Huffngton post

Clippings from news sources involving fashion freedom and other gender equality issues.
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moonshadow
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Re: Huffngton post

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crfriend wrote:[0] None of it is complimentary and most of said commentary revolves around the evils of extremism -- in any endeavour.
[1] Only programmers and Computer Science types count from zero. I am entirely happy to see this notion creeping out into the general public!
[2] Available on request [c]

[a] I have written entire pieces of communication in which the main story is accessible by simply reading the text. The humour and irony was all contained in the (sometimes self-referential) footnotes [2] as is the text [2].
This space intentionally left blank.
[c] If polite.


10 IF MAN IN SKIRT = SCARED TO LEAVE THROUGH THE FRONT DOOR THEN GOTO 20
20 GO OUT THE BACK JACK
-Andrea
The old hillbilly from the coal fields of the Appalachian mountains currently living like there's no tomorrow on the west coast.
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crfriend
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Re: Huffngton post

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1970's DGC [0] BASIC hat on.
moonshadow wrote:10 IF MAN IN SKIRT = SCARED TO LEAVE THROUGH THE FRONT DOOR THEN GOTO 20
ERROR 02 - SYNTAX
20 GO OUT THE BACK JACK
ERROR 02 - SYNTAX

Strict BASIC hat off, but CS hat on.

One needs to be careful with code quotes, even with pseudo-code. I say this because sooner or later some poor sod is going to try pasting it into something and is then going to freak out when it doesn't work because they believe that everything on the Internet is true. (The poor bastards.)

In proper BASIC, that program would occupy several lines depending on the precise intent [3] of the snippet above. Real BASIC allows one comparison per statement (i.e. no AND/OR conjunctions) and the single GOTO [2] [f].

[0] Data General Corporation, b 1968, d 1999 "Last [1] of the Minicomputer Giants of Massachusetts. RIP"
[1] The pundits all held that DG would be the first to fall. History proved them all wrong; DG was the last to fail. DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) failed first, then a slew of others, and finally DG fell when it was bought out by EMC in '99.
[2] NOT "Harmful" as all computer code eventually compiles into conditional branches for things. A computer without a jump [a]/branch/goto instruction isn't Turing complete.
[3] which is syntactically unclear

[a] JUMP in the (DEC) PDP-6/PDP-10 is a no-op. The instruction-set is orthogonal -- to make the machine jump to a new address required a "JUMPA" [d] instruction. Hackers quickly realised that JUMPA took several more cycles to execute than a "JRST 0" [e] and used the latter. This persisted until the architecture died in the 1980s.
Real ones, mind, not the modern types. Real ones designed an implemented new instructions on machines if the hardware wasn't capable.
[c] JRST's counterpart was JFCL (Jump on Flags and CLear); JFCL remains the canonical no-op to those "above a certain age".
[d] JUMP Always
[e] Jump and ReSTore flags [c]. With the zero specified, no flags were changed and execution proceeded at the address specified in the instruction.
[f] A statement of 'GOTO "Hell"' is valid in some dialects of BASIC -- so long as it's a defined label -- but not many. It's an utter failure in FORTRAN.
Retrocomputing -- It's not just a job, it's an adventure!
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Daryl
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Re: Huffngton post

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crfriend wrote:I scored seven out of 16, leading off with "drape myself in velvet". I don't exactly get the lasers for the backside, but maybe that's just me (although I enjoy LASERs for other things :twisted: ), and "yoga pants" are a "No!" for 90+% of the population. Quilting I can support, mainly because I'm a bit of an artistic one, though mainly with music and technology (which are closer than one might suspect). I cry frequently when the need arises, both from happiness and sadness -- and sometimes for beauty or a remembrance of a memory from long ago. I prefer cuddling to sex. And I prefer skirts to trousers. Cute is cute, no matter what it's packaging -- and is worthy in its own right.

Yet, with all of the above, I am entirely, completely, and wholly a regular old bloke. I don't need labels to define me because I am not afraid to heed my own inner self. I have every reason to believe I'm a throwback to a time where men were allowed these things and were not reviled for them. It's time to take manhood back and regain our fundamental rights as human beings.

There: I've gone and said it.
Dang we're a lot alike. I remember thinking "that vacuum tube guy is cool" a few years ago. :)

Quilting is off my list unless I can do it with a soldering iron and 74 series logic. Thanks to Bollywood movies and Lisa Gerrard my tear ducts are very well functioning. I can keep my knees together for hours and cross my legs at the knees no problem since I am no longer wearing pants. I have a 5mw HeNe unit I fire up when feeling frisky. The only musical instrument I play is made with a 555, a 74LS93, a 74hc154 plus a few hex buffers eliminating the need for me to be a musician. I can say "cute" but not "SOooo CUuute" for some reason. I cannot affect the sexy baby voice either so I guess it's genetic. I draw the line at smelling purdy. That would only make me noseblind to women...not good.
Daryl...
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crfriend
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Re: Huffngton post

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Daryl wrote:Dang we're a lot alike.
That's the magic of it -- all of us are a lot more alike than we are different, and the sooner that folks learn that the sooner we can return to a (perhaps hypothetical?) world of civility and understanding.
Quilting is off my list unless I can do it with a soldering iron and 74 series logic.
That'd be one scratchy comforter!

74-series logic is really where I got my start, but I've found myself working on machines built from anything ranging from discrete germanium transistors to 10K series ECL. I've never met a valve-based machine in the flesh. Bi-quinary, anybody?

I don't bother trying to sound like anything I'm not, and whilst I'm not "cute averse" I find that I can't draw it out the way the gals can. I also find the "sexy baby voice" cloying at best and repulsive at worst. There was a woman at one of the places I frequent last weekend who had such an affectation, and I must say it was akin to hearing fingernails on a chalk-board for me.
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Daryl
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Re: Huffngton post

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crfriend wrote: 74-series logic is really where I got my start, but I've found myself working on machines built from anything ranging from discrete germanium transistors to 10K series ECL. I've never met a valve-based machine in the flesh. Bi-quinary, anybody?
I started on machines with all logic implemented with discrete components. 7 bit tape drives with just a bin instead of a 2nd reel. I have seen a vacuum tube "programmable calculator" actually in service, an immense beast from IBM. The last technician who knew how to maintain it was retiring in 1980 so the company planned to retire it at the same time. We used "tri-octal" notation rather than hex (ffff=377377). You could pick bits out of the bitbucket with tweezers in those days. Ever used Magnaflux to read data on mag tape?

Ditto on sexy baby voice. I only want to do it to mock those who use it and take themselves seriously.
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