@alexonline: these are all awesome ! You should get a Grammy
BTW, through the DBK and ericpeets discussion I have a question as I got intrigued: in a distributed system with several CPUs and controllers how can you ensure they stay in sync ? ie how do you avoid that a given controller brings the whole orchestra out of whack ? How / who keeps the tempo according to specs ? I will look it up in any case but perhaps somebody knows.
The answer is, it depends. There are two types I've worked with, but there are probably more in other industries I'm not familiar with.
First is what I call the distributed database model, where the main objective is to dole out info. A simple example is DNS. There are what are called root servers that only know how to answer partial questions, namely does it end in a .com, .net, .org for example. If you want to know more, they can refer you to other servers with more detailed answers. On and on until you get to the authoritative server.
And even the final authoritative servers are distributed. There's the master and slave servers. Masters do the actual answering while slaves act as backups. Masters are chosen on regular basis and mainly depends on whether the server's alive or not. You choose enough masters to handle the queries, and the rest are designated as slaves.
Web applications operate in a similar way. There are perimeter servers that must figure out whether a page request is: static, dynamic and/or require DB query. Once figured out, it will either give out static page by itself or redirect the request to backend servers that will round out the request.
In this case, you essentially dedicate one server to be a traffic cop directing you to get to your destination (and find answer), and the rest either has the answer or is another cop with more detailed info on how to get you there.
There's really no guarantee you'll find your answer, or even get there. That's why there's DNS hijacking, 404 pages, so on. The vast nature of the distribution make end-to-end checking impossible.
The second model is the parallel computing model, where it's mainly about how to handle computing. In scientific computer, for example, you have one server (or CPU) dedicated to figuring out how much computation something will take and how to divide that task among other servers (or CPUs).
So, in this case you dedicate one server to be the factory manager, and the rest are grunts who are given their share of task and does them.
Oracle, with grid computing, does something of both (distributed database + parallel computing).
In this case, end-to-end checking is possible and even required.
Now, how does that apply to the Textblade? Since they claim to have 4 cpus (cores or separate SOC) when there are only three physical parts to it, I'm pretty sure they use more the second model, where there's a manager cpu + 3 grunts. The manager gathers reports from the grunts and communicates with the host computer. Each grunt does its share by listening to keypresses, figures out its exact scancode and relays that to the manager. I think in the spaceblade resides the manager + one grunt, for total of two cpu's.
But of course, that's my guess. What the hell do I know? I don't have a textblade.
Now, how does that apply to the Textblade? Since they claim to have 4 cpus (cores or separate SOC) when there are only three physical parts to it, I'm pretty sure they use more the second model, where there's a manager cpu + 3 grunts. The manager gathers reports from the grunts and communicates with the host computer. Each grunt does its share by listening to keypresses, figures out its exact scancode and relays that to the manager. I think in the spaceblade resides the manager + one grunt, for total of two cpu's.
Thanks for the detailed answer. It makes sense for a master slave approach.
Well, while I no longer have my grade book program, I have come across some written material from when I was first figuring out how to save just that data (stored in variables) rather than the whole program with the data. It was pretty much what I described before, but it was nice see it in writing.
Two bytes held the start of the basic program - which, on the computer in question, was always the same. Two bytes held the start of the variables, which were always immediately after the end of the basic section.
So all I had to do was:
Poke (the first byte of the address for basic),Peek (the first byte of the address for variables). - iow, just transfer copy the variable address to the basic address. Poke (the 2nd byte of the address for basic),Peek (the 2nd byte of the address for variables). - ditto Save (which the computer always starts with what it thinks is the start of Basic, but now is the start of Variables. Poke the original values for the start of Basic back in.
That was about it. It took more characters to describe it above than it did to write that part of the code! Nothing complicated. While I suspect I made some minor adjustments when I was ready to apply that to real use programs, that was still the fundamental approach and, yes, it worked every time.
And I also found there was a Verify command so, after saving anything, you could take the time to play the cassette back to confirm it was correct. I had forgotten about that.
So saving just data was easy. Saving on cassettes meant this was a big time saver. And even if you were saving to disk, it would save a lot of space on the disk in those days when you didn't have much to begin with. And, as I explained earlier, doing at least the main portion of the math calculations was easy. And I had, by using ascii codes and a couple other things, saved a lot of memory to make room for more students / grades than other programs did.
Sometimes it isn't about programming skill - or knowing all the "proper" terminology - but having a little imagination. A great example was the grade storage. Even similar programs that only allowed whole numbers (no fractions) for grades - and that was almost all of them - were storing the grades as floating point numbers. And why not? They are numbers so that sure seems logical. But, at least on my computer, a floating point number took 5 bytes as I recall. My way took exactly 1. Since the largest demand and memory would often be the number of grades, this made the biggest difference.
> Does gigahertz (for cpu's), megahertz, CAS latency (for RAM), SATA2/3, PCIe SATA, SCSI, Thunderbolt 1/2/3, IOPS for disks, USB1.1/2/3 for interfaces -- any of that ring a bell? Marketing uses 'speed' while programmers prefer 'timing' because everything has speed and runs in cycles, in accordance to its own clock or based on the CPU's. And they all have to be in sync. It's the "FIRMWARE" (or BIOS, or UEFI BIOS) that makes sure they all run in sync.
Almost all your post is about throwing out computer/programming terms and declaring I don't know what they mean (usually falsely) - as you keep skipping over the actual point. The above is just one of many examples of you doing this.
All to miss the simple point that speed is affected not just by timing, but how efficiently the program (including a program in firmware) works. While speeding up the program in firmware MIGHT cause some timing problem, it clearly isn't the case that it must. Because surely whatever the original speed efficiency was would be unlikely to be the maximum that will work!
Yet more posts proving more ignorance about machine language programming.
