Stephen wrote:

> Well if we are going for a P***ing contest:)

> uniselector and a rotary phone dial. It could add and subtract with the output
> in binary. Almost as much fun as the wine making.

Um... technically that's not a stored-program computer. :-P

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Thu, 08 Nov 2007 18:20:39 +0000, Orchid XP v7 wrote:
> 
>> Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
>>> Invisible escribió:
>>>> (I never really understood why programs produce core dumps. I mean,
>>>> seriously. What chance is there of anybody *ever* deducing anything
>>>> useful from this data? 10^-78?)
>>> The original programmer with access to the sourcecode *can* deduce data
>>> from it.
>> I seriously doubt it...
> 
> I've done it, several times, even with things I'm not the original 
> programmer for but have access to the source code.

Really?

Well, it still sounds absurdly improbable to me, but I'll take your word 
for it.

Now, how about that Windoze habit of saying "The program has experienced 
an error and will be shut down. Do you want to send debugging 
information?" What do you estimate the chances are that *anybody* will 
do anything at all with the data thus sent? ;-)

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Stephen wrote:
>
> > Well if we are going for a P***ing contest:)

> > uniselector and a rotary phone dial. It could add and subtract with the output
> > in binary. Almost as much fun as the wine making.
>
> Um... technically that's not a stored-program computer. :-P

I think really it was an electro mechanical abacus. It had two hard wired
programmes, add and subtract. :) You had to throw a switch to change the
operation.

Stephen

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Stephen wrote:
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> Stephen wrote:
>>
>>> Well if we are going for a P***ing contest:)

>>> uniselector and a rotary phone dial. It could add and subtract with the output
>>> in binary. Almost as much fun as the wine making.
>> Um... technically that's not a stored-program computer. :-P
> 
> I think really it was an electro mechanical abacus. It had two hard wired
> programmes, add and subtract. :) You had to throw a switch to change the
> operation.

The word you're looking for is "calculator". ;-)

And what, you couldn't throw in a few extra logic circuits to convert 
from binary to decimal? ;-)

I, on the other hand, spent months designing CPU and some RAM circuits 
on my Amiga 1200 using DPaint IV AGA. I'm not really sure if it would 
ever have worked, but (without the RAM) would have required roughly 200 
chips. (7400, A.K.A. TTL quad 2-input NAND.)

I tried to restart that effort using KLogic - but it crashes too much.

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Stephen wrote:
> > Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >> Stephen wrote:
> >>
> >>> Well if we are going for a P***ing contest:)

> >>> uniselector and a rotary phone dial. It could add and subtract with the output
> >>> in binary. Almost as much fun as the wine making.
> >> Um... technically that's not a stored-program computer. :-P
> >
> > I think really it was an electro mechanical abacus. It had two hard wired
> > programmes, add and subtract. :) You had to throw a switch to change the
> > operation.
>
> The word you're looking for is "calculator". ;-)
>
> And what, you couldn't throw in a few extra logic circuits to convert
> from binary to decimal? ;-)
>
> I, on the other hand, spent months designing CPU and some RAM circuits
> on my Amiga 1200 using DPaint IV AGA. I'm not really sure if it would
> ever have worked, but (without the RAM) would have required roughly 200
> chips. (7400, A.K.A. TTL quad 2-input NAND.)
>
> I tried to restart that effort using KLogic - but it crashes too much.


Tobor the Robot :)

binary to decimal converter using only relay logic?
Ah! TTL, I built a digital clock out of TTL but did not put it together when I
checked the current. The PSU would have needed to supply 100 amps at 5 volts

could run on a PP3 battery.


Stephen

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Most other languages don't futz with the class of the object while it's 
> being constructed, so it doesn't really come up, I guess. One of the 
> costs of multiple inheritance as implemented by C++?

  I don't understand what multiple inheritance has to do with this.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Presumably that means that if you do sufficiently freaky things with 
> pointers to pointers to data through multiple levels of type casts, the 
> compiler can't figure out what you're actually doing or something.

  Or you simply have a regular function in the base class, this function
gets called in the initialization list of the base class constructor, and
in the implementation of this function you call a pure virtual function.

  It would be difficult for the compiler to follow how the functions are
being called (and, in fact, it's impossible for it to know if the pure
virtual function actually gets called in the general case).

  The problem with calling a pure virtual function in the base class
constructor is that the derived class has yet not been initialized and
thus calling a derived class function implementation could cause undefined
behavior because it's not constructed.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:

>   The problem with calling a pure virtual function in the base class
> constructor is that the derived class has yet not been initialized and
> thus calling a derived class function implementation could cause undefined
> behavior because it's not constructed.

Um... probably. You know way more about C++ than I ever will.

Either way, it's definitely a program bug, and it's definitely 
completely unrelated to virtual memory. ;-)

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Either way, it's definitely a program bug, and it's definitely 
> completely unrelated to virtual memory. ;-)

  That person is presenting the classical symptoms of clueless user whose
brain functions get diminished by 90% when in the precense of a computer.

  One typical symptom is the complete inability to read and understand
simple error or message dialogs. Typically from a message containing 12
words they see 2 and make all kinds of weird conclusions based on these
2 isolated random words.

  The symptoms are worsened when in precense of a knowledgeable person who
is trying (futilely) to teach them how to use the computer. The most typical
(and annoying) thing they will do is, when presented with a dialog with a
simple message and one single button ("Ok"), to ask "what do I do now?"
The mere precense of the knowledgeable person makes them completely blind
to the message in the dialog. They see random symbols which could as well
be chinese kanji.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> Either way, it's definitely a program bug, and it's definitely 
>> completely unrelated to virtual memory. ;-)
> 
>   That person is presenting the classical symptoms of clueless user whose
> brain functions get diminished by 90% when in the precense of a computer.

In this particular person's case, I'd say more like a reduction of 60%. 
But that's still quite a big reduction, I'm sure you'll agree...

It seems to be a case of somebody seeing

   Microsoft VisualC++ Runtime Library
   A pure virtual function call occurred in SVCHOST.EXE.

and instead read it as

   La la la, la la, la la la *virtual* la la, la la la, la la.

This is probably not helped by the "engineer" who was supposed to be 
working on the equipment that this software runs. Apparently he saw this 
message and proclaimed "oh, your computer doesn't have enough virutal 
memory", and increased the setting from 250 MB to 2500 MB. (I.e., over 2GB.)

Ever since that time, nobody will believe me that the error message has 
nothing to do with virtual memory. Or rather, I explain that it's 
nothing to do with virtual memory, they go "oh, OK", and then a few days 
later they're asking me what I'm going to do about the virtual memory 
error that keeps happening. *sigh*

I guess you could classify that as a memory fault rather than a 
comprehension fault. I mean, when I explain that it's not virtual 
memory, they seem to kind of not really understand but never the less 
accept that what I'm saying is right. They just don't *remember* about it...

Oh, and if I find that "engineer", I'm going to give him a talking to. 
But, apparently, I'll have to join the queue first.

[Long story. Rather than getting the manufacturers to service our 
devices, we're using some El Cheapo company who's staff don't seem to 
really know what they're doing, and who take multiple visits to fix 
anything. Everybody is very exasperated, but we have been told by HQ 
that we can't use the manufacturers for cost reasons...]

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