On 09/03/2012 16:48, Jules Richardson wrote:
On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 03:00:55 +0000, John Rumm wrote:

On 05/03/2012 19:17, Ghostrecon wrote:
On Mon, 05 Mar 2012 18:35:36 +0000, stuart noble wrote:

I once spent several days trying to get access to do something beyond
give me a default view of a flat table.


In Access tables are only ever tables. Forms and reports based on the
table present the data any way you please. I had a lot of fun learning
the basics of Access. I never got beyond macros though, and I suspect
most people don't need to either. It's the "relational" aspect that
should be taught, something that IME programmers don't necessarily
understand too well!

I've taught relational databases at A level (computer science) - but
not with ACCESS IIRC I used VFP8 at the time

That takes me back a bit... used to like knocking up things in FoxPro
LAN in its DOS days ;-)

I remember foxpro... I think we mainly used dbase at uni, along with a
bit of ingres.

Anyone got any figures for how many students do computer science these
days at GCSE or A Level? IIRC when I did my A level in '85/6 there were
only about 120 students in the country that took it that year.. I get
the impression there have never been big numbers doing it.

No, but I did A-level CS '91-93 and I think we had about 20 people in the
class then, so across the whole country I expect there were a fair few.

I think we had 20 - 30, but there were only about six other institutions
running the same course in the country that year.

But it was sort-of* interesting back then - there was more hardware
diversity, and it was more about programming than it was the "how to type
a letter" level which I think it all descended into not many years later.

* but easy. We used to work through stuff very quickly, to the point
where we were permitted by the teacher to skip classes and bugger off
into town rather than sit around thumb-twiddling.

Computer Science is usually fairly full on and technically deep. Lots of
focus on high and low level languages, programming, microprocessor and
computer architecture (across micro to mainframe), peripherals. Logic,
boolean algebra, rudimentary digital circuit design...Plus systems type
work on things like public utility billing and other big data processing
tasks. Ours culminated three papers IIRC One two hours short answer
paper, and two three hour long written answer papers.



--
Cheers,

John.

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The Other Mike wrote:

Word, in every iteration performs like a word processor written by
someone who has never programmed before, very amateurish, churned out
by someone stoned out of their mind and who never wrote any body of
text longer than a very short SMS.


Yep. I think that sums it up..



--
To people who know nothing, anything is possible.
To people who know too much, it is a sad fact
that they know how little is really possible -
and how hard it is to achieve it.

On Fri, 09 Mar 2012 23:34:02 +0000, Bob Eager wrote:
Any algebraic language theory? Our postgrad CS course had that, which
left me and other engineers and physicists in the dust as we didn't
have maths degrees.

Just some formal logic, although I think we have a final year option. We
take people with just maths GCSE and bring them up to A level standard
in relevant areas, and add in discrete maths, etc.

Oh, who was the formal logic chap... Alan someone-or-other, I think?

I do remember that - having one A-level electronics - I really wanted to
take CSE rather than straight CS at UKC, but the extra pure maths
involved put me off... the complex number stuff that we had to suffer on
the CS course was bad enough

cheers

Jules

"Bob Eager" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 09 Mar 2012 23:30:17 +0000, brass monkey wrote:

"The Other Mike" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 08 Mar 2012 02:08:05 +0000, John Rumm
wrote:

On 07/03/2012 23:16, The Other Mike wrote:
On Wed, 07 Mar 2012 12:10:40 +0000, John Rumm
wrote:

On 06/03/2012 20:25, Owain wrote:
On Mar 6, 4:43 pm, Bob Eager wrote:
BTw, can I have a prize for starting the fastest growing thread in
uk.d-i-y for quite a while?

The prize would be a RPi, but they're out of stock :-)

Sometime end of March the girl at CPC told me...

Well there's your problem. You can't buy them from CPC.

I think that is what we just said... ;-)

http://planet.farnell.com/email/cpc/...ryPi_form.htm?
isRedirect=true

So does that mean CPC had listed them at some stage? I thought it was
*only* RS and Farnell, the latter, like CPC being a part of the Premier
Farnell Group.

I've had a projected delivery date of 14/05/12 from Farnell. Ordered
29/02/12

Did you get an earlier one of 16/4/12? If so, that's the correct one and
the later date is a mistake.

Also note that both dates are actually 'week commencing'...!

I had one 23/04/12

"Huge" wrote in message
...
On 2012-03-08, Mike Tomlinson wrote:
En el artículo , The Natural Philosopher
escribió:

You need to learn then. You have not even understood the point.

Well, quite.

Rod Speed, who posts from an Australian IP address, is comp.sys.ibm.pc.h
ardware.storage's long-time clue-resistant resident troll. He
*specialises* in missing the point.

He also likes to spend time in alt.folklore.computers, where he adopts the
same role as in c.s.i.p.h.s.

I'm not sure how he found uk.d-i-y, but I sincerely wish he'd **** off
back
to whatever benighted ******** he came from.

