Even writing games like that reinforced mathematical concepts, because programming requires a lot of math. Calculator programming ought to be encouraged more, rather than discouraged. Also, it's fun. I find when something is enjoyable, it makes learning a lot easier.
Same here. I got through long dull high school classes programming my TI-83. I loved making games in TI-BASIC, and got really good at it. I made some useful math programs too. I found that creating a program to solve a certain type of problem (ie solve triangles when you know only 3 pieces of information) actually was a great way to learn the material. Because I knew how to program them, even when they wiped the memory before tests, I could make a quick program during the test to help me out with formulaic questions.
TI-83s are a huge part of why I went into programming, and got a degree in Computer Science.
I've been using PlayOn with my PS3 and watching Hulu, and don't pay for cable (other than internet). It generally works pretty well, but is by no means perfect. There is no way to fast forward, even though Hulu on the computer lets you skip ahead, and the PS3 controls let you attempt to fast forward (but if you do, you usually end up losing the stream and needing to start over). This frustrates the other problem, which is that often when watching something on Hulu it will simply break and stop playing, sometimes more than 30 minutes in.
When that happens I either give up and watch it on the computer, or I have to start all over from the beginning, and go off and find something to kill 30 minutes till the show catches up to where I left off.
There are also buffering problems, but that may just have to do with my home network. (Except it seems to make no difference is my laptop is actually wired or wireless).
I'm starting to consider just hooking my laptop up to my new hdtv via the monitor input and just watching it that way, even though it's far less convenient.
Epic actually released ZZT as freeware some time back. Although I don't think they have it on their site anymore. Am I the only one really sad to go to epicgames.com and click Previous Releases only to find a list of Unreal games? I really wish the website could celebrate their rich history. It would be even more awesome if they provided the old shareware demos - or even made more of those games freeware since they aren't available anymore. Ah well.:-(
Agreed. I too used it to assess albums for purchase and am sad to see it is gone. I think the summary is biased even by Slashdot standards.
I'm not surprised to see it failed though, I'm surprised it lasted this long. (And I enjoyed the ability to trial music from them for as long as they lasted).
Agreed. I hated the buggy client, the DRM, the ads. Yet this news really saddens me.
I was willing to put up with them for the chance to legally try new music. If I heard a song by an artist that sounded interesting, my first step was always to see if Ruckus had them, download an album or two, and check them out. If I found myself booting up that crummy player over and over to listen to it more, I would go buy the CD.
In fact, the very crappiness of their software further incentivized me to actually buy the music sooner, since it was painful to use it all the time, and I couldn't put it on my mp3 player or play it in my car. But again, I liked that you could check the music out for free. I bought a lot of albums I wouldn't have otherwise if it weren't for Ruckus and this legal opportunity to 'try before you buy'.
This is the only case where one could justify DRM. Since the music is free, stripping the DRM amounts to piracy.
Before I got my graph-link (an absolute must-have for the budding calculator programmer) I was known to forego the use of a calculator on math tests that they made you clear your memory for! I didn't want to lose my precious programs that I had toiled long and hard on.
Although I too have completely re-done older programs from scratch for the sake of making them more efficient. Plus there was the point where I learned how to avoid memory leaks and never get Error: Memory when my programs were running.
Oh man, brings back memories. My first programming exposure was QBASIC with help from my dad and a book called QBASIC for kids (or something like that, it was actually targeted for children programmers! How many books like that are there today?) But I didn't return to programming until middle school with... yes... the TI-83. (Not +, which came out the very next year to my chagrin).
I started with simple number counting programs, progressed to moving things around the screen with getkey and output, eventually made a little racer-type program.
I continued to improve, however, and you'd be amazed what you can do with the very limited BASIC language. By high school graduation I had made small rpgs (never finished them sadly, but it was fun to battle and level up), a minesweeper clone, and my personal favorite Gravitation, a connect-four style game for two players of my own creation. I long since abandoned GOTOs, even to the point of coming up with my own graph-screen based menu system to replace the built in one that is hard-coded to GOTOs.
