Posts by Mike Tubby 69 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Aug 2007
What about us TRS80 and Video Genie-II types?
My Video-Genie-II was hacked with a Z80B running at 6.144MHz, had 64MB RAM and ran LDOS 7 from a 5.25" double-sided 80 track floppy...
After that a BBC model B with a external 6502 CPU (over-clocked until the Plessy ASIC got hot of course) with homebrew hard-disk controller, Shugart 501 HDD controller and a second-hand Rodime 20Mb hard disk drive...
After that it was a PDP11/23 and Ultix ;-)
But... what's the weight in Sheep? Come-on... we have used Sheep in the Standard Model for some time now... usually for height, but they also have an average weight of 58Kg according to the Welsh Halfbred Sheep Association.
So... what's the saving that BT are going to make in standard Welsh Halfbread Adult Ewes?
Mike
Unless I'm missing something... " The government is quite happy to legislate that people can lose two demerit points for having music up too loud in their cars..." if I loose two *DE*merit points then I gain two points!!
What do points make? PRIZES!
Mike (tongue firmly in cheek)
... why Paris? Because she probably doesn't know the meaning of "double negative" lol
There was a weak aurora around 1-2AM local time this morning that didn't amount to much.... few ham radio signals from Scandinavia were copyable here in Blighty.
This page:
http://dx.qsl.net/propagation/
has a useful "Aurora Activity" diagram approx half way down the page which is built up from statistical information gathered from satellites by NOAA.
Bottom of the page has a colour world map that shows the extent of the auroral oval - two bright green lines at the stop of the map.
Mike G8TIC
Not sure where Homeboy gets his idea that "... the UK opted for it, but no-one else did..."
DAB was an European project (Eureka 147 if my memory serves) and was a technological leap forward for all members of the project.
The *majority* of Europe has DAB service:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Broadcasting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Digital_Audio_Broadcasting.svg
Mike
Yes, if £150m spend would fix it then that's what it should (perhaps) do... well at least consult and discuss.
How much would it save by de-comissioning all LW and MW sites? Both in terms of:
* rental (land, equipment)
* service charges (Arqiva)
* electricity
* distribution network
... I bet its a lot!!
I can see no point in having "half a delivery platform" ?
Mike
I am a relatively "early adopter" of DAB and have had two Blaupunkt Woodstock DAB radios in various cars over the last 5-6 years.
DAB was rolled out to main BBC sites but the program of secondary and tertiary fill-in transmitters still does not appear to be complete. As a consequence there are many significant stretches of main roads and motorways without coverage from the BBC Mux. Likewise, in the centre of Worcester (my home city) there is little coverage.
My tuner spends more time on 693 and 909 for Radio 5 Live than it does on DAB!
I wrote to the BBC regarding poor coverage in Worcester and around M1/J33-J36 and got a fairly "snotty" reply saying that they could not guarantee coverage for various reasons.
How can Auntie Beeb decry a lack of uptake when it has only half-delivered the goods? What we need is for the Beeb to get their finger out - and:
a) complete rollout of the network and provide UNIVERSAL coverage, ie. to a handheld device *ANYWHERE* in the UK mainland
b) turn off the medium-wave and long-wave transmitters and save pumping hundreds of kilowatts of RF in to the ether and "go green"
This would result in:
* significant uptake of DAB (by phasing out MW/LW)
* improved quality of radio programs
* save huge sums of money (by decommissioning MW/LW) - just the electricity bill alone!!
* allow Auntie Beeb to claim green credentials
Mike
Zen Internet, ADSL2+ 14Mbps Sync with exchange (1.3Km distant)... this lunchtime *very* sllllooooowwwwww and dropped packets:
root@cruella:~# traceroute dns.thorcom.net
traceroute to dns.thorcom.net (193.82.116.5), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 router-zen.tubby.org (82.68.212.70) 1.520 ms 1.736 ms 2.336 ms
2 losubs.subs.dsl2.wh-man.zen.net.uk (62.3.87.147) 174.112 ms 174.494 ms *
3 * * ge-2-1-0-164.cr1.wh-man.zen.co.uk (62.3.87.165) 176.706 ms
4 * ge-3-0-0-0.cr2.th-lon.zen.net.uk (62.3.80.45) 182.866 ms *
5 * * linx-gw.ltn1.intl.telstra.net (195.66.224.14) 184.507 ms
6 154.32.3.142 (154.32.3.142) 185.234 ms * *
7 * * cr-1.LDN4.intl.telstra.net (154.32.3.241) 176.118 ms
8 154.32.9.17 (154.32.9.17) 176.559 ms * *
9 6.57.32.154.intl.telstra.net (154.32.57.6) 192.808 ms 210.686 ms 210.327 ms
10 ns0.thorcom.net (193.82.116.5) 194.420 ms 195.919 ms 199.638 ms
root@cruella:~# traceroute dns.thorcom.net
traceroute to dns.thorcom.net (193.82.116.5), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
this afternoon things picked up again:
root@cruella:~# traceroute dns.thorcom.net
traceroute to dns.thorcom.net (193.82.116.5), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 router-zen.tubby.org (82.68.212.70) 1.569 ms 1.775 ms 2.212 ms
2 losubs.subs.dsl2.wh-man.zen.net.uk (62.3.87.147) 27.572 ms 28.733 ms 29.719 ms
3 ge-2-1-0-164.cr1.wh-man.zen.co.uk (62.3.87.165) 30.191 ms 30.786 ms 31.428 ms
4 ge-3-0-0-0.cr2.th-lon.zen.net.uk (62.3.80.45) 38.553 ms 39.520 ms 40.255 ms
5 linx-gw.ltn1.intl.telstra.net (195.66.224.14) 41.477 ms 41.685 ms 42.703 ms
6 154.32.3.142 (154.32.3.142) 43.449 ms 42.513 ms 43.154 ms
7 cr-1.LDN4.intl.telstra.net (154.32.3.241) 44.731 ms 35.937 ms 35.922 ms
8 154.32.9.17 (154.32.9.17) 35.905 ms 36.494 ms 36.543 ms
9 6.57.32.154.intl.telstra.net (154.32.57.6) 46.054 ms 43.126 ms 49.067 ms
10 ns0.thorcom.net (193.82.116.5) 48.031 ms 46.817 ms 47.053 ms
root@cruella:~#
No hosts or users on my circuit.... you can clearly see that the first hop from my router to Zen (via BT 21CN) was rubish at lunchtime, yet my Cisco router showed "5 min input rate 31kbps, 10 packets per second" which is hardly stressful :-(
Mike
Nickrw is indeed correct!
