I work with a lot of university students who are extremely conversant with the tech-goodies referenced here. I find that a high level of comfort with finely-tuned consumer devices does not translate at all to things that require some effort, ranging from FTP programs to even similar items, like a DV cam.
To show them how to use these things, I use a procedure remarkably similar to the one being derided. It generally works.
I just got into buying them again a couple of years ago, with a long break since the late 1970s/early 1980s issues I have. Even though the modern spirit was dramatically different from the old days, the mags still were a lot more fun and imaginative than most things on the newsstand today.
Between this loss and Retro Gamer going down (I know, it's stitched in to some other magazine... not the same), I'm running out of reasons to check out the magazine rack.
Ironic. I was just looking at some online scans of The Strategic Review (predecessor to Dragon) last night, and leafing through a back issue of Dungeon last night. Not sure how much I'll get into visiting the Web site for the mags. Part of the fun of them was the kid-in-a-comic-book-store experience of buying them and leafing through them while engaging in various slacker pastimes.
When the first PETs (small 9" screen) models came out, the display wasn't all
that fast.
The old PETs were slow because the print character ROM routine
waited for the interval between screen scans before updating the screen
memory. This reduced conflicts over the screen RAM which would have resulted
in random pixels (snow) being illuminated on the screen. There was an input
on one of the I/O chips which was hooked up to the video circuitry and told
the routine when to access the video RAM.
It wasn't too long before someone learned they could impove the
character display speed via a poke to location 59458; which would set the
video controller to update more readily. It was a noticible improvement of
speed on programs using PRINT often, it was kind of like a free upgrade.
It was mentioned in a few publications and used in many programs that relied
on printing to the screen. I had learned of the poke through Cursor
Magazine, a monthly tape-based publication. They printed the command in one
of the 'newsletter' flyers included with an issue which you could insert
into their game "joust" to make it play faster.
Later on, when Commodore released the larger display (14") PETs, they had
improved the display controller which made that POKE unnecessary. An
unfortunate side effect was that the POKE to 59458 affected a different
register which adjusts one of the newer screen display capabilities, which
could result in damaging the PETs video curcuitry when left running. I
discovered it by accident after our school received some large-screen 4016s.
When active, the screen starts to warp after about the third line and the
display stops around the fifth, the keyboard is also unresponsive. When a PET
is in this mode, the only solution is to turn it off, FAST! Fortunately none
of the school's PETs were damaged due to this POKE. Later Cursor Magazine
published a 'fix' that would allow older PETs to use the poke and keep the
large-screen units from frying. Unfortunately there are still many programs
that do not have this fix.
Prevention
Make sure to check BASIC programs (especially games) when running them on a
large-screen PET and be ready with the power switch when you first run it.
I have usually found the 'killer poke' statement looking like this:
POKE 59458,PEEK(59458)OR 32. It will always be a POKE to 59458, the
remainder of the POKE may vary.
Actually, while the goblins themselves have reached true 3D, I am still dissatisfied with the depth of goblin noses. I'm looking forward to the next generation of processors that can render the noses the way they really were meant to be. I think there is still a lot of room for growth in games with essential enhancements like this.
"Wish I could get Turner Classic Movies without having to pay for 90 other channels I have NO interest in."
McCain is actually working on legislation to require cable to go a la carte. From what I've seen, the cable companies are down with it, but the bundle-monsters like Disney and Fox hate it.
I really hope it materializes. We haven't had TV for a couple years now, but if I could just pick a couple of channels I can't get now without a multimegabuck megabundle, it would be great to be able to casually flip on the tube again.
You are sitting in front of a computer. There is an icon on the desktop.
>Make chart.
Can't do that now.
>Launch OpenOffice
You are magically transported from the chair, though the monitor, to the other side, a huge, mysterious old house with lots of long halls, secret bookcases, dark closets and creaky doors. It is getting very dark. You could be eaten by a grue.
I had an Amstrad word processor that I picked up at Sears in the late 80s that rocked hard. It served the college paper needs of me and three friends, who all remember it fondly. The green on black screen was easy on the eyes, and it had to be one of the most easy to learn interfaces I've experienced. Incompatible with the whole rest of the planet, of course, even down to the funky little 3 1/4" floppies. But who cared? There was no electronic submission of papers back then, so everything was going to print anyway, and the Profs were fine with dot matrix.
