Posts by John Brown (no body)

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.

"I actually enjoy the randomness of free delivery."

I can think of at least three Amazon warehouses within a short drive of my house, one is less than 10 mins away, one is a massive regional hub, maybe 30-40 mins away. Even without Prime, it's rare for an item to take longer than next day even on the non-Prime free shipping option. My wife usually takes out a Prime free trial every 6 months or so just for the free TV, but personally I hate the Amazon TV interface. It take too long to browse. Search only works if you know what you want to watch. Browsing is utter shit and interspersed between every "included" bit of Prime is other TV stuff you have pay more for, ie additional subscriptions AKA upselling, ie "dark patterns" is in Amazons DNA. They just can't stop.

Re: Different UI in America?

"I wonder if I see a different UI (connecting to amazon.de)."

Yes, that's the point of the article. Amazon CAN make cancelling easier, but unless forced, will not do so, and as the article states, were forced to do so across the EU. The US FTC is now using the same arguments and Amazon are claiming they are not in breach of US law, although have, of course, changed things very recently after years of allegedly breaking the law to try to just nudge themselves across the line onto the legal side which kind of implies the know there were in the wrong and have taken steps under open threat of action.

"Surely it can't be long before ISP email goes the same way as ISP web space."

From the BBC report on the VM email outage:

"Virgin Media email is no longer available to new customers, but many existing customers still rely on it for work."

Some ISPs stopped providing email as a value-add years ago.

First they cam for out webspace add-on..

Then then came for our Usenet add-on.

Now they are coming for our email add-on.

It's now reached the point where ISPs are no more than utility pipes delivering a product like gas, leccy, water into our home. They are almost indistinguishable with no differential value-adds any more. It seems the only differentiator left is the underlying physical network used to deliver the service and for most people not in a major city, that means one of the many ISPs using OpenReach or VM.

Re: UK specific model?

"Another approach may be to have an option to power the device from an external battery connected by the USB-C port, once the built in battery fails. So you don't remove the original battery, but you replace it by adding on another one."

You mean a "powerbank", but custom designed like a car phone cradle to fit a specific model snugly so the hipster super slim phone suddenly becomes twice as thick? It''ll never catch on :-)

Re: What about...

"Did they really need $180m so badly?"

No. It's just that the GooKids got board with that particular toy because it's not as shine as the competitions toys.

Re: Rule 2? That should be Rule 1

Anyone got a "connected" car and tried delibrately turning off all outside contact? Is that even possible or will you have to wait to see what happens when your car is "no longer supported/EOL"? I'll be very interested to see how many current model cars are still usable in 10-20 years time, the bare minimum of expected lifetime for a car.

Re: Marital Status: British

"I suspect that this would be so incredibly rare that there are no codified cross-pond laws or agreements governing it. If it has happened at all in this century (which I doubt), they probably wouldn't discuss their private business with the nosy busy-bodies in the foreign land ... and would probably travel under the aegis of Uncle and Niece or the like. just to stop idle tongues wagging."

I seem to have a vague memory of some US rock/pop star visiting the UK with his wife, who under UK law was below the age of consent. This would be last century though, not this century. It made the press but I don't remember if there was any actual fallout from it or not.

Re: Not generally a fan of ambulance chasers

"something needs to make this kind of problem get the attention it deserves."

Oh, yes. The mainstream news seems to have forgotten about it already, even the BBC who themselves are affected by it IIRC.

Re: So maybe...

"It's definitely a bad advert for centralising all the important data"

On a similar note, I have various "clearances" from EDBS up to things I can't say I have for various government organisations, pretty much all of which require the exact same data from me. Most of the lower level ones ar esubsets of the higher ones, but having the higher ones doesn't excuse me from having to go through the palaver of the lower ones. They may or may not need to store the data I provide once it's been checked, they really only need to retain the result, which really ought to then be accessible to the other agencies. But much of it is farmed out to commercial vetting agencies and "because competition", none of it is joined up. It's annoying and there's more points of failure.