There were three arcades in the mall near where I lived in the '80s, a proper arcade, a bunch of cabs next door at the movie theater, and a few more cabs next to the Montgomery Ward's entrance. Now that mall is the headquarters of an internet hosting company.
I was in college in the early '80s, and could play Gravitar for like half an hour on a quarter, and two-fisted Gauntlet, pumping dozens of quarters into one character to get a high score on another character that had a single quarter. (high scores were divided by number of quarters inserted)
I remember being really unhappy about Pole Position when it showed up, in that you could only go four or five laps per credit no matter how well you played.
In my limited experience, you need a LOT of pixels for a vector emulation to look good on an LCD display. One of my all-time favorites is Gravitar, and the lines are just a bit too faint with a 1080 display, unless you crank things up. (specifically on my 17" MacBookPro, but I haven't tried it with recent emulators)
I think vector games might look pretty good on a 4K monitor, especially one with retina resolution. And then you won't have to worry about the vector driver hardware flaking out and spewing lines randomly all over the screen, something I've seen too many Star Wars cabs do.
I thought Orkut was already scrapped a couple of years ago in the normal progression of Google abandoning old stuff. This is like hearing about a celebrity dying and your first thought is "he was still alive?"
To be fair, that also depends on your longitude within your time zone. Just going from one end to the other of a typical time zone is an hour's difference on any day of the year, and can be worse if time zones are extended too far from their central longitude. I've lived mostly at the same longitude most of my life, in the center of a time zone. The one year when I lived half a time zone east, I was surprised how early the sun came up, even with it only being a half hour difference.
Because for one thing, the "transmission range" is how their local ads are based. If you watched a local NYC station via Aereo from LA, those used car dealer ads wouldn't be very useful. Also, you'd be in the range of another local station on the same network, which pays the network for the right to be exclusive in their area. And they didn't even get into all the content black-out rules.
Not only that, but there are even fringe-area stations that rebroadcast on very weak transmitters located in the transmitter antenna farm (weak as in 75 watts, yes, as in a light bulb) for the sole purpose of being received by the local cable company(s), cha-ching! I have a pretty good antenna, but at 15 miles I have no chance to pick up one of those baby translator signals, as long as I refuse to support the cable-industrial complex. Or maybe eventually those stations will finally clue in to the new trend of declining cable subscribers, and add a few watts. (In comparison, I can pick up the local university's student-run low power TV station, ten miles farther away, quite easily with a good antenna.)
Except that TWC and Comcast have to pay to rebroadcast local TV signals. Yes, the same ones you can receive freely with an antenna. Every now and again when the contracts are up for renegotiation, they start spamming TV and radio ads about how YOU COULD LOSE YOUR FOX TV!, but somehow it always gets resolved in time. (or maybe after 2 or 3 days of a cable channel gone black)
Woosh! Your reply may be right, but you clearly didn't read what you were replying to, which is pretty much taking a Tivo or Sling Box, and putting it ON THE CLOUD!!!... OUD... oud... oud...
That's because this is based on a law specifically targeted at cable TV companies, created at the request of the TV networks. In the US, at least, local TV stations have a sort of limited monopoly over the right to broadcast their network's signal. Otherwise cable companies (and especially satellite TV companies!) might just pull down the network feed without inserts or news, or even a channel from the next big city over, leaving the local station blowing in the wind. Not that all or even many of the cable companies would do stuff like this, but there were probably enough problems starting to happen that the law was pushed through.
It's not entirely unlike the problems Tesla has been having with dealership laws. The local dealers want the laws that keep the manufacturers from competing with them, whether or not it would actually be a problem. The manufacturers are likely to just decide it's not worth the trouble when there's already a good dealer around. But if there's a bad dealer, too bad. And also with Uber/Lyft vs. cab companies... there are so many bad cabbies who have no motivation to get better because they already have the limited monopoly licenses that keep good competition out.
Netflix isn't "publicly transmitting" broadcast television, which is what Aereo did. Cable TV companies have to pay for the right to carry local TV channels that are otherwise freely available over-the-air to individuals with antennas.
As someone else analogized it, Aereo was "operating an antenna for other people", which is what a cable company does. (it used to be all they did, before there were cable-only networks) Nobody else is providing you with the antenna to record broadcast TV. (Unless you're recording off of cable/sat, in which case the networks have already been paid off by your cable/sat company.)
