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I completed my Computer Science degree at the University of Manitoba in 1976. I did two and a half years of programming in medical research followed by twenty-nine years at Manitoba Hydro (electric utility). Most of that was spent on doing development…
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- Computers and programming (duh). Reading (usually mysteries). Wind-surfing, canoeing. Winter - cross-country…
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- Dell Inspiron 5759 laptop, Windows 10 Home
5,064 Posted Topics
Stranger Things. Adam & Didi saw the Broadway show and said it was fantastic. Now they are going to watch the series.
Been that way for years. When I decided to leave my first programming job I told my boss that I should be present at the interviews. Being an engineer he assumed he knew enough to do it himself. He was wrong. Not only did the replacment not have a programming …
AmigaOS/Intuition/Workbench
>a hockey puck-looking graph I have no idea what this means.
I'm thinking glasses and hearing aids.
Well, my first job out of university (1976) was on a research project to develop a computer aided system for creating custom back supports for people confined to wheelchairs. The technique was called shadow-moire contourography. You make a metal frame about the size of a refrigerator and lay it down …
You are going to get the expected answers from us dinosaurs. The glib answer is that most of my "youth" in computers predates software. At least software that you would recognize by today's standards. I'm talking about anything you would recognize, namewise. Almost all editing was done on mainframes and …
I just had a look at Daniweb from August 2010 when I first joined. Wow! What a difference 15 years makes.
Basically the thing religion has been doing since the inception of religion.
Security in IoT devices. From what I've read they are still woefully easy to hack. We have even seen devices like baby monitors, embedded defibrillators, and pacemakers hacked remotely. This is unacceptable. Less reliance on the internet (see next point as well). If I install a security camera at my …
I don't see how that would be possible. First of all, who would pay the thousands of people required to do the checking? And at the rate new data, or new arrangements of same are being generated it's even worse than the Red Queen's Race.
It's almost meaningless now. You can download just about any book, TV show, or movie now even though they are protected by copyright. The only penalties seem to be on those who are hosting the content, and the hosting sites keep switching from country to country to avoid penalties. Some …
Will he bury them in technical debt before he implodes?
Cop shows that include a 5 minute foot chase. This is usually the result of the cops shouting out a suspect's name from half a block away instead of waiting until they are within arm's reach. Inevitably the suspect runs into the path of a car or truck and the …
First app is Macrium Reflect so I can take an image of the fresh install. Then I repartition to C/D, move my user folders (documents, pictures, etc.) to D. Then I take another image. After that I begin installing my base apps before imaging one more time.
I hope not. My feeling is that code camps are about as useful as the "Learn <language> in 21 Days" books. They don't teach good programming habits. The books may be useful if you already have a grounding in proper software design but learning a skill as complex as software …
This is not a political rant, it's a political reality. The current government would only regulate it so that it benefits the current government, just like they regulate the tax laws. What government **would** you trust to pass reasonable and fair regulations?
I like creating something from nothing. Unlike carpentry, where once you cut something too short you are screwed, programming lets me try things without consequence. It's much more open to experimentation. I've also loved puzzles and mysteries, and debugging involves elements of both. My best times at work were when …
>the XY PROBLEM Is that where you look at your ex and wonder why?
>I’ve been using it, but I always ensure it's perfect or not. Well, it's definitely going to be one or the other. When I give an answer I always try to ensure that it is correct or not.
I would first support a tech tax on auto-trades - the millions of stock market trades that are done automatically by bots. Even a small amount would bring in a lot of tax $$$. If it was applied to **all** trades then it would have only a small impact on …
I hate it when a boss micro manages the team, but letting each team member pick their own language, IDE, etc. is just insanity. The boss should be concerned about having the entire team use the same language and tools, and has to consider how the project will be maintained …
# NORM! Somebody had to say it. Shout out to George Wendt.
Nope. I never found another place that felt as comfortable as Daniweb.
I used AI today to get the syntax of how to use the python ffmpeg library to chain several operations together to convert a video. Much easier than poring through several online sites.
Does anyone else run MarkdownPad locally? I used to use it to edit lengthy posts before submitting but in the last few months whenever I try to run it I get  Yesterday I wiped my C partition and re-installed Windows 11 25H2 from scratch. No luck. I get the …
[google it](https://www.google.com/search?q=alternatives+to+chatgpt&sxsrf=AE3TifNSf1-CpWNsPRepxGZTwV7PRa02-Q%3A1760128255202)
According to [this article](https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/10/tesla-fsd-gets-worse-at-driving-nhtsa-opens-new-investigation/) it's getting worse.
I gave up my desktop in the early 2000s. I had a desktop at the office as well as a Thinkpad. The grreat thing about the Thinkpad was that I could swap out the hard drive without opening the case, so before going home at night I'd swap out the …
I can't imagine you'll get any agreement on this. When technology works well it can be wonderful, especially to someone who has mobility issues. In my experience I have trouble getting any two devices to cooperate. I am constantly losing my connection to my downstairs laptop, even though I am …
You could try the free [DivX Media Server](https://www.divx.com/en/software/divx/#:~:text=Available%20for%20Windows%20and%20Mac,TV%20(DivX%20Media%20Server).) It's not quite standard (whatever that means) but it might do the trick. I use it for casting to my ChromeCast. However, it is non-standard enough that I can't use it to stream to my Oculus Quest 2 using BigScreen. As a …
I'd stay right where I am. I know how things work, even if they frequently do not.
I was going to make it top one but I couldn't narrow it down to just one. My two all time favourite sidekicks on TV are: 1. Al (Dean Stockwell) from Quantum Leap 2. Sam Axe (Bruce Campbell) from Burn Notice.
The problem with the technology changing so quickly is that it becomes hard to decide what platform to commit to. Do you go with something that has been around a while (and may become obsolete) or do you commit to a relatively new technology that will be abandoned when something …
Wow! Is this a can of worms or what? We sort of had this discussion before (regulation) in trying to decide how much responsibility a platform has when publishing content from users. Do Facebook, etc. have the same responsibility to filter content as would the letters page in a newspaper? …
I'd tell you a UDP joke but you might not get it.
> I don't know what religious idea scares me more, eternal torment in Hell or eternal boredom in Heaven. > - Isaac Asimov I'm with Isaac. Count me out.
I don't see how we can. It was estimated that in 2024 we were generating 300–350 exabytes of new data per day. That number is increasing exponentially. We don't have the storage capacity to save everything, and not enough people to determine what is worth saving.
In the age of amazing video effects and immersive VR, board games can be overlooked. I like board games because they promote a sense of community by playing face to face instead of screen to screen. You generally have time to ponder a move rather than just react to a …
Any price? No. The apps I use most frequently are: 1. [calibre e-book reader](https://calibre-ebook.com/) (free) 2. [VLC Media Player](https://www.videolan.org/vlc/) (free) 3. [FastStone photo viewer](https://www.faststone.org/) (free) 4. [Brave Browser](https://brave.com/) (free) 5. [Nightingale Music Library](https://getnightingale.com/) (free) 6. [Everything Indexer](https://www.voidtools.com/) 7. [Python](https://www.python.org/)/[wxPython](https://www.wxpython.org/) I would be willing to pay a *reasonable* price for all …
I just started watching the video you linked to. I want to pay careful attention to the part about lucid dreaming. I would love to be able to induce this on demand. I have had a couple of dozen episodes of lucid dreaming where I was aware I was dreaming …
I retired in 2008 and while I still keep my hand in programming, it's only for my own use. Programming has become so complex with web apps, neural nets, and machine learning that I would be absolutely lost in today's marketplace. I think the worst thing that has happened (and …
The End.