Greed, Zealotry, and the Commodore 64 645
jira writes "On the occasion of the Commodore 64's rebirth as an Atom-equipped nettop, the Guardian's Jon Blyth remembers what the original Commodore 64 taught him. Among other things: 'But look at it, all brown, ugly and lovely. It taught me so much. The Commodore 64 taught me about zealotry. After upgrading from the inferior ZX Spectrum, I would try to convince the Sinclair loyalists to follow me. I would invite them to my house, and let them see that with just eight colors and a monophonic sound chip, their lives lacked true depth. My evangelism quickly faded into impatience. So, I can now see why American Baptists get so miffy about atheists — it's horrible dealing with people who don't realize how much better you are.'"
monophonic sound chip? (Score:5, Informative)
there is no ZX spectrum with a "monophonic sound chip"
the original 16 and 48k machines have no sound chip, the sound is software driven by toggling an I/O bit.
the 128k machines use the AY which is 3 channel
so there! :p
Re:The best C64 programs were 1 line long. (Score:4, Informative)
The best C64 programs were zero lines long. They tossed the Commodore ROM in the trash, thereby freeing-up all 64 k of memory, and loaded directly from the 1541 (or 71) disk drive.
"64k should be enough for anybody." With GEOS you can turn your 64k machine into a clone of the original Mac (with WYSIWYG word processing, a trashcan, and everything). My church pastor did all his newsletters on the Commodore=64. And it doesn't cost $4000. More like $400. With music and color! ;-)
Re:Yeah can't figure the appeal of the Sinclair (Score:5, Informative)
If I didn't have a Commodore, I would sooner have an 8-bit Atari or Apple instead, not a Sinclair.
I'm sure most Spectrum owners would too, considering that those machines were, AFAIR, around three times the price.
The Spectrum was the cheapest computer that could play half-decent games, and its popularity became self-supporting as it lead more game developers to make games for it.
Re:Goes both ways... (Score:5, Informative)
“A lioness went straight for him, knocked him down and severed his carotid artery.”
...and thanked God for her lunch?
Re:Primary Programming. (Score:3, Informative)
Your daughter's question *is* answered in the bible -- I don't know which version of the bible your daughter and mother are reading, but the answer is in Genesis 1 in the KJV:
13And the evening and the morning were the third day.
14And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: 15And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. 16And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. 17And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, 18And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. 19And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
So it took him 1 day to create the stars (and presumably the planets, but since they weren't visible to the naked eye from earth there seems no need to mention them, perhaps god backfilled the universe with planets while humans were going about their business eating forbidden apples and such).
As for your second question, I don't recall anywhere in the bible where it says if you pray for something it will happen, no matter how miraculous. There is a lot of documented suffering in the bible, even to true believers, even god's own son was tortured (if you believe that new testament). God's job isn't to erase all human suffering (what kind of life would that be? I don't see how he could do that and still give humans free will?)
Mind your sects... (Score:3, Informative)
Be careful how you use the term "American Baptists". The American Baptist Churches of the USA are a fairly liberal and ecumenical bunch that believe in religious freedom (and humility) better than Richard Stallman believes in software freedom (and humility).
There are other baptists sects in America that are considered stricter groups and might be more likely to fit your stereotype, so beware how you capitalize "American".
Sure we believe in God, and I won't deny there are some zealots among our ranks, but as a denomination, we believe in autonomy, and the members certainly cannot be categorized the way it's being used here.
www.abc-usa.org ...if you're interested.
Re:Primary Programming. (Score:2, Informative)
+1 informative I had forgotten that Mao and Stalin were just a bunch of ideologically based senseless murderer and that they were atheist