Welcome back, Destri!

Yaayy! Destri's baaaack!

Soo good to see that ol' avatar once again in the thread.

Ain't RL an umbrella seller?

Can I just jump in here, and quickly say thank you to all the members who have been reporting the spam links we've had recently. Haven't had so many pm's in years...

Thanks guys, it's much appreciated

I don't know what's going on with this, I've been seeing a lot more spam posts than I thought I would here lately. Maybe they've found a new way to crack the anti-robot systems you put in place during account creation? That, or some people are just really dedicated to their shady advertising tactics.

Anyway's you're welcome, and thanks for being so quick on the uptake deleting those posts, too.

This post has been edited by Thomas Kaira: Feb 7 2011, 12:37 AM

I noticed a few more spam posts than usual, I've reported quite a few myself within the last month or so.

So I posted a Happy Birthday in the birthday thread for Zerker this morning and looked up his age for the post. According to this site's info, today was his 14th birthday. It caused me to reflect to when I was 14...1976...and to think about the changes and inovations since. This might be better in a thread all it's own, but it's a cool topic for discussion. Stuff that has become common place and/or taken for granted since the USA celebrated it's 200th birthday.

For example...no personal computers in 1976. No cell phones. The very first Space Shuttle, Enterprise, was rolled out of it's hanger and hadn't flown yet. Etc., etc., you get the picture....

Wait, did they have video games in 1976?

I think the Atari 2600 may have been out...not sure. When I was 11 (1973), my father bought a video game system for the family as a Christmas gift. It was made by Motorola and was called "Odessy". A version of "Pong" was one of the games. There were translucent plastic overlays that you would place on your TV screen, held on by static electricity, to provide the "graphics". Like for the Pong-style game, which they called "Tennis", the overlay was a tennis court. The actual game graphics were just white light sprites on a gray background.

This post has been edited by TheOtherRick: Feb 7 2011, 04:31 PM

I remember getting an Atari, if you used their games it was just like you said - but you could also put codes in it to make your own graphics and sounds - by 10's:


10
20
30

etc. Of course, they were still in black and white.

The only one I was ever able to do was lightning flashing and crackling across the screen - then a message of my making flashing on the screen. I looped it so it would keep going - and there was no way to save it, you had to put it back in each time I think.

Woke up this morning. Realized the Packers were still Super Bowl champs.

Not a good start to the day.

I have felt that way everyday since Seattle beat my Saints a month ago...

Certainly on the Atari 400 you could hook it up to a tape deck to save stuff. There's something that's vanished though - tape. The 4kB of ram was a bit of a nightmare though, as was the weird varsion of basic it used.

I can still remember when poeple didn't have PCs (over here anyway) in the early 90s and then the excitment when you got over 100MHz processors. My first had 133MHz with 64kB of memory and a 500MB harddrive... and I'm not even that old.

On the subject of spambots is it just me or have the last couple not actually been advertising? There was the one which copied the top post and replied it on ancient topics and then the one which told you how great the site was - what purpose did they serve to anyone? (What purpose does any spambot serve - has anyone ever followed the link and bought stuff?)

EDIT: if we're going to talk sport do I get to whinge about the six nations results?

This post has been edited by Olen: Feb 7 2011, 06:15 PM

Clicking on the link loads the spamware onto your PC. The one that was praising the site showed the link as Google (dot com) - but if you click on "reply" you can see the entire link - it did not take you to the real google site, but a copy page of that site.

Never click on these links unless you know and have tremendous faith in your Anti-virus/anti-spamware/anti-adware - etc.

PS: Whinage is always welcome! Lets hear it !!

Woke up this morning, and realized that the Jets weren't Super Bowl champs.

Bad enough that Green Bay had to knock my beloved G-Men out of the playoffs. Another twist of the knife when Gang Green lost to the Steelers. But a victory by the Steelers would have made the close loss by the Jets look better by comparison, and my wrath over the NFC Wildcard was still unabated.

Well, here's to next year, and prayers for a Giants-Jets Super Bowl.

This post has been edited by Captain Hammer: Feb 7 2011, 06:38 PM

Or use something secure for browsing such things, like freeBSD

As for whinging, I'll leave it until after next weekend (not that there's any doubt over the results...).

This is my 3rd winter in Alabama. We are under yet another Winter Storm Warning for tonight into tomorrow. The part that cracks me up is that the "warning" is for 1"-3" of snow. This would have been cause for just a "Winter Weather Advisory" back in New York. I know they don't have the equipment to deal with snow here, but it still amazes me how the locals freak out and close the schools before the first flake hits the ground.

Winter advisary was for six inches of snow here, we ended up with nearly 3 feet so far. I'm stranded and its showing no signs of letting up.

Well, school's out again here in the Metroplex. The snowfall isn't half as bad as the first time. Oh well, count your blessings, right? Maybe I can actually go out and do something this time.

Winter wonderland, round 3, a whole inch of snow. Didn't stick on the roads, so the commute will just be horrible instead of horrific.

We’ve had the perfect little snow dusting here. Pretty and fluffy on all the trees, just a little wet on the road. It’s the kind of day that makes me relentlessly cheerful.