1. PONG itself would be hellishly difficult to code. In fact, the original PONG didn't even have code, so to speak. It was entirely generated and controlled by analogue circuits. At best, you could make a passable simulation of 2 'bats' and a 'ball'. Something tells me this has been done before.
2. To those who write 'programming 2600 games is easy'... check out the source code for Combat. (It's a bit down that page). Sure, if you wanted to write some c++ game that shows a block that shoots other blocks, no problem. But for those of us purists, nothing beats the original code.
Just port an emulator and be done with it! Oh wait, it's impossible to emulate PONG...:)
Australia is really a penal colony for British convicts. The public becomes incensed when prisoners receive perks like cableTV, an education, etc. Basically, we want our prisoners to live in concrete boxes, with few if any rights.
Perhaps the government in Australia is just fulfilling the public's wishes? That Crocodile Hunter guy is a real shady character ya know...
From what I can tell, the DMCA basically says reverse engineering is illegal.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the PC was cloned from IBM using reverse engineering. The entire American economy for the past 5 years has revolved around tech (little bit of hyperbole here), brought about mostly because of the proliferation of cheap PC's. Why does this point never seem to come up when people discuss the DMCA?
Was the DMCA brought in just to avoid another Nasdaq crash?:)
However, by terms of the contract, users agree not to actually open the files they download.
This is no different than warez and rom sites that state "You may only download this file for backup purposes only", or "You must delete the file after 24 hours".
I can't believe anyone would actually think this would stand up in court. This is basically Napster with a meaningless EULA. Ooooo, the RIAA is shaking in their boots!
With a latency measured in minutes, this sounds suspiciously like my master plan to make a cluster of 7 million Atari 2600's, with their 1Mhz cpu and 256 BYTES of ram!!!
Obviously, regenerative cartilage and neurons are not an evolutionary advantage. Although we cannot perhaps see the reason for this, it is clear it must be the case. As such, we must be extremely careful when engaging in this sort of research, least we permanently alter the human race - for the worse.
While we're at it, we better make wheelchairs and seeing eye dogs illegal, as there must be no evolutionary advantage to either of these.
AIDS vaccine? If there were selective pressures involved, SURELY we would have evolved to be immune to it!
Slashdot? Better ban it... it didn't evolve naturally, therefore it must be making the human race worse.
Oh wait... I fell for an obvious troll. How silly of me. Better kill me before my inhibited evolution ends humanity as we know it.
I noticed my poor arithmetic about 10 minutes afer posting, and thought it would be funny to see if anyone noticed (/.'ers seem to be somewhat anal on that sort of thing).
Contractions are always viewed as one word though.:)
As I don't know too many cities that americans in say, California or New York take pride in making fun of as being full of rednecks and gravel roads and the like, it was the best I could come up with:)
let's call if more of a metaphor, or simile, or what have you
Broadband wil not take off until it is as easy to set up as a modem is today.
Let's see... setting up your average modem... deal with drivers and/or interrupts and/or free com ports... heaven forbid it's a software modem and you want something other than windoze as your OS... hmm no connection to my ISP, is it my line, my modem, the ISP?
Contrast that with a properly set up cable ISP: install NIC, make sure you have a tcp/ip stack, connect to modem... surf.
It astounds me that in what seems to the rest of the world to be a small, backwards country, I can sit back and bask in the joy of a steady 500 kilobyte connection. And I've been doing so for two and a half years now.
I don't even live in anything close to a bigger Canadian city; Winnipeg is the Kansas of Canada! What's more amazing is that communities as small as a thousand people or so, and several hundred miles away from any major center, are currently being added to our broadband networks!
Maybe all the Yanks that hopped on the dot-com millionaire bandwagon should have spent a tad more money on infrastructure, and a bit less on beamers....
Just imagine if Yellowstone had to comply with legislation such as this:
"Effective immediately, all mountains must be retrofitted with wheelchair ramps, as it is discriminatory for the disabled not to be able to climb mountains".
"All national monuments and geographic features must now be fitted with 17 billion watt loudspeakers, as it is discriminatory for the blind not to be able to visualize what they look like..."
Or, the NOC:
"As of the next Olympics, all races must be run on a flat surface, at no faster than a powered wheelchair can move, so that we do not discriminate against quadrapalegics"
Sometimes I wonder just what planet the people who draft legislation such as this live on. Then again, there is are no laws (yet) that force Hollywood to include an equal number of ugly people (like myself) in their movies... yet.
A parent cannot feel safe when a kid can go home and download the latest new thing, without having to check with parents.
Last I checked, this isn't something you can really prevent, unless you don't own a computer.
