Sold to Warner Communications (predecessor of AOL-Time-Warner) 1975.
Warner splits Atari into Home and Arcade divisions. Jack Trammiel, founder (forcibly retired) of Commodore buys Home division, forms Atari Computer Corp. (1984)
Arcade division gets renamed Atari Games, then Atari/Tengen, then Time Warner Interactive, then gets sold to Williams/WMS, which sells it to Midway, which renames it Midway Games West! (Dates and veracity dubious!)
Atari Computer Corp merges with disk drive maker JTS (1996)
JTS/Atari sells its "Atari assets" to Hasbro Interactive (1998).
Hasbro Interactive absorbed by Infogrammes Entertainment SA as part of malicious French conspiracy. Renamed Infogrammes Interactive. (2001)
Infogrammes Entertainment renames its North American acquistions "Atari". (2003)
Chuck E Cheese buys Infogrammes Entertainment SA, renames it "Freedom Software" (2004).
I'm not a webmaster, but it sounds like a spambot trap is close to being a necessary feature for a small web site. But I can't say I like to idea of using a firewall this way. Mark also provides a link to a site that supposedly does the same thing with apache, but that site is offline. (!)
I find it interesting that he can lock out Cyveillancebot and other spybots simply by banning their IP addresses. Sounds like Cyveillance and other "ebusiness intelligence" companies are being less than diligent in providing the serve that their customers are paying for. I'm reminded of Bruce Schneier's dictum that security is something you can't just buy and forget. Only in this case, it's anti-security!
I knew that. It's on the Apple site. But it sucks that they deliberately turn off this feature for other content. I suspect that jukeboxes leave off bookmarks specificially to avoid pissing off content vendors like Audible.
As for "scrubbing"... come on, some of my audio files are an hour long.
Yeah, I can tell your brain is fried. But you still managed to give a clearer picture of the current state of nanotech than any of the gee-whiz stuff I've read recently. Lots of nanotech enthusiasts seem to think it's like building radio-controlled cars, only smaller. Please consider starting a blog or something!
A show I WOULD have watched eagerly would have been one BEFORE all this technology (save the ability to travel at warp). NO transporters, NO phasers, NO tractor beams, heck no artificial gravity even..
You could be talking about one of two shows. The first one that comes to mind is a Star Trek set right after First Contact when everyone's still struggling to rebuild civilization. And yeah, that would have been really cool. They probably thought of something along those lines. But it would be set mostly outdoors, and outdoor sets cost more. (The very same thing happened to DS9, which was originally written to take place in the refugee camp in "Ensign Rho".) The Berman/Roddenberry junta has always been penny pinchers. That's the one reason they so love gadgetry -- it's cheaper than fancy sets, or even good scripts.
The other one is the "Anti-Trek", the Joss Whedon series Firefly which was cancelled after only 12 episodes. Everybody complained that it wasn't futuristic enough. Which tends to confirm my opinion that real Science Fiction is something you read, not something you watch.
Indeed. In fact, the slight shrinkage in the latest iPod almost puts me over the edge. I want a device I can slip into my pocket. If only it had bookmarks!
That's a pretty standard feature nowadays. Question is, how easy is it to get files to and from the device?. I wouldn't buy an external storage device, no matter its other features, unless it knew how to act like an external disk drive. Anything else is too much trouble. Maybe Zen (Standard by 8!) has this feature, but then why do I see this on the web site: "Creative File Manager:
Move non-music files quickly and easily with this handy little program that fits on a floppy"
Another feature I keep looking for in jukeboxes is a bookmark feature, so I can resume listening the the middle of a track. I listen to a lot of spoken word stuff, so I won't get a jukebox without this feature. The new iPod seems to have it, but only for Audible.com downloads. Or am I mistaken?
What's really dumb about this article is the belief that any documents on a public web site can be considered "private". Indeed, the guy seems to totally misunderstand the purpose of robots.txt. It's not there to specify what's private, it's there to control the way your site is presented on public web servers, and also to help spiders avoid overloading your site.
