cr0sh

My wife and I were talking about what lamps we had that were LED vs fluorescent vs incandescent; one of the bulbs that we have that is of the latter is in our closet, and has been there since before we bought the house in 2002 (the house was built in 1973).

18 years now, maybe longer, but it still turns on and has yet to burn out. Of course, we don't use it much, and it's only something like 30 watts (clear bulb).

Someday, maybe, it'll get replaced.

To clarify, you don't usually see just "a" for an accumulator, as there are usually more than one accumulator-style registers in a CPU, and in many cases they are split along byte (possibly word) boundaries.

So you end up with accumulators called "A" and "B", but are composed of registers "AX" and "AY", and "BX" and "BY", with each being one byte (or word) wide; X and Y being high and low bytes/words of the register (and dependent on "endian-ess" too).

Sometimes you even get where multiple registers can be referenced by a singular name - "D" is a popular choice, and may be made up of "A" and "B" (being low/high "registers" of the larger word). IIRC, the 6809 was like this (?) - A and B were 16 bit registers, but could be referenced as a 32-bit word "D" (or maybe I am thing of the 68k or some other architecture - it's been a long while).

The only other time I have ever seen singular letters used for registers in assembly was for very old pre-microcomputer systems (beasts like the Univac and System/360 - though I think the PDP-8 had similar style). Also some of the very early "microcontrollers" (which were more like glorified sequencers with some extra memory and rudimentary branching, if any) had similar "registers" (Radio Shack once sold, as a part of their "Science Fair" electronic kits, a "Microcomputer Trainer" that was something like a very small 4-bit microcontroller with 128 bytes of memory or something like that - to teach assembler and a bit of hardware interfacing - it had "small" registers like that referred to in single letters).

I used Corona around that time - and from what I recall, projects did build locally; the only exception being that if you wanted to build an iOS version, you had to do so on a Mac with XCode installed. I also recall having to set up the Android dev environment in order to build for Android. I know that later they had where you could build on their servers, but what I recall (and I admit, it's been a while), local building was there back then.

This is kinda sad to see. It's been almost a decade since I last used Corona (then, it was called Ansca Corona), and I found it fun and exciting to use. My employer at the time wanted to use it to build a game app, and I spent a while messing around with it, learning Lua on the fly, and in general having fun making a "game".

I found the system to be easy to use, and relatively high performance. The only thing that was an issue - at the time - was something very strange, which kinda impacted another app we were building:

Corona had a map component, for google maps - but for some reason, it wouldn't work for Android - only for iOS! So - you could create an app with that component, but if you compiled it to install on Android, it would fail, but you could compile it for iOS and load it on an iphone and it would work fine.

At the time, we had an app idea from a client that we wanted to use Corona for, but because it needed mapping, and that didn't work, we were forced to go with another option (PhoneGap and Bootstrap Mobile), that wasn't nearly as performant - but we could embed a google map easily.

Contact with Corona revealed they were working on a fix to get the map component to work with Android, but it came too late for our purposes (and actually didn't happen until about a year or so after I had left that position and had moved on).

Anyhow - I'm glad that the system will live on, although today there are a ton of other options available for easy cross-platform mobile development. Still, I haven't found anything that worked quite as well as Corona.

Gotta say thank you for this resource; I'm always using bash for one thing or another, and this will be a helpful site for the future. I've got it bookmarked for just that reason!

I probably posted to that one as well...

Years after I worked for the company I mentioned before (building an in-house VB6-based ERP system), I worked for another web applications development company who had a client I was "assigned to" to develop software for healthcare management and billing, etc.

It was all web-based - we even had a version for "mobile" (at the time which meant a ipaq personal assistant, running a version of Windows CE and a browser that made IE6 look sane).

The idea behind it was "patient-centricity"; the patient could manage, view, and "edit" their own healthcare records, and any physician on the system could have access to that patient's records (the patient would have to give approval to share with the provider).

