Why a copy of Office is needed on a PC tasked with showing line information is anyone’s guess
So that they can be pwned by poisoned documents, of course.
Window admins rejoice! It isn’t just you that can’t get Office 2010 to uninstall silently. The mighty brains behind the UK railways have had just as much trouble. As well as the usual passenger information boards, detailing the day's cancellations and delays, London’s Victoria train station also features displays on every …
Documenting VBA is pointless. Isn't the code self-explanatory?
I know/hope that this was just a joke, but running VB scripts/macros in production code anywhere is asking for fragility and breakage and lack of accountability. Next time use logo.
Andthe bit about him standing at the station, looking at the terminals, suddenly remembering the portion of the script he neglected to comment out before he was abruptly let go. He was late for work, but he was smiling at his handiwork.
I've worked on rail line overviews. In the bad old days, you had to install either Visual Studio or Office just to get some god damned necessary DLL, which was absurd. Fortunately, those days are long gone.
One of the most important restrictions we have with these systems is to NOT install third party software on them. They're dedicated display systems, not general-purpose computers.
Of course, that won't stop people from trying...
If it's anything like our company, I'll go with "Software updates and rollouts are done remotely by someone who doesn't know what you do and was too lazy to check what all the thousands of machines did so just pushed O365 out to all machines because they were told 'everyone' had to use it now."
I always thought it was an own-goal to include the brand name (+ identifiable look 'n' feel) in error messages and alert boxes which are likely to appear in public places.
Microsoft clearly still thinks this is good PR.
Compare Apple's "grey screen of death" which mentions neither Apple, nor any of their brands. On the contrary, it has an international flavour, with various languages and alphabets, so you could be forgiven for unconsciously blaming the failure on humanity generally.
They should use this error message: https://54below.com/app/uploads/error-message-1024x576.png
(Yes, yes, I'm still living in the 90's)
I don't often say this, but I'm pretty sure even Microsoft couldn't make the trains run worse.
No Microsoft error messages showing at St Pancras tuesday night, but the destination boards were ordered pretty much randomly (actually, by platform - but because they're all one long list, not individual boards headed by destination, that's no help whatever) and contain entries for trains that left an hour before.
Well, just click on the header of the column you want to sort by and they'll be rearranged to your specs, sir.
You may need to jump about 12 feet in the air to click on the header, only to realize that they forgot to install touch/punch screens.
As a user of the 'Brighton Line' I'm just waiting for the Union to call for a strike on the grounds that not all their members got to see the message and that the Railway Operator was discriminating against their members.
Yes, I'm being sarcastic but the impasse between the NUR (or whatever they are called this week) and the TOC's has been going on for more than two frigging years. I know of many people who have given up trying to commute by train because of the uncertainty. If you think that BREXIT is a cause for uncertainty, then any Brighton based commuter will gladly bend your ear for a few weeks on uncertainty.
And... another weekend with half the line shut for so called engineering works.
Roll on Friday... oh wait, I need to work on Saturday bummer.
Yours, disgruntled of Kemp Town.
Unless I have misunderstood the graph, firstly there is no data after 2008, but yes Railway Station has been in decline up until 2000. After 2000 it's been increasingly used. However what you don't mention are their relative uses. Railway Station is used many orders of magnitude more train station. E.g most literature does not use Train station.
So I would suggest that the phrase Railway Station is in decline simply because travelling by rail features less in literature due to alternative forms of travel.
Apparently, according to some announcements, the trains are calling TO "Harrow & Wealdstone", "Watford Junction", "Hemel Hempstead" etc etc.
And the one that really annoys me is on the underground...
"Please move along the platform to your left and towards the end carriages as the middle carriages is where the train is most busiest."
*grinds teeth*
I think its a deliberate attempt to break with the bad old days when you turned up at a railway station, bought a ticket and caught a train by getting in a railway carriage. There seems to be quite an attempt to put down BR at every opportunity because -- I'd guess -- "the powers that be" don't want to remember how cheap, convenient and reliable the service was (most of the time, of course).
These days you're supposed to follow American practice -- obtain a ticket from an agent or on line, potentially months is advance, turn up at the station or depot and when the train arrives find your seat in the appropriate car in the consist. (This is for long distance travel by Amtrak -- for short distances -- commuter railroads -- you'll purchase a ticket from a machine and get on the first available service.)