Posts by geekbrit

Will Flatpak and Snap replace desktop Linux native apps?

This is what made me decide to move away from Ubuntu after fifteen years. Working with the filesystem just became clunky and irritating.

It was bad enough having to move downloaded files from Firefox's own obscure little downloads folder, but that was just the start.

I regularly have to combine pdf files into a pack for a website. I have a little automated script that uses pdftk. Suddenly, this is available only as a snap, and it can't even see the website files.

What's next? Vim becomes a snap and you can only edit files in your home folder?

Your software doesn't work when my PC is in 'O' mode

Instrument kept turning on

I worked in software for a gas detector company - wear one of these gadgets in a confined space and it would tell you whether you were about to be blown up, suffocated, or poisoned.

In a new model, the hardware team were on a cost cutting binge, and the first thing to go was the on/off switch. After one of the two remaining buttons was held for a couple of seconds, the software took over and tickled a circuit several times a second to keep the instrument alive.

All went well until it was noticed that occasionally the device would come back to life on its own a few seconds after switch off.

The full hardware team worked on this for days, until the extremely sleep deprived HW Manager strode up to me with a fierce grin and a manic look in his eye.

"You're doing it! The power goes off, then there's a kick on the power maintain line!"

I looked at him, wondering when the penny was going to drop, then prompted him. "So the power goes off?"

"Yes!"

"And the CPU clock stops?"

"Yes!"

"Then what could I possibly be doing to toggle that line?"

He didn't say a word, just spun on his heel and went storming back to the workbench.

10 PRINT "ZX81 at 37" 20 GOTO 10

Re: Programming vs Hacking

One of my favorite memories of my Nascom 2 - spending a couple of hours staring at the circuit diagrams (supplied with the kit) then realizing I could route a higher frequency clock through a spare DIP switch into the cassette UART... giving me screamin' fast 4096 baud program saves & loads! Just think... a whole 400 characters per second!

Next year's Windows 10 auto-upgrade is MSFT's worst idea since Vista

Re: @koswix

Strangely enough, working with scanners and printers is usually much easier in Linux than Windows - Linux just gets the driver and uses it, there's no need for hunting for CDs or looking for malware-free driver downloads.

ARM creators Sophie Wilson and Steve Furber

I think you probably have quite a few ARM cores around - iPods use them (I'm not sure about today's iPods, but early ones used three), your hard disk drives have them, in fact most of the major components of a PC have ARM in them - network cards, video cards, SSD, even USB flash sticks, and then there's printers, routers, car dashboards, gps, brake systems - ARMs are everywhere!