No way! Next you are going to tell me that the world doesn't use inches, miles, gallons, etc.!
The Battlefront Miscellaneous Thread
- Thread starter Horatio
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One thing about piracy, there were some companies who kind of turned a blind eye to people (students, etc.) pirating their software with the hopes that when they did get a job, they would insist on using that software. I don't know if it really was ever official policy, but I have heard rumors. Things like Photoshop and AutoCAD. I don't believe that is the case anymore...but now they are the "standard" and don't have to worry about it as much.
Is piracy still a big thing? It seems like it isn't much anymore (but then, I am old and haven't pirated any software in probably 25 years or so. I also play a lot less video games now...I jokingly tell people that my favorite video game is excel.
Is piracy still a big thing? It seems like it isn't much anymore (but then, I am old and haven't pirated any software in probably 25 years or so. I also play a lot less video games now...I jokingly tell people that my favorite video game is excel.
Fortnights, fathoms, leagues, and more. Two types of ounces. We buy gallons of milk and 2L of soda.
I remember in college freshmen chem, we were learning about factor analysis and on the test you had to convert something like 1 km/s to furlongs/fortnight. LOL...the prof had to tell most of the class what a furlong and fortnight were. Americans are even bad at our own horrible system!
The Atari 400/800 computers, much like the Amiga, were years ahead of their time. That's because they were designed by the same guy, Jay Miner, who put in all sorts of advanced features, like sprites, smooth scrolling, and display lists in hardware. They had a 256 color palette, which was ridiculous in 1979. Ports of arcade games to the Atari line were, in theory, capable of being as good as the arcade versions.
Atari really screwed up with the marketing of these computers, though. They refused to open up the technical specifications, thinking that their software division would suffer if it had to compete with other companies on a level playing field. This meant that only the most brilliant hackers could figure out how to get the maximum performance out of their machines.
Wow....I couldn't believe it when I read that you wrote 1979. I assumed you HAD to be wrong...now way those came out so early...because they were definitely way better than 1979 computers. But I looked it up and yep. I am blown away...I thought they were like 82-84 or so. Missed opportunity.
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Well shit. If you google it you might find it under different account. It is pretty funny I think...especially given the metric/US jokes.
It's ironic that your next post after this one was about pirates.
It is literally due to pirates that the US failed to implement the metric system when many other countries did. The US was going to go metric, but weights and measures being sent to the US were on a ship that was attacked by pirates. By the time it was all sorted out, the new US president was not interested.
I think that had a lot to do with the fact it was based on the Atari 5200 game system.
Funny enough later on the Atari XEGS console came out, which was based on the 65xe computer, which was still pretty much a somewhat souped up Atari 800.
Atari screwed up everything at some point. Atari gave IBM a run for their money on the worst managed company and dumbest decisions ever.
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A lot of the weird units where because of old limitations on hardware used to measure.
Take a land survey for instance. They are measured in feet. Go back a few hundred years and they where measured in chains which where literally a 66-foot-long chain that a surveyor used . Go back even further and they used Rods, which was a 16.5 foot long metal rod.
A furlong is 10 chains or 40 rods. This is also using the American measurements as the British ones where different.
As you make a post on the 15:03/3:03 Post Meridiem of a 24 hour day comprising of 60 minutes per hour on the 4th month named April, , out of 12 and the year 2024 Anno Domini.
Come now, CE. Common era.
Also, that's AD 2024. AD first, not after.
In the Year of the Lord 2024
Also, that's AD 2024. AD first, not after.
In the Year of the Lord 2024
Hey we can;t call it AD becasue that may offend someone, so lets call it CE. Ok, but what event did the modern era start? Uhh, the birth of Jesus.
Hey, the months are mostly named after gods, what about them? Screw you.
In latin based language you (usally) have the noun before the adjective. In Germanic based languages it's(usally) flipped around.
So we have the House of Yoho versus YoHo's house.
Some put AD after the year to match that, while others out it before. It's English, do you expect anything to be consistent?
Anyways, the point was that it's not metric time.. It's a weird system with 365 days. except when it's 366 every 5th year. It's sometimes 28 ,29, 30, or 31 days in a month depending on moth and year. It's 24 hours a day, with 60 minutes in an hour and 60 seconds in a minute, and for some reason there's metric parts to a second
This is largely because the Orbit and the moon's orbit would like you to go to HELL!Hey we can;t call it AD becasue that may offend someone, so lets call it CE. Ok, but what event did the modern era start? Uhh, the birth of Jesus.
Hey, the months are mostly named after gods, what about them? Screw you.
In latin based language you (usally) have the noun before the adjective. In Germanic based languages it's(usally) flipped around.
So we have the House of Yoho versus YoHo's house.
Some put AD after the year to match that, while others out it before. It's English, do you expect anything to be consistent?
Anyways, the point was that it's not metric time.. It's a weird system with 365 days. except when it's 366 every 5th year. It's sometimes 28 ,29, 30, or 31 days in a month depending on moth and year. It's 24 hours a day, with 60 minutes in an hour and 60 seconds in a minute, and for some reason there's metric parts to a second
Also, technically this is not correct, it's 365 and 366 every 4th year, except every 100 years it's only 365 UNLESS it is also divisible by 400 in which case there IS a leap year.
Our Calendar is defined by Julius Caesar and a Pope.
AD is Latin. Not latinized English, so the Latin syntax is valid.
Not that that ever stopped an English Speaker. English, the Borg of Languages.
