Posts by John Brown (no body)

Re: Major Major

My wife, researching her family history, came across three generations of men, (grandfather, father, son) all with the first name of Major but different middle names. None were ever in any branch of the military.

As an aside, back when I was late teens, I dated a girl who's surname was Major :-)

"(and senior citizens)"

Hey! Criminals, terrorists and drug dealers get old too you know! Well, maybe not as many as the average demographic, but some do :-)

I've often wondered if people who live in a "tropical paradise" yearn for a holiday in the snow. Or for a holiday to a temperate country like the UK where even at the height of summer, the weather can be so unpredictable :-)

Just the other day, it was a "sweltering" 31c here[*] and I saw a very few people obviously from warmer climes with coats on! :-)

"here" being NE England, on the coast. Above 30c isn't common. At all.

Re: Friendly immigration

"gave me a friendly smile as I came through. Never forgotten that."

Sadly, that just confirms how rare a smile is in that situation. In pretty much all of private industry, "service with a smile" is the norm in the US.

Re: Proof if needed

It also requires that you document the procedure for updating the documented procedures. You can change the procedures and matching documentation at any time, just so long as it all matches up, especially if being (re-)certified :-)

Re: Sometimes HR can be too efficient

"I was andy.a......@uk.company.com and the other was andrew.a.....@au.company.com"

Similar here, but at the same company and domain. One letter difference. On creating a new email, Outlook helpfully (mostly!) gives a dropdown of names matching what you are typing, usually based in order of who most often contact, so most people just click on the first matching name in the list. Except I'd been there for years and the new guy was, well the new guy. So my name would normally be the top one and the difference in spelling was subtle enough that you had to look quite closely to be sure, assuming you were aware of the possibility in the first place. Even after a few years, I still get his emails every now and then although he rarely gets mine :-)

Re: Unique keys

Yeah, I went to school, with twins, John and Joseph. Fine in person, but I bet they had issues on computer systems. Officialdom was already running benefits and tax on computers by then even if it was the beginning of the home computer revolution (The school got it;s first computer while I was there, a Commodore PET 2001, which pretty much dates the year :-))

Re: Unique keys

Ah yes, the old "joke" about the two Spanish firemen, Jose and Josb :-)

Re: Unique keys

You missed the point. They were referring to and quoting misconceptions used as "rules" not actual workable rules. Click the link and have a read.

Re: Unique keys

That;s just his own personal reality. It's all in his head :-)

Re: Unique keys

"because everyone spells names starting with "Mc" with a space"

I'd love to know where the person who came up with that "rule" lives. I've known many, many Scots and Irish where surnames starting with Mc or Mac are fairly common and I've never met one who puts a space after the Mc or Mac. I suppose it might happen, but if so, must be quite rare.

Re: Unique keys

"A hundred and fifty years is a long time to bear a grudge. But it is with the French, so..."

Scots v England? Irish v England? Welsh v England? And that's just the three obvious local (to me) ones. Greece and Turkey?

Re: Unique keys

"Unfortunately, it's all too common though, even now, people still forget that not everyone is from a western European background."

That includes Irish and Polish and probably others Western Europeans who constantly have trouble with English and more specifically US centric IT systems and what is "acceptable" in name fields. Which, on the face of it, seems a little odd considering the huge Irish and Polish diaspora in the US. IIRC most white Americans claim some Irish blood :-) I guess they were all anglicised when they arrived to match the forms they had to fill in.

Re: Unique keys

"No problem in German, only in English (and American)."

ISTR an episode of Miami Vice guest staring Phil Collins who went around the episode calling everyone "wanker". On a US networked TV show where swear/curse words were very rarely used. Ever. Censors are/were strict. But "wanker" got through because it was pretty much an unknown word in the US at the time. The British audience found it hilarious because so much imported US TV was so "sanitary" in that regard. There was little no internet back then so language, culture and fashion didn't propagate as quickly as it does these days. I'd not be surprised if swear/curse words, especially from English, transfer fairly quickly and widely into non-English countries, partly because there;s so much US tv and films exported all over the world.

Re: Unique keys

Likewise, William Henry Gates III. I never really understood why people do that. Yeah, "honour" a male relative such as father or grandfather by using their name, but use it as a middle name to minimise confusion. It almost feels like a warped throwback to the aristocracy, but in their case it was the title, not the name that carried on and you got things like Richard the Third or the 5th Duke of Gloucester. Worse, IMHO is "jr". Great if there's only two generations, but if it does junior become senior when they name their kid junior too and grandad becomes senior senior? Worse, some people actually name their kid "Junior".

