Posts by Nuke 844 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Jun 2007
cornz 1 wrote :-
"Trouble with that is the amount of online shopping done now... ....The days of cash are sadly numbered..."
I don't know why I bother to rise to such tripe, but here goes. Lets wind it back a generation or two to 1950 :-
"Trouble with that is the amount of mail order shopping done now.......It is all done with postal orders and cheques ...The days of cash are sadly numbered..."
My PC is never switched off, it hibernates and comes on with a touch of its button. It does not need "firing up". What are you running, Windows 95?
It is indeed a low priority to upgrade though. As I don't need to play the latest games there is no need to. That is why, in order to sell me something, the marketing droids have to try to persuade me that I need to replace it with a "pad type thing". Good luck with that.
Wrote : "BT has not changed it's attitude towards either it's customers or it's competition since the days it was nominally in public ownership."
I don't agree, it is much worse. I do not recall that the nationalised BT charged you a "processing fee" for you to pay your own bill as they do now.
Wrote : "Personally, I put letters like that back in the post with a label over the address, but without postage. The idea is that only when it starts to cost something, companies will pay attention."
Can you explain that? You put a label over your own address? So is BT's address pre-printed on the back, and if so you are assuming it will go back to them and they be charged for the return postage?
I am not sure it will work like that. As long as you really are at your address, I believe that *you* could be charged for the return postage because the Post Office have already done their job properly.
Of course, if BT were to use a pre-paid return envelope, use that (but they don't work that way, being a phone company). I send loads of mailshots like that back, often adding more stuff to get the weight into the next cost bracket. Depending on context I remove anything to identify myself.
I also make a note of mail spammers "Freepost" addresses - you can use any envelope for those. I have a large collection of unused pre-addressed envelopes (they come with electricity bills etc but I pay on-line) and I once sent about a fifty of them back to a mail spammer using labels I printed myself with their Freepost address. I am not sure how far you can go with this - could I put one on a parcel with a few house bricks in it, does anyone know?
h4rm0ny wrote :- "It's a requirement by Microsoft to get your Windows 8 sticker for your x86 device, that the user be able to disable secure boot."
Is that a fact? Can you give a reference for that please ? (I am not being sarcastic, it would be helpful, I'd like to see the wording, thanks)
Badvok wrote :-
>>>>
Please ignore a lot of the nonsense spouted about BIOS lock or as it is correctly called: UEFI Secure Boot.......It doesn't stop you installing some other OS on a PC that is 'Designed for Windows 8'! (You will be able to turn it off in the UEFI configuration screen for most PCs though I suspect there may be a few manufacturers that will hide that option to get a better deal from MS, you'll just need to be a bit more careful what kit you buy).
<<<<
That's a pious hope. "Being careful" about what kit you buy immediately rules out most potential users who have bought a PC from Currys and one day want to give Linux a try - that is how most people start a change to Linux and MS hate it. Even I, who has built my own PC's for years, often find it difficult or impossible to find facts on a particular piece of kit no matter how careful I am - makers change chipsets and BIOS versions all the time and don't seem to make any one particular motherboard for longer than a month or so.
And you can take a safe bet that those makers won't be bothered to provide the UEFI key to their kit, or if they do it will be lost somewhere in the supply chain and not reach the end-buyer. As long as Windows works, they will consider it "Job done", even *IF* MS is not leaning on them.
Wrote :-
>> "Never disclosed them"? You're quite sure that Microsoft did not even tell Amdocs? Or do you just mean "never disclosed them in a way that allowed YOU to find out the particulars"?<<
Yes, he did mean the latter. What matters is that MS never disclosed the identity of the patent to the PUBLIC; this is not just about the GP poster's nosiness, as you imply. Since the whole patent system is meant to be in the public interest, and part of the idea is to make things public (ie the patent itself is published and not kept a trade secret) it would seem logical to me that in any case like this the identity of the invoked patent *should* be revealed publically. The law should be changed to require this.
