I seem to be amassing rather a lot of Beebs - there are currently four on my living room floor, rescued from a company clear-out, and many others lurk in cupboards, all awaiting testing when I catch up with my 21st Century life. Trouble is, that never seems to happen... I do keep one machine set up in case I suddenly need to play Elite:-)
I was pleased to find that most of my old 5.25" floppy disks of programs I'd written do still load. And yes, loading from tape... that noise is burned onto my eardrums.
On BBC BASIC (I think, definitely on Atari BASIC) the syntax should be
30 PRINT A$; "is a wanker!"
LOL. How many geeks does it take to fix a bug?;-)
Actually you can omit the semi-colon at the expense of readability, and many times we were compelled to in order to save the scarce memory. Ah... the joys of removing every extra space and shortening
variable and procedure names down to one letter! Also recall using integer variables (FOR C%=X% TO Y%) just to give the BASIC interpreter a slight speed boost.
What we need for our audio workstations is a fanless (silent) graphics card that will do OpenGL nicely, using Free/Libre/Open Source drivers. Affordable is helpful, but not essential.
I've been watching the gradual progress of the
Open Graphics Project
(and now Open Hardware Foundation) with interest and hope they can release something good before the major manufacturers get a clue - quite likely considering their years of promises (ATI) and proprietary drivers (nVidia). It seems that Intel are doing good things, although IIUC those cards aren't so powerful; I know: power, silence, freedom (choose TWO only)... but progress? Is the ATI Radeon 8500 still the best fanless card with open drivers?
Please wake me up when we get to the 21st Century. I'd happily read a whole page of adverts for news on such a product.
Or if bricks are too difficult, try
Steko blocks,
from which walls and even whole buildings can be quickly erected
(time to relive my childhood Lego obsession and go build me a real house...;-)
KYOCERA Inaugurates First-Ever Solar Grove,
Unleashing "Power of the Sun" for Parking Facilities
"Solar Trees" Convert Parking Lot into 235-Kilowatt Solar Electric Generating System.
(Alas, both websites are already/.'ed with only 23 comments.)
My biggest PITA design flaw in software (just so I'm not completely offtopic) is the inability to remember previous user input, such as the directory you picked the last time you hit "File -> Open". I don't care when the last time was, just remember the directory I was in, dammit!
Yes, I wish The GIMP's file dialogue boxes were a bit less dumb, instead of always opening up at the same tiny size, and had a better implementation of Most Recently Used directories, like CoolEdit95 apparently did (scroll a third down the linked page), although I never used it myself, but other programs have this useful feature. Since GIMP is based on GTK, I suppose I should ask them, and continue to praise GIMP for being just cool everywhere else.
...although my quest for silence led me off on a tangent. And no, I have not used them, nor do I have any interest/relationship with the companies, etc...
Anyone interested in Binaural Beats should check out SBaGen, the
Binaural Beat Brain Wave Experimenter's Lab, available for Linux, Mac and Windows.
All this talk of dreaming reminds me of a very
cool film called Waking Life which all Slashdotters should see. It's a fantastic philosophical journey into the world of dreams and consciousness. The main character wanders around meeting professors and strangers who discuss the nature of being asleep and lucid dreaming. The action is all filmed and then re-animated in an amazing technique called Rotoscoping.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought DVI cables had a maximum length of 10m and long ones cost $80. I'm sure the signal would be better preserved than with analogue VGA, but the cost is a problem.
Please could you use your influence to
challenge the proposed EU directive on
Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement which
will be voted on on March 8th 2004. This
directive as it stands is deeply flawed as it
treats individual people who may unintentionally
infringe copyright in the same way as ruthless
criminals and counterfeiting gangs. Please
support (on my behalf) an amendment to the
directive which would target the master
criminals rather than the ten year-old boy who
taped his favourite song off the radio.
While I agree that copyright is an important
thing to protect (as an artist, I would not like
my work to be ripped off against my wishes), I am
concerned that granting corporations the right to
invade people's homes with private police forces
is just too far into George Orwell's 1984 to
belong in a free 21st Century.
I am concerned about the way in which this
directive is being rushed through parliament by
certain parties without proper debate. It should
be altered so that measures taken are relative to
the scale of infringement so as not to erode
basic civil liberties nor stifle innovation.
My all-time favourite arcade game would have to be Vanguard from 1981. A multi-directional scrolling shoot-em-up game with four fire buttons (up, down, left, right), an inventive development on Scramble. The game featured synthesized speech which in 1981 was way out. Another great idea was where you flew through a sprite labelled ENERGY and were then indestructible for a few seconds, much like the Berserker in Doom. My favourite bit was when you approached a dangerous section and it warned you to "Be careful!". Rocking music too.
A sequel was made, but the graphics are lame compared to the cool and simple style of the original.
Slashdot Mirror
From TFA:
...will hopefully be a worthy [pred|succ]essor to LCARS.
No offence, but thank goodness she doesn't drive on my country's roads. (I checked whois on your homepage).
Good luck with the chauffeur job :-)
Hi Steve
I seem to be amassing rather a lot of Beebs - there are currently four on my living room floor, rescued from a company clear-out, and many others lurk in cupboards, all awaiting testing when I catch up with my 21st Century life. Trouble is, that never seems to happen... I do keep one machine set up in case I suddenly need to play Elite :-)
I was pleased to find that most of my old 5.25" floppy disks of programs I'd written do still load. And yes, loading from tape... that noise is burned onto my eardrums.
