Posts by AndrueC 5509 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Aug 2009
Let the users decide. If LibreOffice were a truly compelling product and not just a derivative copy, people would have already switched to it on their own.
I tried it for quite a while but for the last year or so Writer has suffered from a bug where it can't render the caret in the right place on one of my computers. It seems to be something to do with bullet lists but I was never able to narrow it down. After a while the caret just starts being rendered increasingly further right from the editing point.
I found a couple of bug reports implying that it might be something to do with the graphics card in my laptop. Unfortunately I can't change that and since it doesn't affect Word or Google docs I've pretty much moved to Google Docs now.
A few possible advantages:
Maybe these would be better suited to concrete bed track, but there's not a vast amount of that around Europe from what I gather. (parts of) HS2 in the UK I think, assuming we can ignore the Lizzy Line!
I'd be interested in seeing figures for that. In the UK at least concrete sleepers are the preferred choice. Wooden sleepers tend to only be used in specific locations eg; under turnouts which benefit from the extra cushioning. I'd have thought that was broadly the case across Europe and all modern railways.
ChatGPT (yeah I know..) seemed to confirm this and pointed to some sources for example (Network Rail - UK).
If you search for 'concrete sleepers' you'll find tables showing sleeper renewals. In 2011 335km of concrete sleepers were renewed against 7km of wooden and 103km of steel. Now unless concrete and steel sleepers are hugely more prone to wear and tear than wood (which they aren't - they last longer) that suggests that wood is in the minority.
Well it's not universal but VM and its predecessors went for the areas with what they thought to be the best RoI. They never achieved market dominance in those areas which is why Ofcom never got too involved in their business. Most of those areas remain places with a high RoI for communication providers.
But would another CP want to go up against VM? Sure. Banbury near me had large parts of the town with VM and now everywhere has OR fibre. Same with Bicester a bit further south east. My small rural town never got VM but is now served by three separate cable networks. Swish, Gigaclear and lastly Openreach.
An interesting article about this here.
"As of January 2022, there were 10m likely 'Virgin solus' households. In other words, for roughly two-thirds of the households in Virgin's 16m footprint, it was the only supplier of Gigabit broadband. However, today, there are just 4.5m 'Virgin solus' premises, or less than one-third of Virgin's total. This points to the erosion of what was once a significant technical advantage for Virgin Media, where in many parts of the country it could offer far higher speeds than its rivals. "
I've always thought it to be a silly state of affairs. Technical solutions exist to allow the sharing of cables so why are businesses happy to overbuild? We don't overbuild water, sewage gas or electricity networks. But..apparently it makes sense to a lot of businesses.
Another somewhat drier article here which offers an explanation.
"This suggests that future competition is unlikely to be driven by connecting previously unserved homes. Instead, competition increasingly centres on customer switching, pricing pressure, service differentiation, and migration from legacy broadband technologies to full fibre."
Oh some people at Microsoft knew how to write an operating system. Dave Cutler and his team certainly did. Always be careful when you're making sweeping statements or generalisations.
And if you couple that with personally known rules it can be secure even it's stolen.
I can tell you that the reminder for one of my passwords (least secure, unimportant online forums) is 'poly'. No-one can possibly use that to guess the actual password without being able to read my mind or without them having an incredibly deep and accurate understanding of how my mind works.
Tell that to the poor sap who has to:
The best code doesn't just work. It's also easy to understand and modify by other people (or yourself long after it was first written).
Almost all source code evolves over time. There's a special place in programmer's hell for those who think obfuscation or bizarre identifier names are a good idea.
And style matters. It's all about readability and a lot of that comes down to what the eye/brain is expecting. It's easy to overlook something because it's not where you were expecting it.
Sad but true. I've been a lifelong science-fiction fan but as I've grown up and done more research I've become more aware of how difficult space travel is. Getting to Mars is bloody difficult. Getting back to Earth is almost as difficult.
Trying to combine both things is probably bordering on impossible.
It sounds akin to requiring two people to climb a mountain. One climbs up (carrying a slightly smaller second person) and then dies. The second person climbs down on their own.
