kabdib

50 ms·

511.
by kabdib 6y ago
I meant 16MB, of course. Duh. Argument still stands.
512.
by kabdib 6y ago
It probably would have tipped IBM over to using the 68K. IIRC it was a near thing anyway.
513.
by kabdib 6y ago
I think that the face of computing would have changed quite dramatically if Intel had decided to make the x86 segment paragraph size 256 bytes (8 bits) instead of the useless 4 bits. Imagine not having a 640K (or 1MB) ceiling (without hacks
514.
by kabdib 6y ago
Yup. I narrowly escaped buying one of these drives as a spare for a Synology. Anecdotal evidence is that the SMR drives will mostly work. It's not worth the time or trouble. WD is dead to me until the next cycle of vendor rage forces m
515.
by kabdib 6y ago
Usually the hard choices are what you have to cut. It'll be clear what needs to be done, you just won't have the resources to get there. Then there are the "researchy" type projects, where you have a demo system and mayb
516.
by kabdib 6y ago
Only with a choice of weapons. :-)
517.
by kabdib 6y ago
Pulsar glitches are a thing, here's a great resource: http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/pulsar/glitches.html I'd worry about pulse identification over any significant period of time.
518.
by kabdib 6y ago
My father-in-law retired from a software engineering position at age 75. I'd be 57 years in the industry if I retired then. It seems doable; I know a couple of software types approaching or over 70 now. This would be convenient because
519.
by kabdib 6y ago
The day that the new keyboard was released, I walked over to the Apple store and tried it out. I physically recoiled from it. It reminded me of the Atari 400 keyboard, a cheap membrane keyboard from the 1970s . . . not quite that bad, but s
520.
by kabdib 6y ago
I used to work in an office where there were speakers in the ceiling. The company used them, too. "Call for Mr. Gibber on line 10, call for ..." all day long. ALL DAY LONG while you're trying to concentrate on writing code. F
521.
by kabdib 6y ago
You can cover them in posters and claw back a little privacy. :-/
522.
by kabdib 6y ago
Well, control and cost. However, back when Apple's Infinite Loop buildings were constructed (in the early 1990s) they were mostly full-sized offices. I was told that Apple had done a cost study and determined that hard-walled offices w
523.
by kabdib 6y ago
In the US, if you're in a public place you have no expectation of privacy. Someone can take your photo and do whatever they like with it. (This also goes for photos of "private property" that is visible from a public location
524.
by kabdib 6y ago
A little searching will reveal some of the opsec apparently used by Osama bin Laden. Use of couriers with thumb drives rather than risk electronic communications, and other things.
525.
by kabdib 6y ago
This glorious hunk of junk https://oldcomputers.net/compucolor-8001.html had a keyboard that was optical, it ran beams of light through masks attached to the keys, and looked at the beam interruptions as keys were pressed.
526.
by kabdib 6y ago
Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and Holy the Firm . Dillard has a way with words that is both eloquent and a little violent, and she influenced how I write just as much as Strunk and White's Elements of Style . Douglas Hofst
527.
by kabdib 6y ago
One of Lem's translators, Michael Kandel, wrote a few good books of his own. I really liked _Strange Invasion_ and _Panda Ray_.
528.
by kabdib 6y ago
Once, at 21 (an Atari game). Again, at 31 (the Apple Newton). And again, at 41 (the Kinect). Every ten years or so I get stupid, I guess. I guess I finally wised-up when I turned 51, we'll see if I stay that smart in a couple of years
529.
by kabdib 6y ago
The bit that stuck in my head (from Code Complete or something like it) was the phrase, "Watch out for people who look more productive than they actually are." As in, not writing tests, or making bad decisions that take 10X the or
530.
by kabdib 6y ago
Confession time: In 40+ years of doing software, I've met my schedule once. Actually, that's a lie. I missed by a week on a 150-day long project, my very first project at my very first real company, and that's the closest I e
531.
by kabdib 6y ago
"I'm afraid we're all out of hash buckets at the moment. Would you like a seat at our open addressing table?"
532.
by kabdib 6y ago
> There was a bunch of dead code buried that was only executed > by the tests, apparently to bump up their unit test coverage. I've seen this trick used before; puff up the code base with just-gotta-work type filler (e.g., adding
533.
by kabdib 7y ago
I try to write C/C++ so that the state and flow of control is fairly obvious in a debugger. Complicated and "electric" statements like the ones above are succinct and maybe even obvious, but they're difficult to step thr
534.
by kabdib 7y ago
Some of my favorites, that haven't been mentioned yet - The Supermen (Charles Murray), essentially a biography of Seymour Cray. A Few Good Men from Univac (Lundstrom and Aspray), similar thoughts about the same era of computing. S
535.
by kabdib 7y ago
For Xerox, Hiltzik's Dealers of Lightning is a good source. (The opportunities that Xerox lost because of short-sightedness, political shenanigans and just plain incompetence will probably make you mad. It's a good cautionary ta
536.
by kabdib 7y ago
I guess they could buy AMD. Not that it would make any sense. :-)
537.
by kabdib 7y ago
It's fun to see someone's jaw drop when you show them what you can do with a keyboard macro, some regular expressions and a little shell integration. More than simple fun; I've saved people from hours and sometimes days of dr
538.
by kabdib 7y ago
Yup, a Novation Cat. I still have it, not that it's useful other than as a conversation piece.
539.
by kabdib 7y ago
Emacs user here, it's been my go-to editor for about 40 years. I have a few customizations, not many. My .emacs file is 63 lines long, doesn't include any other files, and mostly just tweaks some key bindings and turns off feature
540.
by kabdib 7y ago
Valve's anti-cheat system does not install any driver-level components.

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