Ageing makes one more cynical

[richmond62]

So: I'll be 63 in 2 weeks time: I have been programming computers for 50 of those years.

A year older, a year closer to when I reincarnate, a year NOT AN IOTA WISER.

AND then I see this:
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And wonder why a 40+ bloke performing an incredibly infantile gesture makes me feel slightly sick.

AND then this:
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And feel:

"Clean new interface"

So f*cking what? I like the 'old' interface. What exactly does 'clean' mean?

"Focus on building, not finding"

Err: that is so totally nebulous I am unable to work out if it means anything (mainly because it is 100% decontextualised).

"Standard state and time formats"

Well, as my best friend at school used to say, "Big c*ck, I've got one of my own."

"Cross platform Audio Recording"

The only thing I can get slightly lukewarm about as I always use Audacity and then imprt the resulting sound files.

"Windows Media Foundation Player"

As I deploy predominantly, on the rare occasions I use Audio or Video ONLY to Linux . . .

"Get started today and save 50%"

Oddly enough the ONLY time I have NOT given a car a test drive is when my wife gave the car a test drive. I don't know what the hell that 50% is supposed to mean in real terms (and my company - a company focussed on ESL teaching and ancillary software production - cannot just write that down to 'operating expenses'): and unless that software company is going to let me have a test drive there is absolutely no way I am going to invest any money; especialy on the basis of some totally vacuous statements and a photo of some bloke doing something with his fists which makes me wonder if he is doing some odd exercise to shift some very bad constipation.

"Get started today and save 50%"

That presupposes I contemplated spending the 100% initially: which I did not.

I went to buy a new pair of trousers the other day (first time in 6 years) and the tattooed person of no identifiable gender in the shop in the mall told me that if I bought 3 pairs of trousers I could have a 4th pair for 'free'. Err: but I ONLY wanted one pair: and buying 4-for-the-price-of-3 was not a 'saving' on buying a single pair. So as soon as anyone starts using the word 'saving' (or its equivalent here in Bulgaria) I suddenly remember that pair of extremely nice cords hanging in my Dad's wardrobe where I will visit in a weeks's time, and as he has been dead these last 6 years, there are mine for the taking: just as when a local lot commissioned me to run up a quick-n-dirty for the High School to run on Windows 7 computers I was able to undercut all the other competitors by NOT insisting on a "4-for-the-price-of-3" expenditure on sfotware and hardware, but did what they needed using LiveCode 8.1 on an iMac running MacOS 10.7.

[tperry2x]

Quite.
50% of [some undetermined amount] is still 50% more than I was going to spend in the first place.

While we are talking about costs, here's something that I find confusing.
(well, there's lots of things - but this is the relevant one)

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Why would I choose one over the other when the pricing is the same?
$36.67 (£29.48 x 12 = £353.76 for a year) That's ONE SINGLE YEAR. (I just find that staggering).
However - "Education pricing" - apart from it being in £ (mixed currency values), shows £512 excluding VAT. (£614.40 with VAT) - so why does it work out £260.64 MORE expensive for an education license. You'd have thought it would be £260.64 less (or even FREE!!!).

All this to PAY for the 'privilege' of being a beta tester for a year.

I might have misunderstood, so please feel free to make sense of this for me. Maths never was my strong point.

[richmond62]

Maths never was my strong point.

Erm, well: I got an A at O Level Maths, a C at O Level Additional Maths, and an E at A Level Maths (a combination of Calculus, a crap teacher, and raging male hormones): so fiddling around with Sines and Cosines is about my limit.

BUT, wonders will never cease:

Even I can work out that £614.40 is more than £353.76.

ANd, non-Mathematically: £353.76 is far too much for me in any case.

[tperry2x]

I got an A at O Level Maths, a C at O Level Additional Maths, and an E at A Level Maths (a combination of Calculus, a crap teacher, and raging male hormones): so fiddling around with Sines and Cosines is about my limit.

I got a U at maths GCSE, a combination of a crap teacher (who only wanted to race ahead getting 80% of his class to attain a certain grade, because it was part of his performance metric to keep his job), who never explained his workings out and methodology - meant that the other 20% of the class became effectively 'number blind': so fiddling around with the SNES was about my limit.

