* Posts by WhoaWhoa

178 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Sep 2013

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Mac OS X Mavericks 'upgrade' ruins iWorks

WhoaWhoa

Re: Proofreading

"So when you want to lighten-up you grab yourself a coffee? It's making sense now..."

You are erroneously inferring causality from two independent events.

Lightening up is a habit worth fostering, I'd suggest, with or without coffee. ;-)

WhoaWhoa

Re: Ribboned for your pleasure

"We all probably would have if we thought you were smart enough to have meant it ironically. Unfortunately your bizaare rantings on this thread have shown otherwise..."

In contrast, you present carefully argued lines of reasoning.

WhoaWhoa

Re: Ribboned for your pleasure

''I'm American so I don't know the nuances of when English people say "uni" vs. "university"'

'nuff said.'

I have to apologise. That was a bit below the belt.

I think the recent US two-fingered salute to the rest of the world regarding spying has tainted my reaction to things American, although I recognise that many US citizens are equally appalled by increasing disdain of politicians and spies for the very population they are employed to serve.

WhoaWhoa

Re: Ribboned for your pleasure

"perhaps that American knows British English"

O perhaps they know American?

WhoaWhoa

Re: Ribboned for your pleasure

"When articles are published about Apple that have a negative headline all the Apple hater's pile in to have a dig, and no matter how rational a comment may be, if they think is even slightly Apple sympathetic, they will down-vote it."

No.

When companies portray themselves as supreme examples of "style" over substance, parade their corporate egos and whip up their acolytes to parade their individual egos similarly, comments here often reflect a disdain for the approach.

Yes, there is pointed humour, too, sometimes. And certain types of corporate behaviour tend to invite such attention.

WhoaWhoa

Re: Proofreading

"Given that it is axiomatic that you can't proof read your own copy I find that astoiunding."

You can. Writers do it all the time. Even school children are taught to proof read their own work.

"Of course there are people who think they can proof their own copy, but they are worng"

They're not. See above. Or consult a dictionary, or even Wikipedia.

"(see what I did there?"

Yes.

If that had been an accidental mistake you'd have demonstrated that it's easy to miss mistakes when proof reading your own work, especially if you do it straight after writing it. But you left it intact so if it had been a mistake originally your proof reading had worked, but you chose to leave the mistake to make a point.

However, "astoiunding" highlighted the difficulty better.

This feels like matching parentheses in Lisp. Deservedly so. Time for a coffee. (And to lighten up a bit. ;-) ).

WhoaWhoa

Re: @WhoaWhoa: please enlighten me

'"Big price tag" - wouldn't know about that, bought that iMac second hand in 2012 - best purchase I ever did on eBay!

...

As far as I'm concerned, that's enough "reality of computers" for me: job done, happy with the price paid. What's your story?'

Having read your description, my story is that I might have a look at the box on eBay, which wouldn't have crossed my mind before. So, kudos for your description.

It's unlikely I'll buy, because I've always been aware that this year's £1,000 (or whatever) computer is next year's forgotten range and that the cheapest computer available is so many orders of magnitude more powerful than the ones on which I had my first assembler dabblings that I haven't bought one for years as I've always found free skip-rescues more than up to everything I need (though choice of OS is important to me and particular upgrades are fine). And I'm conscious of the other things I can do for the price of a (temporarily) high-end box (or even an upper-middle-end iMac :-) ).

And I have an aversion to what might have blinginess as part of its perceived value. ;-)

(I know that some claim to see beauty, rather than bling, in certain products. Fair enough. It's just quite different from my concept of beauty).

WhoaWhoa

Re: I am an Apple fan...

"The thing Apple got right was that you can't stick a keyboard/mouse interface on a phone, something MS has been trying (and failing) to do for ages. If they have forgotten that lesson, their design prowess is shallower than I thought."

The thing that Apple got right was spotting that you can fool some of the people all of the time.

