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Comment Re:Do you remember when you got (Score 1) 135

Far back in the mists of ancient time, I used a PDP11/05 at work. This machine came with a full set of manuals including a schematics and commented listing of the microcode. It also had a comprehensive write-up of the principles of operation. There was enough information there to replicate the entire computer apart, perhaps, from the metalwork.
In terms of understanding how a computer worked, reading that set of manuals was probably more valuable than many college courses.
These days you get almost nothing. I have seen "user manuals" that consist of a URL and a QR code on a sticker and nothing else... which might be fine for a fridge, but sucks when the item under consideration is the computer you might have wanted to use the access the 'net.

Comment User experience (Score 1) 72

My daughter buys from these people. The stuff they sell is cheap and cheerful, it doesn't last long. Which is fine for a child of 11 who is still growing.

  As she gets older and stops getting taller I will try to get her to understand the value of clothes that last more than 4 months, but for now the Shein sheit meets her use case pretty well.

Comment My experience (Score 1) 160

I wrote code for an air traffic communications system. This stuff had to be reliable.

The code ran on the metal - no operating system - which helped. I devised my own memory allocation strategy, used the MMU to leave unmapped pages between allocations in the hope that bugs would show up sooner rather than later, took extreme care with casts and pointers and blah, blah, blah.

And one day I came within 12 hours of forcing a major airport to close because I had made a booboo.

For cases where it really does matter (and I would argue that anything to do with aviation counts here) an additional layer of checking is worth using if it is available.

No, I'm not going to go back and rewrite the whole thing in Rust - I'm retired now - but I would hope that whoever is writing safety critical code these days has the sense to consider it.

Comment My ancient ... (Score 1) 119

My ancient (by phone standards) Android thing requires that I poke the screen to set an alarm, which can be at a particular time of say, or in a specific amount of time. It is fairly reliable, having been known to fail only if I am too drunk to point my fingers at the screen accurately.

By modern standards, it is probably crap.

But it is crap that works, and gets me out of bed in the morning to drive my daughter to school on time after helping me boil an egg for the correct number of minutes.

[waving phone] Hey Siri, can you copy this?

Comment Think of the children..! (Score 2) 54

Here is the UK, children don't get to have a bank card until they are 10 years old.
When my daughter was 9 she was very upset that a shop in the high street refused to let her buy something using her cash.
I spoke to the manager who was a complete arsehole, and since then neither she nor I have been in that shop.
Whether you like to use cash or not, as an adult you have a choice. As a child you don't and my opinion is that any business that a child could use should be required to accept cash.

Comment Re:Sounds about right (Score 1) 149

Meanwhile as soon as you point out that the ones demanding individual actions don't actually walk the walk ...

For what it's worth, I heat my house with a heat pump and drive an electric. I buy power from a supplier of renewables.
The only fossil fuel I use is gas for the barbecue, and that gets infrequent use (the weather here in the UK...)

Comment Forever (Score 5, Insightful) 54

In days of old, if I bought a fridge or a TV or a dishwasher I expected it to work until it broke down and the cost of repair exceeded the cost of replacement.

As a consumer, why should me expectation be any different now?

As a computer guy I understand about software vulnerabilities... which is why my (85 inch, expensive) TV set and fancy receiver are not connected to any network and all streaming is performed by a cheapo Amazon TV stick which can be replaced as necessary. The TV works just fine as a dumb monitor, and can continue to do so until it fails. And if the TV stick/disc player/HTPC get too old to be supported they are easy and cheap to replace.

Of course, all the manufacturers want us to buy a new TV every few years so will schedule "end of life" to maximise shareholder value, so this problem is not going to go away in a hurry.

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