Slashdot Mirror

The design proved less than completely successful in service. (The sodium in the primary loop of the S2G soon became far more radioactive than an equivalent amount of water, it tended to burst into flames on contact with water (another reason, besides it being hot -- both thermally and radiologically, that leaks were BAD News!), and it could not be completely shut down (as the sodium metal would then freeze inside the reactor and primary loop -- more Bad News!).

Esp in urban enviroments. I have detoxed coming away from La La land (Los Angeles) after a few weeks and have passed some scary things. Why isn't detox a part of our lifestyles?

use the butterfly theory to explain it.

ClearChannel is whining to the FCC about XM Radio's recent foray into localized traffic and weather reports."

Clear Channel contends that patiotism demands that traffic reports only recommend right turns and not any of those pro-Dixie Chicks, gay marriage-ing, terr'ist aiding lefty turns.

As for the weather, well, Clear Channel says it's sunny days with n'ary a terr'ist in the skies for all God's chilluns under GW Bush, and there'll be pie in the sky when you die , and you that ain't got rich wealthy parents who provide and protect him / And high office relations , you can join the army, if you fail .

But I saw you don't need a weather man/ To know which way the wind blows . I say pretty soon it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall

Cause I say the airwaves don't belong to a company in Texas, I say that this land belongs to you and me.

And I hope my playlist here (figurtively) kills Fascists

Hummm, I not sure of this... I just did some googleling and it seems that X was created in the mid-80 and Windows 1.0 was announced in 1983 (and released in 1985 and they started working on it in 1981).

The dates from x.org are not very precise, but it looks like mid-80s could be intepreted as 1985 which is 2 year after Windows 1.0 was announced.

Yep, but the date wasn't mentioned in the print edition and a Google search revealed this article on chaotic systems listing William Ditto as a co-author. I would guess it is genuine.

Anyone know if Spumco is dead???

With animators/directors like Genndy Tartakovsky, why isn't John Kricfalusi making a comeback? Looks like cartoon network would be a good home for him. Anyone know???

All the info I Googled re. Spumco comes up with crap that's years old! Is this all that's left? :-(~

Thank you for giving "Herzog Zwei" a name-check -it's often overlooked when people talk about the first RTS type of games. I spent hours and hours playing that game on the Genesis. So good.

For more info.

~jeff

Last time I checked Rio "invented" the mp3 player (Oct 1998, 32MB PMP300)

Well, you should have checked more accurately... The Eiger Labs MPMan was the first portable MP3 player.

I don't have a clue who made the first hard-drive based MP3 player because until Apple came out with the iPod, hard drive players were massive barely-portable beasties.

This cookbook has been a tecchie staple for years!

I beleive if you live in certain places, they pay you for donating sperm.

Along these lines, here's an interview with a former child actor who was paying his rent this way.

"It's, like, several voices screaming out in terror... and then suddenly silenced." :)

If you've never played the first one and never will... why not read the game read the game?

Actually:

"In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!"

I knew that was a Simpsons quote! =)

http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/lexington/44/ thermo.wav

This 1973 Alto did not have a GUI.

Yes it did

http://members.fortunecity.com/chippy3/songs/log.h tml

I implemented an Enigma-cracking program when I was trying to crack the codes in Simon Singh's Cipher Challenge presented in The Code Book. It was a great deal of fun, and required just the right mix of learning, hacking and debugging to accomplish. Eventually I cracked 7 out of 10 of the ciphers (all the ones I expected to be within reasonable grasp).

The first difficulty was finding a sufficiently detailed description of the Enigma machine itself, so that I could write a simulator. Eventually I found a fairly good description of the machine, and some cleartext/ciphertext pairs to try it against. Initially there was a minor problem, which I eventually submitted as a plea to a newsgroup and received a quick response from an eGroup member as to the bug. Voila! A working simulator.

I took advice from Jim Gillogly and his cipher text only break of the Enigma machine. I suspected the final text would be German, so I built a table of trigraph frequencies from Goethe's Faust, which I downloaded from Project Gutenberg. I then coded up a simple hill climbing algorithm which proceeded by Scanning all possible rotor orders (six of them) and all possible rotor positions (26^3), looking for the text with the trigraph score, and then refining that by hillclimbing by redoing the plugboard.

It worked the very first time: out popped the flawless decrypt in less than three minutes on my old 133Mhz P5.

Singh's challenge was signficantly aided by the fact that his ciphertext was quite a bit longer than the recommended message length that was actually used in the War. My experience in trying to crack shorter messages was that the statistics used to guide the search were often unreliable, and the likelihood of getting a successful automatic decrypt were quite a bit lower.

