* Posts by Terry 6

5589 publicly visible posts • joined 31 Jul 2009

Did I or did I not ask you to double-check that the socket was on? Now I've driven 15 miles, what have we found?

Terry 6 Silver badge

It's saving money. Socket near floor means shorter cable runs, less chasing. They were often surface mounted to skirting boards too.

Same reason too many 1970s schools have the only socket right by the f***ing classroom door where it's of no use to anyone except possibly the cleaner.

Also, to be fair, the aesthetic of the period was to have the things down out of sight..

Terry 6 Silver badge

We learn the fearful warning stuff in our childhood. Possibly even then obsolete or just plain mythical. And it can get a deep hold that outlives reason.

Things like you must/must not ; put away the cutlery in a thunderstorm, watch TV in the thunderstorm, empty the kettle every night ( apparently it would corrode), not wash hair during a period ( I could never ascertain from the g/f or her sister what the consequences might be). And so on.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: I once...

There's a whole nuther issue about some PC designs with concealed switches. I've worked with a couple that had thin ridges which looked like trim, but were actually the switch, and logo bumps that looked like they should be the switches, but were purely branding.

Terry 6 Silver badge

There are still plenty of non-fixed, internally fused, screw wired plugs around, that are made in two sections that come apart to fit wires or fuses. One day you'll come to unplug something and the plug will feel sort of loose (or fall apart even). That's when flicking the switch on the socket seems like a very good idea.

5 months later, 37.7% of Windows 10 PCs are running the May 2020 Update... Wait, people are still on 1809?

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: @AC - No choice but to remain out of date

Yet two of my devices that aren't offered 2004 (prev) are also Dells. A reasonably recent laptop and an older big box. Plenty of space. Plenty of RAM. Laptop has a new SSD. Tower has three HDDs . Each has a C: partition far bigger than it needs to be.

Terry 6 Silver badge

None of my home PCs have been deemed worthy by Microsoft to receive that 2004 version- not even a rejection message. Nothing.

And while I'm not at all missing it I am curious about why this might be- or more precisely, how it occurs. Why some got the update, some get a hold message and some, such as myself are just "ghosted".

Windows 10 October 2020 Update has arrived... and so have the fixes. Plus: Fancy a discount on a Surface Duo?

Terry 6 Silver badge

20H2

None of my home machines have 2004 yet. No sign of it being offered.

Not greatly bothered tbh.

Ho hum: If you're so artificially intelligent, name this song while my videos go viral

Terry 6 Silver badge

My impression of (working in) the education system is that the last decade or two of curriculum changes have mostly been about Gradgrind fact acquisition and much less about learning to think or question.

Samsung to introduce automatic call blocking on Android 11-capable flagships

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: I just wind them up

I just ask why they can't do an honest job. like prostitution.

Or sympathetically say I understand why they're calling. The streets must be cold at that time of the year (probably too subtle). Then hang up.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Orange dialler already has this covered

Wrong wrong wrong.

Not everyone wants their entire household to know that they are being treated/tested or whatever. Many callers, not just doctors, need to verify who they are speaking to before leaving an identity.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Orange dialler already has this covered

NO NHS services can leave their identity. Someone else in the household may not know that you have an illness, are getting treatment etc.

UK state of the Internet report: Virgin Media 'fast', BT's PlusNet last

Terry 6 Silver badge

I check my 200Mb VM service pretty frequently, with various different tests.

I get my 200. Across all the different tests, consistently. Even on Wifi to my phone I get 60+

And we've rarely had any downtime.

Gamers are replacing Bing Maps objects in Microsoft Flight Simulator with rips from Google Earth

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Not just lower quality but appalingly out of date

Never looked at my home in Bing maps before. This is North London, not rural anywhere.

And it was much poorer than Google's offer. Street level data was years old. And the satellite image didn't get anywhere near as close.

Hey Reg readers, Happy Spreadsheet day! Because there ain't no party like an Excel party

Terry 6 Silver badge
Pint

Re: The bane of auto formatting....

I'm glad you wrote that. I've written similar comments on El Reg myself. You wrote this with precision, concisely and clearly.

You've earned, (see icon)

Thank you.

Terry 6 Silver badge

All of the above

Where a Spreadsheet becomes a problem ( or an Access DB or a WORD table) most of the problem is not the capabilities and idiosyncrasies of the product. It's the culture in which it is used. Creating a quick tool is one thing. Creating such a tool that needs to be in use for, potentially, ever - or overcomplicating such a tool with extra, originally unintended functions, and/or setting it running long term with no overview of how it works is the organisation's failure, not the Spreadsheet's.

That the developing companies, Microsoft or whoever, fall over themselves to add value to the product with bells and whistles is a shared guilt. The customers want that stuff, and the software companies deal it.

