Posts by Terry 6 5611 publicly visible posts • joined 31 Jul 2009
Either way, that IS an IT issue. Or at at least an IT issue for a decent IT dept to competently handle.
Yup. but a one man band operation supporting the IT of a team of highly skilled professionals needs to be able to rely on the colleagues using a bit of basic common sense.
Over the years the number of people (teachers mostly) who think that turning the monitor off and on is the same as doing this to the computer. It was OK when I first started mixing educational IT support and training with my main education job. Thirty years ago people saw a monitor and thought it was a TV set. So I knew that they were good at our rather technical teaching role, but that using a computer was a new way of thinking for them.
But after a generation it is still happening. Staff would turn off the monitors at night, but leave the PCs running all weekend or potentially the whole Summer holidays. Often logged in too.
Or the times that I got a call saying that "the email isn't working" and they hadn't turned on the f***ing computer.
Thirty years ago I was dealing with people who grew up in the 1950s and earlier.
These days they've all grown up with computers. And they still don't get it.
It's not an IT problem really. It's a task much simpler than programming a 1970s VCR. Or driving a car. Let alone analysing a pattern of complex behaviours in a busy classroom.
It's as if being asked to do something with a computer and they just surrender all thinking.
Yes I know they're busy professionals for whom IT is an enabler. But the same could be said for any number of items that we expect people to get on and use. (We had a microwave in the staff kitchen that looked like it was there to launch a space programme, it has so many dials, settings and options, but they all managed to use it).
When I was in public service the recycling centre actually complained once that the PCs had no HDDs in them.
Well I'd made a point of removing them and doing as much physical damage to them as I could.
Then putting them into the landfill dustbin, buried.
Yes, someone could have found one in the sludge. and dismantled it and read data off the (wiped) plates. You can't make anything 100% safe in the real world.
But I got as close as I could. And it certainly wouldn't have been possible for an ordinary bloke in the street to do.
Lost patience with FF ages ago.
I just like Palemoon better.
Not even for any good reason, though I think I did have some at the time.
EDIT
Just fired up FF. There are loads of plugins I'd never knowingly use. (Silverlight anyone).But some I'd miss.
VLC, PDF-Xchange viewer, Google Earth.
Which are the only ones I also have on Pale Moon btw.
I wonder to what extent the Microsoft that was known for an everyday workhorse OS (Win 98 to 7 ) followed by a vile and derided OS (8). And for the everyday workhorse Office package (Win 2003) that was replaced with the much less friendly line of Office 201x products has simply made it impossible to succeed in a phone market that is balanced between fashion and usability.
i.e. The older OS and Office weren't fashionable.The later ones aren't sufficiently usable.
However good the WInphones may be there just isn't anything to love about the brand.
And maybe that's because they don't seem to care about what their users need, preferring to give users what they imagine we ought to want.
The thing is I love my Lumia 635.
I did want something a little bit better. Not vastly better. Just something that closed the gaps, like a forward facing camera and a light, for example. IMHO if Microsoft set the specification for this device it was another example of shooting aimed at foot. No forward facing camera, in the age of Skype and (shudder!) selfies. But at the time I got this, a year ago, there was nothing that was a bit better and wasn't vastly more expensive.
So maybe a mid-range jobbie is what I need.
I don't want flashy stuff. I don't even want Android CrApps.
I do want a smart phone with reasonable functionality.
When they're good they're very very good.
But when things go wrong they stink.
It's as if they are running on railway tracks.
As long as things are according to plan they give a wonderful service, extremely good value. Really helpful customer service.
But if things go wrong they just don't seem to know how to manage it.
Front line staff aren't kept informed of problems so that they will be going through the "turn it off and on again" routines while their managers know perfectly well that there is a problem down the line.
And if they do screw up you will experience really poor service from them, instead of dealing with it. they go into full scale fob you off mode and refuse to accept any kind of responsibility.
They're not in the BT Openreach league of customer avoidance, but they are getting close.
Which I assume is why they failed to warn customers about the spam flood that got through this week. Or inform us, or apologise. Or, in fact acknowledge it publicly at all.
