Posts by Bebu sa Ware

Boffins carve up C so code can be converted to Rust

Real programmers can change the value of 4. In FORTRAN

I remember that gem from 40+ years ago

Fortran (then, now?) passed all arguments to subroutines by reference. When an integer constant was passed presumably the compiler would assign a temporary initialized to that constant and pass the address of that temporary.

Some Fortran compilers on some systems (IBM?) assigned storage to all the unique integer constants used in a program presumably because of architectural constraints or memory/speed concerns.

When the constant 4 was passed as an argument to a subroutine the address of location containing the constant was passed rather than the address of a copy.

If the subroutine modified the formal parameter corresponding to the actual parameter 4 then that constant (formerly known as 4) becomes 3 (or whatever) during the remainder of program's execution.

I also recall you could also overwrite Hollerith literals (eg 4HHELLO) for even more fun.

How a good business deal made us underestimate BASIC

Re: Hmmm... two different things..

BASIC+2 on a PDP 11/70.

Brings back memories of writing a BASIC program to convert BASIC +2 programs to vanilla BASIC on a RSX-11 system (the +2 license lapsed I think.)

Pretty much assigning line numbers to labels, functions; converting functions to gosubs etc ... most of the elements of a rudimentary compiler I guess.

The DEC manuals are preserved in the Internet Archive PDP11 BASIC PLUS 2 Users Guide. Nowadays seems a rather peculiar language but on machines that sported 64kb memory you could actually do real work using these tools.

Re: Hmmm... two different things..

"programming: breaking down a problem into smaller units that could be solved once, stored and shared."

This was something largely absent from computer science education in the '70s.

Really brought home to me at the time after reading a newly printed copy K&R The C Programming Language (1/e;) where pretty much each small example function implemented some part of the standard library (of 7th Edition Unix?)

Being able to use the RMAC assembler on CP/M 3 to build relocatable objects and libraries meant I could compile and assemble programs in a C subset using the existing abstractions in my libraries which would be linked into a executable. This stuff just wasn't being taught.

As well as using indirection to solve problems, most problems would benefit from delaying binding a particular implementation or solution. ELF shared libraries are good example of using both indirection and delay. (Indirection is arguably also a delay.)

Even without "files" you still have to identify, distinguish and presumably name objects - I guess a file system just one method of doing this, another could be a database which I recall Hans Reiser giving as a rational for some the design decisions in reiserfs. Multics also did things differently.

Re: English is one of the easiest human languages...

"English is one of the easiest human languages, both to read and write as well as to understand."

"many, many people would beg to differ!"

Just about everyone outside the anglosphere, I should think.

Just taking the size of the English vocabulary one only has to look at the paper OED to realise that English has begged, borrowed and stolen its way to the largest lexicon of any language. As I frequently have to remind my non native English speaking spouse that English has few actual synonyms as most are differentiated by very fine shades meaning modulated by context.

The syntax of English is simpler than say German but still has the joys of the genitive and for the non left pondian, the subjunctive - a long explanation to her indoors of why in a particular text "I" followed by "were" wasn't incorrect.

The spelling of English isn't as haphazard as might appear if you understand the evolution of the language from Old English and have some exposure to those texts but for the non native speakers it's a complete dog's breakfast.

As a native English speaker (albeit of an antipodean dialect), I would contend that French is a much easier language for non francophones to learn and understand, possibly Spanish even more so.

Ironically dominance of English while initially due to the far flung British Empire was cemented by the post WW2 economic and geopolitical supremacy of the US - arguably a nation which subsequently hasn't done the language any favours.

LA deputies dogged by New Year date glitch in patrol car PCs

Re: At the sound of the chime, truncheon says bedtime

«“The system thinks it’s July of 2003, ..."

Ok, we desperately need the bit warriors to figure out - what goes *pop* after 21.5 years?»

There were some horrible coding hacks around 2000 which kept stuff working after 1999-12-31 23:59:59 wihile retaining just two digits for the year but nothing I can think of that would pop its clogs as late as 2025.