A whole range of conditions that used to result in short lifespans have now been overcome...
Physically/mentally handicapped people can now have children almost as easily as anyone else (I'll let others debate the ethics of that)...
Modern immigration patterns are spreading our gene pools across the planet - no more localization in the long run...
And of course there's enough stupid men as there are stupid women, so there's a continual stream of stupid children (ok ok so maybe that one is a joke:)
Regardless, human evolution has been anything BUT natural for centuries now, it's only a matter of time before it pretty much comes to a stop. Unless we intervene and create races of super-beings of course (just clone me, we're well on our way!:)
Slashdot Mirror
2. To those who write 'programming 2600 games is easy'... check out the source code for Combat. (It's a bit down that page). Sure, if you wanted to write some c++ game that shows a block that shoots other blocks, no problem. But for those of us purists, nothing beats the original code.
Just port an emulator and be done with it! Oh wait, it's impossible to emulate PONG... :)
Perhaps the government in Australia is just fulfilling the public's wishes? That Crocodile Hunter guy is a real shady character ya know...
Why all the lawsuits in the 80's then?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the PC was cloned from IBM using reverse engineering. The entire American economy for the past 5 years has revolved around tech (little bit of hyperbole here), brought about mostly because of the proliferation of cheap PC's. Why does this point never seem to come up when people discuss the DMCA?
Was the DMCA brought in just to avoid another Nasdaq crash? :)
Please enlighten this ignorant Canuck :)
This is no different than warez and rom sites that state "You may only download this file for backup purposes only", or "You must delete the file after 24 hours".
I can't believe anyone would actually think this would stand up in court. This is basically Napster with a meaningless EULA. Ooooo, the RIAA is shaking in their boots!
With a latency measured in minutes, this sounds suspiciously like my master plan to make a cluster of 7 million Atari 2600's, with their 1Mhz cpu and 256 BYTES of ram!!!
While we're at it, we better make wheelchairs and seeing eye dogs illegal, as there must be no evolutionary advantage to either of these.
AIDS vaccine? If there were selective pressures involved, SURELY we would have evolved to be immune to it!
Slashdot? Better ban it ... it didn't evolve naturally, therefore it must be making the human race worse.
Oh wait ... I fell for an obvious troll. How silly of me. Better kill me before my inhibited evolution ends humanity as we know it.
Contractions are always viewed as one word though. :)
let's call if more of a metaphor, or simile, or what have you
Let's see... setting up your average modem... deal with drivers and/or interrupts and/or free com ports... heaven forbid it's a software modem and you want something other than windoze as your OS... hmm no connection to my ISP, is it my line, my modem, the ISP?
Contrast that with a properly set up cable ISP: install NIC, make sure you have a tcp/ip stack, connect to modem... surf.
Hmm, tough choice there :)
I don't even live in anything close to a bigger Canadian city; Winnipeg is the Kansas of Canada! What's more amazing is that communities as small as a thousand people or so, and several hundred miles away from any major center, are currently being added to our broadband networks!
Maybe all the Yanks that hopped on the dot-com millionaire bandwagon should have spent a tad more money on infrastructure, and a bit less on beamers....
All your answers lie here.
"Effective immediately, all mountains must be retrofitted with wheelchair ramps, as it is discriminatory for the disabled not to be able to climb mountains".
"All national monuments and geographic features must now be fitted with 17 billion watt loudspeakers, as it is discriminatory for the blind not to be able to visualize what they look like..."
Or, the NOC:
"As of the next Olympics, all races must be run on a flat surface, at no faster than a powered wheelchair can move, so that we do not discriminate against quadrapalegics"
Sometimes I wonder just what planet the people who draft legislation such as this live on. Then again, there is are no laws (yet) that force Hollywood to include an equal number of ugly people (like myself) in their movies... yet.
A parent cannot feel safe when a kid can go home and download the latest new thing, without having to check with parents. Last I checked, this isn't something you can really prevent, unless you don't own a computer.
A whole range of conditions that used to result in short lifespans have now been overcome... Physically/mentally handicapped people can now have children almost as easily as anyone else (I'll let others debate the ethics of that)... Modern immigration patterns are spreading our gene pools across the planet - no more localization in the long run... And of course there's enough stupid men as there are stupid women, so there's a continual stream of stupid children (ok ok so maybe that one is a joke :)
Regardless, human evolution has been anything BUT natural for centuries now, it's only a matter of time before it pretty much comes to a stop. Unless we intervene and create races of super-beings of course (just clone me, we're well on our way! :)
Eerie how this plan of NASA's is pretty much identical to the intro to Red Planet. You know, the GOOD Mars movie from last year?