Posts by bed

It's been 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

Here in Scotland when buying timber the conversation include conversion: “Four 150 by 50 (mm) please”- “Is that 3.5 or 4.8 (m) lengths of four by two?”. Sheets of OSB/ply etc, can be 8 x 4 (feet) or 2.4 x 1.2 (metres) and there is a slight difference which builds up when laying sheets side by side.

Cooking is not an exact science so measurements and quantities in SI units can seem a bit of an overkill in the precision department. However, having been brought up with SI units, and weigh and measure ingredients in SI units, it is a bit jarring to come across a web site which has a recipe in a mish mash of systems and abbreviations, especially a) the elusive tbspn (half, whole or heaped), b) fluid oz (is that a mass or a volume?) and, c) the cup (where the cup size it not specified and when I ask my wife what size cups she has, the answer “A” does not help).

Actual metal being welded in support of the UK's first orbital 'launch platform'

Re: Testing is good, but...

Funny how dangerous things end up a long way from London. Dounreay is almost next door.

UK funds hydrogen-powered cargo submarine to torpedo maritime emissions by 2050

Current issues

Short sea crossing are, generally, shallow with strong currents; not ideal for a submarine, much better to build a bridge or tunnel - or is that so last week,

BOFH: When the Sun rises in the West and sets in the East, only then will the UPS cease to supply uninterrupted voltage

tales of POTS

The 'frame room' lacked documentation. No idea which pair went where. Employed some guys to trace and document what they could. Disconnected the rest and awaited the outcome. Personal FAX here. Personal FAX there. And the Director's personal phone line so the offspring could demand a pizza was collected on the way home.

Um, almost the entire Scots Wikipedia was written by someone with no idea of the language – 10,000s of articles

Doric columns

In the north east of Scotland, there is doric, which may be a dialect of Scots. For a taster of what it is like, have a look at Jonny Gibb of Gushetneuk https://archive.org/stream/johnnygibbofgush00alexuoft/johnnygibbofgush00alexuoft_djvu.txt

The first chapter throws you right in at the deep end... enjoy.

CHAPTER I.

JOHNNY GIBB SETS OUT FOR THE WELLS.

" HEELY, heely, Tarn, ye glaiket stirk ye hinna on the hin

shelvin o' the cairt. Fat hae ye been haiverin at, min ?

That cauff saick 11 be tint owre the back door afore we win

a mile fae hame. See 't yer belly-ban' be ticht aneuch noo.

Woo, lassie ! Man, ye been makin' a hantle mair adee

aboot blaikin that graith o' yours, an kaimin the mear's tail,

nor balancin' yer cairt, an' gettin' the things packit in till 't."

" Sang, that 's nae vera easy deen, I can tell ye, wi' sic

a mengyie o' them. Faur 11 aw pit the puckle girss to the

mear ?"

" Ou, fat 's the eese o' that lang stoups ahin, aw wud

like tae ken ? Lay that bit bauk across, an' syne tak' the

aul' pleuch ryn there, an' wup it ticht atween the stays ;

we canna hae the beast's maet trachel't amo' their feet.

Foo muckle corn pat ye in ? "

" Four lippies gweed mizzour will that dee ? "

" We 'se lat it be deein. Is their trock a* in noo, aw

won'er ?"

" Nyod, seerly it is. "

Whoa-o BlackBerry, bam-ba-lam: QWERTY phone had a child. 5G thing's newly styled

Doh!

My Nokia E7 was really useful when having to generate a reasonable amount of text while out and about. Maybe a bit bulky, but a really useful device. Shame the USB port broke.

Not forgetting the Gemini, now almost up Android 8.1

https://geminiplanet.com/

Grab a towel and pour yourself a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster because The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is 42

From where I lived the nearest stereo transmitter was some way south so a large directional FM aerial was required to receive a signal suitable for both ears.

Various key words have stuck within the family… brain the size of a planet, pain all down my left diodes, what is that coming towards me – I hope it is friendly, vase of petunias. However, the best one, because I was involved in digitising (using a BBC micro), from admiralty charts, the coastline of Norway, was something to do with crinkly bits and prizes.

Quite a few years ago I had a 42nd birthday party – because that it was one did.

BOFH: Here he comes, all wide-eyed with the boundless optimism of youth. He is me, 30 years ago... what to do?

