Posts by Christopher Reeve's Horse

My company used to have it's entire QMS and document management system implemented via Notes. This was actually the least fun I've ever had using a computer in any context.

Re: "The interview scores are stored in an Excel spreadsheet"

You're probably not going to like my own personal spreadsheet example then. It's currently using 3 Workbooks, >200 Worksheets, >700 Structured Tables, and >11.4M cells (counting only the cells that exist in structured tables, to keep it simple).

Well, fortunately, the classic, old fashioned way of making digital art non-fungible still exists, and what's more it doesn't require a ridiculous amount of compute power and energy costs to process. Simply render the art as a single instance into meat-space. i.e. print it out.

Re: Even better

Even better is to tie in to a localised heat demand. A combined datacentre / swimming pool would seem to be the ideal candidate?

Re: Who is the liar?

The key words are at the end of the Heads line - "they need". What Deere think that the customers need is entirely at the vagary of their whims.

Re: Workaround

Avoid flying altogether, and strip a massive risk of being in an aviation accident from your life. Cheaper too.

I mean yeah, but...

Yes, yes, I know there are many alternatives to a lot of MS products, but they ain't always possible, feasible, practical, etc.

Re: Nice to have.

And the absolute quality and timing of the ST's MIDI is still revered to this day. Take that, Amiga fanboys!*

*This whole ST/Amiga thing is so amusing, its still like a kind of cultural identity badge. Although, after all these years I'm even prepared to concede that the Amiga was probably the better machine, especially for games. However, I'll still maintain that the ST was significantly more likely to be used as a multi-purpose home computer for all kinds of fantastic hobbies, and as such it has much more in common with PC's nowadays. I'm not saying YOU (whoever you are) didn't use YOUR Amiga to do interesting things, but I think fewer Amiga owners generally did. The End.

Re: "Hybrid"

I think the important part of 'Hybrid' (as I'm sure it means lots of different things to different businesses) is choice. I can now go into offices should I choose to, or when the need arises. I can choose to WFH, and without any obligatory justification. This is ideal really.

The Catch-22 is that one of the main benefits to being in the office it to meet and catch-up with people that you wouldn't ordinarily need to meet online - but for this to work other people need to be in the office too! This is why corporately organised social or training events that can draw people together are now crucial. With staff churn levels at an ever increasing rate, hopefully most sensible businesses will realise the carrot is better than the stick.

Absolutely this. I'm not arguing the app store is perfect, but the alternatives are far worse, generally.

OK, sure, there'll be IT bods and enthusiasts who may benefit from this, but for the general population, no thanks. Although, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple conceded this in a particularly Applesque way, such as hobbling the permissions or system resources of anything not originating from the app store - perhaps even sandboxing them entirely.

Re: Lights, FireTV and heating

I think the most use our ever got was my children asking it to make animal noises. This then descended into the inevitable burps and farts, which even the kids got bored of this eventually.

Fundamentally I think they fail because there's no reasoning with them. There's no prior knowledge in the conversation of anything you've previously asked. It makes the same mistakes over and over again, and every instruction is a new separate command.

One thing I think they're undervalued as is as a basic radio - at least once you've found a station you want there's no more needing to arguing with it.

Re: Good.

I got my ST out of the attic a couple of years ago, and after sourcing a nice new RGB Din plug to SCART cable it booted straight to TOS, first time used in over 25 years! Unfortunately, the floppy drive had failed, but finding a replacement wasn't too hard.

It was very nostalgic and everything, but also a fairly bleak reminder of how far we've come. Back in 1991 I was amazed at the loading speed of floppy disks, but then my previous computer was an Oric Atmos with a cassette tape interface.

Anyone else remember The Carebears demo discs?

Re: And to think that 30 years ago...

One of the things about these forums I find is when I'm just about to make a profound, well formed and intelligent contribution [obviously], is that someone else has already said it! This is where the voting buttons are really useful.

