COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

[Pluggy]

I'm not sure Stanley, as I said when I came round, I've never put a card in that phone, I don't know how it behaves by default. If it doesn't use it by default there will no doubt be a setting to tweak. The settings in the camera App would seem a likely place to start. I know it would take a fair number of photos just using the built in memory.

[Stanley]

When the pressure comes off I will experiment..... Thanks anyway Pluggy. James is coming at the right time, TV reception is virtually nil. Thank god for Youtube!

[Stanley]

Satellite dish fixed, TV back to normal and comms working fine. Fingers crossed! Isn't it amazing how you don't notice gradual deterioration, the TV screen is far clearer!
I picked this up this morning. LINK. Why has it taken so long to come clean? It's a dangerous place out there....

[Tizer]

`Europol warns of Android tap-and-go thefts' LINK
"Law authorities have warned they believe criminals are using Android phones to trigger fraudulent tap-and-go payments. The alert comes in Europol's annual Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment report. Experts had previously said that the rollout of smart wallet systems could raise such a threat. However, the police are unsure exactly how the attacks are being carried out and how common they are. "The possibility of compromising NFC [near field communication] transactions was explored by academia years ago, and it appears that fraudsters have finally made progress in the area," the report says. "Several vendors in the dark net offer software that uploads compromised card data on to Android phones in order to make payments at any stores accepting NFC payments." The report's authors add that one consequence of the novel crime is that shops might not know how to react even if they detect the deceit. "Currently, when merchants detect a fraudulent transaction, they are requested to seize the card," the report says. "However, the confiscation may not be feasible when the compromised card data are recorded on the buyer's smartphone."
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While on holiday we had to wait to make our purchase in a shop while the owner persuaded an elderly gent to pay by contactless card. He didn't know his card was contactless and wasn't aware of the technology. The owner was extolling the virtues of rapid transactions. When it came to our turn I explained to the owner that I was going to pay him by a novel technology which required no electronic connections, no electricity, no RF-enabled card and used recyclable materials. I handed him a banknote. He didn't even smile.

[Stanley]

That shopkeeper would have had a harder time with me Tiz!! I refuse to use the NFC technology on the grounds that there is no advantage to me in doing so and in addition I like cash-back. As for my android phone, no bank details on it and except for exceptional circumstances it will never leave the desktop.
Question, why does NFC not trigger as your card is being put into the slot on the terminal?

[chinatyke]

The elephant in the room that nobody notices is that cash is being used less and less. Once cash disappears and is totally replaced by 'electronic credit and debit systems' the banks and government will have total control of your money. They could introduce an exchange rate between electronic money and cash so that you get charged for depositing money and for withdrawing it, negative interest rates in a different form. Don't think it couldn't happen, coins used to be made from precious metals and had an intrinsic value. Then almost worthless alloys were introduced and few people complained. Bank notes used to be backed by the gold standard and then became fiat money.

When I came to live in Guangxi 12 years ago I immediately noticed that it was mainly a cash society and cards were only accepted at a few outlets. My feeling is that UK is even more dependent on electronic payments than they were 12 years ago and you're on the downhill slide.

[Stanley]

I agree with all of that China.

[Pluggy]

Before I was self employed, I was largely cashless, but nowadays I'm much more cash dependent, as most of my customers pay me in cash. I do take cheques from people whose premises I've visited and known established customers, and I can take card payments but rarely do. Cash is where its at for me in the last 6 years.

In good old Barlick, its only the posher small shops and the national chains take other than cash. And we have very few national chains here.

Payimg for stuff via a mobile phone is a bridge too far.

[Tizer]

The elephant in the room that nobody notices is that cash is being used less and less. Once cash disappears and is totally replaced by 'electronic credit and debit systems' the banks and government will have total control of your money. They could introduce an exchange rate between electronic money and cash so that you get charged for depositing money and for withdrawing it, negative interest rates in a different form.

China's bang on target there. In fact it's already Bank of England policy to move out of cash for the very reasons he's mentioned: tighter control and negative interest rates.

[PanBiker]

Mobile Phone related posts moved to here Mobile Phones

[Stanley]

Makes sense......
Tiz commented on the mobile phone thread on the quality of help available on OG. I second that. The OG support is brilliant and far better than the providers. Thank you to all of you who have helped me and continue to do so.

[Tizer]

More trouble for those who extend the internet to controlling their homes and for organisations which are targets for DDOS attacks....
`Fears of massive net attacks as code shared online' BBC
"Computer code used to mount one of the biggest web attacks ever seen has been released online. Security experts fear the release will prompt more massive attacks that knock sites offline by swamping them with data. The attack tool seeks out smart devices in homes that are weakly protected with easy-to-guess passwords. Net monitoring firms said they had already seen an increase in scans that seek out vulnerable devices....Research by security firms suggests that both attacks managed to generate so much data by seeking out insecure devices that make up the "internet of things". These are smart devices such as webcams, thermostats and other gadgets that owners can control via the net. Scanners built into the attack code seek out vulnerable devices and enrol them into a network, known as a botnet, that a malicious hacker can then use in what is known as a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack."

[Stanley]

All this does not surprise me and is the reason why, as far as possible I avoid unnecessary reliance on the web. It seems to me that this is just asking for trouble.
Have I missed something? Is there a pecuniary advantage to the hackers or is this just vandalism.

[PanBiker]

How to send an email 32 years ago, fantastic, I remember it well.

Reminds me that at that same time myself and my mate Bill were using a forward store and retrieve AMTOR repeater on the 20M (14MHz) amateur band, which was based in Southern Italy, we used it to send text messages to one another across Barlick. With our transceivers and modems, we both had BBC Model B computers. I could compose and dump a message on the BBS in Italy and my mate could retrieve it later or vice versa. 100% error correction both ways.