>> As for "arguing the legitimacy of those patents" well then presumably a company the size of Amdocs has access to qualified legal assistance, and were advised to take a license.<<
Being advised to pay up does not equal the patents being legitimate. There are many possible reasons for paying up, such as the legal costs and time delays, not to mention the risk of a clueless judge and jury getting it wrong.
Those guys need shooting.
I moved out of a house leaving it empty for 8 months, but calling weekly to collect mail. A week after I moved out the TV licence there expired.
Over that 8 months there were 20-30 threatening letters from them about renewing my license. I did not respond, as I did not see why I should have to pay for a stamp or phone call to humour their paranoia.
I saw their position as that of a shopkeeper with a display on the pavement. Easy to steal from maybe, and even though I don't, the grocer comes running after me demanding that I prove that I did not steal anything.
F#'k off! grocer/TVlicensing. If you think you have a case against me, pursue it through legal channels, then I will get costs from you afterwards.
Funny thing is, their letters went in a cycle, getting increasingly hysterical and threatening for about 4-6 weeks, then silence for two weeks, then starting over again. Kept threatening to visit, but I don't think they ever did as surely they would have put some kind of note through the door, if only to show their threats were not entirely empty?
If only they had enclosed a pre-paid envelope (at much less cost than their posts to me) I would have replied. They said I could use their web site, and I tried it. It was lousy and after about 15 minutes of following dead-end links, I got to a page that said if the house became unoccupied then I should phone them anyway.
Graham Marsden wrote :- "I, as an atheist, say that you are free to believe whatever you want to, just as everyone else is free to believe what they want."
That does not follow from atheism as you imply. An atheist believes there is no God. He may or may not insist that others believe like him.
The novels "Nineteen Eighty Four" and "Brave New World" both describe atheist regimes which did not tolerate any religious beliefs.
I can only recall one case of male rape by a female in the UK media, ever. It was some years ago, when you claim it was not illegal. Perhaps they charged her with assault rather than rape.
I don't think that the rarity of media reports of male rape is because the media lack interest - in fact there was huge media interest in the case. I recall that she was assisted by a male friend who tied the guy on his back to a bed.
"Due to the nature of their work, spooks rarely get much in the way of public recognition. "
The reason the Bletchley group did not get recognition is that Churchill did not want the impression to get about that the enemy was beaten by a small group of eggheads solving puzzles and getting a bit lucky. He wanted, especially as war with Russia was a distinct possibility in the late 40's, to leave the impression that it was entirely due to superior military ability.
Nor did he want to shift the honour from the many 1000's of soldiers who had died or been maimed in direct military operations onto a small group of boffins, whom most of the public would perceive as column-dodgers who had enjoyed an easy war in a country house.
I am not trying to be disparaging of the Bletchley achievement. I knew one of those guys (John Saltmarsh, when he was old) personally.
Nice troll Crashtest. Perhaps you would care to support your argument with reason rather than just appealing to the notion that any change must be for the good.
The way evolution works is to move towards an optimum for a particular environment. <car analogy>Cars evolved to having steering wheels (from tillers) that made the car go right when turned clockwise by about 1900 and stayed that way since. You are going to tell us that in your car you have reversed the steering wheel direction or replaced it by buttons let and right in the roof that you hit with your head, because to be different must be better? </car analogy>
Actually, there have been quite a few comments that in many ways Windows 8 looks like a reversion to Windows v3.1, not an evolution.
ElReg!comments!Pierre wrote :- "What you read in my comment does not seem to match what I actually typed"
Perhaps I was reading into it more than you meant.
Westlake's effective main point was that there was no alternative to MS in getting personal computing off the ground. You seemed to agree with him, and in saying so seemed to suggest that anyone else around before 1998 would agree with him too.
I was around before 1998 however and did not agree with his main point, and that is what I meant by commenting that different people can witness the same thing, live through the same events, but see it differently and come out of it with different opinions - even at the time let alone 30 years after. I did bridle a bit at the implication that anyone who did not accept the Westlake viewpoint must be a 13yo fanboy.
Sorry if I mis-interpreted your post; perhaps the thread had got derailed a bit.
