Seeing as the Hitchhikers Guide has already effectively used time travel to sue a cereal company and Ford Prefect was here in the 1980s, Betelgeuse blowing up should not be a problem for it. They would just have to travel back in time to revise the guide retrospectively, as if Betelgeuse never even existed. Thus original copies of the guide would suddenly become very valuable. And Ford would have his planet blown up (possibly several times) just like Arthur.
I guess I left out some details. The original CALL/JMP mistake was made on an 8080 Heathkit H-89 thirty years ago when I was a kid. I wanted to play games and the only way to play them without putting in quarters (which I didn't have) was to program them yourself. The BASIC that came with the H-89 was totally shitty in every way. So I was programming in assembly without knowing jack about programming principles, and only a few months after having touched a computer. A few years later, I worked my ass off to get a (then new) C-64 so I could actually program some games with nice graphics. However, I still didn't have the $30 that a new Macro Assembler cartridge cost, so I made one myself. As far as not using GOTOs, I might have had a few in my BASIC program but only to emulate IF/THEN/ELSE type logic. Everything else was handled by nice clean subroutines like we have in.net today. Since that lesson 30 years ago, I really haven't used GOTO in much of anything.
I went through this same leap. Unfortunately, I also brought the bad GOTO habit from BASIC. After awhile of mysterious stack overflows in my games, I figured out that using JMP from a subroutine instead of returning from it was a very bad idea. Later I got a C-64 but didn't have the money for the Macro Assembler cartridge. So in BASIC (no longer using GOTO), I wrote an assembler which supported the full 6502 instruction set and address labels. The C-64 didn't have any kind of text editor so I wrote an EDLIN style one, also in BASIC. Using my homegrown assembler, I was able to write a simple Q*Bert style game. Best $30 I never spent!
I agree. I remember seeing an Al Gore special about how it was real, the whole world was going to end... Yada Yada Yada.. And when asked what we could do about it, he said "buy CFLs". BFD. I bought a coffee maker with a thermal carafe instead of the usual one with the hotplate that stays on. Those draw 800 watts. If leave it on for the typical 2 hours, that is 1.6kwh that you are saving EVERY DAY. Just by buying a better coffee maker. Get one of those Black and Decker whole house power monitors and maybe a KillaWatt. You might find some other surprises.
BTW, we are heating up the atmosphere. While I don't know how much (if any) of it is caused by CO2 (neither do the zealots), we are definitely heating it up. Every A/C compressor unit, every car radiator, asphalt parking lot and roof, every furnace exhaust and chimney produces vast quantities of heat. Everyone says that is only affects local weather, but if a city as large as New York is 10 degrees hotter than the surrounding area, that heat must go somewhere. Once the hotter air gets into the jet stream or trade winds, it will have an effect (however tiny) on the overall temperature of the planet. With more and more mega cities, the cumulative effect of this might be substantial. It is too bad we don't have any way of using this waste heat.
Back in those days, we didn't have fancy graphic systems like CGA so I had to make do with VT100 and NCURSES. My ghosts were reverse video double quotes which looked good enough. Unfortunately, the 9600 baud transfer rate only allowed 2 ghosts to be playable. With that in mind, I put together a really simple chase algorithm:
When a ghost comes to an intersection, if it can turn towards the player, it does except randomly 1 in 4 times it turns another direction.
If it can't turn towards the play it picks one of the directions it can turn
All of the other rules of the original PAC-MAN (player is faster when no dots, slower when eating them, faster in corners, and ghosts are slower in tunnels) were implemented. The hardest part was the random generator. 128 bit shift-register written in 8080 assembly (my dad helped a bit). By the time it was all done, my 2 ghosts were harder than the 4 in the original. They also seemed to be predictable as well. Every time one of them would hit that random turn it always seemed to be the one that hosed you completely!
