In other words the English Government was created, *by man*, to protect his property, his body, and his rights. Especially after the chaos that resulted when Rome's administration withdrew. It has no other legitimate purpose.
Of course there are governments that exist for illegitimate purposes, like enslaving or exterminating. These governments are diseased and need to be toppled.
The TRS-80 was the most popular (best selling) computer of its day..... Radio Shack sold them like hotcakes. But then the Commodore 64 came along. Now it's dropped to #3 behind the C64 and the Amiga 500.
???. Never heard that term before. It implies that the video was composite, and then split, which is not true for the 128. S-video == Separated video. The black-and-white and color signals are kept separate from one another, in order to avoid interference. I've got a cable like that for my C=64 so I can play games directly on my TV.
>>>RGBI
"CGA" by any other name, but of course the term was copyrighted by IBM so Commodore had to use a different name. The 128 also had a Z-80 inside to run CP/M business software. I learned to use my first spreadsheet on there.
>>>you would have different visible parts of your monitor displaying parts of screens with different resolutions (and, if I recall correctly, their own color depths as well).
Not. Quite. True. I used to run multiple screens... one in 640x240 for a terminal program and the other in 640x480 for a file manager. If I was online, and then pulled down the terminal screen to see the file manager hiding behind it, the *whole screen* automatically switched to 640x480 interlaced. You could tell by the flicker.
So my Amiga 500 was only displaying ONE resolution (480i) overlapped with various screens. This limitation was probably due to the CRT, which couldn't handle more than one video frequency/resolution at a time.
Apple didn't have much choice. The 6502 and 65816 family had reached a dead end. It made more sense to support the newer 32 bit machine (Mac 68xxx) then to hang-onto the older 16 bit CPUs.
Atari and Commodore followed the identical path, saying goodbye to the 6502 series and going with Motorola.
>>>Even contemporary 8-bit computers came somewhat close, after a while; with operating systems like Contiki
If you think Contiki 64 is impressive, you should see where Amigas are today. They boot in a mere 10 seconds, shutdown in 0.00 seconds, and even though most are only 700 megahertz single-core PowerPCs, they still run faster than a PC on crak..... ooops, I mean Vista.
BUT I don't think that was the original posters point. He was saying *in that era* the other computers couldn't match an Amiga. They didn't have the near-CD-quality sound, or the 4000 color displays, or preemptive multitasking, or the the ability to sync with TV signals to do CGI for shows like seaQuest, Babylon5, and more Disney animations than I can list here.
PCs didn't catch up until Windows 95, and Macs not until OS X.
$600 for an Amiga 500 with drive is expensive? Hardly. That's only a little higher than the Commodore 64 + 1541's cost, and that was the lowest-priced computer of its day. .
>>>From the very first Mac they had audio.
So did the Atari console released in 1977, but I wouldn't brag about it. The first Mac's audio was better than that, but not by much. It was inferior to the C64's SID, and I certainly didn't sit around listening to music on the ancient Mac like I did with my C64. Not until my Quadra Mac would I say the audio matched an Amiga.
>>>So, the decision to market the Amiga as fried fish or sushi was not so clear-cut in the 1980s
Also the term "multimedia" had not been invented yet. Amiga was the FIRST multimedia PC, but Commodore kept trying to push the Amiga in the business world. Instead they should have pushed it as an entertainment console where home users could listen to music and watch videos.
There was also a certain stigma attached to home computers as "just toys". Most computer executives wanted the glory that came with being an IBM exec, so they kept trying to shove Commodore 64s, Amigas, Ataris, Apples, and other home gadgets into offices where they didn't really belong. Nobody seemed to understand that the REAL money was in appealing to the masses. Like today.
They made the same mistakes when the automobile was born. Most companies kept trying to build luxury cars for wealthy businesses or businessmen, until a smart man named Ford realized the real money was in selling to the masses.
>>>Euro games that crashed and burned if you had anything besides an Amiga 500 with no fast ram and a floppy drive. 2-8 megs of fast ram?
My Amiga 500 has 1 megabyte of RAM (half chip/half fast) and runs everything just fine. The only time I get a Guru is when I'm doing something stupid, like trying to run two games at once. The MMU in the 68020 eliminates most of those conflicts, by stopping programs from overwriting one another.
Perhaps the problem you had was trying to run those 50 hertz games on a 60 hertz machine? Even today with modern hardware like a PS3 or Wii, that won't work properly. The console will work for awhile, but eventually it will crash.
As for Amiga versus PC versus Mac, it took them about 10 years to match Amiga's hardware and preemptive multitasking ability (Win95 and OS X). I'm glad I owned an Amiga during that period (1985-95) and had a chance to enjoy an awesome computer, rather than be stuck with a PC that went "beep" and only displayed 4 or 16 colors.
