This equals a Portable NES. Of course, you need roms.
You can get a flash advance in a lot of import stores, or at http://www.lik-sang.com
PocketNES is a NES emulator being written. You can get it at http://www.nolag.com Currently it's up to Beta4 and runs many games. PocketNES has the following strengths and weaknesses:
Pro) You can have 'infinite' amounts of games on 1 cartrige (by appending roms to each other)
Pro) It's portable =)
Pro) Batteries last 12 hours approx.
Pro) Costs $200 for everything
Pro) Doesn't require any build time
Con) Not all games are currently compatible
Con) The GBA resolution is smaller than NES, hence some screens are cropped. The author of the emulator has not written in resolution fix into the EMU.
Pro) The EMU is in development, and will get better with time.
Pro) The GBA + (insert favourite system)EMU is bound to come soon, I expect to see Sega master system, Sega genesis, and possibly even SNES emulation to come in the future.
SO WTF are you waiting for? Go get a GBA, a Flash Advance, and join the portable EMU community!
I have a page with a couple pieces of interesting PC (Including early microsoft) history. Check them out Here
Granted it's not the New Mexico address, but still very interesting.
Included is pics of MSDOS 1.1, CP/M X86 1.0 (a tad too late), and a sheet from the Basic manual of an old Z80 based Computer (which came in a woodgrain case, probably about 1977). This Basic manual page was the only reference to Microsoft i could find.
I've had to deal with the same questions as you and it boils down to how passionate you are about certain aspects of the computer world. Be advised this is not the be-all end-all of advice.. but it may help you:
a) Do you love hardware? Do you long to learn how your motherboard works? How a CPU is built? How do you create those chips on your motherboard? Do you find electronics interesting?
b) Do you love programming? Do you strive to solve complex programming issues? Do you write tools or programs in your spare time?
If you agree with A, choose Computer engineering.
If you agree with B, choose computer science. Computer science, in most programs, is MOSTLY programming theory, with very little hardware.
Choosing route A will lead you to learn basics about computer science, but as well how computers were first designed, to how complex today's chips are, and methods on how to design them. You will do far less programming than a CS major, but you should still come out with the ability to write good programs, as well as hardware design.
There are degrees which combine the best of both software and hardware, being a Canadian I can only point out two examples. These are both Engineering examples.
Yes, i used it. I liked it a lot, ESPECIALLY the awesome integration of a Windows networking client inside a file manager (remember, this was when corel linux FIRST came out way back 'when' when this was a feature).
It installed painlessly, and it worked. I reccomended it to friends whom also installed it, who have far less linux experience than I.
Granted i perfer a redhat based distro, and didn't keep Corel installed for a very long time, i was very impressed with the direction they were taking.
THe p[roblem is, every company is going in the same direction and it's only a matter of months before other companies catch up. I believe many of them have.. although, someone please let me know which distribtion is now fully windows-networking capable , this was the most important feature IMHO of Corel.
(When i say windows networking i mean browsing of network compusters, clicking on shares, mp3's etc and it just plain works (ie an mp3 plays in xmms when you click on it without having to mount a drive, use some archaic command line smbmount tool etc)
This company sells tons of award winning games, such as "steel beasts".
Another such company is "Battlefront games" at BattleFront Games with games such as "Combat Mission"..
There are lots of turn-based game companes out there.. many of them may not be "big names" but the companies listed above are getting lots of press and business thanks to the power of the internet community.
Who knows, companies such as this may become much larger in little time.. Fans of turn based games won't be left out =)
If you go to the Hubble pictures page you will find they did focus on Pluto and Charon..
The pictures don't reveal much... not enough to wet my whistle, even though it's probably much better than they have ever observed.
THe kuiper belt object is far too small to really get much from it.. i mean Pluto is a coupel thousand KM across (i believe) and this new object is like 100 KM
One day (last week) While telling some anti-pine friends how much I love pine (over email), I decided i'd telnet to the local SMTP port of my university's mail server and teach myself SMTP headers, and send them an e-mail with telnet.
Well, after attempting (it would not let me relay) i recieved a nasty email from the NOC telling me to never do it again, and that i am a hacker, etc etc.
Point being, I was merely attempting to teach myself SMTP headers, not trying to hack into the system but they immediately labelled me.
I replied back, explained my side of the story and never heard from them again.