And in any case, Cyveillancebot is hardly a real threat to security, compared to script kiddies and the like. If you're trying to keep your private information private, you should be thinking in terms of passwords and encryption, not robot.txt files!
Oh well, those who can, do. Those who can't, write columns.
That's silly. I've never played quake, but I assume there's no command code that make you immune to bullets. Or if there is, who would play with somebody who used it? Unless everybody used it? Kind of a boring game...
In The Sims, there's a "command code" that lets you have extra cash. If you use that, all the job ladder strategy becomes pointless. Another "command code" allows you to change the sweep interval of the memory manager. (Kids, don't try this at home!) Still another shows the path that's been plotted every time a Sim moves from one place to another. These are obviously debugging commands, not meant for use in an actual game.
Yeah I know, almost every Sims player uses them, especially the Rosebud cheat. That just goes with what I said before: most fans don't "play" the game, they just create imaginary people and neighorhoods. Fun, if you're into that sort of thing.
I did get curious about the autonomy cheat. So I re-installed The Sims and played a few scenarios with the cheat at max. As far as I can tell, the Sims don't really do anything they wouldn't do otherwise. They just spend less time waiting for you to give them orders. In particular, they won't flirt or kiss unless you tell them to. This cheat does help move things along, because the Sims (even guests I think) don't pause as long when they have contention issues. If I were still a Sims addict, I'd probably play with this cheat turned on, especially during parties.
While I was checking this out, I played for long periods in "hands off" mode. I discovered something that lowers my opinion of the behavior model even further. If you don't remind them to use the toilet, Sims do the "bad puppy" thing once or twice a day! Stupid.
Let's not make such a big deal every time hackers find new uses for remaindered hardware. It doesn't mean that the Dreamcast (or the Newton, or the Atari 800) is risen from the dead. It means exactly the opposite -- all the sales channels are liquidating at fire sale prices, and the hackers are benefiting. But now, because when they're gone, they're GONE!!!!
A long time ago, I worked for Convergent Technologies, which partnered with post-breakup AT&T to produce the first commercial hardware to be sold under the AT&T label. (Before the breakup, AT&T was a utility, and thus not allowed to sell hardware commercially.) This was (dig the irony) "Project Safari". The biggest result of this collaboration was the Unix PC.
Now, AT&T spent about $1 billion on this project. Paid most of it to Convergent to fill their supply chain with these boxes. Which they never even tried to sell, because upper management decided to concentrate on IBM compatibles. Almost all got remaindered away to various hackers who jumped at the chance to buy a serious Unix workstation for less then it cost to manufacture the thing. Hundreds of people got their introduction to Unix this way. Not a bad thing, but not a ressurection either.
Is that one of those undocumented cheats? What's the point of playing a game that doesn't work unless you cheat?
Re:Ultima Copy Protection Warning
on
Ultima on Linux
·
· Score: 1
I never got past Ultima VI. Been a long time since I played Ultima 1 (on an Apple II!) so I don't remember what copy protection it had. Never played II or III. Started to play IV on the Apple II, then finished it up many years later on a dumpware CD (fortunately I still had the stuff that came with the Apple version). Never finished V, because there was a musical puzzle that I couldn't solve without the materials (no PDFs on the CD set I bought), I couldn't save the game in the middle of the puzzle, and I didn't feel like going back to the last save. I couldn't even start VI, because it required that I answer a question I couldn't answer without the missing stuff.
Maybe most CD publishers are more careful than the one that stung me. But I'd still check carefully before starting a game!
You seem to be assuming that the only way to prepare for a career as a programmer is to study computer science. And that you can only judge a CS curriculum by how well it prepares you for such a career. Neither is true. Computer science and computer engineering are completely separate disciplines -- and neither is a prerequisite to a career as a programer. Of course, some companies won't even look at you if you don't have a CS degree. In some cases, that makes sense. But not always. And not all companies think that way. My last full time job was at a major software company where half the programmers didn't even have a computer degree -- and a lot of them majored in in such high tech fields as Poli Sci or Music.