It wasn't ever going to replace EPIC or any of the other large medical record systems, but the fact that a patient could control their own data was a significant part of the core marketing behind it - provided you could get other providers and support people on-board.

Things were going rather smoothly (but not very quickly) in the progress of the development of this app, until the client wanted to make the entire thing HIPAA compliant. At the time, this meant taking it off our in-house shared hosting environment, and get it on something else. What we found was, at the time the only option was to lease a full rack from Rackspace and use their services (and servers), as they were (supposedly) fully HIPAA compliant.

The client balked at the cost to implement such a system, and instead opted to roll their own. Then the client decided to hire their own developer (without telling us), and wanted us to backdate some HIPAA "compliancy documents" to say their system was fully compliant on a date when it wasn't. My employer thankfully decided not to go down that road, and instead to drop the client and contract (probably the best decision he ever made).

I once worked for a company that let me go because I looked bad on their bottom line and they were looking to sell the company, around 2003. So, severance package in hand, and one week later I had a new position at another company making much more than I was originally.

Anyhow - I was essentially the sole developer of a simple ERP system written in VB6 and using an Access 2003 MDB file for storage. It was being used in-house by most of the company at that point, from billing, to shipping software and patches, to other reporting, CRM, etc. I looked bad to the bottom line because my salary was going entirely into this in-house developed product, that was producing no revenue for the company. I was a literal cost center; I don't blame them for letting me go - it was probably a good business decision...

When I was let go, I was trying to transition to postgresql for the backend (away from the MDB file), and hopefully move the frontend away from VB6 - and make the whole thing a web application in some manner.

They told me when I was let go they told me they were looking into other options to replace the software I had almost single-handedly written to manage the business.

So - I was let go, and the business was sold. Twice. Today, it's part of HP, last I was aware - about 3 years ago. That was about the time that I had to look for a new job, and talked to my former supervisor there (he'd since become VP of his department).

Yep - still using the same old software, with virtually no updates or fixes. Still running on the MDB file. And somehow, it was still all working, nearly 15 years later. I'm amazed, impressed, shocked, and also in complete wonderment how it hasn't fallen over hard since then.

As far as I know - they are still using it. I've been told that both the original company that bought them, then HP (after they bought that company), both looked at the software and wanted to monetize it - everyone who's seen it has been fairly impressed with it, from what I understand. But, because it's so tightly integrated with the business, plus that it was never designed to be modular and salable, has meant that without a major refactor, it can't be easily done.

Honestly, I'm glad it can't - I'd do so many things differently today that I didn't do then (and if done, they could probably sell it as well); it's the kind of code that I know some developer will look at, then want to track me down for a good ol' fashioned murdering - or at least to beat me with a baseball bat.

SAP is a company (and software system) that exists to buy up other company's software, business, and services and then integrate that all into SAP's "core" systems, and do so in such a poor manner that their name and the system has almost become synonymous with the words and phrases "nasty", "unreliable", "run away now", "if you know what's good for ya" and a host of others.

However, due to their entrenchment in various other markets (and who knows if there is any graft or other under-the-table business going on), they continue to manage to exist, and scary enough sell their products to new victims (ahem - customers).

SAP is the old-is-new-again-we're-IBM type of business; nobody ever got fired for buying SAP (but the golden parachute was nice)?

Ok - hyperbole and I don't really know what I'm talking about, so the above should probably be ignored...

...that said - I don't think I'm too far off, either.

Yeah - I'm not mathematically inclined enough to understand what would be so funny about the 38x^3 denominator either?

Unless it's something that would cause an error due to memory/register size constraints, or cause the calculator to sit there forever on some of the other larger squares or test values due to 1986 speed of the ALU or whatever is in the calc?

My gut assumption is that it's some mathematics inside joke of some sort...

The industry as a whole used to be more aligned with engineering but this has changed considerably since, say, the rise of "Agile".

