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Oh now that you put it that way I can see how being able to watch full motion video, listen to a CD, run numerical simulations, and do 3D-POVRAY shading all at once increases your productivity. Not only can you do the same thing with a multi-thousand dollar machine that you could do with a couple hundred dollars in AV equipment but you can also have fancy 3d graphics going on while you do the one actually productive thing, the numerical simulation. I love when people talk about all the things there computer can do at once even though 99% of the time most of it is just wasting processing power.

Ok so here is a link to a few c64 apps, including 2 that have Full motion video capability.

All that I really get out of your post is, yes there is no more productivity, but it is prettier. Also my new computer which cost over 100 times what it would cost to build a 20 year old computer can do 5 things at once. Hmm why not spend that money on 100 older computers and do 100 things at once?

No.

The fact that the community does nothing to filter such poor examples and bring more promising examples to the forefront, is indicative of poor direction. There may be rotten apples in every barrel, but you certainly don't leave them lying around in plain sight on the top.

For dying genres such as this one, it is important to put your best efforts in front, to invite others to enjoy the rare fruits of near-forgotten arts. The Interactive Fiction community does this quite well, even if one doesn't care for their particular genre's style.

With regard to the graphical versus non-graphical issue, one should point out that the medium only carries the message. Graphics games have all of the same problems of story-telling and entertainment, but must devote such a huge amount of effort to depicting everything graphically that very little effort is devoted to the depth of gameplay in general.

Speaking of game development, here is one of my thought-provoking usenet posts from over ten years ago on the issue of NPCs. Evidently someone else thought it was thought-provoking as well, as it had been excised and stored on someone's website this entire time. The context was interactive fiction, but you can easily see that the same underlying ideas can be applied to graphical games as well.

From: bobf@piglet (Robert Taylor Fisher)

Subject: Use of Utility Functions in Interactive Fiction

Date: 20 Apr 92 19:29:23 GMT

Early attempts at simulation of characters in Interactive Fiction relied upon the use of "scripts." Each script was painstakingly written for each character, taking into account what the player might actions the player might perform. Take, for instance, Mrs. Robner in Infocom's Deadline. After opening the door for the player, she would state something, and head off to eat breakfast. However, nothing the player could do could change her course of action. Thus, while the script method produced lifelike, believable action, it did so at the cost of flexibility.

An alternative method relies upon the use of "utility functions," which are commonly seen in economics and game theory. The basic concept is very simple. Let x1 and x2 be two choices which a person has available to him. Also y function U(x) in such a way that if the person is rational, U(x1) > U(x2). The actual values assigned are arbitrary so long as they retain the order of the preferences. This concept is easily extended to any number of options {xn}.

Usign utility functions, one can design characters with built-in preferences which will determine that character's actions. To make things more realistic, one can also make the utility functions dependent upon time so that characters will tend to be more dynamic. As an easy example, take the simulation of hunger. If the current time is t and the character last ate at time to, then we could simulate the character's need for food as a utility function which is proportional to the amount (t - to). One could make the function's value inversely proportional to the size of the character's last meal, c. Thus, the form of the utility function for acquiring food would be like U(eating)~ 1/c * (t - to). This is just an arbitrary example -- better forms for the function could probably be chosen. If one were to compile dozens of these functions, each of which depends on time, the program would take the character and evaluate the functions, determining which option has the highest value, and then enable the character to carry out that action.

The form of the function may also have some conditional dependence. For instance, suppose we had an option for striking the player. The function may have a clause reading (if player strikes me) then add X to function. In this way, the characters would take into account how the player interacts with them, and react accordingly. Perhaps most excitingly, the characters can also be allowed to interact among each other using slight alterations to this scheme, possibly having extremely subtle effects on their interactions with the player. All that would be necessary would be to to r

The operating system in the Atari ST was known as TOS (Tramiel Operating system). Although this link says it was The Operating System

No they don't. Turing Machines are an entirely theoretical construct, which by some standards never have actually been created. (Due to an unforeseen shortage in infinitely long tape.)

You have this little box which has an infinitely long tape fed into it. The box is a finite state machine which reads the tape, and based upon the state of the machine, writes to the tape, moves the tape left or right, and maybe changes its internal state.

