Posts by Doctor Syntax

This is data they should no longer be holding. A belt and braces approach of holding it elsewhere is a breach of that. For all we know this could have been a dump of such a belt and braces copy.

Re: Greasy

"Maybe the telesales are using the telephone directory. Should they delete you from that too?"

In the UK there is such a thing as the Telephone Preference Service. It's a list of phone numbers that shouldn't be called. If a telephone sales organisation is using the telephone book they should filter it against that list.. So in effect the answer to your question is "yes".

And a numbers not to be called list needs no other information than the numbers so your final statement, that they need to remember "you" is false; all they need to remember is a telephone number.

Re: Greasy

"Your system is reasonable"

No it isn't. It appears to have been a response to complaints about his company pestering random people with random phone calls. If they didn't indulge in such anti-social behaviour a deletion should simply have been a deletion.

Re: Greasy

"A surprising number of people still kept on going for Full Delete & then complaining when telesales phone them up. Idiots."

You were making unsolicited phone calls & think the recipients are idiots for complaining?

Is there no limit to the stupidity of marketroids?

I may be old-fashioned here but in my book a theory is a hypothesis that has been tested by some means which would be able to falsify it and has so far failed to be falsified. A hypothesis is a proposition that is testable in that way even if it hasn't been so tested. "Supposed to" is a long way from either.

Re: Ownership and liability

@Steve Knox

If you follow your own link you will see that E&W practice nowadays is that the if the state takes the land then it must provide compensation. If, therefore, the state wished to clear all existing debt by compulsorily acquiring sufficient property & reselling it it would have to raise an equivalent amount of new debt to do so leaving no reduction in the debt but a tidy profit to the solicitors who carried out the conveyancing.

Re: Actually...

Some people are opposed to learning something new because it's inferior to what they've got.

BIG CLUE: If it's not broken don't fix it.

BIGGER CLUE: If marketing think it's broken because they want something new to sell that doesn't mean it's really broken.

Re: Windows 95

"4) The first version had no USB.

Not surprising. USB was a comparatively new technology back then and not that much hardware supported it."

IIRC neither did NT4.

Re: YOU feel, old, I'm cattle-trucked then...

"I remember the 'joy' of using Windows 286...."

So did I. It came as a package from VisionWare which also included an Ethernet board with a BNC connector and an X-server which was, of course, the raison d'etre of the package. And on the other end of the net was an HP running HP Vue desktop which contributed to the subsequent CDE desktop.

Many of the ideas which went to W95 were in there*. Notably there was the start of the menu system but it was a bar with several pop-up menus. The major contribution of W95 was to condense these into a single button with cascading menus. As has been said elsewhere CUA principles were also followed - that's the File Edit etc menus. Those could be implemented in pure text as well as in GUI form.

What MS achieved was to combine a lot of what was already about in such a way that it hit a sweet spot. I've no idea whether this was good luck or good management but they did it. It offered some scope for refinement in implementation and a few features - auto-hide menu bars and multiple desktops for instance. But on the whole it was a feature set that was easier to bugger up than improve as a good many interface designers have proven in the last couple of decades.

*HP New Wave which was an interface revision dropped on top of W3.x also contributed to W95. It introduced the idea of an OO interface, namely that by clicking on a data file the OS would recognise the associated application and start that to open the file. And its text editor had a spill chucker. W95 copyright statements included HP along with the Regents of UCB.

Re: while enabling ... the Windows Store

@Terry 6

Ah diddums!

Oddly enough my strictly non-IT cousin-in-law Terry has no problems with Linux. He can do just what he did with his old XP.

Re: The public accepted Windows 95

@John 104

I just tried that. It does nothing. But then I'm using KDE on Debian. I don't recall it doing anything with SCO either. Why on earth did H/W manufacturers let themselves get talked into wasting keyboard real estate for a key whose use is limited to one particular OS?

Re: Back in the real world

"FTTP is a clear investment in the future"

And a remarkably expensive one compared to FTTC. One cabinet enables connection to a whole bunch of premises. FTTP would require each of those premises to have a fibre connection laid. In some cases there may be existing ducting, in others new ground works would be needed. How many premises could be provisioned in this way for the cost of one cabinet? Do you think any of the companies currently offering FTTP will ever offer services to the sorts of rural customers Bryant was concerned about?

"There's no mention of global warming"

There is now.

"Everyone knew Windows 10 was coming. We may not have known the exact release date"

The release date was trailed well enough in advance. The only uncertainty, I suppose, was that they may have delayed. But the point is well made.

Re: Glutten Free?

Is that gluten or glutton?

Re: "Darling, it was a moment of madness"

"the generation who know no different"

I think they're starting to find out. And as a consequence we can hopefully look forward to the following generation being better educated.