* Posts by BebopWeBop

2862 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Dec 2015

A real loch mess: Navy larks sunk by a truculent torpedo

BebopWeBop

Re: What could have been ...

It kept calm and carried on.

BebopWeBop

"If I tell my wife I was torpedoed while fishing, she'll never believe me."

Mine wouldn't either :-0)

Doors closed by COVID-19, Brit retro tech museums need your help

BebopWeBop
Thumb Up

Cheers

Like many who will read these pages, I have given my modest donation.

BebopWeBop
Devil

10 PRINT "HELLO "; 20 GOTO 10

Ahh a wonderful game for machines that were left 'open' as demos way back in the day of a plethora of 'consumer' machines, all of which appeared to have some sort of basic interpreter available. HOWEVER

Invariably 10 PRINT "**** is sh*t "; 20 GOTO 10 was a more usual intervention.

No, at the age of 14 we were not very subtle let alone mature, and my partner assures me that 40 odd years later things have not improved.....

Cyber attack against UK power grid middleman Elexon sparks in-house IT recovery efforts

BebopWeBop

Re: What ?

Maybe an independent system that ensure the files are usable?

BebopWeBop

Re: Backups

Even then, a careful data backup and replication that uses an independent data checker will deal with most instances of that.

Back from the dead: Appeals court resurrects lawsuit claiming IBM stiffs its own salespeople on commissions

BebopWeBop
Mushroom

Re: How are IT salespeople surprised when they don't get what they expected from a deal?

Alas, other companies have gone the same way. I was at HP while Bill and Dave were still alive (but not running the company) - and now look at the wreck of a once ethical, successful company.

Mirror mirror on the wall, why will my mouse not work at all?

BebopWeBop
Facepalm

And so begins an early erpisode in the never-ending chronicle of providing support for your friends and families computers

Vint Cerf suggests GDPR could hurt coronavirus vaccine development

BebopWeBop
Joke

дух желает, но плоть слаба

The vodka is strong but the meat is rotten

with apologies for an early attempt at rule based machine translation.

NHS contact tracing app isn't really anonymous, is riddled with bugs, and is open to abuse. Good thing we're not in the middle of a pandemic, eh?

BebopWeBop

Wisconsin is 'special' not 'normal'.

BebopWeBop

Re: Clowns in a Blue Rosette

The joke amongst those doing proper degrees when I was a lad, was that at the end of the first year, they dropped the economics - too many hard sums, in the second, philosophy because the problems were too complex and that left them just reading politics for the last year - to their relief.

You overstepped and infringed British sovereignty, Court of Appeal tells US in software companies' copyright battle

BebopWeBop

Re: Should WPL exit the USA ?

Yes, my sone is one of them - and duly fills out a tax return for various reasons. However, he did get a cheque on Monday for $1200 so that has made up for some of his time.

If you're going to spend $3tn, what's another billion? Congress urged to inject taxpayer dollars into open anti-Huawei 5G radio tech

BebopWeBop

Re: I have wondered this before

We can, but I suspect it is a forlorn hope. I suspect that the US is more likely to split than (most) of the EU at the moment.

The Rise of The (Coffee) Machines: I need assistance. I think I'm running Windows. Send help

BebopWeBop

Re: What a curious picture

Upvote - but mine of a bag of Yorkshire Tea.

BebopWeBop

Re: What annoys me intensely ...

Actually what the user generally needs is a bloody cup of coffee - the rest is academic.

BebopWeBop

Re: Not quite Windows

I have unfond memories of the 'Ryan Macfarland' Fortran compiler (I think I have the name right - it is 30 years) that came up with 'Unkown Fatal Erro' during compilation. This was for a large numerical; code I was working on.

After some experimentation - a sort of binary search on a rather wide range of parameters. I worked through naming, array sizes, variable mixes, expression complexity - I was tearing my hair out.

It turned out that a few of the variable names were too long (although within F77 standards). I was actually given a beer or three for the fix (and that was not cheap - I was working in Norway at the time) by my colleagues.

Compilation by friction was not an experience I had had up to then.

More automation to suddenly look like a jolly good idea as businesses struggle through coronavirus crisis, say analysts

BebopWeBop
Devil

In a totally automated world (OK reducto ad absurdum) who is going to pay?

Mad dash for webcams with surge in videoconferencing has turned out rather nicely for Logitech

BebopWeBop

Re: My actual webcam costs $5000...

While I have a DSLR, I have solved all such problems of choice by simply refusing to video conference for almost everything. Very soothing.

Psst... Wanna buy some stock in a spaceplane company? Virgin would like a word

BebopWeBop

Re: Hmmmm

I suspect a pay per view on some of those suggestions would be very lucrative!

Users of Will.i.am's Wink IoT hub ask 'Where is the love?' as they're asked to pay for a new subscription service

BebopWeBop

Re: Let's start a new fad

Better than the cluster fucks being marketed at the moment.

BebopWeBop
Happy

Re: Let's start a new fad

Well, how could he possibly live without one, once the advantages have been spelt out that its!

Penny smart and dollar stupid: IT jobs slashed in US, UK, Europe to cut costs – just when we need staff the most

BebopWeBop

Possibly they do, possibly they dont intend them to return, but I would bet a number of companies are using it as an opportunity to stage layoffs.

IBM to GTS staff: Not volunteering to leave with a redundo cheque? We'll give you a helping hand

BebopWeBop

Re: When they did this at...

Yes, along with a number of others, we grabbed the chance - and 10 years later are still very happy with our own business.

BebopWeBop

I suspect that 10 years ago, the statutory minimum was not the only inducement?

