Posts by Tom 7

I thought the idea of this was to provide broadband for remote communities.

But, like affordable housing units, they will be last and least on the list.

Re: Nice artists impression.

Not sure of the reg units of temp. Neve seem to be able to find them when I need them. Try twice a kebab in an afterburner.

Re: Vendor support is one thing...

No. Not given most of the output seems to have jpg features all over it.

Re: git broke English

"Huck" sounds like the noise you make when you want to swear but your stupidity means you would spit teeth and blood doing so.

Re: A materials win-win?

I doubt its a materials win of any note, I'm not sure how many batteries are recycled but near 100% round here are. The tricky stuff is the rare metals and there seems to be a sulphur based solution (well framework) for that.

The gross incompetence of the people in charge of the actual system.

Re: There is no F in weigh

One consolation is they'll probably lose all the data every couple of weeks anyway.

No, that's an old typesetting thing - a perpendicular problem to cards - the typesetter can gather the letters and hold them as a line between thumb and forefinger for placing in the press.Also good for moving blocks of test around the layout.

Re: Oregon Software Pascal

I thought I'd have look at FORTRAN again just to see how the old dear was getting on and inversely you no longer have to shout to be heard!

Re: "the width of a human hair held 200m away"

The unit of social isolation given to a computer scientist in a pub on discovery of their profession in a non-pandemic situation. The 'I'll be right back after I've answered this important call' unit of length!

Re: Ah, customers.

I have worked for managers who claim they dont need to know what it is they are managing. Fortunately knowing what you are working with means you can keep control of the bits that that can save your arse. If you know something is going to fuck up get it in writing date post the email or whatever where you informed said manager it would fuckup. HR tend to get on your side with that kind of evidence. Any manager who thinks they can manage something they haven't got a clue about is almost certainly an utter twat and you can normally run rings round them but its important to have evidence.

Re: Yep

"Except it makes keeping up with it a full time job." Really? I tend to read through the new features from time to time and if I've a use for them it doesnt take long to get your head round them

Re: Embrace...

There's another one there 'Envelop'. I know of quite a number of people who have been enveloped by MS - given a job and a post and enough money to keep them from working for someone else. A surprisingly cheap way of reducing the competition.

Re: "an operating diameter of either 8 or 40 metres"

A Schroedingers pox on them!

Re: TLA backdoor

Assuming there is some logic behind it (by no means a given) perhaps its an attempt to keep the US ahead of the competition in terms of actually having a functioning 5G infrastructure.

From my use of Ardour I would say that there seems to be absolutely nothing that would need to benefit from hardware acceleration. Unless you're running it on a pentium.

Re: I find your lack of face disturbing ...

While using their phone in the car...

Re: Minimum spec?

I must confess that when I had to wait 20 minutes for something to compile I'd often thought of a better way of doing it, I could say that was because I was learning at the same time as doing - but I'm still doing that now 45 years or so after having written my first line of basic on paper to be taken away by the computer club leader who then took it 20 miles to the nearest available computer.

People tend, like electricity, to take the path of least resistance. Its definitely not the best way to get power to where you want it. Sometimes that extra compile time takes the pressure off your brain and lets it do something the computer cant. I've seen people hammer out hundreds of lines of code a day that impresses the boss and prevents them breathing down their neck all the time but it was often re-engineered later. You may not be in that category but I'd advise you to at least enjoy the chance of a chill out.

And I dare say a charcoal sketch on a piece of stone by Picasso will likely fetch more than you or I will earn in a lifetime! And letting the paint dry makes it less likely to smudge and become useless.

Re: We've reached peak fuckwit

I've not tried that surmstrum (??) rotted fish thing from seriously oop north so It may complement that sour but even if it doesn't it seems to have a similar effect.

No its when all available connections are taken. I would put money on many of them being idle. I bet if they wrote some proper code that only allowed each sign one connection then it would all probably work a lot better.

Re: every byte mattered ...

I dont recall any problems with 16 bit operators in odd places - but the assembler should sort that as an option anyway. I used a CP/M 68K machine for doing some programming learning and it whupped Intel for ease of coding. I would put money on the wrapper and coding checks you had to put in to ensure you didnt wander over segment boundaries wasted far more storage and even a weeks coding on a PC would come up with so many peculiar happenings - code you thought was solid for months would fall over so you'd trace your new code for hours - that a lot more ram would be cheaper.

I learned a huge amount of defensive programming on the PC which has helped me in many ways but the joy of Linux and even the pre-release version of NT in the early 90s were game changers. I'd used unixes on 68000s for chip design work and they had been very stable but I'd not coded on them - largely because I was afraid of crashing them and they did disk checks on reboot! It turns out I probably could have and not worried!