The only oddity the stands out is there are roughly 256 months between 2003-07-31 and 2025-01-01 and 2003 is roughly half way between 1980 and 2024. 1980-01-01 was the epoch for PCs and msdos I think. Perhaps 1980 was represented as roughly -22.5 years from 2003-07-01 and 2025 as +22.5 years from the same date.

The minds and methods of programmers are often ineffable.

Innocent party

whoever is responsible for the system should be tied to a PDP11 and dropped in the river.

Tough on the poor PDP11 which probably ran 7th Edition Unix and its dates would have been good for another decade or so.

I can think of hardware more deserving of this boat anchor fate.

Re: Stupid date order?

I read somewhere that the peculiar mm/dd/[yy]yy format mirrored the written format July 4, 1776 but conversely the 4^th of July, 1776 would be fairly common too.

I think most people in IT or at least sysadmins latch onto ISO 8601 pretty quickly even if they have never heard of the ISO standard.

The handling of time and timezones in software has always been pretty ordinary with msdos and windows bringing up the rear. ;)

Common sense would suggest representing time as a UTC offset from an epoch would leave the presentation of dates and times to the locale handling of the application software and system libraries.

At least the US didn't adopt and retain the French Republican (Revolutionary) Calendar of 1793. Although with miles per decimal hour doing a ton would only be a shade over a leisurely 40 mph (64km/h.)

Re: LASD couldn't find anyone good enough to replace them

"can NOBODY write code any more?"

More case of nobody writing correct code (and I wouldn't include "any more" either.)

No shortage of delusional coders that claim their efforts are correct purely because they use Rust etc or the current development methodology de jour.

A coder than cannot understand or correctly implement (or half inch another correct implementation of) Zeller's congruence wouldn't augur well for their future. 2024 is the simplest case y/4 cf y/100 or y/400.

Tech support warrior left cosplay battle and Trekked to the office

Re: Know your audience.

"The customer knew Klingon."

It would be a toss up what was more incredible: that the client could read Klingon or that the client could read inline assembly. I suspect the latter.

25 years on from Y2K, let's all be glad it happened way back then

Re: And for other reasons

Remember, there were 'portable' phones, but truckers certainly couldn't afford them - no iPhones till 2007!

Even before 2000 there were phones roughly equivalent to today's peculiarly named feature phones. In 1999 I had an Ericsson T28 flip phone which wasn't that expensive even in AU where imported electronics were notoriously overpriced at the time.

One reason for the purchase was the move to digital GSM technology which meant I could use the phone on our honeymoon in the Philippines later in the year. (I was having breakfast on the deck of a moored cruise ship in the he Cebu Sea when I received a call from AU asking me to change the toner in a printer - not one of my tasks in any case so doubly funny. ;)

What I do remember was at that time travelling to North America you might require three handsets to access a cellular services while travelling. It was apparently a bit of a dog's breakfast of technologies and frequencies.

This might have been a reason why (long distance) truckers didn't bother with cell phones.

I remember Y2K as mostly a damp squib. There was a lot of nonsense over devices that displayed the year but only ever used the time of day or day of week at most - wall mounted aircon controls were a common example and microwave ovens.

I found more IT things that didn't get the leap year right for 2000 eg SGI Irix 4.0 but obsolete even then.

Apple offers to settle 'snooping Siri' lawsuit for an utterly incredible $95M

Perhaps it was the unzip sound...

Siri might harbour a voyeuristic and prurient in the activities of its/her/his* clients which might enliven the tasks or those employed in Apple's secure facility.

Any recordings could be interesting as half US body politic are historically unable to keep their fly closed.

_{* never encountered Siri so have no idea of the voice used.}

A New Year's gift from Microsoft: Surprise, your scanners don't work

Re: Another good reason to stay with Windows 10 for now?

"I've found Hamrick's VueScan to be invaluable in getting scanners to just work"

Heartily agree.

I purchased a cheap Canon LiDE scanner over a year ago specifically for Linux support. Canon's scangear software was a bit of washout even after the acrobatics of installing on RHEL8.

