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Micro Men – Acorn vs Sinclair

The BBC has, for once, come up with a one-off programme I actually enjoyed – Micro Men. It’s screening now (several times) on BBC4, and if you were around at the start of the micro computer era you really should watch it. It looks like it was made for us nerds.

It deals with the rivalry between Sinclair and Acorn in the UK home computer market. Okay, it takes a lot of liberties with events and totally ignores the rest of the industry – the best you can say is that it’s fiction based on history. But if you look beyond that, the background detail was completely amazing. And I’m not just talking about having the correct covers on the issues of PCW, although this was nice to see.

For a start, look at the posters on the walls – they’re spot on. Then look at the electronics they’re playing with in the lab. That’s either the guts of a real Acorn Atom or it’s a very good reproduction, even though the chips, which would have been more interesting, are hidden on the reverse. The software on the shelves at WH Smith looks like the real thing, in the real packaging.

In the closing scenes, where Chris Curry and Herman Hauser are discussing where it all went wrong, the whiteboard behind them contains the instantly recognisable design goals of the Acorn RISC Machine (ARM). Even the briefcases the men from the ministry carried – I bought one just like that in 1978 and I’ve still got it!

Someone was obviously paying a great deal of attention to such detail, and I didn’t see anyone mentioned in the credits who could have supplied it. But could it have been Roger Wilson, the genius I’ve always believed to be behind Acorn/BBC BASIC? He featured prominently in the depiction of the Acorn team, whereas Andy Hopper was nowhere to be seen; although this is perfectly reasonable from a dramatic sense

Roger Wilson has subsequently changed to Sophie Wilson, and I got a call from an old friend claiming that she appeared (unaccredited) in a cameo role as the barmaid. I never remember meeting Roger Wilson in person, so can’t tell, but it’s plausible when looking at it again.

The final scene, where Clive Sinclair drives a C5 down a runway only to be overtaken by two lorries, one from Microsoft and one from HP is obviously symbolic of the thrust of the whole film. Romantic, but wrong, of course. We’d all been using microcomputers with Microsoft software for a couple of years before either Sinclair or Acorn came on the scene with their ultra low-cost offerings. Like most people I knew, we avoided the newcomers because they were too cut-down an unsuitable for general nerd activities – particularly interfacing to things. And their manufactured PCBs used hairline copper tracks that were covered in solder-resist – difficult to rework.

Acorn and Sinclair started too late, and ended up building the machines we all wanted in 1980. By 1984 the bulk of computers were being sold not to enthusiasts, but users wanting pre-packaged software running CP/M or MS-DOS – and the Apple Macintosh was on the scene showing the way forward. The Mac booted into user-mode whereas previous machines started with the BASIC programming prompt.

What they didn’t realise was that we were never going to become a nation of computer programmers, we were going to become computer users. And the rest is history.

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Outlook Send and Receive Dialog

If you’re having problems with Outlook insisting on showing you a send/receive dialog even when you have checked the box to hide it in future the solution seems to be simple. Go to the View menu and make sure “Status Bar” is ticked at the bottom.

It appears that if there is no Status Bar to display progress, Outlook will display the Send/Receive dialog regardless of the preferences you’ve set.

If this doesn’t work for you, please leave a comment below.

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UK Keyboard for DOS under Vista

Hat’s off to Microsoft – they have maintained backward compatibility through numerous operating systems since 1981. Even Vista can run ancient DOS applications, although Microsoft doesn’t go out of its way to explain how.

Are you having problems with DOS programs where the keyboard doesn’t always come up with the right symbols? This is because DOS programs under Vista are assumed to be using an American keyboard layout. To change this you have to dig a bit.

There’s an equivalent to AUTOEXEC.BAT called AUTOEXEC.NT in C:\WINDOWS\system32. This won’t be news to many, it’s been around for a while. From inside this you can load the appropriate keyboard driver in the same way as you did under DOS – i.e. keyb uk

Except you can’t – they’ve renamed keyb kb16. Good name, eh?

So to get a UK keyboard back I’ve found that adding the line:

kb16 UK,850,C:\windows\system32\keyboard.sys

to 

C:\windows\system32\autoexec.nt

does the trick. If you’re in some other country, you could try your two-letter country code in place of UK. 850 refers to the code page.

The probably works with Windows 7. Now that I’m just getting used to Vista.

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Patricia Scotland – what about the housekeeper?

Patricia ScotlandPatricia Scotland (or Baroness Scotland as she apparently likes to be known) was made a peer by the Blair government in 1997. She didn’t actually turn up much in the Lords (too busy being a QC) but nonetheless has ended up as Attorney General.

I’d like to see her sacked.

