Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> wrote:

> The Real Bev <bashley101@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> [About her son:]
>
>> OTOH, he programs in assembly language, or at least he used to.
>
> Doesn't everybody!? Or at least C. High(er) level languages are for
> wimps! :-)

Nah. Assembly is a low-level programming language, and is "for wimps!"
Code in machine language. No assembler needed to convert into machine
code. There is no JMP in the CPU's instruction set. JMP, in Assembly,
changes the instruction pointer register. JMP executes more than one
machine instruction. Get intimate with the hardware, and directly code
binaries for the instruction set of that hardware. Then enjoy recoding
for another supported platform, and managing the code branches for each
version of the product along with sub-branches for each platform.

Nope, I no longer have my Altair where I toggled switches, loaded an
instruction into memory, and repeated for every instruction. I really
miss that meticulous and tedious fun ... NOT!

On 05/11/2021 03:57 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
> Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> wrote:
>
>> The Real Bev <bashley101@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> [About her son:]
>>
>>> OTOH, he programs in assembly language, or at least he used to.
>>
>> Doesn't everybody!? Or at least C. High(er) level languages are for
>> wimps! :-)
>
> Nah. Assembly is a low-level programming language, and is "for wimps!"

Hah.

> Code in machine language.

He did that when he had to.

> No assembler needed to convert into machine
> code. There is no JMP in the CPU's instruction set. JMP, in Assembly,
> changes the instruction pointer register. JMP executes more than one
> machine instruction. Get intimate with the hardware, and directly code
> binaries for the instruction set of that hardware. Then enjoy recoding
> for another supported platform, and managing the code branches for each
> version of the product along with sub-branches for each platform.
>
> Nope, I no longer have my Altair where I toggled switches, loaded an
> instruction into memory, and repeated for every instruction. I really
> miss that meticulous and tedious fun ... NOT!

We almost bought one of those, but the Byte Shop kept selling the one it
was building for us to someone else -- for a couple of months. Finally
my husband threatened to throw a chair through their plate glass window
if we didn't get a refund check immediately. We went directly to the
bank to cash it.

We bought a machine from a local builder called Computer Power and Light
which took paper tape or an audio cassette. He wrote his own BIOS and
would wake me up in the middle of the night to brag that he'd just
eliminated four bytes.

--
Cheers, Bev
"If your mechanic claims that he stands behind his brake jobs, keep
looking. You want to find one willing to stand in front of them."

-- B. Ward

On 05/09/2021 01:37 PM, The Real Bev wrote:
> On 05/09/2021 01:10 PM, NY wrote:
>> "nospam" <nospam@nospam.invalid> wrote in message
>> news:090520211459239530%nospam@nospam.invalid...

>>>> Especially annoying if you're trusting it to tell you about traffic in
>>>> an intricate 20-mile route through Los Angeles/Beverly Hills on surface
>>>> streets because that's just what you have to do and it takes you in a
>>>> circle...
>>>
>>> traffic can change at any time and requires a data plan for real-time
>>> information.

Today I set a route to a local Ikea while I had wifi. We didn't like
that route, so took a different one. The Nice Lady demanded that I make
a U-turn in various ways for perhaps 5 miles before SILENTLY rerouting
us the way we wanted to go. She tried WAY too hard to bend us to her
will...

After we'd been on the freeway for perhaps ten minutes she tossed up a
text message that there was a 15-minute delay due to construction. If
she had known about that while I was originally setting the route she
didn't mention it, just that HER route was faster [amount unknown]
because of traffic.

The FM radio app requires wifi. so it's clearly not that. I suppose
it's conceivable that she acquired vast amounts of traffic info while I
was connected, but it would have to have involved traffic in a 20-mile x
20-mile area dumped to the phone. I have no route preferences set,
although I would always choose as much freeway as possible if I could.

Still mystified.

--
Cheers, Bev
"The fact that windows is one of the most popular ways to
operate a computer means that evolution has made a general
fuckup and our race is doomed." -- Anon.

On 5/11/2021 9:14 PM, The Real Bev wrote:

> Today I set a route to a local Ikea while I had wifi. We didn't like
> that route, so took a different one. The Nice Lady demanded that I
> make a U-turn in various ways for perhaps 5 miles before SILENTLY
> rerouting us the way we wanted to go. She tried WAY too hard to bend
> us to her will...

Some years ago she told me how to go but I knew better. I found the
freeway closed and had to backtrack 20 miles and go her way after all. I
swear she was snickering all the way back...

The Real Bev <bashley101@gmail.com> wrote:

> VanguardLH wrote:
>
>> Nope, I no longer have my Altair where I toggled switches, loaded an
>> instruction into memory, and repeated for every instruction. I really
>> miss that meticulous and tedious fun ... NOT!
>
> We almost bought one of those, but the Byte Shop kept selling the one it
> was building for us to someone else -- for a couple of months.

I bought mine for a $100 less as a kit.

