wlindley

Isn't it odd to read "curly" braces? Every printed dictionary I have, up through the 1990s at least, says that braces are {these}, brackets are [these], and parentheses are (these). Saying "curly brace" is as redundant as saying "round parentheses." Yes, braces are curly, by definition.

At least that's how it always in American English, and ASCII. Apparently British English says more than [these] can be "brackets" and <these> were called "angle brackets" in the 1970s, but when did anyone in the computer industry ever start calling anything but {these} braces?

The real mystery is why anyone remotely aware of the Free Software movement would have ever been duped into advocating for handheld computers so hostile to their own goals.

"Self-driving cars" and Fusion power also come to mind. With the advent of photography, it was widely believed that drawing and painting would vanish as art forms. Radio would obsolete newspapers, becoming obsolete themselves with television, and so on. Don't believe the hype.

What does "compute" mean here? It is supposed to be a verb, but here seems to be a noun. I have recently started seeing it apparently mean "computational capacity" but here it seems to mean "an instance of a virtualized computer installation." All this verbing is confusing. Excuse me, I have an eat.

As an emacs user since the mid-80s, I do note this functionality would be nice as a Major Mode, if one were an avid Lisp programmer.

As a Perl Monger since 1994, and as a developer who has used and extended Org::Parser from CPAN, I am happy to see support in any other language, as you have done with Go here. I wonder whether you plan to extend your parser to fairly complete support of all/most of what Org offers.

Thanks for this!

The original IBM PC could be purchased either with 160KB/180KB single-sided floppy drives, or the 320KB/360KB double-sided. Some early IBM PC users still needed the "flippy" trick!

See IBM advert, https://archive.org/details/eu_BYTE-1983-10_OCR/page/n111/mo...

"...whenever 'a software' doesn't...." Ugh. "A software package" or "a piece of software" or perhaps "a program" but you don't have "one software" any more than you can have "one hardware" or "one information." Grammar, please!

My company "Lindley Systems" did all this from 1980 (when I was 14) until the mid 90s, in the Heathkit (later Heath/Zenith) arena. I still have master diskettes and original manuals ready for taking to the Xerox shop, and only a few years ago tossed boxes full of registration cards (with 13 cent stamps on them).

We made the transition from Heathkit HDOS to CP/M and MS-DOS but never shipped a product for MS Windows. We almost had a product ready in 1996 but then MS "upgraded" VB 3 to VB 4 and we started a rewrite, almost completed just in time for the "upgrade" to VB 5 - by which time our market had moved on.

It was a fun time to build custom and specialized hardware and software.

And again, There is no cloud, only someone else's computer.

Thank you, and all the best for a long-awaited and much-needed update to the book!

Also "napkin" (from nappe, old for "tablecloth"). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napkin#Etymology_and_terminolo...

Listed is "HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide (6th ed.)" by Chuck Musciano and Bill Kennedy from 2006.

However there was a 7th edition, ISBN 9781449302597, published 2011. Yet nowhere online can I find a copy to purchase. Does anyone have a clue what happened to the 7th edition or where it might be found?

Garbage in, garbage out. Code spewed by a random generator that has not the slightest understanding of what it is doing, whacked at by a hammer until it seems to be working.

What is this supposed to produce other than a mass of bugs and vulnerabilities? "A.I." is utter garbage and always will be, it is foolish to think otherwise.

According to: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/8038...

"FOREIGN ADVERSARY CONTROLLED APPLICATION.—The term “foreign adversary controlled application” means a website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application that is operated, directly or indirectly (including through a parent company, subsidiary, or affiliate), by— (A) any of— (i) ByteDance, Ltd.; (ii) TikTok;…"

How is that not a Bill of Attainder? Although it does not explicitly say that these companies are guilty of a crime, since when is it legal to make a law against a specific person, group of persons, or a specific company? That cannot possibly be Constitutional.

What exactly is being forbidden here?

Outlawing installing a program ("app" being short for "application program") on your computer (even if it is called a "telephone" it is obviously a computer)? Surely there cannot be laws against running whatever program you want on your computer.

Outlawing access of such a program to the Internet? Obviously that cannot be possible, that would be a "Bill of Attainder" (a law against a specific person or group) which is illegal.

