The integer math was way slower than floating-point in Commodore BASIC V2.0. It was basic interpreter fault, so no one really wanted to use integer variables in basic.
A lot more high level constructs were added on Commodore 128, but most of them were quite limiting. Programing on 1MHz CPU using BASIC to do more than text input / output was hard, but one could toggle some sounds, sprites or graphic modes poking RAM. For anything more complicated was way to slow. Commodore 128 had built in assembler, unlike C64.
Basic commands were tokenized. Example:
hit SHIFT + C= to switch to lowercase mode. Following text is caps sensitive:
10 fO x= 0 to 15: pO 646,x: ? "Hello world.": nE
lI
10 for x= 0 to 15: poke 646,x: print "Hello world.": next
ready.
This example uses 46 bytes of RAM and some more for the x variable. If typed without spaces a lot more bytes could be freed, but it would make the program hard to read. Also the Commodore BASIC v2.0 offered some typing optimization, example one could type IF X=Y THEN 300 instead of THEN GOTO 300. I guess it all was an effort to save RAM. I did not consider BASIC v2.0 bad, I used to code in assembler when I needed speed.
And if there is a Collisions, I'm quite sure someone would actually *look* at the file in question before locking you up in pound-me-in-the-ass prison.
Actually, looking at *it* is a crime.
The emphasis is mine. I jut made this post to show how wrong is to corrupt law with morale. Law should be equal to all, and by this example, it is clear that some of us have more (or less) rights than others.
Yes transistors usually do die if they work near or over 100 degrees Celsius.
Storage temperature for most electronic components is 130-150 degrees Celsius. Usually is safe to dry PCB using hot air if it is not above 130 degrees Celsius if temperature rises slowly.
I'm using Windows XP with disabled swap file(s) for 3 years now. I did not have any problems playing Anarchy Online, World of Warcraft, Spellforce the order of Dawn. Other software that I use does not need much RAM, I am OK with 1 GB of RAM for now.
RAM is really affordable right now, and buying a new PC with 2+ GB is must have. I see no point in Swap file, at least for average home user / gamer.
Let me tell You something about World of Warcraft cheat plugins. In early days people used plugins that could tell what item monster will drop before they even attack it. There was plugin similar to maphack that You were using, but hey, in MMO You could use that plugin to help your friends. The plugin that pissed me off the most was one that enabled the cheater to roll the highest greed or need every time he wanted, gaining all the important equipment that dropped for example during the group quest in an instance.
I see the MMOGlider as minor annoyance. If people want to play fast and level up fast, let them. The World of Warcraft is not about leveling fast, it is about having the best equipment for the level.
Grinding for the expensive equipment (mounts, enchanted items, rare drops) is boring, and people usually do everything in their power to avoid it. Using unfair or cheating scripts, ninjaing, buying gold and leveling using the payed helpers is nothing new, and it is far worse than automated playing / leveling.
All the snakeoil products available on shopping channels, such as the additive that allows you to run without any oil or water in the engine for 1000 miles, even racing round an oval track without any damage, have loads of "research" to back them up. They still don't work.
Any ICE engine can run without oil or water with moderate damage for some time. The "snake oil" You are referring to is an additive that enables piston engines to run up to 40 minutes without proper oil pressure. The additive was used by SSSR military in helicopter engines to allow aircraft to leave combat with damaged engine instead of crash landing on to the battle filed. The additive was made to save the crew and the aircraft, not to extend car engine life but was advertised as car engine miracle.
The snake oil is usually one phone call away. After the snake oil salesman is busted, product is redesigned, relabeled, and ready for sale on the same shopping channel by another copycat salesman.
The 1000 miles is overinflated by copycat snakeoil salesman. 50 miles maybe, 100 miles in a military helicopter but not in a car.
2. Whats the point of the frigging fingerprint?
Who has got the both tha equipemnt and the right to check it?
There is no point in fingerprints. mcwidgetsummed it up nicely.
The biggest problem with the fingerprints is that they are so easy to forge / fake.
Now imagine what could happened if someone could duplicate the ID card and forge the fingerprints.
Ultimately, the Army hopes the project will "lead to direct mental control of military systems by thought alone."
