Over-Moderation

[tdvance]

Originally Posted by ToSeek

That beats the guy I used to work with who could program in octal machine code. (I could do it a bit, but only easy stuff like short relative jumps.)

He's lucky to have octal--On my Commodore Vic 20 in high school, I had to continually translate a hexadecimal instruction list to *decimal* to program machine language! Octal would have been so much easier...

(of course, at work, we tell the younger employees that in our day, we only had 1 bits, and had to bend them to make 0 bits)

[Moose]

tdvance, I used a similar joke, except all we had were 0 rings, and we had to snip them and straighten them to make 1s. Thankfully, we could get two 1-bits out of every 0 ring. 3, if they were the kind with the slashie.

[gzhpcu]

Originally Posted by ToSeek

That beats the guy I used to work with who could program in octal machine code. (I could do it a bit, but only easy stuff like short relative jumps.)

I used to program in 6 bit opcode on a CDC 6600 computer...

[Gillianren]

It's interesting how things get forgotten. I've got a friend who's a computer whiz. Built his own water-cooled computer for fun. And I had to explain punchcards to him. (While standing in front of the jacquard at Jo-Ann Fabrics, of course.)

[PetersCreek]

Originally Posted by tdvance

He's lucky to have octal--On my Commodore Vic 20 in high school, I had to continually translate a hexadecimal instruction list to *decimal* to program machine language!

I remember those days...POKE 210, 243, 97...line after line after eye-watering line. I went so far as to build a RAM expansion module on my own. I even etched the circuit board. Ah, the good old days.

[slang]

Originally Posted by PetersCreek

I remember those days...POKE 210, 243, 97...line after line after eye-watering line. I went so far as to build a RAM expansion module on my own. I even etched the circuit board. Ah, the good old days.

The VIC-20 poke command had three arguments? It was two on its successor, the CBM-64. Good old days when you could purchase the layout of the board, with all lines and components, and a book with a commented ROM listing to boot (hah). The last computer that could relatively easy be understood beyond just the components, I think. (hmm.. built a 2-bit sound sampler, an EPROM programmer, switchable ROMs, blew up I/O chips and soldered in replacements.. those were great days for a kid diving into the world of computers!)

[tdvance]

It had two--so it was like poke 4097,155 and so on.

[PetersCreek]

As I remember it, you could run POKE out to the maximum line length in Commodore BASIC...but you're right, they had to be in pairs: location and value.

[Arneb]

Considering this blatant off-topicism, we seem to have before us a seriously under-moderated board.

[mahesh]

Originally Posted by Gillianren

.... (While standing in front of the jacquard at Jo-Ann Fabrics, of course.)

Is that how you met dear Antoniseb? He's a nice chappie, isn't he?

Patiently a-'tannin', the three of you, by the water-cooler!

[HenrikOlsen]

Originally Posted by Arneb

Considering this blatant off-topicism, we seem to have before us a seriously under-moderated board.

Off-topicism is the natural development of a thread whose main topic has been discussed to its limit.
It's not really something moderators get involved with unless there's a request to split off the off-topic discussion to its own thread.

[Arneb]

It was A JOKE. Yes, of course you are right.

[cjameshuff]

Originally Posted by slang

The VIC-20 poke command had three arguments? It was two on its successor, the CBM-64. Good old days when you could purchase the layout of the board, with all lines and components, and a book with a commented ROM listing to boot (hah). The last computer that could relatively easy be understood beyond just the components, I think. (hmm.. built a 2-bit sound sampler, an EPROM programmer, switchable ROMs, blew up I/O chips and soldered in replacements.. those were great days for a kid diving into the world of computers!)

The good old days are still around to an extent with flash-based microcontrollers...you no longer need multi-thousand-dollar development tools and a large supply of chips so you can keep working with one batch while another is in the UV eraser.