Oh. If you're really, really desirous of a .wav of a race/luxury car and want to save your $1,899 admission price for something else, go to this page but turn off sound before you do. I warned you.

So... somebody is paying "Andy" to do this. Who would want to attack SCO and Microsoft? Linux zealots? It could be this guy, or this guy, or this guy, or this guy, or this guy, or this guy, but it's not this guy, his name's not Andy.

By the way, get a clue: The whole point of my post was to focus on the irony of it. I stated right in the damn title that I was "praying" for nano to arrive, even though I'm a stated atheist. It's good to see you figured it out.

Hmm, seems like we missed on this.

I *did* figure out the "irony", I just didn't find it amusing, or even ironic: your "open armed" fervor for "any and all technology that humankind can produce" seems out-right religious to me. You've simply replaced one god with another was my point, but I suppose I wasn't clear enough. But you go right on thumping your Wired there, Preacher. You've definitely chosen the right church in which to spread the gospel.

Oh, and just so you don't think I'm a total smart-asshole, try a little of this to gain a bit of perspective on where I come from. I don't swallow it whole cloth, of course, but I find it more interesting--and intellectually challenging--than cheering on the latest flavor of the week.

but at least X clearly predates MS Windows.

How clearly?

Microsoft 1983

Xwindows 1984

Well, here's a well known humorous example of a way it could be done without even abandoning the Latin alphabet, although it would require a certain Latinization of English vowels (which would actually be a bit of alright).

A Plan for the Simplification of English Spelling

Generally, and falsly, attributed to Mark Twain. The actual source is referenced on the web page.

It's easy to attribute it to Mr. Clemens since he was an advocate of "simplified" (which is actually to say phonetic) spelling, and others, such as Shaw, advocated dealing with the issue of English vowels by simply deleting them from writing in the manner of protosemtic languages and using shorthand writing.

Here's an interesting page that might provoke thought:

Mark Twain's Simplified Spelling

KFG

But remember that when Microsoft came up with Windows, it was actually a very innovative thing too - a Mac-like interface for you DOS machines!

Of course Windows 1.0 was not the first attempt to do this. Don't forget such wonders as IBM's TopView, Quarterdeck's Desq, Digital Research's GEM and a number of others. For a while in the early/mid 1980's there was a swirl of innovation and copying (not to mention a lawsuit or two) as people tried to bring the Xerox-invented GUI to desktop computers.

[quote] Since checking this prediction by hand would be prohibitively time-consuming, Appel and Haken programmed a computer to do the job for them. Some 1,000 hours of computing time later, the machine concluded that the 2,000 maps behave as expected: the four-color conjecture was true. [/quote]

It also covers various other machine proofs, 'video' proofs and the debate on the use of computers in mathematics.

I hope to god you mean T-X and NOT The T-1000.

From Saturday Night Live

Timmy: (in front of yard-a-pult loaded with dog-shaped black trash bag) "Daddy, where's sparky going?"
Rick Moranis: "Sparky's going to heaven, Timmy." *pulls lever*
(trash bag goes flying into neighbor's yard)

Open by draggin the file from the filer to the app.

Sound pretty much like vintage MS Windows (1.0 or 2.0), where the user dragged a file icon from one screen area to another to get it open.

blakespot

Whe should anyone care what Andreesen says after the truth is out, read about it here:

http://www.chrispy.net/marca/gqarticle.html

or is he really the great Entrepreneur:

http://www.fortunecity.com/campus/alfred/290/andre esen.htm

Remember the Widows 3.0 alternative: Geoworks? From the very early '90s. It came with the chance to try AOL when they were beta testing if I recall right. Even then, I bailed early in favor of Delphi because AOL was so expensive. Delphi was all command line though - still, 20hrs for $20 seemed too good of a deal to pass up.

Homer: Woo-hoo! A perfect day. Zero bears and one big fat hairy paycheck.

[opens it up]

Hey! How come my pay is so low? ... Bear patrol tax! This is an outrage! It's the biggest tax increase in history!

Lisa: Actually, Dad, it's the smallest tax increase in history.

Homer: Let the bears pay the bear tax. I pay the Homer tax.

Lisa: That's home-_owner_ tax.

Actually, you are alittle off. QDOS was developed by Tim Patterson of Seattle Computer Products. He developed this in his "spare time". QDOS was called "Quick and Dirty Operating System", of which he modeled off CP/M, the popular operating system at the time. He had essentially "reveresed engineered" CP/M, using the CP/M manual as his "specs" for his OS, QDOS.

When IBM tried to buy the rights to use CP/M from Digital Research Inc (DRI), Gary Kildall wasn't available, and his wife and lawyers did not like the non disclosure agreement presented by IBM. So DRI sent IBM packing.