5 1/4 inch floppy based games were self bootable. Being so young at the time i don't know the technical details. I would bet they didn't use DOS (perhaps some propritary o/s?), since when games moved to DOS microsoft would have had a fuss about redistributing pieces of the o/s on a selfbootable game.
Anyone know the tech details of these self boot game of yore?
That is server-side protection. This is totally differnet and relies on you, the end user- to provide some information to the company in order to play this game.
I spoke in the assumption that the protection is built into the CD, not in a 'cd key' format but in some form of 'cd check'.
Server-side checks (serial checks, etc) HAVE NEVER AND NEVER WILL be broken. If it is EVER broken, the company is STUPID and can't manage a list of SERIALS PRINTEND AND SOLD IN STORES. This is the EASIEST form of protection, but don't forget the infrastructyure that goes into protecting your game(s) (hint: it must be an online-only game or if not online-only heavily online -based)
Quake3, Diablo 2, Everquest, Ultima-ONline (all games their online-only variations) are such games that have NEVER been broke and NEVER will.
Want to break these games? Socially engineer some CD KEYS from your store, or local game-players, and that's the only thing you can do. You can't force yourself around the protection by sheer technical knowledge (in almost all circumstances).
Remember: WON NET and others are assumed unbreakable. Anyone with pirate-scene knowledge would know this to be true.
Some basic theory: A CD KEY is based on a mathematical formula. The cracker can break this formula in it's basic form to allow you to install the game. But the real kicker is that amongst the successful permuattaions of this formula, there is a 1 in 1,000,000,000 chance of getting a KEY that will work. How is this important?
The games printed with keys are the ones stored in a SECURE database only the game-provider knows about. These are autnenticated against, and the casual pirate who has a CD KEY GENEERATOR will be shut out unless he/she happens to break that 1/000,000,000 chance of getting a right CD key.
This is exactly what is in the protection for Diablo 2. It has not been pirated for Battle.net. Further, Everquest and Ultima Online (which are exclusively online only) have yet to be pirated, and likely never will (aside from server emulators)
All protection is beatable. The only unbeatable protection, is size, and this only matters if a game really can't be reduced.
When macrovision first released C-dilla to the world (for PC), it took groups days (or week(s)) to break it, and it was considered to be extremely tough and almost unbeatable for a while. But crackers are smart and they always find ways around any protection that is thrown at it.
I don't believe kalisto quit over not being able to crack. Considering echelon is likely consisting of mostly EX KAL members, it's just a new name facing the uphill battle of new challenges.
whatever the case, sega et al (developers included) will all take their stabs at copy protection. Crackers will always find ways around it. Always has been this way, always will.
5-Just after Kalisto stops releasing, a "new" group called Echelon emerges and immediately starts releasing games using fairly advanced ripping/booting techniques, as if they've been doing it for ages. Looks like Kalisto, smells like Kalisto. Hmmm, maybe this is all just a big name change for a piracy group?
Kalisto wanted out, and didn't have a witty thing to say. So they made something up. If you read their previous NFO's they were rather pissed off at the 'scene' and one would easily say they did want out.
Now the issue of Sega giving stock options is ludicrist. Sega would rather hand them some handcuffs rather than money or options. You better believe that sega still wants them in jail.
And finally, if the 'warez site' in question was more up to date, you'd notice a new group has formed (named echelon), right after kalisto has 'exited'. Seems a little suspicious to you, doesn't it?
Finally, here are some links that are comparibly better than the one provided in the story.
. There is definitely an overhead premium - I wouldn't consider running any version with less than a 300 MHz processor with 128 MB of RAM.
You've bought into the Microsoft "upgrade" hype as well i see.
I don't know how many times i have to tell people, that I had Windows 2000 running on a P166 with 50 megs of ram, and it was FINE for non-gaming applications.
Office Suites, Internet apps (Ftp, Irc, instant messanging suites, etc) and more.
Don't believe the upgrade hype. Your older system can be put to good use if you want to use Windows 2000.
Of course, Linux is another great OS to have on your older system =)
Here, Bill Joy and Bob Fabry discuss the progress of BSD tcp/ip, and it's quite interesting. From what i understand, bill developed it while everyone else squabbled over clunky, slow tcp/ip implementations. Bill also made sure it was scalable for faster lines (10mbit for example). Other implementations only seem to get 100kbit/sec..
On 11/780's, these numbers typically scale up by 1.4 so that we
can project the throughput with the improvements described above to be
about 11.2 Megabaud, user-user.
