Posts by AndrueC

Re: MSX

To be fair a Mandlebrot Generator is mostly maths and thus unusually hard to understand. It's something of a myth that you need to be good at mathematics to be a computer programmer. For most projects you don't anything more than what I would call arithmetic. If you can add up a bill or work out your monthly disposable income your maths is good enough to cover most programming projects.

Modern languages offer several features to reduce the amount of maths needed. When I started if you wanted to iterate through a list of objects you had to create a loop, specifying the start index, the increment and (most troublesome) the end value. Modern languages now offer foreach which has significantly reduced the occurence of fence post errors.

Re: Original battery factory would supposedly have provided 3000 jobs...

..and instead of helping reducing our climate impact it will now add to it.

Re: Fingers crossed

I just hope the Germans won't go full-Monty on industrial policy and attempt to use a German Linux distro.

..and here it is. The Linux Achille's heel.

User: "I want to install Windows"

Provider: "Here you go."

User: "I want to install Linux"

Provider: "Which distro?"

User: "Um..what's the difference?"

Someone passing by: "Pregnant advark is best"

Another passer by: "Gawd no, Zappo Grindo has a better widget"

Someone who was quietly sitting near by and has now woken up: "You're both wrong Farting Pig is better because it doesn't use systemd"

A brawl now breaks out. The user quietly leaves and goes to the Windows provider.

Re: 'Time Zone'

That's why the face of the man in the moon always looks at us and the really cratery bit is the half that faces away from us.

You are of course absolutely correct but can I point out that the 'face of the man in the moon' only applies to those observing it from the northern hemisphere of the Earth. In the southern hemisphere it's something else.

As for people observing from the equator don't arsk me. It does my 'ead in just to think about it :)

Re: Basics done right and geek's superiority syndrome

Given that most human invention over the millennia has consisted of combining multiple objects together to make a new easier to use and/or more powerful object it seems strange that people criticise OOP. My experience is that nearly everything can be described as a collection of interacting simpler things.

Or maybe I'm strange.

Clearly some people do struggle with the concept of contracts and implementations and with inheritance but I've always found it easy and obvious. It suits the way I think.

* This is what things like me can do.

* You tell me what you expect me to be able to do and I will do it.

* I'm like one of those/these but I can also do these things.

I think where OOP seems to fall apart is that a lot of developers don't like the constraints it imposes. They want to be able reach inside an object and get information from it. They want to look at it and understand how it does what it does instead of just using it. I think it's a similar instinct that leads to excessively long functions and lower productivity. A lot of software developers just seem to have an aversion to black boxes. The idea of having a function just do the one thing its name says it will bothers them. Such programmers prefer to have all the code in one place.

It almost amazes me sometimes how some of them can even use a computer without having first opened case then reverse engineered the PCBs and chips therein.

I'm not saying 'trust my code because I'm a programmer' but if I claim to implement a contract then at least wait until something has gone wrong and can be indisputably traced to my implementation before you start digging. And FFS if the implementation doesn't expose internal data then don't go ferreting around for it. Oh and contracts should be almost sacrosanct. If one doesn't provide what you need then consider the possibility that you might be going about things the wrong way. Contracts are what I often use to 'encode' (probably the wrong word - maybe 'embody' is better) the application logic. I design using contracts. Follow the contracts and you won't go far wrong.

Re: I solved that years ago

Yup. I do something similar but because I'm the admin of my mail server I can use wildcards. It does occasionally cause confusion when speaking to a human who wonders why their employer's name is in my email address. I'm also having to use an old version of Thunderbird because the Virtual identity plugin hasn't been ported over to the newer API. I thought I'd found a replacement that worked with the current TBird API but it didn't quite make the grade for some reason.

Outcasts of Heaven Belt by his wife is worth a read. Emotional and thought provoking.

Re: They do.

Openreach already share poles and ducts. They charge for the privilege but as a concept that seems reasonable and knowing Ofcom (who forced BT to do this) the pricing is probably in line with industry expectations.

Where it goes a little bit wrong is if the alternate company finds that the Openreach poles/ducts are full or blocked. In those cases whoever is laying the cable just digs their own duct or installs their own pole. There appears to be no mechanism to force Openreach to sort out the issue nor to encourage the other company to rent out their new ducts/poles.

