• Announcements

    • Robin

      Welcome!   03/05/2016

      Welcome, everyone, to the new 910CMX Community Forums. I'm still working on getting them running, so things may change.  If you're a 910 Comic creator and need your forum recreated, let me know and I'll get on it right away.  I'll do my best to make this new place as fun as the last one!
Sign in to follow this  
Darth Fluffy

COVID-19 Sadness

Recommended Posts

4 minutes ago, mlooney said:

I need to see if I can find my "Game of Life" code that I wrote so many years ago.

I know I can't, that was too many machines ago. I recall attempting to do those by hand when Martin Garner's math column covered it. Short version, it does not work very well.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I found out about the "game of life" from an old SF book by MA Foster,  "The Gameplayers of Zan", which include the rules for the simple version (i.e. square based with only one type of cell) as an appendix in the book.  I, of course, was exposed to the computer version about 10 years later in my CompSci years at UTEP.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
2 hours ago, mlooney said:

I need to see if I can find my "Game of Life" code that I wrote so many years ago.

 

2 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

I know I can't, that was too many machines ago. I recall attempting to do those by hand when Martin Garner's math column covered it. Short version, it does not work very well.

I definitely can't, because I wrote it in text-editor macros on a Univac 90/80 about 40 years ago. Stopped working with that mainframe about 16 years later, and the text editors on the replacement IBM system were so far inferior...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
3 hours ago, mlooney said:

I found out about the "game of life" from an old SF book by MA Foster,  "The Gameplayers of Zan", which include the rules for the simple version (i.e. square based with only one type of cell) as an appendix in the book.  I, of course, was exposed to the computer version about 10 years later in my CompSci years at UTEP.

Lol, Baja NM.

Macroscope by Pier Anthony had a different one of his games, Sprouts. It is an actual game.

Life broached cellular automata as a serious topic, it became popular shortly afterward. I don't think he was the first, but I'm sure he's the popularizer (other than Martin Gardner quoting John Conway, which helped a lot).
 

1 hour ago, Don Edwards said:

I definitely can't, because I wrote it in text-editor macros on a Univac 90/80 about 40 years ago. Stopped working with that mainframe about 16 years later, and the text editors on the replacement IBM system were so far inferior...

Output to print? That would be gnarly.

... but you are saying you had a Univac running in the mid 1990? That's kind of both awesome and sad at the same time. Not that they were bad machines, just a dying company. They were absorbed by Sperry at least ten years prior, weren't they?

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
3 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

... but you are saying you had a Univac running in the mid 1990? That's kind of both awesome and sad at the same time. Not that they were bad machines, just a dying company. They were absorbed by Sperry at least ten years prior, weren't they?

Yeah, the existing computer that we had on the computer-room floor got rebranded, I think twice, during the time that both it and I were there.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
4 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

Yeah, the existing computer that we had on the computer-room floor got rebranded, I think twice, during the time that both it and I were there.

Back when I took a class in Computational Linguistics at the University of Copenhagen in 2002, we had a functional PDP-9 as part of our server security.

Admittedly its security function was being big and heavy and blocking a window that represented a physical security hole. Thieves had entered the server room through that window and stolen hardware more than once. The PDP-9 put a stop to that.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

My first computer experience was on a PDP-11 system.  That was when the 11 was close to cutting edge.  After I had been on it as a student for few months, I got an after school job as a assistant sysadmin. Fun times.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 hour ago, mlooney said:

My first computer experience was on a PDP-11 system.  That was when the 11 was close to cutting edge.  After I had been on it as a student for few months, I got an after school job as a assistant sysadmin. Fun times.

I loved working with PDP-11s. It was a clean, well documented architecture. No wonder DEC kicked butt and took names.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
20 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

I loved working with PDP-11s. It was a clean, well documented architecture. No wonder DEC kicked butt and took names.

I never got that close to the architecture of the PDP-11 as a programmer, given that most of the stuff I did on the system was either change tapes, load up the line printer and fix jammed Dec-writer II terminals.  When I was programming on the system it was in BASIC-Plus, which for a 1970's version of BASIC was quite advanced.  One feature it had, that I missed until computer memory got cheap was virtual arrays, where you could use a chunk of hard drive space as an multidimensional string array.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

John Prine (and I even called him by his name), April 7, 2020

 

Brian Dennehy? It does not say why he was in the hospital. Ten minutes searching, no more details (yet?)

      "Dennehy died on April 15 2020, of cardiac arrest due to sepsis during a hospital stay in New Haven, Connecticut."

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
39 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Brian Dennehy? It does not say why he was in the hospital. Ten minutes searching, no more details (yet?)

