Posts by Doctor Syntax

Re: Yeah I know it's obsolete

Old != obsolete

Re: 60 years old? -- Time to build a new one

Lulworth Cove is much more bowl-shaped but then you'd have Darwin candidates diving into it.

Because they're local and they seem to have something to do with this cyber attack stuff.

Re: some people have a block

So often the block is just "It'll be all too complicated for me so I won't even try.".

Re: Too Many Stories!

The website can't even display images without javascript enabled. That should be a clear warning in itself. Kids today. Mutter, mutter.

Re: Too Many Stories!

I can't help feeling that although the spark mightn't have been that bright neither was a tour that didn't start off with a warning not to touch any controls they weren't instructed to touch.

Re: a perfectly understandable error

Experienced computer professionals always click through the first time. After all, if it's real it will come back and if it doesn't - well, what could possibly go wrong?

Amused? You should have been relieved that they realised there were two.

Re: Always check everything

And instead of a clear printed label it would simply be moulded into the case, effectively invisible so it wouldn't be obvious there was even a control there.

Re: a perfectly understandable error

"hang around a bit in the morning to witness just exactly how she managed to mangle her desktop icons like that every single day."

More likely something that happened gradually throughout the day.

Re: Liquid mercury is not very dangerous unless you spread it over a wide area

This light at Cragside appears to have no electricity supply.

https://i2.wp.com/heritagecalling.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/cragside-lamp.jpg?resize=358%2C361&ssl=1

In fact one of the contacts is the copper base it stands on (the body is cloisonné enamel on copper) and the other is a wire dipping into a small bowl of mercury. Lifting the lamp turns it off, setting back in its correct position turns it on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tq2G4JIWbEw

Re: But what then

"the mercury sphygmomanometers were deemed ‘too dangerous for the students’"

A few years ago I was recalled to my GP. They'd taken my blood pressure on their electronic gubbins which was subsequently found to have been out of calibration so they had to redo it the old-fashioned way. There's a lot to be said for instruments where you can see exactly what it is you're measuring against (e.g. the traditional chemical balance) but the lure of a number (so it must be right) on a display is too strong for some people.

"Liquid mercury is not very dangerous unless you spread it over a wide area "

The second carbon-dating system in QUB used a chemistry based on acetylene. As it tends to explode at pressures of about one and a half atmospheres the entire gas processing line was run at below atmospheric with a mercury manometer at each step so that if the pressure got too great the manometer acted as a pressure release valve. IIRC the surface of the mercury in the pots was covered with oil.

Re: Infamy! Infamy!

Your handle seems strangely appropriate.

Actually, my favourite line was "Sic transit Gloria". Did she have that name simply to make it possible?

Hence the assembly instruction:

DWIM - Do what I mean.

Re: "It's the system"

If you remember Windows pre-95 the icon for the button at the left of the title bar had on oblong on it (I suspect it was an image of a space bar because I think some incantation involving space could substitute for it). It was said that a good tester could look at that oblong and see a minus sign.

Re: "It's the system"

"the wrong buttons were pressed"

These days it becomes difficult to distinguish the button from anything else on the page. Or the button is further down the page, below the several inches of white space that extends to the bottom of the screen. Or work out which bit of text is a link and which isn't because the User Experience Designer has gone to considerable lengths to ensure they're the same colour.

All because of style over function, style is a matter of fashion and fashion dictates flat design.

Designing an interface takes knowledge, intelligence and thought. Anything cobbled together with crayons is an experience even if the adjective in front of it should be "bad" so a User Experience is substituted for a User Interface.

Place the blame where it belongs.

The original Mac, only a single floppy for storage and not really enough memory was more a proof of concept. W95 looks to have owed rather a lot in functionality to MWM, HP VUE and their successor, CDE with a good deal of underpinnings from HP New Era.

Re: Brexit?

"I gather Boris is not a details man."

Only when he can invent them.

"Even the smallest of changes to an aircraft triggers a huge chain of events in motion, with each event starting its own chain and so on."

The correct way of doing it is not to get it wrong in the first place. Then there are no costs for making a change and no costs, human and financial, from not doing so.

Re: Consumers need to know what aircraft will be used before they book.

How long have you been in this line of work?

Re: Consumers need to know what aircraft will be used before they book.

This can be simplified to avoid having to keep up with the obfuscation: if it's Boeing I'm not going.

Re: Business as usual then

Governments are particularly prone to that outlook. I think it's because they make laws which are supposed to be obeyed so there's a presumption that they will be. The evidence given by the existence of a large law enforcement system is overlooked. There's also an assumption that laws will be obeyed in the way they intended - it's the sort of thinking that sees nothing could possibly go wrong with back-doored encryption.

If it's an Apple product it will be iScrumping.

Re: Calvados?

SWMBO had much the same reaction. "Apple" and "apple" are pronounced the same.

"anti-survivion?"

Darwinion.

Re: Ask any actuary

But just be careful of the format you save them in.

Re: Here's my Word replacement list

And this, Jake is where you differ from those pushing this sort of agenda. They don't have to use technical terminology to hate it.

Re: So... looking at their alternative names...

"Doer"? Since when was that a word?

A long time, actually. In farming an animal might be referred to as a good or bad doer depending on whether or not it thrives.

Re: Sapir-Whorf

And then there's the one about the joint military exercises. The Army officers were fed up with being called "Pongoes" and complained. As a result the Navy circulated an order saying "Army officers should not be referred to as Pongoes" and the RAF circulated an order saying "Pongoes should be referred to as Army officers".

Also apocryphal. Allegedly.

Re: Sigh...

And I doubt there's any mention of Barbary pirates raiding the coasts of Europe for slaves.