Category Archives: Computer Technology

The Internet, Someday

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Vintage Compuserve Ad 1982

CompuServe ad, 1982

As I commented somewhere else, when I think of how hard it was to connect to the “Internet” as it was back then, using clunky equipment, acoustical 300 baud modems, and processors slower than my current watch, I am astonished at myself for thinking it was all pretty sweet.

images

Sitting in front of my Macintosh LC, watching NCSA Mosaic download a progressive jpeg file scan by scan, and still thinking that this was the neatest thing since sliced bread? I realize of course, that it took a while to bring processing speeds and data transfer rates up to where the process could be considered cost-effective:

15146.strip.zoom

This Dilbert strip was from May 7, 1997; check the strips from the previous two days as well, they’re pretty funny in retrospect.

Now, with a core i7 machine and a 50MB internet connection (Pretty sweet, huh? Well, just Google around to see what kind of speeds Korea gets on a regular basis. All things are relative, still) I finally feel as if I have the processing power and download speeds to take care of my basic needs. I don’t do high-overhead gaming or image rendering, so I can’t see really needing anything faster for daily use. [1] But it’s taken us 30 years to get here.

<rant> Of course, I’m composing this post on an HP Pavilion Entertainment laptop, one of the worst purchases I ever made back in 2008. This computer is the piece of hqiz from hell (it was nice to see similar things from Shamus over at Twenty Sided, I felt totally vindicated in my white-hot hatred for Hewlett-Packard); the only thing I can say on its behalf is that five years later, it’s still running and I’ve only had to replace the cheap-john battery twice. I know others who have had much less favorable experiences with this particular line, mainly dead computers. The AMD Turion 64 is probably one of the slowest processors they made back in that day, combined with a pre-installed version of Vista and enough bloatware to delight the most jaded software rep; by the sacred skull of Mogg’s grandfather, I’ve ridden tricycles that could go faster. The kindest thing I ever did for myself was to wipe the whole machine and install Win7 Pro, which virtually doubled the response time… and it’s still slow. I’d like to get the entire corporate chain that designed and approved this abomination and condemn them to a year of using their own garbage… with a dial-up connection.</rant>

But Moore’s Law is still in force. Despite the fact that my work-a-day machine is pretty satisfying to use, I can’t possibly imagine what my two granddaughters, now aged 9 and 6, will have seen by the time they get to be my age. I won’t be alive, and I already envy them.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

[1] Well, I lied. If I were richer than Crœsus, I’d buy a professional system and a really nice video editing package, but that’s just a pipe dream for the present.

Oh, so being a programmer is *still* like that?

Posted on by The Old Wolf

compile

It would appear that things haven’t changed much from the days of programming in Fortran, PL/1, COBOL, and JCL  in the IBM environment.

I share with you a poem by Dan Nessett. I have no idea who this brilliant man is, but he has written some classic DP humor. This one was collected in 1980; old-school programmers will probably relate more than today’s OOP whizkids, but there may be echoes that even the newer generation can relate to.

“I Was Wondering About This Error Message,” I said

Beneath my stare began to blur
10,000 lines of print.
Buried alive by 0C5[1]
Which gave not clue nor hint.

Up from my chair, I neared the lair
Branded “Consultants’ Room.
With puzzled gaze I paraphrased
My mind’s perplexing gloom.

“That bilious sty of wire,” said I,
“Has dumped its DUMP on me.
I cannot guess where in that mess
I’ll find the missing key.”

“The clues are everywhere,” he said.
And I began to think
Of : “Water, water everywhere
But not a drop to drink.”

“Aha!” said he, “Your DCB
Has lost BUFL.
MSHI is far to high
And BLKSIZE looks not well.”

“BLDL in this case will
Cause 0C5 or 4.
To BSP hex ‘503’
Will backspace low cost store.”

“You FREEMAIN twice and GETMAIN once’
This cannot be advised.
And all of this, I’m positive
Has caused your 0C5.”

