As I recall, it was common for the CPU in machines of that era to interact heavily with the Floppy Controller during the I/O process: listening for the sync hole (a real hole in the floppy), driving the stepper motor, transferring bytes, intra-sector timings, stop/start bits, etc. All of which could be further impacted by the system clocks and even the memory wait states used in that particular machine.

There were many early "homebuilt" CP/M machine from sources like HeathKit, Northstar, etc, so there could have been quite a few variants in terms of the actual magnetic data on the disk.

For some real fun, look up how the CompuColor II (circa 1979) controlled it's floppy disks -- it used a serial IO chip in developer/debug mode to save on having a dedicated floppy controller chip.

As someone who has made games for over 20 years, including mobile, and was responsible for a game in Steam's top 100 played over 10 years after it's initial release... let me translate this press release for you...

"We want a revenue stream sustained for 10 years without us having to constantly develop new games and enter into the lottery that is mobile games today.... ... We also want it to never rain during the daytime, or when we are out and about."

Having worked on some hugely popular titles let me just say that I've learned that despite all you do, you don't control your audience. You're in the entertainment business, no matter how good an entertainment product you have, and no matter how much marketing you are doing, you are not making something that is truly necessary in your customer's lives.

So if your players get bored, don't have as much time to spare, popular fads change, new fads sweep the popular conscience, technologies or platforms change, they don't have the money to spare, they want something new and more novel, or whatever... then life moves on and so do your players.

The idea suggested by the headline - that a game's life cycle will be longer just because a developer deems it should be, is ludicrous.

Digging into the press release, though, that's not what they are saying. They are saying they will design their games, technically and gameplay, with a long lifespan in mind. That means growing and evolving content - new levels, new content, new stories, etc. Ongoing active development, much like a long running TV show - never completely wrapping things up and always leaving the door open for what comes next.

Doing that means keeping a development team active for the duration.. which in reality is going to be for as long the game sustains a certain revenue level. If not, the game goes into "sunset" mode. Lots of mobile games are already doing this entire strategy.

Heck, I worked on an iOS game doing just that 3 years ago. It requires that your game develop a large enough *paying* player base early on, and that you sustain their interest enough to keep the IAPs coming, and do it on a regular and consistent enough basis. The whole whale vs non-payer thing comes into play, as well as newer, shinier competition. That means they will pull out all the (Skinner boxes, social groups/teams, etc) stops to keep players hooked and interested.

Great if you can do it, but there is no magic formula or guarantee that you will succeed, or for as long as you want to.

It's officially not released yet, and the seller linked to is in Japan and gouging anyone who can't wait another couple weeks. I'm not sure how or what stock they got a hold of.

According to Intel, list price is $377 boxed or $366 Tray. Not $540.

because no one would misuse this tech to act creepy.

True story:

Back around 1989 I was maintaining a minicomputer system for a small chain of Auto Body Shops near Ft. Worth Texas. I got to know a lot about how the business works and made friends with some of the VERY blue collar guys who sanded, welded, painted and whatnot.

At that time the body shop had dedicated terminal that could dial up the Texas DMV database and retrieve the registration info for a given license plate. On at least two separate occasions I observed one of the shop guys using the terminal to get the name and address of a car they observed that was driven by an attractive woman. Nothing creepy or potentially dangerous there? Yeah.

Maybe we should study CCTV operators in England to make sure that attractive women, or any other category of people, aren't being watched more closely than everyone else.

When I was a teen, one of the main functions of driving (and borrowing my parent's car) was to go be with my friends, hanging out or whatever. Otherwise I was stuck at home by myself.

My own kids are constantly texting, emailing, playing online with, or using other means to interact with their friends without physical proximity. They can do it from anywhere they have wireless connectivity, even when traveling out of town.

Again, back when I was a teen, we had a single land line telephone. If it wasn't in use, It was possible to call and just talk to one of my friends at a time, provided they were home, their line wasn't busy, and they were willing to be tethered by a cord to the phone's location in the house.

She sums it up pretty well... http://judgybitch.com/2013/07/29/policing-twitter-is-dumb/

Just a couple questions come to mind:

First: What is the purpose of keeping the information? If it's just to have a record for your own sake of what and when and how much, do you even need to scan the statement or receipt or keep the original? or can having all the info imported into a money manager be enough?

I've been using Quicken for over a decade (still using Quicken 2000 actually as later versions are bloaty) to keep all my financial history in detail. For answering questions like "When did I buy that Belkin KVM switch so I can see if the warranty period has expired" searching the register is good enough as I add enough info the memos. In this example (real one from just a week ago), finding the information easily was enough, and it's to my advantage to have all the individual statements and detail items combined into larger account histories rather than parse an archive tree full of pdf/ocr files (FWIW: even this old version of quicken lets me attach scans of receipts to entries)

Second Question: In what cases is the Original Paper required as opposed to a scan? If you need to show an original statement, receipt or other document to prove some thing or get something approved, do you know when an electronic copy or reproduction is as acceptable as the original? I don't think this is an area with consistent clear cut answers yet because of its newness.

Let's take an admittedly unlikely example. You have a house but have moved to take a job out of state, and you're trying to sell the house. Some scumbag squatter moves in and tries submitting false documents to claim ownership. All the documents relating to purchase and any mortgages have been scanned and shredded. Will the courts, police, banks, city and county offices etc. give you any trouble because they are not signed originals? What if the scumbag claims you fabricated the documents (like he did) and his are the originals? What if some entities accept a scan and others don't?

I've implemented a hybrid system where different documents get scanned / destroyed at different times. I have a single card-file cabinet (Filing cabinet with half-height drawers). Paper copies of everything from the current year and previous year are kept in a drawer. At the end of each year, I take all the documents from year-1, shred most of them (assuming any need for them has past), and put the ones I deem most critical in a small box to archive.

...they'd rather see Home users use a different licensing model... something with more long term revenue for the company. One way to help such a new model would be to make the current purchase model less attractive.

nahh. That couldn't be.