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My email addresses
Non Computing Interests:
-
I'm an organiser for :
I enjoy wind
surfing , beer
gardens, cycle day trips (preferably fast)
, skiing, walking (~ 15Km/3hr), programming, electronics
& DIY etc. I organise
trips & events & help & encourage others
similarly.- I graduated from UKC
& continued living in Canterbury Kent England
for some years after, then moved to Munich, Bavaria, Germany.
- I am a fervent believer in the "Right To
Repair" many decades before the phrase was invented.
Fundamentaly it means company product information (manuals
& such) should be freely available to owners who purchase
product from when it first is sold. Thus still available even
after a manufacturer may go bankrupt. Easiest achieved by
legal jurisdictions forcing manufacturers to publish manuals
on the web, where it can be public archived by libraries such
as archive.org. This links
to themes of criminalising built in
obsolescence & supporting Free Software & DIY etc, & reducing global
pollution & global warming etc.
 I'm a
Non smoker - Please Do not poison me with your drug addiction
!- Nicotine drug addicts should keep down wind, or take
snuff or chewing tobacco instead. - Please keep your
poisonous smoker acquaintances well away from me, I really do
not want to meet Any more smokers, ever. Those who poison my
brain with their cancerous headache provoking smoke are
liable to hostile vigorous response, to preserve my
health.
Allergic to state religion
& proselytisers !
Computing Interests:
- I'm a C, Unix, & Systems Engineering Consultant in Munich Germany.
I will Not work in tobacco smoke polluted offices.
- Vector Systems
Ltd
 Vector Systems
Ltd is the computer consultancy I work with.- I'm always pleased to hear of new work opportunities
 ( developers always need new
projects ). X-Windows, Internet, & Web system provision
& support are among my interests.
-
Co-founder of both:
 I use,
recommend & contribute to FreeBSD (my local copy of FreeBSD's central
development program source code is maintained current on a
daily basis by automatically using `ctm_rmail' over the
Internet ).- My public sources (BSD, X11,
own).
- I have numerous Unix (FreeBSD) PC's & had some rare
systems: A PC532 (the world's
best publicly documented computer). A
Symmetric S375
- Professionally,
for customer projects, I use Unix
(BSD, Linux etc) &
X-Windows &/or real
time operating systems, etc.
- Tcl/TK Book i reviewed.
- Equipment For Sale And/Or To Give
Away
- Intellectual Property
Rights - Fight Software Patents
- My Remote
domains.
-
Where Don't You Want To Go Today ?
 MICROSOFT PRODUCTS
(& Data in MS Formats) NOT USED & NOT WELCOME
! - I avoid using MS-Dos & MS-Windows except perhaps
using DOS once every few months, as a loader for hardware
test/config programs.
- I do not want to hear about DOS & MS-Windows
viruses. - I'm Immune !
- The leaked Microsoft Halloween
documents.
- The sooner the US Justice Dept invokes its Anti-Trust
legislation to break up Microsoft into smaller competing
units, the better; More choice, innovation, & some
computer-architectural liberation from the stultifying
Wintel mono-culture monopoly would be most welcome.
-
Where Do You Want To Escape Today ?
- Free software, &
particularly free source code, is anathema to
Microsoft & other monopolies, because it permit
competition & innovation, & allows people to more
easily track viruses & fix bugs, rather than blindly
trusting a Pandora's box of binaries from a monopolistic
software pusher & it's allies.
- Big software advertisers spend heavily on direct
advertisements, & in indirect `puff` piece
advertising in magazines, to discourage people from using
free binary software, & even worse (from their
perspective) having free source
available with their binaries.
- Free software projects have
no budget to counter advertise their `products' against
the one sided presentations & distortions of the
advertisers; so it's up to user/purchasers to decide
themselves whether to just believe the advertisers, or
whether to also look at the free
software alternatives.
- Do not believe the trite argument that free software
is not of professional quality. Free sourced software is
often/usually software written & examined to high
standards by professional programmers who dedicate
precious free time to the task, in parallel to being
employed on some other commercial job. A paid job
requires professional quality within budget; but a highly
interesting job that motivates unpaid work, is surely
also a good motivation to quality work, & has less
budget constraints.
- Free source code enables
you to be informed as to what's going on inside, but
doesn't force you to know, & doesn't force you to
hack your system to death ! It just lets you see what
might be going wrong, & allows involved local
repairers to fix things, in shorter timescales than
un-involved remote major software publishers could hope
to issue generic fixes.
- Escape to a world of Free
legal software, .
Business comparison of NT versus Unix .
-
A Munich Computer Club
Various friends ask for help with their PCs, but I only
touch PCs if they run Unix (eg BSD,
Linux etc), for which we have a Munich BSD User Group :
BIM , any PC running Microsoft DOS or Windows I
refuse to touch. So as not to leave you abandoned, here's
info about a local club I heard of (leaflet handed to me
at the Elektronik
Boerse, 1989). "
Computer Anwender Club Muenchen e.V" meet: 3rd
Tuesday each month Situli- Str 7, U6 Freimann,
+49.89.32450092 (or 3). Postal adr. ACM eV, c/o Uli
Ender, Lori- Str 20, 80335, +49.89.186186 They deal with
PCs & Commodore etc. They also have at least one man
who has an alternative to MS stuff. (Uli is now also a FreeBSD user).
-
The First
Microprocessor In The World
Not designed by Intel as assumed, Intel merely designed
the first commercial microprocessor chip set. A MOS-LSI
microprocessor chip set was designed June 1968 to June
1970 for the US Navy F14A swing wing Aircraft, by Garrett
AiResearch Corp under contract from Grumman Aircraft.
After some years of the planes being in use, the wing
control verniers were discovered not to work, & only
the micro switches as end stop detectors protected the
plane from bisecting itself!
-
Last Century when I got on line:
- 1991 I was stacey@guug.de @300 baud via Munich's Unix
based net access group, discussing PC532
- 1993 I ported programs as a Friday Pizza visitor to
PCS Cadmus, & had QIC access to GNU GCC src tars
- 1994 I took an unpaid occasional position as Sun
support at the University CAD dept. in exchange for email
access.
- But I was also freelance
& with the proceeds, in 1987 bought a Symmetric 375 (BSD 4.2 from Bill
Jollitz who later did 386BSD ) & later Toshiba 1100+
8086 laptop with 2 x 720K floppies. It ran MSDOS 3.2
& Minix 1-3?, I extended drivers from 360K to 720K.
With Minix one could even vi a .c & compile
simultaneously, if stickily & slowly
- There's an annual Vintage Computer Fest in
Munich
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