Posts by Doctor Syntax 42029 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"Her husband, the late Prince Philip, was less tech savvy. In an infamous case, his personal account on Prestel etc."
I'm not sure about that. It would have taken a degree of tech savvy to have used a Prestel account but even more to the point I think he organised a conference promoting technology many decades ago.
She was working up until two days before her death at 96. Only ill her final illness prevented her holding a meeting the following day. Charles is about 5 years younger than myself. He's stepping up to the next role. I'd already been retired for years at his age.
Rich or not it isn't a fate I'd wish on my worst enemy but I'm grateful that they both accepted it. It means succession to head of state is pre-determined, doesn't involve vote grubbing (whoever you vote for you always get a politician) and is beyond the disgraceful events we saw recently in the US.
"his mother deliberately kept him away from any meaningful exercise of royal powers even in her old age"
The reality is that he and the other senior members of the family stepped in to substitute for her on more and more occasions in recent years. And short of an actual regency there's no scope for anyone other than the monarch exercising royal powers in any way, meaningful or otherwise.
MariaDB seems to have become the favoured RDBMS for many FOSS applications. This mention of BSL, therefore, worries me somewhat. I run a NextCloud server at home on a Pi. This is undoubtedly production - several directories on my laptop sync with it every day. Should I have a paid for licence? If not, how is this differentiated from production that does require a paid-for licence?
The mysterious thing is that no matter how disliked the product they still sell.
Or maybe it's not so mysterious. They have effective monopolies. If the user is in their walled garden then they have no option. That in turn explains why there is so much diversity in the FOSS world. There is no walled garden.. There are options and we take advantage of them.
Torvalds does the kernel, not the UI nor even the rest of userland*. So there's one thing you clearly didn't know.
And do you know why there are so many Linux desktop environments?
Because the layering of the underlying software makes it possible, because there is no marketing involved so if someone sufficiently talented doesn't like what they're offered they can roll their own and because there are people with different use cases and preferences to keep them all in use.
* Look this term up if it puzzles you.
"The average user (whether an individual buying for themselves, or management in a business) has no clue about improvements under the hood and will buy on the basis of visible features and bling."
Nobody knows whether there are changes under the hood or not. A change of UI can hide the possibility that there are few or none. But although the first impression might be "Modern" or "Ooo, shiny" the reality soon sets in if usability is compromised or it turns out that resources dedicated to the surface glitz might have been better spent on the quality and functionality of what's actually under the hood.
"One of the things I wish the open source world would do more of is just throw things at the wall to see what sticks."
They've done a fair amount of that and do you know what happens? For the most part users stick with what works for them. For a few that may be exploring the latest shiny. For the rest of us it's KDE, XFCE or whatever. It's particularly noticeable that when Gnome decided to make big changes between versions 2 & 2 the response was not just one but two new projects, Cinnamon and Mate to preserve the original UI. There should be some lessons in that.
And we now have a whole field of UX (User Experience) which is all about "delighting" the user and puts emotions and feelings above rational
And yet even there they fail. Nobody here is delighted with their offerings. They may have succeeded in generating emotions and feelings but not good ones.
I've always assumed that having been forced into the corner of standardising file formats MS couldn't keep up their usual trick of evolving them so as to force any would-be compatible S/W to be in perpetual catch-up mode. Instead they forced their users to learn a new UI whether they wanted to or not so that in a few years all the ribbon-native users would find it harder to transfer across the compatibles. Or at worst, it would force the developers of the rest to play catch-up on UIs.
"WHAT WAS WRONG WITH THE WIN95-WIN2K DESIGN LANGUAGE?"
Nowt!
And, contrary to what Rupert says Linux desktops (always excepting Gnome) have remained pretty consistent - differences between the various DEs but on the whole they seem to roll on from one iteration to the next. The one thing that I lack from KDE3 is the ability to specify a corner rather than an edge to unhide the panel (is that tool-bar in Wondows parlance? The thing across the bottom with icons on it.).
Given the right collection of artwork for buttons, colours etc. a KDE desktop can look very much like something from the W95/NT/W2K era. In fact that's just what mine looks like except the desktop icons & fonts look a bit better then the W2K that lurks in a VB. That and multiple workspaces.
The theory behind splitting the interface from the implementation was that the interface could remain stable while the implementation could be changed for improvement. This releives consumers of the interface from having to change to keep up with the mplementation. Microsoft seem to have turned that on its head: the interface is changed for dis-improvement whilst the implementation doesn't necessarily change that much (or so we are reassured from time to time).
For the time being.
I'm reminded of an incident in "Yes Prime Minister" with Hacker in one of his usual jams and asking what to do next. It was suggested he invite the Leader of the Opposition's wife to visit No 10. "Why?" "To measure up for curtains." I suppose the difference these days is that measuring up for curtains is something that's going to be avoided for a long time.
Maybe you never used CDE - a block of several in the middle of the bottom of the screen. That gave us the "Which menu is it on" problem. A good set of cascading menus in one place is a better solution. I've always assumed it was a inspired by a desire to simplify the CDE UI.
But then with a WIMP interface you have other alternatives. You can have application links on the desktop. And you can automate the choice of application according to the file to be opened and have file icons on the desktop. There's two additional approaches. You can have most frequently used applications as buttons on tool bars. So the premise - everything si squished into one button - is false and it's not intrinsically a bad idea any way. And there's no sign of it being patented - the KDE desktop in front of me also has a single button in the bottom left although arguably it's better implemented.
Maybe it's just a touch of "Not Invented Here" where "Here" is the latest lot of crayon wielders.
I'm not sure if the typography of the KDE menu would suit this particular critic but it just works and what's more, just works the way I want it because I can edit the options as I want them. Just works is the first thing that should be expected of any UI gadget.
One quote from TMMM is particularly relevant here: “The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination.”
Many of the professions quoted previously are rooted in basic laws of physics. Biology*, the root of medicine and pharmacy, is slightly less well tied down (we're usually pleased to get 2 sigma) but still based on the physical world. The difference between these and software is real.
* A long time ago there were threats to make the practice of various sciences dependent on membership of the relevant chartered institutions so I took the pre-emptive step of joining mine. If its regular publication was any guide it seemed to be largely populated by biology teachers and the best bit of said publication was the regular page of exam howlers.
The application used both the fixed and removable disks. The problem was then to back up both of these whilst only having the removable drive. The only backup route is fixed to removable.
So first remove the working removable and replace with a blank disk to back up the fixed. Half the job done.
Now how do we back up the working removable? Because it can only be backed up from the fixed disk it has to be downloaded to that first, then backed up to a second blank disk.
We now have the fixed disk occupied by the copy of the working removable so that has to be overwritten by the backup taken at the first stage.
All understandable when you think about it. It's also easy to understand how it can go wrong if you're not thinking too carefully about it.
My first car was an Anglia so I never thought a Ford gearbox was in any way mysterious. One day we were helping out with a student field trip to a site which my wife was investigating. We rolled up on site with the equipment, possibly in my car, more likely in the Botany Dept Mini. No sign of the lecturer with the hired Transit-based mini-bus full of students. When he finally arrived it turned out he'd missed a turn-off, Never having driven a Ford (his car was a Hillman Imp) he couldn't find reverse and ended up driving miles to find his way back without reversing.
I love the "Crkrkrkrk" when you pull it up that leaves you feeling secure that it's not going anywhere.
Press the button to release the ratchet, pull it up silently so the teeth are not wearing with the "Crkrkrkrk". Then release the button. That way that you increase the probability that it's not going anywhere.