Re: History repeating itself

No that wouldn't be a goodie thing at all.

Re: 30 years later...

I've found this while doing a bit of research this page. It provides some interesting information on the original PC design and might explain the comment I'm remembering.

Elsewhere the article also mentions that the IBM PC uses the DMA controller for memory refresh. What is omits to mention is that DMA channel 0 is the one used for memory refresh in the IBM PC, which makes memory-to-memory DMA quite problematic, given that channel 0 would be also required for memory-to-memory transfers. You can do memory-to-memory transfers, or you can keep the DRAM refreshed, but not both.

As an aside, using the DMA controller for memory refresh has an implication for IBM PC initialization. Although the PC has no complicated memory controller and no memory timings to set, immediately after power-up RAM can’t be used because it’s not being refreshed yet. During POST, the BIOS sets up the DMA controller (and timer, which is also involved) to perform the refresh function, but until then, there’s no RAM, and therefore notably also no stack.

Given that OS/2 2.0 kicks the BIOS out perhaps it (re)programs the refresh rate. Perhaps IBM discovered that on clones they didn't get the DRAM refresh rate they were expecting. Another possibility is that OS/2 was just more sensitive to overclocking.

Re: Wellll

But so what? I understand that it was a tragedy for the families involved but I struggle to see why it should be seen as anything more than that. They paid their money, they were told multiple times in the contract that it could kill them. They all surely had enough money to find out how dodgy it was (several people backed out precisely because of that).

For me it only becomes a problem when people are unknowingly dragged into the tragedy. So if a private space craft falls on a populated area and injures or killed people that needs regulation. But if a bunch of rich people choose to take the risk of going to space then good for them. It will spur further investment in space and if they die - whilst being a tragedy for friends and family - it just helps redistribute their wealth.

I'd argue that the NHS needs a committee of IT and medical experts to agree a data standard for patient records and communications

Already a solved problem. Let me introduce you to HL7 and friends.

My preference is for the up and coming FHIR as it supports XML and JSON and is RESTful.

NHS Digital now also offers standardised APIs for accessing data across different systems.

Lol. Reminds me of a licensing system I was involved in a couple of decades ago. They'd made the mistake of having the license expire at midnight CST, Not a good decision for a product sold internationally.

Re: In the absence of files...

So do I *have* to have Word installed, as it is described as the "owner" of the file that you sent me? Or can Libre Office be used? What if I have both installed, because I'm supporting Users who each choose a different program?

'Owning application' in this context only means 'the application responsible for managing that collection of bytes on this system.'. If someone sends you a file you open a compatible application and import it - or as now when you try to open the file in your mail client the operating system suggests a compatible application.

Is that SVG file "owned" by Inkscape or by the web browser from which I used "save link"? What about the SVG file I created using Inkscape but want to view in the browser?

The file is owned by Inkspace, the link is owned by the OS and would contain sufficient information to identify the original data and its owner. The browser would talk to Inkscape to render the SVG (and register its use of it) or offer to adopt a clone of the data for you. If you modify data linked to by or from another application you get prompted whether to notify the other application or just make a copy and update that.

If you uninstall an application:

* Any application that has registered and not released a link to data will notified so that it can decide how to handle it (clone its own copy or warn the user that it won't be able to render the data moving forward).

* You are asked if you want to keep orphaned data and if so it remains on your storage along with whatever metadata identifies the original application.

There might have to be an ability for the OS to provide access to 'orphaned' storage so that applications can search it and take over ownership of the data in some fashion. Although an application ought to be able to mark data as 'for me only' for security reasons as below:

Although the above seems complex it's better than the current system where if you uninstall an application you can lose access to data without realising it. At least here there is something that is responsible for and tracking each data object. This also improves security because it prevents applications from opening data objects willy-nilly. An attempt to open secret_db.sql with - say - a hex editor will be impossible because you can't navigate to it. The only way to access that database is to ask the owning application and that will (we hope) prompt the user for confirmation before allowing it.

Re: Better testing

Linux and Mac both have an equivalent - Linux has panic and iOS has (or used to) the sad face icon.

However for the record it's been many years since I've seen a BSOD from a Windows machine. They have been very rare events for me since Vista and from what I remember that turned out to be an errant video driver.