Ultimately, the Army hopes the project will "lead to direct mental control of military subjects by thought alone."
Fixed that.
Re:If EA is reading this
on
Review: Spore
·
· Score: 1
The DRM isn't nearly as bad as people make out (it is NOT a root kit - it installs a Ring 3 service, which is the least privileged, but only if you aren't running under an admin account), and I would not be surprised if EA ups or eliminates the install limit a month or two after release.
I agree, but why should translation or localisation significantly offset the final price?
Smart programer will include propper translation for example menu_de.h or menu_it.h in the code for the simple program, and something like language_file_central_europe.h for the more complicated piece of the software.
Dumb one will walk trough the code and manually translate each message. That is the main difference between writing good and bad code.
Further more, if serious software engineering company wants localized and properly translated software it will hire skilled software engineer from the Germany or Italy for example. That will ensure proper translation and localisation.
One or two more software engineers can not offset the final price very much. If it does, just hire someone form India:D
I suspect the MP3 conversion is a lot to do with that. If there were any noise around the zero-crossing point, it wouldn't work at all. He's lucky that method works.
He is more lucky than he knows. I never ever made working MP3 out of working WAV for my C-64. It simply wont load correctly. If I look the signal using the head azimuth analysing program MP3 looks just like the head azimuth is bad all the time.
My experience with C64 tapes says it does not. MP3 makes too much errors, and always ends up in LOADING ERROR. Never had an error with WAV file. No lossy data, compression no error.
Exactly. Low gear would have lot more torque at low speed than high gear would. Depending on gear ratio, above 6000 rpm high gear would give more power and torque.
Low gear would have low acceleration at high rpm, but save some energy and extend range. High gear would have high acceleration at medium speed, and could reach high speed as it distributes power and torque in more desirable way for fast driving.
I doubt it could take long time to change gears. It is two gear gearbox, and reverse gear is electrical, so it must be very simple gearbox, therefore extremly fast.
Running browser with disabled scripts did not help me yesterday.
I'm using browser with disabled scripting ( Java script, Visual Basic Scripts, ActiveX, Siverlight ) and I got infected yesterday while meta moderating. I followed link to gnaa.org or something like that and picked up trojan that copied Internet Explorer cache, history and favorites into the Documents and Settings/.../Local Settings/temp. It made another copy of Explorer.exe procces and started to abuse my internet connection immediately.
After killing the Explorer.exe I was able to delete some of the files, and the rest was converted into the unusable files by Microsoft scandisk after I reseted my PC.:)
It seems that some slashdot trolls use 10+ years old bug in windows JPEG decoder used by my internet browser.
I'm using unpatched Windows XP SP2 with most of the Windows services disabled. I'm behind NAT. My PC was infected several times in 3 years, mostly form running the infected files. Story from the headline most likely refers to the Windows XP PC's that have direct internet connection. PC running Windows XP SP2 is quite safe if it is behind the NAT and firewall and if browser has NoScript or similar plug in as You have pointed out.
Someone pointed out that Intel processors are BIOS-upgradeable. What about computers based on EFI instead of BIOS, such as all the Intel-based Macs?
The BIOS upgrade works around bugs in CPU and chipset, it does not fix the CPU or the chipset. I doubt that Apple needs to update EFI as it was the first one to officially point out bugs in Intel CPU.
Some Intel CPU's allow microcode update. As far as I know Microsoft and Apple inclided microcode update in one of the patches.
It looks backward until you look at torque curve on. The torque curve is flat up to 6000 rpm, and slowly goes to zero at 16000.
To conserve battery juice and keep the motor cool you need to drive it at high rpm. It sounds funny, but all electric motors use less power at high rpm.
At around 11000 rpm torque is roughly at 50%. Switching to "high gear" will force electric motor to run at lower rpm where more torque is available and power curve starts to climb up.
As far as it goes to regenerative braking, I admit that driving at high rpm is not always the best solution. However it is the only solution for saving "battery juice" while driving at medium speed. I'm sure it won't help much if the car is driven carelessly, not caring about keeping the momentum.
The way I think of it, is that hey made "low gear" for city driving, cruising, and high gear for high speed driving and rapid accelerating. Should be fairly simple to drive.
Its a bit weird that this car has a two speed gearbox.
