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Non-complaint: They caught it!
https://news.sky.com/video/moment-spacex-successfully-catches-returning-rocket-booster-13232902
Non compliant I am asked to work today. Complaint; I'm going to miss football.
That was pretty amazing!
In my college, we used an IBM 4341, which had a maximum memory capacity of 16 MB.
In my first job out of college, I started writing assembler and COBOL code on an IBM 370/158, which only had a maximum memory capacity of 4 MB.
Back in those days, you had to manage your base registers carefully or you'd run out of core. Your program would crash, and you might leave a file only half-updated. Compiling a program was done with a compiler which would read in your code and produce "object code". The next step would be to "link" your code into what we called a "load module". The load module was the executable version of the code.
Some programs needed one or more TRANSLATOR steps at the beginning; before the compiler step. For example, if you had a program that needed to present a screen on somebody's display, that code might need to go through a CICS translator, to produce compilable cobol statements. If you were querying a database, you might need a database translator step in there too. Things could get complicated. In the new era, I believe translation is all built into the modern compiler's abilities. Lots of things can be done dynamically now too, so you don't have to run "batch compiler" jobs like in the past.
Today's IBM mainframe is the /Z series, and according to the Google mashine, can be rigged for running with up to 64 TB of memory.
Fun Fact: If you run IBM's virtulization OS, z/VM, then you can run Linux on a mainframe. On a big mainframe, you can run dozens, and maybe HUNDREDS of Linux instances on one mainframe machine.
Fun Fact 2: In "the old days", hard drives were big refrigerator sized cabinets with one drive platter+head assembly, called an "HDA" (Head Disk Assembly). Today's mainframe drives are disk arrays that basically look like big NAS racks on the computer floor (maybe all fitting into one or two 19" wide racks next to each other), and they have what are essentially dozens of 3.5" drives mounted in the array. I believe they can be rigged up with SSDs or HDDs.
Fun Fact 3: In "the even older days", we used magnetic tape a lot more than we used disk. It was an art to code for tape, because you had to find the records you wanted to read or change by starting at the beginning and reading forward until you found the record with the key you were looking for.
Fun Fact 4: In the "old kingdom days", we used cards with holes punched into them, and we carried them around in big boxes to keep them in order. Each card represented one record. A card deck could contain data or programming code. To have the code physically printed at the top of a card was called "Interpreting" the card, and would be done only with card decks that might need to be read by humans for one reason or another. There was also paper tape, which is just what it sounds like: tape made of paper with holes punched in it.
I'd rather live in the current era. My first music keyboard, a Roland JV-50 I bought around 1995, could read and write to a 3.5" floppy disc. My next keyboard, a Korg Triton, could write to a floppy disk OR a SCSI hard drive. My newest music keyboards have something around 12-13 MB of memory and can accept USB thumbsticks. I expect in just a few years, keyboard makers will build WIFI and web browsers right into them.
Those old days of carrying a "MediSpan" tape into the computer room to have the latest drug contraindications added to the pharmacy database are long gone. But at least in part, they made me into the technician I still am today. What a ride it has been!
@Subtropic Pixel:
My first brush with computers was when I worked in the shipping room of a nurse's uniform company. I had often need to interact with the computer programmer there. I remember the punchcards, and the large disk trays for the IBM computers. That was in the late 1970's and early 1980's. In the late 1980's, I bought a Commodore 64 for my wife, who used it for wordprocessing and spreadsheets. I remember the tape drive, so slow, reading SAM (Sequential Access Memory - used in tape systems) rather than RAM. I used it for playing games (my favorite was Crossbow). We soon got a floppy disc drive. Then later, a 3.5" floppy drive. Then I read in the manual that you could make it do things. By 1993, I earned my AS in computer science. I believe it was after that when Bill Gates made that famous remark. By the late 90's, we already outgrew the basic (no pun intended) need for only 64K. Then the Internet happened.
This has been a fun ride, has it not?
A ride down memory lane, in multiple meanings of that noun.
At FIT at the end of the '60s the college needed to transfer it's student records from the IBM-1130's disks, to their new computer in their new building, the "Science Tower" (image below). The old computer room was the basement of one of the student dorms. Not at all designed for computers of that era. Thick heavy computer cables laying across the floor, ready to trip the inattentive. Jury rigged 220v power & air-conditioning, and clumsy arrangements of student work desks, keypunches, card sorters, etc. Whereas, the spiffy new computer room was a properly designed area on the first floor, with a proper raised false floor, windows with a view of the campus, and with proper A/C and power connections. The new computer was a Xerox* Sigma 5. I can't remember the specs but it was heads and shoulders above the IBM-1130. The hard drive was an SDS "RAD" (Random Access Device) with one massive quarter inch thick metal platter (image below). It also had a programmable beeper in the console. That's where I first heard music played from a computer. Accomplished by beeping the beeper at various computer timed frequencies to play recognizable commercialized music.
