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another-dave

 Discussion on answer by Raffzahn: Whe…

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another-dave
Jan 8, 2024 16:38
The code in that DEC TSS/8 manual looks like it was cut and pasted (you know, with actual scissors and glue) into the camera-ready copy, from teletype output.
 

 Discussion on question by MonocleRB: …

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another-dave
Dec 16, 2023 20:38
@FrederikVds - I agree and approved the edit. Needs another approval.
another-dave
Dec 16, 2023 20:38
Hypothesis: when a printing device would only be able to print one case, the designer of the device always chose upper rather than lower. Any counter-examples?
 

 Discussion on answer by Raffzahn: Why…

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another-dave
Dec 15, 2023 15:44
re the title: "...Latin Scripture". I absolutely do not want to change it, but I thought maybe I should mention that script and scripture are very different words in English. Though on second thoughts, much computer output was regarded as scripture.
 

 Discussion on question by Coder: Why …

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another-dave
Dec 13, 2023 03:45
There's still segmentation in 32-bit protected mode. Most OSes set up the registers so that there is a flat 32-bit address space (and then leave them unchanged). That is, segments are useless.
another-dave
Dec 12, 2023 18:44
@Coder - segments, tasks, operand prefixes, ...
another-dave
Dec 12, 2023 18:44
@Coder - lack of orthogonality; historical baggage; insufficient registers.
another-dave
Dec 12, 2023 18:44
Because the x86 architecture is objectively horrible, maybe?
 

 Discussion on question by JockM: Look…

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another-dave
Oct 28, 2023 09:07
There have been numerous languages which compile into C (C being a useful machine-independent target). That doesn't make them dialects of C.
another-dave
Oct 28, 2023 09:07
I deny that a language that looks nothing like FORTRAN can be described as 'a dialect of FORTRAN'. That its output might be FORTRAN is beside the point.
another-dave
Oct 28, 2023 09:07
The input language is not FORTRAN, ergo, the compiler is not a FORTRAN compiler.
 

 Discussion on answer by Raffzahn: Why…

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another-dave
Oct 11, 2023 08:15
The argument for floor's convenience for rounding by INT(X+0.5) is compelling, I think.
 

 Discussion on answer by Justme: Why d…

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another-dave
Sep 1, 2023 10:09
'Forced' seems a strong word, when standardization has benefits to both sides of an interface.
 

 Discussion on question by Therac: Why…

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another-dave
Aug 30, 2023 09:58
"Why shouldn't it be?" - you should ask the OP, he's the one that seems to think 60 Hz is inadequately low. For PC gamers, maybe. Not for the rest of us, which was the majority market back in the late 1990s.
another-dave
Aug 30, 2023 09:58
@hippietrail - flat panel, of course (4K). But my point is, for LCDs, refresh rate is not always a concern, unlike with CRTs.
another-dave
Aug 30, 2023 09:58
I just checked the refresh rate on the monitor I use for about 8 hours every workday. 30Hz. It's perfectly fine. The text is crisp and as solid as a rock. I think you're focusing on what was a minority use case at the time (PC + LCD + gamer) and thinking that was a big deal.
another-dave
Aug 30, 2023 09:58
I recall that 60Hz was the bare minimum for comfortable CRT viewing, so it is possible that LCDs adopted that same rate as the 'universally good enough' value? Given that my own interest is for relatively static computer displays (I don't watch serious video on computer screens), there seems no reason to want more. That text ain't going anywhere in a hurry.
 

 Discussion on question by scruss: Pro…

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another-dave
Jun 19, 2023 16:55
Having taken a fair amount of physics and mathematics (both pure and grubby) in high school, I'd say that the lack of libraries using 'degrees' is because most analytical work requires radians.
 

 Discussion on question by javanerd: W…

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another-dave
May 23, 2023 14:49
@javanerd "So...". No. Stop putting words in my mouth, please. How do you get "WebAssembly sucks" out of "Whether it is a good idea" is orthogonal to "it exists"? This is a simple statement of fact.
another-dave
May 23, 2023 14:49
"Whether it is a good idea" is orthogonal to "it exists".
another-dave
May 23, 2023 14:49
@javanerd - that one implementation can be buggy is not a reason to have more implementations that are buggy. Besides, the cases are different. Java, for example, is a fully-fleshed programmng language, and running a Java program in a sandbox requires stopping it from having the access it would normally have. Is javascript used outside the web environment to any significant degree?
another-dave
May 23, 2023 14:49
It's not unsafe because "CPUs have vulnerabilities". It's unsafe because sandboxing software has bugs (more often than not). See the gravestones for ActiveX, Java applets, etc. etc.
another-dave
May 23, 2023 14:49
Why was "running CPU intensive games in a browser" a worthwhile goal? The browser was intended to be a way to read and write "documents", not the one and only user interface for everything ever.
 

 Discussion on question by Arunabh Bha…

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another-dave
Mar 21, 2023 18:34
We have (1) a title asking 'is MS DOS a form of Windows"? (2) A statement in the question body that 'MS DOS is a not a version of Windows', (3) in the body, 'Is MS DOS a form of any of [the versions of Windows]?'. It seems to me that your statement (2) already answers your questions (1) and (3). And if not, you've already accepted an answer which looks to me to adequately address the issue. So why do you want the question re-opened so badly?
 

 Discussion on question by Psychonaut:…

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another-dave
Mar 7, 2023 17:29
Yeah, calling the S/360 a 'virtual machine' is making the phrase meaningless. S/360 deserves great credit for separating the notions of architecture and implementation, but part of the point of that was so that you could build decidely non-virtual hardware implementations at the high end, and microcoded implementations at the low end.
 

