Posts by Danny 4

Flat memory?

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that the flat memory model came as standard with Windows95, though it was possible on 3.1(1) but only under a DOS extender such as DOS/4GW (and a 32-bit processor). 3.1 still used the x86 16 bit segmented memory model of MS-DOS.

As a previous commenter has said, it took MS ten years to catch up with the likes of Amiga, Atari and Apple who already enjoyed flat 32 bit access to memory locations with the MC68000 family.

It took NT before Windows had pre-emptive multitasking that even came close to the Amiga.

Program Manager was a dog because it only listed applications and never data files. The likes of Amiga, Apple et al had a filesystem browser as a GUI frontend. Again it took 95 for MS to do what everyone else has been doing for a decade.

And by a strange coincidence, we seem to have come full circle as the iPhone frontend is effectively the same as PM showing only your apps...

incidental music volume control

If the Beeb should happen to come by here looking for ideas, here's one, what with all this talk of multiple audio channels and that.

How about transmitting the dialogue and music in separate channels. On the TV we can manually set the volume of each channel before it is mixed and fed to the speakers. Then *we* can decide how loud the music should be and it might actually be possible to hear what the characters are saying. This is something my Mum is always complaining about.

Or for that matter when documentary makers decide to go with an over-inflated and continuous soundtrack we can switch the annoying thing off and enjoy the uninterrupted dialogue. I remember a David Attenborough doc a few years back just like this. I could only endure about 10 minutes before switching over.

Sad loss to the universe

The universe just became a poorer place. 56 is way too young. He changed the way we think and use computers. His vision will still be with us for generations to come.

Take me back to the 80s

Gosh. What memories.

Manic Miner was an exercise in frustration. Unless you used the POKE for infinite lives you were on the road to madness. Even as a spotty kid there was no way I had those kind of reflexes. Same goes for the sequel Jet Set Willy.

I once had the pleasure of meeting the long-haired and sandal-shod Matthew Smith at the Software Projects offices in Liverpool when I was selling them my game for the Speccy. An highly interesting guy.

Miner Willy turned up in the crowd cheering on the athletes in the Spectrum version of Daly Thompson's Decathlon. There was friendly competition between Ocean and Software Projects at the time so a bit of homage never hurt. In my spare time after school I did work for Ocean. Paul Owens wanted me to do some code to print a cheering crowd for Decathlon. Even though the code, graphics and sound effects all had to fit into something like 200 bytes it was still quite effective. Those were the days...

Being a geek I was more into Wargames in 1983.

Event Clash

Quite right too. We can't have the final mission clash with The Wedding, what.

Darn it, Daryl.

"Why won't it work, Jeff?" said Daryl pushing the recently expired mouse around.

Jeff stared at the blue screen now mocking his attempts at restarting the system.

"The infection is too deep." replied Jeff. "The only way to get it back is reformat and reinstall."

Jeff searched the ransacked office attempting to locate the system discs that would restore the forlorn machine to life. He knew his search would be futile. The makers dared not trust end-users with system discs.

"Damn. I knew we should have used Linux." he said.

...nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Sucks to have your website hacked. Sounds like failure to filter input but all over the site and hacks on top of hacks. If they customised Joomla then keeping it up to date will be tricky at best. Clearly they looked at the code and decided it was better to start again.

It's why I use my own code site-wide. A faff but I know the site inside-out. And I enjoy the programming. The small pleasures of watching fruitless probes for a non-existant CMS make it all worthwhile...

PARIS cocktail

Terminal Velocity

Our Pale Blue Dot

In PARIS Ad Astra

Space-sucking Earthgirl

Going Down on PARIS

Puny Earthling

The IT Angle

Home Sweet Home

Crazy Sweet Caress

Sweet Down Below

Dreaming of PARIS

The Sweet Lingering Decent of PARIS

is now on BBC prime time news at six

No way. On this day, rememberance day, the news makes it sound like PARIS is plucky Brits conquer space dambusters style.

Nice one, Reg!

To all morons

If you don't like passing on referrer information, turn it off. The only reason that website have this information is because *you're* giving it to them. If you don't have a browser that allows you to turn referrers off, get one that can. There's lots to choose from.

As a webmaster I find it most useful to see how users arrived at my sites.

Additionally, referrer checking is useful to spot image leeches.