Right. That's because it's relying on a map. Although that's not fool proof either. To be completely accurate it needs to be kept up to date regarding temporary speed limits and be aware of time dependant limits (eg; some limits around schools).
So such systems need to combine mapping data and a camera with access to an accurate database of temporary limits.
As I said in my reply: Reading signs is not enough.
I wonder if the Waymo taxis in London can at least negotiate mini-roundabouts correctly?
I'm sick and tired of people in standard vehicles just cutting over the centre. Yes, in some cases it's not possible to go around the centre but the law only allows you to cut across if your vehicle is incapable of going round. It's still a bloody roundabout, people!
I'm also very sick and tired of people thinking that if they approach fast enough they can take priority even if they are a hundred yards away. Give to traffic from the roundabout shouldn't have to refer to someone a hundred yards away approaching like a bat out of hell. In most cases all the approach roads have give way markings on them.
Also in the UK you can't just go by the presence of signs. If a road is NSL (National Speed Limit) there is no legal requirement for speed limit signs when switching from dual carriageway to singe carriageway or vice versa. Even if you're leaving one road and joining another you don't need a speed limit sign if both are NSL.
So for example where the A43 (dual carriageway - 70mph) meets the A422 (single carriageway - 60mph) there is no speed limit sign to indicate the change.
while 74 percent said they would rather spend money with such a business.
Was it pointed out to them beforehand that corporation tax is just a business expense and would mostly(*) be passed onto the customers?
Let's phrase the question thus: "Would you prefer to continue as things are or you would prefer to pay more in exchange for companies you do business with paying more corporation tax?".
(*)Or offset through less attractive remuneration(**) for their employees(***).
(**)Or in very rare cases, reduced dividends to shareholders.
(***)..excluding senior management and board members.
One thing that used to work for me until recently. I don't know if it was a bug or it's a bug that it doesn't work any longer.
I used to be able to hover over the icon of an application running in the background in the Task bar which brought it visually to the foreground but left the keyboard focus on the actual foreground application. That allowed me to read from one application, while typing into another. It is was very useful. But now as soon as I start typing the background application vanishes again.
if you are going to take more than twenty cubic metres a day (about 1,000 litres).
Whoah I got that wrong. Don't know if it was a typo or just a brain fart. It's not 1,000 litres it's 20,000 litres (or 20kl, lol). D'uh it's a pretty easy conversion 'cos this is the metric system.
Anyway now I'm even more puzzled as to why golf courses might struggle to get an abstraction license. Surely a golf course in the UK doesn't need anywhere near 20,000 litres a day?
Ooh. I wonder what the big boys in charge think?
Yes, in the UK you need an abstraction license to take water from a well but apparently only if you are going to take more than twenty cubic metres a day (about 1,000 litres). That intrigues me a bit. Would a golf course need that amount just to keep 18 greens alive? That's almost 56 litres per green and sounds like enough most of the time to me - any agronomists here?
Bloody hell - it's complicated!
But still - even with an abstraction license and as a keen amateur golfer I'm not keen on abstracting during summer. Yes, I love playing golf but there are more important things to be using environmental water for at that time of year. What I think is needed is abstraction to storage during the winter (which might lower the water table and mitigate the mud) then use that water during summer.
Most golf courses in the UK only water their greens, and even then fairly sparingly because golfers don't like wet or soggy greens (and nor will the tightly mown grass).
Most golfers also prefer dry, hard fairways because it helps the ball go further and that's usually a good thing. It's not always good though. Our back nine becomes more difficult in hard, dry conditions as the ball is wont to take some strange bounces. It goes from friendly parkland play to scary links-like play.
But even if they only water greens it's still quite a lot of water and is going to become a problem if/when water companies start refusing to let them use mains water. It's something England Golf is pushing clubs to address. In theory a golf course can be a useful soak in the winter to prevent flooding so there is scope for courses, councils and water authorities to work together.
