Posts by Doctor Syntax

Re: Reintroduce Wolves & Bears

"if they happen to munch on the 'other type of herbivore'"

But could they be relied on to tell the difference between herbivores and omnivores?

Re: Disagree with this

"it's usually pretty obvious when you've finished writing a library or a utility application because you can't think of anything else it could do that would be both useful and relevant."

There's another school of thought which says a design's finished when there's nothing left to take away that isn't useful useful and relevant.

"Please tell me that it's configurable and can be turned off?"

No, it's configurable and can be turned on.

So do I - but without the TimeMachine bit.

Re: This...

Downside of that is that, possibly to make way for it, NextCloud removed their Documents app in a point upgrade.

As far as I can make out the actual Collabora doesn't run under NC, NC just connects to it. Likewise, I suppose, the online LibreOffice. If that's the case these solutions aren't going to be available if you're running a personal NC instance on a Pi, as I'm doing, or considering running it on a hosted web service as I was thinking of doing.

The local Pi server isn't a problem - I just keep a desktop folder synced to the Pi. The idea of being able to economically run a hosted NC server to collaborate on a project with my local history group just hit the buffers if users have to download a file just to be able to view it - it doesn't offer enough advantage over an email list.

Re: Payment workaround?

I think the relevant word is "foundation", not "charity". Apparently German legal support for foundations is considered preferable. In any case, I doubt the idea of moving to the UK would even be entertained. It wouldn't be considered stable enough now. We have a government that wanted to take back control so it could tinker with things according to its own whims.

The existing version already includes remote open and save which I think covers your cloud sync. But let's be cynical here. Enterprise users can't get their heads round the idea that an office suite doesn't have to include an email client so get together with Mozilla to add the Thunderbird-based element of Seamonkey plus Lightbird and call that the Enterprise edition.

I'm very seldom pleased with UI changes in anything. The one change I'd like to see in LO would be use of OS file and print dialogs for KDE.

Re: This...

You can run the online version on your own server. While that might not be a good use case for you - it isn't for me either - I can see circumstances where there might be. A lightweight front end like a Chromebook and an in-house server might fit very well into an educational context for example.

Re: Long-standing issue with volunteer development

"I would think the first thing the TDF should do now is set up a bounty programme."

It's clear from the interview is that one problem is that TDF has some money but can't spend it, at least not directly, on development because of its charitable status.

Perhaps a bounty programme would be one way round this. Like many I tend to pay a contribution when downloading a new version. This isn't much use if it goes into a fund that can't be used productively. To be given the option of paying into a bounty fund administered but not owned by TDF would be better. Better still would be if TDF were able to match bounty payments if it has more money than it actually needs.

Re: So short sighted and petty.

"share the vaccine"

Or the Remdesivir

Re: Standard contractual clauses

"I find it strange that the standard contractual clauses were not also struck down."

I think the judgement says that the clauses are fine, just that, as applied to the US, they're not worth the shrivelled fig-leaf they're written on. Applied elsewhere they're fine.

One aspect of this that bothered me was that the EU position was - and still is - that it was sufficient that the injured party had recourse to law in the country to which the data was exported irrespective of whether such a theoretical right was practically (including financially) possible to enforce. Enforcement in the EU seemed to me essential.

Not that that has any effect in the UK now. Thanks to Brexit I'm denied these rights anyway so for those of us living in the UK this has become reduced to an academic curiosity. This must be some new meaning of taking back control of which I wasn't previously aware

Re: Good

Surprised, no.

By "our", who do you mean? The EU's, probably not. UK's maybe. US's - can they get worse?

Re: The Elephant in the Room

"There needs to be a better definition of Intellectual Property ... Apple should have been paying 10% tax, not 0.5 down to 0.005%"

You need a better definition of "should". The court has just said what Apple should pay. Maybe it morally ought to pay something else but the rules and legislation in place say what it should pay.

Re: HR droids...

"two exams. One was basically a multiple choice IQ type test, the other was a pseudocode test."

I may have mentioned before going for an interview with an agency which had two multiple choice tests.

The first was the sort of questions that I originally encountered at 11+. The guy came back slightly bemused asking "Have you been practising taking IQ tests?" and said I'd only got one wrong. I was bemused that I'd got one wrong. It was a time when my son was coming up to his 11+.

The other was a more general psychological test. I realise that these tests can't be separated from environment. A question such as "Do you sometimes have feelings of panic"?" in a pleasant office in Cambridge has a different significance when the candidate is in a job that sometimes requires an armed escort.

Re: Windows 2000

"shipping product."

Spot the typo.

"Priority will be given to those candidates with some knowledge of Welsh."

Or knowledge of Irish in the RI.

Re: HR job listings v actual job listings..

There's a third type - those written by agencies trawling for warm bodies to try to sell to potential clients who aren't even looking to recruit anyone.

Re: It's 1997 and XML will surely replace software

It takes XX years to work through the Michael Kaye books.

Re: Age discrimination

I suppose you could have explained to the trainer that the only people in the entire universe who haven't known this all along are people who work in HR. But I suppose that might have been discrimination against people who work in HR.

Re: Mandatory Experience

There are two possible explanations for job adverts like this. One is that it's down to ISO9000 and the quality documents say that every skill mentioned must be specified to have at least 5 years experience and they daren't deviate from that. The other is that the job's in sales.

A "qualification" to be listed seems to include membership of the S&T Committee which seems to be a fairly low bar. There are also former shadow science ministers there. Unless the shadow ministers are better qualified than their govt. opposite numbers that's a very low qualification indeed. And there's at least one person double counted.

"but skin colour is relevant to the story here"

Only is as far as it affects poor software.

I don't think US govts have sole possession of that objective.

Re: Confirmation bias

"I recently saw a set of scales that could do the same and it wasn't that expensive."

We had a lab balance that could tell when you were leaning over it. But that might have been more to do with being on the first floor of the nasty pre-fab building.

But you reinforce my point. A balance should tell you about mass. The mass doesn't change when move from the bench to the floor even if the force on it does. A real balance compares one mass with a standard mass so that gravitational field effect doesn't matter; it's the same for both masses.

BTW our building was next door to the local weights and measures dept. so I borrowed their standard weights.

Re: Confirmation bias

"The police have latched onto this because they desperately *want* it to work."

It's more universal than that. It just rides on the back of the bewitching effect of anything that displays numbers. People just believe the numbers without giving any thought to how the numbers get there.

I first realised this effect when digital balances arrived. I had a couple of OU students who questioned the use of the mechanical balance in the original (S100) Science Foundation Course kit; why bother with that when they had nice digital balances in the school where they taught. My reaction to getting a digital balance in the lab was to get some known good weights to check it.

Re: They're tariffs

Veblen goods. A higher price might just sell more products.