* Posts by Destroy All Monsters

16005 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Jun 2008

10 PRINT "Happy 50th Birthday, BASIC" : GOTO 10

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: Horrible Travesty of BASIC @Billy Bob Gascan

There is everything right with interpreted code.

Premature compilation is the root of all inflexibility. It is also an historical accident because machines used to be small and weak.

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: @Fibbles re: Pascal

But as a language, it was strongly disliked by students.

Frankly, this is still the case these days. And judging from cow-orkers, the people who go into computers would like to be able to write working programs with the same attention and care as they put in writing tweets. Frankly, they are in the wrong domain.

The whole compile thing compared to just running it seemed wrong to them.

Of course, and this is why REPL-supporting languages are good.

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: The BASIC of today

Woah downvotes. Must be the backblast of barely literate "programmers".

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Holmes

Re: Horrible Travesty of BASIC

jake, is that you?

I am so glad that I learned C instead of BASIC and that my exposure to it was limited because it sucked.

Your passport to leet elitism, sir. Valet parking included!

Ok, so anyone owned the

Power C compiler or any other C compiler fitting into the 64KiB (or 32 Kib) of RAM of those times?

"Due to the limited memory available in the C-64, the compiler may not be able to handle some very large source files. It is unlikely that the Power C 128 compiler will run into insufficient memory problems and not be able to handle the large source files"

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Bill probably didn't exactly pay Dartmouth College for the idea of Basic either. Rip-off from the get-go.

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
FAIL

Also, fail for not alluding to Bill's Butthurt Missive about people copying his precioussss paper tapessss of Basic.

Already back then, the "YOU BE STEALING MUH INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY" meme was prevalent.

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: The BASIC of today

Why would you try "bf"?

Actual programming languages are meant to be used and open the functionality of the machine in a most agreeable way, not to have a good wank over being close to theoretical computer science and minimalist languages useful in mathematical proofs.

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Precise Time

"and if you don't come back right now, don't bother coming back at all"

Not even taking the foot off the gas pedal

Stephen Hawking: The creation of true AI could be the 'greatest event in human history'

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: Turing Police

Penrose can't into understanding that minds are not immaculate theorem provers but made to chase down eatable rabbit and fuck the neighbor's bitch.

NEXT!

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

A good sci-fictionary read in the spirit of Stanislaw Lem from back then (i.e. 1986). It might even appeal to Mr Bong.

The Wager by Christopher Cherniak

Abstract

The Portrait Programs Project grew out of hyperinterdisciplinarianism of the famed Gigabase Sculpture Group, in turn stimulated by recent cutbacks in government support for the arts. The National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation had jointly funded the Gigabase Sculpture Project to foster the literary/musical genre of composing genetic codes for novel organisms. Later, artists trained in recombinant DNA technology designed massive Brancusi-esque statues of living cytoplasmic jelly. However, Art For Art's Sake objectives of these giblet sculptors were compromised by precautions necessary after discovery of the "Gogol's-Theorem Bomb" that threatened to get loose and jam all DNA replication in the biosphere; not even viruses would have survived.

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: two words

No. Quantum computers are good for the following:

1) Factoring large numbers

2) Rapid searching in databases

3) Simulation of quantum processes

Otherwise they are mostly useless for any calculation of importance in the macro world.

"True AI" is anyway fucking bullshit. It's like saying that you will finally attain "a true combustion engine".

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Facepalm

Why is Hawking bloviating on AI this and that?

I can't remember him doing much research in that arena. He could talk about cooking or gardening next.

Hackers ZERO IN on ZOMBIE XP boxes: Get patching, Internet Explorer 8 users

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Thumb Down

Re: Next time...

The question is, why does XP even NEED support. After more than ten years, should it functionality not be restricted by safe & secure?

Perish the thought.

Comcast and EA said to be planning streaming games service

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Facepalm

Two years and a day

"The report notes that the two firms have been developing the platform for more than two years."

We quickly hacked something together, but we ran out of locktite. SHIP IT!

Steelie Neelie's 'Airbus of chips' plan taxis for June take-off

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Facepalm

Cargo cultism of the worst sort

Maybe they should first know what they are selling and how the market will look like before they go down the road of pumping out "stuff".

"Tintin au Congo" comes to mind, now retitled to "Tintin en EU"

Please work for nothing, Mr Dabbs. What can you lose?

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Windows

Re: Networking @Cliff

And politicians selling shovel-ready projects.

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: I could not agree more .....

> invest £30m into a Chinese joint venture

I do not think it is a good time to da that shortly before a bubble burst, innit?

French software developers are all beautiful women

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: I worked in France

I worked in France Programming for BNP Paribas

I know right?

All the beautiful ones are getting hired by state, arrive at 09:00 and leave at 16:30...

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Pint

Something to get steamed up over your morning Müsli.

Those incidents sparked worldwide condemnation and social media outrage. Perhaps the same thing might happen after this story is published?

OUTRAGE OF THE WEEK!

TO YOUR TWEETS!!!!

