Posts by Furbian

UK tech pioneer Mike Lynch dead at 59

His dad...

.. was an Irish-born firefighter...

There is a 49-year woman helping the police with their inquiries, with regards to the road death.... a lot of people are going to annoy her quite a lot over this.

However it is such a remarkable coincidence, there's 1% of me that thinks this is ....

The New ROM Antics – building the ZX Spectrum 128

Re: "their substantial egos"

That cover still inspires my imagination, the two small spacecraft, the city down below, combined with Blake's 7 on TV, was quite the influence.

Kaspersky reveals previously unknown hardware 'feature' exploited in iPhone attacks

You receive some 'visitors'....

They tell you that you need to put in a back door, and that even telling anyone they visited you would get you into trouble. 'You' can be an individual, a team, management etc.

Arm wrestles assembly language guru's domains away citing trademark issues

Oh, that's a hilarious one! Made me giggle. It may exist as a zombie lawsuit somewhere, can't be bothered googling it.

India hits pause on import ban after Apple and Samsung pull out

Re: Work Program

VAX, oh that brings back memories! Worked on VMS systems back in 2000; my final job on such a system was to see if it was viable to keep going, by trying to get it to work with TCP/IP, managed to get quite far with some third-party software before giving up.

Meta tells staff to return to office three days a week

A deeper perpective...

Undoubtedly working from has shown to be better, hardly a study disagrees with it, My workplace requires managers to allow one day from home, up to a maximum of four, though a manager can decide for this to be zero, which was the case, until my new one decided he'd like me two days a week, which are not quite full days either. Problem is that not all others are in on the same days, so out of the few who would be in our area, typically it's just two. Now in the old days, I worked for large consultancies, you could tap an expert on the shoulder and they'd save you hours of time, and you could do the same for someone else. I miss that, but then again they made me commute thousands of miles every year. Now my commute is a bike ride of less than half an hour, and the team, within a huge organisation, is small and doesn't have that many other experts anyway. Yes, I do get less work done on-site. My story, is probably not like anyone else's, but probably has parallels.

True, big landlords want their tenants back, but the support industry, the cafe's the shops around the office, now have a reduced income and may need fewer people. Then again home shopping might increase and shift the jobs to local shops and online warehouses (that are being automated more and more, but let's not talk about automation here).

Another angle, Covid-19 gave a unique opportunity to study mass home working and the idea of BMI (not weight index, basic minimum income). I digress here a little, it was squandered by political hubris though, simply giving everyone with an NI number £1k a month, no messing around with giving it through companies and business loans, near zero extra admin costs, but no, they had to enrich/look after their wealthy voter base with £2.5k payments, whilst those on the other end ended up with less than £400 a month, and the business loan fund was looted like an ATM throwing out money.

Techie fired for inventing an acronym – and accidentally applying it to the boss

Oh no...

I've only just discovered what SNAFU stands for, about 30 years later... I shall not be using it in future!

Signal says it'll shut down in UK if Online Safety Bill approved

Re: Banning encryption fixes what?

This looks like fun... decades ago on a bus in Liverpool, I saw this fine warning ...

The inspector will push for the heaviest penalties against offenders.

With the following letters scrapped off, from these words: 'for the heaviest penalties' ...

for t e heav e t alt e

Serious surfer? How to browse like a pro on Firefox

Session Manager....

I've been using this for years, it's excellent:

https://tab-session-manager.sienori.com/

Dirty solution if you have some session files left over:

http://furbian.blogspot.com/2016/01/firefoxs-session-managers-strikes-again.html

UK Home Secretary delays Autonomy founder extradition decision to mid-December

10 years on....

This has been going on for so long that many a person reading this will wonder who? what? etc.

A 'national security' issue: UK.gov blocks Nvidia's Arm deal for now, inserts deeper probe

That trade deal with the US to make up for Brexit...

With gunboats ready to do battle with French, a trade war (there was meant to be deal, no?) with the EU imminent, conditions similar to those that started the troubles in Northern Ireland, there is meant to be, eventually, a grand US trade deal that would make up for all this. Someone in the US may just notice, 'hey, you appear to have blocked one of our largest tech companies from buying one based in your country that's owned by the Japanese."

