14 ms·

I Thought I'd repost some of losethos's comment, seeing as he is hell-banned, but the comment was quite relevant. losethos: Smart American kids my age had C64s

I Thought I'd repost some of losethos's comment, seeing as he is hell-banned, but the comment was quite relevant. losethos: Smart American kids my age had C64s and Apple IIs. We all entered 6502 machine code into DATA statements in BASIC programs. Everyone did it. It seems so fantastical and primitive to a monkey, doesn't it. Generally, we used monitor program to disassemble and assemblers, though you had to buy an assembler. Every store had magazines with BASIC programs full of DATA statements with graphic and machine code data. People typed it in. We had xsum bytes on blocks.

icambron 13y ago
Er, that reads quite differently in context than it does here.
- omegaham 13y ago
  The guy is an sad combination of brilliant and stark raving mad. If he were medicated, I think he'd be a decent guy. In the meantime, he appears to be a homeless guy wearing a sandwich board and yelling gibberish into a bullhorn. Who made a complete operating system.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - logicallee 13y ago
    re: losethos What I've seen of his writing here (by clicking on my profile, turning on showdead, and going to userpage losethos) is about as mad as this, http://www.chartrain.org/PDF/Finnegans.pdf http://www.chartrain.org/PDF/Finnegans.pdf Actually, considerably less mad. Try to read that, and then try to read losethos's comments. which can you at least get some sense out of? Why, losethos - if you ignore the 'crazy' sentences. If you ignore the 'crazy' sentences in the above link, by contrast, you are left with only chapter numbers and the closing words "Paris, 1922-1939." At least in Losethos there is something in between the 'crazy' stuff. Anyway, why did I choose the above link for comparison? Because it's James Joyce! So returning to Losethos. He might be 'stark, raving mad', but at least there's something to read and understand if we ignore all the detours. Anyone who dismisses him outright clearly doesn't have a liberal arts education grounded in having to read real nonsense. After reading some of his posts, I have nothing to declare about his mental health - and neither should you.
    - nknighthb 13y ago
      > I have nothing to declare about his mental health - and neither should you. He told the world he was schizophrenic, as well as describing at various times his (clearly schizophrenic) rationale for certain things, such as the random number generator that he believes God uses to talk to him. It's not a secret, and it's not something anybody is just guessing about.
      - logicallee 13y ago
        That's useful, and you should link it. It would have saved this thread a lot of arguing. (People misinterpreted the issue to be that he hand-coded an OS.)
        nknighthb 13y ago
        The person who willfully misinterpreted it in that utterly nonsensical way claims to have now done his homework, so he should have found it already. Losethos has left an easily-followed trail across far larger swaths of the internet than just HN. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3434374&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=4 http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=343...
        logicallee 13y ago
        Is... >>losethos are you schizophrenic? >Definitely. Are you? One minute accusing me of disability fraud, next minute not ntaking meds. ...the extent of your claim that he "he told the world he was schizophrenic" or can you find a more specific link?
        nknighthb 13y ago
        Seems plenty specific to me. There's also [1]. And as far as I've seen, he's never disputed it anywhere. You've edited it from your post now, but that he has strong credentials is neither in dispute nor relevant. Schizophrenia can present at different times in life, and even when its onset is early and obvious, it may not become anywhere close to debilitating for many years, even without any treatment at all. [1] http://www.metafilter.com/119424/An-Operating-System-for-Songs-from-God http://www.metafilter.com/119424/An-Operating-System-for-Son...
- salgernon 13y ago
  The problem is that losethos is quite obviously suffering from a severe mental disorder. His posts are not usually so racist, but almost always include a lot of religious, well, insanity. It's sad because a few lines of his posts are usually very much on topic, buried in a morass of debilitating drivel. I don't know what he's like if/when he's on medication, but to me, it seems a shame that his posts end up not being seen. To that end, I appreciate someone having hoisted the salient portion.
  - icambron 13y ago