How to send an email in 1984

Don't forget to press record on your cassette tape recorder at the end of the program to download this weeks free software.

[Tripps]

Great stuff. Thanks for the link. You never forget the sound of a Sitor / Amtor transmission..

Prince Philip had his prestel account 'hacked' in 1985. Looks like everyone used 1234 as the password. They were charged under the Forgery Act, for forging the password. How quaint, and very imaginative.

Phil hacked

I found my kids' Spectrum in the shed a while ago with lots of taped games. Not sure what to do with it. There's a private museum of computing in Cambridge, but I'd guess they have plenty of them.

[PanBiker]

I built my first computer in 1979, Acorn 6502 Microcomputer in kit form. It had a rudimentary keyboard for input and I think from memory a 9 digit 7 segment display. You could do simple I/O commands and hexadecimal calculations in the assembler. I next built an Acorn Atom which had a qwerty keyboard 2K of ram and a TV output, it supported tape or floppy drives, the latter at the time cost as much as the computer. Followed that with A BBC Model A, again built from kit then I expanded it up to Model B spec to give more I/O options, upgraded the ram to 64K and added a sideways ROM board for pre programmed roms and eproms. I built an eprom programmer for burning my own firmware programs. I used the BBC B extensively with my amateur radio station because of the I/O options on the machine.

We were selling the Acorn machines through work and I went on all the courses for repairing them to component level. It was an ideal situation for me and made it a lot easier to experiment with radio interfacing and stuff and various early data modes. RTTY, AMTOR, PK232. Dabbled with programming bits of software for use with the radio, mainly in BASIC but some in 6502 assembler, it was a lot of fun and good learning curve at the time.

[Stanley]

The height of my technology then was a card index and a typewriter....
See THIS for a Forbes article about the structure of Samsung. What particularly grabbed me was the demand that they distribute $billions of cash to the shareholders.....

[Pluggy]

Looks like Ian has been at it a little longer than myself, it was 1981 before I built my first computer..........

I've often said that if technology comes as far in the next 30 years as it did in the last 30 years, I don't want to be around to witness it. (Except its 35 years now).

Being a cheapskate I only have standard broadband, but downloading the latest incarnation of Windows 10 for a customers PC makes me wish I had something faster. (90 MB a minute was unheard of not so long ago but downloading a 4.1GB ISO file puts it in its place).

[Stanley]

If you think 35 years is bad to deal with, try 80! The timers on the gas lamps had to be wound up once a week by a man with a ladder..... That was computing!



The eight-day movement time clock that controlled a gas lamp.

[Big Kev]

I am still on ADSL broadband and until July of this year it has more than covered our needs, I've now realised how much we rely on it particularly for TV and music streaming. Since July there has been an intermittent connection dropout, sometimes between 30-40 times in a 24 hour period. I've had visits from 6 Openreach engineers, who've run line checks and replaced the master socket 3 times (I have a spare one now if anyone needs one) and a Sky Broadband engineer who replaced the router (if they post one out you have to pay for it, if an engineer comes and installs it, it's free of charge). I've lost count of the number of phone calls to the Sky Support Desk, each one ends with the promise that they'll fix it once and for all

I had a rummage through the router logs which show varying noise levels on the upstream, between 8 and 16db, which would affect the speed so I had a bit of a Google. Sky uses DLM (Dynamic Line Management) to optimise the speed of your broadband connection, this usually happens in the 5-10 days following installation of a new router and, once it's done its thing, shouldn't have any need to make any more adjustments...

When I called Sky yesterday I was answered by 3rd line Support (it must have been a busy day) and I had a nice chat about DLM and the intermittent dropouts. The upshot is DLM is now switched off on my line and a 'noise suppressor' switched on, this has resulted in a slightly slower download speed (16.5mbps) but hopefully a more stable service. I'll let you know how I get on and hopefully this may be of use to anyone experiencing similar issues

[Stanley]

Life can be very complicated.....

[PanBiker]

Hows your internal cabling Kev, any legacy stuff still hanging about? When I moved to fibre I had a need to move my Master socket. My old Netgear router was running on a normal extension socket and was fine for 17Mbps. I re cabled with CW1308 to extend to my new Master socket position and put new faceplates in with integral filters. This gave me a 2Mpbs increase to 19Mbps on my stats. Didn't take a lot of notice of the upload rates as it was just a means to an end to get the Master where I wanted it. I was gobsmacked by the effect that 5 meters of decent cable could make.

[Big Kev]

Hows your internal cabling Kev, any legacy stuff still hanging about? When I moved to fibre I had a need to move my Master socket. My old Netgear router was running on a normal extension socket and was fine for 17Mbps. I re cabled with CW1308 to extend to my new Master socket position and put new faceplates in with integral filters. This gave me a 2Mpbs increase to 19Mbps on my stats. Didn't take a lot of notice of the upload rates as it was just a means to an end to get the Master where I wanted it. I was gobsmacked by the effect that 5 meters of decent cable could make.

No issues with internals, Ian. Single unjointed cable from the pole outside the back gate to the Master Socket and no other boxes in the house. It runs from the pole underground to the cabinet by the Police Station, I have to put my trust in the 5 Openreach engineers who have been and checked it out.

It did drop out again at 18:15 today, I only noticed because the music went off and I had to reboot the Sonos to restore the connection. It was only down for around 30 seconds so am still hopeful turning off the DLM and assigning a manual profile will resolve it. I will push for compensation once it is resolved, fibre for the same price I pay for ADSL is not unreasonable for several months of disrupted service

[Tizer]

The height of my technology then was a card index and a typewriter....

I remember when I first encountered Hollerith cards in the early 1960s. Herman_Hollerith

[Stanley]

I think Jacquard looms got there even earlier!