Posts by Dan 55

Classy move: C++ 20 wins final approval in ISO technical ballot, formal publication expected by end of year

Re: "Competent, core language"

By Burrows system languages you mean ALGOL. And then you complain that C++ is old and tired.

Re: Is C++ becoming too large and complex?

Well, you've missed what auto is for.

Re: Is C++ becoming too large and complex?

As far as I can tell there was no other language around which was as popular as C was which could cope with software of operating-system level complexity, certainly none of the examples of languages given here. So C was probably the best place for C++ to start.

If you're saying the popularity of C was/is misplaced then you don't understand why C was and is popular. You still can't write operating systems in Pascal, at one time that supposedly was a contender for C's crown.

C++ built upon this foundation. It was not perfect, but it got results, exactly like C, which is why C and C++ are popular. Other languages might have feature A, B, and C but not all of them. If they're useful then C++ will incorporate them and carry on. The other languages certainly won't be in any hurry to incorporate each other's features, let alone features from C++.

C++ does not aspire to be some perfect representation of an object-oriented language. There is no perfect language, not C++ and not the rest. The others either 1) have barely managed to get out the academic stage, trapped in constant debates about the best way to do things with a moribund user base or 2) are scripted or need a JIT VM or 3) are owned by some megacorp. C++ is the only language which is not owned by anyone, compiles into object code, and has new features which the user base are pushing for. The ones that are getting somewhere (Go, Rust) are getting somewhere due to their similarity to C++.

Re: Is C++ becoming too large and complex?

So you would rather C++ be unchanging, forever, born in a state of perfection meaning no changes are necessary to the language in the decades ahead to meet programmers' needs?

All you need to do is look at the relative numbers of users of Eiffel, Smalltalk, Simula 67, or whatever other perfect language you care to mention to see how well that would work out. C++ would turn into one of those languages or another version of Objective C - nobody uses them unless they're forced to.

Re: Object

On the other hand I saw Z in uni. And never again.

You don't need header files meaning you don't need to include the same file multiple times from different places in the code, you don't have to worry about include order, and you don't need to mess around with guard defines so headers can be included multiple times.

Re: C++ – never classy

Then again, a language that doesn't change is dead, that goes for both computing and spoken languages.

Re: Is C++ becoming too large and complex?

You don't have to remember all the language, you can forget the bits which are superseded by something newer, better, and/or simpler. E.g. C++11 really simplified a load of stuff.

Nintendo revives Game & Watch portable proto-console, adds color to 2.36-inch screen

Re: So... can it be hacked?

But this thing in a Game & Watch case would be running hardware powerful enough to emulate a 1.8MHz 6502-like CPU as found in the NES?

As they're Nintendo they wanted to keep it a secret until launch day so it's not yet available in the US as it doesn't have FCC authorisation.

Amiga Fast File System makes minor comeback in new Linux kernel

Boot off a floppy and use HDToolbox to re-write the driver to the partition table thingy, Shirley?

Re: This will make the soon-to-be-Kickstarted mini Amiga easier

You could emulate more systems by swapping the SD card or running them on the Linux side, and you'd still have the nice case.

Re: My life is now complete...

No need to get jealous, your own computer was good in its own way too, it had built-in MIDI.

This will make the soon-to-be-Kickstarted mini Amiga easier

It's a Linux/AmigaOS hybrid running on a Pi 4 in a Mini-ITX case, and if you just wanted something to emulate all your games in a nice A3000-style box which can fit under the monitor then it's probably the cheapest and most practical way.

Mini Amiga Inspired Case & Ami-Hybrid | Show & Tell (30 mins)

SMEs to UK.gov: We need vouchers for tech and training ahead of final Brexit curtain falling

How to reach a trade agreement with 27-country union defined by legal documents

1. Rip up the withdrawal agreement that you just signed with them less than a year ago.

2. ???

3. Profit!

Digital pregnancy testing sticks turn out to have very analogue internals when it comes to getting results

Re: Wastful - but unfortunaltly not uncommon

Surly we can come up with a similar device with replaceable strips?

But that ruins all the digital single-use landfill magic.

Apple commits to support human rights - 'We believe in the critical importance of an open society'*

So much for Apple's vaunted privacy...

... if Zuckerborg scares them out of doing it. I guess it it'll be back in an approved form later.

Makes you wonder what other privacy features have been nobbled to keep other corporations or governments happy.

Brexit border-line issues: Would you want to still be 'testing' software designed to stop Kent becoming a massive lorry park come 31 December?

