England didn't declare war on Germany, Britain declared war on Germany.
Posts by J.G.Harston
3725 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Mar 2009
Page:
Ukraine asks ICANN to delete all Russian domains
A tale of two dishwashers: Buy one, buy it again, and again
Re: Personalised Ads
I block most ads, but what really causes me problems is videos on web pages that start playing without my permission. I've managed to get YouTube to stop doing it, but I'll try reading the local paper and all my connection credit goes flooding down the drain as loads of videos start stealing all my money.
Firefox claims to have a global "don't autoplay videos" setting which I've set, but they somehow bypass that.
Your app deleted all my files. And my wallpaper too!
Re: Lack of training and lack of standards
I seem to spend most of my jobs documenting processes that are otherwise "oh, somebody knows how to do that". One job was a short cover between the last IT chap being fired for something, and the replacement not having started yet, and I managed to document everything he'd done in his head to a state that could be handed over to the new starter.
A couple of weeks after I finished and had started another project I got a phone call saying they'd had to fire the replacement, and did I want to go back? Unfortunately, it had been just outside my comfortable commuting distance (put-up-able for just four weeks), and I was well into my next contract. Which was nearer and had an on-site canteen.
Re: Concepts are hard to understand
I've thrashed Windows into usability organising my home directory into categories of things I want stuff sorted into, and similarly, with a bit more efforted, I've cattle-prodded it into organising my applications into similar categories, so instead of a sinfgle programs directiory with mumbly-thousand subdirectories, I have apps/internet, apps/office, apps/dtp. apps/programming, apps/graphics, etc etc
Windows fights hard to impose it's "single pile of crap" model on me, but I fight back harder.
Re: Concepts are hard to understand
Years'n'years ago (ok, the 00s), I set up a small suite of shared computers. They were shared with the same logon, so to prevent them being trashed into unusability by multiple users dopping crap everywhere, I did the computer equivalent of shared office furniture - on power on, the USER\Desktop folder was deleted and recreated from a pre-configured DEFAULT\Desktop folder with a shortcut link to a folder of user directories.
Of course, piles of complaints about files disappearing. Somebody on site disabled the startup setup, resulting in exactly what I expected, the desktop full of dozens of different people's crap, and all the links to applications lost amongst the crowd. Oh well, if they *like* working in a pigsty, that's their life.
File suffixes: Who needs them? Well, this guy did
If I'm reading correctly, the problem is the human was seeing "configure.txt" in in the filer window, so typed "configure.txt" in the script, but on running the script it found that the file "configure.txt" did not exist, becase the file was actually called "configure.txt.txt".
If the human had entered "configure.txt.txt" in the script, then yes it would have found the file called "configure.txt.txt". The problem all boiled down to what the Windows filer was telling the human being what the file was called. The filer was lying.
Real-time software? How about real-time patching?
Re: Site Acceptance Test
In 12 years of field work, I've only once had the chance of "enjoy somewhere nice". Three days' work at Sellafield. Security required about an hour's vetting on entry and exit to site. With careful timing I managed three hours hiking over Hardknott Pass on my last day between leaving the site and driving through the night to get home.
Make assistive driving safe: Eliminate pedestrians
Re: Tesla
If you advertise it as an "autopilot", then it's an autopilot. Switch on, leave it to it. Not a driving assistance. Don't they have trade description laws in the States? If not, I have a 10kg gold bar to sell you. Don't let it's dull grey colour mislead you, I'm advertising it as a gold bar.
You should read Section 8 of the Unix User's Manual
Re: % in email addresses?
Somewhere I've still got my university sweatshirt with uk.ac.stir.cs printed on it. :)
My first two real paid jobs involved nursing and configuring sendmail, with some bits of rewriting as well. Usefully, I came from a background of having written a sendmail program* for networked Beebs five years earlier. :)
*And an instant messaging system**
**And a distributed information browsing system***
***And a multi-user networked gaming system****
****Youngsters today, think they invented everything....
Arm's $66bn sale to Nvidia is off: Deal collapses after world's competition regulators raise concerns
To err is human. To really tmux things up requires an engineer
Re: Step outside
The Windows filer has 'Delete' and 'Rename' right next to each other, so so easily mis-selected.
Edit: I had to fire up the A5000 and check why this has never been a problem with RISC OS. In the filer Delete and Rename are next to each other, but for Rename you go into another submenu, so you would never be accidently clicking on the main menu entry unless you were actively targetting the Delete option. In Windows both Delete and Rename have to be selected in the same menu, making a few pixels mis-aiming disasterous.
Privacy is for paedophiles, UK government seems to be saying while spending £500k demonising online chat encryption
No, I've not read the screen. Your software must be rubbish
Re: As we have found out so many times over so many late nights-
If a job involved driving you wouldn't employ somebody who couldn't drive would you? If a job required you to dig holes you wouldn't employ somebody who couldn't use a spade. If a job involved being able to read you wouldn't employ somebody who couldn't read. So why do companies employ people who are incapable of using a computer for jobs that require you to use a computer?
Re: Users, no matter how long they might use an application, never mind their instructions
I had somebody trying to walk me through setting something up over the phone for something. He had a weird accent and it took some repeating to work out he was saying "press C then TAB key" Eh? It sounded like "pressy thent abkey". What? Ah!!!! He means "type CONFIG" !!!!!!
GAARGH!!!!
If you want me to enter a ****ing configure command, ****ing well tell me to enter a ****ing configure command.
