The Official 2023 Death Pool
-
Potter stars among tributes to Sir Michael Gambon
The actor, a four-time Bafta award winner, was best-known for playing Dumbledore in the hit film series.
-
This post is deleted!
-
Legendary Bears linebacker Dick Butkus, 80, dies
Hall of Fame linebacker Dick Butkus, a vicious tackler who made the Pro Bowl in eight of his nine seasons with the Bears, has died at the age of 80.
-
@DogsB said in The Official 2023 Death Pool:
Dennis Austin, the co-creator of PowerPoint, has passed away at age 76
Dennis Austin, together with Robert Gaskins, created the PowerPoint software for the company Forethought. It launched in April 1987. Microsoft bought the rights to the app just a few months later.
An lengthy story of PowerPoint, from the author itself, is linked in TFA (PDF, 30+ pages).
It's an interesting read of how things were done 40 years ago. There are some fun nuggets such as early VCS (for a grand total of... 2 developers!):
we had to solve the source control problem. There was no software solution at hand, but we soon invented a practical alternative.
We bought one of those card racks that hangs on the wall intended to hold employee time cards for punching in and punching out. In each of the slots we put a 4x6 card corresponding to a single source file. When you wanted to modify a file, you pulled the card out of the rack and took it to your office. To check in, you made a dated notation on the card about what had been done and then returned the card to the rack. The actual file was, at this point, copied to our network repository.
This crude system worked remarkably well for us.
-
@remi said in The Official 2023 Death Pool:
@DogsB said in The Official 2023 Death Pool:
Dennis Austin, the co-creator of PowerPoint, has passed away at age 76
Dennis Austin, together with Robert Gaskins, created the PowerPoint software for the company Forethought. It launched in April 1987. Microsoft bought the rights to the app just a few months later.
An lengthy story of PowerPoint, from the author itself, is linked in TFA (PDF, 30+ pages).
It's an interesting read of how things were done 40 years ago. There are some fun nuggets such as early VCS (for a grand total of... 2 developers!):
we had to solve the source control problem. There was no software solution at hand, but we soon invented a practical alternative.
We bought one of those card racks that hangs on the wall intended to hold employee time cards for punching in and punching out. In each of the slots we put a 4x6 card corresponding to a single source file. When you wanted to modify a file, you pulled the card out of the rack and took it to your office. To check in, you made a dated notation on the card about what had been done and then returned the card to the rack. The actual file was, at this point, copied to our network repository.
This crude system worked remarkably well for us.
I wonder if earlier small development teams did the same thing but with different floppy disks for different parts of a program. (Different code chunks, graphics or music work disks for games, etc.)
-
@Parody maybe... I guess you could ask them, but you've got to hurry: as the story above shows, people who did this are starting to die off (the 80s' were 40 years ago, if they were 30-40 yo at that time they're coming onto 80 yo now). And it's the kind of mundane everyday details of their work life that is unlikely to have been properly documented anywhere outside of human memory.
-
-
"It was her second time falling from the sky, following her first jump when she was 100 and had to be pushed out of the aircraft. "
I thought they weren't allowed to push you out, even if you asked them. Maybe she had to sign a special release beforehand.
Chicago woman, 104, dies days after attempting world's oldest skydiver record: report
Dorothy Hoffner, the woman who took to the skies to claim the title of world's oldest skydiver, died Monday, according to a Chicago media outlet.
-
@jinpa said in The Official 2023 Death Pool:
"It was her second time falling from the sky, following her first jump when she was 100 and had to be pushed out of the aircraft. "
I thought they weren't allowed to push you out, even if you asked them. Maybe she had to sign a special release beforehand.
As someone who has skydived before, I can assure you as soon as you're in position to jump, your bodily autonomy has been suspended. You're basically tied to your instructor and it's your instructor who has all the control. You literally have just a few seconds of window to jump in time. Any more and you'll miss your landing point, so they make sure they're in control as you jump out to avoid any problems if you hesitate.
-
@The_Quiet_One So you're telling me that a Cheers episode was not technically accurate?
-
@jinpa said in The Official 2023 Death Pool:
@The_Quiet_One So you're telling me that a Cheers episode was not technically accurate?
Real alcoholics donât like company or talking. Weâre strong silent loners.
-
@DogsB said in The Official 2023 Death Pool:
Real alcoholics donât like company or talking. Weâre strong silent loners.
Sometimes they find they are hassled less at the bar than at home.
-
Actress Suzanne Somers dead at 76
Suzanne Somers died on Sunday. She was 76. The "Three's Company" and "Step by Step" star turned fitness entrepreneur battled breast cancer for over 20 years.
-
Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger dies aged 100
For decades he played a pivotal, and sometimes polarising, role in US foreign policy.
-
-
@The_Quiet_One said in The Official 2023 Death Pool:
As someone who has skydived before,
It's called "skydove" only when you shat on someone while doing it.
-
@LaoC said in The Official 2023 Death Pool:
@The_Quiet_One said in The Official 2023 Death Pool:
As someone who has skydived before,
It's called "skydove" only when you shat on someone while doing it.
not to be confused with seagulling as that requires you to steal food from someone standing on the ground
-
@Zerosquare today in reading the headlines:
Kissinger is Dead, Finally Something Good Has Happened in 2023 - Lawyers, Guns & Money
One of the most vile individuals to ever befoul the United States, Henry Kissinger is dead. A man responsible for the deaths of millions of people around the world and yet the most respected man within the American foreign policy community for decades, Kissingerâs sheer existence exposed the moral...
-
-
-
Tom Smothers, Comedian, Musician and Scourge of CBS Censors, Dies at 86
He and his brother, Dick, "turned television upside down" on 'The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour' before they were canned.
-
I saw the news today, but apparently it happened very late is the last year. One of the Warhammer creators.
Shane MacGowan - Wikipedia
