I am tempted to do the same, but my ISP would probably report me (or it would be flagged as the request went through the government's listening program) and I'd likely end up in prison.
We have no rights to freedom of speech here, nor do we have an equivalent of your Second Amendment. We don't have your level of violence (yet; that's probably coming real soon now) but knife crime is getting worryingly high in our cities.
Meh. Back in my day, I had a 64Kb computer which had 65,536 addressable bytes in memory, with 49152 usable outside of the ROM. I never once saw a spurious "i" being inserted into the documentation, and in terms of memory storage there doesn't seem to be any real need for one.
Also, we measured storage in minutes.
Gerroff my lawn!
Well, I can certainly agree that it's under-spec at this point in time. Problem is that there's still no competition out there that matches what it can do even with the low-power. Full keyboard, game controls and a desktop linux installation? There aren't any cell-phones that to my knowledge can do all that and still fit in your pocket without external peripherals.
Agreed. A rooted Android phone with a decent mod on it is as close as you can get to a Unix box in your pocket. The lack of a physical keyboard is a drag, but with a decent stock keyboard replacement like SwiftKey, it is not the end of the world.
What about the OpenPandora? That's an actual linux box in your pocket, keyboard included.
So making 10 attempts to get the needle into a vein just satisfies your sadistic tendencies?:)
Well, we have a rule in our trust that ensures we only have three stabs at a patient before we call an anaesthetist to do the job. I can't speak for my colleagues, but I've only ever needed two attempts... But then, some patients I refer straight on to the anesthetics chap without even bothering:)
This is very handy in emergency situations where it's literally the patient's life on the line if you don't get a needle in.
Yes, you have. I'm a nurse in the UK and it's been common knowledge for a few years now that a blank photo negative (ie, no picture, just black) stuck over a mobile phone camera lens coupled with an IR torch allows you to see the veins through the camera viewfinder. It's neat to mess around with a really useful with a difficult cannulation.
One solution would be to give them an 8-bit emulator so they can the basics such as direct memory mapped I/O (graphics, keyboard, sound), dont have to worry about breaking anything, can learn the fundamentals of hex, of pointers, etc.
From experience with kids, that won't help. When I started learning to code at age 7 on a z80-based computer they were few and far between. Everything was new, and new techniques were being developed all the time. The reason I wanted to code all sorts of algorithms and programs was because there was nothing like them available to me - I enjoyed problem solving because the solution enabled me to achieve a particular goal.
Now there are no goals left of that sort of simplicity - you have to tell the kids that yes, this is important and yes you need to learn it before you can code your own FPS or spreadsheet or whatever, but the software is already out there to scratch that sort of itch. So now you have the majority of kids not wanting to bother with programming because they don't need to. An 8-bit emulator is restricted in terms of both speed, graphical ability and storage whereas they know that the larger PCs are not restricted in those ways and so won't enjoy learning to code on an 8bit emulator.
And a kid that isn't enjoying him or herself won't learn very well at all. That said, I've seen plenty of adults learn to code on an emulator but they learn differently.
Yeah, I'm talking about quite a long time before the Amiga - early to mid 1980s. In fact, the Amiga was the only time I ever really used a joystick (and I really don't miss it!).
Player 2 would take a turn after player 1 had died/lost a life. Simultaneous co-op or multiplayer was quite rare, with only a couple. Often in those cases one player would take one side of the keyboard, and the other player would take the other. Unless you happened to have one or two joysticks, but they were quite clumsy in my experience compared to the keyboard:)
In the 20 years prior to the K&M control method I used a joystick rarely - it was almost exclusively the keyboard (QAOPM) on the 8bit machines I owned. Moving from those machines, I had a brief play with 16bits (Amiga, Megadrive) but then moved on to the PC where keyboard control (with mouse) was the norm.
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/
Shedloads of documents, scanned books, pretty much all the magazines scanned in, vast library of games to play (with permission to host more acquired regularly), links to emulators *and ROM images* legally thanks to Amstrad (the current owners of the Sinclair Computers IP) allowing free distribution. A fantastic site.
Or indeed, http://www.specbas.co.uk/
Disclaimer: I'm the author of that interpreter. It's based on the old 8bit BASIC style, where you get a "command line" where you enter your code and execute statements. It's line-based, and has sprites and graphics and stuff like mod music and such. It's a little pet project which a small number of people enjoy messing around in. It's not a serious programming language.
Yeah, but it was a great game, you have to admit. I bought it once before, and now I've bought it again. Wonderful game, love it to bits! And now the source is available they've really gained some (more) good reputation from fans.