WhoaWhoa
Pint

Re: ...disqualify me from knowing what I'm talking about. OK,

"Re: ...disqualify me from knowing what I'm talking about. OK,

...lighten up, Mr Success. No one said you didn't know your job. Don't let a bit of light joshing from a self-confessed grammar nazi and 'campaigner for plain English' penetrate your armour so easily..."

:-) :-) :-)

The Register's enduring appeal is that there are many participants who "get it". And those that don't contribute every bit as much, in their own way.

Have a pint. Here's to slurd spech.

WhoaWhoa

Re: Proofreading

"Do lecturers enjoy reading essays with lots of typos?"

No. And that is the sort of reason why so many years of education are focussed on teaching children to read and write properly. However university is a place where high levels of that competence should be taken for granted. Unfortunately, there are many universities where that is no longer the case. That does, though, make it easier for the better ones to shine as a result of not compromising their expectations of students.

A parent correcting their university son's or daughter's typos is an indictment of the offspring's education and self-sufficiency. I know a fair few students who would refuse to accept such parental hand-holding in an area in which they felt they had already passed their rite of passage; and parents who would, similarly, no more offer such help than offer to wipe their grown up offspring's bottom. I know other parents / children who would act differently.

WhoaWhoa

Re: Ribboned for your pleasure

"It's not plagiarism to get help with typos."

If it's just a typo, help isn't needed, just a bit of effort to re-read and correct your own typing mistakes. If another person made changes that you wouldn't have made and you pass those changes off as your own work by not attributing them, that is an example of plagiarism, although you might choose to view it as a trivial one.

If there were no problem, the son or daughter would presumably have no reservations about putting, "daddy helped correct my typos" at the bottom of the work...?

WhoaWhoa

Re: Ribboned for your pleasure

"Certainly better than those who think using Uni to shorten University is done to look trendy but for some reason shortening enough to 'nuff isn't."

Glad you spotted the irony.

Or did you?

WhoaWhoa

Re: Use Case is a term of art in software engineering

"And my 25 years experience running large scale multi-company, international, software integration projects as an engineer and as a manager where 3/4 of the projects I have ever worked on have had requirements expressed through Use Cases, disqualify me from knowing what I'm talking about. OK."

The problem was not distinguishing between a software design document, in which context use cases might be entirely appropriate jargon, and a discussion in a forum about your personal view about the suitability of a word processor for an essay writer. The essay writer might use a word processor, but they would not, knowingly, apply a "style of use case" to their essay.

I refrained from asking what you meant by a "style" of use case, though that flipping between the formal and informal use of language was, um, "interesting".

There are times to step back from ingrained management speak and renew an acquaintance with the English language. A forum discussion can provide good opportunities. A technical forum might, even, be a particularly good place to use English and jargon when each is appropriate.

WhoaWhoa

Re: Ribboned for your pleasure

"Re: Ribboned for your pleasure

You're obviously clued in. Plagiarism is taking someone else's work(s) and presenting it as your own or taking credit for it without acknowledging the original creator / artist. I think what is being referred to is more commonly known as proof reading or editing."

Plagiarism and editing (by another person) are not mutually exclusive.

Plagiarism is passing off another person's work as your own. If another person edits your work, making changes, and you do not credit that other person's changes you are passing off their work as your own. There are contexts in which that's normal and expected, but submitting work for assessment in an academic context is not one, unless it is explicitly permitted.

And once the mental "adjustment" has been made to allow a parent, for example, to help little Johnny or Jane to (they hope) get a better grade than they could have done by themself it become a small step to suggest a "tiny" extra example or a "tiny" rearrangement of words or ideas. And if that tiny change is really just part of the editing, then a slightly bigger change would "help", and would be OK, wouldn't it?

It used to be the case that pupils / students were expected to learn to do their own proof reading, make their own spelling and punctuation corrections. It is more common now in some contexts (in the UK at least), especially in schools, to look the other way, because so much focus is put on grading schools by often-meaningless (but easy to measure) civil servant, desk-dwelling administrator-designed criteria that put huge pressure on schools to increase their pupils' grades.

