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My computer stays in my office, and I don't sleep there (except during Teams calls).
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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I have had a Microsoft Comfort Curve keyboard for years and it gets heavy use every day. Only left, right and down cursor keys are missing their markings; all the others are completely intact. (No, I don't play games or anything like that - just coding and documentation.)
Oh, and part of the Microsoft logo is worn away.
It's not a brilliant keyboard (it makes lots of tryping mistakes) but it's good enough that I don't want to be looking for anything else.
Phil
The opinions expressed in this post are not necessarily those of the author, especially if you find them impolite, inaccurate or inflammatory.
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I've just sent my DAS back ( too noisy ) very well made though
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Get them to replace it with a Cherry Brown version instead of Cherry Blue - they lack the audible "click" that makes them noisy.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Lempel gone on the 4th of February, and Ziv just yesterday, on the 25th of March...
"If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization." ― Gerald Weinberg
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Eh ?
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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"Prof. Abraham Lempel, Inventor of PDF & MP3 Compressions"
I never ever heard about Lempel being involved in MP3 development. So I checked Wikipedia on MP3: It names 6 developers, none of them being Lempel. "And others", says the list, with a link: "Lempel" is not found on the referenced page. Lempel certainly did not develop the primary, psychoacoustic (and lossy) compression method of MP3!
I also never heard of Lempel developing PDF, so I checked Wikipedia on PDF as well, including the "History of PDF". No mention of Lempel in either article.
The Wikipedia article on Abraham Lempel makes no mention of neither MP3 nor PDF.
Lempel and Ziv (and Welch) did some tremendous work in developing the most influential lossless compression algorithm of all times. The importance of this should most certainly not be underestimated or degraded.
The journalist's problem is that 95+ % of his readership has never heard of LZ77 or LZW. Thousands of formats use some LZW variant; Lempel cannot be credited for all of them. So, let me dig out a couple that are well known to common man, and attach Lempel's name to those! It doesn't matter if Lempel himself never even heard about those formats (well, he certainly did know both PDF and MP3!); the essential thing is to associate his name with something great!
So why didn't the journalist mention e.g. Microsoft .docx? Probably because the majority of the readership would refuse to believe it. You can make them believe that Lepel could take credit for MP3 or PDF, because they know very little about the development of those formats, so let's go for those rather than .docx!
Many (40+) years ago I read an informal study of major technical innovations, among them the car, telephone, radio and several others, and correlated the information in the major encyclopedias in the US of A, England, France, Germany, Italy (maybe others as well; I don't remember all the details): Which importance did each 'national encyclopedia' give to developers of their own country to the technology? To which degree did they downscale the contribution from persons of other nationalities? When presented side by side, the results could be described as 'hilarious'.
After I read this study, I always have been somewhat skeptical to any source trying to glorify beyond limits any person of its own nationality. Lempel doesn't need that! His work certainly was so great that it can stand on its own, without trying to give him credit for other format that he never touched, as a developer.
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trønderen wrote: So I checked Wikipedia
You might be right in this case, but you should rely on better sources than that.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Sure, but when you have been in the IT business for 40+ years and never heard a single hint of neither Lempel nor Ziv being involved in either PDF or MP3, so at the outset, you are 99.9% sure, and Wikipedia confirms your 99.9% certainty (by not saying a word about any connection, which it certainly should have, if it was a fact), then Wikipedia may serve as a reference point for other people who have been in the business for a shorter time than I have.
I certainly do not trust Wikipedia, but it may serve as a decent starting point for an information search. In this case, I think that being right in the middle of it for 40+ years (including teaching the principles of LZ77 and MP3 at college level) constitutes sufficient advance research that I can support the Wikipedia information in this question.
If I were misinformed, I would think that some CPians would provide some reliable references to show that I am wrong. I haven't seen traces of that yet.
(I have a friend who has been living in Sweden for 40 years: He just knows of this Swede who is the sole inventor of MP4 (I believe that my friend knew the guy). The invention was stolen out of his hands, along with a handful other inventions of his. I don't know if this Swede knew Lempel and Ziv - maybe those were the culprits. Or maybe he stole their MP3 contributions and created MP4 from that. My friend bluntly rejects any discussion of the issue, and if given references to anything contradicting his firm beliefs, he just pushes it aside and turns his back to it. He only believes in the truth.
In my fantasy, I like to play with the idea of gathering together a group of such firm believers in who is to take the credit for the invention of this and that, and let them have a dogfight to straighten out the question, to come to a conclusion so that we can rewrite the history according to what they agree upon after the fight. On the other hand, maybe we already have such a thing, in Wikipedia  !)
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ditto to OG
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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The other one, Welch, (L Z W), is already gone in 1988.
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#Worldle #429 2/6 (100%)
🟩🟨⬜⬜⬜⬅️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr
Knew where it was but had to peek because bad memory
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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#Worldle #428 1/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr
easy one
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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Wordle 645 3/6
⬛⬛⬛🟨🟩
⬛🟩🟨⬛🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
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Wordle 645 3/6
⬜⬜🟨🟨🟨
🟩⬜🟨🟨🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
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Wordle 645 4/6
⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜
⬜⬜🟨🟨🟩
🟩🟩🟨🟨🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Had 2 letters flipped or it would 3/6
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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Wordle 645 2/6*
⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Well. That was lucky! 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Wordle 645 3/6*
⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟨🟨🟩 - Should be worth 2.5 don't you think? 
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
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Wordle 645 3/6
⬜⬜⬜🟨🟩
⬜⬜🟨🟨🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Wordle 645 3/6
⬛⬛⬛🟨🟩
🟨⬛🟨🟨🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
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Wordle 645 3/6
⬛⬛⬛🟨🟩
🟩🟩🟨🟨🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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On a whim, this weekend I started re-reading "The Mythical Man-Month". I had forgotten what a delightful book it is:
Quote:
Why is programming fun? What delights may its practitioner expect as his reward?
First is the sheer joy of making things. As the child delights in his mud pie, so the adult enjoys building things, especially things of his own design...
Second is the pleasure of making things that are useful to other people. Deep within, we want others to use our work and to find it helpful...
Third is the fascination of fashioning complex puzzle-like objects of interlocking moving parts and watching them work in subtle cycles, playing out the consequences of principles built in from the beginning...
Fourth is the joy of always learning, which springs from the nonrepeating nature of the task...
Finally, there is the delight of working in such a tractable medium. The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff...
Some of the stuff seems even more germane these days than it was when it was written:
Quote: The purpose of a programming system is to make a computer easy to use. To do this, it furnishes languages and various facilities that are in fact programs invoked and controlled by language features. But these facilities are bought at a price: the external description of a programming system is ten to twenty times as large as the external description of the computer system itself. The user finds it far easier to specify any particular function, but there are far more to choose from, and far more options and formats to remember.
Ease of use is enhanced only if the time gained in functional specification exceeds the time lost in learning, remembering, and searching manuals. With modern programming systems this gain does exceed the cost, but in recent years the ratio of gain to cost seems to have fallen
Feel like trying new frameworks anyone? 
Mircea
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Mircea Neacsu wrote: Feel like trying new frameworks anyone?
Only because .net has so much backward support for v1 :grrrrrr: .
We need a replacement for .net and C#. It's been twenty years now.
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I wish the software development at large to take such an attitude towards C/C++ (50+ yo) and *nix CLI.
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