Posts by Terry 6

When Facebook says you're not a good 'culture fit', it means you're not White or Asian enough – complaint

The now disbanded Royal Ulster Constabulary was comprised of members of one NI community. Similarly applied in several of their industries (ship building comes to mind).

Recruitment was people in place only appointing people like themselves, often after recommendation by people already in place. ( and being actively hostile to others).

There are countless examples of this. It's why it's usually banned.

"Cultural fit " is pretty much synonymous with "People like us" because that's the only common culture shared by candidates and current employees. The outsider can not share the unique company culture, whatever that might be, until after they have joined.

Cool IT support drones never look at explosions: Time to resolution for misbehaving mouse? Three seconds

Re: It normally the Caps lock

Lots of resources online for this still. Or if I remember correctly, there's a registry edit.

But I have this link saved; Still works in 10

https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/disable-caps-lock-key-in-windows-vista/

Re: Switching on the "monitor stand"

it was easier to move it forward/backwars to inevitably plug something into the back,

Or, more poignantly, to get to the fu****ng serial number which is always on the f***ing back.

And even now, when I've not had to do this for years I still feel my blood pressure rising!

Re: It normally the Caps lock

Yuk

Re: It normally the Caps lock

Does anyone need caps lock?

I normally disable it. Only problem being people so used to using caps lock instead of shift. Some of them can't cope with this. So I had to leave it be. Which was fine when we had individual PCs. Less so for shared ones.

Re: Mouse mats with logos -avoid, avoid, avoid

Actually, I'd already stopped with the mouse mats long before they went optical. Unless the desk was particularly shiny - when a bit of the old A4 would be added to save me wasting time and effort finding the actual mouse mats.

Re: Switching on the "monitor stand"

Some years ago I went to one of the schools in my patch where I was doing specialist literacy support on behalf of the local authority ( at a small but usefully higher pay grade than the classroom teachers.

In the open plan section there was a horrible smell coming from a row of sinks.

I was greeted by the headteacher with a "Could you sort out that smell for us"..

My response that I was the literacy specialist, not even employed by them and that they had a schoolkeeper for that job was met with, "Ah but he's too busy".

Microsoft takes tweaking tongs to Windows 10's Start Menu once again

Re: Clearly I've missed something but

This does not sound like one of the major chain supermarkets, where product positioning is determined by head office algorithmically according to some arcane combination of profit margins - including supplier payments or discounts for premium locations, demand prediction (including advertising campaigns), and customer tracking. As well as good old fashioned seasonal variations.

Re: Edgy

would be admitting defeat.

Even before I read this comment I was thinking something along those lines.

It's as if those execs who foisted Win 8 on us, insisted it was wonderful and what everyone wanted, then launched their shill army to pretend everyone loved it, are still refusing to give up.

Now they're hiding in the woods and launching annoying darts of Modern at us when they think we're not watching.

Clearly I've missed something but

Why ?

<i?the decidedly old-school world of the Control Panel System page now fall into the About page of Settings. </i>

The Control Panel did what it did. I don't say it was perfect, but it did what was needed.

So what's the point of shifting everything around into a place that's still a Control Panelly sort of space?

It's a bit like when a library moves the Crime and the Thriller sections of books into one called Crime and Thriller- on the same bookcase. (Or the opposite for that matter).

I was screwed over by Cisco managers who enforced India's caste hierarchy on me in US HQ, claims engineer

Re: Protecting culture...

My late mum always said "Two wrongs don't make a right".

Re: "HR" - there's your problem.

Not for most people. Being able to leave a job and walk into another is a luxury most don't have.

Around the early 1970s I fancied going to work in PR after Uni*. I was offered an interview for a company doing corporate promotions and stuff in which the man doing the i/v kept asking if I minded that I'd be working for a woman (who wasn't at the interview, tellingly). He must have asked this 4 or 5 times and clearly couldn't believe that I wouldn't mind. I was 21 and looking for my first job, and though working class I had a degree. I'm guessing he'd mostly been employing local working class lads to stand up in trade shows.

*I was torn between going into IT and Educational Psychology and I guess this seemed a good way to avoid the choice. I ended up going to education (mostly).

Re: Deep-rooted prejudice

"Indian" restaurants are almost all Bangladeshi Muslim not Indian.

