tengwar2

19 ms·

271.
by tengwar2 4y ago
A minor niggle there: machine code is the native language of the computer. Assembly language is a slightly higher-level and slightly less expressive language. Most of the time, they can be seen as equivalent, but as a trivial example, a gen
272.
by tengwar2 4y ago
I understand that company officers cannot be directly sued or prosecuted for the actions of the company that they run, on the legal theory that the company is a separate person. However is there any reason that they cannot be prosecuted as
273.
by tengwar2 4y ago
I seem to have replied at top level - I intended to reply to someone attempting to say that selling crap was ok because you should expect crap if it's cheap.
274.
by tengwar2 4y ago
Probably not. I assess grant applications for government funding for commercial R&D (not in the USA). We do see some applications which we believe are written by AI, along with a lot written by grant-writers. Now to be clear: we explic
275.
by tengwar2 4y ago
She was sold a carrot peeler. She didn't receive a carrot peeler. It's not relevant what the price was: that's a decision for the shop. If they can't sell carrot peelers at a price that makes sense for them, the answer i
276.
by tengwar2 4y ago
It was also common to invent "tiny languages" (e.g. PIC) and domain-specific languages (e.g. Awk, Yacc) to a greater extent than now. There was no real community to share work. I heard of OO and C++, but didn't really unders
277.
by tengwar2 4y ago
In the mid 90's I remember one guy at the European Commission telling me that he still used Word 2.0 for similar reasons.
278.
by tengwar2 4y ago
We used to run an entire lab on these things, including one floating at 4000V inside a perspex cage, controlling part of a C14 accelerator. My understanding was that although you would flip the disk to boot in to Locoscript, at root it was
279.
by tengwar2 4y ago
This is very mild. Cases that have affected me: 1) Augmentra made a mobile phone app called Viewranger which is useful for walking. It presents topological maps, and uses GPX files to plan a route or record a trail. I bought the 1:50000 map
280.
by tengwar2 4y ago
No. That's one type of slide. In others, the slides are there to present facts rather than numinous concepts. Think of illustrating something in programming: usually you need to show working code, and the audience need to be able to ta
281.
by tengwar2 4y ago
It's only a research project, unfortunately. I'd be seriously interested in buying one.
282.
by tengwar2 4y ago
Absolutely not! I can't think of any major economy that is more of a hell-hole than the USA. That applies over so much of the major features of the place: extreme politics, gun violence, "justice" system, policing, prison sys
283.
by tengwar2 4y ago
One area I find interesting is ergonomic computer keyboards. My daily driver is a Kyria ( https://docs.splitkb.com/hc/en-us ) running 20cN choc switches. That's one you make and customise yourself, but there are qu
284.
by tengwar2 4y ago
An ossuary is usually something like a building (e.g. a charnel house), but apparently you are right in saying that it is applied to Jewish bone-boxes ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossuary#Jewish_ossuaries ). For the o
285.
by tengwar2 4y ago
That's cryptocurrency. There are some other applications of blockchain, usually centred around recording non-cryptocurrency transactions (transfer of ownership of diamonds being the best known example), or smart contracts for things li
286.
by tengwar2 4y ago
It's possible that the word "hoe" is rarely written down in this context. I wasn't able to find "putlock" in this context on the web, although I found a blockchain protocol where the name clearly linked the wor
287.
by tengwar2 4y ago
If you look at your logs of botnet attacks, most of the traffic is scattered evenly across the world, and cryptoware is probably similar. Ultimately the command and control will go back to Russia (usually), but firewalling Russia and China
288.
by tengwar2 4y ago
It was actually the Poles who cracked Enigma and built the "bomba" machine (Marian Rejewski) to automate cracking the key. They passed the method to Britain. Turing refined the bomba to make the British bombe, which was then furth
289.
by tengwar2 4y ago
As a Brit, I would say the same. However it may be some specialised terminology - for instance the wooden beams that support the coffin over the grave before it is lowered are "putlocks", a word I had not come across before. So it
290.
by tengwar2 4y ago
I'm a funeral officiant in the UK, inter alia. The traditional purpose of an ossuary is to save the skull and two femurs, which were thought to be the desirable minimum for the archangel Michael to work the resurrection on the day of j
291.
by tengwar2 4y ago
I'm not sure if it was that one, but there was one edition of Borland C++ which had a handle on the top of the box containing the manuals, and a safety warning about lifting carefully.
292.
by tengwar2 4y ago
Surprisingly few people know about the web site https://h2g2.com , which was started by Adams. It's encyclopædiaish in the way that Ford Prefect's book is, rather than being like Wikipedia (and it happens to be a couple
293.
by tengwar2 4y ago
It's in an orchestra. Not every instrument has to have every capability - that's why they are used together. I had a weird error from the embedded YouTube link in that page, but I found a page which showed it being used realistica
294.
by tengwar2 4y ago
It's not unheard of for labour cost to be explicitly excluded as a purchasing criterion. The English Electric Lightning was one example: it was intended for defence against Russian bombers with nuclear weapons, and cost of maintenance
295.
by tengwar2 4y ago
It's not exactly practical to throw away a design and start on completely different aircraft! Also consider that the size was fixed by the fuel requirements and the wavelength of the sideways-looking radar. The second point was a domin
296.
by tengwar2 4y ago
Max speed isn't the only consideration, of course. Almost all "supersonic" planes are effectively subsonic with a supersonic sprint capability, rather than being natively supersonic. Concorde, Tu-144, A-12/SR-71 and XB-7
297.
by tengwar2 4y ago
To a limited extent, the churches sometimes receive a bit of government funding for these activities (food banks, help for the homeless, etc.). It certainly doesn't cover costs but it can make the difference between being able to do s
298.
by tengwar2 4y ago
Pff, that's modern C. K&R C was a bit more of a challenge. I wonder if there's any of my old industrial code on QNX still in operation? I wrote it in the early 90's after ANSI C was available as the ANSI compiler didn&#x2
299.
by tengwar2 4y ago
Do you happen to know why web browsers don't already do something like this? I find that a large number of domains are called every minute. I say domains as most of them seem to be providing Javascript, although some of them are the we
300.
by tengwar2 4y ago
No we're not. There's a lot of people here claiming that their personal use is representative of their country, or of Europe as a whole. I get SMS from a lot of people. You don't, probably because a lot of the people you know

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