The Natural Philosopher wrote
Rod Speed wrote
The Natural Philosopher wrote
Rod Speed wrote

It certainly doesnt make any sense to be teaching plumbers pure maths unless they want to do that.

Actually EVERYBODY ought to have if not the facility to use it, a basic *understanding* of pure maths philosophy and
science.

Dont agree with that with the sort of individual that is
only able to do stuff like drive a truck etc with pure maths.

And I'm not convinced its even possible to do with science
with the worst of the fundys that believe that their collection
of fairy storys is the literal word of some god or other.

Buy that I don't mean following the reasoning, just understanding
where it fits in the general pool of knowledge.

I believe thats beyond a decent subset of kids.

Just how big that subset is is another question.

There's a reason that the sales of 'natural' remedys is so unbelievable.

Then I could dispense with the signature below.

I had to plough through Penrose twice before I realised WTF he was actually doing...and that it was in principle,
simple ..

And there is a very substantial subset of the kids that will never manage that, even with the best teachers, and it
will never be possible to have most teachers that good.

though the actual mechanics of manipulating abstract algebras, Iwill take on trust.

I'm not convinced that it makes much sense to even be teaching that stuff to say hair dressers.

Makes more sense to concentrate on much more basic stuff like
not actually racking up debts that incur very high interest rates etc
and even with that, I dont believe that even the best teachers can
get even that message thru to some of the more stupid kids.

I setup DSL and voip for a kid's family that has just left high school after doing all the years that are available
to do, with quite decent results.

I keep getting questions about whether the voip invoice means that
he has a credit and so has money he can spend etc, with one of the
clearer statement formats around. There is something very fundamentally wrong with an education system that produces
a result like that.

Account Summary
Opening Balance $10.00 CR
Call Charge $1.50 DR
Service Charge $4.95 DR
Payment $6.45 CR
Closing Balance $10.00 CR

I cant decide if he's just thick or just super cautious and wants confirmation etc.

You need to learn then.

Nope.

You have not even understood the point.

Wrong.

That is arithmetic, not mathematics.

I never said that was mathematics, it was JUST an example of someone
who cant even manage something as simple as that not having a hope in
hell of being able to be taught what you want to teach all kids.

He's also one of those damned fundys that believes that everything
in his particular collection of fairy storys is quite literally the word of
some god or other that some goat ****ing chilld molsester claims was
whispered into his ear by some angel and he just wrote it all down.

He's a moslem.

He actually believes that the world was quite literally created in just
7 days and that evolution doesnt happen some and that damned
god or other deliberately created everything we see around us.

He was actually stupid enough to tell me that I shouldnt be eating
an icecream with my left hand when he happened to rock up just
after I was finishing the evening meal. He's a neighbour. He wasnt
actually stupid enough try that again after I told him that I dont
actually wipe my arse with that hand.

On Mon, 05 Mar 2012 12:42:06 +0000 (GMT), "Dave Liquorice"
wrote:

On Mon, 05 Mar 2012 12:03:14 +0000, Andy Burns wrote:

Does it come with a sound chip?

Yes, output to 1/8" jack (or over HDMI) but no input without e.g. using
USB.

Ooo. Just thought of another use with the addition of a USB DSAT or
DDTV dongle. An off air digital radio receiver so one doesn't need
the telly on. Controlable over its ethernet port via a web interface
(one assumes the linux it comes with has a web server?). This could
be expanded to an internet radio as well if one wasn't worried about
gobbling up (possibly expensive) internet bandwidth.

Yes, you could hide it in the fabric of the building, and use
ethernet to distribute TV.

Use a zero IF receiver. If they want to network sniiff then tell them
the network handles confidential infomation.

Let the Crapita Nazi's try and find that


--

On Mon, 5 Mar 2012 05:00:31 -0000, "Brian Gaff"
wrote:

Kind of reminds me of Uncle clive and his use the zx 81 to control a nuclear
power station ideas.

They never went that far A few coal fired stations used BBC B's
for a teletext like display of critical temperature and pressures with
logging to disk.


--

On Tue, 6 Mar 2012 07:36:42 +1100, "Rod Speed"
wrote:

Its arguable if its worth bothering with the pre 2007 UI of Word and
Excel when few will bother to get those older versions for their own
systems and the student versions of the latest UI are so cheap.


Word 2007 or better? That'll be WordPerfect For Windows 6.1 then

Complex text manipulations were a piece of **** in WP6.1, they took an
age in anything else. Combine that with Lotus 123r5 and it was IMHO
almost a perfect combination.


--

The Other Mike wrote
Rod wrote

Its arguable if its worth bothering with the pre 2007 UI of Word and
Excel when few will bother to get those older versions for their own
systems and the student versions of the latest UI are so cheap.

Word 2007 or better? That'll be WordPerfect For Windows 6.1 then

Complex text manipulations were a piece of **** in WP6.1,
they took an age in anything else. Combine that with Lotus
123r5 and it was IMHO almost a perfect combination.

And so few felt that way that they didnt survive.

On 05/03/2012 19:30, Rod Speed wrote:
John Rumm wrote
Rod Speed wrote

And if you want them to be able to do more than just trivial documents at work, they certainly need more than you
propose with Word too.

A bit more than a couple of weeks, perhaps - but certainly not years of it.

We dont do years even with the trade schools.

Your not in the UK I take it? The so called "ICT" (a name which means
nothing to anyone outside of education), literally can get taught for years!

After all, what sense does it make that kids leave school after doing the full time at school, without being able to
use something as common as Word for the sort of thing Word gets used for at work by so many ?

You mean writing one page letters, three page memos, and documents
that might use high tech capabilities like auto numbering! ;-)

Plenty of them do rather more than just that.

