Re: it lives!
To be fair to MicroFocus' Cobol, it could be configured at compile/run time to support a number of different dialects - in some of which the syntax of verbs were different!
Posts by Neil 44
154 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Jun 2009
New research aims to analyze how widespread COBOL is
Twenty years on, command-line virus scanner ClamAV puts out version 1
BOFH and the case of the disappearing teaspoons
AI detects 20,000 hidden taxable swimming pools in France, netting €10m
Fibre broadband uptake in UK lags behind OECD countries
Monday 14th February 2022 16:19 GMT
Re: It's of no interest to me.
We have noticed it when we have been trying to have 2x Zoom/Teams/Skype/Webex/... calls at the same time for work/volunteering/etc. My wife has spent A LOT of time on Teams calls for work in the last 2 years
Up to now I've had to schedule round her meetings or participate on Zoom by phoning in (stopping my phone using WiFi). A single video-capable call uses 0.4 - 0.7Mbs upload and that's all we had and even then it wasn't very reliable.
Monday 14th February 2022 16:02 GMT
Emergency phone connections....
Something that has come up locally is the inability of FTTP to support an emergency phone in the event of a power cut...
The area in question is in a valley and doesn't get mobile coverage (on any network) reliably - so that isn't a reliable alternative.
There are stories that "someone" - don't know if it is the fibre provider or the phone service provider - has to provide a battery-backed solution (that's assuming that the fibre hasn't broken as well!), but I've not seen any evidence of it...
(I admit our new ONT and router are both plugged into a UPS which will keep them running for a few hours!)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-59564480 has reported the issue in the North East with Storm Arwen
Monday 14th February 2022 15:40 GMT
Re: Doh!
We have an "XO" phone line, so no fibre to the cabinet as the exchange is about a mile away - but we have just had FTTP installed by OpenReach : so much better than 6Mbs/0.5Mbs!
Only problem has been keeping our 25-year old phone number (Vodafone sales got it wrong and suggested getting a new number then porting the old to the line when its all working - which technically they can't manage to do) - but changing numbers will drop all the spam calls about our solar panels, insulation, domestic appliance insurance etc (not to mention unexpected internet activity being flagged up!)
I started the project for the 42 premises involved in October 2020. We had the relevant number signed up by the end of Jan 2021 with vouchers issued. OpenReach came and strung the fibre between the poles and dug up the drives of the 3 houses that were fed underground by direct buried cables (including mine!) and a section of the verge to connect up a couple of poles that were again fed by direct-buried feeder... Just after Christmas they were pretty much finished (give or take one rotten pole that still hasn't been replaced - so the people off that pole still can't order!) and we could order. Order placed and installed and working on 20Jan2022.
Not sure how the grant situation will play out as I'm pretty sure there were 2x voucher holders served by the "still not working" pole. It does have the fibre distribution hubs tied to the bottom of it, so at least when they replace the pole, it'll all be installed and good to go
Nobody cares about DAB radio – so let's force it onto smart speakers, suggests UK govt review
Tuesday 26th October 2021 13:29 GMT
No RDS equivalent on DAB(+)
The think they missed completely on DAB is an equivalent for RDS - which is particularly useful in cars with its TA feature to switch you to a local station for Traffic News.
DAB radios in cars pretend to have this, but they are using the FM tuner to listen for it... So, no FM, no TAs
Hacking the computer with wirewraps and soldering irons: Just fix the issues as they come up, right?
Monday 23rd August 2021 18:25 GMT
OS/32?
The Interdata machines (later Perkin Elmer Data Systems, then Concurrent Computer Corp) came with a quite capable real-time operating system called OS/32 (there was an OS/16, but I don't think the 7/32s could run it). Various people used it for its "real time" attributes.
The assembler was very similar to IBM's BAL (it was called CAL!)
Much of the operating system was actually written in C...
Edition VII Unix got ported to the 8/32 range (from what I remember!) then System 5 to the later models.
Wire wrapping was routing the interrupt lines round the expansion boards you had installed in the right order (Racu-Tacu - not sure of the spelling but it's how it sounded!)
At one time I ended up working on a "peephole optimiser" to optimise the output of the C compiler (which was very much "template" so had lots of repeated/wasted instructions!) - it made a BIG difference and ensured I was proficient in CAL (the optimiser was written in CAL too!)