And.. the end-note which proves it's historical significance..
We will be working with Rob Gurwitz at BBN in the coming weeks,
combining our version of TCP/IP with his current version. We look
forward to making a high-performance version of the protocol available
to the VAX/UNIX community at an early date.
Regards,
Bill Joy and Bob Fabry
This is a killer archive. Someone needs to collect all old archives of old 'net' material and categorize it. For example, Kern & richie (c inventors) have old stuff on their web pages, like Source code to a C compiler from 1971! (1971!!!!!!!)
CLearly there is a demand, and a need for all academia et al to pull old data off their tapes, before it's too late.
Slashdot Mirror
This equals a Portable NES. Of course, you need roms.
You can get a flash advance in a lot of import stores, or at http://www.lik-sang.com
PocketNES is a NES emulator being written. You can get it at http://www.nolag.com Currently it's up to Beta4 and runs many games. PocketNES has the following strengths and weaknesses:
Pro) You can have 'infinite' amounts of games on 1 cartrige (by appending roms to each other)
Pro) It's portable =)
Pro) Batteries last 12 hours approx.
Pro) Costs $200 for everything
Pro) Doesn't require any build time
Con) Not all games are currently compatible
Con) The GBA resolution is smaller than NES, hence some screens are cropped. The author of the emulator has not written in resolution fix into the EMU.
Pro) The EMU is in development, and will get better with time.
Pro) The GBA + (insert favourite system)EMU is bound to come soon, I expect to see Sega master system, Sega genesis, and possibly even SNES emulation to come in the future.
SO WTF are you waiting for? Go get a GBA, a Flash Advance, and join the portable EMU community!
I felt the exact same way, To me it's almost as if i've travelled in time and taken pictures, bringing them back with me..
However, Imagine if some images of more familiar sights from that time period would be revealed in just as much glory..
I've played with it, briefly however, and when I opened a terminal it sure smelled and breathed like a typical Unix.
Many of us will find it right at home in many ways, and the best part about it is it has a GUI shell that's so easy to use your mother can use it.
I highly reccomend Linux/Unix freaks (and windows freaks too) check it out sometime, it's very impressive.
Now if I could only afford a machine that can run MacOSX
No, don't waste your time. I don't care about wether it had an X in the name or not =)
but thanks for the interesting points of view on your experience with CP/M etc.
I was too young to know the difference at the time.
I have a page with a couple pieces of interesting PC (Including early microsoft) history. Check them out Here
Granted it's not the New Mexico address, but still very interesting.
Included is pics of MSDOS 1.1, CP/M X86 1.0 (a tad too late), and a sheet from the Basic manual of an old Z80 based Computer (which came in a woodgrain case, probably about 1977). This Basic manual page was the only reference to Microsoft i could find.
I am a 4'th year Computer engineering major.
I've had to deal with the same questions as you and it boils down to how passionate you are about certain aspects of the computer world. Be advised this is not the be-all end-all of advice.. but it may help you:
a) Do you love hardware? Do you long to learn how your motherboard works? How a CPU is built? How do you create those chips on your motherboard? Do you find electronics interesting?
b) Do you love programming? Do you strive to solve complex programming issues? Do you write tools or programs in your spare time?
If you agree with A, choose Computer engineering.
If you agree with B, choose computer science. Computer science, in most programs, is MOSTLY programming theory, with very little hardware.
Choosing route A will lead you to learn basics about computer science, but as well how computers were first designed, to how complex today's chips are, and methods on how to design them. You will do far less programming than a CS major, but you should still come out with the ability to write good programs, as well as hardware design.
There are degrees which combine the best of both software and hardware, being a Canadian I can only point out two examples. These are both Engineering examples.
Sysyms & Computing at University of Guelph
Systems Design Engineering at University of Waterloo
Yes, i used it. I liked it a lot, ESPECIALLY the awesome integration of a Windows networking client inside a file manager (remember, this was when corel linux FIRST came out way back 'when' when this was a feature).
It installed painlessly, and it worked. I reccomended it to friends whom also installed it, who have far less linux experience than I.
Granted i perfer a redhat based distro, and didn't keep Corel installed for a very long time, i was very impressed with the direction they were taking.
THe p[roblem is, every company is going in the same direction and it's only a matter of months before other companies catch up. I believe many of them have.. although, someone please let me know which distribtion is now fully windows-networking capable , this was the most important feature IMHO of Corel.
