There is a saying, "Neither a lender nor a borrower be.". At some point I twisted that in my mind to "Neither a leader nor a follower be" and have tried to live by both.
Not really lines of code as such, but in Visual Foxpro, opening a DBF (database table file) on a fileserver, from an application running on that fileserver, referring to the file using its local path rather than a mapped network drive file path, resulted in a big speedup. (the application typically runs on RDP servers, but can also be run directly on the fileserver, which we do for some heavy-duty processes)
In the 80s the malls usually had 1) an arcade, 2) at least one bookstore, sometimes two, 3) a toy/hobby store where you could buy RPGs and wargames, 4) a music store or two, and 5) 'food' of some kind. Good memories, though I rarely go to a mall these days.
Still using VFP9 to this day. Our application originated in ~1986 in dBase II, then we switched to FoxBase, then the various version of FoxPro. Currently in VFP 9. But, we still have to invoke Foxpro for DOS 2.5 (in DosBox) to edit some report layouts, because they were created in the DOS version in the 90s, and the automatic tool to 'transport' them to new versions crashes hard for reasons we were never able to figure out.
There's something called Scener (https://scener.com/about) that does something similar but it requires streaming service subscriptions. I love that this would work to share a DVD with friends, but there are probably legal problems around that, I'd think?
The reason the mural was so so noteworthy was because the last war fought on that particular planet happened at such an early level of development (cavalry charges, armored knights, etc).
I agree - I hate advertising in general, but that in niche magazines (as long as it isn't too obtrusive) servers a very useful purpose and I'm ok with it.
Yeah - and I get the impression that 5.0 isn't anything like 4.0, so maybe it wouldn't be as unpleasant as I've been fearing. I had been with two very long-lasting gaming groups (~35 years each) which both dissolved in the last couple of years, so maybe it's time to modernize.
There was some advertising, especially toward the back of the magazine, but since Dragon was published by TSR, they probably weren't relying on the ads for financial support.
In my case, I loved my Atari 800 and 800XL, but when the Amiga came out and someone brought theirs in to the university lab where I was working, I knew I had to have one. I finally got a 500 a couple of years later and still have it.
Back in the 90s, I semi-seriously considered building a pizza order module into our software. On Fridays our 25-person office usually got pizza, and I usually wound up spending a good 20 minutes going around and tabulating how many of what kinds of pizza we needed to suit everyone.
I don't spend much time on Facebook, but I use a Firefox extension from here: https://www.fbpurity.com/ which lets you get rid of (hide) a lot of the junk, including sponsored stuff. It would be unbearable for me otherwise.
I cracked a couple of games (that I owned - Fort Apocalypse, and some other one) by disassembling (by hand) the boot code and NOPing out the copy protection checks with a hex editor - I think I actually used a Forth utility to do that part.
I had a similar one I'd type in hex at $300, something like:
CALL -151
300:B5 00 20 ED FD E8 AD 30 C0 4C 00 03
300G
(that's a recreation I just worked out, but I think what I used to use was a little different - I forget what technique I used to use to get a semi-random character in the accumulator for it to print)
This filled the screen with scrolling garbage while buzzing the speaker.
I bought an NSA mug at the National Cryptologic Museum in 2000 or so. I was amused when it developed cracks and started leaking around the time Snowden was just getting into the news.
I use a Firefox extension called "F.B. Purity". It gives you a lot of control over what you see on Facebook. You can hide "People You May Know", among many other things.
https://www.fbpurity.com/