Posts by Terry 6

Re: previous versions

Actually, thinking about this analogy more. We swapped our first Honda Jazz for a better, more up to date Jazz, in due course. Then an H-RV and we're waiting for delivery of an eH-RV. And for all the steady improvement and even switching to a larger vehicle a big plus is that they don't f*ck about with the controls- or change stuff that works well, and just improve stuff when they need to because the users want it or they have something new and better to offer. (We notice that the USB charge ports have been moved and will be easier to get to, the current ones are a bit fiddly to reach. And everyone complained about not being able to play their own choice of phone satnav into the console, so now you can through that easier to reach USB port, for example).

Not optionally removed, removed end-of

That's the key point. The vast gulf between hiding a feature that users may not want or need and removing it entirely when they might want or need it.

It's been a big deal since The Ribbon at least. not because said Ribbon is a bad thing, necessarily, but because they removed the flexibility of the menu system to move components out of menus or into different ones to match with users' working system.

Re: This hasn't actually ever happened though has it?

Just remember: there are most users who use technology as a means to an end.

FTFY but otherwise 100% agree.

Re: previous versions

That is a disingenuous counter argument. The controls of a car don't tend to be part of a purchase decision unless it's a change to q different type of car. So while significant unjustified changes to these would be a disaster, they would be improbable , because the actual purchase choices are image and lifestyle lead, unlike computers (other than maybe Apple) so aesthetics are far more significant.

But switching from, say a manual petrol car to a modern, hybrid, automatic car does necessitate adjusting how we use the controls. And no one who makes the choice to shift (no pun intended) to an automatic has any problem with that.

Re: Creativity vs Standards

In the computer world there's the added fact that no one gives a damn about aesthetics after the first 5 minutes of practical usage. Home users can manage their own OS aesthetics if the OS publisher lets them. And commercial buyers just want a machine that the staff can use efficiently.

Re: previous versions

Snake.

Some complaints are about change because not everyone likes change, true. Many more are simply because the change has no functional purpose on a functional devices . Most are about changes that mean tasks become more difficult or simply require a new learning curve for no advantage.

Interestingly, you seem more emotional about all this than we are. This is interesting.

Re: Is that a feature or is it a bug?

No, I get the impression that 'nux users tend to be pretty split about that, and most seem to disagree about distros instead, or ( since the majority are very techie)about stuff that goes on "under the hood".

Also there's a difference between disliking a UI and disliking changes in the key functionality. You can change the layout, icon shapes or whatever and leave the user's control alone. You could, equally remove or add the degree of control the user has but leave everything looking and (otherwise) responding in the same way.

Win 8's stupid "charms" were a total pain in the arse to most users- being invisible and impossible to find when you wanted them( if you ever did) and then suddenly popping out in your face after an incautious movement of the mouse. But were irrelevant to the functional control.

Re: How to make Windows 10 bearable

Here's one for your list; Why do computers fail to see shared folders when on or other of them logs in to a Microsoft account and the other(s) on a local account.

I discovered this wonderful "feature" the hard way. Setting up a new PC last month I let it use a MS account ( don't know why, I was rushing).

For weeks couldn't get it to show its shared folders to my other PCs. I tried all the usual methods suggested on the interwebs and one or two less usual ones. Nothing.

The I remembered they were on different kinds of account- and wanted to switch that anyway. As soon as the new PC was on a local log-in like the others my network shares were back!

Re: previous versions

Each new version of Microsoft anything seems to have reduced user control and introduced unneeded obstacles to working the way we want to, rather than how some Microsoft marketing type thinks we should be working.

I- and I'm not alone PCPro had a letter about this published a few months back- I want to be able to control what my Start menu shows and where. Because I have software I only use from time to time and I find programme names pretty unhelpful half the time. (Partly, to be fair,because publisher vanity means they think their clever name is more important than something that describes the function of the programme)

I need to be able to group my programmes according to function, not list them by damn fool name in a long cluttered,over complicated alphabetical list of programmes and folders-with-programes-in. That way I can quickly find the programme I need to perform the job I need it for without having to go down the list and try to guess which programme it was.

