Posts by Tim99 2321 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Apr 2008
Many, many, years ago the professional who taught me basic photography asked me "What’s the best camera?" "A Pentax K1000?" I replied. They had just come out and we had bought a few… "No", he said, "It’s the one you have with you!" Which may be why almost everything, other than specialized work seems to be done on a mobile phone?
After supporting this stuff for years, I think that for many users it could be called "Window". They use just one or two apps, and never copy/paste between them. Back in the day, when I asked them what version of Windows they were using they said "97", that's when I realized that they used MS Word for almost everything. These days it may be "Chrome" (the browser).
Welcome to our new, improved, rentier capitalism - You pay even more to rent what you have "purchased"!
I still have a Burberry waxed olive green lightweight jacket I bought over 50 years ago. I think it was about £5? Rewaxed a few times, and a bit worn around the pockets, but still wearable. Fortunately with a detachable plain beige plush lining and no tartan at all. I bought it to keep warm and dry, presumably before they were "fashionable".
Perhaps you may not have enough political cynicism in your life? Conservatives tend to come up with ideas like "National Health Trusts" (1990 Thatcher/Major). This was to give "more local control" by bringing in internal markets encouraging purchase of services from local suppliers. It also allowed the Trusts to borrow monies; meaning that a significant amount of NHS funding is spent servicing debt, and has allowed the proliferation of private suppliers; both ideas are classic Thatcherism. Cameron continued this trend with the Health and Social Care Act 2012 which and transferred ~£70 billion of "commissioning", or healthcare funds, from the abolished Primary Care Trusts to several hundred clinical commissioning groups, partly run by general practitioners, but also a major point of access for private service providers. I suspect that the NHS long Term Plan and the Health and Care Act of 2022 will continue the trend of privatization. In the public sector we called this a "pre-sale overhaul" - With something as politically sensitive as the NHS this has to be done incrementally, like the mythical boiled frog.
A caveat: My cynicism may have been developed by my career - Initially as Scientific Civil Servant (including under Thatcher); a senior technical role in a very large public utility; the General Manager of science-based businesses owned by bankers; and the Managing Director and, later, owner of a technology company. I'm retired now.
In 2002, twelve years after Margaret Thatcher left office, she was asked what was her greatest achievement. Thatcher replied: “Tony Blair and New Labour." Blair apparently agreed.
How ever much is spent on health "it will not be enough". Outcomes are unlikely to be improved until more is done on prevention, the current system can actually favour ill health, as most is spent on treatment. Maybe the alleged traditional oriental system of only paying doctors whilst you are healthy :-)
When I lived and worked in the UK, I paid "National Insurance" so did everybody who worked. If you were a student, it was normally deemed to have been paid; a married woman could pay what used to be called "the 6 penny stamp", meaning that if she did work she would be covered by her husband’s insurance, but she could pay the "full stamp" to get personal cover. I find it amusing that, according to most figures the US compulsory cost for health averages about $12,000 compared to the UK cost of <$6,000.
It might not be cynical to postulate that the US system does not produce a significantly better outcome, and that it may have been designed to maximise profit? Personal experience in the UK indicates that Conservative governments deliberately underinvest in the publicly funded sector so that they can be privatized and sold off…
I had a customer who ran an early version Microsoft’s Small Business Server on a 486 desktop PC (I know. The boss preferred to spend the business’s money on his leased top of the range V8 Ute instead of the Server which was responsible for all of their income). It had a "Turbo" button to increase/reduce the clock speed. I sat down next to it to promote a user to a higher SQL Server group in our software, and noticed that the Turbo light showed the slow speed. I reached down to change it, and in the next ohno-second, managed not to release it when I realized that I had pressed the nearly identical Power button next to it. Fortunately all of the 12 or so users were within shouting range, so I asked them to save their work and log off. I managed to use the keyboard with the other hand to shut the Server down.
After restarting everything, and apologising, I went to my favourite coffee shop down the street and had 2 large flat whites and 2 chocolate Bouchees before I felt strong enough to go back and carry on.
Australia has legislated/agreed basic award rates for many employees. The Union’s claim is for a bit more than the award, which seems reasonable. The laundry allowance per shift is $0.25 more than the award - To put that in perspective the standard price for a decent takeaway coffee in Sydney is ~$4.00.