At least that's my experience.
I've never had much interest in 3d (or any other ) gaming*
But with Microsoft in control of the engine neither will anyone else be able to play.
Because they'll insist that all games' controls will be a.) hidden and b.) how they respond will b changed randomly for every game so that the up button will make things go in a circle and the left button will make them go up. That......
Wait a minute, whoa, hold on....., hidden objects that you have to discover by randomly clicking, strange cryptic messages appearing on the screen.. controls that.change depending on where you are, secret locations......
I think I've finally understood what Windows 10 is all about.
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*Never had the patience to get past that bit where you are stuck in a dark place and can't get out until you repeatedly perform a random sequence of events.
Yeah, the Microsoft knockers will find any number of grumbles. That's no surprise. BUT, this is about the fact that those of us who have actually quite liked using Microsoft for a few decades are now being kicked by their really unhelpful or plain stupid design decisions.
The only reason to remove the Win 7 type start menu was that it was a bit clumsy to manage, with every new bit of software adding a whole bloody folder of crap, as if theirs was the only programme on there. So it needed to be made simpler to control.
Instead, first they removed it in Win 8, then when they brought it back in Win 10 they kept all the bad bits and all but completely took away what there was of the good part, the ability to manage it to make selecting a programme easier and quicker.
Which is what they did with the "Ribbon". I think the excuse was that some users weren't able to find items they'd moved in Office 2003 (should they suddenly want to do so), or some such nonsense. But they couldn't just write a "show all" or "find" switch. No they, to all intent and purposes, removed the ability to hide the vast number of largely unused menu items that cluttered up the interface, or regroup the menus to fit a user's work pattern.
Then there was the matter of where documents are stored ( by default). Was there anything wrong with having a folder that a user could navigate to directly?
Was it really difficult to control access to these for machines with more than one log-in?
Of course not. But they decided that users' documents would by default be buried deeply inside the OS' innards, alongside the settings, with only an indirect pathway to them. Which is great if you only want to open and close a document with its associated programme, and in its default location. But not so great if, say, you want to share,copy or move a document.
But more to the point, WHY?.
Why make things bloody complicated when they can be kept simple?
Why have hidden "charms"?
Why have the controls in lots of different places.
Why stop people organising the Start menu.
Why make creating a restore point hard to find?
And of course, why keep updates secret and compulsory, even for savvy users?
And so on and so on.
It's the sheer bloody-mined pointlessness of these decisions that rile me so much.
I am ( or was) a Microsoft supporter. back from the days of CP/M - or rather when I discovered MSDos
And I have never objected to changes if they were beneficial to me as a user, or to the staff who I managed, if we could get the work done better with it. I even could cope with Clippy most of the time.
But the last few years almost all MS's actions have been negative.
There was the ribbon. Which makes it impossible to hide menu elements you'll never use, or to group them according to your own work patterns without creating a whole new menu and hiding several original ones. (At least Clippy was there to help you do things - not prevent it).
Then Windows 8. Which hid key elements in invisible patches on the screen, so that you could only ever find them by accident when you least wanted them.
Then 8.1 which improved things a bit, due to public outcry but only with a grudging air.
And now Win 10. Which could have been good.
But there's the Start All Apps menu, that makes organising programmes as difficult as all hell.. Which allows programmes to install folders, but won't let users directly interact with them, so that we have to open them, and right click an element get inside them, then navigate up the tree to get to and move/remove the folder.
Which won't let you move their in-built apps at all, even if you have a perfectly good folder to put them into.
Which doesn't immediately register that links have moved, and sometimes won't admit it ever.
And there's the controls that are spread into all sorts of places, mostly not the control panel, so that, for example creating a restore point manually is pretty much hidden from mortal view.
Then there's the compulsory update, without the option to say no ( I would not mind if it just installed by default if users failed to respond).
And the Notifications panel that has only the most basic of options.
I'm sure others could add to the list.
The thing is, I also do all the ad blocking stuff. And so on.
But I don't mind that sites have adverts. I even unblock and click on some, at random intervals, to pay my way.
