English *loves* to appropriate swear words from other languages. WeWe sometimes use "caca" to mean "shit" in English too.
I didn't knew that.
On Sun, 12 Oct 2025 02:59:09 -0400, c186282 wrote:
Had a web page with a sign-in ... to "punish" those who didn't have
the password I wrote a short JS script with a massive
floating-point/trig equation that repeated as fast as possible. Get
it wrong and your PC fan would cut in full immediately and a bunch of
warnings would appear in the browser
You would be a ball of laughs with a rubber ducky.
https://github.com/hak5/usbrubberducky-payloads
If you have a Pico the Adafruit CircuitPython bundle has a handy adafruit_pid lib.
On Sun, 12 Oct 2025 02:59:09 -0400, c186282 wrote:
Had a web page with a sign-in ... to "punish" those who didn't have
the password I wrote a short JS script with a massive
floating-point/trig equation that repeated as fast as possible. Get
it wrong and your PC fan would cut in full immediately and a bunch of >>> warnings would appear in the browser
Ive seen accounting programs written in BASIC too.
On Mon, 13 Oct 2025 10:20:48 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Ive seen accounting programs written in BASIC too.
PHP is like the new BASIC -- people use it because they don’t know any better.
On Mon, 13 Oct 2025 21:56:33 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:
On Mon, 13 Oct 2025 10:20:48 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Ive seen accounting programs written in BASIC too.
PHP is like the new BASIC -- people use it because they don’t know any
better.
The acronyms themselves tell the story. 'Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code' and 'Personal Home Page'.
On Sun, 12 Oct 2025 02:59:09 -0400, c186282 wrote:
Had a web page with a sign-in ... to "punish" those who didn't have >>>> the password I wrote a short JS script with a massive
floating-point/trig equation that repeated as fast as possible. Get >>>> it wrong and your PC fan would cut in full immediately and a bunch of >>>> warnings would appear in the browser
My first thought, given this involves floating point, is:
Is this somehow exploitable by using an Intel Pentium?
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote at 19:20 this Sunday (GMT):
On Sun, 12 Oct 2025 02:59:09 -0400, c186282 wrote:
Had a web page with a sign-in ... to "punish" those who didn't have
the password I wrote a short JS script with a massive
floating-point/trig equation that repeated as fast as possible. Get
it wrong and your PC fan would cut in full immediately and a bunch of >>> warnings would appear in the browser
I think most browsers sandbox their tabs better. so it wouldn't be too
much of an issue for the end user. I'd still find it incredibly
annoying, though.
Ummm ... I'm not going to trash BASIC or PHP. They're comprehensible
and serve their purpose without being pretentious or ivory-tower.
Good stuff is good stuff.
On Tue, 14 Oct 2025 01:21:07 -0400, c186282 wrote:
Ummm ... I'm not going to trash BASIC or PHP. They're comprehensible
and serve their purpose without being pretentious or ivory-tower.
Good stuff is good stuff.
I've never done much with BASIC and my PHP experience comes from trying to fix a PHP app developed by another programmer. My real bone to pick with BASIC is its influence on COM. It gets real old wading through BSTRs, and Variants introduced because typing in VB sucked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variant_type_(COM)
The path from DDE to OLE to COM is another one of those evolutions that could have used some natural selection.
On Mon, 13 Oct 2025 21:56:33 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:
On Mon, 13 Oct 2025 10:20:48 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Ive seen accounting programs written in BASIC too.
PHP is like the new BASIC -- people use it because they don’t know any
better.
The acronyms themselves tell the story. 'Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code' and 'Personal Home Page'.
Technically, the acronym for PHP now stands for "PHP hates programmers".
On Tue, 14 Oct 2025 01:21:07 -0400, c186282 wrote:
Ummm ... I'm not going to trash BASIC or PHP. They're comprehensible
and serve their purpose without being pretentious or ivory-tower.
Good stuff is good stuff.
I've never done much with BASIC and my PHP experience comes from trying to fix a PHP app developed by another programmer. My real bone to pick with BASIC is its influence on COM. It gets real old wading through BSTRs, and Variants introduced because typing in VB sucked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variant_type_(COM)
The path from DDE to OLE to COM is another one of those evolutions that
could have used some natural selection.
On 10/14/25 02:56, rbowman wrote:
The path from DDE to OLE to COM is another one of those evolutions that
could have used some natural selection.
COMs are a bit weird for my tastes. Lots
of languages have their own takes on them
however.
