Rocksteady's epic bucks the trend of unfinished, unpolished launch code.
It's a sad fact that this generation's big releases are often playing catch-up on their promises post-launch - a "release now, fix later" mentality that developer Rocksteady thankfully doesn't appear to subscribe to in its excellent Batman Arkham Knight. Having played the PlayStation 4 review code extensively, we're pleased to see the game is set to launch in a very refined, polished state. As the finale to the Arkham saga, it's a superb production, but crucially it also turns in a slick, stable playing experience with solid performance on day one.
A full analysis is under way, but in the meantime we can offer a quick, spoiler-free taster of in-game performance based on the PlayStation 4 version of the game (naturally, we'll cover all three versions next week). Full disclosure: footage here runs from a Sony debug unit, using code that Rocksteady is clearly comfortable handing to critics ahead of launch. As such, you'll likely spot a familiar Eurogamer name (amongst other production info) watermarked into our captures - Warner Bros was unable to provide clean code ahead of its embargo. Regardless, the analysis still paints a solid picture of what you can expect on release in a few days.
First off, in line with most open-world games this generation Arkham Knight is capped at 30fps, in this case backed by an adaptive v-sync. This works out nicely in practice: unlike the last-gen iterations of the series that used a similar setup, dips below 30fps on PS4 are relatively uncommon across the run of play. In effect, this means tearing only creeps in at exceptional points, such as heavy interplay with physics while driving the Batmobile. Thankfully screen-tear is also difficult to catch by eye even when it does flare up, owing to Gotham's darker colour palette.
A frame-rate analysis of Batman: Arkham Knight on PS4 shows impressive returns. It's a strong 30fps read-out, with a just few dips on display when hurtling down Gotham's littered alleyways. Everything outside of this runs just as it should.
As for frame-rate, aside from one streaming stutter as we're given control, the rest of play is locked at a consistent, smooth 30fps. We get seamless transitions between gameplay and cut-scenes too, which really brings this consistency to light over the breadth of a play session. The only hitch is in fast Batmobile pursuits, where the frame-rate dips to 26fps in one segment. Everything else - from effects-heavy tank combat to swoops across the city with a grappling hook - just cruises along at a clean 30fps. No stuttering, no frame-pacing issues, just a continuous line - as it should be.
Having sunk many hours into the game, the stability of the build here is laudable. Our playthrough went almost entirely bug free, with only a faint flicker of pop-in for geometry and light maps at range, too far away from the player to be at all perceptible during play. The only real bug we encountered was a collision detection blip at the 50 per cent mark, causing us to fall through the game world in one specific spot while in the Batmobile. Fortunately, the rest of the adventure went uninterrupted, and we suspect we got unlucky in this one case.
Having almost completed the game - in terms of the main mission path, at least - it's safe to say Arkham Knight's opening act (from which we plucked our test clips) is indicative of the performance, quality and production values of the full package. It's a slick, confident showing from Rocksteady we can't wait to spend more time with.
Got stuck going hands-on yourself? Our Batman: Arkham Knight walkthrough is live now.
Editor's note: While Warner Bros. supplied us with final code to run from a debug unit, we'll be holding off on our review until launch day - June 23rd - once we've had experience with the game on a retail console, in compliance with our review policy.
Our Batman: Arkham Knight walkthrough continues.


Discussion in 'Vintage Magazines' started by iluvjeisa, May 2, 2009.
This issue has Carre Otis and Christy in lengthy eds...Linda on the cover by Meisel of course.
God i LOVE this cover, and how fantastic that Polly is there.
I'm not sure what I think of Linda looking wittily strangulated by the title, would it have been better if she'd been at the forefront of the letter? I suppose that would have messed with the perspective.
For some reason.....I like it. When I realized it was Polly Mellen and the team looking up at her, this cover gained a new dimension. Linda is the epitome of Vogue, and they are mesmerized by her perfection....and Linda, well she's strangled, but she's the most formidable creature on earth.
Carre Otis by Michael Roberts....rocking the night.
in the first pic she looks a lot like doutzen.
the last carre scan..her smile..such a bad girrl!
^^That is simply stunning, still...after all this years i love it.
Yes, this is one of my favourite issues of Vogue Italia....real Meisel greatness here.
Love the cover as well. Great that Polly is on it too.
It would be so dreamy if Meisel does a new editorial shoot using Christy!


The Cybex VR3 strength circuit is the latest in selectorized strength machines from the Cybex corporation. We have a 16 piece complete strength line available for sale in great working condition. These are commercial grade strength machines and have come directly from a facility. Cybex prides itself on designing their machines based upon scientific principles and effective engineering. The VR3 line delivers striking aesthetics, innovative and bio-mechanically sound designs and extreme durability. We can also repaint the equipment to your color of choice.


text:
A Message from Carnegie Council: Democracy Threatened and Renewed
The siege of the U.S. Capitol by a rampaging mob marks one of the darkest days in the nation's history. The U.S. has suffered attacks from enemies foreign, but never before have enemies domestic engaged in riots and insurrection urged on by a sitting president.
This America on display is not the America the world has watched with wonder and respect since the Constitution was ratified in 1789, beginning one of the world's greatest and longest-lasting experiments in representative democracy.
The shocking images of shameful looting and the desecration of the U.S. Capitol will linger for years, etched in imaginations as vividly as the attacks on Pearl Harbor and on 9/11. But as powerful as the images of physical violence are, the violence done to America's democratic institutions may run deeper and last longer, undermining their very foundations.
It will be no easy task to undo the damage to our nation's institutions. But this process can advance if leaders and citizens are called to account to look beyond personal ambition and serve a higher purpose—one rooted in ethical reflection and practice.
Carnegie Council is committed to the rigorous pursuit of truth, to engaging with all of you to pursue with integrity the values and interests that hold us together rather than those that drive us apart.
We have always believed that democracy, with all its imperfections, is an essential endeavor, never complete. History shows us that the experiment in democracy has always been difficult, so we should not expect a free ride today or into the future. What makes democracy exceptional is its openness and its capacity for self-correction.
Ethical action is a powerful force for good. If we can make ethical choices today, we give humanity a future worthy of the name. We begin this year a new chapter—a low moment, but one that offers the possibility of reconciliation and renewal.
The need is urgent; the moment is now. Join us in re-dedicating ourselves to using the power of ethics to build a better world.
Stephen D. Hibbard
Chairman, Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs
Joel H. Rosenthal
President, Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs
FEB 7, 2023 • Podcast
Technology Governance and the Role of Multilateralism, with Amandeep Singh Gill
In this AIEI podcast Carnegie-Uehiro Fellow Wendell Wallach and Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen are joined by Ambassador Amandeep Singh Gill, UN Secretary-General Guterres' envoy on ...
C2GTalk: How will global warming impact society, both economically and socially? with Paulo Artaxo
Research on solar radiation modification is needed, especially in the Global South, to understand whether it could be an option for reducing climate risk, says ...
FEB 6, 2023 • Article
Ethics, Escalation, and Engagement in Ukraine and Beyond
Now that HIMAR and Patriot missiles as well as Leopard and Abrams tanks are on the way to Ukraine, NATO unity is at a high ...

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


why? is there no sound???
So where are the API?? How can I use them?
Shoot. I need this api badly for my project..But according? to some articles that i read , is only going be release a few months later which would be too late.Does anyone knows if there is an "experimental" version or a "beta" version for this api yet?
They use Macs and iPads because for the apple is not a competitors. They know they are? superior than apple.
im confused why are they using macbooks? and the ipad at google i/o?
Thumbs up for Nyan Cat? and Keyboard Cat cameo!
I hope that this new Player will allow VEVO and others publisher to open and don't restrict content streaming for? mobile platform… thumbs up please!
When is this API released ?? any ideas or guesses ?
pretend like your punching the person in front of you? ? promoting violence i see google …. i want to work for you .
Can this be used to serve protected content to my paid app? I'd like to provide streaming video to users who have purchased my app, but not to anyone? else over the web or otherwise.
Watching this from my Android handset? using youtube.


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Early in the Civil War the city of Philadelphia was chosen by the U.S. government to be used as a central location to create military hospitals for the care of sick and wounded Union soldiers and sailors. Mower General Hospital also known as Chestnut Hill Hospital, built in 1862 on a lot of 27 acres between Stenton, Germantown, Springfield and Abington avenues in Chestnut Hill, was one of these hospitals and became a subject of the photographic lens of Philadelphia photographer John Moran. Moran photographed a series of views of the innovatively-designed facility, predominately showing exteriors, but also a small number of interiors, which were issued as mounted photographs and stereographs soon after the facility was completed.
Designed as a pavilion hospital by Philadelphia architect John McArthur, Jr., the large facility was composed of a central enclosed complex of administrative and utility buildings. The complex was surrounded by a central corridor from which forty-seven patient wards radiated to theoretically better control the spread of infection. Strategically located opposite the Chestnut Hill depot of the Reading Railroad, Mower received and treated over 17,000 injured soldiers transported directly from the battlefield between January 1863 - May 1865. Patients were received at the entrance, assigned to a bed in the hospital, and treated by a staff of nearly 200 surgeons, nurses, and ward masters whose work was facilitated by tramways within the wards and specially designed carts to provide medical supplies and food.
Under the administration of Col. Charles H. Greenleaf and Surgeon In Charge, Dr. J. Hopkinson, the hospital provided not only medical and surgical care, but numerous on-site services for both the staff and patients, including housing for medical officers, a chapel and library, a post office, a band-stand for daily performances by a full band and drum corps, protection by guards and a fire-brigade, food preparation shops and storage houses, a barber shop, laundry building, and a dining room. The hospital also employed the most modern medical necessities of the era by utilizing fresh water from the Chestnut Hill water works, gas lighting, and indoor plumbing.


