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

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.

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

is Whitby part of the UK?

Blimey, it still appears to be. Talk about 'out of the ark'

Obviously not enough people have money to spend on stuff they 'saw
advertised on telly' to make it worth while bringing it into the 20th
century, never mind the 21st.


--
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.

stuart noble wrote:

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

there's being behind the times and there's being lost in a bronze age
timewarp.


--
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.

Clive George wrote
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 prefer Word Pervert myself.

I remember swearing at that.

Yeah, dog of a user interface.

Owain wrote
Rod Speed wrote

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 ....
Its not clear to me what the british system does with say the
education of hairdressers and plumbers about computing,

Large parts of the British system are still working on shoelace-tying
at age 8 and have difficulty using words, never mind Word.

I did watch that doco series, Gareth Malone's Extraordinary School for Boys.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1721246/
He was having enough trouble just getting the boys to actually read printed books.

And they were a bit older than that, 10ish

Tho one did present his play script typed, presumably on a PC of some kind.

The Natural Philosopher wrote
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.

Yep.

It doesn't work like that.

Fraid so.

WP was infinitely better than word.

Thats just your opinion.

And we had it.

So did we. It was called Word Pervert for a reason.

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

There were plenty that preferred Word over Word Pervert.

And Excel over 123 too.

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'.

That wasnt what happened. And I did the buying, and I bought them
both and the users got to use what they preferred to use, and bugger
all preferred Word Pervert, although certainly some did.

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.

Thats not why Word Pervert died in the arse.

123 in spades.

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

Just mindless sily stuff.

Fools proclaimed the same stuff about Win over the Mac too. The Mac died anyway.

The Natural Philosopher wrote
Mark wrote
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? 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"

And plenty more need a bit more formatting power
than that even for just a club/school newsletter etc.

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.

Nope, a discarded netbook is.

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..

I didnt, used McCracken.

And assembler from the DEC manuals.

The Natural Philosopher wrote
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...

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

There are bugger all of those anymore.

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..

Bob Eager wrote
John Williamson wrote
Bob Eager wrote
Tim Streater wrote
Adrian C wrote
Tim Streater wrote
Adrian C wrote
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 does actually on the popup label.

It doesn't start the system.

It never did. It does start apps etc tho.

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...

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

What? you invented it old man?

dennis@home wrote:


"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...

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

What? you invented it old man?

DUE TO A MIRSPRGRAMED NUERIC KEYDA, ALL 88s APPERA AS &&s

--
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 05/03/2012 19:17, Mathew Newton wrote:
On Sunday, March 4, 2012 10:09:32 PM UTC, 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?

It might be ideal to control my Internet cat feeder:

http://www.newtonnet.co.uk/catfeeder

The current incarnation with a Linksys WRT54GL is a tad overkill, and arguably a waste of a fairly decent router!

When the dust has settled I might take a look.

Mathew

You have competition,

In Today's Metro ...

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/892233-...itter-messages

Given they've published the twitter account, that dog must be pretty fed
up of treats.

--
Adrian C

On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 16:45:48 +0000, Adrian C wrote:

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.

I know that. But some people complain that it stops the system and is
therefore stupid.



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

*lightning protection* - a w_tom conductor

On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 12:25:33 -0800, Owain wrote:

On Mar 6, 4:43Â*pm, Bob Eager wrote:
BTw, can I have a prize for starting the fastest growing thread in
uk.d-i-y for quite a while?

The prize would be a RPi, but they're out of stock :-)

LOL! Oh well, just a few weeks to wait..



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

*lightning protection* - a w_tom conductor

"Bob Eager" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 12:25:33 -0800, Owain wrote:

On Mar 6, 4:43 pm, Bob Eager wrote:
BTw, can I have a prize for starting the fastest growing thread in
uk.d-i-y for quite a while?

The prize would be a RPi, but they're out of stock :-)

LOL! Oh well, just a few weeks to wait..



