Posts by Dagg

Re: transwarp performance

In a college project (30 years ago....God, I'm old!),

Bloody whipper snapper; get off my lawn!

"resistant to change when said change means they must change."

The other thing I've seen is a new developer fresh from some training course on some new language/library/tool set/ etc comes in and rewrites a block of legacy code in new whatever then leaves and you end up with a maintenance nightmare.

If it 'aint broke don't fix!

Re: C is the new COBOL

C can be readable, but smart alecs programming like it's 1981

Exactly!!!!!!! Sorry for all the exclamation marks but this is so true. I have maintained legacy code where some idiot developer FW who loved using used l1 and I1 that is (lowecase L)1 and (uppercase i)1.

When he coded the font may have shown them as considerably different but in Courier New they are close enough to be a major pain!

Re: One of them hasn't even lasted a day

twat didn't specify a sexual preference

What about species? Dolly the sheep anyone...

Re: Rule 1 of paying people to quit...

...people who are good and can easily find another job will take it.

With the consulting companies. Her in Australia I used to work for one of the big 4 and every time we got a LNP (conservative) government in they started letting go the public service. The company I worked for would then hire the good ones of these people and when the gutted public service started engaging consultants to do the work of the people it no longer had we would just step in.

Money, Money, Money...

Re: Why?

Rust will block them

So what actually happens say in a production system?

Re: What's the point?!

Safe rust code does not have memory safety bugs, because it can’t.

So what does it do if I try to write to array entry 101 when the array only has 100 entries?

Prevent the write and continue

Crash the program

What? Because in both those cases the result is not good in a production system.

Re: I must admit, beyond basic research I do not fully get the point of the X-59 program

Because sometime (actually most times) it is not the final destination that is important, it is the things you learn on the journey.

Re: It seems to be the American way...

Maralinga still poses posed an actual threat to the locals

It has not been cleared up correctly and is still hot.

Re: Why?

Yet, converting to Rust now might be a wasted effort

Yep, with you on that one. Spend considerable time and effort upskilling in Java and never managed to use it. There was way more work and money in C/C++.

Re: No, of course I've no idea if this remotely resembles the actual syntax used...

So... the problem is if there is an error in the source code it will just be transferred into the destination code. it's just GIGO

To actually fix any potential memory errors will require extensive refactoring. This will require access to the original high level/business requirements that were used to create the original code. You will also require ALL of the subsequent change requests and process changes.

And then you will need to try to track down the wildcard changes that you cannot find any reason as to why they were made.

You use the same one that Schrodinger's cat is stored in.

It is only when you open it do you know how much you managed to save.

Re: cross border data collection nightmare.

I used to look after a server which collected data from different time zones. The whole DST issue was a nightmare. In the end all data was stored with UTC timestamps.

Major issue in Australia with each state having its own timezone and only the southern states having daylight saving. In some cases parts (far west of NSW) of one state adopt the timezone of next door state.

So not only do you need to store datetime in UTC you also need to store the native offset from UTC.

Re: Leave the clocks alone

I'd much rather go to work in the dark than come home from work in the dark.

Don't know where you are in the UK, but I was in the midlands and mid winter it was drive to work in the dark, see the sun barely rise above the horizon mid morning the set mid afternoon then drive home in the dark.

I'm now living in Australia and the southern states have daylight saving and it is a waste of time, The state of Victoria maps to North Africa in the northern hemisphere and daylight saving is a complete waste of time.

Re: Power containerisation

Can't they need to be near a large body of water for cooling. Sydney harbour would be perfect. Put them around the harbour at 5 km spacing. Perfect!

Re: Cost!

There's private sector interest, but there are some serious regulatory and legal hurdles to get over.

Here in Australia the Coalition has stated that they get rid of these to make it easier for nuclear. But still no private sector interest... Read what you want into that!

Re: Double entry bookkeeping

The only original reason for a double entry system is you only needed to add, no subtraction was required. From what I remember this was to do with the use of roman numerals.

In sales/ledger/account systems you don't need a double ledger but each transaction is recorded against each sale/purchase/banking etc.

Re: Roll out new point of sale system, get petty crime wave?

previous accounting system - Capture - was also buggy

Yep, I wonder if Capture was the foundation/data-layer of Horizon.

Re: ...and it was open to abuse.

Post office terminal sent a sales transaction to head office. Head office sent an ack packet back. Ack packet didn’t arrive at the terminal. Terminal retransmitted the transaction. Head office logged it as a second sale.

WTF!!! This is the classic double commit problem. I remember being taught all about this in compsci and working with it in EFTPOS using AS2805/ISO8583.

The standard approach was to send a request and if the response did not arrive in time a reversal was sent. The original requests and responses could be discarded but the reversals had to be stored and forwarded. Total F*ckwits

Re: So? Suggestions please…

If it doesn't have drivers because the H/W's too new

Wrong, the hardware is about 3 years old but has never been supported under linux. It is under Windows and Mac. Or in the case of a printer it will sort of works under linux but you are not able to head clean or head align.

And you can always try running your irreplaceable Windows app under Windows of your choice in an isolated VM for safety.

Tried it and instead of being able to fully use the features of both screens together you get a little window. And runs so slow.

I'm not the one beefing about windows. I just get pissed off with the attitude that linux will fix everything, linux is the solution, linux is mother, linux is father...

I will and I want to change to linux ASAP once it is able to deliver what I need and solve the problems that I have.