Speaking as a member of the British National Health Service (in a medical capacity), I must say that this is a tad confusing. Although the family of someone in a persistent vegetative state will certainly be consulted as to their views on "pulling the plug," it is not a decision that is ever made by the family or even the closest next of kin - the medical team, following the Consultant's instructions will make that decision. I personally have been involved in end-of-life care in many cases like these and we have never, ever, allowed families to make these decisions. So why make the injunction to protect the family? They're not the ones ending someone's life. Although I suppose there's enough morons out there that will decide the family must pay for the NHS's actions... But again, I've never seen that happen either.
Apparently not - it will cost them a *lot* to upgrade for some reason that I couldn't get a satisfactory reason for... IT seemed to just sort of wave their hands about and said "nope, sorry mate, can't do it". So we're stuck in XP with IE6. Not a good thing in a hospital.
Some of us/can't/ upgrade - we're not allowed. I've been asking my workplace (UK NHS Hospital in the north of England) IT department to *please* upgrade to a better version of IE than v6, but they won't - their contract with MS which got them copies of XP for free doesn't allow for upgrades.
I dunno, I can say with a fair degree of certainty that for me and my social circle at least, the video gaming industry was thriving during those years with the only problem being how a teenager with limited income could actually find the cash to spring for the many fantastic games produced during the "crash" for the C64 and Sinclair machines that we owned. It's well worth taking a wander through the magazine archives at www.worldofspectrum.org for that period to see just how many games were produced which were worth playing for the spectrum alone (I assume that the C64 had similar publications). Each month there were more and more, sometimes more than thirty new games with reviews over 75%. That doesn't seem to represent a video-game crash to me, unless we're only talking about consoles and the companies that solely supported them - home computing (as opposed to video games) was taking off in a very big way and had a very healthy market here in the UK.
I'm confused by the phrase "near-dead". I distinctly remember back in 1985 seeing masses of new game releases from some of the real great publishers of the day, released in stores up and down the country. Nothing was "near-dead" at all - the Commodore 64 and Sinclair Spectrum were really going well, and looked unstoppable. Was this "near-dead" thing a US problem, or worldwide? I have some of my fondest gaming memories from 1982 to 1989.
I'm talking about the UK of course.
Since the local Tesco started selling DVDs for less than a tenner, I've bought well over a hundred. I never bought them before that - anything more than a tenner and I went without. Very occasionally I'd get a dodgy VHS from a mate which, if I'd enjoyed it, I'd go it hunt down (The Matrix was the last of those, and the last one I watched illegally) and pay full price (£17+). There have been no films since then that I've felt were worth it, and prefer to wait until they're in the bargain bucket. Note that by "going without" I mean I did exactly that, and didn't download them. My 20KB/Sec connection makes downloading pretty much anything a PITA.
So for me, the film industry is failing because the vast majority of cinema these days is crap, and what is watchable is way too expensive for me.
No having to wait days for delivery or go shopping, just download the game in a few minutes and go.
Unfortunately, my geographical location means that I'm limited to a download speed of about 20-30KB/Sec, which most of the time clocks in at about 10KB/Sec.
This means that I can walk into the neighbouring town (12 miles away), buy a game, walk back and still have acquired the data quicker than if I had downloaded it. Physical media every time for me.
During the development process, many people felt disillusioned by this and cancelled their orders. People take their place, but if you head over to GBAX.com, you might be able to get one of the first batch (which are being built right now) if they have any left.
To be fair, the buy who got his Pandora isn't a developer. He trotted along to the assembly line, offered to help out building these and walked away with his Pandora early as payment. He's paid his preorder money the same as the rest of us.
Everyone else will have to wait - these are being built in a Village Hall in the north of England which has been appropriated for the duration (I believe the guy who first proposed this device may well own the hall). There's not many folks building them, and they hope to be able to assemble about 100 a day at first, getting faster as they gain experience.
My kingdom for mod points right about now.
I'm a registered nurse in the UK NHS, and your post is a shining example of the way that things are done in that organisation. I'm not a doctor, unlike your wife, but I work very closely with a team of doctors who actually haven't finished their medical training yet, but work up to 36 hours in one stretch (but get a small compensation each month in their pay for giving up their Working Time Directive rights) and often work alone when on-call. It's unsafe, and they're all constantly exhausted (as are we all, under current budget cuts).
