Posts by Paul 76

Re: Naive Question

So doing what MS do, then ? This is the organisation that recommended you used casts for the old GlobalLock()

Re: Skiddies

It's a nonsense. DPRK is not a rich country, but it's not so poor it's scrounging for bitcoin. If they did such a thing they would probably want information first (which you don't get if you announce ransomware) and chaos second (which could be done by changing data very very infrequently randomly, or just destroying it for example).

It's a standard ransomware thing that got out of hand, some person(s) built it on the released exploit and it was too successful.

Re: Munich city now planning to move ALL their Linux desktops back to Windows

LiMux and LibreOffice are “far behind the current technical possibilities of established standard solutions”

So, someone's bought Microsoft's cr*p then ? Probably cash involved.

Either that or they play games on them a lot.

Re: "Also trusts stripping all attachments on incoming mail as a precaution."

Yes, or at least something not dissimilar. Only allowing HTML, XML or zipped XML for example, or just raw text.

Is it perhaps the case the real "villain" is a word processor which can run executables.

Re: Reinvention

Yes, but if you are half decent you can flip about. I'm working on a project for someone in C++ on VS. Then I'm programming 1801 assembler for fun in the background. It's not that difficult, you just have to make allowances for the limitations of different languages.

Re: I see nothing has changed

No, virtually nobody does that any more. Some of us who are really old wrote our own games because we didn't have any otherwise (I had three computers before I had one which had any real games for it, the BBC Micro) by which time I was well in.

A few years ago I designed a monochrome PAL video display using an old DRAM I liberated from an ancient PC card. The idea was that it was driven by a microcontroller that fed the 8 address lines, CAS and RAS, data in and Write. Using CAS/RAS reduced the address wiring, and the refreshing was done as the display was generated from DataOut with another couple of pin generating Sync. It was quite neat, just an experiment, I got about 100x100 pixel resolution out of it. I stuck it on AVRfreaks or something.

I had an email from this guy who wanted to use it as his final year project for some US University, and he wanted me to convert it to NTSC *and* also, would I very kindly design a printed circuit board for it for him.....

Re: @Anonymous Curd

.... well it does depend on what C for what platform :) Which is probably what you wanted to hear :)

So this person with a first didn't realise there aren't any actual integers in Javascript ?

Re: Interesting...

Actually everyone should learn what you did :) Or something like it. I remember wiring up a CPU design (it was a bit like one of those 100-1 electronics things to build a CPU out of except you had to work it out yourself). No JVM, but then at that time no Java (we did Pascal, Lisp, BCPL, Prolog, COBOL, Assembler and some FP). I did a 1980s version of your course by the sound of it.

I remember booting a PDP/8 at one point from a paper tape reader, or something like that. Such experience is actually useful.

Why anyone uses JS is beyond me (except as a way of showing automation in web pages perhaps) because of its somewhat malleable syntax. The problem with Unity is you can do an awful lot without writing a single line of code. Examiners do not appear to know this (or that if you produce a form in VS it isn't actually that hard ......)

An absolutely true story. I am, or was a teacher, and took part on a discussion board like this for teachers of ICT/Comp Sci.

There was a few years ago an A2 (formerly A-Level) project where you had to produce something a blind auction system for houses in a new estate in Tewkesbury in Access (yes, I know !). This had been given to teachers to prepare the pupils , but without them knowing the actual task.

(as an aside, the amount of utterly irrelevant green propaganda in the specification was amazing - about half of it. I know because I went through it and removed anything that wasn't actually part of the problem. Some of the problem was very poorly specified as well.

This had one problem. As far as I could see none of the teachers could do it. Muggins here produced two sample solutions with different algorithms (basically it required Select the first n database rows matching this query which is non trivial in Access, and I found a way of doing it which was different), It was given out, but only to someone who could identify themselves as a teacher. It was very popular.

I got absolutely deluged with requests for advice from pupils many of who clearly had both the complete task and the database itself - this is supposed to be done in exam conditions (a bit like old physics and chemistry practicals) , I'd left my email address in. From all over the place.

If there was a 'distribution hub' for it in something like Student Room, I couldn't find it. Even if they had got a bootleg copy of my Access DB from somewhere they still shouldn't have got the rest of it.

