Even though it is Windows, there is absolutely no technical need for AV when the application is so limited.
Fixed that. I am afraid that the Payment Card Industry (PCI) differs from your opinion.* In their infinite wisdom**, PCI has decreed that ALL computers need to be running AV. After, all, if it is good for the desktop, it must be good for the servers, right? And since a virus can be spread from anywhere to anywhere, all computers need to have their own protection.
I know it seems silly, but many of the PCI Audit Drones actually believe this. I spent hours trying to convince an auditor that we did not need AV on a Linux server that cannot accept email and has no internet connection. If the PCI Audit Drone finds a computer without AV, you fail the PCI Audit. If you fail the Audit, you get marked as failing on a public web site. If you fail enough times, you lose your ability to accept credit cards. So the need to have AV on a POS is there, it is just not a technical need.
*Reality
**For very, very small values of infinite
The one I am most surprised at is Phoenix ONE. Although we are having a very cold year this year (it hasn't even hit 90 yet [32 for those outside the US], and we are already into April), normally cooling costs would be huge. I know they have done some work with chillers to replace air conditioners, but cooling that size space in 115 degree heat (46 Celsius) can't be cheap.
Phoenix does have some advantages, though. Very low earthquake probability, slim chance of flooding, and hurricanes and tornados are things that happen in other places. I know that i/o Data had big aspirations, but didn't know that they had the seventh largest data center.
If you look at the bottom of the iCade page for suggestions, you will find things like a knife that makes noises depending on what you cut, canned unicorn meat, a secrets bear that lets you spy on kids, and my personal favorite, the Tribbles'n'Bits breakfast cereal. It has to be the ultimate Geek breakfast. Unfortunately, under availability it shows that it is only available on Sherman's Planet.
While I loved Ultima III and IV, and got really, really good at most of the InfoComm games ( I hated the ending to Infidel, although it was one of the easier ones to get through), one of the most unsung heros was Alternate Realty "Series" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_Reality_(series)
Released in 1985, there were many features that were considered "revolutionary" by games that were released as much as 7 to 20 years later. Things like hidden stats that changed based on your actions, and changed the way an NPC would interact with you. (Some guilds wouldn't let you join if you killed peasants, while others wouldn't let you join unless you killed peasants. [plus the guild didn't always tell you what actions allowed or prevented you from joining.]) It also multiple stats such as hunger, fatigue, sickness, cold or hot, thirst, or how much you were carrying that actually changed how fast you could move. Movement seemed so much smoother than other 3D game of the time, and distant object came into focus gradually as you got closer. As the sun rose and set, or if it started raining, the entire color pallet would change, making it look much more realistic. Although I did not have the time to spend on it, I had a friend that spent weeks mapping the City and never did finish it completely.
Exactly my point! Yes, early 80's was a decade or two ago. But that was when the policy of Change-your-password-often was conceived. But it is still "Best Practice" so we have to put up with password changes every 30 days. Personally, I think a 6 month change policy or, at the very most, 90 days between password changes is sufficient.
A tough question, especially since "best practice" dictates that the password be changed often. I did a little research into this and found that UNIX is actually the culprit for needing to change passwords often.
It seems that several year ago, the/etc/passwd file was world readable (since it had to be read in order to log in), and that both the username and password was stored there. (Now the passwords are stored in/etc/shadow which is not world readable.) It was fairly simple for someone to download a passwd file and then run it through a dictionary cracker to find the passwords. In the early 80's it was found that a dedicated mainframe could crack any dictionary word in the passwd file in about eight weeks. If the hacker only had access for a couple hours a day, it could take up to four months. (If a complex password was used, it would take much longer or possibly never be cracked.) Therefore, if a person changed his password every 30 days, he could be sure that by the time the hacker cracked his password, it had been changed.
However, as computers became more powerful, the time to crack passwords from a passwd file became less and less, a better solution needed to be found. One method was to separate the password from the username into a shadow file, and make sure that the shadow file was not world readable. A cracker would need to break into the computer with root privileges in order to read the password file so that they could break into the computer.
Unfortunately, the above explanation is long, complicated, and goes against "best practices." I have tried pointing that out to several "Security experts" without any success. Pointing out that passwords will be written down if they have to be changed often will not help much either.
