Annoying printers

On Sat, 06 Oct 2018 20:22:08 +0100, nospam wrote:

In article , NY
wrote:

it's much easier to flip to a specific city or town, since they're
alphabetical. it's the side streets that matter, so only the last part
of the trip is needed, not the entire thing.

i've used both, and one city/town per page is much better.

As long as all the maps are all to the same scale and drawn to the same
cartographic standard. I think that was the most absurd and unusable thing
about the road atlas of my sister - that an inch on the map meant several
different things as you moved along the same road from one town to the next
and the next.

they can't all be the same scale, since cities and towns are not the
same size. if a larger city doesn't fit on one page at a reasonable
scale, it will span more than one page.

Which would be far easier than changing scale.

It didn't help that the overlap from one town to the next didn't specify a
page number to turn to, and in some places the name of the adjoining town
was not easy to see.

it should be very prominent.

With a grid arrangement of pages, you usually get a
fairly prominent arrow with the "turn to" page number in it, in all four
directions. And at least for two of those directions, you are turning to a
previous or next page,

half the time is a lot.

It's less than all of the time which happens with yours.

so there is only a problem of having to turn over
multiple pages for 50% of the time, whereas it is quite a coincidence if the
adjoining town is alphabetically before or after the one you are currently
looking at, so there is a problem 100% of the time.

there's no need to go town to town and page by page.

take highways to the destination town and then stay on that page, maybe
one page flip if it transits to another town.

But you need to know which town. On UK maps you just follow the pager numbers.

In message Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:
On Sat, 06 Oct 2018 17:42:05 +0100, Lewis wrote:

In message Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:
On Sat, 06 Oct 2018 05:13:42 +0100, Peter Moylan wrote:

On 06/10/18 09:13, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:

Everyone should speak the same language on the entire planet, for
ease of communication. English is the most widespread, and one of
the more sensible ones (no genderised nouns for a start). Is it true
that in French a female cat is male, as it's "le chat" no matter if
it's male or female? Preposterous!

French has "le chat" for a male cat and "la chatte" for a female one,
but in practice not many people bother checking the sex of the cat
before talking about it.

It's not like English, where everyone knows that every cat is "she".

I might call a ship "she", but a cat is an "it", so is a human baby.

Around here people get very angry if you use 'it' for a baby. Or even
MORE angry if you use the wrong gender pronoun.

You can't tell the sex of a human baby without looking in its nappy.

Which is why people are super careful to dress their babies in rigidly
gendered clothing and possibly ribbons or pierced ears for girls.

--
SOURCERERS MAKE THEIR OWN DESTINY. THEY TOUCH THE EARTH LIGHTLY.

On Sat, 06 Oct 2018 20:14:48 +0100, NY wrote:

"Jimmy Wilkinson Knife" wrote in message
news
On Sat, 06 Oct 2018 17:15:59 +0100, hah
wrote:

On 10/05/2018 01:34 PM, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:

[snip]

Please try to follow the thread! 'We' weren't talking about an
English-speaking country, we were talking about the US!

Isn't Trump going to make it English speaking?

Changing the locale from en_US to en_BS :-)

I fail to see what you have against Trump.

Well for starters, he's still alive and still President. Need I go on? :-)

Seriously, some of what he says sounds eminently sensible, such as putting
the needs of home industries before those of foreign countries that want to
import their good into the US, to the detriment of US companies.

He's a nice sensible racist, what every country needs.

But his
dismissive, act-first-thing-later attitude to everything about the previous
regime or everything that isn't quite as he thinks it should be, makes him
into a buffoon. Boris Johnson is similar, but at least he's usually funny
and irreverent with it, and I suspect he deliberately puts his foot in it to
further the buffoon persona, whereas Trump seems to do it in all
seriousness.

I'm genuinely surprised that he's still President, and hasn't (yet) been
impeached or assassinated.

He was voted in, there should be no such thing as impeachment.

I wonder what will happen in the imminent
mid-term elections if Congress and Senate end up with opposite parties in
the majority.

