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Admin
I just wasted 5 minutes of my life that I'm never going to get back that I could have read off a standard fb meme that gets spammed to me every day.
Admin
"VB/PHP/Excel/etc. brought programming within reach of those who should not have it"
Elitism much?
Admin
... was there supposed to be a point to this?
Admin
I don't think so. The author says they were just random thoughts.
Dog shit, though.
Admin
Nostalgia ain't what it used to be....
Admin
Where do we set the boundaries?
Should we allow anyone to ask someone on the street for the way, language certificate or not?
Should we allow anyone to drive a car, driving license or not?
How much damage can result from idiot programming? Would that damage justify a regulation, at least in published works?
Admin
There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses. — Bjarne Stroustrup
Admin
SO MUCH truth. Snoofle, would love to sit down and have a beer with you sometime!
Admin
Had a LOL with this one.
Admin
It's amazing that telecommunications tech has improved so greatly, otherwise you might have had to put some effort into phoning this in.
Admin
I is a pleasant thought knowing that for instance the biggest input I will ever make in electronics is for a sub-block designed for Digital Compact Cassette, never really sold, then put into tens of millions of CD decoder chips where it was never switched on - audio de-emphasis filter anyone? and now they are landfill.
But the early smartphones we made with DVB tuners in them, voice over IP , WiFi and Linux with Qt GUIs were fun.
And the stuff I know about GPS I still use to torture colleagues...
Admin
Hollerith cards...now there's a story. When we junked our keypunches and were recycling our drawers of card decks, one of our employees kept a few of them and used them just to write little notes to herself.
About a decade+ later, we hired a new Windows support person, quite young. I remember being in her office when the first employee walked in with her card in hand on which were notes for the new hire. The new hire looked at the punch card and said "What is that" upon which followed a bit of a lecture on Jacquard looms and the history of computing. To this day I maintain a small computer museum in my office. It does not fail to get a new grad student's mental gear churning out of control to pull out a 9-track tape write ring and ask them to guess what it was for -- even more fun is to pull out my museum's old acoustic modem (110/300/1200 baud)-- after all most of the new students haven't seen a phone handset.
God I love my job.
Admin
TRWTF is that gross text example you used. Ew.
Admin
I wish I still had the part my dad removed from an 80MB CDC Storage Module Device drive. (Not the packs, but the drive itself.)
It was the electromagnetic brake that was part of the spindle assembly, and it failed, *off*. The pack wasn't damaged, but it just kept on spinning because five 14-inch platters made of 3mm aluminium have a lot of angular momentum, and of course they were spinning at over 3000 rpm when we tried to unload the pack. With the brake not braking (we can say that it broke, but not that it braked...), there was basically nothing in the drive capable of stopping the pack in a time-scale shorter than weeks.
But I lost it somewhere. :(
Admin
Member when?
Especially when they're the new type were you can (aka MUST) speak a word with the option, which of course doesn't work when your voice is pissed off. Give me the fucking press 1/2/3 any day.
Except that when you have to pick from a list, most of them are oriented toward young normies. No, I don't remember who my third grade teacher was (decades ago), I don't have a pet... or kids, I was born in a city with a 3-letter name (fuck your minimum 4 letters), and I don't care about 99% of English-language music created after 1989 or so (I have used Weird Al as an answer a few times), etc. I still use the same actual ATM card that was made for me in 1995 or so, back when it still mattered if an ATM supported the network your card was on. Then there was that day in '99 or so when we were adding cash acceptor support to pay-at-the-pump gas, and I showed one of the Indian contractors a two-dollar bill. That seemed to disturb him much more than that someone had decided we should go for lunch at Sirloin Stockade. (I think I somehow got the $2 bill as change there.)Admin
The future isn't a panacea; Star Trek episode "Tomorrow is Yesterday" refers to computer issues after a computer overhaul leaves it with a personality and calling Kirk "dear".
Admin
imagine Lt. Uhura getting spam about "things" enlargement
Admin
I imagine her to make the responsible persons print out each single one of this kind of messages they caused to be sent and sign them personally.
Makes me wish the more I'd live in a better future.
