An argument has been made (by both myself and others) that at least one slashdot user is a script already. Not necessarily an intelligent one, but a script nonetheless.
Does it bother you that an argument has been made (by both yourself and others) that at least one slashdot user is a script already?
At Walnut Creek? So, is it used to cart CD-ROMs around?
I'm sure I still have that purple Aminet CD kicking around somewhere...
The DMA controller was a seperate 40 pin Intel chip and omitting it probably reduced the cost by tens of dollars. It also severely crippled the I/O throughput.
"Tens of dollars" (cost price) would still have been a significant amount back then. Also, if, as others have commented, the PC Jr was already intentionally hobbled to avoid competing with IBM's more expensive machines, this reduced performance would likely have suited marketing anyway(!)
Funny that for all the bitching about the "chiclet" style keyboard back then, now I see way too many laptops (and even Macs) that are using what looks like the same style.
I laugh and laugh at the Mac's chiclet crap. They're horrible to use for touch typing, just one step above a membrane keyboard.
To be fair, AFAICT (*) "chiclet keyboard" is a word that seems to have changed its meaning over the years. In the PC Jr's day (again, AFAICT) it referred to *rubber-keyed* keyboards with the "chiclet" appearance. Rubber keyboards- like the PC Jr's- are not fun to type on.
The present-day Mac desktop keyboards often called "chiclet"- like this one- are, to be fair, not rubber keyed.
That said, I'd now like to agree with the parent and grandparent... they're still absolutely f*****g awful, style-over-substance garbage. I was typing on one (like the image above) today, and it's utterly horrid. I would blame it on the keys' lack of travel, but I've used laptop keyboards that are actually quite nice despite that. It may well be the "chiclet" layout, can't say. I've used it before as well, so it's not a case of being unfamiliar with it.
On the same machine I'd already swapped out the equally overrated "Magic" mouse mainly because its low profile might have looked good, but it was odious from an ergonomic point-of-view (i.e. nothing to hold in the hand, and I don't even have big hands).
Urgh.
(*) Based on what I've read from US sources. I live in the UK, and the expression "chiclet keyboard" wasn't used over here in the early-to-mid-80s (because "chiclets" gum wasn't sold here either). We simply called them "rubber keyboards".
As a matter of fact, the basic design [of the Coleco Adam] was tweaked slightly and became the MSX standard that was so popular in Japan.
It didn't "become" the MSX standard, where did you get that
Maybe he's getting it confused with the Spectravideo SV-328 (and SV-318) which *were* supposedly the design upon which MSX was based, although not 100% MSX-compatible themselves.
I drive about the same, but live in the UK where "gas" costs have always been high. Thing is though, it's still cheaper (and twice as fast) as taking the train.
Yeah, but that's not saying much- the UK's privatised train system is horrendously expensive compared to similar railways (*) elsewhere in Europe- it makes a mockery of the Conservatives' claimed motives for privatisation, that it supposedly increases competition and efficiency and drives down costs. (**) Years upon years of way above the rate of inflation increases on prices that weren't cheap to start off with. When even the Tory-friendly Daily F****** Mail is running a story on how shockingly expensive it is (***), you know it's bad.
(*) Run along OMG COMMUNIST!!!!111^w^w more socialist lines
(**) Then again, we all know that this is about Tory dogma and feathering their own nests, regardless of how they dress it up. Their recent privatisation of the Royal Mail, despite the fact that the majority of people in the UK- including many Conservative supporters!- were opposed to this, and the fact that it was blatantly sold off at far below its market value, makes obvious what most people had already figured out long ago. Expect the Royal Mail to go the way of the Dutch national mail service when *that* was privatised and is apparently very poor now.
(***) This story was the top of the search results last time I searched for a story to make this point, so go figure...
Yes, because I'm retired now. Used to be 15K miles per year, now it's 4K.
Why's that a "Well Duh"? The story was about teenagers, and unless you're exceptionally precocious, I suspect that you're not a retired teenager, right? And if you are, well, I suspect you're *not* a typical example...
I think it's safe to assume they meant "the demographic group that are teenagers", i.e. the fact that you got included in the group of teenagers for several decades back doesn't mean that you still get to count towards the present-day "teenager" statistic!
Just get over it dude. People are going to make jokes. Often times those jokes will be in questionable or bad taste.
Go back and read what I said. I wasn't responding to the original (lame) jokes, but calling out the OP's bullshit *response* of "black humour is a coping mechanism" being used by people who clearly *weren't* using it as such.