There are a lot of handy little tricks you can do in TI-BASIC, for instance, if you start a line with " you can make it a comment (it is a string, but it is ignored if it isn't assigned to a var). The most recent piece of data is always automatically stored in the ANS temporary variable, so you can use it to pass arguments between subprograms. While variables are global and limited to the alphabet (and theta), you could define your own lists and use those instead (or use them as arrays). I even mimicked recursion in my minesweeper clone by using a list as a stack. (I had to use two programs, however, since I don't think you can have a program call itself). For graphics, it helped to set the window size to values between (0,0) and (64,-92) [I think those were the pixel counts, but correct me if I am wrong] so that to match up pixel position with other graph functions (such as line) all you had to do was reverse the order of the X and Y coordinates, and make the Y value negative. Once I figured out that trick, graphical programs were a breeze.
The constraints in TI-BASIC also really force you to think outside the box as a programmer. Space is incredibly limited, so you learn to make every byte count, and optimize code as much as possible. Additionally, the processor is slow, so you learn ways to improve your algorithms for speed.
Sure, you could program ASM programs. But for me, the weaknesses of BASIC were all part of the challenge. (Plus there was the advantage of being able to code it directly on the calculator, especially when bored in class). Others liked wasting time playing games on their calculators. I always had more fun making them myself, and it was around that time that I realized I wanted to make programming into a career.
I'm still tempted to pick up a TI-84+ silver to replace my crummy TI-83 with-no-archive-memory. I miss programming the thing.
Couldn't let this "informative" comment get by with such an inaccuracy.
Drive was actually by Tim Minear, the executive producer of Firefly. Who also keeps getting shows canceled by Fox. (I really wanted to see what happened in that race.)
The finger print scanner is one of those things that never worked right for me. Sometimes it would work, other times it wouldn't matter how many times I swiped, or which finger I used, it wouldn't work.
I haven't bothered to re-install the fingerprint software since I made the system dual-boot (with a clean copy of windows)
I agree. I feel like a minority here... but I like buying cds. When I spend money I want something tangible - I can later rip the tracks myself (into whatever format I want, free of drm encumberance and at whatever quality I choose). I also like the full album experience. I'm not one to buy single tracks off an artist, I like getting a set of tracks that go together.
It is sad that I so rarely find any cds I want to buy in stores, though. I buy almost everything from Amazon or Deep Discount these days, because they are the only ones that have the selection (and price) that I want.
On the flip side, it looks like DRM-free pay-to-download music is growing. Also I am hopeful that this means albums will never go out of print anymore, because downloads will always be available (no CDs to continue printing).
Sometimes exploiting glitches in games makes them good. These have to be glitches that don't cause problems, but rather let you do things you aren't supposed to be able to do.
I remember in Sonic 2 in the Wing Fortress zone, if you stood on the elevator/conveyor things, you could walk off at the top (or bottom if it was going down), and continue to walk, as if on a surface.
Wow, I didn't believe you until I checked Amazon! These just recently came out, too!
Well, I had heard that they were going to reissue the first two seasons Starbursts with more discs (instead of the double sided ones. I had to return one set three times before I got a working one!) They weren't going to until they ran out of their existing stock, so maybe they'll start a new printing soon. One can hope.
Otherwise... wow... I don't know what to say. I'm glad I picked mine up! Strange if it really is out of print.
Muppets - or rather, sophisticated animatronics - look far more alien than bumpy-headed prosthetic-covered actors. They were always portrayed very realistically too, the skill of the puppetry is really astounding!
Nothing against SG-1, but it had the best run of any scifi show in America. Ten seasons, a spin-off, and more possibly on the way.
Farscape got a mere 4 seasons, cancelled while they were wrapping up the end of the 4th season, and were promised a 5th - so many threads were left dangling. Thankfully the fans got a miniseries to wrap it up, but it's so heavily compressed another season would have been so much better.
Farscape had a sense of humor that I loved, but it was not silly. It was actually quite dark, it really pushed the envelope in terms of what science fiction shows can do. A few plots were cheesy, sure, but every good show has a few clunkers.
Thankfully, the Farscape DVDs have been re-released as "Starburst" editions. More special features (including exclusive interviews and several new commentaries), and a much cheaper price. That's how I got to see the series, and glad of it.
Did I mention how excited I am that Farscape is returning?! Hopefully these "webisodes" will be longer than a few minutes each, I don't see how you could tell much story in something too short.
