Wordstar! The 1571 floppy can read/write Kaypro formatted discs, as well as some other CP/M formats, and Commodore's own GCR'd CP/M format. With software the 1571 can read/write practically any 5.25 format out there, including DOS.
IIRC I've read tha CP/M on the 128 was popular for BBS sysops since it was inexpensive.
The thing with the C128 is that you can use both displays at the same time, meaning you can have a 40 column display hooked up AND an 80 column display. Most people used dual-mode monitors but there was some software that you did some things in 40 column mode but then the software displayed special output in 80, or vice versa.
Which ones? While 80 columns and 128K were options on the//e, 6he//e didn't come with 128k as default till 1987 with the Platinum//e. That was also the first//e with a numeric keypad by default. The 1571 also has a higher capacity than Apple's 5.25" drives.
So yes, the C128 did have some features as standard before the//e.
But they were what the cool kids had for toys back then.
Cool "affluent" kids, the vast majority of kids back then didn't own computers. It is only on Slashdot where everyone assumes everyone was one of those spoiled suburban kids with a WarGames or Ferris Bueller style set up like they had. You'll see things like:
"When I was 15, my Quantumlink/Compuserve/Source bill was around 300 a month"
It's a slow decline into "one of many niches" rather than a "dead and gone" sort of thing. More and MOre the PC Gaming market is turning into the late Amiga game market. Games from US/UK developers that have little/no console experience....yet, but will do so eventually (Blizzard is a good example), Cross-platform games and Ports, and games from European developers too poor or too partisan to do console games.
After all there was a time not so long ago when die-hard PC gamers said things like:
You'll never have an action packed blood soaked slugathon like DOOM on a kiddie console.
Or.
You'll never have MMO's on a console.
Or.
Bioware and Bethesda will never do a console game.
If you bought or built a PC in the last couple of years it is already more powerful than the new consoles.
No, it isn't, clock speed isn't everything. To beat the PS4 and Xbox One you would need to not only match their CPU's (how many people in the mass-market do you know that own 8-core CPU's), up the RAM (many people still have 4, and match the GPU's...AND you'd have to match their specialized busses/internal bandwidth and all the other stuff they have...maybe even upgrade the motherboard....which you cannot do for the same price.
Now sure, those guys who have spent $2000 plus on their machines like the "Performance and Ultra machines" showcased in magazines like Maximum PC and PC gamer have better machines...but they paid $2000 plus! For that price you can get a PS4.... and $1600 worth of games. While that guy with the $2000 rig is probably either playing benchmarks for the e-peen bragging contest, or playing the same map in LoL or de_dust counter-strike over and over and over again because he has no money for games.
Heck, most gaming PC's don't come with blu-ray drives (HTPC's tend to though)...because like the CD to DVD transition, PC gamers are saying: "Why do I need a Blu-ray drive in my gaming machine, I don't buy Blu-rays and no games come on Blu-ray."...all because PC publishers still ship games on DVD's just like how they kept shipping games on CD when DVD's would have saved them having to put multiple discs in the boxes.
Transition to LateX, Beamer, and something for spreadsheets and the bloated office suite is banished from your computer.
Easier said than done, the learning curve is high and long. And if you use something like Lyx to ease it, then you have the Cult of Knuth Latex Grognards saying how Lyx makes bad LaTeX and how you should hand tool your LaTeX code in Emacs, Vim or with Butterflies.
Once prices drop after Christmas, my son will get a PS4.
What, a Slashdot geek who actually wants one who didn't get one at the Midnight Launch?
I do doubt there will be a PS4 price drop before 2015. And yeah, seeing stores prepare for Christmas even before Halloween (the local wal-mart had some Christmas things out, before)...annoys me.
Pro shoppers do not shop on Black Friday. It's crowded, noisy, simply annoying...wait and shop when it's less busy. Yes you miss out on some loss-leaders, but don't give into the hype, you will enjoy your Christmas better.
