Posts by Terry 6

Re: "people usually work on what they are interested in"

Simple example. Palemoon's devs have chosen not to indicate when a new add-on appears, unlike in FF and Thunderbird. It's been asked for and argued cogently and reasonably for in their forums by a number of individuals ( including me). There have been plenty of users indicating agreement. No one has posted any objection to this ( at least when I last checked).

The Dev team, however, say point blank that they won't do this because they want to be even handed and give all addons equal preference. We've argued that knowing that something new has become available isn't favouring it - it's letting us know about it, because otherwise..... we won't. Unless we have an idle couple of hours to search through all the categories (or maybe just the ones we might be interested in) for something we don't recognise.

So if you do develop something new for PM, no one will know.

And I for one am slowly drifting back to FF.

Re: The social media companies don't help enough

Twitter is the same. You can report hate, but not conspiracy or lies.

Re: Pah, you kids

Stick? We begged for a stick. Had to sharpen our finger nails

Back at MIT (not the good one, the other one in NZ) in late 90's I remember the PCs in the various labs has LS120 "superdrives" which took a standard floppy as well as 120MB disks. A bit like a zip drive.

Problem there is that the LS120 discs were exorbitantly priced. Not many people bought more than 1 and the entire device became obsolete as soon as affordable CD writers and media appeared.

Idiocy.

Re: Excel hate?

Microsoft are amazingly bad at sorting out long standing, well known inadequacies.

The one I usually refer to at such junctures is the recycling bin icon.

For God knows how many Windows versions it's been possible to replace the recycle bin(s) with something more interesting. But you have to manually alter the registry entries to make them change automatically.

The ,0 (below) has to be entered manually at the end of the path to the new icon or the icon won't change on empty/fill without a refresh ( which would be pointless).

It's well documented on the various support websites.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Key Name: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CLSID\{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}\DefaultIcon

Class Name: <NO CLASS>

Last Write Time: 30/03/2020 - 09:14

Value 0

Name: empty

Type: REG_SZ

Data: R:\Icons\domie.ico,0

Value 1

Name: full

Type: REG_SZ

Data: R:\Icons\coffee.ico,0

Value 2

Name: <NO NAME>

Type: REG_SZ

Data: R:\Icons\domie.ico,0

Re: Technical management tips

Although I guess it explains how they got bought up by a rival so easily.

People become what you expect them to be, or hire them to be.

If you grind any initiative out of your teams and make them risk averse, by micromanaging, for example, then no one can complain if they are lacking initiative and risk averse so that they need to be micromanaged. No one, except that is, the poor bugger who comes in from elsewhere to try and get results out of them.

Re: Problem with learning parrot fashion

There's a difference between not knowing what happens in the details under the bonnet and not knowing how the thing works in a more general sense.

"cheque/check" and "chess" btw come from the Old Persion word for King ( cf Shah which btw I think would be pronounced with a guttural ending "Shakh"). Check mate is "chaque mat" i.e. The King is dead.

Yes and no. Check and cheque both seem to have a shared commonality within Old French word (escheque) meaning to hold something off ( from Chess). But by the mid 1700s with the word "eschequer" referring to a checked cloth ( think Chess board pattern) on which money was counted came "exchequer" -with the "ex" bit added on in place of the the French es out of English pretension- as one who controlled the cash. From that comes the word cheque - as far as I can work it out.

The American version - check- seems to be attributed to checking the sum, the verb form, by the various on-line dictionaries as an origin, but frankly doesn't ring well and may be a post-hoc explanation. Both ran in parallel according to context. "Check" being the form used for everything other than financial instruments which remained wedded to "eschequer" outside the American colonies.

Re: To be fair

The ambidextrous thing is useful. But I do find that I automatically do certain things with specific hands unless there's a good reason not too. As a general rule, strength with left, dexterity with right. Though that doesn't always work.

Re: Trying to teach...

My own use, and I think probably most users, is relatively simple. Long and repeated simple calculations.

But I do share the suspicion when I come across massive spreadsheet based systems. An obvious example, PFI charging. If a school or a hospital requests a new table from the PFI company the cost goes into a spreadsheet. (Say £100) which then calculates a service charge for making the provision, and another for ordering, and another for cleaning and another for admin and another for maintenance and however many others that have been hidden in the contract small print. And the school is given a bill for £350 and an annual charge of £100 p/a there after. And no one has any way to know whether that's right or not.

Re: How to write directions...

