* Posts by Anonymous Coward/2.0

22 publicly visible posts • joined 15 May 2012

The many derivatives of the CP/M operating system

Anonymous Coward/2.0

Yep, used to work on it in the late 80s

I used to work on BRIDOS systems in the late 80s. It was a wierd multi-user CP/M that supported up to 8 users by having a separate Z80 card for each user in a central box. A 9th card was the system master that managed shared resources such as printers and disks.

It also had an interesting security flaw that I discovered by accident. The system had 2 levels of users: normal users and superusers that could do anything on the system. The various user boards sent messages to the main system board to interact with disks/printers/etc. A superuser message was distinguished by having a single bit set in the message header. If you executed a program as a normal user that sent a message to the system board with the superuser bit set then the OS decided that you must be a superuser and promoted you granting you all rights on the system.

UK government review of IR35 tax reforms? Like a broken pencil, say contractors groups – it'll be utterly pointless

Anonymous Coward/2.0

Re: It's over....

<rant_mode>

I like that having money "squirreled away" automatically means dodgy money in your mind. When I was a permie I still managed to save money from my income after tax. Why do you assume that contractors have done something wrong?

If we're down the IR35 route then why don't we also get rid of all the tax-avoidance schemes that I've seen companies use for permies:

- bonus schemes, you only pay personal tax on the bonus not NI, company avoids NI

- share options, ditto

- petrol allowance, ditto

- company car, ditto

- salary sacrifice to artificially lower tax paid on pensions

Then lets get permies to pay all their own insurance/holiday/sick pay.

Yes there are contractors that abuse the system. There are also those perfectly legally using the same mechanisms open to *any* company director. In your words "dodgy dividend splitting". There are also permies that screw the system. I've seen far too many retired on the job permies doing f*** all for their salary.

Some of us don't contract to make a fortune - I work in embedded and the mythical 100 grand salary oft quoted on here is just that - a myth. I contract because it gives me a degree of control and so I don't have to go cap in hand to a fuckwit manager to get a day off. I also get a choice in what I work on and anything that I develop that is not directly for a customer is my IP not my employers. So don't lump all contractors together as abusing the system and I won't lump permies together as work-shy and bitter.

When the dust settles on the IR35 changes it will turn out to make fuck all difference to the tax revenue raised but it will cause companies extra costs for no benefit to them. The beneficiaries of this will be the big body shops hiring out staff for a pittance at an exorbitant fee, offshore outsourcing companies and umbrella companies.

</rant_mode>

Blade Runner 2049: Back to the Future – the movies that showed us what's to come

Anonymous Coward/2.0
WTF?

The Culture

Errm, "Iain M Banks' relentlessly uplifting Culture books"

Relentlessly uplifting? Were we reading the same stories? Although the Culture is nominally a utopian future surely the books largely concentrate on the negative aspects of this society. As quite often the main protagonists of the stories end up dead or badly damaged I'd hardly call them uplifting...

America 'will ban carry-on laptops on flights from UK, Europe to US'

Anonymous Coward/2.0
Flame

So how does this work then?

On a recent Ruinair flight to Ireland my wife was asked to remove a Kindle from her checked-in bag because they wouldn't allow lithium batteries in the hold. Okay so Ruinair aren't transatlantic but if other airlines apply the same rule then it won't be possible to take a laptop anywhere - the airlines won't allow it in the hold and the US won't allow it in the cabin. Omnishambles springs to mind.

Boffins reveal how to pour a perfect glass of wine with no drips. First step, take a diamond...

Anonymous Coward/2.0
Boffin

No engineering required.

Just twist the bottle as you finish pouring a glass. No drips. No diamonds required.

User needed 40-minute lesson in turning it off and turning it on again

Anonymous Coward/2.0
Coat

Re: Can you hold down the power button

Power button?

I think that you mean "Access Standby" or "Mode Execute Ready".

