Microsoft basic could be saved in the original text format or a faster loading token format. The token format was not human readable but existed as a language of its own. Any computer language can be translated into another language including human readable language. I had a translator program that would convert token basic into human text readable. I also have a program that converts C programs to pascal.

Any computer language is just a language and can be translated to most any other language if you know what the tokens mean. Granted you loose the embedded comments that explain what the code is supposed to be doing but that isn't all that different than fixing some beginners code that doesn't do what it was supposed to do.

Star-taling news

In one Solaris environment there was a problem of searching through a list of ~ 100,000 names for each of ~ 1000 names. Perl let me do it in 3.5 minutes which beat the old method that took hours. Yes, the old method was bad for this operation but it' what they had.

One book I read on Perl showed three different ways to do the same thing. It then said they all compile the same so write however works for you. So most of my Perl looks like shell script or basic with lots of comments. It's easy to support that way. I'm dating myself when I say I also use Pascal mostly because it's easy to read my old code. With the Borland compilers it's really fast code. With it I could get deep into Microsoft's OS and do things that I read couldn't be done like change the ID on floppy disks or hard disks. I could even add multiple IDs to disks though only one would show. Fun times messing with the low level stuff.

I tried to like Perplexity and just couldn't make good use of it. Maybe I was doing something wrong but the responses I got were rarely any good.

We've been in a recession for 5 years

I would like to see my metal roof barn painted with this stuff. The south side of the roof is 16 by 44. That would probably power a lot of my house, at least the coffee maker.

Important systems should have redundant backup/restore options.

Where I worked (now retired) as sysadmin, every system had two boot disks. If a system was patched and failed on reboot for any reason, the system was booted off the unpatched second disk. Now if the second disk failed because lightning struck the system we would boot to the unpatched hot spare system which also had duel boot disks. We also had multiple levels of remote backup to restore every system.

I don't know at what level Delta made their decisions on backups but I am sure they didn't treat their critical systems as important as my former employer did.

Be a better parent and teach your kid to pay their own way.

When the money involved in that small minutia is greater than the net worth of some countries then why on Earth would you be surprised?

There is zero reason to do business in the EU today. The entire EU is stagnating because of stuff like this. There is no innovation coming out, new businesses are practically nonexistent.

Really sad watching the EU become a Government version of Rambus that just sues everyone for money when the ideas run out.

90%+ of the AI they showed off at WWDC was their own. There was one small segment where they showed it asking for approval to go out to ChatGPT. I'd hardly call that struggling.

My boss did this with one of my coworkers. Made the guy quit, then took his salary and hired 16 Indians out of Hyderabad and still had leftover cash to burn.

They've had 13 years to get a certified replacement.

This was my very first thought reading the article also, there's zero reason to continue using physical floppies on devices that require them when more reliable systems are available.