Trying to find a one-size-fits-all solution to something like this is silly. Everybody's different. Is money no object or are you on a budget? Do you really need your own big screen, or will that old department project do for the weekly meeting? Etc., etc.
Right now I'm really anxious for my monitor to wear out because LCDs have fallen into my price range. But have they worked out the latency kinks yet? Well, I don't care, 'cause I'm not a gamer. YMMV!
don't know about you, but no job I've ever interviewed for as an applicant or as an interviewer myself has specified that you don't need to know Language X or Technology Y, as long as you have a CS degree.
Unfortunately, that's my experience too. But you're missing the point. Right now employers are screaming, "We need people who know Technology Y!" So you study these things. You're all set, right? Wrong. Because Technology Y won't last forever. Someday, employers will be screaming for Technology Z, which doesn't even exist yet. If you're not able to get up to speed on Z faster than it replaces Y, you're a lot less employable than you used to be. And it's no use whining, "But that's what you told me I needed!"
Bottom line is this: HR gatekeepers and hiring managers do indeed use XYZ checklists. Stupid, but nothing you can do about it. But if you use that as an excuse to get a too-narrow education that will be obsolete in 5 years, you're even more stupid. You might lose that big promotion to a Philosophy major! Imagine the humiliation!
I found The Sims fascinating for a while. But it soon became obvious to me that the "free will" behavior was very limited, not to mention poorly thought out. There are all these intriguing behavior parameters -- but in the end it mostly doesn't matter whether your Sim is "outgoing" or "playful" or whatever, because they never get anywhere if you don't micromanage their behavior. Not even romance is spontaneous. (!!!) And they can't even figure out who's turn it is to use the bathroom without your help!
(Related issue: Sims have no ability to negotiate for shared resources. You can have major deadlock just from two Sims trying to cross each others paths. Never mind the major problems you have when a bunch of hungry Sims all try to grab a plate and find a seat at once. ("There's an empty chair! Wait, now it's occupied. There's an empty chair! Wait, now it's occupied. There's an empty chair...") Which is kind of disturbing in a real-time game! It's probably not a coincidence that the software itself seems to have a lot of race conditions. Has anybody at Maxis heard of the Dining Philosophers?)
So why is the game so popular? I think people just enjoy creating imaginary people and building houses for them. If you're artistically inclined (I'm not) that must be a lot of fun. But as a simulation, the game is a total failure. Which leaves me with low expectations for "DNA".
There's also the issue of the large number of people who came into the industry during the Bubble/Boom of the 90's but honestly had no business there. They now consider themselves software professionals but would really have been better off somewhere else.
Hey, I know the people you're talking about -- except the ones I know are left over from the boom that ended in the mid 80s. Though to be honest, the ones who should leave the computer biz completely have mostly done so. The really depressing people are those who are reasonably competent mid-level techies, who almost became rich and famous two decades ago, and waste a lot of time (both theirs and other peoples) shooting for a second chance.
Which they will never get, because they're focusing on the Big Score, instead of building something solid.
My turn for a semi-random thought: when you're trying to build a career for yourself, do not make decisions based on the hope that your next job will take you from Zero to Ready to Retire in just a few years. About 99.9% of the time, you'll have nothing to show for all your unpaid overtime but some valueless options. Unfortunately, it's the other 0.1% that makes the news!
Ultima Copy Protection Warning
on
Ultima on Linux
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Danger Will Robinson!
You can easily obtain all the Ultima games by downloading them from an abandonware site or (more legitimately) buying an "oldies" CD. One little problem: Lord British was fond of document based copy protection. And he was very creative about it.
I used to think this was pretty cool. Unlike games where you have to find the 3rd word on line 5 of page 23 of the manual to play the game, some Ultima games came with fancy maps (printed on cloth!) or lengthy treatises that you just had to read in order to solve some of the puzzles. And unfortunately these are not provided with most CD re-releases (and not at all with downloads of course). Some fans have provided online versions, but coverage is spotty. Make sure you have Googled all this info before you start the game, or you may find youself stuck in the middle of a game -- forever!
