Posts by Terry 6

Re: "Across the free software world we have a problem in getting people to pay for things"

Really. Many years a go I went into a school as a (relatively highly paid) local authority funded specialist teacher, to work with a kid who had serious literacy difficulties.

There was a horrible smell in the school's open plan teaching area.

I was met by the headteacher who said "Ah Terry, do you think you could sort out that smell for us".

And yes, since I had a kid in that school entitled to my specialist help, and since I was funded by the rate payers (at a promoted teacher grade) to provide that help I said "It's not my job". .

I also said "You have a schoolkeeper for that."

The head told me that the SK was too busy!

Wow. Spot on with your documentation comment.

My experience is that Open source documentation is it's mostly either unintelligibly written ( a few years back I volunteered to edit some to make it useful) or deep technical gibberish. At worst a link for a help item or even a changelog will go to a "Wiki" page with an incomprehensible structure, marked by incomprehensible headings and incomprehensible jargon/technical expressions. Useful information like, say Save dialogue changed to allow user selection being buried several levels down in a section called something like user interface which is in a branch called customisation which comes under a heading lable of, say gui design And these may be in a chapter heading called Interface design protocols or something

Needless to say the link in the software/download site won't point to that useful nugget of information contained within the wiki. It'll point to the Wiki's title page, which will contain 5 chapters - none of which would be identifiable as having any useful information for anyone other than the developers (because, by and large it doesn't).

Re: "Across the free software world we have a problem in getting people to pay for things"

I can only speak for myself. I use free software by preference when my use case for paid software can't justify the cost. e.g. I haven't bought ABBYY because I only need to use OCR about once a year, if that. £165 is a lot for that.

I also use free versions when the alternative is a subscription. Yes I will pay £50 for the paid version of some product, or even £100 maybe. But not £50 every year forever.

Re: Too many bells and whistles?

Interesting, in that context, is that Microsoft's "Ribbon" is much less customisable than the previous menu system. It's not a fault with the Ribbon, per se as much as the Microsoft in their wisdom stupidity made it difficult to customise.

Once I would have removed the items that I would never, in my professional ( and certainly not in my home) life, have any need for, and regrouped other menu items according to how they fitted together in my use case, quite easily. (Like anything I used for editing in an "edit" menu rather than split between review and home) Which was a useful productivity feature.This is no longer the case.

Re: "Christ is king in this country"

Always best to bear in mind that the Pilgrim Fathers' version of religious freedom was mostly about the freedom to be intolerant of other Christians.

Re: Video is still on his Twitter feed

"Many of these types have left Twitter for other sites that are even more open to their madness.

FTFY

Re: "...own domain raises a flag with me"

It's stay, not expand in business.

The number on the side of a van/shop frontage etc. is to attract new customers- tell 'em your number.

It won't lose them customers who get their details by recommendation - but it will block off an extra source of business. So they can stay in business if they don't rely on passing trade.

Always carry a Swiss Army knife.

In fact, any kind of travel from home, transition etc.this mini-toolkit is a potential life saver. (Perhaps even literally, who knows what might occur)

Re: Car Mechanics are not IT people

While I don't know if it's relevant here. Not every garage is an MOT station. Our local, nearest, for example takes cars to a friend who does the MOT at his place. This is not uncommon. Some just do servicing and repairs and leave MOT to bigger places. Some just don't want to do admin and prefer to keep their hands oily.

Re: @talktalkbusiness.net

This is talktalk business and small companies employing a dozen or so staff would quite reasonably use this. They aren't big enough to have their own tech support, may not be in a tech industry and have little or no knowledge or interest. They just wan an email system that works.

But that "very very small" " Mickey Mouse" operations is a couple of dozen, or more, livelihoods, not including the thin margins of their suppliers etc. Multiplied by by thousands of businesses. And in a Pandemic with lockdown etc.

This could be the difference between survival till things recover or failure for many of these companies.

We can't all work for Amazon.

Re: Knowing what you're talking about

No. "Priests" of varying versions, are also in that mix, arguably. Mostly though politicians and high end scammers who can make more money by misleading the public than by encouraging the truth.

Think who'll do well out of Brexit.

In any such situation, we always need to remember. Councillors are nominated by their friends in the party and elected by a public who know very little of them beyond their label. Some of these, in turn will rise up the party ranks and be nominated for parliamentary elections.

So once idiocy gets in the rot can spread far and wide. And like any kind of rot, it's easier to get it in than to eliminate it.

Transcribing speech.

Re: Cubic metres? cm^3? ?? What is its abbrev.??

Thinking about this, about a million years ago I was involved round the edge some project or other where the engineer sometimes wrote CuM for cubic metres ( of soil to be shifted). But they were transcribing a conversation we'd had, not writing a technical document. (Something along the lines of "We informed the client that we would need to move 300CuM of earth").

Re: Ticket master

Some of this is due to, what a parallel thread calls, outsourcing. i.e. damn fool beancounters thinking that they can provide a service that doesn't directly earn them revenue and might leave them with unsold tickets ( collecting in the money) by off-loading it to another company.

In the case of theatres they do this by turning a blind eye to the downsides. e.g. price gouging and unfair sales practices.

Re: Interesting choice of words

IOW The definition of an actuary is someone who finds accountancy too exciting.

And the difference between an accountant and a computer is that a computer has imagination.

Having had dealings with these companies over the years the common thread is that they sell a lot less work for a little less money than the council pays. The shortfall between what the council staff did and what the councillors and officers imagined they did was then all a premium priced extra. The outsourcing companies were all very aware that their contract was insufficient, because they had poached good council staff to run things and win contracts. The councillors and council officers otoh always seem(ed) to think that the job they were outsourcing comprised a simple headline task, and hadn't a clue what their staff actually did. X minutes to clean a classroom sounds plenty to people who think the job is just a quick Hoover of the floor and polish the desks. Tell that to the people who are dodging round piles of modelling, dusting heaps of National Curriculum documents abandoned in the corners, Hoovering the alphabet tiles placed where the kids sit in front of the teacher's desk and scraping glue ( and worse) off the surfaces.

We all wonder this. And do so every time one of these outsourcers goes round the revolving door. again.

Tender> win contract>fuck-up>tender for another contract> and round it goes.

Re: Same same

"committed to" means nothing.

" vigilantly monitoring" means less than nothing.

Hollow words having no substantive content.

Bugger your "back in the day".

I was still going through this in the early 21st C.