Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Legal is not the right word (Score 1) 229

by erenare (#34679542) Attached to: Spanish Congress Rejects Internet Censorship Law
Only for a certain value of "recently".

Franco's dictatorship ended with his death in November 1975. Except for the staple left-wing rant "Franco will be back if the right wing wins", he is but a shadow of a memory in the tech-savvy generation.

Let's move on, shall we? Franco's / Dictatorship's ghosts have nothing to do with either the right of P2P (expensively purchased through the Canon paid to the SGAE) or the topic at hand (rejection of a certain set of anti-P2P measures).

*sigh*
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?
Image

Whisky Made From Diabetics' Urine 226

Posted by samzenpus from the I've-tasted-this-before dept.
It's doubtful that any other distillery will come up with a whisky that tastes like Gilpin Family Whisky because of its secret ingredient: urine. Researcher and designer James Gilpin uses the sugar rich urine of elderly diabetics to make his high-end single malt whisky. From the article: "The source material is acquired from elderly volunteers, including Gilpin's own grandmother, Patricia. The urine is purified in the same way as mains water is purified, with the sugar molecules removed and added to the mash stock to accelerate the whisky's fermentation process. Traditionally, that sugar would be made from the starches in the mash."
Sci-Fi

Churchill Accused of Sealing UFO Files, Fearing Public Panic 615

Posted by samzenpus from the truth-is-out-there-in-that-filing-cabinet dept.
Newly released secret files show that Winston Churchill ordered a cover-up of an alleged encounter between a UFO and a RAF bomber because he feared public panic. From the article: "Mr Churchill is reported to have made a declaration to the effect of the following: 'This event should be immediately classified since it would create mass panic among the general population and destroy one's belief in the Church.'"
Mars

New Mars Rover Rolls For the First Time 100

Posted by Soulskill from the keep-them-doggies-rollin dept.
wooferhound writes "Like proud parents savoring their baby's very first steps, mission team members gathered in a gallery above a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to watch the Mars Curiosity rover roll for the first time. Engineers and technicians wore bunny suits while guiding Curiosity through its first steps, or more precisely, its first roll on the clean room floor. The rover moved forward and backward about 1 meter (3.3 feet). Mars Science Laboratory (aka Curiosity) is scheduled to launch in fall 2011 and land on the Red Planet in August 2012. Curiosity is the largest rover ever sent to Mars. It will carry 10 instruments that will help search an intriguing region of the Red Planet for two things: environments where life might have existed, and the capacity of those environments to preserve evidence of past life."
KDE

KDE SC 4.7 May Use OpenGL 3 For Compositing 187

Posted by timothy from the that's-software-compilation-to-you dept.
An anonymous reader writes "KDE SC 4.5 is about to be released and KDE SC 4.6 is being discussed. However, Martin Graesslin has revealed some details about what they are planning for KDE 4.7. According to Martin's blog post, they are looking at OpenGL 3.0 to provide the compositing effects in KDE SC 4.7. OpenGL 3.0 provides support for frame buffer objects, hardware instancing, vertex array objects, and sRGB framebuffers."
PC Games (Games)

BioWare's Star Wars MMO To Have Space Combat 122

Posted by Soulskill from the just-in-case-they-weren't-busy-enough dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Big news for Star Wars fans looking forward to BioWare's upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG — space combat has been confirmed for the game. Players will be able to fly around the galaxy in their own personal starships, avoiding asteroid belts, landing in dangerous territory and battling other vessels. The initial news makes it sound like a cross between Mass Effect's galaxy map and a traditional space fighting game, where players will have to find 'hotspots' on the galaxy map in order to enter a particular zone."
Classic Games (Games)