I think it's quite handy for single motor electric car.
Low gear is used to get car into the motion, and more importantly to keep electric motor cool at low speed.
High gear is usable for driving at high speed, especially when high acceleration is needed.
Then if driver wants to save battery juice, it can switch into the first gear while driving at high speed and use the energy from regenerative braking, or cruise at low torque / high rpm where electric motors should run more efficiently.
It looks like normal car, but it is made to be driven in slightly different way. To drive more efficiently drive it at high rpm, to accelerate shift it to the high gear first, then hit the accelerator pedal.
This unwanted e-mail looks more like a news. It seems that someone is trying to spread information, not to push "pharmacy" or other consumer products. Can't say for sure, I'm getting all pharmacy and iPHONe spam only.
I'll keep this link in my bookmark, just in case something comes up in the news at 11.
I grew up playing with some germanium transistors, hand full of resistors and capacitors, 5:1 audio transformer, some diodes, LEDs and high impedance headphones. I used array of springs on a wooden board to connect components without even using the soldering iron. It was the crudest protoboard I've ever seen, yet It was the fastest way to assemble and test small projects. I was 13 year old then, I had a lot of fun modifying projects that come with kit.
I learned how transistors work, what can be done with resistors, capacitors, diodes, coils. I was fun.
Please, slashdotters weigh in, because I've missed something here. Some 4000 series integrated circuits would be nice. They work on wide range of supply voltage, use very little power, and can accept almost anything as input.
Some ferrite rings, E cores, ferrite rods for coils, transformers and chokes. Impulse and radio electronic can be great fun.
Some cheap and easy to program micro controllers, maybe some perforated universal PCBs to materialise MCU and H-bridges into modules.
Do not forget to add LEDs, optocouplers and fototransistors, medium power bipolar junction transistors and FET or two. Do not pile up components, pair or two is enough for small hobbyist project. If anything is missing it can be bought later.
A book, e-book or an link to the site that has general information on electronic components and circuits with some math and explanation on circuit operation.
An ablative could propel itself quite good, but I guess You want to use the atmosphere as the propellant.
Maybe You could use the ablative or liquid coolant to create spin from vapour / gasses and cool the mirror at the same time. That could stabilise the payload just enough to reach velocity needed to orbit the Earth 9 times.
An helium balloon could lift the ablative ( and the satellite ) to the say 30 maybe 40 kilometers. Helium and polyethylene can't be expensive. It could be quite hard to hit satellite with the laser at high altitudes.
Another idea is to launch the gyro with the rail gun and keep on hitting it with the laser beam later when it reaches the popper altitude.
There must be a way to make the system with at least two stages.
Tin Whiskers ?
I have Philips radio from 1939. Nothing special. Long waves, medium waves, short waves, bakelite case, quite small for tube radio. It still works thanks to the leaded thin soldering alloy. It just needs to be kicked hard sometimes because it tends to make whistling like noises.
Thin Whiskers !
Stop kidding me, if such thing existed, my radio would stop working 50 yeas ago.
The only reason why RoHS is so much enforced is throw it to the landfill recycling policy for the modern electronic.
Interesting. However it might be difficult to shield 30pW CPU against beta emitter.
I guess that integrated solution ( CPU + on-die battery ) is not an option.
>All the equipment, moving parts, maintained, used to capture human power won't reach the point of break even on any of this stuff.
I cant agree more. I bet piezo effect could harness power cheaper and more efficient than
pads underneath, driving fluid through mini-turbines that then generate electricity It sounds complicated, mini-turbines can't be very efficient, there is going to be a lot of fluid, vents and pipes, lot of friction.
Piezo effect can be used to create high AC voltage needed for CFLs. There You go, floor tiles can power CFL's (almost) directly.
The fabrication of piezo electric floor elements can be cheap, natural materials can be used that look like and behave like ordinary floor materials They would be simpler to recycle than mini-turbines and a lot easier to replace. There is really no need complicated system, but engineers, British engineers...
then it finishes and you turn to your buddy and say "so it's 'wade in and kill everything' like last time then?" That *IS* what bad games do to the players. They make everyone do the same: 'wade in and kill everything'.
