Posts by ricardian 235 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jan 2016
Mid 1980s and Commodore Pet was the machine of the day in my area. Armed with Raeto West's invaluable manual and a little 6502 assembler knowledge it was relatively easy to control external bits of kit using IEEE488 (aka GPIB) low level - TALK, UNTALK, LISTEN, UNLISTEN - commands. My tour de force was to link two Commodore Pets, each with its own IEE488 controller, using 6502 assembler
Back at work in the 1980s we got one of the first IBM PCs and a C compiler. The C compiler was "Aztec" and it was selected because (allegedly) the CEGB were using it in power station design! Memories of writing batch files to compile, link and create .exe files. And TSR (Terminate & Stay Resident) programs were not unknown.
In-house the PO and Fujitsu know or have access rights to know things about Horizon but in Scotland the Procurator Fiscal / staff / Prosecutors only know and only can know what the PO and or Horizon tell them. Unless the PF / Staff received documentary evidence that contradicts the instructions / witness statements they received how on earth are they to know that Horizon was riddled with errors and the PO / F staff have lied to cover up these problems?
I suspect that the person writing this about the process in Scotland knows v. little about how legal proceedings work.
I'm assuming that in Scotland (just like in England & Wales) the Prosecutor is under a duty to disclose to the defence documentary evidence that is adverse to the Prosecutor's case. Down south the PO of course had such material, but north of the border the PF will only have it if the PO had provided it. Knowing the PO as we now do, it probably didn't.
I doubt that the PF or its staff or Prosecutors were told about the Horizon defects.
In 1973 I started work in a government office that had a "copier" which used liquids (no idea what they were) and you had to use barrier cream before attempting to use the machine. It produced copies that were "not bad". Nowadays the unions would scream blue murder about H&S!
Back in the 1978 the Open University had two computer sites, one in Milton Keynes and one in NE England (Sunderland?). These two sites did not share all the data as I discovered when sending in an assignment consisting of a handwritten bit of code that relied upon data saved by the previous assignment. On several occasions my assignment failed because the data was stored at the other OU site.
Reason for handwritten bit of code? I was living in Brora, Sutherland and nearest site with access to the OU system was over an hour's drive away (and access, via a 75 baud T100 teleprinter and a telephone-based modem, was decidedly flakey at the best of times)
What was the course? My first ever OU course, PM978 "Computers and Computing"
Did I pass? Yes, grade 2
Working at a secure government site the security guards would patrol twice a day to ensure that all was well. One area only worked Mon-Fri so when the security chap checked it on Sat morning and found a cupboard left open he reported the security guard who had performed the previous security check. Alas, he failed to realise that occasionally someone in the area would work on a Saturday. The outcome was that if that situation occurred again the security guard wouldn't simply report his mate for failing to do his job but check whether (a) someone was working in the area or (b) there had been a break in!
In 1964 I was in the RAF, unmarried, living at RAF Northolt and travelling to work at the Air Ministry via the Central Line (with a free travel pass every 3 months!). It was 24/7 shift work and after a busy night shift it was not unknown for folk like me to get on the tube at Charing Cross, doze off and wake up several hours later at somewhere like Ongar...
I've told this story before but it is relevant to the topic.
My friend worked for a high security Government department and had managed to create a small piece of security-related hardware that matched all the specs - works with wide range of voltages both AC & DC, not polarity sensitive, not bothered by moisture, heat, vibration or being dropped from several feet onto hard surface. However, he failed on the final item in the spec - had to be easily & quickly destroyed in case of an emergency
Many years ago a friend of mine produced a "hardened" piece of cryptographic kit for the military. It was tough (run over by tanks on Salisbury Plain, dropped out of aircraft) and dealt with a wide range of voltages ( AC & DC), reversed polarity, etc. He failed to meet the final requirement - it had to be simple to destroy in an emergency.
The RAF recently changed the names of some ranks:
Leading Aircraftsman (LAC), Senior Aircraftsman (SAC) & Junior Technician (JT) became Air Specialist (class 2), Air Specialist (class 1) and Air Specialist (class 1) Technician.
Source https://www.raf.mod.uk/our-organisation/raf-ranks.
The electronic organ in the kirk where I'm the organist was bought new about 8 years ago. About 5 years ago it started "locking up" at random intervals (usually in the middle of a service) then "unlocking" after a few hours. I managed to get the manufacturers of the organ to admit that the problem was caused by the advent of local wind turbines & solar panels. Eventually the manufacturer replaced all the internal electronic panels and I've had no problems since then.
Back in the early 1990s we were using MS Windows (I forget which version) and having problems with a slow disk drive. After several physical replacements we discovered that it was the drive letter that was the problem - it transpired that drive letter "F" was used by MS Windows for diagnosis purposes and had several "special" functions tied to it.
I dumped Santander (had been with them for over 30 years starting with Alliance & Leicester) when they refused to send the OTP via landline phone instead of mobile phone - no mobile signal up here. Transferred the account to TSB who are quite happy to send the OTP via landline phone.
I first encountered the Commodore PET in the mid 1980s when I worked for a large Government organisation and the head tech manager bought a couple for us "to play with". We didn't get very far until we bought a copy of Raeto West's invaluable handbook. I still have my copy in the attic but I might just put it on the market to see what price it will fetch! https://www.amazon.co.uk/Programming-PET-Raeto-Collin-West/dp/0950765007
A Open University courses in the 1980s taught computing using HEKTOR (acronym now forgotten). First we coded by hand - pure assembler, calculating jumps, etc. Then progressed to a very simple assembler and so eventually on to a C compiler & linker. I used some of that knowledge when I had a chip whose floating point multiply took umpteen clock cycles to multiply by 10 - I did 3 left shifts then added the original twice, much faster
The Russian military appear to have shot themselves in the foot, metaphorically speaking:
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/russian-troops-can-t-use-era-encrypted-phone-system-in-ukraine-because-they-destroyed-4g-masts-says-expert/ar-AAUMGV6?cvid=6b0ba0f6e1e54c0ce4f43e19d282ddac&ocid=winp1taskbar
Back in the 1960s a large factory installed a fire-suppression system which consisted mainly of sprinklers and incorporated a new innovation at the switchboard (a PMBX1A) which automatically called the local fire station with a voice message on a loop "There is a fire at factory xxx. There is a fire at factory xxx" if a fire was detected - the 999 system couldn't be used as the technology to interact with the operator didn't exist.
One night the large factory caught fire and the fire-suppression system did its best but the factory burned to the ground before the fire brigade turned up. At the post mortem it transpired that the factory's system worked as designed and telephoned the fire brigade with the repeating voice message. The fire brigade telephone system responded with its own message "The telephone number for this fire station has been changed to 1234578, please replace your received and dial the new number".
I do have a mobile phone but I can only get a signal if I stand at the bottom of the garden or over on the far side of the road. I moved from Santander to TSB because Santander insisted that I had to receive my OTP via mobile phone whereas TSB (and Paypal) are quite happy to use my landline phone.
I live on Stronsay, Orkney. The nearest mobile phone tower is on the island of Sanday, about 7 miles away. I can get a signal on my mobile about twice a week and that's usually just enough to receive a couple of texts. There is a new mobile phone tower under construction as part of the emergency services network, apparently that's run by EE. I wonder if Vodafone could add a couple of aerials on that tower?
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