* Posts by keithpeter

2057 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Jul 2007

Locally Integrated Menus back on Vivid Vervet’s menu

keithpeter Silver badge
Coat

Menus

Hello All

Vervet Unity Question: If you start LibreOffice Writer, and then click in the new document window and then type in the shortcut Alt + IOF, does the LibreOffice formula editor appear?

The way that the global menu code introduced by Canonical in Unity broke keyboard shortcuts is the reason I stopped using Unity based desktops after 12.04. No other reason. I suspect that menu calls are still hijacked by Canonical's global menu and that, therefore, keyboard shortcuts will still be broken. I would be absolutely delighted to be proved wrong on that.

Microsoft dumps ARM for Atom with cut-price Surface 3 fondleslab

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

Re: Bob, Zune, Clippy, and Steve Ballmer

"Yes, how about 92% of the world's office desktop computers and laptops?

Poor poor Microsoft..."

The younger people I work with do associate Microsoft as a brand mainly with work. And that means office PCs that are mostly OK but a bit slow.

We run some decidedly clunky 'business applications' that have UIs that appear to have been designed by someone who likes cluttered and difficult to read screens, and who appears to believe that the published procedures actually represent the way tasks are completed.

These business applications have nothing to do with MS of course, but they are associated in our minds with the Microsoft logo - which we have lots of time to see as we watch the little arrow chasing itself around the circle.

My younger co-workers will be making the decisions in a decade or two. This I suspect may be the reason for Microsoft's foray into lower end hardware including this new tablet.

Smart meters are a ‘costly mistake’ that'll add BILLIONS to bills

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

Just give us the numbers

At least we have had the cost-benefit analysis for the HS2 and people can argue about it. Get them to *publish* the report so we can all see what the numbers are like for smart meter rollout.

Microsoft's Windows 10 build list snowballs for Lumia mobes

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

Re: Since when did the old Nokia Lumias suddenly get named just Lumia.

"...Nadella has to give Elop a bag of Doritos..."

@returnmyjedi

Elop's paunch looks huge there - even worse than mine - there must have been a lot of bags of Doritos exchanged over the years.

Seriously: I think it is good that MS are releasing public betas like this.

Dot-sucks sucks, say lawyers: ICANN urged to kill 'shakedown' now

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

"What's more, the company intends to charge ordinary consumers just $9.95 for a dot-sucks domain."

So what is stopping 'ordinary consumers' [cough marketing's bf cough] buying up the appropriate domains and just sort of not using them? Or putting a cat picture up...

Mono Magic: Photography, Breaking Bad style

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

Re: Secondhand prices

"Selling most 35mm cameras seems to attract no takers."

Pop a card on the noticeboard in the local art school (the one that does degree level fine art) in your area. That audience seems to be interested in the possibilities and most art schools will have a wet darkroom tucked away somewhere.

keithpeter Silver badge
Coat

Re: pinhole cameras are fun

@Nigel: I experience things with a pencil and a sketchbook more these days but may indeed dig the brass brick out. The apotheosis of 3 inch screen isolation must be the selfie stick. I may experiment with handing total strangers the Nikon and asking if they can take a photo of us. Sort of Richard Hamilton process.

@Everyone: Retro analogue things are back in fashion (vinyl records, film cameras including instant, knitting, making stuff like furniture, cooking). Is this because we want to leave marks in some way through the process as a kick against the pixels? If OP wanted a crisp sharp colourful picture of his moggie, he would have just taken one on his iPhone. Instead, the image presented, dusty though it is, has a story and is a momento of time spent.

Google 'William Christenberry box cameras' for an idea and a theme (change over time).

The coat: off out before the downvotes start...

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

pinhole cameras are fun

Just saying, if you can find a community darkroom and want a project for an afternoon.

Using 35mm film as negative

http://www.kodak.com/ek/US/en/Pinhole_Camera.htm

Using printing paper as 'negative'

http://www.pinholephotography.org/Beer%20Can%20construction.htm

The wheelie bin camera guy

http://www.pinholephotography.org/

Might dust off the old Nikon this holiday.

Dear departed Internet Explorer, how I will miss you ... NOT

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

NetSurf

For those who wish to sample the mid-90s Web as part of some strange retro compulsion, try installing the Netsurf browser in a live Linux session, and make sure that Javascript is switched off in preferences... It is *quick* mind you.

"...including worthier projects such as Opera and Mozilla’s flying open sourcers."

Flying open sourcers: nice phrase that, I shall steal it.

