Links again.

  • The birthday paradox is fucked up. I remember experiencing this once in high school, when in a room of 50 people it turned out that the girl next to me shared my birthday.
  • Robin pointed me to the Tierra Entertainment group, who remake old Sierra games with new graphics, digitized voice packs and what not - for free, and for more modern versions of Windows.
  • The things I’m seeing that are possible with modern browsers (read: not IE) are totally amazing. Like these “Uberlink List Menus“.
  • An old one, but a good one: hacking via Google.
  • I read a pretty good free online science fiction novel named The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect, hosted on k5. Like I said, it’s pretty good (nothing amazing).
  • The patent on the LZW algorithm used in GIFs is gone. This has actual implications for me, since one of the products I work with could definitely benefit from using GIF images - but I’m a little too paranoid to jump right in and start playing with them. Something tells me Unisys isn’t going to let these die quietly.

4 Comments »

  1. Matt said,

    June 19, 2003 @ 2:11 pm

    I hope the Tierra site does some of the space quest series, or police quest. I played a bit of kings quest when i was younger but i mainly played:

    Space Quest 2, 3
    Police Quest 2
    Manhunter
    NNIJA - this game ruled you just fought ninjas in differnt dojos and you could throw your sword.
    ALF - eat cats! eat pizzia! Dont get caught by Willy or the Dog Catcher!!

    .. .all on a tandy 1000 … sweet.

  2. derek said,

    June 19, 2003 @ 2:33 pm

    Agreed. Space Quest was great.

    Woo hoo on the LZW algorithm. I doubt it will last long, but I’ve always thought that image formats shouldn’t be patented anyway.

  3. Ron said,

    June 19, 2003 @ 3:36 pm

    Yeah, part of me says, “Fuck that intellectual property crap!”

    Then again, I’d be really pissed if I came up with something awesome that someone else marketed the crap out of and made zillions when I deserve the credit.

    I think that I’d mostly be mad about not getting credit, more so than the cash… but that’s another matter entirely…

  4. Tech Knight said,

    June 19, 2003 @ 5:40 pm

    The canadian patent on the lzw algorithm doesn’t expire until june something 2004 :(

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