Most of my early work with *NIXs was with BSD types - Including some weird diversions into MIPS and Perkin-Elmer, so I am probably comfortable with it. Later, IBM PCs and then Windows paid much of my salary; the rest included Novell, Ultrix and Debian. I still prefer BSD to Linux, possibly because that is what I used first?
Now I'm retired (and in my dotage) I can still use much of the *NIX that I learnt back then in "Terminal" on an iMac. If I buy another computer it will probably be an ARM base Mac, and then the last traces of Microsoft (and Linux?) will probably disappear from my life...
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Over the years, MS had monopolized the computer business. Their products were everywhere, if you wanted to use a "standard" spreadsheet you needed Excel on Windows. Servers ran MS Mail and SQL Server, Windows networking was everywhere and held it all together. In my opinion, the success of Microsoft is partly down to their well known "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" tactics. In many case the standards that were embraced, like SQL, LDAP and Kerberos were from official international standards, or based on the looser FLOSS licences. I found this to be particularly upsetting as my science background had taught me to make knowledge freely available to everyone so we could all move forward.
When the world wide web became generally available, MS seemed to underestimate its impact. This, I thought, was surprising - One of MS insights seems to be that “good enough” is good enough. The best of breed does not always win - Ubiquity wins. We now have an opportunity to help people take control of computing for themselves.
I have been a volunteer technical assessor to a national accreditation and standards body for 15 years. During this time I have come to believe that open data and document formats are essential to all public organizations. Infrared and mass-spectral data are generated in standard formats. Raw instrument and sample data is transferred as CSV files of known formats. Whilst it is important to use FLOSS wherever you can to avoid proprietary lock-in - It is more important to mandate that a copy all important data is held in a standard format. All of this data should be accompanied by its relevant metadata. Metadata is “data about data” and describes how data is assembled. Examples include size, colour depth, resolution, creator and date of an image; “Markup and Content” for XML; the structure of raw data from databases, and the relevant schema (ASCII delimited/CSV data and Data Definition Language statements for SQL?); HTML structured documents and OS PDF. Currently we keep most of our data in proprietary formats and structures. We could all use FLOSS solutions for this, but this does not address the problem of when we don’t have access to the original developer or when a programme goes out of fashion. Perhaps the data is contained within an application that uses Java, C/C++, PHP, CSS/HTML and SQL - They are all standards - Can we find someone who can duplicate this if we have to move platforms?
Museums are dealing with this now - an XML file* containing:
<painting>
<img src=“image1.jpg” alt=‘Self portrait, by Artist’/>
<caption>The artist painted in <date>1997</date> </caption>
</painting>
gave us the data described by the relevant metadata .
Many existing digital items will not survive for future generations, but an eighteenth century hand-written letter might.
*(This has now been replaced by DublinCore).
Thank you Liam - Great article. Something that you touched on: I think that data freely published open format/metadata is more important. When the ECMA MS MSOOXML IEEE controversy was fresh in our minds. I wrote a long reply to correspondence from PJ in 2010, covering my thoughts on "Standards" vs FOSS - Some of which may now be moot because of HTML and "the Cloud", but I believe that the underlying thoughts still are relevant:-
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The main difficulty that I have with the LPGL is not necessarily part of the question “Why would releasing under the LPGL lead to a direct proprietary closing of a product, in your opinion? JBoss used LGPL, I’m recalling. So I am unable to understand that part”.
The LGPL generally deals with software library packages. The library is copyrighted and requires a distributer to give a user all of the normal GPL rights for that library. The normal GPL requires that any software that is distributed should follow the normal GPL freedoms. However the LGPL allows for proprietary code to be linked to the library. One of the justifications for this approach is that the widest possible use of a LGPL library could encourage a LGPL project to become a de-facto standard. Only changes made to the LGPL library must be made available to other users under the LGPL. If identifiable sections of the distributed work are not derived from the Library, and can reasonably considered independent separate works, then the licence does not apply to this sections - i.e. Changes made to proprietary code that uses the library do not have to be made available to end users. Aggregation of another work not based on the Library does not bring the other work under the scope of the LGPL. I can see scenarios where a commercial producer aggregates a number of different FOSS libraries with a reasonable amount of their proprietary code. This could give a terrific hand-up in being the first to market a new product - This product could then be extended until it has market dominance, during which time the FLOSS libraries are depreciated and replace with proprietary “work alike” modules (Remember that the PGL is a copyright licence and not a patent, so that the ideas and implementation are not protected). The LPGL prohibits the distribution of software that incorporates patents, but it does not prohibit you from gaining a dominant market share. In any case if you do not distribute the work, you do not have to distribute changes. A few years down the track you could have a dominant work that may (in the US) be patentable. If you want to find out more, look at “Why you should’t use the Lesser GPL for your next library” at www.gnu.org. A probable example of purchased BSD licenced libraries being used by a proprietary vendor to develop a struggling product was TCP/IP networking in Windows (Spider Systems and MS). This was quite legal, and within the intent of the licence.
