Posts by PerlLaghu

California sues President Tariff

Re: Its a multi polar civil war

.... preferably from another country!

Trump thinks we can make iPhones in the US just like China. Yeah, right

Shut that door?

I'm wondering at what point China [et al] decide they've had enough & just park all their ships for a while?

"Until the additional cost to unload is below <name percentage>, we're no longer shipping - let us know when your stocks run out. Oh, you still running Just In Time stock management? That's a shame."

Vodafone: Be in the office 8 days a month or lose bonuses

But what's the bonus?

Apparently not conforming to the RTO means one "would not be eligible for a bonus in 2026 or in subsequent years in which a final warning is given"

The big question is "What size is the bonus?"..... I know I'm not in this IT game for the money (so long as I have enough for my hobbies, I've no desire to get money for monies-sake), but a bonus could be a nice holiday somewhere.

Of course, if the bonus is a couple of hundred quid, I'm not seeing a winning argument here: I'm not shelling out [in my case] an extra £60 a month to commute to an office, to be demonstrably less productive, at no risk to my actual employment (allegedly)..... and, at the end of the year, actually be worse off in both time and money

Shove your office mandates, people still prefer working from home

"I made good friends at work."

I work to make the money to buy you things.... sorry, buy me things [Apologies to Lennon & McCartney, and Mr Sellers] - just because I work with a bunch of people, doesn't mean I need to like them, or be friends with them.

Consider this: how many do you meet outside work functions?

Missing Thunderbirds footage found in British garden shed

Was that the puppet film, that had a close-up of a real hand moving a slider; or the "live-action" film, that had a close-up of a fake-hand moving a slider?

[I laughed _SO_ hard when I saw that!!]

Martin Goetz, recipient of the first software patent, logs off at 93

Copyright vs patents

Ach... all you haters... get off your high horse!!

There's a vast difference between "patents" and "Monetization"

Consider the humble shipping container - a "patented" concept [to create a standard], gifted freely..... and used almost everywhere.

Yes, there are people who use patents (and trademarks & copyrights) to make money.... shocker: humans have been trying to sell "The One True Way" for as long as humans have been alive!

IT needs more brains, so why is it being such a zombie about getting them?

Leading from the code face

.... and I quote:

According to Larry Wall, the original author of the Perl programming language, there are three great virtues of a programmer; Laziness, Impatience and Hubris

Laziness: The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful and document what you wrote so you don't have to answer so many questions about it.

Impatience: The anger you feel when the computer is being lazy. This makes you write programs that don't just react to your needs, but actually anticipate them. Or at least pretend to.

Hubris: The quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs that other people won't want to say bad things about.

BT CEO orders staff: Back to the office or risk 'disciplinary action'

I'm not sure I can afford to commute this winter.

If we consider that the cost of living is increasing somewhat markedly, and only going to get worse during the winter - I'm not sure I can afford the ~£250pcm commute to work in the office.

The crime against humanity that is the modern OS desktop, and how to kill it

Re: It does suck

> I too have a quadruple monitor set up

Ditto.... however I've gone back to a single monitor. Admittedly, it's a 50" 4K telly - so it's not a kick in the as$e off the 2x2 grid of 23" monitors I used to have.... and there's no big black cross right in the middle of my view-space - WIN!

Yes, it doesn't have a great refresh rate - but I don't play games on it.

Yes, the laptop always needs to have the monitor position set when I restart.... but that's once or twice a day, and I can live with that.

.... but screen real-estate - you can't beat it!

Underwater datacenter will open for business this year

Subsea, simply following Microsoft

Do people really not remember Microsoft doing this first?

It was only a couple of years ago too....

https://www.theregister.com/2020/09/14/natick_back/

Your software doesn't work when my PC is in 'O' mode

Academics can be stupid too

Back in the last century, I was working as user support for a University [lets call it The University of Poppleton], and I got a call about broken email.

After spending some time determining they didn't know what program they used to read their email (it was a blue bird), and that the icon was missing from their desktop - so the problem was about computer configuration, not actual email... we then tried to find out if the program was actually installed on the computer.

.... of course, when they said they couldn't see the start menu, or any other icons either, I started to get a bit.... "concerned"

I then found out that the "big Box" has no lights on it, the keyboard did nothing if you tapped the NumLock key, and it was all a bit silent.... now I was moving from a failing email system to a broken computer problem.

A chance question lead to the comment "Oh, we have a power-cut just now"

Bloody academics: they spend so much time thinking about esoteric quantum whotsits, they forget about "normal" stuff - like computers need electricity to effing RUN!

GGNnnnn!!

(Why did they take my ClueBat from me!??!!)

£42k for a top-class software engineer? It's no wonder uni research teams can't recruit

Re: broken

There is a central, national, pay scheme for Higher Education. You can see the values here: https://www.ucu.org.uk/he_singlepayspine

Note that, for IT, it breaks down into three blocks:

Junior: points 24-28

"developer": 29-36

"Senior": 37-44

.... these are pretty much the same bands as [Research/Teaching/Knowledge Exchange] -Assistant / -Associate / -Fellow.

Re: It's all about the banding

This is the "Developer" v's "Senior Developer" - the "Senior" means "manages people."

There used to be the concept of the "[Technical] Senior Developer" - someone who was recognised as particularly knowledgable in a subject area.... and [with my cynics hat on] you paid them more to keep them.

Share your experience: How does your organization introduce new systems?

Leading from the code face

Quite often, solutions are created by the code-monkeys (by being the lead monkey, or convincing the lead monkey it's a good solution).... and then providing a "fait accompli" product to Da Management, and waxing lyrically about how awesome it is.

Open-source software starts with developers, but there are other important contributors, too. Who exactly? Good question

Documentation for the Win!

YES! Documentation is massively important...

Good documentation stops idiots annoying you with stupid questions

Handcranked HTML and JPEG japes. What could possibly go wrong?

Re: Oldie Here

I'm having similar fun here at work.... the joys of "Accessibility Regulations", and "Semantic Meaning"

Bamboozle the PMs! "Break this down into semantic sections, and we can create properly structured content", and "Structure and Presentation" influence each other, so you need to tell be BOTH before I can start" :)