Posts by Terry 6 5609 publicly visible posts • joined 31 Jul 2009
Not quite. Working to rule is saying that if you don't pay us extra we aren't going to do any unpaid extras. It is literally doing what you are paid to do. If that sabotages the employer it's because the employer is using the staff's goodwill by asking for additional unpaid work or responsibility. And if the goodwill has been lost the employer takes the consequences even when it's not organised withdrawal but just disenchanted staff unwilling to help the employer out.
Being old I've been aware of and tinkered with Linux on and off for many years. Not deeply. ( Currently I have a little Lenovo MiiX convertible that I've truly converted- to PeppermintOS). And I had some experience of messing with a UNIX based system donkeys years ago.
But right from the start LINUX was described to me and in the stuff I read while learning about it as being a "UNIX-like OS".
So from a purely historic angle, that's what it is; "UNIX like".
I don't really care about the similarities or differences to be honest. As far as I'm concerned an OS is something you beat into submission and then leave tucked out of sight while you get on with doing stuff on a computer.
Probably an unpopular comment here. But the IT world as a whole seems at least no less susceptible to latest fads and shiny ideas as anywhere other field. And since it's what underlies all of the modern world this affects everything from potato farming to poetry writing.
Add in FOSS elements that rely on the enthusiasm of one or more volunteer contributors who may have a certain feature preference, or need to do more paid work and spend less time fixing bugs and changing superficial features, or just don't have the enthusiasm to redraft old ideas (Or just get older).
So there is a randomness of development with stuff being abandoned because it's not profitable or not interesting enough, or suddenly changed,, or contain quirky features that a developer just liked (or perhaps because of someone in the marketing dept.if it's commercial software) and refusing to respond to what ordinary users might want. And then there is this thing we're all aware of- of a huge monolithic bit of software that's in everything, but is relying on one part-time FOSS developer who's never been paid for all the work he's put into it and is now approaching retirement age and would rather be out fishing.
Are there any other industries where you buy a whole item but you have to pay extra to use bits of it.
Welcome to your brand new fridge/freezer. If you would like the temperature to go below 2 degrees C please pay £350 to unlock our freeze+ package
or
Contents 350ml orange juice. If you would like to drink more than the first 250ml please pay 75p to unlock the full volume
Though what BMW are doing with their vehicles sounds a bit like this. Then again, most modern cars are essentially computers on wheels so maybe it's not different.
Appliances, agree. But some controllable light switches are useful to keep the burglars away. Lights can be told to turn on or off at some point in the evening, in different rooms. And I do like being able to control the heating so that it can go on when we are getting nearer home. Smart doorbells- I'm still not sure We have a basic Ring doorbell It's improved quite a lot since we bought it, ( so those updates are important!) but it's still not quite up there with the promise suggested by the adverts. And was probably more expensive than was justified, It's not often that we use it for more than could be achieved by a normal old fashioned ding-dong bell.
In less severe circumstances* I had this argument with the higher ups ( and I was risk assessment trained). A fire practice that doesn't emulate the real thing is worse than useless, it may actually make the situation much worse. Staff who are used to taking an inadvisable route out will likely do exactly that in a real emergency, because that's the escape route they'd been trained to follow.. Which could mean filing back into the core of the building, through to the front internal staircase and into the path of a fire/smoke.
*We'd been told not to use the external fire escape steps at the back of the building except in a real fire, as they were iron and narrow. So there was a small risk that someone might slip....
The suspected leak was in a large Victorian primary school. With a relatively small play area. The kids ( and staff of course) were evacuated into the play area. And that was it. Had something actually gone bang! we were all within a few metres of the building. ( I was on a visit to the school at the time and stayed to help with the kids). It became clear during the rest of the day that the local authority had no contingency planning for such events -and there was a total lack of visit or help from any of the higher ups, of course.. We eventually were able to take the kids to a (recently built) sports hall nearby and kept them entertained.