Thanks for clarifying my "workings-out", glad to know it's not just me. That pricing does. not. compute.

[richmond62]

A 'U': wow: in my day (apart from the diplodicuses playing merry hell with our cricket pitch) the things only went down to F: and anything below C was a fail.

I suppose this is all part of the nannying so nobody fails: even if you'd have to be a complete moron to work out that a U was . . .

And of course that result was fairly meaningless if you are now in charge of loads of computers.

[tperry2x]

And of course that result was fairly meaningless if you are now in charge of loads of computers...

And they are all working, and continue to work too!
It wasn't until I left school that I actually learned how to think for myself. Now I'm back in one, where once again I can leave my brain at home. It's not required for daily use. It's funny how life goes full circle.

[richmond62]

It wasn't until I left school that I actually learned how to think for myself.

Would I be too cynical in thinking that one of the biggest achievements of schools was to prevent children from thinking for themselves?

[tperry2x]

Would I be too cynical in thinking that one of the biggest achievements of schools was to prevent children from thinking for themselves?

Not cynical at all. You don't learn how to think, you either have that ability or you don't. What you learn in school is how to simply get through the system.

When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, It's a wonder I can think at all

[richmond62]

I think I'll play that song to the teenagers this afternoon.

I'll print out the lyrics with words missing: great listening comprehension exercise.

Thank you for solving my lesson-planning problems for today. *

* Oh, I forgot, I gave up lesson planning in 1989.

[richmond62]

What you learn in school is how to simply get through the system.

Well, for the first 6 years of my schooling I was extremely lucky insofar as I went to what was then an experimental school where we were really allowed to and encouraged to think:

https://oaklandsjunior-school.org.uk/

As far as I can tell, that school (in a fairly godforsaken part of the Urban splatter-sprawl that goes on forever round London), has managed to hang on to a lot of what I experienced in the 1960s.

After that I had the "benefit" of 7 years private education where they stuffed our heads with "facts" (although I did have 3 enlightened teachers who managed, somehow, to get me thinking): and as my "fondest memories" are of being bullied mercilessly be cause I kept on thinking outide the box (the effect of the Primary school) there I certainly learnt how to keep a lot of my thinking to myself, and most of the time my thinking involved creative ways to make the system work for me rather than against me.

[richmond62]

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In Britain (where I come from) there is something called the 'Trades Description Act'.

Presumably as LiveCode is based in Britain, and should be bound by that act, should I find I cannot 'innovate' be building standalone executables to run on Haiku, OS2 Warp, and Symbian OS, I can take them to court?

The Trade Descriptions Act 1968 made it an offence for businesses or salespeople to sell a product or service based on misinformation. The Act forced them to be more truthful about their service or product and not deliberately mislead consumers into spending their money on a false claim.

Internet search.

https://www.pinsentmasons.com/out-law/g ... egulations

a blacklist of 31 practices that will be deemed unfair in all circumstances.

[Skids]

Where was this special deal advertised? I've looked on the web site but not found anything.

Good to see that the one time only deal of 2024 is now being re-run. Do you think they are short of cash?

The education price includes twenty seats and not the one the rest of us can buy.

I never managed a "U" but I did get an "O" grade for my "A level" physics, does that count? Good teacher who once dropped that he had a mate we might have heard of, one Arthur Clark who had written a few books.

S

[richmond62]

Where was this special deal advertised?

It arrived in my in-box on my 'other' email account that uses my first name (John).

[richmond62]

Do you think they are short of cash?

I think they are up the Khyber Pass, caught between the Afghans, the Pathans, and the Pushto speakers of the lower Panshir valley: and I think that a certain person's leadership methodology is, at last, resulting in what a fair few of us have seen coming for a good 10 years.
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This is an awful pity: but if you keep making promises you do not keep, keep making extremely tactless announcements, and behaving like a "listen-to-no-one" tyrant, you will end up in trouble.

In fact:
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Definitely!

[Skids]

John you must be special because I have not received such a generous offer.

The longest and most amusing way to say definitely by the way.

S

[richmond62]

a generous offer

Um, well: generous is as generous does . . .