I wish you'd stop mincing your words and say what you mean
LOL

On 09/03/2012 23:02, The Other Mike wrote:
On Thu, 08 Mar 2012 02:08:05 +0000, John Rumm
wrote:

On 07/03/2012 23:16, The Other Mike wrote:
On Wed, 07 Mar 2012 12:10:40 +0000, John Rumm
wrote:

On 06/03/2012 20:25, Owain wrote:
On Mar 6, 4:43 pm, Bob Eager wrote:
BTw, can I have a prize for starting the fastest growing thread in
uk.d-i-y for quite a while?

The prize would be a RPi, but they're out of stock :-)

Sometime end of March the girl at CPC told me...

Well there's your problem. You can't buy them from CPC.

I think that is what we just said... ;-)

http://planet.farnell.com/email/cpc/...sRedirect=true

So does that mean CPC had listed them at some stage? I thought it was

Yup...

*only* RS and Farnell, the latter, like CPC being a part of the
Premier Farnell Group.

I presume that since they are part of Farnell they got included. They
certainly seemed happy to take orders (and by the sounds of it, were
inundated with them)

--
Cheers,

John.

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On 09/03/2012 23:02, Adrian C wrote:
On 09/03/2012 22:30, Ghostrecon wrote:

No, that's A level ICT. A level Computing is fairly rare now, as it's
hard. But we still get a fair few applying to us.

yes ... Computer studies as opposed to ICT, Information technology
btec etc
was and still is technical, programmig, systems analysis computer
archichecture

Mine in 1982 was called A level Computer "Science", not studies. It was

There was a fair overlap if I recall... as part of our A level course we
actually sat the AO level Computer Studies exam after year one. (AO
being O level in standard but aimed at an older audience IIRC)

pretty dry content as above, just around the time games consoles and
home computers became big and were a world apart from paper tape and
learning about random and sequential file access...

Did you have that book by Carl French? Seemed to be very popular at the
time... the purple "Science" one, and a slightly thinner tgold coloured
"Studies" one.

--
Cheers,

John.

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On 10/03/2012 09:59, Huge wrote:
On 2012-03-09, Bob wrote:

We don't do assembly any more, but that may return soon (probably ARM).

Damn those phones/tablets, eh?

I've just done a mobile security course, which involved a certain amount
of ARM assembly hacking. It was huge fun and gave me nice warm feelings
of nostalgia, since I last did any assembly programming about 30 years ago. It
was amusing when the trainer asked if anyone in the class had done any assembly
programming before - I was the only person who had. One or two of the less
techie people present didn't even know what it was ...

;-) Rather like talking with IMB mid range / mainframe types who seem
convinced that Assembler (note the capital A!) can only be known to
hallowed IBM programmers, and can't seem to get their heads round the
fact that every processor has a low level assembly language...


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On Sat, 10 Mar 2012 09:59:26 +0000, Huge wrote:

On 2012-03-09, Bob Eager wrote:

We don't do assembly any more, but that may return soon (probably ARM).

Damn those phones/tablets, eh?

I've just done a mobile security course, which involved a certain amount
of ARM assembly hacking. It was huge fun and gave me nice warm feelings
of nostalgia, since I last did any assembly programming about 30 years
ago. It was amusing when the trainer asked if anyone in the class had
done any assembly programming before - I was the only person who had.
One or two of the less techie people present didn't even know what it
was ...

The last bit I did was last week. PDP-8.




--
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http://www.mirrorservice.org

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On Sat, 10 Mar 2012 13:33:46 +0000, John Rumm wrote:

On 10/03/2012 09:59, Huge wrote:
On 2012-03-09, Bob wrote:

We don't do assembly any more, but that may return soon (probably
ARM).

Damn those phones/tablets, eh?

I've just done a mobile security course, which involved a certain
amount of ARM assembly hacking. It was huge fun and gave me nice warm
feelings of nostalgia, since I last did any assembly programming about
30 years ago. It was amusing when the trainer asked if anyone in the
class had done any assembly programming before - I was the only person
who had. One or two of the less techie people present didn't even know
what it was ...

;-) Rather like talking with IMB mid range / mainframe types who seem
convinced that Assembler (note the capital A!) can only be known to
hallowed IBM programmers, and can't seem to get their heads round the
fact that every processor has a low level assembly language...

IBM did a lot of using generic terms for their products....

- PC
- JCL
- VM
- Assembler

....!



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http://www.mirrorservice.org

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On 10/03/2012 13:26, John Rumm wrote:
On 09/03/2012 23:02, Adrian C wrote:

Did you have that book by Carl French? Seemed to be very popular at the
time... the purple "Science" one, and a slightly thinner tgold coloured
"Studies" one.


Yup! Both are still swimming about in the Loft somewhere. Should dig it
out and have another go at those karnaugh maps

Don't quite believe the current cost of the book on Amazon - £46?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0826454607

--
Adrian C

On Sat, 10 Mar 2012 14:22:22 +0000, Adrian C wrote:

On 10/03/2012 13:26, John Rumm wrote:
On 09/03/2012 23:02, Adrian C wrote:

Did you have that book by Carl French? Seemed to be very popular at the
time... the purple "Science" one, and a slightly thinner tgold coloured
"Studies" one.


