The end is never really the end. Just the beginning of the next thing. What makes anyone think that the quantum level is the end of smallness?
*I* don't know, but I do know that that's the bleeding obvious type of question I thought up when I was something like 11 years old (and I'm not *that* damn smart by any means). I strongly suspect that physicists have therefore already considered that issue, and even if it were true there's probably quantum issues deriving from the likes of the uncertainty principle that would come into play anyway.
In many ways it already has stopped in that single-core performance hasn't improved much for a while
Amen... I'd like to emphasise that point.
Yes, it's absolutely correct that Moore's Law relates to the number of transistors- however, for years many people took it as being synonymous with increases in clock speed and performance because the two pretty much *did* correlate until recently. And while it's not broken yet according to the actual definition, the easy and "free" performance increases that most people took as being an inevitable consequence of Moore's Law *have* massively diminished in the past few years, to be replaced with increases in multi-core technology that require a lot more work to get the most out of- and I'd say that computer performance in recent years hasn't increased anywhere near as fast as it did during the 1990s and early-2000s.
"Going to buy an Android phone" doesn't mean "don't give a shit". I'm a Google and Android customer (and a very nice phone it is too) and it irks me when I hear that Google isn't "playing nice" precisely because I am a customer.
Well, it's pretty likely that there are going to be some exceptions who do care, but you're only one person, mistakenly thinking- as happens a lot on Slashdot- that you're representative of the mass market when you're not.
As the OP implies, it *is* pretty likely that the vast majority of consumers- most of which will *not* be tech nerds, let alone Slashdot types, but merely people who want a cheap phone- will not care. Sorry, but that's the way it is.
So the moon spins around us in an ellipsis, where it's closest to us at perigee and furthest at apogee. Apparently it's blamed for the tsunami [dailymail.co.uk]
Well, if it's in the Daily Mail it *must* be true...
Actually, I'm not convinced that's the real Daily Mail. If it was, it would mention that the Japanese earthquake was caused by illegal benefit-scrounging immigrants to the UK, and that it stands a real chance of affecting house prices here. Oh yeah, and that we're all going to die from the 0.5cm-high remainder of the tsunami when it hits the UK and the only solution is this week's wonder food that'll let us all live to 179.
Ho ho ho... you dismissed it as pedantry, just like I predicted! You're so clever!
Or maybe that wasn't the intention. Who cares... either way, it's still the type of stupid misuse of the word "digital" you'd expect from those whose tech-savviness is superficial at best. The fact that you're aware of this misuse doesn't make it less stupid.
and are unable to determine meaning based on contextual clues
That'd be you, not me, then- it was pretty obvious that I was making a point. If the absurdity of my conclusion in the first sentence wasn't obviously tongue-in-cheek, the spelling it out in the next paragraph should have made it obvious.
Or more likely you knew this, but were lamely trying to score points by intentionally misreading it in a straight manner. Unfortunately, this doesn't really work if the comment clearly wasn't meant seriously in the first place.
I meant "I buy digital downloads except when..."
Yeah, we all know what you meant. We're not stupid, even if you are.
I can't imagine that many people care about the jewelbox itself, just the paper inserts.
That might be the case if it comes in a bog-standard generic jewel case, but even so, once you take storing the inserts safely into account, the difference in convenience is much smaller anyway, IMHO.
I almost always buy digital except when the CD is cheaper
I don't understand... why would you buy an analogue copy in cases where the digital CD is cheaper? Hmm...
Good grief, I know some people will dismiss it as pedantry, but given that CDs were *always* sold as a digital format- arguably *the* first wide-selling digital consumer format- I don't think there's even that excuse for the implication that "digital" only encompasses those newfangled downloads(!) Especially not on a geek site like Slashdot...
Ya, lifting a spindle of 100 CD's is just Sooooo much trouble
If you're going to bother acquiring and keeping the original CDs, chances are you're going to want to keep the original packaging, i.e. jewel cases, leaflets, et al. You're sure as hell not going to slap them on some crappy spindle.
