Posts by Andus McCoatover

Taking me back awhile...

Very good workfriend of mine, who was turned to dust in a crematorium (G3TFM, anyone?) in the Autumn of 2007, had a mini.

I had a Ford Anglia*. Neither of us had a delay wiper, so, I designed and built on Veroboard - one for each. Used a UJT (Unijunction transistor) as the 'timer', with a cheap relay to fire the wipers off. About 5 components in total. This was about 1978.

*This was an Anglia 105E (registration 989 FOJ - clue on it's age. Never let me down, even tho' it only cost me £50 then), not the previous version 995E. The previous version had a vacuum wiper mechanism linked to the intake. In short, the more you put your foot down, the slower the wipers got. Yep, doing 70 in heavy rain, it was better to stick your head out of the window. If you REALLY needed to see, take foot off accelerator, and wait...wait...wait for the vacuum to build up.

Nah.

Bulgarian lass has already tried this.

Golden Share

Someone 'in the Know' help out here?

I understood the Finnish government holds a so-called 'Golden Share' in Nokia, which Wikipedia describes as "... to give a government veto powers over any major corporate action, such as the sale of a major asset or subsidiary or of the company as a whole." - e.g. sell-off, as Finland really - and I mean really - depends on Nokia's stability. With the forestry industry (Finland's "Green Gold") in decline, shipbuilding suffering even after building the worlds biggest passenger liner, construction recession terrible, Nokia's holding Finland up IMHO.

May not be true anymore, as IIUC Corporate activities only are in Espoo, but R&D/Manufacturing etc. are in China/India/Hungary.

I hope I'm wrong, but..open to correction. Nokia has, in my opinion, made some daft decisions recently, but that's probably due to the inertia of a 'big ship'. It can't turn around quick enough to stop the smaller, fitter rivals like Huawei, ZTE, etc biting at it's heels. They seem to be in a dichotomy. Cheap phones for the masses, easy - until saturation, but erm - which Operating System should we install this week? Maemo? S40? S60? Windows?

Pity. Market leaders once. Seen DEC lately? Thought not, and I was brought up on the belief that "Every Computer is a D I G I T A L Computer".

The current calendar nominally started with the birth of Christ

Yep, puzzling. How, then is Unix time determined? First 'conceived', first implementation or based on the calendar (1. Jan 1970) - which is also based on, er - the birth of Jesus? House of cards.

Got me thinking...OK, somewhat off-topic, but..

In some countries (UK, US) a legal decision by a prior legal court is often quoted as the basis for the case being considered at present. As in the imaginary case of "Crown vs. Dogbreath*, it was concluded...etc."

Isn't this like a 'house of cards'? If a previous case is successfully appealed against, what happens to the ones above it?

* I wanted to use "Mr. M.P.Duckhouse esq", but I think I've worn that one out already.

I CAN vouch for Europe.

I can also personally vouch for Peru, Israel, Indonesia, China, Philipines, Britain, Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Hungary etc ad. nauseum. Most common phones are Nokia. OK, I bought my son an LG last year, because he wanted the 'fetching pink' colour. I worry about him sometimes, more when he's conscripted into the Finnish army, but I digress.

I've been there, seen it with my own eyes. I agree Nokia's tanking at the moment, but you should do a 'Google' for "Finnish Sisu". (Not the sweets, BTW)

Remember, US has less than 5% of the worlds population.

No Troll...

Just an ex-GSM engineer, who kept being told when 2G would be 'turned off'. In 2004, it was 2008, then a bit more life...2011 was the last date I heard. Try to turn off 2G on your phone, you can still call..Possibly...

Of course, NMT450 got a boost when Nokia brought out it's "Ringo" phones, but the boost was only a couple of years or so. Pissed off a lot of users here in Nordic-land. Pity anyone who bought a 2G-only iPhone.

Gaming consoles? Just sounded - well, a bit 'Ginger', as Jeremy Clarkson once said.

"Britain - in the heart of Europe"

Didn't one of our Major grey politicians declare that as a hope, once?

So, how the hell can I travel anywhere else in Europe with just my Finnish Driving Licence (which doubles as an ID card that I'm happy to have*) but not back to my native Blighty?

No, I don't need a 'counterpart' for my European D/L. The police, if I'm stopped will simply scan the barcode into one of those new-fangled things called a 'Babbage Difference Engine' - aka 'Computer', and with a bit of Marconi's Magic Wire-free Invention, determine all, and I mean all about me. Like how much I earn so said magic machine can calculate the day-fine depending on my speeding , number of dependants and earnings. Ticket printed without the use of punched cards in a matter of seconds. Wondrous!

(Oh, just for light relief - I received a cheque from the taxman a week ago. For about €30. As Finns haven't really used cheques for more than a quarter of a century, and HMRC cheques are classed as a 'private cheque', Nordea Bank told me it'd cost around €100 to cash it...)

Primitive Britain? You bet. Do you folks still take a bath every Friday, whether you need it or not?

*Happy to have, 'cos if I make a large-ish purchase in a shop (say, over €50) they'll need to see it to verify the Social Secrity number. I'm comfy with that.

Why all the effort?

I just set fire to my letters to Santa, and let the smoke go up the chimney -

# ren uncle=bob. (IT bit, natch..OK, DEC RT11, but I'm old.)

Danger is, if the smoke's white, not black, the Catholics across the street will elect a new Pope.

In Surrey's Camberley High street..

..there are - or were the last time I was there - two Macdonalds, close to each other.

One sells hardware, the other sells brownware. No conflict of interest, I suppose.

"A couple of days ago a big union got their strike plans busted by the High Court"

Same union. Unite.

I think they're getting a taste for blood. Will we see any more "Industrial Action" (my favourite oxymoron) initiated by them?

Finally..

0 = NOOOOOO-lla . (Nolla)

Almost..

I was, as a Nokia employee and a member of the team building Sweden's "3G" network, working on the Network Management System in Nokia's "NOC" - Network Operations Centre. OK, not Telia, but it'll surely follow. Unless things have changed since 2003(2002?). Kinda lost touch since I left NSN a couple of years ago.

As an aside, the building was located on the (converted) top floor of a multi-storey car park in Stockholm. The car fumes from downstairs made your eyes water sometimes.