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mp3.1415player said:
Subtracting your variable from a constant and checking if the result is zero is a stupid way to do it!
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Which is how, originally, the ALU performed the CMP operation anyway. Subtract B from A, if the result is positive, it's greater, if it's negative, it's less than. If it's zero (or less than sigma(usually a really small number, like 1 x 10^-10)) it's equal.

And yes, I know that discrete compare ICs have been around since the late 70's, at least in TTL.
 
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Damn, I miss the 8-bit days and the Commodore machines. When a wardialer was part and parcel of ever cracker's toolkit, passwords were "admin/god", and Elder Gods like Admiral Grace Hopper freely roamed the Earth.

We'll not see their like again.
 
Ace Dreamer said:
"So, I'm planning to program in 'C'. Now, where is my list of language features I'm not going to use, unless it seems like a really good idea. And, which minimal bits of 'C++' shall I use, to avoid the usual 'Oh look, I got it wrong, again' ?"

'C' - the programming language where you can spot how long people have been programming by the features they use... I liked, "I always use pointer arithmetic, it's easier - why should I bother using arrays?'...

Will be fun if Taylor develops a Bug-Compilation Programming Logic scheme, and calls it BCPL? :)

EDIT:

6502 Assembler (8-bit processor) was supposed the inspiration for the (32-bit) ARM instruction set, the 'Acorn RISC Machine' (obviously later renamed). The aim was to provide a BASIC Interpretter that ran faster than the x86 Assembler code on IBM PCs - they did this. IBM... weren't pleased.

Another aim was to provide a cheap, simple processor, needing very little silicon, and not much power. The x86 range was devouring more and more silicon, drinking more and more power... Funny the way a chip developed upstairs above a hairdresser (I believe) is now about everywhere...

ARM is the guts of the 'Raspberry Pi', now on v5 - worth looking at is the RPi Pico, if you've Ardunio'd, and want something with ARM, and an immensely better spec. (and optional Wi-fi). Give your pet bug robot extra Vroom!
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I've met the people who initially designed the ARM processor and other associated chips a number of times. From memory the 6502 was indeed one of the inspirations for the ARM design. Making it cheap, fast, extremely low power, and with fairly basic silicon was the whole point, and they jumped right over the 16 bit which most of the competition were using into a full 32 bit flat memory model processor. ARM originally stood for Acorn Risc Machine, as it was wholly a design of Acorn Computers, ie the inventors of among other things the BBC Micro range a certain discoverer of the H-Field we know about uses :)

It was rather impressive, actually. There are very few computer companies even today that have designed a desktop computer from first principles including the entirely novel processor silicon, instruction set, companion chips including graphics processor, memory management unit, and IO processor, done all the pcbs, industrial design, and so on, then written the OS and a whole pile of applications on top of that. At the time they were far ahead of most of the other companies that were doing anything similar, and in fact if they'd had a slightly different set of circumstances, might well have beaten Sun at their own game. The third generation ARM processor was considerably faster in many respects than the comparable SPARC chips from Sun, and much faster than the equivalent 80x86 ones, as well as taking a tiny fraction of the power. it also had a much smaller silicon footprint and hence was a lot cheaper.

They failed at that, of course, for a whole slew of reasons, some avoidable and some not, but their processor architecture was a phenomenal success, to the point that there are probably more ARM processors around now than all other processor types put together :) Absolutely everything has some variant of ARM in it, almost all phones and tablets, all the newer Apple laptops, a growing number of non-apple ones, right down to washing machines and up to high end supercomputer clusters. They were a major success in that part of things even if the desktop computer company that spawned the whole thing is lost in the mists of computer history...

Interestingly Apple were at one point a partner of theirs in the Acorn days. And they used ARM processors in their first 'tablet', the Apple Newton, which was a complete flop :D

The history of the ARM processor is rather fascinating if you dig into it. As I've done since I've been using those processors in one form or another most of my career...

astfgl said:
68HC11 was my favorite at Uni. E2 flavor (2K EEPROM) for development and A8 (512 bytes) for production. It has a tiny ROM bootstrap that accepts 256 bytes on the serial port, places them into RAM and then jumps to the start. That can be a test program, or your own code that receives more bytes and burns them to EEPROM. No JTAG for you...
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The 68HC705 was an earlier version of something very similar I had the misforture to have to do some legacy support work on years ago. A product that had been designed in the 80s and was still being used in a specific industry long after the company that made it had vanished needed modifications, and myself and a couple of friends ended up putting in a couple of years work on the thing on and off. It was not fun. Horrible processor.