Personally, I don't think 100 CDs is still that much hassle, and I still like having them for albums, but your argument is disingenuous.
Yes, I know that in North America, the CD single doesn't seem to have been a hugely popular concept. I have several CD singles from artists I like that originate in Europe however, and as a bonus, you get all that B-side material that comes with the CD single whether that be remixes, or even tracks that will never be on an album.
Here in the UK, CD singles had their heyday during the 1990s, and they were *grossly* overpriced. They often used to have them on promotion to get them into the charts during the first week (at around £2 to £2.50), but after that they usually went up to £4. That's £5 to £6 in today's money!!! I ended up buying quite a few singles on cassette because they were much cheaper (even though the quality was nowhere near as good and they probably weren't actually cheaper to manufacture).
And yeah, all the bonus tracks were nice if you wanted them (*), but in the majority of cases you didn't and you were effectively paying £4 for a single song!
And frankly, who the hell wants a single CD for each song anyway? I used to have that, and it's just clutter.
(*) The record companies exploited this to get songs into the charts too- have two different versions of the CD single with different bonus tracks- so screw that cynical marketing trick as well.
A company with their own client, but also a rich ecosystem of clients [...that...] has become a strong platform
Are we talking about the same Twitter, a somewhat overhyped but essentially pretty basic and straightforward distribution service for short textual messages?
And while there may be a large number of Twitter clients out there, I'm not convinced that this constitutes a "rich ecosystem", which would imply interdependent software and services building upon Twitter to create something greater than the sum of its parts.
Twitter was where many companies work their butts off to be. [..] Apparently, some don't like that, and *willingly* deconstruct their achievements.
Most companies work their butts off to make money. Perhaps Twitter think they'll make more money that way.
As I said, a wide range of clients is not necessarily the same thing as a true ecosystem (which would be more dangerous to attack). While choice may be nice, I suspect that Twitter could afford to lose countless pointless "me too" reinventions of the wheel if they're particularly crappy, or they don't support Twitter the way that suits Twitter themselves.
Have you ever seen Doctor Who? I'm pretty sure film makers make their country the center of the universe more often than you think.
See above- Doctor Who is made for a primarily British audience. When it comes to material clearly intended for US domestic consumption that isn't shoved down the throats of other countries, I'm really not concerned about that.
On top of which, Doctor Who is quite critical about aspects of British culture on occasion- hardly the jingoism-fest that Independence Day was.
For all of your blather, you fail to recognize how this isn't endemic to America at all. Japan does the same thing
Bzzt... missed the point. This garbage was made and promoted for worldwide consumption, not an exclusively American audience.
While there exists a healthy *niche* audience for imported anime in the US, this should not be mistaken for a product that's expected to sell in its original form direct to mainstream, mass-market US audiences. Where that's the case, it would either be more US-centric to start off with or explicitly altered/adapted to suit local tastes.
There is no way in *hell* that a Japanese movie of comparable scale and budget would succeed in US multiplexes if it relied on Americans empathising with Japanese culture in the same way that Americans expected audiences of Independence Day to empathise about the US.
I don't give a flying f*** about (e.g.) US daytime soaps, quizzes and the like that revolve around US culture, because they're generally not shown abroad, or not a big deal if they are. Independence Day was promoted by massive marketing campaigns outside the US, and clearly intended for non-US audiences to lap up.
Was Independence Day a film? I thought it was a really long PR ad for the U.S.? Kind of like the recent AD "Australia" with Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman.
Believe me as a non-American, if that was ever meant to be PR for the US, it backfired badly in my case.
That film is the most obnoxiously jingoistic piece of **** I've ever seen.
I f****** hated the way that everything revolved around the US. The rest of the world being just a mass of cliched scenery to be blown up (illustrating the threat to the part of the world we were supposed to care about, i.e. the US) ruled by incompetent leaders who needed a cornball US President to save The World (effectively The USA, who gives a toss about the rest of the world anyway. Yeah really, I don't care if my country gets blown up, we're all Americans by proxy, right?).
