GnarfGnarf

LSP = Language Server Protocol

I'm working on a project to 3D-print tablets of text, press them onto clay slabs, and fire the latter in a kiln. Should preserve the information, such as biographies, for as long as Babylonian tablets.

I worked for Sperry Univac 1974-79, in Halifax, Montreal and Calgary. I was an "SA", Systems Analyst at the service of the Sales team. It was a lot of fun. The Univac salesmen were the cowboys that didn't fit in at IBM. When preparing benchmarks, money was no object, we had lavish expense accounts. In the Oil Patch I saw $100K deals signed during coffee break.

One of Univac's problems was the proliferation of operating systems for the different incompatible architectures. There was Exec 8 for the premier 1100 series (36-bit); OS/4, OS/3, OS/7 and later VS/9 (formerly RCA's TSOS then VMOS) for the 9000 series (32-bit); also the 418 and 494 real-time OS'es (18-bit words). Then there was the CADE 1900. All written in Assembler of course. We even had Varian in the branch, with salesmen from the different product lines competing for business.

All this duplication resulted in overhead and squandering of programmer resources.

After the Burroughs merger, the joke was that UNISYS stood for "Univac is Still Your Supplier".

Too cheap... :o)

Funny airport call letters story: I once headed to Salt Lake City, UT (SLC) for a conference. My luggage was processed by a dyslexic baggage handler, who sent it to... SCL (Santiago, Chile).

I was three days in my jeans at business meetings. My bag came back through Lima, Peru and Houston. My bag was having more fun than me.

There should be an intermediate syndicate that charges me micropayments for every article I choose to read, then charges one lump sum to my credit card at the end of the month. And also remits payment to each newspaper or Website.

I would love to subscribe to a syndicate that accumulated micropayments for each article I choose to read, then charged my credit card one lump sum at the end of the month.

I don't want subscriptions to specific newspapers. There are not enough hours in the month to take advantage of all of them.

I got a demo in Cupertino, and was blown away. I’m not a sports fan, yet I would get one of these to watch sports games. The realism is mind-blowing. One second you’re behind Team A’s net and watch the oncoming attack. Next second you’re at the other end. It’s better than being there in person. If they can figure out how to keep up with a running attacking player, that’s the killer app.

How is this still happening? We discovered this in Canada in the 1970's. Except in our case, the Urea Formaldehyde foam was giving off formaldehyde gas.

Historians describe that Russian peasants pre-1917 were basically living in Medieval conditions. Russia didn't adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1918! As flawed as Communism is, it did lurch Russians into the 20th century.

The Tsar and the aristocracy failed at their job. They deserved their fate, to be fired. Maybe Communism was the only way to drag Russian society, kicking and screaming, into the modern era that other European nations had attained, centuries earlier.

Unfortunately, Communism does not have the checks and balances of Capitalism, and it lends itself to abuse by tyrants and dictators.

I've been happily programming since 1965, and I've been doing C++ since 1995. There is still so much to learn, it's never stopped being fun. However, Apple Notarization may just be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

Heroin or C++?

Dreary film.

In the 60's I hacked the Montreal Metro's transfers, and rode free. The punched holes recorded time and date code.

Thanks for the clarification. I think STL is the greatest thing since sliced bread. The time I have wasted in the 90’s debugging malloc/realloc/free rat’s nests for dynamic arrays, I could have put to better use. Thank god for vector/deque etc.

I work isolated. I didn’t learn about STL until years later,

What’s wrong with STL?

That’s because your computer is a hobby, and mine is a business. My customers use Windows and macOS. They have happily paid for my house, my car and my retirement. :o)

Why would anyone use anything other than UTF-8 in this day and age?

Windows took a gamble years ago when the winner was not obvious, we’re stuck with UCS-2, but you can circumvent that with a good string library like QT’s Qstring.

I use Qt, and I have to get my binary Notarized by Apple.

That is correct.

No, Apple will detect and suppress malware as part of the vetting process.

As much as I hate to submit to Apple having to Notarized my software, I have to admit that it’s a useful measure to detect and prevent malware. The end user is protected by Apple’s “Good Housekeeping” seal of approval.

It won’t run on another user’s computer unless it’s been Notarized.

I haven’t written a GOTO since 1992, when I needed a common exit to free memory that couldn’t be accommodated on the tiny 4K stack of Turbo C / 16-bit.

I have never experienced the need for a ‘goto’ otherwise.

Now, 1970’s COBOL, that was another story.

To those who complain about the poor documentation: that's the whole point. The maintainer offers consulting services ($5,000/yr.). It is in his interest that users should need his help.

It's worth it for commercial customers. It's a fair business model for an Open Source project.

The Franciscan priests deserve eternal ignominy for destroying these priceless and irreplaceable books.

You can download all your data from the Apple Website. Heartbeat, GPS etc. are plainly available. I wrote an app that converts Lat/lon to distance traveled.

My Apple Watch tracks Afib (atrial fibrillation) much more consistently and reliably than my Charge 5 did.

For example, the Apple Health App automatically talks to my dieting app, so when I walk, I get credit for the calories.

I couldn’t get the Afib tracker working consistently on my Fitbit Charge 5. Had to switch to an Apple Watch and an iPhone. Much more reliable.