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W∴ Balboos, GHB wrote: Putting the whole thing in perspective, gold was used for some of its properties (let's ignore cosmetic show of wealth).
Not just that; and will come back to our previous topic, but sorry, this is more interesting to me. Will come back to that, got that conversation marked and I want to learn about it what is not schooled here. I have this stupid idea that European "truth" and yours may vary. Yours as valuable as mine.
W∴ Balboos, GHB wrote: 1 - it was available. One of the few metals found native. That's why it, along with silver, are the ancient metals. Copper, also found native, ushered in the bronze age. Iron required smelting.
And in some centuries before this dude they call Christ, they already had alternative uses, as documented. As for copper, no, they found bronze, an alloy. Pure copper is harder to tame. And still, Romans made teeth from it. Yes, been to Rome, because "everyone" has to before they die, no? Not going to Egypt ever, if I see there what I saw in Rome, I will loose faith in history.
W∴ Balboos, GHB wrote: 2 - it was malleable enough to be easily worked into useful shapes
Not arguing there; but also means metal working before we did any actual metal-working.
W∴ Balboos, GHB wrote: 3 - it (in its metallic form) is extremely inert (== non-toxic).
Not just non-toxic. Lots of sh*t isn't toxic, but our immune system will react since it is recognized as not part of our body. For some dumb reason, it ignores gold. I no doctor, no explanation there. And it is chemically inert. Meaning it doesn't react with most stuff.
W∴ Balboos, GHB wrote: 4 - at least by the 18th century, prosthetic teeth were made out of ivory or even wood.
I just posted you a link on how Egyptians, long before this Christ, already did dental procedures using gold. You're "at least" is valid, nonetheless, just as "at least" in the 20th century is. This one is a filler argument, not a reasonable one and you didn't research. Fact is, we repaired teeth (with all humanity hating the idea) some time ago.
W∴ Balboos, GHB wrote: 5 - Egyptians using gold for holding together a prosthesis is a far cry from forming a filling! all they have in common is use in the mouth (accidentally, fitting criterion 3, above).
"Hammering it, breaking the jaw" you said. And why would they use gold, if bronze more plentifull? So, you want more "proof" that it is a resource, not just some ancient form of BitCoin? And glad I not a Roman with a bloody toothache.
W∴ Balboos, GHB wrote: The reason for gold jewelry being "18 karat" or less is not to cheapen the jewelry by reducing the gold content but to make it harder and so actually more suitable for jewelry (wouldn't deform as easily).
I know, my seal-ring isn't 24 karat, because it'd deform due to natural movement of the hand. Asked for silver as a filler. And it's "just" 14k, because the jeweler said that would last longer. Due to friction, it is still getting thinner.
W∴ Balboos, GHB wrote: The normal gold content for jewelry was 14/24 (14 gold to 10 iron, by weight) (i.e. 14K) for a long time.
So my jeweler knows his stuff. Not very surprised. And used it to seal letters. Didn't work, eventually did, but that's another story entirely.
W∴ Balboos, GHB wrote: Also, a much earlier statement of yours about using gold to coat electronic connectors because it was such a good conductor: not so! It's used to prevent corrosion and, insofar as it last, it will.
It is a good conductor, just not the ideal one. And it conducts heat like a champ too. The point that it doesn't rust, makes it the ideal spray on any connector. Because, you know, only the out layer needs be. Inside is prolly copper.
W∴ Balboos, GHB wrote: However, the fact of it making an interface between metals is an increase in resistance and thus an overall loss in conductivity (tiny). The extra cost (and waste of gold) is rarely worth it for the consumer's own connectors. Maybe on some circuit boards it's sensible but on your HDMI connector? I suppose so, if you live in a salt mine (or shipboard).
And there it is; Einsteins idea on interest.
"Waste" of gold in those quantaties adds to the money, but to me as a consumer, worth it. But the amount of gold is finite, and a lot is used by industry each year. And one day, the amount we mine and discover will be less than what industry needs. Central Banks not going to part with theirs, in exchange for rediculous amounts. It's value, as a resource and thus as a currency, is doomed to rise.
And that's just gold. Now, silver, is far more complicated. Go there. I'm curious what you'd say about silver.
If I ever behave disrespectfull; quote it and I apoligize public. I also can't do two discussions at a single time. Choose between this an NATO; we can always go back if we finish one.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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This created a great discussion.  for Eddy & Greg.
For those that want a summary: BC is BS.
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Without knowing its history, one might even think GameStop had "value".
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it.
― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
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It was fun, so don't mention it.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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The intrinsic value of any currency is what others around you agree it is. This includes physical and virtual currencies.
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The ancients, universally, tried to take it with them ... I doubt that anyone will ever find someone buried with their BTC.
Put another way, if someone owed you $40,000 now, would you take it in BTC (at its height), or take gold.