Museum items

Comment from above noting that you know you are old when the kit you started on can be seen in a museum which is indeed true as The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley has (or had at the time) some DEC PDP 11s very similar to the ones I started on in 1985 - shorty followed by a VAX, then a MicroVAX another and another...

El Reg presents: Your one-step guide on where not to store electronic mail

(not) deleting emails...

As a true hypocrite, whilst imposing mailbox limits on users, I ignored them myself because I never knew when I would need to refer back to some previous event, project, or whatever. Of course users bypassed the limit by using ost files then failing to back them up or failing to migrate them when upgrading hardware. The problem was, in reality, we lacked the hardware resources to support a large exchange server with the associated online, nearline and offline storage and backup requirements. Having moved on, o365 has a 50gb mailbox limit and I see I have barely 40gb free despite having emails going back to, seemingly, the beginning of time and, now, backups are someone else's problem.

BBC said it'll pull radio streams from TuneIn to slurp more of your data but nobody noticed till Amazon put its foot in it

GetIplayer

I wonder if GetIplayer will still work?

Apple blinks on iPhone repairs, touts parts program for independent tech mechanics... sort of

Eh!

I recently repaired a friend's Dell Inspiron 2320 all in one where the HD had died. It was easy to get into. It was a 3.5" HDD (so not a laptop low speed thing) and a spare RAM DIMM slot - so I upped the RAM to 8GB, then screwed it back together. The rest of the seven hour day was spent doing Windows updates and refilling the one drive.

The in and outs of Microsoft's new Windows Terminal

<ESC> sequences revisted

Now that brought back memories from way back when I wrote a PDP11/70 program to change the font / font size on an Epson dot matrix printer connected to the serial port on a VT52, then VT220, and another I called 'lpr', which turned on the printer port, dumped a file to it, and turned it off again. Them were the days.

Flight Simulator 2020: Exciting new ride or a doomed tailspin in a crowded market?

Flying in the clouds

Articles elsewhere on the internet suggest the processing will be done in the (Azure?) cloud which means the client end will have less processing to do but latency issues may restrict usuability and, perhaps, this is more hand held console stuff than full-blown multi-4K-monitor stuff.

UK's internet registry prepares a £100m windfall for its board members – and everyone else will pay for it

Post Brexit...

Post Brexit and Scotland then Northern Ireland leave what is currently the UK, the UK will cease to exist. Perhaps someone needs to start a Former UK TLD, the acronym would be most appropriate.

US kids apparently talking like Peppa Pig... How about US lawmakers watching Doctor Who?

Clangers...

Since no-one, so far, has mentioned the Clangers... I just did.

Attention all British .eu owners: Buy dotcom domains and prepare to sue, says UK govt

dot UK doomed?

Once Scotland achieves independence there will not be a UK to have a dot uk tld and the tld for former united kingdom may be deemed rude.

Palliative care for Windows 10 Mobile like a Crimean field hospital, but with even less effort

Hmmm...

The other half has a Nokia 1020 (winho 8.1) with 64Gb storage. The 1020 is the one with a 40Mp camera - Huawei are just catching up. It has had the screen and battery replaced and, hopefully, will last a wee while yet as prizing the device away from the other half would not be worth the grief. Maybe I should lay a Lumia 950 in stock as a backup. I have yet to see a suitable Android app as a substitute for Winho mail and calendar - even MS Outlook on Android, which when I last looked could not display a month's calendar view. OK some of the Android apps are quite nifty, but none seem life threatening essential.

make all relocate... Linux kernel dev summit shifts to Scotland – to fit Torvald's holiday plans

Penguins in Edinburgh

The Holiday Inn would be ideal as it is next to the zoo which is (mostly) famous for its penguins. Maybe, next time, Torvalds should book into Banff (there being one in each country) or Aberdeen (where there are many in several) or Perth etc...

You can take off the shades, squinting Outlook.com users. It has gone dark. Very dark

OLED power usage?

Do dark themes use less power on OLED screens?

O2 wolfs down entire 4G spectrum as pals fiddle with their shiny 5G band

As Always cont’d…

As Always cont’d…

Cell phone masts do not necessarily need a fibre back-haul connection, many using microwave dishes, but, if it is required, there is a surprising large amount of fibre in the ground connecting major conurbations and, increasingly, connecting telephone exchanges – you just don’t hear about it because telcos are somewhat shy about publicising where the fibre is. And, even if there is fibre in a duct passing past your front door this does not guarantee access as it is not something you can tap easily.

