So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Opening .csv files in Excel is possible, but I would say under no circumstances should you do it. (If you want to take a peek on a Windows machine use Notepad++.) There are lots of bad things that can happen if you use Excel.
Atom is better than Notepad++....
I like Sublime text as well, it's good for CSV editing.
I have always been put off by the $70-80 cost. Seems very steep for a text editor.
I've never had to pay for it, just put the ticket in and it gets approved. ๐
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Just tested it and got a dialog up with an exclamation and the message file not loaded completely which you have to ok away
In that case the explanation in this Guardian article doesn't make sense (unless some half-wit ignored the error):
But while CSV files can be any size, Microsoft Excel files can only be 1,048,576 rows long. When a CSV file longer than that is opened, the bottom rows get cut off and are no longer displayed.
Or the load was part of a macro with warnings turned off (Application.DisplayAlerts = False)
Which shows a level of incompetence in itself.....hey we are loading important data that informs policy....lets turn the warnings off so they don't bother our pointy little heads
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Opening .csv files in Excel is possible, but I would say under no circumstances should you do it. (If you want to take a peek on a Windows machine use Notepad++.) There are lots of bad things that can happen if you use Excel.
Atom is better than Notepad++....
They arent the same sort of thing though
Notepad++ is just a text editor and yes I know you can add on things for syntax colouring Atom is trying to be a dev environment
Atom markets itself as "A hackable text editor for the 21st Century"....
I certainly would never use it for dev. That is what visual studio and pycharm are for.
It has just struck me that those who think the virus lockdown rules are too strict are similar, very similar, to those who think immigration problems are exaggerated.
They say the numbers wont be as high as predicted, then, when they are, or almost are, they say the number doesn't really matter because it's not that bad anyway.
Noteworthy, I think, because it is not the same people doing it
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Just tested it and got a dialog up with an exclamation and the message file not loaded completely which you have to ok away
In that case the explanation in this Guardian article doesn't make sense (unless some half-wit ignored the error):
But while CSV files can be any size, Microsoft Excel files can only be 1,048,576 rows long. When a CSV file longer than that is opened, the bottom rows get cut off and are no longer displayed.
Or the load was part of a macro with warnings turned off (Application.DisplayAlerts = False)
Oh god I bet that's exactly what happened. Normally it wouldn't matter but there probably wasn't any exception handling in the code to catch actual showstopping errors.
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Opening .csv files in Excel is possible, but I would say under no circumstances should you do it. (If you want to take a peek on a Windows machine use Notepad++.) There are lots of bad things that can happen if you use Excel.
Atom is better than Notepad++....
I like Sublime text as well, it's good for CSV editing.
I have always been put off by the $70-80 cost. Seems very steep for a text editor.
You have to pay for it?
The dialogue box is annoying, but not that annoying.
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Just tested it and got a dialog up with an exclamation and the message file not loaded completely which you have to ok away
In that case the explanation in this Guardian article doesn't make sense (unless some half-wit ignored the error):
But while CSV files can be any size, Microsoft Excel files can only be 1,048,576 rows long. When a CSV file longer than that is opened, the bottom rows get cut off and are no longer displayed.
Or the load was part of a macro with warnings turned off (Application.DisplayAlerts = False)
If there was someone literate enough to do that then they wouldn't be using Excel at all.
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Just tested it and got a dialog up with an exclamation and the message file not loaded completely which you have to ok away
In that case the explanation in this Guardian article doesn't make sense (unless some half-wit ignored the error):
But while CSV files can be any size, Microsoft Excel files can only be 1,048,576 rows long. When a CSV file longer than that is opened, the bottom rows get cut off and are no longer displayed.
Or the load was part of a macro with warnings turned off (Application.DisplayAlerts = False)
Oh god I bet that's exactly what happened. Normally it wouldn't matter but there probably wasn't any exception handling in the code to catch actual showstopping errors.
Why would anyone do that though? Turning off the error reporting has never ended well, at least for production scripts.
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Just tested it and got a dialog up with an exclamation and the message file not loaded completely which you have to ok away
In that case the explanation in this Guardian article doesn't make sense (unless some half-wit ignored the error):
But while CSV files can be any size, Microsoft Excel files can only be 1,048,576 rows long. When a CSV file longer than that is opened, the bottom rows get cut off and are no longer displayed.
Or the load was part of a macro with warnings turned off (Application.DisplayAlerts = False)
If there was someone literate enough to do that then they wouldn't be using Excel at all.
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Just tested it and got a dialog up with an exclamation and the message file not loaded completely which you have to ok away
In that case the explanation in this Guardian article doesn't make sense (unless some half-wit ignored the error):
But while CSV files can be any size, Microsoft Excel files can only be 1,048,576 rows long. When a CSV file longer than that is opened, the bottom rows get cut off and are no longer displayed.
Or the load was part of a macro with warnings turned off (Application.DisplayAlerts = False)
If there was someone literate enough to do that then they wouldn't be using Excel at all.
Oooohhh, some of the things I've seen before I wouldn't say that.
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Just tested it and got a dialog up with an exclamation and the message file not loaded completely which you have to ok away
In that case the explanation in this Guardian article doesn't make sense (unless some half-wit ignored the error):
But while CSV files can be any size, Microsoft Excel files can only be 1,048,576 rows long. When a CSV file longer than that is opened, the bottom rows get cut off and are no longer displayed.
Or the load was part of a macro with warnings turned off (Application.DisplayAlerts = False)
If there was someone literate enough to do that then they wouldn't be using Excel at all.
Never work on a government it project should be a rule taught on courses. There are far too many non technical people making far too many technical decisions
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Just tested it and got a dialog up with an exclamation and the message file not loaded completely which you have to ok away
In that case the explanation in this Guardian article doesn't make sense (unless some half-wit ignored the error):
But while CSV files can be any size, Microsoft Excel files can only be 1,048,576 rows long. When a CSV file longer than that is opened, the bottom rows get cut off and are no longer displayed.
Or the load was part of a macro with warnings turned off (Application.DisplayAlerts = False)
Oh god I bet that's exactly what happened. Normally it wouldn't matter but there probably wasn't any exception handling in the code to catch actual showstopping errors.
Why would anyone do that though? Turning off the error reporting has never ended well, at least for production scripts.
If I were to take a guess, there was some dialogue box that popped up every time for some ancillary reason and was slightly annoying. So someone googled "How do I turn off the dialogue boxes in macro scripts" and copied the top answer off of StackOverflow.
I would point out that pollsters got 2012 wrong because they assumed some reversion to the mean for African American turnout.
What is HS turnout not only doesn't mean revert, but instead becomes even greater?
Then the (high quality) polls will be spot on.
I am not an expert on polling methodology but there seem some unusual findings in ones, particularly at the state level. For example, looking at the CBS / YouGov breakdowns:
It polls Registered Voters, 89% of say they will Definitely Vote. That doesn't sound right, especially when you look at the NYT poll for PA which only has likely voters which gives a figure of 77% (which is actually "Almost Certain")
People always overstate their likelihood of voting, in all polls.