How about an emulator?
Or at least that is what I think it is supposed to be.

http://rpi.descartes.co.uk/sim-emu/

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

*lightning protection* - a w_tom conductor

On 06/03/2012 03:29, Rod Speed wrote:
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.

No its not just word, but it is largely using office applications" (and
that in reality if frequently MS Office apps). Publisher, and Powerpoint
get a big look in, and some Excel...

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.

As with most exaggerations there is a core of truth in there.

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

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

I would say they are related. Being comfortable with technology, and
know the basic functions of office software is important. As is decent
mouse and keyboard skills. However repeating that over and over only
gets board kids, not better trained ones. (note there is actually a fair
amount of interesting stuff in the ICT syllabus - alas much of it does
not get taught or gets taught in a veru formulaic way because the
teachers don't have deep enough skills either to really understand what
they are doing, and develop the concepts and explore a little.

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.

Indeed... although look round a school and the same principle often
applies. IT suites full of "ok" computers, and top end kit in the staff
rooms that never gets touched!

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.

If they were adequate I would not have commented on it!

To be fair its less of an issues these days in that even relatively poor
machines will still perform fairly well on basic office apps as long as
you are not shifting large or complex documents about. But load up a
graphics content rich 500MB doc on a machine that can't hack it, and it
will spend most of its time paging and not doing much else.

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.

Indeed.

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

ICT is compulsory at the moment if you follow the NC. As I alluded to,
some categories of school have more freedom to interpret manoeuvre
within the constrains of the NC.

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.

I was not proposing that anyone should be "forced" to use any specific
bit of kit. I personally would like to see some of the basics of
software development taught alongside the office apps skills etc. I
suspect however that you would find it easier to generate enthusiasm for
a (say) a small robot being driven round an obstetrical course by a on
board Pi, than one would for something popping up on the screen of a PC.

- 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.

I disagree, and would also suggest that evidence would not support that
claim. We (i.e. the UK) seem to be producing far fewer people going to
university to study hard sciences in general, and software/hardware
engineering in particular than many other countries.

A number of people have commented on this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14683133
http://royalsociety.org/Current-ICT-...ce-in-schools/

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.

We don't really have much in the way of trade schools as such here (I
take it you refer to ones that major on vocational training rather than
academia?) which is a shame. Some of the better comprehensive schools do
now have streams that lean this way however.

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.

Its quite often surprising what kids are capable of if guided in the
right direction. I have never had one of ours come home and enthuse
about having learnt how to set a margin in word etc, in fact it never
gets much of a mention. However the day our eldest went for a "sampler"
day at a potential senior school and they had them programming macros to
pop up messages boxes etc in VBA, she actually came home and wanted to
try it out here!

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

Well a hairdresser running a business is as much a businessperson as
many others. The same skills are required.

However, there is a danger of focussing too much on "life skills". While
it is an important part of eduction, and so is the acquisition of
qualifications (if that is your competency), there is a vital and often
forgotten aspect of education which is in effect holding up a "mirror"
to your students to allow them to form a better picture of who they are
and what they are actually capable of when challenged and pushed a bit.
To in effect push a wide variety of "buttons" and see which one gets
them going. Try a broad enough range of things to stimulate interest,
and let them decide where there interests and vocations rest.

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.

They do, as do the Japanese. Although in their rigour and very
constrained system they also tend to suppress some of the inventiveness
and creativity, which (historically at least) our educations system was
better at preserving.

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



--
Cheers,

John.

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

On 06/03/2012 08:24, Mike Barnes wrote:
John :
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!

You also spot the programmers who never learnt that trick, and hence
never set a sensible tab order on their dialog designs ;-)


--
Cheers,

John.

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

On 06/03/2012 03:32, Rod Speed wrote:
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.

