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I have lived since the days when the real reason for this was stil alive and kicking. When I explain to youngsters today, why ASCII was 7 bits and US digital channels 56 kbps, they stare open-mouthed at me: Is that really true?
For those who do not know: Digital phone lines in the US were 8 bit, and the raw bit rate was 64 kbps. But the system designers decided to pack 24 of those up in a 1,5 Mbps T1 connection, leaving no room room for the signalling to/between the phone switches - dialling and such. (When running ISDN over such lines, only 23 phone channels were used, with the last one reserved for signalling.)
So to communicate e.g. number dialling (and a lot of other control signals), every sixth byte in the "user channel" had to sacrify its least significant bit for such use. A recognized term for this is "bit robbing", which I find quite descriptive. The five bytes inbetween were intact 8-bitters. Aside from the problem of every 6th byte being 7 bits only, the problem was that the equipment preparing the data stream couldn't know which one of the bytes were the 6th. (Equipment connected directly to the line, such as a digital phone, could synchronize by "frame hunting", recognizing frame delimiters in one of the six bytes, but not in the other five.) So no LSB was trustworthy. The byte rate was 8000 bytes/sec, the byte size 8 bits, but only 7 were reliable. You couldn't even use it for parity: Half of every 6 bytes (or if you prefer, every 12 bytes) would, on the average, be received with the wrong parity.
Bit robbing was never used in European telephone networks. Our 2 Mbps E1 channels had room for 30 user channels, one for signalling according to international standard and one for national or proprietary signalling. Channnels were clean 8 bit / 8000 Hz, 64 kbps. So, the switch to ISDN went much easier in Europe than in the USA. Here in Norway, ISDN was The line standard from around 1995 up until the present (although most subscribers didn't know: The analog, 1930 or thereabouts standard, signals from the old phones they clung to, where digitized and transformed to ISDN format before entering the phone switch).
(The single phone company providing fixed phone lines here in Norway announced two days ago that they no longer will accept orders for new fixed phone lines; they will tear down their old lines within a couple of years. People who insist on having a desktop phone will be equipped with an adapter transforming the signals from the old rotary dial phone into cellular phone signals. ... I guess that those insisting, have retained the rorary dial, never upgrading to pushbutton DMTF model  )
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Time for ASCII to shine again (except on PRIMOS)
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I suppose you know that Uncode defines a UTF7 encoding as an alternative to UTF8 (or UTF16).
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covfefe
cheers
Chris Maunder
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You know, it's positively embarrassing when an Australian, indentured in Canada, working for an international web site, knows more Internet slang-de-jeure created by the American Orangemeister than an American(*) does.
(*) Yours truly
Software Zen: delete this;
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I actively discourage any useful information from taking hold in my head.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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I practice that as well. I took 30+ hours of math courses in college, many years ago. That part of my brain is now taken up by memorized movie dialogue(*), a far more useful thing (at least for me).
(*) Why yes, I do have the entire script for Young Frankenstein on tap.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Similar to the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition, how about we create CP rules of Software Development?
I'll start:
If you announce to the universe that you have nothing to do, the universe will find an annoying bug for you to fix.
If this goes anywhere, I'll collate the list and post it, um, as a tip, I guess?
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From the FRoA 34 & 35:
Quote: War is good for software development
Quote: Peace is good for software development
(I was just watching DS9: S03, E15 "Destiny" after lunch - coincidence?)
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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FRoA 47 can go through unchanged: Quote: Don't trust a man wearing a better suit than your own.
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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what happened to
Quote: don't trust anyone that opens with, "I can help."
??
This internet thing is amazing! Letting people use it: worst idea ever!
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So can FRoA 112, "Never have sex with the boss' sister." 
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Bosses daughter?
If your neighbours don't listen to The Ramones, turn it up real loud so they can.
“We didn't have a positive song until we wrote 'Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue!'” ― Dee Dee Ramone
"The Democrats want my guns and the Republicans want my porno mags and I ain't giving up either" - Joey Ramone
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The length of time required to learn a new Microsoft paradigm / language / framework is inversely proportional to it's lifetime.
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On that basis, you should be able to pick up C++ in about three minutes...
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Maybe you missed the "Microsoft" keyword...
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Well ... It started as "C with classes" in 79, and Turbo C++ was out in 1990. But then came Visual C++ in 93, and pretty much since then if you reached for a C++ project, you reached for a MS product (Embedded excepted, I had some success with Embedded C++ on ARM processors at the beginning of the century)
OK, Turbo C is still out there, but the last release was 12 years ago - name me a mainstream C++ IDE that doesn't come with the MS logo?
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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 I thought this thread was supposed to be humorous. Apparently not...
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C++ is not a frivolous language! It's the "Uncle in accounting" of programming languages.
(C# can crack a joke from time to time, and VB is the Special Needs cousin you hope can't make it to the party)
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Hey, I thought that was a joke 8)
MS may have implemented a few versions of C++, but had nothing to do with the original definition of the language (other than to implement slightly non-compliant versions) and still only have an input to the language design (rather than controlling it).
Just shows how blinkered an idea one gets of the dev ecosystem if one has never stepped outside the MS universe I suppose.
(I started using C++ from its very earliest days, developed for Windows and Linux with it for over 20 years, and never once did I do that with a Microsoft product.)
HA HA HA HA <bonk>
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It took me nearly three minutes just to get the shrink-wrap off the manual!
This also tells you how long ago it was!
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Never fix one bug when refactoring the entire module could bag you 50 more bugs.
Corollary: Always try and get your manager to bonus you on the number of bugs you fix.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Chris Maunder wrote: Always try and get your manager to bonus you on the number of bugs you fix.
You are such a good employer. CP devs, ask for bonus. We promise we will flood the sugs and bugs forum.
"It is easy to decipher extraterrestrial signals after deciphering Javascript and VB6 themselves.", ISanti[ ^]
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Oh no! Do we really need the whole bible?
Quote: "What are we going to do?"
"What a Ferengi always does in a situation this grave."
"Panic?"
"No, you idiot! He goes to the Rules of Acquisition. Unabridged and fully annotated with all 47 commentaries, all 900 major and minor judgments, all 10,000 considered opinions. There's a rule for every conceivable situation."
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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