Outlawing access to the servers to which that program communicates? Likewise a Bill of Attainder, and illegal.

So what exactly is being done here? No-one is explaining

It's a program. "App" is a word, short for "Application Program," publicized by Apple for its handheld computers that masquerade as (and are euphemistically called) "telephones." "App" effectively means "proprietary closed-source program that talks to proprietary walled-garden programs running on someone else's computer, and acts as a spy sending all your sensitive data to who-knows-where."

No-one ever called a real program an "app" before that, did they?

Most shocking of all is how almost every free-software, anti-big-government, anti-big-business, and libertarian advocate swallowed these allegedly "smart" alleged "telephones" -- which are obviously computers that someone else controls and utterly disempower the users -- to the utter disregard of every principle they said they believed.

Don't call it a "computer" (computers are scary), call it a "smart" "telephone." Or call it a "device" as if it were a can opener.

Don't call it a "program" (programmers are geeks), call it an (ugh) "app" [which is just short for "application program" of course]

Never had one of those nefarious handheld treacherous computers, never will, thanks.

In the 1940s, the Army used a phonetic alphabet starting Able, Baker, Charlie. My late father was on the first two postwar atomic bomb tests (the first after Trinity, and at Hiroshima, Nagasaki) which were Able and Baker.

Able was an air burst over Bikini (thus the name of the swimsuit).

Baker, the water burst, was the world's first atomic disaster; as a result of Baker, the third scheduled test Charlie was cancelled. My father died years later of colon cancer, perhaps not unrelated to contaminated air and water at the Eniwetok base afterwards.

FUBAR indeed.

a/k/a It is all a clever scam. True, or true?

And this is why it is so shocking that even folks who should know better, who are technically savvy in the slightest, would ever consent to use such a brain-damaged computer system that runs nonfree software.

Indeed. Wouldn't be surprised if San Francisco tried to ban software, and criticism too. Perhaps "Software, critics, and software critics seek to ban San Francisco."

I have a kitchen phone and a desk phone (both VOIP), a Linux workstation, a DSLR camera, a radio, and read real books and play CDs. Also an RCA Orthophonic High Fidelity phonograph for 78, 45, and 33⅓. After the last Star Trek went off the air, and Jeopardy! went woke, there was nothing to watch on TV and it got left behind somewhere.

Computers are nothing but free software. Had a mobile phone (a flip-phone with real buttons) for years but never used it, and just let it lapse, as being unnecessary. Never understood why so many folks bought into being abused by their handheld pocket computers, and paying for the "privilege." Anyone who gives MS/Apple/Google/Amazon (the evil MAGA) money is being an enabler for the abuse of others.

"De-skilling" would be a better way to write this. I was halfway through before realizing it wasn't about "desk-killing" or the pretending that workers are incorporeal gossamer entities that do not have to physically interact with the real world. (a/k/a "remote work")

Heath/Zenith's ZBASIC on the MSDOS-but-not-PCDOS Z-100 used a similar format but with at least different keywords. Somewhere I had a set of programs I had written in ZBASIC but could never load after selling that computer. Wonder if I still have the floppies squirreled away, now that I have a Greaseweazel to read those diskettes...

Much of the world apparently believed that wearing a muzzle and living like a hermit instead of outdoors, exercise, vitamins, and a normal lifestyle would prevent the common cold. Pure magic over rational science. One wonders what the next generation will think of the insanity of the past few years.

After a few more revisions, you can make an RK05 ! (for the youth: That's a DEC joke)

Bottom line: Pay cash if you want to support your local shops. Use credit cards if you love enriching your local megacorporation.

Butter in the USA is sold in 1-pound boxes, each containing four quarter-pound "squares" that are marked with tablespoon and fractional-cup gauges. Simply slice off five tablespoons. (There are "Eastern" and "Western" square sizes, depending on where you live.) See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butter#Packaging

Indeed, how would you slice cold butter by grams? Is there even a procedure?

With just one quadruple-thick blanket ('duvet') you are either broiling or freezing, with no ability to peel back or add just one layer at a time. Can't understand how anyone can be comfortable with that.

»> ... "curly braces" ... « Ugh. Braces are "curly" — there are no "square braces" or "round braces." Needlessly redundant and confusion-inducing. Can we please eradicate this circumlocution from programming language?