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Maybe she just got an email featuring Justin Bieber

She still looks like she's going to keel over and slide down the solar panel any second now while the male representatives of the human race are like "dude, what?"

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Holmes

Re: What's with the bizarre self censorship?

It has nothing to do with american uptight Warriors Against Fun and feminazis battling rape culture they detected, It is because of pr0nfilters. Too young to remember the discussions being had before the War on Terror?

Sony on the ropes after revising losses UP to $1.3 BEEELLION

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: Sad

> Back to pre-1922 Light Bulb business.

You misspelt "pushing extremely expensive electronic-enhanced fluorescent tubes to consumers via the political backdoor of green regulation".

Script fools n00b hackers into hacking themselves

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: Nothing new here...

Should have given him 127.0.0.1

SpaceX wins court injunction to block US Air Force buying Russian rockets

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Thumb Down

INSTANT DISQUALIFICATION!

Musk now clearly enters the house that one wants to indiscriminately see the pox on, and then confortably installs himself on the living room couch.

This action is all glued together by the thin logic that the Russian Minister in Charge of Rocketry is on the "you gonna get it in the arse" list that the US FedGov randomly drew up because it is so extremely butthurt over the factregrets that it cannot pull another "color revolution" and have Putin just roll over and play dead as his most valued assets in defense and defense industry start to orbit the EU/NATO attractosphere.

Enforcing Mercantilism by riding on the coattails of "the law" and "revolutions" emerging out american embassies? Distasteful in the extreme.

Tablet boom quiets down a bit as growth slows

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Windows

Looks like we are seeing slowdowns across the board...

Nasty GDP Report

By Mark Thornton

Wednesday, April 30th, 2014

The latest GDP report for the first quarter can be reviewed here. GDP grew by only 1/10 of 1% in the first quarter [Must be Uncle Sam's superduper money printing still]. There were big negative reversals in both exports and equipment purchases from the 4th quarter of last year. The accumulation of inventories also was reduced, but is still accumulating rapidly indicating less of a need to add inventory in future quarters. Consumption grew at a 3% rate, but this was largely driven by a nearly 10% jump in health care spending, that was probably driven by the Affordable Care Act. The saving rate is also reported to be “unusually low.” The only bright spot in the report was that government spending was down for the quarter.

Google Glass teardown puts rock-bottom price on hardware

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: Twat doesn't come for free

Because otherwise, Goggle glasses could already be had at McDonald's - with your fries.

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: "A teardown report on Google Glass"

1) Go to San Fran

2) Find a glass... well, somebody with Google glasses

3) MUGGING!

4) Determine BOM

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Paris Hilton

Re: Cheap as chips

Surprised about what?

That people can't into economics if their life depended on it?

Not really. Because it does and they can't.

Microsoft's Azure cloud goes a bit wobbly in West Europe

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Terminator

Well, it *is* "International Workers' Day"

These servers just decided to perform some "labour action". ROTM?

(In the US, this day is called either "Law Day", "Americanization Day" or "Loyalty Day". WTF?)

Actual spin doctors eye up alien world Beta Pictoris b: Young, hot ... and really fast

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: Question regarding the Big Bang

I am talking about a Multiverse.

This thread is now entropy.

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

unless very high temperatures make them fluffier

Hot bunny planets!

Twitter's got a new UK public policy wonk... 'You are the product' Big Brother Watch bloke!

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: @AC "Oxymoron"

Meanwhile, Tony's back in the news. I was getting worried.

Demented Tony Blair recites the Saudis' creed in his latest speech

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Facepalm

People may consider tweets to be personal property

Woah, the life is good down in trashville.

Cash slump a Seagate problem, or a hard disk industry problem?

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

On the other hand, the NSA/Amazon/Facebook/etc. datacenters should still grab a fat disk pie.

Amazon veep: We tweak our cloud code every 16 seconds – and you?

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
FAIL

Re: 1999

I was with you, but then...

> unlike Agile

gb2 waterfall horror

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Joke

Demanding this story with an XBox-kidded Bezos

"The great thing about Amazon tweaks isn't rolling them out every 16 seconds, it's showing everyone online that we did"

ITU says IT industry must become 'resilient' in face of climate change

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Mushroom

Wow more verbs for my compliance statements.

Luckily Miss Yellen will print up the dollars needed for all that to happen. Hyperdrive when?

Seriously, aren't people coming up with these things ashamed of getting paid?

FBI floats $5 MEELLION bounty for alleged Chinese WMD purveyor

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Big Brother

Yet another...

...AIPAC engineering smokescreen to get Iran back into the news now that Neocon Nuland and speaker of the dead Merry Kerry are busy engineering the takeover of Ukraine, thus sucking all the oxygen out of the newsrooms?

Twitter investors squawk as user growth, income disappoint again

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Holmes

Re: constant growth

"constant growth the holy grail of capitalism"

You are pretty much totally fucking off the mark.

"*Positive* growth" is the holy growth of humanity because it means that next year just might suck less than this one.

" Come on, you can't expect indefinite growth"

There sure is still lots of room.

