Posts by Terry 6

Re: Time to modernise: magneto-optical disks

I was one of the (few?) people to buy an LS-120 ( or some such unhelpful combination of letters and numbers) Superfloppy disc drive. Which was obsolete even before DVD-RW came along. The name didn't help take up, I'm sure. But the main problem was that the media were prohibitively expensive. The makers clearly wanted to make their money on disc sales ( in the razor blade business model), but got greedy and over-confident. IOW no one bought the bloody things, they costed an arm and a leg, so you weren't likely to buy more than you absolutely needed- probably one or two.

Re: Photocopier challange

I just don't have a very flexible (for rotation) neck. If I try to look back over my shoulder the sheer effort makes my eyes go funny. I've been driving for decades, always used my mirrors ( until the camera came along).

Re: How to make an ISP disappear

With VM they simply don't bother to update the status page on the web site or inform frontline phone answering staff that their service is fu**ed.

Re: Photocopier challange

Upvoted. But in real life we know that people just want to get home. So drive straight in. And worry about reversing out, next time.

Re: Conference Confusion

And frequently the user who needs the stuff has not been in the room long enough to find out how, no one from that department has ever needed to use it or been given time to work out how to and a key component has been put somewhere safe.

Re: Photocopier challange

Ah, my Honda has the fuel and bonnet release levers close together and tucked down just out of sight. I've only released the bonnet and driven off with it loose once though.

Re: Photocopier challange

Yes, late sister's car was one where you had to press a peddle before turning on the ignition. Which I didn't know. Tasked with starting the car because it had been sitting for a few weeks I just couldn't. I did figure out there had to be some sort of stupid trick- and eventually worked it out.

Actually

Proper Nobel Peace Prize stuff. Think about all the office annoyance that would be averted if only there were enough bloody spoons when a brew is needed!

FFS

FFS!

Well yes, that too. But I didn't want to add it as a 4) because it's not about the actual software. just plain egregious

Re: Lane warnings

I think it's not really meant for the aware driver, but rather is for the dozy driver who has lost awareness.

Re: New car

Interestingly, with various Hondas, as far as I can work out it's temperature differential that triggers this. i.e. if the cold road shows as substantially colder than it was/or the air temperature or something of that sort.

Re: New Road Layout Ahead

Or if it had, not realising that f***ing Garmin take a while to notice things like a whole new exit from the M6 to the M1 South that's been years in the building. So that they are in the wrong lane and or go sailing off past the exit until they run out of motorway and find themselves (OK, myself) in the depths of rural Nowhereshire with no way to find where the f***ing M1 has gone.

Re: As an application developer ...

Subcontracting means there is slightly less time to do the job than is needed, especially if there are penalties for over running too. So pesky details get dropped.

Re: As an application developer ...

I put this down to the sheer uselessness of messages - starting with the old yes/no style options where either seemed much use and it was not possible to work out which action (if any)would be helpful.

Re: re: streaming services and content

I also found that a "recording" that I'd "saved "on my Virgin Media box's HDD became unavailable after the series in question became unavailable - and which I'd forgotten to finish watching. It was there in the list, but, no. "No longer available." Bastards.

Re: The manufacturer couldn't give a fuck

IOW "Lifetime" like "Up to......% off" is marketing speak for "We'll do what ever we like."

Re: Waste of money

And that's the true reality. Those programmes, along with game shows and compilations, fill the enormous gap that is created when we expand the number of suppliers, but can't increase the supply. Add in beancounters who'd rather remake/copy a successful film (Conan the Barbarian v2 ffs) or TV series, create stupid sequels/prequels (Police Academy 973) and add extensions to the existing ones than finance something truly new anyway, and you have the full explanation for the hundreds of hours of dross that is broadcast daily.

Re: Ink on Paper

It did. It's synchronisation across device that is the problem, with TBSync being broken.

Re: Before computers we used to make stuff that worked

My cousin was one such guy. Since those days, though close to retirement now, he's lectured in electronics.

Re: One Ring to rule them all ...

Yes, I don't watch a lot. There are maybe half a dozen series I'd like to see. I might hate them once I start of course. They're all on different services. And that means paying and risking wasting an awful of of money.

Re: Ink on Paper

Sore point. Thunderbird calendar on my desktop only syncs to my phone via the TBSync add-on and an EAS one . I'm buggered if I understand why it needs two or indeed why it isn't just built into TB.

Either way, latest update broke the add-ons last month. Still waiting for a fix. No calendar updates in TB until it is. If it ever is. And if the Dev producing the add-on can't find time to fix it, moves on to pastures new or something I'll be forced back in to MS Outlook in September.

Re: TomTom Lifetime Maps

Been there, (but not withTomTom's help anymore)-Done that.

Re: B.I.T.A. & Twisted

I saw some ITA stuff when I was doing my (rather specialised) PGCE. Pretty horrific. As far as I could understand it, it was designed to make Phonics work by making the spelling of words match how they sounded. How the fuck kids were then meant to transfer to real letters seems to be unexplained, or at least it wasn't part of that ( historic) module we looked at briefly.

Not sure what the whoosh is. I totally agree with you. I wouldn't have used the word "Arcane" for it, at least not in its original form and probably not at all. But I think the poster was using the term as in a mystical art. And there I'd agree it - even if it's not the correct use of the word..

Synthetic Phonics - which started as simply being linear decoding (c+a+t=cat) has morphed into being a quasi-religious system that has to be "Pure". (The word is actually used). And Analytic Phonics (aka Onset and rime) is seen as being a serious Heresy, along with any kind of fun, focus on meaning or even, in some of the more extreme cases admitting that some words may not be decodable.

Well, to add to your understandable confusion. As the Phonics Only movement has progressed we've moved away from giving kids "Real books" to stupid books that only serve to rehearse the phonic patterns required.

