I cut my computing teeth on a Commodore C=64 back in 1985. I was 5 years old, and didn't have the slightest clue what anything was.
The machine was 2nd-hand, had an Altai tape deck instead of the Commodore one, and (more unusually - none of my friends with C=64's ever had one) also included a Commodore 1541 5.25" floppy disk drive.
I learned how to write some BASIC programs on the built-in copy of Commodore BASIC; nothing fancy, but enough to get a head start. I'm still not any good at programming, really...
The machine really was awesome for gaming; some of my favourite games are still C=64-only releases and have had no modern-day equivelants - classics such as Street Beat, where you play a Rastafarian with a ghetto blaster, and you have to find songs for your record label, and show how popular the songs are by making people dance. All the while, people are trying to kill you, break your ghettoblaster, steal your tapes, and what's worse, sometimes your record label won't like the songs you bring them! True classic.
Then there was the wonderful text/graphic adventure game, "Twin Kingdom Valley". I spent many hours trying to beat that one (never did). Also, "Knight Games", where you participate in medieval sporting events - sword fights, pike fights, crossbow and archery competitions... beautiful graphics, wonderfully detailled, and lots of fun to play.
Other favourites:-
- Way of the Exploding Fist - Fist II - IK+ - Ace of Aces - The Dambusters - Ranarama - Archon - Elite - Parallax - Rescue on Fractalus - Paperboy - Desert Fox - Skyfox - Zaxxon - Super Zaxxon - Tapper - Spy Hunter - Up 'n' Down
Think of all the major game franchises these days that have their roots in the C=64 - the "Microsoft Flight Simulator" series started life as Sublogic's "Flight Simulator", which was a C=64 release. "The Sims" is a far more advanced version of "Little Computer People" (a.k.a. "House-On-A-Disk"). There will be many others.
For all you C=64 lovers, whose C=64's have sadly gone to Silicon Heaven, download the CCS64 emulator (http://www.computerbrains.com/ccs64/), and find a whole bunch of C=64 games and applications over at http://www.c64.com/
My C=64 was quietly retired after we got an Amiga A500 for Christmas in 1990 - the A500 gave similar computing joy for a long time thereafter, but that's another story (we're not being asked about our 2nd computers, after all).
Incidentally, what is terminal velocity for a human being falling through Earth atmosphere?
The reason I ask is that I remember reading about the highest survived fall by a human being in the Guinness Book of Records last year; a flight attendant survived the bombing of her aircraft and fell from 35,000 ft and - despite massive injuries - survived!
--- Vesna Vulovi retains the Guinness Book of Records world record for surviving the highest fall without a parachute: 33,000 feet. The incident occurred on January 26, 1972, over Czechoslovakia. Émigré Croat terrorists bombed JAT Yugoslav Flight 364. The explosion tore the DC-9 to pieces, but Vulovi survived.
She remained strapped into her flight attendant's seat in the tail section of the plane, which remained attached to the washrooms. The assembly struck the snow-covered flank of a mountain. Vulovi was the only survivor on the flight, and not only lived to tell about it, but continued working for JAT Airways at a desk job. Her injuries included a fractured skull, two broken legs and three broken vertebrae, one of which was crushed and left her temporarily paralyzed from the waist down. She regained the use of her legs only after several months of successive surgeries.
Vulovi was awarded the Guinness Record title at a ceremony by Paul McCartney. She later became a national hero in Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the 1970s. ---
This prompts me to say that, although highly unlikely, the astronauts MAY have survived the impact - although their injuries may have been too severe for them to survive long enough to be located, recovered and treated.
Right enough, the A1000 was released in 1984. The A500 was in 1987. I got mine in 1990 (having used a C=64 since 1985).
I remember reading about the Amiga 1000's first public performance, playing Defender of the Crown. People were asking where the Laser Disc player was - they didn't believe any in-game graphics could be so good (quite right too - DotC was a beautiful game).
As for Doom? On an A500? Not a chance. I WAS playing Doom (an unofficial port) and even Quake (the official port by clickBOOM) on my A1200 w/ 68040 accelerator card and 16 MB of RAM by the time I left high school in 1998. At the time, ADoom, the Doom port, was the best rendition of Doom on any platform, performing similarly back then as the Legacy client does now.