These are not uncommon terms. Even to a simple consumer buying a computer, they're about as common as the price tags. If you don't know these basic terms, I don't see how you can buy one. As a programmer, they tell you the speed and timing in their controllers. You can't put together things willy nilly -- at differing speeds and timings -- and expect them to work. Nor can you replace one item in set of things that work with something faster (or even slower) and expect everything to be hunky-dory. You'll probably have to replace multiple items items, or all things for best chances.
Mess with something that was previously working, there's high chance that chain will no longer work. In low level programming dealing with speed and timing is a constant problem. You don't know because you haven't done any.
I didn't start by declaring you didn't know. You first bragged and attacked someone with your claims, so the onus was on you to prove it. Each of your subsequent replies proves (to all but you) that you're oblivious of the low-level programming environment, least of all machine language environment, which is about the lowest you can get.
You've played this game before. You made a big deal about how hard it would be to do the math in in machine code You acting like you knew I couldn't do it. And took advantage of the fact that I surely didn't remember details.
I see you're trying to cook up some conspiracy theory, that either I or somebody else was out to get you from the start. Conspiracy theories are nice, since they can explain away everything. It's the modern version of mysticism, voodoo. But to most people it just comes off as a desperate, last resort tactic, and is another play from Waytools playbook.
But then I looked some things up and, surprise, it turned out there was this nifty little "ADD" instruction that easily adds two registers together (a very key and often used step in a grade book program). It was easy to load (LD) the registers with the value of an address that held a grade. So when I said I didn't think of it as a big deal, surprise again, it was because it wasn't a big deal. I may sometimes enter the code in assembly terms. Or enter it as the MC hex numbers (for things that were common and I simply remembered eventually - such as LD A, which was used a LOT). Either way, it comes out as MC the computer doesn't have to interpret like it did the Basic part of the program and it wasn't complicated at all.
You're choking on your own words here. Slow down.
You're still referring to binary arithmetic, how did you do decimal (in an all-binary environment)?
How did you convert the binary to decimal and vice versa (asked n-th time now)?
What CPU are you referring to (can you say this time?)?
What's the CPU architecture? 8, 16, 32 -bit? (Let me guess, you can't say?)
Is ADD an ML opcode, or an assembly mnemonic? They're not the same. Former would mean it's a built-in opcode, latter would indicate a compile-time macro. (Let me guess, you don't know)
LDA (not LD A) looks like 6502 code, meaning load accumulator. Does this look familiar: https://www.masswerk.at/6502/6502_instruction_set.html Because I sure don't see an 'ADD' instruction there. Are you referring to two different chips? Is one 8-bit and the other a 32-bit?
I don't think you can answer any of those questions. Do you see how your replies create more UNCERTAINTIES, because you FEAR being outed, making people DOUBT you more == FUD.
> These are not uncommon terms. Even to a simple consumer buying a computer, they're about as common as the price tags.
LOL! Probably everyone buying a computer knows the price they are paying. A whole bunch won't know all those other things, especially this one: "CAS latency". I've seen lots of people shopping for computers and not once, in all the questions they may ask about cpu's, storage, etc, have I ever heard anyone ask about that!
> I don't see how you can buy one.
Well, we can start with the basics. Go into a store (or online), see something you like which fits your budget. Pay for it. Many people do only that. But not me.
> You first bragged and attacked someone with your claims, so the onus was on you to prove it.
I first simply made an example about programming, using an example from my own experience. TBD then made my programming itself an issue and you brought in the grade book item. So don't blame me.
Meanwhile, you still throw in fibs, like this one:
> What's the CPU architecture? 8, 16, 32 -bit? (Let me guess, you can't say?)
But I already said it was 8-bit. You see, it is things like that - and I gave many more examples in a prior response - that either show you are being less than honest or you don't pay attention to the answers anyway.
> LDA (not LD A)
You're wrong again! I know about LDA too, but you seem ignorant about LD A. You sure do make a LOT of assumptions! But this is my favorite:
> looks like 6502 code Considering I specifically said it wasn't 6502 before, that's a strange thing to challenge me on! But it does show you don't pay attention to the answers you are given (or you are deliberately trying to mislead readers). You are good at making assumptions though. Just not accurate assumptions.
Well, while I no longer have my grade book program, I have come across some written material from when I was first figuring out how to save just that data (stored in variables) rather than the whole program with the data. It was pretty much what I described before, but it was nice see it in writing.
Two bytes held the start of the basic program - which, on the computer in question, was always the same. Two bytes held the start of the variables, which were always immediately after the end of the basic section.
So all I had to do was:
Poke (the first byte of the address for basic),Peek (the first byte of the address for variables). - iow, just transfer copy the variable address to the basic address. Poke (the 2nd byte of the address for basic),Peek (the 2nd byte of the address for variables). - ditto Save (which the computer always starts with what it thinks is the start of Basic, but now is the start of Variables. Poke the original values for the start of Basic back in.
That was about it. It took more characters to describe it above than it did to write that part of the code! Nothing complicated. While I suspect I made some minor adjustments when I was ready to apply that to real use programs, that was still the fundamental approach and, yes, it worked every time.
And I also found there was a Verify command so, after saving anything, you could take the time to play the cassette back to confirm it was correct. I had forgotten about that.
I think now we're getting somewhere. You wrote a BASIC program that implemented a few peeks and pokes here and there to distinguish between the program space vs data space, for the sake of dumping the data onto a cassette. Not sure why you didn't use what was already built into BASIC, but okay.
So saving just data was easy. Saving on cassettes meant this was a big time saver. And even if you were saving to disk, it would save a lot of space on the disk in those days when you didn't have much to begin with.
I agree. Saving just the data without all the overhead would have been quick even on cassette. Would be almost instantaneous on a floppy.