(When i say windows networking i mean browsing of network compusters, clicking on shares, mp3's etc and it just plain works (ie an mp3 plays in xmms when you click on it without having to mount a drive, use some archaic command line smbmount tool etc)
There are some great 'independant' companies selling turn based games that are winning tons of awards:
Shrapnel Games
This company sells tons of award winning games, such as "steel beasts".
Another such company is "Battlefront games" at BattleFront Games with games such as "Combat Mission"..
There are lots of turn-based game companes out there.. many of them may not be "big names" but the companies listed above are getting lots of press and business thanks to the power of the internet community.
Who knows, companies such as this may become much larger in little time.. Fans of turn based games won't be left out =)
For 60,000 i'd expect much more than just those systems, which are all fairly recent.
Well it's not computer GENERATED, it's computer aided. Those pixels are likely the finest resolution hubble could make out at that time.
If you go to the Hubble pictures page you will find they did focus on Pluto and Charon..
The pictures don't reveal much... not enough to wet my whistle, even though it's probably much better than they have ever observed. THe kuiper belt object is far too small to really get much from it.. i mean Pluto is a coupel thousand KM across (i believe) and this new object is like 100 KM
Here Is a link to some pluto as seen by hubble.
One day (last week) While telling some anti-pine friends how much I love pine (over email), I decided i'd telnet to the local SMTP port of my university's mail server and teach myself SMTP headers, and send them an e-mail with telnet. Well, after attempting (it would not let me relay) i recieved a nasty email from the NOC telling me to never do it again, and that i am a hacker, etc etc. Point being, I was merely attempting to teach myself SMTP headers, not trying to hack into the system but they immediately labelled me. I replied back, explained my side of the story and never heard from them again.
wow, CP/M actually l ived on to become Dr. Dos? I didn't know that..
.. must be worth something =)
I have an origional copy of cp/m 86 from IBM (c) 1982
But the obvious is in front of our eyes:
the challenge is putting the graphics and sound drivers on the CD such that most, if not everyone, can play it!
Consoles are self bootable because the hardware stays the same: compatability is never an issue..
This was done frequently with PC games.
5 1/4 inch floppy based games were self bootable. Being so young at the time i don't know the technical details. I would bet they didn't use DOS (perhaps some propritary o/s?), since when games moved to DOS microsoft would have had a fuss about redistributing pieces of the o/s on a selfbootable game.
Anyone know the tech details of these self boot game of yore?
Sega sends letters to everyone and their grandmother who has "sega" and "download" in the same HTML code.
Many EMU sites have been sent similar letters.. so really this should come as no suprise to anyone following sega and their paths of litigation.
The premiere 'news' site for the piracy scene finally gets a letter from Sega.
It's %100 true that ISONEWS does not distribute images of games, but the difference here is that ISONEWS reports news of groups releases of games.
They send out their own 'press releases' if you will that state they have released the latest game.
The question is: what is legal, or illegal about these 'press releases' (otherwise known as NFO files).
If these NFO files can be found as not breaking any laws: then sega has no case, otherwise, isonews has a bit of a problem.
I don't recall remembering anyone that has successfully been litigated upon for having mere NFO files.
Guy, that is not protection.
That is server-side protection. This is totally differnet and relies on you, the end user- to provide some information to the company in order to play this game.
I spoke in the assumption that the protection is built into the CD, not in a 'cd key' format but in some form of 'cd check'.
Server-side checks (serial checks, etc) HAVE NEVER AND NEVER WILL be broken. If it is EVER broken, the company is STUPID and can't manage a list of SERIALS PRINTEND AND SOLD IN STORES. This is the EASIEST form of protection, but don't forget the infrastructyure that goes into protecting your game(s) (hint: it must be an online-only game or if not online-only heavily online -based)
Quake3, Diablo 2, Everquest, Ultima-ONline (all games their online-only variations) are such games that have NEVER been broke and NEVER will.
Want to break these games? Socially engineer some CD KEYS from your store, or local game-players, and that's the only thing you can do. You can't force yourself around the protection by sheer technical knowledge (in almost all circumstances).
Remember: WON NET and others are assumed unbreakable. Anyone with pirate-scene knowledge would know this to be true.
Some basic theory: A CD KEY is based on a mathematical formula. The cracker can break this formula in it's basic form to allow you to install the game. But the real kicker is that amongst the successful permuattaions of this formula, there is a 1 in 1,000,000,000 chance of getting a KEY that will work. How is this important?
