Posts by Terry 6 5611 publicly visible posts • joined 31 Jul 2009
1.) Start‑ups raised a combined US$5.2bn during the year, 9% more than in 2016.......Fundraising by Israeli start-ups has been rising steadily since 2012, when it was just US$1.8bn. From the Economist https://industry.eiu.com/login.aspx/
2.) Starting a comment with "Oy Vey" tells me exactly where that comment is coming from. Hint, stereotype racist caricaturisation.
Ironically, being a Jew and a Zionist I can't wholly support Bombastic Bob on this. Israel has behaved quite badly sometimes. Which country hasn't? Even ones who are far more secure than Israel. That being said, saying "I'm an agnostic" is no defence from accusations of Antisemitism. Why would it be? Jews are a culture and an ethnic group as well as a religion. And Israel is the (only) Jewish state.But a real touchstone of anti-semitic attitudes is whether you offer the same or greater levels of criticism of other countries that behave badly sometimes. Particularly countries that do far worse things far more often. cf Myanamar/Russia/Turkey/most other Middle Eastern countries/Pakistan/most ex-colonies of the UK/etc etc etc. If the only country you criticise is the only Jewish one then it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the differentiating factor is the Jewish one.
One slightly annoying LO issue makes me sometimes regret switching to LO. It's that in WORD Selecting FILE - NEW will open a link to my templates (albeit at the top of an annoyingly fussy page), and selecting or navigating to one will open a new document with that template.
But in Writer this just isn't available so simply. The FILE- NEW just opens a blank document in the normal template and instead you need to either chose FILE -TEMPLATES and chose one, which opens the chosen template file as an editble document (so you have to remember to save it as a document or risk over writing the template) or FILE- TEMPLATES -MANAGE TEMPLATES ( and then IMPORT if the template file isn't where LO expects to find it. Which is all much less intuitive.
AC
Not Tarquin, but certainly a Jeremy or something similar. ( There aren't many real Tarquins). With the accent that does the identifying for him. So I'd doubt that there were many who couldn't identify his background, even if it hadn't been known.
So maybe you are the one with a chip on the shoulder, if you struggle to accept this sad fact of life. It's well documented. Oxbridge having the lowest level of students from working class backgrounds across all subjects. And the highest level of law students getting the all important post-grad training contracts is biased significantly in favour of Oxbridge, (by way of Eton/Harrow) too.
Hmmm
Some years a go my car was in a minor bump. hit by an oncoming car on a bend. The young driver admitted guilt. Then a few weeks later his father seems to have told him not to, and use their legal insurance to contest this. It went to a court. Our insurers fought and sent a young girl lawyer from a redbrick uni. His legal insurance paid for an equally young but posh boy from an old university. We had nothing to lose ( even ncb was protected). They would have had to pay themselves. We had no reason to lie ( see above), they brought a witness who was shown ( by the judge himself) to be lying.
And then the judge said he believed them, not us - and our insurer lost. I don't think I come across as being untrustworthy. They had been proved liars. But still the judge found for them. Maybe it's just cynicism, but I couldn't see any other factor at play other than the judge's wanting to give a boost to the posh-boy lawyer.
UK lawyers and law makers are largely cut from the same private/public school posh cloth. And no Old Etonian law maker is going to do anything that might hurt an Old Etonian lawyer. Are Americans the same? I wouldn't be too surprised if so. (Albeit Yale/Harvard not Eton/Harrow )
There is a considerable glee at the failure of Windows Phone, which is fair enough if you just hate everything Microsoft on principle. But in reality the Winphones were well liked by anyone who actually used them. They worked well, they talked well to car hands free units and they had the chief, basic "apps".
They didn't have the sort of street cred that makes people rush out to pay too much for an iThingy. Nor did they have the right range for ordinary users, most being either too big, too small, too cheap or too expensive. i.e. There was a big mid-range hole.
But with the right corporate decisions* they would have been a brilliant alternative to the Apple/Google duopoly.
*And they also are a brilliant touchstone to identify the grim level of corporate decision making of Microsoft generally.