I may be wrong. But looking at the IT world from the edges it seems to me that it works best when they're collaborating not warring.. Inf act too often when stuff goes tits up it's because they neglected to cooperate.Particularly to cooperate with the poor sods who have to use what they come up with.
That's different. A vehicle reversing is, in effect, driving towards you backwards. A driver that reverses back to pull round a vehicle ahead and hits something behind him is at fault just as one who reverses to get into a slip road is. Even with a roll back - as caught my late father out- it's only a short roll back that leaves the driver behind at fault. If the driver ahead fails to halt his vehicle rolling backwards in a timely manner and infringes a reasonable gap left by the car behind then he's likely at fault just as if he'd deliberately reversed. My father got caught because there was a short 2 car length, curved and steep slope at the end their street where it met the main road, so he was partly round the curve and too close to the vehicle waiting to turn into the main road. If he'd stayed off the curve the car might not have hit him- or if it rolled back far enough to do so would have shared, or got all the culpability.
The lane keeping one is a bit of a bugger. We keep ours on, but there are a number of local places where we have to fight with it a bit, because,for example, you need to infringe a wide white line slightly to avoid colliding with a long row of parked cars that pretty much reduce the road to less than the width needed.
From a statement quoted off the RAC about the highway code and the law.....
“But the advice it offers can be used as evidence in any court, to establish liability."
Can you be fined for breaking the Highway Code?
Yes, you can be fined for breaking the Highway Code.
My italics.
So, it's not the law, but you can still be fined for breaching it. Which in effect means it is the law - but with a bit of flexibility to allow for circumstances.
The difference there is between rolling back, in which case, ( unless the driver failed to act on the roll back), the car behind is culpable, and moving backwards under the driver's action, e.g. in reversing. If you reverse into a vehicle behind you it's your fault. If you roll back more than a short, reasonable distance, it's your fault i.e.. by not acting to stop the roll back within a reasonable time.
No. There's a total difference between stopping ahead of a car and pulling in front of it. An issue that gets dodgy if the car driver that pulled in ahead of you claims that he was already there/had been for a certain amount of time first. It's then that the front facing camera is invaluable.
The UK application is that you have to leave enough time and space ahead of you to be able to stop if the car ahead of you stops. For whatever reason. That just doesn't apply if the car ahead cuts in front of you.
The automatic brake stopped our car a couple of times. A car cut across in front of me trying to get to a petrol pump that was free ahead of me. And my wife was driving past some bushes on a very narrow curving lane and the sensor disliked a bush that was encroaching into the road.
Even, indeed if the car ahead rolls back a few inches, like when stopped at a junction on the top of a hill, and it bumps into you, the driver behind is deemed responsible because he was too close to the vehicle ahead, even while stationary. I know, because such an occurrence was the only blemish on my late father's driving record.
Hmmm
come out with a brand new, shiny MBA. One of his new mantras was....
Some of us do postgrad management training of one sort or another ( mine was in education leadership BTW) pick up the certificate and hopefully some improved insights. And then get on with the job like before, but hopefully better informed ( and with a pretty certificate to wave around as needed).
And others just become clones of the trainers and their particular ideology/dogma - going on to try and implement all the latest fashion in bloody stupid policies that the course has promoted.
Yeah. I've noticed on Mastodon so many posts that only make sense if you are an American, or at least have a basic knowledge of Americana. They don't seem to realise that anyone else is on there. Because so much is written with that assumption. Temperatures being the most obvious one. They never put degrees F. But they'll complain that the temperature is 26. And we're meant to know that means cold .
Ach.
