* Posts by IvyKing

381 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Jul 2009

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Those who 'circle back' and 'synergize' also tend to be crap at their jobs

IvyKing

Re: I'll pass this on to management

Then there was the Dilbert comic from about 20 years ago where Dilbert and the PHB were engaging in corporate speak. The final panel was the text "Dear reader, if you or any of your loved understood the preceding dialog, you have our deepest sympathy."

Apple’s MacBook Neo turns out to be its most repairable lappy in 14 years

IvyKing

Re: Based on pricing of M1 Macbooks

I'd be willing to bet that the Walmart M1 MBA's were a marketing test by Apple to see if a laptop designed for the education market would be attractive to normal consumers.

IvyKing

Chromebook replacement

Apple designed the Neo to make it attractive to school districts to replace Chromebooks. This meant that the Neo had to meet a strict cost to manufacture target and it also had to be reparable by district technicians.

Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

IvyKing

Re: Playboy - the science fiction magazine

FWIW, "Wind From The Sun" was first published as "Sunjammers" in Boy's Life.

DR-DOS rises again – rebuilt from scratch, not open source

IvyKing

Re: DR DOS 3.41 was from 1989, not 1981

I was about to make a similar correction. In 1981, 86-DOS was in the process of being converted to PC/MS-DOS and DRI was still busy trying to get CP/M-86 out the door.

US state laws push age checks into the operating system

IvyKing

The Cal state Assembly has 80 members, so the 58-0 is actually 58 yes, 0 no, 22 abstain.

Chardet dispute shows how AI will kill software licensing, argues Bruce Perens

IvyKing

Re: Software patents as well?

The billionaires in California DO pay taxes, the top 100 or so taxpayers pay around 10% of the state tax haul. California does not have a lower tax rate for long term capital gains, so a not inconsequential amount of that tax comes from inflation.

Apple's budget-friendly MacBook Neo is bursting with color and compromise

IvyKing

You can do other things with the port that's used for charging

I had a 2017 model MacBook Pro that just had 2 USB-C ports, though both were USB 3.0. One of the dongles purchased for that MBP was a multi port AV adapter that had an HDMI socket, a USB-A port and a USB-C port for the power cable. Seems to me that this should work just fine with the Neo. The 2017 MBP was replaced with an M3 MBP that came with Magsafe, 3 USB-C/Thunderbolt ports, an HDMI socket and an SD card reader meaning the only dongles needed were USB-A to USB-C and an Ethernet adapter.

Microsoft boffins cook up archival storage using Pyrex glass they say can last over 10,000 years

IvyKing

Re: Do they make their own Pyrex?

One easy to tell difference between real Pyrex and ersatz "pyrex" is the color. If the glass has a greenish tinge, that's a dead giveaway the cookware is made from soda-lime glass and not borosilicate glass.

Final step to put new website into production deleted it instead

IvyKing

In SoCal the Albertsons stores use the Vons name and the Kroger stores use the Ralphs name. I'm not sure how Lucky we are to have only a few grocery store chains still around.

FWIW, Lucky was the name of a grocery store chain common in SoCal a30 to 40 years ago.

US is moving ahead with colocated nukes and datacenters

IvyKing

Re: 50% efficiency

Large LWR plants are typically 33% efficient, with the limit imposed by the 1000psi saturated steam. The HTGR's were supposed to be 38% efficient and early LMFBR plant designs were calling for 40+ efficiency before issues with swelling of fuel cladding became known.

The ultra-critical coal plants are supposed to be 45% efficient and the latest combined cycle combustion turbine plants are reaching 61% efficiency. The high efficiency of the combined cycle plant really pays off in areas short of cooling water.

Reviving a CIDCO MailStation – the last Z80 computer

IvyKing

Ah - Kaypro... I remember seeing the "factory" in Solana Beach, and 2.5 decades later my kids were going to middle school just north of the site.

A co-worker had a high voltage probe my by Non-Linear Systems, which became KayPro.

Study confirms experience beats youthful enthusiasm

IvyKing

Re: No s**t

Reminds of a saying: "Good judgement comes from experience, experience comes from exercising bad judgement." Getting burned by some undocumented or poorly documented "feature" leaves a lasting impression on one's mind - and someone fresh out of school is unlikely to have come across these "features".