There's a kind of neat Turing Machine Simulator here if you want.

Doesn't he remember Atari? T-W owned that from '76-'86, their most profitable and inventive years when they made great games.

/Tongue-very-nearly-almost-only-partially-in-cheek :)

Au contraire, mon frere. Here is what I found when googling for the subject:

Alfred Vail, Morse's assistant, was the inventor of the telegraph hand-key and sounder. He also made changes where characters were defined by spaces and dashes, as well as dits. 'HO HO' or 'HEE HEE', were used for laughter or humor. These are incorrectly sent today as 'HI HI'. The error results from the confusion in the early days of amateur radio, between the use of the Continental or International Morse code, and the Landline/Railway or American Morse code. In the American Morse code, 'O' is sent as two dits, spaced slightly farther apart than the two dits in the letter 'I' Radio amateurs, not familiar with the American Morse code,, picked it up as 'HI HI', instead of 'HEE HEE' or 'HO HO'.

(found here on page 6)

I believe there's also an article about it that's linked from AC6V's massive ham radio site.

Stupid? One short simple question established that the candidate did not have the experience he claimed. And no, someone who wants to be a system administrator should not have to look up the most common arguments to ps.

(BTW, System V's /usr/ucb/ps sucks so badly that I wrote a quick&dirty /proc-groveller here; never got around to implementing bits I rarely use, though.)

The corresponding question for someone who claims Solaris as well as Linux experience is, "When would you use killall?" and you do not want someone who gets that wrong touching your box....

For a while I've been hosting some of James Oberg's Space History items. One is titled Dead Cosmonauts -- he documents five definite deaths:

• Valentin Bondarenko, [died in training] March 23, 1961 -- a high-pressure oxygen fire similar to the Apollo 1 accident.
• In April 1967 cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov was killed when the parachute of his Soyuz 1 spacecraft failed during the return to Earth
• On June 30, 1971, the three cosmonauts of the Soyuz 1 1 crew perished on return to Earth.

The last two were publicly (if not fully) acknowledged at the time.

There were various rumours, but they have not stood up to investigatation, even after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Here are some details about it.. enjoy!

Well, I can get DSL from IGS.net for CDN$34.95. 1.5mbit/128kbit, no caps. Mac/Linux friendly. Yay.

URL: http://dunkels.com/adam/contiki/links.html

System information and emulators

Commodore 64/128

The Commodore 64 is based on the 6510 CPU, which is a 6502-derived 8-bit CPU. It has 64k of RAM and 16k ROM which includes a BASIC interpreter and some basic I/O services. Graphics is provided by the VIC chip which has 16 colors and a maximum resolution of 320x200 in hi-res mode. It provides a 40x25 raster of characters in character mode. The three voices of digital sound is produced by the SID chip.

The Commodore 128 is an extended version of the Commodore 64 that contains a 8510 CPU which is capable of 2 MHz operation and can address 128k RAM (hence the name Commodore 128). It also has a Commodore 64 compatibility mode which is extremely similar to a regular C64 but with a few minor differences.

The SuperCPU is a 20 MHz 16-bit 65816-based computer that is plugged into the back of the Commodore 64 or 128. It uses the C64 keyboard and joysticks for input and the VIC and SID chips for audiovisual output. The SuperCPU is capable of addressing several megabytes of memory and is usually used together with a 16 megabytes RAM expansion board.

There are no SuperCPU emulators avaliable.

• The VICE emulator is capable of emulating a large number of Commodore machines. It emulates the C64, the C128, the VIC20, most of the PET models, and the CBM-II. VICE runs under Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and a number of other host systems.
  
• Joakim Eriksson's Web C64 emulator, written in Java, runs as an applet within a web browser.
  
• Per Håkan Sundell's CCS64 emulator works under Windows and DOS.
  
• The ec64 emulator is developed for Linux and was originally written entirely in x86 assembler.
  
• An article by Simon N Goodwin about C64 emulators.
  
• The Commodore emulators category in the Dmoz has more links.
  