What he said about games, plus Labyrinth, Repton, Citadel and Sentinel. I learned to drive on Revs. See my pages about classic games on the Beeb
(hmmm, am I asking /.'ers to RTFA?)
LOL. How many geeks does it take to fix a bug? ;-)
Actually you can omit the semi-colon at the expense of readability, and many times we were compelled to in order to save the scarce memory. Ah... the joys of removing every extra space and shortening variable and procedure names down to one letter! Also recall using integer variables (FOR C%=X% TO Y%) just to give the BASIC interpreter a slight speed boost.
What,... you mean I can come out of this basement now?
Syntax Error
>_
Silver Jubilee!
Who's going to write the press releases?
What we need for our audio workstations is a fanless (silent) graphics card that will do OpenGL nicely, using Free/Libre/Open Source drivers. Affordable is helpful, but not essential.
I've been watching the gradual progress of the Open Graphics Project (and now Open Hardware Foundation) with interest and hope they can release something good before the major manufacturers get a clue - quite likely considering their years of promises (ATI) and proprietary drivers (nVidia). It seems that Intel are doing good things, although IIUC those cards aren't so powerful; I know: power, silence, freedom (choose TWO only)... but progress? Is the ATI Radeon 8500 still the best fanless card with open drivers?
Please wake me up when we get to the 21st Century. I'd happily read a whole page of adverts for news on such a product.
I think today's /. MessageOfTheDay (at the foot of the page) manages an Insightful response to that statement:
Nice ideas :-)
"Have you trashed SCO today?"Not this week. Where's my hammer?
Or if bricks are too difficult, try Steko blocks, from which walls and even whole buildings can be quickly erected (time to relive my childhood Lego obsession and go build me a real house... ;-)
They could have parked here.
(Alas, both websites are already /.'ed with only 23 comments.)
Yes, I wish The GIMP's file dialogue boxes were a bit less dumb, instead of always opening up at the same tiny size, and had a better implementation of Most Recently Used directories, like CoolEdit95 apparently did (scroll a third down the linked page), although I never used it myself, but other programs have this useful feature. Since GIMP is based on GTK, I suppose I should ask them, and continue to praise GIMP for being just cool everywhere else.
These devices always looked interesting:
...although my quest for silence led me off on a tangent. And no, I have not used them, nor do I have any interest/relationship with the companies, etc...
Anyone who still thinks that Debian is hard to install, please think again
A big up to Debian developers everywhere!
Anyone interested in Binaural Beats should check out SBaGen, the Binaural Beat Brain Wave Experimenter's Lab, available for Linux, Mac and Windows.
All this talk of dreaming reminds me of a very cool film called Waking Life which all Slashdotters should see. It's a fantastic philosophical journey into the world of dreams and consciousness. The main character wanders around meeting professors and strangers who discuss the nature of being asleep and lucid dreaming. The action is all filmed and then re-animated in an amazing technique called Rotoscoping.
Cheers, Malc
Since a recipe is merely a list of instructions, I figured that the GPL could be applied, although IANAL.
So, for Slashdot, I present Free Food :-)
[Don't go toasting my server now... :-]
Dear Mr. Huhne,
Please could you use your influence to challenge the proposed EU directive on Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement which will be voted on on March 8th 2004. This directive as it stands is deeply flawed as it treats individual people who may unintentionally infringe copyright in the same way as ruthless criminals and counterfeiting gangs. Please support (on my behalf) an amendment to the directive which would target the master criminals rather than the ten year-old boy who taped his favourite song off the radio.
While I agree that copyright is an important thing to protect (as an artist, I would not like my work to be ripped off against my wishes), I am concerned that granting corporations the right to invade people's homes with private police forces is just too far into George Orwell's 1984 to belong in a free 21st Century.
I am concerned about the way in which this directive is being rushed through parliament by certain parties without proper debate. It should be altered so that measures taken are relative to the scale of infringement so as not to erode basic civil liberties nor stifle innovation.
Thanks for your time,
Malcolm Smith
[Vaguely modelled on the EFF's page]
Come on people: take a few minutes this weekend to ensure these good people have messages in their Inbox on Monday morning!
Yikes! It seems that the Countdown ending has put the fear of God into the Pointy Haired Bosses!
It's currently 29% Yes; we'll see what the next instalment of the saga brings...
Sadly, that is how it was when I voted. I'm alarmed that they can fool even 3% of the people some of the time.
This online poll currently has a small but worrying percentage of people ready to buy SCO licences.
I agree :-)
My all-time favourite arcade game would have to be Vanguard from 1981. A multi-directional scrolling shoot-em-up game with four fire buttons (up, down, left, right), an inventive development on Scramble. The game featured synthesized speech which in 1981 was way out. Another great idea was where you flew through a sprite labelled ENERGY and were then indestructible for a few seconds, much like the Berserker in Doom. My favourite bit was when you approached a dangerous section and it warned you to "Be careful!". Rocking music too. A sequel was made, but the graphics are lame compared to the cool and simple style of the original.
Wouldn't ODD be a simpler acronym?
Boo, no OGG support. We welcome the MUDDA initiative though.