Well, first, someone has to actually get up there to do the damage. When it's 20 feet in the air, you have to work to cause problems. Sure, overhead freeway signs get tagged every now and then, but this is all very much high-hanging fruit. Also, this can already be done with ground rail, but I haven't heard about a major epidemic of rail sabotage. People getting hit by trains because of stupidity or stalling on the crossing is significantly more common. There perhaps should be some concern that this is in a place where terrorists like to blow things up, but even they know that with no transportation infrastructure, they won't be able get around to blow more things up.
Pretty sure that was more so the developers could test their code without having to play through an hour of all the other levels. And for the testers, too.
There has been a lot of evolution of cheat codes.
At first the game companies probably just left them in because it was easier than removing them. (conditional compilation and debug/release targets? what's that?)
Then they left them in because they became cool.
Then they made games with hundreds of them so they could monetize them in various ways like "official" strategy guides (this was in the days before web ads)
Then they didn't care.
Then it's possible that the console manufacturers cracked down on "hidden" stuff because they got so paranoid about ways to break into their system. (never mind that hacked save files on memory cards have been one of the best ways to break into a system)
No idea how cheat codes can be any form of copy protection, whether console or PC. In the '80s, computer games often had code sheets to run the game, but those weren't cheats, they just let you in.
I have actually implemented a slight variation of the Konami Code (no A B or Start, so I used other buttons) as a secret unlock code in an actual product. It's just hard enough to do with a rubber keypad that it often takes more than one try. I can't be the only one, anyone else out there done this?
Because of course they would follow the language specification and resist the temptation to embrace and extend it. (Get back to me when they have C99 support.)
Slashdot Mirror
Setup eye-tracking cameras on the pedestrian signs
Are you going to use a zoom and enhance camera for that?
I bet we could do it by making the crosswalk out of solar-powered roadway tiles!
...and now the kiddies play 99-cent (or free) app games all day on mommy's cell phone that are visually superior to anything of that era.
There were three arcades in the mall near where I lived in the '80s, a proper arcade, a bunch of cabs next door at the movie theater, and a few more cabs next to the Montgomery Ward's entrance. Now that mall is the headquarters of an internet hosting company.
I was in college in the early '80s, and could play Gravitar for like half an hour on a quarter, and two-fisted Gauntlet, pumping dozens of quarters into one character to get a high score on another character that had a single quarter. (high scores were divided by number of quarters inserted)
I remember being really unhappy about Pole Position when it showed up, in that you could only go four or five laps per credit no matter how well you played.
In my limited experience, you need a LOT of pixels for a vector emulation to look good on an LCD display. One of my all-time favorites is Gravitar, and the lines are just a bit too faint with a 1080 display, unless you crank things up. (specifically on my 17" MacBookPro, but I haven't tried it with recent emulators)
I think vector games might look pretty good on a 4K monitor, especially one with retina resolution. And then you won't have to worry about the vector driver hardware flaking out and spewing lines randomly all over the screen, something I've seen too many Star Wars cabs do.
I *warned* you, but did you listen to me? Oh, no, you *knew*, didn't you? Oh, it's just a harmless little *squirrel*, isn't it?
Sure, let's call it "dark plastic". I think it's gone to the same place as the universe's missing dark matter.
I thought Orkut was already scrapped a couple of years ago in the normal progression of Google abandoning old stuff. This is like hearing about a celebrity dying and your first thought is "he was still alive?"
TMTOWTDI
There's More Than One Way To Die... ummm, in Iraq.
I'm sure there's a CPAN module for that.
But how much will it be in 12 hours?
To be fair, that also depends on your longitude within your time zone. Just going from one end to the other of a typical time zone is an hour's difference on any day of the year, and can be worse if time zones are extended too far from their central longitude. I've lived mostly at the same longitude most of my life, in the center of a time zone. The one year when I lived half a time zone east, I was surprised how early the sun came up, even with it only being a half hour difference.
Because for one thing, the "transmission range" is how their local ads are based. If you watched a local NYC station via Aereo from LA, those used car dealer ads wouldn't be very useful. Also, you'd be in the range of another local station on the same network, which pays the network for the right to be exclusive in their area. And they didn't even get into all the content black-out rules.
