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Greed, Zealotry, and the Commodore 64
jira writes "On the occasion of the Commodore 64's rebirth as an Atom-equipped nettop, the Guardian's Jon Blyth remembers what the original Commodore 64 taught him. Among other things: 'But look at it, all brown, ugly and lovely. It taught me so much. The Commodore 64 taught me about zealotry. After upgrading from the inferior ZX Spectrum, I would try to convince the Sinclair loyalists to follow me. I would invite them to my house, and let them see that with just eight colors and a monophonic sound chip, their lives lacked true depth. My evangelism quickly faded into impatience. So, I can now see why American Baptists get so miffy about atheists — it's horrible dealing with people who don't realize how much better you are.'"
there is no ZX spectrum with a "monophonic sound chip"
the original 16 and 48k machines have no sound chip, the sound is software driven by toggling an I/O bit.
the 128k machines use the AY which is 3 channel
so there! :p
So, I can now see why American Baptists get so miffy about atheists -- it's horrible dealing with people who don't realize how much better you are.
That's funny... that's the same reason I, an atheist, get so miffy about Christians, especially Baptists, especially young-earth Creationists.
Hopefully this is a whoosh and there's some sarcasm I'm missing or something...
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Isn't this the third or fourth vaporware company to claim that it somewhere scooped up the rights to flay Commodore's carcass and smear the mutilated skin of the brand onto some boring x86 whitebox?
In these days of emulators and cheap FPGAs, it just seems tasteless to throw a plastic skin around the winning architecture and call it a C64(even more tasteless to claim to do that, then not follow through, of course...) If you want to bring the past into the present, take advantage of the fact that modern tech should be able to reproduce old gear for considerably less, even in small quantities. If you want to hearken back to the days of the architecture wars, when numerous competing systems existed, featuring a variety of exotic design choices, perhaps one of the hobby projects in creating something exotic, for its own sake, is a more appropriate homage...
The best C64 programs were zero lines long. They tossed the Commodore ROM in the trash, thereby freeing-up all 64 k of memory, and loaded directly from the 1541 (or 71) disk drive.
"64k should be enough for anybody." With GEOS you can turn your 64k machine into a clone of the original Mac (with WYSIWYG word processing, a trashcan, and everything). My church pastor did all his newsletters on the Commodore=64. And it doesn't cost $4000. More like $400. With music and color! ;-)
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
If I didn't have a Commodore, I would sooner have an 8-bit Atari or Apple instead, not a Sinclair.
I'm sure most Spectrum owners would too, considering that those machines were, AFAIR, around three times the price.
The Spectrum was the cheapest computer that could play half-decent games, and its popularity became self-supporting as it lead more game developers to make games for it.
It's easy to develop mental blind-spots when you are receiving your primary programming. Try teaching belief systems to someone who has been raised without myths and given reason and critical thinking skills. In that fully formed individual, they usually tear the mythos to shreds and do not accept it. When you are a child you do not have the thinking skills to reject fantastical ideas. Those basic thinking patterns are then used to "hang" your later learning off of. I'd be ashamed to handicap my children with such outmoded ideas. Religion fulfills a societal function only which is diminishing rapidly, at least in first-world nations.
Shh.
CommodoreUSA seems to be the first company since the original Commodore's fall that has a plan to do something that both is associated with the original, and still is plausable. They actually have a case. A simple case with a Atom based motherboard is a realistic goal. As a retro gaming fan, I find the idea of having a PC in a C64 looking case really attractive, and if I get board of it, I can just use it as a standard PC. That takes all of the risk out of buying some specialty hardware, and the work out of trying to gut a real C64 and fit in a PC.
Aha, 'Computing Today', January 1983, all prices in pounds before sales tax:
48k Apple II (no disk drives, etc): 525
16k Atari 800: 449
16k Spectrum: 125
48k Spectrum: 175
4k VIC-20: 120
I can't find a Commodore-64 ad.
I teach people Sindarin, you insensitive clod. Why would I teach them a language that nobody speaks?
Ok, I'm going to settle the issue for now! ;)
;)
The proper position to take is igtheism. Basically being an igtheist means saying we can't talk about the existence or non-existence of God without defining better what God is. Right now, Physics is not complete. This means that until we have a full understanding of Physics (if ever, see Godel's incompleteness theorem) then the existence of God must remain undecided. God may very well be hiding behind the last theorem. Beware!
