Posts by Terry 6

Linux Mint 21.2 includes a bit of feature creep from the GNOME world

Re: Have I Mentioned -- "Let A Hundred Flowers Bloom", Mao Tse Tung

Or maybe it's not that they don't care, but that they don't care about end users.

It's the FOSS plague (here come the down votes). Software projects written because they interest the developers, or simply in the way the developers find pleasing in some way. The ordinary user isn't so much a consideration because were not the motivation to write the thing in the first place. And any suggestion that an approach or feature may not be the best way forward is ignored, or worse, users with helpful suggestions are told if they don't like the way that it is they can fork it; except most of us users can't. maybe because we're not coders, or because starting to understand that programme from the outside is beyond us, or we don't have the skills for something as complex as that and so forth.

iOS

I'm new to using an iPhone ( got disillusioned with OnePlus btw because of the changes that started to appear, which removed the nice features that made 1+ special)

And I get an impression that iOS is pretty much all over the place.

Where's the bin icon> Oh it's in the botom right. No it isn't now it's the top right, And sometimes a control won't even be there at all. It might have an x or a cancel button or just nothing with no way to exit.

User was told three times 'Do Not Reboot This PC' – then unplugged it anyway

Re: Remove, Throw, Call

More to teh point, it's not so much the cover. It's the difference . The automatic actions, muscle memory and unconscious patterning need to be interrupted. At the end of the day the desk jockey will have their own shutdown routine, just as the computer does. A sequence of events that are just performed one after another..

Put pencil in drawer, set phone to out of office, return mug to kitchen area and leave it next to the dishwasher for the dishwasher fairy to place inside,* go back, check phone is in pocket, have bag/wallet purse, turn off PC, put on coat, head for exit.

It's all one sequence: The end of the day ritual. And the DJs don't want or need to do anything differently. On the contrary, any variation will likely lead to them forgetting their phone or something.

It's a standard behaviour which can frequently be annoying or even dangerous, when someone just follows the usual pattern and forgets that today is different. Usually it's no worse than "Don't forget to collect little Jimmy from granny's on the way home". But it can be.

*Sorry cynicism got the better of me there.

UK govt Matrix has unenviable task of consolidating several different ERP systems

My suspicion is that serving 7 sets of highly entitled-feeling senior bureaucratic types, with an even more entitled-feeling ( and possibly titled too) top bureaucrat leading each one is going to be horrific. Each and every one is going to want their pet foible built into the system. Each and every one is going to want to take credit for some "improvement". Every rivalry and resentment is going to played out.

There isn't enough popcorn in the world.

Re: What a boost for the hospitality industry!

You forgot the lawyers. Whenever there's a bloodbath it's the lawyers who benefit.

Just a tax payer

I have no knowledge of these things, beyond what I've read about earlier disasters- so just thoughts and questions. Like;

What problem are they trying to solve

Do the needs of all the different departments match enough to combine the software

Is there enough knowledge and understanding of what these system do and how they need to do it

Are the problems they're trying to solve ( above) sufficient to require the cost and disruption this will cause

Is it too complex for anyone to get their heads round

Has the cost included the retraining of all the staff (This last bit I have experience of, albeit on a small scale, and the answer is usually no.)

Google institutional investor calls for wider cuts: 30k jobs

Friedman

This is the Milton Friedman formulation. The only responsibility of a company is to its shareholders.And since the modern shareholder is an asset stripping carpet bagger the only metric becomes the latest quarterly earnings. If the company crashes and burns next year that's just too bad.The vultures ( no disrespect t El Reg) will have flown. Probably having opened a bear account too, to benefit from the wreckage.

It's been 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

Re: Gammon's

"don't understand Brexit"

Ah. yes. The quasi-mystical belief that still fuels some Brexiteers. A bit like the golden plates of Mormonism. A kind of spiritual belief in Brexit.

Re: The amount of times...

I find this fascinating. Whichever measurement scale you choose increasing for adding heat would seem to be the logical measure. Adding heat is something we've done for millennia. Refrigeration rather more recent.

Re: The amount of times...

c to f is perhaps easier to do in your head as "double it, take off 10% ( 1 tenth) and add 32"

e.g. 20 doubled is 40 minus 4 makes 36. add 32 gets to 68

It works backwards with a touch of inaccuracy because it's is a bit of a pig to do exactly. Because you have to add back 11 tenths. Good enough for every day use though.And not too hard to adjust the error margin a tad.

