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Silicon Dreams
''Silicon Dreams'' is a trilogy of interactive fiction games developed by Level 9 Computing during the 1980s. The first game was ''Snowball'', released during 1983, followed a year later by ''Return to Eden'', and then by ''The Worm in Paradise'' during 1985. The next year they were vended together as the first, second and last of the Silicon Dreams. As with most Level 9 games, the trilogy used an interpreted language termed A-code and was usable in all major types of home computer of the time, on either diskette or cassette. Level 9 self-published each game separately, but the compilation was published by Telecomsoft, which sold it in the United States with the tradename Firebird and in Europe with the tradename Rainbird. The trilogy is set in a not too-distant future when humans have started colonising space. For the first two instalments the player has the role of Kim Kimberley, an undercover agent, whose goal in ''Snowball'' is to save the colonist's spacecraft from crashin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Level 9 Computing
Level 9 was a British developer of computer software, active between 1981 and 1991. Founded by Mike, Nicholas and Pete Austin, the company produced software for the BBC Micro, Nascom, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Oric, Atari, Lynx 48k, RML 380Z, Amstrad CPC, MSX, Amiga, Apple II, Memotech MTX, and Enterprise platforms and is best known for its successful text adventure games until a general decline in the text adventure market forced their closure in June 1991. Level 9's first release was an extension to Nascom BASIC called ''Extension Basic''. The first game, also for the Nascom, was called ''Fantasy'' and was similar to ''Valhalla'', but with no graphics. Other products from that era were ''Missile Defence'', ''Bomber'' and ''Space Invasion'' — all for the Nascom. The tapes were duplicated and sent out by mail order by the brothers based on orders generated by the classified advertisements they ran in the ''Computing Today'' magazine. They were originally based in High Wyco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Compact Cassette
The Compact Cassette or Musicassette (MC), also commonly called the tape cassette, cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Ottens and his team at the Dutch company Philips in 1963, Compact Cassettes come in two forms, either already containing content as a prerecorded cassette (''Musicassette''), or as a fully recordable "blank" cassette. Both forms have two sides and are reversible by the user. Although other tape cassette formats have also existed - for example the Microcassette - the generic term ''cassette tape'' is normally always used to refer to the Compact Cassette because of its ubiquity. Its uses have ranged from portable audio to home recording to data storage for early microcomputers; the Compact Cassette technology was originally designed for dictation machines, but improvements in fidelity led to it supplanting the stereo 8-track cartridge and reel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Counter-intelligence
Counterintelligence is an activity aimed at protecting an agency's intelligence program from an opposition's intelligence service. It includes gathering information and conducting activities to prevent espionage, sabotage, assassinations or other intelligence activities conducted by, for, or on behalf of foreign powers, organizations or persons. Many countries will have multiple organisations focusing on a different aspect of counterintelligence, such as domestic, international, and counter-terrorism. Some states will formalise it as part of the police structure, such as the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Others will establish independent bodies, such as the United Kingdom's MI5, others have both intelligence and counterintelligence grouped under the same agency, like the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). History Modern tactics of espionage and dedicated government intelligence agencies developed over the course of the late-19th century. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Service
National service is the system of voluntary government service, usually military service. Conscription is mandatory national service. The term ''national service'' comes from the United Kingdom's National Service (Armed Forces) Act 1939. The length and nature of national service depends on the country in question. In some instances, national service is compulsory, and citizens living abroad can be called back to their country of origin to complete it. In other cases, national service is voluntary. Many young people spend one or more years in such programmes. Compulsory military service typically requires all citizens to enroll for one or two years, usually at age 18 (later for university-level students). Most conscripting countries conscript only men, but Norway, Sweden, Israel, Eritrea, Morocco and North Korea conscript both men and women. Voluntary national service may require only three months of basic military training. The US equivalent is Selective Service. In the Unite ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuclear Fusion
Nuclear fusion is a reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei are combined to form one or more different atomic nuclei and subatomic particles ( neutrons or protons). The difference in mass between the reactants and products is manifested as either the release or absorption of energy. This difference in mass arises due to the difference in nuclear binding energy between the atomic nuclei before and after the reaction. Nuclear fusion is the process that powers active or main-sequence stars and other high-magnitude stars, where large amounts of energy are released. A nuclear fusion process that produces atomic nuclei lighter than iron-56 or nickel-62 will generally release energy. These elements have a relatively small mass and a relatively large binding energy per nucleon. Fusion of nuclei lighter than these releases energy (an exothermic process), while the fusion of heavier nuclei results in energy retained by the product nucleons, and the resulting reaction is endo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ammonia
Ammonia is an inorganic compound of nitrogen and hydrogen with the formula . A stable binary hydride, and the simplest pnictogen hydride, ammonia is a colourless gas with a distinct pungent smell. Biologically, it is a common nitrogenous waste, particularly among aquatic organisms, and it contributes significantly to the nutritional needs of terrestrial organisms by serving as a precursor to 45% of the world's food and fertilizers. Around 70% of ammonia is used to make fertilisers in various forms and composition, such as urea and Diammonium phosphate. Ammonia in pure form is also applied directly into the soil. Ammonia, either directly or indirectly, is also a building block for the synthesis of many pharmaceutical products and is used in many commercial cleaning products. It is mainly collected by downward displacement of both air and water. Although common in nature—both terrestrially and in the outer planets of the Solar System—and in wide use, ammonia is both caust ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