Re: "We have carefully designed our in-app browser"

And they're not the only ones with this shady type of behaviour. Every link I open from Gmail in iOS opens a prompt to select a browser: Google, Chrome or Safari. I don't have Google or Chrome installed, Safari is the only browser in use, and furthermore, the option to 'ask every time' is set to off but gets ignored.

That's not quite as bad as directly opening an IAB, however every attachment from within Gmail opens firstly in a Google equivalent software (in app), completely ignoring system app defaults.

That's not to say they're doing the same injection/data skimming activities, but why would they need this functionality otherwise?

Re: People will die

Why indeed.. It's usually because the people tasked with whatever job they're trying to accomplish don't have the training, tools, time, support, resources or funding to create a database management system, they typically have other technical skills and responsibilities.

Additionally, a database represents a certain level of crystallisation of processes which may not yet have settled down yet in an excel model.

I see the disdain for Excel here so often. So, I ask again, what are the alternatives? (Genuinely, I'd like to know)

There's a lot of IT experts commenting here, and I'm sure many of you could take a big Excel model and develop it into a proper structured database, with a nice shiny front-end and all the bells and whistles etc. But what then?

The point is that this is your jobs, and your skills. The typical Excel user is not usually an IT expert, but has other skills in other disciplines, and is merely using Excel as the easiest tool to get done what they need to do. It takes a big step in needs and complexity before any kind of budget is ever made for taking something out of Excel and moving it into 'IT world', where people with specialist IT skills take over development.

Unless I'm blatantly unaware of something obvious, there's simply nothing else that's anything like as ubiquitous available in this gap. Is there a database and frontend development software package that has a nice GUI, is accessible to non IT folk, and at the same time meets the approval of the IT specialists? Until there is, every business is going to have 1000's of mission critical excel workbooks kicking around.

PS. I know Power BI covers some of this, but it's really just a fancy dashboard, and doesn't overlap with most of what Excel can do with data.

Re: a non chip filled would be bliss

Yes indeed, safety trumps everything else. I own a Volvo with adaptive cruise control / radar assisted braking, and I don't think I'd ever buy a new car again that didn't have similar features.

Re: Why is oxidization a problem?

Well perhaps in the future oxidation won't be such a problem - once we've destroyed the natural environment sufficiently for oxygen levels to plummet that is. Nature always finds a way.

Re: About Time

That was 'liar', not 'lidar'...

Re: The main issue...

Totally true, but if Microsoft had more of a customer centric focus on good outcomes, they could perhaps have done more to help smooth things out. Or perhaps the device manufacturers didn't really want them to - who knows!?

Re: Land line calls

Landline numbers have been made effectively obsolete and unwanted, I can't even remember the last time I used mine that wasn't picking up a call from a robo-dialler. In fact, it's no longer even plugged into the socket and I don't regret it.

Mobile calls are heading the same way due to the overwhelming surge of spam calls and messages. Caller ID can't be trusted anymore, so calls that aren't made through a proprietary messaging system (WhatsApp, Teams, Facetime etc) have a very low level of trust.

Re: More agency?

I came here to say pretty much exactly that. Basically any agency other than the individual's own free will. Do I want every waking moment of my life turned into a nightmarish version of a Facebook live feed, which is constantly trying to direct and influence every interaction, movement and thought I have? No, no I don't. Or for the Aussie translation; Facebook can Get F*****.

Re: You're alright, Jack?

Quite a lot of routers don't allow you to change the DNS address - all the Homehub devices provided by BT for example. Sure, there are workarounds such as setting up different DHCP servers, but it's less than ideal.

Either way, DNS content filtering is already on shaky ground with the advent of DoH, as the local client can specify whatever DNS it wants. At this point solving the filtering content becomes much more complicated than your average home user is going to be able to manage.

Re: Trusting M$?

There's approximately 37 Windows RT owners that would like a word with you...

Re: There's no mandatory App Store to act as a gatekeeper, so you can run whatever software you want

But yet it's Microsoft that are actually trying to pull that kind of bullshit with Windows 10S or whatever it is... TBH for some people a good bit of restriction is probably good idea. Oh, hi Mum!