Posts by Old69

Re: Since the story seems to have ended part way, why not finish it ourselves?

... software upgrade to make W95 support USB.

Re: If they are doing message passing

"Removing the need for every packet to be acknowledged by the receiver."

TCP usually acknowledges periodically rather than every packet - with a cut off time if there isn't a continuous flow of data. It is an implicit acknowledgement of any previous packet up to that one. The window mechanism allows dynamic tuning of occasions when the sender might have to pause its traffic waiting for an acknowledgement.

With TCP the Devil was always in the detail for any particular use.

Re: Licence, not license

English had many spelling revisions over the centuries - often with misguided judgements. Eg "could" is apparently a corruption of "coud" by a cleric who thought it ought to be grouped with "would".

There were major attempts in the UK to standardise spelling ca. 17th century. By that time English speakers had colonised other continents and retained some previous spellings - to which they then added their own revised ones.

Re: Murphy's Law revisited

with the Sod's Law rider "at the worst possible moment".

"I believe international trademark lawyers have a helpful database"

"Durex" brand name.

English condom. Australian sticky tape. Israeli scouring pad.

Re: Classic drivel, top notch!

"Never admit defeat, never admit fault, attach yourself to the winners, pat yourself on the ass for doing so..."

I didn't think Eton had girl pupils yet?

Re: Ham and Cheese at Calais

"Now, what study does not reveal is how these monkeys value iPhones against Android handsets"

The study said that juvenile monkeys have no discrimination about what they steal. Their elders educate them. They learn the tourists' responses to something being stolen - and remember the graduated reward in subsequent negotiations with other tourists. That implies they would be able to distinguish the range of objects in some detail - possibly even factoring in things about a tourist's appearance?

Re: In a past far far away - targetted ads

"[...] and the New Zealand Inland Revenue Department want to intimidate them paying back the money.

A guy from NZ became quite successful in a career elsewhere. He decided to repay his student loan - even though it wasn't required in his particular situation. Apparently it was heavy going persuading the relevant authorities to accept it outside their normal collection rules.

Re: I would like to see a flat architecture 32 or 64 bit design.

"Test it with a FPGA evaluation board."

What gate clocking speed is achieved by 130nm? My Xilinx FPGA designs in 1986 ran with an external 100ns clock - the FPGA logic gates clocked somewhat faster. The 1800 gates required manual routing to be able to cram my design on one.

Given the number of gates on modern Xilinx FPGA chips plus module libraries - it feels like one would handle quite complex project designs. Baking in silicon as a first evaluation seems very retro and inefficient.

Re: Correction

"You're young, aren't you?"

Note "per session". For the young the repeat interval can apparently be very short. Not sure what is claimed as a record. IIRC The Kinsey Report did have some double-digit*** numbers per day for what was considered the male capability peak circa age 16.

***not necessarily double-finger

"[...] are already warming up their double entendre's..."

Cold ones - "ouch!"

Re: 2019 is also the year for the events of...

"Who down voted this and why?"

Like people who spray their tags all over public spaces - they just do it as a reflex for some insatiable inner need.

At one time down votes bothered me - wondering how something had so upset someone. Now I ignore them unless someone has posted a critique from a different standpoint.

"Enemies of the people like you should have their citizenship revoked and be packed off to the EUSSR to work as slaves for the Brussels eurocrates."

I was going to upvote this as a nice satire - then the awful thought struck that it sounded too like some Leavers I know.

Re: Sigh

"I mean, that must be the least of the ways the Yanks could stuff the things if they so chose"

Aren't some of the F-35 maintenance programmes mandated to Italy and Turkey?

Re: 512 MiB of misery

"Lesson learned: always check that the backup media is disconnected when not in use."

...and have two back up copies. The most dangerous window of opportunity for SOD's Law is when you have the back up device connected to the PC.

A friend called to say his PC wouldn't power up. I asked him to try again and tell me what was happening on the lights. What he then did was rock the PSU's mains switch several times in quick succession - from which I heard "A big blue flash!". Dead floppy, DVD, two hard disks etc. The only thing that survived was the cpu fan.

Re: Don't tell my mother I work with computers...

"...she thinks I play the piano in a brothel."

