I don't know where the USF monies go but it certainly isn't here.
I suspect the likes of AT&T and Google get the lion's share and then through sleight of hand it somehow funds build outs of fiber in large metro areas. If it weren't for the local independent telcos scratching and clawing for a few crumbs, there wouldn't be any FTH in rural areas.
A few years back .gov allocated considerable funds for expanding, presumably, FTH in "rural" areas. The state I live in did the same. So far in the AT&T monopoly, not an inch of fiber has been plowed that I can see. Most of the funds have probably been laundered back to the politicians and the status quo remains.
A new WISP has been putting up sites over the past several months in parts of the AT&T service area with no other terrestrial service available. This, even in the age of Star Link. I doubt they would be doing so unless they had a pretty good idea that no FTH will be available for five to ten years or at least long enough to amortize their investment.
Like most taxes levied on We The People, the USF is a PR stunt intended to buy votes.
Nice memory. That book was included with the Coco2 I bought in late '83. Part of the lack of fun I had was not having a dedicated TV to use with it--I had to share with the siblings--and it was a black and white console. Still I learned a lot but should've done more. Oh well, I gave the whole works away in the mid '90s and it's probably in a landfill in NW Oklahoma.
Sometime around 1990 is when I got my first computer, and it was one of those. Came with the wonderfully audible cassette recorder, boxy 5-1/4" disk drive, pair of joysticks and a couple cartridges. My parents bought it secondhand off someone. You never know, maybe your machine went to some kid, sparked a passion they turned into a career, and is still in some closet cherished to this day.
I've been familiar with the Sperry logo for about 50 years, but only because dad had bought a New Holland combine in late 1969 that sported the Sperry New Holland logo. It wasn't until more recent times that I learned the company was a conglomerate engaged in diversification but primarily known for large computers.
New Holland went through a few iterations until being purchased by the Fiat group. It is a part of CNH with its sister company of Case IH.
Trivial examples of Gtk+ apps seem to be legion but to find a decent tutorial that works its way through a moderately complex and usable app seem to be scarce. In particular I haven't found a decent example of using the GTKBuilder class and complete documentation of the XML properties seems almost nonexistent.
Aside from that, instead of writing a GNOME app in C, isn't Vala or GJS the preferred language now?
I wanted to try and follow this blog, but write the app in Vala and I haven't figured out how to use gtk4 with meson yet. I personally want to build a nautilus extension, but that seems very far off considering the sorry state of their documentation.
> Trivial examples of Gtk+ apps seem to be legion but to find a decent tutorial that works its way through a moderately complex and usable app seem to be scarce.
The same is true for a lot of languages and frameworks: Programming education, and tutorials on the Internet, start with Hello World and stop at some very small, trivial application with the complexity of about 1-4 source files. Final class: How to write a notepad-like application, or a TODO list with check boxes. There are a lot of resources that get you started but very little about how you'd approach what would turn into a medium-sized or large application, with hundreds of source files and many third party dependencies.
Much different than the self study route I chose back in the early '80s. 41 years ago next month I worked up enough courage to call one of the local radio amateurs and scheduling the Novice license exam with him which he was glad to do. Of course, I had some trepidation as I didn't want to inconvenience him but I quickly got over that as most hams are more than willing to assist the newcomer.
The way new hams enter and interact with the rest of the amateur radio world has changed dramatically over that time span. It saddens me a bit each time I read that someone received the "get off my lawn" impression from their first contacts in the hobby. Hopefully such instances are rare and the result of miscommunication/misunderstanding rather than ill intent from either party.
Many of my older fellow radio amateurs will disagree, but Wayne Green is truly missed these days. Reading his editorials from 73 Amateur Radio Today decades later show that he had an insight into events and people that rankled many, particularly during his first run of owning 73 until his magazine company was lost in his divorce settlement. Those hams are still embittered to this day which shows just how effective his writing was in trying to get his readers to use their critical thinking skills and thus how many hated the idea that they do so.
