On Tue, 22 Oct 2024 09:59:31 -0700, John Ames wrote:

> Which, sure, beefy microcontrollers with comparatively spacious memory
> loadouts are cheaper than ever, but less luxurious ones are cheaper
> still - and a byte saved is, as always, a byte earned ;)

How much of your time did it take to save that byte?

Think of how many bytes you would need to save per hour of your time, to
make it worthwhile to whoever is paying for that time.

On Tue, 22 Oct 2024 09:38:25 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> No, I hold it as self evident that anyone who thinks that 'all men are
> created equal' is a dangerous raving lunatic and belongs in an asylum.

You won’t mind if I consider your viewpoint inferior to mine, then.

On 22 Oct 2024 17:34:50 GMT, rbowman wrote:

> The problem lies with differentiating between the care of the old and
> infirm and the support of generations of an underclass.

A nation’s most valuable asset is its people. Like it or not, the
“underclass” seems to be where most of the future population is coming
from, in many countries, as the birth rate among the affluent elite drops
below the replacement level. So if you don’t invest in that “underclass”,
your nation will end up with no future. QED.

On 2024-10-22, D <nospam@example.net> wrote:

> On Tue, 22 Oct 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

<snip>

>> In that sense the companies themselves have gone 'socialist' in that, like
>> Marx, they regard economics as a zero sum game.
>
> Incorrect. By design they do what they do, and whether the economy is
> zero sum (it is not) or not, does not really apply. That is why todays
> crypto-socialist government is so extremely dangerous. It subverts and
> distorts the markets, just by existing.

As opposed to large corporations subverting and distorting the markets,
as God intended.

>> That is, it isn't about creating more wealth, it's about who gets to own
>> what there is left.
>
> True.

I.e., a zero-sum game.

--
/~\ 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 Tue, 22 Oct 2024 20:52:22 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

> How much of your time did it take to save that byte?
>
> Think of how many bytes you would need to save per hour of your time,
> to make it worthwhile to whoever is paying for that time.

Well, that's the question, isn't it? Same as anything in the tech world.
And the answer depends greatly on the individual use case, the devs'
familiarity with the tools in question, and the cost of a byte's worth
of hardware.

Thankfully, it's also something that we can consider Someone Else's
Problem any time it's not actually our problem.

On Tue, 22 Oct 2024 14:48:15 -0700, John Ames wrote:

> Thankfully, it's also something that we can consider Someone Else's
> Problem any time it's not actually our problem.

And you really expect the young kids today to spend the extra effort
learning something like Forth?

No, they are going to use MicroPython and take dynamic memory allocation
for granted.

And I think it’s about time, too.

On Tue, 22 Oct 2024 20:51:36 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> On 2024-10-21, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 21 Oct 2024 19:33:03 GMT, rbowman wrote:
>>
>>> Add up all those milliliters and pretty soon you have another bottle
>>> of booze to sell.
>>
>> Make them say “millilitres” first ... if they can’t, don’t sell it to
>> ’em ...
>
> Easy. It's pronounced "see see".

Do you notice “cl” (centilitres) being used on wine bottles?

Here’s another use for them: car fuel economy is commonly quoted in litres
per 100 km. But you could use cl/km instead, and keep exactly the same
numbers.

On Tue, 22 Oct 2024 20:51:39 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> At least with text you can skip ahead. You can't easily skip ahead in a
> video and land at the right spot - assuming that there is one spot and
> not a bunch of little spots separated by fluff and ads.

YouTube lets you choose different playback speeds.

On Tue, 22 Oct 2024 21:04:53 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> I.e., a zero-sum game.

But the very concept of “economic growth” is incompatible with the
assumption of economics being a zero-sum game.

On Tue, 22 Oct 2024 22:23:31 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

> And you really expect the young kids today to spend the extra effort
> learning something like Forth?

I don't expect anyone to do anything! They're free to use whatever fits
their workflow and personal tastes best!

It's just funny to watch you be so dedicated to dismissing out-of-hand
a thing that nobody was even pressuring you to use, is all.

In alt.folklore.computers Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
> On 2024-10-21, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 21 Oct 2024 19:33:03 GMT, rbowman wrote:
>>
>>> Add up all those milliliters and pretty soon you have another bottle of
>>> booze to sell.
>>
>> Make them say “millilitres” first ... if they can’t, don’t sell it to
>> ’em ...
>
> Easy. It's pronounced "see see".
>
We just say mills. Everyone knows what you mean. Once you eradicate medieval
measuring systems, life is so much easier.

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Oct 2024 09:59:31 -0700, John Ames wrote:
>
>> Which, sure, beefy microcontrollers with comparatively spacious memory
>> loadouts are cheaper than ever, but less luxurious ones are cheaper
>> still - and a byte saved is, as always, a byte earned ;)
>
> How much of your time did it take to save that byte?
>
> Think of how many bytes you would need to save per hour of your time, to
> make it worthwhile to whoever is paying for that time.
>

If it’s the difference between using what you have and buying a more
expensive board, times however-many units you’re shipping, it might not be
too many.