I do object to being spammed, particularly being spammed about expensive versions of things I've already bought, or having sites full of rather unpleasant ads that fill the page with flashing banners to the point that the content is lost. Or sucker ads telling me I've won a competition that I didn't enter.
As noted above. It's not adverts that are the problem.
It's the useless gits that create this shit because they can't do a useful or productive job ( and aren't good enough to get a proper advertising job either) who should burn in hell.
Precisely
The next thing you will notice is a lightbulb in the ribbon menu in Word, Excel and PowerPoint, captioned “Tell me what you want to do”. The idea is that rather than hunting through the ribbon, you type something..
So in effect El Reg is solemnly informing us that Microsoft have decided to slap a bit of paint over the dreadful ribbon, when they should have just got rid of it.
(Sticking with Libre Office. It's not great but it's good)
There's a degree of truth in that. But the fact is that Microsoft do seem to be doing their best to piss people off. And I mean people who broadly like what they do. I've already commented on some of the Win 10 issues.
But here's a good example of a more general one. Despite all the years of development MS software still give misleading or just plain unhelpful error messages.
Case in point. I was just transferring a couple of files from my Winphone to my Win 10 PC by Bluetooth. I accidentally started the second transfer before the first one had completed.
And the error message.....
"Your device does not support Bluetooth transfer".
Which is the most infuriating kind of error message, because of the intense desire it generates to grab someone by the throat and scream* "It is transferring a file, you dick".
*Or equivalent for all the other times that something like this has occurred.
I have ti agree, sadly.
A few years ago when I was still working in educashun we had to operate a new web based database that was meant to be core to what we did.
BUT, because of it we couldn't update IE. And had to use an older, insecure version. It just didn't work on newer IE versions. We were forbidden from installing a newer version of IE.
Which rather meant that all the security features in the database, let alone the rest of the PC work, were undermined out of the box.
These days i don't have to take responsibility for keeping work stuff working anymore, And iI would never have been able to get the big high ups to allow us to dump Microsoft when I was. But then I wouldn't have wanted to. I was happy to use Windows 3.11 to 7 (Give or take the odd ME ).
Post Windows 8 my feeling has changed pretty dramatically.
I loathed everything about 8. Not just the OS itself, but the attitude to customers behind it.
8.1 was a significant improvement in usability from 8, but so grudging as to be beyond belief.
Now 10. And Microsoft have taken their attitude of trying to control us and how we use their software to new depths.
The Office ribbon was dumb enough. Forcing users to have either all the menu items or none of them, in effect.
But the new version of the start menu, with it's Byzantine limits on how we can organise it. and which will block Windows Update if certain shortcuts aren't where Microsoft put them.
Coupled with updates that are kept secret from the users and admins and privacy breaches that we can't block
Just appalling. A terrible, insulting, arrogant, almost vicious attitude to customer service.
Microsoft have finally done what no 'nux fan has been able to. Persuaded me to start dumping MS and moving my home machines on to Linux
You can claim that if you wish. It isn't true. But you are ducking the point.
That Israel is singled out for criticism.
Where was the profession of outrage over a real crime in Srebrenica.
Or Russia's proxy invasion of Ukraine.
Or Australia and New Zealand's treatment of the people who lived there long before Europeans with no connection to those places arrived.
Or the treatment of residents of Diego Garcia.
But no, the Jewish state in its traditional historic homeland gets the stick. The one democracy in a sea of hostile enemies using force to protect itself.
"I can't support the behaviour of many other states either - including our own, with their attack on civil liberties and the poor.
Well here's the thing. Look at Israel's record. Not always good. Sometimes excessive even.
No one is asking for your support. And that level of criticism is understandable.
But look at those countries which routinely behave really dreadfully. Condone slave labour, deny civil rights, have arbitrary imprisonment, throw political opponents in to torture chambers, promote proxy wars across neighbouring countries and so on,.
Then look at where most of the venom is aimed.
Then claim that the Jewish state isn't being singled-out for anti-Semitic reasons.
I don't see the same degree of venom about Russia throwing pop singers in prison or its supporting the "rebels" in Ukraine, or about Saudi-Arabia, or China, or Iran, or Uzbekistan or North Korea and so on and so on.
