* Posts by Pompous Git

3087 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Sep 2014

Munich council: To hell with Linux, we're going full Windows in 2020

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Not sure about Office?

"And how long did that take and cost versus - uhm - maybe just using Windows / IIS ?!"
How would he know given that there's no way he got that all finished yet...

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Re: No bullshit, Git.

"You;d think the brain-trust at Redmond would have figured out the "macro malware on open" thing before they unleashed Office 2K on the unsuspecting world..."
TBH, I thought they had and that many years ago. I still have a sample Word DOC file (not a text file, but a binary) that has the original macro virus. Opening it in Word 2010 generates a message that the document contains macros and you have the option of either enabling macros or not. The option of "permanently" disabling macros that was there 20 years ago seems to have gone MIA somewhere along the line. Presumably macros in DOCX files are also detected.

Plain text files have always had the potential to cause mayhem. They are called batch files and can be created on *nix, not just Windows. I'm willing to bet that you could write a batch file to delete a bunch of files, name it "Run me to become a Instant Multimillionaire.bat" and idiots would run it to see what happens.

A Word document has never been a "plain text file". It may no longer be a binary, but it's always had a list of commands for Word to execute as well as the text you read. Not just macros, but all the formatting and other stuff as well, like requesting user input.

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Re: Politics is nothing to do with it.

"1. Exchange calendaring is dire, apparently unable to cope even with switching to or from summertime."

I have yet to see anything better

Go and find a 2yo to give some crayons to. A minute later you'll have something much better than exchange."

Obviously you are on drugs...

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"That's why opening a text file (document) still gets the machine infected. In 2017."
That sounds like complete bullshit. And why 2017?

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Re: Politics

"going back to the article which is about windows and linux you will see one of the reasons that they are ditching it is user unfamiliarity... after SEVERAL YEARS the users are still struggling with linux.

While I agree that linux is probably the way forward, its not there yet."

But they weren't using Cinnamon Mint in Munich. Shortly after I commenced using that distro, MS began fucking over Win7 installations and several of the friends/rellies that rely on me for support had me fix the problem. I replaced Win7 with Cinnamon Mint, showed them how to keep the system updated and that my friend has been that. Twelve months of zero demands for ongoing support. Local computer dude started doing this some time before me and reports that the only users having problems are those who can't resist fucking about in the system. Fortunately few in number.

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Re: FAO: Mrs Git @ jake

"Your Gitness would do well to ignore the portability issue."
Portability in a workstation provides me with nil benefit. rather the reverse. I have a Zenbook that weighs a mere ~1 kg for "travel" that's largely restricted to visits to the city to see doctors. Only needed for web browsing/email and occasional game play. Even that gets left behind in favour of the Galaxy Note 3 I recently acquired. More than good enough for email now I have that via a decent web interface.

A portable has a screen that is arguably inferior to my two Dell 27 inchers and even my el cheapo 19". The keyboard is also redundant. For some reason I've accumulated several that are better than any laptop keyboard I've used. I have an aversion to trackpads and usually use a Verbatim bluetooth mouse with the Zenbook. Any power saving would be insufficient to recover the cost of these various redundant parts.

The Antec computer case to my left is on its second MoBo (both ASUS) and its second cpu. Originally a Core i3, it's currently inhabited by an unlocked Core i5. Unlike a lappy, it contains a couple of full-size hdds and an optical drive. There's plenty of room for more. When something in it dies, it's easily replaced by me. The original video adapter fan died and was replaced by a standard computer fan with the aid of a glue gun and soldering iron for example. Couldn't source the type of fan that came with the adapter.

Yes, there are plenty of use cases for portable workstations, but I'm really not a candidate. The arthritis bites so I'll not travel much beyond Hobart from this point on. Last trip airport security insisted I go through the checkpoint without my shoes, or walking cane. I slipped on the tile floor, badly bruising my hip and elbow. Previous trip a passenger at Sydney airport kicked my legs out from under me. I ache enough already without that kind of shit happening.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Jeeeezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

"I was living with an Ozzie once

Never again"

Aah diddums... I've been living with mine for 37 years come the end of this month. I just don't seem to be able to stop myself falling in love with her every day. Not that I've tried...

