There was 64k of ram, and only 64k of address space, so the ROM was using some of that address space by necessity. You could remap the address space to RAM-only but that would cause several things to stop working. The trick was to copy some parts of the ROM to RAM and then you could change the pointers to things like where the screen-font and such that were usually in ROM were now stored. As long as you did some prep-work, it was easy to run with a flat address space available to you. This technique was used a lot of the time to be able to edit bits of the ROM while still remaining in a fairly standard environment.
Also, the difference between BASIC and assembly could be fuzzy. I still have a book on machine language for the C64 which starts with simple programs being entered in basic using DATA statements combined with POKE and READ to load them directly to memory and then manually set the instruction pointer to the beginning of your program. All that was do-able in BASIC, which is how I wrote an assembler in ML via BASIC to allow me to use opcode names instead of remembering that LDA == $A9 == 649 decimal (load a value into register A).
OK, I admit I looked up that opcode, but it's been 20 years.:) I was 8.:P
While it would be really nice to have collapsed states saved so that you can resume reading where you were, I have another issue with the "Collapse Comments" setting.
The new/current behavior is nice, but as I read through a thread, I want all ancestor comments expanded. Once I am done reading all sibling comments, then their parent comment should be collapsed. I do this manually now, and had hoped the new setting would automate this.
On the plus side, the comment lines make it really easy to see where these groups start/end, and allow me to do it manually. It just sometimes feels like a chore in a 500-comment discussion
Actually, the only stable isotope of gold has 118 neutrons, you seem to be short 39. Although, if you were to make it with 116 neutrons, you'd have a half-life on 186 days, with a decay product of platinum. Good luck in your alchemy!
This $appdir/ setup you mention was done in UNIX-style OSes once upon a time (and still is), and every one of these $appdirs was kept in one place:/opt.
I have a.profile I used on Solaris machines for something like ten years that had several for loops for setting up the $PATH, $MANPATH, $LD_LIBRARY_PATH, and so on, by looping through/opt/*/{bin,man,lib}. While the/opt setup has certain advantages of separation of applications from each other, it creates a messy operating environment. You have a list of applications (`ls/opt`) and can uninstall any of them (`rm -rf/opt/$app`) using standard file management tools. Package management provides these advantages of/opt, by giving you a list (in synaptic, dselect, `rpm -qa`, etc.) without the disadvantage of having a 5k $PATH. If you compile your own software and are too lazy to create a package, you install into an area meant for that (/usr/local) most of the time. Admittedly on systems with net-mounted/usr,/usr/local has another purpose, but we can safely ignore that in 99% of cases, as the two are not incompatible.
One of my housemates built a linux system that relied on loopback fs images, mounted and combined with unionfs. He had basic packages that would be loaded into the unionfs, and the file trees merged. Then, the only files on the only rw branch of the union were config files he had changed, and his home directory. It was an absolutely fascinating system, and there were scripts for hot-loading new packages, with some restrictions on unloading due to the nature of unionfs (which he had hacked the kernel to get this functionality). When he started talking about creating a package manager, the discussion really ended with us saying he had just changed where the abstraction level of standard package managers was and the only real advantage was that altered files were in a separate filesystem, and easily sorted through. All the other advantages of the system are the same as in, for example, debian. You don't need to touch any files, or know where they'll be, to install OO.o, you just install the package, and everything is interleaved into your filesystem for you.
Naively creating a/Applications directory and thinking it will make everything better and easier ignores the vibrant history of UNIX. I wish more people would learn how and why modern package management came about. It is incredibly powerful, and one of the things that Linux systems have over Windows, rather than vice versa. The 'Add and Remove Programs' control panel is a cheap imitation, and per-program installers a serious downside to the platform.
I'm not sure about where the first mnemonic comes from (though it's the same one I always remember), but the dollar amounts for AUs was from "Have Space Suit, Will Travel." That was one of my favorites when I was about 7 years old...
I did some contract work for someone (names hidden to protect the innocent) last year who was using a database package named CornerStone (I think).
This program was written by the people at InfoGames for internal use in the early 80s and then sold as a product starting in 1984 or so.