That said, there is a yum replacement in the works called "dnf"
From the man page:
DNF is an experimental replacement for Yum, a package manager for RPM Linux distributions. It aims to maintain CLI compatibility with Yum while improving on speed and defining strict API and plugin interface.
But you seem to be using "selfish jerk" as "person who does not agree with me", which I'm afraid is a nonstandard (though common) definition.
Come now, there's plenty of selfish jerkass behavior in the geek community, we see it here all the time. It stems from the "I'm smarter than everyone else" entitlement thing we see here...and yes, the social ineptitude
Nobody used that phrase (or the Ferengi accent) but you.
I see it all the time on Slashdot.
And while the term is "females" (no "the") is somewhat unusual in that context, being offended by it makes you look like a pedantic asshole. Seriously complaining that someone sounds like a basement-dwelling geek on Slashdot is just plain bizarre.
Why is it bizarre? It's your basic "Stop Being Stereotypical" rant. I don't mind some of the old slashdot culture, but "The Females", Natalie Portman memes and misogyny has got to go.
I am well aware of the David Reimer case, and others, but that does not discount bias by the scientists, or other factors.
Babies can detect smiles, so if they detect Mr. Scientist smiling as they reach for the gun....well that ruins the test. In fact that is far more likely than a 3 month old knowing what a weapon looks like.
It seems reasonable that whatever those inherent preferences are, they could at least occasionally encourage certain STEM specialists in girls to a disproportionate degree.
I think this makes a good case that the lack of women in engineering is caused in significant part by their individual personal preferences. There are a few women engineers, but you can't expect parity.
I am not so sure we can discard bias and culture so quickly, and there are plenty of misogynists in STEM who are willing to use any excuse to keep women out of the boys club.
The general idea is that there's something wrong with the men that's driving the women out, therefore the men need to be corrected (in much the same way a dog is).
There is something wrong with some geek men, they simply are socially inept and simply are selfish jerks who don't realize they've benefited from male privilege and most likely socio-economic privilege all their lives.
Of course they don't use the term "aspies" because that might put the men in a protected class also, which would make those PC brains explode.
Of course they don't use the term "aspies" because that might put the men in a protected class also, which would make those PC brains explode."Near-aspies" is a good one for the less bleeding-heart of the PC set, though; it implies the men are socially inept while not giving them the excuse of a medical condition.
It's quite possible to be diagnosed with Asperger features without actually getting the full diagnosis. Also we see quite a few self-diagnosed people on Slashdot making various claims and using their "Aspergers" as an excuse for social ineptitude and general asshattery, as in "I'm blunt and do not understand why the hew-mon females are complaining because I have Aspergers"
Normally I'm fairly tolerant of socially inept speech, but that goddamned "the females" just really ticks me off. It makes me want to say "Stop being such a geek stereotype."
And how many times have we seen on Slashdot someone using a "supposed" Aspie diagnosis as an excuse for being a selfish socially inept jerk.
The SMART gaming houses have ALREADY FIGURED OUT how to make mad money even WITH the Steam sales..ready to have your mind blown? here it comes....its called DLC!
Oh, DLC, you mean that thing that a good portion of Slashdot thinks is the DRM Devil-in-Disguise and not worth paying for? You've obviously seen the hate for DLC on Slashdot.
But hey you wanna get assraped by consoles that treat you as a combination walking wallet and shoplifter?
Don't be a misogynist and use the term "ass-rape". And how am I getting "ass-raped" Game companies are businesses, they're in the business of making money, they're going to see us as a wallet. You're in favor of DLC and you don't think they see the buyers of DLC as a wallet? That's what some on Slashdot say!
But if the devs weren't making money on Steam sales guess what? They wouldn't HAVE THEM. Its called supply and demand,
Perhaps they only have them because PC gamers are cheapskates? Perhaps that is why they are treating the PC like a stepchild?
