So Stargate and Fringe aren't Sci-Fi?
(even if Fringe is *BAD* sci-fi sometimes)
Where'd you get the idea that it had to take place in The Future? What about stories that are purely psychological or sociological in nature?
The default mode that VGA starts up in is 720x400x16 text mode. This can be extended to 720x480x16 for 80x30 text. Switching to a 8x8 (from 9x16) character cell yields 90x60 text. 256-colour mode automatically makes the pixels twice as wide so photographic pictures are usually viewed in 360x480x256 mode (e.g. Linux's "zgv" viewer).
And, on a monitor with size controls (i.e. not an actual "IBM PS/2 Color Display" monitor), you can get 800x600x16 (thus 400x600x256) if you don't mind a incredibly low refresh rate (below 50Hz).
Not sure about the VIC-20 but the Atari VCS and HCS (Home Computer System) and Apple ][ came out in the 70s. ProLogic's "Flight Simulator" for the Atari HCS is a good example of a game that utilises multiple threads of execution to simulate flying a airplane via polygonal graphics. This is in contrast to most games that have a main thread and a background thread ran by the vertical blank interrupt.
(and perhaps a third ran by the horizontal blank interrupt)
And don't forget Texas Instruments' TI-99/4 (and 99/4A), which also came out in the 70s. And, for that matter, the Intellivision; whose OS would move sprites for you (i.e. the game programme) via a background OS thread.
All these 70s systems had graphics and sounds effects.
Sounds like 4DOS.COM for MS-DOS from the 90's. It was a replacement for the command processor ("COMMAND.COM"). You could type:
SET FILECOMPLETION=CD:DIRS;EDLIN:DIRS TXT DOC CFG;GIFCHECK:DIRS GIF
and typing "CD " and then CONTROL-TAB would give you a list of directories. For EDLIN it would also show text files. For GIFCHECK it would show directories and GIF files.
And when I type CD TOME it knows to swtich to \GAMES\ANGBAND\TOME.
(if I use CDD instead it even changes the currently loggged drive to C:)
If I type CD COMM\*A*.* it would look for a directory (in the directory-tree database) with a "A" anywhere in the filename and any extention whose parent directory is named COMM.
My 1979 Atari computer (HCS) has "recoverable" RAM disks. But that's because the device drivers/handlers that I use just don't bother to build a new file system (MyDOS) or else they only do so when they can find no existing one (SpartaDOS X). It's the same with the Amiga's "Executive Multitasker" and AmigaDOS as well. I can't imagine how your choice of OS would make any difference as RAM disks are handled by the device handler rather than the the OS itself. (except for Linux; and even it supports FUSE!) The same for "RAM:" style file systems. I even remember something like the for MS-DOS.
And the FVWM window manager for X supports pushing a window to the top/bottom of the window stack. I had it set so that the right mouse button on the title bar moved a window to the top of the stack; or, in the case that it was already at the top, to the bottom. I did this because in imitation of the Amiga. (except it's a special "gadget" instead of the title bar on the Amiga) Once again that's the job of the window manager and not of the OS.
Why would someone want to build these kinds of things into the OS?
PNG is a still video picture format. Why would anyone want to add animation to it? Just use MNG. That's the "GIF89a" equivilant of PNG. MNG is the "ANIM" to PNG's "ILBM", so to speak.
Doctor Who was never meant to be "camp", "corny" or "cheesy".
(barring the occasional JNT gag)
It just seems that way to you because it's so old. If you grew up on old-timey special effects it all seems normal. TV back then was more like a radio show where you had to use your imagination.
On the other hand, it was never meant to be depressing or morose either. Hence the upbeat/hopeful endings.
(even if half of the good-guys are dead by the end!)
"NuWho", on the other hand, makes a mockery of of Doctor Who and sci-fi in general. With a very few episodes like "Dalek" being the exception. And even they have too much loud, dramatic music. Like it's screaming "FEEL SAD!!!" or some such.
I've commented on that before. He seems to think that the video chip, video memory and blitter ("2D accelerator" for you kids out there) live in the monitor. He gives that as a reason for the Mac's built-in monitor. The Macintosh didn't even HAVE video memory.
(and certainly not a blitter)
Remember that this is the Silver Age Superman that we're talking about. The one who had a god-like tactile-psycho-kinetic (i.e. like psycho-kinesis, but only affecting what he's touching) ability to lift/move impossibly large objects without them falling apart under their own weight/mass.
No, what's really threatening to comic book fans sanity in this movie is Supes' rebuilding-the-great-wall-of-china vision!
I wouldn't put much stock in what he says considering the fact that he thinks that the Macintosh had a built-in monitor so that the "chips that draw the things on the screen" can be "intergrated" with the CPU. He also seems to think that all MS-DOS programs are textual and that they actually use ASCII codes via the "teletype" emulation instead of just writing directly to video memory. And that whole thing about buggy programs spewing out random text on a IBM and random pixels on a Mac becayse it's always in graphics mode is bogus. Try switching to graphics mode in MS-DOS via ANSI codes and you'll still see text because the BIOS (or ANSIPLUS.SYS, if you've installed it) handles "drawing" the text when outputing text via the CON: device. If you run Linux on the Macintosh you'll get the same thing from buggy programs on the "bitmapped" screen.
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So Stargate and Fringe aren't Sci-Fi?
(even if Fringe is *BAD* sci-fi sometimes)
Where'd you get the idea that it had to take place in The Future? What about stories that are purely psychological or sociological in nature?