It pissed me off that we were obviously meant to relate to all the American symbols, i.e. to only really be shaken and take the threat seriously when *The White House*- that symbol of "our" beloved government was blown up, because even non-Americans have the same deep attachment to some mid-sized white building that they don't have for their own national symbols.
In retrospect, the film presaged the Bush era. The obviously cheesy, sentimental, cornball, ra-ra-ra, insular, America-up-its-own-arse (er, I mean "ass") mentality that regardless of how stupid and insulting you found it yourself you knew *was* going to be taken non-ironically by a bunch of future-Bush-voters in multiplexes across the land. A film obviously tailored to the most negative stereotype of an insular, right-wing American.
And you (i.e. the film makers and distributors) expect me to lap up that self-indulgent wankfest? Yeah, you probably do. Fuck you.
Then again, lots of people here lapped that crap up here, so go figure.
If shagging hedgehogs is wrong, I don't wanna be right.
C'mere, Sonic.
Oddly, there *does* seem to be a particularly large amount of Sonic the Hedgehog furry ("spiny?!") porn out there- it was also one of the earliest examples I remember seeing of the phenomena.
Since I didn't grow up with Sonic (I was already 15 or 16 when it came out and not really into console games) I was kind of surprised, as I'd only remembered it from the original games that were very popular in the early-90s. How seriously could you make a game out of that? (Particularly since this was before everyone knew Rule 34).
However, I since found out that they did some popular long-running TV cartoons in the 90s (which I hadn't been aware of, having been past kids cartoons at that point). It appears that this is where the characterisation et al comes from.
I was going to ask if that thing included any onboard memory. Even the unexpanded (1KB RAM) ZX80 and ZX81s required serious memory-saving to do anything of note... the VCS has 128 *bytes* of RAM and I would have assumed that that would barely have covered even the most cut-down overheads.
But going by this video it appears that the user gets something like 64 characters/tokens. In short, you're not going to be able to do anything more than tweak a couple of variables via that weirdass keypad-driven interface before you run out of memory. The whole thing looks terrible if not ludicrous.
Fundamental problem is that the VCS included enough memory to be able to *run* programs, but certainly not to develop them!- which pretty much confirms that it wasn't remotely plausible as a general-purpose computer.
The question is, did Atari ever attempt to sell *the console itself* as a "proper" computer, or intend this cartridge to bolster that claim? Or was it always meant as just a bit of "fun"(??!)
There's also the problem of ounces (weight) and ounces (volume)
Here in Britain, I can't recall the volume ever being simply referred to as an "ounce"- it would always be a "fluid ounce". I'd automatically assume that the plain, unqualified "ounce" meant weight.
'Course, the UK and US fluid ounces are different anyway...:-/
(I am going to classify the Atari as a computer is it was marketed as such)
Which one? The Atari VCS / 2600 console or the somewhat more advanced Atari 400 and 800 "Home Computer" systems?
Was the VCS ever marketed as a "computer"? Yeah, of course it's a computer in the general sense of the word, but I can't see anyone buying it to use as a "computer" in the more specific sense most people mean.
The same Apple II that took the personal computer out of the kit stage operated by switches used to enter binary digits into the computer to program them? [etc]
Yep- the statement was about Woz, who was basically part of the early hacker culture. Aspects of the Apple II's design are very hackerish, such as the way he got it to generate colour, or the clever way that the Disk II floppy disk system was designed to reduce its cost.
It's true that- along with the Commodore PET and the TRS-80- the Apple II was one of the first microcomputers to move beyond the Altair 8800 style hobbyist design into something more consumer-friendly. This doesn't change the fact that it was designed by a guy widely considered to be a "hacker" nor that many aspects of its design are hackerish.
You, sir, a a poser, and real hackers are laughing their ass off at you.
You've made the mistake of jumping to the conclusion that I ever claimed to be a hacker myself. I didn't, and never have.