I'd argue that it changed once smaller businesses could afford (and have room for) their own computer. My best guess would be somewhere around the PDP-8 era (late 1960s-early 1970s).

Once things started to move away from large-scale computer rooms and consoles of blinking lights, towards a more "hands-on" and interactive approach, where the programmer didn't have to wait between "batches" of runs to see what their code did (correct or not), that is when (from a software development point of view) so-called "engineering" went out the window.

Should be open now:

https://www.smiffy.de/dbkda-2018/

The biggest difference is that comment threads are the majority of how people create content on the internet now and they weren't before.

Were you not around for newsgroup flame-wars of the early 90s (and probably long before that, if you were among the lucky few that had access)...?

Social media such as twitter, for example, everyone now has a voice (what it gives), but with its char limit (what it takes) doesn't give critical thinking and rational debate a highlight, therefore it spirals down into madness.

Twitter has a hard, small limit. Most other platforms either have no limit, or the limit is fairly large.

The problem is, people don't use it.

Worse, those that do use it are ridiculed, or their words are ignored (TL;DR anyone?)...

Thinking about this, I wonder if any of it has to do with people's "inner monologue" that was discussed yesterday here on HN? If you didn't see it, the gist was that there are some people who don't have such a monologue, and it came as a surprise to one person. Similarly, those without such a monologue are often surprised that others have it; one person commented that they often wished that the voiceover of characters in a movie, expressing their inner thoughts, was a real thing - and were shocked to find out that for most people - it is!

Anyhow - does this play into how people write online? Do they tend to write less or smaller messages, because their inner monologue is too loud or constant? Do those without such monologue write more thoughtful and longer posts? Then I think of myself; I have an inner monologue, but I tend to write long things (case in point - this post?) - but I don't find my inner monologue a burden.

But some do - I know I have read of people who either must always have some noise around them to drown out their "inner monologue", or if left in silence, even for small moments, will declare themselves "bored", perhaps because their inner monologue isn't perceived as interesting (whereas I and others have no problems thinking and pondering things, in silence, with no boredom)...?

Does this effect how people compose and type their messages? Does it help or hinder understanding? Does it facilitate or does it block meaningful conversations?

Twitter may have tapped into something that was always there to begin with, and in essence has helped foster that communication style - making it acceptable widely - conversation as "sound bites" - which has perhaps led to our present situation.

What you may or may not know is that at one time, there was a doctrine by the FCC known as the "Fairness Doctrine":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine

"The fairness doctrine had two basic elements: It required broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters."

This doctrine was eliminated in 1987, after a series of lawsuits about it.

Arguably, it's part of what started this whole mess we now find ourselves a part of.

I've put out a request to his email address for access; if I hear anything, I will post back to this thread...

I wonder how long they will support 32x Windows 10?

I noted in another comment that they have a similar problem with people wanting VB6 open sourced, because so many businesses rely on VB6 apps - some written internally or exclusively for their business.

Windows 10 (from what I remember) almost didn't support VB6, but in the end they included the runtime DLL to allow for the apps to work. I wonder if this is a part of the 32x thing? Seems a likely possibility...

VB6 and the companies relying on it might be an albatross around Microsoft's neck; for how much longer, I'm not sure.

That's pretty much also why they'll never open source VB6, despite a very large number of developers wanting it.

Instead, Microsoft has been virtually forced to continue to include the VB runtime DLL in every version of Windows since, because there are so many businesses out there that rely on software developed in VB6 that can't (easily or cheaply) switch to something else.

Windows 10, from what I understand, almost became the first version to ship without it, but Microsoft relented under the pressure (maybe I'm misinformed here, though).

VB.NET is sufficiently different enough that conversion either isn't possible, or due to the source code not being available (or the 3rd-party company that wrote it not existing any longer as an entity - or the source code assets not available or whatnot due to dissolution) - conversion becomes nearly impossible, short of a very expensive reverse-engineering effort by another 3rd party.