LOHAN chap compiles 'tenner a week' cookbook

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

oatmeal = Porridge oats

UK.

The stuff in the breakfast cereals section that comes in a polythene bag and does not cost much. Not the hipster rolled variety but the flakes. Cheap. Antioxidant. You can do a week's breakfasts for a quid (half and half milk/water sweatened with cheapo honey).

"If I do it again next year it might be a selection of other people's ideas..."

Huevos rancheros. With kidney beans in the tomato sauce. I can walk 30 miles on that. Serve with rice for main meal. See

http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/eggs-recipes/mexican-breakfast/

I use pitta breads instead of tortillas and just use the tinned tomatoes, onion and a pinch of chilli powder.

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

Micro Review

OK, a copy landed on the mat this morning packed in one of those cardboard sleeve things. You get 122 pages in a glue spine paperback. Recipes divided down by food type (Bread, Pasta/Pizza, Meat &c) rather than meals (breakfast, lunch dinner). There is a section on veg cooking and buying that might help clueless students (e.g. me, 30 years ago).

Biggest omission (in my opinion): oatmeal. Cheap source of carbohydrates, good for you and would sort breakfast out when made half-in-half with milk and water. Something like a quid for all week mainly depending on the milk as oatmeal can be had for £1 per kg and keeps for a year or two. Add another £1 for a month's worth of honey for sweetening. Or chop half an apple in or some nuts or dried fruit. Or throw in some scavenged blackberries - ace.

Savory oatmeal for a warm lunch or light meal: fry onion in some kind of fat (bacon fat would be tasty for meaties, butter is good as well) in a small saucepan, add one cup oatmeal and stir in for 30sec then add two cups water, salt and boil for the usual 5 min. A good handful of spinach leaves helps appearence and taste. Towards the end of the boiling, chuck in a stingy handful of the strongest grated cheese you have. For a main meal pop a poached egg on top. Pepper to taste.

Oatcakes: Continuing the bread theme in the book, you will need a whisky glass of course...

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/520634/scottish-oat-cakes

No yeast so might be an easier way into bread making for those of us who have never got round to trying.

Second biggest omission: kidney beans &c. I just use the canned ones as the factories get the beans fresh and steam cook them on an industrial scale. Barbunya Pilaki made with Borlotti beans (aka Roman beans) could be a pre cooked neck filler when served with pittas and homous.

The audience: if this goes to a second edition, the thorny issue of educating the clueless students without nagging them arises. Drip feeding information about storage of left-overs (lifetimes in the fridge), diet balance for a weekly menu into the recipes might be an idea. Or just go for it and put a chapter in about a typical weekly menu at the end.

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

£20 a week next

Middle price recipes next ok?

Worth noting that Lulu allows purchase without creating yet another login and accepts paypal. Watch out for the naughty marketing opt-in on the penultimate screen.

Might get into the self-publishing thing...

Lighty and flighty: Six sizzling portable projectors

keithpeter Silver badge

@Will Godfrey

"I'm also puzzled at who these are targetted at."

Me (a few years ago).

I have in the near past gone into community centres, libraries, adult education centres, pubs (when closed), works canteens, and Quaker meeting houses for the purpose of teaching maths to adults.

Laptop, projector, sometimes a Mimio, flipchart, chunky pens. When I did this kind of stuff I was lugging a huge Phillips projector in a rucksack along with a 15.6" laptop, web'n'walk dongle for Maths Web sites and remote Moodle access, (paper) workbooks and marked work. As I don't drive that was all going on the bus. It worked.

I'd want 2k lumens or so. That Canon looked ok, and I like the look of the short thow lens, the rest are toys for my use. Don't care about 'flesh tones'. 1024x768 is fine. I need crisp bright projection of what is on the screen including a 'magic notebook' type device.

I'm in classrooms these days. I miss the improvisation. My favourite was the quite nice looking if rather low-ceilinged classroom in a community centre. We got started, all going nice, when suddenly there was the Mother of all thumping noise from the ceiling. The 'classroom' was under the stage of a small hall, and the ladies had just started their exercise class. 20 of them and they were not svelte...

Windows 10 build 10041: 99 bugs on the wall, fix a bug, add a feature, 114 bugs on the wall

keithpeter Silver badge
Coat

Anyone trying with low end hardware

Is this build working with lesser hardware? For example a Atom D2700 based small PC with 2Gb ram? That might save some landfill at the cost of the PC manufacturer's balance sheet...

Mine's the slightly threadbare one...