Or maybe you mean that silver doo-dad that Roddy McDowall used in that "The Fantastic Journey" TV series back in the '70s.
The default mode that VGA starts up in is 720x400x16 text mode. This can be extended to 720x480x16 for 80x30 text. Switching to a 8x8 (from 9x16) character cell yields 90x60 text. 256-colour mode automatically makes the pixels twice as wide so photographic pictures are usually viewed in 360x480x256 mode (e.g. Linux's "zgv" viewer).
And, on a monitor with size controls (i.e. not an actual "IBM PS/2 Color Display" monitor), you can get 800x600x16 (thus 400x600x256) if you don't mind a incredibly low refresh rate (below 50Hz).
Not sure about the VIC-20 but the Atari VCS and HCS (Home Computer System) and Apple ][ came out in the 70s. ProLogic's "Flight Simulator" for the Atari HCS is a good example of a game that utilises multiple threads of execution to simulate flying a airplane via polygonal graphics. This is in contrast to most games that have a main thread and a background thread ran by the vertical blank interrupt.
(and perhaps a third ran by the horizontal blank interrupt)
And don't forget Texas Instruments' TI-99/4 (and 99/4A), which also came out in the 70s. And, for that matter, the Intellivision; whose OS would move sprites for you (i.e. the game programme) via a background OS thread.
All these 70s systems had graphics and sounds effects.
SET FILECOMPLETION=CD:DIRS;EDLIN:DIRS TXT DOC CFG;GIFCHECK:DIRS GIF
and typing "CD " and then CONTROL-TAB would give you a list of directories. For EDLIN it would also show text files. For GIFCHECK it would show directories and GIF files.
And when I type CD TOME it knows to swtich to \GAMES\ANGBAND\TOME.
(if I use CDD instead it even changes the currently loggged drive to C:)
If I type CD COMM\*A*.* it would look for a directory (in the directory-tree database) with a "A" anywhere in the filename and any extention whose parent directory is named COMM.
And, if you were using NDOS from Norton Utilities, then you were using 4DOS. Try it out at <URL:ftp://ftp.jpsoft.com/4dos/>.
My 1979 Atari computer (HCS) has "recoverable" RAM disks. But that's because the device drivers/handlers that I use just don't bother to build a new file system (MyDOS) or else they only do so when they can find no existing one (SpartaDOS X). It's the same with the Amiga's "Executive Multitasker" and AmigaDOS as well. I can't imagine how your choice of OS would make any difference as RAM disks are handled by the device handler rather than the the OS itself.
(except for Linux; and even it supports FUSE!)
The same for "RAM:" style file systems. I even remember something like the for MS-DOS.
And the FVWM window manager for X supports pushing a window to the top/bottom of the window stack. I had it set so that the right mouse button on the title bar moved a window to the top of the stack; or, in the case that it was already at the top, to the bottom. I did this because in imitation of the Amiga.
(except it's a special "gadget" instead of the title bar on the Amiga)
Once again that's the job of the window manager and not of the OS.
Why would someone want to build these kinds of things into the OS?
PNG is a still video picture format. Why would anyone want to add animation to it? Just use MNG. That's the "GIF89a" equivilant of PNG. MNG is the "ANIM" to PNG's "ILBM", so to speak.
You mean GIF is ALWAYS lossless. GIF doesn't support lossy compression.
That Lich King ain't so tough anyway. A 13 year-old boy killed him with a sweater!
Doctor Who was never meant to be "camp", "corny" or "cheesy".
(barring the occasional JNT gag)
It just seems that way to you because it's so old. If you grew up on old-timey special effects it all seems normal. TV back then was more like a radio show where you had to use your imagination.
On the other hand, it was never meant to be depressing or morose either. Hence the upbeat/hopeful endings.
(even if half of the good-guys are dead by the end!)
"NuWho", on the other hand, makes a mockery of of Doctor Who and sci-fi in general. With a very few episodes like "Dalek" being the exception. And even they have too much loud, dramatic music. Like it's screaming "FEEL SAD!!!" or some such.
I've commented on that before. He seems to think that the video chip, video memory and blitter ("2D accelerator" for you kids out there) live in the monitor. He gives that as a reason for the Mac's built-in monitor. The Macintosh didn't even HAVE video memory. (and certainly not a blitter)
Remember that this is the Silver Age Superman that we're talking about. The one who had a god-like tactile-psycho-kinetic (i.e. like psycho-kinesis, but only affecting what he's touching) ability to lift/move impossibly large objects without them falling apart under their own weight/mass.
No, what's really threatening to comic book fans sanity in this movie is Supes' rebuilding-the-great-wall-of-china vision!
I wouldn't put much stock in what he says considering the fact that he thinks that the Macintosh had a built-in monitor so that the "chips that draw the things on the screen" can be "intergrated" with the CPU. He also seems to think that all MS-DOS programs are textual and that they actually use ASCII codes via the "teletype" emulation instead of just writing directly to video memory. And that whole thing about buggy programs spewing out random text on a IBM and random pixels on a Mac becayse it's always in graphics mode is bogus. Try switching to graphics mode in MS-DOS via ANSI codes and you'll still see text because the BIOS (or ANSIPLUS.SYS, if you've installed it) handles "drawing" the text when outputing text via the CON: device. If you run Linux on the Macintosh you'll get the same thing from buggy programs on the "bitmapped" screen.
Did you try this:
:set cpoptions+=u
And it even talks about your issue under ":help u". Including how to do the above.