I installed the vuescan software which just worked but without a licence the images have a watermark which can be removed from existing images with the licence enabled software. I would have happily purchased the software but my need for a scanner had evaporated.

I suspect the watermarks could be fairly easily removed at least in principle without a copy of vuescan but given the excellence and reasonable price of the software I wouldn't even contemplate discovering how.

Vuescan demonstrates software doesn't have to be shitty even on a Windows platform.

Eight things that should not have happened last year, but did

It's in your living room.

"Our drone has delivered your parcel. It is on your roof."

Our drone has delivered your parcel to your living room... through your roof.

No not Santa... unfortunately.

Boffins ponder paltry brain data rate of 10 bits per second

Musk as an Oracle?

If Space Karen thinks or asserts something is, you can be pretty damn sure that it isn't.

Worth remembering the human brain like every other biological system has evolved to deal with its environment.

I would punt that a pre industrial world would not require a stream of consciousness much faster than something of the order of magnitude the authors are claiming.

Re: "listening comprehension in English (13 bits/s)" Huh?

I would imagine that what is meant that thirteen bits of information is conveyed every second to the the listener.

You might imagine an experiment where scripts of varying length and information density were read to test subjects with the subjects subsequently tested on the content for comprehension and retension. Devilishly difiicult to control confounding factors I would think.

The information density and the usual rate of verbal delivery does vary between languages, I believe. I imagine the maximum rate of listening comprehension for all languages would approach something well under 20 bits/s.

Christmas 1984: The last hurrah for 8-bit home computers

"if I couldn't write a mouse driver, I didn't deserve a mouse."

Absolutely golden.

British best practice customer relations.

"That's the way to do it."

Should be more of it. :)

I can just imagine Mr and Mrs Torvalds telling a young Linus "if you cannot write a proper multitasking operating system you don't deserve a 386."

Parker Solar Probe sends a "Still Alive" tone back to Earth

Not a grain of a scruple but drams are another matter

But the Tories can't do that because they don't have any scruples.

I imagine neither side would pass up a wee dram.

Daft enough to be so

《Distances in leagues, fuel volume in firkins, temperature in Fahrenheit, time in fortnights.

Just wait until Farage makes this official Reform Party policy.》

And a return to £/s/d with a gold standard for pounds (sovereigns and guineas) and a silver standard for shillings (half crowns, florins, 1s, 6d and 3d) and a floating conversion between the two.

Re: Good job

we just use a handkerchief with a knot at each corner

Ned Gumby ("my brain hurts") fashion?

Re: I give it 30 years...

《I think they should try a Starship (appropriately) prototype very soon... with Musk onboard.》

Seconded - per aspera, ad astra which might be rephrased "through our having to endure [Space Karen], [let him be cast] [in]to the star[s]."

Naïve Reg hack thinks he can beat Christmas food comas once and for all

Odd for an aged Antipodean...

Seeing all the references to miles, feet and odd pound by clearly UK residents.

I suspect AU/NZ and UK commenced the conversion to SI about the same time but now in AU speaking of feet, inches, miles, pounds, pints, ounces (both) etc to anyone much under 50 will mostly garner blank looks.

A twenty something is more likely to know what a Troy ounce is.

Re: Bless

《bottle of perfume - genuinely one of the most peculiar suggestions》

Not so peculiar if you imagine as "Mr Fiennes" was suggesting sotto voce if you were to have it sprayed in your eyes.

This is well known in the saner ie non american parts of the world where possession of mace is illegal.

When an undergraduate larking about, having been accidentally sprayed in the eyes by a daft UG engineer with an avon perfume spray I can testify it is very effective device for disabling an assailant. Perhaps in that particular case only marginally more effective than the perfume itself. :)

Former NSA cyberspy's not-so-secret hobby: Hacking Christmas lights

Re: Best joke ever :D

«" I'm from NSA. I know how to keep a secret. " Snowden anyone ?»

Knowing "how to" and "doing so" are fortunately not quite the same thing.

