Posts by Terry 6 5608 publicly visible posts • joined 31 Jul 2009
I had another go at leaving that accursed programme last night. But dammit, the calendar thing has me pinned. It's the one way I've found that keeps my calendar synchronised across PC/laptop/tablet/phone. And it can't synchronise calendars with it's "big brother" programme -Outlook 2010.
The email and contacts are no problem. Thunderbird does fine for the rest of the family
I think you've nailed the point. So many users thinks it's just " the internet" and are barely, if at all, aware that they use a browser. To users the browser is no more than a frame round the outside of the Amazon page (or the office intranet). These are the same people that we've quoted here, so many times, who call us because "The email isn't working" ( BSOD) and call the thing with pictures "the computer" and the box that does the computing "the hard drive".
Hobbyhorse moment coming......
All those people who complained that ICT in schools was rubbish, because it just showed kids how to use WORD and they needed to be taught to code were far off the mark IMO. ICT needed to teach kids how computers worked, what they could do, how they did it (including how to use OFFICE/Windows/LINUX etc.) and what the implications are for how we live our lives. Actually writing code should be a small, but interesting, part. Knowing what happens to your data is far more essential.
The Windows Mail App and calendar app are so shitty they beggar belief. I'm sort of tied into these on one home machine, at least until I have time and not too may events, and can switch because I started to use them to see what they were like compared to Outlook, because Thunderbird just isn't great with calendar integration and functionality.. Somehow, though the calendar app contain two versions of the account. One shares events with proper Outlook. One doesn't ( It'll import from Outlook, but not export to it). There doesn't seem to be any easy way to tell which is which. But once you start getting appointments in the wrong one it gets hard to go back. Someone got paid for writing that shit.
I don't know who thinks themselves " l33t" these days. Pretty bloody pretentious self-regarding term even a few years back IMHO.
And even a moderately techie minded person can make their own image with readily available free, easy to use tools (Macrium etc).
Gotta watch our for John Lewis price match. It may have changed, but they hd a habit, a few years back, of using their own models numbers for the same item. As in, we can't price match the W11zzB model because we are selling the ( identical ) WW11zzA model.
Two of us have said this;
"Your contract is with the seller, not the manufacturer. Any warranty offered by the manufacturer continues to exist but that is separate to your statutory rights.".
I've quoted the other person's. That person got no votes, up or down. I got a down vote. For stating the simple truth. In the UK you have a contract, a civil contract, with the supplier. When that contract fails, because the supplier ceases to trade, you become just another creditor. And since the hierarchy of creditors runs, insolvency practice, government, preferred lenders (banks etc), everyone else there is little chance of getting redress from the insolvent supplier. You join the back of the queue.
Unless you have a manufacturer's warranty that gives you the same protection ( it's unlikely to offer yo a refund). You can claim on a credit card against the card issuer if you paid for part or all of the item by card.
Statutory warranty. Not in that sense. There are strong protections about the durability and fit-for-purpose of the goods. But the contract is with the retailers ( and/or credit card company where applicable). If the retailer goes the warranty goes. Unless the manufacturer chooses to give a warranty.
This does seem to be a thing. When stores or chains close the closing down sales seem, these days, to be no more than a come-on to sell more stuff at high prices before the doors close. I've assumed that the idea is to make as much profit as they can from the gullible, then move the remainder to a factor who will just take it off their hands for a guaranteed price.
Of course that's also part of my anger with Microsoft - on top of Ribbon, advertising/data collection, Win 8.x, hiding and splitting up control panel items, default actual folders for user data placed in virtual folders then buried in with system folders in "Documents and Setting" as if these were compatible items, the Win10 version of a Start menu and omitting Publisher from Home and Student versions of Office, (like home users don't need to make greeting cards and posters etc). That they created this mobile platform with much fanfare, made it nice to use with plenty of useful features then instead of improving it over time they seem to have vandalised it. The early version of Windows Mobile had network support, which was very useful, so they removed it. The later versions of WinPhone were in a world where people wanted "apps" so they went out of their way to discourage producers instead of making sure they could provide them. They bought Nokia's phone line then priced it so that there were horrible cheap versions and expensive overpriced versions, but nothing in between until it was too late. Dammit, when they have a good product they seem determined to f*ck it up. And when they have a crap product they seem determined to force it on everybody.
No Daniel B. If you haven't noticed there are plenty of us, not by any means generally Microsoft fans, who really liked our Windows phones and egret their passing. Basically, those who actually used the things, instead of carping ( or crapping) from the side lines liked them.
Dammit. I once came as close as it gets to having been a Microsoft fan. But I can't disagree with anything that Djstardust has written there. I can even add putting their 3d and virtual reality crap into immovable locations in the start menu, arrogantly trying to force this stuff under our noses. Even having all those unmovable links (Paint 3d ffs) is merely an extension of the piss poor version of the start menu with it's arcane complexity if you want to rearrange links - that they had to reintroduce after the failure of Win 8.x which had also been a Microsoft attempt to force the public down roads it didn't want to follow.