Service depends on the dealership much more than the make. You must have had a shitty one. My dad did too - with a Toyota. Less than 15k miles on his new Corolla and it is affected by the engine oil sludge. They said "well, our records show that you didn't change the oil, so it is your fault, so it is not covered under warranty. And you need a new engine". My dad produced receipts from the scheduled oil changes he had performed by his mechanic, but the dealer and/or Toyota refused to honor the warranty claim. He had his mechanic clean out the motor for about $500 and has been able to keep it from blowing by using synthetic and changing it every 2,500 miles.
I bought a new Chevy S-10 about the same time and didn't have any problems for the first 2 1/2 years until the front brake pads started wearing out. At about 2 weeks before my 3 year warranty was to expire I took it into Midas for new brake pads (they are not normally covered under warranty). Midas said there seemed to be a problem with the brake caliper as well, and I should take it to the dealer. If I was lucky, they might cover some of it under warranty. I took it to the dealer, and not only did they cover everything, but provided a free rental car as well.
If you run Linux, You can get the original shareware including the game files at my website. I also have a nice Debian package for dark-war but haven't figured out how to get a reseller agreement with 3drealms. Note my nick name.
If your kid likes Roller coasters, get one their coaster building kits. Besides being wicked cool and still (mostly) made in the US, your kids (and probably you) will learn all sorts of stuff about physics, construction mechanical engineering, etc without even knowing it!
It should be - even on Windows. I was using scp from CYGWIN to transfer a large file to a Linux server and the encryption was eating up all my CPU. I couldn't do anything else at all. Try to open emails, access web pages, nothing would work while the copy was running. I used nice with the command and checked task manager. Sure enough, the CPU was still at 100% but as soon as I did anything else, it responded perfectly. The CPU was always at 100% but when running nice I couldn't tell it from the other applications.
Adding nice to your Desktop should be easy too. Just edit the shortcut and add nice to the command, i.e.: nice firefox (I am running this browser with nice and can't tell any difference)
I heard some commercials for Windows phones a few days ago on the radio and the commercial ended with something like "with Windows 7 mobile... a product of the Microsoft group." I got the impression the Windows 7 mobile was the product of some sort of Microsoft subsidiary. WTF?
Re:Have two forms of flying, safe and unsafe.
on
TSA Pats Down 3-Year-Old
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
That wouldn't work. The business of taking over the cockpit was solved on 9/12: Just lock the damn door and don't open it. Oh and since the pilot has 2 of his best friends (Smith and Wesson) with him, any attempt would be rather short lived...
There really isn't a premium. I went to Home Depot recently, bought several hand tools, a lock, about 12 9v batteries, some 2 part epoxy, etc. Spent about $80. Out of this list, the only thing made in China was the lock. Everything else was made in the US. The lock (a Master Lock) was one of the more expensive items, and I had no choice. As far as price goes, the US made versions of most of the products I bough were about the same as the Chinese made ones. For about the price of a large order of Dominoes, you can get a cast iron pizza pan, also made in the US. Until you have made pizza on one of these bad boys, you haven't lived. And try finding a Chinese made version that is much cheaper.
Should you have ever have a Big-Mac attack, Eat this, not that has a burger for you. Instead of one of those crappy fake veggie-patties, they use a big-assed portobello mushroom for the burger. Looks mighty yummy, and I eat meat. BTW, if you are out with other people at a restaurant, most vegetarian entries are absolute nutritional nightmares, not that the meat entries are much better. I have also never advocated Linux to anyone. Several people have come to me in which I help them and explain how it works.
20 years ago, I sent an email to a coworker who sat in the desk next to mine. When he complained, I apologized and promised to phone him the next time.
They did do this to one of my computers. It worked quite well, preventing me from using Windows on that computer. Perhaps a little too well as I just ripped it out and installed Ubuntu where I don't have to worry about such bullshit.
Slashdot Mirror
Damn - I wish I had mod points for informative - oh wait I do... Damn the motherfucking ./ moderator rules!