I can't imagine Trump as a great orator, remembered for years afterwards for
phrases like "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do
for your country" or "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the
other things, not because they are easy, but because they are *hard*". (OK,
JFK did also say "Ich bin ein Berliner" instead of "Ich bin Berliner", and
the former refers to a type of jam doughnut rather than a resident of
Berlin, but we'll forgive him for that.)

I don't want an orator, I want someone who makes sensible decisions.

In message Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:
On Sat, 06 Oct 2018 18:33:56 +0100, NY wrote:

"Jimmy Wilkinson Knife" wrote in message
news
The UK way is far easier. 01234, spoken as one word. Then 567890 spoken
as one word, or sometimes two - 567 890. It's been worked out that most
people can remember 7 digits easily, so 5 and 6 works well. It does
confuse me though when someone gives me their phone number in an odd
sequence, like 0123 4567 890. Mind you, we always used to have freephone
numbers beginning 0800, some of which now seem to be 08000. Not sure if
the size of the area codes changed or not, I do remember when I was a kid
our number changed twice as they lumped exchanges together. I used to be
able to phone next door with only 3 digits!

My parents' number changed from a 6-digit STD code and a 4-digit phone
number to the same digits but parsed as 4-digit STD code and 6-digit phone
number. The only difference was that if you were phoning another phone on
the same exchange, you needed to dial 6 rather than 4 digits.

The PhONEday happened and 0xxx changed to 01xxx.

At least they weren't in one of the cities that got a brand new STD code. My
grandpa lived in Leeds and his number changed from 0532 xxxxxx to 0113
2xxxxxx. He answered his phone with a pause between the new 2 and the number
that he was used to, whereas I think the "approved" way is "2xx xxxx"
(according to BT purists).

I've never answered my phone with the number and thought it a very odd
thing to do. When I phone someone, I want to hear "hello" or their
name, not their ****ing number. What use is that?!

This was common in places where phone service, especially routing,
wasn't very reliable.

--
All things being equal, fat people use more soap.

On Sat, 06 Oct 2018 20:01:56 +0100, NY wrote:

"Jimmy Wilkinson Knife" wrote in message
news
At least the steps provide a small transition. I wouldn't want a house
where
you open the front door and the door frame is literally the transition
between your own private house and the public space of the pavement.

Surely kids would constantly be knocking on the door for a laugh as they
walked past?

Hence the origin of childhood games of knocking at doors and then running
away,

We did that when we were kids, but the doors were several metres from the road, we just ran fast. It was called "Chicken Elle" or "Knock a doory bunk it".

or tying all the door knockers together with string and then knocking
on the first door and watching as that first person set off the next
person's knocker which would set off the next one etc. Not possible on a
street where all the houses are set back from the road.

There is also the problem that you never have any privacy because anyone
passing by can look in through your lounge window unless you have a thick
net curtain.

A lot of folk round here (we have front gardens of about 7 metres) have net curtains or vertical blinds. I just grew a hedge. Now I can see out of my window into my own garden and not view the road. And people can't see in.

On Sat, 06 Oct 2018 19:58:09 +0100, NY wrote:

"Jimmy Wilkinson Knife" wrote in message
news
At least they weren't in one of the cities that got a brand new STD code.
My
grandpa lived in Leeds and his number changed from 0532 xxxxxx to 0113
2xxxxxx. He answered his phone with a pause between the new 2 and the
number
that he was used to, whereas I think the "approved" way is "2xx xxxx"
(according to BT purists).

I've never answered my phone with the number and thought it a very odd
thing to do. When I phone someone, I want to hear "hello" or their name,
not their ****ing number. What use is that?!

When I grew up in the 1960s, it seemed to be the common practice for
everyone to answer their phone with the name of the exchange and your number
("Hello. Bristol 123456"), so that's how I did it. I wonder if it was partly
so as not to give away your name to a stranger (who might have dialled a
wrong number or even a number at random) until you know who you are talking
to. That seemed to change around the 1980s or 90s, although it may also have
been that I was used to answering with my name at work, and just continued
that at home as well.