40 Eridani
40 Eridani is a triple star system in the constellation of Eridanus, abbreviated 40 Eri. It has the Bayer designation Omicron2 Eridani, which is Latinized from ο2 Eridani and abbreviated Omicron2 Eri or ο2 Eri. Based on parallax measurements taken by the Gaia mission, it is about 16.3 light-years from the Sun. The primary star of the system, designated 40 Eridani A and named Keid, is easily visible to the naked eye. It is orbited by a binary pair whose two components are designated 40 Eridani B and C, and which were discovered on January 31, 1783, by William Herschel. It was again observed by Friedrich Struve in 1825 and by Otto Struve in 1851. In 1910, it was discovered that although component B was a faint star, it was white in color. This meant that it had to be a small star; in fact it was a white dwarf, the first discovered.''White Dwarfs'', E. Schatzman, Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1958. , p. 1 Although it is neither the closest white dwarf, nor the b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stasis (fiction)
A stasis or stasis field, in science fiction, is a confined area of space in which time has been stopped or the contents have been rendered motionless. Overview A stasis field is imagined to be a region in which a stasis process is in effect. Stasis fields in fictional settings often have several common characteristics. These include infinite or nearly infinite rigidity, making them "unbreakable objects" and a perfect or nearly-perfect reflective surface. Most science fiction plots rely on a physical device to establish this region. When the device is deactivated, the stasis field collapses, and the stasis effect ends. Time is often suspended in stasis fields. Such fields thus have the additional property of protecting non-living materials from deterioration. This time dilation can be, from an in-universe perspective, absolute; something thrown into the field, has the field triggered and then reactivated, would fly out as if nothing had happened. Storylines using such fields of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Terraforming
Terraforming or terraformation ("Earth-shaping") is the hypothetical process of deliberately modifying the atmosphere, temperature, surface topography or ecology of a planet, moon, or other body to be similar to the environment of Earth to make it habitable for humans to live on. The concept of terraforming developed from both science fiction and actual science. Carl Sagan, an astronomer, proposed the planetary engineering of Venus in 1961, which is considered one of the first accounts of the concept. The term was coined by Jack Williamson in a science-fiction short story ("Collision Orbit") published in 1942 in '' Astounding Science Fiction'', although terraforming in popular culture may predate this work. Even if the environment of a planet could be altered deliberately, the feasibility of creating an unconstrained planetary environment that mimics Earth on another planet has yet to be verified. While Venus, Earth, Mars, and even the Moon have been studied in relation to the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Undo
Undo is an interaction technique which is implemented in many computer programs. It erases the last change done to the document, reverting it to an older state. In some more advanced programs, such as graphic processing, undo will negate the last command done to the file being edited. With the possibility of undo, users can explore and work without fear of making mistakes, because they can easily be undone. The expectations for undo are easy to understand: to have a predictable functionality, and to include all "undoable" commands. Usually undo is available until the user undoes all executed operations. But there are some actions which are not stored in the undo list, and thus they cannot be undone. For example, ''save file'' is not undoable, but is queued in the list to show that it was executed. Another action which is usually not stored, and thus not undoable, is ''scrolling'' or ''selection''. The opposite of undo is ''redo''. The redo command reverses the undo or advances t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Random Access Memory
Random-access memory (RAM; ) is a form of computer memory that can be read and changed in any order, typically used to store working Data (computing), data and machine code. A Random access, random-access memory device allows data items to be read (computer), read or written in almost the same amount of time irrespective of the physical location of data inside the memory, in contrast with other direct-access data storage media (such as hard disks, CD-RWs, DVD-RWs and the older Magnetic tape data storage, magnetic tapes and drum memory), where the time required to read and write data items varies significantly depending on their physical locations on the recording medium, due to mechanical limitations such as media rotation speeds and arm movement. RAM contains multiplexer, multiplexing and demultiplexing circuitry, to connect the data lines to the addressed storage for reading or writing the entry. Usually more than one bit of storage is accessed by the same address, and RAM ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Text File
A text file (sometimes spelled textfile; an old alternative name is flatfile) is a kind of computer file that is structured as a sequence of lines of electronic text. A text file exists stored as data within a computer file system. In operating systems such as CP/M and MS-DOS, where the operating system does not keep track of the file size in bytes, the end of a text file is denoted by placing one or more special characters, known as an end-of-file marker, as padding after the last line in a text file. On modern operating systems such as Microsoft Windows and Unix-like systems, text files do not contain any special EOF character, because file systems on those operating systems keep track of the file size in bytes. Most text files need to have end-of-line delimiters, which are done in a few different ways depending on operating system. Some operating systems with record-orientated file systems may not use new line delimiters and will primarily store text files with lines separat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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