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Michael Kay

 Discussion on question by dave: Was s…

Imported from a comment discussion on retrocomputing.stackexch...
Michael Kay
Jun 11 09:13
Many users of COBOL in the UK would have been using ICL 1900 COBOL. The Centre for Computing History in Cambridge, UK, appears to have a paper copy of the manual: see computinghistory.org.uk/det/14954/ICL-1900-Series-COBOL - but no link to a digitised version.
Michael Kay
Jun 11 09:13
Going beyond COBOL, I seem to recall hearing that there was a convention to use a single column of a punched card (with 12 hole positions) for an amount in pence, representing 0-9 conventionally and 10-11 using the extra two positions.
Michael Kay
Jun 11 09:13
Indeed, both £2/3/4 and £2/3/4d might have been used on occasions, but they were not, IIRC, the most common forms. I think that for amounts exceeding £1, the form £2 3s 4d would be more common, while for amounts below £1, both 3s 4d and 3/4 were used. And don't forget halfpennies, of course.
 

 Discussion on answer by MadHatter: Ca…

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Michael Kay
Nov 5, 2024 12:13
When you say "It imposes, and allows of, no constraint in the application of this right" you're of course excluding the rather important constraint that you can't combine the free software with commercial software. Most people I work with consider that a rather fundamental limitation.
 

 Discussion on question by Eggy: Is it…

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Michael Kay
Sep 30, 2024 16:00
>"It would be unusual for a PhD student or scholar to seek copyediting of survey questions prior to posting them online. " Have things really sunk so low? Yes, I've often embarked on answering a survey that clearly hadn't been properly tested, and have ended up advising the author how to improve it, but the problems are usually deeper than mere copy-editing mistakes.
 

 Discussion on question by user77058: …

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Michael Kay
Aug 6, 2024 17:31
It's nothing to do with whether it's secular or religious, it's much more to do with the fact that attitudes shift over time, and we tend to think we are right and our great-grandparents were wrong, and our great-grandchildren will equally think that we were wrong and they are right. They may be as horrified by abortion as we are about slavery, we just don't know. We can try to find rules that are based on fundamental principles (like "love one another"), but when it comes to practical decisions like how to punish child molesters, there are different ways of interpreting those principles.
 

 Discussion on answer by ohwilleke: Do…

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Michael Kay
Jul 22, 2024 21:47
"Liability is universally waived". There are exceptions, depending on the jurisdiction. In the UK, if one party is a consumer, then the "unfair contract terms" law kicks in, potentially making such waivers void. And you can't waive your liability for personal injury or death. But where both parties are large corporations, it is assumed that they are free agents and are free to negotiate whatever division of the commercial risks they decide to agree on.
Michael Kay
Jul 22, 2024 21:47
ISO 9000 is a joke. It basically demands that everything you do is documented. You can do the wrong things and pass if your process manual says that's what you do, and you can do the right things and fail because your process manual doesn't say that's what you should do.
 

 Discussion on question by Ethan: Does…

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Michael Kay
Jun 13, 2024 19:15
In the UK there is a specific offence of "causing death by dangerous driving", which (I believe) is rather easier to prove than manslaughter.
 

 Discussion on answer by TimR: What do…

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Michael Kay
Apr 16, 2024 17:06
@TimR, Read my comment as "The remark about Montana zagging when others are zigging does not mean that Montana is unpredictable, it means that Montana is contrarian". (I'm afraid my comment duplicates what many others have said. I should have read more carefully.)
Michael Kay
Apr 16, 2024 17:06
It doesn't mean it's unpredictable, it means it's contrarian.
 

 Discussion on question by Titanium St…

Imported from a comment discussion on worldbuilding.stackexcha...
Michael Kay
Jan 7, 2023 21:33
It's not clear whether the question is talking about traffic analysis or about decrypting the message content, which makes the answers rather confusing. However, there's another defense against both, namely noise: send a lot of fake messages so the enemy doesn't know which messages are real.
 

