1990s

Model railroading with your Droid: Solving electrical issues

Dave Farquhar Android, model railroading, Toy trains , , , , ,

Electrodroid is an Android app designed for electronics hobbyists, but it has uses for model railroaders too. Its LED calculator is invaluable when using LEDs to light buildings, cars, locomotive cabs or headlights, or for other projects. Knowing the input voltage, you can then determine what resistors to use to protect the LED.

The voltage drop calculator is useful too, if less obvious. Read more

If you’re wondering where those anti-Google ads came from

Dave Farquhar Software , , , , , , , , ,

If you’re wondering why political-style anti-Google ads are suddenly running everywhere, it’s no coincidence. Microsoft has hired one of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s advertising masterminds to try his hand at campaigning against Google.

While it seems to be having some effect on public opinion, its effect on market share and Microsoft’s bottom line will take more time to gauge. But I think in the long term, talking to customers and figuring out why they are walking out of Microsoft stores empty-handed will prove more effective. Read more

Do as we say, not as we did: Microsoft and standards

Dave Farquhar Software , , , , , ,

Microsoft is sniveling that mobile web sites are written with Webkit browsers in mind, because Webkit has 90% market share on tablets and phones.

For those who are over 30, the irony is nauseating. Read more

How abandonware gets abandoned

Dave Farquhar Copyright, Retro Computing, Software , , , , , ,

From time to time on classic computing and/or videogaming forums, the question of how to track down the current copyright holder to a particular given title comes up. Sometimes someone knows the answer. Frequently they don’t.

This week, when George Lucas announced he’d sold Lucasfilm to Disney, illustrated precisely how this kind of thing happens.

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Happy 35th birthday, Atari 2600

Dave Farquhar Retro Gaming , , , , , , , , , ,
Happy 35th birthday, Atari 2600

The venerable Atari 2600 turned 35 this past weekend. People of a certain age remember it as the device that ushered in home video games. I know I spent a lot of afternoons after school playing blocky, chirpy video games on them in the early 1980s.

The 2600 wasn’t the first cartridge-based console, but it was the first widely successful one. It even spawned clones, the private-label Sears Video Arcade and the Coleco Gemini.

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Windows 8 won’t fail just because nobody likes Windows upgrades

Dave Farquhar Windows , , , , , , , , , ,

John C Dvorak wrote today about the great upgrade upheaval, and argued that Windows 8 is doomed to fail because it’s just going to be too hard to upgrade, and nobody likes Windows upgrades anyway.

I agree on the first point but not the second.

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Why your write blocker doesn’t work with the IDE cable backwards

Dave Farquhar security

I’m reviewing and revising policies and practices at work, including data forensics, the unfortunate necessity caused by employees misusing their company-issued machines.

Early in my career, I had to make the phone call to HR on occasion when I discovered something on an employer-owned PC that shouldn’t be there. I even did forensics once, guided by a lawyer. I had a sector editor and knew how to use it; the lawyer knew what she was looking for. That wasn’t the right way to do it, but this place wasn’t willing to go to the expense required to do it right.

But now I work someplace that is. Read more

Busted at the Safeway for phone phreaking

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing, security , , , , , , , , , ,

Software developer, author, and blogger Jeff Atwood wrote his confessions of the 1980s this week. As a teenager and not-quite-adult, he was a phone phreaker.

More of this went on than anyone wants to admit. Rob O’Hara has podcasted about it. Read more

Happy 30th birthday, C-64

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing , , , , , ,

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Commodore 64’s release, PC World–a magazine published by the same company that once published RUN, a magazine dedicated to the C-64 and other Commodore 8-bit computers–had someone try to use a 64 for a week.

Not surprisingly, they found the 30-year-old computer not up to 2012’s demands.
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There’s plenty of credit for the Internet to go around

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , , , , , , , , ,

There’s a crazy rumor going around saying that the government didn’t do much of anything to create the Internet, and that private industry did it all.

I remember the Internet before the private sector got involved in it. I was there.
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