Re: Stockpile your popcorn

Including the lorry parks?

Does anyone in the EU currently trade with a third country where there are absolutely no trade agreements between the two (see the "Trading with..." heading on each country or region page)? Perhaps they could get by by using North Korea's country code for exports to the UK in the meantime.

If something like that doesn't appear in the opinion columns in the British right-wing comics in the second week of next year, I'll lie down in front of a bulldozer and eat my ID card.

Re: I am sure Boris will be on holiday when the $h1T hits the fan

"But Boris Johnson said the UK was "ready for any eventuality" after the transition period."

Spot the difference:

Rowley Birkin QC

Johnson talking Customs and logistics, his claims in that video about GB-NI trade were debunked in less than a day.

There's a battery-free Game Boy that runs solely on the power of sunlight and the speed of your button-mashing

There's half a Wii in a Gameboy case but that does need batteries. LTT

Anyone else noticed that the top countries for broadband speeds are well-known tax havens? No? Just us then?

The UK's record breaking Covid-19 numbers came first.

Perhaps we've got it the wrong way round, maybe it should be Covid-19 causes 5G.

Surface Hub 2S unshackled from bespoke Windows 10 to install what you want – just wash your hands first, yeah?

A feature nobody asks for when considering a whiteboard

the ability to simply walk up and use the thing is gone, replaced by authentication methods such as Windows Hello.

Microsoft obviously listening to their customers again.

UK utility Severn Trent tests the waters with £4.8m for SCADA monitoring and management in the clouds

If they have Oracle racks I'm surprised they didn't move to Oracle cloud, which should be easier to do in theory. They must have a contract which is subsidising a lot of yachts.

Help. The political process is corrupted, full of lies and state-sponsored deep fakes. Now Microsoft's to the rescue

Re: Muppet politics

Statues - The confederate statues should have been taken down years ago (Mitch Landrieu, then mayor of New Orleans, 20 min speech).

Federal buildings attacked - Does graffiti warrent stormtroopers?

Damage to public and private property - want to itemise it or is it more graffiti?

People being crippled and killed - er, yes, that's what the demonstrations are about, I mentioned that above.

Re: Muppet politics

So much whataboutery, so little time. It's not a chicken and egg problem, there is a timeline.

1) Police kill George Floyd.

2) Peaceful protest (a constitutional right).

3) Protests about police brutality are met with wave of police brutality across US

4) Trump sends in the stormtroopers, first to Portland in Oregon, later to other state capitals.

5) Jacob Blake shot in the back seven times while going about his business and paralysed. More protests.

6) White 17-year-old child with an assault rifle forming part of the so-called militia allowed to kill two black people and walk through police lines.

Various appearances by Trump throughout all this calculated to enrage matters even more, and sending in his federal goon squad if he thinks he can get away with it.

Those are the objective facts.

Obviously the playbook is fomenting division, blaming everything that can be blamed on black people as a whole if it a black person is accused of something, forgiving everything that can be forgiven if it was a white person who did something, and sending in the stormtroopers on every excuse. That's his election plan.

Quite obviously they are not all as bad as each other, because Trump is objectively worse and America has a big policing problem which has been allowed to fester by Trump. He's not responsible for it, but he sure as hell isn't doing anything about it.

Re: Muppet politics

All of the candidates are responsable

Very fine people on both sides?

'A guy in a jetpack' seen flying at 3,000ft within few hundred yards of passenger jet landing at LA airport

Re: Sincalir Spectrum's.....

Searching for his missing trailer.

Google Chrome 85 to block ads that hog power, CPUs, network: Web ads giant will black-hole 0.3% of web ads

Re: Firefox is calling...

However it's getting obvious that the differences between the old pre-Firefox Quantum codebase and the new one are starting to make code maintenance difficult, which is why there are two flavours of Waterfox now. It'll eventually become unsustainable.

Unless Mozilla dies first, in which case the W3C will basically be Google.

Nominet backtracks on .uk domain expiration money grab, critics still fear sweetheart deal to come

"Business case"

“the decision to purchase this initial access to dropping domains – covering the first few minutes of availability – will be based on the business case for each registrar.”

This sounds like there's an extremely tailor-made solution for each registrar. Are business cases submitted in brown envelopes?

Just wait until next year, you'll miss feeling sick to the back teeth of it.

Happy birthday to the Nokia 3310: 20 years ago, it seemed like almost everyone owned this legendary mobile

(In a Crocodile Dundee voice) That's not a prison edition phone, this is a prison edition phone.