And yes, I would gladly pay for more episodes of Firefly. *sigh*
I heard about the ATI difficulties, but sadly that was the only option available for my laptop. (Which is ironic, because they advertise their systems as being Linux friendly.) I do remember reading on Slashdot about ATI making their drivers open-source in the future... or something like that. Maybe that would improve it?
BTW, one other weird issue I had is that sound wouldn't work on Wine, and when I tried to configure Wine the configuration always crashed.:-S
Thanks, I'll consider those distros too. I partitioned my system with a separate data partition (also a WinXP partition - for games of course.) so it's not too difficult to try different distros.
I'm actually planning on switching away from Ubuntu trying a different distro (Gentoo or Archlinux, something less bloated and with more control). Ubuntu just has random problems for me.
I'm running it on an IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad R60 with an ATI videocard and 1gig RAM.
Every now and then when I boot up sound doesn't work - nothing to do with the system volume or the volume control in Ubuntu. A reboot always fixes this.
Also, seemingly at random, message boxes will pop up completely empty and size less. I need to resize them to be able to close them. This is annoying when it happens for Firefox, such as session managing windows coming up with nothing in them. Sometimes settings windows are empty, but opening them again fixes this.
Rarely, but occassionally, the system will crash when I hibernate it (and sometimes when I reboot it). Annoying when I try to hibernate to save my session, and end up stuck on a black screen and needing to shut it off. Especially annoying when it continues to use battery - I need to now make sure it powers off all the way before putting it away.
I used Synaptic to get the plugin for Firefox to view movies (ie quicktime) that are embedded in webpages, but whenever I get one it shows up as a [no video].
I am still learning Linux, but I am a programmer and a computer geek, so I'm comfortable with going in and tweaking things, using the command line, etc. Just a little inexperienced still. Anyway, Ubuntu, for me, doesn't "just work". Not all of the time anyway. I have no idea what to think of some of these problems.
Slashdot Mirror
How about battery life in percentages of Libraries of Congress that can be read on a single charge?
Very well put. Had I the mod points...
Even writing games like that reinforced mathematical concepts, because programming requires a lot of math. Calculator programming ought to be encouraged more, rather than discouraged. Also, it's fun. I find when something is enjoyable, it makes learning a lot easier.
Same here. I got through long dull high school classes programming my TI-83. I loved making games in TI-BASIC, and got really good at it. I made some useful math programs too. I found that creating a program to solve a certain type of problem (ie solve triangles when you know only 3 pieces of information) actually was a great way to learn the material. Because I knew how to program them, even when they wiped the memory before tests, I could make a quick program during the test to help me out with formulaic questions.
TI-83s are a huge part of why I went into programming, and got a degree in Computer Science.
I've been using PlayOn with my PS3 and watching Hulu, and don't pay for cable (other than internet). It generally works pretty well, but is by no means perfect. There is no way to fast forward, even though Hulu on the computer lets you skip ahead, and the PS3 controls let you attempt to fast forward (but if you do, you usually end up losing the stream and needing to start over). This frustrates the other problem, which is that often when watching something on Hulu it will simply break and stop playing, sometimes more than 30 minutes in. When that happens I either give up and watch it on the computer, or I have to start all over from the beginning, and go off and find something to kill 30 minutes till the show catches up to where I left off. There are also buffering problems, but that may just have to do with my home network. (Except it seems to make no difference is my laptop is actually wired or wireless). I'm starting to consider just hooking my laptop up to my new hdtv via the monitor input and just watching it that way, even though it's far less convenient.
I agree with your sentiment, but that is not the actual source. Try the actual original posting by Joss Whedon.
Source: http://whedonesque.com/comments/22240
Epic actually released ZZT as freeware some time back. Although I don't think they have it on their site anymore. Am I the only one really sad to go to epicgames.com and click Previous Releases only to find a list of Unreal games? I really wish the website could celebrate their rich history. It would be even more awesome if they provided the old shareware demos - or even made more of those games freeware since they aren't available anymore. Ah well. :-(
Agreed. I too used it to assess albums for purchase and am sad to see it is gone. I think the summary is biased even by Slashdot standards.
I'm not surprised to see it failed though, I'm surprised it lasted this long. (And I enjoyed the ability to trial music from them for as long as they lasted).
It was free. Not a store. Get your facts straight.
