GNU Image Manipulation Program (or Project)

A bank tried to sell me a pension fund contract. Luckily, I know my math and found out that it was so bad that I’d call it a scam.

The Mitochondrial Eve.

Especially when history has shown that Microsoft had and has issues with security basically everywhere.

I was just using it. But the behavior/reaction to button presses showed me that a button was obviously connected to the wrong function.

I don’t know how to see a memory bug in an out of order elevator, but I once saw and reported a wiring error of a working elevator. It was an interesting talk at the reception desk, but as I could precisely describe what was wrong and the verifyable consequences, they took me seriously. And sent me a “Thank You” email later ;-)

One key point here is: While you actually can replace a bunch of junior developers with AI in some places, any replaced junior developer will never become a senior developer that cannot be replaced by the AI because he/she is basically experince on two legs.

So, corporations, don’t complain about the lack of experienced, senior personnal because YOU have been the main reason they don’t exist.

But that would miss out the large amount of government control over the masses! Think of the kids, not of your rights being trampled on! /s

All batteries are replaceable. Some take a bit more effort and some specialized equipment, though.

I had a friend at university who got a job fixing cobol stuff before Y2K. The bank paid him extremely well, housed him in a luxury apartment during the job, and, as he had no driving licence, dropped in a car with free driver for him.

Well, at least there are people who still use Perl.

I remember being forced to learn this in university.

I started CS from the POV of someone with several commercial projects under the belt and at the time being fluent already in five or six different programming languages. But the university where I started had had an issue - they had been way to theoretical (imagine people writing their CS thesis on a mechanical typewriter, and professors telling us that one does not need computer access for mastering CS!). So they had been more or less forced to include at least a bit of real world stuff into their blackboard and paper world. Which resulted in a no-excuse-mandatory beginners course in Turbo Pascal in the first year and Turbo Prolog in the second.

And I was not alone. It was painful. They showed a programming task to be done on the overhead projector, and about 90% of us could have just typed down the answer without thinking and be done with the weekly assignment in five minutes. Nope. Instead, we had to follow (and join) a lengthy, boring, and worthless discussion about the very basics of programming, before we were allowed to work on it. And woe to us if we did not follow the precise path that we had been “taught” in that lesson, even if it was done in a way that no normal programmer would ever implement it.

If they had given us all the assignments for the semester in one go, we would probably had finished them in one afternoon, including documentation and time to spare.

At least with Turbo Prolog we learned something new. First and foremost that there are strong reasons that nobody uses Prolog for serious programming.

No, it isn’t. I have dined exceptionally well in the UK. Our Christmas dinner is based on an a recipe from an English cook. We have a Scottish cafe/diner in town which serves excellent food.

OK, I’ve dined horribly, too, but it is definitely not the norm - I made the mistake of ordering half a chicken in a fish and chips shop. My recommendation: Don’t repeat my mistake.

I once gave our telco/internet provider the permission to call me on my main number if they have an interesting update regarding our contract. That went without problems for over ten years. One or two calls a year, and usually something worth thinking about.

Then their marketing decided to pull all stops and call us, on all our numbers, not just the main one, but also the kids personal phones. And not only from their official numbers, but random numbers all over the country. We suddenly got a dozen calls a day(!) from them, offering the same two products (at least where we picked up and declined the offer) again, and again, and over again. We blocked numbers, and new ones came up. The block list went from two entries to over thirty. I had to threaten legal action got get our numbers blocked again, and get them marked as such according to our privacy laws.

Silence returned.

Ahh, the good old RFCs dated April, 1st. This one is number 1149 ( A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers), and got later updated in RFC 2549 (IP over Avian Carriers with Quality of Service).

I had a number of occasions where Windows on my work PC f-ed up. None of the times, the windows “troubleshooting” wizard was anything but a waste of time before calling IT or digging into the problem myself.

Indeed I did. Not completly, as it started to dismantle itself (one leg was broken at the hips, and the arms were not much better), but of course I placed it into the recycling bin last, just before the pickup.

A life-sized cardboard skeleton. I bought it as a kind of “paper model kit” with a lot of little plastic and metal clips included, and it used some clever tricks to get all those bones into their proper shape. Intended as a training / learning aid for medical students, it was labeled with all the latin names of everything.

It experienced several outings and trips in it’s “lifetime”, always riding shotgun and waving to the people I overtook. It attended a math and a computer sciene lecture in university (I doubt it understood a single thing from it), enjoyed a day at the “beach” (properly attired with a speedo), and a number of Halloween acts.

It lived in my room for a good decade, moved into the study in my house later, but started falling apart and requiring repairs so it was retired to the paper recycling bin one day.

Very interesting technique to get the widths of the glyphs uniform without them looking ugly in most cases. OK, one can make it look bad if you know the “pain points” of the system, but in normal flowing texts, the fonts do look good.

The sane choice would be to leave.