On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 20:13:27 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> A lot of what we do in programming/scripting is building one layer of
> “abstract machine” on top of another, until we get to something
> optimized for solving our particular problem.

True, but many people using a high level abstraction like Python think of
it as some sort of magic without realizing it's some poor old turtle
slaving away one opcode at a time. (Okay, so it's a team of turtles these
days).

My FORTRAN IV course started with an examination of the System 360
architecture before getting to the first FORTRAN statement. I'm not sure
that happens anymore.

Some of the people I worked with who were in their 40s or 50s had a course
using the 68HC11 microcontroller at UM but that was later dropped from the
curriculum in favor of abstraction. The last I knew Java was the didactic
language of choice for the CS people there.

Cy DeMillion <cyde@loozers.net> wrote:
>On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 18:00:03 -0000 (UTC), candycanearter07 wrote:
>
>> Yeah, I'm also somewhat bad with following POSIX standards..
>
>Don't worry about it.
>
>Your code will always be totally inconsequential.
>
>Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!

Shut up, fag.

--
Joel W. Crump

Amendment XIV
Section 1.

[...] No state shall make or enforce any law which shall
abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the
United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of
life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;
nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal
protection of the laws.

Dobbs rewrites this, it is invalid precedent. States are
liable for denying needed abortions, e.g. TX.

On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 20:30:18 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> Here in NZ, there is a lot of scrutiny of the perks that politicians
> get. (One of the benefits of having a free press.) We just managed to
> shame our own Prime Minister out of collecting a sizeable accommodation
> allowance for living in a property in the capital that he owns.

The US is notorious for perks. They come up in the discussion when they're
trying to get rid of someone like Thomas but business as usual is not to
talk about your colleagues income from books nobody would read if not by a
pol, speaking engagements, and the ever popular revolving door.

> And we had strict controls on campaign finance spending right from the
> early days. And there have been occasional prosecutions, just to keep
> everyone in line.

One of the worst decisions by the Supreme Court was 'Citizens United'

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citizens-united-
explained

Kennedy was a wild card but chose to go with the conservatives that time.

The Senate race has attracted a lot of attention in this state. Normally
most people couldn't find Montana on a map and couldn't care less but with
a 50/50 split in the Senate it becomes nationally important. The incumbent
Democrat is running on a good, old, country boy campaign and has even more
out of state funding than the challenger. Millions are being spent. The
radio carries political ads and my mailbox is stuffed with political
flyers so I guess somebody is making money no matter who wins.

> As for term limits, that doesn’t seem to be a common thing in
> Parliamentary systems. Look at Germany, where past Chancellors like
> Helmut Kohl and Angela Merkel served (nearly) four terms, and nobody
> felt that a special law needed to be passed to bring them to heel: the
> democratic system managed that itself.

After FDR the president is term limited but it's not general. In this
state the governor is term limited and in the past has shown a potential
problem. Schweitzer was a Democrat but was well liked by both sides but
limited out. He'd gotten 65% of the vote for his second term and probably
would have done as well could he run for a third term.

On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 20:18:33 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> Their voting system was put in place under Konrad Adenauer after World
> War II, and was designed specifically to ensure a dictator could never
> take power again. It worked so well, that’s why we in NZ copied it.

Who knows what might have happened but in 1952 Stalin proposed reuniting
Germany with Germany becoming a neutral state not aligned with either
side. Adenauer turned down the offer ensuring over 30 years of misery for
the east. As one of my links pointed out reintegrating the east is still a
problem.