Has everyone had a sense of humour bypass tonight? ;-)

Yes plenty do more, however a sizeable majority don't. As IT hack Guy
Kewney used to say something like "people are in the habit of demanding
tomorrow's technology today, when in reality many would be incapable of
using yesterday's technology next week!"

Plenty of times I have worked in high tech engineering companies, where
the engineers were slogging over 2000 page cross referenced design and
test specs or similar documents or crappy geriatric PCs, while all the
new decent ones were on the desks of the secretaries or middle managers
punting out memos etc.

Bit rash to claim that no one takes years full time to teach
say Word, but if anyone is that stupid they should be shut down.

Depends on what you mean by learn word (or any other word processor.
People can use it for years and never get past the basics, because they
lose any enthusiasm for learning once they know "enough to get by".

With what the Pi can do its more complicated. You can certainly
make a case for at least some school kids being able to do stuff
like that, if only to provide something that might lite the fire of
some potential engineers etc.

Certainly it makes no sense to try and ram it down the throats of
most kids tho.

Anything you stick on a school curriculum you in effect "ram down the throats" of the kids...

Nope, particularly when quite a bit of the curriculum is optional and not compulsory.

If you are in a state school, and ICT is on the national curriculum,
then that is what you get...

(although schools are finding their ways around that now)

things like the Pi just make it cheaper and at least make it possible for just about any parent to also "buy what
they use at school" should schools choose to adopt them.

Sure, but its less clear that something like the Pi
makes more sense than a netbook or a laptop.

However, I expect it being mainly taken up by the self selecting group that are already into such things.

And it remains to be seen how many kids do, either by
demanding their parents do that or driven by the parents.

But then you can also make a case for teaching quite a bit of DIY in schools too when so many chose to do stuff like
that after they have finished school too.

and in fact, some schools do. There is a local one here that teaches building, plumbing, wiring skills etc, and even
has outdoor "pens" so that the trainees can get a feel f what it is like to work in real world conditions for some of
these tasks.

Sure, I didnt mean to imply that none do, I really just meant
that it may make more sense for most schools do to that
instead of using the Pi in schools, just because thats more
likely to be more use to more of the kids than the Pi would be.

Depends on the kids obviously. If it fires the enthusiasm for learning
some "real" computer science then its worthwhile - there are desperately
few getting taught any useful development skills prior to university
these days (unless self taught)


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 05/03/2012 19:15, Adrian C wrote:
On 05/03/2012 18:21, Tim Streater wrote:

Ctrl-Alt-Del on a PC with Windows is a short cut for starting task
manager, locking, logging out or rebooting the machine.

Not here. And you've forgotten Start.

That's your Apple menu. Apple logo top left of your screen (sensible
place).

Where I stick my start button in windows as it happens... ;-) (double
depth task bar, auto hidden at the top of my left screen)

And then there's the dock....


I'm sure you have other equivalent basic key command combinations that
a Mac user is expected to know, to get on with things. And a funky out
of the box introduction video for users to watch to learn these things.

That may be but you're just confirming what I said, that these other
things are OS-specific.


Forget the specifics, the underlying is the same. There are buttons that
do this, there are mouse movements that do that. There are controls in a
car that once someone has learn't driving can adjust to using be it a
BMW or a Trabant.

For someone who is just introduced to computers and needs to start work
with an appplication, the rudiments of working with an operating system
is the first hurdle to overcome. There will need to be initial specific
training to suit a particular computer system, granted, but Mac's aren't
so different once ye have picked up on using one of the others.

Indeed, give a mouse with extra buttons and they can be quite civilised!
;-)

Now explain to someone how to click, drag and release. OS specific?




--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 05/03/2012 17:16, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Adrian C wrote:

Meanwhile, my niece has been exposed to Microsoft Publisher at school :-(

Before the Software For Students deals, Publisher was a stupefyingly
expensive package to buy for home practice use, and hence was pirated
about widely.

One could argue it was hardly worth paying for...

And isn't a patch on Quark anwyay.

InDesign seems to be sweeping that away now... they rested too long
relying on their position as "industry standard"!


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 05/03/2012 19:17, Ghostrecon wrote:
On Mon, 05 Mar 2012 18:35:36 +0000, stuart noble wrote:

I once spent several days trying to get access to do something beyond
give me a default view of a flat table.


In Access tables are only ever tables. Forms and reports based on the
table present the data any way you please.
I had a lot of fun learning the basics of Access. I never got beyond
macros though, and I suspect most people don't need to either. It's the
"relational" aspect that should be taught, something that IME
programmers don't necessarily understand too well!

I've taught relational databases at A level (computer science) - but not
with ACCESS IIRC I used VFP8 at the time

That takes me back a bit... used to like knocking up things in FoxPro
LAN in its DOS days ;-)

There are 2 areas here ICT - word processing, spreadsheets, files folders
etc whichh all will still do and the computer science aspect (what the RPi
is targeted on) how cmputing machines work etc

Anyone got any figures for how many students do computer science these
days at GCSE or A Level? IIRC when I did my A level in '85/6 there were
only about 120 students in the country that took it that year.. I get
the impression there have never been big numbers doing it.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

John Rumm wrote
Rod Speed wrote
John Rumm wrote
Rod Speed wrote

And if you want them to be able to do more than just trivial documents at work, they certainly need more than you
propose with Word too.

A bit more than a couple of weeks, perhaps - but certainly not years of it.

We dont do years even with the trade schools.

Your not in the UK I take it?

Nope, Australia.

The so called "ICT" (a name which means nothing to anyone outside of education), literally can get taught for years!

Thats not JUST Word tho if
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informa...United_Kingdom
is correct.

After all, what sense does it make that kids leave school after doing the full time at school, without being able
to use something as common as Word for the sort of thing Word gets used for at work by so many ?

You mean writing one page letters, three page memos, and documents
that might use high tech capabilities like auto numbering! ;-)

Plenty of them do rather more than just that.

