Posts by AndrueC

Re: world's biggest English-language news website

world's biggest English-language news website

If ever there was a need for a sad face photograph, this is it.

Re: "optional and reorderable"

I remember when left-clicking once on an edit box that didn't have the focus just focused it and moved the cursor. Double clicking selected all the text. These days single clicking selects everything and you have to click again to position the cursor where you want it.

And all these flat buttons - often without any indication of whether they are enabled or not.

And a lot of UI 'designers' apparently have no knowledge of what an accelerator key is nor what an accept or cancel key is.

The original rules made sense. Then arty-farty types decided they wanted to 'differentiate' their product and that it would be 'cool' to look different.

Re: 'ordered' by one of our Cisco routers

how the hell did it know its postal delivery address?

I assume that it was registered with Cisco by our corporate IT department when they installed it. All that then needs to happen is that it notifies Cisco HQ of the failure and their support systems look its serial number up in a database and arrange for the fan to be sent out to the registered address.

It's technically possible Cisco offers monitoring services that will raise the alarm. I just can't immediately find any specific service that includes ordering spare parts. So maybe it was our IT department sending it out but usually they came and visited us (anything to get out of London for the day, lol).

Edit: I have found this document.

"Devices equipped with Smart Call Home technology can be enabled to continuously monitor their own health. Once enabled, this feature can notify you of potential issues using a secure, personalized web portal that contains messages, detailed diagnostics, and recommendations. If a serious problem arises, Smart Call Home can automatically generate a service request with Cisco TAC that is routed to the right team for your particular problem"

It doesn't specifically mention sending out spare parts but it shows how they have the technology to know that 'Router 3 in Bucknell has a failed fan" from there to "Send a replacement out" isn't far :)

Re: Did not notice

I noticed when I tried to create a PR. So I notified the rest of the team and switched to a different task for an hour. By the time I returned Github was back. No source code was harmed or lost.

Re: "even in these interesting times, artisanal dough prodding will endure"

Aye, plenty of bog roll but there weren't any eggs tonight (I didn't want any but noticed the shelf was empty). I can only assume everyone is spending their lock down baking cakes and/or bread. I do have enough wholemeal flour to make a couple of loaves but whilst you certainly can make wholemeal pizza base it detracts from the taste and it can be tricky to get the water content right.

On the plus side there was no queuing tonight and it was fairly empty so I was in and out in fifteen minutes.

Re: Confusing for those that dont .NET

Did you miss the bit when I said it hadn't been released yet? I mean, sure, we could ship it (hopefully this year) still targeting .NET 4.5 but it's hardly an auspicious beginning for an application suite with an expected life time of a decade. It also doesn't help our team if we prevent them using new technology while working on new developments. Would you be happy to work on a new project that was targeting .NET 4.5 as part of a team where no-one had any practical knowledge of Core?

The project is still under development so we want to be using the latest tools and latest framework. We also want our team members to be up to date with developments so that we remain competitive and retain staff.

Our existing applications, sure, they pretty much stay where they are although we had to upgrade them to .NET 4.7 in order to get TLS1.2.

Re: Cables with labels on

Much like comments in source code. That's why I prefer to use good identifier naming to indicate what the code is doing. The compiler doesn't care about comments so won't ever alert you if they become out of date. Plus in my experience most programmers don't read comments anyway.

Sadly I don't think there's any equivalent for wiring.

It also sends a useful message to these scum: Don't bother attacking us again - you're just wasting your time and risking your freedom for nothing.

If everyone did that in such situations (and including kidnappings) the crimes would be far less common. Every time someone gives in to extortion they propagate the evil practice.

Re: why the fuck should the big boys have free reign

That's just sport though, I specifically wrote 'leisure activities'. Although Golf is a sport it's not particularly physical and I view it more as 'something to do that takes half a day'.

But my main point, really, is that it's not something that only the well-to-do play. It's within reach of almost anyone who has a job. The idea that only captains of industry and politicians play it is old fashioned. And having many years experience I can say that very few people talk about their jobs while they are playing. Quite the opposite - golf is a break from their jobs (and their families) - and they'd rather talk about almost anything else.

Re: "Why the heck did we buy loads of desktop PCs"

We just carried our desktops to our cars and took them home. A couple of people had to take their monitors as well but being programmers most of us already had everything else we needed. We don't even need to connect to the VPN very often because most of what we want is in the cloud.