And, as I explained earlier, doing at least the main portion of the math calculations was easy. And I had, by using ascii codes and a couple other things, saved a lot of memory to make room for more students / grades than other programs did.
But this is where it gets problematic. You saved the data in just one byte -- as an ASCII code. Why? ASCII format would mean:
It's fine for display, but only display
The data is then a string, not numeric value
Which means it would take up more space than just one byte, more like 1-byte for each digit + terminator character
You can't do math with strings, you must convert to a numeric first, do math, then convert it back for storage or display
And even if you did all that, what you have is a binary representation of the decimal value. How did you go about converting that to a decimal, and then convert it for display? You see, all that's taken care of in BASIC, but you're on your own when in machine language environment.
Sometimes it isn't about programming skill - or knowing all the "proper" terminology - but having a little imagination. A great example was the grade storage. Even similar programs that only allowed whole numbers (no fractions) for grades - and that was almost all of them - were storing the grades as floating point numbers.
No, it's indeed more about 'skill' than 'imagination'. After all, how 'imaginative' is it do add/subtract numbers? I can't think of anything more mundane than that! But behind that mundane, unimaginative task, there is skill that goes into them. Many people take for granted all the mundane stuff that computer does nowadays, like ethernet, DNS, file systems, GUI, and on and on -- all pretty mundane, unimaginative even. But if you dig into them, you see a lot of skill (and sweat) went into each.
Floating point is another beast all together -- something which further proves the limitless bottom to your ignorance. Besides, you said you didn't do any floating points.
And why not? They are numbers so that sure seems logical. But, at least on my computer, a floating point number took 5 bytes as I recall. My way took exactly 1. Since the largest demand and memory would often be the number of grades, this made the biggest difference.
Sure. War and Peace is just words anyone can throw together. Moonlight Sonata is just some guy tapping on keys (piano keys, not textblade).
Forget about my saying we're getting somewhere. Not only are we going nowhere, you have us going backwards, and fast.
Well, while I no longer have my grade book program, I have come across some written material from when I was first figuring out how to save just that data (stored in variables) rather than the whole program with the data. It was pretty much what I described before, but it was nice see it in writing.
Two bytes held the start of the basic program - which, on the computer in question, was always the same. Two bytes held the start of the variables, which were always immediately after the end of the basic section.
So all I had to do was:
Poke (the first byte of the address for basic),Peek (the first byte of the address for variables). - iow, just transfer copy the variable address to the basic address. Poke (the 2nd byte of the address for basic),Peek (the 2nd byte of the address for variables). - ditto Save (which the computer always starts with what it thinks is the start of Basic, but now is the start of Variables. Poke the original values for the start of Basic back in.
That was about it. It took more characters to describe it above than it did to write that part of the code! Nothing complicated. While I suspect I made some minor adjustments when I was ready to apply that to real use programs, that was still the fundamental approach and, yes, it worked every time.
And I also found there was a Verify command so, after saving anything, you could take the time to play the cassette back to confirm it was correct. I had forgotten about that.
I think now we're getting somewhere. You wrote a BASIC program that implemented a few peeks and pokes here and there to distinguish between the program space vs data space, for the sake of dumping the data onto a cassette. Not sure why you didn't use what was already built into BASIC, but okay.
So saving just data was easy. Saving on cassettes meant this was a big time saver. And even if you were saving to disk, it would save a lot of space on the disk in those days when you didn't have much to begin with.
I agree. Saving just the data without all the overhead would have been quick even on cassette. Would be almost instantaneous on a floppy.
And, as I explained earlier, doing at least the main portion of the math calculations was easy. And I had, by using ascii codes and a couple other things, saved a lot of memory to make room for more students / grades than other programs did.
But this is where it gets problematic. You saved the data in just one byte -- as an ASCII code. Why? ASCII format would mean:
It's fine for display, but only display
The data is then a string, not numeric value
Which means it would take up more space than just one byte, more like 1-byte for each digit + terminator character
You can't do math with strings, you must convert to a numeric first, do math, then convert it back for storage or display
And even if you did all that, what you have is a binary representation of the decimal value. How did you go about converting that to a decimal, and then convert it for display? You see, all that's taken care of in BASIC, but you're on your own when in machine language environment.
Sometimes it isn't about programming skill - or knowing all the "proper" terminology - but having a little imagination. A great example was the grade storage. Even similar programs that only allowed whole numbers (no fractions) for grades - and that was almost all of them - were storing the grades as floating point numbers.
No, it's indeed more about 'skill' than 'imagination'. After all, how 'imaginative' is it do add/subtract numbers? I can't think of anything more mundane than that! But behind that mundane, unimaginative task, there is skill that goes into them. Many people take for granted all the mundane stuff that computer does nowadays, like ethernet, DNS, file systems, GUI, and on and on -- all pretty mundane, unimaginative even. But if you dig into them, you see a lot of skill (and sweat) went into each.
Floating point is another beast all together -- something which further proves the limitless bottom to your ignorance. Besides, you said you didn't do any floating points.
And why not? They are numbers so that sure seems logical. But, at least on my computer, a floating point number took 5 bytes as I recall. My way took exactly 1. Since the largest demand and memory would often be the number of grades, this made the biggest difference.
Sure. War and Peace is just words anyone can throw together. Moonlight Sonata is just some guy tapping on keys (piano keys, not textblade).
Forget about my saying we're getting somewhere. Not only are we going nowhere, you have us going backwards, and fast.
> These are not uncommon terms. Even to a simple consumer buying a computer, they're about as common as the price tags.
LOL! Probably everyone buying a computer knows the price they are paying. A whole bunch won't know all those other things, especially this one: "CAS latency". I've seen lots of people shopping for computers and not once, in all the questions they may ask about cpu's, storage, etc, have I ever heard anyone ask about that!
