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You forced me to login, just so I could upvote this!
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The place I'm working at is about to phase out a product introduced in 2002 running on a 4-bit MCU (the assembly for which is kinda fun to write). Not even phasing out, merely about to phase out. Yeah, and we got heaps of said MCUs on storage because the vendor of that MCU has long quit delivering them because why the hell would anybody use such an ancient product for realsies?
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Quote: 4-bit MCU (the assembly for which is kinda fun to write).
Wow, that's interesting.
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Don't tell me that someone out there is still using Intel 4004s!  
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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I'm afraid I don't know. The MCU I'm talking about is some NEC.
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Chris Maunder wrote: All types of toilets,
OK, since nobody else has taken the bait:
If the toilets were stolen, the police would have nothing to go on. 
(Now ask me what would happen if their dog-walking equipment was stolen.)
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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I am curious, what would happen if their dog-walking equipment was stolen?
Hang on a minute that sounds like a lead to another joke...
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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I guess I'd argue that it's not so much a "age of the system" problem as it is an administrative problem. If you're going to present an enumerated list of options as the user's only interface, someone has to administer that list to current--has nothing to do with how old or new the system is.
Maybe one way it could be argued that it's somewhat an "old system problem" is the interface itself--instead of a drop-down, maybe a text box hooked to a service which offers suggestions based on what's been typed in so far.
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My postal zip code was changed by USPS 10 years ago. There's still websites that won't accept the "new" one. Maybe if I report my collection of cassette tapes stolen... 
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It sounds like the system is designed with the specific purpose of making it so difficult to file a report that you decline to do so.
Software Zen: delete this;
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You landed on one of the key elements of the Digital Transformation.
It's no longer just about IT, systems, solutions and code. It's actually the Data that is far more useful than the code itself as in the future, they might be no code at all 
With AI and ML trained to recognized patterns, basic (and not so basic) systems like robbery reports will be reduced to inference-engine driven Chatbots with no interface at all. You might even ask Alexa to report something was stolen with thousands upon thousands of synonyms meaning just a single object. Date and time might also be inferred by your response (e.g. "Late night yesterday my 2012 red Honda was stolen from my porch"). Cross reference will show what car type was it ("Honda Civic"), nameplate ("KFC-12345") and where's your porch (Alexa would know your address). Late night yesterday will be between 10:30pm and 12:00am as people will mention "after midnight" if it happened afterwards.
So, better buckle up, because "Coding… where we're going we don't need Code"
BTF: To be continued
BTF: Theme Song
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While tying up the reindeer, a shingle came loose.
This explains the dangling Clause.
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GoG is giving away Postal 2[^] probably one of the most disturbing first person shooter available (you can use a flamethrower to set fire to Gary Coleman in order to get an autographed copy of his book, unless you want to stand in line waiting, or try to collect your pay cheque and buy some milk).
It's rude, it's not even slightly PC, and - yes - it's fun. I bought a copy years ago and completed it several times. I even bought milk once.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Clearly, I've been spoiled playing GTA5 (at 4K no less) as it makes this game look rather dated. Even though it's now well over 4 years old itself and no longer considered cutting edge.
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Yeah, Postal 2 was kinda ugly even when it was new and it hasn't aged gracefully either. On the other hand, it's fantastic where it counts, namely in the gameplay department.
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I've stuck for many, many years with Operation Flashpoint and nothing else. It goes back to 2001, and I must've played it for a full decade. By then it was looking very dated, and by today's standards, it looks laughably bad. But the gameplay...there's nothing else like it. Looking at it, you'd think it's just another shooter, but if that's how to approached the game, you would fail, and rather miserably. This is the game that put an end to first person shooters for me.
The Armed Assault series (aka ARMA) is the follow-up, but there's "something" missing that unfortunately fails at "simply upgrading the graphics", and that's all this game needed. I've never been able to quite put my finger on it.
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Philosopher David Dennet in "Consciousness Explained:" [^]Quote: When I interact with the computer, I have limited access to the events occurring within it. Thanks to the schemes of presentation devised by the programmers, I am treated to an elaborate audiovisual metaphor, an interactive drama acted out on the stage of keyboard, mouse, and screen. I, the User, am subjected to a series of benign illusions: I seem to be able to move the cursor (a powerful and visible servant) to the very place in the computer where I keep my file, and once that I see that the cursor has arrived ‘there’, by pressing a key I get it to retrieve the file, spreading it out on a long scroll that unrolls in front of a window (the screen) at my command. I can make all sorts of things happen inside the computer by typing in various commands, pressing various buttons, and I don’t have to know the details; I maintain control by relying on my understanding of the detailed audiovisual metaphors provided by the User illusion.
For every person who experiences interaction with the computer as a compelling illusion, there is a programmer for whom users are illusions, and there is a program manager for whom programmers are illusions 
More seriously, I think this omits the extent to which GUI skeuomorphism [^] (less fashionable since 1990) "anchors" the users' subjective experience to the functionality of "real-world things" ... a desk, a file cabinet, a ledger, etc. I keep waiting for the "killer" synthesis of voice recognition and (hands free) gesture recognition, and the whole hypothetical AI "bonanza."
«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali
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BillWoodruff wrote: I keep waiting for the "killer" synthesis of voice recognition and (hands free) gesture recognition
They're going to first have to determine which action to take given rude gestures:
me: *flips alexa the bird for responding to something I never asked it to respond to*
alexa: *apologizes profusely and offers to clean the bathroom for the next two weeks*
like that.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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Please no voice/gestures usage as the primary method of interaction. I can type on train just fine and I can read stuff on the screen while on train. I don't even want to imagine interacting with my laptop on train via voice/gestures. Neither do I want to imagine that in an office. Or at home, actually. I guess I wouldn't be bothered about such stuff at home were I living alone, but I'm not.
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Group meetings will look like the "conjuring" scenes from the Netflix OA series.
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I ain't got a witty reply to that, please accept a "that's an awesome mental image" from me!
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is it blows our unicode tables up
What we do when we have to insert surrogate characters into UTF-32 to support another 100,000 languages?
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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honey the codewitch wrote: What we do when we have to insert surrogate characters into UTF-32 to support another 100,000 languages?
Well, we should be able to meet the requirements for a secure password ...
Obligatory Dilbert[^]
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Given our current spaceflight capabilities, I doubt that this will be a problem for a long time. Any and all intelligent aliens are proving their intelligence by staying a long way from Earth. 
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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We have at least one already: Klingon Unicode Fonts[^]
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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