Comment I can juggle three ... (Score 1, Interesting) 59
and it took a long time to be able to do that. Four is a *LOT* harder. I cannot even fathom trying to learn all of these advanced maneuvers.
Comment See you all in prison! (Score 1) 403
You know with this kind of power, they will sooner or later "find" something that breaks some obscure law. Then we can all be in prison. Think how cheap license plates will be with the entire country producing them! Profit!
Comment Multi Emulator Super System ZX 80 (Score 1) 196
Old ZX 80 hardware is expensive and rare from what I have seen. You can use the MESS Sinclair ZX 80 target to relive those 8-bit days of yore without the fear of electrical or mechanical breakdowns associated with running on the actual hardware. A lot of early microcomputer equipment often had power supply or other problems which means that even if you can get your hands on the real hardware now, and it works, it may not run for long before things start breaking. I do not have any old ZX 80's and don't have a ROM so I'm not sure of the exact legality were I to acquire one from say Mega Upload or such, but I almost suspect that they might be drifting close to the abandonware status in some areas at least.
There are quite a lot of neat old systems that MESS can emulate. I've been trying to get NitrOS-9 working with a Motorola 6309 myself.
Submission + - No one expects the Apple inquisition (wordpress.com)
dell623 writes: "Apple's recent lawsuits against Samsung and HTC are based on patents that are considered trivial and obvious by most people with a working knowledge of software. Apple are not the only company using such patents, but they are doing it blatantly, publicly and dishonestly, and sadly, unlike common patent trolls, they have a unique history of innovation. Such lawsuits can have far reaching consequences. If such patent wars had happened in the last 30-40 years personal computing devices and the internet wouldn't exist as they do today, and similarly, these patent wars threaten to bring about a technological dark age of stagnation or decline, smothering a technological revolution that is still young. We have had an incredible, transformational period of around four decades where powerful computers started off powering expensive military systems and ended up as minuscule devices in our hands that can talk to each other across the world, and we have only begun to explain the possibilities this brings us. These patent wars threaten to brutally strangle a still young revolution that has possibilities we can only begin to imagine."
Comment Imaginary Mass! (Score 1) 412
Wow that's quite a concept. To me that idea smacks of some unknown type of energy which has the potential of being converted into regular mass. However, it would seem to me complex mass would be impossible because as the particle's mass oscillated between the real and complex states its speed would likewise be respectively slower and then faster than c. Heh, imagine the shock waves from something breaking the light barrier a couple billion times per second, and the energy dumped into entropy. I don't think a particle with complex mass would make it very far. More like a one way ride...
Pure imaginary mass (the tachyon) is pretty neat to think about though. What kind of state could mass be in its "potential" form? The old E=mc^2 certainly implies that you can convert energy into mass, but I'm not aware of anybody who has created mass out of pure energy yet.
Comment Re:Has Everyone Already Forgotten About the Netwin (Score 1) 332
I still have a Netwinder. I spent quite a bit of effort porting the system to Gentoo ARM softfloat, although at the end of the day, it really hasn't aged well. The 275MHz ARMv4l seems a bit pokey now but it can run a bare-bones xorg system with a lightweight window manager. Prior to my porting effort, you had to use hard-float glibc which would trigger an interrupt and the kernel fpu emulator would handle the call. I submitted some patches upstream vs gcc but I have no idea if anybody ever did anything with them, for all I know I have the only softfloat-linux Netwinder in existence.
Comment Re:Tabtop momentum building (Score 1) 332
I was able to compile the Hercules IBM Mainframe Emulator for my OMAP3 Beagleboard, and guess what.. it works.
New FBI Operations Manual Increases Surveillance 189
betterunixthanunix writes "The New York Times is reporting that the new FBI operations manual suggests a broad increase in surveillance. Denoted the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, the manual officially lowers the bar of acceptability when it comes to engaging in surveillance activities, including allowing agents to perform such surveillance on people who are not suspected terrorists without opening an inquiry or officially recording their actions. The new manual also relaxes rules on administering lie detector tests, searching through a person's trash, and the use of teams to follow targeted individuals. It should be noted that these guidelines still fall within the general limits put in place by the attorney general."
