It is pretty crap for writing a GUI (somewherw there is a COBOL version of "Hello World" for X-windows, it is horrible), but excellent at straight data processing, especially with fixed field format files. It is allso excellent at properly handling money in exact amounts.

At the moment, everything to or from a trader is recorded whether Emails or Voice. Nobody goes near it unless there is an official enquiry or funny price patterns are observed. So a "Can you nudge it a bit up" may be obvious when talking about interest rates and if a human listens in. Currently, without full language recognition and some very clever analysis is that can be done is to look at whether prices seem "wrong" when compared with other data.

I learned Fortran first but we used PDP-8s in the University Computer Lab. I think you toggled in RIM and then used that to load the next level boot loader, BIM and then you could do "stuff". I played with FOCAL but IIRC, it was more of an interpreter than a compiler. Fortran was theoretically possible but it was hard to run on the 8 with no disks and just paper tape. I seem to remember that you had to cut the tape from the compile phase and feed the last part with the symbol table in first to the relocating assembler.

Fortran at high school (on an IBM 360 and later an IBM 1130) and then again at university. I never had to do PL/1 though.

In those days, a misbehaving job would usually involve a memory dump being made of the program in error. No core files, it would all go to dead tree in a mixture of hex and ebcdic. It was down to you to look at the binary to tray and work out what went wrong. Most compiler/linkers were good about giving you the memory addresses of your data areas though.

Normal people don't need "unlimited free international roaming", and it's easy enough to just get a local SIM card if you are travelling alot or for extended time, so there just is no broad basis for instituting this change which has broader repurcussions.

You underestimate how often people travel in Europe. In some places you can hit four countries on a day out. At one location where I worked, it was so close to a border that inadvertent roaming was an (expensive) problem. Getting a local contract SIM is hard in many countries not your own. You often need to show proof of residence and prepaid can be significantly more expensive.

In any case, there is the issue of managing SIMs with call forwards/whatever. It is possible, but far from convenient.

It is more around ensuring IM is recorded. You can still run OCS, for example, but everything is stored in case you want to manipulate LIBOR or something. There are places where encryption is important such as Mergers & Acquisitions but it really is just about ensuring that there is a log of all important communications.

If you have a company provided SIM, it is fairly easy to disable SMS. An arrangement can be made with the provider to disable SMS transmission and receipt. Note if you have a device under BYOD, then you have other compliance relevant messaging available. The downside is that you will need internet wherever you are to use it while SMS is a basic service which has high availability and is relatively fast/cheap.

Airbus have an interesting concept involving a linear motor based mono rail catapault. Not exactly what the OP thought, but shaving off the accelleration to take off speed from external power eis very attractive. The source, could be coal, but it also could be something green as long as it coul kick out a few MW (a conventional high speed train can take about 8MW). Note that although carriers are famous for their high G catapaults, they are only needed because of the short flight deck. A normal runway length would give no more accelleration than normally experienced in a commercial aircraft. The advantage is that although jet engines can be efficien, running them flat out as needed during takeoff isn't.

I worked on a trading system back in the early days. We hit lots of "edge" performance cases. To take full advantage of what a system offers us and to code around problems we usually have source code to look at. We didn't change it, but we had to have the access. MS would gladly give their source code to major customers, but frankly there is more expertise around Linux kernels than Windows.

It is getting some interest for financial services such as trading and trade processing - again online patching is great as is the built in messaging and scalability.

it is not quite clear to me on what legal basis English Heritage can claim ownership of the photos one takes. IANAL, but to my mind they can't claim copyright:

They can assert their rights as a condition of entry to the property. This does happen also on entry to various museums which may explicitly forbid all photography or just commercial photography. If you photograph Stonehenge from somewhere else (especially from public land), then there can be no objection or claim to copyright.

# even if a building would be a "form of expression", it is not theirs (being listed as world heritage [unesco.org])

The term "world heritage" is only a special designation which may give access to grants. It does not "belong" to UNESCO, it is theoretically under the 'ownership' of English Heritage.

I went there with my school when I was young and many years ago before EH took over. There was no boundary, and I even ended up sitting on one of the fallen stones (not forbidden in those days). What was more interesting were some of the nearby complexes such as Avebury which had a proper museum.