 Discussion on question by Schezuk: Di…

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another-dave
Feb 12, 2023 18:03
@supercat, Pascal strings just needed flex modes, and upb, lwb operators....
another-dave
Feb 12, 2023 18:03
@SolomonSlow - indeed; I use the tools that the job requires. Do we class mechanics by what branch of spanner they prefer?
another-dave
Feb 12, 2023 18:03
This question seems to want an impossible generalization. One language waxed, another language waned.
 

 Discussion on question by Schezuk: Wh…

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another-dave
Feb 9, 2023 18:11
What Pascal had non-integral fixed point numbers? The original Wirthy version did not have that as a specific type. Like Algol, it had real numbers, of unspecified machine implementation.
another-dave
Feb 9, 2023 18:11
Algol had real numbers, which were not specifically fixed or floating point, the only requirement was that they could hold non-integral values. Would Algol be one answer to your question?
another-dave
Feb 9, 2023 18:11
Well, by definition, anything with an integer datatype supports some fixed-point computation. I assume (though you did not say) you're interested in the case where the language, rather than the programmer, keeps track of the assumed binary point?
 

 Discussion on question by Adam Hyland…

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another-dave
Feb 1, 2023 09:35
how might a C programmer learn that this was behavior to be avoided - on the PDP-11, on entry to the odd-address trap handler!
 

 Discussion on question by Neil Meyer:…

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another-dave
Jan 21, 2023 09:01
I watched 10 seconds of the video. Is it really 9 hours of video bloat about one of the most concise texts we have in programming tuition?
another-dave
Jan 21, 2023 09:01
Did the expert explain why you might not (in the early 70s) care to design, for the purpose of writing an OS kernel for a 16-bit machine, a language that relied on garbage collection for storage management?
 

 Discussion on answer by Raffzahn: Who…

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another-dave
Jan 21, 2023 08:59
@davidbak - I wrote 'Algol 60 dynamic own', your comment said 'Algol 68'. Typo, or did you mis-read? Algol 68 disowned own.
another-dave
Jan 21, 2023 08:59
@davidbak -the answer is ready and waiting....
another-dave
Jan 21, 2023 08:59
No dynamic storage (no GC) in Algol 60, since all you could do with "strings" in the language was to write string literals, and pass them around from one procedure to another, for ultimate consumption by a code procedure. Also for evidence against GC, witness the fairly general rejection of the "dynamic own" interpretation of that part of the language.
 

 Discussion on question by Humancoder1…

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another-dave
Jan 15, 2023 17:09
That generally means the booted system doesn't have drivers to continue to read the booted disk. You had to have 'the right drivers' on a floppy, and press F6 at the right point during text-mode setup (i.e., before the first reboot) to install them. Maybe the issue is 'DVD' - Windows did not support installation from DVD, only CD.
another-dave
Jan 15, 2023 17:09
There used to be a version of the setup program that could be run from DOS; it was chiefly useful before PC ROMs could boot from CD. But as mentioned, it might have fallen out of use by Windows 2000. In any case, you ended up in the same setup program as when you booted the CD, and installation needed the CD, so it's unlikely to help here. (You don't "download NT from DOS", that's a nonsenscal use of "download").
another-dave
Jan 15, 2023 17:09
At what point do you get the 'no EULA' error? Before or after the base OS files are copied to the fixed disk?
another-dave
Jan 15, 2023 17:09
Windows 2000 almost certainly can't install from USB sticks. Setup surely lacks the drivers. It was a pain in the rear making sure you had the right disk drivers ('press F6 now').
 

 Discussion on question by zomega: Why…

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another-dave
Dec 12, 2022 08:44
@JörgWMittag - Printers with (at least) 100 Mb/s Ethernet these days? Seems like most of them....
 

 Discussion on answer by Stephen Kitt:…

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another-dave
Dec 6, 2022 07:26
True, but it seemed to me that was at the level of 'file sharing for a small office', not enterprise-y stuff, and in any case ran on a dedicated OS.
another-dave
Dec 6, 2022 07:26
Good answer overall. It might be useful to emphasize that in the 'server' space, Microsoft had nothing before NT; the competition there was Unix, as you mentioned. Some accounts say that GUI support was somewhat of an afterthought for Cutler. That enterprise focus was of course in line with what Cutler had been doing in DECwest
another-dave
Dec 6, 2022 07:26
A richer system needs more resources. It's as simple as that. It's not that anyone wanted NT to not run on a 486 with 4MB, it was just that it couldn't (or at least, not without intolerably poor performance).
 

 Discussion on question by zomega: Why…

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another-dave
Dec 6, 2022 07:18
@JohnDallman - fair enough; I'm firmly in the programmer camp!
another-dave
Dec 6, 2022 07:18
I think the real problem with this question is the claim of "roughly the same". The systems are entirely different; there is a similar UI, and there is a Windows-like API on top of the NT system calls. But the underlying system structure is entirely different. NT was designed for pre-emptive multitasking on multiprocessor systems with object and user based security, packet-driven asynchronous I/O, and independent of any particular hardware. Porting between hardware is straightforward if you design with that intent; forcing it on a system that was never designed to be portable is much harder.
another-dave
Dec 6, 2022 07:18
I don't recall that, and I was writing code on NT from 3.1 through to about 2008, whatever that was called.
another-dave
Dec 6, 2022 07:18
@WeatherVane - huh? XP is just NT V5.1 with a silly marketing name.
another-dave
Dec 6, 2022 07:18
As for "two at the same time" - well, that's been answered now, hasn't it? I'm not sure when the plan for NT everywhere was formulated, but a good rule of thumb is that an OS takes a decade to mature. The switch of the consumer base to NT (in the form of Windows XP) more or less conforms to that.