lebuffon

For perspective the first commercial radio station in the USA went on the air in late 1920. It was a societal revolution in information speed versus the telegraph->newspaper mode which was in itself a revolution.

I often wonder how many lay people understand that wifi, cell phone, GPS etc are "radio" communication.

And nostalgia is not as good as it used to be either. :)

I am still wondering how many other cancers are caused by viruses that we have not isolated or maybe choose not to search for because "conventional wisdom"

The trail of bread crumbs seems to be there. - HPV - Hep C - Human T-cell leukemia/lymphoma virus (HTLV)

Doctor: I've got good news and bad news. The good news is we have genetically modified you so that you will never get cancer.

Patient: What's the bad news?

Doctor: In about 8 months you'll be able to unzip your pants with your nose.

:-)

Krenshaw's classic version is available in C.

https://github.com/lotabout/Let-s-build-a-compiler

Everybody knows that CPU stands for:

   'C' Processing Unit

;-)

It's more involved than just left/right delay. We localize sound in the vertical direction and front and back as well.

This is accomplished by the delays created between direct into the ear sound and reflections off the outer ear folds.

These reflections create "comb" filters in the audio spectrum which we learn to associate with direction. Its remarkable.

A test to prove this was so was to fill the outer ear with plasticine and perform localization tests on subjects. They could not localize sound in that condition.

The early work as I recall was at the Heinrich Herz institute in the mid 1970s.

I am suspicious that part of what this article is reporting is due to phase cancellation effects causing similar filtration that people can hear as timbre change rather than actually detecting the time delay.

(Source: My recording engineering final paper)

20% might be high but in the absence of oxygen support most people over 65..70 will expire if they stay sick longer than a week with this damned virus.

I don't know the how big the senior population of Myanmar is but 10% is not unreasonable.

I wonder if old CRT televisions could be convinced to become memory devices?

Was it actually Pinochet who masterminded the coup? ;-)

I think that's because in the early decades Paul had the impression that the messiah was coming back any time now. Who needs children.

If you read his letters in chronological order (not bible order) you can see the wind come out those sails. :)

Last I checked Algeria has a bit of solar energy hitting it. :)

Sounds like programming. :)

...having enough experience to know what unwritten assumptions the O/S author, language author, spec writer has made.

Not sure we can say that.

Recent history (from memory) Roman invasion 55 CE. Saxon invasion 400..500 ? Viking Invasions 900...ish Norman invasion 1066

All of these invaders made big changes to the country including place names, laws and language.

And there is the archeological record of pre-historic gene lines that are extinct in England as well.

For sure feeding wrong args to a function is never good.

Experienced Forth users seldom have that particular argument count problem but all the other mistakes in programming are on the table. There is no free lunch.

The Forth coding process involves using interactive testing of your code as you write it. Every variable, constant, data-structure and sub-routine can be easily verified at the interpreter. And... given what you said it is advisable to do it. :)

ANS Forth supports local variables for those times when "stackrobatics" might make you crazy.

Although small, the Forth community has made good progress in this alternative way to code. Some of the newer concatenitive languages working with a clean slate have gone farther in improving the programmer interface. Forth remains at its core close to the metal.

Is a 1.2 million LOC large enough? https://ribccs.com/solutions/solution-candy Written in MPE VFX Forth, native code compiler for Windows.

*I have no connection to MPE UK but have used their cross-compilers in the past.

I take your point that it is not perfect but it is simpler than factoring where named data is required.

My experience is that when it doesn't work, it might indicate that the code is fighting with how Forth is easiest to use.

I try to use Forth per Chuck Moore's philosophy and use many small definitions. This makes the code more like functional programming such that even data is handled by code snippets. When I get this right, factoring becomes trivial.

Forth is the grand-daddy I believe. Kitten is a new one and pretty cool. (search Youtube for a demo)

Concatenative programming is interesting in that the arguments, in and out, are implicit because they typically reside on some form of stack or as objects on a stack. (implementation details)

It might sound useless but one benefit is it simplifies factoring code greatly. If you see a common phrase in your code repeated many times, you can just cut it, paste it into a new definition, replace all the instances of the common phrase with the new definition and everything still works as before.

Surprise. Fortran was used as well but Forth was used quite a bit by NASA. In some ways it is extremely auditable. A handful of assembler functions sit at the bottom the rest is Forth. Minimal numbers of variables in memory if code is written to use the data stack for inputs and outputs to functions. Much easier to certify than GCC. :-)

There were a number of Shuttle experiments where the control software was written in Forth. It gives you a control interpreter out of the box and also bit level access to hardware so you can write custom drivers and then script the hardware control in the functions you wrote or compile them where speed is required, using an 8K..12K kernel.

The Cassini probe used Forth software running on a Forth 2-stack CPU.

There are references in the bible to the "un-penetrable forests of Lebanon". That's on the order of 3K years ago.

I would think that the the cause is complex but humans removing trees until they are gone is probably part of the problem.

or Forth... :)

I don't know much about naming viruses but if Covid-19 is from 2019, then we might be able say with some validity that we are now encountering Covid-20 and the delta strain is Covid-21. That might explain some of the second infections. (?)

Since we are dealing with a corona virus and the common cold corona virus forms have been with us for many years I am not expecting that this will ever be completely gone, just managed.

An interesting development from Microsoft robotics team.

They appear to have pulled together a lot of ideas together that have been in use in commercial Forth systems for 25 years and added some cutting edge Forth ideas.

- implicit call bit. Important to manage code size in Forth where calls are used a great deal. (1st seen in Chuck Moore's silicon designs)

- sub-routine threading: faster than in-direct or direct threaded code

- tail call optimization, not often seen in Forth compilers

- umbilical architecture: compiler on host/code on target

- consistent RPN syntax

- quotations. Not standardized in Forth but implemented in multiple ways in various systems.

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: Revised Edition, Diamond

Interesting overview

There is a thing called a "tethered" or "umbilical" compiler in the Forth world where the target machine has nothing on it but a small comms program that is controlled by the IDE on the workstation. The IDE includes a way to kick off any piece of code interactively on the target from a command line but there is no actual REPL on the target machine, only the running code. This gives you a big IDE while running on a tiny target and reduces a lot of the crying shown in the cartoon. :-)

Is there something similar for other language environments?

Probably related to the way most people believe they are an "above average" driver. :)

Guns Germs and Steel, Diamond. From wikipedia synopsis:

"Diamond argues that Eurasian civilization is not so much a product of ingenuity, but of opportunity and necessity. That is, civilization is not created out of superior intelligence, but is the result of a chain of developments, each made possible by certain preconditions."

For example the mediterranean region had 5(6?) domesticated animals and had wheat,barley oats and spelt grains. Asia had rice.

The North Americans in contrast, had no domesticated animals and didn't get maize until shortly before the Europeans arrived.

Observation

IMHO This: :-) is an emoji. These new-fangled things on our phones are tiny pictures. As pictures they communicate differently than ascii characters because they are a different medium.

But that horse has left the barn...

;-)

I was implying that due to its Latin origin (?) it might be less familiar to non-native speakers.

Or... You think I know f__k nothing, but I know f__k all!

Amusing anecdote.

I was in a class with a Japanese instructor. I had a great deal of trouble understanding him. A hand was raised and a person began talking with a very different accent (Finnish) and I understood very little of that. The Japanese instructor understood the question and replied. I however understood almost nothing of the entire exchange. This may be the future for native English language speakers or perhaps is already the norm in some parts of the world.