Microsoft reprieves SHA-1 deprecation in Edge 85 security baseline

Re: Enterprise

Unless it's Star Trek Discovery...

LCARS is running MS SQL Server.

Zuck says Facebook made an 'operational mistake' in not taking down US militia page mid-protests. TBH the whole social network is a mistake

Re: Humans are not ready for social media

Did anyone think the Internet would turn into Facebook? Even the most unregulated thing I can think of back in the day (Usenet) didn't actively push nutjob post after nutjob post just to get more views to get more ad revenue, and before you know it the recipients have fallen down the rabbit hole into unmitigated bullshit like QAnon while Zuckerborg appears every once in a while saying "I don't give a fuck, I'm going to let society burn because I want to make another billion dollars today, what are you going to do about it?"

Re: Interesting note from the field.

Apparently approximately 400 years of American history has something to do with it, not just what's happened in the past two weeks.

Re: If there were no Facebook?

Humans are social creatures, they're also idiots who will believe anything. There really needs a law to make social networks publishers, and maybe in the case of something like a shooting, co-conspirators. Then you'd soon see Facebook et al managing to police their posts.

Funny, that: Handy script for wiping directories is capable of wreaking havoc beyond a miscreant's wildest dreams

I'm writing a backup/restore script now, and completely paranoid that the backup won't backup or the restore won't restore or the person using it won't see the error message or someone will try to run it as a cron job with half the environment variables missing or something. There are more ifs with quotes and $? than there are lines that actually do stuff.

Dell: 60% of our people won't be going back into an office regularly after COVID-19

The government say it's for the economy, but Dell and hundreds of thousands of other businesses are crunching the numbers and seeing the savings.

Meanwhile those cafes, take-aways, and restaurant which depend on city centre trade will probably end up relocating to the suburbs where people can pop out to grab a bite to eat or have lunch.

Many governments are ideologically opposed to UBI as it doesn't include the Victorian concept of punishing the poor because they deserve it (the proof being they're poor).

Fairphone thinks its fair to offer a not-very-major and slightly-more-recycled new model

Re: Waiting for USA availability...

They only sell within the EEA, which I guess means they won't sell to the UK from next year.

Re: Buying

I searched the forum, there are resellers, although not in the UK. Operators do sell it in the UK though.

I went through the shopping cart process as far as I could as a business without buying and there's nothing which mentions that businesses must buy airtime, so it seems it could be bought direct from the manufacturer.

Re: Buying

Wouldn't that depend on the country and the reseller? I'm sure there'd be nothing to stop you buying two from Fairphone's online shop.

Here's some words we never expected to write: Oracle said to offer $10bn cash, $10bn shares for TikTok US – plus profit share promise

I've read that Wal-Mart are interested too.

The world has officially gone batshit.

Google wants to listen in to whatever you get up to in hotel rooms

Re: Not a bad idea

The dummy switch is there specifically to provide reassurance to guests.

Two years from now on an IT website near you:

"Google, when asked why if the switch was labelled 'off', the device left the microphone on and constantly recorded and uploaded, said that in its defence the UI was indeed turned off but the constant recording and uploading was due to code written by a rogue engineer."

Re: Oh, my aching ribs

He seems to have had memory lapse about uploading to gcloud in the middle of that sentence. Easy mistake to make I guess, he probably ran out of willpower.

The truth is, honest people need willpower to cheat, while cheaters need it to be honest

Life with Amazon's fitness band: Upload your half-naked pics to see how fat you'll look without exercise. You now sound stressed – relax!

Dystopia

Why does Amazon seem to be working hardest to bring it about?

I mean, it's a product that seems designed to make people unhappy.

Hidden Windows Terminal goodies to check out: Retro mode that emulates blurry CRT display – and more

The problem with screen is you lose scrollback. Or maybe what I mean is that I haven't found a way to keep it yet?

MobaXterm, it's got a built-in X-Server, Cygwin, package installer, and tabs.

Brave takes brave stand against Google's plan to turn websites into ad-blocker-thwarting Web Bundles

Re: Prior art?

Don't worry, they've got it all figured out, even if the Daily Mail might have to switch over completely to Google's tracking.

Yes, the first thing 99% of people do with a new Android phone or tablet is install an alternative browser which doesn't use Blink or WebView... in an alternate reality.

If you want out of Google's attempt at closing the open web, your only choice is Firefox because all other browsers use Google rendering engines following Google's specs, however after years of not taking the best decisions Firefox's usage on both desktop and mobile is looking decidedly shaky and so is Mozilla's future.