Comment Our biggest enemy - THE SUN (Score 1) 142
Yes, we need EMP hardening. The Ruskies are our least threat. Biggest threat: SOL.
This. The Carrington Event.
Yes, we need EMP hardening. The Ruskies are our least threat. Biggest threat: SOL.
This. The Carrington Event.
Tiny Boxes,
On the Hillside,
And they're all made of ticky-tacky,
And they all look them same!
So, this is saying that there is some little part of the brain that might actually cause one to make the right decision on stock trades?
IMO, in general, we are not wired properly for trading. Starting with our illogical preference for thinking of moves in asset value arithmetically (points) rather than proportionally (percentage). Major newspapers STILL often use arithmetic charts, which can sensationalize short-term movements. And they almost all report points gain/loss in indices, when they should be reporting the percentage change.
Why would they go away? Is there another common architecture with the security features of the Z series?
Let's see, what do we want running our bank? An architecture where data and instructions can be encrypted in memory, in transit, and in use and decrypted only when and where needed, and explicitly designed to minimize the possibility of side-channel attacks? Or systems built with Intel chips, which have to be have their firmware constantly updated with layer after layer of duct tape, each of which slows the processors down further? Intel processors are one of the biggest "oops" ever in engineering history. (I have no idea about ARM security. I assume, though, it's not possible it could ever be worse than Intel's...)
There are certain applications that best scale "up" rather than "out" - such as relational databases. Sure, there are work-arounds, you can shard, making a mockery of the relational model, there are some other approaches, but for most applications the best solution is simply "big iron". This big iron is available on IBM Cloud (from last year, I believe) as a SAAS - PostgreSQL and MongoDB are currently available:
As well, crypto services and virtual servers on Z hardware are available now:
Yes, this is at a premium price. Not outrageous for protection not available elsewhere as cloud service.
AWS is moving to ARM hardware, and has services and instances available. But that is not big iron. I will LOL when Amazon announces their first availability of Z-Hardware based services on AWS.
This is the secret sauce that AFAIK is currently only available on IBM Cloud - the biggest cloud platform having no public mindshare and that consistently appears two slots lower in market share charts than it actually belongs.
Lots of assumptions based on outdated perceptions being thrown around here.
But when can be get Clippy?
None.
Unlike our President, I can read.
I was one of the founders of SEMCO (South-Eastern Michigan Computer Organization), which spun-out from a short-lived student group at Wayne State University in 1976. There other founders were fellow student Eric Cohen and Jim Rarus, who at the time was an IT administrator at East Detroit Schools.
I had built a wire-wrapped Schelbi H-8, and Eric a MITS Altair and we knew each other from Computer Science classes. Not sure if Jim was a night student or one of the non-students who attended one of the early student group meetings. There was clearly interest from off-campus, and Jim volunteered to provide meeting space at East Detroit Schools, and that's where the first meetings were. Jim was able to get permission for the group to gain access to an HP minicomputer at E. Detroit Schools, and Eric programmed a message board in BASIC - likely one of the few message boards that ran on a minicomputer rather than a "home computer". (I think the Cleveland group had a board that ran on a PDP-8 that a member had purchased surplus. I remember how kewl I thought the rack cabinet was!)
I remember we made a couple of "field trips" early on when it was only a very small group. One to Cleveland to meet with another user group there. And one to Chicago where we spent a day at the University of Chicago, where I vaguely recall demos of Plato, Hypertext, and hearing Ted Nelson talk. I think this was another multi-group get-together - it was fairly common at the time for groups to send "delegations" to other groups in nearby cities.
Meetings typically had announcements, a speaker who might be a member or a guest, and then breakup into SIGs (Special Interest Groups - terminology borrowed from ACM). Members typically brought in hardware to be shown-off, repaired, or debugged, there would always be a soldering iron, wirewrap tools, maybe a scope, etc. that somebody would bring.
The group grew like topsy, and we pretty quickly outgrew the meeting space at E. Detroit schools. A control-room technician at a Detroit TV station (WJBK?) was able to arrange the use of a studio that was unused on Sunday afternoons as a meeting space. When we outgrew that (not sure if it was the Bill Gates visit that pushed us over) we were offered the use of the Ford Motor Engineering Auditorium in Dearborn.