In mathematics and statisticsBasic Statistics Concepts for FinanceA solid understanding of statistics is crucially important in helping us better understand finance. Moreover, statistics concepts can help investors monitor, covariance is a measure of the relationship between two random variables. The metric evaluates how much – to what extent – the variables change together. In other words, it is essentially a measure of the variance between two variables (note that the variance of one variable equals the variance of the other variable). However, the metric does not assess the dependency between variables.
Positive covariance: Indicates that two variables tend to move in the same direction.
Negative covariance: Reveals that two variables tend to move in inverse directions.
In financeFinanceCFI's Finance Articles are designed as self-study guides to learn important finance concepts online at your own pace. Browse hundreds of finance articles and guides to learn about the cost of capital, financial analysis, ratios, multiples, rates of return, profitability metics, and how to evaluate the overall, the concept is primarily used in portfolio theory. One of its most common applications in portfolio theory is the diversificationDiversificationDiversification is a technique of allocating portfolio or capital to a mix of different investments. The ultimate goal of the diversification is to reduce the volatility of the portfolio by offsetting the losses of one asset class by the gains of another asset class. method, using the covariance between assets in a portfolio. By choosing assets that do not exhibit a high positive covariance with each other, the undiversifiable risk can be partially eliminated.
Covariance and correlation both primarily assess the relationship between variables. The closest analogy to the relationship between them is the relationship between the variance and standard deviationStandard DeviationFrom a statistics standpoint, the standard deviation of a data set is a measure of the magnitude of deviations between values of the observations contained.
Covariance measures the total variation of two random variables from their expected values. Using covariance, we can only gauge the direction of the relationship (whether the variables tend to move in tandem or show an inverse relationship). However, it does not indicate the strength of the relationship, nor the dependency between the variables.
On the other hand, correlation measures the strength of the relationship between variables. Correlation is the scaled measure of covariance. It is dimensionless. In other words, the correlation coefficient is always a pure value and not measured in any units.
John is an investor. His portfolio primarily tracks the performance of the S&P 500 and John wants to add the stock of ABC Corp. Before adding the stock to his portfolio, he wants to assess the directional relationship between the stock and the S&P 500.
John does not want to increase the unsystematic risk of his portfolio. Thus, he is not interested in owning securities in the portfolio that tend to move in the same direction.
2. Calculate the mean (average) prices for each asset.
3. For each security, find the difference between each value and mean price.
4. Multiply the results obtained in the previous step.
5. Using the number calculated in step 4, find the covariance.
In such a case, the positive covariance indicates that the price of the stock and the S&P 500 tend to move in the same direction.


text:
//  (C) Copyright John Maddock 2010.
//  Use, modification and distribution are subject to the
//  Boost Software License, Version 1.0. (See accompanying file
//  LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt)

#include <boost/type_traits.hpp>

//
// Just check that each trait actually exists, not
// that it gives the correct answer, we do that elsewhere:
//

typedef boost::add_const<int>::type t1;
typedef boost::add_cv<int>::type t2;
typedef boost::add_lvalue_reference<int>::type t3;
typedef boost::add_pointer<int>::type t4;
typedef boost::add_reference<int>::type t5;
typedef boost::add_rvalue_reference<int>::type t6;
typedef boost::add_volatile<int>::type t7;

typedef boost::aligned_storage<2>::type t8;
typedef boost::alignment_of<int>::type t9;
typedef boost::conditional<true, int, long>::type t10;
typedef boost::common_type<int, long>::type t11;
typedef boost::decay<int[2] >::type t12;
typedef boost::extent<int[3] >::type t13;
typedef boost::floating_point_promotion<int>::type t14;
typedef boost::function_traits<int (int) > t15;

typedef boost::has_new_operator<int> t16;
typedef boost::has_nothrow_assign<int> t17;
typedef boost::has_nothrow_constructor<int> t18;
typedef boost::has_nothrow_copy<int> t19;
typedef boost::has_nothrow_copy_constructor<int> t20;
typedef boost::has_nothrow_default_constructor<int> t21;
typedef boost::has_trivial_assign<int> t22;
typedef boost::has_trivial_constructor<int> t23;
typedef boost::has_trivial_copy<int> t24;
typedef boost::has_trivial_copy_constructor<int> t25;
typedef boost::has_trivial_default_constructor<int> t26;
typedef boost::has_trivial_destructor<int> t27;
typedef boost::has_virtual_destructor<int> t28;

typedef boost::integral_constant<int, 2> t29;
typedef boost::integral_promotion<short>::type t30;

typedef boost::is_abstract<int>::type t31;
typedef boost::is_arithmetic<int>::type t32;
typedef boost::is_array<int>::type t33;
typedef boost::is_base_of<int, long>::type t34;
typedef boost::is_class<int>::type t35;
typedef boost::is_complex<int>::type t36;
typedef boost::is_compound<int>::type t37;
typedef boost::is_const<int>::type t38;
typedef boost::is_convertible<int, long>::type t39;
typedef boost::is_empty<int>::type t40;
typedef boost::is_enum<int>::type t41;
typedef boost::is_floating_point<int>::type t42;
typedef boost::is_function<int>::type t43;
typedef boost::is_fundamental<int>::type t44;
typedef boost::is_integral<int>::type t45;
typedef boost::is_lvalue_reference<int>::type t46;
typedef boost::is_member_function_pointer<int>::type t47;
typedef boost::is_member_object_pointer<int>::type t48;
typedef boost::is_member_pointer<int>::type t49;
typedef boost::is_object<int>::type t50;
typedef boost::is_pod<int>::type t51;
typedef boost::is_pointer<int>::type t52;
typedef boost::is_polymorphic<int>::type t53;
typedef boost::is_reference<int>::type t54;
typedef boost::is_rvalue_reference<int>::type t55;
typedef boost::is_same<int, int>::type t56;
typedef boost::is_scalar<int>::type t57;
typedef boost::is_signed<int>::type t58;
typedef boost::is_stateless<int>::type t59;
typedef boost::is_union<int>::type t60;
typedef boost::is_unsigned<int>::type t61;
typedef boost::is_virtual_base_of<int, int>::type t62;
typedef boost::is_void<int>::type t63;
typedef boost::is_volatile<int>::type t64;
typedef boost::make_signed<int>::type t65;
typedef boost::make_unsigned<int>::type t66;
typedef boost::promote<int>::type t67;
typedef boost::rank<int>::type t68;

typedef boost::remove_all_extents<int>::type t69;
typedef boost::remove_const<int>::type t70;
typedef boost::remove_cv<int>::type t71;
typedef boost::remove_extent<int>::type t72;
typedef boost::remove_pointer<int>::type t73;
typedef boost::remove_reference<int>::type t74;
typedef boost::remove_volatile<int>::type t75;
typedef boost::type_with_alignment<4>::type t76;

int main()
{
   return 0;
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


The helicopter Harbin Z-9. Specifications. A photo.
Home » Blog » other » The helicopter Harbin Z-9. Specifications. A photo.
Harbin Z-9 - Chinese military multipurpose helicopter manufactured by Aircraft Corporation «Harbin Aircraft Manufacturing Corporation» with 1981 years.
Chinese military helicopter model Harbin Z-9 in fact, is just an improved version of the French multi-purpose aircraft model ship Eurocopter AS365 DauphinHowever, if there are faces of the overlap between the two models, the technical performance in terms of both rotorcraft radically different from each other.
The design and construction of the Harbin Z-9 helicopter began with Chinese aircraft builders in 1980, and a year later, the first prototype of this aircraft was able to successfully make its first flight. However, the real production of helicopters of the Harbin Z-9 model was started by the Chinese aircraft manufacturers only in 1994 year - for a thirteen-year period, experts from the Celestial Empire optimized the basic characteristics of this aircraft, created a special weapon for this model, and ensured the strengthening and strengthening of the structure of the fuselage, Thereby obtaining a full-fledged military aircraft.
The Harbin Z-9 helicopter is a full-fledged multi-purpose aircraft capable of carrying military personnel and cargo transportation as well as participating in combat operations, which is facilitated by good armament and protection from ground attack. Harbin Z-9 equipped with an automatic cannon 23 mm., Unguided missiles for the destruction of armored vehicles and large enemy concentrations, and also a number of modifications of this aircraft, also has the ability to attack sea targets, including Ships and submarines, for which torpedoes are used.
On board the helicopter can accommodate up to 12 people, including two members of the crew (pilot and gunner) and 10 soldiers. If necessary, on its board, the model aircraft can also carry and transport various types of cargo weighing up to 2050 kg. A number of modifications to the helicopter Harbin Z-9 used exclusively as a combat aircraft, although it may carry out transportation on its board of several people.
The powerplant of the Harbin Z-9 helicopter consists of two Zhuzhou Aeroengine Factory WZ-8A gas turbine engines, each capable of developing thrust in 850 hp, which in turn provides the aircraft with the ability to fly at maximum speed in 305 km \ h The effective range of the use of a helicopter model Harbin Z-9 is about 700 kilometers, while the distillation - about 1 thousands of kilometers.
Harbin H450 - Version of 2014 years, designed to conduct effective operations against large concentrations of enemy.
Production of model helicopters Harbin Z-9 Chinese aircraft manufacturers and continues to this day.
helicopter length: 12,11 m (depending on version).
The height of the helicopter: 4,01 m (depending on version).
The diameter of the rotor: 11,94 m (depending on version).
Power: 2 × 850 hp (Depending on version).