Yup! Both are still swimming about in the Loft somewhere. Should dig it
out and have another go at those karnaugh maps

Don't quite believe the current cost of the book on Amazon - £46?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0826454607

For a book published 16 years ago!


--
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In article , Jules Richardson wrote:
On Sat, 10 Mar 2012 13:33:46 +0000, John Rumm wrote:
;-) Rather like talking with IMB mid range / mainframe types who seem
convinced that Assembler (note the capital A!) can only be known to
hallowed IBM programmers, and can't seem to get their heads round the
fact that every processor has a low level assembly language...

Every? Depends on the definition of assembly language, I suppose - is it
the binary opcodes which form CPU instructions, or is it the human-
readable mnemonics which correspond to those opcodes?

I usually think of assembly language as the latter (that being what
people program at the low level using), but I suppose it's entirely
possible to have a CPU where there are no official published mnemonics
and instead things are documented in a more long-winded "binary opcode xx
performs operation yy" form. You'd hand-craft[1] binary directly, or
perhaps cross-compile using a completely different system.

It's possible in theory, but I find it hard to believe that such a
system would last for long before someone produced an assembler.
(Or four or five incompatible ones - how many of
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/X86_Ass...x86_Assemblers
would you describe as "official"?)

(I did wonder about FPGAs, but while an HDL isn't a conventional
assembly language, an FPGA isn't a conventional processor either.)

"Alan Braggins" wrote in message
...

(I did wonder about FPGAs, but while an HDL isn't a conventional
assembly language, an FPGA isn't a conventional processor either.)

Did you look at FPLSs?
They had internal feed back paths so you could make state machines easily.
They were coded by hand, putting ones, zeros and x in appropriate places.

On Sat, 10 Mar 2012 18:35:28 +0000, John Rumm wrote:

On 10/03/2012 18:20, Huge wrote:
On 2012-03-10, Nick
wrote:
On Sat, 10 Mar 2012 17:48:20 +0000 (UTC), Jules Richardson
wrote:

On Sat, 10 Mar 2012 13:33:46 +0000, John Rumm wrote:
;-) Rather like talking with IMB mid range / mainframe types who
seem convinced that Assembler (note the capital A!) can only be
known to hallowed IBM programmers, and can't seem to get their heads
round the fact that every processor has a low level assembly
language...

Every? Depends on the definition of assembly language, I suppose - is
it the binary opcodes which form CPU instructions, or is it the
human- readable mnemonics which correspond to those opcodes?

I usually think of assembly language as the latter (that being what
people program at the low level using)....

So do I. I understood the other stuff to be machine code. But it's a
very long time since I played with any of those toys.

Better not mention microcode, then.

)

Unless into DIYing your own processors, there is less chance to play
with that though ;-)

I've had a couple of goes.

The first one was decades ago...my department had a Honeywell DDP-516
when I was an undergraduate (they were used a lot as node processors on
the ARPAnet). My final year project consisted of adding new boards and
rewiring the backplane to modify the effect of some instructions, and add
new ones. And I won an IEE prize!

Second one was a bit later - reverse engineering the microcode on an ICL
2900, then modifying the microcode to make up for a hardware design flaw
that ICL wouldn't admit to.



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On 10/03/2012 21:28, Alan Braggins wrote:
In , Jules Richardson wrote:
On Sat, 10 Mar 2012 13:33:46 +0000, John Rumm wrote:
;-) Rather like talking with IMB mid range / mainframe types who seem
convinced that Assembler (note the capital A!) can only be known to
hallowed IBM programmers, and can't seem to get their heads round the
fact that every processor has a low level assembly language...

Every? Depends on the definition of assembly language, I suppose - is it
the binary opcodes which form CPU instructions, or is it the human-
readable mnemonics which correspond to those opcodes?

I usually think of assembly language as the latter (that being what
people program at the low level using), but I suppose it's entirely
possible to have a CPU where there are no official published mnemonics
and instead things are documented in a more long-winded "binary opcode xx
performs operation yy" form. You'd hand-craft[1] binary directly, or
perhaps cross-compile using a completely different system.

It's possible in theory, but I find it hard to believe that such a
system would last for long before someone produced an assembler.
(Or four or five incompatible ones - how many of
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/X86_Ass...x86_Assemblers
would you describe as "official"?)

(I did wonder about FPGAs, but while an HDL isn't a conventional
assembly language, an FPGA isn't a conventional processor either.)

Oddly I was just about to type something along those lines. Many of them
allow you to download "canned" processor elements into them now, so I
suppose one could fiddle with one of those. (although whether you count
those processors as microcoded ones is another matter)

--
Cheers,

John.