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

Part of wished I had met him...

A computer for under £100 was just a master stroke (ours was an £80 ZX81), kicked off the entire computer revolution together with the BBC Mirco's in schools (£400 a pop, I only knew of ONE school kid who had one and his dad was always held up as the only 'professional' father of note). I for one am grateful for Uncle Clive's machine literally changing my life and setting my career path. I always hoped he'd come out with one more revolutionary idea; the bikes were always interesting, but never quite hit the spot.

It's first day of the semester next Monday; I'll share some of my memories of the man and his inventions with my students. Paradoxically, of the Acorn and Sinclair founders, it's the Acorn side that I know one of!

UK's competition regulator fires red flare over Nvidia's $40bn Arm takeover deal

Re: US trade deal anyone?

Oddly enough I have a 1/48 TSR-2 parked on a shelf above my desk! That was largely expediency, a unique British trait. If we can buy cheaper, why do it ourselves? Only country to give up satellite launch capability etc. However at times it can literally be a lifesaver, think Nimrod and the amount of money poured into that, and it took the deaths of an entire crew to finally give up. Now that we're out of the EU, telling the US to something itself is now a lot harder than it was previously.

I'll round off with a quote:

“An increase in inbound merger and acquisition activity was one of the obvious consequences of Brexit and weakened sterling, but few expected it to manifest itself so quickly or at so large a scale.”, Dan Ridsdale, analyst at Edison Investment Research.

Oddly as remainer, I made a good chunk of cash on the ARM takeover!

US trade deal anyone?

One of the biggest sells on Brexit was the new trade deal with the US. They may not care in the US, or they may care that a Japanese company was allowed to buy ARM, but one of their larger tech companies is going to be blocked from buying it from the Japanese company...

Trade deals usually favour the stronger party (being in the EU used to help with that, but that's history) and the UK being one of the top ten economies will still do quiet well. However, when up against someone larger, e.g. the US, an already weak position is not going to be helped by this. If one looks at the mood in the US, Trump's America First voters number 70 million, and the Afghan surprise to add to that; don't expect a happy bunny in the US administration if this is blocked.

cmd.exe is dead, long live PowerShell: Microsoft leads aged command-line interpreter out into 'maintenance mode'

Tried bulk rename?

CMD rename:

ren *.jfif *.jpg

Powershell:

Get-ChildItem *.jfif | Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name -replace '\.jfif','.jpg' }

I do not consider this a step forward. I am not happy.

.. and if you miss Bash style editing history etc. on cmd, 'mridgers clink' will do the job.

International investors gobble up Brit satellite specialist Inmarsat

"Inmarsat has long carried the mantle of a designated British tech success"

... and yet its share price has been in the toilet for years, worst investment I have made in the last ten years, and the only loss I'll book since if the takeover is finalised. That's from £11 in 2016 to £5.50 today,

My sadness at ARM's passing was tempered by having been a longer term investor in paying off well just weeks after the Brexit vote. Oh the Brexit angle, I'll leave that to someone else to state "Dan Ridsdale, analyst at Edison Investment Research, said "An increase in inbound merger and acquisition activity was one of the obvious consequences of Brexit and weakened sterling, but few expected it to manifest itself so quickly or at so large a scale."". Oh and didn't vote out.

It's the weekend. We're out of puns for now. Just have a gander at China's Moon lander and robo-sidekick snaps, videos

Maybe due to lack of people onboard.

.. or it was remote controlled and someone's hand slipped at the last moment. On a more serious note did they have comms link during landing, or was it obscured by the moon and it was all automated?

Get whimsical and win a Western Digital Black 6TB hard drive

Alas Poor Cecil..

.... I knew him well.

Samsung's spying smart TVs don't encrypt voice recordings sent over the internet – new claim

TV - Off.