Agreed. I hated the buggy client, the DRM, the ads. Yet this news really saddens me.
I was willing to put up with them for the chance to legally try new music. If I heard a song by an artist that sounded interesting, my first step was always to see if Ruckus had them, download an album or two, and check them out. If I found myself booting up that crummy player over and over to listen to it more, I would go buy the CD.
In fact, the very crappiness of their software further incentivized me to actually buy the music sooner, since it was painful to use it all the time, and I couldn't put it on my mp3 player or play it in my car. But again, I liked that you could check the music out for free. I bought a lot of albums I wouldn't have otherwise if it weren't for Ruckus and this legal opportunity to 'try before you buy'.
This is the only case where one could justify DRM. Since the music is free, stripping the DRM amounts to piracy.
Before I got my graph-link (an absolute must-have for the budding calculator programmer) I was known to forego the use of a calculator on math tests that they made you clear your memory for! I didn't want to lose my precious programs that I had toiled long and hard on.
Although I too have completely re-done older programs from scratch for the sake of making them more efficient. Plus there was the point where I learned how to avoid memory leaks and never get Error: Memory when my programs were running.
Oh man, brings back memories. My first programming exposure was QBASIC with help from my dad and a book called QBASIC for kids (or something like that, it was actually targeted for children programmers! How many books like that are there today?) But I didn't return to programming until middle school with... yes... the TI-83. (Not +, which came out the very next year to my chagrin).
I started with simple number counting programs, progressed to moving things around the screen with getkey and output, eventually made a little racer-type program.
I continued to improve, however, and you'd be amazed what you can do with the very limited BASIC language. By high school graduation I had made small rpgs (never finished them sadly, but it was fun to battle and level up), a minesweeper clone, and my personal favorite Gravitation, a connect-four style game for two players of my own creation. I long since abandoned GOTOs, even to the point of coming up with my own graph-screen based menu system to replace the built in one that is hard-coded to GOTOs.
There are a lot of handy little tricks you can do in TI-BASIC, for instance, if you start a line with " you can make it a comment (it is a string, but it is ignored if it isn't assigned to a var). The most recent piece of data is always automatically stored in the ANS temporary variable, so you can use it to pass arguments between subprograms. While variables are global and limited to the alphabet (and theta), you could define your own lists and use those instead (or use them as arrays). I even mimicked recursion in my minesweeper clone by using a list as a stack. (I had to use two programs, however, since I don't think you can have a program call itself). For graphics, it helped to set the window size to values between (0,0) and (64,-92) [I think those were the pixel counts, but correct me if I am wrong] so that to match up pixel position with other graph functions (such as line) all you had to do was reverse the order of the X and Y coordinates, and make the Y value negative. Once I figured out that trick, graphical programs were a breeze.
The constraints in TI-BASIC also really force you to think outside the box as a programmer. Space is incredibly limited, so you learn to make every byte count, and optimize code as much as possible. Additionally, the processor is slow, so you learn ways to improve your algorithms for speed.
Sure, you could program ASM programs. But for me, the weaknesses of BASIC were all part of the challenge. (Plus there was the advantage of being able to code it directly on the calculator, especially when bored in class). Others liked wasting time playing games on their calculators. I always had more fun making them myself, and it was around that time that I realized I wanted to make programming into a career.
I'm still tempted to pick up a TI-84+ silver to replace my crummy TI-83 with-no-archive-memory. I miss programming the thing.
Couldn't let this "informative" comment get by with such an inaccuracy.
Drive was actually by Tim Minear, the executive producer of Firefly. Who also keeps getting shows canceled by Fox. (I really wanted to see what happened in that race.)
The finger print scanner is one of those things that never worked right for me. Sometimes it would work, other times it wouldn't matter how many times I swiped, or which finger I used, it wouldn't work.
I haven't bothered to re-install the fingerprint software since I made the system dual-boot (with a clean copy of windows)
I agree. I feel like a minority here... but I like buying cds. When I spend money I want something tangible - I can later rip the tracks myself (into whatever format I want, free of drm encumberance and at whatever quality I choose). I also like the full album experience. I'm not one to buy single tracks off an artist, I like getting a set of tracks that go together.
It is sad that I so rarely find any cds I want to buy in stores, though. I buy almost everything from Amazon or Deep Discount these days, because they are the only ones that have the selection (and price) that I want.