Looking around, at the "leaders" of industry and commerce, the political "leaders", the "getting away with what you can" approach is the example set almost everywhere, almost all the time. So little surprise if many parents become complicit in this, especially with their own little Johnny or Jane.

But there are also examples a-plenty where getting someone else to do the work you need to do for yourself does not wash. In fields in which real ability rises to the top and no excuses can substitute, people work by themselves; parents or coaches or teachers do all that they can to encourage Johnny or Jenny to do that work, but they do not do it for them. A sports trainer and an athlete know that a press-up done by the coach does not develop the athlete's fitness. Likewise with scales and musicians, or potential winners of the Fields medal and PhD supervisors. The teachers might, do, demonstrate and explain, but they do not do the learner's work for them. Of course in such fields it is quite obvious that a trainer's press-up does not improve an athlete's fitness, or a teacher's scale a musician's skill. But when assessment is viewed primarily for the sake of the resulting grade, rather than as a tool for improving ability, is viewed as the goal there is temptation for a parent or teacher to "inflate" a parent to "inflate" the grade by their own direct contribution, knowing that they will probably get away with it. This is short-sighted and counter productive, since the son / daughter / student is not improving in the way that the athlete doing their own press-ups or the singer practicing their own scales is improving. Worse, they are being trained to get away with someone else doing their work for them when they can: a habit that can lead to a life time of not developing as well as they might have.

If a university explicitly states that a student may ask a parent to proof read and correct work, that is one matter. Many universities have regulations that state that work submitted by a student for assessment must be all their own. Often, even, students are required to sign a statement to this effect. Not that long ago such a statement would have been superfluous as everyone would have understood that to be so, but such have been the shifts in "acceptable" standards of integrity that explicit statements are now seen to be necessary.

Once politicians caught with their hand in the till would have immediately resigned, without prompting, for they knew they had violated a standard that was inviolable. Now governemnt organisations feel it's OK to side-step their own laws and spy on the very citizens to whom they are, in theory, accountable. When acceptable standards shift the consequences can be subtle and wide-reaching as the "getting away with it" approach spreads into other fields.

So, having a little additional one-to-one session with university-attending son or daughter to show them how to use a dictionary and how to construct sentences or punctuate is one thing. Editing their work whilst on the 'phone is trading a short term mark gain for a long term disservice which diminishes their independence, integrity and honesty. It is the parent's choice about how they wish to influence their offspring, but making an even ever-so-slight choice towards honesty or dishonesty, independence or dependence has a cumulative effect over the years for which the parent might feel growing pride, or a tiny bit of sadness at the slightly tarnishing, character diminishing effect of reduced integrity.

WhoaWhoa

Re: part of the long-term strategy I'd imagine

"But yes, including a halfway competent and free one that comes with the OS is a nice thing that gives people value."

In the same way that "value" is given when something "free" is added to anything that has been vastly marked up in the first place.

There are surprisingly many who are persuaded by such marketing deception that targets the hard-of-thinking.

WhoaWhoa

Re: Ribboned for your pleasure

'I'm American so I don't know the nuances of when English people say "uni" vs. "university"'

'nuff said.

WhoaWhoa

"Well, it seems to me that whilst you've been using the swings and roundabouts, Apple have changed the size of the sandbox."

Can't quite unpick the children's playground metaphors, but understand why that setting is appropriate.

WhoaWhoa

'So is this the iWorks Toaster and Fridge edition?

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/1450608'

Article finishes...

'The newly-birthed Twitter account @FridgeToaster got what might be the final word on the matter: "Hey, Tim Cook: Bite my shiny metal ass," it tweeted'.

WhoaWhoa

Re: I'm getting uneasy

"They'll pry 10.6.8 out of my cold, dead hands...."

