Posts by Arthur the cat 3106 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Aug 2009
That's about as stupid as putting backup power generators in the basement of a building that might get flooded. No, you put them on the roof.
Only worthwhile if you put the fuel tanks up there as well. ISTR that a few years back when a huge storm flooded Manhattan one company found out the hard way that leaving the diesel tanks in the (now flooded) basement was not such a bright money saving idea as they had thought.
Unix is clearly inferior to …
That very much depends on one's metric. Existence tends to beat most of them.
the Algol Mainframes of the 1970s
Pah! Mere latecomers! Burroughs stack machines existed in the 1960s.
However, simple fast RISC machines wiped the floor with complex architectures. It's just a Small Matter Of Programming to ensure the compilers are perfect(*). :-)
(*) I'm sure AI will let that happen(**).
(**) Anyone interpreting this as anything other than sarcasm needs remedial lessons in reality.
Unix-like systems (eg: Linux and FreeBSD)
Unless you're a lawyer banging on about trademarks, FreeBSD is not Unix-like, it's Unix. There's a clear line back via the Berkley Software Distribution to the original Bell Labs code. Of course, it's all a bit Ship of Theseus these days.
Yesterday I read an article pointing out the improvements in batteries since the turn of the century, and had to double take as I didn't think they were invented in 1900.
I presume you mean lithium based batteries? The first(*) battery was the voltaic pile, which was invented in 1799.
(*) As far as we know. Give it a couple of decades and I wouldn't be surprised if archaeologists claim the ancient Greeks knew how to make batteries but only used them to light farts at drunken parties.
Invaluable, he was. If you want to make a system idiot-proof, first catch your idiot...
In my case it was Pete. Pete could be totally relied upon to do the most improbable and ridiculous thing when faced with any situation. Absolutely brilliant for ensuring my code could keep running no matter what got chucked at it.
Strangely, the one time all our kit got fried, Pete was in the room but not actually touching anything. He turned up in my office white as a sheet making "bu, bu, bu" noises. What nobody had known was that building management had for some reason run the lightning conductor down the wall outside the computer room. Pete was the only person in the room when a lightning strike hit the building and every piece of equipment turned into a plasma ball toy due to induced EMF while Pete cowered in the middle of the room thinking he was going to die.
Not in the UK of course, the current gov here has had enough of experts...
Whereas experts and pretty much everybody else have had enough of the current government(*).
(*) I use the term loosely, as governing should mean guiding in a considered direction as opposed to executing a drunkard's walk in policy space.
His pithy comment above the code that accepted just a LF (or CR?) was to the effect "you can be right or you can work."
Postel's Law: Be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept
Always good advice, although the latter part can get stretched to breaking point at times.
astronaut programs and the personality traits they screen for
I thought NASA basically looked for obsessive over-achievers?
Any recruiter should bear in mind the recent news about the stabbing in Antarctica, reputedly because the stabee kept telling the stabber the endings of the books the stabber was reading. No jokers who like spoiling books (or videos) for other people.
I suspect Musk gave up when he found he had been conned out a large sum of money by his "eejitsu trainer".
He should have learnt Ecky Thump
the new CEO would have to do everything else and take the blame
But given that everybody blames Musk anyway and will do if/when the company crashes and burns, provided the salary is high enough to compensate for putting up with Musk in the first place it's worth doing for a couple of years.
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