Posts by Bandikoto

But are you a Lady?

Re: Blimey, pt II

An entire kilobytes? Talk about vast tracts of land. My first computer had 256 bytes of RAM and when I added more memory to it, all of my programs broke.

<blockquote>Overall, who really cares if a 5th form remote learning session might have some information gathered that theoretically be shared to the Chinese?</blockquote>

Sure, information gathered may seem worthless now, but you have various indicators of wealth and status as well as raw data for building psychological profiles of the persons in the "classroom" that may well prove invaluable at a later date.

Re: Minor details

Shot-tracking systems are decades old. The first one I heard of used software that processed earthquake data gathered from pole-top microphones to pin-point the shots. https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1996/0096/report.pdf Of course, this public-domain work, bought and paid for by the American public has been privatized and there's a silly valley firm selling it. https://www.policeone.com/police-products/communications/articles/1800129-More-police-using-gunfire-detection-system/

Re: 77 Kelvin you say? Not good but not terrible, however...

What's the boiling point of Nitrogen at the other bar, then?

Try the veal.

Re: "But I never experimented on a live system again"

In CP/M and MP/M (which this likely was), numbers 0 through 15 would be user numbers. The files would all go in the same directory area, but you could hide files from others by changing the user number. User zero is where you'd likely find your executables.

Still, with the choice given, HDD numbers would make for a good guess.

Re: Ah well, back to my PowerPoint slides

>The color-fest at the end?

That's not quite the end. That's the "intergalactic switching-station", assuming that I'm remembering the chapter title from the book correctly. <spoilers>From there, we have Bowman arriving at the habitat the monolith aliens had provided for him. He meets his aged self, not understanding that the aliens are four (more?) dimensional, settles into a routine eating the weird blue cheese stuff in familiar containers and watching years-old television broadcasts, finally he reaches the end of his life and becomes/is reborn as the Star Child. As the Star Child, he returns to Terra, visits his mother, and prevents the various blocs from setting off their orbital nuke - rather, he (if he can be said to have a gender, still) prevents them from having any actual effect.</spoilers>

I saw it as a wee lad, during a re-release, on the biggest screen in a large city. Probably in late '71 or '72, as we also saw The Andromeda Strain and THX 1138 projected in the classroom from 16mm prints.

Re: Compose yourself

Worse yet, the country that melts down on the ASCII sequence T I B E T is right in the middle. 中

Re: Security appliances memory errors and programming bugs

So, did the "best and brightest from the best universities" programmer fail to NULL out the pointer after he or she freed it or were there multiple copies of the pointer to the memory region in the code? Both are no-nos that were supposed to be banned in IOS more than a decade ago. Also, looks as if someone removed the "zero out a freed memory buffer" code - probably because it was "slow". Let's not forget the old "freeing freed memory" check that was in IOS.

But I know nothing.

"Our software is our crown jewels." -John Chambers

It's typical "I've been taught to code, but I don't actually understand computers and the culture/environment in which they're used". People who have no idea of the limitations of where their code will be executed — i.e. why it's unreasonable to bang out N packets all at once, rather than feed them to a rate-moderated emitter, or in this case more than N (for small values of N) is unreasonable to stuff into your for(register x=0;x<N;x++) resend_MDNS_announcement(last_index_sent+x); /* spot the errors */ loop.

What is 2,000,000 packets blasted out on your typical 802.11g network in a typical crowded urban environment, anyway?

Why, indeed, is it unreasonable for any one subsystem to be able to allocate all of the available RAM for its own use and then busy-wait while it's waiting for those 2,000,000 packets to be stuffed out the radio?

Well, it was flying a pre-programmed flight, so it was autonomous, just not self-aware. Time for 3DS to add collision-avoidance cameras like DJI has done? Then again:

https://forum.dji.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=93915

With a helpful screen-shot of its T&Cs. This flying ace managed to fly his very expensive drone into a power line. DJI was helpful until he threatened them with his advocate.

Re: Black arm bands for everyone

In the years before? No-onBUFFERINGe remembBUFFERINGers tha

Re: So...

Hush you. Without this constant stream of "programmers"/"coders", how can they effectively suppress wages fight the tech worker shortage?

I ran into some of these types here in Flyover Country, and they were claiming that their grads got jobs that paid what turns out to be half the going rate here, which is less than what the imports get, even.

Re: a flurry of branching narratives created to feed the attention span of modern Hollywood

Which is why you have the extended stupid exploding rubber doll sequences in "Total Recall". Well, that and the three-boobed mutie. (Hm, one of each hand, the other for...?) It gives the mouth-breathers something to enjoy while the rest of us are watching the story.

Re: If they were a bit smarter

He no doubt got noticed precisely because they're not big boys. The big boys being the only ones meant to make a mint off of that sale. Can't be profiting from the actions of the oligarchy.

I'm not sure if you are or are not referencing 1964's "My Living Doll" starring Julie Newmar, whose character Rhoda aka "AF 709" (a robot) popularized "DOES NOT COMPUTE".

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057774/

Re: a teaspoon ... would weigh 15 tons.

> if you use a balance calibrated for earth

Well, actually, if you use a balance and always use the same standard weights (masses - yes yes we know they're different things, especially outside of a 1g field) on one side of the balance, it will register the same weight/mass no matter where you use it.

Your bog-standard springy scale, on the other hand, is another story entirely.

Re: Double vacuum

>I think pure O2 is frowned upon nowadays.

Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, Edward H. White II, and Roger B. Chaffee all lost their lives in Apollo 1 before we realized that was a Very Bad Idea.

Re: It's not the odd bit of the pig

"Everything but the squeal."

Re: Not a clue

Waiter, I'll have what he's smoking.

Meanwhile, certain types continue to defecate all over our planet, as if they'll be magically transported to a paradise once earth is uninhabitable.

Re: tabs take fewer keystrokes

>Unless your still programming in vi, I don't think you are actually typing these spaces. Of the 2 modern(ish) IDEs I've used this week, pressing enter will indent automatically to the same point on the next line.

And this is why I hate looking over someone's shoulder as they attempt to use vi. Vi has had autoident since I first encountered it in 1981. ":set autoindent" and be done. Also of use: ":set shiftwidth=MYPREFERREDINDENT" and the ^T and ^D insert mode commands, which head out to your next indent and unindent for you, respectively. In command mode, you would enjoy <MOTION and >MOTION, often used as << and >>.

Re: 'Important Folders'

So you're saying that "Swordfish" was a work of fiction?

Way to destroy my hopes and dreams, man.

Re: Uh-oh

It was everyone's first thought.

Do you remember all those religious nutters from the seventeenth century?

Your ancestors sent some of my ancestors to the Colonies, starting in 1620, because they were religious nutters. The Puritans might have changed - the UCC is now one of the most liberal Christian churches in America - but their blue-nosed offspring live on.

Surface 3 and better can do that because they're x86 devices. Prior ones ran WindowsRT and software had to be recompiled for them.

Easier to get guns in some states then Scotch.

I've never had to fill out a federal form (required for all retail firearm purchases in all states) to buy hooch.

Re: Cue David Lee Roth

What instrument do you play?

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Victoria_Williamson/publication/235417631_Contracting_Earworms_The_Roles_of_Personality_and_Musicality/links/0fcfd5116185c5013d000000.pdf

Re: Trump had better hurry up and ban Mint

He's on-tape as favoring Tic-Tacs, though.

Re: Optional

Scott has gone full Randroid. If the garbage man had anything of worth to say, he would be paid accordingly.