This
" zionist thugs occupying Palestine"
followed by this
"oy vey!"
about the land that has been the Jewish home for several thousand years, despite the world's powers trying to take control for their own benefit says, more about your views than about Corbyn's.
All he wants to do is show support for the "struggle" of whoever the far left consider to be doing the struggling at the moment. Which isn't much different to how the Militant Tendency of Labour (which was basically just the Socialist Workers Party playing games) worked in the 1970s - which is when I left Labour.
On top of the questions about Winphone 10, and my existing irritation with Windows 10s horrible implementation of an otherwise good start menu (not letting users just move folders where they want etc).
Today I found that the latest cumulative update falls over and won't install if the character map's link in the start menu isn't where Windows expects to find it.
I need to repeat this for emphasis.
The Windows cumulative update falls over because it can't find the link to the character map in the right folder .
Not a major system file. Not even the actual character map. Just the f---ing start menu link to the f---ing character map.
It's time I joined the penguins.
Makes sense to me.
As I understand things in the old days, say ten or twenty years ago, a company would have an idea for a product. And try and sell it. Whether it was a phone, a film or a sweeping brush.
But since then the accountants and marketing executives have taken control.
The accountants don't want to produce anything that hasn't already made money. Or if they work for the financial institutions don't want to finance it. So we get endless sequels of Star Trek, Batman etc.
And the marketing people don't know what to do with an original product, so they want to see a version of what the competitor is already selling.
Interesting. In the light of the stick that Microsoft get, and the trouble they are in, that HP even survive.
I've yet to have a single HP device, even a sodding mouse, that hasn't hit some kind of software, mostly a driver, problem. Usually stupid things like a software update that overwrites all the existing files but one that it can't overwrite for some reason., then refuses to install because that one hasn't updated, and won't work anymore because the file versions are now wrong.
Not brave at all.
Microsoft haters will snipe and perhaps genuinely refuse to believe, but the current Winphone is really nice to use. And looks good too.
It lacks the vast range of crappy "apps", true.
But it is a good range of devices.
Microsoft's ability to throw out the baby and keep the bathwater is getting close to legendary.
( LIke the pig's dinner that is the Win 10 version of a start menu).
"Android users keen to upgrade should check the XDA Developers forums to see if custom ROMs have been developed for their devices."
We are talking about Android here, aren't we.
The OS that sits in consumer tablets, phones and (shudder) watches.
Which means used by ordinary folk. Not tecchies or El Reg commentards.
People who barely even know they have an OS on their device. People who think Android is just a type of phone. People who would no more think of visiting a forum of any kind than they would of rebuilding their fridge.
People stick stuff on Twitter because they'd like other people to see it.
People read Twitter because they like to see what (some) other people are saying.
It's all very simple and basic and doesn't deserve criticism or antagonism unless you think it's meant to do something different, like making IT middlemen, the digital carpet baggers, lots of cash.
The web and the entertainment industry alike are full of these accountants who expect creatives to perform magic so that they can move in and suck cash off the bottom.
F**k them.
Criticising Twitter for this is like complaining that your petrol station doesn't sell Michelin star food.
Trading standards have been outsourced to Citizen's Advice Bureau.
And they don't seem to be there to report dodgy dealings to.
They seem to be there to give advice. Which is absolutely no use to anyone who avoided getting caught but wants Something To Be Done About It.
It did seem to me that the Scots' antics handed the election to the Tories on a plate. Effectively telling the rest of the UK that a vote for Labour was a vote for the SNP.
But actually, I personally would like to see Britain stay as Britain, not a collection of little countries on a small island.
With an NHS that is truly national.
But no giant top down IT projects please.
How could they!
If ever there was any group for whom there should be no second chance it's the corporate architect. People who design homes may be fine and dandy. But having worked in school and local authority buildings for a good few years I have absolutely no reason to think they deserve any kind of mercy.