I was called in when his Pentium-class machine he'd been running dos 6.2 on died and he needed either a replacement or the program hacked to run on newer OSes. It turned out that it would not run on FAT32 or NTFS partitions, or in Windows in general due to memory handling, but ran just fine under VirtualPC 5 (MacOS X 10.2) with a <2GB partition.
Just for kicks, I moved him almost entirely over to the Mac and set up one of his Win95 machines to run it in dos-mode as a back-up. After using it for the last 15 years, I doubt they'll ever change. Inertia in the officeplace is a scary thing.
In Texas it was illegal to own more than 6 dildos.
1.) I'd love to see a citable official source for this law.
OK, Texas Penal code section 43.23 (c)(1), (e) and (f)
(c) A person commits an offense if, knowing its content and character, he:
(1) promotes or possesses with intent to promote any obscene material or obscene device; or
(e) A person who promotes or wholesale promotes obscene material or an obscene device or possesses the same with intent to promote or wholesale promote it in the course of his business is presumed to do so with knowledge of its content and character.
(f) A person who possesses six or more obscene devices or identical or similar obscene articles is presumed to possess them with intent to promote the same.
And, according to Section 43.21 (7) a dildo is an 'Obscene device'.
(7) "Obscene device" means a device including a dildo or artificial vagina, designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs.
Back to Section 43.23, though...
(d) An offense under Subsection (c) is a Class A misdemeanor.
To finish up....
12.21. Class A Misdemeanor
An individual adjudged guilty of a Class A misdemeanor shall be punished by:
(1) a fine not to exceed $4,000;
(2) confinement in jail for a term not to exceed one year; or
(3) both such fine and confinement.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't forget simple subject/verb combinations: I'm, you're, they're, he's, she's, 'twas, etc.
I also like more convoluted contractions: I'd've, 'twasn't, etc.
Or "o'", and "ma'am."
Nursing. There's a huge shortage that's been going for years and projected to continue for a goodly while.
My tip for the day.
You could remap the ROM-space in basic, too.
There was 64k of ram, and only 64k of address space, so the ROM was using some of that address space by necessity. You could remap the address space to RAM-only but that would cause several things to stop working. The trick was to copy some parts of the ROM to RAM and then you could change the pointers to things like where the screen-font and such that were usually in ROM were now stored. As long as you did some prep-work, it was easy to run with a flat address space available to you. This technique was used a lot of the time to be able to edit bits of the ROM while still remaining in a fairly standard environment.
Also, the difference between BASIC and assembly could be fuzzy. I still have a book on machine language for the C64 which starts with simple programs being entered in basic using DATA statements combined with POKE and READ to load them directly to memory and then manually set the instruction pointer to the beginning of your program. All that was do-able in BASIC, which is how I wrote an assembler in ML via BASIC to allow me to use opcode names instead of remembering that LDA == $A9 == 649 decimal (load a value into register A).
OK, I admit I looked up that opcode, but it's been 20 years. :) I was 8. :P
Ah, memories.
You wrote some of the screwiest mud tools I've ever seen. I wish I still had the source.
While it would be really nice to have collapsed states saved so that you can resume reading where you were, I have another issue with the "Collapse Comments" setting.
The new/current behavior is nice, but as I read through a thread, I want all ancestor comments expanded. Once I am done reading all sibling comments, then their parent comment should be collapsed. I do this manually now, and had hoped the new setting would automate this.
On the plus side, the comment lines make it really easy to see where these groups start/end, and allow me to do it manually. It just sometimes feels like a chore in a 500-comment discussion
Actually, the only stable isotope of gold has 118 neutrons, you seem to be short 39. Although, if you were to make it with 116 neutrons, you'd have a half-life on 186 days, with a decay product of platinum. Good luck in your alchemy!
From TFA (The Fine Abstract):
Abstract
No abstract.
This $appdir/ setup you mention was done in UNIX-style OSes once upon a time (and still is), and every one of these $appdirs was kept in one place: /opt.
