Posts by agurney

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

Computers in schools at the time were of course pitched at the how-to-drive a word processor level; and all rather a wasted exercise...

I beg to differ - in the 1980s I was with a group teaching with a variety of kit; there were Amstrads and IBM PCs for business applications, BBC micros for programming, Apple Macintoshes for graphic design, and yet more BBCs for CNC machining.

The resource was shared across all schools in the area and catered for all abilities.

A lot of the educational software at the time was cr*p, so a part of our remit was to evaluate what was available, develop our own courses (and software if necessary), and share our experiences.

So, hopefully not a wasted exercise.

Not to dis your diskette, but there are some unexpected sector holes

Re: Such memories...

When I ran out of floppies and cash I used to punch extra index holes and notches in the sleeve and insert them in the drive upside down - I was able to convert many single sided floppies to double that way.

When forgetting to set a password for root is the least of your woes

Re: Hitting Enter....

Shouldn't that be fill the keyboard buffer G.10G.10:G.10... ?

Hitting Enter would expand it to GOTO 10:GOTO 10 .. overwriting the sound buffer causing the chaos.

Similar fun was to be had on the Beeb with VDU CTRL codes to change graphics modes and the like on demo programs that should have less accepting of their input.

Crack team of boffins hash out how e-scooters should sound – but they need your help*

No, not that new-fangled thing. Gossip, the only method known to man for moving information faster than the speed of light .

.. or as I've heard it: What's fastest, Telephone, Telegram or Tell-a-woman?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5IKthNYhVY

Massive rugby ball-shaped planet emerges from scrum of space 'scope sightings

I originally saw this reported on CNN with the headline "This giant exoplanet is so 'deformed' it looks like a football" .. and skipped it because, well, don't they all?

Phone jammers made my model plane smash into parked lorry, fumes hobbyist

Re: Failsafe?

If it goes out of range, wouldn't the best failsafe course of action to be to turn around?

Not if it's heading home when the signal's lost.

Maker of ATM bombing tutorials blew himself up – Euro cops

Re: You can just ORDER ATMs???

I read it as the dealers run their own cash machines and stuff them with the cash they want laundered.

Go to L: A man of the cloth faces keyboard conundrum

To be fair to the dingbats, Iona is a fairly common name in Scotland.

Three thousand sea birds abandon nests amid nature reserve drone crash hullabaloo

A sparrowhawk recently caught itself in netting in our garden. We called the RSPB for advice and/or help, but they didn't want to know and suggested we contact the SSPCA.

The RSPB seem to be more interested in land preservation and pushing their agenda in the countryside.

[btw, the SSPCA were helpful and the hawk was released unharmed, much to the chagrin of the local song birds]

Chrome 90 goes HTTPS by default while Firefox injects substitute scripts to foil tracking tech

Re: No, this is wrong

It may be zero cost and seamless from your provider, but some providers 'make' you pay through the nose (e.g. >£50 annually for a single domain SSL certificate from Heart Internet).

That's fine for businesses, but OTT for a small club or charity website that doesn't collect information or sell stuff online.

Telecoms shack in the middle of Scotland put up for auction at £7,500

That's not the end of the fibre, it runs far closer and there are Openreach crews rolling more out in the area. Wayleave shouldn't be a problem as there are few landowners, and there may even be an existing route to the exchange (though doubtless in pretty poor shape if it's underground).

It's certainly not a Des-Res, with fully loaded timber lorries belting past just all day just a few feet away (when the R&BT isn't shut).

Broadband isn't that far away .. I recently had FTTP installed at a property 6 miles from there (as the crow files).

NASA building network cables that can survive supersonic flight - could this finally deliver unbreakable RJ45 latching tabs?

Re: No need to reinvent the wheel

And yet "railway certified" adds peanuts compared to "gaming". Just imagine how much the two combined would add!

That would be "Marine Grade" then.

When even a power-cycle fandango cannot save your Windows desktop

I completely agree. As a student teacher in the 1970s I was advised of the importance of schools' janitors (caretakers). Sage advice.

One does not simply shove elephants on a ballet shoe point and call it an acceptable measure of pressure

Re: Unexpected Reaction?

They unexpectedly created Lonsdaleite, it's tougher than diamond.

Trouble at Skull-Top Ridge: ESA boffins use data wizardry to figure out Philae probe's second touchdown site

Re: Frothy?

If the boulder is that soft, how came that the probe bounced instead of simply sinking in?

Temperature - have you never noticed that soft scoop ice cream straight from the freezer is still rock hard?

We've heard some made-up stories but this is ridiculous: Microsoft Flight Simulator, Bing erect huge skyscraper out of bad data

Re: Storey not story

Not to the west-pondians it isn't.