Good thing this dev quit. I'd have fired him. Out of a cannon. Into the sun

Anonymous Coward/2.0
Facepalm

re: left to my own devises

I used to program in Coral66 which institutionalized something akin to the wonderful #defines in the article. In Coral66 keywords are in primes, e.g. 'IF', 'THEN', 'ELSE', 'BEGIN', 'END' and so on.

This fine except that it meant that you could spaces in variable names but the spaces were ignored by the compiler. These all refer to the same thing -

my variable, myvariable, m y v a r i a b l e, my variable

As you can imagine it became a nightmare trying to find a variable in a big program where developers had used spaces in their own unique way. We tried to ban the use of spaces inside variable names but there were always the maverics that insisted on using them and legacy code and the careless Friday afternoon code post pub lunch.

Land Rover Defender dies: Production finally halted by EU rules

Anonymous Coward/2.0
Flame

no great loss

Sorry but I won't be grieving over the damn things. Uncomfortable, slow and noisy with the turning circle of a small country. Prone to water leaking in to the cabin even on brand new ones. If you have all the bells and whistles they break. If you don't then you either freeze, boil or can't see out of the windows for condensation depending on the season. Iconic but awful.

Has Voyager 1 escaped the Sun yet? Yes, but also no, say boffins

Anonymous Coward/2.0
Boffin

old git alert

FORTRAN - check

ALGOL - check

Assembler - lots and lots of weird CPUs (so check)

US Citizen - nope

Damn - guess NASA won't be calling me then...

Was contacted last year to see if I wanted to work on some CORAL code (no thanks). It's amazing how much of this old stuff is still kicking around.

BORN to HURL: Man's shoulders are head and shoulders above apes, gorillas, chimps etc

Anonymous Coward/2.0
Devil

Re: Poo-flinging antics

"Joking aside, its always interesting to read this sort of research into the science of human developement and the way it gives the lie to guff like intelligent design. If we aren't evolved from ancestors who used to live in trees and walk on all fours, but were 'designed' to be the way we are today,"

That's easy to explain. God really doesn't like us thats why he intelligently designed in all the flaws.

Engineers 3D-print ROBOT SEAHORSE, then SMASH it with rubber mallets

Anonymous Coward/2.0

Re: So: If you want to know how it works...

"bigger hammer" a.k.a. "universal persuader"...

Goodbye Vulcan: Blighty's nuclear bomber retires for the last time

Anonymous Coward/2.0
Happy

Re: Stunning plane

I remember going to an RAF Finningley open day around 1975/76 and seeing a Vulcan scramble followed by a low(ish) level flypast. As cdilla says - the whole-body feel of the power of the Vulcans was incredible.

Windows 10 upgrade ADWARE forces its way on to Windows 7 and 8.1

Anonymous Coward/2.0
Megaphone

Thanks for spamming me Microsoft

If you are like me and don't appreciate being spammed by Microsoft then don't install patch KB 3035583 (marked as "recommended"). If you did install it then uninstall this update to get rid of the MS adware for Windows 10. Unfortunately Windows Update will keep trying to reinstall this update as it is marked as "important".

Microsoft - here's a clue - installing software that is going to nag me about Windows 10 updates isn't "important", it's bloody annoying.

Microsoft - here's another clue - I will decide if and when I upgrade to Windows 10, not you. I certainly won't be installing anything until at least SP1 fixes all the broken shite in the original release. I also won't be installing an OS that breaks existing applications without bothering to tell me what it is going to break.

Epic fail Microsoft.

Make Adama proud: Connect your Things wisely, cadet

Anonymous Coward/2.0
Mushroom

We need a scale of uselessness

We need a proper numeric scale of uselessness here - following on from the article can I suggest the "Admiral Adama Index"

AAI10 = truly and utterly and completely useless

AAI 5 = really useless

AAI 1 = almost not quite useless but you are never getting any of these things in my home thanks all the same

New voting rules leave innocent Brits at risk of SPAM TSUNAMI

Anonymous Coward/2.0
Megaphone

Derbyshire Dales are auto-opt-in

Even though on the old register I always asked to be removed from the edited register Derbyshire Dales are automatically opting people in to the open register. I received a letter from DD saying I was already registered on the electoral roll and the open register and that it was up to me to contact them to get removed. Just phoned them to be removed and the officer agreed with me that the default should be opted-out not opted-in but that was the policy blah blah blah. All hail big corporations and the sale of contact information...

