Posts by AndrueC

Openreach hits halfway mark in quest to hook up 25M premises with fiber broadband

That figure should be taken with pinch of salt, of course.

Not really.

It is industry practice to record 'properties passed' when rolling out cables. No-one counts actual connections because those will only be made as/when/if the property owners choose to take up the service and may never reach 100%.

However what they shouldn't do is regard a property as passed just because it is in relatively close proximity to the cable. Most of the time it doesn't matter but if a property at the end of a street is accessed via a bridge over a canal it shouldn't be considered 'passed' unless the fibre has already been taken over the bridge or if the bridge is known to have viable ducting or suitable poles to carry the fibre.

So if by 'pinch of salt' you imply that OR is lying, then no. OTOH if you mean that engineering always has a little wiggle room then maybe. Call it 12.5 million +/- 500 ;)

40 years of Turbo Pascal, the coding dinosaur that revolutionized IDEs

Re: Which led to Turbo C and C++

Visual Studio is quite nice

I think there was a time around about 2008 when that statement might have been correct. Oh and possible 2019 (when I think they finally released the 64 bit version) but aside from those two brief moments of time VS has been a bloated and often unstable pile of shite. I credit it as being one of the main reasons why I finally retired last August. I was sick to my back teeth of it and its foibles.

Re: Amiga Version

You could distribute DOS applications for free as well with early version of TP but it was restricted to the .COM executable format. Which wasn't really a 'format' at all and was restricted to 64kiB. The .EXE format allowed for significantly larger applications.

Re: Lazarus IDE

My programming career was: Sinclair Basic -> Locomotive Basic -> BCPL (yes, really!) -> C -> Turbo Pascal -> Delphi -> Borland Builder C++ (still using the VCL - oh how I smirked at the idea of so many other C++ programmers using MFC) -> C# (WinForms -> WPF & Xamarin) where it eventually ended last August.

I liked C#. It was an easy language to work with and made me very productive. But I did miss the cut and thrust of C++ (templates were both fun and scary) and I certainly missed RAII. C# has using but it ain't the same thing and not being able to just put objects on the stack and have them cleaned up when it unwound was irritating.

Kylix was the product name. CLX was the cross-platform component library. According to that article it was based on Qt but the API followed the VCL so it's unclear whether it really was a cross-platform version of the VCL. I never used it.

"Its aim was to replace the popular Microsoft Foundation Classes with Visual Component Library. CLX was based on Qt by Nokia[citation needed].[3]: 196 The API of CLX almost completely followed VCL. It was envisioned that existing applications using VCL would be recompiled with CLX.

However, due to lacklustre performance on Windows, subtle differences from VCL, and bugs, it didn't become the expected successor to VCL. Commercial failure of Kylix stopped further development of CLX."

Re: EasyEdit 2 was written in Turbo Pascal

I used Turbo Pascal to write data recovery tools (hardware and software). I liked to mention that when 'real' programmers tried to take the mickey out of me :)

I did eventually move on to C++ but only because we took on more developers and had settle on the most common language. I will always defend Turbo Pascal because it was a very powerful and capable development environment. So was Delphi.

The UI framework evolved nicely over the years. The transition from Turbo Vision to VCL was pretty painless so I'd say continuous evolution encompassing DOS, Win16 and Win32 (the latter in both C++ and Pascal sharing each other's 3rd party VCL libraries) and - arguably - .NET since WinForms is basically Delphi for .NET designed by Anders when he moved to Microsoft. There was even a cross platform version - CLX - which sadly failed to gain market traction because the desktop application market for Linux has never been very big.

And in reference to a previous comment I made about MS UIs: Take a damn' good look MS! This is how you design and maintain a UI framework! You don't need to keep throwing the bath water out with the baby and forcing your users to learn something new. Just bloody do it right the first time! The only weakness I encountered was with how WinForms handles scaling but that might just be because I've only seen how MS failed to handle it. It might be the current VCL handles it perfectly well.

Footnote: Borland did also develop OWL which was something of a dead end. But if you compare it to the competitor of the day - MFC - it wins hands down. OWL was still a much better UI framework and a lot of its philosophy made it into the VCL anyway.