Attack of the Digital People: The BBC goes fully Bong

keithpeter Silver badge
Childcatcher

Re: Fibonacci

@DavCrav

Many thanks.

@The others: please, for the sake of the children, pay attention to the content rather than the form of messages from the chalkface. There are 500,000+ of us and I would be the first to admit that we cannot all complete the Times crossword before breakfast.

There are certainly gramatical errors, typographical errors, and even numerical errors to be found in the 1,107 LibreOffice files I produced in the academic year 2013/14. My work was fit for purpose judging by the pass rate last summer.

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

Fibonacci

"One Reg reader we're aware of, with a distinguished software career in household-name tech companies, teaches 10 year olds Fibonacci sequences after hours."

Good for him/her. But the Fibonacci sequence is just one topic, although one that threads a huge range of maths (Google Ron Knot's Fibonacci page). Any other topics needed? I'd recommend Adam Spencer's Big Book of Numbers for around 100 starter ideas.

My own view is that we need less targets and more teaching in education (but then, I am a teacher, and therefore suspect).

Go

Gamers! Ransomware will scramble your save files unless you cough up $1,000

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

Re: World of Warcraft (WoW) etc

@Shane8

Do a clonezilla clone of the hard drive once a month? Just keep the last clone or two to save hard drive space if you have much files.

Microsoft hints at faster release cadence for Windows 10 previews

keithpeter Silver badge
Linux

Incremental or fresh install

I use a stable and well maintained Windows 7 client/Windows Server 2008 based system at work. It works and someone else has to keep it working (which they do). At home, I use Debian Sid on this laptop and Wheezy on the authoring box that Just Has To Work. They work. I update Sid twice a week with around 100Mb of updates (less at present because of the Jessie freeze). I update Wheezy once a month or so.

Are these Windows 10 releases incremental so each update changes only a small percentage of the files on your hard drive? Or are they effectively fresh installs of the entire system?

If latter, it would be sensible I think to have monthly releases so there is actually some *time* spent on each state of the platform to report bugs.

If former (i.e. like Sid or a rolling release like Arch or OpenBSD -current branch) bring it on and pop it out twice a day if you need to. I presume the bug reporting system has full information on the state of the system at the point where the bug is being reported.

Grab your pitchforks: Ubuntu to switch to systemd on Monday

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

Solaris -> OpenSolaris -> OpenIndiana

@DainB

OpenIndiana is a nice surprise. Just the font rendering is a bit 1990s. And that matters for desktop/laptop!

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

Re: Improved boot speed ?

How many times do you need to boot. Almost never, IME.

Laptop: I use whole drive encryption to avoid data theft if I leave this machine on the bus/train/ or under pub table. Therefore, I close down or hibernate to disk between work sessions. Several times a day. Can't say I notice a lot of difference between Wheezy and Sid though...

Servers: I gather virtualised servers can be spawned, configured and spun down when not needed more quickly with systemd. I have no experience in this area and would welcome views

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

Clean install or upgrade

"Mostly not at all. You may notice the improved boot speeds, which are one of the main reasons it's being adopted, but otherwise the transition is effectively seamless and most of the other effects (whether you consider them to be harmful or not) are invisible to the end user."

This is my experience with clean installs of Debian Sid and of CentOS 7 on a testing laptop. I've not tried an upgrade from a non-systemd os to a systemd version yet. I would be interested to hear from those that have tried a distribution version upgrade in .deb land

Storm in a K-Cup: My SHAME over the eco-monster I created, says coffee pod inventor

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

Re: Bah ... philistines - Man Coffee

@BobRockett

A pint mug? Try a half-gallon mucket heated on a wood fire. And egg shells to settle the grounds.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/09/how-coffee-fueled-the-civil-war/

Personally a moka pot does me.

You're outta here! Baseball star strikes out sleazy trolls who targeted teen daughter

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

Re: get yer pitchforks

"If I was a deranged protective dad I could have been face to face with any of these people in less than 4 hours. I know every one of their names, their parents, where they go to school, what they do, what team they are on, their positions, stats, all of it."

Quote from blog post by Father. Looks like he isn't rounding up any lynching party with pitchforks and torches. I admire his forebearence.

In my own teaching, I remind 17 year olds that facebook and twitter are NOT the back room of a youth club. When they post on 'social' media, they are basically standing in the centre of their city on a soap box with a megaphone, with *everyone* they know in the front row of the audience. That includes Mother, Significant Other and Future Employers. C.F. Jaron Lanier's arguments.