You'll note that I even explicitly pointed out that some may consider Apple's position justified- merely asserting that whether or not it was justified, Apple's current position was undeniably in opposition to the hacker culture.
And that said, it's risible to think that anyone who considers themselves a "cheerful Mac Fanboy" is remotely in touch with what "real hackers" think or do anyway.
And you can't come over the fact that Apple is still much more the old Apple than any other company can hope to be.
In the sense that even the "old" Apple was more closed and control-freakish than people's rose-tinted glasses give it credit for, and that such tendencies have merely become more evident in recent years? Certainly!
Basically I'd say there were two Apples: The Woz Apple and the Jobs Apple [..] But ya, they've had this mentality ever since the mid to early 80s. People just didn't notice so much or gave them a pass because they were "so small" or "not Microsoft."
It's ironic that a company founded on the invention- the Apple II- of a guy- Woz- who was fundamentally a hacker, is now essentially the complete antithesis of that culture.
Regardless of whether or not one can argue that such an approach is justified- appliance-like simplicity and (later) security used as justification by some- doesn't change the fact that Apple's current modus operandi is the polar opposite of the hacker ethic.
And yeah, you're probably right that this closed nature manifested itself with the original Mac, which was both very non-expandable and closed (in a very literal sense here). IIRC the 128KB limit and lack of memory expansion was at the explicit behest of Jobs, and the engineers had to include the facility to upgrade the memory at all surreptitiously so he didn't know about it. (It's been said that the early days of Apple were already over by the time the Apple III came out in 1980).
I don't know if that's a good idea. If you take someone who has shown he's willing to commit crimes and make it impossible for him to earn a living legitimately, then what ways does that leave him to earn one?
Who gives a flying fuck? He's proven he couldn't [my emphasis] earn a "legitimate" living when he COULD have.
Incorrect. The far more likely conclusion is that- regardless of whether or not he could hold down a legitimate job- he preferred, and chose to go for, the vastly greater rewards he was getting from his illegal spamming.
Not that this is necessarily any better, but it's somewhat different.
7 years in prison for $8m? $1.14m per year wage is pretty good. I'd guess that a lot of hard-working, honest people would do 7 years inside if it netted their family $8m.
This assumes that he's going to be allowed to keep the proceeds of the crime. Is that generally the case in the US?
I'd hope not, and if so, that they'd investigate and deal with any obvious attempts to (e.g.) pass on the money to his family, who I assume would not be allowed to keep it either (and possibly be held liable if they were clearly aware of the illegality of what was going on?)
Many older low end systems do not provide enough power to the USB ports to handle the demand by USB devices during the POST process
Aha! I had that problem when I bought a scanner (for my circa 2002 P4 system) over 7 years ago... and I never knew what caused it. Bit late now (not my main computer any more!) but thanks for the info.
This story started in 2003, when modem use was quite common at least in Europe.
Exactly- hence why the editor's comment "Do that many people still have modems attached?" was pointless, given that even the summary it sat beside made clear that the events in question happened between four and eight years ago.
And yeah, most people- including myself- still *were* using dial-up eight years ago, whereas I doubt very many are now (though probably still more than one would suspect).
Lets say there is a mass murderer that kills everyone at what ever job he gets. A written letter confessing his deeds was made between the murderer and another private party (who may take it as a joke). Then lets say the other party's property was robbed and the letter was released into public domain. Even if the letter itself could not be used in legal proceedings it is good enough to warn other employers to not hire the murderer or even enough grounds to get a search warrant to find evidence they could use.
Jeez.... are you seriously comparing leaked emails to some serial killing guy? That's really inappropriate.
Everyone knows that you have to use automobile analogies on Slashdot. Why not rewrite it in terms of a serial killer car? That'd be fine!
Slashdot Mirror
The end is never really the end. Just the beginning of the next thing. What makes anyone think that the quantum level is the end of smallness?
*I* don't know, but I do know that that's the bleeding obvious type of question I thought up when I was something like 11 years old (and I'm not *that* damn smart by any means). I strongly suspect that physicists have therefore already considered that issue, and even if it were true there's probably quantum issues deriving from the likes of the uncertainty principle that would come into play anyway.