      "Dennehy died on April 15 2020, of cardiac arrest due to sepsis during a hospital stay in New Haven, Connecticut."

Mr. Dennehy's death is a good example that while Covid-19 deaths get the press right now, the other causes of death are still out there, in the same numbers as they had before.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 minute ago, mlooney said:

Mr. Dennehy's death is a good example that while Covid-19 deaths get the press right now, the other causes of death are still out there, in the same numbers as they had before.

Well, yeah, probably somewhat more so, as medical resources are diverted. But did you see somewhere that he was in the hospital for something else? I couldn't find yea nor nay.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Just now, Darth Fluffy said:

Well, yeah, probably somewhat more so, as medical resources are diverted. But did you see somewhere that he was in the hospital for something else? I couldn't find yea nor nay.

No, I didn't but sepsis isn't a side effect of Covid-19.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 minute ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Well, yeah, probably somewhat more so, as medical resources are diverted.

My brother, the scrub tech, points out that hospitals run at about 80% to 90% capacity during normal times.  That's part of the reason why having several hundred simultaneous cases can overwhelm a fairly large hospital, never mind having a few thousand extra cases that need hospital care.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
5 minutes ago, mlooney said:

My brother, the scrub tech, points out that hospitals run at about 80% to 90% capacity during normal times.  That's part of the reason why having several hundred simultaneous cases can overwhelm a fairly large hospital, never mind having a few thousand extra cases that need hospital care.

I couldn't sleep either. :P  I think I'll give it another try.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I had to get out with Mrs. Prof and do a large-ish FedEx return via a small "Essential Business" mail shop. We wore masks while out of our car.

As we left the shop, we saw proof of the sad rumors: discarded gloves on the ground in the parking lot. Disgusting. Who the fark would do such a thing? Take your own medi-trash home and discard it there, people! You probably didn't touch anything inside the store except your own package and your own credit card, so what's the deal with leaving the gloves behind? Sheesh!

Gross.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
2 hours ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

You probably didn't touch anything inside the store except your own package and your own credit card, so what's the deal with leaving the gloves behind?

Yeah, but the touched the handle of the cart or basket and oh my goodness, the air was full of other people's breath.   Must protect against that. 

At least I suspect that is what they were thinking.  I've got no clue as to why some one would discard what might be bio-hazard material instead of taking it to where it could be disposed of cleanly.  I would have thought that after years of "don't litter" being drilled into people they would not litter with gloves and masks.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
3 hours ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

I had to get out with Mrs. Prof and do a large-ish FedEx return via a small "Essential Business" mail shop. We wore masks while out of our car.

As we left the shop, we saw proof of the sad rumors: discarded gloves on the ground in the parking lot. Disgusting. Who the fark would do such a thing? Take your own medi-trash home and discard it there, people! You probably didn't touch anything inside the store except your own package and your own credit card, so what's the deal with leaving the gloves behind? Sheesh!

Gross.

I've seen that here, too. I believe they are recyclable, and nearly every grocery store in my area has plastic recycling. (Aldi's doesn't, but they don't supply bags, either.)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
2 hours ago, mlooney said:

Yeah, but the touched the handle of the cart or basket and oh my goodness, the air was full of other people's breath.

This wasn't even in a big grocery store's parking lot! The store was called "Postal Depot" - a FedEx/UPS/USPS shipping outlet. Just a little hole in the wall store in a strip mall. Where's the reasoning for tossing gloves after going to that kind of shop?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
14 minutes ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

This wasn't even in a big grocery store's parking lot! The store was called "Postal Depot" - a FedEx/UPS/USPS shipping outlet. Just a little hole in the wall store in a strip mall. Where's the reasoning for tossing gloves after going to that kind of shop?

No reason what so ever, which isn't to say there is reason to do so in a bigger store either.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
12 hours ago, mlooney said:

I would have thought that after years of "don't litter" being drilled into people they would not litter with gloves and masks.

 

10 hours ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

Where's the reasoning for tossing gloves after going to that kind of shop?

One thing I've learned is that no matter how conscientious or paranoid people may be, first and foremost they are lazy

If there are many clearly marked and easily accessible trash cans and recycling receptacles, people will use them

But if you think people will walk all the way across a parking lot, or cary their own trash home with them, then you will be disappointed

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
22 hours ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

This wasn't even in a big grocery store's parking lot! The store was called "Postal Depot" - a FedEx/UPS/USPS shipping outlet. Just a little hole in the wall store in a strip mall. Where's the reasoning for tossing gloves after going to that kind of shop?

"If there's intelligent life on Earth, it isn't us" - me quoting me.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this