Posts by The BigYin

Re: The national ID debacle - round II coming up.

The system should be federated and public so that if I want to, I can host/provide my own ID verification system. I probably won't (I do have something that vaguely passes for a life), but the only way to keep the bastards honest is to ensure that at any time you can yank the rug from below them.

I agree with the main thrust; if the state wants me to be open with it, then it must be open with me. That means that I can authenticate (via OpenID or whatever) and view all the information the government holds on me, and all MP/civili servant interests and expenses etc.

I'm happy to accept some restrictions for national security (e.g. active police investigations) but not one heck of a lot. I said it below - I want to see my MPs and MEPS leads by example; not engage in hypocrisy,

Re: ID

Godwin. You ruin an otherwise good point.

A public action can still be private (I go to the toilet, that is public knowledge, the action remains private) and it is often by acting in public that we are at our most free and anonymous. The state wishes to remove this - why?

Not for the children; that is the systematic failure of outdated, superstitious organisations that (for whatever reason) still get special treatment. Also, if our own MPs and MEPs divulged their information publicly (you know, to their employers) then I would have more sympathy. Until then, in the words of that great philosopher, "eat my shorts".

Re: I try to write clear code

This. Which is why I doc the living hell out of my code so that people reading it (or the API) know what I mean by "foo" and how I expect it to behave. If they contact me to ask a question, either they haven't read the docs (in which case I give them short shrift for wasting my time*) or the docs were inadequate (in which case I update them).

And if coders don't understand a ternary operator, you need better coders.

*That may seem a bit harsh, and I don't actually mind answering sensible questions. But it's not a case of just one person asking, it's the next and the next and the next and the...so I make them read the docs and come back with a sensible answer. I know some folks always do check the docs, so I know from the get-go they are asking something sensible. Other folks? Not so much.

"Even if they start out accurate they get out of date because there's nothing to enforce change in them as the code changes."

Yes there is, it's called a "Code Review". All code should be reviewed by the team, and preferably by some not involved in the actual project. Of course, time needs to be allowed for this and it seldom is.

"Every time you think of writing a comment, don't! Call a function or method or instantiate an object and put the comment in the name of the identifier."

That's good up to a point, and well named object/methods/params/members are a big help; but nothing, nothing beats proper docs and comments. It also means the APIs can be spat out and handed over to other teams fully doc'd, with behaviours, expected responses etc all done. No need to keep secondary documentation in sync. One line of code docs/comments per line of code (ish, depends on the language).

If you change the code, change the comments. Simple.

Re: Lost Audience

Simple answer: block FB at work, except for those who need it for business purposes (i.e. marketing and PR).

Same for Twitter, Flickr and all the rest.

But not El Reg, that would be inhuman.

Re: Good luck with that

Maybe that's the plan. Make the ads annoying and just before people start to flee offer them a deal "£5 to look at content your friends have given us for free and without ads!"

Can you id the "sponsored crap"? You might be able to set up a GreaseMonkey script (or similar) to remove the crap.

I must admit, I feel a bit guilty at the level of ad blocking I employ as i know sites need money. I drop it every now and again to see if things have improved, but it has only got worse. Even on this very site, some floating puff for the latest MS sack of crap deigned to hover over the comments the other day (just like MS, still trying to catch up with last decade) and the length of time is takes to load all this junk (never mind the insidious tracking and profiling) caused me to raise shields again.

If the ads didn't flash and didn't jar with the content, I could tolerate them.

Re: Great.

"You're right - why are simple and common standard calendar functions so difficult to provide [for free]?"

I added the bit you missed. If you want a calendar service, why not pay for one (e.g. Outlook/Exchange) or help out/donate to the Lightning devs (Kewisch et al)?

Re: result

@AC - Top two hits for me are both xerox.com, and if you know you want xerox.com why not just add "site:xerox.com"?

"That is what the end user wants - a search engine clever enough to return the correct result just by typing a few words."

Which is why I use DDG.

Re: Piro

@Ken Hagan - That's a result URL, not a search term.

DDG supports the "site:" operator, just like Google. It also supports other shortcuts like "!w".

Even on Google you sometimes have to nudge it in the right direction.

Re: In before

@AC - I use DDG all the time. I think it's freaking awesome. It might be what you are looking for (some engines do seem to be better at some topics than others).

As for those manuals "Phaser 7500 manual site:xerox.com" at DDG works grand.

What's yer problem, caller?

Re: Install Linux and let 'em come

If by "support" you mean "provide network shares and other services that Excel could consume" then the answer AIUI is "Yes".

More to the point, Excel barely supports Excel at times!

Re: Install Linux and let 'em come

I came here to say something similar, but you can just ditch Windows and move to a GNU/Linux. There will be a lot of custom code that would need ported, assuming it can even be ported, and there may be show-stopper applications that can only run on Windows.

It might be cheaper/easier to just cough for the fees, which should have been paid anyway!

And, of course, depending on the nature of you business use MS may not demand license fees for their OS but licenses for the use of their patents; regardless of OS you are using.

Re: A better solution...

@Lee Dowling - thank you very much for the detailed reply, it explains an awful lot. I may have to resort to using "modem mode" in the future in that case, which is going to be somewhat problematical.

Or drop VM and go to ADSL.

Re: According to wikipedia...

"Ad hominem". To the man and comes in multiple forms. I assure you I can recognise a reasoned argument, I am still awaiting one from yourself. Your abusive ad hominem wasn't really a good start, nor was the straw man you then attempted and which, in my opinion, also strayed into an abusive ad hominem.

Note: I assume you are all the same AC. This may be wrong. But as you are posting AC I have no way of determining if this is one person or many.

Re: @asdf: According to wikipedia...

"'I haven't presented an argument, merely pointed out that the one you provided was fallacious.'

Which obviously in itself is a good old fashioned ad hominem. Don't hate the player, hate the game."

Except for the small matter that it isn't. Pointing out that your argument is fallacious makes no comment about you as a person, belittles you or otherwise insults you; nor did I seek to put words into your mouth (as you did with me).

As for me being hypocritical, I make no claims to being perfect and at least I have the good grace to post under a handle where you can see my past history. I wouldn't go too far back though, the opinions I expressed in the past may not be the ones I hold now. See that's the thing about debate - when one's argument is shown to be weak/false it needs to be reconsidered.

In order to assist you in this matter, I shall make two simple statements:

1) Stallman raises some valid points about the Ubuntu Shopping Lens. I am not certain I agree 100% with his conclusions as he is a exponent of the slippery slope. However when it comes to matters technical, he does have an annoying habit of being rather prescient. He does at least raise many points for debate and I thought Bacon's response failed to address many of them;

2) On the other matter; I can find no reference to your claim on his Wikipedia page, I did manage to find it on his blog from 2006. On that I think he is wrong, assuming he still holds that opinion of course. You could always ask him and see what he says.

As you can see, I have also cited my sources. If you are going to make claims in the future, I suggest you do likewise.

Re: wtf were Ubuntu thinking pulling this stunt?

Canoncial is a business. It needs to make money. Why is this a surprise to many in the F/OSS community? Do they thinking money pops out of thin air or something?

First thing I did was uninstall the lens. If I want to search Amazon, I'll go search Amazon; I don't need the PC to do it for me. Even with the lens, I am not worried about Amazon potentially data-mining me (won't be possible unless Canonical pass up some kind of GUID) but Canoncial could profile me.

Oh, and Mr Shuttleworth? You don't have root until I say you can have root.