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"its a pity some in the Linux community have a lack of understanding when it comes to dealing with people who ask for help."
Amen to that. Must say though it's not as bad as it used to be 10–15 years ago.

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Re: Windows is for grandmothers...

"Remember how Word came into being? It was commissioned by Apple, because they did not have a large enough software team to develop both the GUI for the Macintosh and applications."
I take it you write fiction for a living... The original wysiwyg word processor for the Mac was MacWrite and was part of the original Mac package along with MacPaint.

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Re: FAO: Mrs Git

@ Fruit and Nutcase and vincent himpe

Thanks for the suggestions, but portability in a workstation is something I really don't need. My desktop machine is moved but once a year onto the deck outside my home for a thorough cleansing of dust bunnies. I'm tossing up whether to go with a decent cooler for my unlocked Core i5, or replace it with a Core i7 ~AU400 new.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Automated document creation

What many commentards are missing is that word processing is not just about creating a standalone document; it's about automating the creation of many documents of similar form as efficiently as possible. A common task is merging data from a data source with letters, called a mail merge.

Comparing LibreOffice Writer with Word:

To suppress blank lines (fields without data)

In Word's Mail Merge Helper, click "Don't print blank lines when data fields are empty"

In LibreOffice Writer

1. Insert field

2. Ensure you are entering paragraphs instead of line breaks. Click view, nonprinting characters to check.

3. Hover over field until name appears, e.g. mailmergedata.Sheet1.Address2, and note the name. If the name has spaces do this

4. Place the cursor to the left of the field.

5. Click Insert, Fields, Other

6. Click the Functions tab

7. Select Hidden Paragraph

8. In the Condition box, enter: NOT [field name from step 2],

9. Click Insert (this might not cause any visible change)

10. Click Close

11. Click the View menu and make sure Hidden Paragraphs is unchecked

12. Merge!

In workplaces like legal offices, you will see legal secretaries (though not Mrs Git for many years) generating dozens of documents per hour that would have taken several minutes each to generate without macros and require more careful proof-reading.

The cost of software is trivial compared to well designed document creation and well-trained end users. There's a reason that such workplaces use Word Perfect or MS Word.

Biggest contract I ever had the business acquired Lotus SmartSuite bundled with the PCs they purchased from IBM. When the system dudes evaluated SmartSuite versus MS Office they went with MS. The Lotus product would have cost them more day-to-day because of lost productivity.

Those who slag off MS Word do so on the basis that it's a piece of shit when you try to use it as a substitute for a page layout program. That's as crazy as using a Kubota tractor to commute to work and an Austin Healey Sprite to plough a field.

Pompous Git Silver badge

" there's no good separate style sheet editor, and no separation of style sheet editing from style sheet application.

You may not be aware of it because there's no word processor of note that does it significantly better available for Windows or Linux that I am aware of (maybe WordPerfect, but I never used it)."

Back when Winword and AmiPro were battling for supremacy in the wysiwyg word processor field, AmiPro stored its settings in a separate stylesheet and Winword embedded its stylesheet in the saved document. This meant that every time you revised an AmiPro stylesheet, you changed every previous document that was based on it. To avoid this, you needed to either have some system of document management that stored the document and the historical stylesheet where they could remain associated, or as usually happened, there was a great proliferation of stylesheets. Or so my fellow trainers who specialised in AmiPro told me at the time.

More than 90% of demand for word processor training ca. 1995-1998 was for Word and the balance mostly Word Perfect when Word Perfect for Windows was finally released. And wasn't that a dog's breakfast?

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"The big advantage with Linux is that it has a better security model than Windows... "
To which must be added that installs and update are way, way quicker on Linux than Windows.

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Re: StargateSg7 / Not sure about Office

"I'm merely highlighting that for someone moving from Windows to Linux/GNU there's a hell of a learning curve which I know does put a lot of people off."
Having moved several friends from Win7 to Linux Cinnamon Mint with no major issues whatsoever, I'm wondering what you're whittering on about. Ordinary Windows users don't come across the underbelly of Windows, nor do ordinary Linux users need GREP, APT etc. BTW it's GREP in Windows too, as well as InDesign.

