Posts by John 110 658 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Aug 2009
You forgot that cheerful little jingle that Windows plays during startup that is supposed to indicate that Windows is finished loading. It LIES!!! OK maybe Windows is finished, but all the other crap that insists needs loading before you can do anything is still churning away for another 5 minutes. If you do crack and click on something, it never appears, so you click it again and get chided for trying to run stuff twice... aaargh
"I think it's primarily intended to annoy pirates!"
It won't annoy organised pirates, because they can afford a solution to circumvent DRM in bulk, It won't annoy casual downloaders, because they get their DRM-free stuff from organised pirates.
It will annoy folk who believe that if they've paid the manufacturer or creator for something, then they have the right to make backup copies to guard against the DRM server being turned off (Zune) or the book they have on their Kindle being withdrawn (1984).
It's usually the little guy that gets screwed by this sort of thing.
"You look down – why not buy some stuff to cheer yourself up?"
COMPU-TEACH:
Posit: you are living in a stagnant, declining civilisation. Where are you looking?
PUPIL:
Down.
COMPU-TEACH:
What do you see?
PUPIL:
My shoes.
COMPU-TEACH:
Correct! What do you do to cheer yourself up?
PUPIL:
Uhm… press the button?
COMPU-TEACH:
Incorrect! Think again. Your world is a depressing place; you are looking at your shoes. How do you cheer yourself up?
PUPIL:
I buy a new pair.
COMPU-TEACH:
Correct!
PUPIL:
Can I press the button?
COMPU-TEACH:
All right.
[Button is pressed. A surge of energy]
PUPIL:
Wa-ho! So nice.
Douglas Adams
I like just white coffee. My youngest, who is a gamesmaster (Known for: World Weaving, storytelling and rambling rants, according to the website...) and a part time barista hates people like me...
I'm also Luddite enough not to need charging sockets (ooh, that sounds a bit cyberpunk)
Bad example.
If M&S offered a clothing search engine then showed their own offering even though your query clearly indicated that you wanted Ben Sherman, then I might agree with you. The screenshot in the article where it even offered to correct the spelling just indicates vindictiveness.
We had a guy that DESPERATELY needed Dragon Dictate (this was the 90s). Before it would even install his PC needed a new soundcard (and a set of quality speakers) and a microphone, lots more memory and an extra big HD -- then it installed but wouldn't run so he needed new PC. Then he "didn't have time" to train it. So he went back to dictating stuff onto tape and getting his secretary to type it.
He also needed one of those desks where the monitor (90s - the monitor was the size of a minibus) sits underneath a glass section of the desktop. Then a bigger monitor because it was now too far away to read, then he still couldn't see it because his desk was covered in paper...
Besides, as my wheelchair-using wife would tell you, wheelchairs and crowded halls don't go together. You can't see over people, (you spend the event looking at more groins than you might be comfortable with) the push handles emasculate anyone you reverse into and you can't get close enough to a booth to actually see anything. Oh and it's hard to handle a drink and a wheelchair. She ends up sitting in a corner relying on people coming to her.
If I'm already fishing about for my phone, I might as well just scan the dangling thingy (ooer missus) on my car keys. Actually my car keys are easier to find than my phone, what with them digging into my leg an all. And I don't have to press any buttons and enter a code onto the lock screen before I can run the app...
(what is thees obsession with the mobile phone...)
"...I tend to have a small tablet or a Kindle to entertain me..."
I use a device consisting of thin flexible pages bound together in cardboard sheets. The pages have markings that are read by an organic optical reading system, and are decoded by an organic matrix that doesn't often blow up.
I think folk are missing the point here. It's not the smartphone per se that's the great invention, it's the need to miniaturize all sorts of cameras, microphones sensors etc enough to fit into the form factor and make them at an affordable price that's the breakthrough. Do you really think we'd have seen (for example) the camera drone revolution without the small, high quality bits of kit originally developed for phones?