Okay, I'll give you that one. "CAS latency" is not for everyone. Not even most tech heads, unless they're tweakers and overclockers.
> I don't see how you can buy one.
Well, we can start with the basics. Go into a store (or online), see something you like which fits your budget. Pay for it. Many people do only that. But not me.
Is that why you struggled so much just speccing out a Mac Mini, and had to ask Waytools (and everyone else) for help? Rather than just "pay for it"? Oppo-PR's watching you... LOL.
> You first bragged and attacked someone with your claims, so the onus was on you to prove it.
I first simply made an example about programming, using an example from my own experience. TBD then made my programming itself an issue and you brought in the grade book item. So don't blame me.
You said:
Wrong again. Sure, I wrote some things in basic. So? If it gets THE JOB done, so what? One of the first things I learned was that there were proficient/expert programmers out there who couldn't write a program that really met the needs of the end user. I'd give examples, but I don't think you'd pay attention. I always focused on the end user and then figured out how to accomplish what they needed.
sounds like an attack to me. Not by my definition, more yours. You claimed "attack" and "verbal violence" for lot less than this.
Meanwhile, you still throw in fibs, like this one:
> What's the CPU architecture? 8, 16, 32 -bit? (Let me guess, you can't say?)
But I already said it was 8-bit. You see, it is things like that - and I gave many more examples in a prior response - that either show you are being less than honest or you don't pay attention to the answers anyway.
> LDA (not LD A)
You're wrong again! I know about LDA too, but you seem ignorant about LD A. You sure do make a LOT of assumptions! But this is my favorite:
> looks like 6502 code Considering I specifically said it wasn't 6502 before, that's a strange thing to challenge me on! But it does show you don't pay attention to the answers you are given (or you are deliberately trying to mislead readers). You are good at making assumptions though. Just not accurate assumptions.
I thought we were talking about the CPU where you found LD A, or LDA, and/or ADD, not the one where you wrote your BASIC grading program. Why are you referring to your post several pages back? Are they the same CPU? Really, I don't know which CPU or CPUs you're referring to, since you won't (or can't) say.
That's why you need a point of reference to have any intelligible discussion. That's why I said: "looks like 6502" not "it is 6502". Get it? If you insist on pointing at different things left and right, it kinda becomes tough to talk about anything.
At the very least, just tell me which personality am I talking to now, Sybil?
apologies. dunno why my previous post was posted twice.
I’m guessing Rolanbek means the stuff about trying to pin DBK for his lack, or otherwise, of the knowledge he does or doesn’t have about programming, BASIC, machine language, etc.
I can see it would seem delicious to catch DBK in some kind of untruth about programming, but as you have been able to see, DBK can explain and rationalise anything, whether he does or doesn’t know anything about it.
Given this impressive skill set, DBK would have made for an excellent content creator in Orville’s Ministry of Truth, for whether he did or didn’t believe in the plans and goals of the Orwellian government, as a civil servant functionary, he would demonstrably have been spectacularly excellent at his job.
No matter the truth or otherwise of the situation, DBK can clearly be 100% relied upon to write up a detailed report. Need a report that explains why the situation is the way it is?
DBK can write it.
Need a report that explains why it should be the other way?
DBK can write it!!
I can probably claim the exact same skills, although I’d only ever use them in a truly Orwellian situation where one needs to be in the tent to save one’s life, but through which you can secretly be part of the resistance to bring the bad side down.
Or something like that. Maybe DBK truly is a resistance fighter fighting from the inside, where his every communication needs to placate Snoketon and Palpaknihghtine’s omnipresentnesses?
After all, DBK he slowly grown ever more strident and insolent in his attempts to publicly admonish WT for its lack of promise keeping and lack of info divulgement.
Perhaps those degrees of stridency and insolence are far too tiny to be to your liking, but DBK walks a fine line.
When Darth Wayder can force choke your TB out of existence, and you want to keep it, then your ability to openly revolt is, well, limited.
It probably also comes down to saving face. While Snoketon’s face is already crushed beyond all recognition, as has been seen in EPISODE VII and VIII, being THE JOKE AWAKENS and THE LATEST EXCUSE, and we see how Palpaknightine’s face was seriously marred in EPISODE III: RETURN OF THE SHIFT KEY and the original TREGLOGY of movies (Eps 4, 5 and 6), we’ve never seen DBK’s face.
In one sense, it then doesn’t need saving, but given that saving face is not usually meant in terms of physical damage, but reputational damage, DBK will never be made to admit whether his BASIC knowledge of machine language was basically made up, or not.
Thus, further attempts to make out that DBK is Da Borg King are futile. His resistance to losing face is your futile attempt to make him lose it, because whatever you say, DBK has an answer.
Whether it is the right answer is the point you’re making, but if you continue, it will be the start of yet another 100 year war, and few of us will live that long.
If you feel you must continue, that is up to you, but my guess is that Rolanbek was suggesting the fight was leaving us uncomfortably numb, given DBK’s Terminator-like Energizer bunny’s ability to keep going and going and going and going.
Unless you are John Connor (who, in the last movie, became a ++SPOILER WARNING++ Terminator himself), it may well be time to simply Declare Victory (whether DBK agrees or not) and move on.
Either way, may your machine’s language be well oiled, and basically, may the force touch keyboard eventually be with us all.
> Not sure why you didn't use what was already built into BASIC, but okay.
Because it wasn't built into Basic. Just using my imagination.
>But this is where it gets problematic. You saved the data in just one byte -- as an ASCII code. Why? ASCII format would mean:
> The data is then a string, not numeric value
> Which means it would take up more space than just one byte, more like 1-byte for each digit + terminator character
> You can't do math with strings, you must convert to a numeric first, do math, then convert it back for storage or display
No, it doesn't mean that. For example, a student scores a 99. The ascii character for 99 is a lowercase "c". So, in a sense, you might say I'm storing a string. But that is not really correct. After all, everything is stored in binary numbers. So if you look at the address holding that 99 (or "c"), you still have the binary number for 99. I simply do the math on that number value that underlies everything.