On 10/2/2024 4:14 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> On 02/10/2024 08:27, rbowman wrote:
>> On Tue, 1 Oct 2024 23:48:43 -0400, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>>
>>>     Clients want "something" - but they're often not sure what that will
>>>     look and feel like. They will ALWAYS have complaints, ALWAYS want
>>>     more and more 'features', some of which will be incompatible with
>>>     each other, added and may run off to somebody else expecting magic.
>>
>> I've reviewed RFPs where the requirement if Section II Paragraph 14c is
>> contradicted by Section VII Paragraph 37a. Particularly when dealing with
>> government agencies you realize the whole mess is a cut'n'paste of prior
>> RFPs that was never read in its entirety. (aside: I shudder to think
>> about
>> those 1000 page laws the idiots pass)
>>
> I used to ask potential clients 'what can you absolutely not do
> without? Let's get that down first, and see how much it is going to
> cost, and then we can discuss the nice-to-haves in order of
> desirability and cost, and if possible, leave the option to add in
> more when your budget can take it'.
>
> Most responded well to that approach.
>
> Te 'I want everything for nothing' went on to buy Microsoft, or IBM
> instead. Promnmises are cheap enough if you never intend to honour them
>
>> To be honest there often is a lot of wishful thinking in the response.
>> "Well, we sorta, kinda can do that..."
>
> Its at that point in the sales process that you need an experienced
> coder in with the salesman.
>

Quoting a salesman at a company I worked for years ago, "It's not what
you can do that counts, it's what you can say you can do." He was
actually a pretty sharp guy, and he was (mostly) kidding.

At another company, I learned that when one of the product managers
asked me if I could do something, the correct answer was always "no."
The mere hint of anything else would send him on a train of free
association and embellishment and it was best not to let him get started.

Good sales folks -- like the guy at the first company -- treat nerds
like human beings, and I always enjoyed working with them.

Louis

On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 20:26:12 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> Ranked-choice is technically not “proportional representation”, but it
> does have a lot of the same effect. And it might be a better fit for
> places (like the US) where individuals matter more than parties.

A couple of initiatives are on the ballot in this state that might lead to
a ranked choice system. One is a 'top four' open primary and the other is
a requirement for a majority rather than a plurality.

It's somewhat controversial on both sides. In many parts of the state 'top
four' becomes a de facto Republican primary which isn't quite what the
supporters envision.

It will be interesting. The Democrats tried to get the Greens thrown off
the ballot. Not very democratic of them, is it?

rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 20:18:33 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> Their voting system was put in place under Konrad Adenauer after World
>> War II, and was designed specifically to ensure a dictator could never
>> take power again. It worked so well, that’s why we in NZ copied it.
>
> Who knows what might have happened but in 1952 Stalin proposed reuniting
> Germany with Germany becoming a neutral state not aligned with either
> side. Adenauer turned down the offer ensuring over 30 years of misery for
> the east. As one of my links pointed out reintegrating the east is still a
> problem.
>

Probably wise not to take the offer. Stalin wold have bribed his way to
controlling a united Germany, just like Putin is doing now in the US and
several EU countries.

--
Pete

On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 20:31:47 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> On 4 Oct 2024 07:45:56 GMT, rbowman wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 03:53:53 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>
>>> Just a realist. You know, looking at what happens in the real world,
>>> instead of inside your head.
>>
>> You know, the Romans had some really nifty technological solutions.
>
> Let’s see, their empire lasted over 700 years.
>
> How long do you think your one will last?

I regret I probably won't be around to see it. When the Roman Empire went
down the entire known world was shaken up. What do you think will happen
when the US hegemony goes down? Good luck on your little island. Perhaps
learning Mandarin would be a good project.

On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 17:37:15 -0600, Louis Krupp wrote:

> Good sales folks -- like the guy at the first company -- treat nerds
> like human beings, and I always enjoyed working with them.

I worked with one sales person who was so notorious for submitting
enhancement requests that were so fractured and incomprehensible that
people collected the more humorous ones.

When I would track him down the truth was he had worked closely with the
client, had a good grasp on what they really wanted, and a pretty good
sense of what was possible. He would also work with the clients to find an
acceptable solution if what they wanted wasn't feasible. But the written
requests...

On 2024-10-04, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

> Is Canada more party-based, like the UK and NZ?

