Posts by big col

Moscow makes a mess on the Moon as Luna 25 probe misses orbit, lands with a thud

In next week's Who me we have a story by Vlad who was working on the Russian luner program.....

The future of digital healthcare could be a two-metre USB cable

Can be a crap idea to diagnose this way

Unfortunately both my wife and I have had terrible experience of diagnosis by video.

My wife developed a sore finger after gardening. Looked a bit red but nothing visually of interest. First video call she was told to bathe in warm water. The second call a week later antibiotics were given. It got worse and very painful. A&E visit 2 weeks after the antibiotics was informed she should have been sent to A& E by the GP sooner as she had a nasty abscess.

In my case I had a video call with a PT.. problem was diagnosed as muscle weekness. Lots of PT later no improvement. Problem finally diagnosed as nerve damage caused by being in a coma for 9 weeks and subsequent recovery due to sepsis. Now on a 70 week waiting list to see a neurologist. But the video call and PT did more harm than good

UK Prime Minister wants £800M to spend on big British iron

The government have been stockpiling pi4's for the past 2 years in order to build the world's largest cluster.

Which explains the consumer supply chain issues

Don't mind Facebook, just putting its own browser in its Android app

Facebook can have its uses

Unfortunately FacFacebok is a necessary evil. I run a charity for a very rare genetic disorder. I also had a support website way back in 1996. We support families world wide, and while a few people contact us via the website, almost all newly diagnosed families will find us on Facebook.

The same goes for many conditions. The ability to share experiences, connect with others and call families world wide and at the same time to have language being a barrier to communication has made it a very useful tool for us to fulfill our support role. It is evil but unfortunately for now we have nothing to replace it with

This is the military – you can't just delete your history like you're 15

Before retirement I worked in student IT support in a university for 27 years . This was in the days before laptops were uncommon and the students used tower systems at home.

Quite often would have problems and to pass the time I was happy to fix the computers for them. When a student brought there PC to my office, I would usually discover a mess of virus, spyware and toolbars.

One morning a beautiful Italian young lady from a different department brought her PC in for me to take a look at. It was running slowly, and she could not print her dissertation which she needed to submit in 2 days time. No problem.

So I took a look, and it was the usual problem of spyware and virus infestation. But there was a massive collection of porn videos and photos, which almost filled up the hard drive.

So I cleaned up the virus and spyware issues. And I printed her 3 copy's of the dissertation. Next day she comes into the department with her boyfriend..Somewhat embarrassed I explained what the problem was, and went into my office to get her dissertation print outs.

CRASH....... She had thumped her now ex boyfriend so hard he fell to the floor, while saying "this body not good enough for you"

She then thanked me and took her computer away. A couple of days later She came back to the office with a nice bottle of Scotch, and a hug for helping her out.

Fun times.

ZX Spectrum, the 8-bit home computer that turned Europe on to PCs, is 40

The Spectum changed my life

On leaving school in 1971 I started work in the clothing industry, became a tailor and then watched the industry and future prospects collapse around me.

I first bought a zx81 and progressed to a spectrum. I learned coding and decided the future was in IT. So embarked on an Open university degree in Computing. Spending the rest of my working life as IT support in Education.

I had a few other home computers, but it is the Spectrum that was my one true computer love

UK health secretary Matt Hancock follows delay to GP data grab with campaign called 'Data saves lives'

Fix the existing problems before making a profit

I am currently being treated for complex health issues in greater Manchester. Attending 3 different hospital's.

Because the computer systems are not joined up I often have to have the same blood and other tests done at each location. Data does save lives and improve overall health outcomes, yet the government makes a data grab and profit from selling our personal data, rather than addressing and fixing the patient records system.

Quick thinking and an explanation for everything – key CTO qualities

i spent the last 27 years before retirement working in student IT support in a university. In the days before laptops were common I would often be asked to upgrade or fix a student PC.

One Thursday a stunningly beautiful Italian student brought her computer along, she was very upset because her dissatation was due in on Friday and her computer was not working. So I said i would take a look.

The problem was nothing more than virus and tool bar infection. After a clean up, all was well so I printed the dissertation for her. And while looking for her files i found a huge porn stash.

Next day she returned with her boyfriend, happy that everything was sorted she asked what was wrong, so I told her. Turning to her boyfriend "so I am not enough for you" as she hit him so hard he ended up flat out on the floor.

Her work was submitted, later that day she returned with beer chocolate and a thank you hug.

Only one of many student story's where porn was involved

Help! My printer won't print no matter how much I shout at it!

I bought an ML 1610 back in the windows XP days, was a wonderful little printer which I bought from Dixons for £15 on clearence. When drivers became unavailable it sat in a corner in the loft feeling sorry for itself for several years gathering dust.

About 6 months ago I was about to bin it and then realised that it would work on a Rasberry Pi under CUPS. A new toner and drum cartridge from Ebay for £5, and now it is a happy printer printing away. It works great with all devices in the house from Chromebooks, Android, Apple and Windows.

As for the paper being chewed up, I found that a light sandpaper rub to the rollers, followed by an alcohol clean fixed paper feed problems.

After outrage over Chrome ad-block block plan, Google backs away from crippling web advert, content filters

Re: So, basically, no change there

No need to root. Just use BlokAda on Android. Works wonders I have never seen an advert on my phone.

Pages load faster, and a huge monthly data saving

And of course Pi-hole for my home network.