Kryslin said:
Which is how, originally, the ALU performed the CMP operation anyway. Subtract B from A, if the result is positive, it's greater, if it's negative, it's less than. If it's zero (or less than sigma(usually a really small number, like 1 x 10^-10)) it's equal.

And yes, I know that discrete compare ICs have been around since the late 70's, at least in TTL.
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Indeed, and it's a perfectly cromulent method. I just feel the processor should bloody do it for me, not expect me to do it by hand! :D
 
Bobismeisbob said:
That's normal, there's thousands of companies like that where you never hear about them until some online article points out that one company owns all sunglasses or something. They just sit there quietly controlling a large chunk of an entire industry and not getting any monopoly charges despite controlling way more than internet explorer ever did.
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I thought that was a violation of the Clayton Anti-Trust Act, which sought to patch some loopholes and refine the more famous Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
mn-- said:
Well, depending on where exactly you were hanging around.

You could find specific areas where smartphones were fairly common in, say, 1997 already... but they tended to be small areas.

Like the very specific region between a Nokia Mobile Phones office, closest university, and a few other supporting buildings, like a grocery store and such - it used to be fairly easy for the professional nerds there to get issued a 9000 as their work phone.

Not many teens though - getting a job there before you turned 20 was a quite a challenge.
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I didn't realize that. Until they moved to Elgin in 2015, I lived less than 5 miles from Motorola's main HQ in northeastern Schaumburg (I believe the Rolling Meadows border was only a couple blocks north). My high school and Woodfield Mall were within that radius (I don't think Woodfield was more than a mile away). It seemed that in the late '90s everybody at Woodfield or Randhurst Mall had a cell phone, but again, they were NOT smart phones. At best they had cameras and could text, but only the really high end ones. Of course it was illegal to bring a cell phone to a high school or below until 2002 in IL, but that didn't stop some kids from doing so and getting away with it.
Ace Dreamer said:
Worm fanfic that assume Earth Bet (2011) has YouTube - probably wrong. Good chance that the camera phones in use have a keyboard - the materials for (capacitive) touch screens... might be a touch difficult to obtain. Also, large LCD screens, the tech involved in getting those functional, manufactured with no flawed pixels, in the late 1990s was very messy...
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Actually, YouTube was started in 2005, and I recall seeing links to videos on it in 2006, but my computer was old and obsolete and had a hard time playing them as the scripts YouTube used even then slowed my Dell Otiplex GX110 computer to a crawl even if it was functional for most other tasks on the web.

Smart phones were available in 2007, I had one issued to me by a company I worked for as a field service technician. They were becoming popular in 2006. They generally didn't start getting GPS until 2008, although a few were available in 2007 as I knew somebody who got one with a built-in GPS but it was only on the highest-end phones available.

I went back to school in 2009 to upgrade from an associates to a bachelor's degree in Information Systems and I think I was the only IT major without a smart phone. Ditto for when I got a job at Walgreen's DTR in 2011, I was the only tech there with only a flip phone instead of a smart phone.
 
Smart phones exploded rather early onto the scene in Japan and a few other spots.

I admit to reading *ahem* "adult" manga, and in many that were drawn in 2010 - 2020, there was a rather popular folding "semi" smart phone that had a tubular camera that also formed the hinge of the flip phone. It quickly became artistic shorthand in a lot of manga for "this kid is middle to upper class, he and his homies have money".

If I get home okay, I will find one such sketch, clip it down to just the phone, and see if anyone here can remember the brand and model.
 
EdBecerra said:
Smart phones exploded rather early onto the scene in Japan and a few other spots.

I admit to reading *ahem* "adult" manga, and in many that were drawn in 2010 - 2020, there was a rather popular folding "semi" smart phone that had a tubular camera that also formed the hinge of the flip phone. It quickly became artistic shorthand in a lot of manga for "this kid is middle to upper class, he and his homies have money".

If I get home okay, I will find one such sketch, clip it down to just the phone, and see if anyone here can remember the brand and model.
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Maybe the Samsung A600?