Professor Jones had been working on time theory for many years.
"And I have found the key equation," he told his daughter one day. "Time is a field. This machine I have made can manipulte, even reverse, that field."
Pushing a button as he spoke, he said, "This should make time run backward run time make should this," said he, spoke he as button a pushing.
"Field that, reverse even, manipulate can made have I machine this. Field a is time," day one daughter his told he. "Equation key the found have I and."
Years many for theory time on working been had Jones Professor.
This is on of my favorite stories by Fredric Brown.
Cost is an excellent question, since there is already a product that does something similar that has been around since at least 2007.
PRP (Petroleum Remediation Product) is made from beeswax and soaks up oils as well. Since it is so light, it floats on water and only absorbs the oils. The bee's wax encourages naturally occurring micro-organisms to eat. The microbes feast on the bee's wax and don't stop eating until all the oil is gone, safely, naturally bio-degrading the petroleum and the PRP itself.
I understand that they mix ground up corncobs into the PRP to make a version that works without water and can bio-degrade oil on land.
I can see only three reasons for the glass version. 1. If it is cheaper to make
2. Since you clean it rather than let it decompose, it is reusable. But the costs of making and cleaning still have to be cheaper than the cost of PRP.
3. If the glass version will absorb chemicals that cannot be degraded by the micro-organisms that feed on the beeswax.
And of course, if one variety is cheaper than another, no customer would EVER tell the cashier the wrong name in order to save some money. Could NEVER happen. And you know that those $4.50/hr cashiers have been trained extensively to be able to tell the difference between a Gala and a Braeburn at a glance. Obviously they have also been trained to tell a Valencia Orange from an Orlando or a Tangelo as well./sarcasm
Wizardry 8 did this well. You could start with fresh characters or imported characters from Wizardry VII. I started with fresh characters and the monsters in the first area were pretty hard. I started a new game with imported characters thinking that I would have a big advantage. Nope. Although my characters were more experienced and able to fight better, the monsters were also stronger. After making my way past the first area, I moved to an even harder area. Realizing I had forgotten something, I went back to the first area. Sure enough, the monsters that showed up were even more powerful. Later in the game, after I had moved my characters up several levels, I had an occasion to go back to the first level. Although the monsters were even harder than before, they were no match for my characters and I breezed through with no problem.
The game was divided into areas and each area had different types of monsters. Each monster type had different levels as well. The neat thing was that there was an upper and lower limit to each monster's levels. For example, the first area had different slime creatures from a wimpy green slime to a very tough emerald slime. Slimes were not seen in other areas and an emerald slime could never do the same kind of damage that a giant wolf that was found in another area could do. Each area was tough, and if you went into an area before you were ready, you could be killed quite easily. Even if you were ready, you could be killed if you weren't careful. Rare was the time you could enter an area and say, "Wow. That was easy."
I really liked that game, and the way it pushed you in each area. Grinding was almost counter-productive, since the experience gained for each type of monster was dependant upon its difficulty. Grinding away in one area only made the next area that much more difficult. I could sit and grind in one area for hours, or I could move the the next area and play for 10 minutes and get the same experience. Unlike other games, it was a great balance between playability and difficulty. Other people I talked to had similar experiences even though we had different playing styles.
A friend gave me a book many years ago called "The Best of Fredric Brown" that was published in 1977. That was how I was introduced to his writing. A few of his stories can be found on Project Gutenber. I understand that another book was published in 2001 called "From these ashes: the complete short SF of Fredric Brown" that is supposed to contain over 100 of his stories.
A classic SF writer that is often forgotten is Fredric Brown. Although his SF stories are often short (usually less that 1000 words) they are totally amazing and stand the test of time very well. One of his more famous short stories, "Arena" was used as the basis of a Star Trek episode by the same name.
I personally liked his several short stories that dealt with time travel and the many ways that people tried to deal with them. My favorite story, "The End", deals with what would really happen if someone could make time run backwards.