Before I can explain my attitude to FLOSS licences, you probably should know my background: I am not a lawyer, any opinion that I express should not be used as advice in any software project. I am a (retired) scientist and software developer. My company has produced commercial software and a couple of successful small products used mainly by the public and community sector. After selling our company, it continues to be successful - My opinions are my own and are not necessarily shared by the new owners.
I first started using computers and programming (FORTRAN) when working as a scientific civil servant in the early 1970s. Later I became the computer advisor to the scientific branch of a (very) large public monopoly. Microsoft was then a small player in the computer business - Serious scientific computing was done on mini-computers like DEC VAX/PDPs or (proprietary) UNIX machines. When the original IBM PC was introduced, we quickly realized that much of the data manipulation and storage that was done with these $50,000+ machines could be done with a <$5,000 PC. The computing establishment dismissed these "toy" computers but, because they could bring the price of some scientific equipment down from $200,000 to $100,000, we quickly worked around their problems. The real revolution started when we could network these machines with LAN Manager or Novell Netware. This allowed inexpensive commercial software like WordPerfect or Lotus 123 to do a lot of heavy lifting. Necessary custom software was written with BASIC or C. Data was stored in SQL databases or inexpensive DOS databases like MicroRim's RBase (which you could purchase from Microsoft, who did not have their own product). Computing was heterogeneous - We used DEC minis and workstations; UNIX, Apple lls, SPARC, CPM computers etc., but mostly IBM PCs running DOS with Netware to connect everything together. The major problems that we had were finding printer, network and modem drivers for all of our mixed kit.
Then Windows 3.0 came out. We quickly found that (even the Windows versions of) Lotus and WordPerfect did not work very well on Windows, but Microsoft's Windows Excel and Word products did (Odd, wasn’t it?). The organization quickly standardized on Windows, Word and Excel. All major printer and modem manufactures quickly produced Windows drivers for their products and many of our support and integration problems went away. Networking was still difficult as MS did not use TCP/IP, so we continued to use Netware and proprietary drivers. We mandated that our users should, if possible, use DOS/Windows terminals. UNIX/minis were still used as servers, and workgroup members shared Netware servers. All of the major Unix manufacturers competed with one another and did not allow easy integration of one company’s product with others. DEC seemed to make integration of PCs particularly difficult and we started to move away from them.
I changed jobs. I was now running a small commercial science based business. The equipment was obsolete and the staff's level of computer knowledge was low. We expanded the business and replaced the obsolete equipment. Almost all of the new equipment was PC based. Data was stored in MS Excel spreadsheets or Access databases (MS had employed some of the RBASE team to help write Access). As we expanded the business our System Integrator (SI) asked why we were moving from Netware to Microsoft's NT. We told him that we only needed one skills set to run the client and server products, and that the main advantage that NT had for us was that it was an applications server as well as a file and print server. NT was just beginning to support SQL products including the new SQL Server (jointly developed by MS, Sybase and Ashton Tate). Our SI was dubious as Netware and the independent SQL products were technically superior to the MS products. It seemed that we were right because within a short time many small companies were using Windows networking, and if they needed a Server they used Windows NT.
I then became the part-owner and MD of a small software start-up. We wrote specialized custom software. One of our jobs was to produce a community heritage based product for government to be deployed in remote areas without adequate communications. We had produced something similar for a couple of customers using MS technology, and when we looked around we saw that our only option was to use Windows and integrate our product with MS Office. There was no infrastructure in place to even consider anything else - We believed what we were told - Which was that the only support you could find in remote regions was MS based. What we did not know was that this support was patchy at best. Everyone said that they "knew Windows", but in practice the level of knowledge was often poor.