My jaw had slackened to my knees;
A fly flew in my mouth.
I gathered up my SYSUDUMP
And crawled off in a slouch.

Back to my desk; I placed to rest
My chin upon my hand.
My weary eyes seemed quite surprised
To gaze on print again.

Beneath my stare began to blur
10,000 lines of print.
Buried alive by 0C5
Which gave not clue nor hint.

-Dan Nessett

The Old Wolf has spoken.

[1] 0c5 and 0c4 are basically the IBM compilation error codes that mean “You screwed up big-time somewhere, and I have no idea what’s wrong.”

2.1.3 ABEND CODE 0C4
1. ERROR ID: none
2. DESCRIPTION: This is a storage protection violation generally caused by your program trying to STORE data in memory that is not allocated for your use.
3. CORRECTIVE PROCEDURE: Make sure any subscripts used do not exceed the boundary specified. Correct all bad addresses in a store-type statement.

2.1.4 ABEND CODE 0C5
1. ERROR ID: none
2. DESCRIPTION: The computer tried to ADDRESS an area in a non-existent part of memory (beyond the bounds of our installation memory).
3. CORRECTIVE PROCEDURE: Check for improper subscripts and for inconsistent lists for subprograms.

This reminds me of my very first FORTRAN programming class in 1969, working on a Univac 1108. The instructor told us about various compilation errors we could get, and what they meant. He went on to say that there was one high-level error we were unlikely to see, because in essence it meant that we were smarter than the computer: “unresolvable ambiguity in source code” or some such thing. Guess what the machine gave me when I submitted my very first deck?

The IBM 702 and the Univac 1

Posted on by The Old Wolf

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The IBM 702 was a business answer to the Univac 1 computer, which was the first mainframe computer which used magnetic tapes. The 702, using Williams Tubes (CRT Memory) had some technical problems and did not last long on the market, being replaced by the 705, which used magnetic core memory instead.

Early Laptop

 

The Eckert-Mauchly Univac 1, 1951. 1000 words of 12 characters. $159,000.00.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Someone is an Excel freak.

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Someone spent a long time doing this. It rather blew my mind. I thought I’d share it.

  1. Download this file and open it with Microsoft Excel. (225K, scanned with Microsoft Security Essentials – Virus-free, contains no macros)
  2. Select all cells [Press CTRL+A]
  3. Clear cell borders [From the Format menu, select “cells”, choose the “border” tab and click “none”]
  4. Set row height to 15.33 [From the Format menu, select “row” and “height”, and 15.33]
  5. Set column width to 2.4 [From the Format menu, select “column” and “width” and enter 2.4]
  6. Click  in the picture to display the actual colors.
  7. Admire the result. Brilliant.
  8. If for some reason you’re not able seeing what looks like a beautiful Indian village scene, click here to see the result.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

“The Flash Plugin has Crashed”

Posted on by The Old Wolf

It’s a common enough scenario. You experience a problem on the computer. You call the hardware vendor, who blames the software. You call the software vendor, who blames the hardware. In each case, you’re dealing with a chaiwallah in India who has nothing to go on but a script targeted for the least-competent computer user in the universe, and you waste precious time in order to get no answers. Which explains this XKCD comic. “Dammit” is right.

My problem: Flash 11.5.502.146 and Firefox 18.0.1 (both the latest versions) are incompatible, and the flash plugin crashes every ten minutes, with a cute little “submit a crash report” link. I’d be curious to know where those reports go, and if anyone cares, because the problem has been going on for a long time. For me, the problem began with Firefox 16 and have continued to date. Mozilla blames Adobe’s Flash 11.3 update, and the fora appear to bear out the fact that there are problems in Flash that Mozilla can do nothing about, and Adobe appears to be unwilling to fix, given the current version numbers.

Today I chatted with Adobe’s customer support, and you can see the result below:

Thank you for choosing Adobe. A representative will be with you shortly. Your estimated wait time is 2 minute(s) and 30 second(s) or longer as there are 1 customer(s) in line ahead of you.

You are now chatting with Vikas.

