I wish I still had my C=64 (I just ran into an old manual for an early Ultima from my C=64 days). I rember one of those 170k 5.25" disks I had that fell into a pan with rusty water and stayed there overnight. Still worked for as long as I can rember thereafter. good thing too as it had my only copy of M.U.L.E. on it.
There are several games from then I wish would be re-made. Even if all they did was update the graphics ala xcom. M.U.L.E., Earth Orbit Stations, car-wars, Mail Order Monsters, Phantasy, Racing destruction set, and a host of others my memory fails to recall.
They could update those a little and release them all in a classics edition cd rom. It would certainly hit slashdot's front page and certainly sell enough to be worth while.
If Commodore was the Borg, I think many with fond memories would sign up for assimilation.
I would shure be tempted:)
Imagine seeing the world in grand 16 color sprites (out of a palatte of er 16 colors), being completely hackable.
I had the un-corrupted version, you only missed about 1/2 second of it, got about 1/2way through fighting. Limits of 64k. It was less than 45 sec I'm positive, more like 11 for the file I had and it FILLED the ram pretty much, I don't think a 1541 could stream data fast enough for more even if the 6510+sid could do both floppy access and play sound at same time.
That said I even had sound digitizer for my C=64, and SAM (software automatic mouth) so I could record sound (up to 8 full seconds on low quality!) and do speech to text.
If your familiar with the computer speech in War Games, SAM was almost but not quite that good. This was pure software on a sub megahzt 8 bit machine with 64K address space.
I miss the C=64's. Wish there was a simularly hackable machine these days, complete with code and schematics and so on.
Considering how far computing power has come. I wouldn't be suprised if some sort of emulation was possible on the mp3 player, especialy the one with a 20GB hd.
I'll bet they have more than 64k ram, probably got a faster processor than a 6510 running in megahertz. It's practically guaranteed the sound capabilities far exceed the sid chip's (if not, alot of people are gonna return these, I've seen $15 toys with more sophisticated sound).
I miss my C=64. Lots of fond memories, 6510 assembly, modding 512k ram pack(ram drive!) to handle 2 megs, running a color64 bbs, running programs that played music with the 5.25" floppy drives. Those drive had built in processors equivalent to the c=64 itself and 2KB that you could program a pair to act as a duplicating machine, without the c=64 even bein on or connected after you programed them.
Only problem is, everyone will say hmmm, comcast is $50 and fooisp is $40. Then they bitch and/or switch.
I think I'd start out with a simple re-direct of thier first webapage grab everytime they log on (or every 2 hours if thier always on) to a page explaining thier machine has been dected sending bar (spam, virus packets, pictures of goatse.cx guy, etc.) and that they have x days (for a reasonable x) to eigther fix the issue or contact the isp to clarify the issue if they believe there is a mistake. Warn them that thier machine will only be severly restricted to contacting the isp only after x days if the issue is not resolved, and thier account suspended after x+y days. End with appropriate links, including one to the page originally requested.
It's a good link folks. It points out how many of things we now consider bad, like open relays and un-munged email adresses in online forums, used to not only be good, but expected or else you were a brainless barbarian.
MORE DETAILS!!!!! I think I have a few to many as it is. o.k. more than a few too many. Sheesh I WAS planning on sleeping tonight. But not till I manage to erase that image from my mind. Crap, can't you go bonkers from lack of sleep?
Well my local Best Buy has dual layer recorders (sony I think), but no one even has the media.
This is what I don't get, it happens everytime. Why bother shipping somthing you don't have media for. I can kinda understand being a step ahead on speed (annoying though it is), but sheesh if there is no dual media to sell why try to sell the recorder.
The only good news it supports 8x on regular dvd media, and only costs $45 more than regular 8x burners.
Gah you shoulda waited for the collectors edition. running time 17d 12h 43m, And it comes with really cool bookends and a $10 gift certificate to a local pizza delivery chain.
All for a just $20 more than your $80 wannabee version!
Short answer was right.