Comment To The Future (Score 2) 332
Dear Descendant,
Please send me an email from the future describing how I can solve my current financial distress.
P.S. I will set up a trust fund for you if you do this.
Regards,
Your Ancestor
'Universal' Memory Aims To Replace Flash/DRAM 125
siliconbits writes "A single 'universal' memory technology that combines the speed of DRAM with the non-volatility and density of flash memory was recently invented at North Carolina State University, according to researchers. The new memory technology, which uses a double floating-gate field-effect-transistor, should enable computers to power down memories not currently being accessed, drastically cutting the energy consumed by computers of all types, from mobile and desktop computers to server farms and data centers, the researchers say."
How Chrysler's Battery-Less Hybrid Minivan Works 347
thecarchik writes "Chrysler announced Wednesday that it would partner with the US Environmental Protection Agency to build and test prototypes of a different kind of hybrid vehicle, one that accumulates energy not in a battery pack but by compressing a gas hydraulically. The system in question, originally developed at the EPA labs, uses engine overrun torque to capture otherwise wasted energy, as do conventional hybrid-electric vehicles. The engine is Chrysler's standard 2.4-liter four-cylinder, the base engine in its minivan line. But rather than turning a generator, that torque powers a pump that uses hydraulic fluid to increase the pressure inside a 14.4-gallon tank of nitrogen gas, known as a high-pressure accumulator."
Duke Nukem Forever Release Date Revealed 288
stupid_is writes with news that Duke Nukem Forever has now gotten a firm US release date: May 3rd. It will release worldwide three days later. The game was resurrected last fall by Gearbox Software and 2K Games after 3D Realms' 12-year attempt at development came to an end in 2009 when the company closed its doors.
Wikipedia and the History of Gaming 240
Wired is running a story about Wikipedia's tremendous contribution to documenting the history of video games, and why it shouldn't necessarily be relied upon. Quoting:
"Wikipedia requires reliable, third-party sources for content to stick, and most of the sites that covered MUDs throughout the ’80s were user-generated, heavily specialized or buried deep within forums, user groups and newsletters. Despite their mammoth influence on the current gaming landscape, their insular communities were rarely explored by a nascent games journalist crowd. ... while cataloging gaming history is a vitally important move for this culture or art form, and Wikipedia makes a very valiant contribution, the site can’t be held accountable as the singular destination for gaming archeology. But as it’s often treated as one, due care must be paid to the site to ensure that its recollection doesn’t become clouded or irresponsible, and to ensure its coalition of editors and administrators are not using its stringent rule set to sweep anything as vitally relevant as MUDS under the rug of history."
Comment Adding IPv6 is not difficult (Score 1, Interesting) 406
I upgraded my systems to ipv6 even though I just have IPv4 by signing up for a free tunnel broker service. I recommend SixXS if you are serious, or one of the others if you just want to flirt around with IPv6. Basically, you open a tunnel on one of the machines, it starts radvd which activates ipv6 on every machine on your LAN automagically, and thats all you do. Perhaps edit a config file here or there to turn on ipv6 if its lacking for some reason. The radvd machine broadcasts on your net and provides something like DHCP for all your ipv6 enabled machines which usually just pick it up on the fly with no reboot or anything required.
Archaeologists Find 2,400-Year-Old Soup
108
Chinese archaeologists have discovered a sealed bronze pot containing what they believe is a batch of 2,400-year-old bone soup. The pot was dug up near the ancient capital of Xian. Liu Daiyun of the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archeology says, "It's the first discovery of bone soup in Chinese archaeological history. The discovery will play an important role in studying the eating habits and culture of the Warring States Period (475-221BC)." No word on if the archaeologists also found the accompanying ancient crackers.