Re: How did they learn he was Dalit?

Posted before seeing this...

it happened to me

I became aware much later of a rift within the school (North Manchester High) and the local area between Catholics and Protestants. Aware as in understanding why there were outbreaks of mild violence, I think caused by our (presumably mostly Protestant even though non-Denominational) school.

It was incidentally a school full of horrific levels of anti-Semitism too. And by no means just among the kids.

Re: How did they learn he was Dalit?

Not apocryphal - personal. I was cornered approached in secondary school (North Manchester High 1968) and asked if I was Protestant or Catholic.

"I'm Jewish"

"Yes but are you Protestant or Catholic Jewish"

Re: General concern

The class system kicks in way before that.

The kids that get sent to posh public schools, then Oxbridge have far more chance of getting that engineering ( or government) job than an inner city kid with no family background of educational aspirations, but who manages to get to a less prestigious Uni through ability and determination.

Re: "We have robust processes"

That is naive beyond imagining.

Remember that "No I in team" thing?

The individual contribution to the earnings of a company can not be identified in that way. If it were the sales dept. would be paid 100% of the salary bill.

How do you decide what the cleaner contributes? Or the filing clerk?

How do you manage to discount the elements of risk/skill/care for detail in apportioning earnings.

The Health and Safety people earn nothing, they're what the bean counters would call a cost centre - but good ones save a company a fortune in lost productivity.

The IT dept. ditto.

Someone must be bricking it: UK govt website for first-time home buyers snapped up for £40,000 after left to expire

Re: Property is not necessarily theft

A lot of this came with 1066 And All That.

All of a sudden ownership vested in Feudal Overlords. The Land was theirs.

From that came, eventually, over a few hundred years, the Enclosure Acts. Which allowed commonly grazed land to be expropriated by the Lordies.

Cultural issue

And I'd say probably not only governmental bureaucracies.

But but the order came down from On High : .gov.uk addresses are to be protected, no mention of .org.uk so, no protection for the latter is a class of thinking. Off with the old, on with the new.

It explains many phenomena.All aspects of losing continuity with what went on before because it's not part of the new shiny.

When, in the 70s, we decimalised our currency the word "shilling" (5p) was eliminated. It could have been retained, but there was a deliberate effort to stop using it- it wasn't part of the new thinking, but it could have been and a whole generation would have been more comfortable with the new currency. It's just a name for 5p after all. It could have been left to wither naturally.

Most of the shenanigans with Windows Start menu over the last few years seem likewise to be a way of burying the Win 7 designs that were abandoned with the fucking horrible Windows 8 layout, rather than having any practical use that helps people do stuff .

It's National Cream Tea Day and this time we end the age-old debate once and for all: How do you eat yours?

Re: I solved this when I was eight

Fair enough. I forgot those. I'm getting rusty. I'd argue that "down" etc. might be the more representative though. (tbh I have no evidence, just my own experience). Either way it's probably not the best way to define the sound. I assumed, incorrectly that you were defining the pronunciation with that sound "sc/ou/n)

English is like that.

It's one of the reasons why the government's emphasis on phonics teaching is so misdirected, even if you don't know much about human learning and how we actually read this demonstrates it.

Re: I solved this when I was eight

"sk-own" or like "sk-un"

Neither of these

No one has ever used those pronunciations. -own is a rhyme with "clown" or "down" except in the standalone word "own". English is like that.

It's pronounced "skon" or "Skohn" ( sk /əʊn/)

But "sk/un". Not even in Yorkshire, where that pronunciation form is common ( e.g. the number "wun" ).

It's equally valid to say "sk/ohn" or sk/on" and you are fully entitled to use which ever you prefer.*

*But the second one is right..

Re: ...delightful cakey accompaniment is pronounced "scone"...

Yeah, absolutely, same as with done or gone (or honey or money) or one....err, Oh. .

Re: ...delightful cakey accompaniment is pronounced "scone"...

That's a third way then. Though not actually one I've ever heard.

"Scone" pronounced to rhyme with gone I have heard, often.

"Scone" to rhyme with tone, a bit less so. Down my way it was people trying to sound posher than what they were said it like that.

But to rhyme with gown - nope, never. Unless you mean "own" which does rhyme with tone/bone/phone etc.