The world's full of tutor agencies. The best / best paid (and the ones with the "in" to the best heeled punters, ) don't even use them anyway, they get recommendations from previous clients who wouldn't touch an agency. And if these tutors are any good they'd be best away from this crew.
John Lilburn
Agreed. Constantly updating software doesn't seem much like a great deal, unless and until some new feature gets added that you really need (and more often it's the reverse). I'm happy with Office 2010 and frankly, 2003 would have been better ( no ribbons and properly customisable menus) except that I use Onenote. Which makes 2010 more useful to me.
A rhetorical point-in-principle isn't meant to be taken as absolute rule. Nor is it valid to attack the principle as if it was posed as an absolute rule.
See also; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perseveration
The gap between perseverance and perseveration in behaviour may be a matter of degree.
John Liliburne
Yes. cash flow. Or revenue to be specific. Sell Office 2016 get a few quid, shared through the chain. Sell a subscription and the money keeps rolling in. Directly. It's the same reason people buy property then rent it out. And why ,in the medium to long term it's usually better to buy freehold property than to rent it. If you can. But a small rental on a software package, year on year can seem more comfortable to the punter while end up costing many times more than buying outright.
I'll sort of accept the school argument, though it is a sort of vicious circle-schools requiring it because it's there. But I am not convinced of the use case of Powerpoint for the small office, unless their small office is running a training company or a certain kind of sales team, the sort that does big presentations. And also, as you note, they are not licensed to use it for that. So for a product licensed for just home use, Powerpoint is a waste of 0s and 1s
As to Lifestyle. In Microsoft's Office Home versions they long ago included Powerpoint, something every SOHO user needs like a they need a rubber can-opener, but excluded Publisher, which is an ideal SOHO product for producing leaflets, birthday cards, invitations etc. that the SOHO user can use a lot.
Which is to say, they are persistently clueless about what home and small office users would need. Which I guess is why they gave us Windows 8.x, "mixed reality portal" (whoever thought of that name deserves to be buried up to the neck at low tide and left for the fish), the realistically uncustomisable "Ribbon"* and Bing.
Whereas the WinPhone was potentially a winner. Almost all of us who used them liked them, but MS couldn't bloody get the thing off the ground and ended up killing it.
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*No problem with the Ribbon as such. But they made it much harder/impossible to customise to how individuals work. Like maybe moving a menu element into a different category because that's where it fits in your work flow.
Hmm. Nice try. My car won't lock if the key is inside. In fact "key" isn't really the right name for it anymore, because it works keylessly. As long as you have the key-like-object on you the doors will open and the car will start. And I don't think I'd want that on my wrist. It'd be like a sign saying "mug me".
Well, my time is increasingly my own. But I do inhabit the world, I do associate with other people and meet them at prearranged times*. I divide my time so that I can end one activity ready for another. And I use my watch in preference to my phone for most of this because it's there on the end of my arm, ready for a quick glance without the effort of putting down anything I'm holding to fish in my pockets for the mobile.
*I try to be punctual, not keep people waiting, and I expect the same from them. In fact at home if the agreed arrival time is approaching we say they are "nearly late". But then I'm a "glass is nearly half empty" sort of person.
In the morning the Mrs. will sometimes ask how I slept. I usually don't know, because I was asleep. If I know the answer it's because I didn't sleep so good ( fortunately rarely). I also know what time I went to bed and what time it is when I wake up ( hint, alarm clock next to bed). Why would I need to wear a watch to tell me these things.
Having a nice watch on the wrist is convenient for a quick time check, more so than picking up my phone. Ditto, in other circumstances having a tough old watch that doesn't mind a few knocks, that I can risk getting scratched etc. if I'm doing a bit of gardening, tidying, cooking, other messy work.
If I could have such a watch that would also pass me my messages I'd be pleased and might even get one. GPS could be useful to me too if it was made practical, since it saves holding the phone in my hand. I'm a bit puzzled by the fitness app thing. Yes there are plenty of joggers. But really are there that many fitness fanatics around?