When you're On Call, only you can hear the silence of the clicks

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Classic Errror

escaping from annoying people in pubs.

Or buying your round?

Terry 6 Silver badge

Oh good

So it's not just the users who hit the send/enter button until something happens then.

UK's Cheshire Police tenders for whole new ERP system after Oracle Fusion went live with 'significant deficiency'

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Projects

Watch out for the vague reassurances that X will be included. That's the killer. Getting an actual specification and a time line. Because you'll be working against your own side too. They will see the ordinary, essential work-a-day stuff as unimportant compared to the solar powered security barriers and the special soft tread carpeting in the corridors. So in the design meetings the stuff that you actually need will always be number 31 of a 30 point agenda just before lunch.

A decades-old lesson on not inserting Excel where it doesn't belong

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Thingies cat

Oh yes. It seems to be accepted in organisational hierarchies that at some arbitrary level you accept the credit for someone else's knowledge and experience.

Terry 6 Silver badge

In reality UK addresses only need postcode and house number. Most autofill systems do precisely that.

I guess a written street and town name is useful for error tracking and such.

Barmy exceptions and errors aside.

Terry 6 Silver badge
Flame

Re: Excel as an intermediate step

And while we're at it

For London numbers, NOT just NOT 0208 or 0207 anything. It's (020 outside London or on a mobile)followed by 8xxx xxxx etc.within London

BT created confusion with this years and years ago during the transition to this numbering system because there was a bodge overlap when you either used (within London) the old number system, 366 1234 for example, or the new used/written as 0208 366 1234. Which ended after the transition. A long long long long time ago.

But you still see even new signs and headings with this stupid illogical 0207* xxx xxxx and so on.

Rant over.

*Explanation for non-Londoners. 020 is the dialling code for London- so you only need it outside the geographic area or on a mobile. Within London you dial the exchange code which starts with either 8 (mostly outer London), 7 (inner London) or sometimes 3 (just to make things more confusing) but that 4 digit area code is a single unit and you can't separate the 7 from the following digits. It has to be (020 o/s London) 7123 1234.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Thingies cat

There is a bigger issue here, too.

I discovered the hard way, early on in my career, that modesty, or even plain honesty can be a disadvantage. People who crow and claim brilliance get the plaudits - and promotions. People who do well, or even brilliant, are the also rans. I saw mediocrities rise far and fast above staff who were doing a wonderful job ( and yes, I'd include myself in at least part of that).

Partly because managers (who probably got there that way themselves) seem happy to take the boasts at face value. But maybe sometimes because the PHBs assume that everyone is over-promoting themselves so downgrade everyone equally.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Excel is ubiquitous

Exactly

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: beancounters were checking lists of Office licenses against users and...

Excel can be used in very simple ways. And then more complex functionality can be mastered as and when needed. It's initial state it's just a ready made table, which immediately places the user one step ahead of creating a WORD table. It then guides users to use simple formulae, or they can readily be looked up, to, say add a column of numbers, or count the size of a list, when they want to seek an easier way to do the job. And it can be used to create a simple flat database by using the columns as fields, (something that used to be available in simple database software that seems to be pretty much extinct now) but is bloody difficult and rather excessive to implement in ACCESS. In other words, Excel has a nice smooth, gentle learning curve for ordinary office workers with a job to do ( and is understandable by managers).

Excel is for amateurs. To properly screw things up, those same amateurs need a copy of Access

Terry 6 Silver badge

Some of which start off as "I'll create a tool for myself that will help me do X".

But then some manager decides that such tool or its improved efficiency is just what we need for the whole department. So the poor bugger who made it gets told to roll it out to the entire department, probably without any extra resources or time, and usually working from their own desktop.

Possible the managers decide that it needs a pro to do the job and get someone in who is a) cheap and b) barely trained himself who will take over the project, fail to understand it and create something that even the original user can't err.... use.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Access

Yes. £420

You had me doubting myself. (Don't know if there's a 2020 version though)

Quote from

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365/p/office-professional-2019/cfq7ttc0k7c5?activetab=pivot%3aoverviewtab

Office Professional 2019

‪Microsoft Corporation‬

32

• One-time purchase for 1 PC

• Classic 2019 versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, plus Publisher and Access

• Microsoft support included for 60 days at no extra cost

• Licensed for home and commercial use

Terry 6 Silver badge

The customers (senior management) they wow with eye candy that visibly (although not effectively) supports the data generation, consumption, and communication needs of the organization. means they can get the job done with fewer, cheaper staff. FTFY.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Inventory tracking

You omitted my ( two) favourite(s). That the inventory wasn't right before they started. Has never been right and is never going to be right. Because for years and years no one knew what they were ordering or how much, or where it was put in the stockroom. So there could be 15 years' supply of left handed widgets under a pile of grommet wranglers at the back, but only three months' worth of right handed widgets because everyone thought there was another pile in the boxes under the spare springs that were stacked on top of them when they had an unexpected order cancellation four years previously.

