Posts by Ken Moorhouse

Re: You don't have the original pic to work from.

Just as well, really. GDPR could arguably be an issue, otherwise.

Re: 10,000 UK users and 60 arrests?

The rest mainly involved Swiss cheese.

Some got away because they were found to be Swiss cheese plants.

Re: my iphone was "too old" to order a beer in Wetherspoons.

You should have less problem ordering cider.

Re: That you can't pull a trailer of sheep with.

Surely you only need to put one sheep in the trailer?

Re: Just be glad it's not a squirrel

Entertaining link

Re: a fabulous piece of art deco extravagance.

As a place of manufacture for vacuum cleaners. Yes.

Re: one of the major flight simulator manufacturers (Link-Miles)

Rediffusion, back in the day: with the emphasis on the "fusion" after reading your anecdote.

Re: hydraulic computers

One of the most impressionable moments I had when going through the Careers Advice system in my last year of school was visiting a Marine Research Lab in Hayes. I found this one of the most boring boring boring visits I went on... until our guide picked up a lump of transparent plastic with various holes wending their way through it. "This is a Fluidic switch" he announced. It was demonstrated by showing air being pumped through a similar device in a rig that had a fork in its path. Air consistently flowed from the source to one of the outlets. A puff of air was applied to a junction just prior to the fork, and flow passed to the other leg of the fork. A puff of air at an opposite junction flipped flow to the other fork. I was familiar with flip-flops but doing this using air, wow. (Yes, everyone at school thought I was a nerd).

The other memorable moment from these visits was being shown round the Hoover factory in Perivale, when it was the Hoover factory (lovely architecture, now Tesco), with a view to embarking on a career as a toolmaker. The guy that showed us around called everyone Fred, regardless of man, woman, ethnicity... Fast forward a few years to when I was doing my ONC: there was this bloke on the course who called everyone Fred: the African's, the Indian's, etc. I asked him "You don't work for Hoover do you?" "WTF How'd you know that?" was his reply IIRC. His name was John fwiw.

Re: "IT is more fashion driven than ladies' fashion"

These days, yes.

In the days of the beige Apple ][ 48k Europlus IT fashion was driven by the number of potatoes you had in your socks.

Re: WordPerfect for one - I absolutely loathed that software.

I had a boss that insisted I use WordStar. Whereas with WordPerfect the key combinations to do various operations made some sort of sense, WordStar was totally irrational.

https://www.wordstar.org/index.php/wsemu-documentation/wsemu-commands-and-menus/1-wordstar-emulator-full-version-command-list

Re: EDLIN!

My favourite was the Text Editor bundled with WordPerfect Office (modestly called ED). It could cope with files bigger than available RAM. One of its many nice features was the ability to include CR/LF's in the search string (it used the Reveal Codes concept), and it had various Macro facilities too.

Re: WordPerfect with Reveal Codes on

Yep, I provide support for a husband and wife that still use it. The "support" is not so much for WordPerfect these days, which is a breeze to use, more for things like rogue emails and the like. Husband has a few books to his name (indexing of which was done by him, using WordPerfect), wife has awards for television scripts she's produced.

Re: you will be greeted by (user) name as you approach the entrance.

If you've previously bought a product with an RFID tag which has not been removed then this can happen. However it is probably more likely you will be silently tracked around the store. Clothes shops are early adopters of this tech.

Re: Grafton Way

Appropriate that UC Hospital has an entrance on that road. Appropriate because I believe they treat burns there.

===

Katrina's comment reminds me: I forget the source of this, but someone once asked the question: "How many roads are there in London W1?"

Any guesses?

Re: In the US, barter is taxable

One of my clients signed up with Bartercard (UK) a long time ago. He was unable to trade out his accrued points/pounds for anything useful trade-related, and ended up buying some limited edition prints for his office just to wind up quits.

Far too much hassle IMO.

Re: deposit the check in the bank (for over $10k) the bank reports it

In the UK I believe it is cash that triggers a report. A check/cheque is more easy to trace and therefore does not need to be reported.

Re: agree to exchange crypto for goods & services, and we do so in a private transaction

Which means a money launderer could buy a Tesla with bitcoin (if Tesla followed through on that whim), without alerting the authorities. I'm sure that the authorities would step in and insist that any such transactions must be notified i.e., bitcoin is treated equivalent to cash.

Re: wouldn't you attack those first?

No. I would wait for the second Tuesday of the month, then walk in through the front gate.

Re: where do these messages saying that the network has been encrypted appear?

This is a quick one to answer.

The attacks I've been called out to deal with have had files placed in every folder that has been encrypted. Files are in IIRC generally two formats, TXT and HTML, outlining what has happened and how to pay. The HTML version is the version that is often used as a headline image in news stories.