Posts by Doctor Syntax

Re: I admit...

"Marmite, beer, same thing, sort of, no?"

Separated at birth.

Re: school meals

I liked school dinners. Maybe that was because we had good catering staff. It was the occasional halls of residence dinners that I had problem with: rabbit bone stew and epoxy cauliflower cheese were the offenders.

Re: Won't work

"What else is there to cover?"

Loss of reputation.

After you've had your customers' personal data cast abroad over the interwebs you'll have seen the last of a good number of them. You may think you're sorting things out for them by letting Experian slurp more of their data for 6 months but it's unlikely they'll think that solves the problem and it's what they think that matters in the long run.

Re: but they don't

Only a subset of them. I don't remember any IRA, INLA, UVF or the like going on deliberate suicide missions.

Re: Do I go down for that

Your string of random bits might not be any good. It might have holes in it. Just to make sure replace every zero with a one. And you won't be asked for the key.

Re: placing it even closer than some satellites in geosynchronous orbits

Smithereens are more likely to burn up in the atmosphere and being dispersed to some extent some would miss entirely.

Re: Teachers

Board room. Everything worked including the projector. The PC and its keyboard and mouse were locked in a cupboard.

Re: Too Many...

There was often a third issue: 'I haven't got a paperclip'.

That's the paper-less office for you.

The HP tape drive needed a half straightened paperclip. When it forgot how to load tapes it had to be reset by using one as a jumper between two holes on the PCB next to the tape spool.

I've power-cycled it twice, but no effect." Tech - "Please reboot your computer..."

Your fault for using a term they didn't understand: "power-cycled".

Your users were lucky in that they were dealing with a business that would - eventually - escalate the problem. All too often that's an unknown concept.

Re: Wasting their time

The classic of getting one to set a boot password without making a note of it was pretty good.

Re: Why, Stallman?

An odd thing to say. On the whole resignations are not planned before the situation (usually a new job) that occasions them.

Make that all the BSDs.

Re: Bloody Wokesters

Yes, but they have some spare time.

Re: Redhat

Ageism is not just allowed but compulsory.

Re: I hate Adobe, but...

But tell that to the paperless office freaks who turn up here from time to time & tell us nobody needs a printer.

Re: A (La)TeX user writes:

Way, way back in the days of Windows 3 HP had New Era which sat above Windows and added a lot of features that found their way into W95. One feature which didn't do that was a text editor with a spill chucker.

Re: Many Years Ago...

I remember having an argument with a manager about a gerund.

Re: Many Years Ago...

Boss management is an essential skill.

Re: I hate Adobe, but...

Our tame proof reader sent back a printed-out copy of the article I mentioned above with corrections in red ink. Like me, she prefers to work on a hard copy version and it also means comments don't mess with layout.

Re: A (La)TeX user writes:

"do you honestly know anyone who would put their hand up and admit they dont know how to use Word properly?"

Haven't used it for years. OO and then LO.

Re: Paragraph and Page styles

"I turned on the formatting code option and the screen filled with dots and <CR> symbols. It turned out that the secretaries placed text on screen using the spacebar and <enter> (aka 'carriage return'). "

Because, of course, they'd trained on typewriters and that's how it works there.

I usually end up overriding styles for particular headings and paragraphs to make small spacing adjustments to control pagination. The hardest ones were republishing out-of-print books where there were loads of spaces to "wrap" text round images and create tables without actually using tables plus the notionally identical font metrics aren't quite the ones the original version used. And no, I'm not going to leave the Comic Sans in there.

Re: Not the end

"100M which, in the end, comes out of who's pockets?"

The shareholders' pockets.

"Moot point, it's not my money."

Check where your pension's invested.

Re: No, sorry.

"A bit like being pregnant, you either are or you are not."

"Unsure" is also an option.

Re: Clueless @(original) AC

What sense of embarrassment? He was born without it.

Re: When is he going to build a bridge

In one respect Covid is doing a good job for HMG by keeping Brexit off the front pages. E.g. how's gaining sovereignty over fishing grounds working out?

Re: When is he going to build a bridge

"and you can't immediately arrange a royal wedding"

Even if you can, it's a high risk operation these days.

Re: When is he going to build a bridge

"Why would anyone want to go to Northern Ireland?"

Well, we would have gone last year had it been feasible, My brother-in-law there died and there was no way of going to the funeral and, without being there, very few ways of helping his widow. If things really do make it feasible this year we'll go. At least the previous two years we (and our daughter) took our grandchildren for holidays so they at least had a chance to meet their great-uncle.