Has everyone had a sense of humour bypass tonight? ;-)

Nope, I was just pointing out that that overstates it.

Yes plenty do more, however a sizeable majority don't.

Thats a separate issue to what needs to be taught to them tho.

Its never practical to just teach what a sizable majority of them actually do with any subject.

As IT hack Guy Kewney used to say something like "people are in the habit of demanding tomorrow's technology today,
when in reality many would be incapable of using yesterday's technology next week!"

Thats a separate issue to what should be taught in schools tho.

Plenty of times I have worked in high tech engineering companies,
where the engineers were slogging over 2000 page cross referenced design and test specs or similar documents or crappy
geriatric PCs,

Those are all quite adequate for running something
like Word or whatever else you prefer to do that with.

while all the new decent ones were on the desks of the secretaries or middle managers punting out memos etc.

Sure, but thats again a quite separate issue to what should be taught in schools.

Plenty of places do have their engineers with the tools they need
to do their jobs and quite a few mindlessly replace their PCs every
say 3 years whether they need to be replaced or not just because
that approach has some advantages in big operations.

Bit rash to claim that no one takes years full time to teach say Word, but if anyone is that stupid they should be
shut down.

Depends on what you mean by learn word (or any other word processor.

I meant spending years teaching about nothing else, in Word specific courses.

People can use it for years and never get past the basics, because they lose any enthusiasm for learning once they
know "enough to get by".

And because they either dont do the more fancy stuff very much, or
because they dont even realise the better approaches like style sheets
are worth the trouble to understand and become fluent with etc.

That sort of thing is certainly worth teaching in schools.

Whether its worth teaching that level to everyone is a different matter entirely.

With what the Pi can do its more complicated. You can certainly
make a case for at least some school kids being able to do stuff
like that, if only to provide something that might lite the fire of
some potential engineers etc.

Certainly it makes no sense to try and ram it down the throats of
most kids tho.

Anything you stick on a school curriculum you in effect "ram down
the throats" of the kids...

Nope, particularly when quite a bit of the curriculum is optional
and not compulsory.

If you are in a state school, and ICT is on the national curriculum,
then that is what you get...

I dont believe that thats compulsory for all say hair dressers etc in
the sense that they must all fully grasp what say Word style sheets
are about, let alone some of the more sophiisticated feaures of Excel.

(although schools are finding their ways around that now)

things like the Pi just make it cheaper and at least make it possible for just about any parent to also "buy what
they use at school" should schools choose to adopt them.

Sure, but its less clear that something like the Pi
makes more sense than a netbook or a laptop.

However, I expect it being mainly taken up by the self selecting group that are already into such things.

And it remains to be seen how many kids do, either by
demanding their parents do that or driven by the parents.

But then you can also make a case for teaching quite a bit of DIY in schools too when so many chose to do stuff
like that after they have finished school too.

and in fact, some schools do. There is a local one here that
teaches building, plumbing, wiring skills etc, and even has outdoor
"pens" so that the trainees can get a feel f what it is like to
work in real world conditions for some of these tasks.

Sure, I didnt mean to imply that none do, I really just meant
that it may make more sense for most schools do to that
instead of using the Pi in schools, just because thats more
likely to be more use to more of the kids than the Pi would be.

Depends on the kids obviously. If it fires the enthusiasm for learning some "real" computer science then its
worthwhile

I'm not sure that it is if you are proposing all kids should be forced
to use it in school, even the ones that plan to be hair dressers etc.

- there are desperately few getting taught any useful development skills prior to university these days (unless self
taught)

Sure, but you can make a case that anyone who is likely to end up being
much use as a computer engineer is likely to do that seff taught stuff.

Its different with something like say jet engine design.

And then you have the other entire can of worms, whats best taught
in primary, secondardy, trade schools and university level education.

I agree with I think it was Bernard who said that the basics of using
Word should be taught to something like 8 year olds just because that
would be useful for most kids even just for projects and assignments
but not neccessarily so true of Excel which might be better left till a
bit later in school.

But I think you can make a case for teaching the sort of thing that
is useful for automating the production of quotes and for day to day
billing etc may be better left to trade school where you can teach
what is appropriate to a particular trade when say car mechanics
are likely to find that stuff less useful than say general builders etc.

Its not clear to me what the british system does with say the education
of hairdressers and plumbers about computing, whether they attempt to
force them all to do that sort of thing because a percentage of the students
will end up running their own small business in that field and so would find
that useful, or whether thats either optional units or optional courses in
the trade schools that can be taken by those who do decide to end up
owning their own small business in that field, without that being a
compulsory requirement to get the qualification to even be allowed to
actually be employed by someone else as a plumber or hairdresser.

I know the germans particularly do make all the kids do all sorts of
things formal education wise even in trade school that isnt common in
many other countrys. They've been doing that for hundreds of years now.

Not sure what they do about that with sxy computers and hairdressers tho.

John Rumm wrote
The Natural Philosopher wrote
Adrian C wrote

Meanwhile, my niece has been exposed to Microsoft Publisher at school :-(

Before the Software For Students deals, Publisher was a stupefyingly expensive package to buy for home practice use,
and hence was pirated about widely.

One could argue it was hardly worth paying for...

Dunno, its quite adequate for say club newletters etc.

And isn't a patch on Quark anwyay.

InDesign seems to be sweeping that away now... they rested too long relying on their position as "industry standard"!

Bob Eager wrote:
On Mon, 05 Mar 2012 17:37:18 +0000, John Williamson wrote:

Tim Streater wrote:
In article , Adrian C
wrote:

On 05/03/2012 16:04, Tim Streater wrote:
Minimise, maximise, Task Bar, CTRL-Z, F1, CTRL-Alt-Del, Start, are
all OS-specific.


