Posts by Terry 6

TomTom bill bomb: Why am I being charged for infotainment? I sold my car last year, rages Reg reader

Re: sad

Sounds like technicalben's repeated comment. Same answer- he had bought a one off purchase years before. It says so.

Re: Simpler than I expected

It tells you this. You've posted this load of cobblers 3 times here and it's just as wrong after the third one as it was after the first. He is explicit. He'd paid for a one off purchase years previously.

Re: As I read that

He'd-paid-for-a-one off, years before. It says so. Read it.

Re: Paper maps ...

To be fair, it took getting a new car for the Honda in-built satnav to show the new exit of the M6 to the M1 South. Which had been open for over 2 years by then and had been in progress for several before. Twice the old one had had updates at annual service and the new intersection still didn't show. There are few more major ones than M6/M1, nor few that are so important. But the maps used by Honda didn't update for it .Staying on the M6 southwards instead of exiting to the M1 as intended now leads you off into the green and pleasant. And since the satnav didn't know where it was anymore, there's a serious bit of detour before you regain a fast road.

(Yes, I did get caught by this the first time; the satav telling me to "keep right" the way I'd always gone, to proceed onto the M1 from the M6 merge, when actually there was a shiny new sliproad on the left.).

Re: NEVER put your home address in your GPS!

"such as by insurance cards or registrations which BY LAW must be kept in the car..."

Not in the UK. It has to be produced at a cop shop if demanded. Which can be a pain, probably mores so now that most of them have been closed down. And the details as we see on TV road crime shows, can be recalled on the police computer instantly from the central database. But here in London, and most large UK cities, you'd be lucky to get parked within heavy artillery distance, let alone hand grenade. But to a thieving chancer, near certainty is much more encouraging that a possibility. But again, that is irrelevant to this point. It doesn't cause any pain to use a location close to home rather than right outside ,so why not be better safe than sorry?

Re: NEVER put your home address in your GPS!

Precisely this.

Also, see car is from different part of town. Tip off criminal mates that said address may be vacant for (quite*) a while.

*It'll be quite a while 'cos their car's been nicked.

Re: Simpler than I expected

Maybe it's "werdsmith" because he beats the words into a different shape?

Re: NEVER put your home address in your GPS!

That only applies if you start from being parked exactly outside your front door. Chance would be a fine thing. And even then the thief can't know that. They can only use the designated "Home" address. So it's worthwhile not quite using that one- and anyway there's no advantage to using the correct one. It's of no practical difference which house number you use in your street, or which street in your neighbourhood, even. Probably more charitable to use a neutral location so that the nice old couple up the road don't get burgled.

Re: As I read that

Fair point, I'd read that as them admitting the whole thing.

Re: NEVER put your home address in your GPS!

It's kind of the raison d'etre of computers. Making life easier for the user.

I was with you until that last bit.

Re: Simpler than I expected

@werdsmith He-didn't-sign-up-for-anything. He seems to have been auto-enrolled by TomTom using data they had stored for services supplied to a car ( and TomTom device) he no longer owned.

Re: NEVER put your home address in your GPS!

That is so naive. Or was it just trolling?

The home endpoint has to be there so that you can leave your start point, which usually means somewhere you're not too familiar with (or you wouldn't be using it). Most journeys are far too complex to recall all the details in one direction, let alone in reverse. Oh and the route into any location is seldom the same as the route out in almost any town with any kind of one way system. Using a satnav is a damned sight easier for those of us without photographic memory than trying to recall a route you've studied on a map before you leave. (I'm old enough to have done that a lot). Not to mention trying to work out how to escape from such places as Birmingham ( slip lanes may be on the right, the left or in the middle of the road you're on) or Leeds (roundabouts with multiple exits at weird angles) or Inner London (no right turns for a mile then a compulsory left).

They also relocate your route when you take a wrong turning, or miss one, or find one is blocked. And ( supposedly) warn of diversions and plot alternative routes - something you can't do if you're driving on your own and still bloody difficult with someone else navigating because by the time they've found the right route you'll have gone past it.

But the endpoint only needs to be somewhere near home. And arguably best not your actual address. You don't need to be paranoid to think that it's a good idea to not store unnecessarily precise information.

Re: New one on me

Or not.

Re: As I read that

No. TomTom admitted their error.

Keep it Together, Microsoft: New mode for vid-chat app Teams reminds everyone why Zoom rules the roost

This is the usual...

Microsoft missing the boat and then splashing around in the shallows.

They've been doing it since they failed to spot the internet might become useful.

Even when the product is good they are always too bleeding late with it.

( I miss my Windows Phone - but they were far too late to get a grip on that market even with the advantage of a familiar look and name, and outside El Reg commentards that does count for something).

NASA trusted 'traditional' Boeing to program its Starliner without close supervision... It failed to dock due to bugs

Re: So what happened?

Not, from what I gather the C-Suite suits a sucj

h. One or two. These are beancounters put into place by the big shareholders, who want short term gains. And since everyone in and around the C level keeps their insanely well paid job and gets paid big bonuses for achieving those short term gains no one is going to challenge the strategy that creates them.

A calculation

Size of reputation = S

Pressure of time to completion = T

Need to keep costs low to win a bid = N

Shareholder pressure to reduce costs across company = P

Risk of failure = R

(S*T)+(N*P) = R

LibreOffice community protests at promotion of paid-for editions, board says: 'LibreOffice will always be free software'

Re: MS Works

I half agree. For me it was of limited use. For the friends and family it was as much as they needed. Just as Microsoft Money was all they needed for home finances. (And maybe a very small business).

But MS killed these useful SOHO packages off to be replaced with a business focus and big expensive packages.

Even the Home versions of Office seem designed to discourage home users. Why else would Publisher be excluded but Powerpoint included. Who needs Powerpoint for home use, or even, for the most part in schools or small/home offices.? Publisher is really good for designing small projects like club posters, home made greetings cards, menus and the like. But maybe not for typesetting a full DTP project that a Professional version user might need to do.i.e. It's an ideal amateur DTP programme, not a pro one.

To be fair,though, that's also why some aspects of FOSS software can be quite ropey. Everyone knows that it's in need of a bit of work, but no one wants to do it.

Change-logs as a small example, sometimes just a link to a "wiki" written in developer gibberish or a page in Git-hub that says nothing a normal user could follow. Or use guides that read as if they were written by a Martian, and full of unconscious assumptions about the users' prior knowledge.

In effect

The risk and fear is that any separate paid version is going to become the cart pulling the horse. Once money starts to drive the development the free version becomes just an advertising front for the true priority - the paid version. And the developers will be far more motivated to develop for and encourage free uses to adopt, the paid version. Next step will be that you only get the (new concept in Office software) in the paid version and the FOSS version will be back in the old version.

More than a bit. There's a strong element of "bait and switch".

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].