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NxiAMLjKWs
 
The Apple Newton was one of the most USEFUL flops in existence, though. I may still have one floating around. I was using it at points when others were sitting with Palm Pilots and the earliest tablets, and was getting better performance out of it than they got out of theirs.
 
Kinsfire said:
The Apple Newton was one of the most USEFUL flops in existence, though. I may still have one floating around. I was using it at points when others were sitting with Palm Pilots and the earliest tablets, and was getting better performance out of it than they got out of theirs.
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I've got an original Newton 100 a boss gave me in 2001 around somewhere. It has Graffiti on it, which I think predated its use on Palms. I never used it much though—I already had a Palm IIIx by then, and I stayed with Palm right up till the iPhone came out.
 
@japh - yes, I think that might be it. Looks very much like the manga images, save for the top of the A600 being clearly able to twist as well as flip. An earlier model perhaps? Otherwise spot on.
 
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zernoc56 said:
I do not remember that episode. Granted I stopped watching once the cast became a Ship of Theseus shortly after Weatherly left.

Did QA try typing on two keyboards really fast to stop Taylor hacking the network?
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Only thing better would be two people typing frantically on ONE keyboard, according to NCIS. It wasn't working, but it wasn't working at a slower rate. Of course, then Gibbs comes in and does the thing both Abby and Mcgee should have thought to do, and cuts all power to the computer and router.
 
FaerieKnight79 said:
The Pinkertons I think are now a private security agency, and trying to distance themself from their controversial past. You know, "we're not those Pinkertons, we're totally a new company with the same exact name."
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And do the same work, though these days their union busting is more spying on employees than knee breaking. That said they aren't really trying to distance themselves, their name as the first people you think of when you think union busters is a major marketing tool for them, their customers don't see that history as a bad thing.

FaerieKnight79 said:
Granted, outside of a rather niche use case (video streaming content that's region locked), there's no real reason to ever use a VPN service. The primary selling point is negated by pretty much everyone using the HTTPS protocol anyway.
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VPNs are good if your don't want your local network or ISP knowing what your endpoint is, or if you don't want your endpoint from knowing where you are. Outside spoofing geofenced streaming libraries it's not something most people would worry about.

EdBecerra said:
The hospital IT staff have red-flagged AO3 as...
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Better than the hospital IT staff that blocked any website containing certain blacklisted words, the maternity and ob/gyn departments weren't too happy to not be able to visit any pages containing "vaginal" one day. :D
 
mp3.1415player said:
From memory the 6502 was indeed one of the inspirations for the ARM design.
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As I've heard it told, they visited Western Design Center, which was one of the rights holder's to the 6502 design having been started by one of designers when he didn't feel like moving states when the rest of the team moved. They had been interested in the possibilities of getting a custom 6502 variant as some other companies had done or hiring WDC to design a cpu for them as surely that had to be too difficult for a small team like theirs. Only when they arrived they discovered WDC in those days was run out of an apartment and had compsci students from ASU doing design work ranging from the circuit diagrams to the photo lithography masks. And the answer they got from the owner was, "Well, I could design a cpu for you based on the 6502 but it would make more sense to start clean and if you are doing that why not do it yourself? Oh, and have you heard about this RISC idea the top academic cpu thinkers are talking about?" And it turned out, yes at least one of the team had read an article about RISC and looking around the room made it clear that designing their own was absolutely possible. Given that and that their earlier computers were 6502 based off be completely unsurpassed by 6502 inspiration.

Although my favorite bit of creation of the ARM lore was how it was so power efficient it worked despite a flaw meaning that the primary power pin on the first batch they received for testing wasn't connected to the chip.
 
Kinsfire said:
I despise NCIS for SO many reasons, not the least of which was Gibbs. My boss 'teaches me a lesson' by slapping the back of my head? HR is getting involved. If it doesn't work because he's got too much power? Well, this video says it for me.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FjWe31S_0g
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Great as that response is? Doesn't work for NCIS. NCIS is military. You do the work you are told to do, with the people you are tols to do it with, or you go to jail.
 
Kinsfire said:
The Apple Newton was one of the most USEFUL flops in existence, though. I may still have one floating around. I was using it at points when others were sitting with Palm Pilots and the earliest tablets, and was getting better performance out of it than they got out of theirs.
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I recall looking at the Newton, reading the reviews, and thinking 'If that was half the price, I'd get one to mess around with, but, Apple'. And, I was a poor student. So, a few years later, I got the ARM-based Psion Series 5, with an eye to having a general-purpose computer in my pocket, I could program all sorts of stuff on.

