Posts by hoofie 63 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Jun 2017
Having been to a few HamFests, it's amazing the utter tat and junk people will try to flog off. Fair enough if it's something that's actually useful like test gear or microwave components [pre-amps, converters etc not things to heat pies in] but a lot of it is busted old tat.
The technology was also kept in the UK - evidence of this is the great strides the UK made in computing in the 1950s.
However the WW2 work was kept hyper secret for decades which included the technology used as we didn't want others [mainly the Russians] to know that the capability existed.
Computing was greatly boosted in the US by the torrents of money pouring into the various weapon programs in the US in the 1950s and also the space program in the 1960s - something that did not happen in war-exhausted and financially buggered Britan. When the Goverment basically pays for all your R&D it's piss-easy to then bring out commeral products.
At the end of WW2 the US emerged as a financial and military superpower with it's economy and industry firing on all cylinders - whereas the UK was bomb-damaged and almost bankrupt.
Someone has the same story on PPRUNE about RAF provided Officer accomodation. On moving in the person concerned found they had wall to wall carpeting - bonus ! When it was determined their lowly status didn't permit this [Wing Commanders only and above etc.] someone came round and trimmed the carpets back....
Can't say I ever took any drugs apart from a puff of weed now and then and I can't say I was a huge punk fan [more of a New Romantics thing for me] but Prodigy were utterly f***ing brilliant.
"Fat of the Land" was a monster seller because it was just full of excellent music with an energy that was incredible.
RIP Keith - sounds like a good bloke who just decided he didn't want to be part of life anymore.
Java pushed off the mobile environment ? Well yes because it was diabolically crap.
Oracle had the driving seat for this and completely blew it whilst Google came up the rail and shot into the distance. Oracle were too busy working out how much money they could squeeze out of it to see the bigger picture.
I'm seeing more and more projects and products move to OpenJDK just because they they don't want to have their balls gripped by Oracle and are worried that it's going to cost them a licence to use it. Docker is a case in point - I can pull an OpenJDK image but if I want Java 8 from Oracle I have to "checkout" and agree to all my details being supplied.
No doubt Her Majestys Customs and Revenue are watching on from the sidelines rather interested. Why spend all that money trying to nail Uber if some other muppet is trying to do it for you ?
I've got f-all sympathy for this chap - happy to rely on crowd-funding rather than his own money but doesn't like it when it all goes tits-up. I think he forgot that sometimes the Courts don't do what you want. He also deserves it solely for his Brexit work but that's an aside.
Note : Whilst Uber do offer a service [I use them myself as they are much better than thieving taxi drivers here in Australia who drive old shit-boxes] I am happy to see them cough up more money to the Treasury.
When I worked at a semiconductor plant many years ago, platinum targets were used in the sputtering machines to coat the silicon wafers in platinum which was used as a contact layer between the silicon and the aluminuim interconnects on the wafer surface. The targets then in 1986 were 5 figures in quid and the size of a paperback.
Anyway the sputter chamber [which use plasma to convert the platinum into a vapour which condenses on the silicon and was about 2x the size of an oven] ended up coated in platinum which needs to be carefully removed by technicians. It turned out said technicians were hiding the extremely thin platinum shavings in their bunny suits and then selling it to a dodgy scrap dealer in the town. This was scientific grade platinum which is much purer than bullion.
Also re the value of wafers in production. An engineer once put a wafer carrier with 25 wafers in a box in a centrifuge but didn't locate them properly. When it spun up the inevitable happened - tinkle tinkle [silicon wafers are EXTREMELY brittle as they are crystalline. The problem was this was test batch for a production line commisioning which meant rather a lot of machine time and efforts ended up in fragments. He was not popular...
I worked there as a "Graduate Engineer" [well not quite - did it in the summer holidays etc] in 1986-88 or so when it was National Semiconductor. I worked first on the 4 inch Fabrication line and then later on in the shiny and new 6 inch Fabrication line.
The local ladies who worked on the fabrication lines were great but some of them were rather "down to earth" and liked the idea of fresh meat being thrown to them. Since everyone was wearing clean room gear [bunny suits etc] you learned to recognise people by the shape of their arses.
I lived in Gourock for a while and had some crazy evenings in the pubs there in Summer.
Very fond memories of a great time.
Glad to hear it's been thrown a lifeline.
In the 1990's I used a to fly a lot between the UK and the Middle East and other points.
Believe me there was nothing better than climbing up the stairs, noting the big RR [Rolls Royce] symbol on the engine cowlings and the Union Jack coloured tail fin.
Onboard the staff were immaculate, the service good and efficient. Best of all - booze. Very welcome after 3 months in a dry country. The drinks trolley was being pushed up the aisle as soon as the wheels left the ground. "Gin and Tonic Sir ? Certainly, here's a handful of minatures to start with".
Finally you knew the pilot was almost certainly called Nigel and had already spent years piloting Her Majesty's finest Military Aircraft around Europe and other places before moving across to the civilian side.
Finally there was Concorde - a sublime experience that made Johnny Foreigner green with envy [especially the Yanks] and was the equivalent of a smack between the eyes with a picture of the Queen. The rot started when Concorde stopped - at that point they became just another bus company.
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