Zaak

As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs.

— Maurice Wilkes

Ruby is more of a Smalltalk than a Lisp.

Notch has said that when he "upgrades" the DCPU spec, the old CPUs will continue to work as they have, but new CPUs will become available. I don't have the reference handy though.

Maybe that's why his code is buggy?

I love the games Notch makes, but he's not perfect.

You could run your spaceship computer like that, but you could also install a multitasking system that allows you to download files from your favorite space BBS while playing a game of solitaire and plotting the course to your next mining asteroid.

Actually, uClinux doesn't require an MMU, and it's been merged into the main line of kernel development.

True, but there's no information on the display modes or the framebuffer format.

I very much hope there will be some kind of memory protection mechanism. Virtual memory would enable wonderful things.

Notch's original intention was to implement a real CPU like the 6502, but he decided to create a CPU optimized for software emulation instead.

The PDP-8 was designed to be inexpensive to implement with the hardware available at the time. It would not be an ideal choice for this purpose.

You're free to choose or write software for it that encodes three 5-bit characters in a 16-bit byte if you like.

I expect that inter-computer communication will be more like it was in the 80s, with swapping floppies and dial-up BBSs being the norm. It's still possible to get viruses that way, but there won't be worms spreading autonomously through the entire system.

I can imagine how an economy of reputation could arise where some people are trusted to distribute malware-free code.

I expect that there will be some kind of default OS released with the game, and that many alternatives will pop up very quickly.

It will not run Linux, because Linux requires a 32-bit CPU with megabytes of RAM. Someone might write a Linux-like system for it though.

It is possible that someone will implement versions of those languages, but this CPU is so memory and speed constrained that you'd be hard pressed to get much useful done. And if the speed of your programs executing turns out to be relevant to success in the game, then people using an interpreted language will be at a possibly decisive disadvantage.

That said, I can see a nice friendly language becoming popular for non-time-critical tasks where ease of experimentation is most important. I just hope it's not BASIC. :)

Notch was at least involved in the original concept for Scrolls. I don't know if he's been involved in the actual development.

On an 80286, OS/2 could only run a single instance of DOS due to that processor's lack of a true virtual 8086 mode.

A government doesn't have to take down your satellite if they can persuade you to do it for them. Jail time can be a powerful persuasion.

And if your orbiting data haven is objectionable enough there's always http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapon

Actually, the complexity of a modern CPU is mainly in making things run fast. Building an in-order, no-cache, single-issue ARM capable of running uClinux doesn't seem all that difficult. The cycle time would be horrible though. You might not live long enough to watch it boot.

My mind boggles at the sheer size of 8M RAM in minecraft...

For a long time it was common knowledge that computers last longer if you keep them cold. It's only been in the past few years that evidence has been shown that moderately high temperatures do not appreciably shorten equipment life.

A mission to Mars is guaranteed to be the most complex space mission ever attempted. Every additional rocket you need for the mission adds complexity. Complexity is the enemy of reliability.

What happens to your Mars departure window when the rocket carrying your life support system goes off course and is destroyed by the range safety officer?

I expect there are many people who would find that very unappealing. I also expect that there are people who would put down the money right now if you would let them.

It doesn't. However, the more launches required to assemble your spacecraft, the more chances there are for something to go wrong.

I'm glad that Richard Stallman and his uncompromising position exist.

I'm also glad that his is not the only voice in the open source/free software community.

The most popular and well-studied public-key encryption systems use factoring, but there are lots of other proposed schemes. The ability to quickly factor products of large primes would cause a temporary upset while alternative systems are brought in as replacements.

It's unlikely that the absence of projects like this would cause them to refrain from pushing repressive legislation.

You have to start with at least one well-known host.

That bugs me too. I have started a small project to make a more realistic water simulation, and found it to be quite a bit more involved than I had expected. Just adding pressure would fix the problem you mentioned, and would probably be pretty easy to do. Adding velocity so that the water sloshes properly seems to be the hard part.

Remember, before testing or reconfiguring, always mount a scratch monkey.

http://catb.org/jargon/html/S/scratch-monkey.html

I always figured it was because of the layout problem of getting many cashier stations clustered together at the end of a long queue area. I hadn't thought about the psychological effect of a single long line though.