Or gaze at the formalin preserved corpse, still clutching, in the Apple Users Museum of Curiosities. ;-)

WhoaWhoa

Re: So, another bloody idiot will have to go

"I wonder who will be following Scott Forstall out of the door?"

"Jony" Ive? (Or "I've", as the iPad would have it).

Being in charge of putting rounded corners on software will end in tears, mark my words.

WhoaWhoa

Re: A little confusion here - not as bad as it initially seems

"And I'm sorry, saying we had to downgrade the software to give the other versions a chance to catch up is a pretty poor one for one of the world's largest IT companies."

Yes.

Not so surprising when you see them as primarily a consumer gadget company, though.

WhoaWhoa

Re: A little confusion here - not as bad as it initially seems

"What has just happened? Well it looks like Apple has stripped back functionality so that the iOS, mac and the web versions of the iWork apps are 100% compatible."

Looking forward to the day when they launch the technology that lets them upgrade iMacs (at no cost) by removing the keyboard and mouse, in the interests of sleek minimalist design and 100% compatibility.

WhoaWhoa

Re: Bah!

"To be fair, the colors that you are now allowed are very, very detailed."

And beautiful. I've never seen such beautiful colours before!

Http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1K6fa4Y3DI

WhoaWhoa

Re: Ribboned for your pleasure

"Er no, the old and new Pages integrate fully with Reuters/Thomson Scientific EndNotes software, about the most sophisticated citation and Bibliography management solution imaginable."

Really?

That speaks volumes about your powers of imagination.

WhoaWhoa

Re: Ribboned for your pleasure

"A Use Case is..."

I expect that many readers know exactly what a use case is. However, unless you have access to and can reference the specific analysis documents you suppose exist as a retrospective "justification", the fact remains that dragging superfluous technical jargon into a sentence which is better served by plain English does not improve the style, content, or credibility of your discourse.

WhoaWhoa

Re: Ribboned for your pleasure

"She can also share her essays with me and I can edit them in the web interface to fix any typos I see while I'm talking with her on FaceTime which is nice and works very well..."

Known as plagiarism, in the trade. Unless, of course, she credits your input to her essays.

Oh, and just because your daughter might say, "Uni", instead of university, it doesn't make you young and trendy to copy her, any more than letting her see you dancing would.

But, Apple... desire for trendiness image... all seems to fit.

WhoaWhoa

"Upgraded the family iMac (2.8 GHz Core2duo) - everything fine, until I tried to upgrade iPhoto and iMovie..."

Sorry for the lack of sympathy, but anyone with a "family iMac (2.8 GHz Core2duo)" was destined to confront the reality of computers one day. Shiny cases and big price tags can only hide the truth for so long.

WhoaWhoa

"It's long just been a parody of itself."

Whilst that claim might superficially appear to trip rather smoothly off the iPen I fear it is flirting dangerously with the Dark Side of Russell's Paradox.

WhoaWhoa

"Apple fucked something up... no that can't be right, shirley."

Apple always has f***ed stuff up, same as everyone else. What's different is that the recently expanded user based, courtesy of iThings, now includes a higher proportion of people who know that a piece of shit splaying out from the iFan is just that and not a little shower of magic fairy feathers worth inflated dollars by virtue of their magic fairy featheredness.

iShit was always mixed in with the good stuff, same as for all technology.

WhoaWhoa

Re: part of the long-term strategy I'd imagine

"Making the software free and including it with new Macs would appeal to a PC user who might be thinking of buying a Mac this time round, who generally would only use the word processor to write a letter to the bank or make a shopping list."

To be brutally honest, the sort of user who "generally would only use the word processor to write a letter to the bank or make a shopping list" doesn't need a (n IBM-compatible) PC or a Mac. They would be best served by a pen and paper - more reliable, more portable and faster boot time. If they really feel the 'need' to use a computer something like an Amstrad PCW512 would be more than ample for their needs. Why, if they ever aspired to novel writing it would still serve them well.

