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Comment FWIW - Had IDE on Apple II, LISA assembler (Score 1) 113

Turbo Pascal truly was revolutionary. First in terms of price. For 40-odd dollars you could get the entire thing, and not have to pay for EVERY executable you produced. Yes, that was still a thing at the time. Even as a student it was afforadable. And it came with two large and very good books about pascal programming.

Absolutely. Add fast as it was compiled to native binary as opposed to BASIC.

And the IDE was great and fast and didn't require much memory. Everything was command line before that.

For high level code. For low level code on the Apple II we had the LISA assembler. It offered an IDE. It also parsed your code as you typed. So you would get an error message for a syntax error as you hit enter for the line.

Comment Lisa was not a Mac, ex memory protection (Score 3, Interesting) 76

The "pre-Macintosh" was the Lisa, not the Apple II.

Macintosh and Lisa blur together, because the last Lisa WAS the first Macintosh.

Lisa becoming a Mac was retroactive. The original OS under Lisa was not Mac OS. Like Unix, Windows NT, and Mac OS X; Lisa OS had memory protection. The Mac would not get that for decades. Turning a Lisa into a Mac XL was a downgrade of sorts, one offset by more software available for it.

Comment For some Apple II literally was pre-Macintosh (Score 3, Interesting) 76

LOL. The "pre-Macintosh" was the Lisa, not the Apple II.

Only for those with $10K lying around. For the rest of us the Apple II was literally our development system for the Macintosh. We would add a 68K coprocessor card to the Apple II. Write our code in assembly on the coprocessor, test it the best we could. We learned that nice habit of separating functional code from the system code. :-)

Then when ready to test the system code we would download a binary to the Mac using a MS-Basic program that would read the serial port and "poke" the data into RAM, then jump to that poke'd code. Let's say debugging was primitive. Hex values in the corner of the screen. But it was doable, and so very very educational.

68K is still my favorite assembly language.

Comment Apple computers still let you load software ... (Score 1) 76

And created a world that modern Apple destroyed. You could get software disks from any store, not just approved ones ...

You still can. Apple computers (Macs) still let you load software from disc, from flash, from the net, etc. It's only mobile devices (iPhone, etc) that do not.

... and you can expand with any expansion card you wanted to engineer. Woz's World was destroyed for a 30 percent cut of all software sales by Jobs and Cook.

After Jobs 1.0 was fired from Apple, Woz helped with the Mac and slots were added to some models. Today, many of the things that once required slots and specialized adapters now use standardized interfaces likes usb or thunderbolt. Want to engineer your own device and connect, no problem, there is no shortage of support for such hacking via usb. See Adafruit or Sparkfun.

Once you needed a slot and a specialized adapter to add a drive. Now you can do that with USB.
Once you needed a slot and a specialized adapter to add a monitor. Now you can do that with Thunderbolt. Hell, you can add an eGPU graphics card via Thunderbolt. Jobs 1.0 was premature with abandoning slots, Jobs 2.0 still leaned against slots, but I recall some Macs with slots too during his 2nd reign. Maybe Jobs 2.0 was better described as a little too early rather than wrong like Jobs 1.0.

Comment Low end systems large part of game market (Score 1) 25

The market for games on Apple is very small

While significantly smaller it is still an interesting size from a business perspective. While people do not buy Macs to play games, people who have bought a Mac for some other reason may still want to play games on it. It’s the computer they have, they want to play games on it.

Basically not releasing a Mac version is leaving money on the table.

and the hardware isn't powerful enough to run any A games anyway.

Not true at all. The simple truth faced by game developers is that people with "gaming rigs" with high end GPUs are not the norm. The game buying public is more likely to have a PC with a low-end CPU, little RAM, and a low-end integrated GPU (most likely Intel, AMD if very lucky). Such people are a large part of the gaming market, even low-end Macs are comparable to these.

Basically not releasing a game that supports modest PCs is leaving money on the table.

Comment Apple supports Linux, GPU, Mac desktop integration (Score 1) 55

It's great work but all the proprietary hardware means Linux will always be a second-class citizen on Mac hardware, it will always be incomplete and behind.

Apple actually supports Linux, not in the dual boot sense but in the virtualization sense.

macOS' Virtualization Framework has let people create console Linux VMs for a while now. With the recent release of macOS Ventura GUI Linux VMs are supported on Apple Silicon CPUs. With full GPU support, integration with the host macOS desktop for transferring files, etc.

Linux may be a second class citizen to Apple, not being allowed to dual boot, but it is not incomplete and behind when run from Apple's virtualization framework.

Comment Re:Like vegetable burgers? Meal worm protein? (Score 1) 129

If you don't like my source then perhaps you can provide one that is better.

I just reviewed every result on the first page of Google search for: beef greenhouse climate. EVERY SINGLE ONE explains, in one way or another, that beef has a significant and grossly disproportionate impact on the climate. The Economist, Scientific American, The Guardian, Forbes, World Resource Institute, Vox, BBC, Science(published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science), Sciencedirect, the United Nation's FAO, and countless more. Take your pick. Or you could try
Environmental impact of meat production with over 200 sources cited.

Global warming in general, and the impact of beef in particular, are all way past the point where denialism requires actively avoiding and disregard wall-to-wall sources saying the same thing.

If we are concerned about the global warming impact of eating beef then I'm thinking we did so well with the big emitters of coal, petroleum, natural gas, cement, and metal refining, that we are looking to the teeny tiny impact of beef.