As to any other "smart" features; what's the point? If you want to do BookFace/Twitting and so on you are going to spend long enough to make it worthwhile to pick up your mobile with a decent screen.
Dropbear
Agree 100%
A 3d printer at that sort of price is not only in the hard to afford range for most people, but it's in the extremely hard to justify range.
As in sensible wife/partner/child shrieking
"You want to spend how much on this toy!? What can it possibly do that justifies £2000? "
"Err well it can print really nice chess pieces. And key rings"
"We don't need a £2000 key ring. And you don't play chess!"
I used to see a lot of schools. In September everyone's password had either expired because it ran out at the end of the previous month, or been forgotten. If the former there'd be a queue to call IT support for the first day or two. If the latter it'd be post-it search time or a call to IT......
Except for the teachers that had a memorable password and stuck a number on the end. They'd be the ones logged in and getting lesson plans and stuff printed before the kids came in. The others would be huddled in a panic waiting for their turn to talk to IT and trying to remember what it was they'd spent hours planning a couple or three weeks earlier.
I am hoping for trickle up fiscal policies. The money always floats to the “top” anyway.
That's in the Wikip article too. But the neocons who are in control wouldn't like that. Trickle down is an excuse to let them do what they want, not a real economic phenomenon. Which is why the gap between (very) rich and poor has widened so much, There's fuck all trickling down, it's all accumulating in off-shore and concealed ( as in property left empty) investments.
No. That stuff about things being more affordable is nothing to do with it, Even the rest of the comment isn't quite there with it.
Trickle down is very explicitly the view that as the top get richer they will increase prosperity for the rungs below. Rising tide lifts all boats etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics
Yup. I almost bought a Dremel at 50% Prime Day reduction.
But when I got to checkout I noticed that most of the reduction was pre-existing and the Prime Day reduction was just an extra 13%. It was still a good deal being a 50% reduction compared to the Argos price for the same thing. But I cancelled. I reckon if I really wanted it it would be available at other places, or at another time too. And for a measly 13% extra reduction I'll take the risk they can take a hike.
Took a quick look. Amazon is where my birthday gifts (i.e. vouchers) live. And have been there for a couple of years already. So I'd have liked to find a bargain or two to spend some on.
Nowt.
Don't get it. There are the usual discounts on items I don't want. And the usual nothing on the things I do want. Which may well be how the algorithm works.
Stuff 'em.
The point is that if you can hotdesk (like it or not), with the available PC and roaming profile then you have the fundamentals of Grab and Go. And school laptops use this principle anyway. A kid gets given a laptop from the pile and logs in.
Adding connection to a remote data store ( i.e. "The Cloud") is no great earth shattering innovation. However providing a working device without access to the internet in some dead spot is a whole nother boiling vessel of aquatic sustenance.
Interestingly there are various references in the interwebs to ways of bringing hot corners back to Win 10. Interesting because I've never met in person anybody who actually wanted the damn things. I've met many ( actually everybody ) who had had experience of them and wanting nothing greater than to get rid of the bloody nuisance. It's like there were two different worlds
Over the last couple of days I've been reading the comments. Mostly the usual stuff (welcome back Bob - I was getting worried we'd have to start putting the spare CAPS into storage).
As I've thought about it I've started to wonder if Microsoft see Windows as becoming a kind of front end for a web/cloud/internet based computing system. Kind of like a global thin-client.
That'd explain things like the importance of Ondrive in their thinking, moving to a cloud based Office subscription, deprecating OneNote to a Store item and removing user control and customisation of the start menu, hiding settings/control panel etc etc.
Computing as a service, rented from Microsoft and mediated through a Windows Interface?
The OS in itself seems pretty stable. But the underlying attitude isn't. The whole "We'll force you to keep our favoured apps in the Start menu where we decided to put them." thing i.e. unmovable and unremovable just stinks.
And the simple networking is just plain crap. I find that shared folders and even the whole other device will just randomly refuse to be seen. Which I put down to them wanting domestic and SOHO users to use their Godawful "Home groups".
