Giving It To a Museum
Today I contacted The Centre for Computing History in Haverhill and later they collected some of my boxes of software. They may also take some of my old hardware, like a DecWriter, a very early and powerful HP Vectra and the Artemis 1000 system.
They certainly need help in all forms.
The Price of an Artemis 1000 System in 1984
In going through my papers for possibly the last time, I found this invoice for an Artemis system. Or at least for the hardware required.
A Metier Invoice for an Artemis System
Effectively, my recollection is that this was about the time we sold the company to Lockheed and it was for old-times sake more than anything. I have a feeling I actually bought my old development mchine from the attic. It’s still in my shed now and I suspect it is the only one left!
Are We Winning the Spam Wars?
If you believe this article in The Register, the answer may be yes. Here’s an extract.
Spam volumes almost halved in the three months between August and the end of October, according to Symantec.
Symantec’s hosted services unit (formerly MessageLabs) credits a 47 per cent sharp decrease in global spam volumes to action by the authorities against botnets and organised cybercrooks. In October, authorities in the Netherlands took down several servers associated with the Bredolab botnet. The action followed the September closure of spamit.com, a key player in the unlicensed pharmaceuticals spam racket, and arrests in the US, UK and Ukraine of scores of suspected members of a ZeuS phishing Trojan ring.
If more of us installed proper protection against spam, we might continue to see a decline.
Let’s hope so! If you don’t want to spend money on spm protection, you could always use Clamwin, as I do.
A Spat Over a Breast Enhancement Cream
There is a legal spat going on between a company called Rodial and a plastic surgeon called Dr. Dalia Nield. You can read about it in this article in The Independent.
It strikes me that this one will run and run, but it could be one that falls into that category, where someone makes a legitimate comment, from professional knowledge and experience, and someone else decides they’ll challenge that statement in the Courts by suing for libel. Read the article in The Independent and you will see that Dr. Nield is supported by Sense About Science, a charity which fights against these actions and in the past supported the author, Simon Singh.
These sort of actions worry me, as I have pretty strong opinions on some controversial subjects and one of these days I might arouse the ire of a rather nasty snake oil salesman. So I will not come down in favour of one party or another.
I do know of Rodial though, but in a strange way. At least twice a week for several months, I have got a sales e-mail from them. When I got the first, I thought it was a spam e-mail, as it was trying to sell me a breast enhancement cream or other such product, that I have no need for. Mainly because I’m a man, but also because I don’t use any creams or potions at all. I should also say, that, I’ve seen lots of this type of e-mail from spammers in the United States and as this email seemed little different, I immediately regarded it as being of the same type, even though it enlarged breasts rather than the male organ. I didn’t even bother to try to unsubscribe, as it came from a retired e-mail address, I don’t use very often. So that means they must have obtained an old list from somewhere. I wonder what the Information Commisioner would say about that. I’m not bothered, as I just set the spam filter to drop them straight into the Spam Folder, as I do for most of the spam I get, as often unsubscribing tells the spammer that the e-mail address is real.
Trying to Stop Inevitable Decline
There are two related stories today about improving the lot of rail passengers and improving the Royal Mail.
The Royal Mail is probably past saving especially if they raise prices, as people will not be prepared to spend more to get letters delivered, when e-mail and the telephone is there. After all phone charges are dropping because of competition and the Royal Mail will only compete by dropping prices.
As to improving trains, we need to replace some old stock like the Pacers, but many are saying they’ve had enough with commuting five days a week and are using the Internet to cut some of those journeys. We are also getting to a point, where people won’t pay more to commute, if stories about low-ridership on the fast commute lines to St. Pancras are true. So perhaps we might see some strategic spending on the worst parts of the network, but the grandiose plans of some are surely dead in these austere times.
The Daisy 2011 Presentation Browser
I’ve just rewritten the first of my suite of Daisy Web Tools, the Presentation Browser.
Presentation Browser Screen Shot
I originally wrote the program for three reasons.