If you are bleeding from multiple wounds, I'm sure you know full well that was not a valid argument AGAINST bandaging the easily fixed bleeding immediately, while experts attempt to get the more severe and difficult bleeding under control.

We have not remotely halted global warming. We have barely begun to slow it down, due to decades of sabotage by denialists. The only way we can possibly solve this problem is a few percent at a time in many different ways and many different places. As all of the top Google search results explain, reducing beef consumption is the quickest and easiest thing we can do to immediately and significantly shift things several percent in the right direction. Several percent translates into years of difference, and a lower peak temperature.

As for the rest of your post, I very carefully checked and double checked. Not one sentence was remotely addressed how much impact beef does or does not have. I'm not sure why, but you spent four paragraphs 100% dedicated to arguing that your signature is false and absurd.

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Comment Re:Like vegetable burgers? Meal worm protein? (Score 1) 129

Beef is one of the top cause of climate change?

Yes.

I thought I'd look that up and a study from Oklahoma State University says beef production causes 1.9% of the CO2 emissions from human activity.

That's called confirmation bias. You went looking for a specific answer, you ignored all of the reliable sources and all of the evidence contradicting the answer you wanted, and you latched on to the first random thing that kinda-sorta looked like the answer you wanted.

In this case you quote a fragment about CO2, and you utterly disregarded methane. Methane is 25 to 80 times more powerful of a greenhouse gas than CO2, and beef production accounts for approximately one third of all human caused methane in the US.

Beef is indisputably an order of magnitude more environmentally damaging than any other category of food. You could buy anywhere from 10 to 200 pounds of virtually any non-meat food, eat one pound and literally burn all of the rest, and it would have less environmental impact than a pound of beef. Beef is obviously only one of many contributors to global warming, but it is a significant factor.

Global warming is not remotely "solved". Temperatures are rising, we haven't stopped the increase, we haven't even managed to slow the increase. Temperatures are still on a basically straight-line increase. There are various initiatives to eventually try to get things under control, but we're nowhere near achieving that. Temperatures are going to continue to rising for decades to come, because denialists have spent the last decades devoted to sabotage.

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Comment In related news (Score 0) 76

Nvidia will reduce the number of GPUs it sells to manufacturers of graphics cards and laptops so that those manufacturers can clear out their existing inventory.

In related news, Ford has decided to reduce the number of Edsels it will sell so car dealerships can clear out their existing inventory,
Microsoft has decided to reduce the number of copies of Vista it will sell so Computer makers can can clear out their existing inventory,
CocaCola decided to reduce the number of bottles of NewCoke they sell so supermarkets can clear out their existing inventory,
and Republicans have decided to reduce the number of their voters they send to vote so that... ummm elections can clear out their inventories?

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Comment TRUSTED COMUPTING (Score 1) 195

Quoting the technical specifications: ...FDO software client is installed on the device.
A Root of Trust key (RoT) is also created inside the device to uniquely identify it. This RoT can take the form of cryptographic keys built into the silicon processor (or associated TPM)...

"TPM" is Trusted Platform Module. The "Root of Trust" is is the master security key locking the cryptography on the device - a key which are are explicitly forbidden to know or control. And of course this is the keys locked in the device must "uniquely identify" the device.

The Trust module is now being embedded inside new CPUs.

If you do not activate the Turst system, and given master control of you computer, you are locked out of the system, and locked out of any website based on the system. The next step is that you must register the unique identiy with a CetrificateAuthority/RendesvousService, and prove that the computer is secure against you. This is called "Trust" - specifically your computer is Trusted not to give you your keys, your computer is Trusted not to permit you to use those keys except as defied by them.

If you are not using an approved Operating system, you are locked out. If you have made any changes to your operating system, you are locked out. If you have not installed mandatory-updates from the operating system provider, you are locked out. Locked out of the system. Locked out of all websites based on the system. Locked out of any and all of your own files which were downloaded under this system. It's a Master DRM which owns your system, Trusted to be secure against the owner.

In case anyone hadn't noticed, Microsoft has made Trust chips (or Trust CPUs) mandatory for Windows 11.

There was outrage when Trusted Computing was announced, but they just quietly kept rolling it forwards. Baking it inside most new CPUs now. Some people tried to dismiss or deny or as hypothetical or paranoid or a conspiracy theory. Here it is, mandatory for Windows 11. And being forced out by Apple, and Google.

By the way, one of the earliest declared purposes for Trusted computing - given in a world cybersecurity forum keynote speech by the U.S. head of cybersecurity - was to force out operating system updates to protect against viruses and worms. Specifically, you would be denied internet access if your computer did not have the latest Opearting system updates. And of course, you would be denied internet access if your computer had an unapproved or unknown operating system. Microsoft built this - it's called Trusted Network Connect. Of course they're not stupid enough to roll that out - not until Trust is already mandatory in all common modern computer and phone hardware.... and inside CPUs... and major operating systems... and of course they wouldn't do that unless major websites were already making Trusted Computing mandatory. Oh wait that's what this story is announcing, making Trusted Computing mandatory in place of website passwords.

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Comment Upgrade RAM and getting 7 years seems easy (Score 1) 47

2007 MB, 2011 MBP, 2018 MBP ... I doubled the RAM in all, replaced HD with SSD in the 2011 MBP. They all made fine desktop replacements, with occasional mobile usage, until they stopped receiving OS updates. I figure getting 7 years is not a problem.

Admittedly I'm build small projects. Things that compile from scratch in under a minute.

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