I was about to post about the TI-92+ not getting any love, saw this, got happy, then saw it dead...sad again. Oh well. :)

Because people aren't going to trust self-driving cars unless they're drastically better than humans are.

I believe that people aren't ever going to trust self-driving cars, unless they are "perfect". Even ten 9s of reliability (no driving errors or accidents) would probably be too imperfect for people to accept (and I don't believe humans have ever made anything that close to perfection).

I believe the reason this is probably so has to do with assignment of blame and guilt. Something easily done with human drivers, less so (or maybe impossible) for self-driving vehicles.

IPv6 once widely implemented might solve the problem, since new fixed IPv4 addresses are unobtanium for non corporate networks; I'm not holding my breath though.

I have this strange feeling that we (the general public) are, in some manner, being segregated away from full implementation if IPv6 for precisely this reason.

That the limitations of IPv4 have benefitted the centralization of our internet access; IPv6, due to its sheer size of address space, turns that space into a commodity that is easily shared. ISPs would (or should) cease to be "gateways" and instead become mere infrastructure.

Assuming efficient network bandwidth allocation, it would allow for easy p2p or "peering"-like arrangements, which isn't easy or as scalable with IPv4 today.

But of course, that isn't in their business interest.

I can't think of any reason why IPv6 isn't "fully deployed" today; I'm sure there's a lot of legacy hardware out there that doesn't support it, but I would think it would be a minority amount in the whole "grand scheme" of the internet. Certainly the "end points" - our workstations and phones and such - are all IPv6 capable today. There's no real good reason for the rest of it not to be - except for control over access.

Just my opinion, of course...

I've thought that part of the reason that all the studies are showing that computers don't seem to help with education are just showing that computers as they are currently used don't help with education. A key element of ... but on a computer! is that if you just take something from the physical world and put it on a computer, you end up with the disadvantages of both compounding.

What's amazing to me is that this is still being discussed, even though a solution to the problem was found decades ago:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Papert

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindstorms_(book)

I think that you might find Papert's ideas interesting; he based a lot of them on the foundations laid by Piaget:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaget%27s_theory_of_cognitive...

but if you actually pay attention to what your child is doing, screens can be a powerful tool.

I related elsewhere how my parents, long since passed away, read to me from physical books and encouraged my education.

I don't have children, but I think you have hit the nail on the head; ultimately everything is just a tool - the important part is the parents interacting with their child's education, using the tools they have available.

I have no doubt that had my mother had access to an ipad or whatever, that she would have used that as well to teach and encourage my learning. As it was, the only other media besides books was television - and so PBS and "Sesame Street" was on, and she'd watch it with me.

But other shows she liked were also educational to an extent - such as game shows; Price is Right can teach a lot of things about money and counting, and Wheel of Fortune can teach words and letters. But it wasn't just plopping me down in front of the TV - she was there with me, asking me questions, teaching me how to figure out things on my own.

Which is what you are also doing with your children, but using the tools that are available today; but I think even if you didn't have access to those tools, you'd still find a way to interact and teach your children, and that's the best thing they could ever have.

They'll also remember it for life.

I credit much of my success in grade school and now as an adult to the fact that my mom consistently and constantly encouraged me to read.

She at first did this, when I was a toddler, by teaching me my ABCs and counting while she "did her bills"; I can't explain her accounting methods, but there were always dates and numbers and months and...well you get the idea. She would encourage me to tell her "what month comes next" or "what number is that"...

Then, as I got older, she started to read to me; first, from a set of "animal encyclopedia" books my parents got from the grocery store as a "give-away"...

(aside: they don't really do this much any more, but back then to get customers to come shop, grocery stores and supermarkets would run these giveaway things where, if you spent so much money, or collected so many "stamps", you could get "this month's book", or dishes, or utensils or whatever - so you'd build up a complete encyclopedia set over the course of a year or so)

...then later from similar encyclopedia books about science; she would read to me about "the brain" or "the lungs" or "the heart" - then other subjects, and I would "read along" with her - she'd ask me "what does this say" and I would read it.