Or more accurately, turnout is always way lower than the polls' figures would have you believe (it may be the people being polled are telling the truth but their likely to be a more politically engaged sub-section of society, so more likely to vote).
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Just tested it and got a dialog up with an exclamation and the message file not loaded completely which you have to ok away
In that case the explanation in this Guardian article doesn't make sense (unless some half-wit ignored the error):
But while CSV files can be any size, Microsoft Excel files can only be 1,048,576 rows long. When a CSV file longer than that is opened, the bottom rows get cut off and are no longer displayed.
Or the load was part of a macro with warnings turned off (Application.DisplayAlerts = False)
It has just struck me that those who think the virus lockdown rules are too strict are similar, very similar, to those who think immigration problems are exaggerated.
They say the numbers wont be as high as predicted, then, when they are, or almost are, they say the number doesn't really matter because it's not that bad anyway.
Noteworthy, I think, because it is not the same people doing it
That is an interesting parallel.
Cheers
I always think of Labour under Blair when they said only 13,000 Eastern Europeans would arrive after A8 accession - when it turned out to be wrong by an order of magnitude, they switched to talking up the benefits of mass immigration to the economy to anyone pulling them up about the 13,000 number
Although I am on the side of thinking the restrictions are too much, especially for the healthy and under 60, I see the same shape shifting going on by people I agree with, me too I guess.
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Just tested it and got a dialog up with an exclamation and the message file not loaded completely which you have to ok away
In that case the explanation in this Guardian article doesn't make sense (unless some half-wit ignored the error):
But while CSV files can be any size, Microsoft Excel files can only be 1,048,576 rows long. When a CSV file longer than that is opened, the bottom rows get cut off and are no longer displayed.
Or the load was part of a macro with warnings turned off (Application.DisplayAlerts = False)
If there was someone literate enough to do that then they wouldn't be using Excel at all.
Not so.
Lots of people can (and do) knock up an Excel macro, yet have no concept of good coding practice.
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Just tested it and got a dialog up with an exclamation and the message file not loaded completely which you have to ok away
In that case the explanation in this Guardian article doesn't make sense (unless some half-wit ignored the error):
But while CSV files can be any size, Microsoft Excel files can only be 1,048,576 rows long. When a CSV file longer than that is opened, the bottom rows get cut off and are no longer displayed.
Or the load was part of a macro with warnings turned off (Application.DisplayAlerts = False)
Oh god I bet that's exactly what happened. Normally it wouldn't matter but there probably wasn't any exception handling in the code to catch actual showstopping errors.
Why would anyone do that though? Turning off the error reporting has never ended well, at least for production scripts.
If I were to take a guess, there was some dialogue box that popped up every time for some ancillary reason and was slightly annoying. So someone googled "How do I turn off the dialogue boxes in macro scripts" and copied the top answer off of StackOverflow.
If you have to google something like that to do with turning errors off then that should be giving you a clue that you probably don't know enough to be turning errors off in the first place
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Just tested it and got a dialog up with an exclamation and the message file not loaded completely which you have to ok away
In that case the explanation in this Guardian article doesn't make sense (unless some half-wit ignored the error):
But while CSV files can be any size, Microsoft Excel files can only be 1,048,576 rows long. When a CSV file longer than that is opened, the bottom rows get cut off and are no longer displayed.
Or the load was part of a macro with warnings turned off (Application.DisplayAlerts = False)
If there was someone literate enough to do that then they wouldn't be using Excel at all.
Never work on a government it project should be a rule taught on courses. There are far too many non technical people making far too many technical decisions
I feel like I should stick up for the research council subsidiaries here. Everyone in the department is extremely tech literate and we have enough PHDs to paper a wall. Now that doesn't necessarily mean the code is brilliant but you can't fault the technical cred of the people signing it off!
I looked at the cases by specimen date chart. It looks like there's still some cases missing. Unless the jump between the 27th and 28th was due to some university term related thing.
I am not sure that the data has been updated - not seeing any data for the 4th (Sunday)
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Just tested it and got a dialog up with an exclamation and the message file not loaded completely which you have to ok away
In that case the explanation in this Guardian article doesn't make sense (unless some half-wit ignored the error):
But while CSV files can be any size, Microsoft Excel files can only be 1,048,576 rows long. When a CSV file longer than that is opened, the bottom rows get cut off and are no longer displayed.
Or the load was part of a macro with warnings turned off (Application.DisplayAlerts = False)
Heaven protect us!
Quite common in my experience because dealing with exceptions is, you know... a bit of a faff.
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Just tested it and got a dialog up with an exclamation and the message file not loaded completely which you have to ok away
In that case the explanation in this Guardian article doesn't make sense (unless some half-wit ignored the error):
But while CSV files can be any size, Microsoft Excel files can only be 1,048,576 rows long. When a CSV file longer than that is opened, the bottom rows get cut off and are no longer displayed.
Or the load was part of a macro with warnings turned off (Application.DisplayAlerts = False)
Oh god I bet that's exactly what happened. Normally it wouldn't matter but there probably wasn't any exception handling in the code to catch actual showstopping errors.
Why would anyone do that though? Turning off the error reporting has never ended well, at least for production scripts.
If I were to take a guess, there was some dialogue box that popped up every time for some ancillary reason and was slightly annoying. So someone googled "How do I turn off the dialogue boxes in macro scripts" and copied the top answer off of StackOverflow.
If you have to google something like that to do with turning errors off then that should be giving you a clue that you probably don't know enough to be turning errors off in the first place
I know you've been in this business long enough to know how little self-awareness most software devs have, particularly early career ones.
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Just tested it and got a dialog up with an exclamation and the message file not loaded completely which you have to ok away
In that case the explanation in this Guardian article doesn't make sense (unless some half-wit ignored the error):
But while CSV files can be any size, Microsoft Excel files can only be 1,048,576 rows long. When a CSV file longer than that is opened, the bottom rows get cut off and are no longer displayed.
Or the load was part of a macro with warnings turned off (Application.DisplayAlerts = False)
If there was someone literate enough to do that then they wouldn't be using Excel at all.
Not so.
Lots of people can (and do) knock up an Excel macro, yet have no concept of good coding practice.
True, but this is real amateur hour stuff. Like if a junior did this more than once they'd be in line for being sacked level of amateur hour.
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Just tested it and got a dialog up with an exclamation and the message file not loaded completely which you have to ok away
In that case the explanation in this Guardian article doesn't make sense (unless some half-wit ignored the error):
But while CSV files can be any size, Microsoft Excel files can only be 1,048,576 rows long. When a CSV file longer than that is opened, the bottom rows get cut off and are no longer displayed.
Or the load was part of a macro with warnings turned off (Application.DisplayAlerts = False)
If there was someone literate enough to do that then they wouldn't be using Excel at all.
Not so.
Lots of people can (and do) knock up an Excel macro, yet have no concept of good coding practice.
True, but this is real amateur hour stuff. Like if a junior did this more than once they'd be in line for being sacked level of amateur hour.
This was probably the junior doing it the first time.