The other one being that there were twice as many knurdle splungers as everyone thought because some of the staff call them furdle splungers instead and keep ordering more because they keep getting told they haven't any in stock.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Access

Or WORD or even on a Powerpoint page. Or even (gasps) with a nice colour felt tip pen.. Publisher has all the amateur's tools for a nice poster, or a home made greetings card and all that SOHO stationery. Which,as noted, is why they don't put it in the Home version where it's useful..

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Access

Publisher is surely harmless, as long as it's not used out of its field ( for example to try to produce professional DTP). It is what you need to put a notice up on the office board, say, reminding people of the tea rota or that its Emily in accounts' birthday.

What is strange about it is that it isn't included in the Home version of Office. i.e. where it's most useful, but is included in the Pro versions where it isn't so much needed. Another example of how MS are so out of touch with the Real World.

IT Marie Kondo asks: Does this noisy PC spark joy? Alas, no. So under the desk it goes

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: cold feet warm computer.

Thermostats?

Huh.

The first purpose built comprehensive school, Kidbrooke, was all plate glass and concrete. Must have looked wonderful in the architects impression drawings. It was also aligned East-West, i.e. one side was facing South. It got so hot on that side that the table tops were quite literally too hot to touch at times. And the rooms were horribly hot most times.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Big boss' hand me downs

Working for a centrally employed teaching service we were on the receiving end of all sorts of crap that wasn't good enough for the bosses or higher profile teams.

So when we needed some decent computers we were sent an old thin client Unix network that had been removed from some other place, with no useful software, no mouse control or gui. (This was in Windows 9x era time, not the stone ages). It could never even be made to work, let alone useful.

And when we asked for decent reception area furniture ( where parents and visitors had to sit) we got sent the worn out crap from the director's office and he got new stuff.

From the Department of WCGW: An app-controlled polycarbonate lock with no manual override/physical key

Terry 6 Silver badge

Hmmm

Older daughter got some free beer for heroes from Camden Brewery- which she'd damn well earned. (3 months redeployed to work as a nursing assistant on a Cofid-19 recovery ward). But I'm guessing she won't be too keen on this offer.

Big IQ play from IT outsourcer: Can't create batch files if you can't save files. Of any kind

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Idiocy

And then there's the idealogical aspect. In private companies it's referred to as concentrating on their core tasks. Which makes absolute sense until you think it through. i.e. the same level of management is needed to manage a contract as is to manage an internal team because you still need to make sure that the job is done satisfactorily. maybe more because an internal team only needs normal management, not the forensic skills of managing external contractors' performance. Whether companies who outsource services do actual do that level of contract managing is a different kettle of ball games.

In local authority services it's idealogical and financial. It's a way of getting staff on crap pay and conditions.

My experience of this in local authorities is probably replicated in commercial organisations, - I'd guess - based on what I've been told-. is that the frontline staffs' own managers have to devote too much time to this work, because no one higher up has the competence, knowledge or interest in doing it. The ones that did were all got rid of, or went to work as contract managers for the outsourcing companies. And yes, I've known people who used to manage local authority site staff, IT teams etc who've gone on to become account managers with big contracting companies. Taking their skills and knowledge with them. And come contract renewal or any (inevitable) out of contract work they're like gamekeepers turned poachers.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Highlights an ongoing problem

Not Understanding the User Base's Requirements

That's kind of where I left the world of computing.

For a couple of decades there were no "proper" school IT staff supporting primaries.

It was types like me, semi-trained semi-amateurs who ran staff training and supported schools.

Towards the end the schools and my own teaching service had proper local authority IT teams to call on and servers and fancy stuff like that. I slowly began to be less necessary in that role.

But just when I thought I could forget about it and just concentrate on doing my own real job various kinds of new educational and and administrative programmes started to appear. The one thing they had in common is that they weren't teacher friendly. Either not doing the job that was needed or just failing to work for teachers. Classic problems such as having a compulsory field that only made sense or needed information that was only available to, say, the social work team.

Or a really good piece of educational software that defaulted to saving kids' work in a restricted area ( programme folders) where there was no save access, and also suppressed error messages so that no one knew where the work had gone ( which was basically into thin air). Added to which access to the teachers' section where they could change the default was somewhat obscure, to say the least. It took enough teacher time learning the educational aspects of how to use the programme with the kids without a whole extra burden of trying to figure this out. Needless to say a lot of software never got used in any of the many schools I used to visit.