I have no objection to people choosing to do what they want, but it does feel as if some parents really don't spend a great deal of time thinking of a name for their sprogs, not even to the extent of considering what hell their kids might go through at school because the first name/last name or initial/last name name make "funny" combinations in the minds of young kids :-)

Re: Unique keys

"Same here. I can't even sign up to the same GP as my Dad because the NHS system cannot handle two people with the same name at the same surgery. The NHS is supposed to recognise people by their NHS ID, or at least name and date of birth, but that clearly doesn't work, so all this talk of a unique ID might be good in theory but I can tell you it ain't gonna work in practice."

That sounds more like a either a problem at your surgery or the software they use. My NHS surgery clearly has no issues with duplicate names so long as other details are different as I discovered when joining the queue for my last flu jab and on giving my name was told, "oh, there's two of you, DoB please?" and all was well with the world. I have no idea how long we've both been registered patients there but I, at least, registered about 40 years ago. I think the 'flu jab was prioritising older patients first, so he'd be of a comparable age to me too. I doubt my surgery is unique in the software it uses but I'd not be surprised to find there's multiple vendors and/or versions out there.

Re: Amanda Langowski & Brendan Le Blanc

They don't care. The people who do care and drop Windows are a microscopic minority compared to the numbers of home users who have little clue and they are a tiny minority compared to the primary group of corporate drones who have not only no choice i what OS they use, it's most likely locked down by InTune or similar they either can't access or can't change most settings anyway. MS are simply dumbing down even further based on the majority use case to the detriment of the rest of us. It's been an ongoing trend with most tech devices, especially since PCs became consumer devices. Make the devices as simple as possible for the users so they don't have to bother their pretty little heads with actually learning how to use it (But meanwhile, keep changing the interface frequently so they still get lost and confused.)

Re: "always show icons, never thumbnails"

True, but removing options to "tidy it up" is stupid. That's a bit like mum throwing all your toys away because you don't put them away in the cupboard when finished with them. The obvious solution is to put the less used menu choices under an "advanced" menu. That tidies things up automatically and it's just a very simply GUI change, not an OS code change and keeps the less used stuff for those who need or want it.

Re: Sounds typical

Yeah, maybe we English should be accusing the Amish of cultural appropriation?

"Disable and disabled I kind of can see their point."

Disabled became the "in vogue" term to use when "handicapped"[1] became a term of insult, or least had bad connotations. Whatever "disabled" gets replaced with will go the same way. See also The Spastic Society and their relatively recent name change. I still see people using "spaz" online as an insult, mainly US people, most of whom probably have no idea of the origin of the term "spaz", a word very rare here in the UK nowadays.

[1] I think in the US, they still use "handicapped" as a normal, everyday word, eg handicapped parking with, AFAIK, no underlying connotations

Re: The world changes, language changes. That's great - let's get on with living the change.

"INI should at least be doing wide scale, unbiased research on how many people are actually, genuinely offended by these various technical terms when used in their precise technical context. Of course, that means first understanding the technical context of each term, then providing that exact context and nothing else, when asking people; things they clearly don't care about."

I agree and upvoted you. But would just add that tiny little nudges in the "right" direction are how you resolve the issues. But it takes many nudges of the right type in the right places and times over many years to change things. And I don't believe this action from INI is any kind of nudge at all since it's targetting only one industry which most non-industry people are not even aware of the internal technical terms used. The sort of nudges needed are long term and should come from the very top. Elected officials are a wide church and some are racist homophobes elected even when people know that about them and they can't think long term, but only as far as the next election. We're stuffed :-)

Re: It's not black & white...actually it is, but not for the reason you may be thinking

"Red is a universal colour throughout nature to signal danger (some flowers only appear red if you can seem in UV light)."

Careful what you call "universal". In some cultures, red is a sign of good luck. In others, white is primarily worn at funerals/in mourning. Some cultures have no separate words for blue and green they are just variations/shades of the same colour so in some parts of the world when you ask what colour the sky is where they live, they may well say "green" :-)

"scones"

Depending on how you pronounce that, you could be offending one or the other half of the UK population. Unless you go with Scon-Ez/ Scone/Ez, in which case most will just look a bit nonplussed and politely ignore you. Let;s not even go NEAR the jam/cream debate as that could lead to serious violence!

Re: Fixing things due to a misunderstanding of the origin

"Short bus kids". Heard on US TV news channel just the other day.

Or, going further back, Larry Nivens Known Space novels where "bleep", "bleeping" and "censored" are highly offensive swear/curse words :-)

Re: And by "solving" a non-problem ...