I consider steam sales to be a race for the bottom, training PC gamers, who are already notoriously cheap...to pay even less. So enjoy your Steam Sales, but don't go whining when formerly PC only developers focus more attention on consoles when that's where the people are actually willing to spend money are.
Look at Payday:The Heist as a perfect example of how game publishing SHOULD be,
Oh you mean that game published by Sony Online Entertainment for the PS3?
And piracy has gone down 5 years in a row
In the US, perhaps....but citation needed.
Wonder what excuses the publishers are gonna use on the "DRM in a box phone home daily to check if you are a filthy shoplifter" new consoles?
The PS4 and Xbox One don't phone home... I don't know where you got the idea they do, because they don't. SCEfoo never had any such plans and Microsoft changed their plans to match.
Good games make money, shitty games don't, welcome to reality, quit using piracy as an excuse to cover up for your badly overblown budgets on shitty games that care more about HDR and lens flare than they do on a decent gaming experience, how about that?
Oh please, you know that indie titles that supposedly have awesome gameplay also get pirated. Even the Humble Indie Bundles were victims of that, as well as Minecraft. And there's plenty of games with HDR and lens flare that have good gaming experience but faux-gaming-hipster jerks don't want to admit it.
I'll wait till a game has a Metacritic score of > 85, and 2 years when the "gold" version comes out with all the patches.
You're missing out on some good games that way, there are some good games that get lower scores because they are "niche" in some way.
Skyrim is STILL $30+. Not buying it until it is $20.
What? $30 is too much for a game with a metacritic score over 90, that has won game of the year/RPG of the year awards on all 3 platforms that is available on, and that has been out for 2 years and the "Gold" edition ie "legendary edition" came out a few months back? The game who's predecessors by the same company were also highly regarded? The game with more gameplay than you can shake a stick at? The game that actually costs less for the amount of content you get than single-screen Atari 2600 games did? That's a big sense of entitlement there.
I have 300 games in my library to play UNTIL then.
Perhaps if you bought fewer games, you wouldn't have minded paying $60 for Skyrim when it came out 2 years ago. I know some people like to collect games, but time is finite and games are so huge these days you will never be able to play them all. I learned that lesson with the PS2, why buy lots of budget/greatest hit titles when one simply won't have enough time to play them all.
Ah, but if you believe the whole "white male privilege" thing, or as John Scalzi puts it, white male being "the easiest difficulty level in the RPG called Real Life"
I do, it's fairly accurate, with modifications for socio-economic status/sexual identity/etc etc. For example Bill Gates is playing on Easy mode with Money cheat and God mode on. while some Poor guy is playing Easy Mode with his Loot setting turned down. While Poor guy has it harder than Bill Gates, his game is still easier than Poor Woman, Poor Black Guy and much much easier than Poor Black Woman.
Certainly when I was in high school, interest in computers merely cemented my status as a geek and a nerd, before either one had any positive connotations.
Yes, but as a nerd you probably weren't that interested in social status, being more interested in your computer. While the jocks might mess around with you a little, they won't usually dedicate themselves to making your life hell. Girl-world is different, "Mean Girls" (the book), and "Queen Bee's and Wannabes" might be good reads about that.
Slashdot Mirror
The C64 is not quite as good as the NES for sprite games, the NES can do more sprites, and the NES has tile based backgrounds.
However for pure bitmap and custom character set games (RPG's), the C64 had certain advantages....at least till the slow 1541 mattered.
Wordstar! The 1571 floppy can read/write Kaypro formatted discs, as well as some other CP/M formats, and Commodore's own GCR'd CP/M format. With software the 1571 can read/write practically any 5.25 format out there, including DOS.
IIRC I've read tha CP/M on the 128 was popular for BBS sysops since it was inexpensive.