Not sure whether the chap is daft or just eccentric in the best British tradition but at least mostly harmless and doubtless brings enormous Yuletide joy and delight to the young and not so young of his community

The lavish house decoration with Xmas lights is fairly recent in AU probably occurred only after the advent of cheap led lights. Those with incandescent bulbs were often wired in series and plugged directly into the 240VAC mains so not really for outdoor use. The ones running off transformers 24V (?) were quite expensive I think.

I am surprised that a manufacturer hasn't incorporated a controller/interface for a low speed serial protocol like 1-wire into the leds and power supply which could make these dynamic displays a lot easier to implement.

Microsoft Edge takes a victory lap with some high-looking usage stats for 2024

Re: Pretty light for Linux

«links2/elinks are good if you need something very lightweight and tended to be a bit more up to date than lynx.»

W3m was worth a look. Last time I used it (a good while ago) I think it could be built with javascript support which I imagine might have made for some peculiar browsing experiences.

I used to wonder how many User-Agent headers use "Nutscrape/1.0 (CP/M; 8-bit)" (from squid configuration doc.) I used it with a Firefox user agent switching plug-in a few years ago and a surprisingly large proportion of sites ignored it - presumably defaulting to IE - a few dropped down to a text only version which I guess was their accessible version for screen reader software.

The winner of last year's Windows Ugly Sweater is ...

I think Sureo earned the gawdy gurnsey.

Copilot could help with bathroom reading material

I could easily imagine your fun AI pal graphically describing any number of ghastly intestinal parasites potentially responsible for your labours straining on the throne.

To be fair though while unpleasant like most Microsoft products it would be highly curative in this context.

One third of adults can't delete device data

Re: Another pedant alert

"To ITS systems" FFS. "It's" = "it is", I learned that in primary school.

I have always found this mug a valuable reference with (6)&(7) being particularly relevant here but (16) is also pretty much universally applicable.

_{typically, in true Victor Meldrew tradition, my own piece of grammatical porcelain has a howling typo}

What do ransomware and Jesus have in common? A birth month and an unwillingness to die

Re: Ransomware is a problem inherit to proprietary OS's

I suspect the result of bash evaluating "$RANDOM$RANDOM$RANDOM$RANDOM$RANDOM$RANDOM$RANDOM" won't be all that more random than $RANDOM.

SvarDOS: DR-DOS is reborn as an open source operating system

Re: They fucked up the web browser?

«Please tell me I am not alone in first reading it as being named Dildo.”»

Pretty universal misreading I would imagine but I offer no theory about what that says about the reader.

I would have assumed it was Microsoft's internal code name for Edge.

UK ICO not happy with Google's plans to allow device fingerprinting

Re: Traditions

first against the wall when the revolution comes.

When you start adding all the other transgressors such as the crypto bros, AI mafia etc etc you will require a bloody long wall which might indicate prophetic insight on the part of the Chinese.

Fining Big Tech isn't working. Make them give away illegally trained LLMs as public domain

"harvesting fruit from their poisonous trees, gorging themselves on those fruits,"

"... of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." KJV Gen.2:17

Hope then that these perishers might... umm... perish?

Microsoft coughs up yet more Windows 11 24H2 headaches

Have to wonder...

at what version of Windows will Wine + Linux/Unix become the better option for running Windows applications? 11?

Might purchase some Codeweavers stock in the new year. ;)

Re: HDR

"an era of cinema where there weren't permanently illuminated emergency exit signs."

You might be forgetting the ever present pall of cigarette smoke in the cinemas of the day. ;)

Techie fluked a fix and found himself the abusive boss's best friend

Re: Close enough

«the run times were going up exponentially as the size of the model was increased.»

Usually a simple problem in the initial parameters setting scale etc

Climate scientists in the 80s and earlier were often computer numpties so when they decided to take their model from a 100km×100km grid over most of the South Pacific to a 1km×1km grid it was no surprise to anyone except themselves that the model (and minicomputer) crapped itself.

