I seem to remember something about setting the buffer length differently and getting significantly faster results -- but that makes the story much less interesting.
That was a good course -- the guy ping-ponged between starting companies and teaching, so his course was solidly grounded in reality. He had _lots_ of stories about wide-eyed technical innocence running smack into hard engineering realities.
Why leave out RT-11?
And since this is far OT -- any TECO fans [that almost came as fanatics] out there. In early 70's I worked in Maynard [ML5-5 to be exact]. Came in one Saturday to finish up a 2 page report using TECO on a KL-10 system that during week handled major portion of DEC's production control. Misplaced a ";" IIRCC thus copying file to itself ;[
Got thrown off system by upper level supervisor program that someone with my permissions should not have even new knew existed. However many scratch disks there were, I attempted to fill them all. A systems expert acquaitence told be I had managed to skip 2-3 levels of protection. Gee, wonder why DEC tried vainly to discourage use of that program -- you could do just about anything in it.
But shouldn't that come out of the publisher's cut? After all, what are editors for? ;]
Bzzzzzt to you both. Zerex.
~Dave~
Yes, and a google search on Xerex turns up some marginally interesting links, none of which is antifreeze. ;-) Zerex is, in fact, antifreeze.
Cheers! Rich
Twenty-five bucke!!!????!?!? Geez, I'd proof the whole thing for ten bucks a typo! ;-)
Cheers! Rich
Rich, Looks like you are a cheap date ;-)
...Jim Thompson
Actually I found quite a few google links to antifreeze with the apparently misspelled Xerex in place of Zerex. Regardless of the spelling the pronuciation is the same and companies likely would not want to have their product confused for another with a similar name.
Clay
What else is new?
(snipped)
Hi Rich,
ah but no magazine editor or book editor that I know of is capable of detecting technical errors, for example in an equation. They're not skilled in all aspects of every engineering topic (no one is). So the editors are expecting that the content of a magazine article, or a technical book, is correct. It's up to the author to make sure the material is correct.
The problem is: once an author writes some technical material that author is the *LEAST* reliable person on the planet Earth to find mistakes in that material. I'm sure you know that. So, ... finding a competent person to review technical writing is **VERY** important. The problem is: reviewing tech material in a thorough way is painful, unpleasant, and yields almost no reward. So it's a royal pain to ask reviewers to carefully review your writing and then tell those reviewers that, by the way, there's no reward for their efforts.
See Ya', [-Rick-]
Yeah, well, so was Cinderella!
Cheers! Rich
True, but at least for books, there is technical review before release.
Hi, Yes. There usually, but not always, is a tech review of proposed manuscripts.
[-Rick-]
Rick, you're talking to the (or at least one of) my copy editor(s).
Lewin -- did you go over all the math, then?
Hi Tim, Ah ha. Interesting.
The reason I said there is "usually" a technical review is because the last technical book that I bought contained SOOooo many technical errors that it's clear that no tech review was performed. None!
The typical tech book has a silly little "typo" or misspelled word once every 20-30 pages. The book I bought had an average of more than one "typo" per page!! I am NOT joking. (One page contained four "typos"!!)
What an unprofessional mess by both the authors and the Publisher.
[-Rick-]
Name them, or at least the publisher. It might induce them to shape up.
Jerry
-- Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get. ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
Hi Jer,
I knew what I'd written probably sounded very mysterious by my not giving any specifics.
I didn't give the book's title, right now, for legal reasons.
However, the publisher was SAMS Publishing (Indianapolis, Indiana). I will *NEVER* buy a SAMS book, sigh unseen, again.
[-Rick-]
I've known that rule for almost 20 years and even back then it was common knowledge. I also don't buy SAMS and never have.
Jon
Hi,
Well Jon, you're a much faster "learner" than I am.
Regards, [-Rick-]
There was a time when looking for a intro to something new I'd give preference to a SAMS book. Not since the early 70's though. Hmmm, did they get bought out in late 60's/early 70's?
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