Look into the Atmel AVR series...you can get going with a chip, a parallel port, and a couple resistors, though I would recommend getting at least something like the $30 AVRISP programmer. 8-bit processors for a few dollars each, nice and simple instruction set if you feel like learning assembly, but C, C++, and other options available with free development tools.

The constraints are a little different...there's only 4 KB of RAM on the ATmega644P, for example, but there's 64 KB of flash for storing program and static data like lookup tables. You've got 20 MIPS to play with, too...a bit faster than the ~1 MHz 6510. There's no connection to the outside world unless you build one...but there's a lot of built-in peripherals to hook stuff up to, and places like SparkFun sell a lot of parts and modules in forms easier for hobbyists to use. If you can find a C64 SID chip, you could wire one up:
http://www.creative.net.au/projects-sidavr.shtml

Or if not, you can emulate one:
http://www.swinkels.tvtom.pl/swinsid/swinsid2.htm

[Swift]

Originally Posted by Arneb

Considering this blatant off-topicism, we seem to have before us a seriously under-moderated board.

\sarcasm mode\

I could ban some people.... I like banning people. That would get us back on topic.

\sarcasm off\

[Moose]

Okay, to correct the blatant under-moderation, I'll need three volunteers to play "Wheel of Misery". I'll be host while Swift reveals the ban durations. (He has better legs than I do, which isn't saying much.)

[geonuc]

I'll volunteer. A little extra misery won't be noticeable anyway.

[Arneb]

I'll volunteer, too. Just edit Henrik's post to appear in brilliant magenta, and, poof, you can construe my last post as public criticism of a moderator action. This should get me to the fool's corner PDQ.

[Moose]

Originally Posted by Arneb

I'll volunteer, too. Just edit Henrik's post to appear in brilliant magenta, and, poof, you can construe my last post as public criticism of a moderator action.

Justification? Where's the fun in that? Nah. Capricious and utterly arbitrary, otherwise it's same-old, same-old.

[slang]

Originally Posted by Moose

Justification? Where's the fun in that? Nah. Capricious and utterly arbitrary, otherwise it's same-old, same-old.

BOFH required reading before The Power is bestowed upon you?

[Moose]

Yes, but I've been teething on Travaglia since the original Campus Machine Room saga, probably episode 15 or so.

[publiusr]

Originally Posted by Arneb

I'll volunteer, too. Just edit Henrik's post to appear in brilliant magenta, and, poof, you can construe my last post as public criticism of a moderator action. This should get me to the fool's corner PDQ.

Web etiquette also varies from site to site.

A lot of people log onto their favorite sites daily, and so have an even amount of posts in a steady flow. A person who visits a site only every once in awhile but who stays and goes over many threads and comments on them might look like someone trying to run a post count up--but that is only due to sporadic visitation--not an attempt to dominate a discussion. I have had that leveled at me when making relevant comments in the depressed trajectory thread. I might come off heavy handed at times, but you have to remain firm when dealing with moon-hoax believers. Same goes with alt.spacers, but I digress.

Other violations of Decorum...

A newbie might be called a necro-thread whatsit--but that thread might be new to him.

I myself didn't even know what a "sock-puppet" was and that it was in bad form before I came here.

At another site, I found my account would not work. There were times I'd be at the library and the computer would wrongly say that my account there was already in use, so I figured the site had a similar problem, and so I made another account.

Only later did I learn (because I rarely notice/read PMs) that my original account had been temp down as a disp action (more on that in a moment *), so that was a mistake on my part.

I really like how INSIDE KSC posts rules as discrete threads every so often as a refresher for folks, which is much appreciated and helps one to avoid other mistakes.

Let me give you an example of a faux pas I made with respect to the pay-only L-2 section of Nasaspaceflight. I had been given a free account to L-2 due to my having popularized Chris Begin's fine site.

He had once complained that he would see others post info from his page and not give credit. Well, I enjoy posting links that interest people (which would get me in trouble later) and so he gave me free access to L-2 as a show of thanks to me for popularizing his site. Later, however, I failed to learn that you aren't supposted to link to the (normally) pay only section of his site until it was too late, and lost L-2 access without warning.