But so is PagePlus at a fraction of the price, of for that matter any of
the word processors from the last fifteen years or so. You can probably
get copies of Wordperfect or Lotus word pro free with air miles these
days ;-)

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 Tue, 06 Mar 2012 22:05:56 +0000, dennis@home wrote:

"Bob Eager" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 12:25:33 -0800, Owain wrote:

On Mar 6, 4:43 pm, Bob Eager wrote:
BTw, can I have a prize for starting the fastest growing thread in
uk.d-i-y for quite a while?

The prize would be a RPi, but they're out of stock :-)

LOL! Oh well, just a few weeks to wait..

How about an emulator?
Or at least that is what I think it is supposed to be.

Oh, there is...but I have plenty of othe rthings to play with in the
meantime...like ten Arduino nanos...

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

*lightning protection* - a w_tom conductor

On 06/03/2012 11:34, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
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.

Which would seem to include many "graphic designers" and any the other
"arty" types that are drawn to publishing.

And of course its 'good enough'

Early versions were from what I understand. Later ones seem to have
eroded most of Quarks USPs.

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.

Yup... for big automated jobs FrameMaker is another tool that gets the
job done.


--
Cheers,

John.

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

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.

Because so few were producing things where it mattered rather than memos
or handy sales flyers!


--
Cheers,

John.

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

On 06/03/2012 11:27, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
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.

Its a shame they dropped the ball so conclusively in the early days of
windows. They gave MS several years head start to replace them as the WP
of choice just because they did not have a credible windows version
until 5.1.


--
Cheers,

John.

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

On Mar 6, 8:42*pm, Adrian C wrote:

In Today's Metro ...

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/892233-...to-feed-dog-us...

Given they've published the twitter account, that dog must be pretty fed
up of treats.

Yeah I saw that!

I opened my feeder up on World IPv6 Day so that whilst anyone could
view the video streams those with IPv6 connectivity could actually
feed them too. Every man and his, err, dog turned up so they were
pretty well fed that day!

Mathew

"John Williamson" wrote in message
...
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.

You click them and they start a menu, what else do you expect it to do?

Adrian C wrote
Mathew Newton 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?

It might be ideal to control my Internet cat feeder:

http://www.newtonnet.co.uk/catfeeder

The current incarnation with a Linksys WRT54GL is a tad overkill, and arguably a waste of a fairly decent router!

When the dust has settled I might take a look.

You have competition,

In Today's Metro ...

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/892233-...itter-messages

I just bought 10KG sacks of dried dog food. Slashed the sack,
let the dog help itself whenever it wanted something to eat.

When its all gone, slash another sack.

Some claim it doesnt work with all dogs, but it worked fine with mine.

On 06/03/2012 18:20, Rod Speed wrote:
The Natural Philosopher wrote
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.

Yep.

It doesn't work like that.

Fraid so.

WP was infinitely better than word.

Thats just your opinion.

Welcome to usenet, that's what we are here for!

Its a pretty fair assessment though IMHO... For technical documents WP
is far more productive.

However there is one of the keys. If you are a techie user you will get
more done with WP. Word is probably easier to do the basics.



--
Cheers,

John.

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

On 06/03/2012 14:18, Dave Liquorice wrote:
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?

That seems common for the relays alas - only the PSB muxes. They built
on near us, which would be very convenient but for the lack of a full
service on it, hence why I still suck ours in from Sudbury over 30 miles
away.


--
Cheers,

John.

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

Bob Eager :
On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 16:45:48 +0000, Adrian C wrote:

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.

I know that. But some people complain that it stops the system and is
therefore stupid.

They're the stupid ones. The Start button can be used to start lots of
things including a shutdown. That shouldn't be difficult to understand.

--
Mike Barnes

On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 22:07:34 +0000, John Rumm wrote:

snipped


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

I would say they are related. Being comfortable with technology, and
know the basic functions of office software is important. As is decent
mouse and keyboard skills. However repeating that over and over only
gets board kids, not better trained ones. (note there is actually a fair
amount of interesting stuff in the ICT syllabus - alas much of it does
not get taught or gets taught in a veru formulaic way because the
teachers don't have deep enough skills either to really understand what
they are doing, and develop the concepts and explore a little.