Vikas: Hello. Welcome to Adobe Technical Support. How may I assist you?

Me: I would like to know when Adobe will resolve its issues with Mozilla. This has been going on for over a year now. I’m using Flash – 11.5.502.146 and Firefox – 18.0.1, and the flash plugin crashes constantly. I have visited every online forum I can find, and everything points to the fact that the problem lies with Adobe’s refusal to fix certain bugs, and nothing to do with Firefox. It’s depressing, and I want it fixed.

Vikas: I can understand your concern. There could be multiple reasons for this error, we need to look into the issue and fix it. However,if you need our assistance then you need to purchase a support contract for $39. As the support for flash player or any other free software is paid.

Me: I don’t want to pay a fee, and I don’t want support to take me through a whole lot of idiot-checks only to find out in the end that the problem is the same one everyone knows about. I simply want the product fixed. Can you give me assurances that the problem is being addressed by Adobe, and a date when the fix will be implemented?

Vikas: I really apologize Chris. If you dont wish to pay I can escalate your feedback to our engineering team so that they can look into the issue. However, cannot assure you the time frame.

Me: Is Adobe aware of the issue, and are they working on it?

Vikas: We work on every feedback provided to us by the customers. We are currently working on the issue. As explained that cannot assure you the time frame.

Me: Thank you for your time. I appreciate your being there to answer questions.

I do my best to be polite to phone agents because they’re just trying to make a buck like me, but you can see that the corporate script they have to work with is hqiz. Even if I had paid the $39.00 fee (an insult!), the result is fore-ordained: “Is your computer plugged in? Have you rebooted? I suggest you re-install Windows 7…”

What bothers me the most is the insouciance. When companies get so large that their budgets move into the billions of dollars, some problems are deemed not worth fixing, and users are nothing more than dollar signs, some of which can be sacrificed as collateral damage in the pursuit of even greater profits elsewhere. It can be downright depressing.

I’m getting close to my only real solution at this point – ditching Mozilla altogether. I have it configured just the way I like it – no ads, no trackers, and a number of very useful add-ons, which are the main factors which keep me hanging around. Chrome has no such problems, and my patience is almost at an end. I’m surprised the Mozilla community has been unable to bring any pressure to bear on Adobe, Mogg knows they’re big enough.

The Old Wolf has whined enough for now.

Warning: Facebook’s Mobile Photo Sharing

Posted on by The Old Wolf

With little or no fanfare (as usual), a recent change to Facebook’s iPhone and Android mobile apps will forever change the way people share photos and the way Facebook finds out where you are and what you are doing.

Here’s a screen grab from my Android phone, just a few minutes ago.

DoNotClick

With an innocent-looking “Start Now” button and the very misleading[1] insinuation that your friends are doing this, Facebook is trying to corral you into sharing every photo you take with your mobile device onto its cloud-based, minable storage. Just two taps, and the last 20 photos you have taken with your phone or tablet, and every image thereafter, will be automatically uploaded to Facebook’s cloud storage. Including photos that you never, ever ever ever ever ever want anyone to see. What kinds of photos those might be I will leave up to your individual imaginations.

Be aware of these things:

  1. Your photos will only be visible to others if you explicitly share them
  2. Whether shared or not, Facebook will be able to mine your geolocation data (if you have not purposely disabled that feature), meaning they will have a good idea of where you are at any given time, what stores you are close to, and what ads they wish you to see.
  3. Given the ability of Google to identify photos (think of Google’s image search or Google Goggles), along with facial-recognition software, Facebook would very feasibly have the ability to automatically identify and tag your friends in photos that get sent to its database. You may have to authorize those tags to be visible, but doing that for you without your permission seems to me a gross violation of privacy.

You can read more about this over at TechCrunch. I’m not going to insist you “like and share” this, because I think that’s obnoxious – but I felt that folks should know about this new “feature.”

The Old Wolf has spoken.

[1] Yes, these three friends do share photos on Facebook. They are probably not, however, using this “insta-share” feature.