Commodore 64/128

There are plenty of alternative operating systems for the C64, mostly written in 6502 assembler. Some of them are far from complete, however, and only appear as dark shadows on a few web pages - MagerValp's SMOS and my own osT are among those.

• GEOS from 1986 probably is the most well-known graphical operating system for the C64. It is still sold commercially by CMDKEY.com.
  
• LUnix NG is an open-source multi-tasking operating system with TCP/IP/PPP-support, a *nix-like command shell, and a number of *nix-like utilities such as ls and cp.
• Craig Bruce's ACE is a text-based single-tasking operating system for the 64 and the 128. It provides a *nix-like command shell, a text-editor, a terminal program for the SwiftLink RS232 interface, as well as device drivers for a lot of devices
  
• GeckOS/A65 is a multi-tasking operating system with TCP/IP support and a *nix-like command shell.
  
• Wheels is a version of GEOS that requires RAM expansion to run.

With its 20 MHz and megabytes of memory, the SuperCPU is powerful enough to run fully-fledged graphical operating systems that rival early Machintosh or Microsoft Windows systems.

• Wings is a TCP/IP-enabled graphical operating system for the SuperCPU. It includes a MOD music player, JPEG viewer, web page download utility, etc.
• JOS is an older version of Wings.
  

TCP/IP and PPP connectivity

To surf the web, send or read email, etc., the first step is to actually get in touch with the Internet. This requires both physical access to an ISP, either via a modem and a phone-line or an Ethernet broadband connection, and the TCP/IP software running on the C64.

There are a number of programs that make it possible to reach the Internet with a C64/C128.

• LUnix NG contains a TCP/IP stack and a PPP implementation which makes it possible to reach the Internet using a modem and a dial-up ISP.
  
• GeckOS/A65 also contains a TCP/IP stack, but no PPP dialer.
  
• My own uIP TCP/IP stack has been used for some time to run a web server on a Commodore 64. uIP currently does not include a PPP dialer.
  
• Novaterm 10 contains a PPP dialer and enough TCP/IP code to be able to run telnet over the Internet.
  

SuperCPU

All of the above mentioned SuperCPU operating systems have TCP/IP support.

• The Wave is a web browser for the SuperCPU (and not for the Commodore 64/128 as the web page claims) that runs under the Wheels operating systems. Here is another page with information about The Wave (that also falsely claims that The Wave is for the Commodore 64/128). The latter page also includes screenshots of The Wave in action.
  

Small graphical user-interfaces (GUIs)

User interfaces for embedded systems range from the simple buttons on the front of a washing machine to those of fully fledged web browser type interfaces on information stations. The underlying technology varies from simple electronic circuits to full-scale PC compatibles.

• PicoGUI is a GUI architecture designed for embedded systems to desktop machines. It does not require any supporting GUI system and can be used on anything from graphical screens to text based systems. Their smallest target system are handheld terminals and the compiled object code size is on the order of hundreds of kilobytes.
  
• Microwindows/NanoGUI is a graphical user interface system designed to run without support from an underlying system. On 16-bit systems Microwindows is about 64k large.
  

The smallest web browsers are usually specially designed for the limitations of embedded systems and other specialized computers such as car navigation systems, set-top boxes and medical equipment. There are also a few small web browsers for old DOS PCs available.

• Interniche's NicheView Portable Embedded Web Browser is probably the smallest full-featured web browser around with its 35 kilobytes code footprint. There is also an additional JavaScript module available.
  
• AU-systems' AU Mobile Internet Browser supports both HTML/TCP/IP and WML/WAP as well as SSL. It occupies 340 kilobytes of code (plus an additional 190 kilobytes for the protocol stacks) and uses 5 kilobytes of RAM when idle (plus 8 kilobytes used by the protocol stacks). Extra RAM is used when downloading web pages.
  
• The Fusion WebPilot Embedded Micro-Browser supports much of the features found in modern web browsers including frames, authentication, and JavaScript. The web page does not specify memory footprint.
  
• MicroDigial's Graphical MicroBrowser supports tables, frames, images as well as FTP as uses 260 kilobytes of code memory and requires a minimum of 210 kilobytes of RAM apart from that. A demo version is available.
  