Video Game Legends To Be Inducted Into Hall of Fame 94

Posted by Soulskill from the fierce-competition-between-tetrominoes dept.
killdashnine writes "Last year we discussed the creation of the International Video Game Hall of Fame and Museum in Ottumwa, Iowa, and a first event in 2009 which brought 3,500 people to witness it. Since then, there's been much progress toward creation of the museum, including the upcoming 'Big Bang 2010' exhibition. Their first event kicks off with formal induction ceremonies, tournaments, record-setting attempts, and an array of concerts from 8-bit music to modern rock. This serves as the first official fundraiser for this new non-profit. Iowa is positioning itself as the Video Game Capital of the World. While some sneer and scoff at this, pointing to LA or Seattle as gaming giants and rightful heirs to the title, the real goal is not to glorify software developers but rather to memorialize the 'heroes of video games,' from the iconic Pac Man to pioneers such as Ralph Baer." Here's a list of this year's inductees. Who gets your vote for next year?
Space

Geomagnetic Storm In Progress 110

Posted by Soulskill from the sky-is-falling dept.
shogun writes "The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports a strong geomagnetic storm is in progress. The shuttle, ISS and GPS systems may be affected." They think this storm was caused by a weak solar flare on April 3rd. As you may expect, this has caused some unusually impressive northern lights since it started. What you may not expect is a photograph from Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi aboard the International Space Station showing the aurora from orbit. He apparently tweets a lot of pictures from space. He and his crewmates have taken over 100,000 pictures since coming aboard the ISS.
Australia

Anti-Gamer South Australian Attorney General Quits 104

Posted by timothy from the usually-the-car-holds-more-clowns dept.
dogbolter writes "South Australian Attorney General, Michael Atkinson, infamous for the banning of R18+ rated games and the censoring of political comment in Australia, has quit. The recent South Australian election provided a massive swing against Atkinson's governing labor party. As a direct result of the South Australian election result, he is standing down. Hopefully someone with half a clue will assume the vacant post and overturn the decision to ban adult oriented computer games."
Upgrades

8-Core Intel Nehalem-EX To Launch This Month 186

Posted by Soulskill from the double-the-cores-for-only-twice-the-price dept.
MojoKid writes "What could you do with 8 physical cores of CPU processing power? Intel's upcoming 8-core Nehalem-EX is launching later this month, according to Intel Xeon Platform Director Shannon Poulin. The announcement puts to rest rumors that the 8-core part might be delayed, and makes good on a promise Intel made last year when the chip maker said it would release the chip in the first half of 2010. To quickly recap, Nehalem-EX boasts an extensive feature-set, including up to 8 cores per processor, up to 16 threads per processor with Intel Hyper-threading, scalability up to eight sockets via Intel's serial Quick Path Interconnect and more with third-party node controllers, and 24MB of shared cache."

Comment Re:Code in high-level (Score 1) 249

by erenare (#30777416) Attached to: Cliff Click's Crash Course In Modern Hardware

As an alternative for learning, I'd suggest using an emulator and programming for some sane instruction set. Maybe the MC6809 which had a nice, clean, easily comprehensible instruction set. (I'm sure that there are other equally good choices). If one still has an interest in assembly language programming after that, then by all means tackle x86. You'll probably be appalled.

*sigh*

I just shed a tear, I had forgotten the beauty of coding 6809 assembler back in the old CoCo/Dragon32 days. From personal experience, it is indeed a great platform to learn a decent/simple assembler.

(on a side note, wasn't the 6809 the only one of the then popular processors to implement integer multiplication in hardware? ah! the beauty of "MUL")

If interested, I would recommend downloading either Paul Burgin's "T3" Dragon32/CoCo emulator for the PC or Xroar, (first hit for "Xroar" in google, multi platform) and have a go at it. Of course it requires a "fast machine" (something like a 386DX 33 will be enough for T3 ;o) and the original Dragon ROMs. (getting hold of the ALLDREAM Editor/Assembler would also be a great bonus if you are pursuing this route)

(please, insert mandatory reference to "people getting off my lawn" at your discretion)

Slashdot Top Deals

If it has syntax, it isn't user friendly.

Close