    I get that he's mentally ill (I read up on his OS the other day), but I do take exception to the repost of part of his comment. Because his comment is ridiculous. "Monkey" is meant as a racial slur. "American" is meant comparatively (where the smart people learn assembler!), not just incidentally. Taking it out of context like that doesn't make it salient just because it's not as obvious what it means. So it's fine, I guess, not to judge him, but we ought to keep judging his comments, which are hellbanned for good reason.
    - asveikau 13y ago
      I haven't seen anything written by this guy. Can someone explain why people on HN seem to conflate mental illness with writing an operating system? Is this just the HN attitude of having just learned js/ruby yesterday and being afraid of low level details? I used to work on a small kernel just as a fun hobby project. I haven't had much time to do much with it lately but it was a lot of fun. I would think that this should be encouraged instead of mocked.
      - icambron 13y ago
        No, no, he really is mentally ill and he really did write an impressive-looking operating system [1]. Also the post quoted above really is packed with racist vitriol. Take all of that literally. [1] http://www.templeos.org/ http://www.templeos.org/
      - nullymcnull 13y ago
gonnakillme 13y ago
It's sort of misleading to present this without the racist drivel that surrounds it.
- vidarh 13y ago
  Why is it misleading, when the racist drivel that surrounds it is clearly mostly or entirely a manifestation of his illness? (if you've followed his history, you'll have seen him much more lucid, and the religious and racist rants is something that has come as he's deteriorated)
  - icambron 13y ago
    Did you read the original? In context it really does mean something different than it sounds like it means here.
    - vidarh 13y ago
      Yes, I did read the original, and while it has some fairly disgusting content, I have also read a lot of what he has written and seen his deterioration to the point where I feel more sympathy than disgust despite what he writes. I understand that it is hard for some people to accept any part of what he's writing when he's expressing himself like that, though. He's one of a few reasons why I keep showdead on, as while I fully understand why he's banned and wouldn't advocate undoing that, I also feel he should not be fully ignored.
nwh 13y ago
I've read most of this persons posts and have played with his operating system a little. I feel so sorry for them that their brilliant mind is caught up in noise. There's an enormous amount of insight in his posts.
wazoox 13y ago
Oh yes, beeen there, did this. But at some point I wanted to build my own programs and wrote a real assembler in BASIC, because writing Z80 opcodes in DATA statements wasn't an easy to write programs, and even less to debug :)
Lagged2Death 13y ago
Smart American kids my age had C64s and Apple IIs. We all entered 6502 machine code into DATA statements in BASIC programs. Yeah, but (similarly to the 'environment' that is the subject of the post) those DATA statements contained the output of some sort of tool. Nobody wrote machine code this way.
- vidarh 13y ago
  > Nobody wrote machine code this way. I'd be careful about that claim. It was not that unusual to "hand assemble" programs, as it was not that unusual to remember the codes. The 6502 has less than 60 documented opcodes (and quite a few undocumented ones with various weird but in some cases somewhat usable behaviour) and only a few addressing modes, and all opcodes are single byte, so knowing most or even all of them doesn't take that much exposure. Some of those values are so ingrained that I still remember the decimal values, despite the fact that the moment I started using tools to work with assembly on the C64, it was all hex e.g. 169 decimal is "load accumulator immediate" (LDA #[8 bit operand) on the 6502. (or A9 in hex)
  - Lagged2Death 13y ago
    It was not that unusual to "hand assemble" programs, as it was not that unusual to remember the codes. Yeah, I grew up with 6502s, too. You'll think I'm weaseling out here, but "hand assembly" isn't what I was talking about. I feel the original comment implies that some people, intending to write significant machine code, sat down with BASIC and started typing in DATA statements. And I don't think that happened to any significant degree. As in the case of the "programming environment" under discussion, machine language routines force-fed into BASIC DATA statements were the output of another tool or process -- whether assembled by hand or by machine -- and were an intermediate form that was never intended to be editable.
- cabalamat 13y ago
  > Nobody wrote machine code this way. Not true. I personally did in Z80.
- gamache 13y ago

