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User: Mr+Z

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Comments · 3,254

  1. Re:You're thinking of *BSD on SCO Releases Linux OS for Itanium 2 · · Score: 1

    You know, that's got to be the freshest take on the "*BSD is Dying" troll I've seen, and yet somehow, it's still mind numbingly stale. Bravo.

    --Joe
  2. Wow, leave it to the Great Blue God! on Microsoft Windows Update and Network Bandwidth? · · Score: 1

    Automatically ask the Internet? I like that. Forget going to a vendor website or even Google. Just send a broadcast packet to all hosts with my query and the Internet will tell me!

    I better check the Evil Bit on the reply packets if I ask for critical updates, so I know whether to trust them.

    --Joe
  3. Re:Hnady dandy tip wile on the subject on 3-button Optical Mice? · · Score: 1

    I guess it makes some amount of sense. I personally like the "paste URL and load it" functionality that the middle mouse button has with Mozilla under X. Or, if you middle-click on a link, it opens the link in a new tab -- even better. I miss that behavior under MS Windows. I'm not likely to remap the mmb to 'back' on either platform. I do see your reasons for it though.

    --Joe
  4. Re:there is the way that large corperations do it on Microsoft Windows Update and Network Bandwidth? · · Score: 1

    Sure, they're paying for the bandwidth between themselves and the ISP. Caching the Windows Update at the ISP allows the ISP's customers to make better use of their own bandwidth while simultaneously reducing the burden on the ISP's link to the rest of the world. It's a win-win situation.

    In general, reducing the ISP's costs for a given level of service is a good thing. In the long run, improvements in efficiency improve the health of the ISP and potentially reduce the costs to its customers.

    --Joe
  5. Re:Hnady dandy tip wile on the subject on 3-button Optical Mice? · · Score: 1

    Why? Why not just right click anywhere that isn't a link and release over 'Back' in the context menu? 'Back' is usually right under the mouse pointer, making it a very quick operation, freeing up the middle click for other purposes.

    Or do you use IE, which has the annoying habit of realigning you to the bottom of the context popup if you are too close to the bottom of the window?

    --Joe
  6. Re:Three buttons are not enough on 3-button Optical Mice? · · Score: 1

    Disagree. I like to be able to hold the damn thing without clicking one or more buttons by accident. Especially when I'm in a hurry, moving hand from mouse to keyboard to mouse etc...

    --Joe
  7. Re:The cost of consumer items on 606 Takes To film Rube Goldberg-like car ad · · Score: 2, Interesting

    My dad likes to tell this story: Goebel Beer was the #1 beer (in Michigan at least) at one time. They were so popular they decided "Hey, we're #1, we don't need to advertise any more!"

    Have you ever heard of Goebel Beer? If so, do you think it's anywhere near #1 in sales? Basically, the moment they stopped advertising, they coasted a little bit and fell into perpetual obscurity.

    And in case your bored: Some more beer commercial history.

    --Joe
  8. Re:I'm glad I was too young to use that on Implementing VisiCalc · · Score: 1
    Those were the days when programming was really fun, man! I remember being really excited when the PalmPilot came out, cuz it sounded like a good opportunity to get back to programming the way folks were meant to do it.
    Who's with me??

    I'm with you! I currently write stuff for the old Intellivision video game system. This thing runs at about .89 MHz, with the average instruction being around 8 cycles. It's a .1 MIPS machine, although it is 16-bit. It very little RAM (around 448 bytes for variables, 2048 bytes for graphics, 240 bytes for display memory). The machine is still sufficient for games, though, because it has hardware sprites and a 3-voice square-wave/noise generator for sound.

    In comparison, the Apple // was approximately .25 MIPS, I believe. (1.023 MHz, average instruction around 4 cycles.) It had a lot more memory, but vastly inferior sound. At least it had a bitmapped graphics mode though! :-)

    Shameless plug: You can find my Intellivision development kit here.

    --Joe
  9. He right on Implementing VisiCalc · · Score: 1

    There's a reason Weird Al has spreadsheets printed out on his bedsheets....

  10. Re:Apple II - serious? on Implementing VisiCalc · · Score: 1

    AppleWorks was my favorite, until I really learned WordPerfect 4.2.

  11. Re:Apple II - serious? on Implementing VisiCalc · · Score: 1

    I think you ducked when the point came whizzing your way. Yes, the Apple ][ was a cash cow for years. But did it sell into businesses? Not really once the PC took root.