Seeing as the Hitchhikers Guide has already effectively used time travel to sue a cereal company and Ford Prefect was here in the 1980s, Betelgeuse blowing up should not be a problem for it. They would just have to travel back in time to revise the guide retrospectively, as if Betelgeuse never even existed. Thus original copies of the guide would suddenly become very valuable. And Ford would have his planet blown up (possibly several times) just like Arthur.
You must be new here. You can cuss as much as you want here:
"I've had it... with these fucking lasers on this fucking plane!"
Obligatory XKCD reference
Please, if you need some serious firepower, you need the totally compatible .357 magnum
I guess I left out some details. The original CALL/JMP mistake was made on an 8080 Heathkit H-89 thirty years ago when I was a kid. I wanted to play games and the only way to play them without putting in quarters (which I didn't have) was to program them yourself. The BASIC that came with the H-89 was totally shitty in every way. So I was programming in assembly without knowing jack about programming principles, and only a few months after having touched a computer. A few years later, I worked my ass off to get a (then new) C-64 so I could actually program some games with nice graphics. However, I still didn't have the $30 that a new Macro Assembler cartridge cost, so I made one myself. As far as not using GOTOs, I might have had a few in my BASIC program but only to emulate IF/THEN/ELSE type logic. Everything else was handled by nice clean subroutines like we have in .net today. Since that lesson 30 years ago, I really haven't used GOTO in much of anything.
I went through this same leap. Unfortunately, I also brought the bad GOTO habit from BASIC. After awhile of mysterious stack overflows in my games, I figured out that using JMP from a subroutine instead of returning from it was a very bad idea. Later I got a C-64 but didn't have the money for the Macro Assembler cartridge. So in BASIC (no longer using GOTO), I wrote an assembler which supported the full 6502 instruction set and address labels. The C-64 didn't have any kind of text editor so I wrote an EDLIN style one, also in BASIC. Using my homegrown assembler, I was able to write a simple Q*Bert style game. Best $30 I never spent!
I agree. I remember seeing an Al Gore special about how it was real, the whole world was going to end... Yada Yada Yada.. And when asked what we could do about it, he said "buy CFLs". BFD. I bought a coffee maker with a thermal carafe instead of the usual one with the hotplate that stays on. Those draw 800 watts. If leave it on for the typical 2 hours, that is 1.6kwh that you are saving EVERY DAY. Just by buying a better coffee maker. Get one of those Black and Decker whole house power monitors and maybe a KillaWatt. You might find some other surprises.
BTW, we are heating up the atmosphere. While I don't know how much (if any) of it is caused by CO2 (neither do the zealots), we are definitely heating it up. Every A/C compressor unit, every car radiator, asphalt parking lot and roof, every furnace exhaust and chimney produces vast quantities of heat. Everyone says that is only affects local weather, but if a city as large as New York is 10 degrees hotter than the surrounding area, that heat must go somewhere. Once the hotter air gets into the jet stream or trade winds, it will have an effect (however tiny) on the overall temperature of the planet. With more and more mega cities, the cumulative effect of this might be substantial. It is too bad we don't have any way of using this waste heat.
Mythbusters has to be there. There are some things in nature that just have to happen.
Back in those days, we didn't have fancy graphic systems like CGA so I had to make do with VT100 and NCURSES. My ghosts were reverse video double quotes which looked good enough. Unfortunately, the 9600 baud transfer rate only allowed 2 ghosts to be playable. With that in mind, I put together a really simple chase algorithm:
All of the other rules of the original PAC-MAN (player is faster when no dots, slower when eating them, faster in corners, and ghosts are slower in tunnels) were implemented. The hardest part was the random generator. 128 bit shift-register written in 8080 assembly (my dad helped a bit). By the time it was all done, my 2 ghosts were harder than the 4 in the original. They also seemed to be predictable as well. Every time one of them would hit that random turn it always seemed to be the one that hosed you completely!
