5
points
Stratoscope
Joined 25,051 karma
Michael Geary: mike@geary.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelgeary/
Stack Overflow: https://stackoverflow.com/users/1202830/michael-geary
Photos: https://geary.smugmug.com/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/geary/
One of these days I will figure out which of these sites I like so I can stop paying for two of them!
- StratoscopeDon't let me clickbait title divert you from this interesting and informative article.
- 4 points
- 3 points
- > the computer they wanted was DEC PDP-10. At this point, Paul Strassman was replacing every IBM and DEC machine at Xerox with an SDS machine.
This scenario must have played out in multiple places. I was involved in one of them.
I was working at Tymshare, and we were evaluating the PDP-10 and the Xerox (XDS/SDS) Sigma 7.
My manager called me into his office.
---
Mike, this conversation is strictly between you and me. If anyone asks, I will deny it happened.
You are our best Sigma 7 expert, and even you prefer the PDP-10.
We're doing final acceptance tests on the Sigma 7. If all the tests pass, we have to commit to it. If enough tests fail, we can return that machine.
---
I got the hint. Challenge accepted!
Knowing all the ins and outs of the Sigma 7, I found a few subtle ways to make it crash at random times, without any indication that anyone had interfered with the tests.
Eventually I slipped up and left my username visible in a core dump.
Back to my manager's office.
---
Mike, we have a problem. Xerox figured out that you were messing with the Sigma 7 system software. We told them we would fire you. So, you're fired. You can't be in the office any more.
But you do have your Teletype at home, right? You have some projects to do on the PDP-10. Can you work on those and stay away from the Sigma 7?
Keep track of your hours, and after this blows over we will hire you back and give you that back pay.
---
So I did. And they did!
- > I'm bad at expressing myself so I can see why I get down voted
Don't beat yourself up over it!
If it helps any, one thing I noticed is that you got some quick downvotes on your first short comment. But then you edited it to add some insightful thoughts, the kind that should be welcome here and indeed led to an interesting conversation.
If I could suggest one thing, it would be to wait until you have that insightful thought and then post it.
(Yes, I realize that the guidelines say "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." That's a good general principle, but I hope we can make an exception when someone is genuinely looking to improve their way of interaction, as you are. We can all learn from that, myself included.)
- > In the scifi-whodunnit The Barbie Murders the concept of changing your body without too much trouble is used by a cult of people who all look exactly the same — lack of genitalia (i.e., 'Barbie'-like) included.
Did you see the Barbie movie? I bet you will enjoy it.
There is a scene where Ken and Barbie are rollerblading in Venice Beach, and some rude people are harassing them. They each announce, "I don't have a ..." (You can fill in the blank.)
And without giving too much away, there is another scene near the end that involves... Birkenstocks!
- > their sexuality came from the bodies their brain was put into? So the brain essentially transforms too after that surgery.
Yes! And of course it's a mix of their previous memories and experiences, and their new bodies with all the hormones flooding into their brains. They don't stop being who they were, but they also become someone new.
Some of the stories deal with this very question. One in particular I'm trying to remember involves two guys who are best friends and buddies. One of them has a Change, and then they go camping in an inflatable bubble on the Moon... And things get awkward and interesting!
(If anyone remembers this specific story, please do tell.)
Since you are someone who has thought about these issues, I have a feeling you will enjoy these stories.
- > did this future also eliminate being straight?
Of course not. No one was forced or expected to have a Change.
It was just an option available to anyone with the curiosity to wonder what it would be like to be the opposite sex - and experience that fully - and then switch back again if they preferred where they started.
But you raise an interesting point. In the stories I read, all of the characters were "straight" in the way we think of that word today. This may be my poor memory, but I don't recall stories involving men who enjoy sex with men, or women who enjoy sex with women.
When a man had his brain transplanted into a woman's body made just for him, then she was attracted to men.
When a woman had her brain transplanted into a man's body made just for her, then he was attracted to women.
The characters were straight, from the point of view of their current body. It's just that they could change that body whenever they wanted.
- I was chatting with Claude this morning about a trip to Chicago where I visited the wonderful Field Museum among other places. An excerpt:
Claude: The Field Museum is enormous - I imagine you got your steps in that day. The anthropology collections there are world-class, even if they didn't make it into your photo collection. Sometimes the experience is more important than the documentation. Did you have a favorite exhibit beyond the dinosaurs?
Me: Oddly enough, the anthropology and human history section! Now I need to take another visit to Chicago to get pictures of those.