True very true - the constantly changing OFSTED criteria discourage (or at
least penalises) the more adventurous teachers if 'experimentation' goes
wrong


snipped

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

ICT is compulsory at the moment if you follow the NC. As I alluded to,
some categories of school have more freedom to interpret manoeuvre
within the constrains of the NC.


+1

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.

I was not proposing that anyone should be "forced" to use any specific
bit of kit. I personally would like to see some of the basics of
software development taught alongside the office apps skills etc. I
suspect however that you would find it easier to generate enthusiasm for
a (say) a small robot being driven round an obstetrical course by a on
board Pi, than one would for something popping up on the screen of a PC.


now the mind boggles :-) lol

"def?? from wikiyuk
Obstetrics (from the Latin obstare, "to stand by") is the medical specialty
dealing with the care of all women's reproductive tracts and their children
during pregnancy (prenatal period)"

We actually have this, well, pic driven 'mars/moon lander" type robots on
the engineering diploma course avoiding obstacles - predictably the
students love it

Snipped

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

We don't really have much in the way of trade schools as such here (I
take it you refer to ones that major on vocational training rather than
academia?) which is a shame. Some of the better comprehensive schools do
now have streams that lean this way however.

We have a stream of pupils some of whom attend colleges doing different
level btec courses, run btec courses in house and the engineering diploma
these number about 100 out of a yeargroup of 400 students - its a right
b*gger to schedule i know !! Unfortunately the present education dept well
michael gove is now against this type of education despite much support fro
large manufacturing companies. Education here is a political footbal. In
the 22 years I have been in it we have changed course about 5 times - it
takes an average of 5 years to get changes through (due to the nature of
students growing up) so the system is in effect constant flux




--
(º€¢.¸(¨*€¢.¸ ¸.€¢*¨)¸.€¢Âº)
.€¢Â°€¢. Nik .€¢Â°€¢.
(¸.€¢Âº(¸.€¢Â¨* *¨€¢.¸)º€¢.¸)

On Mon, 5 Mar 2012 11:17:11 -0800 (PST), Mathew Newton wrote:

On Sunday, March 4, 2012 10:09:32 PM UTC, 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?

It might be ideal to control my Internet cat feeder:

http://www.newtonnet.co.uk/catfeeder

The current incarnation with a Linksys WRT54GL is a tad overkill, and arguably a waste of a fairly decent router!

When the dust has settled I might take a look.

Mathew

I love that
--
(º€¢.¸(¨*€¢.¸ ¸.€¢*¨)¸.€¢Âº)
.€¢Â°€¢. Nik .€¢Â°€¢.
(¸.€¢Âº(¸.€¢Â¨* *¨€¢.¸)º€¢.¸)

On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 11:27:45 +0000 The Natural Philosopher wrote :
It doesn't work like that. WP was infinitely better than word. And we
had it.

I felt/feel that about Lotus WordPro. But I've just finished the 40,000
word manual for my new EuroBeam program and have produced it using Word
2010 because although WordPro runs on Win7 (after an error message) I'm
not convinced it will run on future versions of Windows and this manual
will hopefully stay in print (with revisions) for 15+ years.

Part of my struggle with Word has been down to unfamiliarity, but in
many places it is just inferior to what is now an ten year old program.
WordPro's modeless property inspectors for changing (say) paragraph
spacing or frame borders are much better than the way Word does it, and
when it comes to indexing why doesn't Word have a drop down list of the
index entries you've already added? The best I can say from my move to
Microsoft's 'latest and greatest' is that I am underwhelmed.

--
Tony Bryer, Greentram: 'Software to build on',
Melbourne, Australia www.greentram.com

John Rumm wrote
Rod Speed wrote
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.

No its not just word, but it is largely using office applications"
(and that in reality if frequently MS Office apps). Publisher, and Powerpoint get a big look in, and some Excel...

