Posts by John Brown (no body)

"always lived within commuting distance of their office"

I noticed that line too. My take on it is a little different though. Of COURSE people live within commuting distance" of the office. If they didn't, they'd not be able to get there. But of course, as you say, what IS "commuting distance" and and how far in distance and time are people prepared to accept? That's a personal, social and societal issue with many and varied answers for all of the reasons given by you and those who replied and probably many more too.

Re: Vast majority??

"Since when has 73% been a vast majority?"

I'd guess that in the context of a survey which managed to get the results you planned for, anything above about 60% would be a "vast majority" :-)

Re: We have expensive real estate.

"and if an employer wants to treat their employees as identical work-producing units,"

But that is what is ingrained in corporate culture already. That's why the "Personnel Department" became "Human Resources" and why project managers talk about assigning "resources" to tasks when they mean "people". As one of those "resources", I take great umbrage whenever I see an email chain referring to me and my collogues that way.

Re: Meta chief and human being Mark Zuckerberg

"I'm pretty sure I've seen sources saying he's chief of Meta."

Correct, but the "and" clause needs to be satisfied to make the complete structure result in "true"

Re: Idiocracy

"Right now, pretty much the majority of bus routes in Oxford end up in the city centre."

That pretty much describes every town and city in the UK and probably around the world. Public transport is geared up for large influxes and exfluxes[*] of people to the high density city centre offices. It's not geared up for people living in on one edge of town needing to get to a different edge of town. Travel in, then back out because nothing travels around the edges. And I can see why too, in these days or privately owned public transport. It's only busy at "rush hour" and the rst of the time the buses are almost if not completely empty so they need to make hay on the most profitable routes. While the services are in private, commercial operators hands, maybe we ought to stop calling it "public transport"?

[*] Is exfluxes a word? My spillchucker says not. It should be :-)

Re: Idiocracy

"I live in a subutrban area of a smallish city and the main thing within 15 minutes walk from me is charity shops, hairdressers and a dog shampoo parlour, unless you want to but a fireplace."

And that's the problem. The facilities you need or want are NOT within easy reach. That's the entire point of the idea. Or you you one of those people of the mind that this is Big Governments "plan" to keep people locked away in their own little areas and banning travel to other areas? Because if so, I shall point at you and laugh, with a little sadness.

Re: Idiocracy

I'm not surprised. Taco Bell may not have expanded beyond US shores back then. Even now, I'm surprised to find they actually have 132 restaurants outlets in the UK, one of which is only 7 miles away from me, the next nearest being about 40 miles away. I'm only familiar with the name due to so many US TV shows and films being broadcast here.

Re: This is the most problematic indictment for him, by far

"Convicted criminals are still eligible to run for president (Eugene Debs) and could be president while in prison - until he works out how to use presidential authority to get out."

Just for shits and giggles, I think I'd quite like to see that happen! He gets sworn in and then other world leaders start inviting him to their countries for state visits etc and he has to make his excuses!

Re: This is the most problematic indictment for him, by far

"Or to put it another way Innocent until proven Guilty."

Just for clarification and completeness, the word is "unless", not "until". "Until" implies they ARE guilty, we just ain't tried hard enough yet :-)

"Plain ol' SatNav is good for around 3m CEP. That's nowhere good enough for autonomous navigation."

You only need an accurate, centimetre grade navigation if that's your primary means of identifying where you are and what lane you are in. Having a 3 metre accuracy ought to be enough to identify which road you are on if, as with all AVs currently on the road, you also have other location and situational awareness devices such as cameras, radar, lidar etc. which does the heavy lifting for the immediate area, although for a safety margin, I'd expect an AV car based SatNav to be better than that.

""It's said the cars needed the connectivity to route their journeys."