I hope Daughter can move on from this fast. UK specific: 17 year old lasses are sensitive to self image issues and actually *worry* about online comments.

Lost WHITE CITY of the MONKEY GOD found after 500 years

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

Re: "...The exact location is not being revealed..."

Quote from the article: "Aided by former Special Air Service (SAS) soldiers..."

@Tim: one hopes that covers your concern.

C'mon! Greece isn't really bust and it can pay its debts

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

Re: There was never a need for a combined currency all over Europe

...if only to avoid the idiocy of travelling across the continent with fifteen different currencies in your pocket, getting shafted coming and going on exchange rates.

Isn't it the ability of one currency to float against all the others that Worstall is on about? If Germany had the DM, it would have risen relative to other currencies and made German exports more expensive &c. As it is the Germans are selling goods at a lower Euro wide rate.

'Utterly unusable' MS Word dumped by SciFi author Charles Stross

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

Re: Sometimes fonts and layout DO matter

It's fascinating to realise that the first Hugo award winner, Alfred Bester's "The Demolished Man", experiments with fonts and layouts on the page to describe telepathic conversations.

Upvote for Bester reference. Those who are not familiar with his work should google for the bibliography (and biography).

Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman was using typographical effects to comment on the main narritive well back in the days of lead type in forms. He (and his printer) managed to get it to work for them. Surely we can manage an end-to-end distributed text editing and change tracking system for the novel industry at this (late) stage in the form?

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

Re: I admit, I am Word Processor inept.

"...though that might just be Suse's packaging or Gnome app running under unfavourable KDE settings..."

Yup - I had that one on Slackware with KDE 4.15. Slack does not install any Gnome libraries by default. There was a work around using a theme I recollect and some changes in the KDE config. I needed the oxygen-gtk2 engine installed and I had to puggle about disabling the LibreOffice KDE integration code. After that it looked toastie.

I'd ask on an OpenSuse forum for specifics.

Superfish: Lenovo? More like Lolnono – until they get real on privacy

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

Re: Simple solution

So. Sony's out. (Fuck you, Sony!) Lenovo's out. Acer's HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA out. That's really starting to narrow the feild...

Clevo? some chatter on the Linux boards about these. Generic plastic case/chicklet but configurable.

May have to treat client as disposable going forward.

keithpeter Silver badge
Linux

$30 extra for Signature Windows?

Just as a special offer for a couple of years from Lenovo, while they do all the trust building alluded to in Trevor's article. $30 extra on the consumer level laptops at the heart of this tale gets you the Microsoft Windows Signature install or equivalent that MS provide. MS might even do a deal as it would help their 'premium' brand as well. The take up would indicate the extent to which ordinary people are interested in their 'user experience'.

Typing this on an old Thinkpad (X60) running Jessie (testing) with the MATE desktop. Remarkably light and responsive on a 9 year old machine.

Linux clockpocalypse in 2038 is looming and there's no 'serious plan'

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

Re: Too late!

"I cannot think of a single thing I have which relies on time values and is over ten years old, let alone twenty, but that's just me."

OK, a specific, concrete, example of something large and heavy that goes fast and that depends on an embedded system...

The minicomputers in some diesel electric trains date from 1980s. These won't be Linux kernel based obviously, but a diesel electric train tends to have a long life...

http://trid.trb.org/view.aspx?id=225737

Perhaps the ones being built now do have Linux based controllers. Perhaps these are 64 bit. Perhaps if 32bit, then they will simply stop working (safely) on the relevant date and display an error code. Transport is, fortunately, conservatively managed and suppliers will take a careful change management approach to maintenance. Problems should surface in advance.

The wider point: embedded systems are gleefully being added to many industrial and transport systems to reduce costs, improve monitoring, and provide hard data on use. This is an *expanding* market. Some suppliers will go bankrupt. It is possible that entire business models will be discarded, but will leave a layer of technology in racks in basements ticking away (e.g. DC mains power for 19th and early 20th century lifts/elevators in some cities - now mostly provided by local rectifier/choke sets).

Timely and repeated restatement of this issue and the mitigations available will help to offset any disruption and is best started *now* as most of the systems that will be functioning on the date in question have yet to be designed/implemented.

For pity's sake, you fool! DON'T UPGRADE it will make it worse

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

Re: bébé

https://medium.com/backchannel/the-last-of-the-typewriter-men-729f150c5083

Steampunk solution: A few typewriters (one for each major language), a microphone and some of the software that GCHQ/NSA may be developing for use near the Kremlin might solve the problem.