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I am tempted to do the same, but my ISP would probably report me (or it would be flagged as the request went through the government's listening program) and I'd likely end up in prison. We have no rights to freedom of speech here, nor do we have an equivalent of your Second Amendment. We don't have your level of violence (yet; that's probably coming real soon now) but knife crime is getting worryingly high in our cities.
Here in the UK we tend to measure a gentleman's length in inches, but we use centimetres for height.
Meh. Back in my day, I had a 64Kb computer which had 65,536 addressable bytes in memory, with 49152 usable outside of the ROM. I never once saw a spurious "i" being inserted into the documentation, and in terms of memory storage there doesn't seem to be any real need for one. Also, we measured storage in minutes. Gerroff my lawn!
Well, I can certainly agree that it's under-spec at this point in time. Problem is that there's still no competition out there that matches what it can do even with the low-power. Full keyboard, game controls and a desktop linux installation? There aren't any cell-phones that to my knowledge can do all that and still fit in your pocket without external peripherals.
Agreed. A rooted Android phone with a decent mod on it is as close as you can get to a Unix box in your pocket. The lack of a physical keyboard is a drag, but with a decent stock keyboard replacement like SwiftKey, it is not the end of the world.
What about the OpenPandora? That's an actual linux box in your pocket, keyboard included.
it's been common knowledge for a few years now
So making 10 attempts to get the needle into a vein just satisfies your sadistic tendencies? :)
Well, we have a rule in our trust that ensures we only have three stabs at a patient before we call an anaesthetist to do the job. I can't speak for my colleagues, but I've only ever needed two attempts... But then, some patients I refer straight on to the anesthetics chap without even bothering :)
This is very handy in emergency situations where it's literally the patient's life on the line if you don't get a needle in.
Yes, you have. I'm a nurse in the UK and it's been common knowledge for a few years now that a blank photo negative (ie, no picture, just black) stuck over a mobile phone camera lens coupled with an IR torch allows you to see the veins through the camera viewfinder. It's neat to mess around with a really useful with a difficult cannulation.
One solution would be to give them an 8-bit emulator so they can the basics such as direct memory mapped I/O (graphics, keyboard, sound), dont have to worry about breaking anything, can learn the fundamentals of hex, of pointers, etc.
From experience with kids, that won't help. When I started learning to code at age 7 on a z80-based computer they were few and far between. Everything was new, and new techniques were being developed all the time. The reason I wanted to code all sorts of algorithms and programs was because there was nothing like them available to me - I enjoyed problem solving because the solution enabled me to achieve a particular goal.
Now there are no goals left of that sort of simplicity - you have to tell the kids that yes, this is important and yes you need to learn it before you can code your own FPS or spreadsheet or whatever, but the software is already out there to scratch that sort of itch. So now you have the majority of kids not wanting to bother with programming because they don't need to. An 8-bit emulator is restricted in terms of both speed, graphical ability and storage whereas they know that the larger PCs are not restricted in those ways and so won't enjoy learning to code on an 8bit emulator.
And a kid that isn't enjoying him or herself won't learn very well at all. That said, I've seen plenty of adults learn to code on an emulator but they learn differently.
Yeah, I'm talking about quite a long time before the Amiga - early to mid 1980s. In fact, the Amiga was the only time I ever really used a joystick (and I really don't miss it!).
Player 2 would take a turn after player 1 had died/lost a life. Simultaneous co-op or multiplayer was quite rare, with only a couple. Often in those cases one player would take one side of the keyboard, and the other player would take the other. Unless you happened to have one or two joysticks, but they were quite clumsy in my experience compared to the keyboard :)
In the 20 years prior to the K&M control method I used a joystick rarely - it was almost exclusively the keyboard (QAOPM) on the 8bit machines I owned. Moving from those machines, I had a brief play with 16bits (Amiga, Megadrive) but then moved on to the PC where keyboard control (with mouse) was the norm.
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/ Shedloads of documents, scanned books, pretty much all the magazines scanned in, vast library of games to play (with permission to host more acquired regularly), links to emulators *and ROM images* legally thanks to Amstrad (the current owners of the Sinclair Computers IP) allowing free distribution. A fantastic site.
Or indeed, http://www.specbas.co.uk/ Disclaimer: I'm the author of that interpreter. It's based on the old 8bit BASIC style, where you get a "command line" where you enter your code and execute statements. It's line-based, and has sprites and graphics and stuff like mod music and such. It's a little pet project which a small number of people enjoy messing around in. It's not a serious programming language.