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| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

Bob Eager writes:

On Sat, 10 Mar 2012 09:59:26 +0000, Huge wrote:

On 2012-03-09, Bob Eager wrote:

We don't do assembly any more, but that may return soon (probably ARM).

Damn those phones/tablets, eh?

I've just done a mobile security course, which involved a certain amount
of ARM assembly hacking. It was huge fun and gave me nice warm feelings
of nostalgia, since I last did any assembly programming about 30 years
ago. It was amusing when the trainer asked if anyone in the class had
done any assembly programming before - I was the only person who had.
One or two of the less techie people present didn't even know what it
was ...

The last bit I did was last week. PDP-8.

TAD I 10
ISZ CNT
JMP LUP

!

--
Windmill, Use t m i l l
J.R.R. Tolkien:- @ O n e t e l . c o m
All that is gold does not glister / Not all who wander are lost

John Rumm writes:

On 10/03/2012 17:48, Jules Richardson wrote:
On Sat, 10 Mar 2012 13:33:46 +0000, John Rumm wrote:
;-) Rather like talking with IMB mid range / mainframe types who seem
convinced that Assembler (note the capital A!) can only be known to
hallowed IBM programmers, and can't seem to get their heads round the
fact that every processor has a low level assembly language...

Every? Depends on the definition of assembly language, I suppose - is it
the binary opcodes which form CPU instructions, or is it the human-
readable mnemonics which correspond to those opcodes?

The latter...

I usually think of assembly language as the latter (that being what
people program at the low level using), but I suppose it's entirely
possible to have a CPU where there are no official published mnemonics
and instead things are documented in a more long-winded "binary opcode xx
performs operation yy" form.

I find it hard to imaging how you would document a processor instruction
set without in the process creating its assembly language as a result...
I suppose you could describe every instruction longhand, but I can't
imagine it would be long before some one comes along and creates
mnemonics for each.

ISTR some sort of 8 bit CPU (? Z80 ?) whose documentation included a
description in BNF.


--
Windmill, Use t m i l l
J.R.R. Tolkien:- @ O n e t e l . c o m
All that is gold does not glister / Not all who wander are lost

On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 05:26:10 +0000, Windmill wrote:

John Rumm writes:

On 10/03/2012 17:48, Jules Richardson wrote:
On Sat, 10 Mar 2012 13:33:46 +0000, John Rumm wrote:
;-) Rather like talking with IMB mid range / mainframe types who
seem convinced that Assembler (note the capital A!) can only be known
to hallowed IBM programmers, and can't seem to get their heads round
the fact that every processor has a low level assembly language...

Every? Depends on the definition of assembly language, I suppose - is
it the binary opcodes which form CPU instructions, or is it the human-
readable mnemonics which correspond to those opcodes?

The latter...

I usually think of assembly language as the latter (that being what
people program at the low level using), but I suppose it's entirely
possible to have a CPU where there are no official published mnemonics
and instead things are documented in a more long-winded "binary opcode
xx performs operation yy" form.

I find it hard to imaging how you would document a processor instruction
set without in the process creating its assembly language as a result...
I suppose you could describe every instruction longhand, but I can't
imagine it would be long before some one comes along and creates
mnemonics for each.

ISTR some sort of 8 bit CPU (? Z80 ?) whose documentation included a
description in BNF.

It was done for the PDP-11 and some others. Formally known as ISP, etc.

http://goo.gl/kBauB



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On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 05:19:24 +0000, Windmill wrote:

Bob Eager writes:

On Sat, 10 Mar 2012 09:59:26 +0000, Huge wrote:

On 2012-03-09, Bob Eager wrote:

We don't do assembly any more, but that may return soon (probably
ARM).

Damn those phones/tablets, eh?

I've just done a mobile security course, which involved a certain
amount of ARM assembly hacking. It was huge fun and gave me nice warm
feelings of nostalgia, since I last did any assembly programming about
30 years ago. It was amusing when the trainer asked if anyone in the
class had done any assembly programming before - I was the only person
who had. One or two of the less techie people present didn't even know
what it was ...

The last bit I did was last week. PDP-8.

TAD I 10
ISZ CNT
JMP LUP

!

Indeed. But in my case on actual hardware - a replica I built.



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"BartC" wrote in message ...


"Bob Eager" wrote in message
...
Since the Raspberry Pi will be with us soon-ish (well, about six weeks I
am told, for mine) does anyone have any interesting ideas about what they
might do with it/them?

I'm not quite sure what the purpose of this machine is. Low cost? Once
you've added a monitor, keyboard, mouse, memory (and a PSU?), it won't be
far from the cost of a netbook. (Edit: just seen that it plugs into a TV.
Still, you need a spare TV...)

and who (families) doesn't have a spare TV?

Keyboard 9.99, mouse 5.99 memory 9.99, total cost 50 quid

tim

"John Williamson" wrote in message
...
BartC wrote:
"Clive George" wrote in message
o.uk...
On 05/03/2012 00:55, BartC wrote:


"Bob Eager" wrote in message
...
Since the Raspberry Pi will be with us soon-ish (well, about six weeks
I
am told, for mine) does anyone have any interesting ideas about what
they
might do with it/them?

