The 6510 had 8 extra IO lines. On the C64 it was used for bank switching (selecting whether to access the basic ROM at 0xa000 and the kernel ROM at 0xe000 or the RAM at the same locations) and for controlling the tape player.
For normal usage you might actually be able to get away with using a 6502 (lifted from a 1541 disk drive for instance) if you didn't need the tape player and hotwired the bank switching in the default position, though assorted games etc. and other software that used the RAM would fail.
Similar thing with the IO chips (6526 in the C64, and 6522's in the 1541) - they were mostly interchangeable except for the fact that you'd lose the realtime clock (that almost noone used) and possibly some functionality on the user port - can't remember - if you plugged a 6522 in instead of a 6526. Which was useful since the 6526's were the most frequently failing part in most C64 versions... Same with the 8520's in the Amiga, which were also pin compatible with 6522/6526, but where you'd lose the 32bit timers - don't remember if that had any serious implications.
That's one of the things I loved about the Commodore machines.. They were all so hackable. I remember soldering stuff right on the motherboard, as well as several times moving 6522/6526/8520's between my C64, 1541 and Amiga if one of them failed and I needed something before I got the replacement. As well as the well proven technique for finding which chip had blown: Turn the machine on, wait a few seconds, and feel which was burning hot...
There's also Dancers at the end of time by Michael Moorcock, which is literally set at the end of time, where the last few inhabitants of earth live like a bunch of decadent perverts supported by technology that lets them do practically anything they want, at the cost of harvesting the energy of the stars. Unfortunately they've been at it long enough that the last stars are about to go dark, something they're blissfully unaware of since they consider space to be frightfully boring and treat one of the aliens that comes to spread the message of the end of the universe as an amusing but obviously crazy little pet.
It's one of the best treatments of the extreme far future I've seen, because it truly succeeds in a description that is so far out that it gets away with it without the nagging thought that technology would have progressed further etc.
It's a great book, but it's for people who are can't stomach some perversions in their fiction - the first scene in the book involves the main protagonist having sex with his mother...
16 is legal in most of the world, so you'd probably not be the first.
Re:Statistics catches bad treatment of kids?
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The problem isn't incentives. The problem is ensuring the incentive rewards the right behavior, which ultimately mean that it depends on how you measure the criteria for awarding the incentive.
In the case of teachers, apart from ensuring testing is done by entirely different people, without the teachers present, one possibility is to include an assessment of students feedbacks in the evaluation: Make all the students fill out a questionnaire about their teachers. Of course you would have to treat such assessments carefully or some students will try to make up for poor results by finding ways of blaming the teacher, but it will give you a starting point for determining if there are areas that needs to be investigated.
What you describe is EXACTLY why software engineers needs to understand proper life cycles and project management. It's when the pressure is high that proper understanding and knowledge of the right processes to apply really matters - when you have all the time and resources in the world you can afford to make mistakes.
In my experience, most CS graduates have no clue what to do when the pressure is on.
I think the biggest problem is that people still take CS courses either because they think it's the most appropriate way of learning software engineering, or because they don't find any good alternatives.
A good software engineering program includes at least basic project management, software development lifecycles, QA / testing, and a lot of other skills that most computer science programs don't cover or cover only superficially. They are distinct disciplines that shares a common foundation - in both you need to know how to program, but beyond that there's a huge difference in preparing someone to do research or teach and in preparing someone for professional software engineering.
I live in a county with a population density of 71/(sq. mile) in southern indiana. my nearest neighbor is about 1/2mi away and the nearest stoplight is 12mi away.
That works out to ca 27 people per square kilometre, or about TWICE the density of Norway - a country with broadband offerings that are far better than most of the US...
Americans tend to compare USA to densely populated Central European nations to complain about how rural the US is whenever cellphone coverage, broadband or public transport is brought up. But there appears to be a tendency to ignore the fact that this somehow isn't an issue for Norway, Sweden etc. that have far lower population densities.
