Posts by Doctor Syntax

Re: That's what you get when software has to cost nothing

"They are just people who need a tool to accomplish a job and use the best one they can find or afford."

I seem to spend a lot of time these days putting together various PDFs including the weekly one for my wife's patchwork group* and the more occasional but bigger ones from our history group's out of print books**. I've no idea what Windows & Mac software would be would do or cost but in all cases final assembly is done by the simple pdfunite, image manipulation by Gwenview, Gimp, Pinta and Kolorpaint as required, OCR of scanned pages*** with ocrmypdf****. Vi is the tool of preferences for sorting out the OCR artefacts although sed would be an alternative. QGIS handles occasional mapping work. LibreOffice, of course does the word processing and spreadsheets and conversion to PDF. I seriously doubt that I could find a more useful set of tools for any amount of money whether I could afford it or not.

* SWMBO does her illustrated notes by hand, rather like that old book on BASIC, I do the photography. NextCloud syncs the results between our laptops, both of course, running Linux.

** The PDFs produced for the printers with whatever tools were used there are far too big. I discovered that Word lies when it "crops" images. The .docs were bloated by masked by uncropped images, in one case multiple copies. From LibreOffice it was a case of Edit with external program using Gwenview to crop and reduce the resolution.

*** The scanner on my Brother AIO saves PDFs to an ancient Buffalo NAS which I assume runs an ancient Linux, otherwise I'd point it at the Pi running NextCloud on a more recent Linux.

****The inevitable OCR layout curdling resulting from the image not being precisely aligned for scanning is dealt with by a tool I knocked up years ago using Lazarus to deal with the same problem in downloads from archive.org. I could have used Delphi for that. I last used Delphi about the same time as I last used MS Office - about 14 or 15 years ago.

Re: Acronym

You forgot to ! the !s.

Re: COBOL

I once got a handed a system to work on of which the C component was obviously somebody's "My first C program". "Somebody" was the boss and he'd been a COBOL programmer. He'd discovered macros and introduced a few - MOVE was one - to make it a bit more COBOL like. As I worked on it I realised that some of the code I needed to modify was wrapped up in some of the instances of the macros so eventually (fairly quickly, in fact) I just ran the whole thing through cpp. This was actually the distant 2nd or, as I discovered some months later, 3rd biggest problem that the system had.

Re: Damn

"Have had it for four or five years."

That's LG's problem - people forgetting they're supposed to keep sending their phones for landfill.

Re: Why?

"If the answer to the above is yes then can someone please tell me (us!) what the reason is?"

Because no govt dept. wants to be left without one.

Re: Universal Ergonomics

I usually explain that they're specially designed to be equally incomprehensible in all languages.

Re: Does the verdict on Oracle vs Google

SCO, as was, did not come from any sewer. SCO were a perfectly respectable company selling a good small-system Unix*. It was the basis of a lot of SME on-prem business systems in the '80s, '90s & early 00s.

However their pricing reflected a near-monopoly situation. When Linix came along they didn't have sufficient commercial nous to recognise viable competitor when they saw it. They should have adjusted their price. Not to zero but to one which reflected their quality advantage over early Linux but recognising that they were competing with free-as-in-beer in terms of functionality.

After the ensuing debacle resulting from Linux becoming a suitable platform for running the likes of Oracle & Informix they were bought out by a business that decided that litigation was their only salvation. That's when things got awry.

*Originally they were a reseller of Xenix but then took over development of the next generation.

At some point you have to get from the (allegedly) unreliable mechanical/analogue domain to the (allegedly) reliable electronic/digital domain. Something that sensors handle. So far my not very automated car has had two wheel rotation sensors fail.

Re: Dictionary definition required

I suppose there are no mirrors to be found on Oracle premises.

Re: It's the same documents...

I doubt FB got enough publicity to reach the attention of its product.

Re: re: Welcome to the information age!

You mean you can transport them by smartphone? Who knew?

Re: black-and-white television into a colour set using nylon stockings.

After going up a ladder to fix the aerial.

Maybe they don't. Maybe they just click on something until its accepted.

Re: it's not private infrastructure

Substitute "needs" for "requirements" if you must. Read it as "does everything they want" if you like. But the point is that if somebody simply has a POTS phone and nothing else because they don't need, want or require any sort of internet or somebody else has ADSL or FTTC and nothing else because they don't need, want or require anything fast why should they have their prices raised because you want Netflix for yourself and your kids to watch two different films whilst another of your kids plays online games and you don't want to pay the full whack for that?

The plain fact is that you're asking for a subsidy. If BT/Openreach take out loans to install an FTTP network for those who want it the interest and capital on those loans should be paid by those who are making use of that network and not by those who aren't. If, when those loans and interest have been paid off, the economics of the maintenance of the two systems might look different and FTTP might well be cheaper than the legacy network. Loading the costs of building it onto those who do not intend to take it up is simply inequitable.

Frankly a better way of investing would be to continue rolling out a better service to those who cannot even get a decent ADSL connection. That's the other side of the argument. Upgrading the existing better connected areas will inevitably take away resources from extending the existing fibre network. Living in the country I can think of a number of premises where FTTP might well be a sensible option - properties are so thinly spread that FTTC isn't going to work well. Fine, subsidise those who live and work there rather than have them subsidise those who already have a good service to get an even better one.

"while being accountable directly to its membership"

This seems to be an aspect that's escaped its attention.

Re: And the purpose of self-driving cars is..?

There are solid use cases for (a) some people giving up driving and (b) your mother getting her cataracts seen to.