Posts by Doctor Syntax 33045 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
Our (not Samsung) washer does indeed just ping when it finishes the wash cycle. Responding to the ping leads to disappointment. The door remains locked for a further period to no good purpose that I can see.
After a while it unlocks the door. Silently.
I can never fathom what happens in the heads of UI designers.
"But OS fragmentation is not unique to Windows"
OS fragmentation imposed by a single vendor is, however, a Windows speciality.
I'm not sure about Macs but with Linux and BSDs you can choose your preferred version, your preferred UI and run those on multiple machines if that's what you want*. You don't have to put up with a mishmash and you don't get forcibly updated by the vendor.
* In practice you might want to run different setups. For instance SWMBO suffers from macular degeneration and has had lens replacement. Her laptop also runs Devuan and KDE but some settings are changed to adapt to that.
To my way of thinking taking it in-house means that you do it properly and that includes staffing - both in terms of numbers and expertise. There's no actual law that prevents the Civil Service doing that - it's just that the generalists who run it don't really like employing specialists and even less do they like paying them properly.
It's more likely that a directly employed team with a proper career structure will be a less security risk than a churn of expert managers elsewhere (who, BTW, would have to be vetted).
Historically pounds are a more basic unit than stones which might have been more local standards. From a C18th diary: "I was weighed there and weighed 11 stone and 1 lb—15 lbs to the Stone. I was weighed at Banks woodmill several years since and weighed 11 stone 14 lbs"
Pounds, of course, are good hexadecimal units - none of this decimal malarky. What we need to do the job right is a 16lb stone.
"attention can turn to adjustments in the micron and nanometer ranges in order get the telescope properly aligned"
Stop it! You're doing my head in. Micron adjustments in microscope focussing - fine (literally fine, that's what the fine focussing know is for) but nanometre adjustments on a telescope...
I'm not sure we were reading the same Wikipedia article but the one I read was contrasting consumables with durables. Food and water are given as examples but only as part of a wider range of examples. Just as well really, or else consumer protection legislation would have a very much narrower scope.
I suppose it depends on whether she has established prior expectations of how user interfaces will work.
If you were to design a vehicle control on the basis that the vehicle will turn in the direction in which the lower part of the steering wheel turns then a new driver will learn that and find it natural. Experienced drivers would crash within minutes.
The principle of interfaces when they came into computer science was that the interface, by remaining unchanged* enabled the developer to improve the the implementation behind it whilst not requiring the user of the interface to change in step. What does the I in GUI stand for? That's right - interface. So why is that simple principle not being followed?
What really gets up my nose about this is that Microsoft imposes non-optional GUI changes on its victims supporters who then argue that Microsoft can't be ditched for anything else because of the training costs it would involve. Stockholm Syndrome?
* Of course a new facility could require the interface to be augmented but it shouldn't be broken.
"Weirdly, it's considerably more cost-effective to create one shared workspace that's properly equipped and comfortable than to find some way to create and furnish home offices for each person individually."
But where do you create it? Somewhere convenient to where a number of employees live and maybe another one elsewhere for another group? Or in some city centre only reached by a long and unpleasant commute for all of them?
"Oh, you're doing x ?, do you know you can do it this way?", "You're working on an issue that affects Y? I saw something similar last week and resolved it this way..." "I'm trying to figure out how to do Z. Oh I spoke with someone yesterday, there's an issue with it"
The key is communicating, not communicating face-to-face. I think one of the significant factors in those who find that working at home works is having a good communication infrastructure. That may be no more than email. You can hold a productive conversation over email. I recall one such conversation between myself in Yorkshire and a collaborator in California - I was eating my lunch at the same time (and probably keeping an eye on Bargain Hunt).
Gone are the days when problems would get solved because you happened to take a coffee break at the same time as a colleague etc
Yes, you could never develop anything really complex, such as an OS kernel, without having all the team in one building, sharing coffee breaks, looking over each others' shoulders and so on.
Banks and other financial services are among the stampede of businesses betting the farm on the cloud computing in the hope it can offer "modernisation", flexibility, and reduced cost.
It's always a concern to see modernisation as an end in itself rather than a means to some other, more practical ends.
While they're looking at this perhaps BofE could also consider data sovereignty.
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