rbanffy

✨ Seasoned software developer, proficient in Python, Java. Less proficient in Ruby and Lisp. A bit rusty in C and C++. Learning Erlang very slowly. Also a computer collector and restorer, lover of 8-bit computers, mainframes and interesting Unix workstations.

email: username at that google mail thing

http://about.me/rbanffy

https://linkedin.com/in/ricardobanffy

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/rbanffy; my proof: https://keybase.io/rbanffy/sigs/HtF1uAf_RNpwIkNP1-YGWP_-3doWV6S5Cc1KywXeLYo ]

πŸ“… Joined in 2008

πŸ”Ό 189,490 Karma

✍️ 62,479 posts

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15 latest posts

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(Replying to PARENT post)

Europe has been dealing with wars since before your country existed. That’s nothing new around here.
πŸ‘€rbanffyπŸ•‘1dπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

We need a better system than this one.
πŸ‘€rbanffyπŸ•‘1dπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

I’d be happy if Trump was forced to pay it from his pocket. After all, inciting police officers (or anyone) to commit crimes is also a crime and he should be held accountable.

But this is a civil case.

πŸ‘€rbanffyπŸ•‘1dπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

I see a huge problem in increasing the authority of US police officers. They need to be held to much higher standards than they are now.
πŸ‘€rbanffyπŸ•‘1dπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

I heard 100 million, so. Anyway, it seems we might Earth’s last chance to seed other planets and stars.

We gotta start working seriously on fusion torch drives and fully self contained space habitats that can operate without any external materials for thousands of years. That and power plants that can last that long.

πŸ‘€rbanffyπŸ•‘1dπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

That’s also a nice idea.
πŸ‘€rbanffyπŸ•‘1dπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

Passing a negative value to a function that is specifically for converting strings into unsigned numbers is pretty much an error. In the case of functions that return an unsigned number, at least, negative return values can represent errors.

It’s more fun when the result can be signed though. Maybe strcmp with the representation of the LONG_MAX, and if it doesn’t match, call strtol and watch for a LONG_MAX indicating an error.

C is a bit messy. Would be nicer to return a struct with a possible error and the desired value, Golang style.

πŸ‘€rbanffyπŸ•‘1dπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

Is their misbehavior part of the spec as well? If not, we can always add the correct behavior to the spec and let anyone who implemented a broken version deal with fixing every program compiled using it.
πŸ‘€rbanffyπŸ•‘1dπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

> Likewise there seems to be no "The" MVS/360 operating system there's a zillion possible local installs of all capability levels and eras, all very different and fun.

VM and MVS back then were interesting beasts. The source was available and many people customised them extensively.

I have been playing with VM/370 Community Edition for some time (https://rbanffy.github.io/fun-with-big-computers/fun-with-vm...), and it's an interesting environment. The other day I decided to make plain VM/370r6 available as a docker image (alongside my other images) and it is a very bare operating system, much less comfortable to play with than CE. The same applies to MVS 3.8j and the various community enhanced "Turnkey" editions.

πŸ‘€rbanffyπŸ•‘1dπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

I really love my C64 Maxi - it's a little ARM board running a custom version of (AFAIK) VICE, but it is shaped like a C64/VIC-20/C16. Mine has the VIC-20 colors and keycap titles (the keycaps have the C64 shape though, and caps lock doesn't lock).

It "feels right".

I wish we could have USB versions of period appropriate keyboards such as the VT-100/200/300, the ADM-3A, Apollo, Xerox Star, Symbolics, Apollo Domain etc, as I believe a lot of the realism is the physical parts of the machine you actually touch.

The screen is important, but if you have a fast-refresh HDR monitor, you'll be close enough. Many more recent machines had keyboards that were very close to modern ones and didn't any have special keys absent from a PC-104/105 key one. Mice are also relatively easy, as few machines had very different kinds of mice.

πŸ‘€rbanffyπŸ•‘1dπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

I guess you don't happen to have copies of them lying around, do you?
πŸ‘€rbanffyπŸ•‘1dπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0
πŸ‘€rbanffyπŸ•‘1dπŸ”Ό4πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

> My bank doesn't even support it.

It's not like it's that difficult to implement. Most Brazilian banks implemented a similar protocol in months.

πŸ‘€rbanffyπŸ•‘1dπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0