Seriously: the main issue is the project management of this new system. Reassuring that the commercial sector is just as bad at this as the public sector...

So long, Lenovo, and no thanks for all the super-creepy Superfish

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

Re: Lenovo dead?

@ Florida1920

"The Independent is the only consumer-oriented news source on the first page of a Google search for "lenovo malware."

Print edition of the Financial Times this morning: teaser on front page with continuation towards the back. Hint: this is the one the MD and accountant read. Front page below the fold on BBC with link to Technology article. Hint: this is the one your MP/councillor/non-exec Director/School govenor reads.

Corporate channel managed kit not affected but perceptions will suffer methinks...

Ads! People! love! ads! in! their! apps! Please! use! ours! cries! Yahoo!

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

Sometimes...

...I click on ads that are relevant to a search for an actual product that I want to buy. I'm not averse to advertising that is

1) relevant

2) does not slow my elderly but still serviceable dual core laptop to a crawl

3) does not blink or flash (borderline epileptic)

Otherwise: noscript

Don't touch me up there! Photoshop creator appeals for 'ethical' use

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

Re: Subscription model is sh**.

@TRT

Interesting post. Imagine pricing by feature rather like those 'add ons' the mobile phone companies push to pay as you go customers. Your 'utilisation percentage' view could be used to design a subscription structure that charges fairly low for bog standard basic controls but then prices in 'premium' controls much higher - allowing those premium controls to be purchased as you suggest by the hour. Might be a way forward...

Practical suggestion: Could the large medical science funders not put a moderate amount of development dosh into GIMP/Inkscape and reap rewards long term?

Air gaps: Happy gas for infosec or a noble but inert idea?

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

Re: Costs

... doubtless with phone still in pocket inaudibly recording output from laptops CPU fan, HDD motor and optical drive motor oscillations.

Your welcome Dave.

Which part of "Operated in a central room with stainless steel walls..." did you not understand? Mr Faraday had the central idea a couple of centuries ago.

Seriously: the point I'm making is that this is all cost-benfit tradeoff not absolutes.

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

Costs

Air gapped laptop with wifi card removed, network card disabled, microphone removed, no webcam, speakers removed, usb sockets glued, runs from batteries when booted, chargers and removable parts (keyboard, ram &c) rotated regularily. Boots from an optical drive that has a CD-ROM containing appropriate OS with known checksums &c. Possibly using LibreBoot (checksums again, reflashed from optical drive weekly or something). Connected to a thermal printer of unusual design. Operated in a central room with stainless steel walls (like you have in commercial kitchens) without windows at least 30m from premises outer wall. Result: not far short of a mechanical typewriter but quieter (at least at audio frequencies).

It is all about cost and hassle VS likely degree of interest of material I imagine.

If you have the misfortune to be on a nation state's list, well, just use notebooks and burn them now and again. The obvious XSCD cartoon about password security springs to mind.

Over 50? Out of work? Watch out because IT is about to eat itself

keithpeter Silver badge
Childcatcher

Tower of Babel

"...but what happens when someone gets the crazy idea to let Watson read all of Stack Overflow and O’Reilly and Slashdot and Google Groups and GitHub..."

Watson blows fuse, or prints an error message along the lines of 'training data inconsistent, please prune'.

Ubuntu smartphone to go on sale: It'll be harder to get than a new iPhone

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

No PC capability this time

if we'll be able to connect the phone to a bigger screen and use it as a desktop, it will be very appealing!

They blew it I'm afraid.

"Unlike the original proposal, the handset does not become a desktop PC when plugged into a monitor."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-31148661

So just another low end slab phone with a mildly interesting interface. I'd still get one if I happen to find myself near a flash sale or included in the appropriate magic circle. Not too interested in the hipster shiny race though really. It was the functionality I wanted.

BYOD is NOT the Next Biggest Thing™: Bring me Ye Olde Lappetoppe

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

KYDISH

Upstairs version....

Keep Your Dreadfully Insecure Stuff at Home

Surprised noone mentions remote desktop into company controlled PC on these occasions. Covers data security and network integrity to an extent that others here will no doubt wish to comment on. Seems to work as implemented at current main employer.

I'll admit to using RDP over the guest wifi on the employer's premises because my 6 year old refurbished Thinkpad / RDP session over wifi combination is *actually faster* than the desktop PC I have been allocated.

One cafe in Birmingham uses a 9 digit wifi password which they change weekly..... We always end up writing it down.