I get this same "Why did you remove this software?" prompt when I get rid of it at work.
Having explained exactly what their software does, and what spyware and adware is all about, I generally ask the customer to put something fitting into it. It's quite interesting what they write. Some of it is genuinely unprintable (would make a sailor blush).
Airliners use a system called ILS (Instrument Landing System), which is a directional radio beacon-based setup.
This is a basic description - for more, you should look it up.
There are two signals - the Localiser, which the autopilot on-board the aircraft uses to line the aircraft up with the runway; and the Glidescope, which the autopilot uses to descend at a rate of 500 feet per minute (8.3 ft/s).
A full autopilot (with autolanding facility) will make the aircraft flare out (basically, raise the nose), slowing the rate of descent to about 3 ft/s. The autopilot will then engage the wheel brakes and bring the aircraft to taxi speeds.
Most light aircraft do not have an autoland-capable autopilot. Your average GA aircraft, for arguments' sake, a Cessna 172 Skyhawk, will have an "Approach Hold" function, which will intercept the ILS, and will guide the aircraft to a steady 500 ft/min descent. The pilot must disengage the autopilot at Decision Height (200 ft above the runway) and flare out and land manually.
There have been successful tests of fully-automated GPS-based landings, but I haven't read too much about them yet.
I don't know if you're aware, but the average human brain is larger than the average mouse. Fitting one inside a mouse could take some doing.
Re:Do Not Stare Into Sun With Remaining Good Eye
on
Stereo View of the Sun
·
· Score: -1
Ouch:o(
It's also possible to do something similar by looking at a full moon through even a reasonably cheap (around 100 UK Pounds) refracting telescope. I should know; I have a little blind spot in my right eye to remind me every day:o(
Take care of your eyes, folks; they're really sensitive!
I remember hearing all the jokes about this, and finding it really funny (I was an Amiga user at the time, and laughing at the Windows fans who had previously been touting the Pentium as the best thing ever - even before its' release).
The Pentium jokes even made it into Douglas Coupland's book, "Microserfs" (a great read, not pro-MS at all).
But in all my years, I've never actually seen an affected Pentium computer. At all. Ever.
Yes, I know that the Republic of China is different from the Peoples' Republic of China.
I was merely making an observation that the official name of the government on the island of Taiwan contains "China", which should be taken (at face value) to mean some kind of affiliation. An observation; I meant nothing more by it.
Officially speaking, Taiwan *is* a province of China. They haven't declared full independence yet, even though most of the world (aside from China) recognises it as an independent country.
In fact, Taiwan is still officially known as the Republic of China - they even refer to themselves by that name.
It has a user interface (the seat) It has input devices (the pan, and the flush handle) It has an output system (the sewage pipe) It has a storage system (the cistern) It has antivirus software (Toilet Duck(tm)) It even has water cooling!
Everyone quotes Terminator and Stargate, but the classic cinematic portrayal of a von Neumann machine was the Monolith as seen in "2010: The Year We Made Contact".
The Monolith turned out to be a self-replicating multipurpose tool, and was described by Dr. Floyd as a von Neumann machine.
You don't save and record ADVERTS for BMWs do you?
I have Honda's famous advert, called 'Cog', where they have all the different parts of the car being used in a big, long, Mouse Trap-style chain reaction, with the ultimate goal being the car itself being rolled off a ramp at the end. The music in it was Rappers' Delight by the Sugar Hill Gang. The tagline of the ad was ''Isn't it nice when things just work?''
I believe it wasn't shown in full in America as the whole thing lasted for about 2 minutes, making it extremely expensive for Honda to screen it there.
That's a superb advert, and one that will be well-remembered for a long time. Hell, I've had that advert on DVD for quite some time.
It's not difficult to imagine that advert being rediscovered in 20 years and being shared around the internet (or whatever form the internet will take in 20 years).
Slashdot Mirror
I cut my computing teeth on a Commodore C=64 back in 1985. I was 5 years old, and didn't have the slightest clue what anything was.
:-
The machine was 2nd-hand, had an Altai tape deck instead of the Commodore one, and (more unusually - none of my friends with C=64's ever had one) also included a Commodore 1541 5.25" floppy disk drive.