We had to do paper mileage claims each week, for travel between school visits and our office base. Because we were "casual users"
The top brass in the council didn't have to do this. They were essential users and got a lump sum payment each month and could claim anything above that simply by saying where they'd been over and above the (not defined) normal travel even though they didn't have to travel for the job like we did
Our claim form needed a list of each trip for each day, then column for milometer reading at the start of each trip and another for the end, and anther for the number of miles. For each and every trip, often 4 or more per day, each day, week in week out with only small variations in journey and nominal variation in distance, it was all within the same borough). So in theory, before driving away from the office we were meant to write down the reading. Then again when we got to our assigned school - and then again at the next one and so on...As if battling the traffic and fighting for parking didn't waste enough time when we were already trying to fit too many visits in in a day, Inevitably most of the form was a fiction ( the actual visit list and mileage totals were correct - because we knew the distances). We just made up the numbers, in the office.
Is this saying that the tech has been developed so that it detects clicks on pages that aren't actually even seen? And that this is considered a legitimate part of the fundamental underlying code that was developed by whoever it is who wrote this technology in the first place. i.e some developers thought "Lets include some code that says a page has been viewed when it hasn't because it's underneath another page?
Or have I misunderstood?
...who wonders how the people in these companies who deliberately create dark patterns and the like, cynically creating software for manipulating and exploiting people, can sleep at night? Who chooses a job in software design or coding that is really just the same as three card trick merchants and Ponzi sellers?
My own view, purely based on personal preference and experience, is that there does need to be a fixed anchor - maybe once a week, maybe only for a half day ymmv when everyone needs to be in. Maybe a formal team meeting even. My preference would be one and 1 half days in the office each week. partly so that everyone is working close and meeting each other informally. The half day for more formal stuff,
I struggled, over the decades pre-Covid, to see the point of most of the meetings I and people I spoke to had to attend. Beyond making certain individuals feel important ("I have an urgent meeting to attend" etc) Most of it could have been dealt with by memo. In more recent years the main point had been to communicate with the people who don't read emails ( and much of the blame for that is the idiots who send emails about every little thing to everyone).
And except for meetings and chat there's no point being in an office for most roles. When I was working we only all met in the office once or twice a week - being out doing our jobs in schools most days. And that was enough for the chat., there were lots of other times when we'd be in the base and see one another. It makes perfect sense to have staff in an office base, say, once a week together,ideally not starting or ending around rush hour, because there's no point unless you're actually public facing during office hours. and maybe popping in to meet a colleague or collect stuff from time to time. So that you can meet, catch-up, share experiences etc. But otherwise, what's the point unless it's actually better for them to be away from home?
The office should be a resource, not a cell.
The free aspect of Openshot is important for me (as opposed to my normal choice of free software because I'm a cheapskate). Because I can't justify spending a whole lot of cash for a programme I might use twice a year.
By the same token, I need a programme with a learning curve that I can manage readily when I have to start relearning how to do stuff 6-10 months down the line.
Openshot fills that niche perfectly. It's reasonably intuitive to use. Anything I've forgotten how to do I can rediscover. And it's blissfully short on "I can't do that Dave" components. (You know the ones. You know what you need to do. You know how to do it. But there's some invisible other background process or setting that stops you doing it, until you turn it off/on, but that you don't know about and it doesn't show you).
The USA's love of the internal combustion engine might mean that production for local use and a small export market would persist. But at what cost.
Much of the rest of the world will reduce or ban sale of ICE vehicles over time f and manufacturers will mostly be producing electric vehicles
Compare that to Raymond bloody Feist ( Magician etc). I recently read a really thick volume from one of his more recent output, I hadn't noticed the word "saga" on the cover, ( borrowed from the library). By the time I got to the end of vol 1 not a lot had happened for a book that thick. I looked at the blurb for vol 3 and realised that still not much had happened, despite vol 2 being also rather large. Just thought fuck it and found some proper books.
Even books. The Great American Novel has been too long, and full of extraneous details, random plot digressions and vast armies of unneeded characters for decades. Because then they can charge more. More recently the fantasy novel ( one volume) is spun out to a "saga" ( at least three volumes) and no book ever resolves anything without a few dangling threads- not even the final volume because there may be a second saga in it.
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