engaged the appropriate hardware depending on whether the data at the address was intrinsically tagged as integer or floating?
engaged the appropriate hardware depending on whether the data at the address was intrinsically tagged as integer or floating?
Hmmm... not sure that's always strictly true. Burroughs? Yeah, Burrough. Integers and floating point numbers were tagged within the data word and could be distinguished by inspection and not confused with each other. But I've never programmed one. Maybe there was just one "add" instruction which
The idea that static typing makes code safer is like the idea that COBOL made things safer by including an Identification Section that forced programmer to declare AUTHOR, DATE-WRITTEN, DATE-COMPILED, and INSTALLATION. Maybe a program with that information IS safer but it doesn't help MUCH.
"The Uneeda Biscuit made the trouble! Uneeda put the crackers in a package, The Uneeda Biscuit in an air-tight sanitary package made the cracker barrel obsolete, obsolete Cracker barrel went out the window with the Mail Pouch cut plug chawin' by the stove..." ("The Music Man, set in 1912).
_I_ was traumatized by the queasy and cringey sexual asexuality or asexual sexuality in the sequence with the centaurs. And even without reading about it, I knew instinctively that the weird bikini tops or brassieres had somehow been painted on top.
It leaves ME cold, but if you say so, I guess.
Was the woman in a car or standing? How did he KNOW she was a victim of domestic violence before picking her up, or did he learn that only after stopping? Had she called him on his cell phone saying "I'm trying to flee my abuser, can you meet me... AT THE SIDE OF THE ROAD ON I-93?"
He was going north and intending to continue, but after stopping to assist the woman, something about the encounter made him change his mind and reverse direction. But what? It just seems like that would be something you'd explain.
ways to make a U-turn, and the few that are are dangerous and for cops only. So: 1) he was going south, he saw the woman waving far away on the northbound side, his driver made a tricky, expert U-turn to get to her, assisted her, then made another tricky U-turn to resume the southbound trip... OR,
The story isn't exactly suspicious, just weirdly unhinged. The part that gets me is the lack of any explanation of why his car stopped to help a woman on the NORTHBOUND side, and then was hit driving on the SOUTHBOUND side. I93 isn't a wide road with a median strip, it's two separated roads. Few
I hope OPERATION WARP SPEED was as “BRILLIANT” as many say it was. If not, we all want to know about it, and why??? Thank you for your attention to this very important matter! President DJT
trying to figure out the success or failure of the Drug Companies Covid work. They show me GREAT numbers and results, but they don’t seem to be showing them to many others. I want them to show them NOW, to CDC and the public, and clear up this MESS, one way or the other!!!
I have been shown information from Pfizer, and others, that is extraordinary, but they never seem to show those results to the public. Why not??? They go off to the next “hunt” and let everyone rip themselves apart, including Bobby Kennedy Jr. and CDC,
"It is very important that the Drug Companies justify the success of their various Covid Drugs. Many people think they are a miracle that saved Millions of lives. Others disagree! With CDC being ripped apart over this question, I want the answer, and I want it NOW.
Now, this is interesting. Sorry, I think I need to post the full text. Trump is _aware_ that CDC is being "ripped apart" by vaccine questions and regards it as a "MESS" that needs to be cleaned up. This is the first indication of any qualms about "Bobby Kennedy Jr." September 1, 2025 @ 8:15 AM:
I remember my 1967 Dodge Dart, considered a "classic," rusting out and looking like hell in about six years--developing such a big hole in the floor that we had to have a plate welded over it--starting to emit blue smoke at about eight years--and getting 21 mpg and I thought that was great.
As a kid, I was taught about THREE temperature scales: Fahrenheit, "Centigrade," and Réaumur. With tables converting all three. Réaumur puts freezing at 0, but boiling at 80°. In 2000, touring the Netherlands, I FINALLY saw one... small public thermometer outdoors on a utility pole. Antique looking.
How can it be in IMAX when it wasn't shot in IMAX? (Checking) 35 mm Panavision.
In those days, Consumer Report routinely found and listed around thirty defects in every new car they, lots of "fit and finish" issues.
I remember auto executives saying with a straight face that their sales figures proved that "Americans" didn't care much about quality, gas mileage (as "fuel economy" was called), or safety, and that the free market had found the multifactor optimum tradeoff between them.
Not trying to contradict you, how things do or don't make an impression and how the MSM spins them is another matter, but I don't think they're quite as bad as you suggest. Hope to remember to revisit this after Wednesday.