I learned how to write some BASIC programs on the built-in copy of Commodore BASIC; nothing fancy, but enough to get a head start. I'm still not any good at programming, really...
The machine really was awesome for gaming; some of my favourite games are still C=64-only releases and have had no modern-day equivelants - classics such as Street Beat, where you play a Rastafarian with a ghetto blaster, and you have to find songs for your record label, and show how popular the songs are by making people dance. All the while, people are trying to kill you, break your ghettoblaster, steal your tapes, and what's worse, sometimes your record label won't like the songs you bring them! True classic.
Then there was the wonderful text/graphic adventure game, "Twin Kingdom Valley". I spent many hours trying to beat that one (never did). Also, "Knight Games", where you participate in medieval sporting events - sword fights, pike fights, crossbow and archery competitions... beautiful graphics, wonderfully detailled, and lots of fun to play.
Other favourites
- Way of the Exploding Fist
- Fist II
- IK+
- Ace of Aces
- The Dambusters
- Ranarama
- Archon
- Elite
- Parallax
- Rescue on Fractalus
- Paperboy
- Desert Fox
- Skyfox
- Zaxxon
- Super Zaxxon
- Tapper
- Spy Hunter
- Up 'n' Down
Think of all the major game franchises these days that have their roots in the C=64 - the "Microsoft Flight Simulator" series started life as Sublogic's "Flight Simulator", which was a C=64 release. "The Sims" is a far more advanced version of "Little Computer People" (a.k.a. "House-On-A-Disk"). There will be many others.
For all you C=64 lovers, whose C=64's have sadly gone to Silicon Heaven, download the CCS64 emulator (http://www.computerbrains.com/ccs64/), and find a whole bunch of C=64 games and applications over at http://www.c64.com/
My C=64 was quietly retired after we got an Amiga A500 for Christmas in 1990 - the A500 gave similar computing joy for a long time thereafter, but that's another story (we're not being asked about our 2nd computers, after all).
Sorry to reply to myself, but there is an interview with Vulovi here :-
http://www.avsec.com/asi/editorial/vesna.htm
Incidentally, what is terminal velocity for a human being falling through Earth atmosphere?
The reason I ask is that I remember reading about the highest survived fall by a human being in the Guinness Book of Records last year; a flight attendant survived the bombing of her aircraft and fell from 35,000 ft and - despite massive injuries - survived!
---
Vesna Vulovi retains the Guinness Book of Records world record for surviving the highest fall without a parachute: 33,000 feet. The incident occurred on January 26, 1972, over Czechoslovakia. Émigré Croat terrorists bombed JAT Yugoslav Flight 364. The explosion tore the DC-9 to pieces, but Vulovi survived.
She remained strapped into her flight attendant's seat in the tail section of the plane, which remained attached to the washrooms. The assembly struck the snow-covered flank of a mountain. Vulovi was the only survivor on the flight, and not only lived to tell about it, but continued working for JAT Airways at a desk job. Her injuries included a fractured skull, two broken legs and three broken vertebrae, one of which was crushed and left her temporarily paralyzed from the waist down. She regained the use of her legs only after several months of successive surgeries.
Vulovi was awarded the Guinness Record title at a ceremony by Paul McCartney. She later became a national hero in Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the 1970s.
---
This prompts me to say that, although highly unlikely, the astronauts MAY have survived the impact - although their injuries may have been too severe for them to survive long enough to be located, recovered and treated.
Right enough, the A1000 was released in 1984. The A500 was in 1987. I got mine in 1990 (having used a C=64 since 1985).
I remember reading about the Amiga 1000's first public performance, playing Defender of the Crown. People were asking where the Laser Disc player was - they didn't believe any in-game graphics could be so good (quite right too - DotC was a beautiful game).
As for Doom? On an A500? Not a chance. I WAS playing Doom (an unofficial port) and even Quake (the official port by clickBOOM) on my A1200 w/ 68040 accelerator card and 16 MB of RAM by the time I left high school in 1998. At the time, ADoom, the Doom port, was the best rendition of Doom on any platform, performing similarly back then as the Legacy client does now.
I get this same "Why did you remove this software?" prompt when I get rid of it at work.