Someone rightly wrote :
>> Now, I know if it wasn't MS it would have been someone else, <<
Westlake replied :
>Who? .. MSDOS at retail was $50. 1/5 the price of CP/M-86, <
That was because CP/M 86 was a minority OS, sold as an alternative to the default MSDOS. If Digital Research had got the IBM contract, you do not seriously think that IBM would have tolerated it being such a price? In exchange for the huge default markert IBM were offering (and MS got instead) DR would have been only too happy to reduce the price, given that it costs very little to make further copies of software. Like the 8-bit CP/M on my home computer at the time was a "free" accessory.
I remember the excitement and relief when IBM came into the PC market. It legitimised PCs for normal office work (as opposed to being for games or highly technical work). Where I worked in an engineering department, before the IBM PC our directors looked askance at my group having a mini-computer (PDP-11) as they considered it a toy and suspected we played games on it (at lunch time we did); the IBM PC changed that attitude.
And we (I am talking about me and the other techies) knew that *whatever* OS and other software IBM chose would become a unifying standard - whether it had been written by MS, DR , DEC or any other company.
ElReg!comments!Pierre wrote
"Thank you for showing that there are still people here who were around before 1998.
I was beginning to think that ElReg audience now consisted only of 13-year-old fanboys of various factions."
Well for me you can multiply 13 a few times, but I still don't entirely agree with Westlake. Funny you should think that everyone who witnesses the same thing should all agree on how it was. Perhaps you will come to learn human nature better.
No Gates was not responsible for "putting a PC on every desk". Zylog, Alan Sugar, and Gary Kildall were maybe responsible for mine, for example. The idea of a personal computer for everyone was already well established before Gates happened to get a contract to supply software for a particular IBM project.
I was around at that time and most guys I knew already had some type of home computer. Those other types did fall by the wayside because of Wintel PCs, but there is no question that the market for desktop computers was going ballistic with or without Gates, IBM or any other individual or company.
I maintain that Gates retarded the development of desktop PCs with his buggy software. Most people accepted it as they had never seen any better, but those who had regarded DOS and Wintel with contempt; but for a time there was little or no alternative.
I'm assuming you are not being ironic; others have taken you at face value too.
Gates is pathetic on stage. He just comes over as a burbling geek, or like a lowly MS employee who has suddenly been thrust in front of the cameras. The only reason people listen to him is because they know he [still, just about] has some influence so it is politic to know what he is thinking. Surely only the hardest MS fanboys listen because they actually admire him.
He is hopeless at thinking on his feet. Depart from the script and he deflates like a baloon. Look at this :-
www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5y_Mu1vVKo&feature=related
I am not blaming him for the technical failure, but for the fact that he was completely incapable of handling the situation. Anyone in a public position like his should have come out with aplomb.
Wrote "@AnonymousCoward - Why be so negative? Log burners are great unless you are a total slob who can't be bothered to do anything worthwhile."
Why are you so negative about AnonymousCoward? The guy is only pointing out that logs cost money. They also cost the environment - chopping down trees (the very icon of "greeness") to turn them into smoke and CO2.
And what do you mean by "worthwhile"?
Wrote " Even at 10kw it's probably cheaper than filling a bath - boiling water on demand is often more efficient than having a hot water tank - so your 'bath' could cost even more"
Depends how you have a bath. "FILL" a bath? I bath in about 4 inches of water, I kneel in it.
OTOH, my boss noticed that his teenage daughter's showers lasted for ages, so he timed her by the sound of it. Afterwards (by testing himself for that time with the bath plug in) he found it was enough to fill the bath to overflowing. He pulled the shower fuse after that.
There is also a cultural difference. I am of a generation that was brought up to have a bath once a week, plus a shower in the pavillion after sports. Now however I know people who think it normal to have two, three or even four showers every day. It is too convenient to have a shower.
As for hot water on demand, I have a washbasin heater like that. Often, after running hot for 5 seconds, it will decide I've had enough hot water and switch off the heat, making the water too cold to use - so that water and electricity is wasted.
Wrote :- ""why? and how? are you so much of a scrimper that you read by torch light, rather than waste money on that new fangled electrickery? ... I've binned all mine and bought new LED toys with the money saved from not buying batteries."