Players should have some choice to sneak, hide, evade, or simply just go around or away or to find their original solution.
It's all about the gameplay, the goddamn storyline is just an envelope for the game not the game itself.
Slashdot Mirror
The integer math was way slower than floating-point in Commodore BASIC V2.0. It was basic interpreter fault, so no one really wanted to use integer variables in basic.
A lot more high level constructs were added on Commodore 128, but most of them were quite limiting.
Programing on 1MHz CPU using BASIC to do more than text input / output was hard, but one could toggle some sounds, sprites or graphic modes poking RAM. For anything more complicated was way to slow. Commodore 128 had built in assembler, unlike C64.
Basic commands were tokenized. Example:
hit SHIFT + C= to switch to lowercase mode. Following text is caps sensitive:
10 fO x= 0 to 15: pO 646,x: ? "Hello world.": nE
lI
10 for x= 0 to 15: poke 646,x: print "Hello world.": next
ready.
This example uses 46 bytes of RAM and some more for the x variable. If typed without spaces a lot more bytes could be freed, but it would make the program hard to read. Also the Commodore BASIC v2.0 offered some typing optimization, example one could type IF X=Y THEN 300 instead of THEN GOTO 300. I guess it all was an effort to save RAM. I did not consider BASIC v2.0 bad, I used to code in assembler when I needed speed.
And if there is a Collisions, I'm quite sure someone would actually *look* at the file in question before locking you up in pound-me-in-the-ass prison.
Actually, looking at *it* is a crime.
The emphasis is mine. I jut made this post to show how wrong is to corrupt law with morale. Law should be equal to all, and by this example, it is clear that some of us have more (or less) rights than others.
Yes transistors usually do die if they work near or over 100 degrees Celsius.
Storage temperature for most electronic components is 130-150 degrees Celsius. Usually is safe to dry PCB using hot air if it is not above 130 degrees Celsius if temperature rises slowly.
I'm using Windows XP with disabled swap file(s) for 3 years now. I did not have any problems playing Anarchy Online, World of Warcraft, Spellforce the order of Dawn. Other software that I use does not need much RAM, I am OK with 1 GB of RAM for now.
RAM is really affordable right now, and buying a new PC with 2+ GB is must have. I see no point in Swap file, at least for average home user / gamer.
Haha ... You call THAT cheating?
Let me tell You something about World of Warcraft cheat plugins. In early days people used plugins that could tell what item monster will drop before they even attack it. There was plugin similar to maphack that You were using, but hey, in MMO You could use that plugin to help your friends. The plugin that pissed me off the most was one that enabled the cheater to roll the highest greed or need every time he wanted, gaining all the important equipment that dropped for example during the group quest in an instance.
I see the MMOGlider as minor annoyance. If people want to play fast and level up fast, let them. The World of Warcraft is not about leveling fast, it is about having the best equipment for the level.
Grinding for the expensive equipment (mounts, enchanted items, rare drops) is boring, and people usually do everything in their power to avoid it. Using unfair or cheating scripts, ninjaing, buying gold and leveling using the payed helpers is nothing new, and it is far worse than automated playing / leveling.
All the snakeoil products available on shopping channels, such as the additive that allows you to run without any oil or water in the engine for 1000 miles, even racing round an oval track without any damage, have loads of "research" to back them up. They still don't work.
Any ICE engine can run without oil or water with moderate damage for some time.
The "snake oil" You are referring to is an additive that enables piston engines to run up to 40 minutes without proper oil pressure. The additive was used by SSSR military in helicopter engines to allow aircraft to leave combat with damaged engine instead of crash landing on to the battle filed. The additive was made to save the crew and the aircraft, not to extend car engine life but was advertised as car engine miracle.
The snake oil is usually one phone call away. After the snake oil salesman is busted, product is redesigned, relabeled, and ready for sale on the same shopping channel by another copycat salesman. The 1000 miles is overinflated by copycat snakeoil salesman. 50 miles maybe, 100 miles in a military helicopter but not in a car.
2. Whats the point of the frigging fingerprint?
Who has got the both tha equipemnt and the right to check it?
There is no point in fingerprints. mcwidget summed it up nicely. The biggest problem with the fingerprints is that they are so easy to forge / fake .
