Posts by jason 7 3181 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2009
@Websey
Yep I tend to feel the same way.
Far too much unwarranted spleen really.
I saw a associate of mine that had a new desktop PC sitting on the table running 8.1.
Apparently a mate of his bought it to upgrade from his 10 year old XP PC. Apparently he spent just ten minutes using it and went "ahhh f*ck this!" and gave up. Just gave him the PC to take away. For some reason he was under the impression that after 10 years and three operating systems, nothing would have changed. No learning required at all.
The associate then said "well I agree with him! It's not like Windows 7! Can't shut it down, no start button, where is the desktop? (erm actually at the time it was sitting on the desktop so...anyway)"
I then took 30 seconds to show him where the Shutdown option was, the Start Button (just where the old one was) and how to boot straight to desktop.
So I now had it running like Windows 7 and the result? "Ahh well it's still crap!"
WTF?
...is that 8.2 is another 3GB install that has to go over 8.1.
Why? Well I have Windows 8 Pro upgrades. So if I rebuild my Windows 8 machine then I have to install 8.1 and then another OS over the top to get 8.2.
Basically I'd like to be able to rebuild a machine in a couple of hours rather than 8 or 9.
We used to call then ACGD's.
Accelerated Career Graduate Dipsh*ts
"Hello! I'm your new boss. I'm 24 years old, left Uni 6 months ago with no work experience, never met a customer or worked in IT but I have a third rate degree in Philosophy! Pleased to meet you!"
Yayyyy we're saved!
Chip? Shoulder? Much? Damn right!
...is convincing Pam in the HR dept who is filtering all the applicants purely by "has a degree? Yes or No" to begin with.
Kind of makes it difficult for all of us IT guys that are 40+ that were told to 'get a job' at 18, have a wealth of real useful experience but no degree. We have the certs/experience/been round the block etc. but no degree.
Really great idea to make a degree the modern standard equivalent of "Maths and English O level".
I remember we used to use those for our engineers years ago. The main reason was due to them being about the only such device you could use outdoors which was quite important for such a device.
Back around 2006, we'd been using them for some time and I was organising getting in a refresh when one of the other IT guys who was managing a different fieldforce project stormed in and accused me of "adding another piece of kit to the portfolio of mobile kit!" Apparently he wanted to know why I was buying in these tablets when he had decided his guys were all getting Panasonic Toughbooks.
I simply said "Its not new tech as we've been using them for the past four years! Oh and I guess you tested the Toughbooks screen for outdoor use as well?...Cos these tablets are about the only device that works outdoors!"
He went quite pale and ran out of the office. I don't ever remember seeing any Toughbooks after that.
A lot of people feel their vote is worthless and has zero power to change. So they don't vote. Spoiling your paper just sounds retarded and doesnt gain anything.
So at the next election why don't we try the following - Vote for anyone but the incumbent MP!
That way in theory every current MP would lose their seat, that would include safe seats, Cameron, Millipede etc. All gone. A total change at Westminster. Total chaos for all of them, total upset and a total show that the power to kick them out still rests with the 99%.
Sure we might still end up with a lab/Lib/Con/Co govt, but it would all be new faces and an extreme show of democracy. A campaign could even be setup to provide a more equal divide of the parties by advising voters the alternative to vote for in their ward to create a three way spilt or even a 4 way. Would be interesting to see how a govt would operate with 25% Tory, 25% Labour, 25% Lib and say 25% Independants.
Would be a more useful use of a vote I reckon.
....have all run the figures through their think-tanks etc.
They know that with increasing population and dwindling resources, if they want to keep what they have they have to clamp down hard on the rest of us so we don't dare get up and take it back.
So all this terrorist crud is really a smokescreen to enable them to deal with any 'troublemakers' in the future that might stir up the masses to realise what's going on. Stamp on any dissent. In the meantime they will continue syphoning off all we have and locking themselves away safe from harm.
