Posts by ridley

RIP Sir Clive Sinclair: British home computer trailblazer dies aged 81

Same thing happened with the Amiga, especially when CBM released the A500.

Too cheap and too associated with games to be taken seriously, sadly. I still miss AmigaDOS

Re: Z88?

Was it to your mum?

The last Quantum Leap

RIP Sir Clive

Thanks for the thrills and spills.

I'll raise one of these for you tonight.

I can't help thinking there should be a ritual dodgy keyboard burning to help him take that Quantum Leap into the new DIM

Russia's Pirs ISS module scheduled to fall away, much like Moscow's interest in the space station

Re: 75 years gone

I think someone needs a word with H&S if you're going through 5 generations of engineers in 75 years.

Windows 11 comes bearing THAAS, Trojan Horse as a service

Re: Forgive me for saying this...

Couldn't agree more, but TEAMS is Nirvana in comparison to its demon child OneNote esp the education version.

Microsoft if you tell me that if I put a document into this area it is read only, then please make it read only.

Oh and how on earth does OneNote even when minimised and not in use creep up and steal all of your ram? 25Gb is slightly over the top on a 32Gb machine.

Re: Responsibility

The EU have been known to find against this sort of thing, best complain to them.

Oh...

Re: "and in a few short years we were liberated."

Don't you just buy a Huiwei if you don't want those?

Biden order calls for net neutrality, antitrust action, ISP competition – and right to repair your own damn phone

Re: "if you buy a product, you own it"

Not if it's a Tesla, the mothership doesn't like unauthorised repairs and can shut the car down.

Lessons have not been learned: Microsoft's Modern Comments leave users reaching for the rollback button

Re: "Modern Commenting"

Have a beer for that one.

Cracked copies of Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop steal your session cookies, browser history, crypto-coins

Re: Open options

"Sadly I've not found a spreadsheet app that will handle very large tables"

Neither have the NHS

Airline software super-bug: Flight loads miscalculated because women using 'Miss' were treated as children

Re: Not necessarily.

The max take off weight of a 737-800 is 70tonnes.

I doubt that load sensors on the wheels could reliably measure that to within a few % (prob more) so about 1.5 tonnes.

A difference of only 1.2tonnes in the story but the plane close to the limits.

A floppy filled with software worth thousands of francs: Techie can't take it, customs won't keep it. What to do?

Re: Even in the 1980's

You did if you needed a record of something being imported in order to raise an invoice, as per the story.

BOFH: Bullying? Not on my watch! (It's a Rolex)

Re: Hummmm sounds familiar...

I was a union rep a while ago and took my members concerns re workload to the "Boss".

Boss listened to me and then said that the company took workload issues very seriously and was working hard to reduce it. I asked for an example.

So Boss gave the example that they had been about to increase the working week by 5 hours but decided against it to reduce workload,

WTAF

Don't be a fool, cover your tool: How IBM's mighty XT keyboard was felled by toxic atmosphere of the '80s

Re: Not Cheap

In my days as a PC builder we were after some really cheap components for a really cheap loss leader PC (We hardly ever sold them we invariably sold up) but I was able to buy a 105 key keyboard from a UK based distributor for ......28p. Someone made those, boxed them, has a little manual printed, shipped them half way round the world to a distributer who paid duty on them and sold them to me for a profit...Even I was somewhat shocked at that price*

They weren't the best keyboards in the world, but they weren't as bad as the price implies either.

*This is the reason I really take Umbridge at having to paying £2 for a plastic radiator valve cap from your local three letter DIY store. They must cost them about a penny each. Grrrr

Rookie's code couldn't have been so terrible that it made a supermarket spontaneously combust... right?

Re: Money making exercise

In the mid nineties I ran a computer business. One day I had bought a lot, for me, of 1mb RAM chips for an order IIRC about 400 @ £4 each. Said order fell through which left me with a bit of a problem as RAM prices were falling at the time. I tried to offload them left and right and could get rid without taking a bath.

That night there was the Kobe earthquake taking out a large proportion of the globes RAM manufacturing capability....

I sold them about a month later for about £100 each :-)

Seagate UK customer stung by VAT on replacement drive shipped via the Netherlands

Re: I believe that Seagate disks are made outside of the EU

The receipt won't stop the EU customs charging you to import the item into the EU.

Hollywood drone pilot admits he crashed gizmo into cop chopper, triggering emergency landing

I disagree. It is illogical to give a lesser sentence if no one was injured, the crime is the same whether the accident resulted in injury or not, you should be sentenced for putting others in danger.