But you're right to recognise that the majority of computer users may be really, mostly, shopping list writers.

WhoaWhoa

Re: I am an Apple fan...

"But i feel Tim Cook is slowly destroying what was a marvellous thing of beauty."

Actually, it was a computer. Just a computer.

WhoaWhoa

Re: Ribboned for your pleasure

"Essay writing is probably a pretty typical style of use case for iWorks"

... or,

"Essay writing is probably a pretty typical use for iWorks"?

Bit of a traditionalist, myself. Remember the days when there was a language called English taught, and learned, in schools.

Apple under CEO Angela Ahrendts? Hmm ... (beard stroke)

WhoaWhoa

Re: Bait and switch...

"Tim Cook's job is to make sure that Apple is brave enough to keep betting the farm on their instincts."

Apple's instincts have nearly taken them down the tubes more than once. In the really bad times Bill Gates bailed them out (although, of course, he did have his own motives).

If I had a farm I'd bet it on my instincts that Apple is going to get that tube ride right, eventually.

And I'd bet it would have been just as likely with Jobs at the helm.

iPHONE 5S BATTERY: It may NOT just be you, it may be RUBBISH

WhoaWhoa

Re: iPhone batteries are replaceable

"iPhone batteries are replaceable

You can get a replacement battery for your iPhone 4 or newer at the Apple Store.

The battery is not designed to be replaced by the end user though."

Genius: Give me your money and I'll give you a battery,

Mug: OK, have a load of it.

Genius: Here's your battery. Now I'm going to watch and laugh as you try to put it in. Huh! I'm not called Genius for nothing.

Mug: Oh, Genius, thank you. You are so cool and work for such a cool company. If your logo had lips I'd kiss it every day.

Genius: Don't you do that already?

Mug: Oh yes. You're right. I forgot. I'm not called Mug for nothing.

Cook: Apple 'so very, very proud to be a FORCE FOR GOOD'

WhoaWhoa

Re: Obviously

"...It's fashionable in some quarters to castigate Apple as The Great Satan..."

It's fashionable in some quarters to worship Apple as the Great Messiah.

I've never liked those sort of coffee shop quarters, with their superficiality of contents, the beverage and glow-slab acolyte kind, both sugary imitations of the real thing.

It's the '90s all over again: Apple repeats mistakes as low-cost tablets pile up

WhoaWhoa

Re: @ Wibble - iPads are expensive?

"... but the next one will have been thoroughly thought through. It's still going to be an iPad..."

Why not just save yourself the effort of a thorough thinking through, then?

WhoaWhoa

Re: @ Wibble - iPads are expensive? @Dave126

"Apple don't give a shit if you want to glue your iPad to the desk, but that's no reason for the other 169999999 iPad users to be lumbered with an RJ45 socket."

The lumberment that's used by so many for actual work because it's more reliable and faster than radio waves?

As for Apple not giving a shit, can't argue with that.

WhoaWhoa

Re: @ Wibble - iPads are expensive?

"Unfortunately they don't meet mine (I have tried) as I need better support than they offer such as ongoing OS updates from the vendor and the ability to get it immediately swapped out in a shop and up to the minute data restored if it breaks so I can continue working."

So your requirements are a warm feeling, if a somewhat undiscerning and reality-challenged one?

WhoaWhoa

Re: you pick one of their tablets up and the quality is there to be seen.

"get go"

"start"?

Apple 'happy ending': BULGING iPhone WAD - but can it ever be enough?

WhoaWhoa

"Dell and HP can only dream about making as much from PC sales as Apple does, since they don't sell them for $5 more than they cost to make like most PC OEMs do."

Not sure whether I properly understood what you're saying, but if it is that Apple puts huge markups on its hardware and that's why it is currently so financially successful that sounds like a bit of a shortsighted, screw-our-customers-because-they're-too-think-to-realise strategy. Eventually even the least savvy customers come to understand that they're being ripped off, big time, by that particular company. As that realisation dawns sales will slide. (Yes, there will always be a group of Posh Spice-like fans who imagine kudos arises from conspicuously paying way over the odds, but that group is a minority).

