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Submission + - Revisit the Most Popular Desktop Publishing App of the '80s in Your Browser (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "If you were lucky enough to own both a desktop computer and a dot-matrix printer back in the ‘80s, it’s likely you also dabbled in desktop publishing using a classic app called The Print Shop. Once lost to time, like many classic apps that ran on ancient hardware, The Print Shop has been resurrected in the browser so you no longer need to pay for Adobe InDesign.

"Originally developed by David Balsam and Martin Kahn and published, in 1984, by Broderbund Software (a name that anyone who grew up with a computer in the ‘80s was familiar with) The Print Shop first debuted on the Apple II but was such a huge hit that it was eventually ported to other personal computers of the era, including the Commodore 64, and anything that could run Microsoft’s MS-DOS."

Submission + - SPAM: The Print Shop Club: Create Apple II Print Shop Printouts In The Browser 1

Submitted by beaverdownunder
beaverdownunder writes: "We’ve created this website as a tribute to David Balsam, Martin Kahn, and The Print Shop, and all of the fond memories children, parents and teachers from the 1980s have of it. On this site we’ve emulated the Apple II and The Print Shop software, so that visitors can easily use The Print Shop to create their own cards, posters and banners."
Link to Original Source

Submission + - The Home Computer Christmas Wars (paleotronic.com)

Submitted by beaverdownunder
beaverdownunder writes: Commodore’s Jack Tramiel saw an emerging market for low-cost home computers, releasing the VIC-20 in 1980. At a US$299 price point sales were initially modest, but rival Texas Instruments, making a play for the bottom of the market, would heavily discount its TI99/4A, and start a price war with Commodore that culminated with both computers selling as low as $US99. Only one company was going to walk away.

Submission + - SPAM: #GORF – The Great Oz Retro-Technology Festival

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Spend four days enjoying the company of other retro-technology enthusiasts at GORF: the Great Oz Retro-Fest, at Urban Camp in Melbourne, Australia from April 24th-28th 2019.

Modelled after the wildly-successful US KansasFest event, GORF is an ‘unconference’ that brings together 8 and 16-bit computer enthusiasts, classic console hackers and arcade collectors to celebrate a pivotal era in the development of modern electronics in a communal ‘stay and play’ environment where attendees sleep over at the venue.

Two keynotes will explore the history of the Australian MicroBee computer (with designer Owen Hill) and the local video-game development scene of the 1980s (with Doctor Melanie Swalwell), followed by presentations given by attendees (hopefully including you!) on a variety of subjects regarding a variety of computing and video-gaming platforms.

There’s also an event-long hackathon (coined the GORF-a-thon) where participants will compete to create the most intriguing retro-related project, a game competition night and a documentary screening. Meals are provided, except Saturday night when we’ll go out on the town to visit Melbourne’s retro-gaming bars.

GORF: it’s a summer camp for retro-geeks. Come join us!

Ticket sales close April 1st.

GORF is presented by Teaching Electronics and Computing History Inc., an Australian not-for-profit organisation.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Arthur C. Clarke: Communications in the Second Century of the Telephone (1977) (paleotronic.com)

Submitted by beaverdownunder
beaverdownunder writes: While researching for our magazine we sometimes find nuggets buried by time that have been forgotten by the Internet. This particular nugget was found in the May 1977 issue of Creative Computing. Science fiction author and futurist Arthur C. Clarke’s predictions of the future are fascinating, both for what he got right, and what he got wrong

Submission + - The Diskee: Apollo's most important crewmember (paleotronic.com) 1

Submitted by beaverdownunder
beaverdownunder writes: Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong’s tense two-word report came over the loudspeakers at NASA’s Mission Control in Houston, more of a question than a statement as he and and fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin rapidly descended in the Lunar Excursion Module toward the surface of the Moon. What should they do now? Should they abort or trust the Apollo Guidance Computer to finish its job? They needed an answer, and quick!

Time stood still, then, for a moment in Mission Control, as those present weighed the ramifications of Armstrong’s report. After spending $16 billion dollars of American taxpayers hard-earned money, the efforts of over 400,000 engineers, scientists and technicians, and the deaths of three astronauts (including Gus Grissom, the second American to fly in space) in the tragic Apollo 1 fire, the idea of failure at such a pivotal moment caused the hearts of those in Mission Control to temporarily stop beating.

Submission + - "Upcycling" Pong: Putting a new "spin" on an old game (paleotronic.com)

Submitted by beaverdownunder
beaverdownunder writes: Pong was exciting when it came out back in 1972 but it hasn’t aged very well. By modern standards it’s kind of boring. Luckily in the microM8 Apple II emulator we can do two things to improve it: first, we can render the graphics as cubes and move the OpenGL camera around. Second, we can automate this independently by using a “control program” which executes in a parallel instance of a customised Applesoft BASIC interpreter. By “spinning” the playfield we can make it a little more interesting (and challenging), and we can do it without changing any code in the original Integer BASIC Pong program.

