Posts by Rocket 57 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Apr 2009
A few years ago a company selling retro handheld game machines had an idea to create an 'ultimate' machine. Eventually Pandora delivered was late, over budget with various manufacturing / QC issues.
It was a brilliant little ARM based *nix box - capable of running Quake, full featured but very hobbyist and the only time I was an early adopter that paid up front.
The group is doing another called Pyra and they are much more realistic about managing expectations.
After being a zombie customer I finally came to my senses and got shut of the TV last year .
They 'let' me keep the tivo, I guess hoping I'd be back.
I used to find VM's broadband reasonably solid but it has dropped off a cliff over the last month or so with some websites regularly failing to load altogether.
"with some websites regularly failing to load" ;)
- I "read" this article and frankly, haven"t a clue what it's on about.
- I am honestly in awe of these people that understand this stuff.
I'm definitely putting Quantum Dynamics as my religion / "belief system" on the next census.
At least scientists can prove what they believe even if the rest of us can't understand it.
btw - They got me confused with scientologist last time ;-)
Now instead of 'How do we get our rankings higher?' it's just become 'How can we blacklist the other sites?'
I'm guessing it'll shift the game to insert bogey links in other sites; then a swift report to Google (Sir! Sir! Have you seen what Smithy has done?) and one less competitor to out rank you
Looks like a short time of blacklisting fun can make a difference to revenues
>How about a virtual machine that speaks machine code and does groovy retro things, connected to a social networky thing so that kids can incentivise each other through achievements, challenges, contests and what not. The BASIC, Pascal, SmallTalk etc interpreters could be unlockables...<
Computers are already out there, but the hardware is hidden behind layers of libraries that makes coding a high level exercise. And this runs *nix which hides the hardware behind layers of libraries and perpetuates the high level paradigm.
What's needed is a virtual hardware with LEDs, keys and buzzers and training for educators to enthusiastically teach it
The people here who really want this are already experienced bit-shifters and not used to a teaching environment
The 8bit computers were a futuristic marvel in their time which got kids interested. Now they're museum pieces with no sense of wonder cause they can't watch cats falling over on youtube with them.
8 colours? 16 pixel sprites? Bleeps? This is an iPod world and the kids need something to WOW them.
Put it on tracks with sensors and let them write a maze solver - an educational tool not just a fancy box.
Is this why I couldn't sleep last night?
Although I wasn't aware of the terror being induced in the matter being spin-dizzied in the caves of France, my sleep was broken by strange dreams of swatted flies, traffic accidents and *ahem* fluid leaks.
Investigations must be carried out of the possible implications on our collective psyche!
What a load of ... erm ... 'hot air' ... to recognise that a mod chip allows counterfeit products to be displayed!
It's funny* that only in the last sentence common sense is mentioned.
Maybe if that was applied at the start a whole load of money & time could have been saved...
The start being ... ? 1984? 1973? 1066??
* Funny; being peculiar, worthy of note and not at all amusing
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