spauldo

18 ms·

391.
by spauldo 1y ago
A general reason: they take up a lot of space. Not a problem in most of America, but that'd be a deal killer in Japan. If you're not familiar with Japanese neighborhoods, I'd recommend spending some time on street view - it&
392.
by spauldo 1y ago
QMODEM didn't connect to the Internet. It had no IP stack. It could connect you to a machine that had Internet access. Some ISPs offered that as a service (you'd get some kind of BBS-like interface or - if you were lucky - a UNIX
393.
by spauldo 1y ago
Most network software for DOS was LAN-oriented, like Novell or NetBIOS. Just drive mapping and printer redirection. I'm not aware of a TCP/IP connectivity suite being available for DOS in that era, and I'm not sure how it wou
394.
by spauldo 1y ago
QModem ran on DOS, so the AT wasn't running UNIX. It's almost certainly being used as a terminal. I can confirm that they did run Minix OK, although I remember the network support was iffy at best. We never got it to work at any r
395.
by spauldo 1y ago
Pascal was poised to be the de facto language for microcomputers back in the 80s and early 90s. It really could have gone either way. I'm not sure what tipped the balance to C/C++. Maybe the Microsoft compilers? Maybe the merge of
396.
by spauldo 1y ago
You'll notice the FreeBSD folks don't seem to be particularly bothered by this. FreeBSD loses nothing to Apple or NetAPP. This attitude of "OMG you're being ripped off" any time a company incorporates code from a BS
397.
by spauldo 1y ago
Corn isn't particularly great for producing ethanol. I'm guessing that a synthetic process won't be able to get close to 100x less land usage, but any improvement would be welcome. The problem I see is that there's not e
398.
by spauldo 1y ago
There are plenty of fairly mundane applications for this sort of thing in the military. Every base has a photography and graphic design team that makes posters, signs, PR materials, pamphlets, illustrations for manuals, you name it. Imagine
399.
by spauldo 1y ago
Naw, it's not really all that interesting. A SCADA system has a bunch of field devices it needs to talk to. Most SCADA software has some method of importing lists of device information and creating objects from it. My engineer gives me
400.
by spauldo 1y ago
Just because it's public domain doesn't mean they are obliged to make it available to the public. As noted above, they do have to make it available to other government agencies, but it's the government's choice to place
401.
by spauldo 1y ago
I guess I should have been clearer - the "private repository" mentioned in that bill only has to be available for government employees, and even then only on request. Public repositories are an option, but the government doesn&#x2
402.
by spauldo 1y ago
The "when requested" is the point I was making. FOIA is how you request such software. If you want a copy of the elisp libraries I wrote to automate creation of field devices on military fuel farm SCADA systems, you'll have t
403.
by spauldo 1y ago
Government software can't be copywrited, but the government is under no compulsion to share it. That's what FOIA requests are for.
404.
by spauldo 2y ago
Ground News sponsors a few of the people I watch. Out of the channels I watch I've probably seen them the most on Dr. Becky (an astrophysicist) and Pracical Engineering.
405.
by spauldo 2y ago
Lisp could be simple... but there's a lot of reasons it isn't. It uses a different memory model than current hardware, which is optimized for C. While I don't know what goes on under SBCL's hood, the simpler Lisps I&#x27
406.
by spauldo 2y ago
That's a bit inflexible. Some authors spend their entire adult lives writing a single series of books - yanking copyright out from under them just isn't fair. The same is true of movie franchises, comics, and almost any kind of me
407.
by spauldo 2y ago
It was better looking than Athena or OpenLook, which were your other two free options back then. GTK+ wasn't around, QT was mostly unknown and had license issues anyway, and Motif cost money.
408.
by spauldo 2y ago
It also has the line "You make a dead man cum." I always wondered how Microsoft's marketing department let that one pass.
409.
by spauldo 2y ago
Most of the characters in Star Trek are in the military. That's pretty much part for the course.
410.
by spauldo 2y ago
Hah, I wish that were the case. A whole lot more things would be automated if that were true. Automation requires resources, but it also requires vision, cooperation among affected parties, a workable regulatory framework, maturity and avai
411.
by spauldo 2y ago
I highly doubt they're less popular, it's just that most people who use them aren't as vocal as their detractors.
412.
by spauldo 2y ago
I know that was likely a typo, but can you imagine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob baked into your firmware?
413.
by spauldo 2y ago
I think a lot of the problem with Slashdot was cultural change. When it was new, most of the readership was made up of IT professionals and programmers. Sure, there were trolls but most of the comments were kind of like what you see on HN.
414.
by spauldo 2y ago
Was the 400 as much of a pain to type on as it looks? I was lucky to inherit an 800 when my uncle bought his first IBM clone, and those had nice keyboards.
415.
by spauldo 2y ago
Not sure why that's in jest. Perl is pretty much everywhere and could do the job just fine. There's lots of former (and current) Perl hackers still around.
416.
by spauldo 2y ago
Just search for "Habitrail for Humanity" (and make sure you read that right).
417.
by spauldo 2y ago
Lotsa homeless in Honolulu. Funny story, I was sitting in a pizza place in Spain talking with a coworker about the high cost of rent in Hawaii and the homeless people who wander around Waikiki. Some guy (also an American) overhears us and b
418.
by spauldo 2y ago
Only if you define light as radiation your eyes are sensitive to. In scientific articles, it usually means all frequencies.
419.
by spauldo 2y ago
The hydraulic analogy works great for explaining the basics of electricity to regular people. My stepson doesn't know a transistor from the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, but he needs to know how to use a multimeter to work on his motorcycl
420.
by spauldo 2y ago
This all sounds awful close to the whole CLISP/ReadLine debacle. Basically, CLISP (a Lisp implementation) originally linked to ReadLine, a GNU library under the GPL. Richard Stallman argued that the author of CLISP had to remove ReadLi

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