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Just tested it and got a dialog up with an exclamation and the message file not loaded completely which you have to ok away
In that case the explanation in this Guardian article doesn't make sense (unless some half-wit ignored the error):
But while CSV files can be any size, Microsoft Excel files can only be 1,048,576 rows long. When a CSV file longer than that is opened, the bottom rows get cut off and are no longer displayed.
Or the load was part of a macro with warnings turned off (Application.DisplayAlerts = False)
If there was someone literate enough to do that then they wouldn't be using Excel at all.
Never work on a government it project should be a rule taught on courses. There are far too many non technical people making far too many technical decisions
I feel like I should stick up for the research council subsidiaries here. Everyone in the department is extremely tech literate and we have enough PHDs to paper a wall. Now that doesn't necessarily mean the code is brilliant but you can't fault the technical cred of the people signing it off!
Some of the worst code in history has been written by people with PhDs.
Mind you, I have seen some brilliant UNIX work done by a chemist. The MRI machine (and other systems he was using) were controlled by UNIX. So he taught himself. To Knuthian levels of knowledge. He was just one of those people.
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Just tested it and got a dialog up with an exclamation and the message file not loaded completely which you have to ok away
In that case the explanation in this Guardian article doesn't make sense (unless some half-wit ignored the error):
But while CSV files can be any size, Microsoft Excel files can only be 1,048,576 rows long. When a CSV file longer than that is opened, the bottom rows get cut off and are no longer displayed.
Or the load was part of a macro with warnings turned off (Application.DisplayAlerts = False)
If there was someone literate enough to do that then they wouldn't be using Excel at all.
Never work on a government it project should be a rule taught on courses. There are far too many non technical people making far too many technical decisions
I feel like I should stick up for the research council subsidiaries here. Everyone in the department is extremely tech literate and we have enough PHDs to paper a wall. Now that doesn't necessarily mean the code is brilliant but you can't fault the technical cred of the people signing it off!
I was meaning more the it projects that initiate it projects. When civil servants get involved it really starts to make you bang your head against the desk. And even though people are tech literate doesn't mean they don't do strange things when they are public sector.
As I mentioned I wrote the road routing engine for the DfT project. We used to get every week a pile of xml files from ordinance survey with all the road data in. When I noticed in the data that half the slip roads were missing the annotation and this needed to be rectified so they were consistently labelled they did so my removing the annotation from all slip roads.....it was certainly consistent now but did nothing to solve the actual issue.
I would point out that pollsters got 2012 wrong because they assumed some reversion to the mean for African American turnout.
What is HS turnout not only doesn't mean revert, but instead becomes even greater?
Then the (high quality) polls will be spot on.
I am not an expert on polling methodology but there seem some unusual findings in ones, particularly at the state level. For example, looking at the CBS / YouGov breakdowns:
It polls Registered Voters, 89% of say they will Definitely Vote. That doesn't sound right, especially when you look at the NYT poll for PA which only has likely voters which gives a figure of 77% (which is actually "Almost Certain")
The certainty to vote figure is a comedy figure that is just a bit of fun.
In the 2014 Scottish IndyRef the pollsters undershot turnout.
CNN: Afterward, members of the Secret Service voiced escalating concern at what many of the agency's personnel have determined is total disregard for their well-being amid a deadly and highly contagious pandemic. Agents have tested positive for the virus while traveling for the President's political rallies, which he insisted on maintaining even against federal health guidelines. As employees self-quarantine or isolate in place, others have been forced to work longer hours to fill the void.
It's a situation that has prompted growing and more vocal concern.
"That should never have happened," one current Secret Service agent who works on the presidential and first family detail said after Trump's drive-by, adding that those agents who went along for the ride would now be required to quarantine.
"I mean, I wouldn't want to be around them," the agent said, expressing a view that multiple people at the Secret Service also voiced in the wake of Sunday's appearance. "The frustration with how we're treated when it comes to decisions on this illness goes back before this though. We're not disposable."
Another veteran Secret Service agent also expressed deep dismay at the Walter Reed ride, though was sympathetic for those around the President given the difficulty in pushing back on the commander-in-chief. "You can't say no," the agent said.
While agents in the Secret Service have the power to say no to activities that could put a president in danger, they can't say no in situations that could put themselves in danger.
I looked at the cases by specimen date chart. It looks like there's still some cases missing. Unless the jump between the 27th and 28th was due to some university term related thing.
I am not sure that the data has been updated - not seeing any data for the 4th (Sunday)
The English figure for Oct 4th is currently 68, then Wales 1, Scotland 160, NI 332.
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Just tested it and got a dialog up with an exclamation and the message file not loaded completely which you have to ok away
In that case the explanation in this Guardian article doesn't make sense (unless some half-wit ignored the error):
But while CSV files can be any size, Microsoft Excel files can only be 1,048,576 rows long. When a CSV file longer than that is opened, the bottom rows get cut off and are no longer displayed.
Or the load was part of a macro with warnings turned off (Application.DisplayAlerts = False)
Oh god I bet that's exactly what happened. Normally it wouldn't matter but there probably wasn't any exception handling in the code to catch actual showstopping errors.
People who think Excel is "The Answer" are probably not aware of try { } catch { } blocks .... (or the Excel equivalent)
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Just tested it and got a dialog up with an exclamation and the message file not loaded completely which you have to ok away
In that case the explanation in this Guardian article doesn't make sense (unless some half-wit ignored the error):
But while CSV files can be any size, Microsoft Excel files can only be 1,048,576 rows long. When a CSV file longer than that is opened, the bottom rows get cut off and are no longer displayed.
Or the load was part of a macro with warnings turned off (Application.DisplayAlerts = False)
Oh god I bet that's exactly what happened. Normally it wouldn't matter but there probably wasn't any exception handling in the code to catch actual showstopping errors.
People who think Excel is "The Answer" are probably not aware of try { } catch { } blocks .... (or the Excel equivalent)
try: blah except: pass
Then I don't have to worry about the errors. That's how it works, right?
It has just struck me that those who think the virus lockdown rules are too strict are similar, very similar, to those who think immigration problems are exaggerated.
They say the numbers wont be as high as predicted, then, when they are, or almost are, they say the number doesn't really matter because it's not that bad anyway.
Noteworthy, I think, because it is not the same people doing it
That is an interesting parallel.
Cheers
I always think of Labour under Blair when they said only 13,000 Eastern Europeans would arrive after A8 accession - when it turned out to be wrong by an order of magnitude, they switched to talking up the benefits of mass immigration to the economy to anyone pulling them up about the 13,000 number
Although I am on the side of thinking the restrictions are too much, especially for the healthy and under 60, I see the same shape shifting going on by people I agree with, me too I guess.
I have mentioned I like poking peoples ideas to find the contradictions.
One fun one is that many advocates of immigration -
1) Want lots of immigration 2) Don't want to build infrastructure - particularly housing - to match the increase in population
You can have endless fun as they wriggle around with "Bigger tower blocks", "brown field sites" etc.