I'll take that bet, but I guess we have to define "mainstream media." I'll bet that it's covered by the New York Times, NPR, ABC World News Tonight (with David Muir), CNN, and Reuters. MAYBE Fox. Off the top of my head. If you mean a big headline in the NYT on the front page above the fold, no.
THE GOLF LINKS (1914) The golf links lie so near the mill That almost every day The laboring children can look out And see the men at play. --Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn 1876-1959
People have changed the spellings of their surnames over that kind of issue. (Not not not suggesting you should). It was years before I realized that an acquaintance with the surname "Win" had changed it from "Nguyen."
It's so weird, because if the President IS fine, why not put him before the cameras to acknowledge the rumor and make fun of it--attacking those who spread it, accusing them of treason, etc. He could knock that out of the park.
Exactly. For that matter, why doesn't anybody talk about AI models that can TEST code?
Kinda crazy how we don't have a letter for the most common vowel sound in English, the "schwa," ə, the little grunt between the "t" and "n" of "mountain." Or how we have at least a dozen vowels, but only five letters to represent them.
In Ye Olde Days, address books always included separate sections for M and Mc, though.
But progress is intrinsically exponential for AI tech--unlike every other tech like airliner cruising speeds or processor clock speeds--and when you extrapolate the lines they will be ready to do it by 2027.
A student of mine is very annoyed at the pronunciation difference between "height" and "weight." She was reading something about "height and weight," pronounced the "eight" in "height" like the word "eight," I gently corrected her, and then, of course, she read "weight" and pronounced it "white."
My feelings about "Peanuts" were transformed when I learned that Lucy Van Pelt was loosely based on Schulz's wife. I wonder if she was OK with that.
Recent experience. The mutual fund NAESX began in 1960 and was run by a firm whose name began with N. Vanguard was not founded until May of 1975. And the correct information is within the first ten actual search results.
for some purpose unrelated to the woman, what about his meeting with the woman made him decide to reverse direction?
That's the part that keeps baffling me. It's not ever easy to reverse direction on an Interstate, and it looks like that whole stretch has separated north- and south-bound roads, not a wide road with a median strip. Was he going NORTHbound when the woman flagged him down? If he was going SOUTH
Doesn't explain why, quoting the New York Times, "The state police confirmed the domestic violence incident, saying in a statement that it had occurred on a southbound stretch of [I-93] in Manchester, N.H. The statement did not say why the accident occurred on the northbound side of I-93."
It makes me sad to realize that I will probably never learn whole truth about how the event was scheduled at the wrong "Four Seasons."
It's odd how half-baked the White House response has been. What not have Trump acknowledge the rumors and make fun of them? He'd be good at that. He must be so deified by his base that acknowledging his mortality would be heretical.
But how to get Donald Trump's attention? RFK Jr. was nice to him once, and MOST of his appointees are creating chaos and destroying their departments and he likes that. How do you convince him that RFK Jr. is MAKING DONALD TRUMP LOOK BAD? Or that RFK Jr. has said something disloyal to Trump?
Back to the days when every big gravestone in the cemetery was fronted by a sad little row of little gravestones...
Yep, and we THINK we have an appointment to get the shot in a CVS in NH next week. But I've promised my wife not to flip out if we get there and find some glitch like, "O, we've just been told they are all reserved for NH residents..."
Yeah... you cannot change anyone else's mind unless you are willing to take the risk of having your mind changed.
Thanks!
Just to remember... news story, "October 18, 2012: Cuban state media released a message attributed to Fidel Castro on Wednesday evening, as speculation mounts over the health condition of the 86-year-old communist leader." Then he lived until November 25th, 2016, and was 90 when he died.
Indeed. And I am trying to remember... looking it up... "October 18, 2012: Cuban state media released a message attributed to Fidel Castro on Wednesday evening, as speculation mounts over the health condition of the 86-year-old communist leader." And he lived until November 25th, 2016.
Yes, and in Spanish. Even sweeter in Spanish, in my opinion, especially "nuera" for daughter-in-law. "Yerno" for son-in-law. "Suegro/suegra" for father-in-law, "cuñado/cuñada" for brother-in-law, sister-in-law.
So weird. Sounds simply like an accident, maybe one that wouldn't even be news if it hadn't happened to a celebrity. But that isn't a satisfying story so I expect conspiracy theories.
No, the cause of the decline of Western society is failure to put the apostrophe in "Hallowe'en."
The Google AI Summary also confidently says 1960, _even though a site with the correct information is within the first ten search hits.
and Vanguard has managed it continuously since then." Vanguard was FOUNDED in May, 1975 so no. It's possible to elicit the correct answer from ChatGPT with the right prompt wording, but unless you already know that the answer is wrong, why would you do that?