DJI has just announced a new camera drone, the Phantom 3 Standard, an oddly-named quadcopter that features a built-in HD video camera, 25 minutes of flight time on one charge, and a special follow mode that lets your drone become a flying stalker cam.
The 12-megapixel camera takes 2.7K HD video and includes a gimbal that will keep things steady. You can stream the video to a phone as you fly and record it with a flick of a switch. It also includes GPS and Wi-Fi.
This unit is aimed at folks who want a simpler flying experience. While the Phantoms have always been easy to fly, the Standard hopes to further prevent you from crashing into a tree by improving maneuverability and control. You can pick up the drone now for $799 and it should be shipping this summer.
Designed specifically for first-time pilots, the DJI Phantom 3 Standard brings DJI's signature attention to stability, flight, and imaging to make capturing aerial images easier than ever before.
With a newly designed and integrated camera, the DJI Phantom 3 Standard records up to 2.7k HD video at 30 frames per second using a high-quality 94 degree distortion-free lens. The camera also shoots still images at 12 megapixels in both DNG Raw and JPG formats. Using a standard WiFi connection, the DJI Phantom 3 Standard allows pilots to see what their camera sees in near real time in HD, capture photos, start / stop record for video and adjust camera settings all from the updated DJI Go app.
The remote controller is an updated version of DJI's previous Phantom 2 Vision+ controller, with an integrated WiFi range extender and wheel to angle the camera.
Based on the Phantom 3 design, the new DJI Phantom 3 Standard includes GPS-based stabilization and flight times up to 25 minutes using DJI's interchangeable Intelligent Flight Batteries for the Phantom 3 series.
Follow Me – The drone intelligently follows the user based on their orientation.
Point of Interest – Lets users define an object that the Phantom will fly around in a circle with the object framed perfectly in the center – capturing a cinematic shot that is otherwise difficult to fly manually.


iMIS20 with additional features of AMPAC20 System will offer your association a complete Meeting Management and Registration System.
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You can send unique invitation to register based on key topics to cross section of your Database for maximum results. The second and subsequent reminders can be used to those who have not registered yet to increase the number of participation.
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The participants can pay by credit cards and checks online. The system will update your accounting system with the total paid information.
The system can generate your badges and tickets for the upcoming event and help you prepare for the onsite packets.
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Our team is ready to explore how our meeting management can help your organization.


There are a number of great companies in the market today but there are also many which are overvalued by the market. By using the ModernGraham Valuation Model, I've selected the most overvalued Canadian companies reviewed by ModernGraham.
Suncor Energy Inc. does not satisfy the requirements of either the Enterprising Investor or the more conservative Defensive Investor. The Defensive Investor is concerned with the low current ratio, insufficient earnings stability or growth over the last ten years, and the high PEmg ratio. The Enterprising Investor has concerns regarding the level of debt relative to the current assets, and the lack of earnings stability or growth over the last five years. As a result, all value investors following the ModernGraham approach should explore other opportunities at this time or proceed cautiously with a speculative attitude.
As for a valuation, the company appears to be Overvalued after seeing its EPSmg (normalized earnings) decline from $2.26 in 2013 to an estimated $0.84 for 2017. This level of demonstrated earnings growth does not support the market's implied estimate of 20.49% annual earnings growth over the next 7-10 years. As a result, the ModernGraham valuation model, based on the Benjamin Graham value investing formula, returns an estimate of intrinsic value below the price.
Crew Energy Inc does not satisfy the requirements of either the Enterprising Investor or the more conservative Defensive Investor. The Defensive Investor is concerned with the small size, low current ratio, insufficient earnings stability over the last ten years, the poor dividend history, and the high PEmg and PB ratios. The Enterprising Investor has concerns regarding the level of debt relative to the current assets, and the lack of earnings stability or growth over the last five years, and the lack of dividends. As a result, all value investors following the ModernGraham approach should explore other opportunities at this time or proceed cautiously with a speculative attitude.
As for a valuation, the company appears to be Overvalued after seeing its EPSmg (normalized earnings) decline from $-0.36 in 2012 to an estimated $-0.81 for 2016. This level of negative earnings does not support a positive valuation. As a result, the ModernGraham valuation model, based on the Benjamin Graham value investing formula, returns an estimate of intrinsic value below the price.
Crescent Point Energy Corp does not satisfy the requirements of either the Enterprising Investor or the more conservative Defensive Investor. The Defensive Investor is concerned with the low current ratio, insufficient earnings stability or growth over the last ten years, and the high PEmg and PB ratios. The Enterprising Investor has concerns regarding the level of debt relative to the current assets, and the lack of earnings stability or growth over the last five years. As a result, all value investors following the ModernGraham approach should explore other opportunities at this time or proceed cautiously with a speculative attitude.
As for a valuation, the company appears to be Overvalued after seeing its EPSmg (normalized earnings) decline from $0.65 in 2012 to an estimated $-0.24 for 2016. This level of negative earnings does not support a positive valuation.As a result, the ModernGraham valuation model, based on the Benjamin Graham value investing formula, returns an estimate of intrinsic value below the price.
Spartan Energy Corp does not satisfy the requirements of either the Enterprising Investor or the more conservative Defensive Investor. The Defensive Investor is concerned with the small size, low current ratio, insufficient earnings stability or growth over the last ten years, the poor dividend history, and the high PEmg and PB ratios. The Enterprising Investor has concerns regarding the level of debt relative to the current assets, and the lack of earnings stability over the last five years, and the lack of dividends. As a result, all value investors following the ModernGraham approach should explore other opportunities at this time or proceed cautiously with a speculative attitude.
As for a valuation, the company appears to be Overvalued after growing its EPSmg (normalized earnings) from $-0.21 in 2012 to an estimated $-0.09 for 2016. This level of negative earnings does not support a positive valuation.As a result, the ModernGraham valuation model, based on the Benjamin Graham value investing formula, returns an estimate of intrinsic value below the price.
The author did not hold a position in any company mentioned in this article at the time of publication and had no intention of changing that position within the next 72 hours. See my current holdings here. This article is not investment advice; any reader should speak to a registered investment adviser prior to making any investment decisions. ModernGraham is not affiliated with the company in any manner. Please be sure to review our detailed disclaimer. This article first appeared on ModernGraham. This article first appeared on ModernGraham.


text:
Q: Apache / Lighttpd for load Balancing What do you think about lighttpd for AJP load Balancing?
I use Apache and mod_jk for this, it works fine. What would be the benefit of switching apache to lighttpd?
What software use to load balance J2EE applications? Hardware load balancer?
Thank you!

A:
I use Apache and mod_jk for this, it works fine. What would be the benefit of switching apache to lighttpd?

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The benefits of switching to Lighttpd are mostly performance; Lighttpd requires less CPU/RAM to do the same work as Apache. It can also be easier to set up, but since you already have Apache running, that is a non-issue for you.
I disagree with Andy on the security issue; Apache 2 has had more reported security issues than Lighttpd, but most of them would be in modules you wouldn't compile in for load balancing, and Apache is good at quickly releasing fixes for their security issues. Lighttpd is getting much less security scrutiny than Apache, so it may have more un-publicized issues that we don't know of. It is an apples to oranges comparison...
Today Lighttpd is loosing momentum IMHO. Since its author landed a job at MySQL, and started working on MySQL proxy, the frequency of releases of Lighttpd has gone down. My gut feeling is that most new installations of event-driven open source HTTP servers are using nginx now. See the english language wiki for an overview of nginx.
For gratis open-source load balancing, I believe the largest installed base is for HAProxy and nginx now. It is hard to come up with numbers, as public surveys such as Netcraft cannot detect backend load balancers, but this is my gut feeling based on the blog posts that I see.
Note that both nginx and HAProxy cannot do Apache JServ Protocol proxying. nginx can do HTTP and FastCGI and maybe a few more, and HAProxy is HTTP only. Thus you would have to switch to HTTP output from the application server.
My recommendation would be to stay put on Apache, unless you have a specific functionality need that Apache does not solve for you.

A: I think for load-balancing you should use specialized tools like HAProxy / nginx that have small footprint and very good performance.

A: @jesper.mortensen: haproxy does either HTTP or pure TCP. So if Apache JServ Protocol is TCP based, you can load-balance it and provide high availability. Several other non HTTP protocols are commonly found with haproxy, SQL, LDAP, RDP, SSH, HTTPS, SMTP, POP/IMAP, etc... Some application protocols such as Forms are also used at some places, so I don't see a particular reason for JServ not to be possible.