But still there, in some form across all OS's.
I've no idea what F1 is supposed to be for, but I can tell you that my
OS has no equivalent to Start or CTRL-Alt-Del.

F1 is the Windows standard way to open the Help menu in an application,
and has been since Windows 3, if not before.

Long before. It was documented as the preferred Help key on the very
first PC (there's a list of recommended keys in the original Technical
Reference Manual, circa 1981).

I thought I remembered it from the days when I was using Sprint to write
stuff, but I wasn't sure if it was just a Borland thing. Thanks.

CTRL-Alt-Del works on Windows, DOS and used to work on Linux until they
started trapping it and ignoring it in the GUI. The last time I tried
it, it still worked in a text terminal under X. I assume there's an
equivalent on Apple machines.

But it works differently on DOS and Windows, of course.

Of course, and the way it works changed with Vista.


--
Tciao for Now!

John.

Bob Eager wrote:
On Mon, 05 Mar 2012 18:21:47 +0000, Tim Streater wrote:

In article ,
Adrian C wrote:

On 05/03/2012 17:14, Tim Streater wrote:
In article , Adrian C
wrote:

On 05/03/2012 16:04, Tim Streater wrote:
Minimise, maximise, Task Bar, CTRL-Z, F1, CTRL-Alt-Del, Start, are
all OS-specific.
But still there, in some form across all OS's.
Nope.

I've no idea what F1 is supposed to be for, but I can tell you that
my OS has no equivalent to Start or CTRL-Alt-Del.
F1 on most PC applications brings up the Help information for an
application. You have a 'help' key?
Not on this keybaord. SWMBO's has one, but generally you look in the
app's Help menu.

Ctrl-Alt-Del on a PC with Windows is a short cut for starting task
manager, locking, logging out or rebooting the machine.
Not here. And you've forgotten Start.

My Windows system (used rarely) doesn't *have* a Start button.

3.11? It's been there since 'Doze 95. The Start orb in 7 and Vista is
just a differently shaped start button.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

John Rumm :
On 05/03/2012 19:15, Adrian C wrote:
On 05/03/2012 18:21, Tim Streater wrote:

Ctrl-Alt-Del on a PC with Windows is a short cut for starting task
manager, locking, logging out or rebooting the machine.

Not here. And you've forgotten Start.

That's your Apple menu. Apple logo top left of your screen (sensible
place).

Where I stick my start button in windows as it happens... ;-) (double
depth task bar, auto hidden at the top of my left screen)

My Start button (if that's what it's still called) is also at top left.
But I have the taskbar down the left side, the only sensible place for
it IMO with a widescreen monitor.

Not that the on-screen Start button gets used from one month to the
next. The one on the keyboard is so much more convenient. IMO one of the
most important things people *don't* know about computers, and should
have drummed into them at school and beyond, is how much simpler and
quicker it is to use the keyboard instead of the mouse for many common
operations. I always wince when I see someone using the mouse to move
from one field to the next when filling in a form. TAB, dammit, TAB!

--
Mike Barnes

On Mon, 5 Mar 2012 05:00:31 -0000, "Brian Gaff"
wrote:

Kind of reminds me of Uncle clive and his use the zx 81 to control a nuclear
power station ideas.

I can't compete with that but did use a ZX Spectrum to control the
demo for a major aeropace company at a big trade show.
--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) If a man stands in a forest and no woman is around
(")_(") is he still wrong?

On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 02:40:22 +0000, John Rumm
wrote:

On 05/03/2012 19:30, Rod Speed wrote:
John Rumm wrote
Rod Speed wrote

And if you want them to be able to do more than just trivial documents at work, they certainly need more than you
propose with Word too.

A bit more than a couple of weeks, perhaps - but certainly not years of it.

We dont do years even with the trade schools.

Your not in the UK I take it? The so called "ICT" (a name which means
nothing to anyone outside of education), literally can get taught for years!

All the way through primary and secondary education (Ages 5-14).
And there a GCSE equivalent in ICT so kids can take this up to age 16.

After all, what sense does it make that kids leave school after doing the full time at school, without being able to
use something as common as Word for the sort of thing Word gets used for at work by so many ?

You mean writing one page letters, three page memos, and documents
that might use high tech capabilities like auto numbering! ;-)

Plenty of them do rather more than just that.

Has everyone had a sense of humour bypass tonight? ;-)

Yes plenty do more, however a sizeable majority don't. As IT hack Guy
Kewney used to say something like "people are in the habit of demanding
tomorrow's technology today, when in reality many would be incapable of
using yesterday's technology next week!"

True.

Plenty of times I have worked in high tech engineering companies, where
the engineers were slogging over 2000 page cross referenced design and
test specs or similar documents or crappy geriatric PCs, while all the
new decent ones were on the desks of the secretaries or middle managers
punting out memos etc.

Yep.

Bit rash to claim that no one takes years full time to teach
say Word, but if anyone is that stupid they should be shut down.

Depends on what you mean by learn word (or any other word processor.
People can use it for years and never get past the basics, because they
lose any enthusiasm for learning once they know "enough to get by".

People can write documents using a word processor without knowing how
to use it properly. For example I regularly receive documents where
the author has used spaces and tabs to do indents. :-(

With what the Pi can do its more complicated. You can certainly
make a case for at least some school kids being able to do stuff
like that, if only to provide something that might lite the fire of
some potential engineers etc.

Certainly it makes no sense to try and ram it down the throats of
most kids tho.

Anything you stick on a school curriculum you in effect "ram down the throats" of the kids...

Nope, particularly when quite a bit of the curriculum is optional and not compulsory.

If you are in a state school, and ICT is on the national curriculum,
then that is what you get...

(although schools are finding their ways around that now)

Academies have more freedom. I don't know how many are using it
though. My kids school is an academy and they haven't shown any
change in this area yet.

things like the Pi just make it cheaper and at least make it possible for just about any parent to also "buy what
they use at school" should schools choose to adopt them.

