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Comment Exidy Sorcerer II (Score 2) 857

Z80 at 2.106MHz to sync up with the horizontal sweep frequency on the TV. The II had 48k of memory (wow!) where the 1 had only 32k. Programs on big cartridges (re-purposed 8-track shells): BASIC, word processor, assembler / editor / debugger... we got the S100 cage (5 slots!) and Micropolis floppy disks - quad density! 330K per disk! - and eventually a 10MB hard drive with a controller that occupied two slots in the S100 cage. Character display, 32 lines of 64 characters (yup), but the character bitmaps for chr$(128) and up were in memory so you could get limited graphics that way.

Comment Re:Harmon-Kardon Turntable (Score 1) 316

I've got a Dual and a Technics turntable which I still use. Preamp, amp, and speakers are ancient audiophile brands that nobody has heard of (Adcom? Haybrook?) Driving music is FM, sometimes CD. Walking music is whatever's happening in the real world. I do have some tracks on MP3 that I listen to when doing chores...
Microsoft

Microsoft Open Sources Edge JavaScript Code, Plans Linux Port (windows.com) 92

colinneagle writes: One month after promising to release the JavaScript engine of its Edge browser, Microsoft has proven good for its word and then some. Not only is it releasing the code, it's planning a Linux port. The company uploaded the code to GitHub and announced its plans via a blog post by Gaurav Seth, principal PM manager for Chakra, which is what they're calling the JavaScript engine. "Today, we are excited to share with you that we've just made the sources for ChakraCore available under the MIT License at the ChakraCore GitHub repository," he wrote. "Going forward, we'll be developing the key components of Chakra in the open." With the release, you can build ChakraCore on Windows 7 SP1 or above with Visual Studio 2013 or 2015 with C++ support installed, Seth said. Of course, Edge is more than just the Chakra engine, but this could result in a back port to Windows 7. He also said Microsoft is committed to bringing it to other platforms, starting with Linux, and invited developers to "help us in the pursuit either by letting us know which other platforms they'd like to see ChakraCore supported on, or even by helping port it to the platform of their choice."
Robotics

NASA Selects Universities To Develop Humanoid Robot Astronauts (examiner.com) 21

MarkWhittington writes: NASA announced that it is sending copies of its R5 Valkyrie humanoid robot to two universities for software upgrades and other research and development. The effort is part of a continuing project to develop cybernetic astronauts that will assist human astronauts in exploring other worlds. The idea is that robot astronauts would initially scout potentially hazardous environments, say on Mars, and then actively collaborate with their human counterparts in exploration. NASA is paying each university chosen $250,000 per year for two years to perform the R&D. The university researchers will have access to NASA expertise and facilities to perform the upgrades. Spoiler alert: the robots are both going to Greater Boston, to teams at MIT and Northeastern University respectively.

Comment reminds me of the Win9x fileshare bug... (Score 0) 205

Map a share on a Win9x box to drive X: on an NT box.

At the NT command prompt, type
dir x:????????*.*
Crashes the Win9x box in 17 characters. In WinME they half-fixed it: the machine reports on a blue screen that the server service has crashed and offers to restart it. My suspicion is that the file name matches neither the pattern for the shortname or the longname, and so falls out the bottom of a test that was not designed to ever fail.

Of course that's all ancient history now, and I expect Google may actually fix the problem eventually, unlike Microsoft who ignored the bug report.

Comment DirectX is on the monitor end (Score 4, Informative) 134

While I can't speak for "most", the limited experience I have had with IP cameras is that the stream coming off many of them is a bone-standard MJPEG stream. That is simply a stream of JPEG images, and any app that can interpret them should be fine. Microsoft has actually published a very small demo program, based on dotNet 4, that displays the output from a webcam.

Rosewill's webcam, by the way, uses a Java applet normally to show what's coming off the camera. I don't believe they use DirectX, or ActiveX, as the image output shows up fine on Firefox.

Comment Five to six hours (Score 3, Insightful) 159

I discovered that when I tried to sleep the eight that was supposedly required, I would either wake up at 0300 and not be able to get back to sleep for an hour and a half, or I'd sleepwalk. I read a book a few decades back that suggested that by gradually decreasing your nightly sleeping time, you could find the amount of sleep you really needed (it was some decades back, sorry I can't remember the title now) and I tried what it suggested. Found that I'd wake up decently rested at 7 if I went to bed at 2.

On weekends, I wake up at 8 without the alarm clock. Weekdays, even holidays and when I forget the alarm clock, I'm up at 7. Habit.

My wife hates it.

Comment Avoid lock-in... (Score 5, Informative) 295

host with someone different from where you register your domain. That way if you find the hosting isn't to your liking, you can repoint your DNS and won't get held to ransom. What I'm doing at present is registering with MyDomain and then hosting on GoDaddy, which is fine for low-volume sites.

For my Canadian sites, I register with webnames.ca, use MyDomain's DNS service, and host on whatever's cheap.

Robotics

Foxconn Replacing Workers With Robots 530

redletterdave (2493036) writes The largest private employer in all of China and one of the biggest supply chain manufacturers in the world, Foxconn announced it will soon start using robots to help assemble devices at its several sprawling factories across China. Apple, one of Foxconn's biggest partners to help assemble its iPhones, iPads, will be the first company to use the new service. Foxconn said its new "Foxbots" will cost roughly $20,000 to $25,000 to make, but individually be able to build an average of 30,000 devices. According to Foxconn CEO Terry Gou, the company will deploy 10,000 robots to its factories before expanding the rollout any further. He said the robots are currently in their "final testing phase."

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