Challenger at 40: The disaster that changed NASA

IvyKing

Re: It's all down to politics

The SRB's were made by Thiokol, not Rockwell. Hercules was the other Utah based SRB manufacturer at that time, but both facilities are now part of Northrop Grumman.

How CP/M-86's delay handed Microsoft the keys to the kingdom

IvyKing

IBM did make an 8086 based system about the same time as the 5150 was released. One reason given for the 8088 was that a 16 bit data bus would be more expensive than an 8 bit data bus.

One other reason given for MS getting the nod for the OS was that Bill Gates' mom had connections at IBM.

Everybody has a theory about why Nvidia dropped $20B on Groq - they're mostly wrong

IvyKing

Re: Dataflow architectures

I remember the BYTE article on dataflow architectures being the "new big thing". ISTR this was a mid 1980's issue, with BYTE's publication ending with the July 1998 issue.

Seems to me that the most common use is for signal processing as shown by the number of MAC blocks in most large FPGAs.

You don't need Linux to run free and open source software

IvyKing

Re: Amazingly title happens to be correct;

>The OG MIT License came in to being most likely in 1987, the OG BSD License definetly came to being in 1988, while the OG GPL came into being in 1989... AND RMS was working at MIT when he wrothe the OG GPL. So, if anything, MIT and BSD influenced the GPL not the other way around.

>Without MIT and BSD we would probably not have the GPL...

It could be said that the BSD license was influenced by the license SPICE was released with and SPICE was developed in the 1970's. SPICE being Simulation Package for Integrated Circuit Electronics.

IvyKing

Re: Nice to see Pegasus Mail is still around

FWIW, the IT guy did pay for the company's use of Pegasus Mail.

IvyKing

Nice to see Pegasus Mail is still around

I used Pegasus Mail from 1993 to 1997 as it was the preferred corporate email client in that time period. I found it easier to use than Outlook.

IvyKing

Re: And...

I was able to move my Thunderbird data from Solaris to MacOS with no major problems. A number of years ago, I was able to move Eudora data from my wife's first laptop to T-bird on a newer laptop.

Memory is running out, and so are excuses for software bloat

IvyKing

Re: Gonna get expensive!

The monitor debugger that was used by many of the early 6800 powered micro's was hard coded to start at 32K. The thinking at the time was that no one would have anything close to 32K of memory. The original MS-BASIC had a version that would run in 4K.

IvyKing

Re: Lovely idea - no chance of it ever happening

The "rendir.com" (rename directory) that shipped with SCP's version of MS-DOS 2.0 took up all of 47 bytes on the disk.

Starlink satellite fails, polluting orbit with debris and falling toward Earth

IvyKing

Re: Not content

The satellite and debris are in a low orbit, which means the drag from the atmosphere will quickly remove the objects from orbit. IIRC, SpaceX deploys the satellites at a lower orbit and then has the satellites boost themselves to the operational orbit. That way, a DOA bird will de-orbit in a relatively short time.

In case of a real Kessler Syndrome event, the lowest orbits will be cleared out in a relatively short time, but the more useful orbits will need some sort of active clearing to become usable.

UNIX V4 tape successfully recovered: First ever version of UNIX written in C is running again

IvyKing

IOW, UNIX is to Linux the way that CP/M is to QDOS/86-DOS/MS-DOS with both Linux and DOS written from scratch to emulate an earlier OS. The earliest fork of UNIX was BSD, which was released with license terms similar to the license that used with the release of SPICE.

Purdue makes 'AI working competency' a graduation requirement

IvyKing

Re: And that means...what?!?

One would hope that "thinking critically about AI" means taking AI output with a very large grain of salt.

IvyKing

Re: “his BS degree”

The troll icon was appropriate for your post.

There was intent in my post to suggest anything negative about his degree, the comment about CAD was based his experience learning SolidWorks in high school compared with freshmen who apparently had no significant exposure to CAD prior to their start at Purdue. A related note, we went computer shopping with him, popped into a Best Buy and was pleasantly surprised that the sales droids had a decent clue. Turns out the younger one was an EE major at Purdue.