To me it is very simple. 100K more people. You need 100K "worth" of housing, schools, fire stations, police, pubs, roads, pet shops etc.
Don't do that - don't be surprised by adults in bunk beds, 4 to a room. You can say that's horrible, or OK, or whatever. But don't be surprised by that.
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Just tested it and got a dialog up with an exclamation and the message file not loaded completely which you have to ok away
In that case the explanation in this Guardian article doesn't make sense (unless some half-wit ignored the error):
But while CSV files can be any size, Microsoft Excel files can only be 1,048,576 rows long. When a CSV file longer than that is opened, the bottom rows get cut off and are no longer displayed.
Or the load was part of a macro with warnings turned off (Application.DisplayAlerts = False)
If there was someone literate enough to do that then they wouldn't be using Excel at all.
Never work on a government it project should be a rule taught on courses. There are far too many non technical people making far too many technical decisions
I feel like I should stick up for the research council subsidiaries here. Everyone in the department is extremely tech literate and we have enough PHDs to paper a wall. Now that doesn't necessarily mean the code is brilliant but you can't fault the technical cred of the people signing it off!
Some of the worst code in history has been written by people with PhDs.
Mind you, I have seen some brilliant UNIX work done by a chemist. The MRI machine (and other systems he was using) were controlled by UNIX. So he taught himself. To Knuthian levels of knowledge. He was just one of those people.
I was meaning more the it projects that initiate it projects. When civil servants get involved it really starts to make you bang your head against the desk. And even though people are tech literate doesn't mean they don't do strange things when they are public sector.
As I mentioned I wrote the road routing engine for the DfT project. We used to get every week a pile of xml files from ordinance survey with all the road data in. When I noticed in the data that half the slip roads were missing the annotation and this needed to be rectified so they were consistently labelled they did so my removing the annotation from all slip roads.....it was certainly consistent now but did nothing to solve the actual issue.
We have a software and an electronics team for pretty much these reasons. The scientists are all brilliant but it's a waste of their time and talent to be buggering around trying to work out how analogue electronics work. To be fair, most of them are pretty sharp UNIX operators and there is at least one who is god tier at python. For the customer facing stuff though, we have actual software devs. For the field stuff, well I have my soldering iron on standby.
I looked at the cases by specimen date chart. It looks like there's still some cases missing. Unless the jump between the 27th and 28th was due to some university term related thing.
I am not sure that the data has been updated - not seeing any data for the 4th (Sunday)
If a tradesman comes to your house to repair your fridge and has nothing but a hammer with him, it is obvious to everyone, even Boris, that he is unfit to be a fridge repairman, professional or amateur.
If a data scientist tries to compile the official government SARS-COV2 data and has nothing but Excel, it is obvious ....
It's common to refer to said hammer as the [insert name of city to be dissed, e.g. Birmingham] screwdriver - perhaps we should all start referring to Excel as the 'Whitehall Database'?
The banks got there first. I think I have spent more than half my life trying to remove Excel from the financial operations chain.....
Thank god we managed to kill Access. That was a stake-through-the-heart-with-garlix-and-silver-hollowpoints-just-in-case thing.....
In my old, old life, whenever I was passed someone else's Excel file I would do a quick search for INDIRECT.
If it was in there, you could be 99.9% sure than the spreadsheet would contain major errors.
(True story time. Back in the early 1990s, the most profitable desk at Goldman Sachs London office was Japanese Warrants trading. Every year, it raked up ridiculous, insane profits, despite Japanese warrants only being a pretty small market. Eventually someone worked out why. There was an Excel spreadsheet that calculated how much they needed to hedge their positions. That is, if Goldman Sachs owned lots of Japanese equity warrants, they needed to sell equity futures to balance their risk. And if they were short warrants, then they had to be long the market. Due to an error in the spreadsheet, it was always telling the traders they needed to have massive short positions in the Japanese equity market. As Nikkei was in a serious bear market, this error resulted in the desk making enormous profits.)
Masters of the Universe! โบ
Nick Leeson didn't use something like that, did he?
Except that Nick's luck was of the bad variety. He chased the losses he was hiding and the markets moved the wrong way and made them worse. He's done a lot to redeem himself since going down. Essex boy like you - if Hertfordshire counts.
A legacy system makes more sense why it was a hack job to put it together rather than cleanly written code. A lot of legacy systems aren't prioritised and aren't cleanly written and are hacked together in a way that works until it doesn't.
It has just struck me that those who think the virus lockdown rules are too strict are similar, very similar, to those who think immigration problems are exaggerated.
They say the numbers wont be as high as predicted, then, when they are, or almost are, they say the number doesn't really matter because it's not that bad anyway.
Noteworthy, I think, because it is not the same people doing it
That is an interesting parallel.
Cheers
I always think of Labour under Blair when they said only 13,000 Eastern Europeans would arrive after A8 accession - when it turned out to be wrong by an order of magnitude, they switched to talking up the benefits of mass immigration to the economy to anyone pulling them up about the 13,000 number
Although I am on the side of thinking the restrictions are too much, especially for the healthy and under 60, I see the same shape shifting going on by people I agree with, me too I guess.
We always want to think that our opinions are based on rationality and truth, but I think it's fair to say that emotion always plays a large role.
What's particularly interesting about the two is that I'm instinctively and emotionally anti-borders, but in the present covid situation I see quarantine for people moving around as a way to help bring the virus under control.
So it's not a huge leap from that to appreciating why other people might see border controls as a way to bring other things under control - even though I still disagree with them.
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Just tested it and got a dialog up with an exclamation and the message file not loaded completely which you have to ok away
In that case the explanation in this Guardian article doesn't make sense (unless some half-wit ignored the error):
But while CSV files can be any size, Microsoft Excel files can only be 1,048,576 rows long. When a CSV file longer than that is opened, the bottom rows get cut off and are no longer displayed.
Or the load was part of a macro with warnings turned off (Application.DisplayAlerts = False)
Oh god I bet that's exactly what happened. Normally it wouldn't matter but there probably wasn't any exception handling in the code to catch actual showstopping errors.
People who think Excel is "The Answer" are probably not aware of try { } catch { } blocks .... (or the Excel equivalent)
SD = South Dakota? Why so high there? It's solid Republican anyway.
Dunno why it's high there, but it's a tiny electorate in a big place, so maybe it's just convenience.
Maybe the locals have heard Trump's planning to have his ugly mug carved into Mount Rushmore and are piling in to make sure it doesn't happen?
There's a companion "why did we get it wrong" piece to go with the one from the weekend. The how did we miss Biden sweeping to one of the largest victories ever. Taking the entire west and east coast as well as Texas
I haven't missed it. It's distinctly possible. There's not a lot of point discussing it though because the consequences are so obvious (one of these being I become a good deal better off.)
It's my 30% expectation. I'll be a bit disappointed with a 'solid but not spectacular' outcome.
I'll settle for getting rid of the bastard. Some things are more important even than my bank balance. As it happens, I think Biden just about has it so I can start daydreaming about scenarios involving a Democrat win in Taxas and Alaska but if you offered 270 ECVs right now I'd take it.
