The best upgrade for any computer I've ever done was to add a CMD SuperCPU to my Commodore 64. This took me from an 1MHz 8-bit 6510 processor to a 20MHz 16-bit 65c816 processor. Not only that, but it raised the RAM limit from 64KB to 16MB (I got the 16MB of RAM as well.) Just going from 1MHz to 20MHz increases CPU speed by 20 times without accounting for the 8bit-to-16bit upgrade. The associated 64KB to 16MB RAM increase boosted my memory by 256 times. It also took the RAM's propagation delay down to 50ns so the CPU's data and address buses went from 1MHz to 20MHz as well! It's a phenomenal difference that I can honestly say I have never matched in any other computer upgrade, including building a brand new machine.

To put this into perspective, it would be like upgrading a PC from the year 2001 from a 1.33GHz 32-bit CPU to a 26.67GHz 64-bit CPU. It would also need to increase its physical RAM from 256MB to 64GB while increasing the FSB from 133MHz to 2.66GHz.

San Diego kicks ass in any time zone . . . with or without power.

I think your food processor only counts if it's very small.

I am not a lawyer and as such, do not have the training and experience required to be able to help you. However, I am an American citizen and that makes me responsible for making sure I myself do not break U.S. laws. In our legal system, ignorance of the law is no excuse. While being ignorant of the law can, in some cases, change the punishment you receive, it will not excuse you from breaking the law entirely.

This is why it is so important for us to read at least the aspects of the law that are relevant to what we do. Given the nature of the Internet and computers in general, copyright law is very important to all of us. Despite this, somehow almost no one reads it yet everyone tries to wax intelligent about it.

Many laws are very very cryptic. Luckily, copyright law is not one of them. Go here to obtain a copy of the current U.S. Copyright Law:

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/

Be sure to check back regularly for updates. When reading this document, it is important that you read and understand Chapter 1, Section 101, "Definitions" before reading anything else. If you do not read this and understand it, you *WILL* misunderstand the rest of the document. Once you understand this section, the rest of the document becomes far easier to understand.

Doing this will not prepare you to battle IP lawyers in court, but it will give you a better understanding of copyright in the U.S. and help you avoid copyright issues in the first place. As always, even if you read this law, go hire a real lawyer if you know you are on shaky ground. Attempting to clone someone else' product should immediately make you realize you are on shaky ground, even if you have not read Title 17 of the U.S. Code.

Hint: You don't have to read the entire document. There are sections that do not directly pertain to most modern computing situations. However, it should become very clear very quickly which sections are important to you.

Doing this now will help you to see the infringements you have made in your game. Just one look at the screenshot of your game reveals too many copyright violations to ignore, let alone the text on your web page.

I already have one set aside for soldering PCBs with solder paste anyway, so I use it for crap like this. But they are cheap so it shouldn't be a problem to buy one new. You can pick one up at your local Walmart brand new for about $20 with enough capacity for a video card.

Beelzebud is correct. If not for your own sake, then for the sake of others (especially children) that eat from your kitchen, please do not use the oven where you cook food for this!!

What bothers me are people who don't like it when other people voice their opinions on the internet . . . but have to come in and shit all over someone else's harmless enjoyments.

My dad was a jet engine mechanic in SAC stationed at Ellsworth AFB when Mount St. Helens erupted. For about a year following the eruption, volcanic ash settled into a visible layer on everything which required cleaning on a daily basis. It really kept settling out of the air for that long. While I understand that eruption was an odd case, it does show that we have had some pretty extensive experience with aircraft flying through significant amounts of volcanic ash. Remember that they had Operation Looking Glass at that time so there was no way we didn't have aircraft flying in those conditions.

Of course, it wasn't just the USAF that had to deal with this, commercial airlines had to deal with that fallout as well.

So I find it hard to believe that we don't have some decent amount of data about this. What about the commercial airline data from that time? Where did it go? While the military data from that period might be classified, it may be time to request declassification of some of that data. I'm willing to bet that with a little bit of effort that data can be scrubbed and the safe portions of it released. As for the taxpayer dollars required to accomplish that task, as a taxpayer, I think it would be a worthwhile investment.

Understood, Mr. Hawke. However, there is no reason to make it easy as a matter of policy. If it is made illegal to use fingerprints, then while you may still be able to get my prints, I can also catch you in the act. This, of course, adds risk to the equation for you. Merely making this illegal will be enough to deter many employers from attempting it. It will also make people who want protection more likely to try to find out who's doing this.

And I agree with some other posters that this isn't really a concern. I personally don't care if the government has my prints. But the OP and posters who think you shouldn't work for that employer because of this probably *DO* think it is a problem. They are the ones who should be fighting it, not running from it. History has shown that governments and corporations tend to be predatory. We all know if you run from a predator, it will chase you.

Not many posts yet but I already see a LOT of posts pushing the idea of not working for this employer. This is not a solution. If we don't fight it and win, it will be adopted by more and more employers until it snowballs into something too big to fight. If we think this is a bad idea, it needs to be fought now while it's still in its infancy.

That's not really the point. Once that hash or checksum or whatever of your fingerprint is stored and linked to you, they can still track you by pulling fingerprints from the items you own or touch. All they have to do is get your fingerprint from something and run it against the database with these stored values.

Use acid on your finger tips to remove the prints and use that for ID. The only problem is that you are now linked to hundreds of crimes where no traces of fingerprints were found. But at least they wont be able to identify YOU when they find your actual fingerprints somewhere.

Perl is a very good language to learn as a beginner. You don't have to go into all the cool uber geek tricks to make it do incredible amounts of work. The syntax is easy to learn for simple programs.

And I might be a bit biased here, but why not dish out a dose of BASIC on an emulator? While BASIC 2.0 on a C64 doesn't provide good graphics and audio controls, BASIC 7.0 on a C128 does. Very importantly is that this could give some pretty instant gratification to a kid who might be interested in writing a game. The VICE emulator provides C128 emulation that would be good for this.

I have no moderator points right now, but those who do need to moderate the parent, "Funny as Hell."
 

And while I know I will ultimately lose this battle, thomasdz, YOUR Slashdot ID (178114) is too high. :)

I had no idea Neverwinter Nights was a game back then. And an MMORPG to boot. I was living in the C64 world until 1997 so I had no real desire to keep up with the PC world. I was/am a very big an of the gold box D&D games and I feel totally and completely cheated!

I feel obligated to quote "Demon Hunters: Dead Camper Lake", one of the best movies I have ever seen:

When life hands you lemons, kick him in the nuts and say, "I wanted a beer, bitch!"