Re: Missed opportunity

But they're never used in daily life. Probably because they don't have a friendly name. The technocrats who gave us rational systems like metric units and decimal currency aren't on the whole good people people, I'd hazard. Just as I'd argued previously that we should have retained the shilling ( as a handy, named, 5p unit) they needed to have encouraged useful names for things like decimetre. Names that ordinary people can get to use and like ( a maximum two syllables would be a good starting point). And if that developed into a different name, well and good.

Re: The amount of times...

Kind of depends who you speak to there.

Problem occurs in a recipe that uses combinations cups and teaspoons etc. Because the ratio of large to small quantities may not be the same.

Re: Godless heathens

I do sometimes wonder about this. Pi seems almost too close to an integer to seem reasonable.. As if the universe was somehow slightly wonky.

Re: Don't forget

It's why formal changes tend to take place at 12:01 AM

Re: Hooray for Avoirdupois and pounds, shillings and pence

The impression I get from visiting my American cousins (lawyers, teachers, etc) is that they don't notice the metric measure. A bit like Gaspode.

"I wonder how "easy" it would be to switch from driving on the left to driving on the right nowadays "

The trick is to phase it in slowly, one direction at a time.

( Icon, because otherwise someone......)

Re: Age

" I am not old enough to be a natural user of pounds, stone and feet for this."

Really?

I grew up with lbs and stone for body weight, feet and inches for height, and they were still in use not too many years ago, certainly well into my adult life. I'm just a coupe of years older than you. Mrs 6 is slightly younger than you. Our friends are all around the same age. Most have degree level education or better. And we all grew up using Imperial measures. I had to sit in my primary school lessons memorising that there were 1760 feet in a mile, or 880 in a half mile and so forth. We switched to a greater or lesser extent over the years. But the body height and weight units never did until at least we had kids. And even then we were given their weight in Imperial even if it was written down in metric.

Re: Hooray for Avoirdupois and pounds, shillings and pence

If the price was too... fat chance of that though.

Re: Missed opportunity

Ah. and there you have the one problem with metric units ( and UK decimal coinage) that I do think is a nuisance.

The lack of simply named intermediate units. I don't miss inches or yards, cm or m do me just fine for relatively small numbers of either. I do miss feet though, for when the cm is to small but the m is too large. Even more so g to Kg. The gram is so small you need a couple of dozen* of them to make up a single ounce.and the Kg so large.

With decimal currency, the shilling persisted till decimalisation because it was a useful sub unit. It doesn't matter whether there are 240 or 100 p in the pound, it's still easier to say 7 shillings (" 7 bob" even easier) than 35p (or pre decimal equivalent). Idiot politicians ruthlessly removed the concept of a shilling. They could just have left it there as a 5p unit called the shilling. If people wanted to use it no harm done and they'd have found the transition easier.

*Dozens don't serve any useful purpose- but saying "2 dozen (or a score even) of..." is just somehow easier to articulate than "2 tens of". It somehow sounds clumsy. Else saying "20" sounds over precise if you want a few of something. It lacks a kind of friendliness that people would want to use. Has too much of the white lab coat about it.

Re: Learn both?

Similar age and similar experience. Except I have ( now grown up )kids. The AC doesn't mention if they have any. But with kids going through the school system metric was the one we had to use. ( Though clinical thermometer was an exception 98.4 all the way).

Mostly I use a mixture too, now. I weigh myself in stones and lbs. Recipes in metric, fuel in gallons, distance in Km, speed in mpg, wood in centimetres, height (my) in feet and inches, And so on.

And sometimes there's a combination as in how many gallons will take us so many Km.

Bowls

Funnily enough I caught a bit of the indoor bowls yesterday. There they measure in inches and metres. The jack is n.xx metres away. And the bowl is y.xx inches from it.

New IT boss decided to 'audit everything you guys are doing wrong'. Which went wrong

Re: someone who has more ambition than technical nous

"Nous" is by and large an obsolete term. I think I last heard it used by a particularly unpleasant politician a decade or so ago, and before that an equally nasty primary school teacher several decades earlier.And it's seldom, if ever, used in a nice way. Which may explain its obsolescence.

As in "Use a bit of nous" said nastily.

"Technical nous" is a bit more specialised in meaning and maybe should be retained. It covers something that's more than just "knowledge" or "know-how" (shudder) but includes understanding and intuition.

Re: Sometimes people being stingy with the cash works in your favour

An upvote because I agree. Though it is used often as meaning a prearranged and formalised meeting rather than a casual one, and can be useful in that regard, so I guess it's going to be part of how we speak. See also "meet up with" which is often used to denote a catch-up meeting.

