Notices by Zorro Notorious MEB 🪷🪷🪷 (algocompsynth@mastodon.social)

@nixCraft Slackware?

@nixCraft I was defiant!! I spent something like 12 hours logged into Internet Relay Chat from a Windows 98 laptop during the crossover in the PST8PDT timezone and absolutely nothing bad happened to me!

@itsfoss I don't have a preference since I switched to Universal Blue Bluefin. I can run any distro I want as a Distrobox container, and I have both fixed-release and rolling-release containers.

@nixCraft They can collect code from my open source repos whether I use Copilot or not. Copilot isn't the problem; GitHub is.

@nixCraft Nah, that's solved - it's down to Arch Linux or Universal Blue Aurora (KDE) or Bluefin (GNOME).

@nixCraft They're just in it for the mice.

@nixCraft `sudo nice --19 top`

@nixCraft I am probably switching my main computer from Windows 11 to Universal Blue DX at the end of the year.

@itsfoss Being directed by management to use an IDE instead.

@fsfe A fair amount of USA government-developed software *is* open source and has been for decades! When i worked at NASA in the 1970s we were releasing a lot of code, and long before the web, email servers were distributing LINPACK linear algebra code via email servers.

#PublicCode

@nixCraft I think it indicates wisdom in the C suite and a willingness to listen to their customers.

@nixCraft I'm fine with eliminating COBOL. I'm not fine with Java as its replacement. Replace it with a young language like Rust.

@nixCraft "dies" for me is "stops getting security updates". IIRC for Apple that's five years. My Samsung phone is approaching five years and I think it's still getting security updates. But it used to be three years for Android.

So no, you can't ignore the supplier's hype. The phone may still take pictures and all that but you do *not* want it on the internet if it is vulnerable to hackers.

@nixCraft I don't know what fraction of programmers do it because it is fun, but it certainly has been true for me since day one. And I suspect it's true for the really good ones.

I'm retired and I still do some programming every day.

@nixCraft Well, you see, once upon a time, not all computers were byte-addressed, used binary two's complement integer arithmetic with word sizes a power of two and had IEEE 754 standard floating point arithmetic. 😉

@nixCraft When I was 30, most operating systems only had one text editor and your employer chose your operating system for you. There were no flamewars. 😉