The games printed with keys are the ones stored in a SECURE database only the game-provider knows about. These are autnenticated against, and the casual pirate who has a CD KEY GENEERATOR will be shut out unless he/she happens to break that 1/000,000,000 chance of getting a right CD key.
This is exactly what is in the protection for Diablo 2. It has not been pirated for Battle.net. Further, Everquest and Ultima Online (which are exclusively online only) have yet to be pirated, and likely never will (aside from server emulators)
I could go on.. ask if you have more questions.
All protection is beatable. The only unbeatable protection, is size, and this only matters if a game really can't be reduced.
When macrovision first released C-dilla to the world (for PC), it took groups days (or week(s)) to break it, and it was considered to be extremely tough and almost unbeatable for a while. But crackers are smart and they always find ways around any protection that is thrown at it.
I don't believe kalisto quit over not being able to crack. Considering echelon is likely consisting of mostly EX KAL members, it's just a new name facing the uphill battle of new challenges.
whatever the case, sega et al (developers included) will all take their stabs at copy protection. Crackers will always find ways around it. Always has been this way, always will.
5-Just after Kalisto stops releasing, a "new" group called Echelon emerges and immediately starts releasing games using fairly advanced ripping/booting techniques, as if they've been doing it for ages. Looks like Kalisto, smells like Kalisto. Hmmm, maybe this is all just a big name change for a piracy group?
Bingo.
I firmly believe they ARE echelon.
Or echelon consist of most of the old members.
One or the other.
And it's almost guaranteed to be true.. this is not a rumour, it's an observed fact.
F.Y.I PSX2 games have been hackable for the same amount of time or longer than dream cast.
They come on DVD's and they simply apply the same ripping or downsampling procedures to get it to fit on a CD.
The dreamcast is tougher due to the custom 'data' format (gdrom), and the group 'utopia' was the first to break the protection.
Kalisto uses the same anti-protection that utopia created to break the games.
Jesus. Why do people buy into this shit?
Kalisto wanted out, and didn't have a witty thing to say. So they made something up. If you read their previous NFO's they were rather pissed off at the 'scene' and one would easily say they did want out.
Now the issue of Sega giving stock options is ludicrist. Sega would rather hand them some handcuffs rather than money or options. You better believe that sega still wants them in jail.
And finally, if the 'warez site' in question was more up to date, you'd notice a new group has formed (named echelon), right after kalisto has 'exited'. Seems a little suspicious to you, doesn't it?
Finally, here are some links that are comparibly better than the one provided in the story.
Isonews
152.org
You can see the 'nfos' from the new group 'echelon' and give youself a better picture of the dreamcast pirate world.
. There is definitely an overhead premium - I wouldn't consider running any version with less than a 300 MHz processor with 128 MB of RAM.
You've bought into the Microsoft "upgrade" hype as well i see.
I don't know how many times i have to tell people, that I had Windows 2000 running on a P166 with 50 megs of ram, and it was FINE for non-gaming applications.
Office Suites, Internet apps (Ftp, Irc, instant messanging suites, etc) and more.
Don't believe the upgrade hype. Your older system can be put to good use if you want to use Windows 2000.
Of course, Linux is another great OS to have on your older system =)
Click here and read the last article.
Here, Bill Joy and Bob Fabry discuss the progress of BSD tcp/ip, and it's quite interesting. From what i understand, bill developed it while everyone else squabbled over clunky, slow tcp/ip implementations. Bill also made sure it was scalable for faster lines (10mbit for example). Other implementations only seem to get 100kbit/sec..
On 11/780's, these numbers typically scale up by 1.4 so that we can project the throughput with the improvements described above to be about 11.2 Megabaud, user-user.
And.. the end-note which proves it's historical significance..
We will be working with Rob Gurwitz at BBN in the coming weeks, combining our version of TCP/IP with his current version. We look forward to making a high-performance version of the protocol available to the VAX/UNIX community at an early date. Regards, Bill Joy and Bob Fabry
This is a killer archive. Someone needs to collect all old archives of old 'net' material and categorize it. For example, Kern & richie (c inventors) have old stuff on their web pages, like Source code to a C compiler from 1971! (1971!!!!!!!)
CLearly there is a demand, and a need for all academia et al to pull old data off their tapes, before it's too late.