Not quite. Working to rule is saying that if you don't pay us extra we aren't going to do any unpaid extras. It is literally doing what you are paid to do. If that sabotages the employer it's because the employer is using the staff's goodwill by asking for additional unpaid work or responsibility. And if the goodwill has been lost the employer takes the consequences even when it's not organised withdrawal but just disenchanted staff unwilling to help the employer out.

Companies like this is why the economy is doing shit and wages have flatlined. FTFY

Unix is dead. Long live Unix!

Re: Are you ok?

Disappointed that it's not totally original. Still good though.

Old and out of my depth here but

Being old I've been aware of and tinkered with Linux on and off for many years. Not deeply. ( Currently I have a little Lenovo MiiX convertible that I've truly converted- to PeppermintOS). And I had some experience of messing with a UNIX based system donkeys years ago.

But right from the start LINUX was described to me and in the stuff I read while learning about it as being a "UNIX-like OS".

So from a purely historic angle, that's what it is; "UNIX like".

I don't really care about the similarities or differences to be honest. As far as I'm concerned an OS is something you beat into submission and then leave tucked out of sight while you get on with doing stuff on a computer.

Re: Are you ok?

I'm assuming this is humour. The trouble is that these days you can't always tell- e.g.book banning.

(It's also rather dated of course).

Re: About 15 years ago...

Probably an unpopular comment here. But the IT world as a whole seems at least no less susceptible to latest fads and shiny ideas as anywhere other field. And since it's what underlies all of the modern world this affects everything from potato farming to poetry writing.

Add in FOSS elements that rely on the enthusiasm of one or more volunteer contributors who may have a certain feature preference, or need to do more paid work and spend less time fixing bugs and changing superficial features, or just don't have the enthusiasm to redraft old ideas (Or just get older).

So there is a randomness of development with stuff being abandoned because it's not profitable or not interesting enough, or suddenly changed,, or contain quirky features that a developer just liked (or perhaps because of someone in the marketing dept.if it's commercial software) and refusing to respond to what ordinary users might want. And then there is this thing we're all aware of- of a huge monolithic bit of software that's in everything, but is relying on one part-time FOSS developer who's never been paid for all the work he's put into it and is now approaching retirement age and would rather be out fishing.

Re: About 15 years ago...

And I'd hazard a comment that it's at least as open to feature abandonment as the likes of Google's/Apples's/Microsoft's offerings.

Years late and 36 cores short of AMD, who are Intel’s 4th-gen Xeons even for?

It's a strange industry..

Are there any other industries where you buy a whole item but you have to pay extra to use bits of it.

Welcome to your brand new fridge/freezer. If you would like the temperature to go below 2 degrees C please pay £350 to unlock our freeze+ package

or

Contents 350ml orange juice. If you would like to drink more than the first 250ml please pay 75p to unlock the full volume

Though what BMW are doing with their vehicles sounds a bit like this. Then again, most modern cars are essentially computers on wheels so maybe it's not different.

Nice smart device – how long does it get software updates?

Re: Nobody

Appliances, agree. But some controllable light switches are useful to keep the burglars away. Lights can be told to turn on or off at some point in the evening, in different rooms. And I do like being able to control the heating so that it can go on when we are getting nearer home. Smart doorbells- I'm still not sure We have a basic Ring doorbell It's improved quite a lot since we bought it, ( so those updates are important!) but it's still not quite up there with the promise suggested by the adverts. And was probably more expensive than was justified, It's not often that we use it for more than could be achieved by a normal old fashioned ding-dong bell.

This can’t be a real bomb threat: You've called a modem, not a phone

Re: Work bomb scare

In less severe circumstances* I had this argument with the higher ups ( and I was risk assessment trained). A fire practice that doesn't emulate the real thing is worse than useless, it may actually make the situation much worse. Staff who are used to taking an inadvisable route out will likely do exactly that in a real emergency, because that's the escape route they'd been trained to follow.. Which could mean filing back into the core of the building, through to the front internal staircase and into the path of a fire/smoke.

*We'd been told not to use the external fire escape steps at the back of the building except in a real fire, as they were iron and narrow. So there was a small risk that someone might slip....

Re: Work bomb scare

Ha. Thumb down. Probably from someone who doesn't know the difference between reticence and reluctance.

Decades ago there was a gas leak..

