phil - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Ohio Scientific C-1P (Score 1) 857

by phil on Sunday April 16, 2017 @06:47AM (#54243803) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What Was Your First Home Computer?

I had a C2-4P. It had 8k of ram and a cassette as well, but then I work the entire summer at Six Flags to save the $1100 necessary to add another 8K and 5.25" floppy drive. Eventually I added a 3rd party graphics card and another 32K of RAM. Finally added a 300 baud acoustic coupled modem and I was living large!

Comment Re:Opposed to term "hacker" (Score 2) 615

by phil on Monday February 13, 2017 @10:43AM (#53856083) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What Are Some Things That Every Hacker Once Knew?

I have to disagree with you on this. Back in the day, "Hacker" was a positive term, meaning someone who really got into and deeply understood the systems at hand. A "cracker" on the other hand was someone who used such information nefariously, ie to crack into a system. I suppose these days the difference would be white hat vs black hat.

So indeed the term has meaning, and it is used correctly here. To your point though, over the past several decades, that meaning has been obscured by sensationalist media not bothering to check their facts.

Comment CGA & EGA Graphics (Score 2) 615

by phil on Monday February 13, 2017 @08:47AM (#53855479) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What Are Some Things That Every Hacker Once Knew?

Leave it to Eric Raymond to give us old guys a forum.

I too cut my teeth on BASIC and 6502 assembly.

I haven't seen any reference yet to the fine art of EGA's 16 of 64 color choices, horizontal and vertical timing, blanking interrupts and the like.

Back in those days before the likes of Google and Wikipedia I had a set of IBM PC DOS manuals including all the Int 21 functions, disassembled boot code and more. It is fun to reminisce, but like Mr. Raymond says, I don't miss it at all.

Danish Research Center To Explore Mysteries of Earth's Interior 56

Posted by samzenpus on Friday March 16, 2012 @04:05AM from the jules-verne-approved dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The DanSeis Centre at the University of Copenhagen has just received a grant of more than €3 million from the Danish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Higher Education to investigate and tackle one of geoscience's great mysteries: do mantle plumes, hypothetically buoyant regions of heated mantle material rising towards the earth's surface, actually exist?"

Using Augmented Reality To Treat Cockroach Phobia 126

Posted by samzenpus on Sunday May 16, 2010 @11:51PM from the virtually-fixed dept.

RichDiesal writes "In this blog post, I describe a new use for augmented reality — treating people for cockroach phobia. A recent paper in the academic journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking discusses a system where people suffering from cockroach phobia sit at a desk with a virtual reality headset. The headset has a camera on the front so that patients see the desk they're sitting at — but covered in cockroaches. In the study, researchers managed to elicit a fear response to virtual cockroaches similar to what would be experienced with real cockroaches. Sounds like a little slice of hell to me."

Study Finds Fast-Food Logos Make You Impatient 122

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday April 20, 2010 @11:14AM from the I-got-the-cowboyneal-jitters dept.

A study conducted by the University of Toronto has found that exposure to fast-food logos can cause people to feel impatient and make them more likely to buy things. Subjects in the study were exposed to nearly imperceptible flashes of images (for 12 to 80 milliseconds) which included fast-food logos for some. The subjects were then asked to read about and choose between two different kinds of skin-care treatments, one of which was a three-in-one. Those who had the logos flashed before them read "significantly faster" and chose the more time-saving skin product. From the article: "The researchers concluded 'fast food, originally designed to save time, can have the unexpected consequence of inducing haste and impatience' and 'preference for time-saving products when there are potentially other important aspects upon which to choose a product.' So, basically, driving past a McDonald's on the highway has the potential to not only make you drive faster, it will make you more likely to buy two-for-one Pantene Pro-V Shampoo and Conditioner the next time you go to Duane Reade. One, it seems, is considerably less ominous than the other." I guess this explains why my nephews will chew on their seat belts and try to get out the windows just to be first into the McDonald's Playland.

Jetman Attempts Intercontinental Flight 140

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday November 25, 2009 @01:32PM from the a-jetwing-and-a-prayer dept.

Last year we ran the story of Yves Rossy and his DIY jetwings. Yves spent $190,000 and countless hours building a set of jet-powered wings which he used to cross the English Channel. Rossy's next goal is to cross the Strait of Gibraltar, from Tangier in Morocco and Tarifa on the southwestern tip of Spain. From the article: "Using a four-cylinder jet pack and carbon fibre wings spanning over 8ft, he will jump out of a plane at 6,500 ft and cruise at 130 mph until he reaches the Spanish coast, when he will parachute to earth." Update 18:57 GMT: mytrip writes: "Yves Rossy took off from Tangiers but five minutes into an expected 15-minute flight he was obliged to ditch into the wind-swept waters."

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