Posts by RichUK

Re: How was this made possible?

"my employers have now concluded that everybody has to have a formal office base at one of our larger offices": to be fair there may be tax/financial reasons behind that decision rather than presenteeism ones.

Re: People still use Lastpass?

Ditto. Support has been appalling ever since LogMeIn took them over and that was very definitely the last straw. LMI are only in it to milk it and the users - they've shown no sign whatsoever of being good owners and guardians for LP.

Re: "If it's a Boeing I'm not going....."

A good reputation? Their planes generally have a good safety record but Niki Lauda had to hold their feet to the fire to get them to own up to and fix the issues when one of his 767s crashed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauda_Air_Flight_004

A lot of this stuff is really easy in TB using rules, which are simple and intuitive to set up (the only unintuitive thing is that these rules are called "filters" which is stupid because (a) they aren't filters, they are ruled-based action and (b) there's already something called auto-filter, which actually *is* a filter).

Try hovering over (say) the "from" address on an email, right-click and select "create filter from..."

Rules (filters!) are really good in TB.

Re: Hmm.

You forgot the Dodo.

Re: Statcounter

@Imanidiot - spot on, instead of keeping something that was unique and worked both functionally and in terms of good UI design (which seems to be a dead science these days) they just went with being like everyone else.

Re: In the old days...

Upvoted for the grammar observation alone. Winds me up, I see it so often. That and loose instead of lose.

well someone has to control the fridges when the damned things start spying on us...

Re: Of course it's not a shambles.

Jeroboashambles = shambles * 4

Rehoboshambles = shambles * 6

Methuselahshambles = shambles * 8

Salmanazarshambles (reserved for NHS f*ckups) = shambles * 12

Balthazarshambles = shambles * 16

Nebuchadnezzarshambles = shambles * 20

Solomonshambles (rarely seen) = shambles * 24

Sovereignshambles (reserved for monarchy-related f*ck-ups not parliamentary ones) = shambles * 34

Primatshambles (reserved for shambles originating directly from the PM) = shambles * 36

Melchizedekashambles (reserved for f*ckup resulting in end of civilisation as we know it) = shambles * 40

Re: Vinyl introduces a lot of failings - Laser Turntable

Laser "cartridge" sounds an intruiging idea. But don't forget that the sound of a vinyl record is heavily influenced by the turntable that's spinning it (platter material, resonance, inertia, motor and transport mechanism, suspension, etc) as well as by the cartridge (compliance, tracking weight, inertia, coil mechanism etc) and arm (bearings, sonic reflectivity etc). A laser would eliminate some of these things and measure the others more accurately (perhaps). A record player is, ultimately, a record transport device and a measurement system.

Re: Step back and thnk about this.

"How many aircraft have been lost due to a design flaw over the last 10, 20, 30, 40 years?" - DC10 cargo doors. All 346 people on board Turkish Airlines Flight 981 were killed when the cargo door blew out over France in 1974. It was a known design problem (the door could be left partially unlocked without it being obvious rendering it liable to blow open in flight, with subsequent floor collapse severing control lines). OK this is slightly more than 40 years ago but unfortunately design weakness can and do happen - it's not necessarily poor design, sometimes the implications of a design don't become apparent until heavy use. Hopefully they mostly get spotted and corrected or procedures put in place to avoid them causing an incident. Though speaking of procedures 273 lives were lost in a further DC10 crash in 1979 caused by removing the engine and supporting pylon as a unit, to save time, against the manufacturers recommendations (for which American Airlines were fined $500k, but they weren't the only airline doing it).

Someone queried whether aircraft were allowed to fly without primary instruments working; I'm sure somebody in the industry can advise on this but a few years ago my holiday return flight was postponed because the captain's side primary engine display was inoperative; apparently to fly without it was against company policy. An engineer was to be flown out to fix it. After several hours wondering what overnight accomdation was going to be provided the captain appeared and informed us he'd persuaded the company that, as the right-hand instrument plus the backup were both working, it would be perfectly safe, and we duly took off the same night. I think the captain must have had a hot date ;-)

Re: active vs passive brewing

I think someone a while back determined that 2 minutes was the optimum brewing time, then the teabag should be removed to prevent stewing. Which sounds about right. The amount of stirring was not specified though. Personally I'm a stirrer. (a) I'm impatient and (b) this produces a nice strong flavoursome cup but without the "stewed tannin" factor.