Now imagine what could happened if someone could duplicate the ID card and forge the fingerprints.
Ultimately, the Army hopes the project will "lead to direct mental control of military systems by thought alone."
Ultimately, the Army hopes the project will "lead to direct mental control of military subjects by thought alone."
Fixed that.
The DRM isn't nearly as bad as people make out (it is NOT a root kit - it installs a Ring 3 service, which is the least privileged, but only if you aren't running under an admin account), and I would not be surprised if EA ups or eliminates the install limit a month or two after release.
erm...
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22spore%22%2B%22DVD+burner%22%2Bproblems%2Bstarforce&btnG=Search
bad enough for me. If it did not have bugy DRM in it I'd buy it. now I'm going to wait for the proper crack / DRM-killer / whatever allows me to have working hardware.
If I wanted gaming rig without DVD burner, I'd buy something cheaper than PC.
Funny thing is that similar bug exists in early celeron cores too, but is not listed. Cheers.
I agree, but why should translation or localisation significantly offset the final price?
:D
Smart programer will include propper translation for example menu_de.h or menu_it.h in the code for the simple program, and something like language_file_central_europe.h for the more complicated piece of the software.
Dumb one will walk trough the code and manually translate each message. That is the main difference between writing good and bad code.
Further more, if serious software engineering company wants localized and properly translated software it will hire skilled software engineer from the Germany or Italy for example. That will ensure proper translation and localisation.
One or two more software engineers can not offset the final price very much. If it does, just hire someone form India
I suspect the MP3 conversion is a lot to do with that. If there were any noise around the zero-crossing point, it wouldn't work at all. He's lucky that method works.
He is more lucky than he knows. I never ever made working MP3 out of working WAV for my C-64. It simply wont load correctly. If I look the signal using the head azimuth analysing program MP3 looks just like the head azimuth is bad all the time.
My experience with C64 tapes says it does not. MP3 makes too much errors, and always ends up in LOADING ERROR. Never had an error with WAV file. No lossy data, compression no error.
Exactly. Low gear would have lot more torque at low speed than high gear would. Depending on gear ratio, above 6000 rpm high gear would give more power and torque.
Low gear would have low acceleration at high rpm, but save some energy and extend range. High gear would have high acceleration at medium speed, and could reach high speed as it distributes power and torque in more desirable way for fast driving.
I doubt it could take long time to change gears. It is two gear gearbox, and reverse gear is electrical, so it must be very simple gearbox, therefore extremly fast.
I'm using browser with disabled scripting ( Java script, Visual Basic Scripts, ActiveX, Siverlight ) and I got infected yesterday while meta moderating. I followed link to gnaa.org or something like that and picked up trojan that copied Internet Explorer cache, history and favorites into the Documents and Settings/
After killing the Explorer.exe I was able to delete some of the files, and the rest was converted into the unusable files by Microsoft scandisk after I reseted my PC.
It seems that some slashdot trolls use 10+ years old bug in windows JPEG decoder used by my internet browser.
I'm using unpatched Windows XP SP2 with most of the Windows services disabled. I'm behind NAT. My PC was infected several times in 3 years, mostly form running the infected files. Story from the headline most likely refers to the Windows XP PC's that have direct internet connection. PC running Windows XP SP2 is quite safe if it is behind the NAT and firewall and if browser has NoScript or similar plug in as You have pointed out.
Someone pointed out that Intel processors are BIOS-upgradeable. What about computers based on EFI instead of BIOS, such as all the Intel-based Macs?
The BIOS upgrade works around bugs in CPU and chipset, it does not fix the CPU or the chipset. I doubt that Apple needs to update EFI as it was the first one to officially point out bugs in Intel CPU.
Some Intel CPU's allow microcode update. As far as I know Microsoft and Apple inclided microcode update in one of the patches.
It looks backward until you look at torque curve on. The torque curve is flat up to 6000 rpm, and slowly goes to zero at 16000.
To conserve battery juice and keep the motor cool you need to drive it at high rpm. It sounds funny, but all electric motors use less power at high rpm.
At around 11000 rpm torque is roughly at 50%. Switching to "high gear" will force electric motor to run at lower rpm where more torque is available and power curve starts to climb up.