I've always just said hello. It reveals nothing and sounds like a normal conversation. Most people will recognise my voice, most people will have phoned the right number, and if not they can either ask or we soon work out it's wrong. For example:

"Hello?"
"Could you give Jim a lift to the church tomorrow?"
"Er.... who?"
"Isn't that Bob?"
"No...."
"Sorry, wrong number."

For a few years after I moved here, I had a number that used to belong to somebody else who had a lot of debts. I got calls telling me to "go **** myself" and that I was going to be burnt alive if I didn't pay up. I found it quite amusing as I knew the number belonged to someone at another address - my house was bought off someone who took their number with them - so there was no way they were going to turn up here. Although whoever moved into his house could have got into a bit of strife, especially after what I said back to some of them.

On Sat, 06 Oct 2018 21:17:34 +0100, Lewis wrote:

In message Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:
On Sat, 06 Oct 2018 18:33:56 +0100, NY wrote:

"Jimmy Wilkinson Knife" wrote in message
news The UK way is far easier. 01234, spoken as one word. Then 567890 spoken
as one word, or sometimes two - 567 890. It's been worked out that most
people can remember 7 digits easily, so 5 and 6 works well. It does
confuse me though when someone gives me their phone number in an odd
sequence, like 0123 4567 890. Mind you, we always used to have freephone
numbers beginning 0800, some of which now seem to be 08000. Not sure if
the size of the area codes changed or not, I do remember when I was a kid
our number changed twice as they lumped exchanges together. I used to be
able to phone next door with only 3 digits!

My parents' number changed from a 6-digit STD code and a 4-digit phone
number to the same digits but parsed as 4-digit STD code and 6-digit phone
number. The only difference was that if you were phoning another phone on
the same exchange, you needed to dial 6 rather than 4 digits.

The PhONEday happened and 0xxx changed to 01xxx.

At least they weren't in one of the cities that got a brand new STD code. My
grandpa lived in Leeds and his number changed from 0532 xxxxxx to 0113
2xxxxxx. He answered his phone with a pause between the new 2 and the number
that he was used to, whereas I think the "approved" way is "2xx xxxx"
(according to BT purists).

I've never answered my phone with the number and thought it a very odd
thing to do. When I phone someone, I want to hear "hello" or their
name, not their ****ing number. What use is that?!

This was common in places where phone service, especially routing,
wasn't very reliable.

I was born in 1975 and the only wrong numbers were people pressing the wrong buttons.

On Sat, 06 Oct 2018 21:14:57 +0100, Lewis wrote:

In message Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:
On Sat, 06 Oct 2018 17:42:05 +0100, Lewis wrote:

In message Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:
On Sat, 06 Oct 2018 05:13:42 +0100, Peter Moylan wrote:

On 06/10/18 09:13, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:

Everyone should speak the same language on the entire planet, for
ease of communication. English is the most widespread, and one of
the more sensible ones (no genderised nouns for a start). Is it true
that in French a female cat is male, as it's "le chat" no matter if
it's male or female? Preposterous!

French has "le chat" for a male cat and "la chatte" for a female one,
but in practice not many people bother checking the sex of the cat
before talking about it.

It's not like English, where everyone knows that every cat is "she".

I might call a ship "she", but a cat is an "it", so is a human baby.

Around here people get very angry if you use 'it' for a baby. Or even
MORE angry if you use the wrong gender pronoun.

You can't tell the sex of a human baby without looking in its nappy.

Which is why people are super careful to dress their babies in rigidly
gendered clothing and possibly ribbons or pierced ears for girls.

Why is it so important? I've often referred to someone's dog as "he" and simply been corrected to "she". Surely the same can happen with babies?

