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lproven
8,776karma·4,928submissions·December 30, 2013
about
Tall dark black-clad atheist skeptic biker SF fan; writes, mainly about computers, for a living.
# Work
Currently the FOSS & cloud correspondent for the Register.
https://www.theregister.com/Author/Liam-Proven
Work email: lproven+hn@sitpub.com
# Personal
Comments here (or anywhere else, unless otherwise stated) are personal opinion and not on behalf of any employer.
Based in Douglas, Isle of Man.
Quick info:
https://about.me/liamproven/
Personal blog:
http://lproven.dreamwidth.org/profile
Tech blog:
http://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/profile/
Socials:
https://social.vivaldi.net/@lproven
https://bsky.app/profile/lproven.bsky.social
https://x.com/lproven
https://meet.hn/city/im-Douglas
recent activity (4,928 total)
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I have a tiny handful of friends in IT older than I whose careers are still thriving in the UK. Most are specialists of some kind. I wish them well. For the first >50% of my career, my speciality w…
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Good for you! Sincerely! I am very happy about the move. I'm glad to have left the UK and my quality of life now is far better than it was. I wasn't forced into it. I had a fallback plan: …
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I haven't noticed any particular habits of numerical formatting or anything, but this might be US-specific. But I have done the pulling-magic-fixes-out-of-a-hat thing. It's fun. :-)
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Exactly so. I have tried most things. I removed all the dates from my CV. No difference; a minimally intelligent pimp can add up. Degree, that's 3y; 3y in this role, 2y in that role, 2 years ther…
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I lost my last permanent job in London at the end of 2008, at the beginning of the financial crisis in the UK. I applied for about two thousand roles in 2009 alone, and from 2008-2013, about 3,500 r…
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I like LibreOffice too, but it has no outliner mode. That leaves it hopelessly crippled for me, sadly. I use Calc, Impress and so on, but I write in MS Word 97 under WINE. Faster, industry-standard fo…
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Actually, yes it does. For journo stuff, hypothetical deity help me, MS Word is my editor of choice. Mainly for the outliner -- it's the _only_ mainstream wordprocessor that still includes outlin…
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No, _here_ is the current best guide to cryptocurrencies: https://www.amazon.com/Attack-50-Foot-Blockchain-Contracts-e... …
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I just bought one, used, on eBay last month. I'm pleased with it, although the keyboard action is very stiff -- and I speak as an IBM Model M fan. As a modern version, some kind of enclosure for …
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"ARCOS"? "Distro"? It's not called ARCOS. It's AROS: (originally) the Amiga Research Operating System. (Due to a trademark claim, it is now the recursive AROS Research OS…
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Are you thinking of OPL? OPL -- Organizer Programming Language -- was the default Psion high-level language bundled with all their EPOC machines. It's a block-structured BASIC-like language.
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You're kidding, right? IBM actively shuts down whatever emulation efforts it can... e.g. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/02/ibm_buys_psi/ …
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That's a foolishly simplistic view. From simple models -- e.g. foxes and rabbits: https://niko.roorda.nu/computer-programs/fox-rabbit-theoreti... -- to more complex web mode…
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No, it is not remotely contentious. The actual situation is that the petrochemical companies are spending a large amount of money on spreading FUD to obscure just how dire the situation is. They are i…
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Boustrephodon works very well for _words_ -- but badly for numbers. Even Roman-style ones. I suspect that put it at a disadvantage.
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It wasn't for x86 only. It ran on almost anything: ARM, SPARC, PowerPC, you name it. In its more mature form, as Intent/Elate, it is _the_ single most radical OS there's ever been, pret…
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Strongly agreed. Especially since multiple successors to Unix already exist -- notably, Plan 9 and Inferno.
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A fair point. I would have liked to see what his existing writing partners -- Neil Gaiman or Stephen Baxter, for instance -- could have done. But it's not what he wanted.
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I've occasionally played with Gobo for years now. I am delighted to see it coming back to life of late. One thing I've always thought would be ideal would be if either or both of the 2 Linux…
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There are, or were, 4 forks of AmigaOS around. From memory, here is the breakdown… * AmigaOS 3.5-3.9. By Haage & Partners. Proprietary. Runs on original 680x0 hardware. Based off the original bina…
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I think a few [[citation needed]] comments are required in there. :-)
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Exactly! What is the point of recreating something _resembling_ a Model F but that doesn't have the same layout? Ctrl to the left of A, Caps Lock out of the way at lower right (in just the right …
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Beware of echo-chambers. http://n-gate.com/
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What, you mean apart from every Unix ever? (All right, all right, excluding Mac OS X. But it's weird.)
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11. Such symbolic communication is not unprecedented among wild
animals. Social mammals such as meerkats have vocal calls which can
indicate the type of threat that a scout has perceived. Many primate…
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7. Anyone who has owned a pet dog has witnessed canine behaviour which
at times closely mimics human responses: being hopeful, being excited,
being sad, being afraid and so on. The null hypothesis her…
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4. Flying insects can't do this; there's no direct way to mark a trail
in the air. So bees, as is well known, have evolved a form of symbolic
communication: the "waggle dance". By …