So they dont spend years on Word.

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.

As with most exaggerations there is a core of truth in there.

I dont believe there is with that one as far as the next point I made is concerned.

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

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

I would say they are related.

I wouldnt. You do have to teach the more fancy stuff
even tho many wont ever have a need for some of it.

You can certainly make a case for using Word for 3 page memos
so that the one tool is used for most documents they are likely to
do, if only so they know that Word can do it if they need to, and
can refresh what they learnt on say style sheets if they ever do
need to do stuff that makes them worth using

Being comfortable with technology,

I dont see a problem with that anymore with kids currently in school.

and know the basic functions of office software is important.

Yes, and being aware that Word can do the fancy stuff like style sheets
if you end up producing stuff that benefits from that is part of that.

As is decent mouse and keyboard skills. However repeating that over and over only gets board kids, not better trained
ones.

Showing them the more fancy stuff like style sheets doesnt risk that.

The risk is quite different, that plenty of them like those who plan
to be plumbers and hairdressers may well decide that they will
never need to know that stuff and they may well be right too.

But then thats just as true of algebra and languages other
than english and history and geography etc etc etc too.

(note there is actually a fair amount of interesting stuff in the ICT syllabus - alas much of it does not get taught
or gets taught in a veru formulaic way because the teachers don't have deep enough skills either to really understand
what they are doing, and develop the concepts and explore a little.

Sure but thats inevitable with any technical area.

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.

Indeed... although look round a school and the same principle often applies. IT suites full of "ok" computers, and top
end kit in the staff rooms that never gets touched!

Sure, but there is no solution for that sort of thing.

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.

If they were adequate I would not have commented on it!

Corse they are adequate.

To be fair its less of an issues these days in that even relatively
poor machines will still perform fairly well on basic office apps as
long as you are not shifting large or complex documents about.

And even if you are.

But load up a graphics content rich 500MB doc on a machine that can't
hack it, and it will spend most of its time paging and not doing much else.

I just dont believe any engineer is stuck with a machine like that.

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.

Indeed.

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

ICT is compulsory at the moment if you follow the NC. As I alluded to, some categories of school have more freedom to
interpret manoeuvre within the constrains of the NC.

I still dont believe that all hairdressers have to be fluent in Excel for example.

And I bet, whatever the NC says, hordes of them end up with only the vaguest
notion of what a spreadsheet is, let alone what you can do with Access.

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.

I was not proposing that anyone should be "forced" to use any specific bit of kit.

I meant that type of thing rather than that specific one.

I personally would like to see some of the basics of software development taught alongside the office apps skills etc.

I cant see thats going to fly with those you cant een manage to get to
show up at school at all, let alone do anything useful when they are there.

I suspect however that you would find it easier to generate enthusiasm
for a (say) a small robot being driven round an obstetrical course by a on board Pi, than one would for something
popping up on the screen of a PC.

Dunno, cant see too many of those that plan to be hairdressers getting interested.

It was hilarious watching that doco series
Gareth Malone's Extraordinary School for Boys
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1721246/

Even getting the buggers to read a damned book voluntarily
was a major challenge and those werent even the hair dressers.

- 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.

I disagree, and would also suggest that evidence would not support
that claim. We (i.e. the UK) seem to be producing far fewer people
going to university to study hard sciences in general, and
software/hardware engineering in particular than many other countries.

Sure, but thats mainly because they cant see that that got much future for them.

They may be right too, I cant think of much software wise
that stands out much thats ever come out of Britain, even
tho thats where the industrial revolution clearly got started.

I''ve just put my asbestos undies on, bet that will get a response |-)

Not so true of computer hardware, but its less clear
how many of those ever bothered with uni degrees.

A number of people have commented on this:

Yeah, that happens right around the world, particularly with the hard sciences.

And I have two degrees in the hard sciences myself.

The problem seems to be more what kids see as an area that has much future.

The employment prospects for those with degrees in the hard sciences arent that
great and they arent exactly fields where most can just coast thru effortlessly.