icambron 13y ago

Er, that reads quite differently in context than it does here.

omegaham 13y ago
The guy is an sad combination of brilliant and stark raving mad. If he were medicated, I think he'd be a decent guy. In the meantime, he appears to be a homeless guy wearing a sandwich board and yelling gibberish into a bullhorn. Who made a complete operating system.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- logicallee 13y ago
  re: losethos What I've seen of his writing here (by clicking on my profile, turning on showdead, and going to userpage losethos) is about as mad as this, http://www.chartrain.org/PDF/Finnegans.pdf http://www.chartrain.org/PDF/Finnegans.pdf Actually, considerably less mad. Try to read that, and then try to read losethos's comments. which can you at least get some sense out of? Why, losethos - if you ignore the 'crazy' sentences. If you ignore the 'crazy' sentences in the above link, by contrast, you are left with only chapter numbers and the closing words "Paris, 1922-1939." At least in Losethos there is something in between the 'crazy' stuff. Anyway, why did I choose the above link for comparison? Because it's James Joyce! So returning to Losethos. He might be 'stark, raving mad', but at least there's something to read and understand if we ignore all the detours. Anyone who dismisses him outright clearly doesn't have a liberal arts education grounded in having to read real nonsense. After reading some of his posts, I have nothing to declare about his mental health - and neither should you.
  - nknighthb 13y ago
    > I have nothing to declare about his mental health - and neither should you. He told the world he was schizophrenic, as well as describing at various times his (clearly schizophrenic) rationale for certain things, such as the random number generator that he believes God uses to talk to him. It's not a secret, and it's not something anybody is just guessing about.
    - logicallee 13y ago
      That's useful, and you should link it. It would have saved this thread a lot of arguing. (People misinterpreted the issue to be that he hand-coded an OS.)
      - nknighthb 13y ago
        The person who willfully misinterpreted it in that utterly nonsensical way claims to have now done his homework, so he should have found it already. Losethos has left an easily-followed trail across far larger swaths of the internet than just HN. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3434374&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=4 http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=343...
        logicallee 13y ago
        Is... >>losethos are you schizophrenic? >Definitely. Are you? One minute accusing me of disability fraud, next minute not ntaking meds. ...the extent of your claim that he "he told the world he was schizophrenic" or can you find a more specific link?
        nknighthb 13y ago
        Seems plenty specific to me. There's also [1]. And as far as I've seen, he's never disputed it anywhere. You've edited it from your post now, but that he has strong credentials is neither in dispute nor relevant. Schizophrenia can present at different times in life, and even when its onset is early and obvious, it may not become anywhere close to debilitating for many years, even without any treatment at all. [1] http://www.metafilter.com/119424/An-Operating-System-for-Songs-from-God http://www.metafilter.com/119424/An-Operating-System-for-Son...
salgernon 13y ago
The problem is that losethos is quite obviously suffering from a severe mental disorder. His posts are not usually so racist, but almost always include a lot of religious, well, insanity. It's sad because a few lines of his posts are usually very much on topic, buried in a morass of debilitating drivel. I don't know what he's like if/when he's on medication, but to me, it seems a shame that his posts end up not being seen. To that end, I appreciate someone having hoisted the salient portion.
- icambron 13y ago
  I get that he's mentally ill (I read up on his OS the other day), but I do take exception to the repost of part of his comment. Because his comment is ridiculous. "Monkey" is meant as a racial slur. "American" is meant comparatively (where the smart people learn assembler!), not just incidentally. Taking it out of context like that doesn't make it salient just because it's not as obvious what it means. So it's fine, I guess, not to judge him, but we ought to keep judging his comments, which are hellbanned for good reason.
  - asveikau 13y ago
    I haven't seen anything written by this guy. Can someone explain why people on HN seem to conflate mental illness with writing an operating system? Is this just the HN attitude of having just learned js/ruby yesterday and being afraid of low level details? I used to work on a small kernel just as a fun hobby project. I haven't had much time to do much with it lately but it was a lot of fun. I would think that this should be encouraged instead of mocked.
    - icambron 13y ago
      No, no, he really is mentally ill and he really did write an impressive-looking operating system [1]. Also the post quoted above really is packed with racist vitriol. Take all of that literally. [1] http://www.templeos.org/ http://www.templeos.org/
    - nullymcnull 13y ago

gonnakillme 13y ago

It's sort of misleading to present this without the racist drivel that surrounds it.

vidarh 13y ago
Why is it misleading, when the racist drivel that surrounds it is clearly mostly or entirely a manifestation of his illness? (if you've followed his history, you'll have seen him much more lucid, and the religious and racist rants is something that has come as he's deteriorated)
- icambron 13y ago
  Did you read the original? In context it really does mean something different than it sounds like it means here.
  - vidarh 13y ago
    Yes, I did read the original, and while it has some fairly disgusting content, I have also read a lot of what he has written and seen his deterioration to the point where I feel more sympathy than disgust despite what he writes. I understand that it is hard for some people to accept any part of what he's writing when he's expressing himself like that, though. He's one of a few reasons why I keep showdead on, as while I fully understand why he's banned and wouldn't advocate undoing that, I also feel he should not be fully ignored.

nwh 13y ago

I've read most of this persons posts and have played with his operating system a little. I feel so sorry for them that their brilliant mind is caught up in noise. There's an enormous amount of insight in his posts.

wazoox 13y ago

Oh yes, beeen there, did this. But at some point I wanted to build my own programs and wrote a real assembler in BASIC, because writing Z80 opcodes in DATA statements wasn't an easy to write programs, and even less to debug :)

Lagged2Death 13y ago

Smart American kids my age had C64s and Apple IIs. We all entered 6502 machine code into DATA statements in BASIC programs. Yeah, but (similarly to the 'environment' that is the subject of the post) those DATA statements contained the output of some sort of tool. Nobody wrote machine code this way.

vidarh 13y ago
> Nobody wrote machine code this way. I'd be careful about that claim. It was not that unusual to "hand assemble" programs, as it was not that unusual to remember the codes. The 6502 has less than 60 documented opcodes (and quite a few undocumented ones with various weird but in some cases somewhat usable behaviour) and only a few addressing modes, and all opcodes are single byte, so knowing most or even all of them doesn't take that much exposure. Some of those values are so ingrained that I still remember the decimal values, despite the fact that the moment I started using tools to work with assembly on the C64, it was all hex e.g. 169 decimal is "load accumulator immediate" (LDA #[8 bit operand) on the 6502. (or A9 in hex)
- Lagged2Death 13y ago
  It was not that unusual to "hand assemble" programs, as it was not that unusual to remember the codes. Yeah, I grew up with 6502s, too. You'll think I'm weaseling out here, but "hand assembly" isn't what I was talking about. I feel the original comment implies that some people, intending to write significant machine code, sat down with BASIC and started typing in DATA statements. And I don't think that happened to any significant degree. As in the case of the "programming environment" under discussion, machine language routines force-fed into BASIC DATA statements were the output of another tool or process -- whether assembled by hand or by machine -- and were an intermediate form that was never intended to be editable.
cabalamat 13y ago
> Nobody wrote machine code this way. Not true. I personally did in Z80.
gamache 13y ago