Daily Archives: Tuesday, October 30, 2012

  • More everyday sexism from Fujitsu

    Steve WoodsTech

    IT Donut has revealed that Fujitsu has announced a new range of computers, including a pink, sparkly one for women called Floral Kiss (although it’s also available in ‘elegant white’ and ‘luxury brown’).

    Floral Kiss also seems to have no trackpad. Presumably Fujitsu thinks women are either too delicate or too stupid to use one.

    While the IT Donut post states that Fujitsu will not be marketing Floral Kiss in the UK, I’m sure the patronising sexism of its marketing will not bypass any Brit of either sex with more than one working brain cell.

  • Unlicensed software costs company nearly £100k

    Steve WoodsTech

    ComputerWeekly.com reports that safety specialist First Choice Facilities has been fined £18,000 by the Business Software Alliance (BSA) – the proprietary software industry’s licensing police – for unlicensed software following completion of an acquisition.

    First Choice Facilities will now also have to pay an additional £81,000 to buy sufficient software licences to cover the unlicensed Adobe, Autodesk, Microsoft and Symantec products they used.

    Of course, First Choice Facilities could have avoided all this hassle in the first place in 2 ways – 1 expensive and 1 cheap. The expensive way is the route down which they’ve gone; the cheap way would have been to have used only free and open source software.

    Hat tip: Alan Lord, the Open Sourcerer

  • Language before computers

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Tech

    In recent decades, computing has had a major influence on language. I’m indebted to my old friend Mr Wong for the following round robin that landed in my inbox and admirably illustrates how computing, computers and IT have pervaded everyday language.

    Memory was something you lost with age.

    An application was for employment.

    A program(me) was a show on TV

    A cursor was someone who swears a lot.

    A keyboard was a piano.

    A web was a spider’s home.

    A virus was the flu.

    A hard drive was a long trip down the motorway.

    A mouse pad was a mouse lived.

    There were others – something about a floppy – but I’ll spare your blushes with those! 😉