One year ago, Apple promised breakthrough features to help iPhone, iPad, Mac owners with disabilities. It failed them

Re: Voice control for the mute

And in the car, my old WinPhone would send a text by my telling it to. So no touch required. "Message s____"

"What is your message?"

"Stuck in traffic. I'll be late"

Followed by a whoosh sound and herself gets a nice legal message.

Listening to a message equally legal and easy.

But on my Android you have to (locate and ) touch a little button somewhere on the screen to activate voice. It can't be activated by the car (Honda) controls, even though the phone can. And it's neither legal nor safe to fish around to pick up the phone, then look at the screen to find the little microphone icon....

And anyway, what's the point? If you have to do all that to send a text (when it's legal to do so) you might as well just send a text the usual way.

Re: Hmm

Colin Hughes, a past Reg contributor and disability rights advocate, said, despite all the fanfare, Voice Control is maddeningly frustrating to use on a day-to-day basis.

Re: Lack of engagement with disable people

This quote "there's even a whole specific department for it" tells the tale.

If there's a specific separate department it's not integrated into the design. It becomes "Let's ask the disabled folk down the hall" rather than a team member who doesn't even have to be disabled, but who's simply aware of the needs of the colleague on the next desk saying, "Don't forget to have an end call command too", or even better, just writing one in.

Re: Lack of Support

the people working on the next new thing are much more important than the people working on making them better.

TBH I don't think this is an Apple issue, It's an industry issue. And it's on every platform and every kinds of s/w.

From Microsoft to FOSS by way of Android and Apple. Making shiny new stuff is much more fun ( and marketable I assume) than fixing existing stuff.

Little example I often quote in such circumstances-

Since Microsoft has had a recycle bin icon that changed when you deleted stuff and the option to customise said icon, the two aspects haven't worked together without manually making a small registry edit whenever you choose a new icon. Otherwise the custom icons don't change on delete or empty. Unless you refresh the screen.

It's a well known issue. The solution is easy to find online.

This is the Windows 7 advice. Windows 10 is unchanged. 11 years later

https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/24761-recycle-bin-fix-custom-icons-not-refreshing.html

They still haven't bothered to fix it. And few users will want to be digging around in the registry.

Or there's the simple fact that Android updates don't get passed on to users for most phones.

Internet Society, remember your embarrassing .org flub? The actual internet society would like to talk about it

Re: Is this an “American thing”?

I was going to post this as a separate comment. But it's better here.

I have witnessed the boards/committees of several non-profit groups, albeit all tiny ones, here in the UK who have come to see themselves as being the core of the group they've come to run and above the wishes of the members they're responsible to. And I've seen how their vainglorious attitude can easily turn to straightforward self-indulgence.

I've seen an elected committee of a friendly society turn the organisation into a ltd. company and declare themselves to be "directors". And then use blatantly underhand tactics to freeze out opposition. [Blatant as in having an extraordinary members' vote to remove a couple of previously well liked committee members who'd opposed them, that was unanimous (bar two) in an organisation that normally can't even agree how often the grass should be cut. And by the way, a vote that the friends of those members didn't know about].

Maybe there is hope for 2020: AI that 'predicts criminality' from faces with '80% accuracy, no bias' gets in the sea

Re: Body language

Of course, that's it. Criminals will wear a stripey T-shirt, a narrow eye mask and carry a bag that says "Swag".

Criminality

I don't get the impression, from this report on El Reg, that the paper had any kind of rational way to define criminality. Without that the AI has no rational starting point., even before you start on trying to recognise it (whatever "it" is) with AI. And I don't think there ever could be one. Because it is defined by the laws that are broken Would such an AI, for example, be able to include rich people who hide their company's income and profits through a whole string of shell companies? Would the AI change in some magical way when a dodgy practice that enables tax evasion is outlawed and the actions become suddenly criminal. Or reverse itself when an activity is decriminalised. Or when a person crosses a border between localities when any given activity is or is not legal. Is the 18 year old who legally drinks in one US state somehow changed when they visit one where 21 is the age? Does the change occur as they cross the border? Or only if they lift a glass of alcohol to their lips?

i.e. There is no objective thing called criminality. Criminality is a breach of the law, whether wilful or not, whether the law is justifiable or not, whether the law is significant or not. And breach of that law remains criminality even if the law is later repealed as unjustifiable. It's a status, not a state of being.