Bit different with engineering, but even then its more the
civils etc with the prospects rather than computing now.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14683133

Cearly when the BBC did what it did, it didnt help. **** all in the
way of any software that anyone uses today ever came out of that.

Tho I spose we dont get to hear about many of those that did end up
in software development out of those who did get exposed to that.

http://royalsociety.org/Current-ICT-...ce-in-schools/

The first line of that blows quite a hole in the compulsory claim.

The rest of its too much just sound bites for me.

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.

We don't really have much in the way of trade schools as such here

So where do plumbers, electricians, hair dresssers etc etc etg get qualified ?

The formal part of their qualifications has to happen somewhere.

(I take it you refer to ones that major on vocational training rather than academia?)

That and where say an apprentice plumber gets to do the formal
part of their education to end up being a qualified plumber etc.

which is a shame. Some of the better comprehensive
schools do now have streams that lean this way however.

But surely thats not where you can get qualfied as a plumber or hair dresser or mechanic ?

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.

Its quite often surprising what kids are capable of if guided in the right direction.

And they dont necessarily have to be guided either.

Someone I know well started off with a Commodore 64
at home, nothing much in school at all, even tho it was
one of the better what you lot call public schools, and
ended up in software for our current submarines.

He's the loony that called me from inside the loony bit later than that.

I have never had one of ours come home and enthuse about having learnt how to set a margin in word etc, in fact it
never
gets much of a mention. However the day our eldest went for a "sampler" day at a potential senior school and they had
them
programming macros to pop up messages boxes etc in VBA, she actually came home and wanted to try it out here!

Yeah, its interesting to watch what lights some fires.

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

Well a hairdresser running a business is as much a businessperson as
many others. The same skills are required.

Sure, but I meant whether they bother to teach computing
to all the hairdressers because some will end up running a
hair dressing operation, or leave that for those that do to
get some education in when the decide that they want to
be more than just an employee.

However, there is a danger of focussing too much on "life skills".
While it is an important part of eduction, and so is the acquisition
of qualifications (if that is your competency), there is a vital and
often forgotten aspect of education which is in effect holding up a
"mirror" to your students to allow them to form a better picture of
who they are and what they are actually capable of when challenged
and pushed a bit. To in effect push a wide variety of "buttons" and
see which one gets them going. Try a broad enough range of things to
stimulate interest, and let them decide where there interests and
vocations rest.

Sure, but most schools do manage at least some of that.

We certiainly do in our system, tho its more with the stuff like the
hard sciences, sport, music etc than with plumbing and hair dressing.

Its been interesting whatching that bugger who managed to get quite
decent results in our final state exams in the last year of high school,
but never did manage to work out what DR and CR mean on an invoice
for his voip account means, is considering work wise.

Everything from the cops, largely because someone his dad
knows is a cop, and they are both Turks, or more strictly Kurds,
thru to him and his brothers concentrating on various aspects of
he building trade and getting into spec bulilding to get rich.

These buggers are ALL on welfare of one kind or another
who had so many going back to Turkey to get him married
off that they had 17 going back to Turkey for 3 months and
that was more than any of the booking systems could handle,
so they had split it into two groups.

God knows how they got into the country originally,
they are all Australian citizens now. Presumably as
political refugees because they are Kurds.

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.

They do, as do the Japanese. Although in their rigour and very constrained system they also tend to suppress some of
the inventiveness and creativity, which (historically at least) our educations system was better at preserving.

Yeah, bugger all ever came out of Japan technology wise except games consoles.

Tho I Ispose you should include hybrid cars too.

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

John Rumm wrote
Rod Speed wrote
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.

But so is PagePlus at a fraction of the price,

It costs peanuts off ebay.

And you are much more likely to be able to find
someone else who uses Publisher than PagePlus.

of for that matter any of the word processors from the last fifteen years or so. You can probably get copies of
Wordperfect or Lotus word pro free with air miles these days ;-)

Plenty of free copies of Publisher too.