Sure, but its less clear that something like the Pi
makes more sense than a netbook or a laptop.

However, I expect it being mainly taken up by the self selecting group that are already into such things.

And it remains to be seen how many kids do, either by
demanding their parents do that or driven by the parents.

But then you can also make a case for teaching quite a bit of DIY in schools too when so many chose to do stuff like
that after they have finished school too.

and in fact, some schools do. There is a local one here that teaches building, plumbing, wiring skills etc, and even
has outdoor "pens" so that the trainees can get a feel f what it is like to work in real world conditions for some of
these tasks.

Sure, I didnt mean to imply that none do, I really just meant
that it may make more sense for most schools do to that
instead of using the Pi in schools, just because thats more
likely to be more use to more of the kids than the Pi would be.

Depends on the kids obviously. If it fires the enthusiasm for learning
some "real" computer science then its worthwhile - there are desperately
few getting taught any useful development skills prior to university
these days (unless self taught)

My youngest seems enthused by the RP where an "ordinary" PC does not
so he will be getting one. If he uses it then I would deem it worth
the money.

OTOH when I grew up schools didn't have computers at all and I was
entirely self taught. Hasn't done me any harm ;-)
--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) If a man stands in a forest and no woman is around
(")_(") is he still wrong?

On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 03:00:55 +0000, John Rumm
wrote:

Anyone got any figures for how many students do computer science these
days at GCSE or A Level? IIRC when I did my A level in '85/6 there were
only about 120 students in the country that took it that year.. I get
the impression there have never been big numbers doing it.

I don't have the figures but, the schools I know, don't even offer any
computer science teaching. All they do is ICT.
--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) If a man stands in a forest and no woman is around
(")_(") is he still wrong?

On 05/03/12 23:04, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Mon, 5 Mar 2012 14:52:14 -0000, BartC wrote:

... Window Focus ...

And I've seen adults have trouble with some of those (myself included).

That maybe because on some OS's you can't make any window have focus
or even move others about at anytime. Those two "features" are
probably the most annoying thing of that OS. Followed closely by
opening a blocking dialog box *behind* everything else on the
desktop.

Still catches me out, and I'm hardly a novice. Email on one workspace,
browser on another, open url from email, page loads in browser, which is
what I want as I will look at the web page when convenient: go browser,
no page waiting for site to load. give up. Long time later close
browser, close email, discover, 'do you want cookie' hiding behind email.


--
djc

On 06/03/2012 01:16, Rod Speed wrote:
The Other Mike wrote
Rod wrote

Its arguable if its worth bothering with the pre 2007 UI of Word and
Excel when few will bother to get those older versions for their own
systems and the student versions of the latest UI are so cheap.

Word 2007 or better? That'll be WordPerfect For Windows 6.1 then

Complex text manipulations were a piece of **** in WP6.1,
they took an age in anything else. Combine that with Lotus
123r5 and it was IMHO almost a perfect combination.

And so few felt that way that they didnt survive.

Ah, Word-Defect. I remember swearing at that.

Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Mon, 05 Mar 2012 13:39:16 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Ooo. Just thought of another use with the addition of a USB DSAT
or
DDTV dongle. An off air digital radio receiver so one doesn't need
the telly on. Controlable over its ethernet port via a web
interface
(one assumes the linux it comes with has a web server?). This
could
be expanded to an internet radio as well if one wasn't worried
about
gobbling up (possibly expensive) internet bandwidth.

no FLASH plugins - so no web radio IIRC.

Cos most Beeb content is flash,.

AIUI Flash is only a wrapper around standard coded streams, I think
there is some link with DRM in there though just to make life
difficult.

Makes a good ON AIR RX with a dongle tho. Has it got sound?

Yes, little point in having HDMI and the abilty to process
information fast enough to produce HDTV signals with out sound...

Except you need a [more expensive than a TV] monitor..

I don't follow what you are saying there. Why do you need a monitor?
A Pi has HDMI out just plug it into a telly and get both pictures and
sound.

Sorry? If you already have a telly you can already get all the off air
radio without the Pi.

Or do you mean you want to get internet radio capability added to the
existing telly?


I cant see the point since the telly has it all already off freeview.

Unless you have a burning desire to stream Radio Free Jamaica or something.


--
To people who know nothing, anything is possible.
To people who know too much, it is a sad fact
that they know how little is really possible -
and how hard it is to achieve it.

Rod Speed wrote:
The Other Mike wrote
Rod wrote

Its arguable if its worth bothering with the pre 2007 UI of Word and
Excel when few will bother to get those older versions for their own
systems and the student versions of the latest UI are so cheap.

Word 2007 or better? That'll be WordPerfect For Windows 6.1 then

Complex text manipulations were a piece of **** in WP6.1,
they took an age in anything else. Combine that with Lotus
123r5 and it was IMHO almost a perfect combination.

And so few felt that way that they didnt survive.


No.

It doesn't work like that. WP was infinitely better than word. And we
had it.

Then people starting turning up asking for Word, because 'that's all
they knew'

We discovered that all over the country managers who knew less than we
did were 'buying Microsoft' because 'no one ever got sacked for buying
Microsoft'.

And realised what became the key understanding of the IT boom. The
quality of the product is irrelevant: the key thing is to target the
decision makers with enough FUD and gear the product marketing to their
perceptions.

Which became encapsulated in a single slogan "Designed to sell, not to
work"




--
To people who know nothing, anything is possible.
To people who know too much, it is a sad fact
that they know how little is really possible -
and how hard it is to achieve it.