- You can control the size of the browser window, so that it fits your on-line Internet-based presentation. In the screen-shot above, the browser has been set to 800 x 600 pixels and some of the tolbars have been removed to give a cleaner view of the web page.
- The program allows you to print clean copies of pages from the Internet. The classic is wanting to print say a recipe or a set of instructions and instead of one page with what you want, you get the first bit on one page, the second on another and ipmteen pages of garbage. The Daisy Presentation Browser, allows you to select the part of the page you want and then print it.
- The program also allows you to take copies of web pages and then paste them into other programs, like Word and Paint. It makes producing manuals and on-line documentation a lot easier.
The software is free and can be downloaded from this page. There is a simple registration process to unlock some features of the program. As I hate spam with a vengeance, I only use e-mail addresses collected in the registration process to return user and registration codes.
The software works on any version of Windows later than 2000 or NT4.
To run the software you need to have Internet Explorer installed on your computer, but it doesn’t have to be your default browser.
Would You Trust Western Union?
I’ve never used them, but I’m led to believe they are a reputable company.
But as I get at least five e-mails every day, where the company is mentioned in some form of scam, I don’t think I would even use them to transfer money to someone who I knew to be totally genuine. And I wouldn’t accept any money from someone who wanted to use Western Union!
So why do they allow their name to be taken in vain, by all these criminals?
One In and One Out!
I had a bone density scan some weeks ago and as I’ve not heard anything, I asked the nurse to see if there was anything on their computer, when she did my Warfarin blood test and gave me a shot of B12 today.
There wasn’t any news and judging by how I feel, my bones may not be tip-top, but they certainly aren’t in falling apart mode, as I would have hoped that I would have been called in for the bad news.
It strikes me that there could be a big increase in efficiency here, with possible cost savings!
If you have a test that can be quantified accurately and you are well on the right side of the problem level, surely, you can be told the results either by a more or less standard e-mail and/or letter.
With my bone scan, it might say that I’m reasonably fine, but I should come back for another scan in say six months. A copy could also go to my GP, so she would know as well. I have a feeling, that a lot of communications from hospitals to GPs are actually letters not e-mails and are scanned in the surgery. If I’m wrong, which I hope I am, about these letters please correct me!
There must be hundreds of instances in the NHS, where a sensible bit of automation could save money and redeploy staff to more important duties, than writing lots of similar letters.
We are seeing instances of automation, like appointments systems that text you reminders, but we need to see more. I personally would like to see a better system for anti-coagulant testing.
Visual Basic 6 and a Gammy Left Hand
I program in Visual Basic 6 and despite the language being probably ten years old now, it still does what it says on the tin with all versions of Windows and Internet Explorer up to 7 and 8 respectively.
But also because it is such a well defined language and so easy to use, I can effectively run it one-handed, with just a little bit of help from my gammy left hand for Shift and Tab. I do all the other typing with my right. But then the sort of things you need to do with the keyboard in most programs, you can do with the mouse.
Despite my two strokes, I can still do everything I need to do! I’ve even remembered most of the code I’ve written over the years, so at least that part of the brain works, even if the hand doesn’t!
The first new program will be a 2011 version of my Daisy Presentation Browser. This program does three main things :-
- Allows you to set the size of the browser to improve your presentations based on web sites.
- Print clean copies of web pages to a pre-defined size or the maximum available on your printer.
- Copy the web page in the browser to the clipboard for pasting into another program.
My heart goes out to the genius who designed Visual Basic 6 in the first place, without whom I would be seriously suicidal!
I’m Programming Again!
I may still have pain in my face, a left hand that doesn’t know its Alt from its Control or Caps Lock, but I have to do something so I’m starting to program again. Or should I say reprogramming again as I’m only updating each of my Daisy Web Tools for 2011!
The first one that I will reprogram is the Presentation Browser. I wrote this a few years ago, to solve the problem of being able to print or capture a clean image of a web page, without the toolbar and all the other things that insist on being printed, when you do this from within Internet Explorer or another browser.
I shall announce the program here when it is ready. All of the Daisy Web Tools, will be available separately and free.
The Anonymous Widower 