Posts by Primus Secundus Tertius

Re: Hmmm...

@Gathercole

Back in the 1970s I was asked to make a PDP11 system go faster. It was running DEC's real time OS, viz RSX11. The critical part of the program needed to make a lot of OS calls. I arranged for that region of the program to be mapped into kernel space (using a 'connect to interrupt' facility) and got my speedup. The cost was a section of high-risk code.

There is a reason why interrupts used to return control to the kernel. It may be that a disk transfer has finished, thus allowing some more important program to resume. In more general terms, the context has changed and the system should adjust, particularly if several programs are running. The PDP11 could respond to interrupts within microseconds, perhaps to capture volatile data from fleeting registers on special hardware; but it could be a long time returning to the point of interrupt.

Re: Certainly not a narrow Venn slice

@ Uberseehandel

Forget the notebook and pencil. The modern journalist just phones the story back to a robot at base. The robot has a limited understanding of natural language, English, German, or any other; so any shortcoming of language in the journalist is masked.

Robots' English makes lots of mistakes with homophones, probably because the meaning escapes them.

Re: If the engineer has a quiet moment...

@elDog

But the noise to signal ratio is enormously bigger.

Re: Universities and schools

@AC - "He later became a Professor of Maths."

This is the old fallacy of arguing from individual cases rather than statistics. There are some 600,000 little darlings entering the school system each year. If we are to run a generally successful policy at reasonable cost we have to consider the statistics.

Some 100,000 children will have an IQ greater than 115, and similar number an IQ of less than 85, in accordance with a near-Gaussian distribution with mean 100 and standard deviation 15. These are the bright and the weak streams I identified in my initial comment. The bright ones will, at school, in their careers, and as grumpy old pensioners, have the ability to abstract from the current facts to the underlying ideas. I saw that repeatedly in my work colleagues. They need the kind of schooling that develops that ability.

The present system is doing a disservice to the midstream children: it holds them back because it pretends that the weak ones can match the midstream. It also fails to give the weak ones an education that will bring them satisfaction and make them supportive citizens.

As other commenters have noted, some children needed to be reclassified at, say, 13+. The truth remains that the vast majority of children were correctly assigned by the 11+. Nowadays there is so much testing in schools that it should be straightforward to arrange transfers at 13+. Even in my marvellous new scheme there will be borderline cases who will need re-assessment in due course.

Re: but... will anyone learn from this?

@Dave M

It does look as though there are too many "security consultants" in this business, all scraping the barrel for edge cases they can use to make publicity and boost their business.

Perhaps they should return to writing real programs.

Like an ancient mariner programmer, I long for the simplicity

of the old mouse with buttons.

Re: What's the problem

@Lars

I use Linux on a CD for banking. Much harder to corrupt a CD than a stick.

@monty75

But how many PPE graduates know what sells, and how to create new things that sell?

More seriously, only a small proportion of innovative developments will succeed. The trick is to know when to give up on a project.

Re: Round up the usual suspects

When the British Empire came to an end in Africa in the 1960s, most of the British settlers returned to Britain. A few, however, came to terms with the locals and stayed on as citizens of the new states.

There is an analogous problem with Russian people still living in Estonia and the other Baltic states. To which state are they loyal? They should follow the British example.

Re: Trademarking the "i"

Years ago, America's Finest News Source, aka The Onion, reported that Microsoft had patented the numerals 0 and 1.

@unwarranted t

The biggest disease is that which makes people blind to the value of pure science. Yes, let us cure that one!

@Captain

I have always assumed that letting Google see anything is equivalent to handing it to US Intelligence.

@ "Somethings not quite right"

I would not plug it into my "main computer". But I have others, and can wipe them clean again.

@Elmer

The money won't come from anywhere until the beancounters' own machines are hacked. Why should they listen to what they regard as unfounded claims designed to grab more of the budget?

Re: Good on ya, PFY

Cats are always plotting. If not to kill you, then to do something else.

Re: We need companies like Purism

@Milton

"Social media, by grown-ups"

All computer freaks are nerds. Even me, a little bit.

"the customer wants to add 3-d shadows to the text on the on screen menus"

I guess that's the time to hand it over to the B team.

Re: No ...

@Lysenko

I use both MS Office and Libre Office -- the latter on numerous "other computers" that I own. I use MS Office only on my "main" machine.

The problems arise, as Lysenko notes, when documents have to be exchanged between different "Offices" on a regular basis. A one-off exercise in dealing with minor niggles is bearable, but not time and again, every day.

One other frustration is that OCR packages can pass their results directly into MS Word but not, as far as I know, into Libre Word.

I do wonder how they manage in Germany, where some government entities use Linux while most remain with Microsoft. Perhaps a Reg reader could let us know.

Re: My up is down :(

The Internet is to tell the plebs what is what, not to enable them to have a voice.

@AC

My record for downvotes is about 40, on a totally different topic.

I, too, quite like the ribbon. Have an upvote.

Re: Metric please

@Flatpackhamster

The mile is an excellent base unit. In this modern world, it should be divided into 65536 new inches, as opposed to 63,360 old inches. Then a new foot is 16 new inches, and a new rod/pole/perch is 16 new feet. A furlong is one eighth of a mile (512 new feet), and a cricket pitch is one tenth of a furlong at 51.2 new feet.

What could be simpler?

Well said, Dr Syntax.

For over 60 years, since the famous experiment by Miller, people have been trying to "put it together".

Frankly, they have got nowhere. In the book "Genetic Takeover" (Cairns-Smith, 1982) he, as an experienced chemist, points out that an uncontrolled reaction between organic chemicals just yields a filthy tarry mess. None of the experimental work has shown how precisely constructed long molecular chains can be assembled, or how to produce the pure stereochemical L or D isomers needed as a starting point.

Cairns-Smith proposed that things began with clay, which would answer the L/D question and others, and then organic molecules became associated and eventually took over. This suggestion is not accepted these days - I assume there are good reasons but I am not familiar with them.

There are other suggestions that life began as sea water, with organic contaminants, penetrated cracks in the earth's crust and interacted with hot silicate minerals.

Yes, there are experiments that should be done; but I suggest they need to be looking for the kind of two-stage origins of life mentioned above.

Re: Hmmmm.

The 1789 constitutional convention was the scene of many very experienced politicians. Sometimes I, as a Brit, suspect they gave the US a democratic constitution because they distrusted the voters less than they distrusted each other.

Re: The registry that should never have happened

My understanding is that it is an offspring of the Common Data Dictionary used by certain programs under VMS on DEC VAX computers, and came to Microsoft when they hired Mr VMS to develop Windows NT.

The CDD was an enormous file, frequently changed by almost anything and then clogging up the next backup operation.

Re: Special cases

Well said, Wiggers.

The original academic article makes clear that the tablet was effectively equivalent to the ready reckoners and log tables familiar to the oldies among readers of El Reg.

Re: Maybe I've just been really lucky, but...

Not my experience. They struggle to hit two-nines reliability.