We had some regular repeat speakers, mostly owners of the local fledgling computer stores. Two of the most enjoyable were of those was Rick Inatome (Inacomp then Computer City) and his dad Joe. Joe was a semi-retired mechanical engineer who'd worked for the auto companies, and used timesharing computers in a consulting business, and he was keen on the potential for using personal computers in engineering and design. Rick was in the MBA program at Michigan State. Joe and Rick started Detroit's first computer store in a tiny strip mall in Troy, MI, when Rick was home for the summer, and Eric got a part-time job there assembling Altair kits for customers that didn't want to do the assembly themselves. We all spent a lot of time hanging out in the back room of that tiny store!
Pretty sure it was Rick who made the connection to get Bill Gates to speak to our group. While it was a great opportunity for us, I suspect it was a bigger opportunity for Bill Gates! How many auto company engineering and IT people were in that packed auditorium? A kaboodle! This was well before Microsoft became a public company (1986) and I doubt the average person on the street would have known who Bill Gates was.
I honestly don't remember the subject. It wasn't Windows, that didn't come until 1985 and this was way before that. So, it must have been some iteration of MSDOS. I do remember that his presentation was even more plodding and dry than it is today.
What, you thought there was going to be some great pearl of wisdom here?! No, the guy was boring as hell, but we were still inspired! Somehow, the enthusiasm came through.
OK, seriously, he talked vaguely about the future potential of personal computers. At a time when they were still very much dismissed by many/most.
(Around the same time, I had the opportunity to ask Marshall McLuhan at a lecture (at the University of Windsor) how he thought the personal computer would impact society. His answer basically boiled down to "huh"? and then "not". Better speaker. Blurred vision.)
By the time I left Detroit in the mid-80s, the meetings had shrunk considerably. Personal computers were becoming more mainstream, there was thick magazines available on any newsstand (remember those? Magazines? Newsstands?) and there wasn't so much of a need. It seems the organization has hung in there, though.
Presumably COBOL objects
No.
for example the one COBOL phrase "organization indexed" equates to millions of lines code in any other language.
No.
It probably equals to an enumerated value in a data structure. In just about any language including COBOL.
Maybe I should apply. I had a week or two of COBOL in my “Survey of Comouter Languages” class in 1972 or 1973.
Besides COBOL, it covered Algol, Lisp, Snobol, and APL.
Here’s to the Weird Ones!
I did some useful things with Snobol.
I found knowledge of Lisp useful for programming in a text editor I stopped using at least a a decade or two ago.
APL? I couldn’t afford the type ball.
COBOL was obsolete in 1973. Could not grok those who chose that as a career path.
But - for now - they will prooooofit! Like they did in 1999.
But first we have to dig them out of the grave.
Yes, it IS a zombie acpocolypse!
“Mark Zuckerberg is an arrogant asshole who would not take our advice.”
- speaker redacted
Zuckerberg could probably guess who said that.
Clearing system != trading system. Trading is real-time and what got bogged down. Clearing happens after the fact in fact after close of trading. It’s the settlement of the trades - I.e. the actual transfer of ownership. Trading is the initial agreement to transfer.
In old school parlance trading is the brokers yelling at each other on the floor and exchanging little slips of paper. Clearing is matching up the little slips of paper with customer accounts, waiting for customers to mail in certificates to the transfer agent for the stock, and then for the transfer agent to mail out the new certificate and record the ownership on the books of the traded issue.
Trading is real-time. Clearing is batch.
ClearView's use case is a difficult one, and one I have encountered myself.
What do you do when you have an app that is not of use to the public, or indeed that you might not want to public to obtain, but you need to distribute it to people who are not direct employees?
I worked on an app for a non-profit organization that created apps used during energy audit walk-troughs. This are the (usually free to consumer) programs where somebody will come to your house, and take notes about windows, heating/cooling plant, insulation, etc. etc. and then make suggestions toward saving energy and costs.
So, how do you distribute this app?
The auditors are not employees of the non-profit - they might be employees of multiple/diverse power companies, local governments, or independent contractors.
As such, this app wasn't qualified for distribution under a (single) Enterprise Store. Sure, the different power companies and governmental agencies could place it in their own Enterprise Store. But... what a hassle! Starting with the fact that most/many organizations using the app don't HAVE an Enterprise Store, and don't have the personnel to set up and maintain one.