A: lighttpd has a much smaller footprint and is able to serve many more requests than apache while having far fewer historical vulnerabilities (recent apache 2.2 vulnerabilities)
it's author Jan Kneschke also write mysql proxy and is a super talented developer and well motivated documenter/maintainer of code - although it's a very small project, it's awe-inspiringly good :)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Tiered Pricing: the more you purchase of seven piece ring display, the more you save.
Product note: Holds (7) rings on (7) pieces.
Size: Measures 1 34/" tall to 3 3/8" tall.
Description: Seven individual ring risers covered in a soft velvet. Heights of each riser vary and make for an eye-catching display that is easy to follow with the eye. Arrange the risers as a group or place separately. Rings are held in place by tabs on the top of each riser. Jewelry not included.
Black velvet bangle, cuff bracelet or ring display. Holds 21 bangles or 42 rings. Displays bracelets in the upright position. Measures 14 3/4" x 4 1/4" x 1 1/2" tall.


The Olena Round Storage Ottoman for Casual Elegance by England at VanDrie Home Furnishings in the Cadillac, Traverse City, Big Rapids, Houghton Lake and Northern Michigan area. Product availability may vary. Contact us for the most current availability on this product.


text:
@import Social;

@implementation LGRSocialImported

+ (UIViewController*)controllerForImportedPage:(NSString*)page title:(NSString*)title args:(NSDictionary*)args  options:(NSDictionary*)options parent:(LGRViewController*)parent serviceType:(NSString *)serviceType;
{
	// TODO Make into option for args
	//	if (![SLComposeViewController isAvailableForServiceType:serviceType])
	//		return nil;

	SLComposeViewController *social = [SLComposeViewController composeViewControllerForServiceType:serviceType];
	[social setInitialText:args[@"text"]];

	social.completionHandler = ^(SLComposeViewControllerResult result) {
		// iOS doesn't guarantee which thread we are in
		dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{
			[parent dialogClosed:@{@"result": [NSNumber numberWithInteger:result]}];
		});
	};

	return social;
}

@end


Learning to read and write is easier for children from 3-4 years of age. At this age, everything is based on games and the child is prepared to learn how to read well step by step with free prewriting games.When the child has reached sufficient maturity, he can be taught to read. In this free application of how to learn to read step by step you will find games with letters and words to practice what they learn in school.If it is for children, it is important that the ways of how to learn to read step by step, be when you already have fluency and not force it to do it before, since there would be good results and could be angry learning the letters.Within the language you must already identify some basic letters and words for learning to learn how to read, such as cold, hot, down ... Normally, you can start the process to learn to read between 4 and 5 years old. If you are an adult, you will already have enough language in speech before learning to read properly.- You have to start teaching to know how to read children well through games in a simple way, if the child feels that you are forcing the learning will be slower or feel frustrated.- The first thing will be that they master the alphabet, beginning to read quickly and easily by the vowels and then the consonants. The best method is to teach him through songs. This method is the one that works best.- Stop to look at the images, ask your child to name what you see in the images.- If your child asks a question, answer it. It may help your child express his thoughts and solve his own problems. All this will be a good lesson to learn how to read fast, free and easy.Once your child starts reading, have him read aloud. This can help your child have confidence in his ability and enjoy learning new words. Take turns with your child when he or she is beginning to learn to read to develop more advanced reading forms.Set aside time every day to appreciate how to read together. Many children like to be told stories at bedtime. This is a very interesting way to relax after a long day and prepare to sleep.Learn letters, numbers, colors, shapes or words, following the tutorials with basic lessons on how to read fast and easy with this app, with these tips will suffice.Instead, play games with these elements and find ways to encourage your child's curiosities and interests.This free application of how to read step by step, will give you the most used tips for your child's learning to read. The videos that you can share with others through social networks, also will mark the videos you've seen so that it is easier for you to advance in the reading and writing.Thanks for downloading our free application of tips on how to learn to read step by step, easy and fast !!!