Oh and IoC and interfaces are your friend. For instance we have an IPlatformSpecificHelper which offers methods for doing things that every platform does (eg; getting a Font, creating a bitmap) but does differently. At the heart is AutoFac and each platform has its own registration module which supplies the classes that actually implement the interfaces. So Wpf applications will be using WpfSpecificHelper and mobile apps use XamarinSpecificHelper. Since they both implement the above interface they can be passed into platform common code with impunity. In fact we use this technique extensively to allow us to separate functionality by module by assembly thus aiding in general code portability across our projects.

A related trick is to have an interface for platform specific objects eg; IPlatformSpecificFont. Then you use platform specific converters to return the actual object. I find that better than just using 'object' everywhere.

Re: Civilian note

Yes, hmmm, RBLs might not work very well for IPv6 addresses

Assumptions don't work well for IT either ;)

It's rejecting based on the recipient. 'be3b1ce3b' isn't even close to the required format so the message is rejected immediately. My mail server has very strict recipient rules because I use a DEA system. That recipient name isn't even close to acceptable.

The only blacklisting my server does is on security violations. There are no IPv6 addresses in the list at the moment but I don't know if that's because it doesn't store them or because there have been no attacks from IPv6 addresses.

Re: IPv6 by default

Yup. A couple of years ago they rebuilt their core network but the only impact it had on their IPv6 offering was to kill off the beta program because it wasn't compatible with the new network. That was when I finally left. I went back to an ISP that had been running dual-stack for over ten years.

Re: "not giving Windows 10 enough headroom"

Oh iOS can be just as bad..possibly worse. I have a Mac Mini on my desk (purely for building Xamarin apps I hasten to add). Every now and then it will refuse to build or to apply an XCode update because it doesn't have enough space. When I investigate what is using all the space I find out that it's 'System'.

Great.

Re: Bread

Good point. I only have one bag left. Luckily since I'm working at home I probably wouldn't make sarnies anyway but it's the one area where my grocery buying has let me down.

Re: Who knew...

I wonder how much the new scissor-switch keys cost. Perhaps they are a snip.

Re: Surprised that Trump ...

*cough*

I hope you're going to self-isolate yourself now that you've coughed.

Re: We have to use Microsoft Teams.

Yup. A lousy UI and - in my case at least - no-one listed in recent contacts or favourites. How odd, given that we've been using it for over a year now.

And you have to question a client/server application which, when it needs you to log back in, has to first restart itself.

Re: Turn it round

Just curious. How would people react if it was turned around and applied to other hobbies?

Actually it could be quite useful for golf. Many's the time (well, once or twice anyway, ahem) that I've wished there was a tracking device fitted to the ball.

Re: Galileo is hardly a success story either

As opposed to the UK version, which in true British fashion, has only got as far as a delayed report about doing something.

For twenty years everyone where I live - and quite a few people just passing through - has wanted a bypass around Farthinghoe on the A422. Mrs Leadsom was so proud recently because despite screwing up the initial application she still managed to help secure funding...for a survey.

I fully expect the bypass to open the day after I retire and no longer have much need for it. So expect it to open in about seven years.

It's so nice to know that - according to that blog - the Transport Secretary has sent Northamptonshire County Council an Expression of Interest form. How jolly hockey sticks.

Meh. I use an atomic force manipulator integrated into an scanning electron microscope and modify the RAM and CPU register contents myself.

Re: Oh $deity, retirement means...

Splitter! I'm with the Old Farts club.

Not had any major problems with WPF performance here. There are times when you have to a be little bit sensible about which/when properties are updated but we've only had to deal with that in places where updates were inherently spammy such as audio position information during playback.

The biggest complaint I'd level against WPF is the learning/toolbox curve but we got over that pretty quickly. Once everyone embraces MVVM and learns to shy away from code-behind and you build up a decent toolbox (mainly converters) things go well.

It also has the advantage of being very similar to Xamarin so by and large developers can move between the two freely and share a great deal of code. Typically you have a simple shared view model which has a platform specific service injected. I reckon 95% of our code base is shared between our Windows, Android and iOS client projects.

Re: We need more tax...

Hey, I'm not saying it's right. What's right is that we all should pay more tax

Citation needed.

A pure-random-evolution model doesn't make a lot of sense. A "guided evolution" model [whether the guidance is gods, aliens, cosmic consciousness of a species, or who-knows-what] seems to make more sense.

That's just anthropomorphic confirmation bias: We exist therefore some(one/thing) encouraged that to happen. Random evolution is only difficult to accept if you think that human beings are somehow important and desirable. The problem with that (aside from an obvious psychological bias on the subject) is that we have no evidence of any external entity that could judge our merits.

Occam's Razor suggests that we shouldn't try to explain things by making stuff up so without evidence we shouldn't posit such an entity (this is the main reason I'm an atheist). We're therefore left with no good reason to assume that our existence is the result of guidance.