In many ways it already has stopped in that single-core performance hasn't improved much for a while
Amen... I'd like to emphasise that point.
Yes, it's absolutely correct that Moore's Law relates to the number of transistors- however, for years many people took it as being synonymous with increases in clock speed and performance because the two pretty much *did* correlate until recently. And while it's not broken yet according to the actual definition, the easy and "free" performance increases that most people took as being an inevitable consequence of Moore's Law *have* massively diminished in the past few years, to be replaced with increases in multi-core technology that require a lot more work to get the most out of- and I'd say that computer performance in recent years hasn't increased anywhere near as fast as it did during the 1990s and early-2000s.
"Going to buy an Android phone" doesn't mean "don't give a shit". I'm a Google and Android customer (and a very nice phone it is too) and it irks me when I hear that Google isn't "playing nice" precisely because I am a customer.
Well, it's pretty likely that there are going to be some exceptions who do care, but you're only one person, mistakenly thinking- as happens a lot on Slashdot- that you're representative of the mass market when you're not.
As the OP implies, it *is* pretty likely that the vast majority of consumers- most of which will *not* be tech nerds, let alone Slashdot types, but merely people who want a cheap phone- will not care. Sorry, but that's the way it is.
So the moon spins around us in an ellipsis, where it's closest to us at perigee and furthest at apogee. Apparently it's blamed for the tsunami [dailymail.co.uk]
Well, if it's in the Daily Mail it *must* be true...
Actually, I'm not convinced that's the real Daily Mail. If it was, it would mention that the Japanese earthquake was caused by illegal benefit-scrounging immigrants to the UK, and that it stands a real chance of affecting house prices here. Oh yeah, and that we're all going to die from the 0.5cm-high remainder of the tsunami when it hits the UK and the only solution is this week's wonder food that'll let us all live to 179.
They may not have paid for it, but they are adding value to slashdot with their information. What value are you adding to Knight Rider by watching it?
If David Hasselhoff overacts in a forest, and no-one is around to see him (or they're watching Airwolf on the other channel), does Knight Rider exist?
Sorry, I forgot how pedantic people can be here
Ho ho ho... you dismissed it as pedantry, just like I predicted! You're so clever!
Or maybe that wasn't the intention. Who cares... either way, it's still the type of stupid misuse of the word "digital" you'd expect from those whose tech-savviness is superficial at best. The fact that you're aware of this misuse doesn't make it less stupid.
and are unable to determine meaning based on contextual clues
That'd be you, not me, then- it was pretty obvious that I was making a point. If the absurdity of my conclusion in the first sentence wasn't obviously tongue-in-cheek, the spelling it out in the next paragraph should have made it obvious.
Or more likely you knew this, but were lamely trying to score points by intentionally misreading it in a straight manner. Unfortunately, this doesn't really work if the comment clearly wasn't meant seriously in the first place.
I meant "I buy digital downloads except when..."
Yeah, we all know what you meant. We're not stupid, even if you are.
I can't imagine that many people care about the jewelbox itself, just the paper inserts.
That might be the case if it comes in a bog-standard generic jewel case, but even so, once you take storing the inserts safely into account, the difference in convenience is much smaller anyway, IMHO.
I almost always buy digital except when the CD is cheaper
I don't understand... why would you buy an analogue copy in cases where the digital CD is cheaper? Hmm...
Good grief, I know some people will dismiss it as pedantry, but given that CDs were *always* sold as a digital format- arguably *the* first wide-selling digital consumer format- I don't think there's even that excuse for the implication that "digital" only encompasses those newfangled downloads(!) Especially not on a geek site like Slashdot...
Ya, lifting a spindle of 100 CD's is just Sooooo much trouble
If you're going to bother acquiring and keeping the original CDs, chances are you're going to want to keep the original packaging, i.e. jewel cases, leaflets, et al. You're sure as hell not going to slap them on some crappy spindle.