A little explanation that even though each cell had only six single precision reals going from the 100km grid to the 1km grid involved a factor of 10,000 (not 100) caused more than slight embarrassment.;)

Large minicomputers of that era would have had just enough ram and swap to run the original model. Probably about 10,000 cells with six 32 bit floats so about 256Kb but the finer grid would need +2Gb which was more than the total risk storage.

Even today you might have to introduce "developers" to mister big O().

Quoting Digory Kirke "...bless me, what do they teach them at these schools!” (Although I am not sure Plato be of much help here. ;)

Re: Bluffing

«major problem when you need to know the type system.»

Not something Snobol IV would present. ;)

Re: And This Is Why We Have Code Reviews

For those too young to be able to remember Danny Kaye "The pellet with the poison is..."

Stranded in space: Starliner crew to remain in orbit even longer as SpaceX faces delays

Re: If you know German:

I wouldn't give Windows the time of day let alone an hour.

Hopefully these stranded astronauts won't face the same change in circumstancee that cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev faced.

Wotif

dump the lateral orbital velocity

The ISS is 450t and hurtling along at 7.67 km/sec so a lot of 1/2mv² to casually dump. About 13 TJ :)

"What speed would you be doing once you hit the upper atmosphere?" at roughly 400 km above the earth's surface the value g isn't much smaller than than on the surface (9.8m/s²) so if you cannot integrate x^-2 the speed can be approximately calculated from 1/2mv² = mgh ie 1/2v² = gh where h is the drop from 400 km to the start of the atmosphere (say 80km.)

So v = √2gh ... √(2×9.8×(400,000-80,000)) ~ 2.5 km/sec pretty ludicrous and the kinetic energy in TJs.

"How quickly would you slow down before you could open your parachute?" While I would defer to the crew of the Columbia, I suspect the answer is "not quickly enough."

Million GPU clusters, gigawatts of power – the scale of AI defies logic

infinite monkey nonsense

Literally building the infinite monkey nonsense generating machine for a finite number of monkey* clients.

_{* I hasten to add that orangutans are apes not monkeys. :)}

When your technological ghosts come back to haunt you, expect humbug

"Yes this is the 21st century...

but I don't think there will be a 22nd century."

Conversation on the bus today with a companion complaining about the rest of the passengers' having their faces glued to their phones.

I replied that smartphones were the curse of the 21st century.

English not being her first language, she wasn't sure to what time period the 21st century referred.

I explained my sceptical view of their being a 22nd by suggesting they will forget to procreate (or have forgotten how to.)

Silent NASA lander gives boffins insight into Martian dust

Re: NASA sends robot "red light squeegee guy" to Mars to wash Mars lander solar panels

are there Squeegee guys in UK?

There were/are such chaps in AU. I vividly recall stopping in a rental at the lights at City Rd/Broadway intersection Sydney where a squeegee bod offered to clean the window for a buck (AUD1.00.) Told him the car is not mine, not to bother but he "cleaned" it anyway which unfortunately didn't leave the windscreen any less grubby.

Apple Intelligence summary botches a headline, causing jitters in BBC newsroom

Re: apathy to AI services

The Good Life... Within a few seconds, just by expressing frustration and denial with it, I can get it fabricating characters, actor's names, making up back stories, etc.

So you manage to convince your AI/LLM service to assert Barbara Good (Felicity Kendall) runs off with Shelley (Hywel Bennett)?

Perhaps you can convince it to have Frank Spenser (Some Mother's Do 'Ave 'Em) create a business empire based the manufacture of EVs and a rocketry foundry. Too far fetched?

Interpol wants everyone to stop saying 'pig butchering'

An effort to rewrite history

"And in an effort to rewrite history, the agency has gone back through old press releases and replaced the now taboo term."

Messing with the chronicles of the past including the recent past has very grave risks if history is any guide which of course it wouldn't be any more.

Even the most abhorrent crimes can euphemised by the criminally disingenuous and could be applied to retrospectively to history's worst perpetrators.