The thing with the C128 is that you can use both displays at the same time, meaning you can have a 40 column display hooked up AND an 80 column display. Most people used dual-mode monitors but there was some software that you did some things in 40 column mode but then the software displayed special output in 80, or vice versa.
Which ones? While 80 columns and 128K were options on the //e, 6he //e didn't come with 128k as default till 1987 with the Platinum //e. That was also the first //e with a numeric keypad by default. The 1571 also has a higher capacity than Apple's 5.25" drives.
So yes, the C128 did have some features as standard before the //e.
But they were what the cool kids had for toys back then.
Cool "affluent" kids, the vast majority of kids back then didn't own computers. It is only on Slashdot where everyone assumes everyone was one of those spoiled suburban kids with a WarGames or Ferris Bueller style set up like they had. You'll see things like:
"When I was 15, my Quantumlink/Compuserve/Source bill was around 300 a month"
There is one, but I don't know if it matches the featureset because IANASE (I Am Not A Sound Engineer).
It's called "AutoTalent", should be in the repos (if you run linux)
It's a slow decline into "one of many niches" rather than a "dead and gone" sort of thing. More and MOre the PC Gaming market is turning into the late Amiga game market. Games from US/UK developers that have little/no console experience....yet, but will do so eventually (Blizzard is a good example), Cross-platform games and Ports, and games from European developers too poor or too partisan to do console games.
After all there was a time not so long ago when die-hard PC gamers said things like:
You'll never have an action packed blood soaked slugathon like DOOM on a kiddie console.
Or.
You'll never have MMO's on a console.
Or.
Bioware and Bethesda will never do a console game.
If you bought or built a PC in the last couple of years it is already more powerful than the new consoles.
No, it isn't, clock speed isn't everything. To beat the PS4 and Xbox One you would need to not only match their CPU's (how many people in the mass-market do you know that own 8-core CPU's), up the RAM (many people still have 4, and match the GPU's...AND you'd have to match their specialized busses/internal bandwidth and all the other stuff they have...maybe even upgrade the motherboard....which you cannot do for the same price.
Now sure, those guys who have spent $2000 plus on their machines like the "Performance and Ultra machines" showcased in magazines like Maximum PC and PC gamer have better machines...but they paid $2000 plus! For that price you can get a PS4.... and $1600 worth of games. While that guy with the $2000 rig is probably either playing benchmarks for the e-peen bragging contest, or playing the same map in LoL or de_dust counter-strike over and over and over again because he has no money for games.
Heck, most gaming PC's don't come with blu-ray drives (HTPC's tend to though)...because like the CD to DVD transition, PC gamers are saying: "Why do I need a Blu-ray drive in my gaming machine, I don't buy Blu-rays and no games come on Blu-ray."...all because PC publishers still ship games on DVD's just like how they kept shipping games on CD when DVD's would have saved them having to put multiple discs in the boxes.
Transition to LateX, Beamer, and something for spreadsheets and the bloated office suite is banished from your computer.
Easier said than done, the learning curve is high and long. And if you use something like Lyx to ease it, then you have the Cult of Knuth Latex Grognards saying how Lyx makes bad LaTeX and how you should hand tool your LaTeX code in Emacs, Vim or with Butterflies.
It's not precisely 1.5TB per disc, but 1.5TB per disk cartridge.
with a percentage of the price of food going to the record industry as a performance royalty.
A very tiny percentage, don't worry about it.
How should I do so without running a risk of being sued for accidental infringement like George Harrison was?
Edge case. Don't worry about it.
Once prices drop after Christmas, my son will get a PS4.
What, a Slashdot geek who actually wants one who didn't get one at the Midnight Launch?
I do doubt there will be a PS4 price drop before 2015. And yeah, seeing stores prepare for Christmas even before Halloween (the local wal-mart had some Christmas things out, before)...annoys me.
Pro shoppers do not shop on Black Friday. It's crowded, noisy, simply annoying...wait and shop when it's less busy. Yes you miss out on some loss-leaders, but don't give into the hype, you will enjoy your Christmas better.