    And the Apple ///? I know of at least one business that bought into those (Hastings Manufacturing, in Hastings, MI) and ended up dumping them off on the local library and YMCA. I got to help maintain them. I think the Apple /// left a bad taste in most people's mouths. It's too bad -- the machine had some neat aspects.

    The peak for the Apple /// was its 15 seconds of screen time in TRON. (It was the machine that Flynn was typing at while talking to CLU.) Given that it was never highlighted anywhere and that almost nobody recognized the computer then or now says something about how popular it was. :-)

    --Joe
  12. rofl on Implementing VisiCalc · · Score: 1

    Or is it a hash pipe?

  13. Re:computer terms on Anger as a Software Design Philosophy · · Score: 1

    Actually, according to this page, "foobar" may actually have been the original form.

  14. Re:A bit limited surely... on Anger as a Software Design Philosophy · · Score: 1

    Yeah, but Intel worked around it, providing ORL and ANL instructions on the 8051. General Instruments decided to live up to their name as a generalist, providing the much more general and flexible SIN and SWAP instructions on their CP-1600. (After all, you might want to SWAP partners after a little SINning.)

    --Joe
  15. Re:Implied base 10 in oral speech on Eleventy What? · · Score: 1
    Gee, this is challenging to describe in English... :)

    Hence this joke, which is only funny when read: There are 10 types of people in the world--those who understand binary, and those who don't.

    Back to the topic... I personally use the same nomenclature for decimal and hex, suffixing my statement with the base when it's ambiguous. I'll say things like "twenty-three hex", "cee thousand hex". I rarely speak binary numbers, though. When I do, they're typically short enough that I'll just read the digits.

    --Joe
  16. Re:In all non-decimal systems.. on Eleventy What? · · Score: 1

    You don't read it aloud from right to left. You interpret the number and perform most arithmetic from right to left, just like in decimal. Never, in my 15 years of assembly programming experience have I ever encountered someone (including the astoundingly little-endian designers I work with) that reads binary aloud from right-to-left.

    --Joe
  17. Re:Oh really? on New Whitespace-Only Programming Language · · Score: 1

    Nah, you only need one instruction: "Do What I Want." Opcode? 1.

    --Joe
  18. Re:Oh really? on New Whitespace-Only Programming Language · · Score: 1

    Ahem, the VIC-20 had 5K of RAM. (Here's another link. The 3 KiB they mention is the amount of RAM available to programs after the OS and display memory are subtracted. That's probably why it's listed as "3KiB, 5KiB".)

    Perhaps you're confusing the VIC-20 with the Commodore Plus/4? That thing had 64K of RAM, and four productivity apps built into ROM. So, maybe you had a VIC-20 but wished you had the Commodore 64 or Commodore Plus/4?

    --Joe
  19. fnord on TCP/IP Header Bit Added to Improve Security · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Wow... this massive reposting was actually predicted earlier in an unrelated story!

    Spooky, I tell you. ;-)

  20. Re:Gateway/Mouse on Possessed Technology? · · Score: 1

    I've had it happen both with my Toshiba and my Dell. I wonder if both eraser-head mice are made by the same manufacturer... I know the Dell one is a "Synaptics" brand guy, but I'm not sure off-hand who made the Toshiba one.

    The nice thing is that the driver does re-zero the eraser head if you let it alone and let it reset. That's a double-edged sword, though. I'm sure a good fraction of the "ghost motions" resulted from rezeroing while I was trying to smoothly, slowly scroll through my document.

    --Joe
  21. Re:April trolls day on Human Eyes as Digital Cameras? · · Score: 1

    Where it matters, I write the date unambiguously. For example, YYYY-MMM-DD, where MMM is a 3-character abbreviation.

  22. Re:April trolls day on Human Eyes as Digital Cameras? · · Score: 1

    I've always thought of 1/4 as "one fourth" or January 4th, depending on the context...

  23. Re:One time on Possessed Technology? · · Score: 1

    Your Zelda experience is easily explained -- the video chip inside the NES probably still held the graphics for the Zelda screen. The NES was coming up crashed due to a bad connection on the cart port. The video chip was displaying 'garbage' left over in video RAM.

  24. Re:Gateway/Mouse on Possessed Technology? · · Score: 1

    I have that sort of problem with my "eraser head" mouse on my laptop. I just let it go until the driver decides it needs to recalibrate/rezero itself. It seems rezero whenever it sees a fixed non-zero input for more than about 5 seconds.

    --Joe
  25. Re:YEA! on Possessed Technology? · · Score: 1

    The TV was probably responding to power glitches. 2AM sounds like a good time of night to switch generators into and out of the power grid.

    --Joe