Re: Reclaiming Private Call Costs

Over the years I met a number of beancounter types who'd happily spend £1 of the organisation's money to save 50p.It's a kind of mental balance sheet that accumulates the money saved, but ignores the money spent or time wasted as being part of ongoing expenditure.e.g. time consuming and complex low value car mileage forms that wasted far more expensive staff time than would be saved by preventing the odd couple of quid here or there. No normal claim was ever for more than 20 miles a week but the form could take about 30 minutes, which would have costed >£10 of staff time to complete, and then, theoretically have to be checked in all its stupid detail* by an admin.

And not just money. I can think of a few where there would be significant time wasted accounting for the time used in precise and frankly often meaningless detail.

*You couldn't just submit a claim for the daily round journey, or even a list of places visited, mostly within a half a mile of each other. Let alone submit your timetable of journeys on a claim form for a circuit that didn't often vary from one week to the next.You had to submit the milometer/tripmeter reading at the start and end of each stop. Then enter these into a table and add them up to show a total for each day's journeying. (In my case I automated it and stuck in a random mileage figure for the start of each day).

"Disgusting your customers and driving them away"...

It's a calculation. They probably reckon that most users will carry on as normal, and those are the ones they make money from.

And they are probably right. It's cynical.

Re: re. Disgusting your customers and driving them away is fine

This is the Ford Pinto school of commerce.

It doesn't matter what you do as long as the balance sheet benefits.

[For anyone who hasn't heard the story, in brief, they decided that the cost of law suits by the relatives of survivors was a price worth paying- until Ralph Nader broke the scandal and US courts started awarding punitive damages).

Re: ICL :)

It does, sadly, work both ways. Entering high school massively interested in science and good at maths I met some truly crap teaching in those subjects, a mixture of teaching by rote and bullying. Since I loved reading and met some decent and enlightened teachers there my 'A' levels and degree were a mixture of English and social sciences.

For decades ( happy and successful though they've been) I've known this was wrong for me. I wouldn't change it for the world, but I do wonder what would have been the outcome if North Manchester (boys) High School hadn't been so crap in the early 70s.

Re: Never call soomething "NEW ...."

The New Forest?

Re: Disappointing

This has been my view on Social Meedja.

I don't give a stuff what some idiot conspiracy theory nutter thinks.

But if some perplexed individual who's been told stuff sees the outpourings unchallenged and has no counter knowledge I don't want to leave sewer uncovered.

Re: It's all about the bass

It's a bit like, many years ago, I called the RAC. The car kept misfiring. He did things with the distributor, but it didn't get better and he called for a tow truck. I pointed out that there was an electrical sound being picked up by the radio.He rather loftily told me it was nothing to do with the radio and refused to listen when I told him I didn't say it was the radio, but that it was the sort of sound you get when there's a spark and it was in time with the engine. He just repeated it was nothing to do with the radio....

It was a short

The garage found the problem almost instantly, after I'd told them about the noise on the radio As in the guy saying "Ah yes that'll be the (whatever it was*)". A two minute fix.

*I think it was a high power lead with carbon inside it or something. It was a long time ago.

Re: At Gene Cash, re: wrong error message.

have *always* accepted when something is beyond my knowledge & should be entrusted to a professional.

Which, since this is largely an IT site- so rather more appropriate, is how I've been with IT.

Having started as an amateur and drifted into semi-pro work because in education until at least the early 90s there was seldom any kind of outside support. I did my best to keep up with the tech. But once there was a limited amount of support I was able to call upon this is exactly what I did. As soon as I met a problem that I knew I didn't fully understand- or that was a risk of causing worse problems I handed it over to a specialist. I had my own job, with the IT just being an add-on and there was no way I could have justified the time for training to keep up this stuff to a pro standard. And I was not prepared to bodge jobs that were beyond my skills.