Mark wrote:
On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 02:40:22 +0000, John Rumm
wrote:

On 05/03/2012 19:30, Rod Speed wrote:
John Rumm wrote
Rod Speed wrote
And if you want them to be able to do more than just trivial documents at work, they certainly need more than you
propose with Word too.
A bit more than a couple of weeks, perhaps - but certainly not years of it.
We dont do years even with the trade schools.
Your not in the UK I take it? The so called "ICT" (a name which means
nothing to anyone outside of education), literally can get taught for years!

All the way through primary and secondary education (Ages 5-14).
And there a GCSE equivalent in ICT so kids can take this up to age 16.

After all, what sense does it make that kids leave school after doing the full time at school, without being able to
use something as common as Word for the sort of thing Word gets used for at work by so many ?
You mean writing one page letters, three page memos, and documents
that might use high tech capabilities like auto numbering! ;-)
Plenty of them do rather more than just that.
Has everyone had a sense of humour bypass tonight? ;-)

Yes plenty do more, however a sizeable majority don't. As IT hack Guy
Kewney used to say something like "people are in the habit of demanding
tomorrow's technology today, when in reality many would be incapable of
using yesterday's technology next week!"

True.

Plenty of times I have worked in high tech engineering companies, where
the engineers were slogging over 2000 page cross referenced design and
test specs or similar documents or crappy geriatric PCs, while all the
new decent ones were on the desks of the secretaries or middle managers
punting out memos etc.

Yep.

Bit rash to claim that no one takes years full time to teach
say Word, but if anyone is that stupid they should be shut down.
Depends on what you mean by learn word (or any other word processor.
People can use it for years and never get past the basics, because they
lose any enthusiasm for learning once they know "enough to get by".

People can write documents using a word processor without knowing how
to use it properly. For example I regularly receive documents where
the author has used spaces and tabs to do indents. :-(

Indeed. I was once asked if there "was anything simpler I can use than
word?"

I showed him how to set up an icon on for the text editor.

He was delighted.

"PEREFCT! that's all I wanted! An Electric Typewriter that prints out as
many copies as I need"



My youngest seems enthused by the RP where an "ordinary" PC does not
so he will be getting one. If he uses it then I would deem it worth
the money.


great. Its probably the cheapest way to get a linux machine to play with.

OTOH when I grew up schools didn't have computers at all and I was
entirely self taught. Hasn't done me any harm ;-)

Ditto. Oh, I did do a FORTRAN course in 1867..


--
To people who know nothing, anything is possible.
To people who know too much, it is a sad fact
that they know how little is really possible -
and how hard it is to achieve it.

John Rumm wrote:
On 05/03/2012 17:16, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Adrian C wrote:

Meanwhile, my niece has been exposed to Microsoft Publisher at school
:-(

Before the Software For Students deals, Publisher was a stupefyingly
expensive package to buy for home practice use, and hence was pirated
about widely.

One could argue it was hardly worth paying for...

And isn't a patch on Quark anwyay.

InDesign seems to be sweeping that away now... they rested too long
relying on their position as "industry standard"!


InDesign is actually crap, but its geared to people who don't actually
know any better.

And of course its 'good enough'

Quark is instantly accessible to someone coming from hot metl
typesetting who understands things like proper kerning and spacing, and
so on. But you don't get far in Quark without spending time setting up
your templates. Once you have done that, though, the whole book has a
nice common style.

InDesign is more like Word plus..



--
To people who know nothing, anything is possible.
To people who know too much, it is a sad fact
that they know how little is really possible -
and how hard it is to achieve it.

Bob Eager wrote:
Since the Raspberry Pi will be with us soon-ish (well, about six weeks I
am told, for mine) does anyone have any interesting ideas about what they
might do with it/them?

I've heard of car computers, TV boxes, PBCes as ideas...


http://www.wimp.com/robotsolves/

Another Dave
--
Change nospam to gmx

On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 11:22:42 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Makes a good ON AIR RX with a dongle tho. Has it got sound?

Yes, little point in having HDMI and the abilty to process
information fast enough to produce HDTV signals with out sound...

Except you need a [more expensive than a TV] monitor..

I don't follow what you are saying there. Why do you need a
monitor?
A Pi has HDMI out just plug it into a telly and get both pictures
and
sound.

Sorry? If you already have a telly you can already get all the off air
radio without the Pi.

Yes, but our telly draws about 300W. It does have a "radio mode" that
is supposed to power the (plasma) screen down but I'm not convinced
how far down, it springs back to life PDQ from "radio mode".

A Pi with DSAT/DTTV dongle and set of small PC speakers would draw
watt? Probably less than 10W.

I cant see the point since the telly has it all already off freeview.

No Freeview here yet, scheduled for September.

--
Cheers
Dave.

Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 11:22:42 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Makes a good ON AIR RX with a dongle tho. Has it got sound?
Yes, little point in having HDMI and the abilty to process
information fast enough to produce HDTV signals with out sound...

Except you need a [more expensive than a TV] monitor..
I don't follow what you are saying there. Why do you need a
monitor?
A Pi has HDMI out just plug it into a telly and get both pictures
and
sound.
Sorry? If you already have a telly you can already get all the off air
radio without the Pi.

Yes, but our telly draws about 300W. It does have a "radio mode" that
is supposed to power the (plasma) screen down but I'm not convinced
how far down, it springs back to life PDQ from "radio mode".

A Pi with DSAT/DTTV dongle and set of small PC speakers would draw
watt? Probably less than 10W.

I cant see the point since the telly has it all already off freeview.

No Freeview here yet, scheduled for September.

WHAT??

WTF are you?

since they are switching OFF the analogue stations, by implication you
must have had it for some years?

No analogue will be left by te end of te year..so you MUST have freeview
already at least for the Beeeb muxes.



--
To people who know nothing, anything is possible.
To people who know too much, it is a sad fact
that they know how little is really possible -
and how hard it is to achieve it.

Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:


Just as it was IBM in a previous generation.