Once this is implemented, will they issue advertisement and programme makers a guide so as to avoid the lines like:-

"You going out? Turn the TV off before you leave"

"This TV Offer is out of this world"

"I used to watch TV often when I had nothing better to do"

"Get that TV off my foot, it hurts"

etc. ad infinitum

I have no idea if 'TV Off' already exists, my Samsung 59" TV is dumb and defective (they won't fix it, despite confirming warranty via an e-mail they doubt they sent), and my Smart (semi?) 65" Hi-sense has no ears to listen with.

Would you buy a domain from Google? Industry weighs in on web giant's move

Google blocked me from buying an 80p App until I gave them a copy of my passport.

Well that's pretty it that, I can't even if I wanted to. In the meantime I use fasthosts, not for hosting but just for domain management, and it's been OK, I get reminders when a card is about to expire, I update the details and life carries on. Actually that reminds me, it was updating an expired card on Google Checkout (as it was back then) that caused the Google block in the first place, if you're bored, you can read about it here :- http://furbian.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/my-google-walletplaycheckoutwhatever.html

Oh I've been using Amazon App store since for paid apps, which is OK apart from most Apps needing a wi-fi connection to work, i.e. no using most Amazon Apps on a flight etc.

DEATH fails to end mobile contract: Widow forced to take HUBBY's ASHES into shop

Shops are jsut for selling, not support.

EE, and now I've discovered 3 as well, shops do not appear to have the authority to do anything at all, other than sell you a phone. Any problem? 'Ring our Indian call centre', who will then, allegedly, authorise a repair or exchange but will argue to death to avoid doing so, expect to waste an hour on the phone. On the rare occasion they agree to an action and if you go back to the shop as instructed (sometimes they arrange a collection) the shop staff have no idea and refuse, for example in my case, to accept a return (for repair). Ring back and they'll tell you oh they should have! They behave like two companies, one with shop fronts here, and the other an Indian half, that barely know how the other works and with the Indian half conveniently holding the balance of power, out of reach in effect. Rubbish service from all providers, that lead me to go Pay as you go, which has saved me a packet, buy the phone for £400 and paying for calls has saved me loads, my monthly call/data spend has been less than £5.

EE TV: Network snubs 'Auntie's antique' for mobe-happy set-top box

Re: Oh is isn't

They could run an ad campaign featuring probably the most famous EE product, the Lightening, and claim their broadband/mobile network is 'Lightening Fast' (as an ex-customer though I can testify that it is NOT), but then who would recognise an EE Lightening in this day and age. I am definitely too old for this...

Are you a fat boy? Get to university now, you penniless slacker

Having a different skin colour...

... is a great worse, though the physical scars of my schooling are largely long gone, I haven't quiet forgotten the beatings. That's 'darker' skin colour, obviously. Not many have ever picked on my obesity and in the career I eventually had, both factors had little if any influence, though starting the career was a nigh on impossible task in the first place.

Report: EE in talks to scoop up 60 Phones 4u stores from troubled High Street retailer

"pick over the carcass"

Quite literally, maybe they all pulled out from their deals with Phones 4u a few weeks ago precisely so they could pick up the stores on the cheap. Quite like someone doing a lot of hard work in introducing someone to a client they have good relationship with, only for the introduced party to go around the chaps back and make a deal with the client themselves, i.e. cut out the middle man. The ones who pay the price in this case are the workers left without a job. Naked capitalism as its worst, though I'm no advocate of communism either (i.e. DPRK, no thanks).

Computing student jailed after failing to hand over crypto keys

Re: Furbian Send your MP an encrypted file campaign?

Which is why I mentioned a 'CD' (for those not savvy enough to be able to cover their tracks on-line)... then again with CCTV's everywhere, maybe they'll see who posted it, could be a bit tricky if one drops it in a post box in the centre of a large city though.

Send your MP an encrypted file campaign?

Wasn't there a campaign sometime back to have an encrypted file sent to your MP, and to then tell the Police to investigate them for being up to no good? The MP's would then claim not to know the password, and since they have the e-mail or CD in their possession, they would be guilty of not supplying the password. Would have been fun to send encrypted copies of their expenses as an MP, for the irony of it.