Brexit to better bumpkin broadband, 4G coverage for farmers – Gove

Rural bullshit

Not only are our political overlords mostly clueless about Brexit, they seem to revel in remaining clueless, unwilling to admit to or learn about the myriad complexities involved in detaching the UK from the EU. The mainstream media (msm) is no better, unwilling or unable to admit that the complexities exist. Therefore Gove, and others, can spout any old rubbish (here we have Gove blaming the EU for not allowing the UK to fund rural broadband / 4G and commentators above have correctly called this out as bullshit), with impunity. There will be more. Unless the msm puts some modicum of effort into calling out the bullshit and logical absurdities, the gung-ho cliff-edge Brexiteers will drive the UK over the cliff.

We do forget, however, that the reason we are in this situation has nothing to do with the UK’s relationship with its European neighbours; it is all about the Conservative and Unionist party remaining in power. The slow-motion car-crash of Brexit will only conclude when the Conservative and Unionist party decides to start sorting out its internal differences over its view of the UK’s place in the world. Don’t hold your breath though, asphyxia is unpleasant.

From tomorrow, Google Chrome will block crud ads. Here's how it'll work

And then you get cookied

So I block all third party cookies and delete all cookies on exit. Life is so much quieter not being cookied.

2017 tablet market trended towards torpor

Linx Win10 tablet

Last year I got the wife a Linx 1010B 2GB / 32GB windows tablet for £77 which works fine for her - mostly netflix, e-mail and some web browsing. A bit slow installing Win 10 from scratch via USB stick but with USB keyboard and mouse installed subsequent configuration went fine, if a bit slow. It replaced a Tesco Hudl which eventually becaime unusable. I quite fancy the 4GB/64GB version.

Thar she blows: Strava heat map shows folk on shipwreck packed with 1,500 tonnes of bombs

Re: You forgot to mention

Yeah, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaufort%27s_Dyke

The North remembers: York scraps Uber's licence over data breach

Oi!! (II)

Looking at a map of the United Kingdom, York is near the middle not the North. But don't let geogaphy get in the way of a headline.

Windows Update borks elderly printers in typical Patch Tuesday style

Alternative options do exist

Two scenarios for you: When paying for stuff at our local builders yard, I swipe through my account card and their the computer pretending to be a till, prints out multipart invoice/receipt thing on a dot matrix printer my part of which gets recycled (burnt) when I get home. When paying for stuff at a less local establishment, I swipe through my account card and their computer pretending to be a till, e-mails me the details which I keep in a folder.

Car trouble: Keyless and lockless is no match for brainless

Quelle surprise

And the menus will be in some other language which you ignore until changing something becomes urgent and, therefore, inconvenient. A hire car in Sicily spoke to me in Italian every time we went over a bump which, as there was no smoke, I ignored until, while waiting for spouse to return from some retail therapy, I found the menu item to change the language only to discover it was a loose USB socket which, whenever we went over a bump, briefly disconnected followed by a warning about no doing that while driving.

All your masts are belong to us outfit Arqiva confirms IPO plan

Maybe they know something...

We don't know, such as the increasing number of households not watching OTA broadcasts (or not watching at all) leading, eventually, to not needing the infasctructure for OTA broadcasts.

Storms blow away 2017 Solar Challenge field

hollow laughter

(some) people laugh at the idea that batteries are going to replace the internal combustion(sic) engine.

Capacity and (therefore) range: Capacity (power density) is increasing at 5-8% per year. If this continues, when power density approaches that of hydrocarbons, the laughter will appear somewhat contrived and hollow.

Charging times are only an issue because, at present, power density is not good enough. When it is the dynamics change – how often do you fill your car with hydrocarbons? For those people who can charge at home, and whose daily commute is within current capacity, this is already not an issue.

Thirdly – this is a nonsense statement. When battery density competes with hydrocarbons, batteries (and other storage solutions) will smooth the fluctuations of supply from renewables and demand from consumers.

HMS Queen Liz will arrive in Portsmouth soon, says MoD

Scapa FLow?

Not entirely convinced. AFAIK, since leaving Invergordon, it has been trundling around the Moray Firth and has featured regularly on the FB pages of people on the south side of the Moray Firth, especially those with long lenses.

