Posts by Doctor Syntax

"Switching over from office to anything else requires people to relearn the tools they use to do their chores, and nobody wants to do that."

Each new version or even update of Windows? Switching UI to ribbon?

You're quite right, of course. That's why I'm sitting in front of a Linux UI which looks more like W2K than anything Microsoft serves up these days. (Actually when I fire up a VM with W2K it looks a bit pixelated in comparison. Was it really so rough sitting directly on the H/W?)

Re: "More ads ... could be last straw for some"

"Me, I'm resigned to being one of the last of the dinosaurs"

And keeping glancing nervously upwards.

"Besides, Linux is simply not user friendly for most people once you get beyond clicking on icons and have to go into the terminal"

It's always easy to spot those who haven't used Linux in the last 20 years or so.

Sometimes the terminal option is quicker than clicking through a list of stuff and for a lot of work vi is a better option than any GUI editor on Linux, Windows or anything else which is why I used it in a terminal emulation window on Windows just as I do on Linux. But the occasions when it's really necessary to drop into a command line? - about the same has having to edit the Windows register.

The frogs are well boiled by now. Or is it Stockholm syndrome?

Re: Nice operating system you have there...

I think it was my old Latin master who used to say "That's not a threat, it's a statement of intent".

Yes, an responded to the negative feedback PDQ. Monopolies are different in that regard, at least until TPTB start investigations when they promise to be good little children, all the while crossing their fingers.

Re: Missing half the population?

"The big problem is that every time a woman lies it hurts not only the man/men directly involved but it hurts women in general."

This, above all.

It means the genuine cases are apt to be severely cross-examined in court. It's far from misogynistic to believe it wrong that so few cases get to court. Not only do investigators want to avoid miscarriages of justice, they want to avoid making things worse for the genuine cases when they do get to court. Setting quotas for prosecutions, let alone convictions helps nobody.

"A good number of these women are suffering from some personality disorder and think they are the centre of the universe and nothing else matters."

Maybe mores have changed since I was professionally involved* - '70s & early '80s - but experience of reading a lot of statements suggested that personality disorder very rarely came into it. Complainants mostly fell into two groups:

1. Those who woke up realising it might not have been the good idea it had seemed at the time and were probably worried about being pregnant. The police surgeon provided them with a morning-after pill.

2. Those who wanted an excuse for daddy who had been waiting up for them. I'm pleased to say that my own daughter never gave me any problems in this regard and I'd have tried to avoid putting her in that position if I thought there was a possibility. I did have one variant of this go to court; the DPP for some reason insisted but eyewitness evidence totally demolished the claim, embarrassed the complainant and left her family looking rather angry with her.

I have to add that my personal view was that if under-age drinking had been heavily stamped on there would have been a much lighter caseload. Certainly one or both parties in many cases were under pub-age but had drink taken.

There were, of course, a number of cases which were taken very seriously by everyone and, if at all possible, brought to court.

* Alleged sexual offences are a large part of the forensic biologist's workload.

Re: The Rust community forked the language under the name Crab

They ougtht to call it Verdigris and promote it as a greener alternative.

It's stuff we got used to a very long time ago.

"I wouldn't even go that far. It's just an excuse not to spend money they don't want to / can't spend."

The whole stupid idea started out as a money-saving exercise. More lanes were needed but adding them by buying up more land was expensive. Just relabel what's already there, it'll be cheaper...

Of course, unless you really do feasibility studies before making the decisions it never seems to work out as expected. Isn't that odd?

"If there are capacity problems then motorists just need to adapt"

Best to tackle the problem at cause. Heavy traffic is a consequence of years of planning that concentrated employment in city centres to the extent that each centre requires more than 1000 sq miles surrounding it to accommodate the people who work there. Until that's dealt with complaining about traffic is simply victim blaming.

Re: Er, I thought we'd moved to hating cars for new reasons

Smart motorways are just mostly insufferably dumb

"Getting rid of the difficult bit in the title. Other candidates include the Online Safety Bill.

Re: Firmware ...

I remember the press reports from those early days. The IBM-compatible market was enabled by clean-room implementations based solely on the published APIs. The BIOS vendors were very careful about avoiding any possible basis for suggesting their code could have been copied from the originals. After all they were confronting a a massive law firm with a computer company bolted on the side of it.

Re: But realistically what have we (the US) to offer them?

Governments tend to be inward-looking. As a consequence they seldom think of how the real world will react to their decisions. The real world will very often work round the decisions so the achievement is usually at best minimal and at worst adverse.

Re: Stationery....or not.....

Just open with a pair of scissors: cut out the bit of envelope with the staple in it.

Re: Nicknames

"And a toolkit can hold a hammer"

Just one? Surely you need a graduated set so as to select one matched with the target job.

Re: Ahh, the Orifice Manager

"ordering expensive pens only to leave them in every meeting room"

Go round the meeting rooms to recover them, then re-issue them, charging the department's budget for a new pen every time.

Re: This is why we need code review

"to find no obvious clue where the test was"

I've often thought there should be a recognised test procedure requiring three people.

One is the developer or a reasonably senior member of the team is there's more than one. The next is a user. The user should have no knowledge of the application that's been developed but a good knowledge of the application domain and of what the application should do.

Ostensibly it's to allow the developer to learn how users use the application, in reality it's to learn just how unusable it is.

The user is allowed to ask developer no questions other than "How does it tell me how to do X?" and the developer is allowed to answer no other questions.

Ostensibly the third person is an invigilator to enforce these rules but is, in reality, there to stop the other two coming to blows.

Re: This is why we need code review

"my IT teacher telling me I'd never have a career in IT"

Obviously someone who had o idea how things happen in the real world.

Re: This is why we need code review

Ah yes, the bad old days of "IE or nothing"

The bad old days are still with us, just a bit updated from IE to whatever short, possibly very short, list the devs bothered about. And then there are those who take umbrage and won't display anything at all unless JavaScript is enabled for their site. Or won't display a close button on their cookie pop-up (looking at you, National Archives).

Re: If hes

The year is yet young.

Re: makes a smidge of difference

It sounds like straightforward internet bragging but without the Lamborghinis and Rolexes.

Re: Something needs to be done to protect consumers

"or else there would be a second tier of commercial repositories who would vet new additions before adding them"

In fact, this sounds to be the sort of thing I had in mind: https://it.slashdot.org/story/23/04/12/1623201/googles-free-assured-open-source-software-service-hits-general-availability

Re: Sounds like marketing speak, I wondered why...

Before the reshuffle it was Dorries.