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Quote: So you infiltrate them and have a good eye on them?
OK why?
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Ah, ok. Communists without guns would not have been our customers at that time. 
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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Very well said. It's hard to convey that to someone who hasn't done so but what you wrote really resonated with me. Still go as often as I can. And I loved Doom, but not even close.
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Password managers. Before hackers used to have to hack my accounts individually but now they can access all of my credentials in a single convenient attack.
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PeejayAdams wrote: What does it for you?
Self driving cars. SpaceX landing the first stage. On a barge. In the friggin' ocean!
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I get the opposite feeling: Whenever I look at code I wrote say 10 years ago, I go: "Blimey! I would never, EVER do it that way now. Whatever was I thinking? That's not code, that's black magic!" 
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
Anonymous
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The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine
Winston Churchill, 1944
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Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.
Mark Twain
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The Dazzle Kaleidoscope program. For its time, you could tell that every single line was hand-crafted assembly because it made all other programs feel super slow. Dazzle (1993) - YouTube
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Circa 1993 I was somewhat chuffed when I managed to render a Mandelbrot set in less than twenty minutes on a 386, so yes, that's pretty darned quick!
Something else that impressed me a lot in those days was Fractint which could render fractals in seconds rather than minutes by doing all the calculations with ints rather than floats.
98.4% of statistics are made up on the spot.
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I did, indeed, miss it but look forward to taking a look. Thanks!
98.4% of statistics are made up on the spot.
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For me, it has always been the game StarFlight. How did they get so much awesome gameplay and adventure on a 3 1/2 inch floppy disk?
When you are dead, you won't even know that you are dead. It's a pain only felt by others.
Same thing when you are stupid.
modified 19-Nov-21 21:01pm.
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Yes, there have certainly been some "how on earth did they fit that in there?" games over the years. Some of the 16k Spectrum things are amazing - Way of the Exploding Fist is a nice example.
98.4% of statistics are made up on the spot.
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The thing that most makes me go "Wow" is how my GPS device can plan a route through real-world roads and take into account all the traffic laws, such as where you're not allowed to turn left, and such. Amazing!
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... and then direct you into a river and give up ... 
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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First time I saw a blinking cursor on a green CRT screen, press a key on the keyboard and the character appears on the screen. I said the myself, "Wow!" 
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The first time I spent a day on a green CRT, I said "Wow! That's what I call eye-strain!"
I used to hate those things with a passion, the amber ones were so much nicer to work with but everywhere had those horrible green ones.
98.4% of statistics are made up on the spot.
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I hear ya, staring at greet CRT all day is stressful. Now a day, I can't even code on 2 27" LCD. I must have a 55" 4K and set the font size to 150% or 12Pts font. Still going home with blurry vision every day.
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I've not got quite that bad but I do find myself struggling a bit with eyestrain from 27's these days. This job certainly isn't good for the eyes (or your health in general, for that matter).
98.4% of statistics are made up on the spot.
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Pretty much anything.
Wow, how can a computer compute?
Wow, how can a (cell) phone, or computer for that matter, connect to any other device anywhere in the world in milliseconds?
Wow, how can we build big ass skyscrapers with all kinds of fancy architecture?
Wow, how could the early civilizations do pretty much the same without all our fancy technology?
Wow, how can Google calculate the shortest or fastest route from anywhere to anywhere by car, public transport, bike or foot (and so accurately)?
Wow, how can anyone write decent code in JavaScript? Actually, I haven't seen this for myself yet and I'm not ready to believe this exists.
Wow, how can Google search through millions of websites for some random string in milliseconds.
Wow, you already mentioned Shazam, who does the same but with music, WOW!
I know it's all perfectly logical.
Some physics, some chemistry, some math...
But wow.
And that's just some human achievements.
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Cryptography - I've never had the math to understand it.
Flight control for aircraft - I was involved with one project and it's scary stuff. Lots of complex, high-rate data acquisition coupled with complicated math. In that software, if there was a bug that let the aircraft go unstable, the pilot died 2-3 seconds later.
Software Zen: delete this;
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I don't think I'd ever get a wink of sleep if I worked on stuff like that.
98.4% of statistics are made up on the spot.
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We actually built a software emulator of the flight control system for the purpose of validating the system's design. Our emulator could be 'flown' in ways that a normal flight test would not allow. Still scary stuff (if we missed something  ), but a step removed from direct responsibility for the pilot's safety.
As I recall we only found two or three minor design errors, none of which had flight safety concerns.
Software Zen: delete this;
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How about a software control a eye surgical laser. One fault move and the patient lost a sight. Which why it takes 2 years develop and 4 years testing.
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I've had laser eye surgery.
I am a software developer.
And I've thought about that exact same thing. When I had the laser beaming into my eyeball.
Not a pleasant thought to have at that exact moment.
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