One for the 5 year olds runs along the lines of "Hello Fox" /"Hello Box"/Ox comes in- [Ox then sits on the top of the next page and plays no part in the rest of the book] It continues "Fox is sad"/"I can fix it". I'm not sure how you fix sad, or what that is telling the 5 year olds about mental health.

The latest iteration of this is that the kids can only be given books with words that are phonically regular*. They are not allowed any rhyming songs, or sounds games to help them remember, or enjoy. It has to be "pure" Phonics. At 5 years old!

The impression coming through ( no one is paying for research as far as I'm aware) is of a generation of kids coming through who can read mechanically, but don't want to - and who some observers are suggesting struggle to read challenging texts even if they wanted to.

The research aspect is interesting. For years I used to get the journals and there'd be plenty of research about teaching methods- often very nuanced or persistence of reading in older children, or approaches to comprehension and retention of written material. In the last couple of years before I retired all that had disappeared. All the studies were about comparative success of Phonics teaching in, for example, different alphabets. Absolutely nothing about attitudes to reading, relevance of reading to different age groups, etc etc.

*I guess in another decade or so they'll be taught to drive on roads that are empty of other cars and only allowed to turn left.(In the UK).

Teaching some phonics is very useful. It's a good way of getting a good part of many words. The wheels come off when it becomes the only authorised approach for the whole of teaching reading, with a specific authorised methodology and specific targets that are required to be met.

There was a time when some academics were so anti-phonics that the kids in some schools weren't being given that skill. I fought very hard with the schools I was supporting to make sure that it was taught. The absolute minimum is that kids can recognise the sounds of most of the letters instantly, so that they know what sound the word begins with. But equally I fought against some schools where a scheme was followed slavishly when it wasn't productive.

An example. A consonant blend is a pair of consonants that run together (e.g. "sl"). It's almost as useful to be able to get these at the start of words as simple consonants. But one school was complaining about, and asking for help for, several kids who weren't getting enough ticks on a list of the blends they were required to learn by rote. But they were all getting a fair few. The simple and (should be) obvious solution is to teach the kids to generalise from one to many. If they know "sl" they can get {st,sp,sw,sk...}. Also {bl,cl,fl,gl...}. Then {bl,br,} and so on. You can ( I did) make a diagram with "sl" in the middle and the other sets on paths radiating outwards. The school took this up. The long standing problem resolved itself within a couple of weeks; leaving me to take up referrals for the kids who really needed specialised help.

Re: $110,140 is not much in US...

And that's a comment I can't argue with. Better than a low bar isn't the same as good enough.

In educational terms measurement is both essential and fraught.

We need to measure the outcomes of our work- or how do we know if we're doing the right things for the right kids at the right time.

But, as soon as measurement becomes public and political it becomes counterproductive if not totally destructive. Because the pressure then is to provide easily understandable measurements showing steady progress at an apparently impressive scale.

The reality is that the aspects that are the easiest to measure are seldom the most relevant. That individual items are not significant in isolation, but rather progress is most often seen in how they integrate. And that progress is not regular in identifiable steps. Over any given period there will be small progressions in some components, some big progressions in others. Some plateaus and some sudden surges. Some total blocks that the teacher will have to deal with*, and some sudden flashes when the learner will just "get it".

*Deeply suspect are any programmes and methods that require the teacher/student to just do more of the same, or keep repeating a unit until it's achieved. The professionalism of the teacher is to decide whether they should try to do that and how much. Or find some alternative method. Or reduce it down to just the essential elements or maybe simply provide a workaround that lets the kids progress- and come back to it later, if that is what is needed.

Those studies - I read several. It was my job to- all compare these two approaches to find that phonics works better than sight recognition at what they have redefined as word recognition. In isolation from the aspects of reading that they anathematise, use of context above all.

Pure straw man arguing again, I'm afraid.

Incorrect. Children learn to read best when they have good language skills, are introduced to the language and rhythms of book language, have a good understanding of rhymes, have been taught a useful amount of both analytic and synthetic phonics (only the latter is permitted now), recognise a good number of useful words (not just the 100 most common ones because frequency is not the same as utility) and are given support and encouragement to gain confidence in their ability to anticipate and verify words and phrases. The phonics behaviourist lobby call the latter "guessing". It isn't. But they are very good at dog whistle arguments.

And all of the above are important components of reading, but none is individually essential. You can learn to read without any one of them if you have the others. Except maybe the language skills. For reading to be meaningful you need to have the language to understand what you are reading.

That is a straw man argument. One much used by the phonics lobby. The whole word recognition approach was a common one when I learnt to read, in the 60s.

By the 80s it had been replaced by a much fuller understanding of the reading development process. Reading as a complex set of cognitive activities. But that is much harder to explain to the public, much harder to market and much more expensive to produce materials for. Nor does it satisfy the demands of the Behaviourist theoreticians who'd been pretty much expelled from mainstream Psychology outside of education. Phonics, however, is an absolute Behaviourist approach.

Phonics is marginally more effective than that old "Look and Say" approach, but Look and Say was an approach that was pretty much obsolete by the late 80s. It didn't stop the powerful and vociferous phonics lobby from attacking it as if it was still current and, more importantly, falsely, defining everything other than phonics as if it too was "Look and Say".

So there was a restricting device on the a/c that didn't stop it being accidentally turned off, but then made it difficult and obscure to turn back on.

My first thought "Someone got paid to design this??!!"

But then a deeper anger welled up inside me. About the number of hours and hours I've spent over the years because undoing some accidental or involuntary change of some setting or other was much more difficult and obscure than the original turning it off had been.

There has to be a bloody good reason for making a setting that's easy to set one way but difficult to reset back to the other one.