I'm not quite sure what the purpose of this machine is. Low cost? Once
you've added a monitor, keyboard, mouse, memory (and a PSU?), it won't
be far from the cost of a netbook. (Edit: just seen that it plugs into
a
TV. Still, you need a spare TV...)

How about for applications where you don't need a monitor, keyboard,
mouse, extra memory? Think automation, control, robots, etc.

Sure. But then maybe they don't need 1080p mpeg decoding support, and
they could have saved a few quid of licensing to these Broadcom people or
whoever supplies that technology. And I would have thought there are
enough control boards out there for this sort of stuff (where you use a
normal PC for developing the software then just download it).

Broadcomm are chip suppliers and designers based in Cambridge and supply
video and audio playback chips, as well as Bluetooth chippery.

The decoding's in the firmware, and the GPU and CPU are on one chip to
save time, space and money.

That's the standard mechanism for "ARM" processors. There are a dozen (or
more) manufactures all producing them with different "on chip" add ons for
specific purposes. Some may have as many as 30 different extra "modules"
all on chip.

tim

"Tim Streater" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"tim...." wrote:

"BartC" wrote in message
...


"Bob Eager" wrote in message
...
Since the Raspberry Pi will be with us soon-ish (well, about six weeks
I
am told, for mine) does anyone have any interesting ideas about what
they
might do with it/them?

I'm not quite sure what the purpose of this machine is. Low cost? Once
you've added a monitor, keyboard, mouse, memory (and a PSU?), it won't
be far from the cost of a netbook. (Edit: just seen that it plugs into
a TV. Still, you need a spare TV...)

and who (families) doesn't have a spare TV?

Keyboard 9.99, mouse 5.99 memory 9.99, total cost 50 quid

How are you proposing to add memory?

He presumably means an SD card.

On 11/03/2012 05:26, Windmill wrote:
John writes:

On 10/03/2012 17:48, Jules Richardson wrote:
On Sat, 10 Mar 2012 13:33:46 +0000, John Rumm wrote:
;-) Rather like talking with IMB mid range / mainframe types who seem
convinced that Assembler (note the capital A!) can only be known to
hallowed IBM programmers, and can't seem to get their heads round the
fact that every processor has a low level assembly language...

Every? Depends on the definition of assembly language, I suppose - is it
the binary opcodes which form CPU instructions, or is it the human-
readable mnemonics which correspond to those opcodes?

The latter...

I usually think of assembly language as the latter (that being what
people program at the low level using), but I suppose it's entirely
possible to have a CPU where there are no official published mnemonics
and instead things are documented in a more long-winded "binary opcode xx
performs operation yy" form.

I find it hard to imaging how you would document a processor instruction
set without in the process creating its assembly language as a result...
I suppose you could describe every instruction longhand, but I can't
imagine it would be long before some one comes along and creates
mnemonics for each.

ISTR some sort of 8 bit CPU (? Z80 ?) whose documentation included a
description in BNF.

Yup, used to be quite common, but does not seem to get much of an outing
these days. Not sure if I ever had the official Zilog books on the Z80,
although I have got Zaks, and that may well "borrow" the official
language description as many books of its day did.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 20:24:15 +0000, Tim Streater wrote:

In article ,
John Rumm wrote:

On 11/03/2012 05:26, Windmill wrote:
John writes:

On 10/03/2012 17:48, Jules Richardson wrote:
On Sat, 10 Mar 2012 13:33:46 +0000, John Rumm wrote:
;-) Rather like talking with IMB mid range / mainframe types who seem
convinced that Assembler (note the capital A!) can only be known to
hallowed IBM programmers, and can't seem to get their heads round the
fact that every processor has a low level assembly language...

Every? Depends on the definition of assembly language, I suppose - is it
the binary opcodes which form CPU instructions, or is it the human-
readable mnemonics which correspond to those opcodes?

The latter...

I usually think of assembly language as the latter (that being what
people program at the low level using), but I suppose it's entirely
possible to have a CPU where there are no official published mnemonics
and instead things are documented in a more long-winded "binary opcode xx
performs operation yy" form.

I find it hard to imaging how you would document a processor instruction
set without in the process creating its assembly language as a result...
I suppose you could describe every instruction longhand, but I can't
imagine it would be long before some one comes along and creates
mnemonics for each.

ISTR some sort of 8 bit CPU (? Z80 ?) whose documentation included a
description in BNF.

Yup, used to be quite common, but does not seem to get much of an outing
these days. Not sure if I ever had the official Zilog books on the Z80,
although I have got Zaks, and that may well "borrow" the official
language description as many books of its day did.