• The 2net Alice Web Browser is intended for handheld computers and PC based architectures and requires 400 kilobyte of free RAM and 200 kilobytes of code memory. It includes a TCP/IP stack.
  
• WebBoy is a fully-fledged browser with SSL support intended for 386 DOS boxes with more than 4 megabytes of memory. Includes a TCP/IP stack.
  
• The Arachne web browser runs under MS-DOS or Linux and requires at least 1 megabyte of memory. Does not include a TCP/IP/PPP stack.
  
• Lynx is probably the most well-known text-based web browser around. It is ported to many different operating systems and architectures including MS-DOS.
  
• The Off by One Web Browser has been labeled as the smallest web browser ever, but is quite large in comparison with other small web browsers. It is 1.1 megabytes large and requires support from an underlying Windows operating system.
  
• Mirko Sobe's BOSS-X HTML browser for 8-bit Ataris is not a full web browser, but an off-line HTML viewer with hyperlinking abilities written in three days.
  
• The pre-alpha v0.3 GEMWeb browser supports 640x480x16 VGA.
  
• The Atari Phoenix Web Browser is a non-existant vapor-ware web browser project intended for the 8-bit Ataris.
  

The Wings operating system for SuperCPU-powered C64s is supposedly going to be ported to it. It's not exactly a *NIX operating system, but it's pretty damn close. http://www.king.igs.net/~billnacu/wings/

Maybe with the C-One us 8-bitters can get closer to a real 8-bit Opera browser... :-) Of course it would probably have to run under Wings or Wheels though

Never say it's impossible, it will just make people want to prove you know nothing.

And my own Falcon Desktop page(menus only work in IE)

The Falcon still is a remarkable machine, full gui and tcp/ip stack plus webbrowser and a few other goodies would all fit on a floppy. Maybe one day I will get some time to scan in the reviews from ST Format and ST user. MultiTos added a BSD based multitasking kernel which was only 64k(Apple was not the first to create a consumer based *nix computer MINT)TOS

http://www.tht.net/n/internet_access/adsl_personal .htm
http://services.igs.net/residential_high_speed_acc ess_se.html
http://www.cuic.ca/alternate/index.htm

I think most of these are Greater Toronto Area based but you shouldn't have a problem finding one for the area you live in, just search in Google.

When they drink they would use lead cups and drink ale or whiskey. The combination would sometimes knock them out for a couple of days! They would be walking along the road and here would be someone unconscious and they thought they were dead, so they would pick them up and take them home and get them ready to bury. They realized if they were too slow about it, the person would wake up; also, maybe not. So they would lay them out on the kitchen table for a couple of days, the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. That's where the custom of holding a "wake" came from.

• Anchorhead (best Lovecraft game I've played)
• World's Apart (good SF)
• Spider and Web (spy game, with a twist)

1) the mass of the object is know

The mass of an asteroid is not known. 433 Eros, which we know better than any other asteroid, still has an unknown mass for purposes of calculating it's orbit 800 years into the future. Being off by even a few grams results in being off by thousands of miles in final trajectory. It's apparent mass is between 6.69 and 7.2 x 10^15 kg enough to put our calculations off by entire solar units, after 800 years have passed. There is also the problem of asteroids constantly shedding and gaining mass due to collisions, dust deposition and even the solar wind itself depositing dust or blowing deposited dust away.

2) the sice of the surface is known

"Sice" is an Ceske (Check) word that I assume means reflectivity. Consider this: look at a common crystal. Notice that it's reflectivity is determined by it's orientation to the veiwer. The moon always presents the same face to earth, but the sun "gets to see" all sides of the moon. If we base our calculations of an objects reflectivity on observations from earth, or a spacecraft orbiting the asteroid, we cannot make accurate calculations of the objects reflectivity because only one set of data really matters, the reflectivity of the object from the sun's point of view, which may also be variable.