--
Pete

On Tue, 22 Oct 2024 16:07:33 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:

> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, 22 Oct 2024 09:59:31 -0700, John Ames wrote:
>>
>>> Which, sure, beefy microcontrollers with comparatively spacious memory
>>> loadouts are cheaper than ever, but less luxurious ones are cheaper
>>> still - and a byte saved is, as always, a byte earned ;)
>>
>> How much of your time did it take to save that byte?
>>
>> Think of how many bytes you would need to save per hour of your time,
>> to make it worthwhile to whoever is paying for that time.
>>
> If it’s the difference between using what you have and buying a more
> expensive board, times however-many units you’re shipping, it might not
> be too many.

Presumably there is some threshold below which it simply isn’t worth
trying to save a bit of RAM. What is it nowadays: as much as 1MiB? Higher?
Lower?

Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes:
> As opposed to large corporations subverting and distorting the markets,
> as God intended.

claim was constitution setup patent system to protect new innovative
players from large monopolies (that nominally protect their status quo).

patent linquistic study in the 90s, found there was 30% of
computer/technology related patents with very ambiquous language filed
by patent trolls (setup be large status quo monopolies) in
non-computer/non-technology caterories

the troll entities had no activity for which they could be sued ... but
the trolls could sue other entities that appeared and might adversely
affect the status quo of large monopolies (subverting the original
purpose of the patent system) ... in addition to the trolls that were
strictly scamming the patent system for financial gain.

previous mention of the plutocrat gilded age 1870-1920 and
countermeasures (stil offline)
https://archive.org/details/triumphantpluto00pettrich
real paper copy
https://www.amazon.com/Triumphant-Plutocracy-Government-Economics-Autobiography/dp/1789873215

then the '29 crash. in jan2009 I was asked to HTML'ize the 30s (Pecora,
had been scanned the fall of 2008) senate hearings (resulted in many
prison sentances) with lots of internal HREFS and URLs comparing what
happened this time and what happened then (comments that the new
congress might have an appetite to do something). I worked on it for
awhile and then get a call that it won't be needed after all (comment
that capital hill was totally buried under enormous mountains of
wallstreet cash). wiki (and the actual scanned hearings should also
be there when wayback machine fully returns).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecora_Commission

One of the comparisons was the 80s S&L crisis resulted in 30k criminal
referrals and 1k prison sentences. Bush senior claimed that (while VP),
he knew nothing about Iran-Contra because he was fulltime deregulating
financial industry (resulting in S&L crisis)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis
along with other members of the family (note there have been claims
that republican supporters not only paid the $50k fine, but also the
$26M settlement ... and Saudi's helped bail out the brothers)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis#Silverado_Savings_and_Loan
and another
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE0D81E3BF937A25753C1A966958260

then after turn of century (one of the brothers, pres) Bush presided
over economic mess that was 70 times larger than the S&L crisis
.... proportionally should have had 2.1M criminal referrals and 70K jail
terms ... but instead we got "too big to fail", "too big to prosecute"
and "too big to jail".

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

On Tue, 22 Oct 2024 14:04:53 -1000, Lynn Wheeler wrote:

> claim was constitution setup patent system to protect new innovative
> players from large monopolies (that nominally protect their status quo).

The original concept was called “letters patent”. These were Government-
granted monopolies in particular industries (e.g. salt extraction from
seawater, or the manufacturer of gold leaf); if anybody else tried to set
up in competition with you, the legitimate monopoly holder, the Government
would send its goons round to give them a hiding.

When it became clear the system was outdated, instead of getting rid of it
completely, the idea was changed so that you needed to come up with some
kind of “invention” to get a “patent”, which gave you a monopoly on the
rights to that “invention”.

Though oddly, the concept of “invention” needs to be narrowly defined. For
example, Einstein couldn’t get a patent on his groundbreaking General
Theory of Relativity, but microchips exploiting General Relativity to
accurately determine your position in space and time can indeed be
patented. Was the underlying enabling theory too “inventive” to be
patented, perhaps?

On 2024-10-22, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

> On Tue, 22 Oct 2024 21:04:53 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
>> I.e., a zero-sum game.
>
> But the very concept of “economic growth” is incompatible with the
> assumption of economics being a zero-sum game.

By the classical definition, perhaps. Not necessarily in the
newfangled sense of some rich guy getting all the marbles.
And, of course, the planet _is_ finite...

--
/~\ 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 2024-10-23, Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> wrote:

> then the '29 crash. in jan2009 I was asked to HTML'ize the 30s (Pecora,
> had been scanned the fall of 2008) senate hearings (resulted in many
> prison sentances) with lots of internal HREFS and URLs comparing what
> happened this time and what happened then (comments that the new
> congress might have an appetite to do something). I worked on it for
> awhile and then get a call that it won't be needed after all (comment
> that capital hill was totally buried under enormous mountains of
> wallstreet cash).

Were you by any chance then asked (or ordered) to destroy your work?
That's a common political move at that point.