'Boutique' ISPs: Snub the Big 4 AND get great service

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

Re: Xilo is hard to beat

The Talk and Surf product capped at 10Gb/month traffic looks ok to me as it includes line rental.

Now to investigate the *process of switching* (groan) both Internt (EE) and phone line (BT). Sigh...

'YOUTUBE is EVIL': Somebody had a tape running, Google...

keithpeter Silver badge

Re: "Don't be evil"

"According to her website her husband is sick with lung cancer.

Dealing with that and the Google corporation must be horrific."

"YouTube is not at the top of my priority list right now" on the blog post linked in OA. One can understand why.

Ms Keating's most recent bandcamp release is Into the Trees. Apocalyptica meets Helen Jane Long. It is growing on me. I'm doodling on the piano along with it. I think you should all drop the price of a coffee and bun on a copy.

keithpeter Silver badge
Pint

Re: "Don't be evil"

"According to her website her husband is sick with lung cancer.

Dealing with that and the Google corporation must be horrific."

Hence the comment on the transcript I imagine ("Youtube is not at the top of my priority list right now").

So I just bought her most recent work as a 320 Kb/s mp3 download from the efficient and well organised bandcamp Web shop. I suggest we all do the same.

Nimble CEO lifts lid on sales veep saga. It ain't pretty

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

Re: Just wondering...

Interesting reply as always Trevor. Just a couple of thoughts...

"The sales guys also spend a lot of time training the channel partners so that they know enough about the product to answer questions/sell the boxes as well as to ensure channel partners are up on the technical side of things enough to provide tier 1 and tier 2 support. (With tier 3 typically going back to the startup's engineers.)"

Manuals? Wiki? Videos? FAQ cheat sheets? Basically why the need for actual presence?

"...at the executive layer they have to work closely with all the other tentacles of the company to ensure that A) they know what's changing and B) they manage to push those changes/training down to their army of salespeople and channel partners..."

Again issue tracker or wiki?

Am I being naive(*) or could not some of the organisational structures developed by the libre/open source community get used here to reduce the need for actual face time and allow a human scale sales committment?

(*) Quite possible, I work as a teacher.

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

Just wondering...

...what does a sales team in this kind of company actually do?

Customers are technically literate and presumably have a good idea of metrics. Will they not just run the numbers, check the tech and place an order?

The tramp for obvious reasons

Microsoft will give away Windows 10 FREE - for ONE year

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

Re: Must say it..

"For consumers not wearing sandals, choice of Windows 10 for £0 or some ragtag unsupported shareware OS for £0 is indeed a 'no brainer'"

Quite so.

However GNU/Linux is available in various distributions, some of which have paid support pricing models (warmtoned headgear), and some of which have 3 to 10 year free support and a fairly solid reputation (smallest US currency denomination plus OS, and Deborah and Ian, and those chaps in London who hold hands just down from the Eye).

Theo De Raat does not strike me as the sandal wearing kind of chap come to think of it.

keithpeter Silver badge
Childcatcher

Options...

"Cortana will be built into the operating system."

And we can switch it off easily?

Another paperclip looms for humble desktop users...

Then there were 3: Another UK mobile network borged ...

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

Re: cool phone number

0121-777-7777 (seven 7s) is a radio car company in Birmingham of which I am a semi-regular customer. Let's hear it for Asif and his beemer.

PS: paying for a landline just for broadband. Landline is a long way from exchange, adsl low speed at present. I want to dump the copper.

What is my best option for cheap (non-streaming) bandwidth without a landline?

The tramp for obvious reasons.

Alan Turing's lost notebook goes under the hammer

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

Re: "The Imitation Game"

"The "U-571" of Turing Biopics (What a complete load of tosh, dramatacised up for Hollywood)."

Not seen it so can't comment, but the publicity drive here in UK does mean my students have at least heard of Turing. Silly code games in maths lessons - went down very well, a bit of safety stuff from CEOPS made them think about https and the little padlock...

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

Re: Glad to see Turing had problems with notation!

Notations are important, you think through them, you frame things acording to their contours if that makes sense. Heaviside D operator is a good example: reduces certain classes of differential equation to polynomials.

About the notebook: just publish high res scans of the Turing pages so historians of maths can mine them. The book itself can then go to the collectors so far as I'm concerned.

Microsoft rolls out even cheaper 'Notkia' Lumias

keithpeter Silver badge
Windows

Hoping for Nokia 215 for UK

Candybar resurgence.

Small, cheap, earphone socket/music player/microSD/FM Radio. Battery lasts half the week.

Previous version of this post disappeared after posting.