Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Heh (Score 1) 283

Back in the day, I remember the local Bell main switching center being a very non-descript, completely unmarked mysterious building.

I imagine that also was for security reasons.

Yeah, the enemy would never guess that a large office building completely devoid of windows might possibly be a telephone switch.

Comment Butter and margarine all over again (Score 1) 46

the past repeats . . .

margarine was supposed to be better for us than that awful butter.

But, gee whiz, when we got down to it and actually looked, this chemical concoction designed to mimic the taste chemistry of butter also mimicked other properties--and was *worse* . . .

now, we make a fuel to mimic the combustion chemistry of current fuels, and, well, . . . surprise!

Comment Re:Despite (Score 1) 276

It has been a while since I've used Word, but I remember it was really good at propagating tiny changes through a document that made it important that you keep an extra copy around because some seemed to have no easy way back to what you wanted.

This "feature" actually saved me quite a bit of work at a job I had a few years back. The documentation people were so afraid that anyone who was not a full-time Word expert would irrecoverably screw up the corporate branding (IOW, formatting) of their docs, they didn't want developers to directly edit them. So I was often able to get away with emailing a quick text summary to them, and they had to do all the fidgety proof reading, formatting, etc.

I don't know how they managed to get their jobs done, given that they had no real source control and mainly juggled each update amongst themselves over email and random impoossible-to-find folders on Sharepoint.

Since all the docs had the same basic layout and they were mainly trying to make them look consistent with whatever corporate branding was being promulgated that week, it could easily have been done by writing them in "markdown" and having a script that converted them directly to PDF. Or maybe even learn LaTeX. Then the docs could all be maintained and diffed in github like all the other project artifacts. I didn't even bring that up because I knew that their heads would explode.

Comment Re:Hypercard could have been basis of internet (Score 1) 53

I wrote bankruptcy filing software for my own use in the late 80s on hypercard. Some things it generated itself, and some it sent a mail merge file to word 5.1 (the last version that could simply use a text file as input rather than those bizarre inserts). In fairly short order, it ended up transferred to supercars, which could have multiple stacks open (but I never transitioned back when hypercard 2.0 came out. I suppose I could have scripted that, but . . .).

I thought about making a commercial project of it, but then in '92 (?) new forms were coming out, and the court clerk told me that anything submitted would have to be pixel perfect when they got their new scanners in the coming months. Add that to Macs only having 1% market penetration in law offices at the time, and I ended up simply buy-in another program (to my secretaries' dismay!)

The next year, supercard shipped a PC version. Oh, well.

And more than 30 years later, no such scanners (nor will they ever be; we electronically submit pdfs these days).

Had I known *either* of those*, I could have been the biggest player in the field.

After being away for more than a decade and a half, I trie what was then the biggest player--and it *still* didn't do stuff that I easily did with hypercard in the 80s!

I ended up implementing it, largely from scratch, using LiveCode.

Initially metacard on the NeXT, then runner on several platforms, and now LiveCode, it's basically HyperCard on steroids able to use databases and so much more. Now they're pushing AI, and I'm retired, so not my problem any more.

Comment Re:Inefficient when programming (Score 1) 189

>The QWERTY and PC-based layout (especially for some non-EN
>layouts) are simply not suited for the prolonged use of the SHIFT-
>pinky and stretching the hand to the control characters on the
>numeric row,

Nor is EMACS, at least on a CKIE (control key in exile) keyboard.

I actually had to get medical treatment in grad school after days of heavy editing, requiring me to twist my wrist and fully extend my pinky to reach the key. He said that they could send me to physical therapy, but I could do just as well myself with rubber bands on my last two fingers, stretching against them for some amount of time a couple of times a day.

Now, I surely wouldn't be one to tamper with university equipment, but a couple of days later, there was a little piece of plastic on my desk next to the keyboard. It apparently somehow escaped from the toggle mechanism on the capslock key, allowing me to remap control to it!
 

Comment Re:Learning your IDE is more effective ... (Score 1) 189

>Nothing of this comes natural.

some does, actually, under the right circumstances.

wordstar (and I mean the original eight bit stuff, not the later extensions) was laid out rather logically and consistently with its diamonds and prefixes.

To the point that a couple of times, I instinctively used combinations that I hadn't consciously realized existed--and then sat back amazed as I realized what I'd done!

hawk, who used to type over 100wpm on a manual

Slashdot Top Deals

My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net income. -- Errol Flynn Any man who has $10,000 left when he dies is a failure. -- Errol Flynn

Working...