We decided to put it in the public App Store. Problem then is, what purpose does the app serve? We decided that - for the public - the purpose was to allow consumers to prepare for an upcoming energy audit. While there was a fee paid (typically by the utility or governmental entity for the completed audit results/certificate, this was handled outside of the App Store. (And is perfectly legit to do, so long as you do not "lead a horse to water" - that is, you cannot prompt the user toward the payment means from in-app or from app listing.)
This may not be a good choice for all apps, though. For example, the Uber "driver app" is in the App Store. Should it be? Is this ideal for Uber? Probably not - for one thing, they will get non-drivers downloading it and trying to login, people just "messing with them", etc. There probably is no good reason for an Uber Driver App in the App Store - IMO it really belongs in an Enterprise Store, but it doesn't meet the requirement, since Uber Drivers are not Uber employees. (At least this week, in probably 49 states, pending court cases in California...)
Honestly, Uber Driver belongs in an Enterprise Store. Apps provided by B2B companies that are meant for use by their business partners perhaps do not belong in the App Store. (e.g. should an App from Home Depot for Home Depot vendors be in the public App Store?)
In the past, I think that Apple was lenient, realizing that they had these use-case gaps where Enterprise Store publication makes sense, yet is disallowed by the rules.
But there was too much abuse, starting with the "fake beta" Enterprise Stores. The "our app needs to tap all network I/O but it's not really a VPN app" Enterprise Store abuse. And others.
Recently, abuse has popped-up around the use of TestFlight for non-beta releases. The Iowa Democratic Primary app comes to mind... No way that should have been a TestFlight distribution. It was used in a general election - NOT a test - and was widely deployed (not just to a select number of precincts as a test).
For another client - an app used to keep work/task hours for field service workers - it made sense to put it in the client company's Enterprise store, as the field service works are their employees.
Where the hell is peanut butter and jelly in the bread isle?
I’ve n3ver be3n anywhere where it isn’t In Th3 PB&J isle!
Ok, except at Frys. (remember Frys?) At Frys, the PB&J is found in 5 different illogical isles.
It is only in select markets, typically near their distribution facilities.
Hahahahahaha!
“Distribution facilities” = nearest Whole Foods. In “select markets”. (Which, unfortunately, I am in).
They turned the in-house fast food restaurant of mine (no big loss) into a “distribution center” (blocking the streets of a neighborhood retail district).
I loved how one day the parking cops ticketed a whole row of illegally-parked delivery drivers and I lauuuuuuuughed!! Easy pickings!
If I am going to have to pick my own fruit and vegetables I better be compensated for it. I want a dedicated server behind the counter to hand me my product.
Where the hell do you shop where a clerk hands you fruits and vegetables?
“Tops on or off?” (Carrots)
FWIW I shop at a fruit and vegetable warehouse that is also open to the public. Everything is at least 3 days fresher, and kept in ideal conditions (take a warm jacket!) You sign a waiver and they give you surgical gloves. There are no prices. You review the prices at checkout, and they will cheerfully return anything that gives you nosebleed (that exotic Japanese melon. That pound of vanilla beans.) Prices are “market”. That means they are more expensive than Whole Foods out of season, and cheaper than Ralph’s in season. It’s not their job to hedge the market for you.
Best feature: there are no delivery drivers blocking your access to the shelves and bumbling with their over-sized Android phones, struggling to read the English language product descriptions. (They are punished severely for bad picks, and so they are slow AF).
There are “pickers” who are employees (W-4, imagine that!) of the warehouse, picking produce for the high-end restaurants who are the bulk of their customers. They politely get out of you way - and you know what? - that prompts me to step back and let them do their job (quickly and professionally).
I will occasionally bump into a local celebrity chef, who is willing to go to the trouble of picking each and every fruit and veg individually. Like I do.
(which is pretty much what happens at Ralphs, except that the quality and freshness isn’t QUITE there). I mean, if you want f-me (in a good way) fruits and vegs shrink wrapped, go to a Japanese market, k?
Oh, BTW, they sent somebody to the aforementioned warehouse to pick fruits and vegs individually, washed them, and then shrink-wrapped them. Then put them under high-CRI lighting.
Nothing thing wrong with that. Prices are reasonable, and no f-ing delivery pickers.
"Ninety percent of baseball is half mental." -- Yogi Berra