IBM then went back to Microsoft since it was Microsoft who sent IBM to DRI. At the time, IBM had only contracted Microsoft to do the languages and some tools for the IBM PC. IBM needed an OS to run on the PC. Microsoft then "seized" the opportunity and told IBM that they would supply an OS for the system. As "luck" would have it, someone at Microsoft knew about Tim Patterson's QDOS and they pursued it. Microsoft then bought QDOS for $50K from Tim Patterson and Seattle Computer Products. This was the "deal" of a lifetime, since from there DOS royalties jump started the Microsoft engine.

For more info, check History of DOS (PC Museum), one of many sources of information on the subject. Or check Cringely's "Triumph of the Nerds" documentary series.

It is impossible for language to decay by changing, and typically when a society is strong and vital and growing you have huge changes to the language the people use.

Most modern americans would have a lot of trouble understanding the early english settlers.

America also used to have half it's people speaking german, until the political and social purges during WWI made talking german in american a very unhealthy thing to do. The banking system in Ohio actually used german up until the 1920's.

It is only when a society is begining to slow and bog down that you get "language reforms." The fall of the british empire gave us standardized spelling with letters that are not pronounced, because the "scholars" wanted to show off. Upto that point people used writing to record the sounds their mouths and vocal apparatus made, so of course two people with two different accents would spell things differently.

Mark Twain had a lot to say about problems with the very alphabet we used, and wanted a method that could exactly record the sounds that a person made while speaking. He would have written laugh as laf for instance.

One of my favorite quotes from this is "It has taken five hundred years to simplify some of Chaucer's rotten spelling--if I may be allowed to use to frank a term as that--and it will take five hundred years more to get our exasperating new Simplified Corruptions accepted and running smoothly."

It is trying to hold back the changes in language which show how decayed a society is. Some seem to think if you can hold off change then you can reclaim the glories of your past achievements, but they are wrong. In the end it is futile, like trying to hold back the tides.

From the British Thunderbirds 60s TV series I give you the Mach 6 Fireflash!

(Now if they could just learn how to make civillian aircraft whose safety systems are more reliable...)

But do you have to have a license for them?

Think again in 11th dimension!

According to M-Theory, the universe, and everything, is a just big bubble(Membrane). :)

slightly off topic but... when i was a young geek of about 10 years old, i played a computer game based on reverse polish notation -- robowar (lousy web page, but the few good ones disappeared long ago)

you programmed a robot and then unleashed it against other people's programmed robots in a visual arena. when programming a robot, one had to keep the stack well in mind (stack overflows -- when there are more than 99 instructions on the stack -- and underflows -- when an instruction tries to do something with the stack but nothing's on it -- were common with noob robots). because part of the game involves selecting the maximum number of instructions per unit of time that your robot can execute (you can trade away some computing power for armour) programming strategies developed that involved loading up huge amounts of numbers and commands on the stack when things are quiet, then burning through them when needed.

it really was a fun game (provided one wasn't bored by programming). when i got to high school and they gave us TI-85s i was pissed that my refined RPN skeels couldn't be put to use

and you've seen me in the neighborhood a couple times with some known violent criminals

Like Pinochet, Noriega, Khomeni, Hussein, Bin Laden et caetera? Those kinds of violent criminals?

From a cool guy in black armour to a whiny blonde-haired brat to a pouty-faced wavy-haired bishounen. Hey Lucas, why don't you just stomp all over your fans' hopes and dreams while you're at it, eh?!

(Yes, that was a very poor attempt at a joke.)

...and perhaps the funniest. For more proof, check out the eulogy he delivered at a memorial for Graham Chapman.

Apple isn't credited for the clamshell design, IIRC the clamshell design had appeared a couple of times before the first Powerbook. Apple is usually credited with the palmrest design that has come standard on many (not all) laptops since.

Plagiarism ? Yes and no, and mostly YES. The consensus among dramaturges and literary folks is generally 'yes, he plagiarised a lot'.

However, culturally, the artists of his time did not really have a concept of plagiarism -- id est, it was an accepted practice to take someone else's work. Something of an honour actually, to have someone do your work.

There are parallels to this 'culture of creativity'--a clique of artists or artisans working together on the cutting edge of something. Rock and Roll discovering itself as an art form in the "sixties" for example--no one accused Hendrix of ripping off Dylan when he did "All Along the Watchtower" or robbing The Who when he smashed his guitar on stage at Monterey. Software hacking of the "seventies" was similar--everyone stole each others code and improved it [or just used it to do something else that was cool]. The bleeding-edge hobbyists pave the road for those who come after with a labour of love. Though, perhaps, with the exception of Mr. Gates.

