[Ed P]

Many many years since I used it, but this used to work!

[Ed P]

Wheels-Of-Fire wrote:

Let the paste dry into a lump and then grind that into your final powder.

That is the step when people lose hands and eyes.

During Uni vacations, I once worked in the labs of an explosive factory. From my untutored eye the safety precautions surrounding black powder production were much greater for smaller quantities than those for nitroglycerine. (just a darned great zip bag in the ceiling full of tons of water).

[Ed P]

Dan, if you like RSS I recommend Liferea – very easy to set up your own lists of sites, though some are sadly disappearing. I use it to get news feeds from around the world, this makes it easy to see what the Beeb is deliberately not reporting!

 

[Ed P]

Presumably the laptop is wifi connected. That looks to be the problem area. You could try a cheap usb wifi dongle and turn off on-board wifi to test this theory, but I’d start by updating the wifi drivers.

[Ed P]

I run an XP in a VM sand-box i.e.no Internet Connection, but tbh most things seem to work in Win7

John I’m still amazed that your SP3 collection works I guess the executables must be installation modules..

[Ed P]

Do not get disappointed if John’s files do not work at all. Remember that any drivers need to be both installed and registered (not a trivial exercise), and that other than stand-along programs all programs need a zillion registry entries in different places in the registry. Remember also that dlls need to be registered – etc etc.

I will not say that John’s collection of files will not work, but I’ll be amazed if they do!

[Ed P]

D-Dan wrote:

So it seems that more than 1/3 of the Conservative MPs lack trust in TM. What chance if Labour do, actually, table a motion of no confidence?

Then job preservation comes into force. Those ComArtist Brexiteer who voted against May will shift position if they think it endangers their seat.

[Ed P]

If you have a DVD burner it is relatively easy to make these bootable and an SP3 iso will easily fit. If you do not have a DVD burner a USB connected DVD burner is relatively cheap.

[Ed P]

Thanks Bob, your ‘Boys in Blue’ are more helpful than my lot! I’ll pass on the info.

[Ed P]

This indicates a possible reason for the timing of the Brexit ConArtist’s announcement. . I hope the SFO and SEC investigate them to establish their innocence or otherwise.

link

[Ed P]

Re Oath — fair point, but like me you can always use Private Browsing and set your browser to forget. Then they can ask what they like and just get nowhere!

EDIT – or if you use Python it is pretty easy to set Chrome up in a one-time box – see the Python code I posted here:

[Ed P]

Just thought you may be trying to resuscitate an old business database or similar. If you are, then you will be better placed to look at the file extensions and see if there is any Win7/10 software that will access it. Failing that stick in a Live Linux CD. Linux has a lot of old file compatibility in its software library.

[Ed P]

Dave Rice wrote:

Having worked in the public sector (Post Office) and then done the same job as an outsourcer (CSC) I can absolutely say out sourcing is downright dangerous unless you have the balls of someone like BAE.

+1 to all the above, but then just to compound matters and ensure failure you put some incompetent a-hole as Minister in Charge who then completely ties up the system by insisting on progress reports every day, and interminable sessions on explaining what the long words in the report mean. e.g. What is a database, interface etc. Or, I thought AI meant Artificial Insemination .. what EXACTLY is it? Then when he finds things too hard and things get way behind schedule, chops out essential bits. I’m thinking of you ‘Failing Grailing’, you would be a prime contender for the job!

Been there got the scars and lived through failure/overrun etc until my old company learned its lesson and started putting real ‘managers’ with both cojones and clout in charge. I see no-one in Parliament (any party) capable of doing the job without screwing it up.

[Ed P]

Back on thread – what games do you have that cannot be run on Win7?

I’m guessing 16bit pnes and maybe DOS. If that is the case then you have other options:

For DOS there are a number of emulators that work just fine with modern rigs. e,g. DOSBox. My own personal preference is to run a full DOS virtual machine with a virtual floppy disk player. (you can still get USB floppy readers and they connect to vms.

For 16Bit, you could try ReactOS in VirtualBox. No guarantees on this one as ReactOS is very much beta software. The other thing to try is a VirtualBox in which you set up a fresh Win95 from Ebay – no activation or Internet issues with this one!

[Ed P]

You cannot activate it even if you have the Internet, M$ closed down the activation site when they withdrew support. T went that route with a 64Bit XP that I was trying to activate on a vm setup.

Your best bet is to stick a Linux distro on it, but even these have problems with XP era graphics drivers. Maybe Damn Small Linux will run but do not hold out your hopes.

[Ed P]

PM I agree the Pi FLIR is klunky, but it is 20% of the price of an Android add-on. The Pi is also relatively easy to integrate into any system along the lines Dave outlines. i.e. use Pi FLIR as a sensor rather than a proper camera.

I’ve played with a son’s iPhone FLIR add-on. The pics are almost at iPhone resolution, BUT they have the usual OEM problem of being a closed box for developers (plus the usual Apple problems!). The other major issue is that the ‘detected’ temperature is  dependent on the emissivity of the object as well as apparent temperature. i.e. My son’s kit is just as good at detecting moss on a roof as it is warmer hot-spots.  To an extent each application has to be tailored with such and other factors in mind.

To feed back a little on the ‘range’ issue that Dave raised, afaik range is not the issue but resolution is. With only 768 measuring points on an image, the detectable object size will be directly proportional to the focal length of the lens. The Pimoroni ad shows both standard and wide angle lens options so I guess if one needed a longer range a telephoto could be used. (I plead ignorance here as I have no idea of the problems faced with using different focal length/glass thicknesses and FLIR chips)

[Ed P]

So, after Bob’s revelations  — hands up anyone who truly believes that our Establishment is capable of defining and crafting a technology solution to the Northern Island border issue. Preferably of course, one that will also give us full control of our border in order to stop non-Irish EU citizens from wandering across. ?

[Ed P]

I guess this should be in the Pi section but Dave may have a professional interest.

The price of true FLIR kit is starting to plummet. Pimoroni (an IOT accessories company) has just released a thermal camera add-on for the Pi. Although the 32×24 pixel resolution is useless for surveillance work, I would guess that the resolution would be sufficient to detect a moving person at 15 metres.

I’m getting one to play with as I see it having uses for monitoring thermal insulation and other things. The relatively low cost, programmability and  1 degree C thermal resolution over a large working range, also makes it of potential use in a diverse numbers of things e.g. monitoring farmers hay storage to detect ‘hot’ spots, or peering at mobos for bad traces etc. One of those items only limited by imagination and ability.

I’ll probably pair it up with a cheap pi-zero camera to make the heat maps a bit more intelligible.

[Ed P]

The law seems a bit flaky on ‘surveillance’ cameras. Today I had a policeman call to ask if one of my cameras could monitor passing traffic. I said yes it could, but doesn’t (except by accident) as I have set it up to only record when there is movement in my own drive. I said that I thought there were privacy concerns about deliberately recording events not directly connected with  my property or possessions, and asked if that were correct. He said yes, but it seems a grey area. I asked if he wanted me to record everything, but he declined saying he would come back if they did.

He would not say why the police wanted to know. (I suspect it was a survey the police are doing to see the extent of ad-hoc recording in the area, as I’m not aware of any criminal activity in the vicinity.)

[Ed P]

The VFM Addict wrote:

The very second May pulled the vote instant and staggeringly dramatic falls (i.e. uncertainty).

Or a market reaction to the possibility of a Hard Brexit. It is the vector, and not the movement that is an important indicator,

[Author]

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