BNF is a bit turgid to read. May as well use mnemonics.

lol read BNF as a mnemonic doh

Branch if not F.... ? :-)
--
(º€¢.¸(¨*€¢.¸ ¸.€¢*¨)¸.€¢Âº)
.€¢Â°€¢. Nik .€¢Â°€¢.
(¸.€¢Âº(¸.€¢Â¨* *¨€¢.¸)º€¢.¸)

On Fri, 09 Mar 2012 23:02:24 +0000, Adrian C
wrote:

On 09/03/2012 22:30, Ghostrecon wrote:

No, that's A level ICT. A level Computing is fairly rare now, as it's
hard. But we still get a fair few applying to us.

yes ... Computer studies as opposed to ICT, Information technology btec etc
was and still is technical, programmig, systems analysis computer
archichecture

Mine in 1982 was called A level Computer "Science", not studies. It was
pretty dry content as above, just around the time games consoles and
home computers became big and were a world apart from paper tape and
learning about random and sequential file access...

I did O (or was it AO) Computer Studies in the late 70's at a college.
It was a bit outdated but I got to play with computers so it was
enjoyable.

I was going to do A level Computer Science but couldn't fit it into my
timetable.
--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) If a man stands in a forest and no woman is around
(")_(") is he still wrong?

On Fri, 09 Mar 2012 23:06:58 +0000, The Other Mike
wrote:

On Fri, 09 Mar 2012 18:14:28 +0000, Chris K
wrote:

Having been in a large organisation that made the transition from WP to
Word, there were a lot of users that never really made the mental
transition and were forever looking for the 'show codes' option

No wonder when a simple one word delete in 'Word' can suddenly alter
the format in the rest of a document to nothing like it was
milliseconds before and without any indication on how to fix it other
than by bodging.

I often find, in this situation, that the undo function restores the
document to its intended state. YMMV of course.
--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) If a man stands in a forest and no woman is around
(")_(") is he still wrong?

On 12/03/12 09:28, Mark wrote:
On Fri, 09 Mar 2012 23:06:58 +0000, The Other Mike
wrote:

On Fri, 09 Mar 2012 18:14:28 +0000, Chris
wrote:

Having been in a large organisation that made the transition from WP to
Word, there were a lot of users that never really made the mental
transition and were forever looking for the 'show codes' option

No wonder when a simple one word delete in 'Word' can suddenly alter
the format in the rest of a document to nothing like it was
milliseconds before and without any indication on how to fix it other
than by bodging.

I often find, in this situation, that the undo function restores the
document to its intended state. YMMV of course.

I find that this problem often occurs in documents written by typists
who started with a typewriter. They use tabs to align columns of figures
and a small change can throw the whole layout into disarray. The
solution is to use tables.


--
Bernard Peek

On Fri, 9 Mar 2012 22:38:57 +0000, Ghostrecon wrote:

On Sat, 10 Mar 2012 08:42:56 +1100, Rod Speed wrote:



Even with programming, you still have to teach a particular language, its
just not possible to teach just concepts and no specific language as well.

you can teach interupts and algorithms though .. see my earlier post on
sorting

And you can teach design patterns and methodologies.
--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) If a man stands in a forest and no woman is around
(")_(") is he still wrong?

On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 09:42:23 -0000, "tim...."
wrote:


"BartC" wrote in message ...


"Bob Eager" wrote in message
...
Since the Raspberry Pi will be with us soon-ish (well, about six weeks I
am told, for mine) does anyone have any interesting ideas about what they
might do with it/them?

I'm not quite sure what the purpose of this machine is. Low cost? Once
you've added a monitor, keyboard, mouse, memory (and a PSU?), it won't be
far from the cost of a netbook. (Edit: just seen that it plugs into a TV.
Still, you need a spare TV...)

and who (families) doesn't have a spare TV?

We don't. Got rid of them as they take up too much room.
--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) If a man stands in a forest and no woman is around
(")_(") is he still wrong?

On Mon, 12 Mar 2012 09:48:33 +0000, Bernard Peek
wrote:

On 12/03/12 09:28, Mark wrote:
On Fri, 09 Mar 2012 23:06:58 +0000, The Other Mike
wrote:

On Fri, 09 Mar 2012 18:14:28 +0000, Chris
wrote:

Having been in a large organisation that made the transition from WP to
Word, there were a lot of users that never really made the mental
transition and were forever looking for the 'show codes' option

No wonder when a simple one word delete in 'Word' can suddenly alter
the format in the rest of a document to nothing like it was
milliseconds before and without any indication on how to fix it other
than by bodging.

I often find, in this situation, that the undo function restores the
document to its intended state. YMMV of course.

I find that this problem often occurs in documents written by typists
who started with a typewriter. They use tabs to align columns of figures
and a small change can throw the whole layout into disarray. The
solution is to use tables.

I think this is a different issue than The Other Mike was talking
about. I assume that he was referring to things like attempts to
change the font of one line actually changes the font of the whole
document.

I agree that spaces and tabs are often misued for formatting tables.
I often moan about that.
--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) If a man stands in a forest and no woman is around
(")_(") is he still wrong?