Hmm ... how to best code something like
that in K&R 'C' ?
COMs are a bit weird for my tastes. Lots of languages have their own
takes on them however.
Hmm ... how to best code something like that in K&R 'C' ?
On 2025-10-15, c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:
On 10/14/25 02:56, rbowman wrote:
The path from DDE to OLE to COM is another one of those evolutions that
could have used some natural selection.
COMs are a bit weird for my tastes. Lots
of languages have their own takes on them
however.
Hmm ... how to best code something like
that in K&R 'C' ?
I looked into it briefly. It became eye-glazingly complex
very quickly. I punted and re-designed everything using
sockets. Much simpler - and more portable.
Did lots of BASIC programs, but was kind of out of that before it
ever became "visual". Turbo Pascal ... and BASIC went into the bottom
drawer.
However IF you keep it strict and straight you can do very complex
stuff with BASIC and it works as well as lots of other languages.
On 10/15/25 01:36, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
On 2025-10-15, c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:
On 10/14/25 02:56, rbowman wrote:
The path from DDE to OLE to COM is another one of those evolutions
that could have used some natural selection.
COMs are a bit weird for my tastes. Lots of languages have their
own takes on them however.
Hmm ... how to best code something like that in K&R 'C' ?
I looked into it briefly. It became eye-glazingly complex very
quickly. I punted and re-designed everything using sockets. Much
simpler - and more portable.
Much agreed. COMs were kind of a "first try", but better approaches
soon arrived.
VB's biggest strength was that it combined a well-known, accessible
language with an extremely straightforward UI builder, and did it some-
thing close to "the right way round," presenting methods as browseable
and editable components of the UI objects they applied to rather than
making you dig through an object definition in a source file in search
of the appropriate callback function.* Especially back in the Bad Old
Days of Win16 programming, it was far and away the simplest way to go
from zero to functioning GUI application..
QtDesigner isn't too bad for a drag and drop visual editor.
VB's biggest strength was that it combined a well-known, accessible
language with an extremely straightforward UI builder, and did it some-
thing close to "the right way round," presenting methods as browseable
and editable components of the UI objects they applied to rather than
making you dig through an object definition in a source file in search
of the appropriate callback function.
On Tue, 14 Oct 2025 20:01:12 -0400
c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:
Did lots of BASIC programs, but was kind of out of that before it
ever became "visual". Turbo Pascal ... and BASIC went into the bottom
drawer.
However IF you keep it strict and straight you can do very complex
stuff with BASIC and it works as well as lots of other languages.
VB's biggest strength was that it combined a well-known, accessible
language with an extremely straightforward UI builder, and did it some-
thing close to "the right way round," presenting methods as browseable
and editable components of the UI objects they applied to rather than
making you dig through an object definition in a source file in search
of the appropriate callback function.* Especially back in the Bad Old
Days of Win16 programming, it was far and away the simplest way to go
from zero to functioning GUI application...
* (Of course it was defined the usual way in the raw source text, but
the IDE handled things so that you didn't need to bother thinking
about it...mostly.)
...but, unfortunately, the language spec was a little bit of a mess
from the get-go, and only got worse the more stuff they bolted onto it,
plus the runtime was more than a bit buggy :/ Shame, as I still haven't
seen anything in the modern day that offers a comparably simple way to
build GUI programs.
On Wed, 15 Oct 2025 03:33:43 -0400, c186282 wrote:
On 10/15/25 01:36, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
On 2025-10-15, c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:
On 10/14/25 02:56, rbowman wrote:
The path from DDE to OLE to COM is another one of those evolutions
that could have used some natural selection.
COMs are a bit weird for my tastes. Lots of languages have their
own takes on them however.
Hmm ... how to best code something like that in K&R 'C' ?
I looked into it briefly. It became eye-glazingly complex very
quickly. I punted and re-designed everything using sockets. Much
simpler - and more portable.
Much agreed. COMs were kind of a "first try", but better approaches
soon arrived.
CORBA was no ball of joy either. However it sort of faded away while COM lived on.
On Wed, 15 Oct 2025 09:00:25 -0700, John Ames wrote:
VB's biggest strength was that it combined a well-known, accessible
language with an extremely straightforward UI builder, and did it some-
thing close to "the right way round," presenting methods as browseable
and editable components of the UI objects they applied to rather than
making you dig through an object definition in a source file in search
of the appropriate callback function.* Especially back in the Bad Old
Days of Win16 programming, it was far and away the simplest way to go
from zero to functioning GUI application..