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I volunteer for a national authority that assesses organizations' compliance with some primary ISO standards. My assessments are always written in plain text - No carriage returns, except for each list item, 2 for paragraphs breaks, and 3 for section breaks. Anything that I want to stand out **is delineated by asterisks**. I also strip the formatting from the punters' submitted texts if I have to include it in my replies. I convert it to PDF on the very rare occasions where formatting is required (tables, multiple-line equations, etc.,).
This is for self preservation. Typically, a Word file (most people use them) is created by a user, often opened by them on several PCs; passed around a committee, when each member adds their own tracked changes/comments; back to the boss, then to the original author; then changed again (repeat). During its travels it will have been through MS Exchange several times; in multiple Outlook PST files, and at least one will have put it in a DAT attachment.
One organization had a document in DOCX format - It was originally created with Word 97, and seemed to have all the (hidden) annotations from all of its biennial amendments - It wouldn't even print correctly, merging a couple of tables and throwing page breaks halfway down paragraphs. Sometimes I'm lucky and get the information that I asses as PDFs, but even then somebody may have left their subsequent annotations on it...
I'm retired, but have been around this stuff for >50 years. I volunteered as being the main "computer" teacher/support person for a retirees centre with 2000 members. At the time we had about 8 people who could help out, or teach. We learnt to ask a series of questions when we had a new punter:-
1. Do you know how to use Windows? No? Look at an iPad.
2. If you use Windows, do you have a relative who will *completely support it, including fixing it repeatedly*; or are you happy to pay someone $100 *every time* something doesn't work? No? Look at an iPad.
3. If you don't use/want Windows, do you have an Android phone? No? Look at an iPad.
4. If you have an Android phone, do you like it/understand it? No? Look at an iPad.
We found that to teach a novice how to use an iPad for basic tasks took about 3 afternoons. If they had used Windows, a bit longer because they were trying to complicate what they were doing. A Samsung Tablet, took people about twice as long to learn.
Is an iPad perfect? Obviously not. The subsequent questions we asked were things like: Do yo have lots of CDs that you want to rip? Have you a camera with interchangeable lenses? Do you need to write lots of long documents, or use large/complex spreadsheets? Generally the answers are. "No", so we showed them an iPad. Some of us in the teaching group used Linux, and a couple of photographers used MacOS.
Now I'm in my dotage, I probably use an iPad more than a computer. My only computer now is an iMac - I'm comfortable with it, most of the BSD stuff that I learnt in the 1970s/80s still works. I could certainly manage with my large screen iPad - If I didn't volunteer for somebody else where I need to read/create complex documents and spreadsheets. The iMac is also used to record live TV and automatically skip adverts (Thank you HDHomeRun, comskip, and ChannelsDVR).
Make your, older relatives life easy (and yours), show them an iPad. Passing on your old Windows laptop or Android phone is not likely to be helpful.
In the 1980s we had a very large electromagnet on an instrument that was driven by a bank of 50A MOSFETs. When they became unstable (mains power?), the bang that they made was similar to a close-range pistol shot. Pfah, health and safety - What do you mean that your ears were ringing for a few minutes afterwards? It only happens about twice a year.
Have an upvote, my wording was not clear. I was thinking of Republics that have their names in bold on maps (like the Congos); and not the other 140 odd in this Wikipedia Listing of formal names.
If we look at this Wikipedia Democracy Index about three quarters of Authoritarian regimes are "Republics" compared to over a third of Full democracies, indicating a Republic is >2 as likely to be authoritarian [/Joke]. As a proportion of World population, only 6.4% live in Full democracies and 37.1% live in Authoritarian regimes. For those on the left and right side of the Pond, the same reference lists the USA as a Flawed democracy, and the UK as a Full democracy - Make of that what you will, my irony quotient is overloaded today...
As a retired old fart, I phoned Apple to tell them that my iMac had a line of red pixels all the way down the middle of the screen. They checked the warranty and told me to take it to the nearest agent. I told them that I was elderly, and couldn’t easily transport it there - "No problem, we’ll send somebody to your home". A nice man came the next day and replaced the screen on site. Sometimes being polite/reasonable works.
