Posts by jake 26713 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jun 2007
I'm still making more money yearly just from COBOL than the average newbie graduate's entire yearly salary for more modern, popular languages.
I've been recommending people buck whatever the current trendy fad language is and learn COBOL and Fortran since they started dropping the two in favo(u)r of C (and then Pascal) back in the '80s. Not a month goes by without a former student/mentee dropping me an email thanking me for the advice ... I know lots of Java, Ruby, Python, C++, C# etc. coders who are out of work, but the COBOL and Fortran folks are all gainfully employed.
Personally, I still prefer coding in good old C.
"people are free to do anything they want, with no redress."
No, it's application of the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution, as extended through modern methods of communications. In a nutshell, the .gov can't read my diary (even an electronic one) without either my expressed authorization, or a warrant issued by the appropriate court.
Once that warrant is executed, the perp will be fingered and have his time in court.
Things like this found on Public Land are considered "private property" until declared otherwise by a court of law. These same rules allow you to park your car in the Mojave and wander off on a hike for two or three days without somebody "salvaging" your car. The search warrant requirement is the same one that allows you to carry around nekkid pictures of your .sig-other on your camera with no fear that the cops will insist on looking at them.
Another example: That stainless steel pillar that was found in Utah was left alone by the authorities because it was private property ... EVEN THOUGH the folks who placed it would have been denied a permit, had they applied for one, and probably would have been arrested had they been caught installing it. Likewise, the twats who removed it are technically guilty of theft if they didn't have the permission of the owner to remove it.
Somebody buying or selling an investment based on ANYBODY saying that "one day the interest rates will rise" is just as stupid as somebody making investment decisions because somebody said "the sky is blue" ... OF COURSE interest rates are going to rise someday! Then they will go down again, And then back up, and down. And up. Ad nauseam.
"Qanon is probably why Anonymous has been so "quiet". They all became Qanon instead."
When you consider that both Anonymous and Qanon started on 4chan by skiddies trolling adults for the lulz, this is probably the most accurate post in this thread. I find it absolutely mind boggling that some actual adults actually give any credence to either.
"Conspiracy Theory followers are easily swayed"
Not swayed. Duped, suckered, hornswoggled, mislead and taken would fit better. However, once they have been hoodwinked they are far more tenacious in maintaining their delusion than people not so easily snowed. I've found that the more logical the argument against their confusion, the harder they cling to it. Kind of like religion.
"Take the Williamstown line train to Spotswood"
You can't get there from here.
"stroll down to Scienceworks if you want to see it in (simulated) action."
I could toggle them into my period Altair 8800 again, but somehow I think once is enough. I should have taken a video.
If you have access to an actual Altair 8800 and want to try this for yourself, here is a PDF of Dompier's article in the May 1975 People's Computer Company newsletter, as reprinted in the February 1976 issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal of Computer Calisthenics & Orthodontia, including code for "Daisy, Daisy" and "Fool On The Hill".
It would seem my memory of watching the demo in 1977 was a tad off. Mea culpa.
Pretty Much the definitive history of blinkinlights here.
Here's a plaintext addrerss for those of you who quite sensibly refuse to simply click on links without having at least an inkling of where they might take you:
http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/B/blinkenlights.html
I was at a meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club in 1977ish when Steve Dompier demonstrated similar music making skills with an Altair 8800. It took him about 30 minutes of toggling switches to get it to play "Fool on the Hill" or "Bicycle Built for Two" in RF picked up on an AM radio. Someone watching (Roger Melen? There were several CROMEMCO folks there that day, if I remember correctly ...) was overheard to say that it was the most useful thing he'd ever seen a personal computer do. At that stage of the game he may have been right!
I'm fairly certain that everyone witnessing this thought it was a computing first ... I found out later that the Ferranti Mark 1 had a function that would allow variable pitch operator feedback, and someone had programmed it to generate music in the very early 1950s[0]. A couple decades later I found out that the Australians had beaten us all to the punch, having programmed their CSIRAC to make music in 1949 or 1950[1].