Now, the argument for "God," exists but it is absolutely not anything that is given in a traditional teaching. It is meta-physical. Consider the most fundamental unit in our Universe, the Quanta. Anything that requires exactly more than a single quanta to represent is abstract. This means that the definition of the thing relies on having a relationship across multiple real things versus just being a singular real thing. Only Quanta are "real," everything else is abstract. The reality we experience through our senses is not real, it is spread over countless quanta and is far removed from the base, real, Universe which is just the quanta without relationships. There are abstract layers of reality on all scales and any relationships between them qualifies for a "name." One of these names is "God," and in a pantheistic viewpoint it can be the sum of all relationships in the totality of our Universe. God's thought on you is you. With any relationship qualifying as an entity in itself then any computation or action that causes another action is just as "real" as the reality you and I perceive. GOD can be thought of as existing within the network of actions in how we treat each other. If I am a right Christian and I treat you well, that tenet of how you treat others spread across many like-minded individuals has a measurable affect. The nebulous web of actions, or computations, has a reality that is equal in "realness" to what you and I experience through our senses.
So, God is undecided for now but of all the levels of reality there are plenty God could fit into. Just not a traditional definition of "God."
Shh.
Good grief. Sure, it's outdated, but the Commie 64 was more than just another computer. It was a hobby. It was a pastime. It was a learning tool. It was an EXPERIENCE. If you had the ability and knowledge, you could add new features and functionality to the machine by cutting traces and soldering wires to the leads on chips, to your extension circuitry. I added all kinds of extras to mine, including a BASIC extension, MicroMon Assembler, a cartridge "bypass" switch, etc. Can't do those kinds of things with modern PC's.
My first word processor was "Speedscript". I typed it in from COMPUTE! Magazine over several days. That program did, in six kilobytes, what WORD was doing in hundreds, back in the early 90's! I used it more than any other software on that Ol' 64!
Now, want to talk about emulators? How about this one:
http://www.mymorninglight.org.nyud.net/C64/J64.htm
Now THAT is a COOL C= 64 emulator, if I do say so myself! :)
Willie...
Be careful how you use the term "American Baptists". The American Baptist Churches of the USA are a fairly liberal and ecumenical bunch that believe in religious freedom (and humility) better than Richard Stallman believes in software freedom (and humility).
There are other baptists sects in America that are considered stricter groups and might be more likely to fit your stereotype, so beware how you capitalize "American".
Sure we believe in God, and I won't deny there are some zealots among our ranks, but as a denomination, we believe in autonomy, and the members certainly cannot be categorized the way it's being used here.
www.abc-usa.org ...if you're interested.
The Spectrum was significantly cheaper than the rivals. The CPU ran faster than the C64 but the graphics weren't as good - but what really sold it was the huge following it had in the UK. At one point there were three separate mainstream magazines available (I used to buy all three and still have them somewhere).
On price, here's the Argos catalogue circa 1985:
Spectrum: £119.95
http://www.flickr.com/photos/38301877@N05/3593465768/in/set-72157619206330728/
Commodore 64: £189.00
http://www.flickr.com/photos/38301877@N05/3592657253/in/set-72157619206330728/
Lionesses can HAS prey!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
LolCats can has pray in yur congregation?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
In the end, it was (as is often the case) really bad management that killed Commodore.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
If the Christian god exists, and is all powerful, then helping out those who most need and deserve it (like children about to be raped and murdered for instance) would consume an infinitesimal fraction of his effort. If he is all loving, then he surely wouldn't begrudge us that.
People have got 8 channels out of the Spectrum's beeper. The 3.5MHz Z80 is fast enough to do pulse density modulation for this many channels (essentially the beeper circuit contains a low pass filter, which acts as a DAC, just like SA-CD works except it's not as refined).
Some of the Speccy beeper music demos are pretty astonishing.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
That I canceled my charter subscription to BYTE when they kept dissing my PDP-8 machines in favor of that little 8 bit piece of crap.
Which is now wider and still a piece of crap, just a fast one. Other machines can actually be fun to program in assembler. Ever tried on an intel box?
Sigh.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
A Speccie zealot, eh?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Why is that modded funny? Elves are people, too, you know!
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)