Blue ray, as I understand it, requires a different frequency laser to fit it's smaller lands and pits.
Older dvd's use much longer wavelength laser wich limit how small an area they can read, blue ray discs use smaller areas.
In theory it might be possible to play games to use several neighboring pits together to 'fool' the drive such that it reads as dvd, but I wouldn't bet on it. Besides it would be easier to just deal with blue ray as is rather than run an iffy algorithym to burn to your $30 disc in a pattern to make it look like a <$1 disc.
I also understand that blue ray readers may need a second laser to read the current old laser type media (cd and dvd). But that seems more amendable to clever engineering.
Of course they could always ship the low def movies with less compression and more extra features.
I realize that for the most part current compression on dvd's is 'good enough' or slightly better. But I'm one of those that prefer reduced compression. Espicaly if I'm gonna grab a frame and play with it for my own amusement.
With 50gb you drop compression on a two hour movie to somthing like 10-15 instead of the >100:1 they use now. For a one hour tv show you might be able to do it without loss. (especially when you take out the 20min of comercials!)
Really, Your the first person I've ever heard claim over/under rated can be meta modded.
I've never ever seen over/under rated in MM, and I usualy MM 4-5 times a week. at ten mods per mm that makes 40-50 a week, or about 250-300 times this year sofar. And that is just me, lots of other people say largely the same. I don't think it happens. Perhaps you missremember? or are relying on 2nd - 3rd hand info?
As far as context, the current score of the post is obvious context. if a post is sitting about where it should be (in the meta mods opinion) the obviously it was higher or lower, thus the mod is likely reasonable. If however an on topic post that is not a troll or flaimbait is at -2 overrated then you can be pretty shure its wrongly modded overrated, or if a gnaa troll is at +5 underrated, then yeah that's probably wrong to.
hmm, yeah I guess rare was a bit overstatement, less common maybee.
I have seriously seen so many false informative I suspect they became background noise and I just tuned out the obvious use for over-rated.
Still it's used far more often for drive by modding, and since you can't meta mod it, it's a problem.
o.k. Now carry that through. What are the two major parties going to say when they see that a third partie has taken enough votes to change an election?
Not what will they say to the people (they'll claim, oh so subtly, that the other side is at fault somehow). But what will they say to themselves?
What thier going to say is along the lines of two things. The first is "we need to get rid of them" and the other is "shit, the peons are taking them seriously, we need to at least do some of that shit to look good".
They will try to fud the third party and at the same time try to apeal to those that voted for the third party.
It may not get us what we want, but it's better than just bending over and accepting it.
Well my state isn't a shoe in for eigther side.
All that happened in 2000 is the major networks couldn't guess florida right and a few people stirred up a great many to try and prove the other side was cheating. Both sides tried to lable the other as trying to steal the election.
The thing I find most amusing (in a sick, darwin award way) is that it's not really the people who are supposed to choose who's president, it's the electoral college who's job it is to do that. While many state laws (47-48?) lock the whole electorate to the majority of the popular opinion now. What's supposed to happen is we elect sane people to rationaly choose amongst themselves the best person to be president. In theory this forms a buffer against 'the passions of the moment'. But people have screamed democracy and such so loud the common belief is we live in some sort of athenean democracy rather than a representative government with democraticly elect representation.
I personaly can not, in good concience, vote for Bush Or Kerry. And I feel if we're going to let the majority parties know we are not happy with thier actions, and give them a clue as to what we want from our government, voting for a third party in 'contested' states creates more of a noise than being an ignorable minority. Though it most certainly helps no matter what state when third parties start taking on more and more of local government.
In a state that is more than 60% dominated by one party, they have no incentive to pay any attention to the voters. But they will most certainly notice if they lose a state by 2-3% and find out that many or more voted for a third party. They will have to try and apeal to those persons more in the future or risk losing again.
If you can't win, at least make shure they felt the blow.
Yes clears it up fine.
I was just worried some might think your situation was an argument to remove the ability of adults to chose for themselves on this issue and rely on 'big brother' to chose what is best for them.
