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Comment Re:Awesome (Score 2, Interesting) 109

Damn, that'll teach me not to throw out obsolete stuff. I wrote a simple piece of music software for my Amstrad CPC464 back in the mid-eighties. It took input from the keyboard (using shift/ctrl for sharp and flat, if I recall), displayed musical notation on screen and played it through the primitive sound chip.

I eventually got it to play one of Bach's 48 (preludes & fugues). I seem to recall that it had 4 channels, so could cope with the 4-part counterpoint pretty well. The sound chip was horrible, but if you specified a rapidly decaying envelope it could sound very roughly like a plunckety-plunk "harpsichord".

All gone now: It was stored on one of Alan Sugar's ridiculous 3 inch disks (not 3 1/2 or 5 1/4, and entirely proprietary to his toy computers).

Space

Is a 'Katrina-Like' Space Storm Brewing? 356

pilsner.urquell writes "A newly released NASA report warns that the world has forgotten the power of the sun, creating a technological society susceptible like never before to large infrastructure damage from solar storms. According to the report, the world has grown so dependent on modern technologies without respect of what the sun can and has done, that it's risking major communications, finance, transportation, government and even emergency services disruptions."
Portables (Apple)

Top Apple Rumors, Bricks, Low Price, NVIDIA 283

Vigile writes "With the news that Apple will be releasing new MacBook products on October 14th, speculation has begun on what exactly those new products will be. Tips of a manufacturing process involving lasers and a single 'brick' of aluminum are catching on, as is the idea of a sub-$1000 netbook-type device. More interesting might be the persistent rumors of an NVIDIA chipset adoption that would drastically increase gaming ability, allow MacBooks to improve their support for OpenCL and take advantage of the new Adobe CS4 software with GPU acceleration. Will NVIDIA's ailing chipset business get a shot in the arm next week?"

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