See also elsewhere on el reg their removal of proper Onenote 2016 to make users use the shitty cut down store version.
Weapon 3 of the science deniers is to deny the credibility of the scientists. 2b will have laid the groundwork. All that's needed then is to suggest that the scientists are working for some evil enterprise. (Big Pharma is good, because that one is, to say the least, a bit too plausible. But the government is always there as Aunt Sally if needed). It becomes beautifully circular, self defining and impervious at that point. Any further scientist who supports the research is obviously in on the conspiracy - otherwise they wouldn't be confirming the research, because everyone knows it's a fake..Anyone who questions the reason (why would they go to to all that trouble and risk to fake the moon landings?) is just a dupe. Unless they are in on it, of course.
Yes, weapon number two* of the anti-science conspiracy theorists is to undermine the strength of the science by equating it with other trivial irrelevant or even non-existent material (Darwin is just a theory). The BBC is terrible for this. They'll, say, bring a respected scientist into the studio but then square him/her off with a known climate denying spokesman with no scientific background. as if that person has equal credentials.
*Version 2b is to undermine the science by focussing on minor or non-substantive variations to argue that the scientist aren't agreed.
John Brown (no body)
Sorry I disagree. "Fake(news) still means fake. All that has changed is the frequency that it is used to undermine honest truth by mislabelling it. This is not Orwell's Newspeak however chilling it may be. The meaning remains the same. The blatancy and frequency in which it is misused has changed, that's all.
Rich 11
Well said. One of the weapons of the fake news/Anti-vaxxers/etc. is to say that a 100% negative hasn't been proved. But of course it never can be, let alone to their loony "standards". Because no negative ever can be proved 100%. I can't 100% prove that there aren't fairies at the bottom of my garden, or that there isn't a conspiracy of lizards running the world.
And, as noted today and other times recently (passim as Private Eye might say) the Blair government removed much of the restriction on the gambling industry, making it an open market industry, leading to the curse of the high speed gambling machines in all these betting shops (of which there are now far more, so that they can get around one of the few limitations; number of machines per den of vice) and the increased number of rather disingenuous, if not downright objectionable, gambling adverts on TV, particularly during the world cup when there were plenty of kids watching i.e. describing throwing money away by the bucket load as "more fun". hardly supporting traditional Labour principles.
Oh. And don't forget PFI.
Maybe the negative comments about the use of fax machines ( in the NHS and elsewhere) tie in with various other posting around El Reg over the last few years, when for whatever reason Fax has been mentioned. There does seem to be a core of Commentards who just don't like Fax and won't hear a good word about it. To me it's just one more tool. And if it does the job and gets the result I need I'll use it if I can.. And why not?
Sometimes having something physical that can be seen and picked up as it comes out of the machine, can be held as you walk around and can be kept on the (real) desk top so that you can refer back to it is the best way.
Whereas the number of people who have a long list of unread emails in a mail folder points out one weakness of that system- emails seem to be easier to ignore (or get overwhelmed by). Perhaps partly due to the fact that because it is so effortless it becomes undervalued. A physical fax has a degree of substance that one more email just doesn't.
And since I had a fax on my 4in1 printer until a few weeks ago, when I had to replace it, I am very aware that a complaint email to a senior manager gets automatically fobbed off by the automated (or AI) systems, but a fax pretty much always got a proper response, and usually a resolution.
Timbo
We took a Smart meter - because my wife didn't want to keep sending in meter readings. But the bastards fitted one that only read the electricity - said they couldn't supply one that read the gas meter. . So eventually they had to come around and replace that.
By which time we were looking at changing suppliers. The new suppliers can't read from it, So our shiny new meter has been turned into a dumb meter. Or at least the reading display no longer works. And apart from having to look in the-cupboard-under-the-stairs it makes not the blindest bit of difference.
The idea, was, I think, that we'd use less fuel. But it won't because it doesn't give an appliance by appliance, or even room reading. So we can't just look and see where we're using too much. - if we were.
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