As far as intrinsicly re-deeming quality, yeah that could be hard to find. Art is the major possibility. Or possibly if your familiar with the catharsis vs contagion arguments you could argue the catharsis side. However in most cases I wouldn't lable it inherently bad eigther, just one of those neutral things in of itself, and it's the actions and reactions of those involved that determin good vs bad.
You also have the small problem of defining pornography. Somthing akin to defining indeecency, even SCOTUS had trouble there.
I would say that I feel somthing need not have a redeeming quality to be allowed eigther, just not be bad beyond those making informed choices. I.E. junk food isn't to good for you, but as long as your not hurting anyone but yourself it's your choice.
Not exactly. The libertarian (the party in the us) point of view is that the GOVERNMENT has no right to tell you how if and when to help your fellow man. This is based in the fact that honest charity is far more giving and helpfull than forced charity.
Socialism as I've seen it is about forced charity run by a government beurocracy that inevitably leads to abuse and people falling through the cracks. Much less ethical or moral imho to deliberately impose a system that results in people being forced to pay cheats while those in honest need are left to suffer.
Minor nitpicks, take with no hard feeling please. First you don't sound like a liberal so much as a moderate with some liberal ideas.
The one that lept out at me though was this:
"I think the right to bear arms is essential (especially as I see the country going further right:) But I don't think it applies to carrying a gun"
I think you may have meant own, not bear, as to bear means to carry pretty much. I would recomend looking into the 2nd sometime and what was meant by the founind fathers and what really happens in the us in direct response to gun ownership and carry laws.
While someone can get addicted to anything and it's definately NO-FUN (in the middle of quiting smokeing right now, for the second time like an idiot), just because a small percentage of the population can get addicted to a specific thing doesn't axiomatically make that thing bad for everyone.
Humans are designed specifically for sexual activity and the system is fairly robust. The addictive cycle you reference is built into the system along with hardwired counter-ballances as well. The whole system has evolved to guarantee reproduction.
The fact that some people suffer from imballance in the system doesn't mean porn or sex are bad in any-way, just that some people are more susceptable to being de-balanced with many and varied negative consequence not of thier making. Just like some are highly allergic to peanuts and could die from eating them. Should we now ban peanuts?
Please don't think I'm attacking you or ridiculing your pain. Farthest from it. But please also don't imply that because something is bad for some, yourself included, that it must be completely removed from society. I don't think that was your point, but others might so thus I post.
Well that explains that. Of course I never studied tax law in of itself, my info comes from the short, simplified stuff thrown out tengential relavent in other subjects.
Frankly we need a tax law simplification to the point where the concept of tax preparer seems silly and stupid. I figure if the tax law can't be printed on the reverse of the form legibly, it's too complicated.
Yes on both accounts. Especially the 2 seconds thought. I've seen people modded informative, who clearly have NO clue what thier talking about and post complete gibberish relative to the topic. But hey since the mod can't understand it, it must be informative.
One of these days a gnaa crap-post is gonna get moderated +5 informative.
Your mostly right, it's flamebait and mostly offtopic.
Still he did feed a troll, and a bunch of angry reaction is somewhat likely for posting an off-topic opinion.
Of course both your post and mine are technically off topic, but it's difficult to discuss mods in-context otherwise.
The mod for 'I'm punishing you because I dissagree' is actually over-rated as it currently is immune to meta-moderation and thus a no-risk method of drive-by-modderation.
lol, the lawbook doesn't even have to be 6 years old, let alone millinia.
Many modern law books turn language around so much you need a translator with years of education and arguments still erupt with multiple translators (we call them lawyers, see what I mean about it) and fervent argument. Kinda like dark-ages religeon.. HEY THAT EXPLAINS IT!
Slashdot Mirror
I wish I still had my C=64 (I just ran into an old manual for an early Ultima from my C=64 days). I rember one of those 170k 5.25" disks I had that fell into a pan with rusty water and stayed there overnight. Still worked for as long as I can rember thereafter. good thing too as it had my only copy of M.U.L.E. on it.