Slashdot Mirror
Are they populated by magic albino alligators?
Sloppy of me, I forgot the smily. What's the smily for "irony", anyway?
Well then, you must think very highly of Cyveillance's intrusive spybot. It's only purpose is to sniff out copyright violations!
- Founded by Nolan Bushnell (1972).
- Sold to Warner Communications (predecessor of AOL-Time-Warner) 1975.
- Warner splits Atari into Home and Arcade divisions. Jack Trammiel, founder (forcibly retired) of Commodore buys Home division, forms Atari Computer Corp. (1984)
- Arcade division gets renamed Atari Games, then Atari/Tengen, then Time Warner Interactive, then gets sold to Williams/WMS, which sells it to Midway, which renames it Midway Games West! (Dates and veracity dubious!)
- Atari Computer Corp merges with disk drive maker JTS (1996)
- JTS/Atari sells its "Atari assets" to Hasbro Interactive (1998).
- Hasbro Interactive absorbed by Infogrammes Entertainment SA as part of malicious French conspiracy. Renamed Infogrammes Interactive. (2001)
- Infogrammes Entertainment renames its North American acquistions "Atari". (2003)
- Chuck E Cheese buys Infogrammes Entertainment SA, renames it "Freedom Software" (2004).
In researching this timeline, I made a truely mind-boggling discovery: Atari was briefly in the engineering/scientific/graphics workstation business!I find it interesting that he can lock out Cyveillancebot and other spybots simply by banning their IP addresses. Sounds like Cyveillance and other "ebusiness intelligence" companies are being less than diligent in providing the serve that their customers are paying for. I'm reminded of Bruce Schneier's dictum that security is something you can't just buy and forget. Only in this case, it's anti-security!
As for "scrubbing" ... come on, some of my audio files are an hour long.
People decided that "dungeon" was too kinky!
Yeah, I can tell your brain is fried. But you still managed to give a clearer picture of the current state of nanotech than any of the gee-whiz stuff I've read recently. Lots of nanotech enthusiasts seem to think it's like building radio-controlled cars, only smaller. Please consider starting a blog or something!
The other one is the "Anti-Trek", the Joss Whedon series Firefly which was cancelled after only 12 episodes. Everybody complained that it wasn't futuristic enough. Which tends to confirm my opinion that real Science Fiction is something you read, not something you watch.
You're reading way too much into an offhand comment. If Pudge has any objectivity issues, it has to do with his idolatrous love all things Apple!
Indeed. In fact, the slight shrinkage in the latest iPod almost puts me over the edge. I want a device I can slip into my pocket. If only it had bookmarks!
Another feature I keep looking for in jukeboxes is a bookmark feature, so I can resume listening the the middle of a track. I listen to a lot of spoken word stuff, so I won't get a jukebox without this feature. The new iPod seems to have it, but only for Audible.com downloads. Or am I mistaken?
And in any case, Cyveillancebot is hardly a real threat to security, compared to script kiddies and the like. If you're trying to keep your private information private, you should be thinking in terms of passwords and encryption, not robot.txt files!
Oh well, those who can, do. Those who can't, write columns.
In The Sims, there's a "command code" that lets you have extra cash. If you use that, all the job ladder strategy becomes pointless. Another "command code" allows you to change the sweep interval of the memory manager. (Kids, don't try this at home!) Still another shows the path that's been plotted every time a Sim moves from one place to another. These are obviously debugging commands, not meant for use in an actual game.
Yeah I know, almost every Sims player uses them, especially the Rosebud cheat. That just goes with what I said before: most fans don't "play" the game, they just create imaginary people and neighorhoods. Fun, if you're into that sort of thing.
I did get curious about the autonomy cheat. So I re-installed The Sims and played a few scenarios with the cheat at max. As far as I can tell, the Sims don't really do anything they wouldn't do otherwise. They just spend less time waiting for you to give them orders. In particular, they won't flirt or kiss unless you tell them to. This cheat does help move things along, because the Sims (even guests I think) don't pause as long when they have contention issues. If I were still a Sims addict, I'd probably play with this cheat turned on, especially during parties.
