That's what it came to mean later, substitute "microcomputers" for "microprocessors". But originally CP/M stood for "control program / monitor". Monitor was a fairly standard term for a primitive operating system.

It started becoming "control program for microcomputers" after PL/M, which stood for "programming language for microcomputers."

I'm not here for the breaking news, I'm here for the interesting and insightful comments!

Here in the general Orlando area, Comcast is not too bad, they get the work done. And that I can say *nice* things about AT&T these days compared to a decade ago, well that's just black magic! Then there's Spectrum.

In several satellite offices of our company we needed to setup business Internet service. These offices are in strip malls and medical office plazas, and we knew going in that Spectrum was available at those places. So when we requested service, we'd have independent contractors come out with the damn router (invariably an Arris DS1670a), look for a cable, and tell us there wasn't one. They'd have to call in "Construction" to get a cable run to the building. Construction would "do something" and say the contractor could come out. And again, contractor said there was no cable, they'd call Construction. This went on for over three months at one office, spread among seven services calls. At the last contractor visit, I asked to speak with Construction directly. Well, turns out I can't, and I can't even get them to call me back. I dutifully reported this back to our Telecom department, who made very nasty calls to Spectrum to get this straightened out. Which eventually did happen. By the way, the contractors are not paid if there is not a cable to connect the router to, it's considered a failed install, and they get nothing for the trip. Waste of time for them and me.

At another site, where practically every office and business on the plaza has Spectrum service, we were told it was not available at that particular office. This, despite having been in the office before build-out, and finding their ground feed and splitters. At another site, they honestly did not have their cable run in place, but took over four months to get the run in place, including a couple of months where they dug their colorful plastic cable conduits into the ground, but left them in pretty loops at the side of the building. To be clear, these are places where our nextdoor neighbors have Spectrum service, yet Spectrum tried to tell us *we* couldn't have it. We're an international company, don't tell us such crap. They took the order, said they could do it, then attempted to welch out of it.

I always *love* it when folks trudge out this old bromide. "It wuz da Democrats then that...[did whatever]!". All the while quite consciously "forgetting" that almost to a man, every one of those then Democrats have since become Republicans. Sure, there are a few exceptions, Manchin of WV, who might as well be a Republican. I'm born and raised a US Southerner, I know well what it means to have Southern Democrats ie "Dixie-crats" running the state. Look up John Connolly, governor of Texas in the 60's, who started the "Democrats for Nixon" movement, or the ex-Democrats who turned in their party cards to become Republicans in the 80's. The Democrat Party of the present is not the Democrat Party of the 30's and 50's, much like the Republican Part of the same years is not the modern Republican Party. Things change, people re-align, it's not the same decade after decade.

I started with SLS way back when (late '92?), but soon moved over to Slackware as soon as it came out. While I've moved to Ubuntu (with a special love for Mint), I have bought and installed every copy of Slackware since, all the way to 14.2. While you might use another distro to try out and use Linux, you use Slackware to learn what Linux actually is all about. All due thanks to our BDFL, Pat V!

How about the CEO, is he planning on dragging his ass back to the office? Or would that cut into his tee time?

I find it funny that just before reading this, I had an issue logging into Slashdot. Noticed I wasn't logged in even though I have "remember me" checked, and I've been using the same home directory for ages. Look, I'm a 60 year old low 5-digit member, really I'm going to recall a password I probably set ten years ago? No biggie, I have had to use the password reset feature here on /. a time or two before. This time... ??? I click on the "send password reset code" button, and found the email with the password reset link. Clicked on it and the page opens. Nice, so I type in a new password and click "save", and immediately the page bitches at me that I need to put in my old password, the one I currently forgot. Cleared the page, reclicked the password reset link, same exact problem. I need to enter the password that I don't remember to reset password I don't remember for one I can.

So I guess there will be a day, maybe not so far in the future, that ol' Mr Foobar of uid 11230 will no longer ever be allowed to log into SlashDot again. Oh well...

Film at 11...

Another low UID'er here, and yea, there used to be a time when the editors *did* care, and do things like the math. CmdrTaco had no problem doing it, and even sometimes did the math wrong. But in the last twelve years (or so) of this site's existence, ..., well I say no more.

"Singular "they" has always been a part of English"

Strictly speaking, no it hasn't. "They" entered English just vaguely sometime in the 1100's or early 1200's from Norse (it's cognate with "that"). The original English pronouns began with "h" and a vowel or two, and started to become indistinguishable due to normal and historical vowel changes. "They" tended to solve the confusions of the original pronouns. Norse is the reason we have doublets like "shirt" and "skirt", both original male clothing items.

Otherwise, I agree with you.

Living around Orlando and Florida, we hear enough about future cities, either already built (Deltona) or will be (Tavistock's and the Mormon Church's city on US-192). And they all devolve into the same thing. More land torn up and concreted over, more destroyed wildlife, polluted environments, roads mindlessly laid all over going nowhere, and promises to the local development boards for approvals that come to nothing except no property taxes will be paid. Thoughtless sprawl all over the place. And the original developer selling it all off to another one before much of the city ever gets actually built. This in an area probably already stressed by too much water and sewage usage, school and government services that must be provided, and changes in the original plan that turns the whole project to the worse.

It really get tiring to read about all this nonsense, since it always turns out into something not according to the plans, and in no way actually helps the original local municipalities.

I don't know about Roku, never used it. But I've installed HBOMax very easily onto not one but two Fire sticks without a hitch. Works perfectly, and is also easy to update when needed. I get an HBO ad about one out of three times I start to watch something on HBOMax. I understand Roku makes installing third-party apps extremely difficult, but with Fire it's a cinch.

It's almost like a Fire stick is a specialty Android device, while the Roku isn't.

Tell that to the folks over at https://www.reddit.com/r/liber...

I'm learning to read Japanese, mostly just for fun. "Fun", yea. Any way, I've seen so many reviews of various language learning books that got 1 star reviews (would have been zero stars if possible), not because the book was bad or unhelpful, but simply because the book was written *in the target language*! I buy a nice technical Japanese dictionary, it had a couple of one star reviews only because the damn dictionary is in Japanese. Which they could have determined from the "preview book" feature of the Amazon site.

I work in IT for one of the most heavily over-regulated industries in this country, the medical laboratory. No one is giving our industry any easement of the regulation on us, and frankly we don't want it. We *thrive* on our regulation. It's good for us. There is almost no corner of our industry that doesn't have some regulation hanging over it, and even the industries we contract with to service our industry are also themselves heavily regulated. It gives a nice high cost threshold to any company trying to enter it. Sure, we could make barrels more cash without the regulation, but we'd also have a lot more competition.

We see our regulation as a challenge, not a burden. Why can't the coal industry?