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it.
― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
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obermd wrote: The intrinsic value of any currency is what others around you agree it is. This includes physical and virtual currencies.
No.
Fiat's value is leglislation, and then further controlled by a central bank.
Currencies like salt and gold, is not something we agree upon each week in secret. They have value because they are resources - and that makes them usuable as a currency.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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I stumbled upon this book in my APress account today and it is so nicely written that in 10 minutes I wrote my first Assembly language program and ran it.
Beginning x64 Assembly Programming: From Novice to AVX Professional: Van Hoey, Jo: 9781484250754: Amazon.com: Books[^]
Over the years I've looked at Assembly and tried it out a little, but it's never been easier to try than now.
I have Debian running in a VirtualBox so I quickly:
1. installed nasm (Netwide assembler).
2. Installed GCC tools
3. installed make
4. created a makefile as led by the book
5. typed in the sample program
6. let the makefile build and link the program.
7. ran it.
That's very cool. This author is obviously really good because he gets right to the point and explains things clearly. I am impressed and I always like to read a good book that is so well-written.
modified 9-Feb-21 15:01pm.
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To whom it may concern, here is a list with some alternatives: x86-x64-assemblers[^]
FASM looks like fun too 
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RickZeeland wrote: here is a list with some alternatives: x86-x64-assemblers[^]
The author mentions many assemblers also: YASM, FASM, GAS, MASM (Microsoft)
NASM (netwide assembler) is nice because it runs on all 3 major platforms.
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Haven't written any in over 40 years, since writing it on a PDP-10 while at university. But it definitely has a charm to it.
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Greg Utas wrote: Haven't written any in over 40 years, since writing it on a PDP-10
Wow, that is cool. I believe that might be the hardware that Gates and Allen began with.
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It was a great system, but maybe I remember it much as one remembers a first love. 
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Greg Utas wrote: It was a great system, but maybe I remember it much as one remembers a first love
Yeah, that's how we all are with our first OSes. I even remember DOS 3.3 / Windows 3.1 fondly now.  Well, maybe not. But Win95, for sure. Pre-emptive multitasking was dreamy. Format a 3.5" disk while playing minesweeper was really cool.
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Indeed.
My first brush with assembler was writing little games etc in Z80 code on a self-built NASCOM1 computer.
My first major contract was porting MSDOS 1.25 to an IBM PC Clone. The disk drivers etc were all written in 8086 assembler. I can still see the thousands of pages of printed listing that I had to work on! (Filled with useless comments of the sort: "-- add 23 to AX")
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Me too, also NASCOM1. No assembler, only machine language. I remember things like 3E 00 41 05 ...
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Oh yes - you soon learned the various opcodes 8)
I used to write it out as assembler on a coding sheet, write out the opcodes and then key them in!
All these years later, despite the higher level languages and huge compute power, things haven't really changed as much as you might think. I just spent a whole day trawling through the code for a framework I'm using because its documentation tells you how to pass some data through to a sub-system, but absolutely nowhere, in text or examples, does it specify the format that data has to take!
Doubly annoying because it isn't in the same format as you pass exactly the same data to the parent code 8)
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Exactly.raddevus wrote: it's never been easier to try than now
Not sure I agree with that. In 1979 I'd turn on my UK101 (similar to the Nascom) and it would prompt for BASIC or MONITOR. Choosing MONITOR gave you a 2-character input field where you could type in the hex value of the byte at address 00. Press ENTER and it moved to address 01. (You had to convert the 6502 assembly instructions into bytes in your head or on paper first, but there were only 56 instructions so it didn't take long to memorise at least the common ones.) 
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Mike Winiberg wrote: My first major contract was porting MSDOS 1.25 to an IBM PC Clone
Wow! I wouldn't have even known where to start. How did you discover the details back then?
Very difficult, very few books if any on stuff. Maybe the old Peter Norton book. Really interesting.
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You were given the sources for the relevant device drivers by Microsoft, but - as I said - the comments generally didn't give much away, so it was a lot of assembling and hardware debugging using logic analysers etc 8)
Of course back in those days, MS et al published printed manuals for their software etc - you didn't have to rely on intermittent broadband connections to websites with out of date or incomplete, badly formatted docs on them!
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VAX 11 assembly language in the late-80s for me.
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I started out on the PDP-11 but it was with DIBOL.
Scott
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Greg Utas wrote: Haven't written any in over 40 years, since writing it on a PDP-10 while at university. But it definitely has a charm to it.
Back in my day, we used to carve our code with a hammer and chisle on stone punch cards.
Nothing succeeds like a budgie without teeth.
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I remember painting my first program on a cave wall somewhere in France.
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Yes, that led to the very first method: CRN (Convert Roman Numerals).
If you can keep your head while those about you are losing theirs, perhaps you don't understand the situation.
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