Service depends on the dealership much more than the make. You must have had a shitty one. My dad did too - with a Toyota. Less than 15k miles on his new Corolla and it is affected by the engine oil sludge. They said "well, our records show that you didn't change the oil, so it is your fault, so it is not covered under warranty. And you need a new engine". My dad produced receipts from the scheduled oil changes he had performed by his mechanic, but the dealer and/or Toyota refused to honor the warranty claim. He had his mechanic clean out the motor for about $500 and has been able to keep it from blowing by using synthetic and changing it every 2,500 miles.
I bought a new Chevy S-10 about the same time and didn't have any problems for the first 2 1/2 years until the front brake pads started wearing out. At about 2 weeks before my 3 year warranty was to expire I took it into Midas for new brake pads (they are not normally covered under warranty). Midas said there seemed to be a problem with the brake caliper as well, and I should take it to the dealer. If I was lucky, they might cover some of it under warranty. I took it to the dealer, and not only did they cover everything, but provided a free rental car as well.
We have been running this for about 10 years. Thanks! Now I have a new buzzword I can use to get some more NAS backup devices....
Good for Your Soul...
If you run Linux, You can get the original shareware including the game files at my website. I also have a nice Debian package for dark-war but haven't figured out how to get a reseller agreement with 3drealms. Note my nick name.
If your kid likes Roller coasters, get one their coaster building kits. Besides being wicked cool and still (mostly) made in the US, your kids (and probably you) will learn all sorts of stuff about physics, construction mechanical engineering, etc without even knowing it!
It should be - even on Windows. I was using scp from CYGWIN to transfer a large file to a Linux server and the encryption was eating up all my CPU. I couldn't do anything else at all. Try to open emails, access web pages, nothing would work while the copy was running. I used nice with the command and checked task manager. Sure enough, the CPU was still at 100% but as soon as I did anything else, it responded perfectly. The CPU was always at 100% but when running nice I couldn't tell it from the other applications.
Adding nice to your Desktop should be easy too. Just edit the shortcut and add nice to the command, i.e.: nice firefox (I am running this browser with nice and can't tell any difference)
I heard some commercials for Windows phones a few days ago on the radio and the commercial ended with something like "with Windows 7 mobile... a product of the Microsoft group." I got the impression the Windows 7 mobile was the product of some sort of Microsoft subsidiary. WTF?
That wouldn't work. The business of taking over the cockpit was solved on 9/12: Just lock the damn door and don't open it. Oh and since the pilot has 2 of his best friends (Smith and Wesson) with him, any attempt would be rather short lived...
There really isn't a premium. I went to Home Depot recently, bought several hand tools, a lock, about 12 9v batteries, some 2 part epoxy, etc. Spent about $80. Out of this list, the only thing made in China was the lock. Everything else was made in the US. The lock (a Master Lock) was one of the more expensive items, and I had no choice. As far as price goes, the US made versions of most of the products I bough were about the same as the Chinese made ones. For about the price of a large order of Dominoes, you can get a cast iron pizza pan, also made in the US. Until you have made pizza on one of these bad boys, you haven't lived. And try finding a Chinese made version that is much cheaper.
Should you have ever have a Big-Mac attack, Eat this, not that has a burger for you. Instead of one of those crappy fake veggie-patties, they use a big-assed portobello mushroom for the burger. Looks mighty yummy, and I eat meat. BTW, if you are out with other people at a restaurant, most vegetarian entries are absolute nutritional nightmares, not that the meat entries are much better. I have also never advocated Linux to anyone. Several people have come to me in which I help them and explain how it works.
And id you shift each letter back in IBM, you get HAL, as in "Just what do you think you are doing Dave?"
20 years ago, I sent an email to a coworker who sat in the desk next to mine. When he complained, I apologized and promised to phone him the next time.
put in your CGI script something along the lines
convert -thumbnail 100 $QUERY_STRING thumbnail-$QUERY_STRING
echo Location: thumbnail-$QUERY_STRING
echo
They did do this to one of my computers. It worked quite well, preventing me from using Windows on that computer. Perhaps a little too well as I just ripped it out and installed Ubuntu where I don't have to worry about such bullshit.
The must have missed the date of The Answer a few weeks ago.