Just replaced a Bosch machine by a Samsung. On the Bosch you couldn't tell if the timer had been set or not, there was no indication. Every night I'd set the timer, put away the soap and then set the timer again in case I'd forgotten the first time. The Samsung, however, has a very clear and obvious control panel. It can be done.
I've refused to buy their products for many years. Ever since I had an HP multi-function printer. Which was OK until there was a software update. But the old version wouldn't uninstall properly, a dll refused to delete itself. And because of that the new software refused to install, even though it was the same version .dll it wanted to use . I went through all the umpteen uninstall levels that HP's unbelievably unwieldy software required. Still couldn't reinstall their poxy printer. And on the web there were hundreds of posts, all with the same complaint. Dumped printer. The ink was expensive anyway. Never bought HP since.
How long is it since we had any hope of corporate good behaviour?
These days it's all about what you can tie them down to, that they can't wriggle out of. If it's not a watertight contract or legal obligation it's just a marketing ploy and won't bear any weight.
Yes they're bastards run by short-sighted bean counters. But we know that and shouldn't be shocked when they act accordingly. Let alone trust or rely on them.
Yes. I've come up against a place, many years ago, that had data corruption for some reason or other, ( I forget why). In those days they were quite advanced by having their data saved to a disc, every night. I think a simple batch file or something. Unfortunately the save went ahead after the corruption, and over-wrote the previous day's good save.
It taught me to keep an old back up or two safe -and when I learnt about the grandfather-father-son system a few years later I periodically "retired" some copies. These days, as noted previously, I retire old HDDs instead.
The thing is, for an awful lot of organisations the cost is a couple of external HDDs and five minutes a week swapping them round. Ideally if it's not confidential data (or is sensibly encrypted) take one home or lock it in a car boot even. (In case your office burns down or is broken in to).
"probably to just restore from a backup."
This should be first port of call. No need to try to buy back your data. When big corps. lose data this way, having the resources to keep secure back-ups there's simply no excuse.
And for smaller users that should include swapping an external drive round on a regular basis. i.e. Almost all your data should (also) be in a cupboard somewhere, ideally off-site. And fairly recent. You wouldn't leave your wallet in the office with the window open, so why would you do that with your valuable data.
The thing about 12s is actually the opposite. It's the primes that we need most. Knowing 12s can be replicated by knowing 6s and how to double. Or 3s. Which also ensures that the kids ( and adults) understand what they are doing with these tables. Ironically rote learning of the tables makes understanding, manipulating and applying them less likely. Better that the kids realise that if they do want to multiply by 12 they can multiply by 3 then 4.
The backlash by the "Traditional Education" lobby against what they saw as dangerously progressive and undisciplined, in the USA and the UK, has lead to a return of a curriculum and teaching methods that are mechanical and behaviourist. Something that even as far back as Charles Dickens was well understood to be the enemy of education. https://www.shmoop.com/hard-times-dickens/education-quotes.html Though a reading of 1066 and All That would make the same point. https://www.amazon.co.uk/1066-All-That-W-Sellar/dp/0413772705 or see Wikip. for a summary.
We have returned to teaching kids by rote, not by working things out for them selves.
Reading has become "Phonics" and little kids have to be tested on the times tables to 12x12 ( the number gives away that dirty little secret, if it was 10x10 you could believe it was rooted in some kind of thought, but requiring the 12s tells us immediately that it's no more than a harking back to the 1950s when we needed the 12s to do our feet and shillings. Even 13s would be more useful, being a prime number).
It's not that we don't need to use phonics or tables, or historical facts; it's that they've become the centre of education. Memorisation instead of being able to think and work things out.
'Fraid so. Users of 123Reg etc. are usually not techies, just small businesses or individuals buying a package like they would buy a new desk. It is sold as a commodity. These people are, if anything, ahead of the curve in terms of tech. They at least are having a proper hosted web site and a domain. But it's a very big curve.
I can't completely agree. Most politicians start with ideals and good intentions, more often than not. Even in these days of the career politician. But the foundation in ideological belief (magical thinking even) in the "market" or Marxism or whatever plus confirmation bias and the compromises to gain small victories mean that logical, lucid policies stand little chance in the face of the realities of politics. Climbing the greasy pole starts as the means to an end, even if it becomes the end with the attrition of political life. Some, like Corbyn or Rees-Mogg, retain the ideal even if they lack the grounding in reality. But yes, some, like Boris, or May are just after power.
I do agree that PPE doesn't seem to be a good basis for political understanding. Politics, Philosophy and Economics ought to be the way to understand government, but it doesn't seem to have worked out that way. And lets face it. If you're interested in engineering or science at age 21 you are most likely not going to be too interested in party politics and becoming an unpaid local councillor. And if you are a politically minded scientist I'd be a bit suspicious of you.
There is considerable evidence that increased levels of fruit and vegetable give improved medical status, improve internal biome and protection from a lot of disease etc.
That being said, the point was that juice is being made into an enemy by the very health lobbyists who most promote this. Even juice with bits. Whereas having juice as one of the 5 a day at least encourages kids on the route, provides vitamins and hopefully even some fibre ( the bits) if parents don't let the kids be too fussy.