One other thing I remember my mom encouraging me to do was recognizing car models and makes; I'm not sure why or if that even fits in here - but it was something I recall.

As I got older, both of my parents would buy me books on any subject I desired. I also had several magazine subscriptions (I once had three different computer magazines coming in - Family Computing, K-Power, and the Rainbow, plus Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, and Omni). They purchased and I had access to two different sets of Encyclopedia Brittanica. I had my own library card by the time I was in the second grade for the city library system.

At one time I recall I had some problems with reading and spelling - and my parents got one of those "hooked on phonics" sets and worked with me on that. Ultimately I went from being an average student to doing much better work and having an easier time in school.

But all of that ultimately led to my life today; their encouragement of reading, and of "finding out the answers on my own" ("Dad, what's this and that?" I'd ask - my dad would reply "Let's look it up in the encyclopedia!") also encouraged me to become a self-learner, among other things. They were always encouraging my education, and helping me however they could (when they saw how much I liked computers, they bought me one, and upgrades - this was in the 1980s mind you, and none of it was cheap).

I wouldn't be the person or the software engineer I am today had it not been for their efforts and sacrifices. My parents weren't wealthy (my dad did road construction for the county, my mom was a "stay at home" mother who earned extra side-money by selling eggs from our chickens) - but they both knew the importance of an education, and were always involved in it for me.

But it all ultimately started with reading.

What about something like this?

http://strobe.audio/

I mean - that's just the first hit I found searching for open-source multi-room audio streaming for the raspberry pi. There were others.

Seriously - once you got one node to work, at that point clone the sd card (just dd it), and pop the image onto new cards for each new node. I don't know what kind of configuration or fiddling you might have to do, and while it isn't a "plug-n-play" thing like Sonos, you (and everyone else here) probably have the smarts to figure it out.

And once you have it figured out for one - the copying it and duping it to the other nodes and setting them up is probably not much of a stretch.

If there's cat5 at the keypads back to the central hub, and the speaker wires go to the keypads, then you can just hook the wires from the speakers to the cat5 - choose one or two pair (depending on the distance, you might want to "double up" to lower the impedance over the run), and hook 'em up. Then you just need to figure out a distribution system at the central hub location.

If you find you can run the speakers on a single pair per speaker - that will leave you with 2 other pairs on the cat5 - which you could use for control or communication.

But what I would do before all of that is try to reverse-engineer the protocols or whatnot that the whole system is currently using, so you can keep the keypads/amps and such, and create some kind of custom main "head unit" later.

I go to hamfests often; if I ever need old audio gear, I can get it there (recently picked up a home-built crystal set with the galena cat-whisker still hooked up - I have yet to try to see if I can get it to work, but it looks complete).

Not too long back I bought a bluetooth adapter for my old Realistic component stereo system (that I bought as a high-schooler in 1989) - my wife likes to use it to listen to music and audio books, both inside the house and outside on the back patio.

If I ever wanted to do some kind of "streaming music/speaker system" - there are plenty of open source options out there. Or I would run wiring for speakers like others here have done. But for now, our needs and simple, and we're fine with that.

I'm not sure why you should feel guilt here - you actually went above and beyond what most people would have done in the situation. Most people, finding money on the ground that nobody was trying to pick up themselves, would have just picked it up, pocketed it, and walked on.

And honestly, there should be no guilt in that. Now, had there been someone going around saying "hey, I had this money here and the wind blew it out of my hand, have you seen it?" - and they named the denomination or something that made you know that the money you picked up belonged to them - and you didn't say "why yes, I found this over there; here you go!" and handed it back...well, you should feel guilty knowing you had taken their money - even if they didn't see you do it.

But if nobody is actively looking for it, then heck - what can you do, and why feel guilt over it? Sure - you could have left it lying there, and if everyone did that, maybe somebody could retrace their steps to find where they dropped it?