In fact, only 12 US states have population densities below that of Norway, and their total population is about 17 million.
Broadband availability and offerings is worse in the US than even countries like Norway, with a population density of 14 people per square kilometer (less than half that of the US), just as with cellphone coverage...
The "value addeed" part refers to the fact that it is a tax on the value added by the seller, since the seller can offset any VAT they pay on products they buy. In Europe, VAT is a more important source of revenues for the government than income tax in many (most?) countries.
And you are right - in most European countries it is a legal requirement to at least show the VAT inclusive price in any advertisement or price display targeted at consumers (nothing stops you from also displaying the price without VAT, though). Trade publications and ads targetted at companies can generally use the VAT exclusive prices only if they prefer. The rationale is that since consumers can't reclaim the VAT, not showing the VAT inclusive price is misleading advertising.
17.5% VAT is actually one of the lowest rates anywhere in Europe. Most countries are at around 20% or above (up to at least 25%). But consumer prices in most European countries are always quoted inclusive of VAT, so at here I don't constantly get surprised (I keep forgetting sales tax whenever I visit the US and look at prices).
I was told by Dixons that I could not get a refund for the Windows, as I had paid £0 for the software anyway.
They can say that all they want - it doesn't make it true, and if someone tries that claim you should ask to get it in writing and take them to magistrates court for illegally bundling the products (they can sell them together, but they can't deny you the ability to buy them separately, and there's no way the court would accept their claim that you bought the software for 0,- unless Dixons could show they got it for free too) - costs you next to nothing and just having a lawyer prepare and show up would cost them more than the machine.
Doesn't work that way in (most of) Europe. Consumer protection laws in most European countries require sellers to offer products unbundled when they are clearly distinct products. Since a computer can be used without Windows, and can be bought without from other vendors, and since Windows is available separately this is a pretty clear cut case. Trying to twist the pricing also wouldn't work all the time equivalent products are available unbundled to indicate the real values of the products.
The thing is China at least has a lot of high quality universities that are churning out skilled software engineers. It's quite easy to find people with the skills, and increasingly with the commercial experience, to get your job done. Language is a challenge, but at the rates you can hire teams in China it's one that you can afford some overhead to take care of.
Actually, the legal basis for this decision in Germany, is the EU data privacy regulations, which each member country are required to reflect in national laws. In the UK this would be the Data Privacy Act that gives us similar protections to the Germans.
What I want to know is how what Hussein did is any different or worse from the various mass murders successive US governments have supported or actively participated in? Such as the US support for Pinochet's coup in Chile, CIA aid for Suharto's coup and subsequent genocides in Indonesia and East Timor (including handing over list of suspected communist sympathisers that was used by Suharto's regime as death-lists), the various brutal killings of civilians and unscrupulous use of chemical warfare during the Vietnam war etc.?
Hussein certainly deserves to rot in jail - I'm against capital punishment - but so does a long list of US presidents and other members of US administrations. That is what makes people consider Bush as one of the greatest threats to world peace - he's shown that he has no scruples.
I'm assuming you're a troll, but it still terrifies me how many Americans actually believe there was a connection between 9/11 and the Iraqi government.
Get your facts straight. The Wired article hasn't been "debunked", because it didn't claim anything other than that there are similarities and that they'd let Mahir speak for himself in an interview.
The point with the Borat and Ali G characters is that they are vehicles to make others provide the comedy, often in way that makes them reveal their bigotry. I've never found Sasha Baron Cohen particularly funny, but I must respect a man that as a jew dares to walk into a bar and get everyone to sing along to a blatantly racist song about jews for the sake of comedy. He's not making fun of "stupid colonials" - he's making fun of stupid racists and bigots, whether in the US or here in the UK.
He can be funny when he talks to people who agree with the ridiculous claims he makes, but he's also quite chilling.
I doubt code bits from today will solve those sorts of problems.
You might be surprised.