Even "show respect to the victims" is a bit dubious as even the presumably unintentional use of "to" rather "for" indicates to me the futile "signalling" nature of the whole exercise. One might empathize or have sympathy for those who have succumbed to romance fraud (which is a much better description as it encompasses both the romantic deceit and financial fraud) but I am fairly sure enhanced respect for poor sod/soddess isn't in the race.

Coder wrote a bug so bad security guards wanted a word when he arrived at work

Re: Tounge in cheek?

"what is the problem with the Tesla system?"

I would hazard in a word "Musk." ;)

In AU the Powerwalls apparently won't (not can't) talk to other stuff (walled garden) which is raising the temperature under our regulators' collars.

Personally I would touch anything Space Karen has dicked about with. If it were a choice between a Powerwall and a truck load of sealed lead acid batteries it would be a no brainer for the truck load.

Guide for the perplexed – Google is no longer the best search engine

Not entirely perplexed...

Once I worked out the perplexity.ai needs javascript I ran a simple query viz the meaning of "without cavil" which does appear to return accurate answers unlike one of its competitors which presumably as a consequence of AI infestation returned some nonsense about Cavil and the Final Five referring to some Battlestar Galactica reboot of which I was totally unaware (the original battle-too-far tv serious was piss poor enough to wonder why anyone would bother) and having foolishly followed the link to the wikiclone page I am certain my previous ignorance was indeed bliss.

Unfortunately perplexity requires a google etc login before revealing the provenance of its results thus not for me, alas.

Re: This is the second Reg article today which references wheresyoured.at

Right at the top of https://www.wheresyoured.at/

The Words of Ed Zitron, a PR person and writer.

PR person? Sounds like Ed travelled the road to Damascus a journey no less perilous today.

I guess the .at is only for the English word 'at' and nothing to do with Austria.

$800 'AI' robot for kids bites the dust along with its maker

Still Educational....

Like the death of any pet it's a learning opportunity.*

I can envisage a demand for Moxie sized cardboard boxes with an optional small spade to inter the defunct robot in the backyard beside the budgie and moggy. Even personalized headstones.

The children can shed tears over the passing of their little plastic chum and the parents over the £639(GBP) or USD799.00 although I am not sure too many Australian parents would have paid over AUD1000.00 for the toy.

Thanatophobia and necrophobia apparently being endemic in western societies with fewer children keeping animal pets there is probably a need for a surrogate plastic pal that is b(r)ought into existence, develops, reaches maturity followed by a slow decline into senility and decease.

_{* echoing Ecclesiastes "Everything has its time and everything dies."}

Re: But..

"orange baboon in Florida, shares a lot of Beeblebroxian traits (& convictions)"

Well spotted! I believe Beeblebrox was President of the Universe when he stole the Heart of Gold - a lot of similarity but not even the sum total of brain cells of the entire Trump circus would come within cooee of Trillion (Trish McMillan) or the talking lift hardware from the SCC.

BlackBerry offloads Cylance's endpoint security products to Arctic Wolf

"addressing a rampant need"

This meaningless waffle that would have embarrassed ChatGPT

"... we will be addressing a rampant need for a truly unified, effective security operations that delivers better outcomes for customers. ..."

brought to mind Tenniel's illustration of the Lion for Lewis Carroll's Alice Through the Lookinglass where the rampant Lion was being apparently being addressed by the Mad Hatter and March Hare(?) but Lion is otherwise occupied with an ongoing altercation with the Unicorn.

Australia moves to drop some cryptography by 2030 – before quantum carves it up

Re: Let's say we knew quantum computers do it in 2040

sold a bunch of post quantum snake oil which is eventually found to be far weaker.

A wise chap might encrypt his secrets with the strongest contemporary pre quantum cryptography before wrapping the lot in post quantum security sauce.

Red Rabbit Robotics takes human form to sell work as a service

Re: A Path To Artificial Intelligence

Humans are intelligent.

Lacking compelling evidence I will have to accept your word on that.

Humans are a bi-pedal sack of tubes and squishy bits.

True. Just a goodly number are challenged by the left and right distinction between those two feet as any RSM will attest (and likely to the squishy bits too.)