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Classic Games (Games)

Lost Online Games From the Pre-Web Era 186

Posted by Soulskill from the you-are-no-match-for-my-imperial-starship dept.
harrymcc writes "Long before the Web came along, people were playing online games — on BBSes, on services such as Prodigy and CompuServe, and elsewhere. Gaming historian Benj Edwards has rounded up a dozen RPGs, MUDs, and other fascinating curiosities from the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s — and the cool part is: they're all playable on the Web today." What old games were good enough for you to watch them scroll by on your 300 baud modem?
Classic Games (Games)

How Death Rally Got Ported 89

Posted by Soulskill from the not-the-opposite-of-starboarded dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Last year, I got the opportunity to port Remedy Entertainment's Death Rally to modern platforms off its original MS-DOS sources. I wrote an article about the porting process for Game Developer magazine, and now I've posted the text of the article for general consumption. 'The source software platform was DOS, Watcom C, and some Dos4GW-style DOS extender. The extender basically meant you could use more than 640k of memory, and would not need any weird code for data larger than 64k. The game displayed in VESA 640x480 and MCGA 320x200 graphics modes, all with 8-bit palettes; there was no true color anywhere. There were also some per-frame palette change tricks that emulators have trouble with. The source code was mostly pure C with a couple dozen inline assembly functions. There were a few missing subsystems, specifically audio and networking, which would have to be replaced completely anyway, as well as one file for which the source code was lost and only a compiled object was available.'"
NASA

The Sun Unleashes Coronal Mass Ejection At Earth 220

Posted by Soulskill from the return-fire dept.
astroengine writes "Yesterday morning, at 08:55 UT, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory detected a C3-class flare erupt inside a sunspot cluster. 100,000 kilometers away, deep within the solar atmosphere (the corona), an extended magnetic field filled with cool plasma forming a dark ribbon across the face of the sun (a feature known as a 'filament') erupted at the exact same time. It seems very likely that both eruptions were connected after a powerful shock wave produced by the flare destabilized the filament, causing the eruption. A second solar observatory, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, then spotted a huge coronal mass ejection blast into space, straight in the direction of Earth. Solar physicists have calculated that this magnetic bubble filled with energetic particles should hit Earth on August 3, so look out for some intense aurorae — a solar storm is coming."
The Internet

The Puzzle of Japanese Web Design 242

Posted by kdawson from the how-to-pack-five-eggs dept.
I'm Not There (1956) writes "Jeffrey Zeldman brings up the interesting issue of the paradox between Japan's strong cultural preference for simplicity in design, contrasted with the complexity of Japanese websites. The post invites you to study several sites, each more crowded than the last. 'It is odd that in Japan, land of world-leading minimalism in the traditional arts and design, Web users and skilled Web design practitioners believe more is more.'"
Image

Happy Towel Day 122

Posted by samzenpus from the wringing-out-the-wit dept.
An anonymous reader writes "While Douglas Adams continues his attempt to set a new record for the longest extended lunch break, geeks all over the universe pay tribute to the beloved author by celebrating the tenth edition of Towel Day. Towel Day is more alive than ever. This year Richard Dawkins, one of Adams' best friends, has tweeted a Towel Day reminder to his numerous followers. The CERN Bulletin has published an article on Towel Day. There has been TV coverage and there will be a radio interview. The Military Republic of the Deltan Imperium, a newly formed micronation, has recognized Towel Day as an official holiday. In Hungary several hundreds of hitchhiker fans want to have a picnic together in a park. And there's a concert, a free downloadable nerdrap album, a free game being released, the list goes on and on."
Image

Man Put On "No-Fly List" While In Air To NYC 300

Posted by samzenpus from the beware-the-list-refresh dept.
An unnamed man flying from Nigeria to New York City found out he was added to a no-fly list somewhere above the Atlantic Ocean, when the plane stopped to refuel in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Officials won't say what he did or why he was added to the list after he had already boarded a flight. He was not immediately charged with a crime and Customs and Border Protection will only say that he is a "potential person of interest." From the article: "The man, a citizen of Gambia, was not on the no-fly list when he boarded the aircraft in Dakar, Senegal, said a US official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly."
Input Devices