Wisepay 'outage' is actually the school meal payments biz trying to stop an intruder from stealing customer card details

One advantage of the cashless system is that all youngsters use the same method - there is no distinction between subsidised/free/paid which (in theory) removes the stigma associated with being seen to have free school meals.

Spain's highway agency is monitoring speeding hotspots using bulk phone location data

Re: Perhaps the answer...

My adaptive cruise control car is a (not top of the range) Skoda. It's not a Tesla, it doesn't steer for me, it's 20th century cruise control but with the benefit that it maintains a minimum distance from the vehicle in front; perfect for those long slow road works with average speed cameras.

Re: Perhaps the answer...

Adaptive cruise control is one answer - it maintains a suitable distance from the vehicle ahead, but stops you going over a set speed.

Re: Railway Lines?

I regularly drive the length of Spain and it's a refreshing change from blighty.

With few exceptions, everyone drives on the right; they signal, pull out, overtake, and return to the right leaving the left lane(s) free (except rush hour around Madrid).

Last time I returned from a visit the traffic in the UK looked similar .. on the A3 most folk drove on the right, and on the M25 they drove on the right and over/undertook on the left albeit with less courtesy than the Spanish.

England's COVID-tracking app finally goes live after 6 months of work – including backpedal on how to handle data

For what it's worth

Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own tracing apps, too, for what it's worth.

Living in Scotland it's worth a helluva lot more to me than England's.

0ops. 1,OOO-plus parking fine refunds ordered after drivers typed 'O' instead of '0'

Re: good grief

Erm.....?? ERM 29C my first car, a red MK I mini I owned as a student.

RM: Carlisle

C: 1965

What the duck? Bloke keeps getting sent bathtime toys in the post – and Amazon won't say who's responsible

Re: As funny as this is...

Firstly just tell the delivery driver that you hadn't ordered anything from Amazon and simply refuse to accept delivery on the basis that you didn't place the order...

That doesn't work during Covid - delivery drivers are just leaving goods on doorsteps, maybe taking a photo as proof of delivery in lieu of a signature, then ringing the doorbell and scarpering. By the time I get to the door they're already in the their van ready to go.

Spotted the ISS in the sky yet? How about pulling out some spare kit and giving it a listen?

Re: Rats

Radiofax (aka WEFAX) is still alive and kicking, and is used to transmit weather charts.

US starts sniffing around UK spaceports – though none capable of vertical launches actually exist right now

Re: Film

There's also "Rockets Galore", based on Compton MacKenzie's follow up to "Whisky Galore".

It is unclear why something designed to pump fuel into a car needs an ad-spewing computer strapped to it, but here we are

I tried something like that recently and got a ticking off.

HSE guidelines refer to constant control being required and latches not being wedged open: https://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg216.htm

Police drone fliers' wings clipped to prevent them bumping into real aircraft

Re: Mixed measurements

Why is altitude given in feet while horizontal distance is given in metres?

It's metres, because if the drones had a decent range they'd use the preferable nautical miles.

;)

Oh Hell. Remember the glory days of Demon Internet? Well, now would be a good time to pick a new email address

Re: "Another bemoaned the hammering of yet another nail in the coffin of Blighty's ISP past"

It IS worth moaning about and getting all misty eyed over .. that tenner a month for dialup included a static public IP address.

'Peregrine falcon'-style drone swarms could help defend UK against Gatwick copycat attacks

How about training pergrine falcons to attack drones? That'd be a much more eco-friendly solution

.. what would you do when the bad guys start attaching razor blades to the rotors?

<edit> Jan 0 beat me to it..

Radio nerd who sipped NHS pager messages then streamed them via webcam may have committed a crime

Under that clause, is it not the responsibility of the NHS trust in question since it is them that are making the content of the communication system available by broadcasting it in plain text in the first place?

Why should the NHS spend a fortune upgrading their systems just because some scrote has a cheap SDR dongle and chooses to broadcast their pager messages? It may be old technology, but it has wider coverage than mobile telephony.

This is the same as intercepting ambulance, police, fire, coastguard, aircraft etc. radio conversations in the clear .. listening in is illegal but unlikely to lead to prosecution, however acting on those messages or re-transmitting them is the bigger problem.

Calling all the Visual Basic snitches: Keep quiet about it and so will he...

Re: Do the right thing?

I remember reading of a case in the UK, probably in the 90s, where the directors of a small software house were jailed after selling customers an accounts package that contained two sets of books, the real (hidden) ones, and the ones sent to the Revenue.

The one I'm familiar with was in the '80s (courtesy of a close contact in the Customs & Excise computer investigation branch).

An Apple II accounting package was found to have a backdoor .. log in with the regular password and accounts were clean, but append a value, e.g. password10, and that percentage of transactions would be 'lost'.

IIRC the program was written in BASIC, so once suspicions were aroused it wasn't too difficult to find out what was going on.

