I love that windows 1.x had a tiling window manager. I think it's kind of a shame that mode died for so long.
The overlapping technology wasn't there. Tiling wasn't a 'feature' ;)
Run Windows 1.01 in your browser
71–80 of 93 posts
Re: Run Windows 1.01 in your browser
#72Played Reversi in Windows 1.01. Still lost. I will go hang my head in shame now.
The key to Reversi is to win the corners (EDIT: you can lose while still winning 2-3 corners, but losing the corners gives the opponent a much greater chance to take large chunks of the edges and then purse to turn whole rows). To win the corners, you must avoid the spots 1 out from the corners. To avoid being forced to take the spots 1 out from the corners, one strategy is to avoid the edges as long as possible, and then try to only take edge pieces with at least one gap to the corners, and one gap to the opponent.
You also want to keep your options open, to prevent being forced into taking the wrong piece near the edge or corners.
A simple strategy that works against this version relatively often is to at the start look for positions that will take some of the opponents pieces while ideally increasing your possible moves, while being as far from the edges as possible. Then when you are forced to put a piece near the edges, put it near the centre of an edge (as far from corners as possible).
By then the options will be so constrained you can start looking a at consequences of each option, with the goal being to avoid putting pieces near the corners.
I'm not a particularly good player, and I got 3 out of 4 corners on my first attempt by just relatively haphazardly following the above, which means the default settings and/or overall strength of this version is pretty weak.
Re: Run Windows 1.01 in your browser
#73Every time I see an emulator like this on HN, my mind is blown. Can someone explain to me and any other run-of-the-mill hackers reading this, how an emulator like this is made? I wouldn't even know where to start.
Run-of-the-mill hackers should know this. You pick a sufficiently low-level abstraction layer and implement it in Javascript. Everything above that layer 'just works'TM.
> Run-of-the-mill hackers should know this.
Do you really need to put the guy down for honestly admitting ignorance and trying to learn?
Anyway, "hacking" and computer science in general is diverse enough now that I wouldn't expect even an expert in any particular subfield to necessarily know anything about another. It's quite possible to be, say, an experienced database guru with a solid working knowledge of raytracing, network administration, and Unicode, without ever having touched anything related to emulators.
Re: Run Windows 1.01 in your browser
#74I love that windows 1.x had a tiling window manager. I think it's kind of a shame that mode died for so long.
The overlapping technology wasn't there. Tiling wasn't a 'feature' ;)
From what I've heard, the overlapping technology was there as proven by its use in drop-down menus; the designers of the first version of Windows just thought tiling was a better way to go.
Re: Run Windows 1.01 in your browser
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
So that's: 1. Zork 2. running in the Infocom Virtual Machine 3. running in an IBM PC emulator 4. running in Javascript 6. running in x86 machine code and x86 maintains backwards compatibility with that original IBM PC through 7. hardware instruction set translation It's nice to know all those transistors aren't sitting idle.
For fewer layers (and faster playing) you can use Parchment: http://iplayif.com/?story=http://www.batmantis.com/zorks/zor... Though the status line doesn't work... I should fix that. And if you like Zork, try these modern classics: Lost pig: http://iplayif.com/?story=http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-arc... Spider and Web: http://iplayif.com/?story=http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-arc...
Great. I like those interactive fiction and will play Lost pig :)
What is missing is some sort of save game option via web storage. And maybe you should give some example links on the first page.
bookmarked
Re: Run Windows 1.01 in your browser
#76Every time I see an emulator like this on HN, my mind is blown. Can someone explain to me and any other run-of-the-mill hackers reading this, how an emulator like this is made? I wouldn't even know where to start.
The same way as any other emulator. Programs for any computer are just a sequence of bytes - i.e. just another file format. So you write something that interpret that file format. It's not fundamentally any different from writing, say, a PDF viewer.
Re: Run Windows 1.01 in your browser
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Run-of-the-mill hackers should know this. You pick a sufficiently low-level abstraction layer and implement it in Javascript. Everything above that layer 'just works'TM.
> Run-of-the-mill hackers should know this. Do you really need to put the guy down for honestly admitting ignorance and trying to learn? Anyway, "hacking" and computer science in general is diverse enough now that I wouldn't expect even an expert in any particular subfield to necessarily know anything about another. It's quite possible to be, say, an experienced database guru with a solid working knowledge of raytrac…
I wasn't putting him down. Just noting that his use of the word 'hacker' is not correct. There's a minimum bar to clear to call one's self a hacker and understanding how to substitute part of a software stack with another one is above that bar (in my opinion).
Re: Run Windows 1.01 in your browser
#78Glad it boots to desktop, not metro.
Re: Run Windows 1.01 in your browser
#79The first time I ran this something went wrong I somehow didn't manage to even boot in to windows but found myself at the command line, with only the DOS floppy disks available. The true Windows 1.01 experience.
C:
CD windows
winRe: Run Windows 1.01 in your browser
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Run-of-the-mill hackers should know this. Do you really need to put the guy down for honestly admitting ignorance and trying to learn? Anyway, "hacking" and computer science in general is diverse enough now that I wouldn't expect even an expert in any particular subfield to necessarily know anything about another. It's quite possible to be, say, an experienced database guru with a solid working knowledge of raytrac…
I wasn't putting him down. Just noting that his use of the word 'hacker' is not correct. There's a minimum bar to clear to call one's self a hacker and understanding how to substitute part of a software stack with another one is above that bar (in my opinion). See: http://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html
Hmm.
What I'm about to say probably sounds a lot like something that somebody who lacks impressive technical prowess (like myself, self-admittedly) would say, but I think that being a "hacker" is almost more of a mindset. Or, alternatively, there is a hacker mindset, and a lot of the folks here can identify with, and exhibit, that mindset. Specifically, the hacker mindset means that you're always curious, always learning, always improving, just like the poster who asked the question above.