Posts by John Miles 524 publicly visible posts • joined 31 Jan 2007
No it was Delphi/Object Pascal - I've used VB but only to support legacy stuff where either VB coders weren't much use or had left. If I bother updating a CV I doubt I'll mention either, but I expect to retire after this job - just hoping they decide to pay me off.
Must have a look and see if I still have the C# book I brought in back around 2002, where it explained all the reasons they didn't include things like default values for parameters (IIRC there were several I had grown use to in a different language) and see how many of them have been added since.
Then you'll like this direction sign On Google Maps (to Shingay-cum-Wendy & Bassingbourn-cum-Kneesworth) - in these cases it just means "with" - so Shingay with Wendy
By stripping out a large generic library someone had added just to split a version string at the full stops, there was already a way to do it in the main framework they could have used. It reduced application size to half of what it was and reduced the initiation calls at startup to about 5% .
Now using .Net - a similarly sized application takes up 100,000 times more disk space and even longer to start.
I think Mr Musk needs to be careful - I've seen what happens with humanoid robots and bad men - see Chappie's Revenge Scene
An almost applicable SMBC - Rise of the Machines
Probably need a new TheRegister Unit for Australian Rain - so just over 2 Emus or 1/2 a Red Kangaroo hop
For those who don't know In 1869, new rations of tinned mutton were introduced for British seamen. They were unimpressed by it and suggested it might be the butchered remains of Fanny Adams, an eight-year-old English girl who was extraordinarily brutally murdered in 1867 by a solicitor's clerk. "Fanny Adams" became slang for mediocre mutton, stew, scarce leftovers and then anything worthless, hence "Sweet Fanny Adams" - to mean nothing.
What could go wrong - Elevator Recognition
"amanfromMars 1" first visible post appears to be on 10 June 2009 however there was a amanfromMars posting from June 2007 who I think was same person
There on way making a habit of not building labs though 127 million - seems quite cheap compared to Deadly pathogen research hub remains unbuilt despite £400m spend (BBC)
I installed a bit in a computer for a friend and when finished and tested switched it off.
When I next went to see them I asked where the computer was, the answer was gone for repair as it wouldn't switch on, I asked had they checked power switch at back (it had low power switch at front and rocker switch at back) - needless to say it came back no fault found.
I read a study around the time typists were disappearing - the bottom line was though typist could produced the typed document much quicker, the actual effort of producing the words for the the documents was generally same on a PC by a unskilled typist compared to drafting it by hand and it could be sent out immediately, while sending it to typing pool and need to review what they typed added time. Now add it is much easier to make quick changes compared hand drafts in response to other's reviewing it, it was much quicker to get a letter/document out. Some people make a song and dance out of it on PC, but they'd have done similar writing it by hand.
I've had documents retyped by typing pool/document team - despite having provided it as a word processor file in right format.
One sign of being in a bubble, is people trying to explain why it isn't the same as before - the dot com bubble was because of too much money invested chasing herds of unicorns, this time it is different they are only chasing a very few unicorns, troble with unicorns is they are as rare as rocking horse shit. When the crash happens you won't see the big players vanish, but behind the scenes the fallout will damage them and hit their workers and supply chains. I suspect we may even have had the trigger for the bubble popping with the uncertainty around trade.
So the support guy came over a looked at it and was struggling to sort it - I innocently asked whether they had adjusted the volume control wheel on the side, no but when they did the laptop audio output started working - this was in era of having a CD drive in laptop and could use it as a CD player independently IIRC.
Let's hope - SMBC Rise of the machines is right.
XKCD - Real Programmers - the alt-text being "Real programmers set the universal constants at the start such that the universe evolves to contain the disk with the data they want."
I'm also a customer (they took over a building society I had a mortgage and current account with) - I didn't get an email, but then I've not given them an email address.
That sort of outage is why I've accounts with two banks and enough in either of them to cover most things I'll need short term.
One place I worked we had one of those - only 5 digits and number was 141 *, when ever I pressed the 1 a second time it always felt as if it did nothing, so one day I tried it with just 14 and sure enough it opened. A bit later I had to change the number, reading instructions and yes you could only use each digit once. What did we do there - data communication security.
* It's fairly safe to use the actual number as a I changed (several decades ago), and b the site has closed and been sold for housing
If you have too much resource then what tends to happen is you waste by throwing lots at things without thinking whether the results will be worth it, when your resources are more constrained then you think more carefully to avoid squandering them and are more likely to look for inventive approaches.
The big players in AI seem to have been brute forcing it and that often has exponentially decreasing results for the extra effort.
What is needed is enough resources that people feel doable and can take a few gambles, but not so much that they will end up wasting huge amounts just trying things.