If that is ALL they need a wireless connection for, why does it not have an up to date built-in mapping system, even a cheap SatNav they can connect to the rest of the cars systems as a backup? Grinding to a halt when there's no phone/WiFi signal is not a good look. Just try making a mobile phone call or using mobile data from somewhere where there are a lot of people, most of whom will have mobile data permanently turned on, WiFi turned on and many apps chattering even when they are not using the phone, sucking up what can be limited bandwidth many places. If I need to log into our work system while out on the road, it's not a good idea to pull into a motorway services around lunchtime during the summer school holidays. You might have 5 bars, but you ain't getting much data, so I'm not surprised those GM cars lost the wireless data in a busy, crowded area. You'd think that would be a major metric they'd have been monitoring for while they were running with drivers during the daytime.

Re: Spreadsheet imports

As a Supermarionation puppet, under the clothing, I suspect they are as gender-free as Ken and Barbie :-)

On the other hand, you really should not be blaming someone for a mistake when a freshly minted grad is dropped in to not only do everything IT related but still do the shelf stacking and order fulfilment he was originally hired for. That's just asking for trouble. But, small business and a boss who probably thinks "IT" is a job title and of course a new grad will "know it all" :-)

Re: Ice mining on Mars

Is that an assumption or is there evidence of water in such a form that clearing out the ice will leave a useful void with something other than a "rubble" covering? I'd expect anything that close to the surface to be more like a permafrost, ie some water ice in a porous rock or similar structure.

Re: Door Access Readers

Unless you get pulled over for some reason, the copper is in a picky mood[*] and, not finding anything else, does you for "going equipped".

[*] see what I did there? :-)

"After rescue he was given a formal written reprimand for using the rubbish bin in the lift as a toilet."

Well, I hope he in turn reported them for the H&S violation of not ensuring the emergency phone in the lift worked.

Re: So much fail...

"there doesn't appear to have been a signing in book (which would show somebody still "present")."

Signing in books are still quite common and reception are usually quite scrupulous in making sure visitors sign in. Signing out they leave? Not so much. I suspect if there was a real fire and an evacuation, the Fire brigade will be looking for an awful lot of visitor who've apparently been in the building for a month or more :-)

Re: Door Access Readers

"Eventually someone decided which doors would be easiest to force to access the offending PC. I think it took about 2 hours to gain access and fix it. The problem is that it could not "fail open" from the outside as this would leave all the buildings with unrestricted access."

Was the eventual solution to have at least one access point that can be entered with a traditional lock and key?

Re: I've been locked out ...

Unlocked, not open. There's a difference. Fire exits do not usually open from the outside. They are emergency exits. If you can open a fire exit from the outside because it's not "locked", then you are doing it wrong.

Re: Nobody is visiting anybody

"Look at all the time & resources the Romans & Greeks had, and they didn't develop anything."

They did quite a bit with hydraulics, mechanics and even dabbled with steam, but there was no economic incentive to develop most technology when they had lots of cheap slave labour.

Re: Ink's not the only problem

"You can find a bulb and replace it but its a really fiddly operation, its obviously never intended as a fix."

Look at the list of available "spares" for the big HP floor-standing office devices. The list is fairly small nowadays and is often entire sub-assemblies these days. Got a scanner problem? Replace the entire scanner/lid of the printer it's not just a roller or separator pad.

Re: What comes around….

"But I’m sure the cost of implementing it has reduced to stuff-all by now."

It is. I would only ever consider a PS compatible printer. Although you do have to double the check the cheap end ones in case the PS is done in software by the driver. PCL6 comparability is also a nice-to-have or as an alternative. My use case is printing from FreeBSD,Linux and my wifes Windows laptop, so there's no real need for OEM drivers or worry that they may stop supporting it (eg new version of Windows often drop "old" printers) PS and PCL6 are so ubiquitous now it's hard to find an OS+driver that won't support a printer in most of ots functions. Likewise with scanners, I only buy stuff which is supported by SANE.

Re: Well if anyone can do it, NASA can.

The risk is pretty low. Probably about as low as the chances of a launch vehicle carrying samples up to orbit, not reaching it's destination and dropping it's load in the wrong place after a rapid unscheduled disassembly. As you say, "accidents happen". It's all about calculating the risk.