It took a whole reel of magnetic tape running in a special super fast mode to send enough data to the beeper to make the music for only about 90 seconds (essentially rewind speed). But I digress.
Moving the student data from the IBM-1130 to the Sigma5 required punching out all the student data onto punch cards in binary (utilizing all 12 rows on the card, 1.333 columns per 16-bit word) to be read in by the Xerox. No internet, no direct connection, incompatible disk drives, no tape drive on the IBM. Cards were the only commonality. That process took weeks and LOTS and LOTS of cards. Binary punched cards are flimsy and prone to damage by jamming in the punch or reader. You haven't lived until you've had to pull out fragments of a laced computer card from a complex mechanical machine and piece them back together to permit you to manually repunch a copy of the damaged card.
One needed to be patient and precise back then, do-overs were time consuming.
*Xerox: aka XDS (Xerox Data Systems), aka originally SDS (Scientific Data Systems)
The BASIC programming language was my first programming language. My introduction to computers came at a time when BASIC was becoming archaic, but because the urban shool district was underfunded and whatnot, the technology was at least one generation behind suburban school districts. So they still had computers with BASIC and even had BASIC textbooks lying around. Some of the Macmillan math textbooks had code samples in the back. But in some ways this was a good thing because I experienced some of the last computers that offered full access to the hardware, before they became the media consumption devices they are today, heavily limited to the point that sometimes you can't even install a different operating systems without doing something to the BIOS.
Over time I learned that the version of BASIC on these "IBM compatible" computers was not basic at all. With the PEEK and POKE commands, one could read and write directly to RAM memory. And at that time, a portion of the RAM was allocated for the video hardware. That meant writing to that part of RAM could directly control the display, writing text or turning pixels on and off. And the IN and OUT commands allowed direct access to ports, enabling a person to read and write data to the hardware connected to the computer. One could directly program a printer, robot arm, disk drive or anything else. I had big plans to reprogram one of our robots that had what appeared to be a laser attached to it. They didn't let me program the robot. Some nonsense about me being crazy and Skynet. They don't know what they're talking about. And the team they chose didn't exactly win any robotics competitions.
Anyway, I think I'll go back to my 2024 computers where the only thing you can do is change the volume level on YouTube.
Oh, I remember PEEK and POKE, on the C=64! I also wrote something that showed bar graphs, in color, that were actually driven by data. BASIC was my first one, too. Later, when I got my first IBM compatible XT, there were DOS Batch files as well as BASIC. Then, something called 4DOS came out, a third party replacement for the DOS operating system. Pretty cool at the time. I wrote a 4DOS batch file system that was like a front end for my games. A menu to choose which game, then it accessed the proper archiving program (there were many competing apps - ZIP seemed to win the war) to "unzip" the game, and run it. When I quit the game, it saved the progress and score, then re-zipped it, and went back to the menu. The 4DOS allowed one to use different colors for the text, on one screen, and ASCII graphics, and rudimentary music. Beeps, really, but you could make actual notes, and use musical timing (quarter beats, half beats, etc.). I made a Jeapardy tune play while waiting for the menu choice. And when quitting the meny system, it played the Looney Tunes song, then quit. It was fun!
Egads, you've got me remembering things from 60 years ago. In the mid '60s, FIT was a very small and new and poor college. I remember that the old computer room in the basement of the dormitory, was originally set aside as the student TV room. They put a b/w TV and some folding chairs down there and rigged an antenna on the roof of the 3-story dorm to get reception from the Orlando stations (FIT is in Melbourne on the east coast about 60 miles away) That's where, we watched the orginal Star Trek broadcasts.
But then the IBM-1130 was donated to the college and they needed a place to put it. So, we lost our TV room, but gained a computer. For some it was a headache. For me it was a career.
Just got a box of hot pockets. None of them have the microwave sleeve that I thought usually comes with them.
WOW, Nice.
Well, that is scary. Good luck.
...hmm all the discussion about the new changes has pushed the thread to page 2. Need to change that...
A box of pockets.
filled with boxes full of pockets
holding boxes that contain
yet more pockets of boxes
full of pockets.that are brimming
with boxes of pockets.
it's late and I had a somewhat exasperating day.