Cheap call? Hardly. GSM gateway judicial review to settle whether UK Home Sec can legally push comms watchdog around

I run a small charity for a rare genetic disorder. Most of our members are not in the UK. I have been using a VOIP service since 2003. 10 euros for 120 days of free calls. Then I use the credit.

On Sunday we had a conference call with our research board in the USA, a 2 hour call cost 1.2 euros. Brilliant service and quality. I hate to think how much it would have cost by standard landline.

It may be poor man's Photoshop, but GIMP casts a Long Shadow with latest update

The name got me into bother

Many years ago I was showing a group of student teachers the software we used. After a quick photoshop demonstration I was asked if there was anything less costly.

Gimp I say, its open source so free for you to use. I will show you

Unfortunately I entered gimp.com, rather than gimp.org. In those days the .com site was... see icon

Dodgy website projected on big screen to 25 student teachers...

woops... Quick clickety click to the correct address, and carried on red faced.

Mobile app devs have, oh, about 9 hours left to decide whether to stay on Google's ad platform

What are these mobile adverts you speak of. I see no adds.

Blokada is my friend..

Windows Fall Creators Update is here: What do you want first – bad news or good news?

I upgraded to 10 because I wanted to play with the 3D printing tools otherwise I would have stuck with 7.

The spying was a worry, at first I used O&O ShutUp10 which does a good job of protecting privacy, but the settings kept reverting back on each upgrade.

I then found the best add on for win10 was a Raspberry Pi , running PInhole, and using wally3k lists.

It is amazing at how much traffic windows 10 generates on the network, it is constantly phoning home, fortunately all now blocked.

And the big advantage of pihole - stuff, my daughter who has development delays is safe online and gets no add to click by mistake on her iPad, and my wife is now able to use the web advert free which is all the better for our bank account, and all windows 10 talemetry is blocked,

US Navy suffers third ship collision this year

I wonder if Sub Lt Phillips, was on secondment to the American navy.. "left hand down a bit"

Dry those eyes, ad blockers are unlikely to kill the internet

Re: @werdsmith - People who use adblockers...

Those signs (lists) on doors that say "no leaflets, no charity, no canvassers etc are generally usually found in scummy neighbourhoods and on untidy unkempt properties. The residents are usually grumpy, miserable gits. Houses that have welcome mats and decorative flowers etc outside, generally don't have these lists but have happy residents who will take the leaflet with a smile and a thank you.

Just an observation....

Or maybe they are people who have other responsabilities such as caring, and are sick to death of people knocking or calling, desterbing the much needed 5 munutes of rest they get each day.

Will Europe's ISPs unmask anonymous IP infringers?

Whats wrong with catching real crooks

The police, EU, law makers and anybody who wants to look good puts massive effort into preventing IP infringement.

Yet the crooks, scumbags, tricksters and spammers continue to ply their trade ripping off the old and vulnerable, with impunity.

I am sick of the whole debate.

Mosaic turns 20: Let's fire up the old girl, show her the web today

Re: Mosaic changed my life

sorry if you visited the above link the site was in maintenance mode, a Drupal update messed up the database, all fixed now.

selfless promotion - visit

http://costellokids.com

An interesting side note, since those early days the web has assisted many researchers scientists and families around the world to understand genetic conditions better, families noticed connection's between a number of unique syndromes. And now a group of 9 different syndromes are known to be related making the RASopathies the largest group of genetic disorders known.

I doubt that the level of collaboration that is happening now would ever of happened without those forst steps through the mosaic browser and a few people who could see how it could be used as a tool to bring groups together.

Mosaic changed my life

In 1994 my daughter was born, she was diagnosed with a very rare genetic condition called Costello syndrome. She was the 23rd person in the world known to have the condition and little was known about her future or outcomes.

I used gopher to try and find information with little success, and then saw mosaic, it was amazing. Suddenly users had a way of finding information in a way that was simpler to use then the previous tools. My thoughts at the time were that my daughter is the 23rd person with this condition then I will set about finding somebody else. Working in IT at a university I had access to an early Novell web-server, so I built a small website, archived references to all the medical publications I could find, an hoped that somebody else would find us. Amazingly someone did and our support group was born.

In 1996 when my daughter was diagnosed with cancer the articles referenced on that early website helped to save her life, New scientist included the story in an article 04 October 1997 called Surfer, heal thyself.

Our support group was one of the first, or maybe the first rare disorder support groups just on the web. Even today it is estimated that the numbers of people with my daughters condition is less then 500 world wide, yet our support group has members from all corners of the globe. Mosaic gave me the reason to learn HTML. learn how to make a website and change not only my life but the health of others.

Our current website is http://costellokids.com

Apple antenna guru 'warned Steve Jobs' over Judas Phone

warranty

since 2002 all consumer goods sold in the EU have a 2 year warranty by law. Unfortunately for us the people who are paid silly money to enforce consumer law don't give a dam.

Under the sale of goods act it is up to the consumer to prove there is an inherent fault after the first 6 months, and this can often be difficult to do.

However Under EU law the 2 year warranty is mandatory

http://www.wak-tt.com/tt/2yearwarranty1.htm

(quote)

Directive 1999/44/EC, May 1999 from the European Parliament stipulates that by 1st January 2002 all member states must have altered their legislation to comply with new consumer laws. These new laws will ensure that all new consumer goods, including cars, carry at least a two-year warranty and used consumer goods have a minimum of a one-year warranty.

So stuff Microsoft or any other manufacturer who says its out of warranty when it breaks 1 year and a day after purchase, and point them to the above directive.