True.


By which I mean (for example) http://cs.stackexchange.com/a/1761 Edit -- and this even more obvious example, which I'd somehow forgotten about completely http://cs.stackexchange.com/a/1750

In those examples it's not actually failing at doing what it's supposed to do. But maybe that's not what you meant.

No, I worded it poorly. What I'm saying is that greedy algorithms, in the process of navigating only local optima, are almost guaranteed to overlook global optima in any sufficiently complex problem space. What I should have said was "deceived" not "failed." Which is why we have meta-heuristics, of course!

What SADIST decided that six week old babies should start crying real tears? My heart is forever and irrevocably broken

They're big globby round ones too. MiniPaz can still squeeze a cartoon teardrop when she really gives it the effort.

Pretty sure R Tape Loading error was the speccy - not enough memory on the ZX81 for loading errors it either worked or it didnt :-)

Anyway - through the wonders of emulation you can play it online

http://www.zx81stuff.org.uk/zx81/emulat ... ter%20Maze

Does anyone know of a website that will find the optimum route between a number of waypoints?

It seems that google maps has a limit of ten on the free version, but there are 14 on my list.

Activision has bought King (the people that make Candy Crush and Bubble Witch) for $5,900,000,000.

That's a lot of zeros.

Yeah, I thought that, but couldn't remember if it gave an error of its own (I would've been 5, I guess, when the zx81 completely died. Strangely, I remember it looking nothing like a zx81. I remember it having proper keys for a start. And red ones. My father insists that it was just a stock zx81 though.)

Also, more than Minecraft when Microsoft bought it. That's a lot of money.

More than Star Wars, too.

If it was red keys it could have been the official external keyboard

http://www.zx81museum.net/sinclairzx81hardware.html



Its weird the stuff you remember - i still remember how to copy games on it without a twin tape deck

FAST
RAND USR 836

Which basically loaded up your game and dropped you back into basic - with a C/0 message so you could then save the game back out to a fresh tape :-)

Fucking hell.

I suspect it makes quite a bit more money right now, so that's hardly surprising.

I used to work somewhere that introduced a paperless office and brand new IT system.

This system involved printing out a useless confirmation on a side of A4 every time you booked something... Which happened every 3 or 4 minutes.

With 15+ staff, we went through reams of paper that all ended up in the recycling bin.

I have a Game app on my phone for the video game store. Within it, it has a QR code for my reward card number.

This QR code has a refresh button that changes the look of the QR code every time it's pressed.

Why? My reward card number never changes?

I used to work somewhere that introduced a paperless office and brand new IT system.

This system involved printing out a useless confirmation on a side of A4 every time you booked something...

Exactly. Star Wars is a licence to spend $200+m making a film that hopefully won't suck. King is a licence to sit back and feel your arse grow as the money rolls in.

Sure but what happens when other companies come up with new and incredibly popular games? That value surely gets reduced.

Three King games were top 10 grossing games on both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store in the U.S. for second quarter 2015, marking the Company's sixth consecutive quarter with at least three titles in the top 10 grossing games list on one or both of these major U.S. mobile platforms
...
Gross bookings from non-Candy Crush Saga titles increased 30% year over year to $324 million, or 61% of total gross bookings in second quarter 2015

Now it's Christmas time, motherfuckers.

It's not as bad as I thought it was going to be.

"Here you are you lonely old cunt, now you can watch everyone else having fun at Christmas."

The wife has gone to St Louis. Which, turns out isn't on the coast, nor was it hit by Katrina.