So I found myself trying to a) help teachers around this ( including changes to defaults where possible) and b) sitting with the designers and administrators of the software and saying things like "No teacher, or indeed anyone who wsn't a Social worker/Psychologist/etc would ever think that this sentence meant what you seem to think it means." or "You can't make that a compulsory field because teachers don't have that information" and so on.

But the biggest group was software that just didn't do what the teachers needed it to do, because someone somewhere didn't realise that this wasn't how teachers worked. One, I can't remember what it was, needed teachers to be able to leave the classroom "just for five minutes" for some kind of setting up tasks. Like, yeah, you can just leave 30 7 year old kids when you felt like. What ever it was it never got used.

Terry 6 Silver badge
Alert

Re: Couldn't happen now?

No you clearly don't. This is outsourced (SERCO and another bunch) under Dido (TalkTalk ) Harding''s ever watchful eye.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Idiocy

Office software's ability to access files anywhere on a system a decade or two back was well known. I'd used it myself - so there had been no excuse for leaving that open.

And no one with an ounce of sense turns off core functions (like save and print).

All of which does rather suggest that issues around outsourcing, and the kinds of people who run public IT must be pretty long standing.

And then we wonder why public projects never seem to work, let alone on time or within budget.

Twitter: Our image-cropping AI seems to give certain peeps preferential treatment. Solution: Use less AI

Terry 6 Silver badge

In another part of El reg the same day

In brief AI software designed to monitor students via webcam as they take their tests – to detect any attempts at cheating – sometimes fails to identify the students due to their skin color.

Products like ExamSoft are being used by coll.......

https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/05/in_brief_ai/

Help! My printer won't print no matter how much I shout at it!

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Top priority "Can't print"

Well done. (But that's a terrible single point of failure. Next time it might not have been an issue solved with a spare printer).

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: HP

Having written the previous...

I thought I'd look at he Brother website to see when tehy last updated the drivers. Though their software had been telling me that it was up to date,when I last checked. I found a slightly more recent driver. (2016).

So I installed it. Just like with the HP of many years earlier it killed off the old driver, but then refused to install- insisting that there was a driver installed already ( clearly not version aware).

Printer no longer working I had to go through the usual steps.

Remove all software from previous ( still. in place).

Nope.

Go though registry and manually delete every relevant reference to Brother.

Then it would install.

Do the writers of driver software never test their stuff in the real world.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Out of tree error

Double spacing was required in my student days (typewriters) and single sides was the only way (and also required).

I guess the PC is still just a clever typewriter to some.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: HP

Yup. At home an agieng basic laser (Brother HL-1110) for all the routine black printing. A Canon inkjet printer/scanner for colour, which we don't that use much

Terry 6 Silver badge
Flame

Re: HP

I've refused to use anything HP for many years and tried to prevent them being bought at work.

Ever since my home HP had an update that refused to install. But left the existing install broken.

The old install had failed to uninstall properly because a particular dll wouldn't go away.

The new install refused to work because that dll needed to be replaced and so it just aborted.

The version number of the poxy file that refused to be overwritten was the same fucking one so a simple "skip" would have done.

I went through all the various levels of uninstall.Several times.

Halloween approaches and the veil between worlds wears thin – the Windows 10 October 2020 Release walks among us

Terry 6 Silver badge

2004?

I don't object to updates and stuff- I have time on my hands to sort out problems these days (Or reimage).

But I haven't been offered the 2004 yet. On either of my PCs.

And now they're prepping the October one, eh.

Maybe they need to sort out the current job first.

We don't need maintenance this often, surely? Pull it. Oh dear, the system's down

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: The people who wrote it said that it would take them weeks to fix, at a cost of ~£5k

No

Terry 6 Silver badge

The people who wrote it said that it would take them weeks to fix, at a cost of ~£5k

Is this how the industry works then?

You sell a duff product and demand loads of cash to make it do what it should have done anyway. That being said, even bloody Microsoft send out fixes each month. Free.

Amazon staffers took bribes, manipulated marketplace, leaked data including search algorithms – DoJ claims

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: House cleaning

'Cept Google seems to ignore such exclusions when it wants to. The days when you could craft a search so it actually found what you waned anddidn't just try to flog you stuff based on a key word are long gone.

Research into deflecting potentially world-destroying asteroids is apparently not a 'national priority' for the UK

Terry 6 Silver badge

And apologise to it.

Terry 6 Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: We've left the EU

2 Thumbs down. Now leaves me wondering, are they;

A) taking me literally or

B) sensitive Brexiteers that know I'm taking the piss out of them

2 is more fun.

0ops. 1,OOO-plus parking fine refunds ordered after drivers typed 'O' instead of '0'

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: And this ladies and gentlemen...

A good rule of thumb; if you have to stop and think about this kind of system before you can ascertain the information it's a bad system.