The suspected leak was in a large Victorian primary school. With a relatively small play area. The kids ( and staff of course) were evacuated into the play area. And that was it. Had something actually gone bang! we were all within a few metres of the building. ( I was on a visit to the school at the time and stayed to help with the kids). It became clear during the rest of the day that the local authority had no contingency planning for such events -and there was a total lack of visit or help from any of the higher ups, of course.. We eventually were able to take the kids to a (recently built) sports hall nearby and kept them entertained.

Re: Work bomb scare

" reticence"?

You mean you didn't want to tell anyone about it? (until now).

TBH more likely Irish.

Citizen Coder? Happiness Concierge? Here come 2023's business cards

Re: Evangelists, Jedis, Ninjas, Prophets, Gurus

I may be wrong. But looking at the IT world from the edges it seems to me that it works best when they're collaborating not warring.. Inf act too often when stuff goes tits up it's because they neglected to cooperate.Particularly to cooperate with the poor sods who have to use what they come up with.

Task Nomenclature Reimagineer

I'd have enjoyed that job- as long as I could enforce the titles I'd dreamt up.

Tesla driver blames full-self-driving software for eight-car Thanksgiving Day pile up

Re: Hmmmmmmm

Like something falls off the vehicle ahead - I've seen it happen. (I've even experienced it once. I was able to dodge round the chunk of metal on the motor way).

Re: Hmmmmmmm

Fair enough on that. I think we let ourselves get click baited into a general point by the article.

Re: FSD ≠ Autonomous

That's different. A vehicle reversing is, in effect, driving towards you backwards. A driver that reverses back to pull round a vehicle ahead and hits something behind him is at fault just as one who reverses to get into a slip road is. Even with a roll back - as caught my late father out- it's only a short roll back that leaves the driver behind at fault. If the driver ahead fails to halt his vehicle rolling backwards in a timely manner and infringes a reasonable gap left by the car behind then he's likely at fault just as if he'd deliberately reversed. My father got caught because there was a short 2 car length, curved and steep slope at the end their street where it met the main road, so he was partly round the curve and too close to the vehicle waiting to turn into the main road. If he'd stayed off the curve the car might not have hit him- or if it rolled back far enough to do so would have shared, or got all the culpability.

Re: FSD ≠ Autonomous

The lane keeping one is a bit of a bugger. We keep ours on, but there are a number of local places where we have to fight with it a bit, because,for example, you need to infringe a wide white line slightly to avoid colliding with a long row of parked cars that pretty much reduce the road to less than the width needed.

Re: FSD ≠ Autonomous

From a statement quoted off the RAC about the highway code and the law.....

“But the advice it offers can be used as evidence in any court, to establish liability."

Can you be fined for breaking the Highway Code?

Yes, you can be fined for breaking the Highway Code.

My italics.

So, it's not the law, but you can still be fined for breaching it. Which in effect means it is the law - but with a bit of flexibility to allow for circumstances.

Re: FSD ≠ Autonomous

The difference there is between rolling back, in which case, ( unless the driver failed to act on the roll back), the car behind is culpable, and moving backwards under the driver's action, e.g. in reversing. If you reverse into a vehicle behind you it's your fault. If you roll back more than a short, reasonable distance, it's your fault i.e.. by not acting to stop the roll back within a reasonable time.

Re: Capable of driving a car as well as a human?

No. There's a total difference between stopping ahead of a car and pulling in front of it. An issue that gets dodgy if the car driver that pulled in ahead of you claims that he was already there/had been for a certain amount of time first. It's then that the front facing camera is invaluable.

The UK application is that you have to leave enough time and space ahead of you to be able to stop if the car ahead of you stops. For whatever reason. That just doesn't apply if the car ahead cuts in front of you.

Meet the merry pranksters who keep the workplace interesting, if not productive

Re: No desk policy

Hmmm

come out with a brand new, shiny MBA. One of his new mantras was....

Some of us do postgrad management training of one sort or another ( mine was in education leadership BTW) pick up the certificate and hopefully some improved insights. And then get on with the job like before, but hopefully better informed ( and with a pretty certificate to wave around as needed).

And others just become clones of the trainers and their particular ideology/dogma - going on to try and implement all the latest fashion in bloody stupid policies that the course has promoted.

BOFH and the office security access upgrade

Re: All I want for Christmas is...

Yeah. I've noticed on Mastodon so many posts that only make sense if you are an American, or at least have a basic knowledge of Americana. They don't seem to realise that anyone else is on there. Because so much is written with that assumption. Temperatures being the most obvious one. They never put degrees F. But they'll complain that the temperature is 26. And we're meant to know that means cold .