IMHO if Commodore had moved-over to a PowerPC + addon cards structure like Apple did, they probably would have survived to the present day.
Hey! Some of us still use 56K modems you insensitive clod! (Hugs laptop affectionately) (It's okay... they didn't mean anything by it.)
I remember downloading VGA porn on my C=64. First it took 10 minutes per picture. Then the processor needed about half an hour to convert the 320x 200x 256 color space downto 160x 200x 16. The image would appear one line every few seconds. And the final result was never satisfactory.
Not until I upgraded to my 640x 480x 4000 color Amiga did I finally discover the TRUE beauty of a naked woman with breast implants. Ahhhh memories.
So if I was running JRterm (think primitive web browser) and playing Pacmania at the same time, JRterm could put a window on my Pacmania screen to inform me my 2 hour download is finished? Cool. I never moved higher than Workbench 1, and now I wish I had.
It's too bad that the Judge in the Commodore bankruptcy did not let them reorganize and continue selling Amigas. That's what they asked for, but instead the judge overruled the CEO and dissolved the company. I can't help wondering if said judge had been bribed by a certain other competitor (cough microsoft) to kill-off Commodore instead of letting them continue business.
And don't you dare say I'm "trolling". Study history. It's a matter of U.S. Antitrust record that Microsoft used bribes, buyouts, whatever it took to eliminate/marginalize competitors. MS-1990s was like the Goldman Sachs of the computer world.)
If I were in the UK I'd start downloading and distributing the Anarchist Handbook via bittorrent just to challenge this ridiculous law.
Any good patriot should be willing to spend time in jail to protect the Nature-given right of free speech. It's your mouth. Nobody has a right to muzzle it (although they do have the right to remove you from their private property). The government was created by the People to protect individual rights, not to take them away. Any government which stops acting as a servant, and becomes a master, needs to be altered or abolished.
My "sound blaster" was called Paula. She was a sexy sound chip, located inside my beautiful amiga, and produced near-CD quality sound in 1985 (when Macs and PCs just went beep).
I wish I could borrow hypnotoad on my next date: "You are feeling horny. You need some and you need some NOW. Hpynotoad has spoken."
Girl - "I...need...some...now. You'll do." (and rips off my clothes)
Yeah.
Okay back to reality. Another exciting Friday evening with Sci-Fi Channel Prime. Hmmmm.
Re:Cohen Should Abstain from Any Regret
on
The Futurama of Physics
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
P.S.
>>>Star Trek a lot of credit for their early intrigue with physics.
I wanted to be like Scotty or Geordi, but neither is really an engineer as it turns out. i.e. They don't design. They are more like technicians, trying to keep the existing systems (which some other engineer built) operational. I should have been that, instead of studying engineering. I think it would be more fun.
Oh well.
Re:Cohen Should Abstain from Any Regret
on
The Futurama of Physics
·
· Score: 4, Informative
>>>the genre of sci-fi entertainment often sparks the scientist in people?
That is what Isaac Asimov said. Of course he continued to be a Physics professor, but he also wrote more entertainment books than any other SF writer. (Over 300 if I recall correctly.) He said science fiction sparked young people's imaginations, as well as problem-solving abilities, and that curiosity was a key component for any successful science student.
I thought FOX (bastards!) canceled that show over 5 years ago (along with Family Guy,Dilbert,Firefly,Lonegunmen,Brisco County,Sliders,Space Above and Beyond,.....). I guess there are drawbacks to not having cable tv. Oh well. Maybe Hulu has the new episodes.
Favorite episode - Why Frye saves the planet by playing Space Invaders. Classic.
I think Cellphones will have about as much impact on dedicated portables (DS, PSP, etc) as the Computer had on dedicated gaming consoles (PS3, X360, etc). i.e. Virtually no impact.
Dedicated units still offer the ease of plug'n'play while cellphones and computers do not. Which is why I quit computer gaming about the same time Commodore Amiga disappeared as a platform (1995). Too much hassle trying to make the shitty game work on the crappy hardware. I'd rather just play my Gameboy or PS2.
I'm glad you brought this up. I'm an engineer with EE degree, but I want to be a programmer. But as soon as the HR people see the absence of a CS degree, they chuck my resume in the trash. How on earth do I gain the required skills without spending 10s of thousands of dollars getting that formal degree.
I suppose I could download a bunch of CS textbooks and speed-read, but that still doesn't provide the proof HR is looking for. Oh well.
Slashdot Mirror
In other words the English Government was created, *by man*, to protect his property, his body, and his rights. Especially after the chaos that resulted when Rome's administration withdrew. It has no other legitimate purpose.
Of course there are governments that exist for illegitimate purposes, like enslaving or exterminating. These governments are diseased and need to be toppled.