Re: My experience

No previous user

Re: Move over Monsieur Tesla

This is what stops us from considering an electric car. (We are buying a new Honda Hybrid E-HRV).

We live in a fairly standard N London terraced house. No off-street parking and a handful of lamppost chargers that have no parking restrictions . So we'd stand very little chance of parking by one. In fact, even if we were willing to trail a charge cable across the pavement there's a damned high risk of not being able to park outside our own house.

Re: wine predictions

Absolutely. The red for meat white for fish nonsense can go for a start. And well done beef is just a different way of enjoying beef. You can enjoy either or both.

Re: My experience

Student daughter is too young to use CDs in her car. But there is a phone holder that fits into the CD slot. Out of the box it isn't great, too loose. But since she's never going to need the slot for CDs, a bit of double sided tape does the job.

OTOH we've had a sequence of Hondas. They have built in (Garmn) Satnavs which are pretty much crap. Because even after they've been updated (included in our service plan) they aren't up to date. For example where the new S bound exit from the M1 to M6 was opened it still tried to take us past the slip road down the M6 section to (wherever), after it had been updated. Also, it seldom picks up on, or calculates delays and speed restrictions- even long standing ones where they're making the new killer (smart) lanes

And its routing can be bizarre. Once we had to visit a flat in Regent's Park. It took us into a park entrance and told us to turn right. We weren't sure where the flat was but had thought it was to the left. Satnav took us on an anticlockwise journey out of the park, down to the Euston rd and back up into the park. Arriving at the flat about 150 metres from where we'd entered the park- but 45 minutes later!

Now we use Waze on our phones, with a holder in the air vent. It isn't nice and big like the inbuilt satnav, but it gets us where we need to be very efficiently.

Re: Public view

searchers may end up at competitor sites,

Depends how much they're paying Google I guess.

Re: Another tale of secret dealings and shady contracts

It looks like one of two possibilities.

There's the " job interview carve-up" or the "we don't want to change anything really".

In the first it's the same as when a job description/person spec is written so that the person they want to give the job to ( CEO's mate,mistress,brother-in-law.....) is the only person who can reasonably apply. ("Must have.................. 19 years experience playing golf and wear size 9 Timberland boots". OK I exaggerate a bit- but only a bit. I've seen a few barkingly long and specific JD/PSs that were clearly written with an individual in mind).

Re: Public view

That's not paranoid. It's simply justifiably cynical.

Yes and no.

The concern there was largely the product of some serious shroud waving by Vote Leave and those who wanted to get us out of the EU prior to the ref. i.e. Fears that were whipped up and played on.

Re: @Dan 55

People, presumably, who don't care about the financial impact on people's lives, loss of opportunity etc. but just -on principle- didn't like being part of the EU?

Because.....that's the only result.

Re: I would like to support anyone that is "not Amazon", but how can I if their site is broken?

There's a whole nuther issue.

Communicating with a business to tell them they have a problem is pretty much impossible these days.

It's the well documented merry-go-round of FAQs that don't mention any issue you need to look at and "contact" links that go back to the FAQ pages.

Because the trivia is still all that leaving the EU has provided. It's not that remainers can't see past the trivia. It's because there's nothing but trivia to see. And even the sodding passports are made in France.

Then why post? You aren't affected, don't seem to have an opinion even (or at least didn't include one) and have no investment in the story.

True, some of it was about sovereignty - not letting the EU force us to have straight cucumbers and stuff like that, or fish our own waters. Except that the straight cucumber story and similar were all myths and we don't actually eat much of the fish from our own waters, preferring cod/haddock/plaice etc. But hey, blue/black passports.

Re: Wasted advertising

I'd guess that a C suite type wouldn't dare not spend tons on advertising by whatever is the accepted/fashionable means.

It's not about outcomes (for the shareholders) it's about activity. Not slinging tons of cash would be seen as dangerously complacent. Like a premiership football manager that didn't spend on new players.

Buying a new player is seen as doing something and keeps the bought footballer away from a rival team..

Advertising is seen as doing something and counters the threat from a rival company that is spending big on ads.