I didn't recall the printing process, but looking at stuff online I saw one that had a Printc (c being the register to be printed) in assembly. In the example they added two numbers in registers (say 20+5), put result in register c and the display of the result was "25". Very cool! Sure seems simple. Certainly seems likely that's what I did.
> Floating point is another beast all together -- something which further proves the limitless bottom to your ignorance. Besides, you said you didn't do any floating points.
Wow, missed the point again! I know enough about floating point numbers to know that it took about 5 bytes on my computer to store each. I knew I could store numbers differently to take just 1 byte. That's it. That's all I needed to know for this. Yet you say that "further proves the limitless bottom to your ignorance".
Careful, because some people may notice you didn't actually show how that is the case. You simply made an empty accusation. You do that a lot.
Let me save you time and reveal the usual next excuse to attack: "I don't have to show why, everyone can see it". Trouble is, no one else will have shown it either and the rational readers will eventually notice.
> Is that why you struggled so much just speccing out a Mac Mini, and had to ask Waytools (and everyone else) for help? Rather than just "pay for it"?
You still don't listen, even though you quoted me accurately. I referred to what many people do, which contradicted your description AND I included, "Many people do only that. But not me." Can you actually read the last 3 words in that quote?
> You said:
Which was to TBD after he was doing his ridicule game. People in glass houses and all that.
> I thought we were talking about the CPU where you found LD A, or LDA, and/or ADD, not the one where you wrote your BASIC grading program.
That's weird since it has pretty consistently been about the computer and program I created MC on. Now you say "LD A OR LDA". That isn't what you said before! You said "NOT LD A", as if I was wrong. But you were wrong. And obviously it didn't "look like" a 6502 instruction since both LD A and ADD don't fit that, according to what you posted.
DBK can clearly be 100% relied upon to write up a detailed report.
whatever you say, DBK has an answer.
Well, it's sort of easy to write short posts making baseless attacks on someone. After all, being baseless, they can't include anything to back them up. If they are long - and some are - the length seems to be more of an effort to make things so confusing that maybe people don't notice that none of it makes sense. This tends to happen when their shorter posts become too obviously wrong. And, sure enough, their posts are getting longer!
So it will always take a lot more work to show why those posts are wrong. Oh, I could just respond with "You are wrong", but that gives the advantage to those who make things up. Especially since there are more of them. So, yep, I'll tend to make longer posts.
DBK can clearly be 100% relied upon to write up a detailed report.
whatever you say, DBK has an answer.
Well, it's sort of easy to write posts making baseless attacks on someone. After all, being baseless, they can't include anything to back them up. If they are long - and some are - the length seems to be more of an effort to make things so confusing that maybe people don't notice that none of it makes sense. This tends to happen when their shorter posts become too obviously wrong. And, sure enough, their posts are getting longer!
Eric would probably claim the above relates to your posts :-) :-) :-)
it’s federal election voting day in Australia. No Trumps here down under although we do have a character called Clive Palmer who wants to “Make Australia Great”.
Eric would probably claim the above relates to your posts
I'm sure. CLAIMS are easy. Just like assumptions.
But he was wrong about a bunch of things, some of which are easy to show. Such as wondering why I didn't save variables using Basic when that option didn't exist on my system.
Or saying it would be difficult to do math, yet I just needed the "ADD" command to do most of it.
And the related error where he seemed to think if he didn't have it on 6502 CPUs he couldn't figure it out. Did you know I could search for "assembly" and "ADD" and come up with a mere 700 million on google. I suppose some wouldn't actually be about an "ADD" assembly instruction, but I checked the first 3 or 4 and all did. Seems it is found on multiple CPUs!
Or that I would have to go through some awkward process to display my grade codes as decimal numbers.
I could go on and on, and throw in things I specifically answered, yet he said I would say, "I don't remember" or something.
So, yes, he could CLAIM and I can claim. But I can back it up.
Eric would probably claim the above relates to your posts
I'm sure. CLAIMS are easy. Just like assumptions.
But he was wrong about a bunch of things, some of which are easy to show. Such as wondering why I didn't save variables using Basic when that option didn't exist on my system.
Or saying it would be difficult to do math, yet I just needed the "ADD" command to do most of it.
And the related error where he seemed to think if he didn't have it on 6502 CPUs he couldn't figure it out. Did you know I could search for "assembly" and "ADD" and come up with a mere 700 million on google. I suppose some wouldn't actually be about an "ADD" assembly instruction, but I checked the first 3 or 4 and all did. Seems it is found on multiple CPUs!
Or that I would have to go through some awkward process to display my grade codes as decimal numbers.
I could go on and on, and throw in things I specifically answered, yet he said I would say, "I don't remember" or something.
So, yes, he could CLAIM and I can claim. But I can back it up.
Eric would presumably say he could back it up too, and that claims are claims.
Eric would presumably say he could back it up too, and that claims are claims.
But he won't back it up. But let's take a recent one and see what happens.
I wrote: "Even similar programs that only allowed whole numbers (no fractions) for grades - and that was almost all of them - were storing the grades as floating point numbers."
His response > Floating point is another beast all together -- something which further proves the limitless bottom to your ignorance. Besides, you said you didn't do any floating points. How long should we wait for him to back up his criticism? Maybe you could help him out?
Since it is true that it took 5 bytes on my computer, what is he basing his made-up ridicule on? Is he going to say it isn't 5 bytes? If so, that would be another mistake since it would probably only mean that it was different on whatever systems he uses. Just as he got it wrong about LD A and ADD because they were different or didn't exist on what he was familiar with. As such, making such an argument would only show he is ignorant.