And at what point does criminality make one a criminal . One offence? Two? Three?

I'm a criminal, I definitely drank before I was 18. I once tried an illegal substance, I'm sure I accidentally went through a red light once. I've definitely walked out of a shop with a newspaper and forgot to pay once. I frequently, as a kid and within the age of criminal responsibility, jumped off a bus without paying. And I've got on and off a bus while it was still moving!!!

And I'm equally sure that I've breached a few other laws (when was the one about archery practice repealed?).

Belief in 5G conspiracy theories goes hand-in-hand with small explosions of rage, paranoia and violence, researchers claim

Re: So basically ...

Imagined, rather than made up, perhaps. Climate change deniers have thrown that straw man about a lot. I'd suspect that some camp followers believe it.

Re: Academic Psychologists and Survey Questions

Not every....

There's the sponsored survey - which will mysteriously support the clients' views.

There's the purely academic research survey, which is what scientific studies should be.

There's the research survey done to aid the production of a paper that will be accepted by the journals and enhance an academic's career prospects.

And, sadly, there are the, arguably numerous, scientific studies that fit in neatly with the conclusions that academic boards want to hear. Because funding for academic research, these days, is very contingent on approval from above. And that in turn is contingent on funding the kind of research that won't upset the politicians/press/donors.

Have to declare an interest here - I'm not an academic- but my teaching used to be very informed by what the academic research was saying about how we acquire reading. Research that seemed to dry up once the Behaviourist and business lobbies were able to impose the view that Reading = =Phonics ( and a certain type of phonics that is coincidentally very easy to market). All the academic research that crossed my desk after that was pretty much useless - even for phonics teaching e.g. comparative studies of phonics acquisition between Croat and Canadian learners ( I may have got the countries wrong, though there were a lot of similar ones so it doesn't matter).

Re: Seems plausible

Ah yes. It's a question I've asked a good few times. If it's a "secret conspiracy" how come everyone has heard of it? Still waiting for answer to that one.

Re: Seems plausible

Underlying a lot ( not all, I guess) of the conspiracy belief is an anger at the know-it-all clever folks that tell them their fears are nonsense. And as we were told not too long ago, we've heard too much from experts.

These are the ones that were labelled the "elites" in the Brexit discussions by the Leave campaigners despite the fact that the people saying this were ( or were backed by) mostly Etonians and millionaires.

Think of those stories we've read and posted in El Reg comments. The people who call in the IT experts, but then refuse to do what they tell them to. Or who's own close family* will buy a piece of over-priced useless crap because Elsie down the road tells them to, rather than asking us, with years of training and experience in using, sourcing or repairing the stuff.

*OK this is personal. My late mother got sold a rubbish overpriced laptop and stuff she couldn't use because an Elsie told her to. And I ended up spending far too much time sorting it out for her.

Re: We have our own US-based All-American 5G Conspiracy Theory!

Not sure about the UK in that list. Does Capita have a foreign spying outsource dept?

Re: We have our own US-based All-American 5G Conspiracy Theory!

If resistance is futile, why bother?

Re: So basically ...

It probably fits in with Kahneman.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow

It's perhaps easier to come to a dubious conclusion and defend it than to analyse and work out the sane probability.

Faxing hell: The cops say they would very much like us to stop calling them all the time

Re: I called the cops

This, and all the preceding comments in the thread just serve to confirm what I've already thought. That the whole world wide dialling code system (and the way it's described to users who need to use it) is a mess.

A small example,of course, is the London dial codes. Because in the transition to the 020 system you could dial the original number or the 020+7+local number there are still lots of people that quote and even write their numbers in the format 0207 123 1234. And since most people these days seem to phone using a tiny mobile with terrible sound rather than a nice comfortable, clear home phone, it will still work for them because you have to dial the full number. But if you use a fixed line phone within London you don't dial the 020 bit. You must still dial the 7 though.

And of course, when you ask someone to read out a number to you (within London) you never know when they're starting with 7/8 whether it's coming in the form 7712 3456 or its 7123 1234 - unless they say the 020, which you then have to kind of ignore for a few beats until they get to the main number.