TRIVIA:
The TRS-80 was the most popular (best selling) computer of its day..... Radio Shack sold them like hotcakes. But then the Commodore 64 came along. Now it's dropped to #3 behind the C64 and the Amiga 500.
>>>split composite
???. Never heard that term before. It implies that the video was composite, and then split, which is not true for the 128. S-video == Separated video. The black-and-white and color signals are kept separate from one another, in order to avoid interference. I've got a cable like that for my C=64 so I can play games directly on my TV.
>>>RGBI
"CGA" by any other name, but of course the term was copyrighted by IBM so Commodore had to use a different name. The 128 also had a Z-80 inside to run CP/M business software. I learned to use my first spreadsheet on there.
>>>you would have different visible parts of your monitor displaying parts of screens with different resolutions (and, if I recall correctly, their own color depths as well).
Not. Quite. True. I used to run multiple screens... one in 640x240 for a terminal program and the other in 640x480 for a file manager. If I was online, and then pulled down the terminal screen to see the file manager hiding behind it, the *whole screen* automatically switched to 640x480 interlaced. You could tell by the flicker.
So my Amiga 500 was only displaying ONE resolution (480i) overlapped with various screens. This limitation was probably due to the CRT, which couldn't handle more than one video frequency/resolution at a time.
Apple didn't have much choice. The 6502 and 65816 family had reached a dead end. It made more sense to support the newer 32 bit machine (Mac 68xxx) then to hang-onto the older 16 bit CPUs.
Atari and Commodore followed the identical path, saying goodbye to the 6502 series and going with Motorola.
>>>Even contemporary 8-bit computers came somewhat close, after a while; with operating systems like Contiki
If you think Contiki 64 is impressive, you should see where Amigas are today. They boot in a mere 10 seconds, shutdown in 0.00 seconds, and even though most are only 700 megahertz single-core PowerPCs, they still run faster than a PC on crak..... ooops, I mean Vista.
BUT I don't think that was the original posters point. He was saying *in that era* the other computers couldn't match an Amiga. They didn't have the near-CD-quality sound, or the 4000 color displays, or preemptive multitasking, or the the ability to sync with TV signals to do CGI for shows like seaQuest, Babylon5, and more Disney animations than I can list here.
PCs didn't catch up until Windows 95, and Macs not until OS X.
>>>The OS was still superior to MacOS and Windows though.
Still is even today. (See Amiga OS 4)
$600 for an Amiga 500 with drive is expensive? Hardly. That's only a little higher than the Commodore 64 + 1541's cost, and that was the lowest-priced computer of its day.
.
>>>From the very first Mac they had audio.
So did the Atari console released in 1977, but I wouldn't brag about it. The first Mac's audio was better than that, but not by much. It was inferior to the C64's SID, and I certainly didn't sit around listening to music on the ancient Mac like I did with my C64. Not until my Quadra Mac would I say the audio matched an Amiga.
>>>So, the decision to market the Amiga as fried fish or sushi was not so clear-cut in the 1980s
Also the term "multimedia" had not been invented yet. Amiga was the FIRST multimedia PC, but Commodore kept trying to push the Amiga in the business world. Instead they should have pushed it as an entertainment console where home users could listen to music and watch videos.
There was also a certain stigma attached to home computers as "just toys". Most computer executives wanted the glory that came with being an IBM exec, so they kept trying to shove Commodore 64s, Amigas, Ataris, Apples, and other home gadgets into offices where they didn't really belong. Nobody seemed to understand that the REAL money was in appealing to the masses. Like today.
They made the same mistakes when the automobile was born. Most companies kept trying to build luxury cars for wealthy businesses or businessmen, until a smart man named Ford realized the real money was in selling to the masses.
>>>Euro games that crashed and burned if you had anything besides an Amiga 500 with no fast ram and a floppy drive. 2-8 megs of fast ram?
My Amiga 500 has 1 megabyte of RAM (half chip/half fast) and runs everything just fine. The only time I get a Guru is when I'm doing something stupid, like trying to run two games at once. The MMU in the 68020 eliminates most of those conflicts, by stopping programs from overwriting one another.
Perhaps the problem you had was trying to run those 50 hertz games on a 60 hertz machine? Even today with modern hardware like a PS3 or Wii, that won't work properly. The console will work for awhile, but eventually it will crash.
As for Amiga versus PC versus Mac, it took them about 10 years to match Amiga's hardware and preemptive multitasking ability (Win95 and OS X). I'm glad I owned an Amiga during that period (1985-95) and had a chance to enjoy an awesome computer, rather than be stuck with a PC that went "beep" and only displayed 4 or 16 colors.
IMHO if Commodore had moved-over to a PowerPC + addon cards structure like Apple did, they probably would have survived to the present day.