But not because of this row about employing an illegal immigrant. Big deal – she didn’t follow the procedure. This isn’t a case of dishonesty, is it?

It’s highly embarrassing for Labour, of course. Their ludicrous laws, rushed through with little or no sensible scrutiny and based on populist opinion rather than fairness and common sense have been making innocent people’s lives a misery for years. It’s no surprise that she can’t follow the rules. Who can?

So chuck her out for being partly responsible for these daft laws in the first place. Unless, of course, she really does see the error of her ways and starts a process to repeal them. I won’t hold my breath.

However, the press and politicians (opposition and own side) have got their teeth into her, and that’s all they can talk about.

What you don’t hear anyone talking about the person she employed: Loloahi Tapui. Let’s just take a look at the facts as we know them.

Tapui applied to work for Scotland as a housekeeper, and Scotland checked her documentation and found it in order. Scotland has said this clearly, and the court accepted it. What she did not do is keep a photocopy, and it is because of this that she was fined. However, from this we can conclude that Tapui lied about her status and presented false documents to Scotland at the start of her employment. The documents must have existed to have been checked, but they cannot have been genuine.

So Scotland is the victim of a crime here. Tapui set out to deceive her in order to gain employment and obtained forged paperwork.

Tapui is here illegally. I expect she’s still here. Hitting Scotland with the maximum £5000 might do something to serve her right for producing such stupid laws in the first place. But what of Tapui? She’s the dishonest one. Lock her up with hard labour and then deport her back from whence she came? I haven’t heard of that happening. I haven’t even heard that she’s been charged. Have you?

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Margaret Haywood vs. Nursing Establishment, Round 3

Remember that Panorama documentary from 2005 highlighting problems at the Royal Sussex hospital? The whistle blower responsible for the undercover filming was a Ms Haywood, a nurse of 20-years experience. At worst you could claim she was a victim of the reality-TV craze, trying to get her 15-minutes of fame. At best she’s a public-spirited whistle blower taking a desperate step to highlight problems and bring about change. I’m inclined to place her near the later end of the spectrum myself.

The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), however, don’t share this view and had her struck off in April – she can no longer work as a nurse. The NMC was set up by the present government in 2002 in order to regulate nurses and midwives. Ms Haywood clearly embarrassed the government, but I’m sure this had nothing to do with their decision, bizarre as it appears. Even government health minister Ben Bradshaw was quick to criticise their decision in no uncertain terms.

As far as I know, the NMC didn’t feel inclined to take any action against the Royal Sussex or any of those shown to be neglecting patients – only the messenger. If anyone from the NMC is reading this, perhaps they could enlighten us?

Now there’s been another twist. Someone’s had the bright idea of nominating Ms Haywood for a the Patient’s Choice award, 2009 – the country’s favourite nurse as chosen by the patients themselves and run by the Nursing Standard, organ of the Royal Collage of Nursing (their union, in effect). Apparently when the NMC was approached by the BBC concerning this development they declined to comment.

I don’t know anything about the four other worthy nominees, but I know what message I want to send to the NMC – and everyone gets a vote.

So Vote Here

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I killed the computing press.

In the 1980’s and 1990’s there were a lot of interesting companies producing interesting bits and pieces related to the world of computing, and a lot people were interested in hearing about them. By about 2000, computers had become commodities, as expected. There are obviously far fewer manufactures, and their products tend to be pretty much the same. They’re mostly bought by people as tools, and most computer users wouldn’t recognise a bus controller even if it ran them over.

Not only have I stopped reviewing computer parts, I’ve stopped reading such reviews. Until now. Right now I want to read a review of current colour laser printers. Why? I want to buy one, of course, and I don’t know which one to pick.

You see, unlike PCs, it does matter which printer you choose because you want to produce the best possible output. This is something that can be tested objectively and subjectively by an independent human; you won’t be able to decide it by looking at the competing specifications. And speaking of specifications, they’re probably not going to be entirely honest when it comes to other metrics, so there’s not substitute for some standard test prints and a stopwatch.

I rang a friend from the Golden Age who should have known, and asked where the reviews were to be found now that Personal Computer World had folded. I was shocked at what I learned. Apparently the decline of the computer press is far worse than I feared. Not only has PCW disappeared, but PC Magazine is no more (in Europe) and the remainder are fading away. There’s no advertising revenue. And it’s all my fault! Yes – I haven’t even bought a computer mag in years. How could I have bought anything through reading adverts? Or reviews?

But reviews are essential. Without them, how can anyone decide what’s good and what’s not? Where are the reviews? If anyone can tell me, then please do.