Insecure AVG search tool shoved down users' throats, says US CERT

Re: Foxit

Gave up on Foxit years ago, Sumatra PDF Reader is astonishingly lightweight in comparison, the installer is only 4MB! Best off all no bloatware etc.

Vodafone: Soz investors, we wrote down £6.6 BEELLION on Euro ops

Re: Plus ca change

Agreed, and looking at the share price, I got out just after the Verizon deal was completed, it's continually heading southwards towards less than £2 (£2.05 today). Even if it did end up at £1.90 I'd still be wary of buying it again. One has to wonder what their management has 'planned', if anything.

Back off, Siri! Microsoft debuts Halo beauty Cortana

Re: Don't understand the name

That's what I thought initially, an ubiquitous unreliable car from Fixed Or Repaired Daily, only beaten on that front by those turkeys from Morris (Ital) and Austin (Allegro). Mine was a Datsun 120Y tiny rust bucket, which had one rather amazing quality, it worked.

Google encrypts Chinese search requests to subvert Great Firewall

Hypocrites....

This is the same company that was busy using its Google camera cars to grab people's home wi-fi details, illegally, and now it claims to be acting in the interest of net users? It's not, it's a commercial company that operates for the sake of its own profit margins, which is after all its purpose, including that hyped up marketing slogan 'Don't be evil', read 'YOU don't be evil, but we can snoop away, avoid tax as much tax as possible etc."

No doubt being an American company it will oblige the NSA with a good number of back-doors, rather than risk its wrath (underhand or otherwise) in Google's primary market. Probably given up on China for good, or that 10% share is probably what they're desperately trying to cling on to so that they can maintain a toe hold there.

HP 'KNEW' about Autonomy's hardware sales BEFORE the whistle blew: report

To the Americans getting all upset over this...

.. I have one word 'Ferranti'.

One has to be old enough to remember the early nineties to appreciate how this could be seen as ironic payback.

Sinclair’s 1984 big shot at business: The QL is 30 years old

Fantastic article, loved it!

Iwas loaned a QL a few years after it had lost most of its value and about a year before the Atari ST as widely available, so I did at least get to enjoy using it. Superbasic really was quite nice compared to what I had on my Spectrum. But those darn Microdrives, awful from beginning to end. Could write a chapter on my Spectrum Microdrive odyssey, finally ending with the Opus Discovery One 3.5" disk drive expansion box, with £6 blank floppies which were just so much more reliable.

Apple coughs up 7 hours of profit to refund kids' $32.5m app spend spree

Default off for in App purchases?

Why are apps allowed to be downloaded with in app purchases enabled? They should also ship their devices with in app purchasing off by default. Odd that they don't, maybe they know they make more money, even after the refunds, buy not doing so.

My two pences worth, we were caught out early a year ago, £25 of purchases were made before the plug was pulled, Apple refunded it.

As for consumer rights, Google locked me out when I updated an expired card, unless I hand over a copy of my passport. I switched to Amazon app store instead. May as well troll my experience:-

http://furbian.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/my-google-walletplaycheckoutwhatever.html

Even 'Your computer has a virus' cold-call gits are migrating off XP

My favortie brush offs.

Tell them I have Linux, these leaves them befuddled and they hang up quickly. In reality I have a few Linux Virtual Machines, but my main OS is Windows 7.

Another one I do for fun, tell them I built my PC, this also results in a quick hang up, i.e. "Yes, it's very simple, bought a case, motherboard CPU and memory, and put it all together...".

Last but not least, "YES, I am really having trouble, can you just wait a minute.", then leave phone near a TV or some source of music, repeat as long as it's fun, i.e. "with you in a jiffy, just hang on, really interested", or they hang up.

Microsoft: Don't listen to 4chan ... especially the bit about bricking Xbox Ones

Typical Microsoft...

For quite some time, getting our PS3 out of HDMI mode meant just pressing 'on' for a few seconds that made its display output reset to default, quite important when you took it to a friend's and that didn't have a 1080p display.