From a desktop perspective they lost my interest when they moved to systemd.
Why? From a "desktop user" perspective it doesn't make a difference. You can even use the old "service" commands if you want.
C'mon RedHat/CentOS recommends you don't do an in-place upgrade.
What? I've done at least 4 in place Fedora Upgrades.
Is there really that much difference between:
sudo apt-get install foo
and
sudo yum install foo
That said, there is a yum replacement in the works called "dnf"
From the man page:
DNF is an experimental replacement for Yum, a package manager for RPM
Linux distributions. It aims to maintain CLI compatibility with Yum
while improving on speed and defining strict API and plugin interface.
But you seem to be using "selfish jerk" as "person who does not agree with me", which I'm afraid is a nonstandard (though common) definition.
Come now, there's plenty of selfish jerkass behavior in the geek community, we see it here all the time. It stems from the "I'm smarter than everyone else" entitlement thing we see here...and yes, the social ineptitude
Nobody used that phrase (or the Ferengi accent) but you.
I see it all the time on Slashdot.
And while the term is "females" (no "the") is somewhat unusual in that context, being offended by it makes you look like a pedantic asshole. Seriously complaining that someone sounds like a basement-dwelling geek on Slashdot is just plain bizarre.
Why is it bizarre? It's your basic "Stop Being Stereotypical" rant. I don't mind some of the old slashdot culture, but "The Females", Natalie Portman memes and misogyny has got to go.
I am well aware of the David Reimer case, and others, but that does not discount bias by the scientists, or other factors.
Babies can detect smiles, so if they detect Mr. Scientist smiling as they reach for the gun....well that ruins the test. In fact that is far more likely than a 3 month old knowing what a weapon looks like.
It seems reasonable that whatever those inherent preferences are, they could at least occasionally encourage certain STEM specialists in girls to a disproportionate degree.
I think this makes a good case that the lack of women in engineering is caused in significant part by their individual personal preferences. There are a few women engineers, but you can't expect parity.
I am not so sure we can discard bias and culture so quickly, and there are plenty of misogynists in STEM who are willing to use any excuse to keep women out of the boys club.
The general idea is that there's something wrong with the men that's driving the women out, therefore the men need to be corrected (in much the same way a dog is).
There is something wrong with some geek men, they simply are socially inept and simply are selfish jerks who don't realize they've benefited from male privilege and most likely socio-economic privilege all their lives.
Of course they don't use the term "aspies" because that might put the men in a protected class also, which would make those PC brains explode.
Of course they don't use the term "aspies" because that might put the men in a protected class also, which would make those PC brains explode."Near-aspies" is a good one for the less bleeding-heart of the PC set, though; it implies the men are socially inept while not giving them the excuse of a medical condition.
It's quite possible to be diagnosed with Asperger features without actually getting the full diagnosis. Also we see quite a few self-diagnosed people on Slashdot making various claims and using their "Aspergers" as an excuse for social ineptitude and general asshattery, as in "I'm blunt and do not understand why the hew-mon females are complaining because I have Aspergers"
Normally I'm fairly tolerant of socially inept speech, but that goddamned "the females" just really ticks me off. It makes me want to say "Stop being such a geek stereotype."
And how many times have we seen on Slashdot someone using a "supposed" Aspie diagnosis as an excuse for being a selfish socially inept jerk.
The SMART gaming houses have ALREADY FIGURED OUT how to make mad money even WITH the Steam sales..ready to have your mind blown? here it comes....its called DLC!
Oh, DLC, you mean that thing that a good portion of Slashdot thinks is the DRM Devil-in-Disguise and not worth paying for? You've obviously seen the hate for DLC on Slashdot.
But hey you wanna get assraped by consoles that treat you as a combination walking wallet and shoplifter?