When I did that stuff, I believe that the career grade was the one that you would spend much of your productive career on. Your final grade was considered to be one or two higher. One reason that I left the Scientific Civil Service is that my (pleasant, competent, and fair) boss told me in my yearly staff review that my career grade was PSO or possibly SPSO, but if I had been to an Oxbridge type institution it would have been SPSO/DCSO. Perhaps he was right; I left the SCS to work for a Public Utility, and then left there at the age of 40 as a PSO, with a written offer of regrading as an SPSO if I stayed.
I've thought that there are 4 types of employees (and people!). The doers and thinkers; the enablers; the masses; and the boat anchors. The first does the hard or the vision stuff; the second help/make it happen; the third go along for the ride and do a bit; and the fourth stuff it up, or are actively difficult. The proportion might be 10:30:50:10
In business (and life?) the Pareto principle (80:20 rule) is certainly real: 80% of "good things" come from 20% of customers/staff/people; 80% of "bad things" come from 20% of customers/staff/people (and not normally the "good things" ones).
We can then superadd Sturgeon's Revelation: That Ninety percent of everything is crud - This is why most of us can't have/do nice things...
Your point is well taken, but some of the children think that their phone is their main/only computer (and it often is).
I'm retired now, but still do unpaid work, and even I found that I could travel and do work with a small iPhone, mouse and small bluetooth keyboard and an HDMI cable/adapter to connect to hotel TVs. YMMV as I could do much of it with an iPad too.
In the 1970s UK Civil Service, if you had not reached the appropriate rank for the carpet (or desk, hatstand, coatrack), had been moved into an office that had said items, and had use of said items (for a year?), you were then entitled to it; even if you were moved elsewhere.
My union rep insisted that details of the hardwood kneehole desk, 3 cornered coat/hatstand, and carpet square that were in my office were entered into my staff file so that I would be entitled to them in future. Apparently my lowly rank meant that I should only have had linoleum, 2 clothes hooks mounted on the wall/door, and a table desk with a single metal filing cabinet.
If you are running on a Pi, have you considered SQLite? It is more capable than many think: SQLite.org - Appropriate Uses for SQLite (Websites).
Beryllium and oxygen? The melting point of Be (~1300C) and the boiling point of beryllia (~4000) may be a bit of an engineering problem if you want to pump fuel, and have the exhaust leave as a gas (melting point of liquid ~2500C, which would still be tricky). Perhaps fluorine as the oxidiser, but then maybe lithium as the fuel? Both fluoride salts are liquid at <600C. Oh sorry, you said "sane" to handle, that takes fluorine out...
To be nearly serious: High impulse/low volume systems like those based on hydrazines/nitrogen oxides are useful in (extra)orbital craft, but their cost, handling difficulty, and toxicity make them impractical for launch vehicles. As an aside, I worked on this with some of them, including 95% H2O2...
I have used LO/Open Office elsewhere, but made a decision a while ago to keep Java off my main Mac.
If I need a database I use SQLite; or (hardly ever now) PostgreSQL (I'm really not going to fight with this stuff anymore after: Ingres, POSTGRES, RdB, Oracle, Sybase, Informix, XDB, Revelation, R:BASE, SQL Server, etc...)
I’m retired from paid work, but knock out specialized spread sheets to help organizations confirm to a basic ISO standard. I prototype in Apple Numbers, then export to Excel. It is much quicker and easily matches requirements. Is Notes perfect? Certainly not, a couple of obscure statistical functions are not supported, and the inability to lock individual columns, rows, and cells is a pain.
One trap is that Numbers allows more than one table on a sheet - Which can solve the locking problem, as an entire table can be locked - If the sheet is exported it creates a separate sheet for each table. Obviously I check the exported file with a real copy of Excel, and sometimes have to make minor alterations: "lookup" and "vlookup" can be tricky, but "x lookup" seems fine; and for conditional format, "stop" can be in the wrong order…
OK, this may be somewhat contentious…
My only computer is BSD derived and works well with a PC keyboard. It uses macOS (via Darwin). Remembering Command/WIndows and Option/Alt wouldn’t be difficult if I used a USB connected PC keyboard. Certainly when I used PC-BSD, the PC keyboard was well supported by the CLI, but the OS was discontinued in 2020 (TrueOS). Perhaps the reason for BSDs low take-up probably wasn’t just an easy PC keyboard and partition compatibility?