Amazon on the hook for predictably revolting use of concealed clothes hook spy cam

Re: Another frivolous case

The best time to have a dental appointment?

Re: Another frivolous case

Well quite. It's so annoying to find yourself stuck in the woods with a dead body at your feet and a broken shovel. It's not so bad at the moment I suppose since the rain has made the ground very wet but the summer before last you practically needed a jack hammer and of course you can't be doing that so you need a damn' good shovel.

Microsoft .NET MAUI devs vent over bugs backlog, response times

Re: Microsoft shot itslef in the foot with the droppong of ASP.NET WebForms

Constantly churning the development environments as Microsoft has been doing since 2010 is causing mayhem and frustration in the MS Development Communities. And this is also contributing to developer burnout

It was the major factor in me starting the retirement process last year. I'd shouted and sworn at VS for crashing/hanging/*insert random stupid IDE behaviour here* for just one time too many and the idea of having to learn yet another UI framework - and an unfinished pile of crap at that - was just too much. Xamarin was quirky and the development experience targeting iOS incredibly painful but MAUI wasn't even complete and MS wanted us to move to that?

I had been reporting VS bugs to the MS team for several years and almost nothing was ever done about them. They just continued to add more and more features to the already bloated and unstable IDE.

So I got the retirement parachute ready. Then my employer wanted the dev team back in the office for two days a week and I pulled the cord.

Best decision I have made in a long time. Screw VS. Screw MS.

Andrue Cope. Software developer: 1982 - 2023.

;)

Re: There are things to consider

You will see that consolidating all this technology is a Massive! task, and fair play to Microsoft for taking this on and making it happen.

Nah. If they'd designed it properly in the first place they wouldn't have a problem.

As I wrote in my previous post - Microsoft have just never been very good at orthogonal thinking. Pretty much everything they do ends up being twisted to the point where the only option is to give up and start again. If they'd done the job properly we'd still be on WinForms because it would have evolved to meet the needs of developers and the market.

I thought that after they'd poached/enticed Anders from Borland they'd be on to a winner but he drifted off to other projects.

MS have only themselves to blame for this mess and they should not be praised for their inadequate attempts to come up with yet another bloody UI framework.

Must be time for yet another Microsoft UI Framework. I'm sure this time they'll get the basics right and it'll finally be all things for all people.

Yeah right. One thing MS has never been good at is determining the basics and providing a truly generic solution. Dunno why. Too many vested interests? Too willing to move the goal posts? Whatever. Seems like everything they do ends up fractured with multiple competing versions.

Electric vehicles earn shocking report card for reliability

Re: Odd

Some hybrids (maybe all but certainly Toyota's) actually have fewer moving parts than a conventional ICE vehicle. Toyota's Hybrid Synergy drive doesn't have a gearbox for instance. Instead it uses a set of planetary gears that remain meshed all the time. As a result the power train of an HSD equipped vehicle is simpler than that of a traditional ICE mechanically. The only clever bit is the ECU logic which adjusts the inputs to the power split device.

The traction battery is of course an extra not present on conventional ICE vehicles but at present they use fairly conventional technology (the older Corolla/Auris models use Li-On for instance) although later models have moved to NiMh and solid state batteries are apparently coming soon for hybrids.

But overall it's established technology with just some moderately clever programming and fewer mechanical parts. It's not surprising that hybrid vehicles like Toyota's are reliable.

Regulator says stranger entered hospital, treated a patient, took a document ... then vanished

Re: A future who me?

Have they checked that nothing else got turned off by the same person eg; a ventilator?

UK government rings the death knell for SIM farms

Re: Ban banning things

You can get motion sick though. I felt a bit queasy when I went through there a few years ago. The lack of windows makes it risky for those of us susceptible to such things.

UK's cookie crumble: Data watchdog serves up tougher recipe for consent banners

Re: Next should be non consentual email

I am pissed off at my bank, Nat West, they keep on sending me spam.

How do you know it's actually them? It is trivially easy to fake emails. If it really is them then GDPR means that there has to be a way for you to opt out of it. Check their website for contact preferences. If you have told them you don't want marketing related emails and they are still sending them then you need to start threatening them with GDPR.