I was so down with that machine, it really took me a while to feel comfortable using a Mac with its blah black on white WP. I passed the unit on to someone else who needed it for papers. Never should have done it.
but global warming isn't going to make the Earth uninhabitable, or even remotely so.
Also, comparing the cost and number of lives sustained by spending money on the moon, Mars, or space station habitation versus spending it on an already life-sustaining planet which may become less hospitable shows much better bang for the buck on the terran side. The concept of giving the Earth up for dead while dreaming that space is going to serve better odds is quite a stretch.
Really? So far, in my admittedly limited trials, I've found IE to be the browser I have the most compliance issues with. I guess it depends on what is being done.
Might be a bit of a wait for enterprise-level implementation, unless your organization is a bold one (and it kind of sounds like it might not be). I think the "mostly" part of the phrase being quoted is not going to inspire your execs to jump in with both feet.
Probably, there will be a period while monkeys like me stick our forks in the sockets, leading the RoR Dev group/37Signals to either develop monkey-proof sockets, or lots of best practices to proliferate so that non-monkeys can learn from our mistakes.
Better yet, do some monkeying in your spare time and join the fun. Really, here's a fork!
Patricia Santangelo is in many ways the embodiment of the suburban mom.
She is the mother of five children, ranging in age from 6 to 19. She is divorced, living in Wappingers Falls after growing up in Yorktown and Putnam County. At 42, she works as a property manager for a real estate company and is trying to get her own business off the ground.
I love the RIAA lawyer's quote, "Let's face it, what we're doing is on the right side here."
We're back in that universe where shaking down divorced moms with five kids for $3,000 - $4,000 or the threat of tens of thousands in court fees and damages, all as punishment for the heinous crime of the download of six songs, is "the right side." It's even more fun when you consider the possibility it wasn't even her who did it. I don't know, how popular is Godsmack among that demographic?
The RIAA interoffice memos on these cases must read like tobacco company internal communications.
They tested it by firing it at a model of the USS Constitution carved out of a grain of rice. The moondust cannonballs were found to be much more effective at doing damage to the hulls of an armada of less-well crafted microscopic ships of war.
I think the "cannonball" reference indicates the powers that be have let slip a little too much:
there is life on the moon
it has attained a level of technology roughly that of 16th century through 18th century Europe
There's a fair amount of literature out there discussing the scientific aspects of cooking--the changes foodstuffs go through while being prepared (like the caramelization of sugar, for one), and why certain processes have the effects they do. It's an area I've always wanted to know more about, but there's that time issue. Thanks for the interesting bit of information!
Good genes and good outlook can go a long way. Hope it keeps working for you.
Part of the problem with the study
on
Drink Decaf and Die
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
You raise up a good point about stale coffee, which also may have some bearing on the study. From the article:
"In this study researchers gave participants a nationally popular home-brewed caffeinated coffee and decaffeinated coffee brand."
Granted, they wanted to do a study researching the health effects of regular versus decaffeinated coffee on the general population, so they went for what most people use, which is probably canned pre-ground. But it's probably a poor reflection of what fresher coffee does. Kind of like comparing the health difference of between boiled or steamed reconstituted dehydrated food.
Plus, drinking all that average coffee is most likely dampening their joie de vivre. I think that little things that brighten your day can have a lot of benefits, health-wise.
The summary refers to conditions where vessels have been severely compromised, but I wonder if it can go even further. Vascular deterioration, and its role in overall CV ill-health is both part and parcel of modern America, and also contributes to the severity of other conditions. Having some way of replacing damaged vessels that is easier than current methods could find applications across the board.
The article doesn't give much detail, but I would think that generation of blood vessels that won't be rejected, if it could be refined and the costs driven down, could have a huge effect, especially if combined with new, lower-impact, surgical techniques.
Slashdot Mirror
I work with a lot of university students who are extremely conversant with the tech-goodies referenced here. I find that a high level of comfort with finely-tuned consumer devices does not translate at all to things that require some effort, ranging from FTP programs to even similar items, like a DV cam.
To show them how to use these things, I use a procedure remarkably similar to the one being derided. It generally works.
I wonder who they got to sell the RF modulator.