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"!

John Rumm wrote
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.

Because so few were producing things where it mattered rather than memos or handy sales flyers!

Nope, there were always plenty producing stuff that mattered to see Office survive fine;.

There's a reason bugger all turns up in WP format.

John Rumm wrote
Rod Speed wrote
The Natural Philosopher wrote
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.

Yep.

It doesn't work like that.

Fraid so.

WP was infinitely better than word.

Thats just your opinion.

Welcome to usenet, that's what we are here for!

We arent just here for opinions.

Its a pretty fair assessment though IMHO...

Not in mine.

For technical documents WP is far more productive.

And learning wise it aint.

However there is one of the keys. If you are a techie user you will get more done with WP.

I dont. The user interface is a dog and it died too.

Word is probably easier to do the basics.

Absolutely certainly easier to do the basics like
producing documents which others can read effortlessly.

in 1112702 20120306 091827 Mark wrote:
On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 02:40:22 +0000, John Rumm

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!

ICT = "International Computers and Tabulators" to me.

On Tue, 6 Mar 2012 22:57:52 +0000, Ghostrecon wrote:

On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 22:07:34 +0000, John Rumm wrote:

snipped


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

I would say they are related. Being comfortable with technology, and
know the basic functions of office software is important. As is decent
mouse and keyboard skills. However repeating that over and over only
gets board kids, not better trained ones. (note there is actually a fair
amount of interesting stuff in the ICT syllabus - alas much of it does
not get taught or gets taught in a veru formulaic way because the
teachers don't have deep enough skills either to really understand what
they are doing, and develop the concepts and explore a little.

True very true - the constantly changing OFSTED criteria discourage (or at
least penalises) the more adventurous teachers if 'experimentation' goes
wrong


snipped

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

ICT is compulsory at the moment if you follow the NC. As I alluded to,
some categories of school have more freedom to interpret manoeuvre
within the constrains of the NC.


+1

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.

I was not proposing that anyone should be "forced" to use any specific
bit of kit. I personally would like to see some of the basics of
software development taught alongside the office apps skills etc. I
suspect however that you would find it easier to generate enthusiasm for
a (say) a small robot being driven round an obstetrical course by a on
board Pi, than one would for something popping up on the screen of a PC.


now the mind boggles :-) lol

"def?? from wikiyuk
Obstetrics (from the Latin obstare, "to stand by") is the medical specialty
dealing with the care of all women's reproductive tracts and their children
during pregnancy (prenatal period)"

We actually have this, well, pic driven 'mars/moon lander" type robots on
the engineering diploma course avoiding obstacles - predictably the
students love it

Snipped

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

We don't really have much in the way of trade schools as such here (I
take it you refer to ones that major on vocational training rather than
academia?) which is a shame. Some of the better comprehensive schools do
now have streams that lean this way however.

We have a stream of pupils some of whom attend colleges doing different
level btec courses, run btec courses in house and the engineering diploma
these number about 100 out of a yeargroup of 400 students - its a right
b*gger to schedule i know !! Unfortunately the present education dept well
michael gove is now against this type of education despite much support fro
large manufacturing companies. Education here is a political footbal. In
the 22 years I have been in it we have changed course about 5 times - it
takes an average of 5 years to get changes through (due to the nature of
students growing up) so the system is in effect constant flux

Very true. I just wish they leave alone and let the teachers do their
job. Despite all the political rhetoric all parties have micromanaged
schools via their policies.
--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) If a man stands in a forest and no woman is around
(")_(") is he still wrong?

On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 19:46:09 +0000, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

dennis@home wrote:


"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...

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

What? you invented it old man?

DUE TO A MIRSPRGRAMED NUERIC KEYDA, ALL 88s APPERA AS &&s

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

jgharston writes:

Dave Liquorice wrote:
Word and Excel do need to be taught,

No, word processing and spreadsheets. You don't teach somebody
to drive a Ford Focus, you teach them how to drive a car.

