Verity Stob pays her respects to the legendary Irish Times humorist and columnist Myles na gCopaleen, whose centenary it isn't this month.
I was perusing Scientific American the other day when I came upon and across an excellent article by Armando Fox and David Patterson. The big problem with crashes, they say, is not the actual fault itself so much as the time taken to reboot. Inevitably there is an -oriented name for this approach—recovery-oriented computing or "ROC." A ROC/rock pun is included in the text. Instead of a single system reboot, there are lots of automatic microreboots, which isolate the part of the system that had failed and simply...
Programmers of the World: Hey there!
Myself: ...and simply and swiftly cause that subsystem and its dependent subsystems
Programmers of the World: Hey there, Verity Stob!
Myself, irritably: Yes, what is it?
Programmers of the World: Is it going to be like this all the way?
Myself: The change will do you good. What of it?
Programmers of the World: Fair enough, but we're a bit pushed for time. We'll just jump straight to Michael Swaine. We hear he is tiptop this month.
Myself: No, wait, come back. I can show you something clever.
Programmers of the World: Is that so?
Myself: Yes. I will show you how to exchange two variables, without using a third variable.
Programmers of the World: Indeed that's clever. Smart boy wanted.
Myself: I'll be using a logical operation you haven't heard much of, since before you graduated.
Programmers of the World, sighing in reminiscence: Those were the days, and never once back before five in the morning.
Myself: It's called "exclusive or." You take your two variables, let's say they are ints by the way, and you...
Programmers of the World: No, ints is no good. We'll be wanting strings. We always use strings for this. Different lengths, and one of them in your Unicode.
Myself, after a pause: Perhaps you'd be interested in my new scheme for working out eigenvectors?
Programmers of the World: And, of course, the strings are immutable.
Myself, departing in that lofty vehicle, high dudgeon: I'm wasted on you, you ignorant dolts!
Programmers of the World: She's off already? And she's never told us of where to mine this exclusive ore.
Keats and Chapman visited the fun fair, accompanied by Chapman's eldest daughter. The great attraction of the fair was a wonderful roller coaster that had been built with this unusual design feature: The change of height over any short section of track was proportional to the cosine of theta.
The party of three enjoyed many turns on this ride, until Chapman's daughter began to complain of feeling unwell, with a strange blocking sensation inside her nose. Chapman was all for letting her go off and seek medical attention by herself, but Keats spoke against this plan.
"Best to stay with her," advised the poet. "I think she's a bit sinusoidal."
Catechism of Clichi
Just where in [corporal|corporate] terms have IT1 directors been playing their cards?
Close to their chests.
And from which direction might these persons expect a lash against IT2?
They expect a backlash against IT3.
And what item of software applications from this same direction stimulated this lash?
A backlog of software applications.
Correct. From whom will this lash (induced by this log) come?
It will be come from the users.
Just from the users?
Excuse me, I meant from the end users.
That's better. And what part of a string quartet do these end users feel they have played in relation to the upgrading of the IT4 infrastructure?
The end users feel they have played second fiddle to the upgrading of the IT5 infrastructure.
Yup. And since when has this been a problem?
It is an age-old problem.
And for how long will it probably remain?
It will probably remain for the foreseeable future.
And which generation of software may mitigate this problem?
The next generation.
Okay. And what mineral substance won't record the next generation's release this financial year?
The next generation's release will not be slated this financial year.
Right. And what circular motion do the IT6 directors hope eventually to apply to the next generation?
They will roll it out.
Uh-huh. And beyond the confines of what container must our brave boys and girls do their thinking, if they are ever to achieve this rotation?
They must do their thinking out of the box.
And to what must they again set fire, in order best to facilitate their corporate plans?
They must re-ignite the long-running debate. Oh, and Miss?
Yes?
Shouldn't that be "to facilitate their corporate strategy"?
Quite right. Well done, child. You may take a sherbet lemon from the jar.
This issue approximately marks the 15th anniversary of this column in its various forms, so I am craving my editor's special indulgence to mount briefly an off-topic hobbyhorse. (Reader's voice: Off-topic? How can we tell?) It is also the 40th anniversary of my contemporary, Doctor Who, and doubtless there will be much Who-har concerning which of his girlfriends tripped up and gave the game away most stupidly, which actor played The Doctor best (Patrick Troughton), and so on. Amid this festival of trivia and joy, I would strike a more serious note.
Although everybody is familiar with the small, light, white cylinders so often used as a packing material for computers and electronic goods, an astonishing proportion of the population is ignorant of their origin. With a whole industry dependent on them, it is time everybody knew the ugly truth about Dalek droppings. Daleks have been farmed for their guano since 1965, when a certain entrepreneur purchased a breeding pair from a Dr. Banardos home, where the BBC had callously abandoned them after it had finished filming. Today there are many Dalek farms across the developed world; their ray guns are cruelly docked for "safety reasons," their movements restricted to a small concrete compound by a vicious two-foot-wide gravel path. Just 
12,000 trillion is sufficient to send a Dalek home to the planet Skaro. With your help, we could soon see many of these creatures breathing once more the poisonous radioactive atmosphere of their world and exterminating the annoying blond Thal people. You know the web site; and, yes, we do accept Paypal. Thank you for your kind attention.
DDJ
1Information Technology. 2Information Technology. 3Information Technology. 4Information Technology. 5Information Technology. 6Information Technology.