Half a kilo of cosmic nuclear fuel reignites NASA's deep space dreams

You'd need to hold it even more carefully if it used Pu-38 as a power source.

Firefox slow to load YouTube? Just another front in Google's war on ad blockers

I find it hard to believe that clearing history fixed this, so I assume the U-Block update fixed it.

Most likely. I've been using uBO for several years now and had been completely oblivious to the presence of adverts on YouTube until a year ago when I stayed at a holiday cottage and tried to watch some golfing videos on the TV. I didn't realise what a hideous experience it was without an ad-blocker.

I did see the 'You shouldn't be using an ad-blocker' pop up a couple of times a few months ago but refreshing the uBO filter cache sorted that out.

I've never seen YT as a source of entertainment though. I prefer Sky for that. The only times I view something on YT is if a Google search suggests something interesting. Even then as I've posted before I'd rather spend two minutes reading an article than fifteen minutes watching/listening to someone drone on explaining the same thing. So if YT eventually wins over uBO I'll just exclude it from my search results.

Microsoft takes aim at on-desk, non-cloudy developers with Windows AI Studio

I retired in August so it looks like I got out before AI arrived to make my life easier.

Oh dear. How sad. Never mind.

Tool bag lost in space now tracked by garbage watchers

If, when you find them, there's also a yellow handled jeweller's screwdriver with them please let me know.

Robot mistakes man for box of peppers, kills him

Re: You think it was just another isolated incident....?

Hah. For the last couple of years I've several times joked about how bizarrely reliable my ink jet printer is. It's been doing what I ask when I ask despite it relying on a wifi connection all that time. No need to touch it other than insert or remove paper.

Then on Monday I asked it to print something. It obliged but something was off with the colour. A few tests later and it turns out it won't print magenta any longer. I tried changing the cartridge but that made no difference. It's a Pixmar so the print head is part of the cartridge. So I guess that's that. I'll keep it until the black ink runs out but as I've always thought: You can't trust printers. Not a bloody single one of them.

YouTube cares less for your privacy than its revenues

Re: Ad blockers exist... because...

I've posted this before. I read this book when I was a teenager in the 1980s and I have done everything I can to avoid adverts ever since. Occasionally I've been privy to people actually discussing adverts like they were a TV programme. All I can say to that is "you, sad, sad, bastards".

Mid-contract telco price hikes must end, Ofcom told

Re: Including devices

So the phone cost is rolled into the contract and hidden, meaning that people continue paying the inflated price after the end of contract unless they actively renegotiate.

That has not been the case in the UK for several years now. CPs are required to notify you when you reach the end of a contract.

"In February 2020, Ofcom introduced rules requiring phone, broadband and pay-TV providers to warn customers when their current contract is ending, and what they could save by signing up to a new deal."

Don't fear the Thread Reaper, a Windows ghost of bugs past

Re: It should never happen, hence the bug check

We had a similar situation with a library many years ago. As an implementor I toyed with the idea of 'ERROR: This is not an error.' but then because I was into Terry Pratchett's work at the time I went with 'ERROR: Mr Beekle is a Poo'.

Then one day would you believe it another bug actually triggered that error for a customer. Luckily they thought it was funny.

IBM to scrap 401(k) matching, offer something else instead

Re: 5% WTAF

I contributed into a personal pension scheme from the very first day I started work. I even put the contributions on a 10% annual increment. For my entire working career it remained my biggest single monthly outgoing - bigger even than my mortgage payments. Fast forward 30 years and I've retired at age 56 with what should be a fairly comfortable few decades ahead of me.

My various employers helped out with their own schemes (one in particular was very generous) but the bulk of my funds are from a personal pension.

If you're going to retire early you have to get serious about your pension from an early age. There can be no such thing as 'putting too much money aside'.

The UK government? On the right track with its semiconductor strategy?

Just not with the current corrupt lot.

If you ever find a significantly better alternative please let me know. I've voted in at least 9 general elections by now and have always voted for 'the least useless of the bunch' or 'the bunch likely to do the least damage'.

I don't think I've ever had the experience of voting for someone who represents a competent collection of politicians. They are all to some extent taking a short termist view and looking after number one.