The real brilliance of his writing is that he could make you think without delving into political commentary and do it in just a few words. His stories were descriptive enough that you could picture the worlds he described, but not so descriptive that they limited the story to a particular time or place. Stories written in 1954 could have easily been written in 1994. In other words, truly timeless science fiction, something that is very, very difficult to do.
I will get off my soap box now, with a quote from Fredric Brown.
"The last man on earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock at the door..."
Are we talking the same Apple? You know, the ones who sell the iPod Nano? Just because they updated the firmware on the iPod Nano, so that a third party docking station (Which only has two functions. 1. Charge the iPod. 2. Provide speakers. That's it, nothing else.) stops working and the iPod Nano suddenly reports an "unsupported device found" is NO reason to think that Apple is in ANY way controlling. What possible reason could there be to call Apple a control freak?
By the way, I understand that Apple has denied all rumours that they intend to come out with an Apple iCar specifically designed and approved as an authorized mobile listening accessory to the iPod and iPhone. The last I heard was that they were definitely not researching ways to seal the hood shut to prevent people from changing the iCar battery.
I have noticed that several people seem to think that they would rather have an odometer tax than RFID. I think this is according to plan.
How to increase taxes - a step by step guide.
Government: We want more money! Let's have a look at Transportation...
Committee member 1: We can increase the gas tax! Committee member 2: No way. We will look like greedy bastards. (We are, but we don't want to look like it.)
C1: How about taxing the odometer?
C2: No way! We will spend months fighting a "privacy invasion" battle and the bill will get killed off in the end, anyway.
C3: I have an idea. Let's start a study about forcing people to put RFID transmitters in their car and tracking where they go and how far they have gone.
C2: Won't we have the same problem with "privacy invasion?"
C3: If we do, we can pull back and they will practically beg us to tax the odometer or else increase the gas tax.
C1: I like it! If they don't raise a stink, we get more money and we track them everywhere, and if they do, we get either an odometer tax, or more gas tax. If we work it right, we could probably get both!
It could be really, really great if the screens could be both tied together (reading page1 and page 2 of the same book) or independent (reading page 1 of one book and page 43 of the same book or page 1 of a different book).
Think of the possibilities. In a textbook example, a problem refers you to a definition, illustration, or answer found in the appendix, or in a different chapter. Instead of setting a bookmark, scrolling to the appropriate section and then jumping back, you have one screen set to the area you are reading and the other to the appendix or other page and you simply look from one page to the other.
Another example might be when a class assigns multiple books. You could have two books up a the same time, referring to both without having to close one and load the other.
After homework is done, I want to get back to my light reading and use both screens for the same book. I get to see twice as much text at the same time, reducing the amount of page turning/scrolling to get to the next paragraph. I don't know about you, but I find the small screens and the small amount of text that can be displayed on an ebook reader one of the problems that is just hard to ignore. YMMV.
BULL! There may be teachers that are like that, but to say "most" is a gross miss-representation.
My father-in-law is a Jr. High School teacher, so I can tell you some of the restraints that are on the teachers.
They are not allowed to discipline students. (I am not talking physical discipline here. Teachers are not to scold a student for bad behaviour. At most they can send them to the principle's office, which means the kids gets out of class that day.)
If a teacher gives a student a bad grade, they are often yelled at by a parent, claiming that if the teacher has it in for the child, sometimes even calling the teacher racist. (That happened to my father-in-law.)
Teachers are not allowed to confiscate knives, cell-phones, distracting toys or video games without being accused of stealing, but make sure each student pays attention.
Teachers are given conflicting instructions on teaching. (leave no child behind, but teach to the highest level. Don't teach just so they pass tests, but you need to cram 1.5 years of test stuff plus the stuff beyond the tests into 9 months.)
Oh, and by the way, we are cutting salary again because we don't have the budget, but we need to attract the best and brightest teachers.
While we are at it, we know that you have been teaching students for 10 years and have some of the highest test scores in the state, but this charter school that has only 3 students per class has a new method of teaching so we want you to start using it in your class of 35.
If the teacher can't keep the class in line, sometimes it is because they are not allowed to, not because they can't be bothered.
With the way teachers are treated these days, I would never recommend a teaching profession to anyone.
