Posts by big_D

Re: I remember floppy disks

I had an A500 + A590, with the memory also installed. I used to "borrow" SCSI drives from the Macs at work, just to see how quick they would make things. I kept one at home, until someone new came along and the old Mac Plus was assigned to them and I had to take the drive back.

I then got an A1200 - I wanted a 4000, but just couldn't afford it/justify the price.

Re: I remember floppy disks

Dragon's Lair came on half a dozen or so floppies on the Amiga. At my local computer store, in Southampton, the dealer set up an A500 with 5 external drives daisy-chained together, so you could play "uninterrupted", if you call waiting 10 seconds+ for the next scene to load uninterrupted - but at least you weren't constantly swapping floppies.

Re: I remember floppy disks

I remember installing the Windows 95 beta from a pile of 3.5" floppies!

The combo 5.25"/3.5" drives were useful for their time.

I have to say, I threw away my last couple of floppy disks a few weeks ago, when cleaning out the cupboards. I don't think I've actually used a floppy disk for nearly 20 years.

Re: Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria and

Crimea is a little larger than a post box and it has a long and rich history, especially of conflict.

Re: @big_D - Who did not see this coming?

The same as any other company with a presence in the USA, in theory, yes. In practice, Microsoft have a track record of testing in court, whether they have to hand the data over, at least in some cases, where there is no precedence.

Such as the Irish data center being in the USA...

Re: Who did not see this coming?

You mean the US Government.

GitHub would have had to do this, regardless of whether they were still independent or part of Microsoft.

The same for GitLab and BitBucket.

Re: Disposable income

That brings back memories of the outhouse at my grandmother's house. :-O

Re: Disposable income

Yes, at some of the places I've worked at, the bog roll provided makes Aldi's discount rolls look like a luxury living item in comparison.

Re: Don't we have this already?

Just for the record, Wednesday was a new record with 40.5°C, Thursday broke that with 41.6°C in Lingen - that is officially recorded temperatures, recorded in the shade.

On the way home last night, I registered 44°C, about 40KM from Lingen.

Re: On the bright side ...

But farming is not a tech startup, so it isn't sexy!

Give it 6 months and BoJo will say, "let them eat cake"*

* Probably imported Cinabons.

Re: Don't we have this already?

Until recently, temperatures above the low 30s (low to mid 90s) were very unusual in Germany, they were the exception, rather than the rule. Over the last decade we've had temperatures in the high 30s most years.

Re: Don't we have this already?

The news said it was a national record, 40.2 degrees Celsius.

Tomorrow could exceed 41 degrees. Local temperatures have exceeded 40.2 degrees in parts of Germany, but not the official recording stations.

Re: Don't we have this already?

That is at least for west Germany. I know Bavaria has had around the 40 degrees mark a few times. My balcony thermometer went up to 35 once, but I think the official temperature was 40.5

Winter is down to - 12 or so, here in the north, when I was down in Bavaria, we had one day of below - 30. In the summer it would get up to around 40 degrees in extreme summers, but usually mid 30s.

That's all in Celsius.

So we have an average range of over 40 degrees, between a normal winter and summer, in the extreme years, it is between 70 and 80 degrees difference between summer and winter.

Re: Shameless plug.

Well, you are downstairs during the day and you don't want it to be pitch black all day long...

So we only lower the shutters on the sunny side, and then not all the way.

Re: Shameless plug.

We have the windows open over night and until about 7 or 8 in the morning, when it starts getting too hot, then we close all the windows upstairs and roll down the shutters. We added new insulation to the roof a couple of years back.

We had temperatures of over 37°C yesterday, during the day, but the bedroom remained in the mid-20s.

Downstairs is a bit more difficult, but we still managed to keep the temperature under 28°C during the day, with the shutters down on the sun-ward side.

Re: what's so difficult about Q, U, X, Y and Z?

Yes, and the current high pressure front coming up through Europe, bringing the Sahara heat with it, is called Yvonne, which left my daughter being blamed by her colleagues for the current unpleasantly hot weather (we had 37°C yesterday and tomorrow should crack the 40°C mark).

Re: what's so difficult about Q, U, X, Y and Z?

The current high pressure front coming up through Europe is already called Yvonne.

Re: I don't understand all the ramifications, but...

Or promoting a fake website with no legal rights to the images over the owner themself.

But that would mean Google actually taking an interest in the law and complying with it, to give website and copyright owners an easy way to report fake sites, to verify the claims and remove those fake sites and their metadata from the search cache... All that costs money and therefore reduces profits, so as long as court cases, lawyers and compensation claims are lower than following the relevant laws, there won't be any change.

Re: I don't understand all the ramifications, but...

They want to stop Google from showing copyrighted images from one site, linked to another site that doesn't have copyright. It seems reasonable to me.

If Google would react to a request to check their cache, because it is illegally linking images to a site that doesn't have copyright or a license to use those images (or other content), this wouldn't have to go to court.

But that would mean additional administrative costs and reduced revenue, for doing the "right thing".

Re: Smart

And in the 60s and 70s the West said that the Japanese could only steal Western designs and not make anything original.

And in the 18th/19th Century, the UK/Europe said America could only steal European designs and not come up with anything new...

You can probably keep going back, the Greeks moaning about the Romans etc.

And don't forget, China invented a lot of things centuries before the West even thought about them.

Re: Smart

Except, when Huawei was put on the naughty list, ARM revoked their license to use ARM technology...

They might be able to continue using the current version of ARM they had, or at least continue to produce and sell in China (if the Chinese authorities turned a blind eye to the infringement), but they wouldn't have access to newer designs and they wouldn't be able to sell internationally.

Re: "...need to be hard rebooted after exactly 149 hours"

You look at the maintenance schedule, calculate in the next flight (plus delay/headwind/circling time) and if it will be near or exceed 149 hours, shut everything down.

Re: Not enough

And email, back then, generally didn't use TLS, it was just plain text - webmail could be different, but SSH/TLS wasn't universal back then.

Re: Not enough

Wem, nowhere have I said it was ok to listen in on Wi-Fi signals, just that, because they aren't encrypted, unlike cell phone calls, which are encrypted since the mid 90s, they can be eves dropped in by anyone with a Wi-Fi scanner, which is just a pc or a smartphone with the relevant software.

That is why you should always use at least WPA 2 encryption.

Re: Not enough

No, you don't have to join the network, you can passively sniff the unencrypted packets out of the air.

To use your unlocked door analogy, this isn't like walking in and taking whatever you like. It is the equivalent of the house owner, writing all of their information in big letters on a whiteboard which stands in the window and can be seen from the street. (Or the user shouting the information out of the window.) The packets are there, "hanging" in the air outside, where anybody can hear them, without having to join the network.

It was still wrong of Google to have sniffed those packets out of the air - they didn't join those networks, they just grabbed a few packets out of the "air" in passing. I'm not disputing that at all, I'm just saying that anyone who sends unencrypted information over public frequencies can't have any expectation of privacy.

Re: Not enough

I agree, the sum is piddling.

On the other hand, anyone who surfs on an unsecured Wi-Fi connection shouldn't be surprised that their data is being gobbled up, it is the equivalent of standing in the town square and shouting out your information as loud as you can...