Once people start to realise how much they've been played for, to a significant extent, marketing-fodder fools, their loyalty will move away never to return.

Study: Arctic warming at 'stunning' rate – highest temps in 44,000 years

WhoaWhoa

"Ok, so what do you see as high tech in relation to green ?..."

A focus on research battery and electricity storage technologies (with a little more significance that the ability to play Angry Birds)?

Thinking of other examples is left as an exercise for the reader.

WhoaWhoa

Re: It must be us!

"They are energy companies and will be selling us energy in whatever form produces the most profit."

Nothing to do with their existing field of expertise and its continued relevance, or otherwise, then?

So that means that Microsoft and Apple used to be the companies making typewriters for typing pools and what we witnessed in recent decades was their smooth transition into computer companies?

WhoaWhoa

Re: Ship of fools

"anarcho-syndicalist commune"

There was someone at university who'd come out with phrases like that. The scientists who knew him used to offer to write his essays for him using a dice-and-paper based random word generator.

WhoaWhoa

Re: greenies are wrong about almost everything

'Re: greenies are wrong about almost everything

"Green power was only expensive because of the feed in tariffs"

No, green power is expensive because of something called "physics".

Look it up.'

And nuclear power is only 'cheap' because the escalating cost of safely storing / processing spent fuel is always (to date) swept into the future and omitted from calculations, to be picked up, eventually, by tax-payers rather than nuclear companies. In the UK we've recently seen how 'cheap' it is when Cameron trumpeted the deal he'd done whereby China will build the next UK nuclear reactor (and, likely, others to follow) and will be guaranteed a payment per unit generated close to double what existing companies are paid. And guess who picks up that bill? The same plebs who pay the taxes.

The Raspberry Pi: Is it REALLY the saviour of British computing?

WhoaWhoa

Re: HDMI not compulsory

"Want a switch instead of pulling the micro plug out of the RPi?"

On the odd occasion when I've wanted to reset it I've tended to use the more resiliant plug on the big volts end of the power supply. The one plugged into the mains extension lead. Doesn't show any signed of wearing out yet.

Why did Nokia bosses wait so long to pop THAT Lumia tab?

WhoaWhoa

Re: The Name

"For a glorious moment there, I thought you had realised that easy to remember names were a good idea.

...

they will just ask for an 'iPad 5', because that is easy to remember."

For one dreadful moment Boots the Chemist and time of the month images were swirling around.

EU tsars rubbish Brit PM over attempt to delay beefed-up privacy rules

WhoaWhoa

"HMRC list of politicians expenses and bank accounts going public? we can only hope!"

It will happen. If the data's collected it will just as surely be mishandled.

That's when the politicos, slow beasts that they are, will finally realise that it is they who have the most to lose by snoop-enabling.

Cameron on EU data protection rules rewrite: 'Hold it so we get it right'

WhoaWhoa

Re: Just to put this in perspective....

"The fact that they are US voters and what they demanded was that Britain continue to sabotage the EU on behalf of the USA is just following every other British PM."

Hard not to be compliant when a certain agency has a record of every piece of dirt you and you associates and your family and your friends (do politicians have them?) have been associated with or would be embarrassed by.

In a meeting with a woman? For pity's sake don't read this

WhoaWhoa

Re: Speaking as a techno-nerd male ...

"Speaking as a techno-nerd male ...

... I never have any electronic attractions "alive and available" when in meetings that might lead to money. Only stands to reason ... Pay attention to the person you are face-to-face with. And the contract you are trying to hammer out. Outside distractions are contra-indicated."

Would that be a "money is the only thing that matters to me so if you're not bringing any please f*ck *ff now because I've got better things to do" sort of techno-nerd male?

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