As far as it goes to regenerative braking, I admit that driving at high rpm is not always the best solution. However it is the only solution for saving "battery juice" while driving at medium speed. I'm sure it won't help much if the car is driven carelessly, not caring about keeping the momentum.
The way I think of it, is that hey made "low gear" for city driving, cruising, and high gear for high speed driving and rapid accelerating. Should be fairly simple to drive.
Its a bit weird that this car has a two speed gearbox.
I think it's quite handy for single motor electric car.
Low gear is used to get car into the motion, and more importantly to keep electric motor cool at low speed.
High gear is usable for driving at high speed, especially when high acceleration is needed. Then if driver wants to save battery juice, it can switch into the first gear while driving at high speed and use the energy from regenerative braking, or cruise at low torque / high rpm where electric motors should run more efficiently.
It looks like normal car, but it is made to be driven in slightly different way. To drive more efficiently drive it at high rpm, to accelerate shift it to the high gear first, then hit the accelerator pedal.
This unwanted e-mail looks more like a news. It seems that someone is trying to spread information, not to push "pharmacy" or other consumer products. Can't say for sure, I'm getting all pharmacy and iPHONe spam only.
I'll keep this link in my bookmark, just in case something comes up in the news at 11.
MOD PARENT UP!
I learned how transistors work, what can be done with resistors, capacitors, diodes, coils. I was fun. Please, slashdotters weigh in, because I've missed something here. Some 4000 series integrated circuits would be nice. They work on wide range of supply voltage, use very little power, and can accept almost anything as input.
Some ferrite rings, E cores, ferrite rods for coils, transformers and chokes. Impulse and radio electronic can be great fun.
Some cheap and easy to program micro controllers, maybe some perforated universal PCBs to materialise MCU and H-bridges into modules.
Do not forget to add LEDs, optocouplers and fototransistors, medium power bipolar junction transistors and FET or two. Do not pile up components, pair or two is enough for small hobbyist project. If anything is missing it can be bought later.
A book, e-book or an link to the site that has general information on electronic components and circuits with some math and explanation on circuit operation.
An ablative could propel itself quite good, but I guess You want to use the atmosphere as the propellant.
Maybe You could use the ablative or liquid coolant to create spin from vapour / gasses and cool the mirror at the same time. That could stabilise the payload just enough to reach velocity needed to orbit the Earth 9 times.
An helium balloon could lift the ablative ( and the satellite ) to the say 30 maybe 40 kilometers. Helium and polyethylene can't be expensive. It could be quite hard to hit satellite with the laser at high altitudes.
Another idea is to launch the gyro with the rail gun and keep on hitting it with the laser beam later when it reaches the popper altitude.
There must be a way to make the system with at least two stages.
Tin Whiskers ?
I have Philips radio from 1939. Nothing special. Long waves, medium waves, short waves, bakelite case, quite small for tube radio. It still works thanks to the leaded thin soldering alloy. It just needs to be kicked hard sometimes because it tends to make whistling like noises.
Thin Whiskers !
Stop kidding me, if such thing existed, my radio would stop working 50 yeas ago.
The only reason why RoHS is so much enforced is throw it to the landfill recycling policy for the modern electronic.
Interesting. However it might be difficult to shield 30pW CPU against beta emitter.
I guess that integrated solution ( CPU + on-die battery ) is not an option.
I cant agree more. I bet piezo effect could harness power cheaper and more efficient than pads underneath, driving fluid through mini-turbines that then generate electricity It sounds complicated, mini-turbines can't be very efficient, there is going to be a lot of fluid, vents and pipes, lot of friction.
Piezo effect can be used to create high AC voltage needed for CFLs. There You go, floor tiles can power CFL's (almost) directly.
The fabrication of piezo electric floor elements can be cheap, natural materials can be used that look like and behave like ordinary floor materials They would be simpler to recycle than mini-turbines and a lot easier to replace. There is really no need complicated system, but engineers, British engineers
That *IS* what bad games do to the players. They make everyone do the same: 'wade in and kill everything'.
Players should have some choice to sneak, hide, evade, or simply just go around or away or to find their original solution.
It's all about the gameplay, the goddamn storyline is just an envelope for the game not the game itself.