Personally, I don't think 100 CDs is still that much hassle, and I still like having them for albums, but your argument is disingenuous.
Yes, I know that in North America, the CD single doesn't seem to have been a hugely popular concept. I have several CD singles from artists I like that originate in Europe however, and as a bonus, you get all that B-side material that comes with the CD single whether that be remixes, or even tracks that will never be on an album.
Here in the UK, CD singles had their heyday during the 1990s, and they were *grossly* overpriced. They often used to have them on promotion to get them into the charts during the first week (at around £2 to £2.50), but after that they usually went up to £4. That's £5 to £6 in today's money!!! I ended up buying quite a few singles on cassette because they were much cheaper (even though the quality was nowhere near as good and they probably weren't actually cheaper to manufacture).
And yeah, all the bonus tracks were nice if you wanted them (*), but in the majority of cases you didn't and you were effectively paying £4 for a single song!
And frankly, who the hell wants a single CD for each song anyway? I used to have that, and it's just clutter.
(*) The record companies exploited this to get songs into the charts too- have two different versions of the CD single with different bonus tracks- so screw that cynical marketing trick as well.
A company with their own client, but also a rich ecosystem of clients [...that...] has become a strong platform
Are we talking about the same Twitter, a somewhat overhyped but essentially pretty basic and straightforward distribution service for short textual messages?
And while there may be a large number of Twitter clients out there, I'm not convinced that this constitutes a "rich ecosystem", which would imply interdependent software and services building upon Twitter to create something greater than the sum of its parts.
Twitter was where many companies work their butts off to be. [..] Apparently, some don't like that, and *willingly* deconstruct their achievements.
Most companies work their butts off to make money. Perhaps Twitter think they'll make more money that way.
As I said, a wide range of clients is not necessarily the same thing as a true ecosystem (which would be more dangerous to attack). While choice may be nice, I suspect that Twitter could afford to lose countless pointless "me too" reinventions of the wheel if they're particularly crappy, or they don't support Twitter the way that suits Twitter themselves.
Have you ever seen Doctor Who? I'm pretty sure film makers make their country the center of the universe more often than you think.
See above- Doctor Who is made for a primarily British audience. When it comes to material clearly intended for US domestic consumption that isn't shoved down the throats of other countries, I'm really not concerned about that.
On top of which, Doctor Who is quite critical about aspects of British culture on occasion- hardly the jingoism-fest that Independence Day was.
For all of your blather, you fail to recognize how this isn't endemic to America at all. Japan does the same thing
Bzzt... missed the point. This garbage was made and promoted for worldwide consumption, not an exclusively American audience.
While there exists a healthy *niche* audience for imported anime in the US, this should not be mistaken for a product that's expected to sell in its original form direct to mainstream, mass-market US audiences. Where that's the case, it would either be more US-centric to start off with or explicitly altered/adapted to suit local tastes.
There is no way in *hell* that a Japanese movie of comparable scale and budget would succeed in US multiplexes if it relied on Americans empathising with Japanese culture in the same way that Americans expected audiences of Independence Day to empathise about the US.
I don't give a flying f*** about (e.g.) US daytime soaps, quizzes and the like that revolve around US culture, because they're generally not shown abroad, or not a big deal if they are. Independence Day was promoted by massive marketing campaigns outside the US, and clearly intended for non-US audiences to lap up.
Was Independence Day a film? I thought it was a really long PR ad for the U.S.? Kind of like the recent AD "Australia" with Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman.
Believe me as a non-American, if that was ever meant to be PR for the US, it backfired badly in my case.
That film is the most obnoxiously jingoistic piece of **** I've ever seen.
I f****** hated the way that everything revolved around the US. The rest of the world being just a mass of cliched scenery to be blown up (illustrating the threat to the part of the world we were supposed to care about, i.e. the US) ruled by incompetent leaders who needed a cornball US President to save The World (effectively The USA, who gives a toss about the rest of the world anyway. Yeah really, I don't care if my country gets blown up, we're all Americans by proxy, right?).