IvyKing

We had root beers at XXX the first time he visited the campus when looking at options for college/university.

BTW, the Jerky store in Old Town San Diego carries XXX root beer.

IvyKing

President Chiang was rather dismissive about AI in his speech at the 2023 graduation ceremony where my son was getting his BS degree. To be fair, he was commenting on the quality of AI generated text as opposed to applications where AI may be of real benefit. From what my son has said about his working with freshmen, it sounds like more emphasis is needed on CAD, although AI may be of help with dealing with CAD.

WatchGuard sounds alarm as critical Firebox flaw comes under active attack

IvyKing

Glad to see I wasn't the only one confusing "b" and "f"!

Ford shifts gears to build batteries for datacenters

IvyKing

A home sized battery system would be of interest to me, especially if it could do a whole house back-up.

BOFH: If another meeting is scheduled, someone is going to have a scheduled accident

IvyKing

Re: Talk about flash·backs…

The ammeter on the battery in the downtown L.A. exchange was reported to have a 12,000A redline. There was a red stripe on the floor signifying that metal tools were prohibited beyond that point in order to prevent formation of metal plasma.

The batteries on USn WWII fleet subs had cells weighing one ton, and would be about the same size as exchange batteries. It is my understanding that exchange batteries were built with glass cases, which wouldn't work to well in a sub.

FreeBSD 15 trims legacy fat and revamps how OS is built

IvyKing

Re: x86 versus x86-32

The point was that most of the "modern" Unix derivatives were not ported to the 8086 or the 80286 (Xenix/SCO was an exception). Lack of memory management precluded Unix being ported to the 8086, though Intel did build a few prototype machines with memory management (one of my classmates had one). The 80286 could support code that was originally written for the PDP-11 as both were 16 bit machines with tricks to extend the address space (16 bit segments in the case of the 80286), but the versions of BSD that were being ported to Intel architecture were originally developed on the Vaxen at UCB and the VAX had a 32 bit address space. The 80386 was the first in the x86 series to allow use of 32 bit segment and thus was more in tune with the way 32 bit Unix memory management worked. I would not want to subject any development to requiring use of 80286 code for any x86 software.

As far as "x86" code goes, the 8086 was designed so that 8080/8085 assembly code code be easily ported to the 8086. The 8080 was designed to allow easy translation of 8008 assembly code and the 8008 dates back to 1971.

The 80286 was designed before Unix was a niche OS and had some very impressive options for multi-tasking and multi-user systems. IIRC, OS/2 v1.x was designed around the 80286 and dynamic memory allocation involved the hardware more directly than more modern systems. One result was if 1K of memory was allocated, any attempt to access beyond that 1K would generate a fault.

A BSD tidbit. The CS department at Cal bought a PDP-11 to replace the loss of the CDC6400 "B" machine, which was running the KRONOS time sharing OS (I got a couple of exposures to using Kronos during my first quarter at Cal. That PDP-11 was rotated between 3 different OS's, one being an experimental OS from Bell Labs was prompted comments such as "If Bell Labs hadn't invented the transistor, The Phone Company would still be using vacuum tubes" and describing the "C" language an "An abomination in the eyes of the Lord".

IvyKing
Headmaster

x86 versus x86-32

FWIW, the first x86 processor to support 32 bits was the 80386, which was introduced in 1985 and first machines using it shipped in 1986.

KDE Plasma sets date to dump X11 as Wayland push accelerates

IvyKing

Re: CDE

I've also used CDE on Sparcs as well as X86 (Solaris). Before CDE, I used HP's VUE, which was the original desktop environment based on Motif. I also have a copy of a book on the design of Motif, written when Motif was an HP project. FWIW, my favorite background for VUE and CDE was Ankh.

SpaceX loses debut V3 Super Heavy in ground test mishap

IvyKing

Re: Test stand

Knowing who to hire is the one of the most important if not the most important quality for the person in charge.

This security hole can crash billions of Chromium browsers, and Google hasn't patched it yet

IvyKing

Re: That's a bummer

I am not surprised, but I would guess that the fraction of "Chrome only" websites are less than "Internet Exploder only" websites back in its heyday. I suspect the SaaS websites you've mentioned do not expect to be accessed by iOS devices.

