Posts by CD001

OOo

Sort of agree that OOo is a "low rent" version of MSO ... however I find it much easier to align images (dropping screen grabs into help docs) as I want them in Writer than any version of Word.

And I can actually find things in OOo - the problem with the ribbon interface in MSO 2007 is that to keep things tidy they've stuffed some things in (what I find to be) very strange places, "macros" under "view" for instance or "headers and footers" under "insert" rather than "page layout".

And since about the only thing I use a Word Processor for is cobbling together help documentation for apps I've written - the native PDF export in OOo is a total must-have. So for the limited amount of work I actually do in "Office" documents, for me, OOo IS better than MSO.

IRL

I go out in the real world occasionally - it's all very nice but Farcebook doesn't give me a hangover ;)

depends

Depends on the contractor - I've seen contractors who's only genuine skill seems to be a PHD in bullshit manage to flimflam clueless managers out of six figures... I would argue they were overpaid since once they'd fucked off it was left to the permies to go in and fix the bloody mess afterwards.

Doesn't matter whether you're a permie or a contractor it's all about attitude - you can find work-shy, bone idle permies just as easily as BS/rip-off merchant contractors... yup folks, there are twats in every walk of life.

EVERYBODY VOTE

And have everybody write "no confidence" (or "I have no confidence in the ability of any of these morons to run run a country" - a literal vote of no confidence - *b'dum ching*) across the whole ballot paper - unlike not voting, spoiled votes still have to be counted.

or maybe

The "Fascist bastards" just spotted "Pritesh Hathalia from Leicester" and hit downvote without reading the post...

One would hope that the comment was meant to be ironic and intended to show up the stupidity of the great British public - 119 downvotes would show quite clearly that at least 119 people didn't get it. I would like to think that - however I don't have that much faith in humanity.

actually

If you've ever placed an advert in a magazine you'd know that right-hand pages are more expensive than left... this is because as the eye (in Western civilisation) reads left to right the last thing you see is the furthest right and is therefore more likely to jump out at you or stick in the mind.

The same holds true for UI design so I'd guess having IE appear in this far right spot would actually weight it favourably, slightly. (don't believe me, look at the post icons below and see if you spot the hand grenade first or Paris).

Since you would have to deliberately tweak your "random" pattern to generate this behaviour I'd say it was unlikely to be accidental.

I would argue

Since the issues that arise from IE6 are mostly cosmetic they should ONLY affect designers (HTML/CSS) the only time developers would be hit by them is if they're chucking together a rich client application and the AJAX or JavaScript falls over.

If you ask me, (X)HTML and CSS fall squarely into the "designer" remit - even JavaScript if it's just used for fluff - that's why they're WEB designers not GRAPHIC designers.

Actually

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Not Licensed for UK Use until XXX is revoked

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That's a BLOODY GOOD IDEA! :)

ye-es

... except Opel is owned by General Motors at the moment. Maybe they're trying to show some kind of German/American love child can succeed - well, I say succeed - barely avoid going into administration whilst totally fskin the European component of the company up the arse while they're at it?

Actually - maybe it's the ideal choice of motor?

Thing is though...

If someone has access to the "passwords" file on your machine, you're pretty much hosed anyway - especially if that file is already encrypted, password protected and stored in a hidden volume (granted the odds on that happening are slim to none).

I read once that the "best" thing to do would be to use passwords you've not a hope in hell of remembering with upper and lower case letters, numbers, symbols, whatever - write them down on a bit of paper and keep it in your wallet.

If you lose your wallet you've already got the hassle of getting all your plastic cancelled so you're just adding "change passwords" to you list of things you've already got to do.

I'm sorry...

I have testicles I am genetically incapable of asking for directions!

300 validation errors

I was going to say - what does 300 errors mean exactly - most validators cascade them so if you forget to close a single tag it can flag up many, many errors because of the the tags nested inside that tag - and even then these are only "warning" level not "error" level errors...

... but then I looked at the source code of the parent document (yes, it uses iframes) and saw 175 errors - one of which was not including a <body> tag. I mean WTF? This is why, despite being a web developer myself, I despise most web developers.

It's not like it's hard to write decent, standards compliant (X)HTML and if you know what you're doing, apart from the odd typo, anything you write will be standards compliant before you even worry about validating it (validation is just for spotting the typos). It is, after all, easier to remember the standard code than the kludges.

So you're going at it arse about face - code to standards and then if you HAVE to, apply IE6 kludges afterwards - to be fair to MS, IE7 and 8 will work if you code to XHTML1 (transitional they don't like the "application/xhtml+xml" Content-Type for strict) and CSS2 - it's only JavaScript (and CSS3) that really causes headaches.

because

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One thing we can be sure of is that minister = idiot. Why do prime ministers always find the person least suited to each ministerial job.