WinForms grew out of VB and has survived despite Microsoft's repeated attempts to kill it.
QtDesigner isn't too bad for a drag and drop visual editor.
I'll assert that Lazarus/FP is by far the best drag-n-drop solution.
Super-quick to design GUIs and then add your own IQ to them.
HyperCard was doing that about four years earlier.Very true, although HyperCard stopped just shy of allowing full first-
And don’t forget great-granddaddy Smalltalk, which goes right back to
the 1970s, and was more advanced than either of them.
Well, today, try Lazarus/FP. If I need something with a versatile GUI
like right now - that's the way to go. Yea, pretty "object", but it
works and you can hook in custom functions really easy.
On Thu, 16 Oct 2025 02:27:34 -0400, c186282 wrote:
I'll assert that Lazarus/FP is by far the best drag-n-drop solution.
Super-quick to design GUIs and then add your own IQ to them.
I'll assert I played with Pascal when TurboPascal came out for CP/M. Not
bad for $49.99 but that was a few days ago.
Le 11-10-2025, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> a écrit :
On Sat, 11 Oct 2025 17:48:23 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
On 2025-10-11, Stéphane CARPENTIER <sc@fiat-linux.fr> wrote:
Le 10-10-2025, c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> a écrit :
Yea, great, half a zillion lines of HTML, PHP and fuckin'
JAVASCRIPT ........
You remind me of a good example of a difficult thing to translate. In
French, I'm calling javascript: cacascript. Because in French caca
means shit. So any French speaker reading/hearing cacascript can
understand it's shit designing javascript. I have no idea how it could >>>> be translated in English because shitscript could be understood as any >>>> scripting language.
We sometimes use "caca" to mean "shit" in English too.
I didn't knew that.
On 10/16/25 03:22, rbowman wrote:
On Thu, 16 Oct 2025 02:27:34 -0400, c186282 wrote:
   I'll assert that Lazarus/FP is by far the best drag-n-drop solution. >>>    Super-quick to design GUIs and then add your own IQ to them.
I'll assert I played with Pascal when TurboPascal came out for CP/M. Not
bad for $49.99 but that was a few days ago.
 Still use Pascal for all kinds of things. Something
 about the look & feel appeals to me. Started with
 the ancient M$/IBM multipass compiler (still have
 one in a VM somewhere).
 However for right-now basic GUIs (albeit with a
 90s look) Lazarus is your best bet once you learn
 how to place and access your own functions in
 the auto-generated code. Need something by 5pm
 then you go Lazarus.
Stéphane CARPENTIER <sc@fiat-linux.fr> wrote:
Le 11-10-2025, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> a écrit :
On Sat, 11 Oct 2025 17:48:23 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
On 2025-10-11, Stéphane CARPENTIER <sc@fiat-linux.fr> wrote:
Le 10-10-2025, c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> a écrit :
Yea, great, half a zillion lines of HTML, PHP and fuckin'
JAVASCRIPT ........
You remind me of a good example of a difficult thing to translate. In >>>>> French, I'm calling javascript: cacascript. Because in French caca
means shit. So any French speaker reading/hearing cacascript can
understand it's shit designing javascript. I have no idea how it could >>>>> be translated in English because shitscript could be understood as any >>>>> scripting language.
We sometimes use "caca" to mean "shit" in English too.
I didn't knew that.
English has borrowed many words from many other languages,
French included.
"Caca" is likely an example of on that English has borrowed
from French.
English meaning is the same as in French:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/caca
Since I was born, I hear people afraid of the number of English
words finding their way into French.
But, it's only since a few years that I discovered how it works in
the other way. I mean, I knew that not a so long time ago French had
the same status English has today.
That, I know, too. Since I was born, I hear people afraid of the number
of English words finding their way into French. But, it's only since a
few years that I discovered how it works in the other way. I mean, I
knew that not a so long time ago French had the same status English has today. But since a few years, reading not translated English authors, I
can see that more French words find their way in English than what I
knew. But...
Stéphane CARPENTIER <sc@fiat-linux.fr> wrote:
Le 11-10-2025, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> a écrit :
On Sat, 11 Oct 2025 17:48:23 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
On 2025-10-11, Stéphane CARPENTIER <sc@fiat-linux.fr> wrote:
Le 10-10-2025, c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> a écrit :
Yea, great, half a zillion lines of HTML, PHP and fuckin'
JAVASCRIPT ........