Tim Streater writes:

In article ,
John Rumm wrote:

On 11/03/2012 05:26, Windmill wrote:
John writes:

On 10/03/2012 17:48, Jules Richardson wrote:
On Sat, 10 Mar 2012 13:33:46 +0000, John Rumm wrote:
;-) Rather like talking with IMB mid range / mainframe types who seem
convinced that Assembler (note the capital A!) can only be known to
hallowed IBM programmers, and can't seem to get their heads round the
fact that every processor has a low level assembly language...

Every? Depends on the definition of assembly language, I suppose - is it
the binary opcodes which form CPU instructions, or is it the human-
readable mnemonics which correspond to those opcodes?

The latter...

I usually think of assembly language as the latter (that being what
people program at the low level using), but I suppose it's entirely
possible to have a CPU where there are no official published mnemonics
and instead things are documented in a more long-winded "binary opcode xx
performs operation yy" form.

I find it hard to imaging how you would document a processor instruction
set without in the process creating its assembly language as a result...
I suppose you could describe every instruction longhand, but I can't
imagine it would be long before some one comes along and creates
mnemonics for each.

ISTR some sort of 8 bit CPU (? Z80 ?) whose documentation included a
description in BNF.

Yup, used to be quite common, but does not seem to get much of an outing
these days. Not sure if I ever had the official Zilog books on the Z80,
although I have got Zaks, and that may well "borrow" the official
language description as many books of its day did.

BNF is a bit turgid to read. May as well use mnemonics.

I suspect it's because of a limited capacity to keep large amounts of
stuff in mind, but I've always preferred high-density information to
the wordy stuff; BNF isn't an easy read, but in younger days I could
puzzle my way through it with some effort.

--
Windmill, Use t m i l l
J.R.R. Tolkien:- @ O n e t e l . c o m
All that is gold does not glister / Not all who wander are lost

Bob Eager writes:

On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 05:19:24 +0000, Windmill wrote:

Bob Eager writes:

On Sat, 10 Mar 2012 09:59:26 +0000, Huge wrote:

On 2012-03-09, Bob Eager wrote:

We don't do assembly any more, but that may return soon (probably
ARM).

Damn those phones/tablets, eh?

I've just done a mobile security course, which involved a certain
amount of ARM assembly hacking. It was huge fun and gave me nice warm
feelings of nostalgia, since I last did any assembly programming about
30 years ago. It was amusing when the trainer asked if anyone in the
class had done any assembly programming before - I was the only person
who had. One or two of the less techie people present didn't even know
what it was ...

The last bit I did was last week. PDP-8.

TAD I 10
ISZ CNT
JMP LUP

!

Indeed. But in my case on actual hardware - a replica I built.


Hugely impressed. I (used to) know enough for that, but never had the
extreme perseverance required to build a complete PC from scratch.

Meaning by that building something like a PDP8, a 'Straight 8', from
transistors, diodes and capacitors.

(Adding to/modifying one, I have done.)

Maybe you meant building a semi-replica from gate arrays etc., which
would still be a big job.
I'd still be very impressed.


--
Windmill, Use t m i l l
J.R.R. Tolkien:- @ O n e t e l . c o m
All that is gold does not glister / Not all who wander are lost

On 12/03/2012 19:06, Windmill wrote:

Hugely impressed. I (used to) know enough for that, but never had the
extreme perseverance required to build a complete PC from scratch.

Meaning by that building something like a PDP8, a 'Straight 8', from
transistors, diodes and capacitors.


Probably pales into insignificance compared to a PDP8, but I did once
throw a few bits of 6800 series around a 6809, 74 logic and static ram
chips, wirewrap the whole thing on a eurocard, burn an eprom and get a
monitor going. Then I wrote a terminal program on my BBC micro to talk
to it, and completely missed the objectives of my final year college
project I was building it for.

Now I've got a few 486SX chips floating around the workshop. Maybe I
should wirewrap one of those up into something that runs. Or maybe not.

Got a bad bad past history of building and assembling computers and then
finding absolutely no use for them once running. Sat in this room with,
oh (quick count), 10 of them around me.

--
Adrian C

On Mon, 12 Mar 2012 19:06:10 +0000, Windmill wrote:

Bob Eager writes:

On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 05:19:24 +0000, Windmill wrote:

Bob Eager writes:

On Sat, 10 Mar 2012 09:59:26 +0000, Huge wrote:

On 2012-03-09, Bob Eager wrote:

We don't do assembly any more, but that may return soon (probably
ARM).

Damn those phones/tablets, eh?

I've just done a mobile security course, which involved a certain
amount of ARM assembly hacking. It was huge fun and gave me nice
warm feelings of nostalgia, since I last did any assembly
programming about 30 years ago. It was amusing when the trainer
asked if anyone in the class had done any assembly programming
before - I was the only person who had. One or two of the less
techie people present didn't even know what it was ...

The last bit I did was last week. PDP-8.

TAD I 10
ISZ CNT
JMP LUP

!