Not sure about 270 but I know what you mean. Nothing more important than Trump out. If he loses it makes 2020 a great year.
In the 1980s or 1990s someone probably would have been manually checking all the time to make sure data wasn't being truncated from a spreadsheet in this sort of situation. These days people are so confident in technology that they don't think checks are necessary.
A legacy system makes more sense why it was a hack job to put it together rather than cleanly written code. A lot of legacy systems aren't prioritised and aren't cleanly written and are hacked together in a way that works until it doesn't.
Wait. There's a legacy system for recording Covid-19 cases? What foresight!
A legacy system makes more sense why it was a hack job to put it together rather than cleanly written code. A lot of legacy systems aren't prioritised and aren't cleanly written and are hacked together in a way that works until it doesn't.
Wait. There's a legacy system for recording Covid-19 cases? What foresight!
I'm not surprised PHE have legacy systems for recording cases. Whether it is Covid19, Swine Flu, SARS, HIV or any other communicable disease I'm sure they have all sorts of systems.
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Just tested it and got a dialog up with an exclamation and the message file not loaded completely which you have to ok away
In that case the explanation in this Guardian article doesn't make sense (unless some half-wit ignored the error):
But while CSV files can be any size, Microsoft Excel files can only be 1,048,576 rows long. When a CSV file longer than that is opened, the bottom rows get cut off and are no longer displayed.
Or the load was part of a macro with warnings turned off (Application.DisplayAlerts = False)
If there was someone literate enough to do that then they wouldn't be using Excel at all.
Not so.
Lots of people can (and do) knock up an Excel macro, yet have no concept of good coding practice.
True, but this is real amateur hour stuff. Like if a junior did this more than once they'd be in line for being sacked level of amateur hour.
It'll be a grad consultant - no one will ever track them down, or if they do they'll just be assigned to another contract.
45.2% would be Trump retaining 98% of the 46.1% he polled in 2016. Biden picking up most of his votes from third parties like the Libertarians and Greens.
I looked at the cases by specimen date chart. It looks like there's still some cases missing. Unless the jump between the 27th and 28th was due to some university term related thing.
I am not sure that the data has been updated - not seeing any data for the 4th (Sunday)
I think it has, there is data for yesterday now.
For deaths, yes, for low level cases, but not nation level cases. hmmmmm
In the 1980s or 1990s someone probably would have been manually checking all the time to make sure data wasn't being truncated from a spreadsheet in this sort of situation. These days people are so confident in technology that they don't think checks are necessary.
It is one of the problems with technology, people see data on the screen and assume it must be correct. More and more we will get this as governments get bigger and bigger databases on us all. We will see conversations coming up like
Q: Why did you stop my pension? A: Because you are dead.
Q: But I am not dead unless you think I am a zombie A: Then you cant be that person because that person is dead. You are trying to defraud us.
Q: Look heres my driving licence showing you its me. A: It can't be you because that person is dead the computer says so. (confiscates licence)
In the 1980s or 1990s someone probably would have been manually checking all the time to make sure data wasn't being truncated from a spreadsheet in this sort of situation. These days people are so confident in technology that they don't think checks are necessary.
Well, someone must have checked something to work out that there was a problem.
Maybe it was someone at one of the universities wondering why the number of cases in their local authority was lower than the number of cases submitted by the university?
Whoever it was, someone checked, someone noticed, and someone made sure it was fixed.
Otherwise we would still not know about these missing cases and we'd be bouncing along at ~7k cases, with some people making absurd comments about the relative England/devolved nations figures that now look rather silly.
It's really fascinating to dip into this and watch well-informed people discussing what is obviously a serious Govt cock-up, due to letting the Captain tell the Engineer how to look after the engines.. I wish I understood it all!
The thing that convinces me Trump is dead in the water for re-election. Last time he got himself the 3-4 slogans, make America great, build the wall, lock her up, and they resonanced, even if people didn't really quite believe how he would achieve them or want clinton locked up (it just reinforced opinion that some shifty stuff about Clintons).
This time he has got nothing going. Sleepy Joe doesn't really go anywhere, does keep America great. He has tried getting the Harris is a far leftist, Biden is on drugs, but we aren't seeing people really going for them.
Good point on the broken promises -
He hasn't made America great again. He hasn't built the Wall. He hasn't locked her up.
Only people locked up are his 2016 campaign team.
Problem is that his supporters believe he's done the first two. I saw an interview the other day with a Trump voter who said, inter alia "He's built the wall, and he's even fixed healthcare which the Democrats tried to do for years and failed." How do you deal with this level of delusion?
Amazing really. All you can hope is that there are insufficient of them. And this time I feel pretty sure there aren't.
A legacy system makes more sense why it was a hack job to put it together rather than cleanly written code. A lot of legacy systems aren't prioritised and aren't cleanly written and are hacked together in a way that works until it doesn't.
Wait. There's a legacy system for recording Covid-19 cases? What foresight!
Probably a legacy method of importing data from disparate systems. Uploading CSV and Excel spreadsheets is old trick to get round incompatible external systems. Given the NHS is a mass of ancient tech bound together with damp string..... PHE has probably being using this kind of thing since the dinosaurs roamed.
So they needed to get external data. So they fired up their trusty ImportViaSpreadsheet setup, as part of their implementation.
In the 1980s or 1990s someone probably would have been manually checking all the time to make sure data wasn't being truncated from a spreadsheet in this sort of situation. These days people are so confident in technology that they don't think checks are necessary.
Well, someone must have checked something to work out that there was a problem.
Maybe it was someone at one of the universities wondering why the number of cases in their local authority was lower than the number of cases submitted by the university?
Whoever it was, someone checked, someone noticed, and someone made sure it was fixed.
Otherwise we would still not know about these missing cases and we'd be bouncing along at ~7k cases, with some people making absurd comments about the relative England/devolved nations figures that now look rather silly.
Yes someone noticed, the question is how long has it been going on.....noticed the same day not so bad.....been occuring since August would have changed things significantly
In the 1980s or 1990s someone probably would have been manually checking all the time to make sure data wasn't being truncated from a spreadsheet in this sort of situation. These days people are so confident in technology that they don't think checks are necessary.
It is one of the problems with technology, people see data on the screen and assume it must be correct. More and more we will get this as governments get bigger and bigger databases on us all. We will see conversations coming up like
Q: Why did you stop my pension? A: Because you are dead.
Q: But I am not dead unless you think I am a zombie A: Then you cant be that person because that person is dead. You are trying to defraud us.
Q: Look heres my driving licence showing you its me. A: It can't be you because that person is dead the computer says so. (confiscates licence)
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Opening .csv files in Excel is possible, but I would say under no circumstances should you do it. (If you want to take a peek on a Windows machine use Notepad++.) There are lots of bad things that can happen if you use Excel.
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Opening .csv files in Excel is possible, but I would say under no circumstances should you do it. (If you want to take a peek on a Windows machine use Notepad++.) There are lots of bad things that can happen if you use Excel.
Atom is better than Notepad++....
