Posts by Blue Pumpkin

Re: There are only so many ways of clipping a signal.

Oh Denshi - I had forgotten about that too ... happy days

Same experience here - because of it decided chemicals were not for me and went off to do computer engineering ...

Re: "We asked Lego why it did not create a custom part for the dish"

Yes you are being an old curmudgeon, but so am I and so is my significant other... have an upvote

Re: Crikey that brings back memories

Upvote for the Maths Tower ... it was still ugly but nothing quite as ugly as the CS bunker next door where daylight was not allowed if you were an undergrad

By the time I got there everybody was on Pascal ...

Re: FORTH anyone

It also had an interesting way of storing and addressing data on "screens" or blocks if I remember.

RPN is never going to endear people to your language - though it does tend to make them think more about what they are trying to do

Re: Metric units courtesy of GNU units

Ahh accuracy, precision and margin of error…. All well misunderstood terms.

At one time it was drilled into you in the very first weeks of university maths for science and engineering. I hope it still is

Re: Sadly not a item of bad englishes

You meant verbized ....

Like burglarization ... committed by burglarizers ....

Though I have never understood 'obligated' when obligarized is obviously the correct word

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

Re: Where are they?

MrBanana surely you have met Evil Pea?

Fortunately Supertato is on hand ....

The fable of the scorpion and the frog comes to mind…

Re: Forth is just cryptic

The worst part is coming back to something you did ages ago and try to figure out what you did - although it's not as bas as APL !

And just like BASIC, it's still going https://www.forth.com

I remember attempting to write a FORTH interpreter in 8086 assembler for fun ... with only 4k available - those were the days.

Re: Power on the bottom

You just need the Mac Mini holder

IKEA has the answer

I have the previous Mac Mini and the previous IKEA holder .. good to see them pre-empting the technology upgrade

Obligatory FORTRAN text here ….

Re: This would explain...

Where CCP is Celebrated Capitalist Process right ?

Perhaps a Clearwater Revival ….

Re: 386 and 68020 had ports of Unix

Not forgetting the original SCO - we used to run it on Compaq 386 laptops in preference to Windows

Re: What makes a minicomputer?

> the difference between a microcomputer, a minicomputer and a mainframe

You can race some minicomputers down the hallway - microcomputers and mainframes not so much

The MicroVAX coffee table edition was the fastest - good turning circle but difficult to steer except in straight lines - especially when sitting on it ....

Re: Random tornadoes

He doesn't believe in acts of God ....

Alas I don't think there was one - though I did send a request for one :-(

Wiki page is pretty good though.

Re: Free as in, of no value…

No they're CA - where software goes to die ... sums it up really

Re: The gift that keeps on giving…

.... taking

Re: Quelle surprise!

I don't remember who it was (am obviously approaching old fart age) but there was, some possibly animal behaviourist, who named one of his wards Norm Chimpsky

Re: This is a real problem....

Think of it as a gift .....

Re: That's VW on my 'do not by' list

Yes but how long before it starts singing "Share and enjoy" ?

Re: Is this evolution continuing?

Thank you !

Re: Vasa Syndrome

And the museum is fabulous and an unmissable visit when in Stockholm .... https://www.vasamuseet.se/en

Re: TECO!

Indeed. The TECO parlour game was to type your name at the command prompt and then try and work out what it did to your file ....

Re: Disappointed

Not even Ruby on Rails …

Re: My Mum caught me on Tuesday night

There comes a point in time when you have to announce to people that their technology has gone to the other side and they have no choice but to renew. Even if it's not quite true, but just to keep your sanity ...

If only it were equally simple with central heating ....

Re: Chromebooks sell to education...

Outlook is available on the Mac.

And it's an even bigger piece of crap than the Windows version, despite having been around for over 15 years ... so I wouldn't get your hopes up.

Thankfully Microsoft does (or did) a version of Office without Outlook that they charge less for ...

Re: Mac system requirements

You need to go here https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/

And you'll probably be able to run something more recent.

Am currently running Monterey on a 2015 Air. - with only 8GB.

Re: Worrying - esp. in the UK

Give us a "C"

Give us an "R"

Give us an "A"

You can guess the rest .....

Re: $2 million. The struggle was worth it.

Sure, they want to run a business like lots of other people.

But being shat on by bigger unrestrained monopolistic companies with can make that difficult.

Was software patenting the right way to go ? Probably not, but what other effective avenues were available ?

The patent world of the 60s is not the patent world of today.

Re: 3 experiences with Concorde

As a kid I remember the Concorde maiden flight from Tolouse. Followed not much later by the humungous - at the time - launch of the 747. It was a great time for planes :-)

There is also a Concorde at the Seattle Museum of Flight at Boeing Field, that you can walk through. And as you say it's tiny. In addition there is also a walk through of a previous version of Air Force One - maybe 707 based - I don't remember - someone will tell me.

All in all a great place to go - a whole day will not be enough.

And if you're there, the visit to Boeing at Everett is just awesome, a cathedral of engineering prowess.

Though I guess there are no more 747s

It’s all just dust …

Even though the Empire standardised on the Universal Interface and Protocol as embodied by R2D2 it's just a bigger island, so you still have to lug around a bunch of C3POs to get anything to talk to anything ....

Re: I think it is the perfect time to start a new company : Gloom

Tastefully decked out with demotivational posters from despair.com …..