There are several games from then I wish would be re-made. Even if all they did was update the graphics ala xcom. M.U.L.E., Earth Orbit Stations, car-wars, Mail Order Monsters, Phantasy, Racing destruction set, and a host of others my memory fails to recall.
They could update those a little and release them all in a classics edition cd rom. It would certainly hit slashdot's front page and certainly sell enough to be worth while.
Mycroft
If Commodore was the Borg, I think many with fond memories would sign up for assimilation. :)
I would shure be tempted
Imagine seeing the world in grand 16 color sprites (out of a palatte of er 16 colors), being completely hackable.
Mycroft
I had the un-corrupted version, you only missed about 1/2 second of it, got about 1/2way through fighting. Limits of 64k. It was less than 45 sec I'm positive, more like 11 for the file I had and it FILLED the ram pretty much, I don't think a 1541 could stream data fast enough for more even if the 6510+sid could do both floppy access and play sound at same time.
That said I even had sound digitizer for my C=64, and SAM (software automatic mouth) so I could record sound (up to 8 full seconds on low quality!) and do speech to text.
If your familiar with the computer speech in War Games, SAM was almost but not quite that good. This was pure software on a sub megahzt 8 bit machine with 64K address space.
I miss the C=64's. Wish there was a simularly hackable machine these days, complete with code and schematics and so on.
Mycroft
Considering how far computing power has come. I wouldn't be suprised if some sort of emulation was possible on the mp3 player, especialy the one with a 20GB hd.
I'll bet they have more than 64k ram, probably got a faster processor than a 6510 running in megahertz. It's practically guaranteed the sound capabilities far exceed the sid chip's (if not, alot of people are gonna return these, I've seen $15 toys with more sophisticated sound).
I miss my C=64. Lots of fond memories, 6510 assembly, modding 512k ram pack(ram drive!) to handle 2 megs, running a color64 bbs, running programs that played music with the 5.25" floppy drives. Those drive had built in processors equivalent to the c=64 itself and 2KB that you could program a pair to act as a duplicating machine, without the c=64 even bein on or connected after you programed them.
Mycroft
Only problem is, everyone will say hmmm, comcast is $50 and fooisp is $40. Then they bitch and/or switch.
I think I'd start out with a simple re-direct of thier first webapage grab everytime they log on (or every 2 hours if thier always on) to a page explaining thier machine has been dected sending bar (spam, virus packets, pictures of goatse.cx guy, etc.) and that they have x days (for a reasonable x) to eigther fix the issue or contact the isp to clarify the issue if they believe there is a mistake. Warn them that thier machine will only be severly restricted to contacting the isp only after x days if the issue is not resolved, and thier account suspended after x+y days. End with appropriate links, including one to the page originally requested.
Mycroft
It's a good link folks. It points out how many of things we now consider bad, like open relays and un-munged email adresses in online forums, used to not only be good, but expected or else you were a brainless barbarian.
Mycroft
MORE DETAILS!!!!! I think I have a few to many as it is. o.k. more than a few too many. Sheesh I WAS planning on sleeping tonight. But not till I manage to erase that image from my mind. Crap, can't you go bonkers from lack of sleep?
Mycroft
Fair enough mod, I'll go along quitely now.
Mcyroft
Well my local Best Buy has dual layer recorders (sony I think), but no one even has the media.
This is what I don't get, it happens everytime. Why bother shipping somthing you don't have media for. I can kinda understand being a step ahead on speed (annoying though it is), but sheesh if there is no dual media to sell why try to sell the recorder.
The only good news it supports 8x on regular dvd media, and only costs $45 more than regular 8x burners.
Mycroft
Gah you shoulda waited for the collectors edition.
running time 17d 12h 43m, And it comes with really cool bookends and a $10 gift certificate to a local pizza delivery chain.
All for a just $20 more than your $80 wannabee version!
Mycroft
Short answer was right.
Blue ray, as I understand it, requires a different frequency laser to fit it's smaller lands and pits.