On the flip side, it looks like DRM-free pay-to-download music is growing. Also I am hopeful that this means albums will never go out of print anymore, because downloads will always be available (no CDs to continue printing).
I'm in ur gmail, using ur 3069
Sometimes exploiting glitches in games makes them good. These have to be glitches that don't cause problems, but rather let you do things you aren't supposed to be able to do.
I remember in Sonic 2 in the Wing Fortress zone, if you stood on the elevator/conveyor things, you could walk off at the top (or bottom if it was going down), and continue to walk, as if on a surface.
More info on the repressing of the older Starburst editions at TV Shows on DVD.
Wow, I didn't believe you until I checked Amazon! These just recently came out, too!
Well, I had heard that they were going to reissue the first two seasons Starbursts with more discs (instead of the double sided ones. I had to return one set three times before I got a working one!) They weren't going to until they ran out of their existing stock, so maybe they'll start a new printing soon. One can hope.
Otherwise... wow... I don't know what to say. I'm glad I picked mine up! Strange if it really is out of print.
Muppets - or rather, sophisticated animatronics - look far more alien than bumpy-headed prosthetic-covered actors. They were always portrayed very realistically too, the skill of the puppetry is really astounding!
Nothing against SG-1, but it had the best run of any scifi show in America. Ten seasons, a spin-off, and more possibly on the way.
Farscape got a mere 4 seasons, cancelled while they were wrapping up the end of the 4th season, and were promised a 5th - so many threads were left dangling. Thankfully the fans got a miniseries to wrap it up, but it's so heavily compressed another season would have been so much better.
Farscape had a sense of humor that I loved, but it was not silly. It was actually quite dark, it really pushed the envelope in terms of what science fiction shows can do. A few plots were cheesy, sure, but every good show has a few clunkers.
Thankfully, the Farscape DVDs have been re-released as "Starburst" editions. More special features (including exclusive interviews and several new commentaries), and a much cheaper price. That's how I got to see the series, and glad of it.
Did I mention how excited I am that Farscape is returning?! Hopefully these "webisodes" will be longer than a few minutes each, I don't see how you could tell much story in something too short.
And yes, I would gladly pay for more episodes of Firefly. *sigh*
Thanks. Well, that's why I keep Windows and dual-boot. Sad that we need to do things that way, but it makes sure everything works.
Ah, yeah I hear ya on the misleading. Well at any rate it's positive progress.
I heard about the ATI difficulties, but sadly that was the only option available for my laptop. (Which is ironic, because they advertise their systems as being Linux friendly.) I do remember reading on Slashdot about ATI making their drivers open-source in the future... or something like that. Maybe that would improve it?
:-S
BTW, one other weird issue I had is that sound wouldn't work on Wine, and when I tried to configure Wine the configuration always crashed.
Thanks, I'll consider those distros too. I partitioned my system with a separate data partition (also a WinXP partition - for games of course.) so it's not too difficult to try different distros.
I'm actually planning on switching away from Ubuntu trying a different distro (Gentoo or Archlinux, something less bloated and with more control). Ubuntu just has random problems for me.
I'm running it on an IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad R60 with an ATI videocard and 1gig RAM.
Every now and then when I boot up sound doesn't work - nothing to do with the system volume or the volume control in Ubuntu. A reboot always fixes this.
Also, seemingly at random, message boxes will pop up completely empty and size less. I need to resize them to be able to close them. This is annoying when it happens for Firefox, such as session managing windows coming up with nothing in them. Sometimes settings windows are empty, but opening them again fixes this.
Rarely, but occassionally, the system will crash when I hibernate it (and sometimes when I reboot it). Annoying when I try to hibernate to save my session, and end up stuck on a black screen and needing to shut it off. Especially annoying when it continues to use battery - I need to now make sure it powers off all the way before putting it away.
I used Synaptic to get the plugin for Firefox to view movies (ie quicktime) that are embedded in webpages, but whenever I get one it shows up as a [no video].
I am still learning Linux, but I am a programmer and a computer geek, so I'm comfortable with going in and tweaking things, using the command line, etc. Just a little inexperienced still. Anyway, Ubuntu, for me, doesn't "just work". Not all of the time anyway. I have no idea what to think of some of these problems.