My oldest son is 5, and I am having some of the same thoughts.
What system did you do the demos on in the 1990s? Might a "classic" system like that not be the "contained" environment you are looking for as a learning environment? And you are even good at that! Systems like the C64, Amiga 500 and Amiga 1200 are still references for current demoscene competitions. They are timeless, you can find them on eBay or emulate them, and your son will be able to show his skills on those even 10 years from now.
If you are afraid that these are not cool enough for your son, fear not. At retro events like VCF, Pixel Heaven, or in the dedicated area at Gamescom, children line up to play on those systems, and for some it is an element of great pride to be experts in them.
My answer to your question looks like this at the moment: I will start with a CBM 8032, after showing him how arcade games of the 1980s were. Then I will add a bit of color, sound, and maybe sprites, via a VIC-20 or C64. And then, if things go well, we can add multitasking and more OS and chipset features by exploring one of the last cool systems where you could try to master every secret: the Amiga.
It doesn't have to be "retro for life". But I think that learning with a "simple" past like this, also makes you better appreciate the present and the future.
While PC floppy drives are mechanically the same as Amiga floppy drives, the controller that is attached to the drive is different. The controller used in PCs can't handle the stream coming from Amiga disks. The first thing I would do is preserve those disks by creating an image with a custom controller. I am positive that the music and art can be converted, but that can be done later. First, save (image) those disks!
OK, well that changes things. This wasn't immediately obvious from the page linked, nor the demoscene link[1] contained therein. I understood from that page that the links to ADA, Pouet etc. were sources of demos with copyright holder permission (I'm not actually sure this is 100% true), not that Cloanto had sought permission from the demo creators in question for their blessing to bundle their wares with Amiga Forever.
I can't actually find this list of demos in the documentation though, is it online?
Thanks for the feedback. The page [1] has been updated to clarify this detail. The documentation is installed with the package (Help menu, or press F1 to open it), but if you would like to contact me @mikelabatt I can send you a copy.
Me and my colleague Nicola were the ones who asked for these permissions. Iconic demos like Roots 2.0 and World of Commodore could not be included in the historical context for the reasons you mentioned. If someone does not want their work to appear in a commercial book project or in an electronic curation, I respect that. We could do better, like featuring more recent works. Perhaps one day it will be done, like the website (OTOH, some say that it has a Craigslist-like appeal to it). This always was a niche project driven by passion, and resources are tight.
A century ago engineer Luigi Stipa did experiments with several flying wing aircraft designs. Here is Stipa-Caproni's "intubed propeller" from the 1930s:
Indeed WPA3 is required for "Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6" only, but Ubiquiti already stated in a post that they are working on WPA3, even offering it as a software upgrade for many of their older models:
They're still providing these to Windows XP Embedded customers like those running it in ATMs, POS systems and industrial control systems until 2019. It's probably been out since march like the other OSes for those users, so they just released the same patch to everyone else.
I surely won't be doing it myself, but I can imagine some spook making this small personal sacrifice of becoming an employee at some Windows XP shop just to smuggle patches to his mothership for vulnerability analysis.
I hope that the fact this patch was signed in February doesn't imply that it was published in February and available to every semi-competent cyberwarfare unit in the world.
QA maybe? Imagine the shitstorm headlines Microsoft would get if they managed to accidentally brick every Windows XP computer in the field with an automatic security update.
A robots.txt file is not any sort of license (anti-license?). It's existence has no bearing on the question of if the IA should be allowed to do what it does. It is only intended to provide helpful information to web crawllers.
Well yes, the whole point of robots.txt is that it's impolite to refuse to follow it, and doing so and getting caught might get you banned from the site.
That's a really good point. I'm not a fan of Internet Archive ignoring robots.txt, but if I'm really unhappy about it I can block their robot in Apache using .htaccess rules (as long as they continue using archive.org_bot as their user agent).
How is this any different from a human doing the same? The internet is meant to be open, it's free information after all. If you don't like it put your stuff behind a login
I see it as a subtle difference of automation and scale, plus the fact that the Internet Archive is not just saving these copies, but also making them available.
Imagine standing on the public road and taking a picture of your neighbor's home (or face) for your own use. Is that the same as a large company taking pictures of all homes (or faces) of the world, and making them available to the entire world, forever?
I could not find any source confirming this, but item 080 on the list is "Television cameras, digital cameras and video camera recorders".
If this indeed became effective July 1, 2016, wouldn't it mean that the 30-minute video recording limitation which is in place on some consumer devices to avoid a small duty (around 5%) can now be lifted?
It looks like these devices are indeed affected by a change which came into effect on July 1, 2016. However, this is going to be a stepwise reduction of 0.8% points rather than a complete elimination. So this month the duty changed from 4.9% to 4.1%.
> If this indeed became effective July 1, 2016, wouldn't it mean that the 30-minute video recording limitation which is in place on some consumer devices to avoid a small duty (around 5%) can now be lifted?
I certainly hope so, 30-minute video tax is one of the stupidest EU regulations. It is outright antidemocratic, it makes it unnecessary difficult for regular citizens to purchase equipment to make documentaries and porn.
What system did you do the demos on in the 1990s? Might a "classic" system like that not be the "contained" environment you are looking for as a learning environment? And you are even good at that! Systems like the C64, Amiga 500 and Amiga 1200 are still references for current demoscene competitions. They are timeless, you can find them on eBay or emulate them, and your son will be able to show his skills on those even 10 years from now.
If you are afraid that these are not cool enough for your son, fear not. At retro events like VCF, Pixel Heaven, or in the dedicated area at Gamescom, children line up to play on those systems, and for some it is an element of great pride to be experts in them.
My answer to your question looks like this at the moment: I will start with a CBM 8032, after showing him how arcade games of the 1980s were. Then I will add a bit of color, sound, and maybe sprites, via a VIC-20 or C64. And then, if things go well, we can add multitasking and more OS and chipset features by exploring one of the last cool systems where you could try to master every secret: the Amiga.
It doesn't have to be "retro for life". But I think that learning with a "simple" past like this, also makes you better appreciate the present and the future.