Nice machine, with it's IR link it could talk to other Psions, or use a (IR capable) cell phone to do e-mail, even talk to a portable printer, so you could write and print documents, anywhere. I'd hopes it was the future of pocket computing, and I'd never need a laptop (instead, smart phones). Downside, was it chewed through non-rechargable batteries, the hinge kept breaking (yes, it was guaranteed/had a repair contract), and the OS (EPOC 32) had a horrible C++ interface, that made programming your own apps for it a serious pain (OS interfaces need to be simple, not 'clever'). If they'd hidden this behind something like BBC BASIC V...

Twenty years on, I found the release of the Gemini PDA, as sort of reincarnation of the Series 5, interesting...

Do you think Taylor could devise a bug that functioned as a PDA, or a smart phone? Would it sell??? :)
 
On the other hand if she figures some stuff out she could offer "bug net" as an independent network much like Taylor Prime did for the inmates of the Birdcage in Hive Daughter.
 
Jordisk said:
Great as that response is? Doesn't work for NCIS. NCIS is military. You do the work you are told to do, with the people you are tols to do it with, or you go to jail.
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... and I'd be willing for it to go to court for the issue. Because despite it being NAVAL Criminal Investigation Service, in the series, it's multi-branch. (Gibbs, as you recall, is a Marine, which they only remind you about twenty times PER SEASON.) I think that the asshole DiNozzo used to be a cop that they grabbed. They can't just slip you into a private court-martial and disappear you. So Gibbs love of abusing the staff WOULD come out. It's one of the things I like about some of the fics where they call him on that, sometimes to the loss of his job and pension.
 
Kinsfire said:
Because despite it being NAVAL Criminal Investigation Service, in the series, it's multi-branch. (Gibbs, as you recall, is a Marine, which they only remind you about twenty times PER SEASON.)
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The Marine Corps is considered to be adjacent to the Navy, having started as infantry and sharpshooters serving aboard navel vessels, and are treated as part of the Navy as far as criminal investigations are concerned. So having a Marine in NCIS makes perfect sense.
 
Jacen1 said:
The Marine Corps is considered to be adjacent to the Navy, having started as infantry and sharpshooters serving aboard navel vessels, and are treated as part of the Navy as far as criminal investigations are concerned. So having a Marine in NCIS makes perfect sense.
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Besides which, DoD is DoD, don't matter what branch you're in you're still subject to the UCMJ and still have to follow orders of your boss, even if they are in a different branch than you. If it's an unlawful order then you can take it up the chain of command to contest it, otherwise you do what your told.

As for abuse in the workplace, there's whole departments hell-bent on putting a stop to that crap in the military. Plenty of people to bitch to and Gibbs wouldn't last a week, nor would half the ppl on that show. It's complete fiction bullshit.
 
Jordisk said:
Great as that response is? Doesn't work for NCIS. NCIS is military. You do the work you are told to do, with the people you are tols to do it with, or you go to jail.
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Except it's not actually military. It's military-adjacent. Or, rather, it's part of the nominally civilian oversight. Both answer to the Secretary of the Navy, but there is some separation...nominally.
Kinsfire said:
... and I'd be willing for it to go to court for the issue. Because despite it being NAVAL Criminal Investigation Service, in the series, it's multi-branch. (Gibbs, as you recall, is a Marine, which they only remind you about twenty times PER SEASON.) I think that the asshole DiNozzo used to be a cop that they grabbed. They can't just slip you into a private court-martial and disappear you. So Gibbs love of abusing the staff WOULD come out. It's one of the things I like about some of the fics where they call him on that, sometimes to the loss of his job and pension.
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This is due to some similar name issues. It's not part of the USN (United States Navy), but the DoN (Department of the Navy). The DoN oversees USN, USMC, and USCG(during wartime). There've been attempts to rename it DoNaMC, but they haven't succeeded yet. Basically, DoN pre-dates the creation of a separate Marine Corps, but did not split off a new Department within the broader DoD, unlike when the Air Force formed.
 
Wait, you're telling me that fiction lies? Whoa, next thing you're going to tell me that CSIs can't do DNA analysis in an hour or that you can't just adjust the focus on security footage to get a clear picture of the bad guys.
 
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