Is the Line-in Jack On the Verge of Extinction? 411

Posted by timothy from the erasing-the-analog-hole dept.
SlashD0tter writes "Many older sound cards were shipped with line-out, microphone-in, and a line-in jacks. For years I've used such a line-in jack on an old Windows 2000 dinosaur desktop that I bought in 2000 (600 Mhz PIII) to capture the stereo audio signal from an old Technics receiver. I've used this arrangement to recover the audio from a slew of old vinyl LPs and even a few cassettes using some simple audio manipulating software from a small shop in Australia. I've noticed only recently, unfortunately, that all of the four laptops I've bought since then have omitted a line-in jack, forcing me to continue keeping this old desktop on life support. I've looked around for USB sound cards that include a line-in jack, but I haven't been too impressed by the selection. Is the line-in jack doomed to extinction, possibly due to lobbying from vested interests, or are there better thinking-outside-the-box alternatives available?"
Image

Funeral Being Held Today For IE6 194

Posted by samzenpus from the good-riddance dept.
An anonymous reader writes "More than 100 people, many of them dressed in black, are expected to gather around a coffin Thursday to say goodbye to an old friend. The deceased? Internet Explorer 6. The aging Web browser, survived by its descendants Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8, is being eulogized at a tongue-in-cheek 'funeral' hosted by Aten Design Group, a design firm in Denver, Colorado."

Comment Look at the big picture regarding power (Score 1) 260

by cfryback (#31130152) Attached to: UPS Setup For a Small/Mid-Size Company?
I know with only 30 end users getting the funds to do this can be a challenge....It was for use (local council) until literally every time our HVAC systems would draw extra because of heat or cold, the whole phase would trip out...Thus we would have a mad panic to the DC to shutdown servers manually! Finally got a electrician (big hint here, get one familiar with Datacentres!) who looked at all three phases of power coming into our building. The first thing that we did (after a facepalm of the original setup) was to load balance ALL the power coming in, and moved the Datacentre power to a different phase than the HVAC - a no brainer, but no one before me really had thought of this! The second phase of what we did, was to run our own 3 phases right from the main switchboard into the Datacentre with the main breakers in the Datacentre, then a couple of sub-panels.We now have our Datacentre with a North/South power distribution feeding two Liebert UPS's that in turn, feed PDU's. So if we loose one phase, things will "scream" and email off alerts - but things will stay up. We still (because of the age of our first UPS) need a physical server connected to the UPS via serial, but the newer one has a web card in it. I have a script that if both UPS end up on battery mode, a graceful suspend of the VM's starts, with our exchange and DC's being the last to suspend. We happen to be a Windows shop, with a HP C7000 blade enclosure that is our VMware farm, connected to HP EVA 4100 which the two SAN switches have up to 96 hours of write cache. The other thing that I am looking at on its own small UPS is a MikroTik 411u with a prepaid 3G to give us independent source of SMS's. There is little point of having a SMS server that is going to be shutdown because it is on UPS. The key thing to remember about UPS (as far as I am concerned) - is that they are not a replacement for mains power. The suggestions for a generator are interesting given the fact that you only have 30 end users, the expense, maintenance of them would make them cost prohibitive tive in your environment. But 30 minutes to bring up a DC?

Comment Re:What constitutes "fake" hardware? (Score 1) 161

by cfryback (#31059136) Attached to: Chinese Man Gets 30 Months For Fake Cisco Sales

Why the hell is Cisco still in business, again?

I totally agree with the above. Sadly, the ONLY piece of Cisco Kit that we have is 5000 Series ASA - that our ISP manages for us (as part of our services from them) that we only use as a VPN concentrator. Licensing is, well, confusing to say the least...paying annual maintenance on it, DOES NOT allow you to get upgrades to firmware or the propitiatory Cisco VPN client (no x64 Windows 7 client yet - if ever!!!). Network is fully equipped with HP Procurve Switches, which not only have a lifetime warranty, but firmware upgrades at no extra levels of support. Our core router is an http://routerboard.com/pricelist.php?showProduct=57 which (and we sadly have static routing - but that is another story) I have just started at looking at the whole potential of it after a year in service.

Comment Re:Too Bad (Score 1) 640

by cfryback (#30101330) Attached to: Psystar Crushed In Court

OS X is a decent operating system, but few people can be satisfied by a single hardware vendor. Might as well write off Apple as a player now, as it's unlikely they'll ever release the death grip and let the world play with OS X.

+1 Probably a reason why I will never drink the Apple Kool-Aid.

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