VanguardLH <V@nguard.lh> wrote:
> Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> wrote:
>
> > The Real Bev <bashley101@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > [About her son:]
> >
> >> OTOH, he programs in assembly language, or at least he used to.
> >
> > Doesn't everybody!? Or at least C. High(er) level languages are for
> > wimps! :-)
>
> Nah. Assembly is a low-level programming language, and is "for wimps!"
> Code in machine language. No assembler needed to convert into machine
> code. There is no JMP in the CPU's instruction set. JMP, in Assembly,
> changes the instruction pointer register. JMP executes more than one
> machine instruction. Get intimate with the hardware, and directly code
> binaries for the instruction set of that hardware. Then enjoy recoding
> for another supported platform, and managing the code branches for each
> version of the product along with sub-branches for each platform.

Yep, I used to program extra instructions in a microprogrammable
computer (HP 2100A), so I had to be *very* intimate with the hardware.

> Nope, I no longer have my Altair where I toggled switches, loaded an
> instruction into memory, and repeated for every instruction. I really
> miss that meticulous and tedious fun ... NOT!

Did that already in 1969 or so (obviously not on a Altair or anything
like that). Needed to toggle some 10 (16-bit) instructions, just enough
to read the 64-instruction bootloader (BBL, Basic Binary Loader) from
papertape. 64 instructions was enough for not only a papertape
bootloader, but also for a disk (disc at the time) bootloader (BBDL/
BMDL). Later, I changed it into a multi-boot (disc) loader. Memory was a
whopping 64KB max and disc anywhere from some 350 KB to some 5 MB. Cost
only a hundred K$ plus, a bargain.

On 5/11/2021 6:46:38 AM, nospam wrote:

> cellular can have several radios to support the various
> air interfaces, including for 2g, 3g, 4g/lte, 5g (low, mid, mmw) and
> cdma depending on phone and what it supports.

My phone has a normally hidden option that shows all the bands supported.
There's a checkbox next to each which allows you to select that one band.

I didn't mess with that checkbox.

What does it do?
Does it turn off that band of the cellular radios?

>
> wifi can have 2.4 ghz, 5 ghz and 6 ghz radios.
> some phones have ultrawideband.

That makes me wonder a similar question.
If you don't have anything set up on those bands do the radios still emit?

>
> a few have an fm radio (although it doesn't work very well).

Only a few?
There are over a hundred Android phones released in 2020/2021 with FM radio.

Huawei
Honor 7A
Honor 7C
Honor 7s
Honor 8X Max
Honor 9N
Honor Note 10
Huawei Mate 20
Huawei Mate 20 Lite
Huawei Mate RS Porsche Design
Huawei P Smart +
Huawei P20 Lite
Huawei Y3 (2018)
Huawei Y5 (2018)
Huawei Y6 (2018)
Huawei Y7, Y7 Prime and Y7 Pro (2018)
Huawei Y9 (2018)

LG
LG Candy
LG G7 Fit
LG G7 One
LG G7 ThinQ
LG G8 ThinQ
LG K10 (2018)
LG K11 Plus
LG K8 (2018)
LG Q Stylus
LG Q7
LG Q8
LG V30S ThinQ
LG V35 ThinQ
LG V40 ThinQ

Meizu
Meizu M6s
Meizu M6T
Meizu M8c

Motorola
Moto G7
Moto G7 Play
Moto G7 Plus
Moto G7 Power
Motorola Moto E5
Motorola Moto E5 Play
Motorola Moto E5 Plus
Motorola Moto G6
Motorola Moto G6 Play
Motorola Moto G6 Plus
Motorola Moto Z3
Motorola Moto Z3 Play
Motorola One and One Power
Motorola P30

Nokia
Nokia 1
Nokia 1 Plus
Nokia 2.1
Nokia 3.1 and 3.1 Plus
Nokia 3.1 Plus
Nokia 3.2
Nokia 3310 4G
Nokia 4.2
Nokia 5.1 and 5.1 Plus
Nokia 6.1 and 6.1 Plus
Nokia 8110 4G

OPPO
Oppo A71 (2018)
Oppo A1
Oppo A3 and A3s
Oppo A5
Oppo F7
Oppo F7 Youth
Oppo F9
Oppo A7x

Samsung
Samsung Galaxy A10
Samsung Galaxy A20e
Samsung Galaxy A30
Samsung Galaxy A40
Samsung Galaxy A50
Samsung Galaxy A6 and A6 + (2018)
Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018)
Samsung Galaxy A70
Samsung Galaxy A8 and A8 +
Samsung Galaxy A80
Samsung Galaxy A9 (2018)
Samsung Galaxy J2 Core
Samsung Galaxy J2 Pro (2018)
Samsung Galaxy J3 (2018)
Samsung Galaxy J4
Samsung Galaxy J4 +
Samsung Galaxy J6 and J6 +
Samsung Galaxy J7 (2018)
Samsung Galaxy J7 Duo
Samsung Galaxy J7 Prime 2
Samsung Galaxy J8
Samsung Galaxy M20

Sony
Sony Xperia 10
Sony Xperia 10 Plus
Sony Xperia L2
Sony Xperia L3
Sony Xperia XA2 and XA2 Plus
Sony Xperia XA2 Ultra