You remind me of a good example of a difficult thing to translate. In >>>>> French, I'm calling javascript: cacascript. Because in French caca
means shit. So any French speaker reading/hearing cacascript can
understand it's shit designing javascript. I have no idea how it could >>>>> be translated in English because shitscript could be understood as any >>>>> scripting language.
We sometimes use "caca" to mean "shit" in English too.
I didn't knew that.
English has borrowed many words from many other languages, French
included. "Caca" is likely an example of on that English has borrowed
from French.
English meaning is the same as in French:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/caca
On 2025-10-18 04:24, c186282 wrote:
On 10/16/25 03:22, rbowman wrote:
On Thu, 16 Oct 2025 02:27:34 -0400, c186282 wrote:
   I'll assert that Lazarus/FP is by far the best drag-n-drop
solution.
   Super-quick to design GUIs and then add your own IQ to them.
I'll assert I played with Pascal when TurboPascal came out for CP/M. Not >>> bad for $49.99 but that was a few days ago.
  Still use Pascal for all kinds of things. Something
  about the look & feel appeals to me. Started with
  the ancient M$/IBM multipass compiler (still have
  one in a VM somewhere).
  However for right-now basic GUIs (albeit with a
  90s look) Lazarus is your best bet once you learn
  how to place and access your own functions in
  the auto-generated code. Need something by 5pm
  then you go Lazarus.
I also like Lazarus.
Although the amount of libraries to do the same thing is confusing, re
which is the proper one. I forget how many types of strings: the classic
255 string, the 0 terminated string, Windows style, and then utf
strings. Maybe more I forget.
And there is a Linux version. Back to topic ;-)
On 18 Oct 2025 21:02:59 GMT, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
That, I know, too. Since I was born, I hear people afraid of the number
of English words finding their way into French. But, it's only since a
few years that I discovered how it works in the other way. I mean, I
knew that not a so long time ago French had the same status English has
today. But since a few years, reading not translated English authors, I
can see that more French words find their way in English than what I
knew. But...
iirc in Dostoevsky's satire, 'The Demons' (or 'The Possessed' or 'The Devils') some of the characters salt their speech with French phrases to
show how hip and Western they are.
Quebec French words found their way into the states bordering Quebec. Many people in that area either go out of their way to mispronounce them or
don't have a clue about the French pronunciation.
iirc in Dostoevsky's satire, 'The Demons' (or 'The Possessed' or 'The Devils') some of the characters salt their speech with French phrases to
show how hip and Western they are.
Quebec French words found their way into the states bordering Quebec. Many people in that area either go out of their way to mispronounce them or
don't have a clue about the French pronunciation.
On 18 Oct 2025 21:02:59 GMT, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
But, it's only since a few years that I discovered how it works in
the other way. I mean, I knew that not a so long time ago French had
the same status English has today.
French was, and to some extent still is, the language of international diplomacy. This is why you see so many French words/phrases
specifically used to refer to the functions of embassies and their
staff: “attache”, “chef de mission”, “charge d’affaires” etc.
Science-fiction writer Poul Anderson once wrote an essay (“Uncleftish Beholding”) as a school-level introduction to the basics of atomic
theory. Only he wrote it using only words from Old English, assuming
the subsequent conquests/evolutions had never happened, so the
original Anglo-Saxon words had to be adapted as the basis for the
scientific terms, instead of Latin, Greek, German etc as we actually
do. You can read it here <https://groups.google.com/g/alt.language.artificial/c/ZL4e3fD7eW0/m/_7p8bKwLJWkJ>.
On 10/18/25 14:08, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-10-18 04:24, c186282 wrote:
On 10/16/25 03:22, rbowman wrote:
On Thu, 16 Oct 2025 02:27:34 -0400, c186282 wrote:
I also like Lazarus.
Although the amount of libraries to do the same thing is confusing, re
which is the proper one. I forget how many types of strings: the
classic 255 string, the 0 terminated string, Windows style, and then
utf strings. Maybe more I forget.
And there is a Linux version. Back to topic ;-)
 The main gotcha between Linux and Win tends to
 be the FONTS :-)
 I wrote a few programs that could run Lin or Win
 using Lazarus. Delphi is, alas, only Win (and
 expensive as all hell these days).
 Pascal/object-Pascal is almost infinitely
 capable, pretty well documented and compiler
 fast.