Older dvd's use much longer wavelength laser wich limit how small an area they can read, blue ray discs use smaller areas.
In theory it might be possible to play games to use several neighboring pits together to 'fool' the drive such that it reads as dvd, but I wouldn't bet on it. Besides it would be easier to just deal with blue ray as is rather than run an iffy algorithym to burn to your $30 disc in a pattern to make it look like a <$1 disc.
I also understand that blue ray readers may need a second laser to read the current old laser type media (cd and dvd). But that seems more amendable to clever engineering.
Mycroft
Of course they could always ship the low def movies with less compression and more extra features.
I realize that for the most part current compression on dvd's is 'good enough' or slightly better. But I'm one of those that prefer reduced compression. Espicaly if I'm gonna grab a frame and play with it for my own amusement.
With 50gb you drop compression on a two hour movie to somthing like 10-15 instead of the >100:1 they use now. For a one hour tv show you might be able to do it without loss. (especially when you take out the 20min of comercials!)
Mycroft
Really, Your the first person I've ever heard claim over/under rated can be meta modded.
I've never ever seen over/under rated in MM, and I usualy MM 4-5 times a week. at ten mods per mm that makes 40-50 a week, or about 250-300 times this year sofar. And that is just me, lots of other people say largely the same. I don't think it happens. Perhaps you missremember? or are relying on 2nd - 3rd hand info?
As far as context, the current score of the post is obvious context. if a post is sitting about where it should be (in the meta mods opinion) the obviously it was higher or lower, thus the mod is likely reasonable. If however an on topic post that is not a troll or flaimbait is at -2 overrated then you can be pretty shure its wrongly modded overrated, or if a gnaa troll is at +5 underrated, then yeah that's probably wrong to.
Mycroft
hmm, yeah I guess rare was a bit overstatement, less common maybee.
I have seriously seen so many false informative I suspect they became background noise and I just tuned out the obvious use for over-rated.
Still it's used far more often for drive by modding, and since you can't meta mod it, it's a problem.
Mycroft
o.k. Now carry that through. What are the two major parties going to say when they see that a third partie has taken enough votes to change an election?
Not what will they say to the people (they'll claim, oh so subtly, that the other side is at fault somehow). But what will they say to themselves?
What thier going to say is along the lines of two things. The first is "we need to get rid of them" and the other is "shit, the peons are taking them seriously, we need to at least do some of that shit to look good".
They will try to fud the third party and at the same time try to apeal to those that voted for the third party.
It may not get us what we want, but it's better than just bending over and accepting it.
Mycroft
Well my state isn't a shoe in for eigther side.
All that happened in 2000 is the major networks couldn't guess florida right and a few people stirred up a great many to try and prove the other side was cheating. Both sides tried to lable the other as trying to steal the election.
The thing I find most amusing (in a sick, darwin award way) is that it's not really the people who are supposed to choose who's president, it's the electoral college who's job it is to do that. While many state laws (47-48?) lock the whole electorate to the majority of the popular opinion now. What's supposed to happen is we elect sane people to rationaly choose amongst themselves the best person to be president. In theory this forms a buffer against 'the passions of the moment'. But people have screamed democracy and such so loud the common belief is we live in some sort of athenean democracy rather than a representative government with democraticly elect representation.
I personaly can not, in good concience, vote for Bush Or Kerry. And I feel if we're going to let the majority parties know we are not happy with thier actions, and give them a clue as to what we want from our government, voting for a third party in 'contested' states creates more of a noise than being an ignorable minority. Though it most certainly helps no matter what state when third parties start taking on more and more of local government.
In a state that is more than 60% dominated by one party, they have no incentive to pay any attention to the voters. But they will most certainly notice if they lose a state by 2-3% and find out that many or more voted for a third party. They will have to try and apeal to those persons more in the future or risk losing again.
If you can't win, at least make shure they felt the blow.
Mycroft
Yes clears it up fine.