 Discussion on question by Marcus: Wha…

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Michael Kay
Feb 8, 2022 20:23
It was lazy to set an exercise whose answer could easily be googled. It's part of doing an exercise like this that you search the web for information that can help you, and if your searches stumble on the exact same problem with code to solve it, what are you supposed to do: pretend that you didn't find it? Reuse is good programming practice. Design exercises that make your students think: it's harder work for you, but it's a lot more rewarding for everyone.
 

 Discussion on question by Mark Price:…

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Michael Kay
Oct 29, 2021 06:44
You will offend some people. Some people were offended by His Dark Materials. Personally (as a Catholic) I wasn't: on the contrary, I enjoyed the (unusual) experience of reading a novel in which the characters' lives had a strong spiritual element and which explored the relationship between forces of good and evil in a new way; the fact that institutional religion came out on the evil side was to me a powerful reminder that we can't take it for granted that good will always triumph.
 

 Discussion on answer by Kate Bunting:…

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Michael Kay
Oct 22, 2020 03:17
@gidds I've always thought en-GB was more inclined to run words together than en-US: "data base" was spelt as two words in America for years after it had become "database" in the UK.
 

 Discussion on answer by Konrad Rudolp…

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Michael Kay
Sep 18, 2020 01:41
I ran a programming course in Stuttgart a few years ago; those on the course all worked with each other daily, and spoke to each other informally as "du", but when speaking to me, they referred to each other formally as "meine Kollegin Frau Doktor Schmidt" etc.
 

 Discussion on question by Ubuntix: Ho…

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Michael Kay
Sep 18, 2020 01:37
I would ignore all advice from anyone who is not personally familiar with the social conventions in Germany, and more particularly, in German academia.
 

 Discussion on answer by Nelson: Is fi…

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Michael Kay
Jun 25, 2020 12:02
I would add: a CS degree teaches you meta-skills. It doesn't teach you the programming language you will need to use on your next project, but it teaches you how to learn that programming language, which is a much more valuable skill.
 

 Discussion on question by Ant_222: Do…

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Michael Kay
May 3, 2020 15:47
I agree that it's not ungrammatical for a "use" to "operate". It is ungrammatical to qualify "operate" with adjectives rather than adverbs ("uninterrupted", "error free"), but that error is so common and pervasive, especially in the US, that there's no point complaining about it any more.
 

 Discussion on question by Jamie F: Em…

Imported from a comment discussion on workplace.stackexchange....
Michael Kay
Apr 16, 2020 08:34
Are you're quite sure you're not just suffering from imposter syndrome?
 

 Discussion on question by csrowell: I…

Imported from a comment discussion on security.stackexchange.c...
Michael Kay
Jan 20, 2020 14:51
Great. I once used an HMRC form that didn't allow & or < in an otherwise free-format notes field. Total incompetence on the part of the people who designed the form, but at least they tell you. Now you're suggesting that the user should be allowed to type 500 words of text, and at the end they're just told that it's invalid, without saying why? Security doesn't mean making your site totally unusable.
 

 Discussion on question by JonathanRee…

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Michael Kay
Jan 9, 2020 15:42
I do this regularly with hotel bookings. Use a bookings site to search for a hotel, then phone them directly to make the booking. In that case I don't believe either I or the hotel are in breach of any terms and conditions. People making a profit as middlemen have to accept that they can be bypassed.
 

 Discussion on question by Michal: Is …

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Michael Kay
Jan 8, 2020 19:02
@Makyen "The company has a right to not provide service to anyone they choose, as long as it's not for an illegal reason." You're straying into complex territory there, and it's likely to vary by jurisdiction. Most countries have anti-discrimination laws. And in the UK (I'm told) you can sue if the supplier has abused a dominant position contrary to the prohibition imposed by section 18 (the Chapter II prohibition) of the Competition Act 1998.
 

 Discussion on question by Wiggo the W…

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Michael Kay
Nov 28, 2019 12:27
Getting data off an old fashioned mainframe 9-track magnetic tape would be seriously expensive nowadays. I expect there are still devices around but certainly not available for sale. (But of course adults are getting younger all the time. I have colleagues who have never seen a punched card...)
 