Russia hustles to fill impending void left by the ISS

Re: Russian President Vladimir Putin has approved a project to build an Orbital Station

If the current narcissistic dictator isn't working, overthrow them and install another narcissistic dictator. Surely there must, somewhere, be a narcissistic dictator that will rule Russia in good way.

Privacy advocate challenges YouTube's ad blocking detection scripts under EU law

I'm also getting fed up with random delays between photos being taken and them actually being available on the cloud. Even if I select a photo and then 'Backup' it sometimes takes over a minute or multiple attempts before I can access it on my PC. I'm a paying Google Drive customer so I'd expect better than that.

Unfortunately decoupling myself from Google would be a pain in the arse and I doubt the alternatives are any better.

UBlock Origin is affected by this and (as the link to Reddit demonstrates) it's only because UBO developers keep updating their filters that most of us are not aware of the battle. I got a few popups last week and had to refresh the filter cache before hey went away.

I use UBO but last week I was getting the popup until I did the filter cache clear and reload.

If worst comes to worst I'll just exclude YouTube from my search results. It's never been a significant source of entertainment for me. Just a way to get answers. Even then most of the time I'd rather have text to read than listen to boring pratt droning on and taking up ten minutes of my time when I could've read the equivalent text in half a minute.

Progress towards 'Gigabit Europe' is slow, with UK also lagging

Re: for testing your connection

Meh. This test performs and reports on both single and multi-threading. It also correctly identifies UK ISPs :)

I don't believe UK is over 10%

And you are very, very wrong.

FTTP means FTTP. Most commonly GPON so shared fibre but fibre all the way from the property to the exchange.

ADSL and even FTTC do not qualify. The current situation is that nearly 60% of properties in the UK have fibre going past them and could have a fibre terminated at their property if they wished.

Re: "42% of users stated their current internet was sufficient for their needs"

So in reality, all it takes is two/three properties connected to the same splitter to saturate the underlying GPON network and start to notice reductions in speed.

The good news is that in reality that's quite unusual. It's very difficult to saturate such a high speed connection.

Re: Economic output?

Yup. Given the tight margins on internet connections and the tightness of customer wallets I doubt there was ever a business case based purely on sales. However as you say the cost of maintaining the old system is rising. Most suppliers have dropped out of the market and those that are left charge a premium to supply the necessary kit.

For Openreach this is more about reducing spiralling costs not increasing profit margins.

Re: "42% of users stated their current internet was sufficient for their needs"

There's rarely (probably never) congestion in the last mile, especially with any kind of fibre-based service. Congestion usually occurs in the links between the head-end (exchange) and the CP's core network. Even then it's usually an artificial limit rather than a lack of actual bandwidth. Such congestion doesn't mean that more fibre needs to be put in the ground, it just means that someone needs to pay to light up some more of what's already in there.

That can be expensive so this is where paying a bit extra can make a real difference. If you sign up with a cheap ISP you can expect to see a slowdown or even packet loss at peak time (the evenings). Pay a bit more and despite no physical change to your connection you can experience a better service.

Re: UK uptake is slow

I currently have access to two FTTP providers - Gigaclear and Swish. Unfortunately for them I'm waiting for Openreach so that I can stay with my current ISP - IDNet.

The problem I have with the above two providers is that neither supports IPv6. Now before anyone questions the current need for IPv6 I'll state that my problem here is a technical one. How can I have faith in an ISP that hasn't implemented it yet? Compounding my concern is that my current ISP has been providing a dual-stack IPv6/4 solution for nearly 20 years.

When I was setting up my mail server to support IPv6 IDNet's technical support provided competent answers to my questions without delay or signs of stress. To them I was asking reasonable questions and they provided the information I needed and helped fill in my knowledge gaps. That was ten years ago. They even helped resolve some uncertainty I had when configuring my router despite it being a router that they didn't supply and don't offer to their customers.

So another issue here is that we don't all want to through in our lot with Johnny-come-lately ISPs that can't even be bothered to support the prevalent standards of the day.

one is the UK with 42.9 percent

No it isn't. The UK went over 50% a couple of months ago, is currently just shy of 60% and predicted to reach over 90% within a couple of years.