text:
Tag Archives: hes
Project: Space Station, Part 3: The Game
Stan Kent and his company AstroSpace may have exited the stage, but Avant-Garde Publishing, the new owners of HES, weren't ready to give up on Project: Space Station. They reached out to Larry Holland to finish the game.
Holland shares with Stan Kent some impressive academic credentials, but he's otherwise his polar opposite: a quiet just-get-the-job-done sort who has always avoided interviews and public exposure as much as possible. After earning a Bachelors in anthropology and archeaology from Cornell in 1979, he spent two years out in the field, working on digs in Africa, Europe, and India, before starting on a PhD at Berkeley. He settled there near Silicon Valley just as home computers were beginning to take off. He bought himself one of the first Commodore 64s, learned to program it, and was hired by HES in early 1983 to port action games like Super Zaxxon to it. He proved himself clever and reliable at the work, enough so that it was decided to dump Project: Space Station in his lap. It was just the chance Holland needed to show what he could really do. He pared down and refined AstroSpace's shaggy mixture of advocacy and simulation, synthesizing a bunch of disparate pieces that looked more like engineering tools than pieces of a game into something that fit on a single disk side and was actually fun — and all without sacrificing the spirit of the original concept.
Project: Space Station starts you out on July 1, 1985, with two space shuttles, $10 billion(!), and high hopes. You'll have to plan and build your station module by module, while also, this being the new era of space exploration, earning enough from commercial satellite launches and the results of the experiments you run up there to keep the project going. From the perspective of today especially, Project: Space Station is a simulation of an alternate history in which the American space station not only got funded and built in the 1980s but all of NASA's manned-space initiatives — most notably the shuttle — lived up to all of their plans and hopes. In this timeline shuttle launches are truly routine. You can assign a couple of astronauts to a shuttle, launch it, bring them down a few days later after having delivered their payload, then launch them again a week later like the space truckers they are. In a small concession to reality, every ten launches or so the shuttle might lose some thermal tiles, thus needing an extra ten days or so for repairs, but the thing blessedly never blows up or burns up. You even have clients asking you to hoist satellites for them for $40 million to $70 million a shot, and the shuttle is cheap enough to operate that you can turn a profit on that; pack several satellites into the cargo bay and send 'er up before your arch-rival, the European Space Agency with their boring unmanned rockets, steals the job from you.
The first thing you notice when you first start Project: Space Station is how friendly it strains to be. I've made it a point to mention in the past how the innovations of the Lisa and Macintosh trickled down to cheaper machines in a way that gave the Apple computers influence far out of proportion to their actual sales numbers. That influence is all over Project: Space Station; this program simply couldn't have existed a couple of years earlier. Everything is presented via icons and menus, navigable with the trusty joystick, while the space-station design screen has you sketching out your station by pulling modules into place with a "mouse" pointer. There's even a — get this — context-sensitive help system to guide you through the game along with some canned tutorials to get you started. Hardware limitations inevitably restrict all of this in practice, but Project: Space Station feels like it was looking ahead about ten years into the future of software — or just looking very carefully at what was happening on the Mac, which largely amounted to the same thing.
The other obviously extraordinary thing about Project: Space Station is the fact that it runs entirely in real time. There were plenty of grand strategy games already available for machines like the Commodore 64; SSI alone had published dozens of them by 1985. But, true to that company's roots in cardboard wargaming, most of these felt like tabletop rules sets that had been translated to the computer. Project: Space Station, however, is undeniably a born-and-bred computer game. There are no turns here. As you navigate through its screens the clock is constantly ticking, sometimes much to your consternation, as when you find yourself with research projects that need to be tweaked, a shuttle costing you money in space that needs to be landed ASAP, a precious satellite contract about to be awarded to those pesky Europeans, and another shuttle on the launch pad about to begin its countdown. Where do you begin? This game does nothing if not teach how to prioritize and how to manage your time. It also does a great job of not making you feel like you're just tinkering with a dry spreadsheet, a syndrome that afflicted many other contemporary strategy games, a genre not exactly known for its graphics at a time when graphics in general were, shall we say, somewhat limited in comparison to today. Project: Space Station's graphics are actually quite nice for the era and the machine. But more importantly, you get to do such a variety of stuff in this game that it stays fresh and interesting for a surprisingly long time. When you're tired of budgeting, there's a shuttle to land via a real-time action game; when you're tired of tweaking research projects, there's that new laboratory module to move into place via an EVA.
So, let me walk you quickly through the different sections of the game, each of which is represented by and always accessible via its icon at the top of the screen.
The Plan section is the expected spreadsheet portion of the game, where you allocate funds to your different departments; buy the actual pieces of the station which you'll be assembling, erector-set-like, in orbit; hire and fire astronauts; and provision and schedule shuttle launches. The most interesting and surprising part of this section is the astronaut-selection process. Each of the 32 possible astronauts has not only a professional specialty but also a personality. You have to consider whom you put together, because personality clashes can and will result if you put, say, a control freak together with a more laissez-faire kind of fellow. You'll grow attached to some of these folks, and you'll feel awful if you kill one or more of them by stranding a shuttle in orbit or botching an EVA.
Shuttle launches are affected by the weather; you'll want to watch it carefully, and delay the launch if conditions are too unfavorable. Occasional mechanical snafus will also cause delays. Once the candle is lit, you take control, guiding the shuttle into orbit via a little action game that doubtless would have horrified the original Project: Space Station team with its lack of realism but is nevertheless a nice, not-too-difficult break from the strategic side of the game. If you stray too far off course, the shuttle will end up parked in orbit far from your station, making any EVA operations to expand or repair it much more time consuming and hazardous.
Shuttle landings also involve a simple action game. Rough landings can result in damage to the shuttle and extra repair time before it can fly again.
The Station section is there mainly to let you transfer astronauts between a shuttle in orbit, which can hold up to six people, and the station, whose capacity depends on how many crew modules you've bought, flown into orbit, and linked up, along with how much additional station infrastructure you've built to support the crew: power modules, radiator modules to disperse heat from the power modules, emergency modules to protect the astronauts from the occasional solar flares. And of course there's not much point in having people at the station without something for them to do — meaning research projects, which require laboratory modules, which require yet more power modules, which… you get the picture.
The EVA section is the most fanciful part of the game. You venture outside shuttle and station using worker pods that have everything to do with 2001: A Space Odyssey and nothing to do with anything NASA was likely to come up with in the mid-1980s. You use the pods to construct the station, clear occasional debris that's made its way into the station's orbit, and launch commercial satellites; in the screenshot above, I've just attached a Payload Assist Module to a satellite to boost it into geosynchronous orbit. It's very easy to run out of fuel or damage a pod so badly that it's no longer functional. When that happens, you'd best have a backup pod that you can use to rescue the first before oxygen runs out. Once you've experienced a single time the excruciation of waiting for an astronaut to die from oxygen deprivation, unable to do anything about it, you'll make sure you always do, believe me.
Finally there's the real heart of the game, the R & D section; after all, it does bill itself on the box as a "science simulation in space." You can have up to four research projects running at once, assuming you have a station that can support them. While you receive a generous initial budget which you can supplement with satellite launches, your research should eventually become the heart of your revenue stream, as it is the heart of the game's rhetorical argument for a space station as a fundamentally practical, commercial proposition that will eventually pay for itself and then some. Some projects can also yield practical improvements that will make your station run more efficiently. There are 40 impressively specific projects to choose from, divided into 9 categories: Agriculture, Astronomy, Bio Medical, Earth Watch, Geology, Materials Science, Meteorology, Physics, and Space Technology. It's a big thrill when one yields a major breakthrough, enough so that you'll probably be willing to ignore questions like why it's necessary for people in space to examine the satellite imagery used to make a crop survey.
I don't want to overstate the case for Project: Space Station. While thoroughly entertaining in its early stages, it does have a litany of little problems that are very likely to turn you off eventually. Many involve research. If you don't happen to be watching an R & D project when a milestone is completed, it's very easy to miss it; once replaced by something else, each R & D notification from each project is lost forever whether you've actually read it or not. That's a very bad thing because each project yields exactly three milestones, after which it continues to suck money from your budget but doesn't earn you much of anything. You're thus often left uncertain whether a given project has run its course or a big windfall might be just around the corner. Even more infuriating is when a project starts saying a "key scientist" is needed for research to continue, without telling you whom or even what type of scientist you should be looking for. Gameplay then devolves into a tedious — and expensive — ferrying up of shuttleloads of possibilities and swapping them in one at a time, whilst you wonder what the hell sort of a research team would just tell you they feel the need for someone else but not whom or what for.
There are a number of other areas like this where the game's ambitions outrun the capabilities of an 8-bit 64 K computer with a blocky low-resolution screen, where you feel like the game just isn't telling you things you really ought to be able to know. Which research projects are expected to yield the most immediate returns for the early days of your station? When can you expect the next injection of financial assistance from Congress, and how much will it be? If a research team is suffering personality clashes, who exactly is having a problem with whom? And then there's the goal problem, in the sense that there really isn't one. The whole affair must presumably spin down into entropy at some point, when you've done all of the research projects and can no longer sustain your station, although it seems that can take a very long time; on his now-defunct blog dedicated to the game, Geof F. Morris posted screenshots of a station that lasted into 2007 in game years. I would venture to guess that Larry Holland was not so much unaware of these problems as just unable to push the hardware any further to correct them. Project: Space Station's sensibility is so modern that it can lead us to expect more from it than a Commodore 64 can deliver even under the control of a great programmer.
The game didn't have much commercial luck. It was released at last in late 1985, some three years after Stan Kent had first conceived it and just a few months before the Challenger, which features as one of the two shuttles in the game, blew up on its way to orbit and suddenly made Project: Space Station's sunny optimism about a future in space feel tragically anachronistic. Avant-Garde Publishing went under shortly thereafter, marking the final end of the HES label. Yet Project: Space Station wasn't dead yet. It ended up in the hands of Accolade, who rereleased it in 1987 as a member of their Advantage line of budget games, with some small but important changes: the Challenger was replaced by the Discovery, and the starting date was moved up to 1987. It made no great impact then either, and faded away quietly into commercial oblivion at last.