I'm willing to bet you are running apps today that use quicksort code that is at least 15 years old - quite possibly older, and that can be traced at least 20-25 years back (that is, it likely was translated from an older version in another language rather than written from scratch).
You probably use at least one app that uses wildcard matching using the "wildmat()" function written by Rich Salz in 1986 (GNU tar for example).
The amount of old code, or code written based on old concepts in use today is already quite high. People keep reusing wildmat() for instance because it does what it claims to do, is well understood and widely tested.
That is despite the fact that both the two examples above are of things that are fairly easy to write, and quite easy to do better than most of the commonly reused implementations. In most cases it just isn't worth the effort to write it yourself.
There's lots of code out there that is decades old that have survived multiple direct translations from now mostly dead languages even.
That will continue, though I tend to believe that what will survive is more likely to be small pieces like the above than large apps or frameworks.
First, Vernor Vinge has a PhD in Computer Science. This obviously doesn't guarantee he can't be wrong, but to those commenters who said something like "these ideas are idiotic"... you've got an uphill battle to convince me that you're that much smarter than Vernor Vinge, especially as most of you saying that don't show me you understood what he was saying in the first place.
Actually, the worst software engineer I ever worked with had a PhD in computer science. It tells you nothing about someones understanding about software engineering. For all practical purposes the two are different fields.
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For normal usage you might actually be able to get away with using a 6502 (lifted from a 1541 disk drive for instance) if you didn't need the tape player and hotwired the bank switching in the default position, though assorted games etc. and other software that used the RAM would fail.
Similar thing with the IO chips (6526 in the C64, and 6522's in the 1541) - they were mostly interchangeable except for the fact that you'd lose the realtime clock (that almost noone used) and possibly some functionality on the user port - can't remember - if you plugged a 6522 in instead of a 6526. Which was useful since the 6526's were the most frequently failing part in most C64 versions... Same with the 8520's in the Amiga, which were also pin compatible with 6522/6526, but where you'd lose the 32bit timers - don't remember if that had any serious implications.
That's one of the things I loved about the Commodore machines.. They were all so hackable. I remember soldering stuff right on the motherboard, as well as several times moving 6522/6526/8520's between my C64, 1541 and Amiga if one of them failed and I needed something before I got the replacement. As well as the well proven technique for finding which chip had blown: Turn the machine on, wait a few seconds, and feel which was burning hot...
It's one of the best treatments of the extreme far future I've seen, because it truly succeeds in a description that is so far out that it gets away with it without the nagging thought that technology would have progressed further etc.
It's a great book, but it's for people who are can't stomach some perversions in their fiction - the first scene in the book involves the main protagonist having sex with his mother...
16 is legal in most of the world, so you'd probably not be the first.
In the case of teachers, apart from ensuring testing is done by entirely different people, without the teachers present, one possibility is to include an assessment of students feedbacks in the evaluation: Make all the students fill out a questionnaire about their teachers. Of course you would have to treat such assessments carefully or some students will try to make up for poor results by finding ways of blaming the teacher, but it will give you a starting point for determining if there are areas that needs to be investigated.
Now I know how it ends, and I haven't read it yet... You bastard!
In my experience, most CS graduates have no clue what to do when the pressure is on.
A good software engineering program includes at least basic project management, software development lifecycles, QA / testing, and a lot of other skills that most computer science programs don't cover or cover only superficially. They are distinct disciplines that shares a common foundation - in both you need to know how to program, but beyond that there's a huge difference in preparing someone to do research or teach and in preparing someone for professional software engineering.
That works out to ca 27 people per square kilometre, or about TWICE the density of Norway - a country with broadband offerings that are far better than most of the US...
Americans tend to compare USA to densely populated Central European nations to complain about how rural the US is whenever cellphone coverage, broadband or public transport is brought up. But there appears to be a tendency to ignore the fact that this somehow isn't an issue for Norway, Sweden etc. that have far lower population densities.
In fact, only 12 US states have population densities below that of Norway, and their total population is about 17 million.