On Sat, 06 Oct 2018 19:29:29 +0100, nospam wrote:

In article , Jimmy Wilkinson
Knife wrote:


I tried slotting it in by gravity, I tried pushing it a bit further, I
even tried gently pushing while it tried to feed it. It either didn't
grab it at all, or only grabbed one side and screwed it up, then continued
trying to print on it, whether it was there or not.


I have yet to meet a printer that jams paper.... No further comments nor
advice.

You must be using some very expensive paper, because everyone gets paper jams.

not everyone. actually, very few do.

I've worked for 11 years in the IT industry, and every model of printer I've ever seen gets jams.

On Sat, 6 Oct 2018 19:58:09 +0100, NY, another mentally handicapped,
troll-feeding senile idiot, blathered:


When I grew up in the 1960s,

Oh, no! Not yet another lengthy senile bull**** story!

FLUSH senile ****

On Sat, 6 Oct 2018 20:14:57 -0000 (UTC), Lewis, another mentally challenged,
notorious troll-feeding senile idiot, blathered.


Which is why people are super careful to dress their babies in rigidly
gendered clothing and possibly ribbons or pierced ears for girls.

Just after a few replies to the Scottish sow, you sound as ridiculous and
idiotic as him, you ****ed up senile! LOL

On Sat, 6 Oct 2018 20:17:34 -0000 (UTC), Lewis, another mentally challenged,
notorious troll-feeding senile idiot, blathered.


This was common in places where phone service, especially routing,
wasn't very reliable.

What has all this **** got to do with any of the ngs you keep cross-posting
it to, senile troll-feeding cretin?

In message Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:
On Sat, 06 Oct 2018 21:14:57 +0100, Lewis wrote:

In message Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:
On Sat, 06 Oct 2018 17:42:05 +0100, Lewis wrote:

In message Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:
On Sat, 06 Oct 2018 05:13:42 +0100, Peter Moylan wrote:

On 06/10/18 09:13, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:

Everyone should speak the same language on the entire planet, for
ease of communication. English is the most widespread, and one of
the more sensible ones (no genderised nouns for a start). Is it true
that in French a female cat is male, as it's "le chat" no matter if
it's male or female? Preposterous!

French has "le chat" for a male cat and "la chatte" for a female one,
but in practice not many people bother checking the sex of the cat
before talking about it.

It's not like English, where everyone knows that every cat is "she".

I might call a ship "she", but a cat is an "it", so is a human baby.

Around here people get very angry if you use 'it' for a baby. Or even
MORE angry if you use the wrong gender pronoun.

You can't tell the sex of a human baby without looking in its nappy.

Which is why people are super careful to dress their babies in rigidly
gendered clothing and possibly ribbons or pierced ears for girls.

Why is it so important?

I have no idea. It is one thing I have never understood about Americans.

I've often referred to someone's dog as "he" and simply been corrected
to "she". Surely the same can happen with babies?

Maybe. But sometimes people will be deeply offended or genuinely angry.


--
"A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely
foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.: -
Douglas Adams

On 07/10/18 03:42, Lewis wrote:

Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.

I have sometimes thought that that is the most memorable sentence in all
of science fiction.

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW, Australia

On 06/10/18 21:30, NY wrote:
"Jimmy Wilkinson Knife" wrote in message
news
French can't even count. The French for "84" is "four twenties
and four" It's a miracle there were any French mathematicians at
all.

I like ¤99.99 on a radio advert: "quatre vingt dix neuf quatre
vingt dix neuf" spoken very quickly.

During WWII a spy in Belgium or Switzerland (not sure whether he was
British or German) was unmasked because he used the French counting
system soixante quarante (74) or quatre vignts dix-neuf (99),
forgetting that French-speaking Belgians and Swiss have simplified
their counting system and use septante, huitante and nonante for 70,
80 and 90, together with single digits un to neuf.

It's slightly more complicated than that. The Belgians use septante and
nonante, but mostly stick to quatre-vingts for 80. Huitante is used only
in some parts of Switzerland. Octante is occasionally heard but I don't
know the regional distribution. I think Quebec uses the same number
words as in France.

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW, Australia