 My last five years before retirement I tended
 to write apps first in Python, then, a week or
 two later, in FPC or Lazarus tighter-better.
 Pascal is a Very Good Language for applications.
 It tends to get forgotten amongst the latest/
 greatest "new solutions" - but DON'T forget it.
 It's still Right There, Up To The Job, and
 more readable than 'C' or 'Rust'.
On 18 Oct 2025 21:02:59 GMT, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
But, it's only since a few years that I discovered how it works in
the other way. I mean, I knew that not a so long time ago French had
the same status English has today.
French was, and to some extent still is, the language of international diplomacy.
This is why you see so many French words/phrases specifically used to
refer to the functions of embassies and their staff: “attache”, “chef de mission”, “charge d’affaires” etc.
Science-fiction writer Poul Anderson once wrote an essay (“Uncleftish Beholding”) as a school-level introduction to the basics of atomic
theory. Only he wrote it using only words from Old English, assuming
the subsequent conquests/evolutions had never happened, so the
original Anglo-Saxon words had to be adapted as the basis for the
scientific terms, instead of Latin, Greek, German etc as we actually
do. You can read it here
<https://groups.google.com/g/alt.language.artificial/c/ZL4e3fD7eW0/m/_7p8bKwLJWkJ>.
On 2025-10-19 03:36, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:
Science-fiction writer Poul Anderson once wrote an essay
(“Uncleftish Beholding”) as a school-level introduction to the
basics of atomic theory. Only he wrote it using only words from Old
English, assuming the subsequent conquests/evolutions had never
happened, so the original Anglo-Saxon words had to be adapted as
the basis for the scientific terms, instead of Latin, Greek, German
etc as we actually do. You can read it here
<https://groups.google.com/g/alt.language.artificial/c/ZL4e3fD7eW0/m/_7p8bKwLJWkJ>.
No, I can't! :-D I need a lot of notes, many words I don't get.
* sourstuff -- oxygen (c.f. German “sauerstoff”)
On Sun, 19 Oct 2025 13:39:40 +0200, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-10-19 03:36, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:
Science-fiction writer Poul Anderson once wrote an essay
(“Uncleftish Beholding”) as a school-level introduction to the
basics of atomic theory. Only he wrote it using only words from Old
English, assuming the subsequent conquests/evolutions had never
happened, so the original Anglo-Saxon words had to be adapted as
the basis for the scientific terms, instead of Latin, Greek, German
etc as we actually do. You can read it here
<https://groups.google.com/g/alt.language.artificial/c/ZL4e3fD7eW0/m/_7p8bKwLJWkJ>.
No, I can't! :-D I need a lot of notes, many words I don't get.
There’s probably a full translation somewhere. Just a few random clues
I can remember:
* worldken -- science
* firststuff -- chemical element
* uncleft -- atom (cannot be cleft, i.e. divided)
* bernstone -- I think this is amber, by analogy with the fact that
“electron” comes from the Greek word for “amber”. So “forward
bernstonish lading” is “postive electric charge”, “backwardladen”
being “negatively charged”.
* neitherbit -- neutron
* sunstuff -- helium
* sourstuff -- oxygen (c.f. German “sauerstoff”)
* minglingken -- chemistry?
* stuff -- matter
* work -- energy
* “Nor are stuff and work unakin. Rather, they are groundwise the
same, and one can be shifted into the other. The kinship between
them is that work is like unto weight manifolded by the fourside of
the haste of light.” -- E = mc² (“fourside” = “square”)
I think, given the Germanic core of Old English, somebody who knows
German might have a better chance of guessing at the meanings of words
On Mon, 20 Oct 2025 02:10:59 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:
* sourstuff -- oxygen (c.f. German “sauerstoff”)
fwiw hydrogen is Wasserstoff. Makes perfect sense. Burn hydrogen and you
get water. No need to get fancy and involve the Greeks. iirc Strunk &
White said to use good Anglo-Saxon words and avoid the fancy stuff.
...that doesn't mean I knew that this particular word had found hisI'd be interested to know for sure, but I'd bet that any such - what
way into English. For example, some words/expressions like "ŕ propos"
and "et voilŕ". The funniest of them, for me, being "nom de plume". I
have no clue about how it came into English because when I saw it in
English texts, I was wondering. I mean, nobody in France was using
those French words in this way.
The guy WAS ultra-smart ... however THAT take on things was just
WEIRD.
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