Taekwindow: Time to make your middle mouse button earn its keep
Nothing to scoff at: Crisps and nuts biz KP Snacks smacked in ransomware hack attack
STOP using Windooze for mission critical tasks!!!
CardioView doesn't work on Linux.
INRStar doesn't work on Linux.
Sullivan Cuff doesn't work on Linux.
UroDiary doesn't work on Linux.
accuRx doesn't work on Linux.
CardioLink doesn't work on Linux.
Crescendo doesn't work on Linux.
DigiScript doesn't work on Linux.
EasyLog doesn't work on Linux.
EMIS doesn't work on Linux.
SystemOne doesn't work on Linux.
JayEx doesn't work on Linux.
MicroLife doesn't work on Linux.
ECGViewer doesn't work on Linux.
ScriptSwitch doesn't work on Linux.
SpaceLab doesn't work on Linux.
Spirometry doesn't work on Linux.
Re: Windoze security as service
Reporting from the coal face, another issue is too much software is badly written and requires the user to have Admin permissions to run, or requires Admin to allow another user to run it, or to see the test equipment plugged into it.
Doing the recent Win10 rollout, way too much required hours on the phone to the supplier for them to remote in and flick some switch somewhere. For Every Single Bloody Machine.
America's EARN IT Act attacking Section 230 is back – and once again threatening the internet, critics say
Are they also going to prosecute The Postal Service because people can write naughty letters? Are they going to prosecute Bic because people can write with pens? Are they going to prosecute Kimberly-Clerk because Knockers Weeky is printed on paper? Are they going to prosecute BICC because they make wire that electrons carrying pr0n travel along? Are they going to prosecute Nokia because anybody can stuff a camera down their undercrackers and press GO?
Brocade wrongly sacked award-winning salesman who depended on company insurance for cancer treatment
When forgetting to set a password for root is the least of your woes
Bouncing cheques or a bouncy landing? All in a day's work for the expert pilot
Toaster-friendly alternative web protocol Gemini attracts criticism for becoming exclusive clique
Why should I pay for that security option? Hijacking only happens to planes
Re: Would they ever...
Worryingly, this reminds me of an incident a few decades ago. I was at work, just going into a meeting, and got a phone call from my wife.
Wife: Why haven't you paid the electricity bills, we've been cut off!
Me: Why did you let them into the house?
Wife: Let who into the house?
Me: The people from the electricity company!
Wife: What people from the electricity company?
Me: The. People. From. The. Electricity. Company. Who. Cut. Off. Our. Electricity!
Wife: What people from the electricity company?
Me: DidYouLetAnybodyIntoTheHouseToCutOffTheElectricity?
Wife: No.
Me: Then. How. The. Hell. Did. They. Cut. Off. Our. Electricity???
Wife: Well, I just assumed they did....
Me: HOW?????!!!!! *NEVER* let anybody into the house claiming to be *ANYTHING*!
As you can infer, it was just a local substation fault, and the power came on a few minutes later, but wifey assumed that no leccy = power company had broken into house and removed supply, and if neccessary, SHE WOULD HAVE LET THEM.
Arm rages against the insecure chip machine with new Morello architecture
'Please download in Microsoft Excel': Meet the tech set to monitor IT performance across central UK government
COVID-19 was a generational opportunity for change at work – and corporate blew it
Epoch-alypse now: BBC iPlayer flaunts 2038 cutoff date, gives infrastructure game away
Software guy smashes through the Somebody Else's Problem field to save the day
Spruce up your CV or just bin it? Survey finds recruiters are considering alternatives
Re: A CV can be a useful starting point
An upvote for shd. I do geneological research as a hobby. That has spilt out into my coding as I've written stuff that allows me to take terse typed notes from documents in the limited time available to have them in my physical possession, and later on expand them into full, neatly processed documents later.
m lily
becomes
Murfield, Lily; 3 Burngreave Yard, Church Street, Whitby, EDJJ-33.
I too got roped into becoming Treasurer for a local society after the last one "ahem" need to hand it over. One afternoon's training by the Chamber of Commerce 25 years ago came in very handy - paying for it was the only thing the Job Centre ever did of any good for me.
Re: Coding is not the end
"Coding interviews miss the point."
Can they code in a crap development environment on somebody else's computer without their own tools and their own setup?
The majority of my knowledge isn't in my head, it's in my computer. That's the entire point of humans inventing storage systems.
Not looking forward to a greyscale 2022? Then look back to the past in 64 colours
A fifth of England's NHS trusts are mostly paper-based as they grapple with COVID backlog, warn MPs
Re: "improve productivity in an organisation severely short of staff"
Or, go down the route that GP surgeries do. GP practices are all individual private businesses, each of them choses how to function and what equipment to use. Individually they chose their own clinical software systems, and a healthy *working* ecosystem has developed to provide that clinical software, often written by GPs for GPs, so they know what they want and what to provide. None of it imposed from on high by some ivory tower dwellers.
Nothing's working, and I've checked everything, so it must be YOUR fault
There's also misuse of the word "delete" instead of "remove". I can't remember the exact example, but something like: I want to remove this shortcut to this application. "Do you want to delete AppName?" Err... no of course not, I just want to delete the shortcut.
I've just checked this PC: it now says "This will only delete the shortcut to AppName. Do you want to delete the shortcut to AppName?" Much better.
ObWhich: a personal annoyance is Star Trek holodecks: "Computer, delete Troy character!" No!!!!! You might want that character again in the future, why throw away all those thousands of hours of work????