IvyKing

Re: That's a bummer

Firefox user here as well, but Apple's insistence on Webkit for iOS has probably done more to keep Chrome from being the second coming of Internet Explorer than anything Mozilla has done.

SpaceX is behind schedule, so NASA will open Artemis III contract to competition

IvyKing

Re: Go Fever

A bit of context: The program to develop the F1 engine used on the Saturn V started when Eisenhower was president.

Who gets a Mac at work? Here's how companies decide

IvyKing

Re: My company switched

I suspect the "post covid" switch to Mac laptops was more due to the long battery life with the M series processors than the aftereffects of COVID. One other thing is that the Mac trackpad beats the hell out of most PC trackpads.

An idea that won't sink: China planning underwater datacenter deployment

IvyKing

Re: Given how vulnerable underwater lines are 'accidental' damage

I was about to post a similar concern, but you beat me to it. It is a very real concern.

PC memory costs to climb as fabs chase filthy lucre in servers and HBM

IvyKing

I'd be more impressed if you had some 1103's...

Microsoft veteran's worst Windows bug was Pinball running at 5,000 FPS

IvyKing

Gato also had the same problem - it was insanely sped up when played on a 16MHz 386.

Microsoft open-sources the 6502 BASIC coded by Bill Gates himself

IvyKing

Re: At that time ...

Thanks for the correction!

I remember looking through the documentation for GE's timesharing service that was being used by the college where my dad was teaching circa 1969. My first exposure to computer programming was at the local CDC office a mile east or so of UCSD, and learned to like the IBM keypunches.

Working from home is a little bit different when using a fiber optic internet connection with 20 million times the data rate used by the model 33, along with a key board that's easier to type on the the model 33.

IvyKing

Re: claiming Bill Gates didn't write 'his' BASIC but stole it.

Intel stated that the 8086 instruction set was designed for source code compatibility with the 8080, which was source code compatible with the 8008. Seattle Computer Products had a program from translating Z-80 assembly code to 8086 assembly code, hence the hooks in 86-DOS to convert CP/M system calls to Int21H calls used in 86-DOS and subsequently MS-DOS.

IvyKing

Re: At that time ...

"I was hacking on the proto-BSD in C and assembler."

Which suggests you were at Cal ca 1976 and doing your dirty work in Evans Hall, or perhaps Corey Hall.

The first comment I heard about the C language was that it was "an abomination in the eyes of the Lord" and a comment "If Bell Labs hadn't invented the transistor, the phone company would still be using vacuum tubes".

FWIW, I got a BS degree and MS degree from Cal in '76 and '78 respectively.

After nearly half a century in deep space, every ping from Voyager 1 is a bonus

IvyKing

Favorite Voyager 2 memory

Was in 1989 when spending an afternoon at the Rueben H Fleet Space Theater watching live reception of images of Neptune. Seeing images of Pluto would be a bit more than a quarter of a century later.

FreeBSD Project isn't ready to let AI commit code just yet

IvyKing

BSD is dying

That joke was common on Slashdot circa 2000.

Mysterious X-37B spaceplane flies again, this time carrying a quantum GPS alternative

IvyKing

The author wrote that the Space Shuttle was launched "on a rocket", though the shuttle itself was part of the rocket. The X-37B, on the other hand, was the payload of the rocket.

Side note about the shuttle - the shuttle could have carried a bit more payload had it used the SSME's instead of OMS engines for final insertion to orbit but that would have meant that the external tanks would have had uncontrolled re-entry and landing who knows where.

Servers hated Mondays until techie quit quaffing coffee in their company

IvyKing

Re: HDD spindle bearings

The Deskpro 386 that I bought in September 1986 came with a 40MB CDC Wren drive. The connector was the same one as what was later called the IDE connector.

Advisor to Brit tech contractors Qdos confirms client data leak

IvyKing
Joke

Qdos? Isn't that a violation of a Seattle Computer Products trademark??

QDOS for me will always be the original name for what became 86-DOS then PC/MS-DOS.

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