Boston Dynamics spends months training its Atlas robots to perform one minute of parkour almost perfectly
European Commission redacts AstraZeneca vaccine contract – but forgets to wipe the bookmarks tab
Sunday 31st January 2021 19:49 GMT
Re: And the EU still can't understand why the UK left.
I believe that the Sanofi - Glaxo vaccine trial has been aborted because it didn't work well enough. (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/sanofi-gsk-covid-vaccine-trials-b1769865.html)
Its also going to get more difficult to run large scale trials now that vaccines are being licensed: if there is a licensed vaccine in a country, it is unethical to give 1/2 your trial participants "not a vaccine" (beit placebo or another vaccine - eg the meningitis vaccine the Oxford team used in the UK arms of the trial)
Certainly growing and producing the Oxford/AZ vaccine isn't "simple" as it requires growing cells that have complex requirements (you can find out about the process by looking at the various publications on the ChAdOx vector that have been published over the years). It probably isn't something all of the "traditional" vaccine makers have the environment to do . BUT the places that CAN make it are getting better at it. The Serum Institute of India are also working on it ) and are the biggest maker of vaccines in the world - they are focusing on India to start with (https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/health/serum-institute-of-india-to-focus-on-supplying-covid-19-vaccine-to-india-first/article33163262.ece)
Super-antique-fragile-and-it's-XP-alidocious, even though the sight of it is something quite atrocious
Saturday 7th November 2020 14:07 GMT
Re: Windows XP is still around in many places.
All this "modern" stuff...
I sometimes have to do (usually electrical or mechanical) fixes on a pair of industrial washing machines (each about the size of a small bedroom!).
One runs Windows 95 and the other Windows 98.
They are not connected to a network and the OS / application is on an SSD...
Help! My printer won't print no matter how much I shout at it!
As the world descends into madness, it's good to see some things never change: Monthly Android patches
Mainframe madness as the snowflakes take control – and the on-duty operator hasn't a clue how to stop the blizzard
Analogue radio given 10-year stay of execution as the UK U-turns on DAB digital future
Saturday 4th July 2020 13:50 GMT
Re: Radio 4 LW?
The successor to Teleswitch is, of course, 2G Phone services - lots of "Smart" meters only work on 2G. Came across a problem with one we were using in a trial in eastern Brighton - where they'd redeployed all the 2G facilities in the local cells to 4G and there were no 2G signals at all.
No surprise: Britain ditches central database model for virus contact-tracing apps in favour of Apple-Google API
Thursday 18th June 2020 17:18 GMT
Re: If it has cost £108M that is more than the vaccine development program!
Yes. And IF it doesn't work (which I really hope it does!), AZ are proceeding at risk and won't get paid by anyone else. No government money goes to them...
They have also said they will sell it "at cost" for the duration of the pandemic - they're gambling that they are going to make their money when the pandemic is over and people need a booster ever 1,2,5,... years (it isn't known how long the antibodies will last yet, obviously, for a new vaccine!).
Thursday 18th June 2020 16:58 GMT 
If it has cost £108M that is more than the vaccine development program!
... which is completely ridiculous for a (relatively) small software project...
(The government has given the Oxford vaccine group £20M to do the trials - OK Astrazenica are putting some money in now for the later phases particularly outside the UK and ramping up the production trials but still nowhere near another £88M)
Surprise surprise! Hostile states are hacking coronavirus vaccine research, warn UK and USA intelligence
Windows 7 back in black as holdouts report wallpaper-stripping shenanigans
SanDisk's iXpand Wireless Charger is the unholy lovechild of a Qi mat and a flash drive
July is here – and so are the latest Android security fixes. Plenty of critical updates for all
Shocker: UK smart meter rollout is crap, late and £500m over budget
Friday 23rd November 2018 14:54 GMT
Re: Not so smart!
A number of years ago I had a tangential involvement with the communication to smart meters....
One scenario the were looking at was the control of a second output from the meter that could be turned off remotely. The idea being that a house could have non-critical circuits connected to that output so that they could be turned off for a short period to cover for spikes in demand (the "make a cuppa in the ad-break in Corrie" scenario). The sort of things that might be connected to that output would be the immersion or other forms of heating where you wouldn't miss it for the duration of an ad-break...
The idea was a discounted tariff if you used the 2nd output as you would be "load shedding" when required.
Not having a smart meter, I don't know if these second terminals have been implemented!