Not only that, but there are even fringe-area stations that rebroadcast on very weak transmitters located in the transmitter antenna farm (weak as in 75 watts, yes, as in a light bulb) for the sole purpose of being received by the local cable company(s), cha-ching! I have a pretty good antenna, but at 15 miles I have no chance to pick up one of those baby translator signals, as long as I refuse to support the cable-industrial complex. Or maybe eventually those stations will finally clue in to the new trend of declining cable subscribers, and add a few watts. (In comparison, I can pick up the local university's student-run low power TV station, ten miles farther away, quite easily with a good antenna.)
Except that TWC and Comcast have to pay to rebroadcast local TV signals. Yes, the same ones you can receive freely with an antenna. Every now and again when the contracts are up for renegotiation, they start spamming TV and radio ads about how YOU COULD LOSE YOUR FOX TV!, but somehow it always gets resolved in time. (or maybe after 2 or 3 days of a cable channel gone black)
Woosh! Your reply may be right, but you clearly didn't read what you were replying to, which is pretty much taking a Tivo or Sling Box, and putting it ON THE CLOUD!!!... OUD... oud... oud...
That's because this is based on a law specifically targeted at cable TV companies, created at the request of the TV networks. In the US, at least, local TV stations have a sort of limited monopoly over the right to broadcast their network's signal. Otherwise cable companies (and especially satellite TV companies!) might just pull down the network feed without inserts or news, or even a channel from the next big city over, leaving the local station blowing in the wind. Not that all or even many of the cable companies would do stuff like this, but there were probably enough problems starting to happen that the law was pushed through.
It's not entirely unlike the problems Tesla has been having with dealership laws. The local dealers want the laws that keep the manufacturers from competing with them, whether or not it would actually be a problem. The manufacturers are likely to just decide it's not worth the trouble when there's already a good dealer around. But if there's a bad dealer, too bad. And also with Uber/Lyft vs. cab companies... there are so many bad cabbies who have no motivation to get better because they already have the limited monopoly licenses that keep good competition out.
Netflix isn't "publicly transmitting" broadcast television, which is what Aereo did. Cable TV companies have to pay for the right to carry local TV channels that are otherwise freely available over-the-air to individuals with antennas.
As someone else analogized it, Aereo was "operating an antenna for other people", which is what a cable company does. (it used to be all they did, before there were cable-only networks) Nobody else is providing you with the antenna to record broadcast TV. (Unless you're recording off of cable/sat, in which case the networks have already been paid off by your cable/sat company.)
Well, first, someone has to actually get up there to do the damage. When it's 20 feet in the air, you have to work to cause problems. Sure, overhead freeway signs get tagged every now and then, but this is all very much high-hanging fruit. Also, this can already be done with ground rail, but I haven't heard about a major epidemic of rail sabotage. People getting hit by trains because of stupidity or stalling on the crossing is significantly more common. There perhaps should be some concern that this is in a place where terrorists like to blow things up, but even they know that with no transportation infrastructure, they won't be able get around to blow more things up.
Don't forget the humble ladder truck!
Pretty sure that was more so the developers could test their code without having to play through an hour of all the other levels. And for the testers, too.
There has been a lot of evolution of cheat codes.
At first the game companies probably just left them in because it was easier than removing them. (conditional compilation and debug/release targets? what's that?)
Then they left them in because they became cool.
Then they made games with hundreds of them so they could monetize them in various ways like "official" strategy guides (this was in the days before web ads)
Then they didn't care.
Then it's possible that the console manufacturers cracked down on "hidden" stuff because they got so paranoid about ways to break into their system. (never mind that hacked save files on memory cards have been one of the best ways to break into a system)
No idea how cheat codes can be any form of copy protection, whether console or PC. In the '80s, computer games often had code sheets to run the game, but those weren't cheats, they just let you in.
I have actually implemented a slight variation of the Konami Code (no A B or Start, so I used other buttons) as a secret unlock code in an actual product. It's just hard enough to do with a rubber keypad that it often takes more than one try. I can't be the only one, anyone else out there done this?
Because of course they would follow the language specification and resist the temptation to embrace and extend it. (Get back to me when they have C99 support.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V...
Coming soon to Visual Sudio: Visual Dalvik!
That's okay, we can just get the Federal Reserve to print more energy.