Surprisingly given its (lack of) commercial performance, Project: Space Station spawned a modest, oddly specific sub-genre of space-station-building games that also included Electronic Arts's Earth Orbit Stations as well as Space MAX from the perfectly named Final Frontier Software and the more fanciful E.S.S. Mega from Coktel Visions, which replaced American with European boosterism. Buzz Aldrin's Race into Space, a management simulation of the Moon race, might also be considered something of a spiritual heir. All except that last share with the space shuttle itself today a certain melancholia. Thoroughly of their time as they are, they can be a bit disconcerting to us in ours, showing as they do ambitions never fulfilled, grand adventures never quite undertaken.
Project: Space Station is even more fascinating as a piece of history than many of the titles I write about, being a document of our sunniest expectations for a future in space prior to the Challenger explosion that changed everything. But even taken as just a game, it's impressive and noble enough that I'd recommend you play it for a little while in spite of its issues. You can download the original Commodore 64 version from here if you like, or find its ports to the Apple II and IBM PC on other sites. Most games — even the equally-noble-in-its-own-way Ultima IV — treat life so cheaply, sending you off to slaughter in the name of becoming a hero. It's nice to play a game that's all about preserving the precious lives of your astronauts, that shows that a game can be absolutely without violence and still be riveting, that shows that heroism need not come with a body count. Would that ludic history had many more like it.
(Larry Holland — who in later years tended to be billed as Lawrence Holland — has generally managed to avoid talking much about his personal life and background as well as his early career. The best print source is a profile in the spring 1992 issue of LucasArts's newsletter The Adventurer. While I generally try to avoid wikis or overly fannish sources, his page on Wookiepedia is also very complete and appears to collect just about everything we know about him, scanty though it may be.)
Posted by Jimmy Maher on July 30, 2014 in Digital Antiquaria, Interactive Fiction
Tags: hes, holland, project space station
Project: Space Station, Part 2: The Dream
As long as there has been a space program, there have been space-program boosters. With budgets dwindling and interest waning after Apollo 11, however, NASA suddenly needed them as never before. Various people started various organizations to educate, to advocate, to lobby, sometimes even to agitate the case for space. Briefly among the more prominent of these folks during the early 1980s was Stan Kent, a precocious English rocket scientist still in his mid-twenties.
Growing up working class in the industrial city of Wolverhampton in the West Midlands, Kent wrote to NASA asking for more information about the Titan rocket used to hoist the Gemini space capsules into orbit. Much to his family's surprise, they sent it, cementing a passionate love affair with space and with NASA. (NASA was notably wonderful about this sort of thing in their 1960s heyday; many a starry-eyed kid all over the world received a similar thick envelope filled with pictures and articles for no charge but the cost to mail a letter to Houston.) At age 15, he demonstrated for the first time what would prove to be a lifelong knack for self-promotion. Determined to find a way to study rocket science, he entered a contest to design a functioning powered aircraft which won him national attention inside his home country and was enough to recommend him to a wealthy philanthropist in Santa Clara, California, named Austen Warburton. With Warburton's assistance, he came to the United States to attend university at the age of 17, and graduated from Stanford with a Masters in aerospace engineering in 1978 at the age of 22, winning the prestigious Herman Oberth Gold Medal in the process for his paper on "The Space Shuttle External Tank as a Reentry Module." He was soon working for Boeing and later Lockheed, and doing consulting jobs for NASA itself.
Kent's public space advocacy began in 1979, when he got wind of proposals within NASA to stop monitoring the two Viking probes that had landed on Mars three years before simply because they couldn't afford to continue to pay people to do it. He organized a Viking "charity" which presented NASA administrator Robert A. Frosch with a check for $60,000 to go toward continued monitoring on January 7, 1981. The sum would increase to over $100,000 in the months to come, then increase dramatically again when he organized with former astronaut and Moon-walker Pete Conrad to sell off recovered pieces from the old Skylab space station by way of further fundraising. (By that time Viking 2 had already gone offline due to a failed battery. Viking 1 would continue to transmit — and, yes, to be monitored — until a botched software update took it offline on November 11, 1982.)
Under the aegis of Delta Vee, the nonprofit corporation he set up with the assistance of Warburton and some aerospace colleagues, Kent stumped the country on behalf of space, appearing on television, on radio, in Omni magazine (with whom he did much of his advocacy in partnership), and in countless newspaper articles. He worked to set up a nationwide network of "neighborhood space centers" — "the McDonald's of space" — and gave speeches to anyone who would have him. Far from your stereotypical rocket scientist, Kent made space cool in what the L.A. Times described as his "new-wave haircut, beige suit, purple shirt, and bright red tie"; he looked like "he might be a member of a rock band." In September of 1981 he testified before the Congressional Subcommittee on Space Science and Applications at the age of just 25. His pitch emphasized a new, more pragmatic take on space very much in keeping with the dawning hyper-capitalism of the 1980s. The NASA that Kent described was fundamentally a practical enterprise whose work would bring scientific and technological breakthroughs to make life better for ordinary Americans, along with economic benefits to the country; Kent was fond of citing such dubious surveys as the one done in 1972 by Chase Econometrics, which claimed that every $1 spent on the space industry injected $10 to $15 back into the economy within five to seven years.
In that spirit, he and his partners soon set up a second, for-profit corporation they named AstroSpace. Its initial purpose was to research and hopefully to exploit a pet idea Kent called SOLARES: "Space Orbiting Light Augmentation Reflector Energy System," a way to beam concentrated sunlight down to Earth for use as energy. In the meantime, though, the home-computer boom was happening. Soon Kent hit upon a more earthbound project for his company: to create a computer game that simulated the building and operation of the permanent space station that he and so many others felt represented the next logical steppingstone to Mars and beyond. By 1983 he had sold the idea to Jay Balakrishnan of Human Engineered Software, who loved big, high-concept edutainment titles.
Project: Space Station was certainly that. The game that Kent and Balakrishnan described (separately) to InfoWorld magazine in 1984 — it was quite obviously the HES product that the latter was most excited to discuss — filled nine disk sides. Balakrishnan:
It's an absolute simulation. First of all, to start you have to go to Congress to requisition a budget. You have to choose your scientific team that will comprise the space mission. There's a book, almost like a story, with different fictitious characters that you can select your team from. There's a whole page of biographical data on each person — where they went to school, whom they married, whether they're stable individuals or not, and so on. Then you must decide on what kind of industry you're going to develop in space — for example, if you want to make ball bearings or crystals or whatever.
Then you design your space station. Each one is a different module. You might build a plant area, living quarters, etc. Then you run a simulation. Now the plant starts working, giving oxygen and life, and the industry starts working. You see that it's a viable operation. Finally, after you have overseen everything, you resign your post. You were the director of a successful space industry, so you get your gold watch at the end. Of course, during the game all kinds of random things can occur. Maybe you've gone over budget. So you go back to Washington, D.C., and appeal for a higher requisition to keep the business going.
Together Kent and Balakrishnan organized an "advisory" board for the project that consisted of Kent's colleagues in the aerospace industry along with the high-school students who would be the game's most obvious target market, all "overseen" by the hapless, computer-illiterate Leonard Nimoy (who must have been wondering by this point why he'd signed on with HES at all).
I find this original conception of Project: Space Station fascinating as an early example of a computer game with an explicit real-world rhetorical goal. One could call it without hyperbole propaganda, a political advertisement for a NASA space station. The justifications it makes for such a project are the same as those Kent was making in his speeches, and, indeed, those that Ronald Reagan more obliquely referred to in his State of the Union address of 1984. In Project: Space Station, players would enjoy success not so much in the form of exploratory firsts or pure scientific breakthroughs but rather that of crop surveys that would make American agriculture more efficient, new semiconductors that would make American computers more powerful, lasers that would revolutionize American manufacturing, even the proverbial cure for cancer. If it wasn't always entirely clear why some of these research projects had to be done by people in space, well, that was a problem Project: Space Station shared with some of Kent's speeches.
This huge game being developed by a bunch of aerospace people with no experience in game development was of course all but doomed to failure. Kent and company did manage to get far enough to produce some intriguing screenshots that, as published in the April 16, 1984, issue of InfoWorld, stand today as the only tangible artifacts left to us from this version of Project: Space Station. The whole thing collapsed by the end of that year, with HES going bankrupt and being absorbed by Avant-Garde Publishing and AstroSpace coming to an abrupt end along with Kent's time as a space advocate. He made an extreme and kind of bizarre change in life direction, opening back in Santa Clara a night club called One Step Beyond that became a regular stop on the college-rock touring circuit for some years. Today he writes erotica, hosts naughty events at a sex shop, and is something of a fixture of the Southern California nightlife scene while apparently still keeping his hand in from time to time as a rocket scientist. In 2012 he consulted on the perfect combination of all his interests: a proposed Playboy space station.
(Stan Kent's space advocacy is chronicled in the August 3 1980 Washington Post, the January 8 1981 and November 12 1982 New York Times, and the July 22 1982 L.A. Times. The two InfoWorld articles that describe Kent's original vision for Project: Space Station are in the April 16 1984 and September 3 1984 issues. A transcript of his testimony before Congress is contained in the government publication "Future Space Programs, 1981: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Space Science and Applications of the Committee on Science and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives, Ninety-seventh Congress, First Session, September, 21, 22, 23, 1981." The space-advocacy movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s and the place of a space station within are treated at length in Reaching for the High Frontier by Michael A. G. Michaud, available online from The National Space Society.)
Project: Space Station, Part 1: The Reality
It was hard for a space-obsessed kid growing up in the 1980s not to feel just a little bit envious of the previous generation. The late 1960s had marked the climax of one of the most glorious adventures in human history, and the first one that, thanks to the miracle of mass media, everyone could share in in real time. Even the most non-technical and non-scientific among us could understand the clear progression that climaxed in that "giant leap for mankind": Apollo 7 tested the Apollo capsule in Earth orbit; Apollo 8 voyaged to the Moon and circled it; Apollo 9 tested the lunar lander in Earth orbit; Apollo 10 was the dress rehearsal; Apollo 11 was the big one, July 20, 1969, the day that changed everything forever for humanity. Or so it must have seemed at the time. By the early 1980s it could feel hard to believe the Moon landing had actually happened. In place of Apollo we got the space shuttle, NASA's glorified space truck. In place of the clear milestones of Apollo we got a space program whose strategy seemed akin to the missions of the shuttles themselves: go up, circle around for a while doing some things people weren't really too clear about, then come back down. Oh, we dutifully put together our shuttle model kits and dreamed of seeing an actual launch, but something was missing.
The program to make a reusable space plane was first conceived even before that first Moon landing, when 2001: A Space Odyssey was in cinemas showing a vision of the near future in which a flight into Earth orbit was as routine as a flight for the opposite coast. To achieve such a vision, clearly something would have to change. An Apollo Moon rocket weighed slightly over 450,000 pounds without fuel, of which 12,250 pounds — less than 3 percent of the total — would make its way back to Earth at the end of a mission in the form of the non-reusable command module. The rest was cast away at various stages of the mission, making Apollo 11's trip to the Moon, if one of — perhaps the — most inspiring voyages in human history, also one uniquely wasteful and completely unsustainable as a model for a future of routine space flight. After all, while NASA had been enjoying effectively blank checks from Congress through the Space Race, it didn't take a Nostradamus to realize that that was likely to change in a hurry as soon as the Moon was achieved and American pride satisfied.