And realised what became the key understanding of the IT boom. The
quality of the product is irrelevant: the key thing is to target the
decision makers with enough FUD and gear the product marketing to
their perceptions.

Hmmm, why does this sound familiar? Windfarms, anyone?


Exactly. Its well known formula in marketing. You dont sell to the end
user,. you sell to the local authority in charge of the budget, and what
matters is not a result for the end user, but a result for the decisions
maker and his career path.

So, food eaten by men is targeted at the women who do the shopping.
Windpower is sold to politicians, not power companies, on the basis that
they will win votes and look modern, and so the whole spiel is about
'climate change' 'green jobs' 'and free energy' and not about 'lowest
cost lowest carbon' which is what WE want.

What percentage of engineers - who know about engineering - favour
nuclear power. about 60% with male engineers favouring it much more than
female.

Who favours renewables? public sector droids who know nothing about
electricity but a lot about politics.

Worm Perfect wasn't the greatest thing, but boy its was beter than
bloody Word.

The first time I saw that paperclip I had to rush to the toilet.

And then when it decided what I wanted to type before I had typed it -
wrong - I had a screaming fit till someone told me that with a degree
from Microsoft, you could actually discover how to turn it all off.

Frankly if all I had was wordstar on CP/M it would be enough for 99% of
my writing needs.

I shudder to think how many lines of code I have written with just 'vi'

....that being the editor you could always rely on being there.

--
To people who know nothing, anything is possible.
To people who know too much, it is a sad fact
that they know how little is really possible -
and how hard it is to achieve it.

Another Dave wrote:
Bob Eager wrote:
Since the Raspberry Pi will be with us soon-ish (well, about six weeks
I am told, for mine) does anyone have any interesting ideas about what
they might do with it/them?

I've heard of car computers, TV boxes, PBCes as ideas...


http://www.wimp.com/robotsolves/

Another Dave

Now, can it pick the lottery winner, as well?


--
To people who know nothing, anything is possible.
To people who know too much, it is a sad fact
that they know how little is really possible -
and how hard it is to achieve it.

On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 06:52:23 +0000, John Williamson wrote:

Bob Eager wrote:
On Mon, 05 Mar 2012 18:21:47 +0000, Tim Streater wrote:

In article ,
Adrian C wrote:

On 05/03/2012 17:14, Tim Streater wrote:
In article , Adrian C
wrote:

On 05/03/2012 16:04, Tim Streater wrote:
Minimise, maximise, Task Bar, CTRL-Z, F1, CTRL-Alt-Del, Start, are
all OS-specific.
But still there, in some form across all OS's.
Nope.

I've no idea what F1 is supposed to be for, but I can tell you that
my OS has no equivalent to Start or CTRL-Alt-Del.
F1 on most PC applications brings up the Help information for an
application. You have a 'help' key?
Not on this keybaord. SWMBO's has one, but generally you look in the
app's Help menu.

Ctrl-Alt-Del on a PC with Windows is a short cut for starting task
manager, locking, logging out or rebooting the machine.
Not here. And you've forgotten Start.

My Windows system (used rarely) doesn't *have* a Start button.

3.11? It's been there since 'Doze 95. The Start orb in 7 and Vista is
just a differently shaped start button.

7. It's not a Start button. It does not have Start on it. It doesn't
start the system.



--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

*lightning protection* - a w_tom conductor

On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 09:18:27 +0000, Mark wrote:

All the way through primary and secondary education (Ages 5-14). And
there a GCSE equivalent in ICT so kids can take this up to age 16.

And there's an A level. And a level 3 OCR diploma (A level equivalent).

--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

*lightning protection* - a w_tom conductor

On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 09:32:19 +0000, Mark wrote:

On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 03:00:55 +0000, John Rumm
wrote:

Anyone got any figures for how many students do computer science these
days at GCSE or A Level? IIRC when I did my A level in '85/6 there were
only about 120 students in the country that took it that year.. I get
the impression there have never been big numbers doing it.

I don't have the figures but, the schools I know, don't even offer any
computer science teaching. All they do is ICT.

I know quite a few. But then it's my job to visit them.



--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

*lightning protection* - a w_tom conductor

djc :
On 05/03/12 23:04, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Mon, 5 Mar 2012 14:52:14 -0000, BartC wrote:

... Window Focus ...

And I've seen adults have trouble with some of those (myself included).

That maybe because on some OS's you can't make any window have focus
or even move others about at anytime. Those two "features" are
probably the most annoying thing of that OS. Followed closely by
opening a blocking dialog box *behind* everything else on the
desktop.

Still catches me out, and I'm hardly a novice. Email on one workspace,
browser on another, open url from email, page loads in browser, which is
what I want as I will look at the web page when convenient: go browser,
no page waiting for site to load. give up. Long time later close
browser, close email, discover, 'do you want cookie' hiding behind email.

Isn't that a function of the browser you use, rather than Windows? It
doesn't happen to me.

--
Mike Barnes

On 6 Mar 2012 13:03:00 GMT, Bob Eager wrote:

On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 09:32:19 +0000, Mark wrote:

On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 03:00:55 +0000, John Rumm
wrote:

Anyone got any figures for how many students do computer science these
days at GCSE or A Level? IIRC when I did my A level in '85/6 there were
only about 120 students in the country that took it that year.. I get
the impression there have never been big numbers doing it.

I don't have the figures but, the schools I know, don't even offer any
computer science teaching. All they do is ICT.

I know quite a few. But then it's my job to visit them.

In what capacity?
--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) If a man stands in a forest and no woman is around
(")_(") is he still wrong?

On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 12:35:05 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

No Freeview here yet, scheduled for September.

WHAT??

WTF are you?

Middle of the North Pennines.

since they are switching OFF the analogue stations, by implication you
must have had it for some years?