Comments
There are no words...
First is what I call the distributed database model, where the main objective is to dole out info. A simple example is DNS. There are what are called root servers that only know how to answer partial questions, namely does it end in a .com, .net, .org for example. If you want to know more, they can refer you to other servers with more detailed answers. On and on until you get to the authoritative server.
And even the final authoritative servers are distributed. There's the master and slave servers. Masters do the actual answering while slaves act as backups. Masters are chosen on regular basis and mainly depends on whether the server's alive or not. You choose enough masters to handle the queries, and the rest are designated as slaves.
Web applications operate in a similar way. There are perimeter servers that must figure out whether a page request is: static, dynamic and/or require DB query. Once figured out, it will either give out static page by itself or redirect the request to backend servers that will round out the request.
In this case, you essentially dedicate one server to be a traffic cop directing you to get to your destination (and find answer), and the rest either has the answer or is another cop with more detailed info on how to get you there.
There's really no guarantee you'll find your answer, or even get there. That's why there's DNS hijacking, 404 pages, so on. The vast nature of the distribution make end-to-end checking impossible.
The second model is the parallel computing model, where it's mainly about how to handle computing. In scientific computer, for example, you have one server (or CPU) dedicated to figuring out how much computation something will take and how to divide that task among other servers (or CPUs).
So, in this case you dedicate one server to be the factory manager, and the rest are grunts who are given their share of task and does them.
Oracle, with grid computing, does something of both (distributed database + parallel computing).
In this case, end-to-end checking is possible and even required.
Now, how does that apply to the Textblade? Since they claim to have 4 cpus (cores or separate SOC) when there are only three physical parts to it, I'm pretty sure they use more the second model, where there's a manager cpu + 3 grunts. The manager gathers reports from the grunts and communicates with the host computer. Each grunt does its share by listening to keypresses, figures out its exact scancode and relays that to the manager. I think in the spaceblade resides the manager + one grunt, for total of two cpu's.
But of course, that's my guess. What the hell do I know? I don't have a textblade.
Thank you, thank you. This is one of my favorite songs. And it's funny how it always entered my head whenever WT posted...
You truly are a genius!!!
Thanks for the detailed answer. It makes sense for a master slave approach.
Two bytes held the start of the basic program - which, on the computer in question, was always the same.
Two bytes held the start of the variables, which were always immediately after the end of the basic section.
So all I had to do was:
Poke (the first byte of the address for basic),Peek (the first byte of the address for variables). - iow, just transfer copy the variable address to the basic address.
Poke (the 2nd byte of the address for basic),Peek (the 2nd byte of the address for variables). - ditto
Save (which the computer always starts with what it thinks is the start of Basic, but now is the start of Variables.
Poke the original values for the start of Basic back in.
That was about it. It took more characters to describe it above than it did to write that part of the code! Nothing complicated. While I suspect I made some minor adjustments when I was ready to apply that to real use programs, that was still the fundamental approach and, yes, it worked every time.
And I also found there was a Verify command so, after saving anything, you could take the time to play the cassette back to confirm it was correct. I had forgotten about that.
So saving just data was easy. Saving on cassettes meant this was a big time saver. And even if you were saving to disk, it would save a lot of space on the disk in those days when you didn't have much to begin with. And, as I explained earlier, doing at least the main portion of the math calculations was easy. And I had, by using ascii codes and a couple other things, saved a lot of memory to make room for more students / grades than other programs did.
Sometimes it isn't about programming skill - or knowing all the "proper" terminology - but having a little imagination. A great example was the grade storage. Even similar programs that only allowed whole numbers (no fractions) for grades - and that was almost all of them - were storing the grades as floating point numbers. And why not? They are numbers so that sure seems logical. But, at least on my computer, a floating point number took 5 bytes as I recall. My way took exactly 1. Since the largest demand and memory would often be the number of grades, this made the biggest difference.
These are not uncommon terms. Even to a simple consumer buying a computer, they're about as common as the price tags. If you don't know these basic terms, I don't see how you can buy one. As a programmer, they tell you the speed and timing in their controllers. You can't put together things willy nilly -- at differing speeds and timings -- and expect them to work. Nor can you replace one item in set of things that work with something faster (or even slower) and expect everything to be hunky-dory. You'll probably have to replace multiple items items, or all things for best chances.
Mess with something that was previously working, there's high chance that chain will no longer work. In low level programming dealing with speed and timing is a constant problem. You don't know because you haven't done any.
I didn't start by declaring you didn't know. You first bragged and attacked someone with your claims, so the onus was on you to prove it. Each of your subsequent replies proves (to all but you) that you're oblivious of the low-level programming environment, least of all machine language environment, which is about the lowest you can get.
I see you're trying to cook up some conspiracy theory, that either I or somebody else was out to get you from the start. Conspiracy theories are nice, since they can explain away everything. It's the modern version of mysticism, voodoo. But to most people it just comes off as a desperate, last resort tactic, and is another play from Waytools playbook.
You're choking on your own words here. Slow down.
https://www.masswerk.at/6502/6502_instruction_set.html
Because I sure don't see an 'ADD' instruction there. Are you referring to two different chips? Is one 8-bit and the other a 32-bit?
I don't think you can answer any of those questions. Do you see how your replies create more UNCERTAINTIES, because you FEAR being outed, making people DOUBT you more == FUD.
edit: added line spacings for Kahuna
LOL! Probably everyone buying a computer knows the price they are paying. A whole bunch won't know all those other things, especially this one: "CAS latency". I've seen lots of people shopping for computers and not once, in all the questions they may ask about cpu's, storage, etc, have I ever heard anyone ask about that!
> I don't see how you can buy one.
Well, we can start with the basics. Go into a store (or online), see something you like which fits your budget. Pay for it. Many people do only that. But not me.