'We're changing shift, and no one can log on!' It was at this moment our hero knew server-lugging chap had screwed up

BebopWeBop

The only people not there were in marketing.

"No idea why they were different!" remarked Steve.

They were probably the cause of most of the problems other in the same room were trying to fix. It was probably a civil order/anti lynching move.

Singapore releases the robot hounds to enforce social distancing in parks

BebopWeBop
Unhappy

Re: It'll just shoot

One might, but clearly not. We live in unenlightened times.....

BebopWeBop

Re: Local wildlife

Can Pixar reuse the footage?

BebopWeBop
Pirate

Re: It'll just shoot

I think that Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451got there sometime before with his mechanical hound - which I assume was being referred to in the original post.

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

BebopWeBop
Joke

Logical - and did anyone do a competent cost-return analysis?

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Spacecraft with graphene sails powered by starlight and lasers

BebopWeBop

Re: Why is making them perforated the great breakthrough?

Ahhh, that explains the rumoured rival project based in Yorkshire.

BebopWeBop

Re: Calling Isaac Newton...

Especially Malta - they would be employing it to blast inconvenient journalists from an unsafe distance (not that they are only ones I would NOT trust with such an array, in fact, I can't think of any country that could be trusted),

Source code for seminal adventure game Zork circa-1977 exhumed from MIT tapes, plonked on GitHub

BebopWeBop

I believe MDL (model development language?) I am given to understand he ported the compiler. I wa just a snotty undergrad at the time.

BebopWeBop

I as not clear. Zork was ported, not BSD! c/o a US friend apparently)

BebopWeBop

I remember wating a lot of my time on this on a rather elderly ICL (a 2960 if I remember correctly) , machine running EMAS (Edinburgh Multi Access System) - oh how overjoyed we were to get BSD on a Vax - ported by a bored PhD student.

Australian contact-tracing app sent no data to contact-tracers for at least ten days after hurried launch

BebopWeBop

Re: Putting the Cart before the Horse

Don't believe everything you read about the UK!

The iMac at 22: How the computer 'too odd to succeed' changed everything ... for Apple, at least

BebopWeBop

Re: Great article, thanks!

Yes, it came at a good financial time for us, and we picked one up a few days after it’s release.

Data centre reveals it modeled interiors on The Hunt for Red October sets

BebopWeBop

A data centre I have occasionally visited would benefit from being honest and remodelling itself on Nostromo. Not and employer I would like to be beholden to.

American tech goliaths decide innovation is the answer to Chinese 5G dominance, not bans, national security theater

BebopWeBop
Trollface

Well I never! Fancy competing by investing in their own work rather than legislation - whatever will happen next, lawyers behaving ethically, customers coming first? We do live in strange times.

Ex-Imagination Technologies boss tells UK Foreign Affairs Committee: Britain needs to stop overseas asset stripping

BebopWeBop

Re: The Value of a Company

Hello ZeiXi me old mucked - is that you?

UK finds itself almost alone with centralized virus contact-tracing app that probably won't work well, asks for your location, may be illegal

BebopWeBop

Re: And what about the people ...

Actually Dave has just arrived as well. (down 2)

Britain has no idea how close it came to ATMs flooding the streets with free money thanks to some crap code, 1970s style

BebopWeBop
Thumb Up

Well, whoever was doing the testing earned their pay packet! I wonder how the tests were devised and how much of their content was based on 'gut feelings', beyond a few standard sets?

Google Australia says government pulled pin on content-for-cash talks, hands in its homework anyway

BebopWeBop
Pirate

'we do for free what meatspace distributors charge for'

'we get our revenue by stealing other peoples work'

TFTFY -------------------->

The right incon at last :-)

Brit magistrates' courts turn to video conferencing to keep wheels of justice turning

BebopWeBop

Combined with persuading the police not to bring vexations (in the popular sense if not legal) at the same time might do wonders.

Oracle faces claims of unequal pay from 4,000+ women after judge upgrades gender gap lawsuit to class action

BebopWeBop
Unhappy

And while I hope that if it can be demonstrated, those discriminated against will get compensation, I feer that the only winners will be the lawyers....

We're not Finnished yet: Nokia chalks up €200m sales hit to 'COVID-19 issues'

BebopWeBop

Because the do good solid networking gear - just a guess you understand. Not to mention that they might see their 5G market grow with China's woes.

Apple chucks $3 at iPhone users after killing FaceTime on iOS 6 because it didn't want to pay connectivity charges

BebopWeBop

Re: How about

Five - the lawyers.

Cheshire Police celebrates three-year migration to Oracle Fusion by lobbing out tender for system to replace it... one year later

BebopWeBop

Re: Requirements issues?

It may well be a real requirement - but given that they have managed to avoid deleting data that has been mistakenly or unlawfully gathered on the basis 'that it is too difficult', I don't hold out much hope.

Family meeting! Chocolate Factory makes its business-like video-chat service free to anyone with a Google account

BebopWeBop

Re: The kids spotted this last week

I can’t imagine the school will counter over it also being used as a social meeting she? School is not just about stirring in a row acting like a passive sponge....

Florida man might just stick it to HP for injecting sneaky DRM update into his printers that rejected non-HP ink

BebopWeBop
Happy

Re: HP printers

We had a 'industrial' grade coffee machine on similar terms. Our MD had got a very good deal. They did not anticipate the insatiable need for good coffee (and it was - roasted frequently and ground to order) by R&D staff, not to mention regular visits by the engineers in an attached factory. The maintenance engineer was there on a bi-weekly basis (the MD did know how to negotiate a tight SLA).

I left a couple of years later, but I wonder what the renegotiations looked like when they came!