Slashdot Mirror
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
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...
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.
I'm a medicinal chemist working on a program to cure Alzheimer's disease, and I thank God for my abilities.
Tell me, what part of your abilities came from God? Did he go through the years of school for you? Perhaps he inspired you with the knowledge of how chemical reactions work?
Thanking God for your abilities is just pushing it back a step. Instead of me disrespecting a doctor by giving God the credit instead, that's you disrespecting every human teacher you ever had. If you're thanking God for the aptitude alone, thank your parents -- nature or nurture, the part you're crediting God with likely came from them.
If you're thanking God for every single event that deterministically led to you being where you are now, basically for setting the universe in motion, even if that were true, that seems absurdly far removed from what you're actually doing with medicine -- how do you know you're even doing what the creator of the universe would want?
I think you presume too much of the Doctor when you deny the existence of miracles.
What is it I'm supposed to be presuming that isn't possible?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
“A lioness went straight for him, knocked him down and severed his carotid artery.”
...and thanked God for her lunch?
http://michaelsmith.id.au