> You first bragged and attacked someone with your claims, so the onus was on you to prove it.
I first simply made an example about programming, using an example from my own experience. TBD then made my programming itself an issue and you brought in the grade book item. So don't blame me.
Meanwhile, you still throw in fibs, like this one:
> What's the CPU architecture? 8, 16, 32 -bit? (Let me guess, you can't say?)
But I already said it was 8-bit. You see, it is things like that - and I gave many more examples in a prior response - that either show you are being less than honest or you don't pay attention to the answers anyway.
> LDA (not LD A)
You're wrong again! I know about LDA too, but you seem ignorant about LD A. You sure do make a LOT of assumptions! But this is my favorite:
> looks like 6502 code
Considering I specifically said it wasn't 6502 before, that's a strange thing to challenge me on! But it does show you don't pay attention to the answers you are given (or you are deliberately trying to mislead readers). You are good at making assumptions though. Just not accurate assumptions.
I agree. Saving just the data without all the overhead would have been quick even on cassette. Would be almost instantaneous on a floppy.
But this is where it gets problematic. You saved the data in just one byte -- as an ASCII code. Why? ASCII format would mean:
- It's fine for display, but only display
- The data is then a string, not numeric value
- Which means it would take up more space than just one byte, more like 1-byte for each digit + terminator character
- You can't do math with strings, you must convert to a numeric first, do math, then convert it back for storage or display
And even if you did all that, what you have is a binary representation of the decimal value. How did you go about converting that to a decimal, and then convert it for display? You see, all that's taken care of in BASIC, but you're on your own when in machine language environment.No, it's indeed more about 'skill' than 'imagination'. After all, how 'imaginative' is it do add/subtract numbers? I can't think of anything more mundane than that! But behind that mundane, unimaginative task, there is skill that goes into them. Many people take for granted all the mundane stuff that computer does nowadays, like ethernet, DNS, file systems, GUI, and on and on -- all pretty mundane, unimaginative even. But if you dig into them, you see a lot of skill (and sweat) went into each.
Floating point is another beast all together -- something which further proves the limitless bottom to your ignorance. Besides, you said you didn't do any floating points.
Sure. War and Peace is just words anyone can throw together. Moonlight Sonata is just some guy tapping on keys (piano keys, not textblade).
Forget about my saying we're getting somewhere. Not only are we going nowhere, you have us going backwards, and fast.
I agree. Saving just the data without all the overhead would have been quick even on cassette. Would be almost instantaneous on a floppy.
But this is where it gets problematic. You saved the data in just one byte -- as an ASCII code. Why? ASCII format would mean:
- It's fine for display, but only display
- The data is then a string, not numeric value
- Which means it would take up more space than just one byte, more like 1-byte for each digit + terminator character
- You can't do math with strings, you must convert to a numeric first, do math, then convert it back for storage or display
And even if you did all that, what you have is a binary representation of the decimal value. How did you go about converting that to a decimal, and then convert it for display? You see, all that's taken care of in BASIC, but you're on your own when in machine language environment.No, it's indeed more about 'skill' than 'imagination'. After all, how 'imaginative' is it do add/subtract numbers? I can't think of anything more mundane than that! But behind that mundane, unimaginative task, there is skill that goes into them. Many people take for granted all the mundane stuff that computer does nowadays, like ethernet, DNS, file systems, GUI, and on and on -- all pretty mundane, unimaginative even. But if you dig into them, you see a lot of skill (and sweat) went into each.
Floating point is another beast all together -- something which further proves the limitless bottom to your ignorance. Besides, you said you didn't do any floating points.
Sure. War and Peace is just words anyone can throw together. Moonlight Sonata is just some guy tapping on keys (piano keys, not textblade).
Forget about my saying we're getting somewhere. Not only are we going nowhere, you have us going backwards, and fast.
R
Is that why you struggled so much just speccing out a Mac Mini, and had to ask Waytools (and everyone else) for help? Rather than just "pay for it"? Oppo-PR's watching you... LOL.
You said:
sounds like an attack to me. Not by my definition, more yours. You claimed "attack" and "verbal violence" for lot less than this.
I thought we were talking about the CPU where you found LD A, or LDA, and/or ADD, not the one where you wrote your BASIC grading program. Why are you referring to your post several pages back? Are they the same CPU? Really, I don't know which CPU or CPUs you're referring to, since you won't (or can't) say.
That's why you need a point of reference to have any intelligible discussion. That's why I said: "looks like 6502" not "it is 6502". Get it? If you insist on pointing at different things left and right, it kinda becomes tough to talk about anything.
At the very least, just tell me which personality am I talking to now, Sybil?
I can see it would seem delicious to catch DBK in some kind of untruth about programming, but as you have been able to see, DBK can explain and rationalise anything, whether he does or doesn’t know anything about it.
Given this impressive skill set, DBK would have made for an excellent content creator in Orville’s Ministry of Truth, for whether he did or didn’t believe in the plans and goals of the Orwellian government, as a civil servant functionary, he would demonstrably have been spectacularly excellent at his job.
No matter the truth or otherwise of the situation, DBK can clearly be 100% relied upon to write up a detailed report. Need a report that explains why the situation is the way it is?
DBK can write it.
Need a report that explains why it should be the other way?
DBK can write it!!
I can probably claim the exact same skills, although I’d only ever use them in a truly Orwellian situation where one needs to be in the tent to save one’s life, but through which you can secretly be part of the resistance to bring the bad side down.
Or something like that. Maybe DBK truly is a resistance fighter fighting from the inside, where his every communication needs to placate Snoketon and Palpaknihghtine’s omnipresentnesses?
After all, DBK he slowly grown ever more strident and insolent in his attempts to publicly admonish WT for its lack of promise keeping and lack of info divulgement.