.profile I used on Solaris machines for something like ten years that had several for loops for setting up the $PATH, $MANPATH, $LD_LIBRARY_PATH, and so on, by looping through /opt/*/{bin,man,lib}. While the /opt setup has certain advantages of separation of applications from each other, it creates a messy operating environment. You have a list of applications (`ls /opt`) and can uninstall any of them (`rm -rf /opt/$app`) using standard file management tools. Package management provides these advantages of /opt, by giving you a list (in synaptic, dselect, `rpm -qa`, etc.) without the disadvantage of having a 5k $PATH. If you compile your own software and are too lazy to create a package, you install into an area meant for that (/usr/local) most of the time. Admittedly on systems with net-mounted /usr, /usr/local has another purpose, but we can safely ignore that in 99% of cases, as the two are not incompatible.
/Applications directory and thinking it will make everything better and easier ignores the vibrant history of UNIX. I wish more people would learn how and why modern package management came about. It is incredibly powerful, and one of the things that Linux systems have over Windows, rather than vice versa. The 'Add and Remove Programs' control panel is a cheap imitation, and per-program installers a serious downside to the platform.
I have a
One of my housemates built a linux system that relied on loopback fs images, mounted and combined with unionfs. He had basic packages that would be loaded into the unionfs, and the file trees merged. Then, the only files on the only rw branch of the union were config files he had changed, and his home directory. It was an absolutely fascinating system, and there were scripts for hot-loading new packages, with some restrictions on unloading due to the nature of unionfs (which he had hacked the kernel to get this functionality). When he started talking about creating a package manager, the discussion really ended with us saying he had just changed where the abstraction level of standard package managers was and the only real advantage was that altered files were in a separate filesystem, and easily sorted through. All the other advantages of the system are the same as in, for example, debian. You don't need to touch any files, or know where they'll be, to install OO.o, you just install the package, and everything is interleaved into your filesystem for you.
Naively creating a
Once you get used to carrying a purse, it's very convenient. Somehow the keys always end up in the bottom, though.
I'm not sure about where the first mnemonic comes from (though it's the same one I always remember), but the dollar amounts for AUs was from "Have Space Suit, Will Travel." That was one of my favorites when I was about 7 years old...
I did some contract work for someone (names hidden to protect the innocent) last year who was using a database package named CornerStone (I think).
This program was written by the people at InfoGames for internal use in the early 80s and then sold as a product starting in 1984 or so.
I was called in when his Pentium-class machine he'd been running dos 6.2 on died and he needed either a replacement or the program hacked to run on newer OSes. It turned out that it would not run on FAT32 or NTFS partitions, or in Windows in general due to memory handling, but ran just fine under VirtualPC 5 (MacOS X 10.2) with a <2GB partition.
Just for kicks, I moved him almost entirely over to the Mac and set up one of his Win95 machines to run it in dos-mode as a back-up. After using it for the last 15 years, I doubt they'll ever change. Inertia in the officeplace is a scary thing.
OK, Texas Penal code section 43.23 (c)(1), (e) and (f)
(c) A person commits an offense if, knowing its content and character, he:
(1) promotes or possesses with intent to promote any obscene material or obscene device; or
(e) A person who promotes or wholesale promotes obscene material or an obscene device or possesses the same with intent to promote or wholesale promote it in the course of his business is presumed to do so with knowledge of its content and character.
(f) A person who possesses six or more obscene devices or identical or similar obscene articles is presumed to possess them with intent to promote the same.
And, according to Section 43.21 (7) a dildo is an 'Obscene device'.
(7) "Obscene device" means a device including a dildo or artificial vagina, designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs.
Back to Section 43.23, though...(d) An offense under Subsection (c) is a Class A misdemeanor.
To finish up....
12.21. Class A Misdemeanor
An individual adjudged guilty of a Class A misdemeanor shall be punished by:
(1) a fine not to exceed $4,000;
(2) confinement in jail for a term not to exceed one year; or
(3) both such fine and confinement.
Oh, and just so you know I'm not making it up, here's a link to the Texas State Penal Code
Crazy, huh? I think one of the dodges is to call them 'educational devices' around here, but I haven't checked.
My second Heinlein (after Stranger) at the age of 7. Ah, the memories...
I have a copy of the scribners hardback from 1958..... wonder when I picked that up.
--Warui Kami