So you really have to be careful or it looks like you are being a loose cannon, especially if another poster on the board really has it in for you. Let me give you another example:

*One person called "Jim" seems to be a favorite at nasaspaceflight and he likes to complain to the moderator when somebody disagrees with him, or disproves his statements, as here.

Jim on NRO, space-based radar, etc.
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/ind...8396#msg108396
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/ind...9881#msg109881
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/ind...0892#msg110892
and he low-rates the fine journalists at SPACE NEWS
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/ind...3542#msg113542

Well, he has had it in for me ever since.

He sent me a lot of vulgar links, was allowed to get away with it, but somehow I wound up being "banned." Ironically I can still log onto my account there, and read the ugly PMs from him, but can't post or anything.

So one has to be careful when visiting certain sites, esp if there is a "favorite."

This is especially true of junk science boards, whose members claim to be excluded, yet are quick to ban skeptics. But I am sure you all have war stories in your tours of duty within the blogosphere.

It also helps if you read the rules, which I need to do a better job doing. I just assume that it is the typical "no ad-hom" stuff--hit "agree"--and go right on.

[Moose]

Originally Posted by publiusr

So one has to be careful when visiting certain sites, esp if there is a "favorite."

We give warnings for first-time offenses for a reason.

[HenrikOlsen]

And we have suspended people for abusing the report function to target people they disagree with instead of reporting actual rules violations.

I've suspended a guy because he reported someone in a thread where he himself had violated the decorum rules. If he hadn't reported I wouldn't have read the thread and he'd have been safe until someone else reported him.

[crosscountry]

Originally Posted by Arneb

Considering this blatant off-topicism, we seem to have before us a seriously under-moderated board.

this goes to show that moderators have to be careful when moderating discussions on moderation

[Moose]

geonuc, Arneb, I'm calling it off. Just realized I ran out of places to hide the bodies last week. No worries, it'll just take a month or so to sort out.

[Gillianren]

It seems to me that whether people think it's over- or under-moderated tends to reflect what they want out of a forum. I don't want a bunch of people getting away with being rude, and if that means dumping politics and religion, well, I'll cope. Pervasive spreading ATM-ism annoys me, and I want it kept out of every thread the proponent thinks it'll fit in. I like the idea that people proposing ridiculous things have to provide evidence for it and can't just demand that we prove them right. The rules here, in my opinion, are sensible and easy to understand. If you get banned for not following them--or, worse, not taking the time to read them--well, that's your fault.

. . . The thing is, it would be awfully easy for me to get myself banned. I know that. I know who and how I am, and so I know when not to post. I know when to just walk away. If I can do it, what's so hard about it for people who aren't crazy?

[mugaliens]

Ahh... PEEK and POKE. I programmed our store's Amiga they were trying to sell with a routine that colorfully displayed our store name and some basic info. The computer took three months to sell, but it did increase street traffic.

[geonuc]

Originally Posted by mugaliens

Ahh... PEEK and POKE. I programmed our store's Amiga they were trying to sell with a routine that colorfully displayed our store name and some basic info. The computer took three months to sell, but it did increase street traffic.

My first response is one I gave in another thread today: Say what?

But then I looked back and there was some off-topic Amiga programming discussion in this thread.

[R.A.F.]

Originally Posted by Gillianren

If I can do it, what's so hard about it for people who aren't crazy?

For being "crazy", you are perhaps one of the sanest posters on this board.

[Christopher Ferro]

Originally Posted by R.A.F.

For being "crazy", you are perhaps one of the sanest posters on this board.

Amen!

I've started to look forward to Gillian's comments like I do Jay's now, though for somewhat different reasons.

I also think that if a significant number of people think we are over-moderated and a significant number of people think we are under-moderated, then we are probably being moderatedy as well as we can be.

CJSF