The totally off-topic thread

[cove]

LIDL is reported as applying for trademarks. I think that they are coming to Australia.

 

[anat0l]

LIDL is reported as applying for trademarks. I think that they are coming to Australia.

For Coles and Woolworths, that could be a lidl problem.

 

[JohnK]

Well, I'm not going to touch some-one's religious beliefs, but the first line there is utter nonsense. I don't know where to begin in critiquing it, but to say that volcanic ash itself can contain fossils might be a start. By 'rate of decay' do you mean the rate of decay of radioactive isotopes, or the decay of organic matter, or something else?

The accuracy of reported timelines.

 

[RooFlyer]

Unless I'm mistaken I think you and GarrettM are in agreement there, no belief required for factual information

Oh, I see. Apologies to GarrettM

 

[RooFlyer]

The accuracy of reported timelines.

Ah. "Reported" time lines. Sort of like "reported" dinosaurs

You know when I was doing my geology degree at Uni, the biggest pi**-up of the year was the Earth's birthday party (natch ). We toasted Bishop Ussher with Cascade's finest (more than once) ... and after that, I don't remember much :shock:

But my interest in the study of time and how scholars approach its study has continued and I have the odd book on the subject. Here are two of my favourites.

On the left - Thomas Burnet's "The Theory of the earth" (English translation 1690) - so a little after Ussher. He was a theologian but rather than counting the Biblical 'begats', he took a 'scientific' approach to describing the formation of the earth in Biblical terms (for instance he calculated the amount of water on the earth and figured out there was not enough to account for the Biblical Flood, so he proposed some alternative theories. Interesting chap.

Om the right - Stephen Jay Gould who should need no introduction. He has reproduced on the cover Burnet's frontispiece, showing the evolution of the Earth from 'without form and void' under Christ's left foot, moving to the Flood at 4:30 (with Noah's ark floating on it), then earth today, the Conflagration, and so on. Recommended reading.

 

[Denali]

There is a icon that I should never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever click in my payroll program.

Ever.

Guess what I clicked about an hour ago.

Initiate Disaster Recovery - lets see if all those vendor promises work.



Me to Software vendor - "You guys should really put a critical / are you sure you want to delete message on that!"

 

[Pushka]

Doesnt sound good Denali. Was that a 'pay staff now' icon? MYOB gives a lot of warnings. Usually unnecessary.

 

[Denali]

Doesnt sound good Denali. Was that a 'pay staff now' icon? MYOB gives a lot of warnings. Usually unnecessary.

No. It was a "Delete All" icon.

Which is NEVER a good thing.

And I knew it exists and not to touch it but doh! Im an idiot today.

Disaster recover seems to work although not smoothly and with a bit of bumbling but worse case senario, only a small amount of data to be recreated.

As I said to my boss, "As Im not jumping off your balcony, this is a 'Lesson learned/What can we learn from this and make it better' situation.

F me - Im an idiot today!

 

[JohnK]

Ah. "Reported" time lines. Sort of like "reported" dinosaurs

Yes. Accuracy of reported timelines.

Please have a read of the following.

Truth in Science | Fossil Record

I don't believe it is as clear cut as you suggest. There are more than a few doubts in my mind.

 

[anat0l]

Me to Software vendor - "You guys should really put a critical / are you sure you want to delete message on that!"

Interesting thought - a few leap years ago or so, people used to give Microsoft (in particular) a lot of flak about all the confirmation dialogs you used to get. "Are you sure (Y/N)?", again and again, etc. etc.. Some even joked that if Microsoft created a car, before the airbags deployed, you would have to be asked "Are you sure?"

Basically the pundits said, enough with the excessive cotton wool and just let us get on with the job. What they didn't know is that these safeguards are useful for some situations - this is one of them!

Many pundits admittedly came from a Linux background. Linux doesn't ask questions - it just does it, and if you get no error messages, it was done. Ask many power users of Linux or related flavours, and some of them might tell you of their war stories involving an inadvertent rm -Rf or inaccurate dd command.

Look at most app design these days. There are no OK or Cancel buttons. This means once you make a change, it is saved. What if you made a mistake or tapped the wrong thing?

Admittedly, once you get "used" to dialogs, people get very trigger happy to just keep pressing Enter or clicking ahead without reading the dialog. Even if the dialog said, "Formatting Drive C: - data will be lost. Are you sure you want to continue?" as long as the eyes see "OK" or "Cancel", some will just keep clicking or hitting Enter/Space without a second thought.

 

[Denali]

I cant log out of SAP without a "Are you sure", but thats the Germans for you.

 

[anat0l]

I cant log out of SAP without a "Are you sure", but thats the Germans for you.