I am reminded of the bloke who fell asleep at the wheel of his land rover & went off the motorway. Bad luck meant that he went off just next to a railway cutting which he went down coming to rest on the tracks and he couldn't get off them. So he called the railway and as he was talking to them a goods train hit his car and detailed, by pure bad luck coming in the opposite direction at that. Moment was an express which collided with the goods train and one person was killed iirc.

Now if he had come off the road and ended up in a field it would be a few points possibly a ban. As it was he was sentenced to something like 20 years.

That just ain't right.

Re: Not really the brightest bulb, was he?

I am not sure Bout the police helicopters but the Huey pilot who write "ChickenHawk" used to make a clearing in the jungle bigger* to allow him to take off.

*When near max very take off weight or over you had to take off on the move to get out of your own rotors dirty air. So if you landed to do a pick up in a small clearing you wouldn't be able to take off from it when loaded, unless you made the clearing bigger with those big old rotors....

Windows might have frozen – but at least my feet are toasty

Re: ... their ability to understand why they should not do it.

Don't ask me how I know but you shouldn't use an old steel Mini wheel as something to wind your very long extension lead round.

Well not if you then decide to power a heater with the ext cord and cannot be bothered to unwind it all first...

BOFH: Switch off the building? Great idea, Boss

Re: Parts of it date back to when fire was invented

We used to do that demo in the labs, with just a tablespoon or so of oil. Still very impressive with a flame up to the ceiling.

We ensure to mask off a smiley face etc on the tiles do the demo and remove the tape ;-)

Cannot ever think why we were banned.

(Maybe it had something to do with melting the fire detectors with one enthusiastic demo....)

Re: Parts of it date back to when fire was invented

A long long time ago we were working on my mum's MK1 escort estate using the oxy acetylene which my parents were dubios about having under the house in the garage.

Lo the car set on fire and we used the powder fire extinguisher to put it out. Took about a milli second burst to put it out but it went for ages, everything was covered, car, garage, drive, flower beds.

So we spent the next hour or so before they came home frantically cleaning up and learning the art of turning over the garden and dusting flowers.

All seemed good and it looked like we go away with it, except.

Mum did keep complained that if she got to 60mph the car filled up with a white mist....

Re: Messing with oxygen-fluorine compounds

Thanks for that.

That made me laugh out loud several times.

SpaceX Starship blows up on landing, Elon Musk says it's the data that matters and that landed just fine

Re: "didn’t even have the engine configuration planned for the production model"

I though it had 6 vacuum and the atmospheric for a total of 9?

Re: Ignition

Look at some of the non SpaceX feeds, they give a much better impression of its cross range capability.

Pretty impressive for a flying tower block.

Re: SN8 flight was to test multiple concepts in one go

You can see the legs folded up inside the "Skirt" as the starship skydived.

They didn't deploy though.

Honey, I shrunk the battery: Something's gotta give as iPhone 12's logic board swells to accommodate 5G chippery

Re: The Iphone 13 will come quicker than the 5G

What?

Install 5G antennas and help spread the virus, are you mad!

Good news: Boffins have finally built room-temperature superconductors. Bad news: You'll need a laser, a diamond anvil, and a lot of pressure

At least it's not Fysics, yet...

BT cutting contractors' rates by a fifth and halving notice period because 'coronavirus'

Re: This years excuse

No, the demand is low across the industry. The demand may or may not be low in BT but given the demand is low across the industry BT can lower the rates without the contractors jumping ship.

If demand for a particular position is low BT can cut that position via the notice period.

He was a skater boy. We said, 'see you later, boy' – and the VAX machine mysteriously began to work as intended

Re: Static

In 1995 I was running a small computer company when someone offered me some 1mb memory sticks at what I though was a very good price, so I bought iirc 300 of them at a few pounds each.

That night the love earthquake happened and dram just disappeared. Over the next few weeks dram became scarcer and scarcer and I just held, didn't even bother building pcs. Suppliers kept offering me more and more...

Eventually o sold for iirc £100 a stick and went on a very nice holiday.

Unexpected victory in bagging area: Apple must pay shop workers for time they spend waiting to get frisked

Re: Happens to all airport staff as well

No the employer is employing you knowing that you are required to go through security in order to attend work, they should pay for that time as a cost of doing business. Not the employees pay it as a cost of being employed.

Dido 'Queen of Carnage' Harding to lead UK's Institute for Health Protection because Test and Trace went so well

And a mobius strip for a wall

Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced techie is indistinguishable from magic

Re: even before PFY

Certainly Athlone didn't, took no more than a second to release the magic smoke.