Feature snatcher Microsoft tweaks OneDrive

Onedrive clients and servers

OneDrive is the cloud file system used by PC, HoloLens and Xbox and Windows Phone and Android and Iphone and, via a web browser, Linux. There are two versions of Onedrive - the 'home' version and the 'business' version which is a layer on top of Sharepoint.

Which version of server on what client was this article referring to?

Fancy fixing your own mobile devices? Just take the display off carefu...CRUNCH !£$%!

Hmm...

If the youtube video of someone else repairing the same tablet/phone as you have looks too complicated, it probably is. However, if it looks doable, with the appropriate tools it might be. The USB port on my phone needs replacing (it charges OK, but the data pins are probably bent) but access requires an almost complete dismantle. The same problem on a Samsung tablet was, in comparison, an easy fix. Replacing the screen on a Dell laptop involved an almost complete dismantle (hinges buried inside and various ribbon cables need detaching) an HP laptop was a quick fix. Eventually, when we get used to not having headphone or USB sockets (bluetooth, wireless charging, data synced with cloud), I dare say the devices will become completely sealed and disposal will be the only option.

Labour says it will vote against DUP's proposed TV Licence reforms

Hmm... Politics

In theory, the BBC is ‘impartial’ and provides a ‘balanced’ view on the world. In reality, it is impossible not to have a point of view when creating or presenting media and, whether that is balanced or not, it is likely to irritate some party or other who will call for some measures to be taken – such as abolish the licence fee.

Another reality is that the BBC has, in its charter, the obligation to promote the state, in effect become the mouthpiece of the state, the point of view is state-centric, which make it difficult to also provide ‘balance’. Hence, prior to the recent election, there was very little un-critical media exposure for Jeremy Corbin (during the election period different rules apply), which has somewhat backfired. Scotland is currently getting the same treatment with the party which came second in the general election somehow being treated as if it had won.

So, I got fed up and, two years ago, removed the aerial, cancelled the direct debit and, with the money saved took out a Netflix subscription. I can still watch the commercial channels over the Internet.

What a To-Do! Microsoft snuffs out Wunderlist

Don’t conflate OneNote and Outlook Tasks

Outlooks Tasks/To-Do-List has never, ever, been developed to exploit its potential possibly because, if it did, it would eat into shared Project usage. That is no excuse however for not building some half-hearted functionality into the Outlook android app such as there is, in a limited fashion, in the Windows Phone Outlook app.

Offering OneNote as a substitute misses the point – of integration with calendars, alerts, rules and so on. It would be nice to think that OneNote (a much underappreciated application) might morph into a tasks substitute, provide shared tasks functionality, or fully integrate with Exchange Server, but that would be yet another strategy – so, fully expect such an announcement to arrive shortly – followed by development and abandonment.

Lochs, rifle stocks and two EPIC sea gates: Thomas Telford's Highland waterway

Or you can walk the great glen

Had the author the time and/or money a boat journey is the best way of appreciating the canal. There is also the Great Glen Long Distance Path which, mostly, takes you along the canal side from Corpach to Fort Augustus then high up the south west side of Loch Ness to Inverness.

BOFH: Password HELL. For you, mate, not for me

The insurance scam

Last year I hit a roe deer which bashed in the front of the car requiring new bodywork, raditor, A/C unit etc. Shortly afterwards I started getting phone calls from 01618544845, 01609608992 - (amongst others) trying to tell me I could make a claim against the third party. They didn't seem to know the third party was an ungulate, so could play up with 'will it be deer?" - though only when in the mood to do so. Fortunately the phone allows me to put a block on the phone number (and a growing list of them) so the problem went away.

Busted Windows 8, 10 update blamed for breaking Brits' DHCP

win 10 and BT

I have had this problem and used c:\netconfig / release c:\netconfig / renew to get going again - clicking the Win10 taskbar icon to reconnect doesn't work.

Ghost of DEC Alpha is why Windows is rubbish at file compression

HAL

I could be wrong, but, I seem to remember that up to and including NT3.51 there was a Hardware Abstraction Layer between the OS and the CPU which mean the same code ran, slowly, on a variety of hardware. NT4 removed that and moved the GUI layer and only ran on x86 and Alpha - no longer MIPS. Quite a long time ago when we had a couple of 433 workstations and an Alpha server. Eventually ran Linux on one of the 433 boxes - went like stink!