The torch *does* run on new fangled electrickery. Are you American and think a torch is a thing like the Olympic flame? It is a flashlight to you.
Why? - I use it when I go out to lock up the sheds last thing; what do most people use torches for?
How? By switching it on by means of its switch; how else?
I hardly ever buy batteries, I use rechargeables. The electricity this PC is using while I type this reply is probably more than the torch uses in a month. Even if I got paranoid about energy saving there are far more serious things to address than a torch.
When the marketing droids announce a newer LED technology (as they will keep doing) will you toss away all your torches again, and again, and again? You, sir, are a paragon of the throwaway age.
Wrote :- "Alternatively, maybe the oldies just run Linux?"
Yes, I just run Linux.
One reason oldies are more careful is that, believe it or not, they were more hard up when young than the present younger generation is. Credit cards did not exist either, except American Express for the very rich. My daughter "has no money" but nevertheless would not dream of buying a second hand car or not getting the garage to do any work on it. A new car would have been unthinkable to most 20-30yo's before c1990.
Every time my daughter moves between flats (often) she leaves half her stuff behind because she can't be bothered with the hassle (clothes, cameras, cooking stuff). OTOH I still have some crockery that I know my *grandfather* bought second-hand when he first left home - it is quality stuff, tough, never chips, and has survived while newer crockery has come, broken and gone.
Things used to be of better quality, and correspondingly more expensive, although they had less frills. Furniture was solid wood, not chipboard crap. Buying a torch for example took a much greater % of your wage than today, it would have been an event, but it would have had "Made in Britain" proudly on it and if it failed in about the first year you would have taken it back to the shop, who would have been most anxious to deal with it to preserve their and the brand reputation. (I daily use a torch my father bought in 1960). Today, the younger generation will just toss something that does not work, even on the day they bought it (looking at my daughter again).
I have always been careful, even when young, and have never had anything stolen in my life; it's just my nature.
OTOH I do not insure anything except the car - don't want to subsidise all those careless people out there.
I have a Psion II on my desk now, although I have just retired it after 21 years of daily use. It has been brilliant, and seemed indestructable, especially compared with much of today's tat. Some of the button legends are wearing thin.
Its only weakness was the lack of a back-up battery while you changed the main one (corrected in Series 3). It kept its data for a minute(?), I guess by means of an internal capacitor.
I was pretty nifty at changing the main battery (needed about every 3 months) within about 10 seconds. But in the last two changes I lost all my data. I think this must have been because the capacitor is losing its capacity after 20 years.
Thank goodness it used a standard PP3 9v battery form. Most devices nowadays seem to use a special battery form for which it is almost impossible to find a replacement when it fails after about 2 years, or if you do the replacement is such rubbish that it then fails after about 2 months.
This is getting deep, but it was JDX who brought up the subject of Linux. The post (by The BigYin) he was criticising made no mention of it. I think both their posts have good points except for the straw man that JDX raises in his second sentence.
There are vendor neutral, platform neutral and free languages available in both Windows and Linux. Perl, Python, and C for example.
No matter what people say about programming skills being transferable between languages, people get attached to the first one they learn. So it IS a concern if MS get them hooked on C# for example.
h4rm0ny wrote :- "if you don't want to keep typing "compilers, linkers and debuggers...", you might just refer to as 'programming products'"
Maybe, but GP was right. "Product" is marketing droids' language. .
A geek would have said "MS languages", "MS stuff", "MS software", "MS IDEs", or even "MS development suites" - anything but "MS programming products".
Because I learned the times tables by rote at about 8 years old, I am hard wired with them. As soon as I saw your 7*8 I saw 56. The rest of your line was redundant.
We seemed to spend a lot of time learning the tables, but it probaby only seemed that way to an 8yo, and I am very glad we did.
I only use short cut calculations like yours for things out of the 12x12 range.