Nope, local relay is currently four analogue channels only. Can't
receive anything else as there are hills in the way.

No analogue will be left by te end of te year..so you MUST have freeview
already at least for the Beeeb muxes.

No "MUST" about it, if you can't receive a main transmitter most
(all?) of the relays don't carry anything but analogue until the
first stage of DSO for the host main transmitter starts.

For us one mux will appear on 12th September in place of BBC2
analogue. On the 26th Sep the other three analogues go and some of
the other muxes appear. After DSO is complete we will have three
muxes, BBCA, BBCB and D3+4, so only half a service, wonder if we can
have a 50% reduction in the licence fee?

http://www.ukfree.tv/shutdowndetail.php?tx=NY730478

--
Cheers
Dave.

Bob Eager wrote:
On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 06:52:23 +0000, John Williamson wrote:

Bob Eager wrote:
On Mon, 05 Mar 2012 18:21:47 +0000, Tim Streater wrote:

In article ,
Adrian C wrote:
Ctrl-Alt-Del on a PC with Windows is a short cut for starting task
manager, locking, logging out or rebooting the machine.
Not here. And you've forgotten Start.
My Windows system (used rarely) doesn't *have* a Start button.

3.11? It's been there since 'Doze 95. The Start orb in 7 and Vista is
just a differently shaped start button.

7. It's not a Start button. It does not have Start on it. It doesn't
start the system.

The start button in XP, 95, 98 et al. doesn't start the system either.
It does, however, open a menu which lets you stop the system.

As has been said, the "start orb" in 7 looks like a button, and if you
hover over it, the caption "start" shows. If it quacks and waddles, my
guess would be that it's a duck.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

Whitby has no Freeview and isn't due to get it until around
September/October 2012.

I think Whitby likes being behind the times. Part of the attraction

On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 14:09:04 +0000, Mark wrote:

On 6 Mar 2012 13:03:00 GMT, Bob Eager wrote:

On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 09:32:19 +0000, Mark wrote:

On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 03:00:55 +0000, John Rumm
wrote:

Anyone got any figures for how many students do computer science these
days at GCSE or A Level? IIRC when I did my A level in '85/6 there
were only about 120 students in the country that took it that year.. I
get the impression there have never been big numbers doing it.

I don't have the figures but, the schools I know, don't even offer any
computer science teaching. All they do is ICT.

I know quite a few. But then it's my job to visit them.

In what capacity?

University admissions....

BTw, can I have a prize for starting the fastest growing thread in
uk.d-i-y for quite a while?



--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

*lightning protection* - a w_tom conductor

On 06/03/2012 13:01, Bob Eager wrote:
7. It's not a Start button. It does not have Start on it. It doesn't
start the system.


It never did start the system.

It's the 'Hello user, are you lost? _start_ here and find your saved and
recently used application shortcuts' button.

--
Adrian C

On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 03:00:55 +0000, John Rumm wrote:

On 05/03/2012 19:17, Ghostrecon wrote:
On Mon, 05 Mar 2012 18:35:36 +0000, stuart noble wrote:

I once spent several days trying to get access to do something beyond
give me a default view of a flat table.


In Access tables are only ever tables. Forms and reports based on the
table present the data any way you please.
I had a lot of fun learning the basics of Access. I never got beyond
macros though, and I suspect most people don't need to either. It's the
"relational" aspect that should be taught, something that IME
programmers don't necessarily understand too well!

I've taught relational databases at A level (computer science) - but not
with ACCESS IIRC I used VFP8 at the time

That takes me back a bit... used to like knocking up things in FoxPro
LAN in its DOS days ;-)

There are 2 areas here ICT - word processing, spreadsheets, files folders
etc whichh all will still do and the computer science aspect (what the RPi
is targeted on) how cmputing machines work etc

Anyone got any figures for how many students do computer science these
days at GCSE or A Level? IIRC when I did my A level in '85/6 there were
only about 120 students in the country that took it that year.. I get
the impression there have never been big numbers doing it.

league tables went some way to knock computers studies at A level on the
head, students found the technical side hard I remember trying to teach
them algorithms for shellsort, quicksort and bubble sort with bits of card
cos visualisation helped the same for recursion and interupt handling even
then some still struggled - they thought it was going to be messing around
building pcs etc (which we did a bit of for the hardware side) - we taught
it for about 5 years with me (physics specialist) + another guy (ICT
specialist) - results were ok but not spectacular we had 40 kids (out of
280) for a couple of years and enough to run a group (20ish) for the rest -
we thought that the numbers were healthy but I moved back to engineering
and physics and they got another ICT specialist to teach it :-(
--
(º€¢.¸(¨*€¢.¸ ¸.€¢*¨)¸.€¢Âº)
.€¢Â°€¢. Nik .€¢Â°€¢.
(¸.€¢Âº(¸.€¢Â¨* *¨€¢.¸)º€¢.¸)

On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 09:32:19 +0000, Mark wrote:

On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 03:00:55 +0000, John Rumm
wrote:

Anyone got any figures for how many students do computer science these
days at GCSE or A Level? IIRC when I did my A level in '85/6 there were
only about 120 students in the country that took it that year.. I get
the impression there have never been big numbers doing it.

I don't have the figures but, the schools I know, don't even offer any
computer science teaching. All they do is ICT.

as ICT became compulsory (at varying levels and initiatives) it became
harder and harder to staff at our community college and that together with
pressure from league tables means it ws phased out 4 years ago IIRC we are
starting to teach GCSE computer studies again from next year which is a
welcome relief from the many flavours of ICT diplom btec and gcses
--
(º€¢.¸(¨*€¢.¸ ¸.€¢*¨)¸.€¢Âº)
.€¢Â°€¢. Nik .€¢Â°€¢.
(¸.€¢Âº(¸.€¢Â¨* *¨€¢.¸)º€¢.¸)