[0] "God Save The King", of course (among others).
[1] "Colonel Bogey".
Many moons ago I took my daughter to SLAC on take your kid to work day. At the ripe old age of 9, she had been there many times before and knew the ropes, but I figured she deserved a day out of school.
She told me as we were walking in that it'd cost me ten bucks for her to not push any buttons. I gave her the money.
On the way back out, I told her that it'd cost her ten bucks for me not to tell her mother she was running a protection racket. She made a face and paid up ... and promptly told her mother as soon as we got home. They both still laugh about it :-)
I don't think the current lot will ever "see the light". If they admit to even one of the myriad interlinked lies, the entire house of cards they have built up will come tumbling down.
I dunno 'bout you, but my mind boggles that ANYONE believes most of their bullshit ...
One of them would have started WWIII by claiming to have a round of 17 after one ball wound up in the cup with no strokes at all.
The other would have later claimed that their score-card was tampered with, because they had TWO holes without taking any strokes.
Both of their sycophants would have sworn on a stack of whatever they hold dearly that they were telling the truth, absolutely, it happened exactly the way they reported it.
The rest of the planet would yawn most expressively.
For amusement value, eyeball wiki's "Veracity of statements by Donald Trump".
"There seems to be no delete button here..."
This is TehIntraWebTubes. There is no delete. Once posted, somebody, somewhere knows about it. Possibly many somebodys. Maybe even the Wayback Machine or alphagoo. Act accordingly.
I'd insert an ElReg HOWTO nuke your own post here, but I see JB already has.
Beers all around are in order.
Personally, I find social media mentions to be good filter material. For example, I've been dropping resumes/c.v.s that mention Linkedin into the shredder for about ten years now. IMO, it is nothing more than laziness on your part, and I don't hire lazy people.
Remember, your resume/c.v. is a paper representation of yourself. Treat it accordingly. Free hint: Have it proofread by several people who aren't brown nosers before you actually use it. I may be critical, but even I know that I can't proof my own work!
See this ancient post for more.
... I had a subscription to 3 newspapers (San Jose Mercury News, San Francisco Chronicle, WSJ). They took up my morning coffee time. I read them for the news, and quite frankly I don't remember any advertising as it was irrelevant to my needs.
Round about 1995, I dropped the WSJ. I no longer felt it was necessary ... but I kept the two local papers. I dropped the Chronicle a year or so later. And finally, in late 1998 I dropped the Mercury. Two local TV news stations took up the load for local stuff, and TehIntraWebTubes kept me up to date on World and Business news. All three papers called and tried to get me to resubscribe over the next several years, but as I always said, why on earth would I want to read yesterday's news today, on dead trees, when I had already read it yesterday online ... or watched it happen on a live TV broadcast.
And that's pretty much where I am today. Two local news channels on TV (KTVU and KGO ... although KGO is becoming un-interesting (to me), focusing more on touchy-feely human interest stories than actual news, and so usually gets turned off), and the rest online.
One thing is still consistent with the old three-papers-per-day habit ... I still don't remember any of the advertising. On the TV, I fast-forward through commercials (deferred viewing), and online, I'm a hard-core add blocker. As for alphagoo ... I drop all their IP space on the floor. They have nothing I need or want to see anywhere in their space. (Although I'll admit to eyeballing YouTube occasionally through an anonymizing VPN).
Lose the fourteen-year-old boy's locker-room childishness and keep it professional: "It looks like you are leaning on your keyboard."
Or you can turn on audio key-clicks. Tell her "This is only for test purposes, I'll turn them off again in a day or so" ... I guarantee she'll figure it out for herself.[0]
Both options have worked for me. The second usually gets me a giggly phone call "You're not going to believe what happened ... can you please turn off the clicks now?"
[0] Now you know why there are no such reports from the days of the typing pool. It happened, but went unreported. The Selectric tends to announce itself, no observing tech required.
