Posts by Doctor Syntax 42029 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"Microsoft comes into my WORK OFFICE (i.e. computer) on a regular basis, literally throws the stuff off my "desktop" onto the floor, stamps on most things until they are broken and unrecognisable, puts a new fancy box on my desk that I can't remove, and tells me that my productivity will be improved."
Don't invite it in.
Had something like the SQL thing with a client's Informix query. We weren't allowed to run UPDATE STATISTICS by the application developer (I recognised it as lack of confidence on the query optimiser on their part combined with skills learned in writing queries for the original pre-SQL, pre-optimiser version). I let the query explainer do its stuff, so what was happening without the benefit of the statistics and rearranged it with temporary tables. The report that they'd never run successfully, not even overnight, ran in about 10 minutes.
We had a 1 lecure a week maths course. Biologists didn't take kindly to maths. We started turning up a little later each week so the lecturer did so too. Then one week we all turned up on time, he wasn't there so we all left and never came back.
Reputedly one of the chemistry lecturers in QUB had a number of laws of lecturing. A colleague who'd been one of his students used to quote one "The mind cannot absorm more than the bottom can support."
Yes, indeed, handle with caution except -
We used it to extract pollen from soil layers. The outer part of polen is almost indestructible so after washing in NaOH soln to remove humins (sic) the samples were boiled in HF in platinum crucibles over a small bunsen burner before being centrifuged in polypropylene tubes. Fortunately I didn't have many of those to do but SWMBO had lots.
Ha! Been there. Photo of road with not too far to a bend and poking out of trees a bit further on were some street lights but none before the bend. We were expected to work out from that that the road we were on was a 30 limit. Sometime later I was on a road from Grange-over-Sands which looked quite similar. The road was at 40 although without a repeater sign in view you wouldn't have known it from a photo. The street-lights in view above the trees were on a roundabout between two stretches of dual carriageway at national speed limit.
SWMBO had spent a couple of years teaching before we met. I'd just been working for a firm of biological suppliers to schools. It had gone bankrupt (invested a lot in making microscopes just as the Japanese were entering the market). She says we still owe her the dissecting scissors she'd ordered.
"Those who don't teach don't realise what a skill teaching/coaching is."
Some of those who do teach don't realise it either. Those who've been on the receiving end of those who taught but didn't have it recognise full well that it is. Possibly the worst to suffer from were Latin teachers on the basis that with a classics degree and none of the greasy pole climbing ability to get into politics teaching was the only career irrespective of aptitude.
Much the same applies to management which is why there are few managers and many manglers.
I think maths is prone to that. The teacher spends a lot of time explaining what's perfectly obvious to anyone except a mathematician and then suddenly there's a rearrangement of equations at sleight of hand speed, possibly with a new bit of notation thrown in and the blackboard's wiped clean for the next stage.
"cutting [an incandescent light bulb] open with a diamond ring and filling it with either hydroflouric acid or magnesium filings before super gluing it back together."
The hydrofluoric acid wouldn't have stayed there long. I had a long struggle over the years trying to tighten up the waste pipe on a leaking lab sink. It never worked and I eventually realised somebody must have washed too much hydrofluoric acid down it and dissolved the glaze (it was a Belfast sink in a Belfast lab). It probably didn't do the glaze earthenware sewage pipe much good either.
"we had trouble staying awake as it was so soporific"
We had a lecturer like that. Her monotone wasn't particularly low but it hit a very distinct, ringing pitch. She had a slight Geordie twang*. In my final year there was fresher who was also a Geordie, again, not with a strong accent normally. He told me that in one class he replied to her with a slightly raised accent and by the end of the hour the positive feedback loop had left the rest of the class floundering.
* Note to non-UK readers: advanced Geordie is inaccessible to the rest of us. Great folk, though and their countryside is arguably the most unspoiled area of England.
"upon what basis does MS continue to believe people/companies will pay considerable sums for the privilege of using Windows and associated products?"
The fact that people actually do do that.
They do so because there are always people hanging about to assure tham that Linux is hard - FFS read through the contortions some commentators are describing to have to undertake installing Windows.
They do so because there are always people hanging about to assure them that they'll have to learn a new UI to use Linux despite Microsoft imposing new UIs on them whenever marketing decides to do that.
They do so because there are always people hanging round to tell them that the choice of distors in confusing despite the fact that they make choices in everything else from breakfast cereals to cars or where to live.
They do so because they're being slowly boiled like forgs.
Thanks to my dentist sending me a consent form to be signed with DocuSign the latter now think I agreed to have an account with them and just sent me an email telling me they'll send me an email series of tips on how to use it. I've no idea whether my FOAD reply will be read but I suspect not.
I have ways and means of dealing with that. The email address to which they sent it has been set to bounce with a note as to why, replaced and real addresses at doctor, dentist and optician appraised of the new one. I couldn't let the local hospital trust have the updated address, however, because they want to send mail through a 3rd party (something else for the things which should be banned list) which uses a do not reply address.
"It works similarly to the old folk who know nothing of atmospheric physics"
The old Red sky at nigh is a very generalised version of this. It works because the weather in the UK usually arrives from the west. What it doesn't say is that it won't work when we're in a run of easterlies. If this is what ML accomplishes it will have the same limitations. As someone said up-thread predicting tomorrow will be like today has a pretty good success rate without any form of computation.
Not TfL but BR.
I used to commute into Marylebone (the unforgiveable performance of the Chiltern line would deserve a post of its own).
The whole station was painted. They did a really good job. They even picket out all the little details of the frieze of the news kiosk.
When that was finished they sandblasted the brickwork getting dust over the new paintwork.
Then they filled in the track of the north platform covering the lower part of the newly sandblasted wall.
Then they replaced the track by digging out a new one down the middle of the wide platform that, in the previous days had allowed vehicles to drive onto it if it was useful to transfer stuff onto a train, cutting off that as a future opeion.
Then they reorganised the forecourt, demolishing the old three-sided open kiosk that enabled one to buy a paper on the way to or from the platforms almost without breaking stride) and replacing it with one in an out of the way little cubby hole.
"it seems the less that politicians, business types et al understand technology, the more likely they are to assume that it's going to be a pancea that'll solve all their problems"
You're describing the core market for silver bullets.
