fractallyte

69 ms·

811.
by fractallyte 12y ago
Way back in 1985, a seminal 'Computer Recreations' column in Scientific American featured the Mandelbrot set: https://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/blog/File/De... (A K Dewdney's
812.
by fractallyte 12y ago
Thanks! Many of those bigger BASIC games (Wizard's Castle, The Valley, Nightmare Park) were really absorbing. I still have many Commodore PET listings; pre-internet, I was delighted to find a copy of King among them - I remembered play
813.
by fractallyte 12y ago
Are those games available anywhere? I have both the Basic Computer Games books (hardcopies!), and a few issues of Creative Computing, but I wasn't aware of the games you just mentioned...
814.
by fractallyte 12y ago
For the 'growth' aspect of business, here's a great site - similar in look and feel to HN: https://growthhackers.com/
815.
by fractallyte 12y ago
I lived there for a few months. The structures are extremely sturdy, with some fantastic views from the upper levels. The base of the Gasometers have been cleverly fashioned into a shopping complex, with adjacent cinema and gym. No need to
816.
by fractallyte 12y ago
Conversely, I still remember : Arcadia Darell, Golan Trevize, Bliss, Janov Pelorat, Hari Seldon, Raych, Joseph Schwartz (and his poignant final lines in the associated novel), Rik... I could go on, and on. All strong characters, with genu
817.
by fractallyte 12y ago
The article warns about the possible hazards, but it's worth reiterating: http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/oct/08/teenager-stomach-l...
818.
by fractallyte 12y ago
Some groups of Australian Aborigines are known to enter a 'hibernation' state at night, in which temperatures plummet to near-freezing temperatures. Their bodies don't shiver - instead, they go into hypothermia, and 'rev
819.
by fractallyte 12y ago
Smalltalk is (literally) a window on an alternative computer architecture and OS/language paradigm. There's a reason it runs on a 'virtual machine'! It's the path that computing could once have taken, the equivale
820.
by fractallyte 12y ago
Perhaps surprisingly, it does have a killer feature: the Xena co-processor, which introduces - for the first time in a consumer machine - 'Software Defined Silicon'. From the blurb: 'Capable of eight concurrent real-time th
821.
by fractallyte 12y ago
I guess you could say they're protecting the memories? :-)
822.
by fractallyte 12y ago
...and, just to back up your comment, here's The Book that tells that side of the story: http://ymarkov.livejournal.com/280578.html
823.
by fractallyte 12y ago
Why not Smalltalk? It was, after all, designed for kids (and look where that got us... Java - pffft!) Squeak has a comprehensive ecosystem; here's an excellent book for high-schoolers: http://www.apress.com/9781590594
824.
by fractallyte 12y ago
I was heartened to discover this UK government-sponsored gem, a free online course explaining procurement (for beginners): http://www1.learndirect-business.com/business-courses/winnin... There may be some pointers here
825.
by fractallyte 12y ago
Better way to save tonnes of needless waste: intelligent consumer . It really isn't difficult to inspect food to check if it's 'off'. Our innate senses are pretty good for that.
826.
by fractallyte 12y ago
riri - an Italian firm - makes very high quality zippers. I prefer them to YKK. Aside: if you're looking for really good buttons, try this company: http://www.corozobuttons.com/ (Made exclusively with tagua nut, als
827.
by fractallyte 12y ago
I worked with a fantastic implantology startup ( http://bioimplant.at ) up until a few months ago, and it was illuminating to discover just how much of the implant industry is a racket. Most surprising of all was the casual ignora
828.
by fractallyte 12y ago
The bureaucracy at NASA is stifling. Slicing up a relatively small budget (compared to spending on finance, defense, and everything other than science) means that the majority of dream research is simply not undertaken. If the barriers to
829.
by fractallyte 12y ago
Open contests would be meaningless without vast financial backing to launch those world-changing projects. And the contributing party would want some kind of financial reward. Never going to happen, for a truly innovative idea, because the
830.
by fractallyte 12y ago
Dogs already communicate with humans - it's just that most humans are too 'dumb' to understand the signals being conveyed: body language, scent, vocalization, behavior...
831.
by fractallyte 12y ago
WordStar is a lot more than just some keybindings. For a detailed description, read Sawyer's essay "A Writer's Word Processor" ( http://sfwriter.com/wordstar.htm ). The article even has a link to it...
832.
by fractallyte 12y ago
Wait, what?? Squeak is a modern, full-featured Smalltalk. It is closely related to Pharo, a cleaner, leaner fork. (Both of these put mainstream languages like Java to shame.) Scratch is simply a kid-friendly DSL built in Squeak. Big differe
833.
by fractallyte 12y ago
Apologies, but I have to nitpick. UN actions (ie. the arms embargo) made the conflict unbalanced - giving the advantage to one side, which then proceeded to run amok. Then, the UN repeatedly failed to protect civilian populations from this
834.
by fractallyte 12y ago
Just extrapolating: that highly abstract symbolic language/keyboard, combined with an agile mind (think 'Limitless' the movie) and 10-finger virtuosity, would be an incredible coding force... Not entirely unrealistic, I might
835.
by fractallyte 12y ago
Right this moment, my mom's going through my old school books and papers - work I did from ages 7-16. I still have C64 printouts from the 80s, old BASIC listings and graphics. And lots more besides. These are the equivalent of old fami
836.
by fractallyte 12y ago
Look for Macmillan's Best of Soviet Science Fiction series, published in the early 1980s. It's a mix of novels and short story collections. For shorts, I particularly recommend World's Spring, New Soviet Science Fiction, and
837.
by fractallyte 12y ago
The people who measure these things would probably disagree with you. A small, random, selection: https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2007/system-failure-pri... http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto
838.
by fractallyte 12y ago
No, this is about basic readiness for a number of contagions that are endemic to the region, which should be prominent on a list of healthcare priorities. Nine years is a considerable time to be able to fix many of the problems you mention.
839.
by fractallyte 12y ago
Liberia has a government. It receives vast amounts of foreign aid. So when the article says: "West Africa was ill-equipped for an Ebola disaster because civil war and chronic poverty had undermined local health systems and there were
840.
by fractallyte 12y ago
I don't understand... Isn't a better (neater?) solution simply to design the logo in Inkscape and then convert the font to a path? I did a quick test - font only, without the graphical elements - and the resulting SVG came to 64KB

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