Having explained exactly what their software does, and what spyware and adware is all about, I generally ask the customer to put something fitting into it. It's quite interesting what they write. Some of it is genuinely unprintable (would make a sailor blush).
Airliners use a system called ILS (Instrument Landing System), which is a directional radio beacon-based setup.
This is a basic description - for more, you should look it up.
There are two signals - the Localiser, which the autopilot on-board the aircraft uses to line the aircraft up with the runway; and the Glidescope, which the autopilot uses to descend at a rate of 500 feet per minute (8.3 ft/s).
A full autopilot (with autolanding facility) will make the aircraft flare out (basically, raise the nose), slowing the rate of descent to about 3 ft/s. The autopilot will then engage the wheel brakes and bring the aircraft to taxi speeds.
Most light aircraft do not have an autoland-capable autopilot. Your average GA aircraft, for arguments' sake, a Cessna 172 Skyhawk, will have an "Approach Hold" function, which will intercept the ILS, and will guide the aircraft to a steady 500 ft/min descent. The pilot must disengage the autopilot at Decision Height (200 ft above the runway) and flare out and land manually.
There have been successful tests of fully-automated GPS-based landings, but I haven't read too much about them yet.
We accept them as one of our own. Welcome to Slashdot! :o)
Ook? :)
I don't know if you're aware, but the average human brain is larger than the average mouse. Fitting one inside a mouse could take some doing.
Ouch :o(
:o(
It's also possible to do something similar by looking at a full moon through even a reasonably cheap (around 100 UK Pounds) refracting telescope. I should know; I have a little blind spot in my right eye to remind me every day
Take care of your eyes, folks; they're really sensitive!
I remember hearing all the jokes about this, and finding it really funny (I was an Amiga user at the time, and laughing at the Windows fans who had previously been touting the Pentium as the best thing ever - even before its' release).
The Pentium jokes even made it into Douglas Coupland's book, "Microserfs" (a great read, not pro-MS at all).
But in all my years, I've never actually seen an affected Pentium computer. At all. Ever.
Yes, I know that the Republic of China is different from the Peoples' Republic of China.
I was merely making an observation that the official name of the government on the island of Taiwan contains "China", which should be taken (at face value) to mean some kind of affiliation. An observation; I meant nothing more by it.
Officially speaking, Taiwan *is* a province of China. They haven't declared full independence yet, even though most of the world (aside from China) recognises it as an independent country.
In fact, Taiwan is still officially known as the Republic of China - they even refer to themselves by that name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan
They're both small, come in different colours, and have a wheel-driven interface.
So does lipstick.
And radio-controlled toy cars.
Really, if "BUT LOOK AT THE SIMILARITIES!" posts were made for every new product, we'd never get anything done.
Dude, you poured acid on your Mac? No wonder neither browser passed! :)
Ni!
Well...
At least it used to be food...
Your lavatory IS a computer!
It has a user interface (the seat)
It has input devices (the pan, and the flush handle)
It has an output system (the sewage pipe)
It has a storage system (the cistern)
It has antivirus software (Toilet Duck(tm))
It even has water cooling!
What more could you want!
"My God! It's full of stars!"
Everyone quotes Terminator and Stargate, but the classic cinematic portrayal of a von Neumann machine was the Monolith as seen in "2010: The Year We Made Contact".
The Monolith turned out to be a self-replicating multipurpose tool, and was described by Dr. Floyd as a von Neumann machine.
You don't save and record ADVERTS for BMWs do you?
I have Honda's famous advert, called 'Cog', where they have all the different parts of the car being used in a big, long, Mouse Trap-style chain reaction, with the ultimate goal being the car itself being rolled off a ramp at the end. The music in it was Rappers' Delight by the Sugar Hill Gang. The tagline of the ad was ''Isn't it nice when things just work?''
I believe it wasn't shown in full in America as the whole thing lasted for about 2 minutes, making it extremely expensive for Honda to screen it there.
That's a superb advert, and one that will be well-remembered for a long time. Hell, I've had that advert on DVD for quite some time.
It's not difficult to imagine that advert being rediscovered in 20 years and being shared around the internet (or whatever form the internet will take in 20 years).