Posts by Doctor Syntax 40471 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
The prime requirements of a UI is that it works and that it works today the same way as it did yesterday. Elsewhere in these comments someone has quoted something to the effect that they wanted familiar ways to do unfamiliar things, not unfamiliar ways to do familiar things
Before W95 arrived a lot of us were using things like CDE which had pop-up menus from gadgets which were by default at the bottom of the screens and also put icons for minimised applications at the bottom of the screen. Following that precedent was a sensible thing to do. They could, however, have put the shutdown option anywhere in the list or even given you the option of where to locate it.
Oddly enough I've never found having the power sub-menu there to be a problem. I suppose it's because I instinctively whizz the cursor half way up the list because the most useful options on my menu are there. The real issue I have with the W95 GUI design was moving the close application function from the system menu - the icon at the left of the title bar to the right hand end. That's partly an issue because the system menu was common to Windows & CDE but also because it was - and still is - easy to hit by accident in place of the minimise and maximise buttons which mattered because most applications assumed you wouldn't hade closed down unless you meant it and didn't offer a chance to save work.
"whatever you’d like to imagine about Microsoft’s benevolent customer-first approach simply ain’t true"
I have no imagination whatsoever about the existence of Microsoft's customer care let alone its benevolence.
It's simply that Microsoft have worked out a means of making more money vs making money:
You're OK with renewing H/W - fine, we (get the H/W vendor to) sell you a licence for W11 which brings in the price of an OEM.
Or
You're not OK with that? Here's a deal whereby you don't have to. You just pay us more each year for ongoing support. We'll keep the price less than you'd spend on the H/W upgrades. We make more than we would have made by indirectly selling you a new licence at OEM rates.
Repeat until you get bored and just let the Windows update runfail.
FTFY
I suppose the big difference with Linux is that the choices are available in parallel and the user makes them whereas with Windows they're sequential and Microsoft's marketroids make them.
"Indeed I am. Most of my documents are portrait with occasional landscape pages. On my 27" widescreen monitor I find vertical real estate more valuable than horizontal."
Very often I find myself working with a document I'm writing on one side and some source document on the other so the width is valuable for that. But then I realised that LibreOffice writer can be set to two-up, e.g. two successive pages side by side which is great for laying out double-page spreads*. I don't know if Word does that as I don't use it. When reading comments like this it struck me that it would be a really good way to build a code editor as you'd effectively have a double-height monitor.
* It actually has a book layout option so the first page of the document is displayed recto. It even has an option on print-preview to do that. But I still haven't found a way to get it to create proof PDFs that way - it just resorts to plain 2-up.
"Until Linux offers a unified desktop UI API, backwards compatibility, and ends its ideological hate for commercial software, it won't be able to replace Windows regardless how much Nadella cripples it."
You should give it a try. What is this unified desktop API you're looking for that doesn't exist. What would it let me do that my disktop doesn't currently do? Who are what is this Linux that holds opinions such as idealogical hatred? It's only people who have idealogical hatreds - and it comes steaming out of that sentence I quoted.
"They revert back to widows and then, because I appear to be an expert, call me up when they can't do something "
If they revert there's no support. That's the rule. Stick to it.
OTOH my CiL's 50 something Windows-using children find they can use her Zorin if they need to so it's not all youngsters who are stuck.
"if I were travelling to some country like Israel where they routinely scan visitors' computers without permission"
Something like a Chromebook would be the solution to that. Not an actual Chromebook because you'd want to connect to your own server. You could then give one set of credentials to security and use something completely different for work.
To clarify that - just in case you want to send it back. Alternatively set up dual boot. Then occasionally you can boot up the Windows partition so you can point and laugh.
It's work knowing you can update those cheapos. SWMO's own laptop has a dodgy M/B and the W2K era one she's using now is really slow. But I was worrying that something really cheaped out might not have access to a boot menu.
One particular stretch or road locally has signs up saying so many casualties in 3 years (which 3 years not stated). What is the correct question to ask about that?
1. None (apparently the local authority's)
2. Who are the anomalously large population of selfish pricks?
3. What's the matter with the road?
In answer to 3 it could be 5 out of 7 junctions having bad sight-lines, 2 being virtually blind in one direction another which really needs to be a roundabout, probably double and was far from being improved by being improved a few decades ago and yet another being quite deceptive at night in that a badly placed reflective speed limit sign makes the main road appear to go on straight on while it actually bends to the near side.
The reason for these, by the way, are that in the age of the horse and cart and stage coach it didn't matter if the turnpike cut at odd angles across the old roads used by pedestrians and pack ponies.
But it's OK, if we just put up signs warning drivers that this road may be dangerous in unspecified places for unspecified reasons all will be well.
Just for added joy, a few miles away there's a left bend sign just at the point where the road bends to the right.
AV's really aren't going to fix issues like those.
What is this thing about voters "registering" for a party. Is this obligatory? I suppose it would be a Good Thing if it was a means of singling out a government employee for closer scrutiny if they were overtly a member of a political party to avert partisan activity but the opposite seems to be the case.
They know they can get away with pretty well any level of customer abuse by now. Perhaps other countries should take a twist on Trump's Fentanyl policy, impose tariffs on the US until they stop shipping Microsoft products.
Bill the department whose member of staff raised the call. Double rate at least, minimum 4 hours. There's no point in warning that you'll do this because morons like that will ignore the warning.
I used to refuse on-call rotas on the basis that if you call I'll respond if at all possible but I won't undertake to sit by a phone all weekend or whatever - this in the days long before mobile phones. OTOH if I was called it would have been serious, usually nothing short of a murder enquiry.
There was one exception when my local police station contacted me directly. They wanted an independent witness to the behaviour of a drunk in the cells. He'd already damaged one cell door - double layer of thick wood with a steel plate between the layers - by head butting it.
Taking action just provides him with something onto which he can divert blame for the inflation he'll cause. It probably takes more courage, however. I suppose, of course, they could just tell him outright why they're quite happy to let him burn his house down and they're not going to lift a finger to help him nor to hide the fact that he's the arsonist. But I suppose it's beyond a politician anywhere to not be seen to react.
"In 2017, then British Home Secretary Amber Rudd emphasized the need to get people who "understand the necessary hashtags" talking."
She must have mastered her brief. According to Wikipedia she was last seen touting herself as a consultant in cybersecurity. Interesting read there about her early career in finance...
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