digitalsankhara

Same! Also built external peripherals for my ZX81.

Like it!

After drinking the ale, the FORTH person says "bye".

Then a FORTH person walks into the same bar...

"cold temperature ale drink"

to which the bartender replies "go you here". The janitor smiles as no sweeping required on a clean stack.

It's interesting that today Radio China International is everywhere on shortwave.

Totally agree. Thought about this myself, as a way of having true community radio. A simple hobby broadcast license of low cost might be pooled to cover copyright music only to prevent the types raids of seen on pirate stations (leaving aside what politics can be read into that enforcement). Maybe that would not be such an issue these days, but anyway, there is a lot of Creative Commons content out there.

I love listening to the North Sea pirates on medium wave. So diverse and ecletic!

You covered all the points I was going to make. As part of the pre-internet generation that grew up with radio and a ham radio operator since my school years this is second nature and common sense to me.

It is interesting that governments have long recognised the power of shortwave such that they have restricted what a citizen can do with it. In wartime, ham radio is usually made illegal. The recipient of a broadcast cannot be detected (save some very local factors - meters range) which is why governments around the world still use shortwave number stations to transmit coded instructions to spies.

I suspect the removal of AM radio in EVs is also because the cost to RF shield the car against EM emissions in that frequency range was deemed too high for the audience it would address, and maybe just lazy or engineering too. Agree, very short sighted.

Hell, even the BBC in the UK is closing down local AM transmitters on cost grounds (but I suspect there is political pressure to move the masses to digital UHF infrastructure).

A medium wave/shortwave transmitter is the ultimate in post apocalyptic film memes!

Is not the height that gets me, it is the edges!

I do some personal work in MacOS 9 on a MacBook Pismo and use the standard Platinum sounds at a low sound level. I personally find the little click and chirp soundtrack quite useful as audio feedback. Though if I were to do this in the office, for the sake of my personal safety, I think I would wear headphones!

I find Bertrand Meyer's Effiel System very compelling. The design by contract methodology is baked into the language. I did try a DBC library [1] for Python but eventually gave up trying to build it into my work. Not because there is anything wrong with that library, but the extra syntax "mess" that results from the bolt on nature that the library provides to Python in order to work became too much for me in the end.

[1] https://github.com/Parquery/icontract

I am old. And fashioned. "a b * c +" rules! :-)

Have you heard of PickOS [0]? Maybe similar to what you are describing. I admit I just read the first couple of paragraphs of the article and thought, yeah - PickOS vibes.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pick_operating_system

For you maybe, otherwise a very broad sweeping statement.

I spent a fair bit of my career in that sort of environment writing embedded software on MSDOS. Have fond memories of that but I wonder if I re-created that today would I be able to mentally cope? Might be the technology equivalent of becoming a monk in remote Tibet with the same needed commitment and rewards.

A younger self used to look forward to the latest (paper) shareware catalogue arriving by (snail) mail, posting back the order form and waiting for the floppies to arrive. True story :-)

To be fair I think MacOS classic (i.e. MacOS 9 et.al) was well thought out and usable IMHO.

There can only be one OS/2 :-)

Would really like to have a dedicated DuckDB version of this please. Also, add in a few simple tools for analytics - basic chart, pivot table tool, ETL etc. Nothing fancy, just enough to scope out the data before building pipelines/reports etc.

No rush - tomorrow is fine :-)

Thanks.

In the US more than likely. In the UK I'm not so sure (can't speak to Switzerland) as there is a healthy community radio scene who may have some democratic influence. There are mutterings of trying to close UK FM broadcasting as well in order to force DAB. I'd like to think there would still be some spectrum allocated for that. If not, the pirates would take over - and good luck to them.

This wholesale move away from simple, analogue radio infrastructure (AM/FM/SW radio) is a disaster waiting to happen in the event of a major regional/global catastrophe.

Most amateur organisations would not even think about trying to experiment with WBFM anyway - too obsessed with ultra-narrow digital modes.

Maybe, when most regions follow suit. Hate the idea of FM broadcasting turning off. Still, would love some ham radio wideband spectrum. Then people driving to work can listen to the likes of me droning on about <insert favourite ham radio topic here>.

Personally I think they should expand community radio wholesale if national broadcasters cannot be arsed.

I am a fan of Joe Editor and the jstar "mode". Works well for me in SSH/Terminal sessions and where I need a bit more than nano. Also puts me left field of the vim vs emacs debate. :-)

Thank you for this. It lives! I will try these forks out. Don't you just love open source!

They did yes, after quite a few funding campaigns targeted at their users. I felt quite bitter about that and I fell for the hype myself.

I used, and liked, the predecessor called Revolution which was closer to the original HyperCard ethos. They are now stuffing so much into LiveCode it feels lost in itself. As a company I find them all over the place with this product.

Ah, yes. I see that now. Thank you.

I have not heard that before. My somewhat litteral spectrum disorder brain implies the bridge is burnt before it is crossed.

Common ones I hear are "I'll cross that bridge when I come to it" - to delay an action or decision and "Don't burn (all) your bridges..." - leave a path open for a reversal.

I have been waiting for someone to re-invent PickOS [1] but with a PG heart and a multiuser shell with PL/pgSQL as first class CLI language or some modern form of Pick/BASIC :-)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pick_operating_system

Give it time my friend. Give it time. Now, if the headline is that Voyager 1 has been mysteriously upgraded and is transmitting a 5TW signal and appears to be heading back, then do please do the 'aliens' thing.

I do like this reasoning. Magic within the machine for me was programming forth as part of my post grad (controlling and processing proton precession magnetometers) and the device was a Triangle Digital Services (now defunct as a viable company I think) TDS2020 forth SBC.

Almost a zen like experience - you, the machine and your focus. No world.

I'd have called it COBWEB :-)

I think there was also COBOLSCRIPT (sp) a few years ago, which, IIRC was a COBOL -> JS converter.

I don't remember the name of the MSDOS shareware vendor, but they had a monthly catalogue which was sent out by post.

Each item had a pretty good description and I'd spent hours reading through the catalogue trying to visualise what the software would do.

Then I'd fill in the order form, post it back with payment and wait a week or so for the floppies to arrive. That did not seem slow to me - it was my normal.

I remember the excitement of installing the software and learning via the README.TXT files.

I had a distant memory about this Mac based spreadsheet/database thing but could not remember its name (Panorama). Couldn't surface it in searches either. Thought about it the other week and here we are!

Odd pricing though = pay in advance credits. Ummm, not something I'd like to use for work when I'm in the middle of an important analysis with a deadline and I (inevitably) run out of credits and have to start faffing about with in-app purchases. Maybe its not that bad and I'm being unfair.