Not if you're Ford, you don't !!

--
Windmill, Use t m i l l
J.R.R. Tolkien:- @ O n e t e l . c o m
All that is gold does not glister / Not all who wander are lost

Mark wrote
Ghostrecon wrote
John Rumm wrote

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

I would say they are related. Being comfortable with technology, and
know the basic functions of office software is important. As is
decent mouse and keyboard skills. However repeating that over and
over only gets board kids, not better trained ones. (note there is
actually a fair amount of interesting stuff in the ICT syllabus -
alas much of it does not get taught or gets taught in a veru
formulaic way because the teachers don't have deep enough skills
either to really understand what they are doing, and develop the
concepts and explore a little.

True very true - the constantly changing OFSTED criteria discourage
(or at least penalises) the more adventurous teachers if
'experimentation' goes wrong

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

ICT is compulsory at the moment if you follow the NC. As I alluded
to, some categories of school have more freedom to interpret
manoeuvre within the constrains of the NC.

+1

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.

I was not proposing that anyone should be "forced" to use any
specific bit of kit. I personally would like to see some of the
basics of software development taught alongside the office apps
skills etc. I suspect however that you would find it easier to
generate enthusiasm for a (say) a small robot being driven round an
obstetrical course by a on board Pi, than one would for something
popping up on the screen of a PC.

now the mind boggles :-) lol

"def?? from wikiyuk
Obstetrics (from the Latin obstare, "to stand by") is the medical
specialty dealing with the care of all women's reproductive tracts
and their children during pregnancy (prenatal period)"

We actually have this, well, pic driven 'mars/moon lander" type
robots on the engineering diploma course avoiding obstacles -
predictably the students love it

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

We don't really have much in the way of trade schools as such here
(I take it you refer to ones that major on vocational training rather
than academia?) which is a shame. Some of the better comprehensive
schools do now have streams that lean this way however.

We have a stream of pupils some of whom attend colleges doing
different level btec courses, run btec courses in house and the
engineering diploma these number about 100 out of a yeargroup of 400
students - its a right b*gger to schedule i know !! Unfortunately
the present education dept well michael gove is now against this
type of education despite much support fro large manufacturing
companies. Education here is a political footbal. In the 22 years
I have been in it we have changed course about 5 times - it takes an
average of 5 years to get changes through (due to the nature of
students growing up) so the system is in effect constant flux

Very true. I just wish they leave alone and let the teachers do their job.

I'm not convinced that you'd get a very viable result that way.

We have national curricula for a reason.

It isnt viable to have every school do its own thing, let alone every teacher.

Despite all the political rhetoric all parties
have micromanaged schools via their policies.

Thats what national curricula do.

Jules Richardson writes:

On Sun, 04 Mar 2012 22:09:32 +0000, 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?

It's still boggling my brain how many people seem to have bought one and
have absolutely no clue what they're actually going to do with it. Was
the marketing hype really *that* good?

I saw no marketing, unless you call a basic description 'marketing'.
What appealed to me was that it was very low power (3 to 5 watts IIRC),
low cost, clearly had considerable capabilities (not for Windows users,
of course, but there are flavours of Linux which can do a lot at a
reasonable speed without needing 3.5GHz quad-core CPUs and a 500 watt
PSU), and would be expandable via USB interfaces to modems, serial
ports, parallel ports, sound interfaces, etc...........

Not for those who want everything ready-made perhaps, but an ideal DIY
device. What _couldn't_ you do with it?
It could certainly be programmed to make your breakfast, control a
vacuuming robot, and make love to you after a breakup.
I'm not even sure I'm joking! But maybe the notion was suggested to me
by the apple (not raspberry) pie incident involving a teenager which
featured in a certain DVD :-)



--
Windmill, Use t m i l l
J.R.R. Tolkien:- @ O n e t e l . c o m
All that is gold does not glister / Not all who wander are lost