Yes - and unfortunately we're starting to accumulate our share of
right-wing whacko candidates, both federally and provincially.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | We'll go down in history as the
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | first society that wouldn't save
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | itself because it wasn't cost-
/ \ if you read it the right way. | effective. -- Kurt Vonnegut

On 2024-10-04, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

> On 4 Oct 2024 07:40:54 GMT, rbowman wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 06:56:38 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>
>>> But C = “machine language” under the hood. That’s what Python uses.
>>
>> It's turtles, turtles, turtles all the way down...
>
> One thing we learned in Comp Sci was the concept of “abstract machines”.
> There is no fundamental difference between hardware and software:
> “hardware” is just what you start with when you turn the power on, but
> does that include “firmware” and “microcode”?
>
> A lot of what we do in programming/scripting is building one layer of
> “abstract machine” on top of another, until we get to something optimized
> for solving our particular problem.
>
> Of course, all this goes out the window once you get to the GUI layer;
> that is the end of the line, with no more programmability (easily)
> possible on top of that. From that point on, the human user has to do all
> the work.

This led to my observation that "interactive" is synonymous with "manual".

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | We'll go down in history as the
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | first society that wouldn't save
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | itself because it wasn't cost-
/ \ if you read it the right way. | effective. -- Kurt Vonnegut

On 2024-10-04, Louis Krupp <lkrupp@invalid.pssw.com.invalid> wrote:

> Quoting a salesman at a company I worked for years ago, "It's not what
> you can do that counts, it's what you can say you can do." He was
> actually a pretty sharp guy, and he was (mostly) kidding.

I've heard that referred to as "kidding on the square".

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | We'll go down in history as the
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | first society that wouldn't save
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | itself because it wasn't cost-
/ \ if you read it the right way. | effective. -- Kurt Vonnegut

On 2024-10-04, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> quadrupling human population would impact the environment far far more
> than a few tenths of a percent of CO2 in the air

If they all fart at once, it's methane we'll have to worry about.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | We'll go down in history as the
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | first society that wouldn't save
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | itself because it wasn't cost-
/ \ if you read it the right way. | effective. -- Kurt Vonnegut

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
> Soon after dynamic memory allocation was invented, it was discovered that
> keeping lookaside lists of free blocks in common sizes speeded up
> allocations immensely.
>
> This was all well-known by about the 1980s, if not before.

implemented in CP67 kernal ("subpools") code 1970 (released CP67
R3) ... following from presentation I gave at SEAS 7Oct1986 (European
SHARE on isle of jersey) loots of R3.0, R3.1, & R3.2 was after I had
graduated and joined scientific center and stuff I had done at the univ
as undergraduate in the 60s (one of my hobbies was enhanced production
systems for internal datacenters).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/hill0316g.pdf

repeated 16Mar2011 at Wash DC HILLGANG user group meeting.

In the morph from CP67->VM370, they dropped and/or simplified a lot of
stuff. 1974, I started migrating a bunch of stuff to VM370R2 base for my
internal CSC/VM ... including kernel reorganization for SMP
multiprocessor (but not the SMP support itself). Then for VM370R3-base
CSC/VM I do SMP support ... originally for the internal online
sales&marketing HONE systems (before it was released to customers in
VM370R4).

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

On 10/4/24 6:35 PM, rbowman wrote:
> On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 12:15:31 -0700, John Ames wrote:
>
>> On 4 Oct 2024 19:11:29 GMT rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
>>
>>> That goes beyond software. Thousands of contiguous acres of dent corn
>>> or other crops might not be the best long term strategy for
>>> agriculture.
>>
>> Just ask the Irish... :/
>
> But they managed to be a net exporter of food while starving. Just ask the
> Brit beef eaters.

Umm ... less "managed" than "compelled".

Brits are rough bastards just underneath
the spit and polish :-)

On 4 Oct 2024 22:47:30 GMT, rbowman wrote:

> ... many people using a high level abstraction like Python think
> of it as some sort of magic ...