I was just worried some might think your situation was an argument to remove the ability of adults to chose for themselves on this issue and rely on 'big brother' to chose what is best for them.
As far as intrinsicly re-deeming quality, yeah that could be hard to find. Art is the major possibility. Or possibly if your familiar with the catharsis vs contagion arguments you could argue the catharsis side. However in most cases I wouldn't lable it inherently bad eigther, just one of those neutral things in of itself, and it's the actions and reactions of those involved that determin good vs bad.
You also have the small problem of defining pornography. Somthing akin to defining indeecency, even SCOTUS had trouble there.
I would say that I feel somthing need not have a redeeming quality to be allowed eigther, just not be bad beyond those making informed choices. I.E. junk food isn't to good for you, but as long as your not hurting anyone but yourself it's your choice.
Mycroft
Not exactly. The libertarian (the party in the us) point of view is that the GOVERNMENT has no right to tell you how if and when to help your fellow man. This is based in the fact that honest charity is far more giving and helpfull than forced charity.
Socialism as I've seen it is about forced charity run by a government beurocracy that inevitably leads to abuse and people falling through the cracks. Much less ethical or moral imho to deliberately impose a system that results in people being forced to pay cheats while those in honest need are left to suffer.
Mycroft
Minor nitpicks, take with no hard feeling please. :) But I don't think it applies to carrying a gun"
First you don't sound like a liberal so much as a moderate with some liberal ideas.
The one that lept out at me though was this:
"I think the right to bear arms is essential (especially as I see the country going further right
I think you may have meant own, not bear, as to bear means to carry pretty much. I would recomend looking into the 2nd sometime and what was meant by the founind fathers and what really happens in the us in direct response to gun ownership and carry laws.
Mycroft
While someone can get addicted to anything and it's definately NO-FUN (in the middle of quiting smokeing right now, for the second time like an idiot), just because a small percentage of the population can get addicted to a specific thing doesn't axiomatically make that thing bad for everyone.
Humans are designed specifically for sexual activity and the system is fairly robust. The addictive cycle you reference is built into the system along with hardwired counter-ballances as well. The whole system has evolved to guarantee reproduction.
The fact that some people suffer from imballance in the system doesn't mean porn or sex are bad in any-way, just that some people are more susceptable to being de-balanced with many and varied negative consequence not of thier making. Just like some are highly allergic to peanuts and could die from eating them. Should we now ban peanuts?
Please don't think I'm attacking you or ridiculing your pain. Farthest from it. But please also don't imply that because something is bad for some, yourself included, that it must be completely removed from society. I don't think that was your point, but others might so thus I post.
Mycroft
Well that explains that. Of course I never studied tax law in of itself, my info comes from the short, simplified stuff thrown out tengential relavent in other subjects.
Frankly we need a tax law simplification to the point where the concept of tax preparer seems silly and stupid. I figure if the tax law can't be printed on the reverse of the form legibly, it's too complicated.
Mycroft
Yes on both accounts.
Especially the 2 seconds thought. I've seen people modded informative, who clearly have NO clue what thier talking about and post complete gibberish relative to the topic. But hey since the mod can't understand it, it must be informative.
One of these days a gnaa crap-post is gonna get moderated +5 informative.
Mycroft
Your mostly right, it's flamebait and mostly offtopic.
Still he did feed a troll, and a bunch of angry reaction is somewhat likely for posting an off-topic opinion.
Of course both your post and mine are technically off topic, but it's difficult to discuss mods in-context otherwise.
The mod for 'I'm punishing you because I dissagree' is actually over-rated as it currently is immune to meta-moderation and thus a no-risk method of drive-by-modderation.
Mycroft
lol, the lawbook doesn't even have to be 6 years old, let alone millinia.
Many modern law books turn language around so much you need a translator with years of education and arguments still erupt with multiple translators (we call them lawyers, see what I mean about it) and fervent argument. Kinda like dark-ages religeon.. HEY THAT EXPLAINS IT!
Mycroft
Who's criteria? Certainly not the AC parent.
Mycroft