Stob It is time to wake up and smell the elephant in the room. Vista is struggling to achieve escape velocity. Microsoft finds itself the butt of an international joke, but does not seem able to get a grip. The issue of choice of platform is once more up for grabs.

Of course there is an alternative; a popular computing platform whose design attracts universal admiration. But although we all look forward to literally punching in the numbers, the Wii does not yet quite hack it (use of a dread phrase coming up) 'in the enterprise'.

So, for the time being, I'm afraid we are all back on re-evaluation-of-Linux duty. Never mind. I've already done the spadework. Let me lead you through a few simple steps to a full-on Open Source experience.

Stob Perhaps motivated by the desire to avoid type-casting, David Tennant is to take time off from television, to lead the RSC's forthcoming production of Hamlet. Your correspondent sneaked into early rehearsals.

Stob 'So that's how I came to be mysteriously orphaned and, on my ninth birthday, just three years ago today, sent to work as a junior grader at the Ah-Poo! Toilet Tissue reclamation factory at Fort Wirth', explained Jo, our heroine, a feisty, scruffy and independently-minded young tomboy whose more mature, more feminine side we won't really encounter until volume three.

Stob

Only the guilty need be afraid

Did you ever try Paint Shop Pro? It is the most splendid of programs, a faithful collie dog of a program. Whistle for it and it bounces up off your hard disk, and licks your face, and gambols around all eager and excited and ready to play.

Design industry pros may swear by Photoshop, but that costs way too much for me. And I never could get my head around The Gimp’s deeply-nested popup menus. (Apparently they are optimised for viewing through the zippered eyes-holes of a leather mask.)

Stob We were quite awestruck and overcome with jealousy when Wired magazine managed to get in that guru of the grated nutmeg, high priestess of the investment handbag, and archdeaconess of the artichoke salad to host its annual 'How to' issue.

Wired came straight out and asked Martha, who is photographed putting the finishing touches to an exquisite robot made out of hedge, what she could teach geeks.

Stob I say, "I could try ringing again."

R, my boss, wipes the raindrops off his specs to look at me impatiently, and starts jabbing at his mobile phone. I sit down on our pile of laptops and computer gear.

The Warm Welcome Hotel and Guest House, Ballylolly (seven bedrooms, three diamonds, three stars, and a lucky clover) is located in that part of Northern Ireland where the rival factions have finally overcome their differences and the miserable burden of history, and triumphantly united in the brotherhood of Christianity.

I’m sure you’ve heard that old joke which contrasts the development of the car with the astonishing rate of progress in digital electronics. The story goes that if automobile technology had advanced at the same pace as desktop computers in the last couple of decades, we’d all be driving cars that can circle the globe on a teaspoon of petrol, get us to Sydney and back in five minutes flat, and so on and so forth…

Well, that’s the theory; the humour element comes in when you realise that if we really did build cars like … uhh … a certain well-known Redmond-based corporation builds operating systems, they’d break down every ten or twenty yards, repeatedly warn that you have unused cigarette butts in the ashtray and force you to upgrade to a new, compatible type of petrol half a dozen times on each trip.

Stob

Those who can, do. Those who can't, make those who can draw a picture

My first effort in instructing computers, about 30 years ago, was drawing a flowchart. Here it is as I remember it, albeit without the smears and crossings-out with which my 14-year-old self doubtless decorated the original.

Stob 'What if,' said a friend down the pub the other day, when the conversation was circling uneasily for take off at that tricky third round mark, 'what if those old Greek philosophers - you know, the ones that used to sit around all day gassing - what if they had had the benefit of modern social website software, like Facebook? Would it have made a difference to Western civilisation?'

Well, duh.

Stob There's another of those lists of supposedly amusing/sage/cute adages going around, bouncing from blog to email, accumulating fresh contributions and occasional edits and doing all the meme-ish things that memes do. This one differs from all the others that you have deleted irritably from your email inbox in that it includes a contribution taken from this very column.

Stob Fewer people than I would expect seem to be aware of the American humorist James Thurber's fine self-illustrated reworking of Aesop's fables entitled Fables for Our Time.

Thurber's stories, being written in 1939, lack coverage of the digital age. I therefore humbly offer three new fables as tribute to the master, and as a species of technical supplement. Dave did my pictures.

Stob Before I start, please take a moment or two to identify your exits, in the unlikely event of the alarm sounding during this article. These are clearly marked with a blue underline like this (nb this is not an actual exit, but just a demonstration of what an exit would look like if this were an exit.

Stob Here is a little contest, to which all fellow Windows programmers are invited. What is the API function LockWindowUpdate for? How might you use it? You are definitely allowed, nay encouraged, to use the official Microsoft documentation.

Stob Last month, Kiwi programmer David Harris officially threw in the towel. After 17 years, he announced he was ceasing development of Pegasus Mail, the famous, free-as-in-beer, email program.

Two article formats inevitably get rolled out at this time of year: the list of predictions for the next twelve months, and the answers to the seasonal topical quiz (which was printed in late December as a filler in the absence of any news and to enable us journalists to spend a few precious Yuletide days in the environs of the Rat and Rootkit).