What we have seen in this thread (and others) is many of the younger ones
think C is that “magic” out of which all else is woven.

On Sat, 05 Oct 2024 02:37:16 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> On 2024-10-04, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>
>> Of course, all this goes out the window once you get to the GUI layer;
>> that is the end of the line, with no more programmability (easily)
>> possible on top of that. From that point on, the human user has to do
>> all the work.
>
> This led to my observation that "interactive" is synonymous with
> "manual".

No, “graphical interaction” is synonymous with “manual”. An interactive
text-based command line still allows for automation.

On 4 Oct 2024 23:52:15 GMT, rbowman wrote:

> When the Roman Empire went down the entire known world was shaken up.

No it wasn’t. Remember it split into “Eastern” and “Western”, and the
“Western” one got taken down by those illiterate barbarians who were the
ancestors of those who nowadays call themselves “Europeans”. The “Eastern”
one continued on its merry way, in some form, for about another 1000
years.

And the Chinese and Indians and the lesser cultures in their orbits, of
course, carried on, blithely unconcerned by any of this ...

On 4 Oct 2024 23:29:47 GMT, rbowman wrote:

> As one of my links pointed out reintegrating the east is
> still a problem.

In the case of the US, the problem is reintegrating those who broke away
to form the Confederacy during your Civil War. Some of them still don’t
accept that they lost, that black people are equal, or even that it was a
Civil War.

Pot, kettle etc.

On 4 Oct 2024 23:14:50 GMT, rbowman wrote:

> The US is notorious for perks.

I would describe your system as “soft corruption”: it seems like, as long
as you cannot directly tie particular dollar campaign contributions to
particular votes, anything less than that is perfectly fine.

Remember, “innocent until proven guilty” is only supposed to apply to
private citizens going about their private business; those who are given
statutory power over others must prove themselves to be squeaky clean, to
be morally qualified to exercise this power; if there is any reasonable
doubt about this, they must step down.

On Sat, 05 Oct 2024 02:37:15 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> On 2024-10-04, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>
>> Is Canada more party-based, like the UK and NZ?
>
> Yes - and unfortunately we're starting to accumulate our share of
> right-wing whacko candidates, both federally and provincially.

Do you have any media owned by Rupert Murdoch? That seems to be a common
factor behind the power of the right-wing whacko faction in the US, UK and
Australia, at least. Here in NZ we seem to be mercifully free of Uncle
Rupie’s meddling. Not that we don’t have our own right-wing whackos
(including religious ones), but thankfully they can never get enough votes
to do significant damage.

We are a liberal and diverse secular democracy, and we like to keep things
that way.

On Sat, 5 Oct 2024 06:13:32 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> No, “graphical interaction” is synonymous with “manual”. An interactive
> text-based command line still allows for automation.

https://pptr.dev/

There are quite a dew other tools to automate GUI testing.

On Sat, 5 Oct 2024 06:22:02 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> I would describe your system as “soft corruption”: it seems like, as
> long as you cannot directly tie particular dollar campaign contributions
> to particular votes, anything less than that is perfectly fine.

It used to be cleaner when 'vote early and vote often' was the slogan with
free shots and beers to keep the voters motivated.

On 5 Oct 2024 07:03:07 GMT, rbowman wrote:

> On Sat, 5 Oct 2024 06:22:02 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> I would describe your system as “soft corruption”: it seems like, as
>> long as you cannot directly tie particular dollar campaign
>> contributions to particular votes, anything less than that is perfectly
>> fine.
>
> It used to be cleaner when 'vote early and vote often' was the slogan
> with free shots and beers to keep the voters motivated.

Putting strict limits on campaign spending would be a good start.

On 5 Oct 2024 07:00:35 GMT, rbowman wrote:

> There are quite a dew other tools to automate GUI testing.

We’re talking about automating GUIs to actually get things done.