Broadband availability and offerings is worse in the US than even countries like Norway, with a population density of 14 people per square kilometer (less than half that of the US), just as with cellphone coverage...
Because it would piss off their distributors and resellers, who they depend on to keep the sales high.
And you are right - in most European countries it is a legal requirement to at least show the VAT inclusive price in any advertisement or price display targeted at consumers (nothing stops you from also displaying the price without VAT, though). Trade publications and ads targetted at companies can generally use the VAT exclusive prices only if they prefer. The rationale is that since consumers can't reclaim the VAT, not showing the VAT inclusive price is misleading advertising.
17.5% VAT is actually one of the lowest rates anywhere in Europe. Most countries are at around 20% or above (up to at least 25%). But consumer prices in most European countries are always quoted inclusive of VAT, so at here I don't constantly get surprised (I keep forgetting sales tax whenever I visit the US and look at prices).
They can say that all they want - it doesn't make it true, and if someone tries that claim you should ask to get it in writing and take them to magistrates court for illegally bundling the products (they can sell them together, but they can't deny you the ability to buy them separately, and there's no way the court would accept their claim that you bought the software for 0,- unless Dixons could show they got it for free too) - costs you next to nothing and just having a lawyer prepare and show up would cost them more than the machine.
Doesn't work that way in (most of) Europe. Consumer protection laws in most European countries require sellers to offer products unbundled when they are clearly distinct products. Since a computer can be used without Windows, and can be bought without from other vendors, and since Windows is available separately this is a pretty clear cut case. Trying to twist the pricing also wouldn't work all the time equivalent products are available unbundled to indicate the real values of the products.
The thing is China at least has a lot of high quality universities that are churning out skilled software engineers. It's quite easy to find people with the skills, and increasingly with the commercial experience, to get your job done. Language is a challenge, but at the rates you can hire teams in China it's one that you can afford some overhead to take care of.
Actually, the legal basis for this decision in Germany, is the EU data privacy regulations, which each member country are required to reflect in national laws. In the UK this would be the Data Privacy Act that gives us similar protections to the Germans.
Cost is a measure of resources. There aren't unlimited resources (people to do the work, raw materials etc.), and hence cost is always an issue.
Hussein certainly deserves to rot in jail - I'm against capital punishment - but so does a long list of US presidents and other members of US administrations. That is what makes people consider Bush as one of the greatest threats to world peace - he's shown that he has no scruples.
So when will we start seeing assorted US politicians rounded up?
I for one just lost absolutely all respect for him.
I'm assuming you're a troll, but it still terrifies me how many Americans actually believe there was a connection between 9/11 and the Iraqi government.
Get your facts straight. The Wired article hasn't been "debunked", because it didn't claim anything other than that there are similarities and that they'd let Mahir speak for himself in an interview.
He can be funny when he talks to people who agree with the ridiculous claims he makes, but he's also quite chilling.
You might be surprised.
I'm willing to bet you are running apps today that use quicksort code that is at least 15 years old - quite possibly older, and that can be traced at least 20-25 years back (that is, it likely was translated from an older version in another language rather than written from scratch).
You probably use at least one app that uses wildcard matching using the "wildmat()" function written by Rich Salz in 1986 (GNU tar for example).
The amount of old code, or code written based on old concepts in use today is already quite high. People keep reusing wildmat() for instance because it does what it claims to do, is well understood and widely tested.
That is despite the fact that both the two examples above are of things that are fairly easy to write, and quite easy to do better than most of the commonly reused implementations. In most cases it just isn't worth the effort to write it yourself.
There's lots of code out there that is decades old that have survived multiple direct translations from now mostly dead languages even.
That will continue, though I tend to believe that what will survive is more likely to be small pieces like the above than large apps or frameworks.
Actually, the worst software engineer I ever worked with had a PhD in computer science. It tells you nothing about someones understanding about software engineering. For all practical purposes the two are different fields.