This is trivial and parochial, I know. But it's indicative of the mess that dialling codes have become.

Re: Fax will never die!

We've had online repeat prescription requests for at least a couple of years - and they send them electronically to my little local pharmacy.

I mourn the fax machine

We Brits get pretty crap service from a lot of companies. Complaints are usually avoided, by making email addresses impossible to find. And the "contact us" links on web pages are constructed to make sure that we don't contact them, by never actually linking to the page that has the web contact form. The "contact us" link takes you to an FAQ page full of questions that no one has ever asked. Which has a "need more help" link, which takes you to the generic "Help" page, which takes you to the "contact us" link.......(repeat ad infinitum). For a short while, while it was still fairly new, you could bypass this with Twitter etc. but by and large they've learnt how to dodge or ignore that now too.

But a Fax! .

That always got results. As good as a written letter, but immediate and cheaper.

What does London's number 65 bus have to hide? OS caught on camera setting fire to '22,000 illegal file(s)!!'

Re: 65 bus route

No. That would be a constant. So they'd depart at arrival time+n ans the space would be the sae on departure as on arrival.

Re: 65 bus route

They do that now. Dunno, maybe it helps. ?

Re: 65 bus route

London Transport used to claim that long waits and a convoy of buses arriving at the same time was the result of "bunching" on the long routes through Central London.

But I used to get a bus from time to time a couple of stops after a terminus. Over the course of 40 or so minutes I'd see 4 or 5 buses ( same number I wanted) go up to the terminus, a couple of stops away. And nothing coming down for me to get on to. Then they'd appear. Together, in a row.

Windows 10 once more in print condition: Microsoft applies out-of-band fix to Patch Tuesday cock-up

Re: Why do people put with this nonsense?

To do that. And also to keep elements of the Win 8 be like a phone design that everyone loved so much </sarc>

Precisely. Bean counter thinking is that the "brand" has a value. So let's see how they can provide the brand while cutting the costs of the product. In effect the product is just a carrier of the valuable brand to them. They'd flog you the label without the bottle (or contents) if they could get away with it.

The worst example (imo) was when Timberland started producing tacky products with TIMBERLAND emblazoned on the front in 4" high letters instead of their previous discreetly badged, brilliant quality stuff. I stopped buying their stuff for a couple of years - I'm guessing I wasn't alone.

PC printer problems and enraged execs: When the answer to 'Hand over that floppy disk' is 'No'

Re: "The IT manager turned up clutching a clipboard"

I've heard one or two stories about companies that do this informally. Marking certain staff members cards and then making their lives a misery till they leave. Being careful not to do anything that would get them before a tribunal. But targetted staff could do nothing right. There would always be a fault found. That sort of thing

Re: Ah IT 'managers'

(Sighs) Mutters "Seen it so often" and shuffles off for a coffee. Shaking head sadly all the while.

Clipboard

In my few weeks working as a filing clerk for a mail order company - and knowing that I and all the others would be fired eventually (written about previously) I found a clipboard lying around. For two weeks I wandered round the building holding this and generally avoiding being where I was meant to be. I wasn't missed in that office, probably because no one knew or cared what we were doing. And no one, ever , questioned who I was and what I was doing. The suits were not interested in any part of the business either too busy to notice a 20 something menial worker.

Re: Ah IT 'managers'

The problem arises when a manager *thinks* he knows everything and doesn't trust his own team

This is the Managers' Disease. It can strike down any manager, but especially one who's team are doing stuff that's technical ( in the broadest sense - so could include pharmacy or psychology workers etc). Promotion into incompetence (Peter Principle), age and rustiness, but above all people who want or need to get away from the frontline doing of stuff (or need to be got away from it).

It includes teachers who can't wait to get out of the classroom to become headteachers, and have a promotion plan even before they get through their first year - they're easy to spot- whatever the current bandwagon > they're on it. And mostly are crap teachers. They also tend to be crap heads too, but the Powers-That-Be love them, at least until there is a crisis.

It includes Psychologists who are wedded to a School of Psychology they learnt on their degree or MA and were uncritical about, but got good marks (because they were uncritical about it). And in turn promote to the next generation of young Psychologists.

And so on.