 Discussion on question by pErs0nZ: Ha…

Imported from a comment discussion on history.stackexchange.co...
Michael Kay
Nov 26, 2019 11:46
Overthrow of a monarch, or of a monarchy?
 

 Discussion on question by Allure: Why…

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Michael Kay
Sep 12, 2019 16:36
Not just buildings: how many staff and students did they have in the first (say) five years? In the UK, the University of Cambridge had an intake of 441 students in 1850, increasing to 3,480 in 2017.
 

 Discussion on answer by o.m.: Are the…

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Michael Kay
Aug 14, 2019 16:56
As regards the use of Nazi symbols, if there are uses that are legal, why did Microsoft reissue a symbol font (for "security reasons") to remove the swastika symbol?
 

 Discussion on question by Washington …

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Michael Kay
Aug 14, 2019 16:55
Interesting perspective. Over here in the UK we get the impression that in the US, if you mention in a pub that your neighbour is overweight, you are likely to get sued for libel.
 

 Discussion on answer by DJClayworth: …

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Michael Kay
Aug 12, 2019 22:43
You don't have to tip. I once refused to tip a taxi driver in Boston who spent the entire 30-minute journey with one hand on his phone and the other on the steering wheel. He objected, I said I was perfectly happy to tip drivers who kept their hands on the wheel, and he shrugged and accepted it.
 

 Discussion on question by derik: If s…

Imported from a comment discussion on opensource.stackexchange...
Michael Kay
Aug 7, 2019 15:43
I distrust Microsoft too, but if you release open source software then you run the risk that someone will do something illegal with it, and your only defence against that is through the courts. You've got to stop thinking of it as "yours": once it's open source, it's not really yours at all in any meaningful sense; it can be used and abused by anyone.
 

 Discussion on question by Vigenere: H…

Imported from a comment discussion on workplace.stackexchange....
Michael Kay
Jul 25, 2019 07:30
"I accepted a promotion and it didn't work out. I would prefer to go back to a purely technical role, doing what I'm good at and what I enjoy".
 

 Discussion on question by Richard U: …

Imported from a comment discussion on worldbuilding.stackexcha...
Michael Kay
Jul 13, 2019 03:59
There's a difference between book knowledge and practical skills. In our society, we might know in theory what to do, but no-one has any practical experience of creating advanced artefacts without the use of advanced tools, and bootstrapping from scratch would mean re-acquiring those skills from book knowledge alone, which would take a long time.
 

 Discussion on question by Erel Segal-…

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Michael Kay
May 14, 2019 17:41
No one ever says "no doubt" unless they are unsure of their facts. Some of these phrases mean the opposite of what they say. "It is easy to see that" means "I'm not going to explain this": ostensibly because the explanation is not needed, but quite possibly because the explanation is not easy.
 

 Discussion on question by hermann: Em…

Imported from a comment discussion on workplace.stackexchange....
Michael Kay
May 8, 2019 15:02
It would be interesting to know how many of Jane's coworkers are female. Is the culture one in which women are made to feel like outsiders?
 

 Discussion on question by ziulfer: As…

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Michael Kay
Apr 27, 2019 17:35
@AzorAhai a collection of people can be international, I find it hard to see how an individual can be. But yes, I've come across the American usage to mean "non-American" in the past. I still find it very strange.
Michael Kay
Apr 27, 2019 17:35
What is "an international"? Does it just mean non-American?
 

 Discussion on question by dogperson: …

Imported from a comment discussion on philosophy.stackexchange...
Michael Kay
Mar 2, 2019 17:37
It depends what you mean by "fallacy"... No, actually, it doesn't. Whatever this is, it isn't a fallacy. It may be a legitimate challenge to your argument, or a legitimate request for clarification, or it may be trolling, but whatever it is, it isn't a fallacy.
 

 Discussion on answer by Michael Kay: …

Imported from a comment discussion on politics.stackexchange.c...
Michael Kay
Jan 16, 2019 18:55
I read somewhere that most illegal immigrants enter legally and then overstay. I have no idea if that is actually true, but if it is, then a wall isn't going to stop them. The wall is essentially symbolic of an attitude.
 