Don't be a misogynist and use the term "ass-rape". And how am I getting "ass-raped" Game companies are businesses, they're in the business of making money, they're going to see us as a wallet. You're in favor of DLC and you don't think they see the buyers of DLC as a wallet? That's what some on Slashdot say!
But if the devs weren't making money on Steam sales guess what? They wouldn't HAVE THEM. Its called supply and demand,
Perhaps they only have them because PC gamers are cheapskates? Perhaps that is why they are treating the PC like a stepchild?
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-04-12-gog-com-steam-sales-send-wrong-message-to-gamers
I consider steam sales to be a race for the bottom, training PC gamers, who are already notoriously cheap...to pay even less. So enjoy your Steam Sales, but don't go whining when formerly PC only developers focus more attention on consoles when that's where the people are actually willing to spend money are.
Look at Payday:The Heist as a perfect example of how game publishing SHOULD be,
Oh you mean that game published by Sony Online Entertainment for the PS3?
And piracy has gone down 5 years in a row
In the US, perhaps....but citation needed.
Wonder what excuses the publishers are gonna use on the "DRM in a box phone home daily to check if you are a filthy shoplifter" new consoles?
The PS4 and Xbox One don't phone home... I don't know where you got the idea they do, because they don't. SCEfoo never had any such plans and Microsoft changed their plans to match.
Good games make money, shitty games don't, welcome to reality, quit using piracy as an excuse to cover up for your badly overblown budgets on shitty games that care more about HDR and lens flare than they do on a decent gaming experience, how about that?
Oh please, you know that indie titles that supposedly have awesome gameplay also get pirated. Even the Humble Indie Bundles were victims of that, as well as Minecraft. And there's plenty of games with HDR and lens flare that have good gaming experience but faux-gaming-hipster jerks don't want to admit it.
I'll wait till a game has a Metacritic score of > 85, and 2 years when the "gold" version comes out with all the patches.
You're missing out on some good games that way, there are some good games that get lower scores because they are "niche" in some way.
Skyrim is STILL $30+. Not buying it until it is $20.
What? $30 is too much for a game with a metacritic score over 90, that has won game of the year/RPG of the year awards on all 3 platforms that is available on, and that has been out for 2 years and the "Gold" edition ie "legendary edition" came out a few months back? The game who's predecessors by the same company were also highly regarded? The game with more gameplay than you can shake a stick at? The game that actually costs less for the amount of content you get than single-screen Atari 2600 games did? That's a big sense of entitlement there.
I have 300 games in my library to play UNTIL then.
Perhaps if you bought fewer games, you wouldn't have minded paying $60 for Skyrim when it came out 2 years ago. I know some people like to collect games, but time is finite and games are so huge these days you will never be able to play them all. I learned that lesson with the PS2, why buy lots of budget/greatest hit titles when one simply won't have enough time to play them all.
What you haven't seen the gendered advertising on TV even today?
Boys and girls have different preferences for toys, from the earliest age. There's psychological literature on that.
yes, but some of that is nurture.
Ah, but if you believe the whole "white male privilege" thing, or as John Scalzi puts it, white male being "the easiest difficulty level in the RPG called Real Life"
I do, it's fairly accurate, with modifications for socio-economic status/sexual identity/etc etc. For example Bill Gates is playing on Easy mode with Money cheat and God mode on. while some Poor guy is playing Easy Mode with his Loot setting turned down. While Poor guy has it harder than Bill Gates, his game is still easier than Poor Woman, Poor Black Guy and much much easier than Poor Black Woman.
Certainly when I was in high school, interest in computers merely cemented my status as a geek and a nerd, before either one had any positive connotations.
Yes, but as a nerd you probably weren't that interested in social status, being more interested in your computer. While the jocks might mess around with you a little, they won't usually dedicate themselves to making your life hell. Girl-world is different, "Mean Girls" (the book), and "Queen Bee's and Wannabes" might be good reads about that.