While I was checking this out, I played for long periods in "hands off" mode. I discovered something that lowers my opinion of the behavior model even further. If you don't remind them to use the toilet, Sims do the "bad puppy" thing once or twice a day! Stupid.
Your experience sounds pretty damn narrow.
A long time ago, I worked for Convergent Technologies, which partnered with post-breakup AT&T to produce the first commercial hardware to be sold under the AT&T label. (Before the breakup, AT&T was a utility, and thus not allowed to sell hardware commercially.) This was (dig the irony) "Project Safari". The biggest result of this collaboration was the Unix PC.
Now, AT&T spent about $1 billion on this project. Paid most of it to Convergent to fill their supply chain with these boxes. Which they never even tried to sell, because upper management decided to concentrate on IBM compatibles. Almost all got remaindered away to various hackers who jumped at the chance to buy a serious Unix workstation for less then it cost to manufacture the thing. Hundreds of people got their introduction to Unix this way. Not a bad thing, but not a ressurection either.
Is that one of those undocumented cheats? What's the point of playing a game that doesn't work unless you cheat?
Maybe most CD publishers are more careful than the one that stung me. But I'd still check carefully before starting a game!
You seem to be assuming that the only way to prepare for a career as a programmer is to study computer science. And that you can only judge a CS curriculum by how well it prepares you for such a career. Neither is true. Computer science and computer engineering are completely separate disciplines -- and neither is a prerequisite to a career as a programer. Of course, some companies won't even look at you if you don't have a CS degree. In some cases, that makes sense. But not always. And not all companies think that way. My last full time job was at a major software company where half the programmers didn't even have a computer degree -- and a lot of them majored in in such high tech fields as Poli Sci or Music.
Right now I'm really anxious for my monitor to wear out because LCDs have fallen into my price range. But have they worked out the latency kinks yet? Well, I don't care, 'cause I'm not a gamer. YMMV!
Bottom line is this: HR gatekeepers and hiring managers do indeed use XYZ checklists. Stupid, but nothing you can do about it. But if you use that as an excuse to get a too-narrow education that will be obsolete in 5 years, you're even more stupid. You might lose that big promotion to a Philosophy major! Imagine the humiliation!
(Related issue: Sims have no ability to negotiate for shared resources. You can have major deadlock just from two Sims trying to cross each others paths. Never mind the major problems you have when a bunch of hungry Sims all try to grab a plate and find a seat at once. ("There's an empty chair! Wait, now it's occupied. There's an empty chair! Wait, now it's occupied. There's an empty chair...") Which is kind of disturbing in a real-time game! It's probably not a coincidence that the software itself seems to have a lot of race conditions. Has anybody at Maxis heard of the Dining Philosophers?)
So why is the game so popular? I think people just enjoy creating imaginary people and building houses for them. If you're artistically inclined (I'm not) that must be a lot of fun. But as a simulation, the game is a total failure. Which leaves me with low expectations for "DNA".
My turn for a semi-random thought: when you're trying to build a career for yourself, do not make decisions based on the hope that your next job will take you from Zero to Ready to Retire in just a few years. About 99.9% of the time, you'll have nothing to show for all your unpaid overtime but some valueless options. Unfortunately, it's the other 0.1% that makes the news!
You can easily obtain all the Ultima games by downloading them from an abandonware site or (more legitimately) buying an "oldies" CD. One little problem: Lord British was fond of document based copy protection. And he was very creative about it.
I used to think this was pretty cool. Unlike games where you have to find the 3rd word on line 5 of page 23 of the manual to play the game, some Ultima games came with fancy maps (printed on cloth!) or lengthy treatises that you just had to read in order to solve some of the puzzles. And unfortunately these are not provided with most CD re-releases (and not at all with downloads of course). Some fans have provided online versions, but coverage is spotty. Make sure you have Googled all this info before you start the game, or you may find youself stuck in the middle of a game -- forever!