Ironic that his company created a poorly implemented Macintosh emulator and wound up being sued for it.

Of course, the hobbyists give way to employees and the bleeding-edge becomes standard business practices. Rock-stars sue each other over sound clips [I'm awaiting this to begin in Rap now], and technology decisions are made by MBAs who trust someone with an MCSE on their resume to make an objective and informed decision.

Perhaps a better analogy would be the obvious difference between the founders of the Internet, the folks that got it to work and implemented the modern "web", and the .com cronies who got CS degrees only because they thought they'd be able to retire by 30.

I remembered this, so I went looking for it. Amazing what you can pull up on google. The shed did not glow. He did however, make a makeshift breeder reactor and enough radioactive material to be detected from five houses down.

The tale of the radioactive boyscout

This Harmonix-developed title, originally unveiled a couple of months back, sports "more than 35 tracks in all"

Ok, I don't want to beat a tired drum, to mix a metaphor into a bad pun, but...

Will it support any arbitrary mp3 I have?

35 tracks is pretty scanty, and I don't want to sing along to Mr. Mister (an 80s band?).

But I have three mp3s of "When I was a Lad", as I have three (legally purchased) different copies of Giilbert & Sullivan's "HMS Pinafore". Now that I'd love to sing along to.

Similarly, I have two complete recordings of Wagner's Ring Cycle, (one from emusic.com at $10 a month and one for $160.00 from Amazon.com -- emusic's not a bad bargain, although disc one of Seigfried's still missing).

And I have a German sing-along version of The Internationale played on guitar, apparently recorded in the heyday of the DDR (and I don't mean Dance Dance Revolution).

I mention these titles not to display my eclecticism (well, ok, not only to display it) but because these are titles that I can't ever imagine finding in a commercial Karaoke product (outside some "worker's paradise") but are at the same time ones I'd really enjoy singing along to.

And this is a general plea -- to manufacturers as well as to the Slashdot choir -- for open standards and interoperability: a karaoke machine tied to a proprietary standard which forces me to pay for karaoke versions of songs I already have, or for which the songs I want aren't available, is less than useless to me. I won't buy it, and the manufacturer won't get my money. A loss-loss.

A karaoke machine that plays my music, and makes my tone-deaf bleatings sound a bit more musical, however, would be worth my money. And I note that the open source software I use in my portable my mp3 player does provide a "poor man's" karaoke function by subtracting the right side of stereo output from the left and vice versa. It's not perfect, and that's why I'd pay for a more adaptable algorithim and the hardware to implement it.

But "Mr. Mister" and 34 other "Backstreet Boys In Sync with Britney and Other American Idles (sic)" I'm not interrested in. A proprietary and costly path to getting more tunes, I'm not paying for. A well designed open format karaoke machine, I'd vote for with my dollars.

I remember a game for the Commodore PET - I think it was called 'Fur Trader' or something like that - you had to navigate rivers and drop off furs in various ports in the Canadian North, which was represented by those line & sqiggle graphics on a green/black screen. I remember learning about canoes and portages, and all of the small Northern outposts from the game like Fort Saskatchewan, Rocky Mtn. House, etc.

Yeah, that was it... I played it on the Commodore 64 - one of the ones that they wheeled around on pushcarts to the classrooms.

This page lists a game called "Fur Trader" - I wonder if that's it.

...unless you count the millions who have died from starvation, or the hundreds of thousands who have been murdered by more direct means. War is hell, but in many parts of the world peace is worse.

Oh Yeah?

i'm not insinuating that the american way is wrong (although it obviously is - if my knowledge is correct, Mr. Webster chose to drop those silent "u"s more or less arbitrarily, for no other reason than to show Britain that the states weren't part of it)

the survey also revealed average GameCube software prices at $26, compared to more than $33 for both PlayStation 2 and Xbox.

is it just me, or have video games gotten significantly cheapter over the last decade or so? maybe this is due to the lower costs associated with manufacturing cds as opposed to cartridges. i remember spending a lot more for the latest sega genesis or super nintendo games. in particular, i remember sword of vermillion costing me close to $70.

More recently they put 32bit processors in the palm of your hand

Ironic that you use "palm". Palm had a 32-bit handheld before Nintendo did, but you correctly point out that GBA outsells any PDA platform unit-for-unit, if only because the GBA plus a game costs less than the magic $100 psychological price point.

It is a fact Nintendo squashes misfires such as as the virtual boy, superscopre, power pad

Power Pad may have been a misfire, but the idea behind it has rebounded tremendously since then. Had Konami developed for the Power Pad, the revolution might have come much sooner, possibly back when DDR was still a country.