I started with BSD on DEC, then SunOS, etc., which may be why I still prefer it to the many varieties of Linux that I have used. I’m retired now, but if I needed to build a Server, I’d probably still look at OpenBSD…
Might I suggest Blind Willie Johnson "If I don't read it, my soul will be lost", apposite blues?
My base 2019 model VW Golf 7.5 with "Driver Assist" applied the brakes (suddenly) when a child (8 years old?) ran around the back of an SUV in a shopping centre car park. We were travelling at <20 km/hr and would not have hit the child, but the car seemed to err on the side of caution, no damage other than putting my heart rate up. Is it perfect? Of course not. When the radar cruise control is on, it doesn’t understand that undertaking is legal here, so I have to touch the throttle to stop the car decelerating (fairly quickly), it also does this if a vehicle turns into a right-turn lane. The lane centring gives a slight writhing effect on curved roads so I’ve turned it off, but just using the lane assist does give useful feedback if you get close to the line without indicating.
One thing that I have found useful is driving in slow speed stop start traffic on a well marked freeway; it will control the stop and start of the car, but leaves a bigger gap between the car in front than a human driver would, and also takes about 4 seconds longer to move forward from stationary than I would (I learnt to drive in London). If we are stopped for more than about a minute, the dash gives an indication that you will need to depress the throttle to move off. If the driver’s hands are taken off the wheel for more than a few seconds, a warning sounds, and if no action is taken the car is brought to a halt. Self-parking is sort of OK, but I hardly use it except occasionally to reverse park into a tight spot. The car has automatic transmission (they nearly all have here) YMMV with a manual (pun, sorry).
If all vehicles had transponders to broadcast where they were, and what they were doing, it seems possible that an autonomous vehicle would be safer than a flawed human - Particularly here, where I have seen people on the freeway shaving (thankfully an electric razor), putting on make-up; and my personal favourite, undoing a Dewer flask and pouring a hot drink into its cup placed on the dashboard.
DDG is my normal browser, much of the time it gets it right. When it doesn’t, I use a bang…
To search anonymously with Google: "my search" !g - - For Wikipedia: my search !w
Yes, generally I would agree with you. As I got older, I realized that most of the stuff that I own was "unnecessary crap". I, too, cook. Most of my expensive knives sit doing nothing for 350 days a year, the one that I use most is Baccarat cuisine pro utility knife which cost me AU$5.95 on special. I have a decent set of 3 Baccarat stainless steel saucepans, and a medium frying pan which gets used most of the time, a couple of enamel plates and a few glass bowls. Most of the rest of the stuff that I accumulated in 50+ years of cooking like garlic presses, mixers, and fancy specialised cookware has gone to the local charity shop. I would probably have saved thousands over the years if I had learnt simple lessons like: Most non-stick aluminium pans are crap and have a very limited life before they start sticking…
My argument is based on local conditions where an average car costs AU$900 a month to own. Most households have 2+ cars which works out a car for every person in the State (including children). So, in future, are most households going to spend $19,000 a year to own 2 cars when 1 owned car will do? I remember in 1955 when my father bought the 4th car in our Norfolk village (population ~120); public transport was not ideal, but was better than it is now. Assuming that the wheels don’t come off (which is looking likely - pun intended) we are almost certainly going to have to go down the route of fewer private vehicles (pun again).
Something which to me seemed strange in these Covid times, is that our State government is getting behind electric scooters and cycles to help relieve suburban transport. Even though public transport is free in our city centres, many don’t like having to wear masks in public transport, travelling with potentially infected people. You can buy a scooter with a 30km/hr top speed and a 90km range for <$1,200 and recharge it for free from your solar panels (25% of our houses have solar panels). A faster 2 seater Vespa type electric scooter with a a similar range is $5,000 (Before COVID, I noticed Teipei has many thousands).
For longer journeys, I can use public transport, travel 45kms for $4 on all buses, trains and ferries; and commence the return journey within 3 hours on the same ticket. Outside commuter times, as I’m a pensioner, I travel free. Yes I have a car, a 46 month old VW golf, with 17,000 kms on the odometer - Mostly it’s used for shopping, recreation and medical appointments, I could Uber those, but as you imply it’s just convenient to have a car…