The Xbox 360? If you forgot to change it before taking it, you had to look up the sequence required to change the display type, i.e. the d-pad actions required to access the systems menu and change the display. Don't know if they ever introduced a display fall-back, it was still needed as recently as last year :-

power the console on using the guide button on a controller and wait for a minute

press up on the dpad

press right 6 times

press down once

press A 3 times

press down 4 times

press A twice to enable display discovery

Universal Credit: £40 MILLION and counting's been spaffed up the wall on useless IT gear

"97m-and-counting in taxpayer money will have been written-off as the software currently being used by just 2,000 benefit claimants"

That's £48,000 per claimant. Dole at about £50 a week costs £2600 per claimant a year, wouldn't it be cheaper to let them claim as they are doing currently? It's not as if they get it for nothing, job centres are quite adept at sanctioning those they think are not doing enough to get a job.

UK.gov dangles £10m sweetener over bumpkin broadband hopefuls

Another 140m was available...

..but it was wasted on Universal Credit instead, and that's just the write off, i.e. total waste to date.

IDS finally admits what EVERYONE ELSE already knows: Universal Credit will be late

One rule for them, another for us.

Anyone else, bar a banker maybe, loosing that sort of money would lose a lot more than their job, probably their liberty too by landing in jail. Seems like being a minister, elected democratically by the people for the people of-course, is the ultimate form of Limited Liability Company, even your job is immune from being touched, for at-least five years whilst you rake in some decent dough on a generous MP's wage until the next election. If voted out, you can then get some cushy job paying over £100k a year working a few days a week, if that, advising, more often than not, a bank, as one now has inside knowledge of government to 'help' their new employer, i.e. how get into government projects guaranteed to be cash cows, even if they are doomed to failure from the start. Nice.

Sony's new PlayStation 4: Early faults ENRAGE some buyers

Re: CAD has it covered

Absolutely. Though the launch PS3 we bought very early on, within weeks of release whilst abroad, before it was released in the UK, is till with us today, though if Sony think I'm going to rush out and buy a PS4, disposing of software library at the drop of a hat, or keep both, well they're wrong.

Xbox 360, the current one is the 5th (or is it 6th? lost count) one. Having said that it's Kinect sibling is now in it's second year, no issues there. Again, Xbox 1? Nah, too many unfinished Xbox 360 games too.

A year down the line, We'll see if there's any compelling game that necessitates a purchase, in the mean time, my PC with a Radeon 7870 and a 30" 2560x1600 monitor made it the choice machine to play Skyrim and the Dragon Age series on.

Your kids' chances of becoming programmers? ZERO

Boy do I have a story to tell..

I was weaned on a ZX81, and learnt Z80 assembler back in '81.... now some 30 + years on, yesterday, I was at a Russell Group university, assisting students and marking their assignments, in, wait for it, assembler (not telling which processor! might give away the 'where'), and I do get this feeling that year on year the intake is getting worse, though the grade requirement is rising. For the first time I had a batch of them who could not understand what an unconditional branch was, despite my bringing up an example in front of them.. just one anecdote of the several I have.

Surface Pro 2: It's TOOL-PROOF and ultimately destined for LANDFILL

Re: re: repairs

Might as well add my two pence's worth. Wife's 15" HP had a display failure just outside the 1 year warranty. Ordered a £18 inverter, opened up screen bezel, bit of pain. Noticed a magnet had managed to fall out of a nearby slot (inside the bezel) and land on the inverter, put the magnet back with some glue, all fixed, the inverter I bought wasn't used. Then about half a year later, noisy CPU fan, dies. Buy this for £15, cheap, but taking it apart wasn't good, a few clip lug broken and had to remove the entire board to get to the fan. Two years on it still works, given to relatives recently.

My HP Envy 17, over 1k's worth of laptop, two years on, begins to overheat, with BIOS telling me of fan failure. So opening time again, resent that I had to get the board out, i.e. near full tear down, to clear out heat sink and fan (during a holiday!), but it was quite easy to take apart and re-assemble, no clips and lugs like the 15" one.

My Sony Xperia Z, a glue up job, that's meant to be 'water resistant'. Well despite all port covers checked as closed, some water did get in to mess up the power switch. So now I'm toying with the idea of opening it, but heat gun? I've decided to stick to using a soft button to get around the problem instead.