I was directed towards cnet – founded by some ex-VNU types, apparently. Also, to my surprise, Trusted Reviews They do know a bit about what they’re reviewing, but I suspect, having read some of them, that there aren’t many big guns on the staff to provide context. In fact I do wonder about there being much in the way of staff at all. Staff cost money and there’s precious little of that around for journalism. And no, there were no comparative reviews of current printers to be found.

Other on-line reviews are written by users. There’s always danger they’ve been written by idiots, but either way, they’re necessarily ill-informed. If I were to review a printer now, I’d be ill-informed too. I’d need to have seen most of the printers out there in order to appreciate the good and bad points relating the the review’s subject, and that’s not going to be the case with a user.

User reviews are either full of praise or damming. Most people spending their hard-earned money on something are hardly likely to say they made the wrong choice. They’ll believe they’ve bought something good – if not they wouldn’t have handed over the dosh in the first place. They start off biased. Only if the item fails to deliver will they refrain from gushing praise in it’s direction. Instead, they’ll utterly condemn it, being furious with the supplier and manufacturer for having conned them.

So given that professional reviews are still needed, what’s the business model going forward?

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Sir Alan Turing?

If you know about computers, you’ll know Alan Turing was a great man. Without his pioneering theoretical work in the 1930s computing would not have developed as did; his work on code-breaking computers during the war helped win it, and he made a considerable contribution to the National Physical Laboratory once the war ended. The man was a genius, and we owe him a lot.

Unfortunately for him, the great man was queer and this got him into trouble with the law following an incident in 1952, after which he was hounded until his death in 1954.

He was awarded an OBE in 1945 in recognition of is work during the war, but there is now a campaign afoot award him a posthumous knighthood and apologise for his treatment at a time when homosexual acts were still illegal. Although it’s regrettable that society treated him, and others, so badly, it was illegal at the time. Not liking a law is no excuse for ignoring it.

John Graham-Cumming has started a petition to get something done about his treatment. Unfortunately it specifically calls for an apology over the prosecution rather than the climate that lead to it. However, it’s still a good cause and the support from the likes of Peter Tatchell isn’t enough to put me off. Unlike the campaigners today, Alan Turing’s world was discrete and should have been no one’s business but his own.

You can get at the petition here

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Digital TV for people who don’t much care

Yesterday an old friend called to ask me for an explanation of this digital TV business as she needed to relocate her set and thought it was time for a sort-out. I’m not a TV fanatic; there are no plasma wide-screens hereabouts. However, she’s not what you’d call an avid TV viewer either, so calling me did make sense in a way.

So what is the current TV story for those of us who aren’t aficionados? This is how it is.

As the government as pointed out, ad nausium, the old TV system is being switched off. That’s the TV we all grew up with – transmitted form a mast on the top of a hill somewhere and received by an aerial on your roof. This was analogue.

Analogue is not dead. There are still going to be analogue transmissions from satellites and on cable TV. However, unless you have a particular wish to watch the local news in Mongolia you’re probably not going to be interested. It’s only for specialist foreign channels; your garden will look like Goonhilly and the kit will be expensive and cumbersome.

So apart from the TV junkies, most people will want just digital TV. The only questions you need to ask are “How should I get it?” and “Do I want High Definition?”

The digital TV system is called DVB (Digital Video Broadcast). There are three basic versions: DVB-S for satellites, and DVB-T, which means terrestrial (i.e. broadcast from a transmitter on the top of a hill), and DVB-C which is sent down cable TV. Cable TV arrives down a cable laid to your house and an expensive subscription to a cable TV company. Everyone hates their local cable-TV monopoly. Unless you already know you want cable TV for your own reason, you probably don’t want cable TV.

For DVB-T and DVB-S there are both free and subscription services:

DVB-T: Freeview and Top-up TV
DVB-S: Freesat and Sky

Both systems need a specific receiver, which can include a decoder for subscription-based channels should you want them. These receivers cost:

DVB-T: ~£30 (but often built into TV sets, especially since 2007).
DVB-S: ~£50 (just starting to appear built-in to some high-end sets).

Here’s where it starts to get tricky. If you do want High Definition (HD) you can only get it on DVB-S (satellite) and you need a special HD receiver box. These cost £150 instead of £50.

With HD the picture is simply made up of more dots than on a standard picture. HD is only worth it if you have a large HD-compatible TV. On a smaller set the dots are so small anyway that you won’t see the extras, and if the set is not not HD-compatible you’re definitely wasting your time. The HD Satellite standard is often referred to as DVB-S2.

You can have a mixture of standard and HD satellite receivers, once you have the dish and the wiring in place, so if you have small sets you can use a standard receiver and get an HD receiver for the big set in the garage, or wherever you keep it.

