This is a great long read about a game I'd never heard about from 1984, called Robot Odyssey.

Robot Odyssey was apparently an impossibly difficult, programming (well really circuit wiring) game, that had a big impact on those that played it.

It was called Robot Odyssey, it took me 13 years to finish it, and it sealed my fate as a programmer.

http://www.slate.com...ame_of_all_time.html


See also: http://www.droidquest.com/

When i was just starting to code as a teenager, one of the games that really captured my interests was a robot programming called RobotWar, which I wrote a complete clone for on the original ibm pc.

From our (sometimes painful) forum discussion on bitcoin..

I try to avoid this bitcoin stuff because the whole world of finance seems completely insane and make-believe to me.  However, i am somewhat interested in the technology issues.

I think the points being made about other currency (gold, diamonds, etc.) being intrinsically mostly worthless -- and in that sense not particular different from virtual/digital currency, are all valid.

But what I think eleman touched on which is odd about bitcoin is that, if i'm understanding it correctly, one of the key ideas of bitcoin is that by design it MUST require huge amounts of otherwise-useless cpu cycles, in order to simulate/create scarcity.

It's a key property you have to have scores of high-powered computers doing nothing but churning through useless operations 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to do "work" that is of no value other than to purposefully slow down the generation of these digital tokens.

That does strike one as wasteful.

But now the interesting technological question that comes to mind is, could you flip that?

Could you make a new crypto/digital currency where the work required to virtually "mine" such things was actually PRODUCTIVE USEFUL work?

Like a crypto/digital coin which was generated by successfully solving protein folding problems, etc.

Such a thing would still enforce rarity/scarcity by requiring massive cpu cycles -- but those cycles themselves would be producing useful work. It would be as if coal/diamond/gold mining helped the environment.. Now *that* could be revolutionary.

A couple of helpful articles courtesy of the Dedoimedo blog regarding SteamOS - Valve's latest bid for world domination.

First up is the review which can be found here.

SteamOS review - Lovely jubbly!

Updated: December 28, 2013

Normally, my game-related content goes into the dedicated Gaming section. But this is a special moment. SteamOS is not just a game. It's a complete, Debian-based distro, and so it merits its own review, right here, alongside all other flavors and editions I've tested in the past. Moreover, some of the stuff will get technical, in the upcoming sequel articles, which makes the Software category the best candidate for this.

Anyhow, SteamOS. Linux based. A dream come true. Now, it's not just a gaming platform, it's a complete operating system, and it may soon land in your living room. The moment we have all been waiting for. But before that happens, let me give you a brief taste of what SteamOS can really do.

Next, and even more interesting, is a step-by-step guide for setting up a SteamOS test environment runnning under VirtualBox. This can be a major PITA if you struggled through it earlier (like I did) on your own. Much easier to follow the steps Igor Ljubuncic so thoughtfully provided. Find them here.

How to setup and test SteamOS as a virtual machine

Updated: January 11, 2014

Note: SteamOS is in continuous development; instructions shown below may change or become outdated or irrelevant. I will follow up with update articles as necessary.

You've just read my SteamOS review. You like it. But you are dismayed by the horrible system requirements. Yup, you need a powerful machine with a modern processor, you need a heap of RAM, a ton of hard disk, and one of the leading graphics cards. Well, not really.

How about we kind of work around all these requirements? This is what I'm going to show you today. How you can install and test SteamOS as a virtual machine, using very limited resources and with zero risk to your physical setup. We will do that using the SteamOS installer archive and VirtualBox. Sounds good. Now follow me...

Great pair of articles!

We occasionally discuss the issue of hard drive reliability on the forum but this it the first time i can remember seeing hard data showing brands with clear differences in reliability..

Hitachi drives crush competing models from Seagate and Western Digital when it comes to reliability, according to data from cloud backup provider Backblaze. Their collection of more than 27,000 consumer-grade drives indicated that the Hitachi drives have a sub-2 percent annualized failure rate, compared to 3-4 percent for Western Digital models, and as high as 25 percent for some Seagate units.

Links:

• http://www.extremete...reliable-hard-drives
• http://arstechnica.c...all-disks-are-equal/
• http://blog.backblaz...-drive-should-i-buy/

Interesting article delving into why RAID of any stripe (ooh, bad pun) and frequent backups won't always save your bacon, but a 'next-gen' filesystem like ZFS or Btrfs just might (no mention of any new filesystems for Windows).  I jumped into a Btrfs file system about two years ago, and it failed catastrophically about 3 months later.  Granted, it's still in a state of experimental flux and will eventually 'get there', but with all the benefits it promises, I'm hoping that's sooner than later...

Bitrot and atomic COWs: Inside “next-gen” filesystems
We look at the amazing features in ZFS and btrfs—and why you need them.
...
Let's talk about "bitrot," the silent corruption of data on disk or tape. One at a time, year by year, a random bit here or there gets flipped. If you have a malfunctioning drive or controller—or a loose/faulty cable—a lot of bits might get flipped. Bitrot is a real thing, and it affects you more than you probably realize.
...

http://arstechnica.c...ext-gen-filesystems/

Greetings all.

Since 2007 we have held an annual event that we call NANY (New Apps for the New Year), where we ask the coders who hang out on DonationCoder to create some new piece of free software and share it with the world.

This month we have a special edition of the DonationCoder newsletter.  Instead of our normal roundup of the best posts on the forums in the last month, this newsletter highlights the new software released during our new year NANY programming event.

The NANY event is not a competition -- anyone can participate and everyone who does gets a coffee mug commemorating the event.  Some of these are polished tools with mainstream appeal -- while others are rough around the edges or were written simply as an exercise by the coder.  They are mostly tools for Microsoft Windows.  All are free.

Visit here for descriptions, screenshots, videos, and downloads of all entries:

• https://www.donation...ndex.php?topic=37023