I don't know if the readers of Byte or 80 Micro had similar reactions to Wayne's editorials. Computer hobbyists and radio amateurs have two different levels of passion. At the time (1980) amateur radio had over seven decades of tradition behind it while personal computing was less than a decade old. Wayne saw that the landscape of amateur radio was changing dramatically in the early '70s, something many of his contemporaries wished to deny. He advocated for FCC rules changes, many of which came too little too late, and changes to ARRL (American Radio Relay League--the US national amateur radio operators association) that to this day have been ignored. In retrospect his perspectives have mostly been proven correct, at least in regard to those two entities and the amateur radio hobby as a whole.
Wayne enjoyed writing and enjoyed learning something new and sharing that with others while trying to make a living at it. The titles of magazines that he started are a testament to that drive.
Did the restrictions on third party software and such apply to franchise stores? I know that the local franchise stores in this rural area carried electronics from other manufacturers but don't recall anything about software or peripherals despite having a Coco 2 from late '83 through the summer of '89 as my only computer.
Despite there being an RS store in the county seat town of this county and in every adjoining county, most of my Coco support came from other amateur radio operators as that was my primary interest. I did buy a genuine RS disk drive and printer for the Coco along the way. While it came with 16k of RAM, a contact via amateur radio led me to purchase the chips to upgrade it 64k which worked!
There was a lot of chatter about the Model 4 but the price and an awareness from amateur radio publications of the rise of "IBM PC compatibles" kept me from going that route. Even if I had known of 80 Micro at the time, I doubt I would have subscribed.
Ironically, the first PC clone--a collection of disparate parts, really--I bought was from another amateur radio operator who worked at the local Radio Shack at the time in 1989.
> Did the restrictions on third party software and such apply to franchise stores?
No. They always could and did sell third-party computer products, while Tandy-owned stores only began doing so alongside the Tandy 1000, since it would be ridiculous to not sell the PC software that the computer exists to run.
That is kind of what I thought, that the local stores had various titles hanging on the wall but since none of it interested me at the time I ignored it and so it's not seared into my memory.
> but don't recall anything about software or peripherals despite having a Coco 2
They did sell 3rd party software for the Coco (at minimum). The distributor I sold games through had a Tandy contact and sent one of my games to see if they wanted to sell it in stores like some other ones they were selling.
They did not, which was a bummer. One funny thing, the opening screen, prior to title and credits etc. was a matrix like display with the screen full of random characters (numbers and letters, not 1's and 0's) shifting characters and colors, etc., the Tandy guy said he thought the game was broken at first.
Several projects I'm interested in have gone to Discourse. I don't mind the Web interface but the infantile notifications I receive and the nonsense the application sticks into a thread are annoying at best and add nothing to the usefulness of the forum. It otherwise detracts from what should be technical discussions.
Another annoyance are projects that choose to autolock threads in Discourse. On a technical forum such actions are unwarranted as there are times when an investigation can take months and remembering to add a nonsense post to keep a thread from autolocking doesn't always happen. So, a collection of disjoined threads result and even with links to the prior thread(s) the flow of investigation is greatly disrupted. SMH
I am just the opposite. I started using Git not long after it gained traction outside of the kernel project. Of course, it was primarily geared toward working in the terminal then. Some years later I had switched to Emacs and gave Magit a whirl. Even after going through quite a bit of its copious documentation, I just never felt comfortable with it. I guess I don't like being that far removed from the actual goings on with the repository.
I've since switched to Vim and happily use git at the terminal prompt. I doubt that will ever change as the interactive interface of various Git commands has improved.
I also heard "Mississippi's Finest Junk" as well. To be fair, I found the MFJ items I had to be able to the job. It was never best of breed but was always serviceable.
I suspect the likes of AT&T and Google get the lion's share and then through sleight of hand it somehow funds build outs of fiber in large metro areas. If it weren't for the local independent telcos scratching and clawing for a few crumbs, there wouldn't be any FTH in rural areas.
A few years back .gov allocated considerable funds for expanding, presumably, FTH in "rural" areas. The state I live in did the same. So far in the AT&T monopoly, not an inch of fiber has been plowed that I can see. Most of the funds have probably been laundered back to the politicians and the status quo remains.
A new WISP has been putting up sites over the past several months in parts of the AT&T service area with no other terrestrial service available. This, even in the age of Star Link. I doubt they would be doing so unless they had a pretty good idea that no FTH will be available for five to ten years or at least long enough to amortize their investment.
Like most taxes levied on We The People, the USF is a PR stunt intended to buy votes.