Re: Interesting...

Oh yes. I go back to the early days of Windows (3.0 16 bit) and you just couldn't banjax around with resources and so on. If you did it died.

I wonder how much damage garbage collection and the like does. I saw too much of the "oh, it's okay, they can buy more RAM mentality". I remember one project I was given to fix (something very much like the old Windows Program Manager) where the entire data structure that made up the display was replicated, twice.

'Cos I'm really really old I started on a trainer board with a hex keypad. IMO this, or something like it (maybe programming PIC16C84 in assembler ?) should be mandatory. It is not fully hitting the metal but it is very close to it ; you are operating at component control level. When I went to University we did some programming linking DEC10 assembler to BCPL ; not a lot, but enough. Why do I suspect most graduates have never heard of either or done the modern equivalent ? How much of it is Windows Forms drag and drop ?

Then you realise it actually does matter if you reserve bucket loads of memory and just chuck it away repeatedly (often).

Re: He said the F word

Must've changed a lot then since I employed an economic migrant from Jamaica. Fill a few forms in, some sort of evidence you've advertised the post, visa arrived a couple of weeks later.

Yes. I've just looked at two randomlyish chosen Computer Science courses (UEA and Nottingham Trent) and the content is not exactly impressive. I'd say it's about a year on average behind my degree (from the early 1980s) and UEA is I think one of our better universities.

Three other factors:

First, does this include just Computer Science, does it include things like Computer Games Programming degrees (my advice for anyone doing one of these ; don't ; learn to program generally and study maths). Does it include ICT (no-one cares much) ? Does it include "Digital Media" ? I seem often have to point out that HTML is *not* programming. It's a XML (ish) page description language. How much time is spent on waffly cr*p ?

Secondly, I don't think I exist any more (psychologists dream ....).

From about 1977-8 ish to the early 1990s there was a huge boom in coding skills learnt on everything from machine code trainers through to and ending with (pretty much) the Amiga and Atari ST. Lots of people bedroom coded. I don't think they do any more. Yes, a lot of it was fairly ropey BASIC ROM systems like the Spectrum and C64, but there was a huge skill base there that could be redirected into better practices fairly easily. I went to Essex on interview and the chap asked me if I wrote programs, I said I did, he said, what was the last thing you wrote , I said it was a Pascal compiler (in BASIC !) and we then had a discussion about the how I'd done it. Perhaps that's a bit extreme, but I'd be impressed if someone actually wrote something almost properly (e.g. not clicking on wizards, or semi automated drag and drop). The older machines also had the advantage that it was easier to hit the metal, you knew how things actually worked.

Third. My son is 18 and is doing a BTEC Level 3 IT course, which the college he is attending has made as computer-science-ish as possible.

Several things to note. Firstly my son (almost) always does the work himself (he occasionally asks me for advice), hands it in on time, and tries to do it to the best of his ability (usually very well). He doesn't seem to be that common. Many do not. They are often hand-held walked through it if they don't hand stuff in ; I've seen lecturers sit down with students on a "do this" "now do this" "now click this" basis ; this attitude is common in schools (and universities in many cases I'm told). The reason for this is staff are set pass rate targets. Or they hand in something half done and its sent back with large detail on how to make it "right".

The actual content isn't as impressive as it looks on paper. A lot of the students (as A/C says) aren't up to it, so it becomes a fill in the blanks job. It will say something like "create a stock control system" but nothing that you or I would recognise as such.

For example my son was given about 20-30 lines of Javascript to type in to do some HTML page validation, but there was little actual explanation of what it was - I went through it with him so he actually understood what he was doing, rather than just typed it in.

This is known (I think) as scaffolding in education, rather than have a question like "Describe the different fate of Henry VIII wives" and having to write a 30 minute essay off the top of your head, you get a fill in the blanks, which a monkey could do. Each part is preceded by an instruction which basically tells students what to write. So what comes out is a series of identical (nearly) essays all which have the prescribed content.

This sort of thing can be applied to Computing (it also applies to Maths) so you are actually hand walked through the production of something that gets the marks.

The problem is that you can't actually do it independently. So A/C get someone with all the paperwork, then gives him some easy starter work and there's no guidelines, he's got to work it out for himself (they're mostly he's), and they can't.