But no, I wouldn't credit Jobs. My fliptop alcatel had a decent camera that foreshadowed just what you could achieve when you can stuff kit into a pocket-sized device.
"In general they seem to agree that the way a USB A socket goes is such that the USB symbol on the plug is uppermost. "
Unless you have a Dell PC. The ones we have at work (ie quite old...) have the USB sockets on the front of the case "upsidedown"
Who cares what way up the back ones are, you always have to rotate the plug several times to get them to fit.
I knew an IT lady who didn't like to embarrass people, soft-hearted soul that she was. When phoned with an obvious "it's not powered on" problem, she would explain that they've had a batch of faulty 3-pin plugs, and can the user check the serial number on the one they have. Miraculously, the problem cleared itself!
We had one user who managed to consistently plug in the "printer end" usb plug 90 degrees wrong. It doesn't help of course that device manufacturers can't seem to agree what way up the sockets go...
Speaking as a stroppy fecker in a Pathology lab, I can assure you that as a non-patient facing service (ie not important) we have to sometimes stress that patients might die if they don't get their results.
As IT support for 40 other stroppy fecker in a Microbiology lab (being told we're Pathogy is intensely irritating, but a matter for another day), I can feel your pain. I regularly have to sort caps-lock password problems. The LIMS we use needs you to switch on caps-lock once you're logged in, unfortunately our users generally change their passwords after they've put caps on, then next time, they lock themselves out by forgetting they used caps lock the last time.
I'm going to thumbs-up you anyway, because I've been on both sides of that fence...
@Wupspups
I had to think before replying to this one because I didn't want to take away from the emotive and important message about cancer treatment that the Reg is putting across here.
Anyway...
Certain groups of UK medical researchers have shown that they are perfectly capable of manipulating the data in their studies to make claims about treatment that are not shown to be valid when the data used to support those claims is examined by other interested parties.
Further, certain reputable UK journals have colluded in this both explicitly by publishing misleading findings (and releasing press releases which publicize those findings) and implicitly by not calling out the perpetrators.
The details are a bit long and convoluted for here but looking here https://jcoynester.wordpress.com/ and here http://www.virology.ws/2015/10/22/trial-by-error-ii/ and searching out "PACE trial" with your engine of choice will give a bit of background.
This sort of scandal is sadly not rare and our press is willing to pull any interpretation out of trial write-ups that will up the reading figures and further their own political agenda (see current NHS reporting for examples).
What I'm trying to convey here is that I've personally lost faith in all science reporting, both in the media (who seem to go out of their way to get it wrong) and the journals.
.gz and the app won't work? Sigh
We have GPs based in the rougher areas who prescribes antibiotics for colds rather than try to tell some ned (that's not listening anyway) that it's not going to do any good.
As an aside, colds can leave you susceptible to secondary infections and, depending on your physical condition, antibiotics can be useful for preventing complications.
The whole area is a bit of a delicate balance and our Medics spend a lot of time giving antibiotic advice on the phone.
<Microbiologist hat>
Currently in our Lab, we use traditional culture/sensitivities methods to check urines. A negative result will be available in 24hrs. A positive result is trickier. Depending on how hard the organism is to identify and the sensitivity pattern, it can take 36 to 48hrs to give you a result.
What a clinician does with that result is variable as well. A lot depends on how ill/frail the patient is (or how young) and whether they're immunosuppressed. The bottom (front-bottom in this case) line is that most simple UTIs clear up themselves if you drink plenty of water and the urine doesn't look like pus to start with. Persistent and chronic UTIs in the very young, the very old and the debilitated sometimes need more work/antibiotics.
note 1: A&E will only use a dipstick and check for protein in the urine - that's not what I would call a result. That can only come from taking a sample and sending it to the lab.
note 2: "something as basic as a urine test" (snort)
see http://labtestsonline.org.uk/understanding/analytes/urine-culture/tab/faq/ if you can be bothered
</Microbiologist hat>
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