The big complication is that (quite sensibly) golf courses only own water that has fallen on them from the sky. Any water that comes in via streams or rivers doesn't belong to them. Anything from underground doesn't below to them. And if they change the amount of water that flows off their property they can be sued for that. It's sensible but does mean that at the moment most courses can't do anything to mitigate for the neighbours in winter and have limited ability to capture water for summer use.
And of course, you have no idea how many servers the email will pass through en route.
That's not how email works, or hasn't done for many years if not decades now. That only ever happened in the past because of network fragmentation meaning that packets from the sender's server had no route to the recipient's and had to be relayed by other servers.
These days it would be very unusual for a mail server of all things to have only partial access to the internet address space. It wouldn't even be done for security reasons since you're actually making security worse. And very, very few mail servers act as relays these days. Spam killed off that feature. Mail servers these days are only ever responsible for their specific domain(s). You try asking my mail server to relay mail somewhere and it'll tell you to get lost in short order.
I would guess that at least 99.9% of emails are transferred directly between the sender's server and the recipient's. They will of course pass through any number of network routers along the way but that's a separate issue.
Oftom would be better off DOING something about the SPOOF calls I have every day that contravene TPS, GDPR and ICO regulations
I think it would be worth your while reviewing your own phone habits. I get one, perhaps two, spam calls or messages a year. If you're getting that many every day it seems like it's something to do with you.
Might want to check out the chargeback terms available on Visa debit cards.
Hmm. Let me think. Which is better?
* Being able to claim back lost money and hope it's returned to my account before I run out of funds to pay bills.
or
* Never losing the money in the first place and just having to tell my CC issuer to re-issue the bill with some of the transactions removed.
I too would rather stick with section 75. That way it's only ever the bank's money that gets stolen.
Coverage is still not great around where I live and that's half way between the two biggest cities in the UK. Okay so it's a rural area but it's only a couple of miles from the M40 and a large town.
But main problem really has been the poor bandwidth allocation I experience. I'm on a cheap MVNO and based on performance I think I keep getting squeezed out when the network is busy. Now that Three and Vodafone have completed their network merger this might be less of a problem but that remains to be seen.
What business does Windows have with BIOS?
Very little beyond what's needed to bootstrap itself.
But that's misunderstanding what's going on here. Windows isn't updating the firmware. It's just downloading an image and setting a flag that means 'update firmware on reboot' the update is being performed by the firmware exactly the same as if you went via HPs own software.
All that WU is doing is automating the process of going to HP and downloading the latest image. Now you could argue that that will result in more people updating their firmware than would otherwise be the case but I don't think that means you can blame Windows if the update screws things up.
It's nothing to do with WU though. All WU is doing is downloading an image and setting a flag to tell the BIOS that on next boot up it should perform a firmware update using that image. It's the same if you use HP's Support Assistant application. It downloads something then asks you to reboot.
In both cases on rebooting I get the normal blinding white screen while the firmware is updated.
Now if HP doesn't check the battery status before starting that process that's bad..but it's on HP. You can't blame Windows for that - it's just the delivery mechanism.
My over seven year old HP ProBook occasionally locks up coming out of standby then shuts down. And it sometimes takes a long time or fails completely to reconnect to my WIFI. But it does neither of these very often and given it's age I can just tut, sigh and forgive it.
It's a bit like me - getting a little tired and ragged around the edges but still willing and able :)
I've updated BIOS multiple times on multiple machines. If an update is offered I take it. In the past I'd even periodically go to the manufacturer's website and check that I was up to date. In forty years I've never had a problem.
Although I do wish that HP's BIOS update didn't insist on using a white background and setting the screen brightness to maximum. I wonder if there's such a thing as 'BIOS update tan'?
Before renewal I need to get my domain chappy to change the AAA record to be the same as the AA. That way I can reduce my cert down to one domain which will save me quite a bit of money.
Well that was a load of hooey :)
After spending a bit of time this morning refreshing my knowledge it turns out to be simpler than that. I just need to replace the two existing MX records that point to subdomains with a single one that refers to the domain. Then we can remove the subdomains and superfluous MX records. My DNS chap has created a new record with higher priority and that seems to be working so the next step is to tidy it all up.