JetSetJim wrote :- "Wiring a plug is almost redundant now with mandated pre-moulded plugs that can only have the fuse replaced. Can't remember the last time I took one apart"
You are easily satisfied. I rarely find the supplied plug and lead are the right length, usually too short. So I either have to wire an in-line extension (trickier than a plug) or I take the new appliance apart and fit a longer cable.to which I fit a wireable plug (from my stock of cable and plugs), throwing away the original - what a waste of resources, especially the copper (but see note below). No, I dont like extension leads for appliances that are to be fixed.
For example I have a Black and Decker hot air stripper, the lead of which is to short to allow me to reach the picture rail or upper part of a door with it plugged into a normal wall socket (do these manufactures ever try their own stuff for real?). I don't want the weight of an extension socket hanging when I am stripping a picture rail.
I also like to have the same design of plug throughout my house, a solid quality design. Many of the re-wirable ones are the cheapest crap the appliance maker can source.
Note : I do keep the original cable for the guarantee period to replace if I need to return it.
Note 2 : Why the hell aren't appliances supplied with chassis plugs so we can buy a lead of required length separately (which could then be non-rewirable)?
Wrote :- "No; but I think open-source projects should consider using licenses that disallow uses that the contributors to those projects would be unhappy about."
That would be unworkably complex. Let's see just some things I am unhappy about -: out-of-town shopping centres replacing high streets, Antarctica being used for tourism, tractors used to clear rainforest, cars being used for drug smuggling, lorries being used for heavy freight insteat of railways ... do I need to go on with a few hundred more things that make me unhappy??
As it happens, I don't have an issue with putting a rocket into a Somali pirate boat, for example.
The point is, not my particular issues, but the fact that everybody will have loads of different ones. The thing would soon get unworkable.
AC wrote :- "The other issue with using tape at home is that you have to have two tape drives, one kept offsite, in case your house burns down"
Why? You don't need to buy a new tape drive until the house actually burns down.
Need to keep an eye open that you can still buy drives to suit your tape though. Years ago I used to do back-ups on a Sparq external drive with removable disks. Then Syquest were taken over by Iomega who sold the rival Zip drive system, and they canned Sparq drives. So I had to ditch my working Sparq drive because I could no longer have bought another one to restore my files if my kit was all lost.
Now I use a Travan tape drive to back up.
Anyone else here played Theme Hospital? One of the complaints patients came in for was "Bloaty Head Syndrome". In fact it was the most common complaint.
The cure was to stick a pin in it and it went down with a bang like a burst baloon.
It seems that Theme Hospital was set in the future.
Explosion Icon
Agreed.
I have been acquainted with military aircraft electronics and there is a similar ridiculous situation. More "traditional" electronics, like the auto-pilot, get lots of space in a regular shape (like cuboid), and the auto-pilot designers refuse to relinquish any of it whatsover and have no incentive to cut it down. OTOH, when some new type of electronics comes along, it has to make do with the left-over tiny awkward shaped spaces like curved wedges - sometimes split between widely separated areas.
If BT cannot get the size down, they should put it underground. Why should they be allotted public space anyway in what should be a highway, not a space for an unrelated fixed installation? At least the street lights that people keep mentioning are to do with the highway.
Would BT be paying for this ground area?
To Hell with BT. Usually they get a thoroughly deserved arse-kicking in these discussions - why not today?
And no, I don't live in K&C, but this applies anywhere.
There is no good reason at all why this stuff cannot be put underground. Mains electrical junctions are underground. Gas junctions are underground. Water connections are underground. Around Bristol, the fibre and its connections put in 10(?) years ago are underground. Many existing copper telcom connections are underground.
But BT want this chance of some new installations to save themselves from, what? - lifting a manhole cover rather than hinging a door open? Are they all pussies these days? Go to Hell, BT.
Obviously! wrote :-
"Wow! What a big stink about nothing. Does it matter? NO.
Some bloke banging on about an pic he took nearly 10 years ago!"
You have completely missed the point. The point is that a picture that is untrue to the situation was published, a very strong image that may rouse people to strong opinions or action, serious action (like supporting war) that is unjustified. It certainly does matter.