Or for all you know, it was dropped, not noticed, and the wind or a passing vehicle picked it up and flung it hither and thither and even if the person knew they had dropped it, they had no way of finding it. You could feel guilt - but now you are feeling guilty over something that is virtually unknown to you; you don't even know if the person who lost it even knows they did, or if they even care...

But again - it's a different thing if you see it happening. As a kid (I was probably 12 years old), I was once in a bowling alley when I was walking behind a man, and I noticed a large amount of money (bills) fall out of his back pocket, and he didn't even notice one bit. We're talking several 50 dollar bills. I saw it. I saw him walk on. I went over to pick it up. It was a lot of money...

I grabbed it all and ran to him, "Mr! You dropped all of this!" and handed it back to him; he was super thankful. I was glad I did it, because I know most other kids wouldn't have done that - heck, there are adults who wouldn't.

But I had seen the money fall out of his pocket - I knew it was his. Had I kept it, I know I would have been stealing from him, and would have felt guilty. It was the right thing to return it without any expectation. To this day (decades later) I am glad I did what I did - that very well could have been his paycheck for all I know.

Now - had (somehow) that pile of money been there and I saw it, and nobody else had claimed it? Well - even today I'd probably take it to the "lost and found" - somebody loses that kind of money (or item - like a wallet, phone, etc) - that's the right thing to do. Only if nobody ever claims it, and it's returned to you as "unclaimed" - should you take it. Even then, maybe it would be better to donate it to a good cause than to keep it.

Definitely an ethical and moral dilemma - and here I don't know if I've just refuted myself, or whether I have helped anything for you, or if I've just made myself question my own failings or faults. Probably a bit of everything - and maybe that's for the best. So thank you for your post - I think.

My first "real computer" (not counting the "computer" in the Milton Bradley Big Trak - though it was a form of Logo programming, I suppose) was a TRS-80 Color Computer 2 - in 1984.

My parents got it for me after I showed an interest in the Apple IIe computer that was wheeled around my elementary school at the time (yes - one computer for the whole school, each teach got it "checked out" once a month - it ended up being so popular, that the teachers later gave up their break room for the kids to have a "computer room" to learn in, completely outfitted by Apple and donations).

Anyhow - I had a TV for a monitor, cassette tape for storage, and a few cartridges (Canyon Climber and Reactoid were my favorite - though later in my teenage years I would discover Dungeons of Daggorath).

I typed in tons of BASIC programs from magazines and books, and yes - finding things incompatible was both frustrating, but informative. I took to learning how to convert between BASICs - GWBasic, PCjr BASIC, and AppleSoft Basic were all fairly easy - for the most part - to convert from so as to run on the Color Computer.

Forget anything for the C=64 or Vic-20, as most of them used tons of POKEs and the special sprite hardware to get anything done, and were (for a kid) impossible to understand what was going on or being done.

I also learned how to convert some code from Fortran to BASIC - I had found a book of graphics code in Fortran, and wanted to run the programs myself...so I learned.

Later, I found a book that detailed how to convert BASIC programs from one system to another; that also assisted me. But ultimately, it was a case of trial and error, tons of reading about the different systems graphics modes, etc.

I still own all of my old computers; I'll keep 'em until I die, I suppose.

Trump wanted to nuke a hurricane.

https://www.businessinsider.com/what-if-nuke-nuked-hurricane...

Trump has asked in the past why we have nuclear weapons if we don't use them.

https://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/03/trump-asks-why-us-cant-use-n...

Trump, during a visit to the war memorial in Hawaii - had no idea what Pearl Harbor was about, at least according to one book:

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-pearl-harbor-memorial-...

You don't believe a man this ignorant about such things, who is "commander in chief" and "carries the nuclear football" - ie, he is in command of our entire nuclear arsenal (let that sink in for a second) - you don't believe that the clock moving on a tweet of his nearly taking us to war (or anything of that nature) isn't a reason for it to move?