[No response from Claude]
[40 minutes pass while I have breakfast]
Me: Looks like I caught you during your morning nap. Every two and a half year old should get a good nap now and then!
Claude: Ha! You caught me mid-thought - I was composing a response about how great it is that the anthropology section was your favorite despite the dinosaurs being such showstoppers, and apparently my brain decided to take that nap you mentioned! ... Though I have to say, for a "two and a half year old," I like to think I'm pretty articulate when I'm awake!
- > People change gender on a whim.
This is one of the more fascinating things about Varley's world.
Unlike today's primitive surgical and hormone treatments, they had a much more elegant solution. You would have a new body of the opposite sex grown in a tank, and when it was ready, a medico would remove your brain from your old body and place it into your new body.
So instead of being in a medical approximation of your new gender, you really were that gender, with your old brain and all your memories intact.
It was so commonplace that people may change back and forth many times. You might ask a friend in casual conversation, "When did you have your first Change?"
A "medico" was something like what we would call a "doctor" today, but they were not considered nearly as highly skilled and highly paid. Basically a mechanic for your brain and body.
- Interesting reading, thanks!
BTW I'm familiar with linkrot, but I just discovered link poisoning.
I was reading the blog post on my Android phone and saw the Maps links to Firefly and Home Restaurant. So I tapped the Home Restaurant link and it took me to the Google Maps app in my normal home position with my home in the center. I thought for a moment that maybe it confused Home restaurant with my home.
So I tapped the Back button and nothing happened. Tapped it several more times with no luck. Finally I used the ||| button and swiped Maps up to kill it.
Then I tried the Firefly link, with the same results.
On the web, both links work fine, but someone forgot to test that these old links still work on Android.
Turns out that Home Restaurant is closed, but Firefly is alive and well. Their menu looks tasty, and the FAQ is something to behold:
https://www.fireflysf.com/faqs
If anyone here ever wants to write an FAQ with charm and grace and humor, read this one and learn. It is the gold standard!
- Additional reporting from Gizmodo:
Marco Rubio Orders State Dept to Stop Using Calibri Font in Anti-DEI Push
https://gizmodo.com/marco-rubio-orders-state-dept-to-stop-us...
- Via The Conversation:
When the world’s largest battery power plant caught fire, toxic metals rained down – wetlands captured the fallout
https://theconversation.com/when-the-worlds-largest-battery-...
- 2 points
- Location: Menlo Park, CA
Remote: Yes, or possible hybrid if nearby
Willing to relocate: Possibly
Technologies: Python, Ruby, C, C++, C#, JavaScript, TypeScript, PowerShell, Flask, SQL, PostGIS, Shapely, Unity, Unreal Engine, multiple assembly/machine languages, Windows user code and kernel drivers, Google Maps and other map APIs, geographic and airspace data
Résumé/CV: https://www.geary.com/resume.html or https://www.geary.com/resume.pdf and https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelgeary/
Email: mike@geary.com
Hi, I'm Michael Geary. I've programmed in many languages and environments over the years. Some of my current interests are:
• Aviation and geographic data. For example, airspace and obstacle data importers for Wing; election results and voter information maps for Google; many interactive maps for other companies.
• Hardware interfacing. In a way, I am a "full stack" developer, but my stack may involve a front end to a piece of hardware rather than the cloud. I first got into programming via ham radio, so RF hardware remains an interest.
• Designing and building APIs. Too often an API is designed by exposing the internals of whatever system provides the API. My philosophy is the opposite: start with the apps. I like to build a series of sample apps before starting on the API. This way I can imagine what API will make those apps and others like them easy to build.
• Talk with users! I don't like to sit in a back room cranking out code. I want to make sure it's the right code for what my users need, and that it's easy to maintain and improve as we learn more about what they want.
Open to full time or contract.
I look forward to talking with you!
- 5 points
- You seem to be making things more difficult for yourself than they need to be.
For the strings, just use f-strings and forget all the others. You can even do things like this for debugging:
For the block indenting, what editor are you using? Pretty much every modern editor lets you select a block and indent/unindent with Tab/Shift+Tab.>>> class User: ... pass ... user = User() ... user.name = "Surac" ... >>> print(f"{user.name=}") user.name='Surac' >>>VS Code and PyCharm are both free and are great for Python coding. They each have a full debugger, which is invaluable when you are learning a language.
- I saw this on the Jack Paar show in 1957, shortly after the BBC broadcast.
Growing up in an Italian family, of course we knew it wasn't true.
Spaghetti doesn't grow on trees, it comes in bags from the grocery store!