Yeah, but it was a great game, you have to admit. I bought it once before, and now I've bought it again. Wonderful game, love it to bits! And now the source is available they've really gained some (more) good reputation from fans.
Speaking as a member of the British National Health Service (in a medical capacity), I must say that this is a tad confusing. Although the family of someone in a persistent vegetative state will certainly be consulted as to their views on "pulling the plug," it is not a decision that is ever made by the family or even the closest next of kin - the medical team, following the Consultant's instructions will make that decision. I personally have been involved in end-of-life care in many cases like these and we have never, ever, allowed families to make these decisions. So why make the injunction to protect the family? They're not the ones ending someone's life. Although I suppose there's enough morons out there that will decide the family must pay for the NHS's actions... But again, I've never seen that happen either.
Apparently not - it will cost them a *lot* to upgrade for some reason that I couldn't get a satisfactory reason for... IT seemed to just sort of wave their hands about and said "nope, sorry mate, can't do it". So we're stuck in XP with IE6. Not a good thing in a hospital.
Some of us /can't/ upgrade - we're not allowed. I've been asking my workplace (UK NHS Hospital in the north of England) IT department to *please* upgrade to a better version of IE than v6, but they won't - their contract with MS which got them copies of XP for free doesn't allow for upgrades.
It's certainly not free entertainment - I pay for my broadband connection!
I dunno, I can say with a fair degree of certainty that for me and my social circle at least, the video gaming industry was thriving during those years with the only problem being how a teenager with limited income could actually find the cash to spring for the many fantastic games produced during the "crash" for the C64 and Sinclair machines that we owned. It's well worth taking a wander through the magazine archives at www.worldofspectrum.org for that period to see just how many games were produced which were worth playing for the spectrum alone (I assume that the C64 had similar publications). Each month there were more and more, sometimes more than thirty new games with reviews over 75%. That doesn't seem to represent a video-game crash to me, unless we're only talking about consoles and the companies that solely supported them - home computing (as opposed to video games) was taking off in a very big way and had a very healthy market here in the UK.
I'm confused by the phrase "near-dead". I distinctly remember back in 1985 seeing masses of new game releases from some of the real great publishers of the day, released in stores up and down the country. Nothing was "near-dead" at all - the Commodore 64 and Sinclair Spectrum were really going well, and looked unstoppable. Was this "near-dead" thing a US problem, or worldwide? I have some of my fondest gaming memories from 1982 to 1989. I'm talking about the UK of course.
Since the local Tesco started selling DVDs for less than a tenner, I've bought well over a hundred. I never bought them before that - anything more than a tenner and I went without. Very occasionally I'd get a dodgy VHS from a mate which, if I'd enjoyed it, I'd go it hunt down (The Matrix was the last of those, and the last one I watched illegally) and pay full price (£17+). There have been no films since then that I've felt were worth it, and prefer to wait until they're in the bargain bucket. Note that by "going without" I mean I did exactly that, and didn't download them. My 20KB/Sec connection makes downloading pretty much anything a PITA. So for me, the film industry is failing because the vast majority of cinema these days is crap, and what is watchable is way too expensive for me.
No having to wait days for delivery or go shopping, just download the game in a few minutes and go.
Unfortunately, my geographical location means that I'm limited to a download speed of about 20-30KB/Sec, which most of the time clocks in at about 10KB/Sec. This means that I can walk into the neighbouring town (12 miles away), buy a game, walk back and still have acquired the data quicker than if I had downloaded it. Physical media every time for me.
During the development process, many people felt disillusioned by this and cancelled their orders. People take their place, but if you head over to GBAX.com, you might be able to get one of the first batch (which are being built right now) if they have any left.
To be fair, the buy who got his Pandora isn't a developer. He trotted along to the assembly line, offered to help out building these and walked away with his Pandora early as payment. He's paid his preorder money the same as the rest of us. Everyone else will have to wait - these are being built in a Village Hall in the north of England which has been appropriated for the duration (I believe the guy who first proposed this device may well own the hall). There's not many folks building them, and they hope to be able to assemble about 100 a day at first, getting faster as they gain experience.
My kingdom for mod points right about now. I'm a registered nurse in the UK NHS, and your post is a shining example of the way that things are done in that organisation. I'm not a doctor, unlike your wife, but I work very closely with a team of doctors who actually haven't finished their medical training yet, but work up to 36 hours in one stretch (but get a small compensation each month in their pay for giving up their Working Time Directive rights) and often work alone when on-call. It's unsafe, and they're all constantly exhausted (as are we all, under current budget cuts).