I like Sublime text as well, it's good for CSV editing.
I'm a Sublime User, and there are some great plugins for it out there.
(However, I've started being attracted by the Dark Side and have VS Code installed too.)
It's really fascinating to dip into this and watch well-informed people discussing what is obviously a serious Govt cock-up, due to letting the Captain tell the Engineer how to look after the engines.. I wish I understood it all!
Never to late to take up coding as a hobby, there is something satisfying about getting a piece of code working and there are plenty of free tools and tutorials around
In the 1980s or 1990s someone probably would have been manually checking all the time to make sure data wasn't being truncated from a spreadsheet in this sort of situation. These days people are so confident in technology that they don't think checks are necessary.
Well, someone must have checked something to work out that there was a problem.
Maybe it was someone at one of the universities wondering why the number of cases in their local authority was lower than the number of cases submitted by the university?
Whoever it was, someone checked, someone noticed, and someone made sure it was fixed.
Otherwise we would still not know about these missing cases and we'd be bouncing along at ~7k cases, with some people making absurd comments about the relative England/devolved nations figures that now look rather silly.
The 770 cases at Northumbria university alone at a time when the national figures were supposedly flatlining at 6-7k a day certainly didn't sit right with me.
In the 1980s or 1990s someone probably would have been manually checking all the time to make sure data wasn't being truncated from a spreadsheet in this sort of situation. These days people are so confident in technology that they don't think checks are necessary.
It is one of the problems with technology, people see data on the screen and assume it must be correct. More and more we will get this as governments get bigger and bigger databases on us all. We will see conversations coming up like
Q: Why did you stop my pension? A: Because you are dead.
Q: But I am not dead unless you think I am a zombie A: Then you cant be that person because that person is dead. You are trying to defraud us.
Q: Look heres my driving licence showing you its me. A: It can't be you because that person is dead the computer says so. (confiscates licence)
There is a woman in Oregon who is insisting that she is not dead. Her bank refuses to believe her and has informed the credit reference agencies that she is dead.
In the 1980s or 1990s someone probably would have been manually checking all the time to make sure data wasn't being truncated from a spreadsheet in this sort of situation. These days people are so confident in technology that they don't think checks are necessary.
The government expects EU citizens to be OK with their right to remain being held on some government computer system rather than being given a physical certificate they can share with potential employers, landlords etc. One can see why that is far from reassuring for a lot of people.
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Opening .csv files in Excel is possible, but I would say under no circumstances should you do it. (If you want to take a peek on a Windows machine use Notepad++.) There are lots of bad things that can happen if you use Excel.
Atom is better than Notepad++....
They arent the same sort of thing though
Notepad++ is just a text editor and yes I know you can add on things for syntax colouring Atom is trying to be a dev environment
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Opening .csv files in Excel is possible, but I would say under no circumstances should you do it. (If you want to take a peek on a Windows machine use Notepad++.) There are lots of bad things that can happen if you use Excel.
Atom is better than Notepad++....
You don't use VIM?
My PhD supervisor insisted on using VIM for everything...just wouldn't have this idea of using an IDE. I seemed to remember he even made his teaching slides in it.
In the 1980s or 1990s someone probably would have been manually checking all the time to make sure data wasn't being truncated from a spreadsheet in this sort of situation. These days people are so confident in technology that they don't think checks are necessary.
It is one of the problems with technology, people see data on the screen and assume it must be correct. More and more we will get this as governments get bigger and bigger databases on us all. We will see conversations coming up like
Q: Why did you stop my pension? A: Because you are dead.
Q: But I am not dead unless you think I am a zombie A: Then you cant be that person because that person is dead. You are trying to defraud us.
Q: Look heres my driving licence showing you its me. A: It can't be you because that person is dead the computer says so. (confiscates licence)
On the bright side she should take up bank robbery they can't jail a dead woman....though I suspect they would find someway to resurrect her pretty damn sharply
In the 1980s or 1990s someone probably would have been manually checking all the time to make sure data wasn't being truncated from a spreadsheet in this sort of situation. These days people are so confident in technology that they don't think checks are necessary.
Well, someone must have checked something to work out that there was a problem.
Maybe it was someone at one of the universities wondering why the number of cases in their local authority was lower than the number of cases submitted by the university?
Whoever it was, someone checked, someone noticed, and someone made sure it was fixed.
Otherwise we would still not know about these missing cases and we'd be bouncing along at ~7k cases, with some people making absurd comments about the relative England/devolved nations figures that now look rather silly.
Yes someone noticed, the question is how long has it been going on.....noticed the same day not so bad.....been occuring since August would have changed things significantly
From the message they had up it had been a problem for about a week, maybe less.
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Opening .csv files in Excel is possible, but I would say under no circumstances should you do it. (If you want to take a peek on a Windows machine use Notepad++.) There are lots of bad things that can happen if you use Excel.
Atom is better than Notepad++....
They arent the same sort of thing though
Notepad++ is just a text editor and yes I know you can add on things for syntax colouring Atom is trying to be a dev environment
Atom is trying to be Eclipse.
Which was my point of course real developers use edlin
It's really fascinating to dip into this and watch well-informed people discussing what is obviously a serious Govt cock-up, due to letting the Captain tell the Engineer how to look after the engines.. I wish I understood it all!
Never to late to take up coding as a hobby, there is something satisfying about getting a piece of code working and there are plenty of free tools and tutorials around
If you want to learn some fun coding for hobby purposes then get yourself an arduino kit off Amazon for 30 quid. Make lights flash and build automatic watering systems for the garden. Lots of fun stuff that can be done with a cheap microcontroller and some bits off RS.
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Opening .csv files in Excel is possible, but I would say under no circumstances should you do it. (If you want to take a peek on a Windows machine use Notepad++.) There are lots of bad things that can happen if you use Excel.
Atom is better than Notepad++....
They arent the same sort of thing though
Notepad++ is just a text editor and yes I know you can add on things for syntax colouring Atom is trying to be a dev environment
Atom is trying to be Eclipse.
Which was my point of course real developers use edlin
You know a software engineering discussion has reduced to its component bits when we start the "which editor is best" chat
The thing that convinces me Trump is dead in the water for re-election. Last time he got himself the 3-4 slogans, make America great, build the wall, lock her up, and they resonanced, even if people didn't really quite believe how he would achieve them or want clinton locked up (it just reinforced opinion that some shifty stuff about Clintons).
This time he has got nothing going. Sleepy Joe doesn't really go anywhere, does keep America great. He has tried getting the Harris is a far leftist, Biden is on drugs, but we aren't seeing people really going for them.
Good point on the broken promises -
He hasn't made America great again. He hasn't built the Wall. He hasn't locked her up.
Only people locked up are his 2016 campaign team.
Problem is that his supporters believe he's done the first two. I saw an interview the other day with a Trump voter who said, inter alia "He's built the wall, and he's even fixed healthcare which the Democrats tried to do for years and failed." How do you deal with this level of delusion?
Biden isn't aiming for the remaining core GOP vote,. As far as the Dems are concerned they are beyond hope, half of them believe the Qanon rubbish. Not possible to reason with those voters.