It pissed me off that we were obviously meant to relate to all the American symbols, i.e. to only really be shaken and take the threat seriously when *The White House*- that symbol of "our" beloved government was blown up, because even non-Americans have the same deep attachment to some mid-sized white building that they don't have for their own national symbols.
In retrospect, the film presaged the Bush era. The obviously cheesy, sentimental, cornball, ra-ra-ra, insular, America-up-its-own-arse (er, I mean "ass") mentality that regardless of how stupid and insulting you found it yourself you knew *was* going to be taken non-ironically by a bunch of future-Bush-voters in multiplexes across the land. A film obviously tailored to the most negative stereotype of an insular, right-wing American.
And you (i.e. the film makers and distributors) expect me to lap up that self-indulgent wankfest? Yeah, you probably do. Fuck you.
Then again, lots of people here lapped that crap up here, so go figure.
If shagging hedgehogs is wrong, I don't wanna be right. C'mere, Sonic.
Oddly, there *does* seem to be a particularly large amount of Sonic the Hedgehog furry ("spiny?!") porn out there- it was also one of the earliest examples I remember seeing of the phenomena.
Since I didn't grow up with Sonic (I was already 15 or 16 when it came out and not really into console games) I was kind of surprised, as I'd only remembered it from the original games that were very popular in the early-90s. How seriously could you make a game out of that? (Particularly since this was before everyone knew Rule 34).
However, I since found out that they did some popular long-running TV cartoons in the 90s (which I hadn't been aware of, having been past kids cartoons at that point). It appears that this is where the characterisation et al comes from.
Still, Sonic porn...WTF!!!
Oh, I've heard about that, yeah.
I was going to ask if that thing included any onboard memory. Even the unexpanded (1KB RAM) ZX80 and ZX81s required serious memory-saving to do anything of note... the VCS has 128 *bytes* of RAM and I would have assumed that that would barely have covered even the most cut-down overheads.
But going by this video it appears that the user gets something like 64 characters/tokens. In short, you're not going to be able to do anything more than tweak a couple of variables via that weirdass keypad-driven interface before you run out of memory. The whole thing looks terrible if not ludicrous.
Fundamental problem is that the VCS included enough memory to be able to *run* programs, but certainly not to develop them!- which pretty much confirms that it wasn't remotely plausible as a general-purpose computer.
The question is, did Atari ever attempt to sell *the console itself* as a "proper" computer, or intend this cartridge to bolster that claim? Or was it always meant as just a bit of "fun"(??!)
There's also the problem of ounces (weight) and ounces (volume)
Here in Britain, I can't recall the volume ever being simply referred to as an "ounce"- it would always be a "fluid ounce". I'd automatically assume that the plain, unqualified "ounce" meant weight.
:-/
'Course, the UK and US fluid ounces are different anyway...
(I am going to classify the Atari as a computer is it was marketed as such)
Which one? The Atari VCS / 2600 console or the somewhat more advanced Atari 400 and 800 "Home Computer" systems?
Was the VCS ever marketed as a "computer"? Yeah, of course it's a computer in the general sense of the word, but I can't see anyone buying it to use as a "computer" in the more specific sense most people mean.
The same Apple II that took the personal computer out of the kit stage operated by switches used to enter binary digits into the computer to program them? [etc]
Yep- the statement was about Woz, who was basically part of the early hacker culture. Aspects of the Apple II's design are very hackerish, such as the way he got it to generate colour, or the clever way that the Disk II floppy disk system was designed to reduce its cost.
It's true that- along with the Commodore PET and the TRS-80- the Apple II was one of the first microcomputers to move beyond the Altair 8800 style hobbyist design into something more consumer-friendly. This doesn't change the fact that it was designed by a guy widely considered to be a "hacker" nor that many aspects of its design are hackerish.
You, sir, a a poser, and real hackers are laughing their ass off at you.
You've made the mistake of jumping to the conclusion that I ever claimed to be a hacker myself. I didn't, and never have.