It goes right back to the beginning of the company. The founders were so absolutely certain that they were right about everything that they were doing that they didn't even bother to spellcheck the name of their company. It was supposed to be Googol.
And of course we won't even bring up minor faux pas, like when Marissa Mayer proudly told anyone who would listen that she was a goo girl, or sometimes googrrl. (Warning! Googling this will bring up NSFW content! Don't say I didn't warn you!)
It is enabled by social media because the rabble rousers never actually have to face the people they are "outing", and neither do the braying mob who follow them. Essentially, TehIntraWebTubes encourages cowardly bullying anonymous pack behavio(u)r in humans.
Does it exist without "Social Media"? Sure. In the same way that a tree falling in the forest without anybody there to witness it does, indeed, make noise.
Angels on the head of a pin territory, for sure. Beer?
There was an effort to teach more men how to cook family meals at Foothill Jr. College in Los Altos a little over a third of a century ago. The feminists went berserk. Their theme was "men already have all the opportunities!" It was funny, in a sad kind of way.
"Maybe he is unsuitable to have a job with some role in diversity."
That may very well be true. Or it may not. Half a dozen words typed in who knows what circumstances a decade and a half ago are certainly not enough to go on, IMO.
"Seems you can not be diverse and have an opinion."
Oh, you can have an opinion alright ... it just better be the same as the minority doing the current screaming. All else makes you into a bad-guy, regardless of how reasonable you are.
Don't you just love the knee-jerk downvoters in threads like this?
I weep for humanity.
Have a beer, friend.
It doesn't matter what his views are today. He has been judged in absentia in the court of public opinion, based on today's social mores, on views he expressed a decade and a half ago, and has been found guilty without an actual trial. There will be no appeal, and those suggesting one will automatically be judged similarly.
Be afraid. Be very afraid. You may be next.
Remember that of-colo(u)r joke you used to tell in the frat/sorority house?
"The number of typos in printed material are going up too.
And it's weird stuff, like viscera being swapped to vitriol..."
That's not typoes, that's the evil monstrosity erroneously known as auto-correction.
"And don't get me started on the improper usage of inflammable"
That's just corporate ignorance, apathy and illiteracy.
The new-fangled WWW subset is to The Internet at large as the monkey exhibit is to the entire city that the Zoo is situated in.
One certainly doesn't need the massive overhead of a GUI and the WWW to read Usenet ... in the old days, we often telneted in to a news server with nothing more than a dumb terminal on a serial line (modem for remote use). Still can, with the proper permissions.
"Dunno, Forth's back up,"
It was never down, at least not on any Newsfeed that I pay attention to.
"first time I've looked at comp.lang.forth since pre-internet"
Seeing as the comp.* hierarchy became operational in the Great Renaming in 1987, about 17 years[0] after TehIntraWebTubes started passing bytes, I highly doubt this statement.
[0] Or 4 years after Flag day, if you prefer the TCP/IP version.
I do not see that with Pan 0.146, but I run Slackware. Perhaps give slrn a shot?
I'm with you on Forté's Agent. If they ever port it to Linux, I'll drop 'em a thousand bucks just because I can ... Even if I, personally, choose not to use it.
Edit: I just had a thought ... If you, like a lot of people today, are not running a swapfile, try adding one to your system. Some old programs, especially those that slurp in a lot of text and manipulate it, expect one to exist. Try 100megs or so to start. Won't hurt, might help.
"if some google luser manages to post spam into a newsgroup, it'll get distributed to any other usenet server that carries that group."
That depends on how clued the downstream server's admin is. My system won't see it, because all of my upstreams filter out the obvious crap. Folks who get a feed from me likewise won't see it. Even when one of my upstreams manages to allow junk through, my own filters usually catch it (and drop a note to the upstream in question).
Running an ancient copy of Cleanfeed here. It still works quite nicely. Ta, Mr. Nixon.
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