There have been the South facing glass walls that allow temperatures to shoot up to unbearable levels from April to October. Windows that are perfectly located to slice the head off any happy nine year old running past. Central staircases that open onto a busy corridor to create a dangerous gridlock at the end of every session or fire alarm and god forbid a real fire. Atrium entrances with the reception area yards from the door, that waste loads of limited space and make it easy for the casual thief to do a runner. Wiring that runs nowhere near the work stations. Meeting rooms with such terrible echo that you can't hear anything properly, add corridors that amplify every sound so that a door closing sounds like the gates of hell. Lighting that can't be reached to change the. strip when it starts to flash. Carpet tiles that give shocks of static to everyone who comes into the room. Fitted cupboards that open out in front of doorways. The works.
My Lumia 635 is 4.5in
I'd prefer something a little bit bigger, but not a lot.
When I bought it the options were this rather basic phone, or a high end/large and significantly more expensive one, that I couldn't justify. Especially since the " a lot more expensive" bit didn't match up with the bit of extra functionality of those higher end jobbies..
So these could be what I was really wanting. A mid range phone, with a decent pocket size.
Something that does the job. Not an ibling or a Google pocket ad agent .
Since a few commentards have been insisting that using Linux is as intuitive as Windows, here's my latest little adventure.
I installed Dropbox.
If I'd been using Fedora, or Ubuntu there would have been no story.
The link in the email that took me to the installer had both of these listed.
But with Mint I had to click for the unlisted distro, which took me to the instructions for compiling it.
Which were fairly straight forward, if you knew what you were doing and could manage path names etc.
But not for an ordinary user who just wants to be able to install a Drobox.
And even for me it seemed like an awful lot of faffing around.
Instead I chose one of the distros listed, ( Ubuntu I think). I'd expected that it would either work or throw an error.
In fact it sort of did both. It told me that there was a newer version ( for that distro) available.
And when I accepted took me to a Mint version.
Go figure as the Americans say.
No. Wrong.
I readily got Linux up and running fine, for myself. Within 24 hrs.
But I am fully aware of how much tech savvy I used.
And an ordinary user wanting to switch to Linux (Mint) would find a very steep learning curve.
So, for example, even if you didn't know how to install a printer in Windows, the printer website will have a driver, which you can download without even knowing what a driver is, then click on install, and Bingo, you have a printer.
Whereas setting up my Epson printer ( reasonably, but not too recent) was a real struggle. The Epson driver was typical geek package. Full of jargon and additional things to download to get the setup to appear, if it ever would. Because I couldn't get it to work, but I know how to get a generic driver for Linux and have the knowledge to make a pretty good guess at which gibberish name is actually the one I want.
The problem isn't Linux, it's the people who write the names of programmes in geek Speak, give installation packages meaningless names, and make set up systems that are opaque.
This is not about me expecting too much too soon.
It's about hobbyists not wanting to make a "commodity" OS that the ordinary user can administer, without joining the club, visiting the forum sites, etc.
Chika
That's sort of a valid point, for me.
But I have to think of my users/friends/family/etc.
"Zip" makes sense outside of geek language. We all know what zipping things up is. We all have zips on things.
But a "tar ball" is something that melts and ruins your clothes.
And ditto "adminstrator". It allows you to adminstrate. Logical.
A "Sudo" ? pure gibberish. Even written in full, something along the lines of "substitute user do" and it's still gibberish.
And those installation instructions all run along the lines of telling users to do something complicated with a meaningless file name, often extracted from a different file that has to be downloaded.
It's not actually a problem with MINT/Linux.
It's a fault with the people who would promote LINUX but don't seem very interested in making it easy to use.
Is it so difficult to have a file called "setup" as with most Windows programmes?
Or menus that are in something that resembles comprehensible English? Or at least do what they say they do.
Or have messages that refrain from referring to technical components that the new user will never have heard of, when they click on something they are meant to click on.
In fairness Windows still puts up bloody stupid error messages, after all these years.
And yes, a running MINT installation looks just like a running Windows (7) one.
Until the user has to do something that ought to be a little more complicated, at which point it becomes a lot more complicated.
It's as if there was an egg shell layer of usability. It's probably ideal for the totally basic user who will only want to use the same 3 or 4 programmes, to write a letter, send and email, etc.
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