Stob Ah, Christmas! When pubs fill up with inexperienced drinkers to the disapproval of regular sots, when lunchtime turkey sarnies get a blob of cranberry jam and are relaunched as 'Christmas dinner flavour' for a 40p premium, and when the moneyed middle-classes are not ashamed to be seen shopping at Woolworth's.

Stob FIRST VOICE No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own;

SECOND VOICE Ahem. Hold on there, Richard. Wrong script.

Stob Microsoft Office Word is a candidate for the world's favourite program, provided you accept BA's use of "favourite" as a synonym for "ubiquitous" (me neither).

One app may bind them all, but its users come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. Here is the Reg's kut-out-and-keep guide.

Stob Thanks to the Beeb's correctly extensive celebrations of Sir John Betjeman's centenary, Betjmania is once more abroad and has conquered everywhere. (Everywhere? Well, as they say in the Asterix books, everywhere except one tiny village...)

Stob Hi Verity, are we up for some more frolics and fun?

Nope. It's a spot test today. Using your neatest handwriting, write out a standard C++ loop on the nursery blackboard. No copying. This will count towards your final grade.

Joy. What brought this on? Oh, ok – gimme the chalk, let's get it over with:

Stob I'm not usually a great one for American TV comedy, the cartoons excepted. But recently I came upon a wonderful thing called House, featuring Hugh Laurie as the eponymous hero, a consultant at a New Jersey hospital. Laurie is an effective counter to that arch-enemy of all American hospdrams, Doctor Mawk.

Stob All top computing publications should occasionally put out a glossary of new and with-it computing jargon, together with clarifications of expressions that have evolved with the new technology. Here is ours.

Stob Microsoft has been firing off some big guns in support of something called 'C++/CLI'.

The Softies would really like to lure C++ users into the suburban programming world of .NET - the .NETscape if you wish. But their previous attempt in this direction, a system called 'Managed Extensions to C++' that was composed mostly of __underscore characters, has been universally deemed resistible.

Stob Natch, the Reg is your first port of call for the low-down on all the big product announcements.

But today we're taking it one step further. As a special treat, we have a preview of some hot stuff that even the CTO doesn't know about yet.

Stob

1. And it came to pass that the Sons of Kahn, who dwelt in the valley of the Scotts, fell yet again upon interesting times. And their fortune did wax and wane, only with not so much of the wax.
2. And they did bring forth a version of Delphi called '2005'. But the users of Delphi looked upon it with scorn, for it was a stinker. And they upgradeth not.
3. And the great and respected leader of the Sons of Kahn, one Daleful Er, spake unto his people saying: I have a great plan to fix our troubles.
4. And the Sons of Kahn spake unto their great and respected leader, saying: Art thou still here?
5. And so Daleful Er departed the valley of the Scotts, with his tail fitted in its groove.
6. Then the remaining Sons of Kahn sat down upon the Dell Yocam Memorial Sofa and parleyed amongst themselves, for they knew in their hearts that they did indeed need a great plan.
7. And then one amongst their number said unto the rest: Let's change our name to Inprise again. That worked brilliantly last time.
8. But the Sons of Kahn heedeth him not, for they perceiveth that the fellow taketh the pitheth.
9. And then another amongst their number spake up, saying: Look, there is a strange mark upon the sofa, upon its very leather. Whosoever can interpret this mark unto us, he must be our leader.
10. And they all gathered around the sofa saying: Eugh, gross; is that a food stain or what?
11. And: Methinks 'tis like a weasel.
12. And: I love the smell of Rorschach in the morning.
13. And they could interpret it not.

Stob Letters We received a shed load of emails in response to our jibes at the BBC's Bitesize website for GCSE sufferers.

Many came forward to explain the site's use of the term 'ICT' instead of the more usual 'IT'. Andrew Field, Head of ICT at a secondary school in Cambridgeshire, writes

Stob Sitting watching telly, a BBC trailer for its Bitesize GCSE revision programme caught my eye. This is an adjunct to the BBC website, a sort of punishment block, where young shavers are encouraged to swot up for their oncoming exams. What, I wondered idly, were our youngsters being taught about our own, dear trade? How had things moved from my own distant youth, when IT training had comprised, as I remember it, Mr S the maths teacher telling us where the Research Machines 380Z lived and emphatically interdicting its use?

Stob Exception handling is a comparative newcomer to the programmer's toolset.

The mighty for loop, the enigmatic if statement and the cheeky little counter increment have been with us since the first automatic languages bubbled to the surface of the primordial programming bog at Manchester, more than half a century ago. But, according to my skimpy research, it wasn't until IBM's PL/I came along, in the mid 1970s, that exception handling appeared in a language.

Stob Do you remember, earlier in the year, there was an episode of Doctor Who where the Dalek stuck its sink plunger through a computer screen and downloaded the entire internet? And then went on to commit suicide?

Stob Ms Stob claims that old comedy sketches, written in the pre-PC era, need to be ported to a safe, modern and familiar environment in order properly to be enjoyed by safe, modern and familiar IT staff. She offers this classic example…