Perhaps those degrees of stridency and insolence are far too tiny to be to your liking, but DBK walks a fine line.
When Darth Wayder can force choke your TB out of existence, and you want to keep it, then your ability to openly revolt is, well, limited.
It probably also comes down to saving face. While Snoketon’s face is already crushed beyond all recognition, as has been seen in EPISODE VII and VIII, being THE JOKE AWAKENS and THE LATEST EXCUSE, and we see how Palpaknightine’s face was seriously marred in EPISODE III: RETURN OF THE SHIFT KEY and the original TREGLOGY of movies (Eps 4, 5 and 6), we’ve never seen DBK’s face.
In one sense, it then doesn’t need saving, but given that saving face is not usually meant in terms of physical damage, but reputational damage, DBK will never be made to admit whether his BASIC knowledge of machine language was basically made up, or not.
Thus, further attempts to make out that DBK is Da Borg King are futile. His resistance to losing face is your futile attempt to make him lose it, because whatever you say, DBK has an answer.
Whether it is the right answer is the point you’re making, but if you continue, it will be the start of yet another 100 year war, and few of us will live that long.
If you feel you must continue, that is up to you, but my guess is that Rolanbek was suggesting the fight was leaving us uncomfortably numb, given DBK’s Terminator-like Energizer bunny’s ability to keep going and going and going and going.
Unless you are John Connor (who, in the last movie, became a ++SPOILER WARNING++ Terminator himself), it may well be time to simply Declare Victory (whether DBK agrees or not) and move on.
Either way, may your machine’s language be well oiled, and basically, may the force touch keyboard eventually be with us all.
Because it wasn't built into Basic. Just using my imagination.
>But this is where it gets problematic. You saved the data in just one byte -- as an ASCII code. Why? ASCII format would mean:
- > The data is then a string, not numeric value
- > Which means it would take up more space than just one byte, more like 1-byte for each digit + terminator character
- > You can't do math with strings, you must convert to a numeric first, do math, then convert it back for storage or display
No, it doesn't mean that. For example, a student scores a 99. The ascii character for 99 is a lowercase "c". So, in a sense, you might say I'm storing a string. But that is not really correct. After all, everything is stored in binary numbers. So if you look at the address holding that 99 (or "c"), you still have the binary number for 99. I simply do the math on that number value that underlies everything.I didn't recall the printing process, but looking at stuff online I saw one that had a Printc (c being the register to be printed) in assembly. In the example they added two numbers in registers (say 20+5), put result in register c and the display of the result was "25". Very cool! Sure seems simple. Certainly seems likely that's what I did.
> Floating point is another beast all together -- something which further proves the limitless bottom to your ignorance. Besides, you said you didn't do any floating points.
Wow, missed the point again! I know enough about floating point numbers to know that it took about 5 bytes on my computer to store each. I knew I could store numbers differently to take just 1 byte. That's it. That's all I needed to know for this. Yet you say that "further proves the limitless bottom to your ignorance".
Careful, because some people may notice you didn't actually show how that is the case. You simply made an empty accusation. You do that a lot.
Let me save you time and reveal the usual next excuse to attack: "I don't have to show why, everyone can see it". Trouble is, no one else will have shown it either and the rational readers will eventually notice.
You still don't listen, even though you quoted me accurately. I referred to what many people do, which contradicted your description AND I included, "Many people do only that. But not me." Can you actually read the last 3 words in that quote?
> You said:
Which was to TBD after he was doing his ridicule game. People in glass houses and all that.
> I thought we were talking about the CPU where you found LD A, or LDA, and/or ADD, not the one where you wrote your BASIC grading program.
That's weird since it has pretty consistently been about the computer and program I created MC on. Now you say "LD A OR LDA". That isn't what you said before! You said "NOT LD A", as if I was wrong. But you were wrong. And obviously it didn't "look like" a 6502 instruction since both LD A and ADD don't fit that, according to what you posted.
You really should try not making assumptions.
So it will always take a lot more work to show why those posts are wrong. Oh, I could just respond with "You are wrong", but that gives the advantage to those who make things up. Especially since there are more of them. So, yep, I'll tend to make longer posts.
it’s federal election voting day in Australia. No Trumps here down under although we do have a character called Clive Palmer who wants to “Make Australia Great”.
Hahaha :-)
But he was wrong about a bunch of things, some of which are easy to show. Such as wondering why I didn't save variables using Basic when that option didn't exist on my system.
Or saying it would be difficult to do math, yet I just needed the "ADD" command to do most of it.
And the related error where he seemed to think if he didn't have it on 6502 CPUs he couldn't figure it out. Did you know I could search for "assembly" and "ADD" and come up with a mere 700 million on google. I suppose some wouldn't actually be about an "ADD" assembly instruction, but I checked the first 3 or 4 and all did. Seems it is found on multiple CPUs!
Or that I would have to go through some awkward process to display my grade codes as decimal numbers.
I could go on and on, and throw in things I specifically answered, yet he said I would say, "I don't remember" or something.
So, yes, he could CLAIM and I can claim. But I can back it up.
Me? I like Clam chowder. It’s yum!
I wrote: "Even similar programs that only allowed whole numbers (no fractions) for grades - and that was almost all of them - were storing the grades as floating point numbers."
His response > Floating point is another beast all together -- something which further proves the limitless bottom to your ignorance. Besides, you said you didn't do any floating points.
How long should we wait for him to back up his criticism? Maybe you could help him out?
Since it is true that it took 5 bytes on my computer, what is he basing his made-up ridicule on? Is he going to say it isn't 5 bytes? If so, that would be another mistake since it would probably only mean that it was different on whatever systems he uses. Just as he got it wrong about LD A and ADD because they were different or didn't exist on what he was familiar with. As such, making such an argument would only show he is ignorant.