Not quite optical

During the war our early warning, such as it was, monitored the German Luftwaffe in France gathering for a raid so they would scramble to meet them.

Several times they would scramble and they raid would strangely disappear before they could intercept.

After a while they noticed that this happened in the early morning but not at any other times.

Eventually it was realised it wasn't a raid at all, but the Sun rising and so radio astronomy was born.

If only the Germans had known they could have caught us with our pants down by launching at the right time.

Voyager 1 cracks yet another barrier: Now 150 Astronomical Units from Sol

Re: They don't build them like they used to

Ay and they had to compensate for the torque of the tape drive starting when taking some shots of the plants.

The first ZX Spectrum prototype laid bare... (What? It was acceptable in the '80s)

Re: 16K

I worked on HMS broadsword and her seawolf missiles (we were adding thermal guidance), I was somewhat surprised bag the core memory and paper tape programme loading, including a strip taped to the side of a filing cabinet that needed to be loaded to avoid firing the missiles at the superstructure...

Raytheon techie who took home radar secrets gets 18 months in the clink in surprise time fraud probe twist

Re: "he had downloaded documents to an external drive against company policy"

At a school I worked in the kids had full access to USB drives, teachers read only.

Go figure.

UK smacks Huawei with banhammer: Buying firm's 5G gear illegal from year's end, mobile networks ordered to rip out all next-gen kit by 2027

Because that is a squirrelly statement that gives the impression that it us the data flowing through them that has appeared in the states hands rather than say the routers ip address or the like.

Isn't 5g data encrypted? If do how can a router be a security risk?

Re: TL;DR:

As opposed to the yanks, with poodle Britain in tow, invading countries hither and thither.

Remind me again how many countries has China invaded in the last 100 years..

Re: This will end in tears.

Countering with an implied EU restriction that doesn't actually exist.

Yep, sounds about right for a brexiteer.

Re: This will end in tears.

What exactly was it about the EU that would have prevented the UK from offering HK citizens asylum/citizenship?

That's right SFA.

Winter is coming, and with it the UK's COVID-19 contact-tracing app – though health minister says it's not a priority

Well that aged well

Centralised app now abandoned in favour of Apple/Google decentralised app.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes: UK man gets 3 years for torching 4G phone mast over 5G fears

Re: He used the wrong excuse

I am quite surprised at the length of sentence. I used to go out with someone who nicked £150,000 from a charity and got way less time.

The Great British anti-5G fruitcake Bakeoff: Group hugs, no guns, and David Icke

"YouTube has clear policies prohibiting any content that disputes the existence and transmission of COVID-19 as described by the WHO and the NHS."

Has anyone found this policy?

I have found a policy that advises that if you want to monetise you content that you should not do x-y and recommends that if you want to monetise it that you should not dispute the existence and transmission of COVID-19 as described by the WHO and the NHS.

But that isn't a ban, just means you won't make money.

UK finds itself almost alone with centralized virus contact-tracing app that probably won't work well, asks for your location, may be illegal

Re: I don't think Apple and Google are creating an app

Dont be silly they can't reject an EU proposal and go their own way hat would require sovereignty.

Re: Hanlon's razor

Presumably the gov had several proposals that they could have chosen the best from or were they just given Dom's mates one?

From Brit telly presenter Eamonn Holmes to burning 5G towers in the Netherlands: Stupid week turns into stupid fortnight for radio standard

Re: Anti 5Ger

No you are not right.

5G is at a much higher, but still safe, frequency that does not penetrate or go around corners too well so would not have been very good for terrestrial TV

So how do the coronavirus smartphone tracking apps actually work and should you download one to help?

It's in the waves

Don'f fall for it people, don't you know the disease is in the waves? Just turn it off!

/s

Re: British soln

I used multiple Rabbit phones at my home business, allowed the same handsets to access multiple lines without spending loads.

Worked great for years.

Happy memories

Re: Good for data-less phone plans

Whilst I agree with your sentiment I would not suggest you accompany the BOFH whilst composting a roll of carpet with your phone turned on, data package or not.

OK brainiacs, we've got an IT cold case for you: Fatal disk errors on an Amiga 4000 with 600MB external SCSI unless the clock app is... just so

Re: Whoa, that was a nasty gremlin

Wow, now Agnus or should I say Jolyon I remember you well, we met a few times at shows and I believe a developer conference.

Now that takes me back.