What are you playing now?

[Rath Darkblade]

Hmm, I suppose. I've seen products advertised as "Simply the Best", and - all right - it's pretty obvious that it's not a breach of copyright of Tina Turner's song. (On the other hand, if they used Tina's image as well as the song title, that could be understood as Tina endorsing that product, which would be very, very different).

I certainly wouldn't write a book called "The Lord of the Rings", or "The Game of Thrones". I simply thought that "I, Robot" belongs in the same category, as it's very, very famous. It's not just one book, but a series of books. It's been covered by Hollywood too, although it's most famous for creating the Three Laws of Robotics. These three laws are pervasive throughout science fiction, and are referred to in many books, films, comics, and other media. They also impacted thought on ethics of artificial intelligence.

Before the Three Laws, people generally viewed robots with fear and hatred, as a kind of Frankenstein's monster, because robotics was a new technology and there were plenty of horror stories about robots becoming evil, etc. Asimov's books were the first to explore the differences and similarities between the robotic artificial intelligence and our "human intelligence". Are robots so different from us? If they can cross from AI to "human intelligence", could they gain sapience, and become indistinguishable from people? And if robots were the same as people, would turning them off be the same as putting them to sleep? Would destroying them, or making them obsolete, be treated the same as murder?

Eventually, Asimov's Three Laws put laypeople at ease with robots. They were adapted into film to create "Robby the Robot" in Forbidden Planet (1956), the android Bishop in Aliens (1986), RoboCop and its sequels (1987 onward), Robin Williams as the robot in Bicentennial Man (1999), etc. Of course, there are others too.

Whoops, I've digressed again ... *blush* But, well - I just can't imagine modern sci-fi without "I, Robot", or modern life without Asimov's contribution in general.

[Collector]

So the information about I, Robot was doubly wrong if not more. This is the problem when looking for the first release of some feature. I have seen similar claims about the first VGA game that were provably wrong, for example. Again Dynamix and Damon Slye is among the contenders.

[BBP]

Playing "hunt the spammer" at the Clue forum I moderate. >:(

[Tawmis]

Playing "hunt the spammer" at the Clue forum I moderate. >:(

I play that same game over at the Legend of Grimrock forums. I wish they'd just give me administrative access (since they won't listen to my other suggestions in the Moderator forum). The Druid-Stone forum is suffering the same thing; the Admins have vanished and it has NO moderators (I offered up my services there too).

[MusicallyInspired]

Today I was fooling around with a Tandy CoCo3 (Color Computer 3, TRS-80 family computer) emulator. For years and years my dad has owned (and I now still have) the CoCo3 version of King's Quest III but we've never been able to play it. Today I got to play it (though emulated) for the first time. It's a bit slow and pauses every time a sound starts and also the sound is only single-channel like standard DOS PC Speaker, but man was it interesting. Especially playing with composite colour mode. Also, apparently you can't move around with the arrow keys and you have to use a joystick, even though the game asks if you want to use a joystick or not. Unless there's some other way on the keyboard to control your character but I couldn't figure it out.

Now that I've learned how to run a Sierra game on the CoCo I'll have to give it another try. Still have it right here in my living room. The hardware is getting old though and stuff is not working as well. we'll see. Was also playing some early arcade games on the CoCo I remember playing that I loved like "Pooyan," "Downland," "Super Pitfall," "Rad Warrior," and "A Mazing World of Malcom Mortar." I also have the cartridge for "Dungeons of Daggorath" which was and still is a huge cult hit. First person dungeon crawler type game. I still haven't figured out the strange and very simplistic parser engine, but apparently it's quite good. Graphics are quite aged (of course) but the atmosphere is incredible especially with the clever use of the very limited sound chip the CoCo has.

I have so many nostalgic memories of all of these games and I can't wait to dive into them again and perhaps finish some of them.

[Collector]

I have a couple of Tandy diskette games that I have never been able to access. I would love to be able to at least extract the files from the disks. From trying to image them I just get messages that they are in a Tandy format.

[Rath Darkblade]

Playing "hunt the spammer" at the Clue forum I moderate. >:(

I play that same game over at the Legend of Grimrock forums. I wish they'd just give me administrative access (since they won't listen to my other suggestions in the Moderator forum). The Druid-Stone forum is suffering the same thing; the Admins have vanished and it has NO moderators (I offered up my services there too).

Isn't it usually possible to ban spammers by their name, or their IP address? That's what I usually do at the Terry Pratchett official forums, which I moderate. That usually does the trick.

[MusicallyInspired]

I have a couple of Tandy diskette games that I have never been able to access. I would love to be able to at least extract the files from the disks. From trying to image them I just get messages that they are in a Tandy format.

Emulators can read them in DSK format. There is also a CoCo emulator out there that can communicate with the host system it's being emulated under somehow. Might want to look into that. I never tried it but I read it. Specifically the one by Jeff Vavasour I think.

[Tawmis]

Playing "hunt the spammer" at the Clue forum I moderate. >:(

I play that same game over at the Legend of Grimrock forums. I wish they'd just give me administrative access (since they won't listen to my other suggestions in the Moderator forum). The Druid-Stone forum is suffering the same thing; the Admins have vanished and it has NO moderators (I offered up my services there too).

Isn't it usually possible to ban spammers by their name, or their IP address? That's what I usually do at the Terry Pratchett official forums, which I moderate. That usually does the trick.

Many spammers spoof their IP address. Or they're bots coming from a mess of IP ranges.

[BBP]

I can delete spammers' posts and ban them, but there's no admin around to prevent them from coming in. Over the past year things have gotten worse with them.

[Rath Darkblade]

That's too bad. Isn't there any other way to stop these idiots? *thinks* Maybe ... maybe it's possible to stop them from posting before you (or other mods) "approve" them, based on a list of known email addresses that are commonly used for spam. Something like that?

[Tawmis]

That's too bad. Isn't there any other way to stop these idiots? *thinks* Maybe ... maybe it's possible to stop them from posting before you (or other mods) "approve" them, based on a list of known email addresses that are commonly used for spam. Something like that?

The problem is that takes Admin access to configure (which she was saying she doesn't have) and that there's no admins present.

[Rath Darkblade]

Sigh. Hmm ... who owns the Clue forums? Someone must have started them at some point, and they would have Admin access. If BBP can get in touch with that person, maybe they can grant her Admin access? Or appoint an Admin? That would solve a lot of problems.

[BBP]

Sigh. Hmm ... who owns the Clue forums? Someone must have started them at some point, and they would have Admin access. If BBP can get in touch with that person, maybe they can grant her Admin access? Or appoint an Admin? That would solve a lot of problems.

Been trying to get in contact with him for a year now. I'm the only one who can chuck spam but since I'm a mod I cannot appoint any other staff.

[Rath Darkblade]

Oh. If he hasn't gotten back to you in a year, then he probably won't be doing it now.

Sounds to me like the owner of this forum just wanted someone he could blame when things go wrong, but without any power to actually change anything that needs changing.