The budget cuts, when they came, were even more draconian than anticipated, costing NASA three of their planned ten Moon landings — another, Apollo 13, never made it there for other reasons — and forcing them to similarly scale back Skylab, the United States's first (and to date, outside of the International Space Station, only) space station. The space shuttle survived only by making a series of painful compromises and an unholy alliance with the Air Force that would see it used for classified military missions — basically, to launch a new generation of bigger and heavier spy satellites — about 30 percent of the time. It was a partnership that neither NASA nor the Air Force really wanted. Robert Seamans, a former NASA administrator who had become Secretary of the Air Force by the time the deal was made, thought it was "asinine" to try to coordinate with a civilian agency and put astronauts' lives at risk instead of just building a cheaper, simpler unmanned rocket for the purpose. But his and other practical voices were overwhelmed by those of the bureaucrats and the politicians.
An early space-shuttle concept which used short, straight wings and a different reentry profile to reduce heat buildup.
The Air Force partnership had tragic consequences for the shuttle. In order to carry the big spy satellites the Air Force anticipated launching, the shuttle's cargo bay had to be bigger and wider than it might otherwise have been, giving the shuttle its distinctively chunky, less than aerodynamically ideal shape. While occasionally useful, much of that space went empty much of the time. In case the Cold War should ever turn hot, the Air Force also demanded that it be possible to launch the shuttle from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, deploy a satellite, and land again back in California within one orbit without ever flying over Soviet territory, thus minimizing its exposure to space-borne or terrestrial weaponry. In aeronautics jargon, this necessitated that the shuttle have a considerable "downrange" or "crossrange" capability to glide off its normal orbital path, which in turn necessitated the shuttle's delta-shaped wings that made it less than a pilot's delight. John Young, the first man to pilot a shuttle to Earth from space, compared it to trying to fly a brick. Other pilots would call landing the shuttle a "controlled plummet," while passengers compared it to a "dive-bomber run." Worse, the final design generated far more heat on reentry than would have NASA's earlier concepts, heat which engineers could combat only through the use of heavy, cludgy thermal-protection tiles that were a constant worry and labor sink throughout the program's history. Each of the 35,000 tiles on the shuttle was a one-off piece that had to be custom manufactured, and every single one of them had to be carefully inspected by hand after every single launch in the hopes of averting disaster on the next mission. In spite of NASA's best efforts, the disaster that was perhaps inevitable finally came on February 1, 2003, when the Columbia burned up on reentry. A more elegant shuttle could have minimized or even eliminated the tiles altogether, and saved the lives of seven astronauts.
Well before the Columbia and even the Challenger disasters, a feeling dogged engineers and astronauts alike that the shuttle just wasn't as safe as it should be in still other ways. This was largely down to yet more concessions and compromises to budgetary realities. In place of a reusable booster section which would have blasted the shuttle into space and then glided — possibly with the aid of a human pilot — back down to a soft runway landing, the shuttle got a massive external fuel tank that would just be cast away, Apollo-style, and a pair of solid-fuel booster rockets that floated back via parachute to drop into the ocean. Essentially little more than hollow metal cylinders filled with propellant, the boosters could be reused, but were problematic in other ways. The shuttle was the first manned space vehicle ever to use solid rockets as a primary means of propulsion; they had heretofore been considered too dangerous because they can neither be throttled nor shut down entirely if something should go wrong during a burn. And, unlike earlier spacecraft, the shuttle was equipped with no emergency escape mechanism whatsoever for launches. Just as the heat tiles' failings cost the last crew of the Columbia their lives, this lack may have cost the last crew of the Challenger, who appear to have been alive and conscious for at least some portion of their fatal fall back to Earth.
I don't mean to say that the space shuttle wasn't a crazily magnificent feat, nor to cast aspersions on the engineers who made it (usually) work in the face of all the cutbacks and compromises, nor to say that I wouldn't have jumped at the chance to fly in it, safety questions and all. The shuttle certainly made for a cool sort of spacecraft, and an almost unbelievably comfortable one. If hardly the lap of luxury by earthbound standards, it was ridiculously roomy by comparison with the American spacecraft that preceded it and those (if any) that appear likely to follow it. Certainly the earliest astronauts in their "Spam in a can" capsules, who had to fight just to get a window, would have loved this craft that an astronaut got to actually fly.
Yet it's hard for even the most generous observer to avoid noting just how massively the space-shuttle program overpromised and underdelivered. Originally projected as capable of launching again just one week after returning to Earth, the timetable was revised by the time of the Columbia's maiden flight in 1981 to one month. No shuttle ever came close to meeting even this timeframe. What with all of the repairs and inspections that were needed — not least to those pesky tiles — a shuttle that launched three times in a year was doing very well for itself. Nor did the huge savings supposedly enabled by this reusable spacecraft ever really materialize. The cost of each launch averaged over the life of the program ends up in the $1.3 billion to $1.5 billion range, at least ten times what it costs the Russians to put a three-man crew into space via their trusty old Soyuz space capsule and a conventional expendable rocket — and, while fourteen people died aboard the Challenger and Columbia, the Russians haven't lost a cosmonaut since 1971. The shuttle lacked the romance of the Apollo program, but that was rather implicit in its purpose all along. More damningly, it failed in its goal of making spaceflight a safe matter of (relatively) inexpensive routine.
For much of the shuttle's lifetime, NASA had trouble answering a fairly fundamental question: just what was it really good for? In the optimistic early days of the program they floated the idea that the shuttle might be a viable commercial proposition, an actual moneymaker for the agency. Other countries as well as private companies would pay NASA to truck their satellites into space. But this never materialized in any significant way; the shuttle was far, far too expensive to launch, not to mention too prone to unexpected delays and other problems, to compete with cheap, reliable unmanned rockets for commercial satellite launches. Twice West Germany paid NASA to launch the shuttle and give them free use of a Spacelab laboratory module installed in the cargo bay, but that was about as good as it would ever get for the shuttle as a commercial entity.
The shuttle also failed to live up to expectations as a tool for the military. Work on the planned alternative launch site for military missions at Vandenberg fell far behind schedule, and was finally abandoned in the wake of the Challenger disaster after over $4 billion had been spent. Of 27 military personnel recruited and trained to serve as astronauts on the shuttle, only 2 ever made it into space due to disorganization, turf wars, and poor inter-agency communication. Instead the military had to content itself with essentially sub-contracting its payloads out to NASA; the missions launched from the Kennedy Space Center and featured the usual rotating crew of civilian astronauts. These so-called "Department of Defense" missions, which numbered nine between 1985 and 1992, always felt a bit farcical. Their satellite payloads, despite usually being officially considered "classified," were an open secret at best around the Kennedy Space Center; during the run-up to the second of these launches, to put a Defense Satellite Communications System into orbit in October of 1985, even reporters were walking around in "DSCS" tee-shirts. Never happy about being bound to the shuttle in the first place, the military started working in earnest to find an alternative following the Challenger disaster and the subsequent thirty-month hiatus in launches. That alternative turned out to be, inevitably, a cheaper and simpler unmanned rocket in the form of the Titan IV, latest in a venerable line of military and civilian workhorse launchers.
Lots of good science was done aboard the shuttle betwixt and between all these dashed expectations. Yet it was hard for even a space-loving kid, much less the general public, to get all that excited about experiments in applied plasma physics or materials science. After the novelty of the first few flights which proved the crazy contraption actually worked, it was just hard to get excited about the space shuttle in general. Only one tantalizing prospect seemed like it had a chance of changing all that: a permanent station in space, to be built, supplied, and maintained by the shuttle.
Artist's conception of the shuttle servicing an American space station.
This idea of a space station had been bound up with that of the shuttle itself right from the beginning. After all, that inspiring 2001 future had featured both, hadn't it? Without a space station, where was the space shuttle to actually go? ("Nowhere," some would soon be saying.) In this, NASA's original vision for the post-Apollo future, the space shuttle was to be just that, the shuttle bus ferrying people, materials, and equipment up to where the real action was happening. The shuttle wasn't supposed to be exciting in itself. The real excitement would be happening up there, as a permanent settlement in space grew and developed and just maybe started thinking about building its own spacecraft right there in orbit to visit the Moon, Mars, the asteroids, perhaps Halley's Comet (which was conveniently due for a visit in 1986). NASA anticipated building both parts of the program — the station and the ancillary shuttle to service it — in tandem. It was only when the budget cuts started to bite that they had to make the hard decision to go ahead with the space shuttle alone as a necessary precursor to the station. If the shuttle without the space station felt like a spacecraft without a purpose, that's because it largely was.
And so NASA continually tried to find a way to get the space-station project out of stasis. During the mid-1970s some planners floated the intriguing idea that it might be possible to reuse the recently abandoned Skylab as the core of a more permanent station. Plans were mooted to send an early shuttle mission to Skylab with a rocket pack that could be used to push it out of its decaying orbit. Later missions would then have refurbished, repaired, and reactivated the station for habitation. Such plans were doomed, however, by delays in the shuttle program and by heavy sunspot activity that caused Skylab's orbit to decay more quickly than anticipated. On July 11, 1979, Skylab crashed to Earth, raining debris down on Western Australia and causing NASA considerable embarrassment almost two more years before the eventual maiden flight of the Columbia.
The space-station project remained alive after that as a theoretically real thing, but generated little more than sketches and plans for which NASA could never seem to amass more than a fraction of the necessary funding. In his January 1984 State of the Union Address, President Reagan gave the project a badly needed shot in the arm via a would-be Kennedy-esque pronouncement.
Our next frontier [is] space. Nowhere do we so effectively demonstrate our technological leadership and ability to make life better on Earth. The Space Age is barely a quarter of a century old. But already we've pushed civilization forward with our advances in science and technology. Opportunities and jobs will multiply as we cross new thresholds of knowledge and reach deeper into the unknown.
Our progress in space — taking giant steps for all mankind — is a tribute to American teamwork and excellence. Our finest minds in government, industry, and academia have all pulled together. And we can be proud to say: We are first; we are the best; and we are so because we're free.
America has always been greatest when we dared to be great. We can reach for greatness again. We can follow our dreams to distant stars, living and working in space for peaceful economic and scientific gain. Tonight, I am directing NASA to develop a permanently manned space station and to do it within a decade.