I just got into buying them again a couple of years ago, with a long break since the late 1970s/early 1980s issues I have. Even though the modern spirit was dramatically different from the old days, the mags still were a lot more fun and imaginative than most things on the newsstand today.
Between this loss and Retro Gamer going down (I know, it's stitched in to some other magazine... not the same), I'm running out of reasons to check out the magazine rack.
Ironic. I was just looking at some online scans of The Strategic Review (predecessor to Dragon) last night, and leafing through a back issue of Dungeon last night. Not sure how much I'll get into visiting the Web site for the mags. Part of the fun of them was the kid-in-a-comic-book-store experience of buying them and leafing through them while engaging in various slacker pastimes.
Just so long as it is the same make and model.
More detail here.
From TFA:
History of 'the killer poke'
When the first PETs (small 9" screen) models came out, the display wasn't all
that fast.
The old PETs were slow because the print character ROM routine
waited for the interval between screen scans before updating the screen
memory. This reduced conflicts over the screen RAM which would have resulted
in random pixels (snow) being illuminated on the screen. There was an input
on one of the I/O chips which was hooked up to the video circuitry and told
the routine when to access the video RAM.
It wasn't too long before someone learned they could impove the
character display speed via a poke to location 59458; which would set the
video controller to update more readily. It was a noticible improvement of
speed on programs using PRINT often, it was kind of like a free upgrade.
It was mentioned in a few publications and used in many programs that relied
on printing to the screen. I had learned of the poke through Cursor
Magazine, a monthly tape-based publication. They printed the command in one
of the 'newsletter' flyers included with an issue which you could insert
into their game "joust" to make it play faster.
Later on, when Commodore released the larger display (14") PETs, they had
improved the display controller which made that POKE unnecessary. An
unfortunate side effect was that the POKE to 59458 affected a different
register which adjusts one of the newer screen display capabilities, which
could result in damaging the PETs video curcuitry when left running. I
discovered it by accident after our school received some large-screen 4016s.
When active, the screen starts to warp after about the third line and the
display stops around the fifth, the keyboard is also unresponsive. When a PET
is in this mode, the only solution is to turn it off, FAST! Fortunately none
of the school's PETs were damaged due to this POKE. Later Cursor Magazine
published a 'fix' that would allow older PETs to use the poke and keep the
large-screen units from frying. Unfortunately there are still many programs
that do not have this fix.
Prevention
Make sure to check BASIC programs (especially games) when running them on a
large-screen PET and be ready with the power switch when you first run it.
I have usually found the 'killer poke' statement looking like this:
POKE 59458,PEEK(59458)OR 32. It will always be a POKE to 59458, the
remainder of the POKE may vary.
Actually, while the goblins themselves have reached true 3D, I am still dissatisfied with the depth of goblin noses. I'm looking forward to the next generation of processors that can render the noses the way they really were meant to be. I think there is still a lot of room for growth in games with essential enhancements like this.
"Wish I could get Turner Classic Movies without having to pay for 90 other channels I have NO interest in."
McCain is actually working on legislation to require cable to go a la carte. From what I've seen, the cable companies are down with it, but the bundle-monsters like Disney and Fox hate it.
I really hope it materializes. We haven't had TV for a couple years now, but if I could just pick a couple of channels I can't get now without a multimegabuck megabundle, it would be great to be able to casually flip on the tube again.
You are sitting in front of a computer. There is an icon on the desktop.
>Make chart.
Can't do that now.
>Launch OpenOffice
You are magically transported from the chair, though the monitor, to the other side, a huge, mysterious old house with lots of long halls, secret bookcases, dark closets and creaky doors. It is getting very dark. You could be eaten by a grue.
>Light lantern. Make chart.
I had an Amstrad word processor that I picked up at Sears in the late 80s that rocked hard. It served the college paper needs of me and three friends, who all remember it fondly. The green on black screen was easy on the eyes, and it had to be one of the most easy to learn interfaces I've experienced. Incompatible with the whole rest of the planet, of course, even down to the funky little 3 1/4" floppies. But who cared? There was no electronic submission of papers back then, so everything was going to print anyway, and the Profs were fine with dot matrix.
I was so down with that machine, it really took me a while to feel comfortable using a Mac with its blah black on white WP. I passed the unit on to someone else who needed it for papers. Never should have done it.