Biden has to get the registered Democrats out to vote in huge numbers and win over a clear majority of the Independents. The crazier the Trump base gets the easier that task becomes IMO and right now the strategy is working. I would be very confident of a Biden win if the election was tomorrow but everything could change over the next month.
In the 1980s or 1990s someone probably would have been manually checking all the time to make sure data wasn't being truncated from a spreadsheet in this sort of situation. These days people are so confident in technology that they don't think checks are necessary.
It is one of the problems with technology, people see data on the screen and assume it must be correct. More and more we will get this as governments get bigger and bigger databases on us all. We will see conversations coming up like
Q: Why did you stop my pension? A: Because you are dead.
Q: But I am not dead unless you think I am a zombie A: Then you cant be that person because that person is dead. You are trying to defraud us.
Q: Look heres my driving licence showing you its me. A: It can't be you because that person is dead the computer says so. (confiscates licence)
There is a woman in Oregon who is insisting that she is not dead. Her bank refuses to believe her and has informed the credit reference agencies that she is dead.
It sounds funny but when you are in the middle of it then its not so funny. This is exactly what led to all thost sub post masters having issues. The computer with flawed software said one thing they said another and the computer must be infallible so they were obviously lying.
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
It should give you an error, "file not loaded completely", or something similar.
If you try and load more than 500 records into Excel, it should give a warning "Better data software is available".
I think Johnson is an absurdity as PM but I also consider the view he is likely to be gone soon to be wildly off beam. Just 10 months ago he won a general election by 80 seats. The best majority for the Conservatives since 1980s Thatcher in her pomp. He did so from a position 6 months prior on assuming the leadership where the party looked to be - was - in a hole. It was a personal triumph. A complete vindication of the ghastly man and his ghastly methods.
He will not be stepping down voluntarily. People in top jobs do not relinquish power and status except for health reasons and there is no reason to expect that here. He does not have long Covid. Neither will he be forced out by his party for the foreseeable future. The earliest it could happen is 2023 and only then if (i) he has become a clear electoral liability and (ii) there is a replacement guaranteed to be more popular.
So, there is a Betfair market, Boris Johnson exit date, and "July 2022 or later" can be backed at 1.8. I think that is outstanding value. It should be more like 1.33.
If any of the punters here take the opposite view and think it should be longer and the value is in the other direction - the lay - I have money there at 1.85 looking for a match. ยฃ50 for starters but with appetite for more. Just hit me.
Or do it privately on here and save the comm/tying up the money
An option but it's a long timeframe and with Betfair I can close to flat when it's down to 1.3 next Spring.
You can still do that if you've had the original bet on here cant you?
Only if the people are still around and we can agree on a close price. Otherwise I get exposure in different places and it's a bit messy.
Yeah I meant exposure in different places. Not that bad really, the same as having a bet w a bookie and laying it off later on BF. Your prerogative obvs
Just checked BF. Instead of being matched I've got people knocking me off top spot with a surge of same way interest and I've had to move from 1.85 to 1.79. If that is money from here acting on my tip I have done myself over posting it! Live and learn. Live and learn.
A legacy system makes more sense why it was a hack job to put it together rather than cleanly written code. A lot of legacy systems aren't prioritised and aren't cleanly written and are hacked together in a way that works until it doesn't.
The real failure here is the lack of checks that the import processes worked correctly. There does not even seem to have been a simple check like "We have the same number of records in the spreadsheet as we do in the CSV". I doubt they even did simple tests like checking the first 3 records and the last 3 records in the spreadsheet against the CSV.
There is no excuse for sloppiness which is what this is. The technology is irrelevant.
My favourite computer programming mistake is the fictional one in Jurassic Park, where the system was programmed to only raise an alarm when the number of dinosaurs was less than expected, not more than expected because that was discounted as impossible to begin with. When they started breeding no-one realised until it was too late.
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Opening .csv files in Excel is possible, but I would say under no circumstances should you do it. (If you want to take a peek on a Windows machine use Notepad++.) There are lots of bad things that can happen if you use Excel.
Atom is better than Notepad++....
They arent the same sort of thing though
Notepad++ is just a text editor and yes I know you can add on things for syntax colouring Atom is trying to be a dev environment
Atom is trying to be Eclipse.
Which was my point of course real developers use edlin
You know a software engineering discussion has reduced to its component bits when we start the "which editor is best" chat
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Opening .csv files in Excel is possible, but I would say under no circumstances should you do it. (If you want to take a peek on a Windows machine use Notepad++.) There are lots of bad things that can happen if you use Excel.
Atom is better than Notepad++....
They arent the same sort of thing though
Notepad++ is just a text editor and yes I know you can add on things for syntax colouring Atom is trying to be a dev environment
Atom is trying to be Eclipse.
Which was my point of course real developers use edlin
You know a software engineering discussion has reduced to its component bits when we start the "which editor is best" chat
How about which version control service to use and which apps to work it ;-)
I have to say I started using GitKraken about 18 months ago and it is superb for all my Git needs. To visually see all my branches, commits etc and be able to handle them all via a UI is such an improvement.
In the 1980s or 1990s someone probably would have been manually checking all the time to make sure data wasn't being truncated from a spreadsheet in this sort of situation. These days people are so confident in technology that they don't think checks are necessary.
It is one of the problems with technology, people see data on the screen and assume it must be correct. More and more we will get this as governments get bigger and bigger databases on us all. We will see conversations coming up like
Q: Why did you stop my pension? A: Because you are dead.
Q: But I am not dead unless you think I am a zombie A: Then you cant be that person because that person is dead. You are trying to defraud us.
Q: Look heres my driving licence showing you its me. A: It can't be you because that person is dead the computer says so. (confiscates licence)
Surely:
Q: Why did you stop my pension? A: Because the computer says you are dead.
Q: Can you fix the data please? A: Yes. You will now be liquidated. Any last requests?
My favourite computer programming mistake is the fictional one in Jurassic Park, where the system was programmed to only raise an alarm when the number of dinosaurs was less than expected, not more than expected because that was discounted as impossible to begin with. When they started breeding no-one realised until it was too late.
To be fair software devs are as prone to stupidity as anyone else, the number of times I have said to a colleague "what if someone does x" and the reply is "No one will ever to x that would be a stupid thing to do". Where x might be for example in a text box marked age type seventeen instead of 17
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Opening .csv files in Excel is possible, but I would say under no circumstances should you do it. (If you want to take a peek on a Windows machine use Notepad++.) There are lots of bad things that can happen if you use Excel.
Atom is better than Notepad++....
They arent the same sort of thing though
Notepad++ is just a text editor and yes I know you can add on things for syntax colouring Atom is trying to be a dev environment
Atom is trying to be Eclipse.
Which was my point of course real developers use edlin
You know a software engineering discussion has reduced to its component bits when we start the "which editor is best" chat
How about which version control service to use and which apps to work it ;-)
I have to say I started using GitKraken about 18 months ago and it is superb for all my Git needs. To visually see all my branches, commits etc and be able to handle them all via a UI is such an improvement.