You'll note that I even explicitly pointed out that some may consider Apple's position justified- merely asserting that whether or not it was justified, Apple's current position was undeniably in opposition to the hacker culture.
And that said, it's risible to think that anyone who considers themselves a "cheerful Mac Fanboy" is remotely in touch with what "real hackers" think or do anyway.
And you can't come over the fact that Apple is still much more the old Apple than any other company can hope to be.
In the sense that even the "old" Apple was more closed and control-freakish than people's rose-tinted glasses give it credit for, and that such tendencies have merely become more evident in recent years? Certainly!
Apple has become a rather villainous, control whore
I was about to say that there are people out there who'd probably enjoy and pay damn good money for a "villainous control whore".
Then I suddenly twigged why Apple has been so successful. (^_^)
Basically I'd say there were two Apples: The Woz Apple and the Jobs Apple [..] But ya, they've had this mentality ever since the mid to early 80s. People just didn't notice so much or gave them a pass because they were "so small" or "not Microsoft."
It's ironic that a company founded on the invention- the Apple II- of a guy- Woz- who was fundamentally a hacker, is now essentially the complete antithesis of that culture.
Regardless of whether or not one can argue that such an approach is justified- appliance-like simplicity and (later) security used as justification by some- doesn't change the fact that Apple's current modus operandi is the polar opposite of the hacker ethic.
And yeah, you're probably right that this closed nature manifested itself with the original Mac, which was both very non-expandable and closed (in a very literal sense here). IIRC the 128KB limit and lack of memory expansion was at the explicit behest of Jobs, and the engineers had to include the facility to upgrade the memory at all surreptitiously so he didn't know about it. (It's been said that the early days of Apple were already over by the time the Apple III came out in 1980).
I don't know if that's a good idea. If you take someone who has shown he's willing to commit crimes and make it impossible for him to earn a living legitimately, then what ways does that leave him to earn one?
Who gives a flying fuck? He's proven he couldn't [my emphasis] earn a "legitimate" living when he COULD have.
Incorrect. The far more likely conclusion is that- regardless of whether or not he could hold down a legitimate job- he preferred, and chose to go for, the vastly greater rewards he was getting from his illegal spamming.
Not that this is necessarily any better, but it's somewhat different.
7 years in prison for $8m? $1.14m per year wage is pretty good. I'd guess that a lot of hard-working, honest people would do 7 years inside if it netted their family $8m.
This assumes that he's going to be allowed to keep the proceeds of the crime. Is that generally the case in the US?
I'd hope not, and if so, that they'd investigate and deal with any obvious attempts to (e.g.) pass on the money to his family, who I assume would not be allowed to keep it either (and possibly be held liable if they were clearly aware of the illegality of what was going on?)
Many older low end systems do not provide enough power to the USB ports to handle the demand by USB devices during the POST process
Aha! I had that problem when I bought a scanner (for my circa 2002 P4 system) over 7 years ago... and I never knew what caused it. Bit late now (not my main computer any more!) but thanks for the info.
This story started in 2003, when modem use was quite common at least in Europe.
Exactly- hence why the editor's comment "Do that many people still have modems attached?" was pointless, given that even the summary it sat beside made clear that the events in question happened between four and eight years ago.
And yeah, most people- including myself- still *were* using dial-up eight years ago, whereas I doubt very many are now (though probably still more than one would suspect).
Lets say there is a mass murderer that kills everyone at what ever job he gets. A written letter confessing his deeds was made between the murderer and another private party (who may take it as a joke). Then lets say the other party's property was robbed and the letter was released into public domain. Even if the letter itself could not be used in legal proceedings it is good enough to warn other employers to not hire the murderer or even enough grounds to get a search warrant to find evidence they could use.
Jeez.... are you seriously comparing leaked emails to some serial killing guy? That's really inappropriate.
Everyone knows that you have to use automobile analogies on Slashdot. Why not rewrite it in terms of a serial killer car? That'd be fine!