Indeed. But in my case on actual hardware - a replica I built.


Hugely impressed. I (used to) know enough for that, but never had the
extreme perseverance required to build a complete PC from scratch.

Meaning by that building something like a PDP8, a 'Straight 8', from
transistors, diodes and capacitors.

(Adding to/modifying one, I have done.)

Maybe you meant building a semi-replica from gate arrays etc., which
would still be a big job.
I'd still be very impressed.

Don't be that impressed. It was (sort of) a kit...I bought the PCBS and
sourced most of the components - and it was quite fiddly. But the CPU was
a Harris 6120 (the chip used in the last PDP-8s) with a few GALs to
translate the I/O operations (and someone else provided the logic for
that).

But it has proper switches and lights and runs OS/8.

Now I must get around to stoking up some of my four PDP-11s...



--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

*lightning protection* - a w_tom conductor

Adrian C writes:

Probably pales into insignificance compared to a PDP8, but I did once
throw a few bits of 6800 series around a 6809, 74 logic and static ram
chips, wirewrap the whole thing on a eurocard, burn an eprom and get a
monitor going. Then I wrote a terminal program on my BBC micro to talk
to it, and completely missed the objectives of my final year college
project I was building it for.

Now I've got a few 486SX chips floating around the workshop. Maybe I
should wirewrap one of those up into something that runs. Or maybe not.

Got a bad bad past history of building and assembling computers and then
finding absolutely no use for them once running. Sat in this room with,
oh (quick count), 10 of them around me.

For me nowadays, it's a matter of collecting old PCs thrown out onto
the street (by people who don't want to pay the Council to pick them
up, maybe) and occasionally resuscitating one to run something
diffferent like W95, OpenBSD, or a largely home-grown Linux version.

--
Windmill, Use t m i l l
J.R.R. Tolkien:- @ O n e t e l . c o m
All that is gold does not glister / Not all who wander are lost

On Mon, 12 Mar 2012 10:46:51 +0000, Mark
wrote:

On Mon, 12 Mar 2012 09:48:33 +0000, Bernard Peek
wrote:

On 12/03/12 09:28, Mark wrote:
On Fri, 09 Mar 2012 23:06:58 +0000, The Other Mike
wrote:

On Fri, 09 Mar 2012 18:14:28 +0000, Chris
wrote:

Having been in a large organisation that made the transition from WP to
Word, there were a lot of users that never really made the mental
transition and were forever looking for the 'show codes' option

No wonder when a simple one word delete in 'Word' can suddenly alter
the format in the rest of a document to nothing like it was
milliseconds before and without any indication on how to fix it other
than by bodging.

I often find, in this situation, that the undo function restores the
document to its intended state. YMMV of course.

I find that this problem often occurs in documents written by typists
who started with a typewriter. They use tabs to align columns of figures
and a small change can throw the whole layout into disarray. The
solution is to use tables.

I think this is a different issue than The Other Mike was talking
about. I assume that he was referring to things like attempts to
change the font of one line actually changes the font of the whole
document.

Indeed I was, of course it can be fixed by an undo, but the underlying
formatting for whatever reason is obviously shagged, either by
something that Microsoft have done, or what the user has done, or by a
file system corruption.

In WordPerfect, a stray formatting code could be identified and
corrected in a few seconds.


--

On Mar 4, 10:09*pm, Bob Eager wrote:
Since the Raspberry Pi will be with us soon-ish (well, about six weeks I
am told, for mine) does anyone have any interesting ideas about what they
might do with it/them?

Cheaper version of this - a face-tracking robot eye:
http://jarkman.co.uk/catalog/robots/theeyestheeyes.htm
(You might have seen it on Dirk Gently last night)

Parts cost on that V1 is around £100, of which 40-ish each is on both
the mbed controller and the serial interface camera to feed it. An
Arduino hasn't got the horsepower. An rPi though is capable, cheaper
and best of all it can use a USB-interface webcam that's under a
tenner. Using the rPi could halve the electronics cost. I'm planning
to offer kits for them - several people who want props can handle
making the model (in a variety of forms), but are shy of the
electronics and coding.

On Mar 4, 10:09*pm, Bob Eager wrote:
Since the Raspberry Pi will be with us soon-ish (well, about six weeks I
am told, for mine) does anyone have any interesting ideas about what they
might do with it/them?

Laser cutting machine controller. Interprets G-code and also runs the
user interface to set the machine up.

Hopefully the rPi's DSI interface will also be available, so that I
can hang cheap S/H laptop screens onto it, so won't need a separate
monitor.

On Mar 5, 12:39*pm, Bernard Peek wrote:

But could you spare a couple of hours to bring an existing teacher up to
speed?

I'd love to. Now how do I explain this to friends who are being laid
off from our local university, where they were already doing just that
as their full-time job? This "rework ICT" initiative sounds great at
first, except that it also seems to be being used as an excuse to dump
its teaching from state-funded schools and onto the voluntary sector.