We use sourcetree at work which sounds like its similar but its certainly better than the horror that was mks
So, to be clear: Excel (even in modern versions) has a million-row limit.... OK, pretty naff in this day and age, but OK, given that it's not meant to be a serious software system...
But it doesn't give an error if you append a CSV file which would take you over the limit, but just silently truncates it? Really? I knew Excel was bad, but that bad?
Opening .csv files in Excel is possible, but I would say under no circumstances should you do it. (If you want to take a peek on a Windows machine use Notepad++.) There are lots of bad things that can happen if you use Excel.
Atom is better than Notepad++....
They arent the same sort of thing though
Notepad++ is just a text editor and yes I know you can add on things for syntax colouring Atom is trying to be a dev environment
Atom is trying to be Eclipse.
Which was my point of course real developers use edlin
You know a software engineering discussion has reduced to its component bits when we start the "which editor is best" chat
How about which version control service to use and which apps to work it ;-)
I have to say I started using GitKraken about 18 months ago and it is superb for all my Git needs. To visually see all my branches, commits etc and be able to handle them all via a UI is such an improvement.
In my last year at uni, a first year asked what I was doing.
I had the case of PC open and was using a screwdriver to short out the capacitor powering the hardware security thingy - an idiot had left the university without reseting it.
I told him that I was coding by bridging contacts with the screwdriver. He went away, awed.....
Comments
He also said that the technical problem has been resolved too.
for the 21st Century"....
I certainly would never use it for dev. That is what visual studio and pycharm are for.
https://twitter.com/PeterKGeoghegan/status/1313135414866190336?s=20
https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1313105408433639424?s=20
The dialogue box is annoying, but not that annoying.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Or more accurately, turnout is always way lower than the polls' figures would have you believe (it may be the people being polled are telling the truth but their likely to be a more politically engaged sub-section of society, so more likely to vote).
I always think of Labour under Blair when they said only 13,000 Eastern Europeans would arrive after A8 accession - when it turned out to be wrong by an order of magnitude, they switched to talking up the benefits of mass immigration to the economy to anyone pulling them up about the 13,000 number
Although I am on the side of thinking the restrictions are too much, especially for the healthy and under 60, I see the same shape shifting going on by people I agree with, me too I guess.
Lots of people can (and do) knock up an Excel macro, yet have no concept of good coding practice.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54387856
Mind you, I have seen some brilliant UNIX work done by a chemist. The MRI machine (and other systems he was using) were controlled by UNIX. So he taught himself. To Knuthian levels of knowledge. He was just one of those people.
As I mentioned I wrote the road routing engine for the DfT project. We used to get every week a pile of xml files from ordinance survey with all the road data in. When I noticed in the data that half the slip roads were missing the annotation and this needed to be rectified so they were consistently labelled they did so my removing the annotation from all slip roads.....it was certainly consistent now but did nothing to solve the actual issue.
In the 2014 Scottish IndyRef the pollsters undershot turnout.
It's a situation that has prompted growing and more vocal concern.
"That should never have happened," one current Secret Service agent who works on the presidential and first family detail said after Trump's drive-by, adding that those agents who went along for the ride would now be required to quarantine.
"I mean, I wouldn't want to be around them," the agent said, expressing a view that multiple people at the Secret Service also voiced in the wake of Sunday's appearance. "The frustration with how we're treated when it comes to decisions on this illness goes back before this though. We're not disposable."
Another veteran Secret Service agent also expressed deep dismay at the Walter Reed ride, though was sympathetic for those around the President given the difficulty in pushing back on the commander-in-chief.
"You can't say no," the agent said.
While agents in the Secret Service have the power to say no to activities that could put a president in danger, they can't say no in situations that could put themselves in danger.
A third agent told CNN: "It was simply reckless."
https://twitter.com/sirpaddybaxter/status/1313054115019345922?s=20
blah
except:
pass
Then I don't have to worry about the errors. That's how it works, right?
One fun one is that many advocates of immigration -
1) Want lots of immigration
2) Don't want to build infrastructure - particularly housing - to match the increase in population
You can have endless fun as they wriggle around with "Bigger tower blocks", "brown field sites" etc.
To me it is very simple. 100K more people. You need 100K "worth" of housing, schools, fire stations, police, pubs, roads, pet shops etc.
Don't do that - don't be surprised by adults in bunk beds, 4 to a room. You can say that's horrible, or OK, or whatever. But don't be surprised by that.
What's particularly interesting about the two is that I'm instinctively and emotionally anti-borders, but in the present covid situation I see quarantine for people moving around as a way to help bring the virus under control.
So it's not a huge leap from that to appreciating why other people might see border controls as a way to bring other things under control - even though I still disagree with them.
Todayโs is -7 the same as on Friday .
Whole industries are going to the wall on the back of these decisions, something I can't ever remember happening in the past.
How sound are can these decisions be?
Q: Why did you stop my pension?
A: Because you are dead.
Q: But I am not dead unless you think I am a zombie
A: Then you cant be that person because that person is dead. You are trying to defraud us.
Q: Look heres my driving licence showing you its me.
A: It can't be you because that person is dead the computer says so. (confiscates licence)
Maybe it was someone at one of the universities wondering why the number of cases in their local authority was lower than the number of cases submitted by the university?
Whoever it was, someone checked, someone noticed, and someone made sure it was fixed.
Otherwise we would still not know about these missing cases and we'd be bouncing along at ~7k cases, with some people making absurd comments about the relative England/devolved nations figures that now look rather silly.
So they needed to get external data. So they fired up their trusty ImportViaSpreadsheet setup, as part of their implementation.
https://twitter.com/sturdyAlex/status/1313147424614092802
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.foxnews.com/world/spanish-woman-wants-to-open-up-grave-to-prove-shes-alive.amp
(However, I've started being attracted by the Dark Side and have VS Code installed too.)
https://www.wdbo.com/news/trending/not-dead-yet-oregon-woman-disputes-wells-fargos-claim-her-demise/DBVD4LGFC5H4TMGVOD37F2Z7TI/
IIRC he was getting stick for binning PHE.
Biden has to get the registered Democrats out to vote in huge numbers and win over a clear majority of the Independents. The crazier the Trump base gets the easier that task becomes IMO and right now the strategy is working. I would be very confident of a Biden win if the election was tomorrow but everything could change over the next month.
There is no excuse for sloppiness which is what this is. The technology is irrelevant.
I have to say I started using GitKraken about 18 months ago and it is superb for all my Git needs. To visually see all my branches, commits etc and be able to handle them all via a UI is such an improvement.
Q: Why did you stop my pension?
A: Because the computer says you are dead.
Q: Can you fix the data please?
A: Yes. You will now be liquidated. Any last requests?
https://twitter.com/Simonablake/status/1313144756713730048?s=20
I had the case of PC open and was using a screwdriver to short out the capacitor powering the hardware security thingy - an idiot had left the university without reseting it.
I told him that I was coding by bridging contacts with the screwdriver. He went away, awed.....