You can, of course, get an HD receiver ‘free’ from Sky. You’ll see such offers all over the place (Tesco current has posters up offering a free Sky HD box with this set). In the small print you discover you need to take out a subscription to Sky TV for a couple of years – something like £500. This is fine if you want the Sky channels; the only people who I know who feel its worth it are the sports fanatics wanting a wide choice of live football.

What’s coming in the future, just to confuse matters, is HD on Terrestrial transmitters – DVB-T2. This doesn’t exist yet, but is planned for later 2009 in some areas. We’ll have to wait and see what actually happens but it won’t work with standard DVB-T (Freeview) equipment even if a TV does say ‘HD Ready’.

If you think it’s time to upgrade your TV you can buy one with a Freeview (DVB-T) receiver built in. In fact, since the start of 2009, you’d have been hard pressed to find one without it. Unfortunately if you want a built-in satellite receiver then you’ll have to wait. There are some around; they’re quite rare and expensive. Give it a year and I suspect they’ll be common enough too.

So to summarise, if your TV has a screen less than about 32 inches either get a new set with Freeview (DVB-T) or a £30 receiver box to work with your old set. If it’s bigger than 32-inch you’ll get a better picture with Freesat, but the decoder box will cost more and you’ll need to install a satellite dish. Or you can wait until 2010 (or later) when DVB-T2 turns up and gives you HD through a normal aerial. It depends on how good a picture you want.

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Bailing out the devil

So the government’s big idea to save us from recession is to prop up the motor industry by giving everyone a £2000 discount on new cars, assuming you trade in an old one. Brilliant! This subsidy will keep the price of cars down while needlessly scrapping perfectly good vehicles that could have given many more years of service.

To make this lunacy palatable the usual emotive terms such as ‘gas guzzler’ and ‘old banger’ have been wheeled out again to try and hide the environmental nonsense of it all from the emotional, and anyone else not bothered to look more deeply into the matter.

And this is aside from the loans and government bail-outs taking place in England, Europe and the USA.

Wake up! We have too many cars because of an over-healthy motor industry able to pile them high and sell them cheap. If you want to reduce the number of cars then contracting the motor industry is the only way to do it. And right now it can be done ‘naturally’, without the need to legislate or tax.

Abandoning any veneer of environmental awareness the politicians will justify this subsidy by pointing to the jobs that would be lost. This is pure emotional blackmail as well as nonsense. If you have surplus workers and piles of cash available there are plenty of other more useful projects available. How about building facilities for sustainable transport with the same resources?

The reason, presumably, is that sustainable transport means just that. Once the infrastructure is in place it lasts, and you’ll end up with a load of workers with no more work unless you can think of further projects. Sustainable energy or agriculture, perhaps? Unfortunately we are stuck with politicians that can only see as far as the next election, and they have vested interests to placate in the mean time. But one thing we can learn from this – when the chips are down they don’t care a jot about the environment, carbon emissions or sustainability.

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Vegetable Deluxe

In 2004 (or thereabouts) McDonalds in England dropped the Vegetable Deluxe, which is a pity. If you ordered it without the egg-based sauce it was actually pure vegetarian. Not particularly nice to eat, but no animal products.

The Vegetable Deluxe was replaced by the Quorn something-or-other, and Quorn contains egg, so its demise was a step in the wrong direction. This was itself replaced, apparently, by a vegetable and cheese sandwich; available without the cheese on request.

So what are McDonalds up to? I decided to write to them and ask, and they replied saying that the Veg Deluxe was simply discontinued. Hmmm.

The next time I was at a McDonalds (some considerable time later) I asked the manager for his views, and was told I could have one. Great! Well, not great; but better than nothing. Can I have a receipt with that?

Armed with the receipt to prove that it was still on the menu I wrote back to head office and this time I received an apology – apparently it’s available, but at the manager’s discretion. The manager I spoke to had no intention of stopping, and supplies were readily available even if it didn’t appear on the menu.

But why should anyone care? Surely McDonalds is the Great Satan of the catering world. Well, actually, they’re not as bad as many and they do respond to public opinion. Any business that doesn’t is, by definition, selling the wrong thing.

So consider this: If people don’t order the Vegetable Deluxe from time to time then McDonalds really will stop selling it. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I say it’s bad. It reinforces their (supposed) corporate idea that meat is the only thing that sells. Actually, if you go to McDonalds in India you’d be hard pressed to find meat, which is proof enough that they do respond to what the locals are demanding. If they’re not selling what you’re after, go and demand it. A boycott isn’t going to scare them.

The only downside is that if you buy a Veggie Deluxe to encourage them you’ll have to find something to do with it, unless you propose to eat it.