Turkish TV presenter canned for flashing too much cleavage

Re: why Israel isn't in both NATO and the European Common Market

.. oh right, the European part of Turkey is Turkey occupying someone, care to mention who? The Bulgarians? They're awfully quiet about wanting it. Long memory you have too, Istanbul only having being established some 560 years ago.

Last but not least, if Turkey shouldn't be NATO due not bordering the North Atlantic, what part of Greece is anywhere near it? Or for that matter Austria, Italy, Romania etc. are? Best of all is Cyprus, which lies further from any European country than most of Asian Turkey.

As for the main article, Turkey in the EU? Never in a million years, too racist and bigoted, with a few notable exceptions. Judging by the postings here, most don't even appear to consider them as being human, but some sort of lower sub-species, in all but name.

Office 365 goes to work on an Android

A small laptop is sometimes the best solution.

My daughter's iPad was sold pending an upgrade to an iPad 2, however she started university; taking notes and editing them in lectures became a priority. I thought about this and bought her a Lenovo X201 12" Laptop. It fits in her large hand bag, and she can watch the umpteen videos in odd formats she has on it straight off VLC, can run Matlab etc.

Eventually though she did get iPad mini as well, as she enjoys the convenience, but that laptop was boon.

My needs were completely different, sold my iPad (a gift) after a few months and bought a HP Envy 17 (Windows 7) instead, which I've had ever since. Admittedly it breaks my back when I carry it to work every now and again on my bike, but it has served me well. Now someone has given me an old iPad as a present again. Installed 'Badland' on it, and I really am quite enjoying it, to sell or not to sell...

My phone's an Sony Xperia Z, which I can take notes on reasonably well using Swype, though I've never written or edited a document on it, then again I've never needed to.

'Beat the lie detectors' trainer sentenced to 8 months in jail

Cypher

Anyone remember the film 'Cypher', where David Hewlett acts a human lie detectors and succeeds (though doesn't manage to stop the chap) where the other techniques had failed? Just thought I'd mention a good film related to lie detection as I leave the discussion forum...

Facebook gov surveillance data kept locked inside, er, Facebook

Re: Statistics, etc..

Useless stats, of the per 100k of population you'd be surprised how many toddlers can't use electronic devices. Under 13's (the bulk of the population in poorer countries) aren't even meant to have facebook accounts, assuming that they have access to internet in the first place.

More useful would have been be what proportion of internet users (or better still facebook users) have had their data requested by a government agency.

India has an internet penetration of just 13% (152m) whereas the UK's is 87% (54m users).

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_Internet_users)

Flash! Ah-ahh! Saviour of the universe? It'll save every one of us?

Re: Fantastic

Snap!

Reminds me of two olde incidents... once when a friend drove over a large puddle I went, 'Splash! Ah-ahh, it'll soak everyone of us'...

... and that a there was local flasher going around singing it as he exposed himself.

Mystery of Guardian mobos and graphics cards which 'held Snowden files'

Graphics card firmware...

You could stick about 128K or more of data in there.. maybe that's why they trashed the graphics card.

Yes I'm being sarcastic, just in case some Daily Fail reader thought that 128K or so is enough to stick anything worthwhile on, or that the Guardian tech staff would be clever enough to use a graphic card's firmware area in that way. Rest of it just looks like pure mindless vandalism. Oh no, hold that thought, the motherboard's BIOS could also be flash with 'stuff' though getting the data out if it's a surface mount BIOS (most are) could be one heck of a challenge.

Guardian lets UK spooks trash 'Snowden files' PCs to make them feel better

Sounds hilarious..

... but this just isn't funny, guys in (jackboots?) turning up and trashing hardware, and the whole 'you've had your fun' etc. exchanges.

Looks like the 'government' is acting with impunity. This is simply wrong.

BRUCE WILLIS (ad) DIES HARD (in Sky broadband telly fib ban)

Mega groan....

This was just a pun too far..."The watchdog, now in its (fifth) element"...