Some of this is because for the last 20 years or so people with new devices etc. have to try and guess how to use them. Instruction manuals are rare, oversimplified and either badly printed or in cluttered PDFs. And my biggest moan in this regard ( see FAQ post below) they only tell the user stuff that's already obvious. And -when they really do need it to explain something non-obvious - the instructions totally ignore that aspect. Often it's not even mentioned in the index.

Re: Passwords

I have a complex p/w that I change from time to time. And is used exclusively for an encrypted file kept in Onenote, which is shared across my devices but also has another p/w for general access. In the encrypted file are a set of files with such things as p/w lists. Which are not too obviously related to the thing they unlock to add a third level (obscurity).

We still use some cheques. Sometimes. because when,for example, we get money back for my wife's out-of-pocket guides assn. expenses it comes as a cheque. Ad so some "subs" payments from some parents who don't get transferring directly. And so on. Not many, not often. But some.

Agree-except the ones I get free from my library. Most (UK) library services have a contract with an e-library or two. I read some magazines the same way.

Especially since the default locations are just pretend folders hidden away in <documents and settings> and not something that appears in a normal folder structure.

Re: Excel hate?

However, the Never Read Answers are usually to go with the Never Asked Questions.

Or to be more succinct. FAQs usually spell out the obvious while omitting the useful. And are sometimes written before anyone has even used the product.

Re: Problem with learning parrot fashion

That's been my experience of car hire, on the few times I've had to use one.

Re: You solved the problem, goodbye

And this sums up the interesting thing. Computers as appliances.

If an appliance goes wrong we expect the repair man/woman to come along and just fix it.

BUT- we still are or should be expected to know how to set a thermometer, defrost the freezer, check the fuses, descale the kettle and put the clocks forward an hour.

And yes, I expect the car to be fixed, service ready to go. But it's still my job to check tyre pressure, water, oil and add fuel as required. Even if I do take it to Halfords for bulb and wiper fitting these days ( a mixture of laziness and that fact that bulb housings are just grim to get your hand into).

Re: How to write directions...

Suggestions

1) Flow chart - to make sure you've covered all the decision pathways

2) Get someone else to try and follow the instructions.

Because your head is full of assumptions, personal knowledge and other unconscious biases.

Starting with the idea that anyone who gets it wrong is an idiot. If they get it wrong you weren't clear or specific.

A particular trip point is sentence subject. The pronoun ( or even a generalisable noun) you use to refer back to object #1 may appear to refer to object #2. e.g. If you've been referring to button A for a paragraph or more, but briefly refer to button B a user may think that you are still working on the function of A when you aren't. Or alternatively, you may think you are clearly still referring to button A when the user assumes you've moved to button B.

In instructions, nothing has been stated unless everything has been stated.

Nothing is obvious until it is explicit.

Re: Been screwed by something similar

Lots of kids seem to do exams on a laptop these days. And it's usually my job during exams to quietly remind them to save as they go. And in that, the key point of their student life, having grown up with computers, at least half of them need that reminder. From the start to the end.

Re: Trying to teach...

And being fair, that's probably not too unusual.

A spreadsheet does have a degree of magic about it. A hidden formula that gives you totals, magically, but you don't know how they arrived there. It might be making them up.

Re: Technical management tips

A decent manager holds back the pressure from above. And applies just enough to below.

A bad manager channels the pressure from above and adds it to the pressure below.

Re: Been screwed by something similar

"Save as....."

Always use save as. Always. At least until you've saved a couple of times. And watch what you're doing.

Re: Trying to teach...

I do some work occasionally, in my retirement, that is paid by a mixture of hours and sessions. The claim form was created on a spreadsheet, to be printed and filled out by hand.

No formulae. (Until I set them up for myself and gave it to anyone who wanted). It was just a matrix for a printed form. And this is in a secondary school! What a waste of time. And effort. For me, though, no effort. Counts the number of full sessions (tick in the cell), multiply that by the number of hours in the session, which is standard. Counts the extra hours. Adds them together.

I save and email to the manager.

There are people who spend time printing the form, writing in the sessions, multiplying by the length of session, adding...... etc etc.

Re: Problem with learning parrot fashion

It's part of a wider problem of people not wanting to bother with the what and how of the stuff they use. It's a kind of snobbery. Knowing stuff is beneath them.

Re: hait cut and social distancing

Just <2m and an arm's worth.

Re: "the woman police officer was 71 years old"

Over 70. At high risk. Stay home.

Working till over 70, fine, if it's her choice. But not now.

Re: "not giving Windows 10 enough headroom"

Me too. But you have to store the cloned partition.

I have a separate internal hdd in my desktop, with a partition just for images, inc one sent from my laptop.

And an external (swappable pair of USB) hdds for an extra copy