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All ministerial positions work that way... therefore:

The Prime Minister is the most unqualified minister to do the Prime Minister's job - there is no-one better at being worse qualified for Prime Minister than the Prime Minister - they are, if you will, the lowest of the low.

Therefore, by definition, they cannot fail BUT to appoint the worst possible minister for any other given position if they did they'd no longer be the most unsuitable Prime Minister and we'd have to have a referendum to appoint someone who is actually incapable of making the correct decision about anything... ever (including resigning).

indeed

Even their customer service is of "two halves" - I think I've only ever rang them a couple of times (and I was a Telewest customer originally).

Most recently was a couple of calls with regards to billing. The first (in the evening), yup, a call centre in India who whilst being quite polite were not able to actually do much if it was outside the script.

Then, when working from home (so rang through the day) I got through to a UK call centre - and had the issue sorted in minutes.

I was querying, with a hint of harrumphing, a deal on the website that meant that new customers got a much better rate (if they took the deal) than existing customers... I was told about an upgrade available for existing customers that matched it - which in my case meant upgrading from the L size TV to XL (with V+) and from the 10Mb to 20Mb broadband connection for only £5 a month more than I was paying plus (discounted) V+ installation... which we went for.

Unfortunately since the other half has had series link and all the V+ "Catch up on demand" type stuff - I've barely managed to get 5 minutes of TV/PS3 time in... NCIS, CSI, etc....

I think the moral of the story is that, if you're an existing customer and you have to call them, do so through the day and use just a hint of harrumphing.

Cable is great - it's just VM that's a bit flakey at times.

voted down...

... in an ironic fashion.

hmmm

Give you Photoshop on Windows but I generally use Netbeans as my IDE, being Java based it's compatible with WIndows, Linux, OSX and so on - and with OSX you'd still have Photoshop... although you would have to put up with that god-awful Mac GUI (fuse lit, runs for cover).

sign me up

Sign me up as a guinea pig / alpha tester of your new Caffotine(tm) - sounds just the ticket to me :)

there, there...

There, there Ms Bee, it's alright - have a large hot chocolate laced with Baileys and everything will be fine.

hmmm

I like your thinking - but in the UK that leaves 4 real choices...

1: Labour

2: Tories

3: Emigrate

4: Suicide

Very few people vote FOR either Labour or the Tories but simply AGAINST whichever bunch of monkeys they hate most at the moment, I've met very few people who actually have the faintest idea what either party's manifesto actually is; they're not voting for any particular ideas or policies but voting blue because they hate red.

Option 3 looks better every day... maybe Switzerland, at least you're in the right country to get some assistance with option 4 if it really gets bad enough.

Kangaroo

Isn't a weird manimal mutant kangaroo at that?

oh?

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IE8 starts up faster than FF

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Not really, IE8 draws a window on the screen faster than FF but then sits there for six months while it thinks about loading your homepage - loading up the GUI is not the same as loading up the program - I've managed to hang IE on a few occasions by trying to cancel the homepage load and go somewhere else (then it refuses to load anything).

Even when IE IS loaded up - the time it takes to open a new tab could almost be measured on a geological scale - several species of weird lizard-men could evolve and become extinct in the amount of time it takes to open a new tab in IE.

You're right though, Firefox isn't perfect, I really hate the way it handles caching for instance and in many ways Opera is better (especially once you've tweaked opera:config) but, like you, I use too many Firefox add-ons to change unless I have to.

Duniverse...

That sounds like a pretty good idea for an MMOG if you ask me :)

and in...

... flats and preservation areas where you're not allowed to install satellite dishes, oh and it's less prone to break-up because of (extremely) adverse atmospheric conditions (it just breaks up because of the crappy, heavily compressed MPEG2 encoding on certain channels) - and I'll take cable broadband over DSL any day of the week.

I have cable and my parents have Sky *shrugs* - each has their pros and cons.

WTC Jenga

Wrong, but funny :)

So the answer is...

... that any prospective parent needs to be vetted and entered into the database before they're allowed to breed. Ideally there should be an aptitude test beforehand and perhaps some kind of "license to breed", possibly even sterilisation of those that fail the aptitude test, just to be on the safe side.

Of course, if I was running the tests I would automatically fail every politician for starting the whole twuntish thing in the first place.

exactly

That's exactly what I was thinking - I'm a web-monkey and I cannot think how you'd manage to make a site incompatible with certain OSs WITHOUT doing it on purpose... in fact about the only way I could think of doing it, other than a simple UserAgent based block, would be via a Java Applet or ActiveX control (which would bork anything other than IE anyway).