Posts by CorwinX 156 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Jan 2023
Back in the mists if time, "computing" was taught as an "Advanced Mathematics" course.
And punch cards and tape did indeed feature.
I was literally taught how to "patch" punch tape by cutting out a bit of the tape and inserting a new bit.
You do all know where the phrases "Cut & Paste" and "Patching" come from?
The snakes aren't too bad but have you seen the bloody spiders.
A roo can knock you out with a punch and their legs will send you back 20ft.
And have you seen the claws on a koala. It's good they get monged out on eucalyptus or they could have your face off.
Then there's the Drop Bears. Especially the Yellow-Bellied ones. Run for cover.
Any Ozzie here will get that joke.
The file structure came about because of the real-world analog of Filing Cabinet (drive), Folder and Document within said folder.
It's a concept a 5-year-old can grasp.
My music collection is filed Artist/Group > Album Name (year) > 0x Song Title
My book collection is filed as Author > Series Name (1-x -- y expected Month 200x) > Series Name 0x - Title - Author
Talking over 6000 files here!
I'd love to hear your opinion on a more sane approach.
Structured is fine, but there needs to be an exit strategy...
Along the lines of ON ERROR GOTO x (whatever language).
x being an a hard coded destination that does analysis, clean up, notification and restart.
Otherwise you can end up in an infinite loop.
Meccano and (showing my age) Denshi Blocks - still available but flashier than back then. Printed book giving instructions how to build circuits out of plug in blocks containing basic components - resistors, capacitors, transistors, diodes, etc. My kit could be used to build a working AM radio.
There's another angle.
They may want to look at simple consumer law.
Fairly sure UK and US law are somewhat the same.
Key phrase is "fit for purpose".
You sell a spade to someone they expect to be able to dig holes with it.
You sell an operating system to someone they have a reasonable expectation that it will run their apps without crapping itself.
Selling a product that doesn't "do what it says on the tin" is fraud-adjacent.
Just saying.
... with you for reminding me that I'm an old git ;-)
I was in Liverpool when it was the world centre of home computing. Worked part time at Fuller Micro. Gold stars for anyone who gets that ref.
Amused myself a fair bit of the time cracking the various anti-piracy schemes they tried on the game tapes (not for money, just for fun).
Simpler times.
... Windows for Workgroups was an upgrade floppy to Win 3.11 because they weren't quite sure if TCP/IP was going replace NetBUI and were fairly clueless about this thing called "The Internet"?
Figure that probably started out as a side-project some techies were tinkering with the network stack.
Bits of kit you could stick between a PC and a printer, modem, scanner etc.
LEDs to show you what lines were going high or low and jumpers to swap the connections around.
Once the kit chattered into life you knew how the permanent cable needed to be wired.
Or you could see the PC was sending data but the printer wasn't responding and needed some percussive maintenance.
Them were the days.
That brings memories back. Landing in Bali, 20yrs ago, travelling on a shoestring (working mind you, words were spoken in the accounts dept when I got back).
They were known as cattle trucks. Waiting outside the train/coach station. Open back, pack as many punters in as was halfway legal and ferry them into town.
Did this exact thing a few years ago.
Senior exec kept everything on a USB 3.5"external drive - no backup, obviously, because.
Sudden problem - drive not recognized.
Plugged it in, ear to drive - click, click click. Drive head stuck in "park".
Made a big production of holding it *precisely* 6" above the desk (measured with a ruler for best effect) and slammed it down.
Drive kicked into life. Copied everything back onto his PC and then threw it in the bin.
Later heard that the reason they guy was sweating like a bison was the drive held a draft financial report he'd been working on for days.
User education ensued.
... on any device except the occasional intranet site that mandated it.
Went from Mosaic -> Netscape -> Firefox.
Not a single problem with it on my current phone, raft of extensions installed, incl uBlock, just works.
Plus it syncs bookmarks with my PC.
No interest in Chrome whatsoever.
Actually, you *can* get it from a Google search.
Expert Witness 101...
Duty is to aid the Court in understanding the situation - not to whoever is paying/employing you.
Independant - how anyone ever thought a Fujitsu employee passed that test boggles the mind.
Duty to bring to the Court's attention anything that might undermine your conclusions (differing opinions, lack of evidence, etc).
Methodology - what steps you took to inform your opinion.
Ongoing duty of disclosure if something crops up to change your opinion, even if the case is over.
Statement should include your qualifications to be having an opinion on the matter along with other legal niceities.
Few other bits and pieces but that's the crux of it and you don't actually need legal training to understand it.
There's no doubt he's an expert with a small "e" but it seems he was mostly involved in linking Horizon into the back-end financial systems - which is not where the problems were.
The problems were with the front-end EPOSS (in both Legacy Horizon and Online) and he doesn't seem to have had much to do with that end of the system.
It's notable that the lawyers kept trying to get him to "beef up" his testimony and to his small amount of credit he obviously pushed back sometimes.
Most of the blame for the Horizon fiasco goes to the Legal, Security and Investigation depts - including standing him up as an independent Expert in the first place.
As with all big systems it's not about if it's got bugs - it does. It's how you (mis)handle them cropping up.
A Conflict of Interest doesn't suggest someone will actually be affected by that conflict and tailor their evidence.
It means there is the possibilty of that happening, even unwittingly.
There's also the *appearance* of bias even if there is none. Justice must be *seen* to be done, etc.
It's bad enough the lawyers thought it was a good idea to stand him up - what the heck were the judges in the cases thinking?
... computer expert. "It's just not the right structure … it indicates to me that they don't understand what those particular structures are,"
This was the infamous doubling bug - some worthless widget didn't know how to use multiplying by -1 to change a positive variable to a negative.
Hopefully not alone.
If I'm advertised at, unwillingly, then there is not only zero chance I'll buy the product - I'll blank the entire company. Permanently.
Even if I fancy something like what they're offering, I'll find an alternative on general principles.
They never seem to measure the negative reinforcement side of annoying people with their inane, ubiquitous, annoying, beef by-product.
... decided to accept the towns concerns and pulled all coverage. As a test case.
You think mobiles/masts are a danger? No worries, we've decomissioned our towers, mobiles don't work in your town anymore and your children are safe.
You do all have landlines and/or nearby payphones don't you?
Define "worse" ;-)
However you score it these idiots will find a new setting on the idiocy scale."This one goes up fo 11".
Readers may disagree but for my part I reckon VMware got it mostly right for well over a decade and actually wanted to build stuff to make sysadmins happy.
Broadcom are a bunch of motherless funts who strip-mine anything they lay their hands on.
They're not a techno company....they're a predatory accountancy firm. Hoping Oracle dont end up going the same route.
Car analogy...
You take your car to be serviced at an official dealership.
Mechanic recommends an oil change. You agree. He uses the wrong oil and your engine presently seizes.
Not his problem because you consented to the work. See how that flies in court.
Same deal here - you agreed to install HP's recommended software and it bricked it - pretty sure the law says they have to fix it.
Also reckon they could fall foul of some anti-hacker laws if someone pushed it - distribution of harmful software etc.
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