However, I was in a big local authority meeting about promoting children's health a few years back. The Powers-that-Be insisted that our target had to be 5-a-day for every child. I argued, unsuccessfully, that we needed to put our energies into supporting a sensible target in our area. That every child had at least one portion. 5 might have been the guideline, but many of our kids never had any fresh food at all.
I lost. Final outcome. Nothing achieved.
Thank you for mentioning that.
Vaping is free from many of the harmful effects of ciggy smoke. Yet there are health lobbies trying, and to some extent succeeding, in having it demonised or banned. This seems to stem almost completely from the basis of you can't prove it's 100% safe and it's enjoyable,so it must be bad. But these aren't the views of the lads in the pub, even though the level of logic is around the same (i.e.the "It stands to reason dunnit" level). It's professional health advocates.
Almost (maybe actually) every activity carries risk. Quantifying risk relative to sitting in a chair, wrapped in a duvet and sipping cooled boiled water is a nonsense.
But there does seem to be a section of the public health lobby who seem determined to view any low risk that gives pleasure as unacceptably high. As in saying a glass of fruit juice shouldn't be 1 of the 5 a day because of its sugar content.
Yes, this particular AC. It starts from the top. Recruiting more women/minority/disabled/working class foot soldiers to fit a quota is bo**ocks. Recruiting board members and senior managers from a diverse community and objective hiring/promotion systems that ensure,as much as possible, that the best candidates get the regular jobs and chances for promotion, is the sensible way forward. Which raises the question as to whether the top jobs still go to the same group of white well-off males as it did in their fathers' generation, even while the companies are desperate to show diversity lower down. If there are to be quotas of any kinds, anywhere it should start with the boardroom. And it needs to include ensuring that not all the appointees went to the same small pool of posh schools and daddy's Ivy League/Oxbridge/etc. universities. When the old posh white men aren't appointing younger posh white men who appoint young posh white men into management there's a chance of natural diversity through the organisation.
Not an American, so this is pretty impersonal, but I'd suggest that an organisation firing a reservist, in the light of that legal requirement and the reputational damage in a country that is pretty quick to defend attacks on members of it's military has got to be really dumb.
They do it by not understanding what the implications of clicking on something are or what the buttons do, or how to reverse this. BUT, it's a flaw in an OS that allows foreground colour and background colour to be set as the same by a user. ANY action that creates an accidental ( as in unconscious) or non-reversible immobilisation should be made very very hard.
Meetings are never about the item(s) on the agenda.
Meetings have just two purposes- One is to prove to higher-ups or other interested parties that a box has been ticked. The other is to share any blame. Note that when something should or does go well there is (at least in my experience) never a meeting to share the praise.
sync.com looks interesting.
For the SoHo user it has the same issue as other free/paid subscription sites. Commented on in another thread.
There's a big gap between the free 5gb option and the lowest paid option.
https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2018/02/23/dropbox_ipo_sec_filing/
5gb zero cost or 500gb for $50 a year. But all I would want is maybe 100gb, pro rata $10 p/a (£7ish)
Well yes. Or at least, just because you pay a lot more doesn't mean you get a lot more or a " more" of stuff that you actually want. Maybe you pay a lot more for a little more. Or a little more good stuff and a lot of junk to make the premium price seem justified.
The best example is with some car manufacturers. For one such example, three or four years back when we wanted to buy a Honda Jazz the only model with a proper built-in satnav system also came with a bundle of crappy useless things like flashy silvery door ledges and god knows what else, bumping the price up well past the value of the satnav we'd actually wanted. The main problem being that these weren't a grade-up of extras, they were useless flash.
If I remember correctly, preRibbon, you could at least move menu items around. To have a customised/simplified menu in the Ribbonised Office you have to create a new menu with all the bits you want and then hide the original . Which usually implies creating 2 new menus, since you need another one for any of the bits you wanted to keep in the original location. Oh and BTW, the bits of the Ribbon are really just fancy menu items, even though they are named "short cuts" ( presumably because like most shortcuts they mean leaving a logical straight route and getting lost in the middle of nowhere).
Too much of the mobile phone business is about labels. Not substance. Just as a "designer" pair of Jeans is more desirable (apparently) and expensive than another perfectly good pair that hasn't got a name attached to the waistband/pocket, so a phone with an expensive name is more desirable than one that comes straight from the same factories in China without the name. And of course, being named for tree fruit makes it even more desirable.
Not coming from a STEM background I don't see any of the commentards who are, so far, answering what to me are the key questions;
1.) Is the energy efficiency of generating, transmitting and using electricity to power vehicles greater or less than that of transporting, carrying then combusting petroleum in a car cylinder? Maybe also factoring in the energy costs of battery weight versus (median?) weight of fuel in the tank and battery production/disposal if that makes a significant difference.
2.) Is the environmental effect of generating electricity <> the effect of transporting and burning petrol, factoring in the relative fuel efficiency etc in point 1.
3.) Are there local environmental effects of ICE that add weight to the value of using electrical vehicles in some locations sufficient to justify changing, even if the net result may not be significantly advantageous.
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