The Great British domain name rip-off: Overcharged .uk customers help pay for cheaper .vodka

and if Scotland becomes independent...

Will there still be a 'uk'? Maybe all the domains would have be renamed using the acronym generated from 'former united kingdom'.

Deep inside Nantero's non-volatile carbon nanotube RAM tech

All change

The implications of memory technology which is a) faster than dynamic RAM and b) non-volatile, are considerable. Presumably there are research projects addressing this – and it would be interesting if these were, if possible, publicised.

Computer architecture has not change significantly since Von-Neumann’s day, i.e. not much change since 1945: “...a memory to store both data and instructions, external mass storage, and input and output mechanisms.” O.K. they have become smaller and faster but they are still separate mass storage and memory systems.

Along with unifying mass storage and RAM, add in a 128bit data bus and you get instantaneous boot, or never off, essentially unlimited RAM (because the whole world is your memory- IPV6 memory) means that somewhere just over the horizon is the potential for a bigger change in computing than anything we have been through yet.

Lowland Scots plunged into panic by marauding ostrich family

Really??

Patna is about 47miles from the centre of Glasgow so, from darn sarth, almost the same place. The usual media response, sadly lacking this time, to such unfortunate / unforseen / unusual events is to invoke the SNPBaaad meme - el-reg really will have to try better,

Apologies to those who find more important or interesting things to do than follow Scottish politics.

Prominent Brit law firm instructed to block Brexit Article 50 trigger

Re: Marked down by history

This is perhaps a key, much overlooked point. In over forty years’ worth of legislation there must be much which contains within some phraseology along the lines of, “in accordance with European Directive blah blah blah” and finding, cancelling, untangling, rewriting, tabling, amending and then passing reworded legislation is not something a couple of civil servants are going to do one quiet afternoon. But then the Brexit crowd had this all thought it beforehand, hadn’t they? Or perhaps that may explain why most of them have subsequently buggered off.

EU wants open science publication by 2020

Re: Short-term protection

I think you missed out a step between 0 and 1...

0.5) Does some research

Ordnance Survey unfolds handy Mars map

Site of old folk's home?

It could do with one or more old folk's homes as it seems to be full of old craters.

No, drone owners – all our base are belong to US, thunders military

What? - no proof reading

What? - no proof reading

This is really poor piece of journalism. No meaningful research or proof reading.

What does this " do us a massive solid " mean?

"Thanks to the metal and lithium batteries in the toys, the gadgets pose a significant risk to aircraft."

No. No thanks at all. The risk is because of the mass which may include metal and batteries (which include metal).

In May (of what year?), [the pilot of] a Harrier [Jump]jet landing in Yuma, Arizona, spotted a drone 100 feet away, and in July, a [the pilot/crew/passenger of a ] Navy T-45 Goshawk training aircraft again (again - you mean this had happened to said Navy T-45 Goshwawk before?) came within 100 feet of a drone over (somewhat unlikely to be anything other than over) near the same airfield.

The FAA is trying to set up a database of drone owners. Wrong - the database exists..."Effective December 21, 2015, anyone who owns a small unmanned aircraft of a certain weight must register"

https://www.faa.gov/uas/registration/

How difficult is using Google?

Not one of Chris William's best pieces of journalism.

Boffins teach cars to listen for the sound of a wet road

why were the cars on the pavement?

Or were they on the sidewalk?

Huawei is the new Nokia: Asian mobe maker sets out its stall

As an oldie, I resent that...

"(no one notices that oldies don’t have phones)".

Depends on how you define oldie; anyone older than you is an oldie. However, this household of happliy retired wrinklies is quite well equiped with windows phones (1020 and 930), a Nokia E7 as a beside clock and an E71 as a standby.

And alll of my contemporaries seem to have phones, though some, those not having had the dubious benefit of a career in IT perhaps, may not make the best use of them.

At Microsoft 'unlimited cloud storage' really means one terabyte

Windows Phone PR cockup

One of the benefits of Windows phone was the option of automatic backup to the (then free) 15GB Onedrive cloud storage which, on 32GB phone, is about right. Reducing that to 5GB strikes me as shooting yourself in the foot which you have just put in your mouth. OK, you can take out an Office365 family subsciption you then get 1TB storage each for up to five people. But, really, what a PR cockup.