"But for a new user, you need to spend ages learning what each command or application does as the name has little bearing."
That's true of any computer OS/system. "Abort, Retry, Fail..." “Error #some-large-number: There is no message for this error”...

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Pint

Re: FAO: Mrs Git

@ Fruit and Nutcase

Thanks for the advice. But will it support two Dell 27" (2560 × 1440) displays? Plenty of Samsung 850 SSDs to hand, and 16GB RAM, but where do I put the two conventional HDDs and optical drive? Cheaper methinks to go with a new MoBo/cpu. Just a bit strapped for cash until the farm's sold. Then I get my 27" Wacom digitising display and I will be a very happy Git indeed.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Outlook

"So why hasn't Redhat (or Suse?) written an alternative to Outlook and Exchange."
And what an excellent question that is. For my 18 months of Living Linuxly, the lack of sync betwixt the Calendar on my desktop and my phone, trivially achieved with Outlook, was a source of much angst. If all you need is Exchange connectivity, Evolution apparently works well.

I don't need that and have discovered a solution that works for me. FastMail is a web-based email client with calendar that I access via my phone, or computer web browser. It lacks a task manager, but I can live with that. The interface is well thought out and the service is reasonably priced.

Pompous Git Silver badge

"The reality is that despite decades of work Linux is "maybe" as user friendly as perhaps windows 98 for a non technical user as a desktop OS with the best distros and more like reverting to windows NT4 with the worst ones, and telling normal users they "should" expend hundreds of hours learning to become a Linux guru just to be able to update and maintain their Linux distro instead of using an almost self maintaining (most of the time) windows environment is just lunacy"
No, the reality is Linux is the easier to use and maintain. Obviously you haven't spent time using a recent distro. I have. I spent 18 months using Linux Cinnamon Mint as my primary OS.

The problem with Linux is an almost complete lack of quality desktop applications. Web browsing (Chrome), playing Civ V on Steam and using system tools were all fine. Mostly I use a word processor for writing and Libre Office worked better than recent versions of Word; it only failed when I was asked to reformat Word docs.

Missing though were many applications I use on a regular and semi-regular basis, such as The Oxford English Dictionary or the Linux equivalents were frankly very badly designed. Very temporarily I've been using Win10 so I could learn enough fix Mrs Git's machine relatively quickly. It is as many agree, a crock of shit! I'm back to Win7 RSN for productivity and Cinnamon Mint for system maintenance stuff. If I could afford to replace my current machine with a grunty i7 it would run Mint as the primary OS and all my Win7 stuff in a VM.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: still not able to add page numbers without putting number to first page

"Outlook uses Word as the default "text" editor under the hood."
Back when Tom Syroid and Bo Leuf were writing Outlook 2000 in a Nutshell, the advice was always make damn sure you don't use Word as your email editor.

I'm using FastMail these days and it serves my needs well. Much to my amusement, the lad I used to hire to babysit the Gitling is now one of their top employees. He taught the Gitling QBasic back when he was all of 8 years old :-)

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Re: Keep LibreOffice even if you move to MSFT [Was: MS Office? Faster?]

"Many pieces of juicy information could be had from documents back in the day"
Not to mention documents from MS. Turning on Track changes was a source of some amusement :-)

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Exchange Servers, eh?

"The document format issue is a red-herring because Office and LibreOffice can both use Open Document Format."
Mrs Git emailed me a 2 page Word document to revise. Libre Office needed 6 pages to display it. Such issues are important within an organisation and has nothing to do with the underlying document format.

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Re: still not able to add page numbers without putting number to first page

"Have you seen the bloated insane HTML MSOffice generates?"
I have indeed! A certain Professor Stinkjet sent me an HTML document he claimed was generated by Outlook. It was a simple 3 line email, but the HTML was ~40 pages long! The header revealed that it had been created by Word.

Pompous Git Silver badge

"Same goes for structured and disciplined document writing support "
Word's support for styles is excellent; one of its strongest points actually. Don't blame Word for its users not being properly trained in its use.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Keep LibreOffice even if you move to MSFT [Was: MS Office? Faster?]

