Posts by wintergirl 22 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Feb 2021
In these cases, the university should provide the necessary software. I've just completed a degree and an Office 365 account was provided by the university for the duration of the course, as was access to the other required specialist software (in my case, the Esri GIS stuff), plus the Adobe suite (Photoshop etc). I've never heard of a case of a university requiring students to go out and purchase essential software needed to complete their course.
I was on a "smart" section of the M1 with no hard shoulder the other day and there was some poor sod sitting stationary in the left-most lane in a defunct Land Rover. It was quite some distance to the next lay-by and there was no lane closure X displayed, no warning. Luckily, it wasn't especially busy, I saw the vehicle in plenty of time, changed lane and passed without drama. But it only takes one idiot fiddling with the phone, the radio, arguing with their kids/passenger/whatever (and we all see them every time we go on the motorway) and it would very easily be a different story.
I keep my car serviced and maintained so I'm not generally leaving the house assuming I'm going to break down, and I'm still terrified of driving on this type of motorway - if something did go wrong with my car on the road, there's a very much non-zero chance of being ploughed into from behind by white van man faffing with his phone, and then it's goodnight.
The Yorkshire Post has just created a new role of Science and Technology Editor, funded largely by, er, WANdisco: https://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/2023/news/new-job-created-as-daily-invests-in-science-and-technology-coverage/
I wonder if this reporter will be covering this story with rigour and impartiality...
For me, the problem was speed, especially UI speed. I use new windows a lot to organise my browsing, rather than one window with a zillion tabs. Every new window opened, showed a Vivaldi logo for 2-3 seconds and then loaded the UI so I could get on with my work.
I asked about it once on their forum, and one of those baffling people who doesn't work for the company but sits on company forums all day providing free "support" to users told me it wasn't a problem and that I shouldn't have asked. Their support channels are littered with "I've got problem X" / "that's part of Chromium and we can't change it" exchanges. I went back to Firefox, who for all their faults actually make their own browser rather than putting a wig on someone else's.
I guess these places have saturated their home markets and their (presumably) private equity owners are desperate for more "growth", so here they come. They don't seem to have a USP beyond "it's a famous brand, you've seen it on the telly or internet, now try our famous Timbits/Cinnabon/tacos/Dunkin' coffee/whatever the hell it is that Wendy's sells".
20 years ago, there might have been a local market where I live for "famous" US/Canadian food brands because the offerings were limited to McDonald's or a terrible local pizza/burger/kebab dump, but not now. The local food scene is light years ahead of where it was, even at the low end that these brands inhabit, and these places can't compete on quality or on price.
The ones from the Krispy Kreme shop here are fresh as you can see them actually being made in the store. They're okay, but there are better local places.
The ones in the glass cases in supermarkets 40 miles from the nearest Krispy Kreme store? I've never even been close to being tempted. Goodness knows how long they've spent in the back of a van, and then in the glass case.
There's one near me, on one of those "retail parks" with the big sheds full of sofas. It opened with a minor fanfare in the local paper - the usual "hey, this brand you've seen on the internet is now available around here!" stuff.
Within weeks, there were staff standing on the road outside holding arrow signs pointing in, with "MEALS £2.99" emblazoned on them. Not the sign of a business that's doing a roaring trade.
I suspect it'll be here today, gone tomorrow. We've reached market saturation with these "famous" junk food/coffee brands - they all seem to be arriving at once, with Tim Horton's, Krispy Kreme, Dunkin' Donuts, Taco Bell, and even Cinnabon and Wendy's in town now. There just aren't the numbers to support them all.
I have the previous model of MX Master mouse (the 2S) and love it. It's weighty and high quality, and the wheel is different in a good way from any other I've used. I'll definitely be getting the updated model at some point when my current mouse wears out - although that may not be for some time given its quality.
It's good to see a move towards high quality peripherals for office users rather than gamers. We spend just as long at our machines, but too often we're expected to use cheap mushy keyboards and naff plasticky mice. Meanwhile, the higher quality stuff all too often looks like it was designed by a committee of 13-year-old boys with their curtains drawn.
An awful lot of keyboards nowadays don't have the number pad (which I can't live without) so this one will definitely be an option for me in the near future.
Very similar story here. FibreNation dug up the street in early 2020 - residents received mail from FibreNation and then TalkTalk saying "hey, gigabit fibre broadband is available, sign up now". Signed up, paid, nobody turned up, got refunded. That was the last anyone heard of it, other than the fibre sitting under the street.
Fast forward through an uneventful year to September 2021 and some more postal bumf has arrived, this time from CityFibre, saying - and I quote - "you may want to think twice about signing a long-term broadband contract until you can get Full Fibre". I don't think I'll bother when it is available. This company's endless announcements of expansion when its already built-out areas don't go live make me feel squicky about the whole operation, almost as if it's designed mainly to raise capital on the markets than to provide services.
Zen's idea of "telling it like it is" is to put a message on their website saying their service is so good that people are flocking in and overwhelming their poor overworked support staff:
> COVID-19 has sparked a flight to quality and increased importance on reliable connectivity which is keeping us busy here at Zen. We are experiencing significantly increased call and email volumes.
...really?
Zen have been rubbish for a while now. I had a couple of issues with them a year or so ago (just before lockdown) and while they always answered the phone quickly, I was never able to get any sense out of them. Lots of "oh, the person who was dealing with you is out of the office" and having to explain the issue over and over, it was as if they had no ticket system for dealing with ongoing issues.
They've now joined the legion of companies still using Covid-19 as an excuse to provide slow responses and not answer the phone. This sort of excuse always looks a little thin when the company is literally in the comms business. They are going to find themselves having retention issues if they charge AAISP money for TalkTalk service.
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