Is she expecting you to be the new Brahms?

Re: Who might be at risk of fraud or be disenfranchised?

"However, if you go on holiday to France or Spain, for example, you have to produce ID whenever you book into any accomodation."

Apparently the same still applies in England.

"Premier Inn says CCTV footage does not support this claim. It has since explained that it is unable to offer rooms to people without proper identification checks."

Re: Anti-pun police

"A pun is a rare medium well done."

You obviously have a stake in this game.

Re: That farmer...

" I don't think they ever found all the cards."

Operators loading a high speed card reader would take a handful of cards out of the user's tray at a time. The speed of loading depended on how big a handful was taken. There was a critical thickness where the uneven pressure of fingers on one edge of the pack would suddenly squeeze the centre ones out. In a chain reaction the rest would follow - all over the floor. It was then a case of reading the numbers to get the pack back in order. Usually the number was printed on the card - but sometimes a user had hand punched one.

Worse still was when the back end of a full tray was balanced over the edge of the work surface. As the cards were removed from the front of the tray the tipping point would suddenly be reached. The whole tray would somersault to the ground - scattering its contents across the floor.

One very high speed card reader had vertical hoppers. There was a heavy block to stop the cards as they reached the output hopper. The block allowed the cards to accumulate into a vertical stack underneath it. When the reader stopped - the block was removed so that the read cards could be extracted. Forgetting to put the block in the hopper before pressing start would result in a veritable fountain of flying cards.

Be a fucking m billionaire.

FTFY

Some modern long term medications are priced at eye-watering rates.

The drastic life-shortening ill-effects of the "Celtic" variation of the inherited Cystic Fibrosis condition can be almost eliminated by the Kalydeco "wonder drug" pills. Children waiting for lung transplants were able to run and swim within weeks of using the pills..

Unfortunately as the number of sufferers is quite small then the drug company initially sought to recoup their R&D by asking USD300,000 for a year's supply per person.

Re: Postman Pat

...and Snoopy?

Re: I hope...

The RSPB charity was in a similar situation of wanting to sell bequeathed land for development - against the deceased's explicit wishes for it not to be developed.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/greenpolitics/planning/11655089/RSPB-ignores-widows-wishes-and-looks-to-sell-land-for-housing.html

Re: @Alistair Dabbs, Re Cooking.

"[...] not burnt, crunchy, [...]"

There are several dishes that require crunchy bacon - for texture contrasts as well as taste. A crumbled topping to an avocado salad; a halved avocado topping - or indeed an avocado open sandwich or a BLT. The problem is choosing a bacon that will cook to that crisp finish - without charring. Luckily our supermarket sells packets of it ready cooked - but it's not as delicious as freshly cooked.

Re: Perspective, Mr. Dabbs

"No Avengers, if memory serves."

Pinky and Perky (1957–1968) - then on ITV until 1971.

"The Avengers" started in 1960 - although it was only the second series that promoted Steed to the main character with Honor Blackman as the intelligent female lead.

There was "Captain Pugwash" from 1957 - and "The Magic Roudabout" from 1965. A reasonable attempt at "Biggles" was on ITV in 1960. "Garry Halliday" 1959.

"Fireball XL5" 1962 - "Stingray" 1964. "Torchy" 1957 plus many repeats.

The Sunday teatime serials tended to be classics that were so earnestly done as to be rather frightening for the children they were supposedly educating. I can still remember the flight of (missing) stairs illuminated by lightning in "Kidnapped" - and the earlier "Nineteen Eighty Four" mandatory hate scene still gives me the shivers.

The history of children's TV:

http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/1397497/

You make TV of the early 1960s sound like a wet Sunday afternoon of that era. :P

Re: Who trained the Japanese to torpedo bomb?

"I did read somewhere that it was the RAF..."

Fairey Swordfish attack on the Italian fleet in Taranto 1940

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Taranto

Re: Most commented section

"I'm afraid you have lost this visitor."

Try using Shader's userContent.css detailed above - plus the additions by other people. You get a reasonably tight, uncluttered home page in a smaller font size without too much white - and the "read" articles clearly differentiated.

It's made it possible for me to resume checking for new articles several times a day.