"Not knowing who they are, or their methodology, etc is your problem, not theirs."

No, it's the exact opposite. If someone wants to make a claim, it's up to *them* to defend and justify it.

Re: Mis-applied Words

"It always bugged me that IDE drives were set up as "master" or "slave", because the so-called slave drive does not carry out any commands from the so-called master drive."

It bugged me too, but for a different reason. Prior to IDE, drives were usually numbered so various schemes could operate with different numbers of numbered drives. IDE by definition limited the interface to only two drives. Multiple controllers meant you ended up with the silly situation of Primary Master/Slave and Secondary Master/Slave and even , in some rare cases, Tertiary Master/Slave. So, we change Master/Slave to Primary/Secondary and we end up in the even sillier situation of having Primary Primary/Secondary and Secondary Primary/Secondary and even Tertiary Primary/Secondary! Clearly whoever thought this through didn't think it through very far.

Re: And by "solving" a non-problem ...

"They are pointing out that a (very short) list of words which mean something society agrees is intolerable are being used by us to mean something very different and we should switch to using different words."

Since when has the word "abort" been intolerable in "society"? It's a perfectly good word in almost all contexts and as far as I can see, on it's own is not offensive to anyone in any way.

Would you be happier if we replaced the #1 word on the list, "abort" with the more long winded "terminate" which isn't on the list? It has exactly the same connotations in all contexts as the word abort so we should be able to transition[1] to that quite easily to make you happy.

[1] Am I[2] still allowed to say "transition" or is that offensive to some in the LGBTQ+ community?

[2] Can one still refer to myself[3] as I or is that offensive to people with dissociative identity disorder?

[3] Can one still say "myself" as "my" implies ownership and has potential connotations of slavery.

Re: And by "solving" a non-problem ...

"not as someone who wants to unnecessarily offend people."

Who could possibly be offended by the term "abort" except a few people in a highly specific context? Why should they be allowed to claim a generic word for their exclusive use and meaning and then have it banned in all other contexts?

Re: Too Anglocentric

I once had to deal with an American who kept insisting that Africa is populated by "African Americans".

I remember a British athlete being interviewed on US TV and they wanted to know what it was like growing up in "England" as an African America. He tried to correct them a number of times by stating he was British NOT African American and was clearly getting annoyed. I think he eventually stated quite clearly "I am Black British NOT African American" with emphasis on the "black". Many in the US can be very insular.

Re: Nope.

"Context is key in language and communication"

Exactly! Abort is commonly used in many contexts and it's use should not be aborted prematurely just because the USA is going through some sort of quasi religious schism over women rights. Similar applies the black/whitehats. That's a nod to Hollywood westerns who in turn took it from the age old origins of humanity where nighttime, dark, black of night was something to be feared and the light/white of day was relief from that "black" danger. This fear pre-dates the current differentiation of the various races around the world so isn't racially motivated in a normal context. Slave. maybe. But Master? Not so much. I can't see traditional posts such as Master of the Rolls, military ranks such Master Sergeant, Master at Arms etc being changed, let alone the traditional apprentice, journeyman, master being changed. I mean, FFS, even Microsoft have a load of qualifications titled "Certified Master of $subject". Although I could MS, Cisco and others jumping on this as a chance to force people to retake the certifications at great expense because the renamed version is ever so slightly different :-)

Re: So ... anybody gonna do anything post-litigation about the "undocumented status" thing?

And yet another one is, if some of the employees are illegals, what is happening to the employer re hiring "undocumented aliens"? Surely even in the land of the free, an employer has know who is working for him/her. Or do employers to pay anything to local/state/federal government? Not have to notify anyone in officialdom of their employees?

Re: The cost of doing business

"They are so large and the revenue so high that any of the current fines are meaningless."

Yes, the "tiny crimes", which many see as not serious. Steal a few pennies from someone and almost no one cares. Steal a few pennies from a billion customers every month and it adds up to real money. But fine them a $million and it means nothing to the $billions they already stole. They just pay the fine and go off and brainstorm the next wheeze.

"And if they don't? Free stuff."

Continuing to use a service for "free" after withholding or denying payment is also known as fraud. Just because the supplier hasn't yet blocked you doesn't mean you can carry using it without paying. To keep your advice both legal and moral, maybe you should try re-wording it?

Re: It is not just Amazon

"Too timid. A suitable penalty would be to force them to split Prime off as a separate corporation."

On the face of it, that might sound like a suitable punishment. The reality is that Amazon Shipping and/or Amazon Sales would be tied to Amazon Prime through fees and commissions such that Amazon Shipping would be under huge pressure to push Amazon prime to increase income.