Sometimes when I'm viewing domai.com or similar sites, I turn on the image compression just for fun. "Yeah that's it... like my old Commodore."
Hey! Some of us still use 56K modems you insensitive clod! (Hugs laptop affectionately) (It's okay... they didn't mean anything by it.)
I remember downloading VGA porn on my C=64. First it took 10 minutes per picture. Then the processor needed about half an hour to convert the 320x 200x 256 color space downto 160x 200x 16. The image would appear one line every few seconds. And the final result was never satisfactory.
Not until I upgraded to my 640x 480x 4000 color Amiga did I finally discover the TRUE beauty of a naked woman with breast implants. Ahhhh memories.
So if I was running JRterm (think primitive web browser) and playing Pacmania at the same time, JRterm could put a window on my Pacmania screen to inform me my 2 hour download is finished? Cool. I never moved higher than Workbench 1, and now I wish I had.
It's too bad that the Judge in the Commodore bankruptcy did not let them reorganize and continue selling Amigas. That's what they asked for, but instead the judge overruled the CEO and dissolved the company. I can't help wondering if said judge had been bribed by a certain other competitor (cough microsoft) to kill-off Commodore instead of letting them continue business.
And don't you dare say I'm "trolling". Study history. It's a matter of U.S. Antitrust record that Microsoft used bribes, buyouts, whatever it took to eliminate/marginalize competitors. MS-1990s was like the Goldman Sachs of the computer world.)
If I were in the UK I'd start downloading and distributing the Anarchist Handbook via bittorrent just to challenge this ridiculous law.
Any good patriot should be willing to spend time in jail to protect the Nature-given right of free speech. It's your mouth. Nobody has a right to muzzle it (although they do have the right to remove you from their private property). The government was created by the People to protect individual rights, not to take them away. Any government which stops acting as a servant, and becomes a master, needs to be altered or abolished.
>>>220h default address of the Sound Blaster
My "sound blaster" was called Paula. She was a sexy sound chip, located inside my beautiful amiga, and produced near-CD quality sound in 1985 (when Macs and PCs just went beep).
1 atmosphere? That's it? They better not be doing any deliveries to gas giants like Saturn or Jupiter.
This Bud's..... I mean, video's for you. Family Guy Canceled:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyxO0558KG0
I wish I could borrow hypnotoad on my next date: "You are feeling horny. You need some and you need some NOW. Hpynotoad has spoken."
Girl - "I...need...some...now. You'll do." (and rips off my clothes)
Yeah.
Okay back to reality. Another exciting Friday evening with Sci-Fi Channel Prime. Hmmmm.
P.S.
>>>Star Trek a lot of credit for their early intrigue with physics.
I wanted to be like Scotty or Geordi, but neither is really an engineer as it turns out. i.e. They don't design. They are more like technicians, trying to keep the existing systems (which some other engineer built) operational. I should have been that, instead of studying engineering. I think it would be more fun.
Oh well.
>>>the genre of sci-fi entertainment often sparks the scientist in people?
That is what Isaac Asimov said. Of course he continued to be a Physics professor, but he also wrote more entertainment books than any other SF writer. (Over 300 if I recall correctly.) He said science fiction sparked young people's imaginations, as well as problem-solving abilities, and that curiosity was a key component for any successful science student.
I thought FOX (bastards!) canceled that show over 5 years ago (along with Family Guy,Dilbert,Firefly,Lonegunmen,Brisco County,Sliders,Space Above and Beyond, .....). I guess there are drawbacks to not having cable tv. Oh well. Maybe Hulu has the new episodes.
Favorite episode - Why Frye saves the planet by playing Space Invaders. Classic.
I think Cellphones will have about as much impact on dedicated portables (DS, PSP, etc) as the Computer had on dedicated gaming consoles (PS3, X360, etc). i.e. Virtually no impact.
Dedicated units still offer the ease of plug'n'play while cellphones and computers do not. Which is why I quit computer gaming about the same time Commodore Amiga disappeared as a platform (1995). Too much hassle trying to make the shitty game work on the crappy hardware. I'd rather just play my Gameboy or PS2.
CCIE == Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert? Better than the Microsoft variant? I think I'll look into this.
>>>I've got the equivalent experience, evidently
I'm glad you brought this up. I'm an engineer with EE degree, but I want to be a programmer. But as soon as the HR people see the absence of a CS degree, they chuck my resume in the trash. How on earth do I gain the required skills without spending 10s of thousands of dollars getting that formal degree.
I suppose I could download a bunch of CS textbooks and speed-read, but that still doesn't provide the proof HR is looking for. Oh well.
I'd be happy to take a Walmart or similar job. Good working environment, air conditioned building, and lots of goods I can get cheap (on clearance).
But of course they won't hire me. Not even for manager training. "Overqualified."