Meanwhile, the Government-WallStreet mafia will try to make you believe as long as possibly that "growth" is an end in itself and that you better hurry and give them your votes and your increasingly worthless funny money lest you lose out on their next super-duper scheme of unadulterated goodness (which interestingly and increasingly often may include wars; no I don't get that either.)

...Meaningless GDP numbers which conveniently include everything that goes onto the national credit card (debt which we luckily "owe to ourselves", phew!) are analyzed and discussed ad infinitum.

..."Everyone shall have prizes" schemes like Obamacare, irrealistic promises for pensions and low, low retirement ages and wages in no relation to productivity are sold and put into law by master snake oil salesmen. Like we are really super rich and everything can be fixed by that final, small, additional tax increase. Which will only hit someone else, promise!

...Malinvestments are sustained and kept alive by money printing and bailouts. Keynesian Hail Marys are heard from the churchlike buildings of the central banks while the the futzed interest rate gives people the impression that "money is cheap now, so hurry".

...The rising stock market is touted as a sign of rude economic health as opposed to the consequence of the fact that all the money sloshing around does not go to productive enterprises that promote real growth (these are rare because establishing them needs time and quite a lot of the existing capital infrastructure has been dragooned into the production tree of warfare goods anyway) but into speculative venues kept alive by illusion of future profits.

This will result in enormous pain (and possibly a dictator or two) down the road but immediate riches to politicians, their cronies and assorted hanger-ons. Any problems then get lazily blamed on "capitalism" and taxfeeding ivory tower denizens like Picketty then get rich bestselling meaningless drivel.

The end of the road is now approaching fast and might well be there by the end of the year. Twitter is just another dying canary.

selling someone a fridge with built in obsolescence

Oh, the never-dying superfridge made of unobtanium which exists somewhere where people actually want to pay for it ... yet again. Carry on.

NASA spots 'new' star just 7.2 light years away

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: I have a bad feeling about this...

"And then he wired $8000 to Star Qaeda"

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: Light blue touch paper?

1 monolith will do.

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: PC

But it's frankly difficult to toss.

Friends don't let friends use Internet Explorer – advice from US, UK, EU

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Trollface

Re: This sort of thing doesn't happen

"No. It's a read-buffer overrun"

Downvotes.

It's like stackoverflow where you have to fight nameless self-appointed wikinazis who don't even understand your question but want to remove it as a "duplicate".

THE INTERNET - A GAME OF DRONES.

Backup biz CommVault to Wall St: Cheer up, lads. We just need MORE SALES REPS

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Alert

Totally unrelated: Pop, pop, pop?

The Accelerating Momo Reversal: Crashing Like Its 2000 All Over Again

by Wolf Richter • April 28, 2014

The debacle has become part of the public debate even on NPR, which is a terrible sign. And KQED, one of our radio stations in San Francisco – a city that had been particularly impacted by the implosion of the dotcom bubble and isn’t naive about it – aired a one-hour show Friday morning, titled, “Are we in another Tech Bubble?” The discussion between the host and the guests didn’t leave much room for the title’s question mark.

The Fly posted some of the biggest losers that once had been among “2013′s favorite stocks.” Biotech company Exelixis tops the list, down 61% from its 52-week high. It’s also down 93% from its all-time high shortly after its IPO in early 2000. In second place on the list: another Biotech outfit, Halozyme, down 60% from its all-time high in early January. It’s back where it was in mid-2013. Imperva, a Big Data security products maker, crashed 64% from its peak last year. And so on.

This sort of wholesale destruction makes the biggies look practically tame: Twitter is down only 44% from its high late last year, Amazon 26% from earlier this year. Amazon has the dubious distinction of having been an early warning signal during the blowup of the dotcom bubble. It started crashing in early December 1999 and was down 40% six weeks later. The bubble officially burst in early March 2000, after which Amazon continued to eviscerate traders and investors alike. Unlike many of its brethren, however, it survived and a decade later made new highs.

Internet-radio miracle Pandora has plunged 42% in six weeks, taking it back to where it had been in September. This is the nature of momentum stocks that get unhinged from reality and soar without even the sky being the limit. When the hot air hisses out of them, they plunge at three or five times the speed. Escalator up, elevator down.

New .london domains touted tomorrow amid usual tech hypegasm

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Windows

Gonna reserve ".depression"

Maybe they will give me a discount.

Apple patents Wi-Fi access point location lookup

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: This one is new!

You are dividing it wrong!

Lost treasure of Atari REVEALED

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Windows

Hey Gringo...

No bodies left over from a cartel pro cleaning?

I thought this was Mexico?

US judge: Our digital search warrants apply ANYWHERE

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Holmes

"The judge's reasoning is based on an efficiency argument"

Ah efficiency. So beloved by the effectuators of the third reich.

The "rule of men, not the rule of law", indeed.

Yes, there is now Bitcoin-mining malware for Android

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: @ d3rrial (was:Strangely enough ...)

I'll use virtual currency when I see value in virtual beer.

The dollar is 100% virtual, yet you can get beer.