Although the one I played was not Labyrinth, there were links on that page that led me to the correct game. The game I remember seems to be the predecessor to Labyrinth, Deathmaze 5000. http://www.trs-80.org/deathmaze-5000/
I wish that was it. However, Dungeon of Daggorath was originally written for the TRS80 Color Computer, and I played this game at school on a TRS80 Model III. The walls look the same, not much else does.
No, the grue, of course, was from Infocom which came out later. (I highly enjoyed those games, but they were not 3D graphics.) In this maze game you fell into a pit and broke your neck. Although there were climbable pits that took you to the next level, they were easily mapped and there was usually only one or two per level. However, it seemed that once your torch ran out, pits started showing up all over the place. With each step you took in the dark there was an increased chance of falling into a pit. Sometimes (although rarely) you could fall into a pit on the first step after the light went out. Other times you could walk as far as 10 steps safely. One person claimed to have gone 14 steps, but no one else saw him and no one could replicate that.
I remember a 3D maze game in the early 80's for the TRS-80. It was a frustrating game that I never won because my torch always ran out. There was an extra torch in a one room, but as soon as you entered the wall closed in behind you and you couldn't get out. I never did solve it, and I haven't been able to find it or even the name of it since so that I can go back to it. But it was my first introduction to the 3D maze/adventure games, and I loved it. It took Dungeon Master for the Atari ST before I found another 3D Maze/Adventure game that I liked.
Too costly, skip the robot step and move entirely digital. The next war should be fought entirely online!
I don't really like that idea. If we start that, we might have to start reporting to disintegration chambers based on the online battles. And then, some alien starship will show up, blow up the computers and then we will be back to real war. (Star Trek for those that don't get the reference)
Slashdot Mirror
Even though it is Windows, there is absolutely no technical need for AV when the application is so limited.
Fixed that. I am afraid that the Payment Card Industry (PCI) differs from your opinion.* In their infinite wisdom**, PCI has decreed that ALL computers need to be running AV. After, all, if it is good for the desktop, it must be good for the servers, right? And since a virus can be spread from anywhere to anywhere, all computers need to have their own protection.
I know it seems silly, but many of the PCI Audit Drones actually believe this. I spent hours trying to convince an auditor that we did not need AV on a Linux server that cannot accept email and has no internet connection. If the PCI Audit Drone finds a computer without AV, you fail the PCI Audit. If you fail the Audit, you get marked as failing on a public web site. If you fail enough times, you lose your ability to accept credit cards. So the need to have AV on a POS is there, it is just not a technical need.
*Reality
**For very, very small values of infinite
The one I am most surprised at is Phoenix ONE. Although we are having a very cold year this year (it hasn't even hit 90 yet [32 for those outside the US], and we are already into April), normally cooling costs would be huge. I know they have done some work with chillers to replace air conditioners, but cooling that size space in 115 degree heat (46 Celsius) can't be cheap.
Phoenix does have some advantages, though. Very low earthquake probability, slim chance of flooding, and hurricanes and tornados are things that happen in other places. I know that i/o Data had big aspirations, but didn't know that they had the seventh largest data center.
If you look at the bottom of the iCade page for suggestions, you will find things like a knife that makes noises depending on what you cut, canned unicorn meat, a secrets bear that lets you spy on kids, and my personal favorite, the Tribbles'n'Bits breakfast cereal. It has to be the ultimate Geek breakfast. Unfortunately, under availability it shows that it is only available on Sherman's Planet.
While I loved Ultima III and IV, and got really, really good at most of the InfoComm games ( I hated the ending to Infidel, although it was one of the easier ones to get through), one of the most unsung heros was Alternate Realty "Series" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_Reality_(series)
Released in 1985, there were many features that were considered "revolutionary" by games that were released as much as 7 to 20 years later. Things like hidden stats that changed based on your actions, and changed the way an NPC would interact with you. (Some guilds wouldn't let you join if you killed peasants, while others wouldn't let you join unless you killed peasants. [plus the guild didn't always tell you what actions allowed or prevented you from joining.]) It also multiple stats such as hunger, fatigue, sickness, cold or hot, thirst, or how much you were carrying that actually changed how fast you could move. Movement seemed so much smoother than other 3D game of the time, and distant object came into focus gradually as you got closer. As the sun rose and set, or if it started raining, the entire color pallet would change, making it look much more realistic. Although I did not have the time to spend on it, I had a friend that spent weeks mapping the City and never did finish it completely.