My favorite example of this has to be the original Wasteland, where they included a booklet of paragraphs of text you were instructed to read at certain points in the game, with conversations and clues and whatnot you'd actually need to progress in the game (which had the side benefit of also saving a lot of disk space). But my favorite thing about it was that the numbered paragraphs also included an entirely separate storyline that never actually comes up in the game, to throw off people reading ahead, and also false clues like fake passwords. Clever and devious, but also really fun.
Thank you! I was reading it and though...given how we were back then...we might have adopted it, but changed all the names. It would still be a "pound" with 10 ounces. and the meter would be called a yard with 100 inches. So it would be exact same system, just everything named differently. LOL
I think it was the other way around, given than the Atari 400/800 came out in 1979, and the 5200 game system came out in 1982.
It was the classic blunder of the brilliant but underfunded startup selling out to a big company (Warner Communications) that didn't know anything about the industry, but had enough money to push the original groundbreaking product (the Atari VCS, aka the 2600 game system) to ridiculous levels of success.
And then of course, upper management thinks that the success is entirely due to their superior leadership, and then proceeds to make a series of utterly idiotic decisions that drives the company into the ground.
Seems like we've seen this story a few times since then.
So often success isn't because of upper management but in spite of.I think it was the other way around, given than the Atari 400/800 came out in 1979, and the 5200 game system came out in 1982.
It was the classic blunder of the brilliant but underfunded startup selling out to a big company (Warner Communications) that didn't know anything about the industry, but had enough money to push the original groundbreaking product (the Atari VCS, aka the 2600 game system) to ridiculous levels of success.
And then of course, upper management thinks that the success is entirely due to their superior leadership, and then proceeds to make a series of utterly idiotic decisions that drives the company into the ground.
Seems like we've seen this story a few times since then.
It's because no one wanted metric time, not even the French. Its too weird and days are not rotations of the earth, which makes things even weirder.
I think it would have gone over better if different names were used for the measurements. Maybe cycles, arns, and microts.....
Opps, my bad
Which would make it imperial time
I know AD is Latin. That was the whole point of the comment about translation and switching the order around.
I before E, except after assimilation? ;D
All joking aside, it wasn't until maybe 10 years ago that I ever saw AD put before a year. All through school it was always after the year.
After the VCS/2600 came out Atari started on their next console. They scrapped that and parts were reused for the 400/800. Then Atari being Atari they decided that maybe this would be a good console and then took what they had and finished it thereby becoming the 5200
One could argue that the 2600 created the industry, but I agree with what you are saying
And then of course, upper management thinks that the success is entirely due to their superior leadership, and then proceeds to make a series of utterly idiotic decisions that drives the company into the ground.
Seems like we've seen this story a few times since then.
Well that and the people at Atari where generally stoned at any given time of the day.
Ah, okay, that's interesting. It sounds like there was some indecision going on there.
Well that and the people at Atari where generally stoned at any given time of the day.
I mean, you're not wrong. Atari was a unique company, to be sure.
Thinking about it, I sometimes think that rather than Noah Webster, maybe Victor Frankenstein should have taken a crack at writing a dictionary.
„Anno Domini“ means „The Year of the Lord“.
That’s kind of different from „since the birth of Jesus“.
Personally I'd argue that Atari's home Pong system created the industry, but the 2600 definitely blew it up, and then, uh, blew it up.
It's a real shame that the 5200 flopped the way it did, a friend of mine had one, and it was a darn nice piece of kit for the time, even a bit better graphically than the Colecovision (and much better audio). Quite expensive for the time, though, which is why only the rich kid friend ever had one.
Rumors suggest Apple is developing custom silicon for AI servers. Given their scale and their cozy relationship with TSMC, I guess they'd be crazy not to cut out the middleman (NVIDIA) here.
I guess, But they are also not ONLY a chip maker. Nvidia's Graphics work is directly related to their AI chips at the Silicon level. So everything they do is focused on this. That is not the case for Apple.
I'm not saying they can't succeed here, but it's not the play I'd want to make.
I'm not saying they can't succeed here, but it's not the play I'd want to make.
Apple may not only be a chipmaker, but they were 25% of TSMC's volume last year vs. NVIDIA's 11%, and of course they're already doing mobile and desktop GPU and NPU designs.
Yeah, Apple have some experience building GPUs ever since they stopped using PowerVR, but I don't think they have much experience in design for GPGPU, which is what nVidia really leveraged into AI acceleration.
They didn't need to burn years of R&D and a $billion+ trying to make a car either.
Exactly.
They have some relevant experience, but only a fraction of what's needed.
Znu, I'm not sure why you think share of TSMC's line helps here? Because in fact, they would require MORE than their current 25% to accomplish anything here. Certainly they aren't going to reduce the number of iPhones being produced to ramp up on AI chips.
If anything TSMC is going to be cross pressured to give up more capacity to Nvidia.
Oh, and AMD just made a splash with new AI chips based on their APU expertise....where are those made?
could it be, I don't know SATA..... I mean TSMC!!!
I doubt TSMC has any additional capacity to give, they're already building AI chips for companies that are ahead of Apple by significant margins.
Related,
If Intel wanted to, you know, get their act together on the foundry side any time here, there would be appetite for their lines. They need a process node that doesn't suck.
The same holds for any attempt by them at an AI chip. But I won't hold my breath.
Apple Has a long history with Nvidia, mostly eschewing them.
So they may have no choice but to roll their own AI silicon.
Plus they have probably a good number of chip designers in house. May as well use them and not risk them bolting to other companies where they might get to work on more challenging projects if Apple were to simply buy from Nvidia.
So they may have no choice but to roll their own AI silicon.
Plus they have probably a good number of chip designers in house. May as well use them and not risk them bolting to other companies where they might get to work on more challenging projects if Apple were to simply buy from Nvidia.