 Discussion on question by nostalgk: C…

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Michael Kay
Nov 11, 2018 11:31
When I read the title I thought perhaps you might be 92 and suffering from arthritis, in which case the answer might be yes. At 22, the only thing you're too old for is getting half-price tickets on a bus.
 

 Discussion on answer by problemoffice…

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Michael Kay
Nov 5, 2018 15:23
Four points (all made somewhere in this thread already, I know). (a) They might not have chosen the best flavour of SQL to teach, but that's their choice and they might have good reasons for it. (b) There's no way the lecturer can be expected to learn (and mark) every student's favourite flavour of SQL. (c) In real life you don't often get to choose what technologies you are using; they are imposed on you, and it's best to get used to the idea. (d) from a learning perspective, you're learning general principles not syntax minutiae, and from that perspective, any dialect is equally good.
 

 Discussion on answer by Sam T: Is it …

Imported from a comment discussion on politics.stackexchange.c...
Michael Kay
Oct 11, 2018 00:45
My passport also says I am an EU citizen, something that happened without my knowledge and consent and which I am not required to agree to in order to use the passport.
 

 Discussion on question by sd7fsjdf887…

Imported from a comment discussion on workplace.stackexchange....
Michael Kay
Oct 3, 2018 19:03
I picked up someone's beer once and drank it. Apologized profusely, bought them a drink, and made a good friend. Always admit your mistakes, you will never regret it.
 

 Discussion on answer by Graham: Why r…

Imported from a comment discussion on politics.stackexchange.c...
Michael Kay
Sep 14, 2018 20:07
@Thern if you're going to use quotation marks then don't misquote. You left out the word "uninvited" which was an essential part of the sentence you are misquoting.
 

 Discussion on question by gsamaras: I…

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Michael Kay
Jul 25, 2018 15:46
I remember being served a vast cheesecake in a US restaurant once, when eating alone. I managed to get through half of it, then needed to relieve myself. On return there was another vast cheesecake on the table. The server had cleared it thinking I was finished, then realised she shouldn't have done that, and brought a new one...
 

 Discussion on question by Shaamaan: I…

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Michael Kay
Jun 29, 2018 20:30
As background to this (and my only data relates to particular surnames, so might not be entirely representative) there is a long-term trend towards increasing variety of first names. That is, the most popular name today might be Oliver, but there are probably far fewer Olivers today than there were Michaels and Davids and Johns in the 1950s.
 

 Discussion on question by Confused: T…

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Michael Kay
Jun 23, 2018 12:55
@Sabine I knew someone who was taken to the police station in Germany because she was driving without any identification papers. I think the police were interested primarily because she was a pretty girl and was only wearing a bikini.
Michael Kay
Jun 23, 2018 12:55
I once had to miss a trip because I couldn't find my passport. Turned up underneath a mat in the boot of the car.
 

 Discussion on question by Cuntimus Pr…

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Michael Kay
Jun 7, 2018 16:22
Thanks for sharing this. Too much of this story is told from the perspective of the victors. I would add that my uncle was in the Wehrmacht (he was 20 when the war ended) and he experienced many atrocities by the Russians on the Eastern front; he often said that some of his fellow soldiers became dehumanised by this experience and tended to lose all sense of morality and compassion.
 

 Discussion on question by HeyJude: Ho…

Imported from a comment discussion on workplace.stackexchange....
Michael Kay
May 4, 2018 09:43
"The code I'm working on is assuming that X is always in the range 1 to 5, but it seems that's no longer true, it can now be 6. Was that change intended? How should I handle the new value?".
 

 Discussion on question by Deoro: Why …

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Michael Kay
May 3, 2018 08:39
Are we evil because we eat chickens? Only a small minority seem to think so; it's surely a question where we will have to agree to differ. But at least we're able to discuss the matter, and vegetarians can try if they will to persuade the rest of us to conform to their ethical values. I wouldn't try persuading a lion.