Posts by J.G.Harston

Re: LEDs

I'm re-fitting my workshop and needed a fluorescent fitting to finish off and match the three already there. Went to sparky shop. Oh, nobody buys them any more, everybody used LEDs.

yerwot? When did this happen? Am I going to have to rip all my tube fittings out just because "everybody" now uses LEDs? And I want continuous light, not loads of points, that's the whole point of tube lighting in the office in the first place.

Re: As useless a a hat full of busted arseholes

Online filing. Yes, the system that refuses to accept such esoteric characters as £ - & % / : and newline. Meaning you have to go in circles to write things such as: the income during 2017-18 from Alice & Bob Ltd was split 50%/25%/25% between: Fred, Jim and Sheila.

Re: programme

A schedule of actions is a programme.

A schedule of actions followed by a computer is a program.

Just as a disk is a disc-shaped item used for data storage. Perfectly useful distinction.

Re: Why

Two bytes is enough to fit 65536 short ints, no need to squeeze two extra characters in, just change the internal interpertation of those two bytes. Instead of year=1900+(byte1 AND 15)*10+(byte2 AND 15) change it to year=byte1+byte2*256

Re: Even Easier

Good point, road tax did actually exist back in 1921, before it was abolished in 1935.

Re: Another 20 (18) years...

But the problem appears that they *haven't* used a sliding window, they've used a fixed window. If they used a sliding window, the roll-over year would advance a year into the future each year, eg a 2-digit year always resolving to a 4-digit year between 50 years ago and 50 years' time.

Eg:

if (year2 > (thisyear+50) MOD 100) year4=((thisyear DIV 100)-1)*100+year2

else year4=(thisyear DIV 100)*100+year2

// untested, fails on edge cases

The problem is, almost all work nowadays *is* bits and pieces and chopping and changing every few months.

I'm doing Windows 7 roll-outs. In two months the job finishes. Previously I was doing new-user installations, a couple of days here, a couple of days there. Previously three bouts of Windows 7 roll-outs. The *reality* of today's employment environment destroys any possibility of accruing the "steady employment for few employers" schtick that HR demands. The very HR that refuses to provide the very "steady employment for few employers" that they themselves are demanding.

Re: driving down costs

Then he's not doing the exact same job. And put it the other way, if the 20-year-old is closing twice as many tickets as the 50-year-old, then yes, the 20-year-old should be being paid more than the 50-year-old.

Re: driving down costs

"Most of the problems in the IT industry vs age discrimination aren't anything to do with age as a number - its all to do with salary expectations."

I expect to be paid a salary commensurate with the work I'm doing, not my age or experience. Why should a 50-year-old doing helpdesk work be paid more than a 20-year-old doing the exact identical helpdesk work? If anything it's the HR bots who are blinkered, "we can't take this 50-year-old for an entry-level job 'cos he'll be demanding senior-level wages". Don't be daft. An entry-level job pays entry-level wages, that's what you pay 'em.

Re: What jobs did they try to get?

"why would they want to do that job?"

Being alive costs money.

Re: He certainly wasn’t misogynist in his science fiction..

Argh! tea | nose error from the memory!

Re: Asimov was a letcher

From what I've read, it was probably an outlet from his first marriage which he admitted was a mistake.

He always liked sex, his first wife didn't, that built up frustration between them. There was also a professional distance between them. Gertrude wanted a university professorial doctor she could show off to society, environments Isaac was never comfortable in. He loved immersing himself in science and science fiction and SF conventions, things anathama to Gertrude.

Marrying Janet Jepperson was the best thing he did in his personal life, he found somebody who enjoyed the physical side of life just as much as he did; as well as sharing professional interests.

Re: three decades

I'm working in a GP surgery, and the number of people coming to reception - full real adults! - claiming their date of birth is in the mid-1990s. It cannae be right!

Re: He'd lost several months of work

Ah, the old "I'll just use this equipment set up for specific work as though it's general purpose".

For some time I worked in a print shop with a RISO duplicating printer. It looks like a huge photocopier. Naturally, we'd have non-print people wandering in behind our back thinking they wanted to do a photocopy, put their original on the plattern, run off a six quid 5000-sheet master and print a single page.

Re: That triggered a memory...

A very long queue apparently.

Re: Free Markets

The US has anything *but* a free market health service. It's the very pinnical of a not-free-market.

Yeah, last week's "one week" deployment has turned into at least two weeks because we have to sit around waiting for a doctor's room to not be occupied.

I remember one outfit tearing a strip of some supplier who couldn't be arsed to put a 15p connector on their PCs and instead expected them to chuck away their £25,000 printing equipment.