Me: "when did vanguard take over naesx" ChatGpt: "Vanguard does not need to "take over" NAESX because Vanguard has always been the manager of Vanguard Small-Cap Index Fund (NAESX) since its launch. Vanguard Small-Cap Index Investor Fund (NAESX) was originally founded in 1960,
But wait, Ithaca is in New York, isn't there a huge surcharge on top of that?
I had to look it up, but no, a mayflower, _Epigaea repens_ , does NOT have a six-pointed star in the middle. It would be pretty cool to have fivefold and sixfold symmetry in the same flower, but it doesn't.
???? Sorry, what do you mean? Tchaikovsky's March Funebre, maybe? But Chopin's is the famous one, isn't it? "Where will you be in a hundred years from now/Pushing up the daisies from underneath the groun'..." www.youtube.com/watch?v=ido5...
You don't need to be very old to wonder why the third wish isn't always for three more wishes.
What stops one branch of government from becoming too powerful? ("checks and balances"). What is one right or freedom from the First Amendment?
I don't think the problem is civics education. What happened is that we elected a president who doesn't know civics. I don't believe he could pass the naturalization civics test. What are the first three words of the Constitution? What is "the rule of law?"
How long were there "news" stories commenting on Fidel Castro's invisibility before his death was announced?
It's like using accent marks in résumé, or italicizing "schadenfreude" to show it's not quite English yet. I was surprised to find out that the Jack London story whose title is now always written as "All Gold Canyon" was originally published as "All Gold Cañon."
And a big part of the answer is, because so many fled fascism in Europe in the 1930s and 1940 and emigrated to the US. Hans Bethe, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, Emilio Segrè, Eugene Wigner. Scientists are already feeling the US. This is our future:
(" Smoot Plans Tariff Ban on Improper Books " NEWS ITEM) "Senator Smoot, Republican UT Is not to be bribed with pelf; He guards our homes from erotic tomes By reading them all himself." --Ogden Nash, "Invocation," 1930.
Actually, it's been documented that Mussolini did NOT, in fact, make the trains run on time. He took credit for improvements made before he came to power. history.howstuffworks.com/history-vs-m...
They put up a sign. But did they pass the ordinance?
They will certainly TRY. But I really think it is MOSTLY a cult of personality. Ron DeSantis was "Trump without the baggage," but he wasn't Trump and he didn't get very far. Maybe I'm grasping at straws, but...
All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. Ecclesiastes 1:5-7 KJV
The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.
It takes a while to get a bill through Congress. The President changes his mind every couple of weeks, and Congress wouldn't be willing to keep up with that.
Writers are generally people who love English, read a lot of English, know English well, and like to take advantage of what the language offers. And generally, for most languages, the written language IS richer than the spoken language.
One year I was calling classmates to urge them to come to our 35th high school reunion. It was amazing: I was calling some of the coolest, most popular kids in our school, and EVERYBODY said the same thing, ALL of them: "Oh, I didn't have a good time in high school. I never felt I belonged."
Woman: “Excuse me?” Man: very slowly “If you want to speak Mexican, go back to Mexico. In America, we speak English.” Woman: “Sir, I was speaking Navajo. If you want to speak English, go back to England.”
Surely not true, but good story: "I was waiting in line behind a woman speaking on her cellphone in another language. Ahead of her was a man. After the woman hung up, he spoke up. Man: “I didn’t want to say anything while you were on the phone, but you’re in America now. You need to speak English.”
Yes. And heaven help you if you ever want information on some topic that happens to also be the name of a singer or a band. (Particularly with Google now limiting you to showing search results no more than ten at a time). Like opera composer Engelbert Humperdinck.
It seems as if, everywhere, new AI features are always enabled by default, and the end-user is never asked if they want them. I guess they're afraid that if people were asked, nobody would enable them and it would be too obvious that they money they spent on them was wasted.
You may be disappointed by how crisp and sharp they are. Washed-out by flash, red eyes, badly composed--but crisp and sharp.
Personal thoughts about them. How they laughed, walked, the jokes they liked, their insistence that everyone use chopsticks at House of Tseng. With someone I've NEVER met, whose name I never HEARD before they were shot, I'd be a phony to pretend I could hold them personally in my thoughts.
"a steel cart that was broken and tilting badly, rubbing hard against the soft, beautiful stone." So soft that ONE incident like that requires replacement of the stone? What is it going to look like in a few years of rearranging tables and chairs, trundling out food carts, ladies in high heels..."
