1,025 karma · joined July 15, 2009
https://contrachrome.com/comic/page01/
"Leah Elliot documents how over the last decade, Google's browser has become a threat to user privacy and the democratic process itself. With her meticulous rearrangement of Scott McCloud's Google-commissioned Chrome comic from 2008, she delivers what she calls a much-needed update."
A few years ago I worked with a scientist who used a huge Fortran program with a long history. He described the lines in a text file that configured the program: "On the first card you put ... on the next card you put ..." They still call them cards! He was born after actual punch cards went out of use.
It has been discussed here several times:
See the links to a detailed architecture description from the book by Bell and Newell in my post at top level here. They thought it was a real computer -- just barely.
Bell and Newell write, "The Programma 101 (Chap. 19) is at the limit of what we call a stored program computer. It has a sufficient instruction set to be classified as a computer, but the storage for temporary data, constants, and programs is limited. ..." (from the beginning of Section 4 in the book, linked at Bell's web site, URL below)
Here is the HTML verson from Gordon Bell's website:
https://gordonbell.azurewebsites.net/Computer_Structures__Re...
Here are scans of the original book pages from a computer history site:
https://tcm.computerhistory.org/ComputerTimeline/Chap19_oliv...
Ray Charles Inducts Nat "King" Cole at the 2000 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony:
Software Against Humanity? An Illichian perspective on the industrial era of software https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/srk21/research/talks/...
De-Escalating Software https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/srk21/research/talks/...
The software developer Kartik Agaram cites Illich's 'Tools for Conviviality' as an influence on his Mu system:
The article does not mention the acclaimed big biography, Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War by Michael J Neufeld, from 2007. That book also takes a very critical look at Von Braun's Nazi past.
It's easy: at the command line, type ed draft.txt (or whatever file name you want). Then on a line by itself, type the a command (for append). Then, just type your draft. When you are done typing, type a period . on a line by itself. Then type w to save the draft in the file. Then type q to exit ed. Your draft is in the file draft.txt. In the old days, you would then have a scroll of teletype paper with your draft on it, that you would tear off and take away to review. Nowadays, you can use another command to print the draft.
Later you can do ed draft.txt again and use other ed commands to make corrections/revisions if you like.
Or, even simpler, just use the cat command. At the command line, type cat > draft.txt. Then type your draft. When you are done, type ctrl-D. That's it. Your draft is now in the file draft.txt. You can use cat draft.txt (without the > ) to see what is in the file.
To append more text later, type cat >> draft.txt - be sure you type two >> , if you type just one > you will erase what you have written and start over.
"Someone, in this case a customer though in other cases it has often been an employee, complains that something is badly amiss with some system, receives no redress, and finds that their reports are ignored. ..."
"I've noticed that responses to attempts to complain about uncorrected technical problems tend to take certain recurring forms ...
What has happened? Someone, in this case a customer though in other cases it has often been an employee, complains that something is badly amiss with some system, receives no redress, and finds that their reports are ignored. So they make noise about it. The response?
1. Misplaced accusations of uncooperativeness. ...
2. Condescending lectures about how `incredibly complicated' the systems in question are ... "
etc. See the post itself for much more:
Maybe Terry was making an inside joke?
Quammen has become well known as a writer on nature and the environment, but he started his career writing spy novels.
His earlier novel The Zolta Configuration (1983) is set in the atom bomb project during WWII. I recall Oppenheimer and his circle are characters.
But I had forgotten many of the details. Here is just one: in 3.1.1, Local State Variables, SICP shows how to, in effect, define classes and create objects using only function definition with lambda and set! (that is, assignment) in the definition body. The function you define this way is a like a class, the functions it returns are like instances. So you can do all this without any specifically object-oriented language features. This occupies just a few pages near the beginning of a long book - the whole book is dense with worked-out ideas like this.
I would add that the cumulative effect of all these examples in SICP is to demonstrate that you can solve any programming problem from first principles - that is, by combining a few simple but powerful constructs in the several ways they describe. Moreover, a solution constructed this way might be simpler and easier to understand than a solution made the more usual way: by looking for a specialized language construct or library that seems to offer an already-made solution to the problem.
(This is copied from a comment I made here several years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8495934)
I usually don't comment on social/political issues, but in this case I had a specific personal experience that was pertinent.
I am from Washington state. I was admitted to Caltech in 1968. In those days, we all had to take the SAT. The Dean of Students told me my math SAT score was lower than they liked to see, but they admitted me anyway. In my class there were two students from Washington state. I recall there were also two students from Washington state in the classes preceding and following mine.
I graduated from Caletch in 1972 with good grades, went on to graduate school and a rewarding career in science and engineering.
[edit] I just reread Bostonian's comment above. I should emphasize that I didn't get the impression from the Dean that Caltech felt it was "devaluing academic measures" by admitting me. There are lots of academic measures besides the SAT. The Caltech faculty and administration understood this 55 years ago.
https://mojim.com/usy129446x2x37.htm
Audio:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCFLanFgUPI (and many others)
Does this repo build a standalone OS the runs on a bare machine, or does it run in a VM like QEMU, or is it a Rust application program that runs hosted on a conventional OS?
I see a lot of value in this. It gives a step-by-step method that students can follow, which often works. The prevailing alternative seems to be, "Look at a lot of examples, pick one that looks similar to the exercise, and change it around by trial and error until it kind of works." This does not generalize to professional level programming either.
At this initial stage, the goal is to build the students' confidence that if they work systematically, they can solve problems. As their education and experience continue, they can take on more realistic problems and methods.
Often called PAIP. Uses Common Lisp to build classic symbolic AI programs, but has lots of good general advice on building big programs.