There can be good reasons for that. Logging into a complex system may take a while depending on files that may need to be opened and linked, logs that need to be updated (paper trail), and so on. Giving you a dialog when you log out not only allows you to have a second thought before you unnecessarily tax the system again due to having to log in again to do something you might have forgotten, but also saves you time because some people have better things to do than having to log in again to do one single task.

That said, I've never used SAP before so not sure how complex are such interactions.

 

[RooFlyer]

Yes. Accuracy of reported timelines.

Please have a read of the following.

Truth in Science | Fossil Record

I don't believe it is as clear cut as you suggest. There are more than a few doubts in my mind.

Like I said, one can't debate 'belief'. You are welcome to your doubts, but there are better solutions than the internet to resolving them - have a look at Gould's book I mentioned. I guess you have the web sites 'debunking' the moon landings handy?

Edit. Against my better judgement, I had a look at that web page . That's 10 minutes I'll never get back. The usual canards about 'gaps' in the fossil record, punctuated equilibrium & so on, which we wrote essays on (half of the class taking one side, half the other) when I was an undergrad (a significant time ago!) - except we had to provide references and citations in our essays!

Mind you, when I was at uni they didn't know what conodonts were, and now they do - go figure.

 

[JohnK]

I guess you have the web sites 'debunking' the moon landings handy?

LOL. Who am I to question the moon landings. I believe everything I am told.

 

[JessicaTam]

Interesting thought - a few leap years ago or so, people used to give Microsoft (in particular) a lot of flak about all the confirmation dialogs you used to get. "Are you sure (Y/N)?", again and again, etc. etc.. Some even joked that if Microsoft created a car, before the airbags deployed, you would have to be asked "Are you sure?"

Basically the pundits said, enough with the excessive cotton wool and just let us get on with the job. What they didn't know is that these safeguards are useful for some situations - this is one of them!

Many pundits admittedly came from a Linux background. Linux doesn't ask questions - it just does it, and if you get no error messages, it was done. Ask many power users of Linux or related flavours, and some of them might tell you of their war stories involving an inadvertent rm -Rf or inaccurate dd command.

Look at most app design these days. There are no OK or Cancel buttons. This means once you make a change, it is saved. What if you made a mistake or tapped the wrong thing?

Admittedly, once you get "used" to dialogs, people get very trigger happy to just keep pressing Enter or clicking ahead without reading the dialog. Even if the dialog said, "Formatting Drive C: - data will be lost. Are you sure you want to continue?" as long as the eyes see "OK" or "Cancel", some will just keep clicking or hitting Enter/Space without a second thought.

Ahh, good ol' Linux. A friend of mine had a very long weekend at work recovering a (not small) business' system.

"Of course you can't delete the administrator account", he said. "See!" soon followed by "Oh dear".

 

[Denali]

I have a brother in law that really questions if the moon landing actually happened.

Lovely, lovely guy but sometimes I look at him and my husband and question how are they related. But hes a really nice guy.

 

[anat0l]

Ahh, good ol' Linux. A friend of mine had a very long weekend at work recovering a (not small) business' system.

"Of course you can't delete the administrator account", he said. "See!" soon followed by "Oh dear".

That's something about the original Linux or Unix (not Mac OS) - you are allowed to do anything, but it assumes you know what you are doing! Also, Linux asks almost no questions and gives no messages unless it is an error. You just deleted your primary partition? If you see no message after entering the command, it was just completed successfully.

This is also why commonly, the advice in Linux is create an account for the administrator and one for yourself, where your account is not an administrator account. In Windows (and possibly Mac - not sure how it's configured), the typical set up is everyone is an administrator by default. Windows tried to get around this by using UAC, but it's just not as streamed compared to Linux with sudo.

Speaking of sudo, anyone who knows Linux will get the following joke:

 

[JohnK]

I have a brother in law that really questions if the moon landing actually happened.

Lovely, lovely guy but sometimes I look at him and my husband and question how are they related. But hes a really nice guy.

Some people like to question things. Do you believe everything the government tells you? Do you believe everything Qantas tells you? Do you believe everything your super fund tells you?

We are all different.

 

[TomVexille]

Some people like to question things. Do you believe everything the government tells you? Do you believe everything Qantas tells you? Do you believe everything your super fund tells you?

We are all different.

Do you believe everything the church tells you?

 

[RooFlyer]

Ahh, good ol' Linux. A friend of mine had a very long weekend at work recovering a (not small) business' system.

"Of course you can't delete the administrator account", he said. "See!" soon followed by "Oh dear".

While I'm reminiscing about my mis-spent days at Uni, I recall when we outdoorsy-types ventured into the 'computer building' (as it was in those days) . The Uni ran on a Burroughs mainframe and we thought we'd put it to good use for once by having it plot out some of our field data.

Had to actually read some of the manual :evil: but I recall we were intrigued about the command we came across "Dump Burroughs".

What happened when we typed that in was ... (oh, hang on, some-one's at the door).