Autumn weather is here.
...happened here late Monday night Portland style with plenty of wet after a beautiful weekend..
Next week Tuesday night/Wednesday morning it supposed to drop down into the upper 30s. Time to pull the quilt out of storage, move the Hawai'ian shirts to the back of the closet and the heavier clothing to the front, as well as lay in a supply of hot cocoa.
I haven't seen any northern lights here. Cloudy.
Autumn is poking around here too.
I went to breakfast with my symphony buddy yesterday (Tuesday). He also drove me to my GP doctor appointment. Both my GP, and my Cardiologist seem to think I'll survive for at least three more weeks so they've filled up my dance card again with at least one doctor appointment or medical test per week from now till then. GP gave me a prescription for Nitroglycerin tablets to calm my heart, as needed. Haven't needed them yet,
but I'm staying calm and not thinking of running any marathons anytime soon.
Then I checked my calendar into November and discovered that I also have a dentist appointment the week after those. (*sigh $$$*)
Silly me, thinking I'd be able to save some money this month.
And I still have to decide on a new Medicare plan for next year.
My only consolation is that when the time comes, if I die at the right time, my creditors won't get their money. Mwa-ha-ha.
Non-complaint: Wheee..., today is payday. SS deposit is in the bank. I'm rich again for a few hours.
Thanks lost his right arm! But unfortunately he still had his left hand. He uses his left hand for the infinity gauntlet.
Complaint: I just found out that the DAZ+ membership will be monthly going forward. That's more than three times what I paid for it last December (on sale, of course) but even more than the full annual was without the sale. I can't do that, so I'll lose the membership.
Me: "Your meter is saying that my electricity use in October was higher than it was during July, when it was 90-100 outside every day and I was running two air conditioners."
Xcel: "Well you must be using more electricity now. Have you considered using less electricity?"
Me: "There's no logical reason I'd be using more electricity now than at any point in the ten years I've lived here, especially in the one month where it's still light outside after work and cool enough to not run any cooling devices. Last October my usage was <kilowatt hours>."
Xcel: "Well if the meter was broken it would tell us."
I'm sure it would. "Hey, you're charging this person too much, please come out and put a stop to that," said no meter or person ever.
So I'm just going to get sucker punched for an extra $10-15 a month now. Or as the old SNL skit goes...
"We realize that, every so often, you can’t get an operator, or for no apparent reason your phone goes out of order, or perhaps you get charged for a call you didn’t make. We don’t care! We don't have to! We're the phone company!"
Boy, it's quiet in here. One post after mine all evening so far. And nothing in any of the other threads I follow.
I think it's due to a combination of the feathers ruffled by the major changes in DAZ Studio, some impressive thread killing, and perhaps some people who only reply to certain other people or only reply to certain types of comments.
...yeah, this thread ended up on page 2 a couple times over the last week..
It's weird to me that video games, even ones that are free to play, can just blatantly lie about what kind of game they are. I've seen dozens of ads for Hero Wars, but I can't say with any kind of confidence that I know what the actual gameplay is like. It's to the point that there are games that advertise themselves as actually being the type of game that other games claim to be like, and EVEN THEN THEY AREN'T.
there was at least one game I would play more if they were honest from the beginning on what the game was mainly about.
Um, I don't know why.
Ich bin müde. That means I have been tired or something like that.
I hate those misleading adds. I mean if the kind of game that you are advertising is appealing to players, why not offer that game?
I tried to stop posting spontaneously because I end up with a string of consecutive posts.
I don't expect replies to my posts, I'm just eating bandwidth with unimportant stuff, knowing that nobody really cares anyway, but hoping to give a chuckle to someone, or wave the flag of "Hey, it's just life, everybody's got one".
Whenever I try to get serious about anything, I get my hand slapped.
Better to be mundane than shushed. This is the ONLY place that I post things on the Internet.
My only place to let people know I exist.
So, I appreciate the tolerance (such as it is) of the moderators to let us have this little playroom.
But yeah, the atmosphere at DAZ is becoming murky. (Oops, getting serious. Stop it LG, just stop it.)
And where would I be without the emoticons?
And now for something completely different, and breaking my rule on not consecutively posting ('cause I meant to do this today anyway)
Take a listen: "Mid-afternoon of a Faun"
by Claude Debussy.
Ah,... so is that's what they call a "Smart Meter"?
I've got a "Smart Phone" will it be having my conversations for me?