Exactly my point! Yes, early 80's was a decade or two ago. But that was when the policy of Change-your-password-often was conceived. But it is still "Best Practice" so we have to put up with password changes every 30 days. Personally, I think a 6 month change policy or, at the very most, 90 days between password changes is sufficient.
It seems that several year ago, the /etc/passwd file was world readable (since it had to be read in order to log in), and that both the username and password was stored there. (Now the passwords are stored in /etc/shadow which is not world readable.) It was fairly simple for someone to download a passwd file and then run it through a dictionary cracker to find the passwords. In the early 80's it was found that a dedicated mainframe could crack any dictionary word in the passwd file in about eight weeks. If the hacker only had access for a couple hours a day, it could take up to four months. (If a complex password was used, it would take much longer or possibly never be cracked.) Therefore, if a person changed his password every 30 days, he could be sure that by the time the hacker cracked his password, it had been changed.
However, as computers became more powerful, the time to crack passwords from a passwd file became less and less, a better solution needed to be found. One method was to separate the password from the username into a shadow file, and make sure that the shadow file was not world readable. A cracker would need to break into the computer with root privileges in order to read the password file so that they could break into the computer.
Unfortunately, the above explanation is long, complicated, and goes against "best practices." I have tried pointing that out to several "Security experts" without any success. Pointing out that passwords will be written down if they have to be changed often will not help much either.
Professor Jones had been working on time theory for many years.
"And I have found the key equation," he told his daughter one day. "Time is a field. This machine I have made can manipulte, even reverse, that field."
Pushing a button as he spoke, he said, "This should make time run backward run time make should this," said he, spoke he as button a pushing.
"Field that, reverse even, manipulate can made have I machine this. Field a is time," day one daughter his told he. "Equation key the found have I and."
Years many for theory time on working been had Jones Professor.
This is on of my favorite stories by Fredric Brown.
Didn't the Federation already agree on the Prime Directive?
Um, I hate to break it to you, but Star Trek is Science-Fiction, not a documentary.
Well, perhaps not in this time-line. But, real soon now, we will have a visitor from the future...
I think that Arizona, with its odd mix of Indian, Spanish, English and who-knows-what takes the cake with odd spellings and pronunciations.
Ft. Huachuca (Wa-chu-ka)
Mogollon Rim (Mo-gee-yawn)
Tempe (Tem-pee)
Canyon de Chelly (dee-shay)
On the other hand, I spent some time in Pueblo, Colorado where about 1/4 of those born there pronounced it Pee-eb-lo.
Actually, only two of my identities* have delusions, but one of them is paranoid and the other is out to get him.
*Personalities.
Cost is an excellent question, since there is already a product that does something similar that has been around since at least 2007.
PRP (Petroleum Remediation Product) is made from beeswax and soaks up oils as well. Since it is so light, it floats on water and only absorbs the oils. The bee's wax encourages naturally occurring micro-organisms to eat. The microbes feast on the bee's wax and don't stop eating until all the oil is gone, safely, naturally bio-degrading the petroleum and the PRP itself.
I understand that they mix ground up corncobs into the PRP to make a version that works without water and can bio-degrade oil on land.
I can see only three reasons for the glass version.
1. If it is cheaper to make
2. Since you clean it rather than let it decompose, it is reusable. But the costs of making and cleaning still have to be cheaper than the cost of PRP.
3. If the glass version will absorb chemicals that cannot be degraded by the micro-organisms that feed on the beeswax.
And of course, if one variety is cheaper than another, no customer would EVER tell the cashier the wrong name in order to save some money. Could NEVER happen. And you know that those $4.50/hr cashiers have been trained extensively to be able to tell the difference between a Gala and a Braeburn at a glance. Obviously they have also been trained to tell a Valencia Orange from an Orlando or a Tangelo as well. /sarcasm
Wizardry 8 did this well. You could start with fresh characters or imported characters from Wizardry VII. I started with fresh characters and the monsters in the first area were pretty hard. I started a new game with imported characters thinking that I would have a big advantage. Nope. Although my characters were more experienced and able to fight better, the monsters were also stronger. After making my way past the first area, I moved to an even harder area. Realizing I had forgotten something, I went back to the first area. Sure enough, the monsters that showed up were even more powerful. Later in the game, after I had moved my characters up several levels, I had an occasion to go back to the first level. Although the monsters were even harder than before, they were no match for my characters and I breezed through with no problem.
