Posts by Terry 6

Re: Copy Space

Which, if computer instructions appear to you as mystical incantations, is exactly what you would, even should, do.

And on the non-IT world I've dealt with plenty of instruction guides that would have the same effect on the uninitiated. Including some school assessment packs that only made sense if you understood how the tests were supposed to work.

I once had to designate one of my staff to sit with a teacher who'd messed up a school based spelling assessment test because of this and help him rub out the students' answers ( in pencil luckily) and then show him how to administer the test correctly. He'd never used a test of that sort, so he'd done what he'd always done. The test had sentences with blanks for the kids to write in the word, and he had to read it out to the class and let them write the word in, but he hadn't understood he was meant to tell them what the word was ( it was a test of spelling not guessing). The instructions just weren't explicit enough.

Re: Self fixing

And in schools......

Re: hmm

That just reminded me of another one.

I bought a flat. Previous owner owned this and the one upstairs where his aged mother lived and he'd converted the entrance so that it had been like a single unit, then converted it back to sell.

When I redecorated I carefully switched off the power before replacing the light switches.

In a moment of well founded paranoia I put a tester on the first one I did, by the front door, before I touched it and yes! It was still live. Turned out he'd wired that one from the flat upstairs so that he could turn the stair light on or something. Another Dick.

Re: hmm

In my student days some of the sockets and light switches in the rented room and shared kitchen gave nasty tingles. (Late 70s)

Since landlord was useless I investigated. And yes. Neutral and live wires apparently connected at random. I went round the entire fucking house redoing them. Dick!

Re: hmm

You forgot the "is it plugged in" and "is the socket on" questions.

Re: One wonders

Still my view. A passing fad.

And not too many people crossing in front of planes or other planes stationary or suddenly turning in front of them.

Re: Did he get a ticket?

There's that lovely study where the subjects are asked to watch a simple ball game. Afterwards they can all comment on various aspects of game play, but failed to notice they monkey* walking between the players.

*Guy in a monkey suit.

Re: Whole story

Seems that prospective buyers should take a lie detector test and an IQ test before being allowed to buy a car

ftfy

" crew were loosing focus and in an emergency it took too long to regain focus. "

Anything which removes from the driver feeling the need to remain in constant control and concentrating is a high risk.

Because there will always be a point when s/he thinks that they can put attention elsewhere for a brief moment. And if nothing catastrophic happen then they'll do it more and for longer in future. And so on.

It's not about driving as such. But about perception.

Re: Am I the only person i nthe world who doesn't have problems with Virgin services?

Mine's always been fine. Their router, too.

I dunno.

I can get full 200mb, always.

Note too the dissonance.

On one had the company is to large and spread out for face to face reset requests, On the other hand the service desk were expecting to recognise the disembodied voices of those same remote individuals.

And to spell this out, if they aren't available for face to face password requests they aren't available to get their voices recognised.

Because money.

Commercial organisations exist for money.

And if putting stuff on your computer brings in the stuff that's what they'll do.

Re: Lenovo

So what!

It's not about you. Your comment adds nothing.

My chemistry teacher, nearly half a century ago, talked about this stuff. (It was used in his PhD apparently). If you got splashed you had to inject a solid he said. Dunno what or how.

But he made clear that it was very scary stuff.

Re: A bit out of date?

If...

This we'll all use taxis argument is a myth. It's built on the assumption that cars just transport people. But our cars also contain the stuff we need when we're out and about. Which may be our work kit ( older daughter carries all her speech and language assessment packs in the boot, for example) and lunch box, our gym equipment ( I used to nip in on the way home from work) or stuff we might need (spare raincoat etc.in case the British weather changes - as it does).

Not to mention all the stuff we take with us and keep in the boot for later. Like errands we need to do on the way home (I'll drop these shirts in to the cleaners...).

And of course we need to keep a supply of supermarket bags in there.

Re: A bit out of date?

Err.

EV owners only rarely need to use a public charge point. Most charging is at home

The leafy suburb market with front drives will, I suspect, not be adequate to support a market fully.

The inner-city living driver, the older style terrace (even in the suburbs, and if it's London especially) living driver, the flat dweller None of us have access to a front drive charging point.

And public charge points need to be cheap enough to not cause resentment. And I'm saying now, I'll be bloody resentful if I find in the future that I'm paying more to charge and run my car from a public charge point near my North London terraced house than the rich folks do.in the driveways of their million pound+ semis and detached houses.

Re: He should be proud that of that guy

Thank you, this..

"suddenly had to remove the telephones that were placed conveniently right outside their locked doors, for visitors to call inside employees on "

validates my earlier comment.

I'd had in my head that I'd seen this from time to time, in reception areas of large companies, but couldn't have quoted where. Or even when.

Re: He should be proud that of that guy

You assume the recipient can readily identify that the call is definitely internal, that also it is definitely from the Helpdesk, not a random department within the company ( and especially not a convenient internal phone just the other side of the reception desk for visitors to use when they arrive) and that he has time to work these facts out while trying to respond to the call itself. And that's assuming he can be sure that the phone system hasn't been hacked into. (Whether or not that is a significant risk is irrelevant, he wouldn't be expected to know, let alone decide, whether it was or not).

Re: Marketing lies

Me too. My VM package gives me a full 200mb.

I'm on a haggled discount. Just had the letter saying price goes up £4/month but even so I know I'll never get that speed elsewhere.

Re: Low quality coding

Yeah, confidence sells. An over-confident applicant will always get a job over a sensibly cautious one.

And an Old Etonian..........

My experience, working between users and devs, has been that security and ease of use are both way down the priority train behind getting in the features that the top brass want to see (often for no sensible reason) and then getting the product out. Result, complex insecure systems that users will simplify if they can, and avoid if they can't. Which can be anything from the post-it note p/w to a complete non-use of the poxy software.

Re: It's a shame...

I think we should store her inside high level nuclear waste. FTFY