Question? Do councils make money from selling the Open Register or is it central guvmint that is making the money?

Adobe Creative Cloud 2014: Progress and pain in the usual places

Anonymous Coward/2.0

no longer a paying customer of Adobe

Been a professional user of Photoshop since 4.0. Normally upgraded every major upgrade (not the .5 versions). Effectively this pretty much worked out the same cost as CC is now. However for my needs there is just no compelling reason to upgrade to CC and many disadvantages:

- I can (and do) use CS6 completely offline for landscape photography trips to outer nowhere.

I am never worried that I am dependent on Adobe staying up and no threat that I can't open files

because I'm away from the webs or Adobe is titsup or ...

- The much vaunted smaller incremental updates hasn't happened, we still have had the big bang

for CC 18 months after the initial release.

- I don't really see anything in CC that is a compelling feature.

- Eventually the updates to camera raw may become an issue but there are plenty of excellent 3rd party tools that are way cheaper than CC.

- I don't want/need the additional software in CC and I ain't going to pay for stuff I won't use - that's why I only bought Photoshop and not one of the suites

Sorry Adobe but you are still not selling CC to me. The recent complete titsup episode hasn't helped your case.

Razzies set to torpedo Rihanna's Battleship

Anonymous Coward/2.0
Trollface

Re: Battleshit

"Independance-Day-on-Sea"?

Is that near Warminster-on-sea?

Don't tell 'em Pike. Don't Panic! etc.. Reckon Corporal Jones would have made mincemeat out of the aliens in Battleship. They don't like it up 'em you know.

Shh! Proxima Centauri can hear us!

Anonymous Coward/2.0
Boffin

Re: 4 years from now

No fuel, launch them with a solar sail powered by lasers based at home. That way its definitely a one-way trip.

BBC pulls plug Ceefax ahead of analogue TV's end tonight

Anonymous Coward/2.0
Happy

Re: Teletext on the BBC Micro

<misty eyed nostalgia>

I remember the teletext modem well. My first job was to write an emulator of the Teletext for Schools service (Wordsworth) for use in Sheffield schools that had BBC micros but not Teletext modem. My version (Keats) ran standalone and provided a page editor - I remember scratching my head for days trying to work out how to do a line-drawing algorithm with Teletext graphics characters. Happy days.

</misty eyed nostalgia>

MYSTERY as six people SURVIVE deadly VAMPIRE BAT BITES

Anonymous Coward/2.0
Boffin

Re: Vacination program

> Don't mess around with vampire bats.

Don't mess with *any* bat unless you are wearing protection. Bats in this country carry rabies. A bat worker in Scotland died from rabies a few years ago. He was bitten by an infected Daubenton's Bat while he was handling the bat. The advice these days is a) don't touch a bat if you don't know what you are doing and b) if you must touch a bat wear gloves,

Canon debuts EOS M compact system camera

Anonymous Coward/2.0
Thumb Down

£130 - that's cheap

The equivalent Nikon "1" FT1 adapter to allow DSLR Nikkors lenses to be used on the J1 or V1 compacts is £229 quids. Ouch.

NHS 'pays up to THREE times over the odds' for IT gear

Anonymous Coward/2.0
Boffin

Only three times the odds?

A Sheffield teaching hospital (I'm looking at you Northern General) pays £125 for log books for the wards. These very hi-tech and very expensive beasties are ruled hard-back notebooks with the pages numbered. Err. That's it. For a mere £125. Each.

The company I'm working for pays over the odds for similar notebooks at £10 each. That's less than 10% of the cost to the Northern General and still massively overpriced.

I'm gonna get me a contract supplying to the NHS...