Specifically, these people *didn't* have the guts to say "yeah, I made a sick joke"- quite the opposite, they tried to put themselves in the same position as those actually affected by the event and grab the moral high ground.
You have no right to control what other people say
That'd be why I didn't tell people what or what not to say at any point, then. I simply exercised my (equally legitimate) right to call them out on it.
Ironically, it sounds more like you're telling *me* what I shouldn't say- that *I* shouldn't be allowed to call people out on bullshit self-righteousness. "Too bad", because it doesn't work that like that. If someone's free to make a sick joke (and I never claimed they weren't), other people are just as entitled to call them a sick f*** or express their dislike. And if you respond to that with the weasellishly BS self-justification above, *I'm* quite entitled to call you out on that.
If this "offends you" then tough- freedom of speech cuts both ways. "Just get over it dude".
People who can laugh at life's ineviable hardships and disasters - whether their own or someone else's - bounce back. People who are afraid to face life and death and laugh at him, cower.
Yeah, very poetic. Still the same old self-justifying misappropriation of "black humour as a coping strategy" being used to rationalise sick jokes by those who were neither involved in nor traumatised by the event being mocked. As I said last time:-
Most of the time I see that argument parrotted on Slashdot, it's being intentionally misused some borderline sociopathic asshole that's just made an insensitive joke about something that happened on the other side of the world and been called out on it.
Sure, we all know that you made that sick joke about that tragedy in the Philippines/China/wherever that'll never affect your home in Buttfuck, Illinois (which you'll have forgotten about by the time you move on to the next news item) as a "coping strategy". It's because you were scared by it.
Bullshit.
We all know that people closely affected by events (or feel themselves likely to be affected) often take solace in black humour- fair enough. We also know that many people are just dicks that like to make sick jokes about stuff that doesn't affect them personally. Anyone in the latter group trying to justify themselves and place themselves *above* their critics with a self-righteous appropriation of the "non-PC coping mechanism" argument is full of it.
When we see Bill Gates walking around in a brand new 20 year old body, then we can start assuming they DO have a cure and are keeping it from the public.
Bill Gates *does* have a brand new 20 year old body. He's just hired someone to occupy his old one and make occasional public appearances so that- as you suggest- no-one finds out.
Incidentally, I've managed to acquire a photograph of Gates in his new body... as a 20-year old *female*!
Van Halen concerts need a LOT of amperage for their very heavy equipment.
Still misleading; makes it sound like the amperage was needed because the equipment was "heavy". Also, you're extrapolating things that weren't actually mentioned in the article.
If you read the article, the heavy equipment (which could- and did- damage floors that weren't designed to take it) was the *only* specific, detailed example given of a problem that actually happened, and wasn't related to the issue of amperage.
And the latter was only mentioned as a potential clause (" So just as a little test, in the technical aspect of the rider, it would say "Article 148: There will be fifteen amperage voltage sockets at twenty-foot spaces, evenly, providing nineteen amperes . .
*Van Halen inserts "M&M clause" as a mine canary to deal with bullshit venues that can't read simply documents.
Despite the fact I pointed out the problem with the *original* guy's summary of this part, you've repeated his mistake. You haven't explained *why* the clause was effective, i.e. the forfeiture penalty that anyone who'd actually read it would go out of their way to avoid... meaning that anyone who didn't do that clearly *hadn't* read it, or any of the other clauses properly.
The problem is that your summary may work as a reminder to someone who's *already* read the article and understood the points being made. But by definition, that's not what a "tl; dr" is aimed at.
Speaking as someone who's definitely too longwinded, I have great respect for the ability to be concise. Summarising by cutting corners isn't that hard. And burying all the information in a pile of semi (or not at all) relevant waffle isn't either- it's all too easy for geeks like me.
Actually distilling the *important* information into a concise but listenable *and* accurate form? That's harder to do well than most people think.
How the hell is this modded up as informative? Should be modded fucking stupid and irrelevant to the discussion.
Just a guess, but I suspect everyone else understands why a "canary" clause (*) inserted to verify that people were paying attention to important technical details *might* be relevant to a case where the contractors had failed to pay attention to the technical information supplied to them.
(*) Which was the purpose of the "No Brown M&Ms" clause. You did understand that... right? Or were you still labouring under the assumption that it was a gratuitous rider requirement despite the fact I explained it wasn't and linked to the article?!
If you want to put yourself on the map, publish your own map.