"I belive the default within MS Word documents is to keep the last 10 changes - so that you can undo them, saved within the file."
MS Word tracks all changes and is limited only by machine resources. To clear the undo stack: protect the document for forms, execute the UndoClear method in a macro, or close and reopen the document.

Pompous Git Silver badge

"Most office users could do their daily jobs using wordpad"
Most programmers could write all their applications in QBasic, but they don't.

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Re: Keep LibreOffice even if you move to MSFT [Was: MS Office? Faster?]

"Documents became fatter and fatter every day. Many, many megabytes. I learnt a little trick."
My trick used to be to turn off Fast saves... (under Tools, Options).

Pastry in a manger: We're soz, Greggs man said

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Re: Grammar!

"Does nobody know how to write English anymore? What you wrote above means that you replaced a sausage roll with Baby Jesus."
Nothing wrong with that! Providing he's been circumcised of course...

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Pint

"all while eating and drinking themselves into several stupors."
Sounds like my idea of fun! Does that make me a Christian?

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Re: While we're on the subject of outrage...

"I always thought Greggs was the breed of cloned animals they put in their pies."
I would have thought they were the Dreggs...

Shiver me timbers! 67cm Playmobil pirate ship sets sail for Caribbean

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Paris Hilton

"Damn. Ok, will dust off my Captain Pugwash outfit. We're talking a pirate nativity scene?"
Butt who wants to play the part of Tom, the cabin boy?

Mm, sacrilicious: Greggs advent calendar features sausage roll in a manger

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Re: Assuming the OP is a Christian...

"> you are not the OP

I am."

No! I am the OP...

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Re: keep the kosher sausages right next to the halal bacon.

"Certainly fake bacon is available made from Turkey or veggie..."
I notice Beef Oxo is labelled "suitable for vegetarians" these days. Is nothing sacred?

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Paris Hilton

Re: Christmas and Religion.

"And what's wrong with being a 17th Century Puritan, may I ask?"
The Puritans were opposed to playing hide-the-sausage for fun.

US government seizes Texas gun mass murder to demand backdoors

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Re: Gun Control you say?

"However, at that point the price of a gun had doubled, that's how tight the market was."
When the Port Arthur Massacre occurred, the local butcher was selling a whole sheep, butchered, for $AU15–20. I purchased one last week for $AU260. While it's not the only factor, the very great increase in vermin eating the farmers' grass plays a big role in this. Of course such price increase only affects the poor and nobody really gives a fuck about them.

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Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Gun Control you say?

@ HarleyBird

My gerbillist friend says you are being somewhat disingenuous. Russell Street was indeed vacated in 1995, but it didn't cease to be "Russell Street", or "Russell Street Headquarters" when context was insufficient, until 2004 when the buildings were finally repurposed and renamed.

The café my friend received the weapon in apparently remained a favourite location for business dealings between criminals and police for some time after the move.

I freely admit to jumping to an unwarranted conclusion, that the gun was supplied by a policeman or other employee of the force. But it wasn't a very big jump. After all, Martin Bryant's main weapon was purchased by the Victorian Police in a gun buyback some years before Bryant acquired it according to my gerbillist friend. And not forgetting the illicit drugs, weapons and money found in the ceiling of the St Kilda nick many years ago.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Gun-control nuts

One point missing in this discussion: the assumption that introducing gun-control laws will reduce the number of firearms in the hands of criminals. Criminals, by definition, ignore laws. Make it harder for them to obtain firearms legally, they will steal them. That's what has happened here in Australia.

Farms are rather large, so making lots of noise using an angle-grinder to remove guns from gun safes is not a problem when the farmer is away.

The main outcome of our new gun-control laws is a very great increase in the number of vermin: rabbits, wallabies, possums, feral cats etc. Farmers used to be able to keep a loaded gun in the ute while travelling about the farm. Nowadays you have to drive back to the farmhouse to get the gun from the gunsafe, the firing pin from its safe... then drive back to where you saw the vermin...