That figure of 42.9% is at least six months out of date, and possibly a year.

One thing the article doesn't mention is customer choice. Most people don't want (or certainly don't need) high speeds. People in the UK aren't buying all that's currently available to them. In the past VM has shuttered its lower tier service and bumped people up for free in order to be able to show a higher average speed. 100% FTTP coverage will not mean that every house has a 1Gb/s connection. Most people will continue to buy the cheapest service available to them.

More X subscription tiers could spell doom for free access as biz bleeds cash

Re: We all knew it would end in tiers...

Everytime I hear that song I think of our last family holiday to Canada in the 80s. The plane across the Atlantic had a very limited collection of music on the pop channel and that was one of them. For some reason after hearing that about fifteen times it stuck in my head.

Re: Personally, I don't pay for ads.

Indeed you can. As long as you don't watch live TV there is no reason to see anything more than a fraction of a second of adverts on Sky's platform. The latest Q boxes even provide skip 30 seconds functionality (they refused to implement it for years despite requests).

Paying for TV to avoid adverts is a fine idea but you end up paying even more for the privilege. This is playing out in the Netflix arena right now. Sky appear to have decided to stick with their current model and so far history seems to suggest they've got it right because they are still around ;)

One complexity with Sky is that most of the channels on the Sky platform are not actually owned or operated by Sky. If Discovery, Alibi et al want to include adverts in their programme content that's their choice.

I subscribe to Sky but only a basic package that gives recording/HD and documentaries.

Casio keyed up after data loss hits customers in 149 countries

Re: FX-82

Edit: It's an fx-5000F I think judging by images online.

Re: FX-82

The one I've got on my desk is an fx-115. My only gripe was having a dedicated [On] button instead of using [AC] like earlier models. After all it still uses [Shift][AC] for off. I don't know what the other one is as it's buried somewhere. It's so old that it doesn't have a cursor though. Has a white body I think and came with a faux leather pouch. It was still working last Christmas.

Edit: It's a fx-500f.

Re: They're still around?

I have three of their G-Shock watches. Each one an example of a triumph of engineering(*). The oldest - 13 years - is still on its original battery. All keeping perfect time of course thanks to the Anthorn transmitter.

I also have two of their calculators dating back to my days at college in the late 80s. Also on their original batteries.

(*)Sadly one is also an example of stupid marketing and design. Red bezel, red strap, red face - that's great. White on black LCD for date etc. - that's stupid. In anything except direct light you can't read the LCDs.

Casio noted that it doesn't not retain customers' credit card information,

So it does retain CC information.

You snooze, you lose? It's not quite as simple as that

I almost always wake before my alarm goes off. I can sometimes grab another ten minutes of sleep but 'being AndrueC's alarm clock' is probably almost as pointless a job as 'BMW indicator fitting specialist'.

British boffins say aircraft could fly on trash, cutting pollution debt by 80%

Re: “smelling and tasting like chips”

Then it'd be a bit crap.

Russia to ban all VPNs – again – says senator

Re: thank you

My ISP - IDNet - isn't.

Tweaked Space Shuttle Main Engine gets ready for final testing

Seriously? This the 21st century and the best NASA can do is use shelved technology from the previous century?

Worse still instead of re-using the old technology as was originally intended now they are just going to dump it into the ocean after one use.

I remember when NASA could be considered the paragon of technical and engineering excellence.

Human knocks down woman in hit-and-run. Then driverless Cruise car parks on top of her

Re: "Should the Cruise car have not started moving if there was a person still on the crosswalk?"

Hah. I had half a dozen lessons before the instructor tried to book me in. At that time the test centre was busy with people from Liverpool coming down to North Wales to take their test as part of a holiday. Anyway it meant I got another half a dozen lessons at half price so was very confident when I took my test.

As expected the first thing I was asked to do after leaving the centre was cross the main dual carriageway into Llandudno town centre and head out to the promenade where coaches are always blocking half the road and tourists are wandering around like mindless sheep.

The route to the prom requires you to get into the turn right lane. Great fun at half past nine on a week day :)