Interviewer Russ Douthat: You WOULD prefer the human race to endure... right? Thiel: [pauses] Douthat: You’re hesitating. Thiel: [pause continues] Douthat: This is a long hesitation. Should the human race survive? Thiel: Yes.
Do you know when the two-sentence headline began? Enabled by the Web and no physical space restrictions... You know the thing: from today's Washington Post: "Justice Department reassigned top attorneys to sanctuary cities group. Every one has quit."
But, seriously, is there an explanation of why he and his family physically vacated the White House, without drama, in a normal way, in 2021? It looked like your routine peaceful transfer of power for several ways, before the lunacy restarted.
Freshness will beat name-of-brand any time.
The first sound "recordings" were made by a "phonautograph," a vibrating stylus scraping away lampblack from glass disk. Years after they were made, someone used photoetching to engrave it into a metal place and it then, for the first time, could be played back.
You might be able to cut that down by as much as a factor of ten and still have it listenable. I think the real trick would be setting up the right illumination to light up the whole disk in such a way that all the groove excursions were clearly delineated.
Interesting. Well, let's say there are 200 grooves per inch and 3⅜ total inches = 675 grooves, and let's say you want to be able to resolve the shape of the groove to 8-bit resolution, so you'd need 256 pixels per groove width, or 172,800 pixels each way... about 30,000 MEGApixels. So not easy.
P.S. I could be being unfair, but I'd bet money the MOS images were photoshopped to boost saturation.
I've seen a total solar eclipse and a dozen total lunar eclipses and lunar eclipses ain't the same. They don't want to make you holler "Stop eating it, GIVE IT BACK." By all means watch it, enjoy it... USE BINOCULARS... but it's not life-changing, it's about like a nice sunset.
For shame. The MOS is climbing on the overhyping bandwagon. Lunar eclipses are cool, the way a rainbow is cools. But the moon doesn't explode in size, or turn bright scarlet or crimson. The difference from an ordinary crescent moon is subtle. It's red-DISH at best. Here's my photo from 2015.
crescent moon is there, but it's subtle. And there isn't much of the creepy feeling you get from a total SOLAR eclipse. You don't have to stop yourself from hollering "Quit eating the moon, GIVE IT BACK." Enjoy it. USE BINOCULARS. But don't expect too much.
ACIP-recommended vaccines. Traditionally, the ACIP recommendations came out at the same time as the FDA's, but this time the ACIP hasn't met, won't be meeting for at least three weeks, and CVS and Walgreen's believe they are not allowed to dispense them without a prescription, maybe not at all.
They are essentially unavailable in sixteen states right now, even if you are eligible. A complicated, incompetent mess because in those states, there are TWO gatekeepers. The FDA says it's safe and effective, but it's the ACIP that says "who should get it." Those states only let pharmacies dispense
able to walk, as when he walked to Marine One to get taken to Walter Reed. So if he's got a sprained ankle or something, he could well be laying low until it gets better.
Unfortunately, Trump views any infirmity as "weakness" and has always insisted on a myth that he has extraordinary health. This constrains the White House to lie and cover up the kinds of things that are almost normal in 79-year-olds. And... although he hates to walk... he places stress on being
To tamp down rumors, the White House ought to publish a Court Circular, à la Mark Twain in "A Connecticut Yankee:" "Clarence’s way was good, it was simple, it was dignified, it was direct and business-like; all I say is, it was not the best way."
The fact that a few days' absence from public video creates a firestorm of speculation is another proof that we are living under a dictatorship. The absence of comment from the White House is bizarre; they don't need to acknowledge the rumors, a routine half-truth about his location would be enough.
It's a societal shift. In the 1950s it was a normal platitude to say "you cannot put a price on human life." Sometime around the 1970s and 1980s we began to do it routinely. Discounted present value of a person's future stream of earnings or something....
He posted a rant about the tariff court decision on 8/29/2025, though.
I'm too gullible. You made me look.
Shippers WANT to ship things, that's how they make money. The US WANTS them to ship things, that's how we collect tariffs. But you can't just announce a tariff, you have to do the detail work to make it possible to collect them. This administration keeps firing the people who do the detail work.
It isn't even due to tariffs. It's due to the administration being so incompetent that shipping companies can't find out how much to pay, whom to pay it to, or through what channel to pay it. They'd be willing to pay, but we won't tell them how. A lose-lose scenario. This isn't good for anyone.
That's what the pandemic was like.
He posted a rant about the tariff decision just yesterday, though.
But, Amazon deliveries?