The game was divided into areas and each area had different types of monsters. Each monster type had different levels as well. The neat thing was that there was an upper and lower limit to each monster's levels. For example, the first area had different slime creatures from a wimpy green slime to a very tough emerald slime. Slimes were not seen in other areas and an emerald slime could never do the same kind of damage that a giant wolf that was found in another area could do. Each area was tough, and if you went into an area before you were ready, you could be killed quite easily. Even if you were ready, you could be killed if you weren't careful. Rare was the time you could enter an area and say, "Wow. That was easy."
I really liked that game, and the way it pushed you in each area. Grinding was almost counter-productive, since the experience gained for each type of monster was dependant upon its difficulty. Grinding away in one area only made the next area that much more difficult. I could sit and grind in one area for hours, or I could move the the next area and play for 10 minutes and get the same experience. Unlike other games, it was a great balance between playability and difficulty. Other people I talked to had similar experiences even though we had different playing styles.
A friend gave me a book many years ago called "The Best of Fredric Brown" that was published in 1977. That was how I was introduced to his writing. A few of his stories can be found on Project Gutenber. I understand that another book was published in 2001 called "From these ashes: the complete short SF of Fredric Brown" that is supposed to contain over 100 of his stories.
A classic SF writer that is often forgotten is Fredric Brown. Although his SF stories are often short (usually less that 1000 words) they are totally amazing and stand the test of time very well. One of his more famous short stories, "Arena" was used as the basis of a Star Trek episode by the same name.
I personally liked his several short stories that dealt with time travel and the many ways that people tried to deal with them. My favorite story, "The End", deals with what would really happen if someone could make time run backwards.
The real brilliance of his writing is that he could make you think without delving into political commentary and do it in just a few words. His stories were descriptive enough that you could picture the worlds he described, but not so descriptive that they limited the story to a particular time or place. Stories written in 1954 could have easily been written in 1994. In other words, truly timeless science fiction, something that is very, very difficult to do.
I will get off my soap box now, with a quote from Fredric Brown.
"The last man on earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock at the door..."
Are we talking the same Apple? You know, the ones who sell the iPod Nano? Just because they updated the firmware on the iPod Nano, so that a third party docking station (Which only has two functions. 1. Charge the iPod. 2. Provide speakers. That's it, nothing else.) stops working and the iPod Nano suddenly reports an "unsupported device found" is NO reason to think that Apple is in ANY way controlling. What possible reason could there be to call Apple a control freak?
By the way, I understand that Apple has denied all rumours that they intend to come out with an Apple iCar specifically designed and approved as an authorized mobile listening accessory to the iPod and iPhone. The last I heard was that they were definitely not researching ways to seal the hood shut to prevent people from changing the iCar battery.
I have noticed that several people seem to think that they would rather have an odometer tax than RFID. I think this is according to plan.
How to increase taxes - a step by step guide.
Government: We want more money! Let's have a look at Transportation...
Committee member 1: We can increase the gas tax!
Committee member 2: No way. We will look like greedy bastards. (We are, but we don't want to look like it.)
C1: How about taxing the odometer?
C2: No way! We will spend months fighting a "privacy invasion" battle and the bill will get killed off in the end, anyway.
C3: I have an idea. Let's start a study about forcing people to put RFID transmitters in their car and tracking where they go and how far they have gone.
C2: Won't we have the same problem with "privacy invasion?"
C3: If we do, we can pull back and they will practically beg us to tax the odometer or else increase the gas tax.
C1: I like it! If they don't raise a stink, we get more money and we track them everywhere, and if they do, we get either an odometer tax, or more gas tax. If we work it right, we could probably get both!