Xiaomi
Xiaomi Pocophone F1
Xiaomi Redmi 6
Xiaomi Redmi 6A
Xiaomi Redmi 7
Xiaomi Redmi go
Xiaomi Redmi Note 5
Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro
Xiaomi Redmi Note 6 Pro
Xiaomi Redmi Note 7
Xiaomi Redmi S2

In article <s7hh69$780$1@gioia.aioe.org>, Dean Hoffman
<deanhofman@clod.com> wrote:

> > cellular can have several radios to support the various
> > air interfaces, including for 2g, 3g, 4g/lte, 5g (low, mid, mmw) and
> > cdma depending on phone and what it supports.
>
> My phone has a normally hidden option that shows all the bands supported.
> There's a checkbox next to each which allows you to select that one band.
>
> I didn't mess with that checkbox.
>
> What does it do?
> Does it turn off that band of the cellular radios?

that sounds like a test mode setting. don't fuck with it.

> > wifi can have 2.4 ghz, 5 ghz and 6 ghz radios.
> > some phones have ultrawideband.
>
> That makes me wonder a similar question.
> If you don't have anything set up on those bands do the radios still emit?

yes, because it's always possible that you may move to a location where
there will be traffic on a different band.

> > a few have an fm radio (although it doesn't work very well).
>
> Only a few?
> There are over a hundred Android phones released in 2020/2021 with FM radio.

not that shit again.

very few of those phones sell in appreciable numbers, and of the few
that do, almost nobody actually uses the fm radio because it doesn't
work particularly well. one person in this thread didn't even know he
had it.

a *much* wider variety of content is available via streaming, and
without annoying commercials. some podcasts contain ads but it's easy
to skip over them.

On 10/05/2021 00.39, NY wrote:
> "The Real Bev" <bashley101@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:s79h5h$66i$1@dont-email.me...
>> Another interesting factoid:  the route chosen by my linux desktop was
>> different from that chosen by the Pixel2 app.  I liked the one from
>> the computer better, so I went that way.  The app kept trying to force
>> me back to ITS preference rather than adjust.  At one point it ran me
>> up a steep hill and down the other side, demanded a left turn and then
>> put me back on the street I was on before it took me up the hill.
>>
>> I can only attribute this to vindictiveness.
>
> The satnav in our Honda (which uses Garmin) has a strange tendency to
> become fixated with a route and tried to get me back onto it even when
> that is longer (time and distance) than the route that we are actually
> taking.

Sometimes they "know" that a route is blocked. Problem is, it doesn't
say why it does what it does.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

On 10/05/2021 10.56, Tony Mountifield wrote:
> In article <s79h5h$66i$1@dont-email.me>,
> The Real Bev <bashley101@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 05/09/2021 01:10 PM, NY wrote:
>>> "nospam" <nospam@nospam.invalid> wrote in message
>>> news:090520211459239530%nospam@nospam.invalid...
>>>> In article <s791ke$sbg$1@dont-email.me>, The Real Bev
>>>> <bashley101@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> When I update them at home over wifi it says they're good for a year.
>>>>> BUT they seem to go haywire if you don't update within some much shorter
>>>>> period -- like a month. WTF?
>>>>
>>>> they expire in 15 days, at the most:
>>>>
>>>> <https://support.google.com/maps/answer/6291838?hl=en>
>>>> Offline maps that you downloaded on your phone or tablet need to be
>>>> updated before they expire. When your offline maps expire in 15 days
>>>> or less, Google Maps will try to update the area automatically when
>>>> you're connected to Wi-Fi.
>>
>> So why does it give a 1-year expiration date? Would Google actually LIE
>> to us?
>
> Nope, that's a misunderstanding of what is said. It actually means the maps
> are good for 1 year, but 15 days before the 1 year is up, it will start trying
> to update them automatically over wifi.

Even if the map is good for a year, maybe there have been modifications
and it wants them. If it is on automatic updating over wifi, I see no
objection to it updating itself. I would like another option to update
only when charging, though.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

On 12/05/2021 06.14, The Real Bev wrote:

> Today I set a route to a local Ikea while I had wifi.  We didn't like
> that route, so took a different one.  The Nice Lady demanded that I make
> a U-turn in various ways for perhaps 5 miles before SILENTLY rerouting
> us the way we wanted to go.  She tried WAY too hard to bend us to her
> will...

Sometimes I go to a remote site. There are two roads; rather the road at
the destination can be entered by both ends, but the farther end means
50 Km more (it is at a mountain top). Being far from home, I may not
notice that it is choosing the wrong route till too late. On the way
back home, as I know where I are, I insist on going home my way. Every
little way, the TomTom wants to turn me back. Until at some point that
suddenly it calculates the correct route some 50 Km shorter. My
conclusion was that the map had the road blocked at that spot in the
road. So I marked the spot and reported the issue to TomTom. They took
their time, but AFAIK they corrected it.

We'll see for sure the next time I drive there.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.