US and UK Amazon workers get a wage hike – maybe they'll go to the movies, by themselves
A story of M, a failed retailer: We'll give you a clue – it rhymes with Charlie Chaplin
Fork it! Google fined €4.34bn over Android, has 90 days to behave
Friday 20th July 2018 10:20 GMT
Re: Choice on Apple?
Having done a little research, it looks like:
Android:
You can change default search engine
You can change default browser (and the defaults for most other types of content)
Yes, you may have the google apps installed, but you're not forced to use them.
IOS:
You can change the default search engine
You CANNOT change the default browser - you can open things in other browsers from Safari, but not you have to initially use Safari to view pages
Apple are one of the largest single manufacturers of phones - shouldn't it be a level playing field?
If manufacturers of phones that use Android don't want to use Google Search / Chrome / ... its pretty simple to configure the phone not to use them by default (unless its in their contract to use them - I've never seen the contract!)
Obviously, all the Android-using phones that are in the supply chain (really anything after design!) won't be compliant with the EU ruling - and many non-Google phones will never get a software upgrade to fix the situation even if Google / Android release it...
Crunch time: Maplin in talks to sell the business
Tuesday 20th February 2018 17:52 GMT
Re: It's done
Used to find an excuse to walk round to Maplin in Westcliffe in the late 70s when visiting my girlfriend's (now wife!) mother... Was always an interesting place to wander around...
Cirkit used to be at the end of the road I lived in in Acton (or was it Ambit at the time?). There's a Cirkit multimeter on the table next to me at the moment!
It's been 50 years since those damn dirty apes took the planet by storm
Well done, UK.gov. You hit superfast broadband target (by handing almost the entire project to BT)
Monday 29th January 2018 12:58 GMT
Exchange-only lines?
I don't know how many lines are "exchange only" (XO) but AFAIK there are no plans for anything faster than regular broadband for these (we get a tardy 6Mbs...)
We don't have anything BT Openreach recognise as a cabinet (it seems our concrete pillar doesn't count...) so its a bit more than a mile to the exchange.
This situation exists everywhere - town and country alike - and there's still no plan that will actually work...
A million UK homes still get crappy broadband speeds, groans Ofcom
Friday 15th December 2017 17:19 GMT
People are managing it...
... as Gigaclear are in many rural areas round here (just not ours, that is stuck with BT!)
Why BT can't even manage to get a decent solution to their "Exchange only" lines that are more the 1/2 mile from the exchange is also beyond me (and the solution of "putting a cabinet in the exchange" won;t work as ADSL2 gives better performance than VDSL over the distance)..
I'd love to get faster than 6Mbs...
BOFH: The trouble with, er, windows installs
Credit insurance tightens for geek shack Maplin Electronics
You may not have noticed, but 'superfast' broadband is available to 94% of Blighty
Tuesday 10th October 2017 09:28 GMT
Exchange Only (XO) lines are completely forgotten
We're about 1 mile from the exchange (as the cables run) and are serviced by a "Pillar" (an octagonal concrete thing that contains all the telephone interconnects for the village - apparently they are quite rare nowadays).
Openreach deem us to be "Exchange Only" - so we get 6Mbs at best and no prospect of fibre. They talk about "putting a cabinet at the exchange" - but at a mile away, VDSL wouldn't give any better speed than ADSL2+ does so that's pointless.. They need a better solution!
Maybe if they connected one of the fibres that goes through the underground cabinet to a box on the surface connected to our pillar... But that's just a dream
I'm sure we're not alone on XO lines and I'd like to know if any of the much touted government money is going to actually help us - though I doubt it as I expect its already been trousered...
Patch your Android, peeps, it has up to 14 nasty flaws to flog
Microsoft totters from time machine clutching Windows 10 Workstation
America 'will ban carry-on laptops on flights from UK, Europe to US'
BOFH: This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back
Phew! Chrome to warn when you watch insecure smut
Friday 28th April 2017 10:25 GMT
Letsencrypt availability
One of the best ways to encourage the use of HTTPS would be for hosting companies to permit the use of cost-effective (i.e. free - like Letsencrypt!) certificates rather than (like 123-reg do) insisting customers purchase certificates from them at a premium prices.
At least some virtual hosting environments (like BlueOnyx) are encouraging the use of free but full featured certificates and manage them automatically
Biting the hand that feeds IT