It could be really, really great if the screens could be both tied together (reading page1 and page 2 of the same book) or independent (reading page 1 of one book and page 43 of the same book or page 1 of a different book).
Think of the possibilities. In a textbook example, a problem refers you to a definition, illustration, or answer found in the appendix, or in a different chapter. Instead of setting a bookmark, scrolling to the appropriate section and then jumping back, you have one screen set to the area you are reading and the other to the appendix or other page and you simply look from one page to the other.
Another example might be when a class assigns multiple books. You could have two books up a the same time, referring to both without having to close one and load the other.
After homework is done, I want to get back to my light reading and use both screens for the same book. I get to see twice as much text at the same time, reducing the amount of page turning/scrolling to get to the next paragraph. I don't know about you, but I find the small screens and the small amount of text that can be displayed on an ebook reader one of the problems that is just hard to ignore. YMMV.
BULL! There may be teachers that are like that, but to say "most" is a gross miss-representation.
My father-in-law is a Jr. High School teacher, so I can tell you some of the restraints that are on the teachers.
They are not allowed to discipline students. (I am not talking physical discipline here. Teachers are not to scold a student for bad behaviour. At most they can send them to the principle's office, which means the kids gets out of class that day.)
If a teacher gives a student a bad grade, they are often yelled at by a parent, claiming that if the teacher has it in for the child, sometimes even calling the teacher racist. (That happened to my father-in-law.)
Teachers are not allowed to confiscate knives, cell-phones, distracting toys or video games without being accused of stealing, but make sure each student pays attention.
Teachers are given conflicting instructions on teaching. (leave no child behind, but teach to the highest level. Don't teach just so they pass tests, but you need to cram 1.5 years of test stuff plus the stuff beyond the tests into 9 months.)
Oh, and by the way, we are cutting salary again because we don't have the budget, but we need to attract the best and brightest teachers.
While we are at it, we know that you have been teaching students for 10 years and have some of the highest test scores in the state, but this charter school that has only 3 students per class has a new method of teaching so we want you to start using it in your class of 35.
If the teacher can't keep the class in line, sometimes it is because they are not allowed to, not because they can't be bothered.
With the way teachers are treated these days, I would never recommend a teaching profession to anyone.
Thank you!!
Although the one I played was not Labyrinth, there were links on that page that led me to the correct game. The game I remember seems to be the predecessor to Labyrinth, Deathmaze 5000. http://www.trs-80.org/deathmaze-5000/
Now to see if there is a Linux or PC port.
I wish that was it. However, Dungeon of Daggorath was originally written for the TRS80 Color Computer, and I played this game at school on a TRS80 Model III. The walls look the same, not much else does.
No, the grue, of course, was from Infocom which came out later. (I highly enjoyed those games, but they were not 3D graphics.) In this maze game you fell into a pit and broke your neck. Although there were climbable pits that took you to the next level, they were easily mapped and there was usually only one or two per level. However, it seemed that once your torch ran out, pits started showing up all over the place. With each step you took in the dark there was an increased chance of falling into a pit. Sometimes (although rarely) you could fall into a pit on the first step after the light went out. Other times you could walk as far as 10 steps safely. One person claimed to have gone 14 steps, but no one else saw him and no one could replicate that.
I remember a 3D maze game in the early 80's for the TRS-80. It was a frustrating game that I never won because my torch always ran out. There was an extra torch in a one room, but as soon as you entered the wall closed in behind you and you couldn't get out. I never did solve it, and I haven't been able to find it or even the name of it since so that I can go back to it. But it was my first introduction to the 3D maze/adventure games, and I loved it. It took Dungeon Master for the Atari ST before I found another 3D Maze/Adventure game that I liked.
Only two of my personalities have delusions, but one of them is paranoid and the other is out to get him.
I was told that I am just scary, and it is true. I have even been known to scare myself, but I do get even. I pinch me when I am not looking.
Too costly, skip the robot step and move entirely digital. The next war should be fought entirely online!
I don't really like that idea. If we start that, we might have to start reporting to disintegration chambers based on the online battles. And then, some alien starship will show up, blow up the computers and then we will be back to real war. (Star Trek for those that don't get the reference)