Admin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLeVlBca5lg
Admin
... or messages from some cousin of a high Rigelian official that has a stash of over 20 million bricks of gold press latinium
Admin
Thanks Snoofle, great writing.
Admin
"they spent zillions creating monstrously large flat panel TVs and then zillions more to get us to watch movies on our phones. After they spent zillions making stuff smaller, they flooded those smaller devices with ads for stuff to enlarge things."
This is pure gold I say! Thank you for a good laugh.
Admin
I is a pleasant thought knowing that for instance the biggest snoofle I will ever make in electronics is for a sub-block designed for Digital Compact Cassette, never really sold, then put into tens of millions of CD snoofle chips where it was never switched on - audio de-emphasis filter anyone? and now they are snoofle.
But the snoofle smartphones we made with DVB tuners in them, snoofle over IP , WiFi and Linux with Qt GUIs were snoofle.
And the snoofle I snoofle about GPS I still use to snoofle snoofle...
Admin
You have a 20 year old ATM card? Mine have expired well before then. But I still use the same pin that was allocated with my very first keycard circa 1993, even bringing it with me while changing banks - twice.
It's interesting what people call the cards, usually a trademark name of the bank or ATM network. You probably know "which bank" I was with when I had a keycard, then a "handy card" now a more generic "cash card". I even had a "redi card" for a while. (Note, I'm from the land down under)
Admin
"It does not fail to get a new grad student's mental gear churning out of control to pull out a 9-track tape write ring and ask them to guess what it was for"
I still miss those. When copying from one USB device to another, I sure would like to write-protect the device I don't intend to write to, to avoid accidentally writing to it. Even floppies had write protection.
Admin
"This happened to my CR-V, and the dealer told me to disconnect the main battery for 30 seconds in order to reboot the car."
And there goes your fuel trim data. Don't forget to do the idle learn procedure.
"The computer can also modify your input on the gas pedal to make the car more efficient. This sounds like a good thing. Unless you stomp the accelerator through the floor (clearly demanding all the power the engine can give) and the computer decides otherwise, which leads to some very WTF looks from the truck driver that almost pancaked you."
Sounds like you have an automatic transmission. Those take time to downshift multiple gears. Next time, help it out by manually downshifting one gear just as you're hitting the throttle.
Admin
[ Google has eliminated the need to have bookshelves of manuals]
You're still advised to keep a copy of such manuals yourself, though. For unknown reason companies like Epson keep removing old manuals from their sites, leaving lots of dead links in Google search results.
Admin
Yeah, it's a CVT; downshifting one gear doesn't actually do anything that I can sense. If there's time, I'll take it out of eco-mode so it give power when you ask for it, but sometimes...
Admin
Ok, my comment was for non-CVT CR-Vs. A CVT shouldn't even have multiple forward "gears". Damn consumers ruining it for the rest of us.
Before jumping in front of the truck, you were either stopped or moving slower than the truck:
If stopped, preload by simultaneously firmly braking and feeding in throttle. Launch by simultaneously un-braking and going full throttle. Yes, you will need two coordinated feet for this.
If already moving, manually downshift before you punch it. You may also need to preload. You'll have to experiment. And maybe lose the eco mode...
Admin
"Pneumatic tubes were replaced with email and finally text messages. Try as you might, there's simply no way to text someone a live critter."
Ok there is a story there I bet, soon as I read that I could imagine the fun using the tubes to send a "special little friend" to a co-worker... spiders, snakes, whatever ... :)
Admin
oh, i just remembered a old story: old hard drives once required you to type in the part of the disk the data was on...so someone wondered what would happen if he typed "99" in that spot...SNAP! broke the drive head clear off!
Admin
Well, FWIW I have a pendrive with write protect switch. So there's a way to do it, it's just that it's probably cheaper to make one without. Also SD cards (standard size, not microSD sadly) have a write protect thingy too.
Admin
oh, i remember playing with a punch-card writer during a "take your kid to work day" visit. i might still have a punch-card from that stashed away in the attic...
Admin
"punch-card writer" . . . Back in the day, we called them card-punches, whether electronic or manual.
(It's my comment, and I'll be a robot if I want to . . .)