My cert is from Godaddy but my domain remains with a small UK company. I've never had any spam from either.
The domain stuff is kind of an odd arrangement. Several years ago they were bought by (or merged with) a marketing company and now that's their main focus. But the guy I've been emailing all that time still works there and is happy to deal with my occasional requests. I have this vision of a large corporate building with chrome and glass and snazzy desks and chairs. Lots of meetings and discussions and people hurrying around.
Then somewhere in a corner is this bloke who just has the kit he needs and is happy with keeping the DNS and registration going :)
Although that does remind me. I realised earlier this year that I don't need a separate domain for my IPv6 address. Before renewal I need to get my domain chappy to change the AAA record to be the same as the AA. That way I can reduce my cert down to one domain which will save me quite a bit of money.
At least on this side of the pond, I can report them to the FTC, especially if they don't a) honor my unsubscribe or b) don't have an unsubscribe.
Same here. We've been able to register with the MPS to stop letters and phone calls for a long time. But for electronic communication we report to the ICO.
MPS is pretty effective. That's probably because of the costs involved in sending out crap that way. Companies don't want to be wasting their marketing resources on calls or letters to people who don't care.
I don't know how effective the ICO is but they do issue fines for various reasons.
I do similar, using a wildcard template. I can hand out a new address without telling the server anything. Only time I have to configure the server is to add an address to the blacklist. I've not had to do that for quite a while though now.
The only issue I've had is with finding an email client that can autogenerate the reply-to based on the incoming address. Older versions of Thunderbird can with a nolonger compatible add-on but the best I've found for the current TBird is a widget that warns me when I'm about to use my primary address and another that can automatically pick an appropriate virtual identity if one exists. Thankfully me email usage is now so low that it suffices as a solution.
Yeah I have a GMail address I use for a few things - mainly contacts that need to be maintained if my own mail server is down for some reason. I've had it a long time, must be well over a decade. It rarely gets any spam (or at least I don't see it). There have been a couple of times when I've seriously considered shuttering my mail server and just using GMail.
That's the reason I still run my own email server. I can filter messages on RCPT TO and should the need arise can validate senders by their IP address.
No relying on easy to forge headers for me :)
It's been fine. The keyboard layout keeps catching me out (backspace is not where I expect it to be) and the mousepad is more offset than I'm used to but those are minor irritants.
I didn't want to carry a personal laptop to and from meetings for fear of dropping it and because I often leave it in the car while I'm playing golf ahead of a meeting in the evening. The advantage of the Chromebook is that I can set it up with a new account that has access to nothing of my own then share a Google Drive folder containing nothing but club documents.
I have been very pleasantly surprised by Google Docs. Even on the golf club's poor wifi it's responsive and does a great job. In fact it does better than Libre office since on my other laptop that has a habit of rendering the caret at the wrong place when navigating lists in Writer.
It certainly gives me what I need and in all honesty I think a larger device would suit almost all my needs. The only limitation is that I do need to run the club's softare and that is Windows only.
That said, a decade or so ago I had already decided that 'anything HP' was not worth my hard earnt money.
Depends on personal experience, I suppose. I'm currently typing this on a 7+ year old HP Probook 470 G5 (cost £900 in September 2018). It automatically updated to Win11 shortly after it was released. The only thing that has failed was the keyboard - or at least one key became sticky. For £30 I bought a replacement and fitted it within five minutes.
It's been my 'daily driver' all the time and still does all that I ask it to.
When I wanted another laptop for a home office setup I didn't hesitate in buying another HP.
Then last year when it was obvious I was going to become secretary of my golf club I needed something more portable and simpler. So I bought an HP Chromebook.
But I will agree that this overpriced-computer-in-a-keyboard-without-a-monitor is a daft idea.
The article text is only using the centre 50% of my screen..
..compounding the problem that page up/down is jumping too many lines of text (at 125% zoom).
And if this is supposed to be 'Image Lite' as per my settings then something is wrong.
Oh and just noticed like others that there's no indication of which articles I've read.
All this using Google Chrome.
