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We need a :sucking breath: icon (the sound one makes when one hears a really bad pun).
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 know that sound, my wife mand my friends do it all the time. I still don't know why.
GCS/GE d--(d) s-/+ a C+++ U+++ P-- L+@ E-- W+++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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I’ve been working on a zine about how computers represent thing in binary, and one question I’ve gotten a few times is – why does the x86 architecture use 8-bit bytes? Why not some other size? Because 9 would have been too much?
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She should subscribe the CP news...
Quote a couple of messages below: That prime numbers and powers of 2 fascinate many people comes as no surprise. Ta-Taaaa.... mistery solved.
4 - 16 (too few combinations)
8 - 256 (nice number, allows a lot and is low enough to be used mentally or even by paper)
16 - 32768 (too much combinations for mental / paper work)
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
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Because they tried 4 but it wasn't enough.
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On the 36-bit Univac-1100 series, you had the choice between 9-bit and 6-bit bytes. 6-bit "Fieldata" was the original character set of the EXEC-8 OS, uppercase only. 9-bit was introduced when ISO-646 (in the US of A known as ASCII) became popular.
DEC-10 and DEC-20 (mainframe relatives of the far more well-known PDP series) also had 36 bit word length, but they stuffed five 7-bit bytes to a word, with one bit to spare. They handled ISO-646 from the beginning, but lots of programmers thought it was an odd format.
Note that both U-1100 and DEC-10/20 were word addressable in memory, not byte addressable. Memory size was commonly expressed in K (you didn't have machines with Mega-memories then!), meaning K-s of addressable units, i.e. words. Then came the IBM 360 architecture in 1964, the first major CPU family that was octet addressable. (Even the IBM predecessors to the 360, the 704/709/7090, were 36 bits word addressable machines). IBM marketed their 360 memory by the number of addressable units, misleading lots of customer to think it was super-cheap compared to e.g. Univac or DEC - but 1 K of IBM octets were just 22% as much memory (measured in bits) compared to the Univac/DEC 36 bit words.
In the 1960-70s, IBM had something like 80% of the computer market in the US of A. They were not quite that dominating in Europe, but still they were The dominating manufacturer. When IBM went for 8 bit bytes, everybody else followed suit, at least for new architectures.
(One are were IBM did not manage to dominate the world: Their EBCDIC character set never was adopted by others - except for communication with IBM mainframes. I see two major reasons for that: There were more national variants of EBCDIC than we have Linux file systems today. And, for historical reasons, A-Z did not fill 26 consecutive code values - mixed in with the alphabetics were other, non-alphabetic characters. Working with ISO-646 was just so much more convenient!)
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She obviously doesn't know anything about computer history. Several of the early computer systems (Multic, LISP Machine, etc.) used 36 bit words. This allowed the hardware to handle things such as dynamic memory management, garbage collection and other OS level functions that we take for granted today but that use a different solution to the same problem of managing a finite resource such as memory.
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Salaries for remote roles in software development were higher than location-bound jobs in 2022, Hired finds. Everybody's working for the remote job
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Even if thery were not higher, the worker would very probably still get more from remote.
Only with avoiding conmute costs and time (time is money too) and avoiding rent in highly demanded places with astronomical prices per m²...
That can easy make 30% or more netto in the bank per month.
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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RoR is the most in demand technology? Fascinating...
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That prime numbers and powers of 2 fascinate many people comes as no surprise. In fact, all numbers split into two camps: interesting and boring We're all looking at you, 41
Off by one error
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"One is the loneliest number"
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In fact, all numbers split into two camps: interesting and boring All people can be split into 10 groups: Those that split people into 10 groups and those who don't.
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There is no smallest boring natural number (i.e. positive integer):
If such a number existed, it would in itself be interesting.
Q.E.D.
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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The development of classic silicon-based computers is approaching its limits. To achieve further miniaturization and to reduce energy consumption, different types of materials and architectures are required. So, Rust really is the future?
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A recent Zenhub report found, for the first time, a quantitative link between developer happiness and productivity, including what keeps developers in the same position instead of moving on to another job at the first sign of perceived trouble. "The beatings will continue until morale improves"
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Being happy at work makes people stay in the job and work better... No fvck Sherlock, what a discovery.
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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The Dragon is an innovative and practical general-purpose language. The supported programming paradigms are imperative, object-oriented, declarative using nested structures, functional and natural programming. Here be Dragon
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Which makes me wonder if they used the Dragon book when designing Dragon?
TTFN - Kent
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MC Escher would be proud.
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Quote: and comes with transparent and visual implementation WYDSIWYG? (D - Don't)
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A surprising number of industries, from embroidery to aviation, still use floppies. Because there's just no copy for that floppy
The fax machine still thinks they're the newcomer though
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Kent Sharkey wrote: The fax machine still thinks they're the newcomer though German burocrats still use faxes...
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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