The 64-bit version appears to fail at the end of the unpack but has not. Once unpacked attempting to run the Setup program fails with an x86/64bit incompatibility error and initally this stumped by 16 year old son...
However a bit of googling reveals an M$ program called oscdimg.exe on Technet:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc749036(WS.10).aspx
that's able to take the unpacked box files and make an ISO from them... run this process (takes about 15 mins) and burn the resultant ISO to a DVD (I used Infrarecorder - but Nero should do too) and you end up with a bootable DVD that works 100%
Ok, so a bumpy ride and an extra hour-and-a-halk but the 16 year old has his Windows-7 student edition installed and is back up and running... me... I us Ubuntu :-)
I welcome YouTube's stand against the PRS! As an owner of several small businesses I am fed up of PRS's continued persual of me an my companies for licenses that I do not need! Their (PRS) tactics are not much short of outright harassment - I have received tens of telephone calls and letters despite writing to them and telling them that I do not use music in any way in my business [except the license-free music-on-hold that comes with Asterisk PBX that is].
PRS have changed - they have gone from being an "in the background" organisation that you sort-of knew that you had to get a license from if you ran a pub/shop/club to a greedy "property grab / money grab" type organisation that seem to be using the drag-net approach to bothering every name that they can find at Companies' House - even if its a non-trading company that exists to protect a product name or trademark!
I'm sure that the reason that YouTube can't deal with PRS is because they have an overly optimistic idea of what their 'property' is worth and egos that are way too big to go with it!
PRS wake up! Get with the plan! Nobody likes you - nobody wants to deal with you!
Mike
UK PLC is already over dependant on GPS - we use it for broadcasting (DAB, DTV and other transmitters depend on it for system timing), the Airwave TETRA Emergency Services network depends on it for timing, many GSM/3G/UMTS base-stations depend on it for timing... basically many systems that help run our day-to-day lives depend on Uncle SAM's GPS system!
What if we fell out? What if he declared war on France and switched off free access over Europe?? What if there was a major systems failure???
SatNav in yor car really is the least of our worries! When you call 999 for an Ambulance GPS tells control where the nearest resource to your incident is and GPS tells the driver of the ambulance how to get to you! Furthermore GPS makes the radio system through which the ambulance crew communicate with control work as well...
GPS is embedded in our lives ... we just don't realise it ... and what's more, we have no control over it because its Uncle Sam's toy...
Then, look at the commercial benefits... who are the major manufacturers of GPS receivers? Rockwell, Motorola, Garmin, Trimble - all US companies! Isn't it aboiut time that we bought navigation receivers from Nokia, Thomson or Amstrad?
If Europe is to truely equal the US in terms of power (commercial, financial, technical, manufacturing or military) then we need a system that competes with, or is better than, NavStar GPS. Better still, new navigation systems should be "dual mode" and work with either or both systems to provide addition accuracy and resillience.
Galileo is one of those infrastructure building projects for the modern age, just like the roads and sewers were 150 years ago! Yes, its expensive, but we need to see past the short-term and look 10-30 years in to the future!
Mike Tubby
If we have the velocity of a sheep in a vacuum, then lets standardise on the mass of a sheep?!?
The average sheep weighs around 100-160lbs - for arguement lets call it 150lbs, or 68Kg, so to get to a unit of the same magnitude as that French thingy (the Kilogram) we need to divide by 100, so we need the centi-Sheep (cS) or, if you prefer to do things by multiples of a thousand and represent a Kilogram then that is 14.7 milli-Sheep (mS).
Now... what was the velocity of a sheep in a vacuum...? or better, what is the weight of a Mini in milli-Sheep?
Mike
Since the early 1980's, when I was at school listening to Genesis and the like, we came across the Furlong per Fortnight (the FpF) and this was widely adopted as the measure of speed (well throughout several schools in Worcestershire :o)
Checking on Google reveals information on the FpF at Wikipedia, to quote:
"One furlong per fortnight is very nearly 1 centimetre per minute (to within 1 part in 400). Indeed, if the inch were defined as 2.54 cm rather than 2.54 cm exactly, it would be 1 cm/min. Besides having the meaning of "any obscure unit", furlongs per fortnight have also served frequently in the classroom as an example on how to reduce a unit's fraction. The speed of light may be expressed as being roughly 1.8 terafurlongs per fortnight."
More at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_strange_units_of_measurement
I suggest that Vulture Central get with the program and adopt the FpF as the standard unit of speed...
Mike
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