Submission + - Kickstarter Campaign Combines Retro-Technology Magazine and 3D 8-Bit Emulation (kickstarter.com)

Submitted by beaverdownunder
beaverdownunder writes: Paleotronic Magazine examines the evolution and culture of electronics and computers through a retro-inspired yet modern-styled format; paired with microM8, an emulation platform for learning computer science and coding skills while exploring computing history, they make a perfect team for both education and nostalgia, for teens and adults!

Submission + - Alex St. John: Game developers must avoid the 'wage-slave' attitude (venturebeat.com)

Submitted by beaverdownunder
beaverdownunder writes: "I know I’m going to offend a lot of people by saying this, but I do so with the hope that a few will wake up and shake off their mental shackles. I’ll grant that it’s been 23 years since I used an outhouse or had to hunt for dinner, but I’m still thrilled by the incredibly decadent luxury of porcelain toilets and fast food. I can’t begin to imagine how sheltered the lives of modern technology employees must be to think that any amount of hours they spend pushing a mouse around for a paycheck is really demanding strenuous work. I’ve hired thousands of people over the years and can’t help but notice the increasing frequency with which I encounter people with a wage-slave attitude toward making video games."

Comment Re:Dangerous Censorship Blindspot You People Have (Score 2) 214

by beaverdownunder (#51188847) Attached to: Twitter Says It's Beating the Trolls

There's no "free speech" on television; it's censored all the time (as a matter of course, even.) There's no "free speech" in newspapers; there's no "free speech" on the radio.

These are all commonly censored due to government regulation or when the company running the media outlet determines that broadcasting speech could be detrimental to its own interests.

How, exactly, are Facebook and Twitter any different from any other media outlet that solicits public content, then publishes what it wants? I think you're confusing what it essentially a self-publishing service with a soapbox on a streetcorner. With the latter, you generally do have free speech (within limits), with the former you certainly do not.
 

Comment Re:What a criminal (Score 5, Informative) 98

by beaverdownunder (#51170005) Attached to: Kim Dotcom Loses Extradition Case

Quoted from a comment on HN:

"Not accurate. Read the indictment.

- Bottom of page 11: thirty-nine infringing copies of copyright motion pictures were present on their leased servers at Carpathia Hosting... in the Eastern District of Virginia

- Page 18:The Mega Conspiracy leases approximately 25 petabytes of data storage from Carpathia to store content associated with The Mega Site.

- It also looks like they leased servers in the US from Cogent, Leaseweb. They paid Carpathia $13M US to host Mega files in the US.

- They also used a US-based Paypal account to receive funds and pay the different hosts in the US.

- They made "reward" payments to US residents who provided copyrighted material.

Mega was running an illegal business in the US."

Submission + - Dizzying Ride May Be Ending for Tech Start-Ups (nytimes.com)

Submitted by beaverdownunder
beaverdownunder writes: NYT: "The worth of hot technology start-ups seemed for years to go in only one direction: straight up.

Now there are signs of growing unease over the dizzying valuations of some of the most richly priced private companies.

The latest sign has emerged with one such favorite, Snapchat, being discounted 25 percent by one of its more recent investors, Fidelity, the mutual fund giant.

Another start-up, Dropbox, the widely used file storage service, was devalued by the giant asset manager BlackRock this year.

The funds’ markdowns may tap the brakes on a fast-growing market. Investors, in the hopes of getting a piece of the next Facebook or Google, have been pouring billions of dollars into young private companies."

Submission + - Mistigris releases 21st-anniversary artpack! (mistigris.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Following 16 years in the wilderness, area code 604's underground computer art group Mistigris unexpectedly returned to life in October of 2015; one year later, over 50 artists (including guests from ACiD and Blocktronics) celebrate with over 100 artworks in a 216-meg artpack release including traditional textmode art (and non-traditional — PETSCII, Shift JIS, teletext and typewriter art) as well as new frontiers for artpacks: photography, painting, sculpture, digital video, and even a textile work. All that plus an hour and a half of music! Some submissions are lost & unreleased Amiga works dating to the early '90s and even late '80s, while others were made last week, but the sum of the enterprise is technologically timeless.

Comment Also, self-interest (Score 1) 300

by beaverdownunder (#50611601) Attached to: Jeff Atwood NY Daily News Op-Ed: Learning To Code Is Overrated

Also, if you asked a plumber if everyone should learn plumbing, or a mechanic if everyone should learn how to fix their car, they would similarly say no -- it's in their vested financial interest to keep the field small.

I don't know why large publications / websites keep giving these people oxygen in the face of such an obvious conflict of interest. Ask a computer science professor from a respected college if THEY think kids should learn these skills and I guarantee you'll get a different answer.

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