700km on a single charge: Mercedes says it's in it for the long run

Re: Pony up.

Wasn't 1967 an all-American win (drivers, team and car)?

Right-click opens up terrifying vistas of reality and Windows 95 user's frightful position therein

Icons

Many moons ago I was documenting a CAD program that had been migrated from a terminal UI to a graphical UI.

One icon that had me confused looked like a pair of cat footprints. .. turns out it was Pause (Paws).

I can't remember if it was changed after I pointed out that there may be problems when it came to translating to French or German.

Cu in Hell: Thousands internetless after copper thieves pinch 500m of cable in Cambridgeshire

Re: Simples...

BT should pull up all the copper themselves, sell it off and use the proceeds to lay fibre...

In that order? Should be an interesting challenge.

Teletext Holidays a) exists and b) left 200k customer call recordings exposed in S3 bucket

Re: What muppet recorded the keytones ?

My money is on the call recording software being part of a 20yr old PBX system and the bucket was just a convenient place to dump the calls when the company ceased operations.

The company is still operating.

GIMP open source image editor forked to fix 'problematic' name

Re: Eh?

That is a bit of a spazz wheelchair, doesn't have any arm rests that will also stop you from rubbing / getting caught in the wheels.

I don't want a manually propelled wheelchair that has arm rests.

One person's harmless japery can be another's night of LaserJet Lego

Re: Heavy...

The presenters of the Beechgrove Garden regularly spoke of doing a wee jobby in the greenhouse or potting shed.

(Gardening TV programme broadcast from Aberdeen)

Fantastic Mr Fox? Not when he sh*ts on your lawn, kids' trampoline and your soul

Re: Need to really P!$$ them off so they go elsewhere

I've used a Contech Scarecrow for several years (PIR and water pressure, uses a PP3 battery) that works for foxes, cats, dogs, deer and herons.

I've also added an electric fence around the garden perimeter (powered by solar panel +12v battery) to cover areas that the scarecrow doesn't reach, and for over winter when the scarecrow would be wrecked by frost.

Iran is doing to our networks what it did to our spy drone, claims Uncle Sam: Now they're bombing our hard drives

Re: Imperial v Metric

The US claim that the territorial airspace extends 12 miles off the Iranian coast. The Iranians claim that they have a territorial limit of 22Km. Twelve miles is approx 19300 meters, not 22000 meters. Perhaps both sides are telling their own truth.

12 Nautical Miles IS 22000 metres (well, closer to 22224).

Re: A certain amount of thrashing around going on here....

As for the limit of Iranian territorial waters, that theory won't wash either. It's 12 miles, and there is no controversy about it.

12 US/statute miles = 19.3121 Km

12 Nautical miles = 22.224Km

So, no chance for confusion there.

10 PRINT Memorial in New Hampshire marks the birthplace of BASIC

Re: BBC Basic Bug

...Can't be arsed. What happens?

5.00000007E-2

Re: BBC Basic Bug

I started teaching computing in a lab with a few dozen BBC Bs (+Macintoshes +Amstrads +other shiny stuff )

One of the first introductions I gave the youngsters was to have them enter the following, after working out the answer for themselves beforehand:

PRINT 2.23 - 2.18

The moral being that you don't take anything that a computer tells you for granted .. some things don't change, even after 35+ years.

[If you don't know what it does, try it for yourself on an online beeb emulator]

Nope, we're stuffed, shrieks Apple channel as iPhone shipments enter a double-digit spiral

Re: Have you seen how much a Ferrari costs?

Irrespective of the badge and price, does it address your needs?

To continue the above analogy - I don't care how fast or shiny these cars are .. can I fit a [wheelchair / family / fridge] in the back? If not, I'll keep using my estate (station wagon).

Mystery GPS glitch grounds flights, leaves passengers in the bar

Re: Time

"ADS-B merely blindly transmits a plane's ID and where it is. That's as simple as it gets."

also transmits altitude, speed and heading .. easy to receive and plot with a raspberry Pi and cheap SDR dongle.

HPE lawyers claim Autonomy chief Lynch knew all about 'revenue-pumping' carousel

Re: "fixation on quarterly performance"

The UK has its share of this stupidity, too. (Though perhaps, given that sentiment and greed plays such a part, it is rational if your only interest is to score some cash and run before the house falls down).

Ferranti and International Signal spring to mind.

Brit Parliament online orifice overwhelmed by Brexit bashers

"..nobody"defined what should be an acceptable number for Constitutional Change

The Iron Lady set a precedent for this in 1979 when she insisted that 40% of the electorate be in favour of the Scottish referendum - 51.6% voted yes, but that was only 32% of the electorate.

Buffer overflow flaw in British Airways in-flight entertainment systems will affect other airlines, but why try it in the air?

It's not his lock to pick.