The western Govts of the world are terrified of another 'Early 90's Eastern Europe' scenario happening. Whereby enough people wake up one morning and think "Hey, you know what? This isn't working for me anymore! It's time for a REAL change!"
If Russell Brand had kept going on about the politics I wonder how long it would have been till he was found 'accidentally on purpose' dead in a hotel room.
...I've never had the desire to buy a radio that has a brushed steel effect kitchen cupboard handle glued on top of it.
Other than how DAB ever got past the basic testing phases all those years ago, I'm still puzzled that this (what 25+ years now?) tech hasn't reached 'given away free with 4 litres of oil' status yet?
...throw it away and buy a second hand Thinkpad or the like.
Nothing puts people off computing whether it be Linux or windows than a crappy slow netbook experience. Any machine that requires you to have to move standard option menus up and down due to limited screen depth is an instant non-starter.
They filled a niche back in 2006-8 but their time since is passed.
I now in most cases refuse to support them. Luckily most of my customers who had them took the advice and dumped them for tablets or better laptops.
Slow netbook is...slow netbook.
...there were games that needed the TV to be set at PAL-60. I only had one such game (The Outfit??) but it caused issues. Haven't seen any of those since 2006.
The vibe I'm getting from both Sony and MS is that no one likes proper product testing. And certainly not testing it with anything more than 6 months old or isn't just laying around campus.
I think the issue here is that the previous generation suffered from numerous cock-ups and lapses of QC and attention.
You would have thought after all these years, this time around things would be monitored with a higher level of scrutiny and testing.
But no....
So err...the question has to be asked of such folks that feel they have to keep all their stuff 'secret' -
What exactly are you up to that might make the NSA etc. even vaguely interested in what you do?
Most intrigued.
In reality I'm sure you are just as boring and irrelevant to the NSA etc. as the rest of us. Sorry but the NSA really isn't hanging on your every word.
....you know the next offer they get will be $50 million take it or leave it.
In such situations I always remember that scene in the 'Adolf Hitler Diaries' when Murdoch offers the German newspaper x million for the rights and they sit there smug asking for double, thinking they are in total control.
Murdoch (played by Barry Humphries) simply says nothing stands up and walks out. The Germans completely crumble.
Total control switch. Quite a powerful scene actually.
I remember the first day of my Computer Studies O level myself and my mate Simon sat at the single 380Z instead of all the BBC B machines because it looked more...techy.
For that day we played around on it and had fun accessing the disks in the two drives. But the next time, we sat back at the BBC B and there we stayed for the next two years. I don't think the 380Z was touched after that.
Would have been September 85 I guess. I often wonder what happened to that old beauty.
Indeed, you can't give Linux away. I offer my less financially able customers Linux on their new PC advising them it's £100 cheaper and will do all the Ebay etc. they want.
But no they still stump up the extra £100. In the five years I have been in business not one has asked for Linux. Even the ones that know about it. They just want Windows.
We had this a lot at our company.
If you had a useless clerical person, you couldn't sack them (also wasn't worth the effort) so the best way to get rid of them was to 'promote them out' to another department. "Congratulations! Bye Bye! Ding dong the witch is dead!"
However, this kept happening over and over so by the time I left, we had people that had zero social skills, couldn't count to ten, manage their way out of a paper bag etc. now at Head of or Director level.
The other problem was they thought they were gods as their rise had been so meteoric. Unfortunately, we were all in on the joke.
So if you've reached a high senior level, just think back how regular your promotions have been and whether any of your previous colleagues actually bother to keep in touch or walk the other way when they see you. If so then you may be one of them and everyone else knows.
Kind of where good employments rights can bite you hard.
Indeed I often used to hear from my other half "Oh christ Adobe wants my user password to download and it wont take the last one again! Better setup yet another account!"
I think at last count she had 6 or more.
Even I have three (maybe) and I don't use any of their stuff. Don't ask me what the passwords are, but nothing amazing. The details in them are all bogus...mail @mail.com anyone?
So if Adobe says they have for example 50 million accounts that's possibly only 5 million actual users.
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