A similar situation occurred in the early stages of WW1 when the British Government encouraged false rumours that German soldiers invading Belgium were chopping babies' limbs off; this was to get the British public to accept total military involvement in Belgium and Northern France
The issue of copyright is trivial by comparison. Doesn't sound to me that the photographer was "banging on" about it. Sounds like a journalist contacted him t tell him about it and his reaction was to say he was "astonished" by it. Sounds like a reasonable reaction to me.
Wrote :-
"I wish there were more scientists in power, though there has been one major exception in the past...."
Mrs Thatcher, worked in food science after leaving uni I understand. Yet in power she hated science and technology. I was working in one of the engineering industries that she sent to the wall.
Basically, having changed careers herself, she looked down on the losers (as she saw them) that she had left behind, and had it in for them, perhaps subconsciously wanting to justify her career move. Also maybe revenge for having been the lab junior, making the tea and clearing up. We all went through that stage.
I am not sure what the answer is.
Wrote :-
"Usually [torque] is measured in kilogram/centimetres. Surely kilogram/meters would be a more common measure of torque in engineering?"
Indeed. Centimeters are a dressmakers' unit. In my engineering industry we use microns, millimeters, meters, and kilometers. I understand that the SI recommend factors of 1000 between preferred units in this way.
However, in volume, the centimeter does appear because we go : cubic mm, cc (cubic centimeter), litre (cubic decimeter) and cubic meter, because these volumes are also factors of 1000 apart.
OTOH there is not enough attention being given in this discussion to the BVS (British Vernacular System) which for length goes : thickness of a human hair, the lengths of a matchbox, a London bus, and a football pitch, the circumference of the Earth, and from here to the Moon and back. These lengths deliberately have no rational relationship to each other and are not to be confused with the units of >height< which involve Nelson's Column etc.
Alan Dougherty wrote :- "The 'company' cannot see a large consumption if the meter has been bypassed."
I understood that point. The GP post made it.
My point was to question what is going on inside the heads of the electricity company. Because even if we assume that it does not occur to the company that the crooks bypass the meter, what would a Smart Meter tell the company that the quarterly reading would not? There would be a lot of consumption evident in any case.
Wrote :- "BC Hydro [claimed] that it would "help catch marijuana grow-ops" among other things (how? grow-ops bypass the meter)"
Even if they did not by-pass the meter, why did the company think a Smart Meter would make a difference? The game would be given away by the large consumption, as on the quarterly bill, for the type of premises, wouldn't it?
FrankAlphaXII wrote :- "in the UK. Can you guys go outside and check your own meters?"
Outside? To hell with that, most here are inside (except newest houses where it is a carbuncle on the front wall). The company keeps nagging me to convert to an outside one, which is ironic as these days they expect me to take my own readings most of the time (but I get a discount for that). When their own monkeys do read it they get it wrong half the time - I am not exagerating, that is the track record so far where I now live.
The older meters had a wheel you could see turning, and you could instantly see the speed changing. I remember helping my father by switching things on and off around the house while he timed the wheel - doing years ago just what is now being touted as a bright idea.
However, newer meters are wonderful wonderful digital and mine only changes every whole kWh. With that it is not practicable to "see" what you are consuming at any moment.
Years ago Which? magazine looked into a telephone meter that displayed the rising cost of a call while you were making it.
Many of their respondents said that they were surprised how LITTLE the call was costing them minute by minute, and hung on for longer than they would have done without the meter!
Of course, all those "little cost" calls added up and at the end of the quarter their bills were higher than ever.
AC wrote : "By the end of the day that it launches Win8 will be running on a larger number of PCs than Linux has been installed on."
So we mustn't discuss a new release of Windows, or compare it with Linux or anything else because there are more copies of Windows than Linux?
Like we shouldn't discuss a new Ford model, or compare it with a Chrysler or any other car, because there are more Fords around than Chryslers?
Not sure I get your point or follow your logic.
You are being funny, right?
".... interactive live tiles bursting with useful information ....."
........ priceless!!!! You should be on the stage! It was when I read that part that I went bursting with coffee over keyboard. Worth it though - I am going to remember that soundbite for a long, long time.
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