--
/~\ 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 2024-10-22, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

> On Tue, 22 Oct 2024 20:51:36 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
>> On 2024-10-21, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> On 21 Oct 2024 19:33:03 GMT, rbowman wrote:
>>>
>>>> Add up all those milliliters and pretty soon you have another bottle
>>>> of booze to sell.
>>>
>>> Make them say “millilitres” first ... if they can’t, don’t sell it to
>>> ’em ...
>>
>> Easy. It's pronounced "see see".
>
> Do you notice “cl” (centilitres) being used on wine bottles?

One of our most useful wedding presents was a set of beer mugs.
They are marked "50 cl".

> Here’s another use for them: car fuel economy is commonly quoted in litres
> per 100 km. But you could use cl/km instead, and keep exactly the same
> numbers.

That's almost as much fun as when we first went metric and I found I
could read my speedometer in km/h by treating the numbers as hexadecimal.

--
/~\ 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 2024-10-22, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

> On Tue, 22 Oct 2024 20:51:39 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
>> At least with text you can skip ahead. You can't easily skip ahead in a
>> video and land at the right spot - assuming that there is one spot and
>> not a bunch of little spots separated by fluff and ads.
>
> YouTube lets you choose different playback speeds.

Perhaps, but my original point was that a concise reference -
even 100 words - can provide the needed information in a
fraction of the time needed to wade through a rambling video.

--
/~\ 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 Tue, 22 Oct 2024 11:14:32 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:

> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>> On 22 Oct 2024 00:44:34 GMT, rbowman wrote:
>>
>>> On Mon, 21 Oct 2024 23:14:14 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>>
>>>> The French invented the system.
>>>
>>> Yeah, at the same time they were chopping heads off and trying to
>>> create a brand new culture. How did that work out for them?
>>
>> It worked well enough that they were friends of yours, supporting your
>> revolution, too.
>>
>> Have you forgotten where that big statue in New York City came from?
>>
>>
> It was King Louie the <mumble> who supported the revolution. He just
> wanted to twist the British Lion’s tail.

XVI. His grandfather, Louis XV, had lost New France to the Brits in the
Seven Years War (French and Indian War in the US). XV left the mortal coil
in 1774. I would assume XVI was butt hurt about losing the colonies to the
Brits, like Lafayette who lost his father in the same war. XVI inherited a
real bag of crap.

Interesting times. I grew up about 25 miles from Saratoga which was the
campaign that convinced the French backing the rebels was worthwhile. The
area was also the site of a lot of activity during the French and Indian
wars so we got a heavy dose ofthe state's history in school plus being
able to go picnic on the actual battlefields.

On Tue, 22 Oct 2024 20:58:07 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> On 22 Oct 2024 17:34:50 GMT, rbowman wrote:
>
>> The problem lies with differentiating between the care of the old and
>> infirm and the support of generations of an underclass.
>
> A nation’s most valuable asset is its people. Like it or not, the
> “underclass” seems to be where most of the future population is coming
> from, in many countries, as the birth rate among the affluent elite
> drops below the replacement level. So if you don’t invest in that
> “underclass”,
> your nation will end up with no future. QED.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-38GX2YQig

Quite a bit of investment has been made in that dusky underclass for
seventy years with little to show for it than riots when a drugged up
felon dies during an arrest. I fear you are correct and there is no
future. Not my problem.

On Tue, 22 Oct 2024 20:51:37 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> On 2024-10-22, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
>
>> We can build better statues out of spare parts.
>>
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_the_Rockies
>
> Thanks for that. We went through Butte this summer, but missed it.
> Time for a return trip.

Kind of hard to miss :) If you do return try to have your trip coincide
with either the Montana Folk Festival or An Ri Ra, the Irish festival. The
former is good exercise since the venues are distributed up and down the
hill.

I've never done the tour. I did hike toward the site on the Continental
Divide trail from Homestake Pass but realized there was a closer
trailhead. The politically correct explanation is it's a woman in pioneer
dress in honor of the early settlers and not the BVM. Yeah, right.

On Tue, 22 Oct 2024 20:51:36 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> On 2024-10-21, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 21 Oct 2024 19:33:03 GMT, rbowman wrote:
>>
>>> Add up all those milliliters and pretty soon you have another bottle
>>> of booze to sell.
>>
>> Make them say “millilitres” first ... if they can’t, don’t sell it to
>> ’em ...
>
> Easy. It's pronounced "see see".

Yeah, we can do that...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kTx5MzRanI

On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 00:27:23 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> And, of course, the planet _is_ finite...

The concept of a “resource” is not finite, though: it’s whatever you can
persuade someone to pay you for. The whole idea of “added value” is about
creating additional resources, that didn’t exist before, out of existing
ones.

On 23 Oct 2024 00:38:20 GMT, rbowman wrote:

> Quite a bit of investment has been made in that dusky underclass for
> seventy years with little to show for it ...

Look at your existing affluent elite, and note how many of them originated
from that very underclass. Seventy years is way too long to go without
such replacement becoming inevitable.

In short, the very viability of the society you live in is crucially
dependent on the existence of that underclass.