3) the orbit(distance) is known

The orbit can be guessed. We can know with relative certainty where an object was. We can know fairly accurately where it will be in 20 years. We can wildly speculate where it will be in 800 years. Consider the cesium beam atomic clock. It is accurate to 1 x 10^-17 seconds. Such a clock would be off by as much as a thousandth of a second in 800 years. Given that deviation, Calculations of an orbit could be off by several kilometers just on un-guessable timing errors alone. Unfortunately, there is a mathematically unsolvable problem too: The Three-Body Problem, well explained here. Unfortunately, we are faced with a 32 body problem, just counting the sun, planets and major moons. It doesn't even end there. The mass of any body is not consistent across it's surface. For instance, there are places on the earth that "pull" harder than others. This is well mapped on earth, and there are satellite launches planned or in orbit to more closely map this phenomenon, but we have just barely scratched the surface as far as research into, for instance, Jupiter's Local gravitational variations, which have a much greater impact on solar orbit calculations than any body in the solar system.

4) the intensity of sunlight is known

The intensity of sunlight is unknown. The sunspot activity cycle causes the solar wind to change in intensity. Additionally, it warms and cools cyclically. I've heard on a ten thousand or so year cycle, but I cannot remember the source. The sun is also very gradually warming due to the natural life cycle of stars. The planet's magnetic field's slow and accelerate the solar wind and create airfoil shaped shadows in their wakes, through which asteroids must pass. The Planet's magnetic fields also have a quite variable affect on the solar wind, as watching an aurora will show you.

I'll leave you with this:

You can watch a wave sweep the beach and know that the beach will likely have the same shape after its passing but to predict with certainty where a particular grain of sand will go is not within our abilities and never can be.

There are many waves, and even they affect the orbits of asteroids, as the friction of tides moved the moon out to it's current orbit, and slowed the earth to it's present length of day.

Care to guess the coefficient of friction of metallic-hydrogen against it's unknown but assumed "rocky" core? Tidal forces within Jupiter will have to be factored in too.

Just to many variables.

This year's competition had a pretty pathetic group of entrys. Nothing like last year's competition. It seems like most of the reviewers would only recommend you play one five or six of these games.
However If you are a first time player or looking for something with an amazing story check out this winner from the '99 xyzzy awards.

Worlds Apart

I'm almost sorry to see this story posted here. If you are new to IF or a casual player, the best thing to do is wait for mid-November when the results are posted and only play the the top 5 games.

I'd argue/agree that if you're new to IF or a casual player and lazy — which, in this context, is not a sin — the best thing to do is to troll through archives from past years and play the top few. Then, if you're inspired, vote on a few of this year's games!

Here are a few modern, independently-written Interactive Fiction games that match or beat anything Infocom has produced:

Photopia (scroll down)
Metamorphoses
For a Change
Babel
Worlds Apart

For lots more, head over to The Best of IF.

Here are a few modern, independently-written Interactive Fiction games that match or beat anything Infocom has produced:

Photopia (scroll down)
Metamorphoses
For a Change
Babel
Worlds Apart

For lots more, head over to The Best of IF.

And what if you wanted a service that they couldn't provide at $50/month? "Sorry, nothing we can do..."

In the abscence of regulation, people do business wherever it is mutually beneficial.

And what if you wanted a service that they couldn't provide at $50/month? "Sorry, nothing we can do..."

In the abscence of regulation, people do business wherever it is mutually beneficial.

Another SF writer, who's name hasn't so far come up, is David Brin. He suggested that an ethical solution to AI is to raise AIs as human children. This is a speech transcript, and this part is about 75% down. Look for Raise them as our children.

Brin is also the author of The Transparent Society, a fascinating piece on privacy.

I'm surprised more people haven't seen this idea. Once it's been pointed out to you, it seems so reasonable. After all, this is the way that we have already used with reasonable success to pass on our culture and values to newly created intelligent beings.

Henry Troup

1. William of Occam
2. Gutenberg
3. Galileo
4. Descartes
5. Copernicus
6. Darwin
7. Turing, the one computer guy who should be here, although he based his ideas on the next guy
8. Godel
9. Semmelweis
   
10. Einstein

1. William of Occam
2. Gutenberg
3. Galileo
4. Descartes
5. Copernicus
6. Darwin
7. Turing, the one computer guy who should be here, although he based his ideas on the next guy
8. Godel
9. Semmelweis
   
10. Einstein