But it's not all good news. My Windows 10 mail server use to randomly freeze. From looking at the event logs it was mostly moaning about a lack of virtual memory and pointed out that the top few processes were between them consuming a few hundred megabytes. Making it shut down every 24 hours helped a bit but it still did it. When I dug into the logs further I noticed that WSUS was often downloading an update shortly before the freeze. On a hunch I added more RAM taking it from 8GB to 16GB and since then it's been fine. All a bit strange since all it's doing is running a mail server, TVersity and Logitech SqueezeServer.

Hey ho.

I took this picture while touring Devonport Docks back in the 1980s. At the time I thought I was recording a derelict due to be scrapped. Now I'm not so sure.

Edit: Hang on, is that a shark fin in front of the wreck?

It worked okay in testing!

Imagine if your bank said "Sorry, we lost your $90,000 savings because we don't have doors on our safes, the password to the box with the money in was 1234 and we haven't updated our CCTV since 2000."

Well I'd be shocked and surprised that my bank was keeping my savings in its vault ;)

That's not how banking has worked for hundreds of years. When you deposit $90,000 in a bank what you're actually doing is giving them $90,000 in exchange for a promise that should you ask them for some money at a future date they will give you some of their money. Once deposited the money belongs to the bank and you are reliant on contract law and possibly their good will if you want to get it back ;)

I wouldn't expect any bank to just leave the money to rot in a vault. I'd expect them to use it to make more money. If I'm lucky I might even get a decentpaltry cut of the profits in the form of interest.

Re: until the Cybertruck is scheduled for a full wash

Mine gets at least one a year, whether it needs it or not.

Mine too - when it gets serviced.

Re: In my misbegotten youth....

I'm not complaining, using Windows 11 means I get well paid to just sit down and wait half an hour for it to boot every time. I reboot Windows 11 whenever I want to relax.

Eh?

I used to power down my work machine at the end of the week (I put it in standby at the end of the workday) and on Monday it booted and was ready for me to login within twenty seconds. And this was a machine that had BitLocker active. It was also a relatively elderly clone - must've been five years old. I missed the last upgrade cycle because everyone knew I was about to retire. Heck - when I was working I could boot the machine, launch three instances of Visual Studio get Docker running two Linux instances (PostGres back-end and an Elastic Search server) and be ready for work in 10 minutes.

My personal laptop is the same on the rare occasions when a Windows update requires me to reboot it.

You appear to either be running on really, really shitty hardware (in which case I don't understand how you even got Windows 11 installed) or else there is something very wrong with your computer. Malware or a virus perhaps?

Re: IPv6

I made my mail server(*) accessible over IPv6 several years ago. It wasn't all that difficult. Using a competent ISP that has supported dual-stack IPv4/6 for over 15 years helped of course.

(*)Sits in my spare bedroom.

Re: "Rust will stop you using data after it's been freed"

You can fix a lot of memory issues in C++ by using RAII and keeping as much as possible on the stack or fields. Make good use of const & and implement private copy ctors by default.

And FFS use proven libraries eg the STL and friends.

The thing I found with C++ is that if you're lazy it's easy to screw up. But if you make the effort and invest it in libraries (yours or proven external ones) it can be safe. Its downside is that a lot of developers lack the skills or management won't give them the time to do the job properly. In that respect languages like C#, Java or Rust win out.

It's all well and good to say that C++ can be safe in the hands of a competent programmer but unfortunately the world doesn't have enough of those. Quite frankly it doesn't have enough 'vaguely competent' programmers. For all our sakes we need to use languages that support and assist mediocrity in the people using them.

Re: >but the problem may also exist in 737s already being used by airlines

Good point. Didn't it used to advise against using Windows to operate a nuclear reactor?

Re: Stuffed Turkey

IPv4/IPv6 coexistence is much more complex than a simple gateway.

My ISP (IDNet) has been offering dual-stack IPv4/6 for nearly 20 years now. The main reason I'm not switching to FTTP with an altnet is because neither of them that are available currently support IPv6. Any ISP that doesn't at this point in time is clearly lacking technical expertise and I for one wouldn't trust them with my connectivity.

Thankfully Openreach should be coming here soon (maybe this year) at which point IDNet can upgrade me to FTTP.

I did find somewhere better. I retired. And my employer lost the 2nd most valuable developer on the team (the most valuable had moved to a better job a few weeks prior).