All the elephants in the University of Florida server room are probably breathing a sigh of relief over this one.
Plus, it is a rare day when I do not need to measure my yark.
but global warming isn't going to make the Earth uninhabitable, or even remotely so. Also, comparing the cost and number of lives sustained by spending money on the moon, Mars, or space station habitation versus spending it on an already life-sustaining planet which may become less hospitable shows much better bang for the buck on the terran side. The concept of giving the Earth up for dead while dreaming that space is going to serve better odds is quite a stretch.
This is good news. I have been waiting years for Apple to build a forehead control option into the ipod.
for the Thunderbirds, I guess
Could we save money by going with a Phoenix/Griffin combo instead? The Phoenixes in particular have the benefit of being recyclable.
Really? So far, in my admittedly limited trials, I've found IE to be the browser I have the most compliance issues with. I guess it depends on what is being done.
Might be a bit of a wait for enterprise-level implementation, unless your organization is a bold one (and it kind of sounds like it might not be). I think the "mostly" part of the phrase being quoted is not going to inspire your execs to jump in with both feet.
Probably, there will be a period while monkeys like me stick our forks in the sockets, leading the RoR Dev group/37Signals to either develop monkey-proof sockets, or lots of best practices to proliferate so that non-monkeys can learn from our mistakes.
Better yet, do some monkeying in your spare time and join the fun. Really, here's a fork!
She maybe a very nice lady with a marriage that fell apart, but we don't know that.
Actually, we do (www.thejournalnews.com).
Patricia Santangelo is in many ways the embodiment of the suburban mom. She is the mother of five children, ranging in age from 6 to 19. She is divorced, living in Wappingers Falls after growing up in Yorktown and Putnam County. At 42, she works as a property manager for a real estate company and is trying to get her own business off the ground.
I love the RIAA lawyer's quote, "Let's face it, what we're doing is on the right side here."
We're back in that universe where shaking down divorced moms with five kids for $3,000 - $4,000 or the threat of tens of thousands in court fees and damages, all as punishment for the heinous crime of the download of six songs, is "the right side." It's even more fun when you consider the possibility it wasn't even her who did it. I don't know, how popular is Godsmack among that demographic?
The RIAA interoffice memos on these cases must read like tobacco company internal communications.
Nice going, spud. You went and busted the picture. If it ever comes back, be more careful where you put the next pixel.
Art is a fragile thing.
They tested it by firing it at a model of the USS Constitution carved out of a grain of rice. The moondust cannonballs were found to be much more effective at doing damage to the hulls of an armada of less-well crafted microscopic ships of war.
I think the "cannonball" reference indicates the powers that be have let slip a little too much:
There's a fair amount of literature out there discussing the scientific aspects of cooking--the changes foodstuffs go through while being prepared (like the caramelization of sugar, for one), and why certain processes have the effects they do. It's an area I've always wanted to know more about, but there's that time issue. Thanks for the interesting bit of information!
Good genes and good outlook can go a long way. Hope it keeps working for you.
You raise up a good point about stale coffee, which also may have some bearing on the study. From the article:
"In this study researchers gave participants a nationally popular home-brewed caffeinated coffee and decaffeinated coffee brand."
Granted, they wanted to do a study researching the health effects of regular versus decaffeinated coffee on the general population, so they went for what most people use, which is probably canned pre-ground. But it's probably a poor reflection of what fresher coffee does. Kind of like comparing the health difference of between boiled or steamed reconstituted dehydrated food.
Plus, drinking all that average coffee is most likely dampening their joie de vivre. I think that little things that brighten your day can have a lot of benefits, health-wise.
The summary refers to conditions where vessels have been severely compromised, but I wonder if it can go even further. Vascular deterioration, and its role in overall CV ill-health is both part and parcel of modern America, and also contributes to the severity of other conditions. Having some way of replacing damaged vessels that is easier than current methods could find applications across the board.
The article doesn't give much detail, but I would think that generation of blood vessels that won't be rejected, if it could be refined and the costs driven down, could have a huge effect, especially if combined with new, lower-impact, surgical techniques.
Or, we could just stop eating junk.
I'm going to invent reading email "...on a chicken".
I nicknamed my laptop that I bought in 2001 "Chicken," so I have been reading e-mail on a chicken for years.
See you in court.