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Gun Control you say?

"You mean the building on Russell Street that was the former police HQ -- having been vacated in 1995, the year before the 1996 Port Arthur shootings?

Something doesn't sound right with your anectdote there."

I haven't lived in Melbourne since 1970 and truly had no idea the police headquarters had moved. My bad. I used to work nearby in late 1970.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Gun Control you say?

"...and the incidence of gun crime plummeted (despite some mythical black market deal)."
Plummet: To cause to drop rapidly, to hurl down.

Bullshit!

Australia -

Homicides 1990–2010

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: If you can't get rid of the guns ...

"A lot of people already handload/reload. So it's perfectly easy to make your own ammo and not buy it."
Indeed. And if you are careful, you get better quality ammo while spending less money. Last box of .22 I had, two rounds failed to work!

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Gun Control you say?

"If you take all of the guns away, they'll just resort to another method. "
After the Port Arthur Massacre set a new world record for the number of dead, draconian new gun laws were enacted in Australia and a huge number of guns destroyed. An acquaintance in the field of gerbillism decided to see how hard it was to acquire a gun under the new regime. He received his illegal handgun at a café within sight of the Russell Street headquarters of the Victorian Police in Melbourne within half an hour after making his request.

Note that handgun ownership in Australia has always been severely restricted and so they have always been exceptionally difficult to obtain. For some arbitrary meaning of "difficult"...

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Gun Control you say?

"Who's talking about gun control? Just get rid of them all from the civilian population."
Most analysts admit it's difficult to know exact numbers of fatal shootings because of poor reporting by the police. That said, the data suggests that more innocent people are killed by police than civilians. Usually, the civilian is shooting at someone they know has committed a crime; they are the victim of it. The police shoot people they believe to be criminal. As in the case of Justine Diamond. Her crime? Calling the police to report an assault.

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Pattern of incompitance

Not only spelling, grammar too these days. Just sayin'...

Alexa, please cause the cops to raid my home

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Re: Having been at the ex's this morning

"We discovered this when my daughter used it as a teething aid rather than some weird sex thing."
So what happened when she did use it as a "weird sex thing"?

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Re: IT happens

"If the worst that happens for the rising of the machines is that they decide we need the occasional lie-in ...."
Worst thing about life today is people deciding what I "need" without any input from me. Worse will be fucking stupid machines doing it too!

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: IT happens

"You have to clean the chimney very regularly if you burn wood or the build-up of creosote in the chimney leads to a chimney fire."
For varying rates of regularly. Not very often if:

* You burn only dry firewood (not wet from rain, or green unseasoned)

* You only run a hot fire. Damping down for overnight burning results in a great increase in creosote condensation.

We have a copious quantity of kindling and small stuff to relight the fire on cold, winter mornings. Locals call them morning sticks. I will be having our flue cleaned for the third time this summer since it was installed in 2003. Not because I think it needs cleaning yet, but because we're selling the house and I want a dated receipt from the chimney-sweep.

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Mushroom

Re: The next stage in AI:

"The real next stage is when one of them tries to kill the other two."
No, the next stage is when one of them succeeds...

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"I don't read tabloids so please, Vulture, keep rehashing the stuff that might be interesting."
Couldn't agree more. Especially since reading our local rag causes brain damage...

The NAKED truth: Why flashing us your nude pics is a good idea – by Facebook's safety boss

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"MOST Of Women Are NOT THAT Attractive NAKED."
Speaking as a 66 y.o. almost every young woman I see is beautiful, clothed or naked, especially when they smile. I think you need to get a grip...

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"From pure artistic point of view, our male parts while EXTREMELY FUNCTIONAL ain't exactly the most aesthetic of forms"
In 1970, I was the undraped model at the Launceston Art School. At least two of the students, both female, took a very great interest in my penis. (I was the first model to not wear a jockstrap; it never occurred to me to do so). One girl drew my member in exquisite detail, the other considerable larger than real life.

'Sticky runway' closes Canadian airport

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Re: Self interest?

"BTW, my new favourite word is "Aerosexual.""
Makes me wonder how well that female pilot would handle my Piper ;-)