A space station will permit quantum leaps in our research in science, in communications, in metals, and in lifesaving medicines which could be manufactured only in space. We want our friends to help us meet these challenges and share in their benefits. NASA will invite other countries to participate so we can strengthen peace, build prosperity, and expand freedom for all who share our goals.
Couched in empty political tautologies as it is ("America has always been greatest when we dared to be great?"), that declaration did lead to some action: an official Space Station Program Office was established at the Johnson Space Center, strategic plans and blueprints were created with more enthusiasm. Any momentum was abruptly dissipated, however, by the Challenger disaster of January 28, 1986, an event which stopped American manned spaceflight in its tracks for two and half years of investigating and soul-searching. The shuttle program would never quite be the same again, while hopes for the space station were all but dashed. Reagan's successor George Bush gave NASA another apparent boost in a major speech on July 20, 1989, refloating the old idea of the station, now to be named Freedom, as a base for launching future missions to the Moon and Mars. But that speech was just another in an emerging tradition of Presidents making grand pronouncements about space exploration that come to nothing. Just as had happened with the space shuttle, project Freedom was steadily scaled back and compromised in the face of dwindling budgets. In 1993, NASA's independent Freedom was finally folded into the International Space Station, itself only a shadow of what NASA had originally planned for the station to be.
Even at that, though, the ISS finally provided the space shuttle with a purpose for which it seemed eminently suited. Beginning with the first ISS building block which the Endeavor carried into orbit in 1998, the aging shuttle fleet got from the station a new lease on life and a new sense of purpose; this was what the shuttle had been designed to do all those years ago. But then came the Columbia disaster of 2003, and all the old doubts resurfaced. It was almost with a sense of relief that NASA retired the shuttle at last in 2011, before any more lives were lost, even if doing so left them with no way to get people into space at all for what looks to be, at best, some years to come. It was hard to escape the feeling as the shuttle fleet was parceled out to museums that something had gone horribly wrong in the aftermath of Apollo, that a brilliant beginning had been squandered.
(A very good short summary of the shuttle program and its discontents is found in The Final Countdown by Pat Duggins. For more on the shuttle as a military vehicle, see this article at Smithsonian Air and Space. For more on the drawbacks of the shuttle's design and the alternative once proposed by Max Faget, see this article at The Space Review.)
Human Engineered Software (or, The Software Icarus)
Jay Balakrishnan
Narayana Pillai Balakrishnan was a native of Cherthala, India, who, after traveling the world for years as a player of traditional Indian music, came to Hollywood in the early 1950s to teach the trendy new practice of Hatha Yoga to the stars. The software company founded by Jay — an Americanized shortening of "Sanjay" — Balakrishnan, the son he and his American wife raised there, would evince through its short, chaotic life a similar blending of idealism with commercialism.
Like many American children of Indian parents, Jay Balakrishnan kept one foot planted in each culture, spending much of his childhood and adolescence in schools in India's Kerala region. During a summer break from the University of Southern Florida, he discovered computers while working at the Naval Electronics System Command in Charleston; he describes the discovery as a "religious experience." When he went back to university, he "loaded up on computer-science courses." After graduation, he worked as a programmer for GTE and later Hughes Helicopter. Meanwhile, in 1978 he bought his first Commodore PET, intending to use it only to do calculations for a course in piloting. But he soon found the PET every bit as entrancing as the big machines he worked with on his day job. He wrote an assembler, initially planning to submit to a magazine as a type-in-listing. However, his friends told him it was good enough to sell commercially, and so Balakrishnan founded Human Engineered Software (HES, or HESWare), out of his apartment on his 25th birthday in June of 1980.
Unlike the other early software companies I've profiled on this blog, HES got its start on the relatively unpopular — in North America, that is — Commodore PET. Otherwise, though, this story begins similarly. Balakrishnan wrote all of the early software himself, packaged it himself, shipped it himself when orders came in from the tiny advertisements he took out in magazines and newsletters like Kilobaud, Compute!, and The Midnite Software Gazette. Running on a PET with as little as 8 K of memory, those early products were, like the assembler that got the ball rolling — literally; he named it HESBal — mostly programming tools: a file editor called HESEdit, a BASIC program lister called HESLister.
HES was soon doing well enough for Balakrishnan to quit his job at Hughes. Still, running a one-man software company got exhausting quickly. He had elected to offer the ultimate in customer support in the form of a 24-hour help line; this kept him captive in his apartment waiting for the next ring, his sleep interrupted constantly. Thus when a manufacturer of monitors and other hardware called Universal Supply came to him with an offer to buy the company but let him continue to manage it, he was receptive. Balakrishnan and HESWare moved north to Brisbane, California, where he found a partner in running the operation in the form of an ex-Xerox manager named Ted Morgan. He also now had the funding to reach out to other platforms and other authors. Seeing Britain as a potential untapped source of software for the briefly but hugely popular Commodore VIC-20, he traveled to London to attend a computer show and do some networking in June of 1982. It was here that he met the man whose games would dramatically raise HES's profile and enrich its bank account: Jeff Minter.
I could easily write several feature articles on Minter and the surrealistic action games which he continues to write to this very day; his distinctive style and psychedelic flair make him both one of gaming's first auteurs and its most long-lived. But, at least for today, we'll confine ourselves to his connection with HES. When Balakrishnan met him, he had just founded his long-lived British software house, Llamasoft, on the strength of a Defender clone called Andes Attack. It lacked the skewed originality of Minter's later games, but Balakrishnan was nevertheless impressed with the fast graphics. He worked out a licensing deal, renamed it Aggressor, and moved it from cassette to a VIC-20 cartridge for the American market. Later that year came the much more original Gridrunner, Minter's — and HES's — first big hit. More lovably bizarre VIC-20 and Commodore 64 hits poured out of Minter at the rate of a new game every few months, many showing an odd fixation on ruminants: Attack of the Mutant Camels (probably his best-remembered game), Revenge of the Mutant Camels, Advance of the Megacamel, Metagalactic Llamas: Battle at the Edge of Time. HES's sales jumped from $1.4 million to $13 million between 1982 and 1983, largely on the strength of cheap and cheerful VIC-20 and 64 cartridges — although Balakrishnan did try to keep his hand in other fields as well, releasing hardware expansions for the VIC-20 and a word processor called, inevitably, HESWriter for the 64.
That year the HES story took another unexpected twist. Parent company Universal Supply had been building equipment largely for Atari and Mattel. That suddenly became a very bad business to be in as the Great Videogame Crash of 1983 became a reality. Balakrishnan and Morgan managed to extricate HES from the collapsing Universal Supply, reincorporating it as an independent entity once again. With stars in their eyes, with everyone telling them their industry represented the next big wave in home entertainment, they now embarked on one of the most spectacular boom-and-busts of the home-computer era.
The first step in any good software flameout is to collect lots and lots of investment capital from folks as entranced as you are by the hype about your industry, but who are nevertheless guaranteed to want their money back when the hype doesn't pan out. HES accepted huge cash injections from the major Silicon Valley venture-capitalist Tech Venture and from a company called Action Industries, a manufacturer of household knickknacks (!) based in Pennsylvania. Most interestingly, Microsoft also came on board. Their participation led to HES releasing a Commodore 64 version of Multiplan, Microsoft's first attempt at a spreadsheet program in those years before the Office hegemony. Multiplan represents the only piece of software Microsoft would ever develop for the 64.
The next step is to overextend your distribution network. HES aggressively pushed their software into mass merchandisers like K-Mart and Toys "R" Us, opening the way for other publishers to do the same but paying dearly for the privilege of being first. By 1984 Balakrishan estimated that HES's games were available through 8000 different outlets, while most competitors were only in 3000. This was good in its way, perhaps, but also meant that HES had to make a lot of copies right from the launch of each new title to have it available in so many places. And that in turn meant that when a new title turned out to be a flop — as did for example HESGames, an Olympic-themed effort that was roundly pummeled in the marketplace by Epyx's Summer Games — they were left stuck with huge amounts of unsold inventory.
Jay Balakrishnan with Leonard Nimoy
Finally, you have to spend hugely on advertising and promotion in comparison to the amount you spend on actually, you know, writing software. The remade HES made their first big promotional splash at Steve Wozniak's second (and final) US Festival on Memorial Day Weekend 1983, where they had a big spread inside the tech expo. (At a press conference there HES's spokesman inexplicably spilled the beans at considerable length about IBM's still-secret PCjr project, to which HES, like a number of software companies, was privy. IBM was, needless to say, livid. An insider with whom I'm in occasional contact who was there claims the spokesman "might have been stoned — there were lots of drugs at that concert.") They then rented a sort of permanent floating software exhibition on the retired aircraft carrier and newly minted museum ship Intrepid on Manhattan's West Side. In early 1984 they made their biggest splash when they acquired the services of Leonard Nimoy as spokesman; if Commodore had used Captain Kirk to make the VIC-20 a raging success, they would use Mr. Spock to do the same for HES. Unfortunately, Nimoy seemed to know even less about computers than William Shatner; when asked what kind of computer he had at home, he said he didn't know. (Nimoy was making a lot of strange career choices at this time, including driving a car for the Bangles in an incomprehensible music video for an admittedly pretty great song and plugging "erasable programmable logic devices" — Mr. Spock! get it? — something he presumably knew even less about than home computers, for Altera Corporation. InfoWorld magazine shruggingly concluded that he was maybe just "hard up for cash.")
The somewhat, well, intellectual thrust of these promotional efforts, of using Mr. Spock as spokesman and hawking wares inside a museum, points to an interesting dichotomy about HES. They may have been rushing to hit the center of the mass market, but at the same time they weren't dumbing down their products to do it. Far from it. HES was pushing hard to define themselves as a maker primarily of "edutainment" products. In a 1984 interview with InfoWorld, Balakrishnan describes an intriguing mix of upcoming high-concept titles, most of which would never see the light of day.
We've got a game called Cell Defense, in which you are in charge of your body's immunological system, and viruses attack you. There are various levels. These affect how fast your cells reproduce and whether you are a sick or healthy organism. You are learning a lot about the body as you play the game.
Then we have another game called Reflections, that's based on physics, with all kinds of lights and bouncing reflections. Then there's Life Force, in which you essentially learn about genes and genetics. It has eight levels. In the first one, you create an amoeba, then you get into multi-celled organisms. Man is the seventh level. The eighth is the mystery one in which you create an unknown organism by taking ribosomes and nuclei and putting them together.
Our fourth game is called Ocean Quest, in which you go and look for sunken treasure. As you do that, you learn about undersea life. There are different scenarios that affect the game, such as whether you are in the Pacific or the Atlantic. Of course, undersea life and fish differ according to the region.
Following the videogame crash and burn, conventional wisdom held that the simple action games which had defined digital entertainment for the masses prior to that point were now passé — dangerously so, in fact. Tellingly, in that same InfoWorld interview Balakrishnan manages to never mention Jeff Minter or his games in describing HES's rise to prominence. HES's 1984 portfolio, like the bookware phenomenon, can be read as a sign of a home-computer software industry wanting to differentiate itself from videogames for very practical commercial reasons. Yet, just as most of the people producing bookware really, deeply believed in it as a potential revolution in reading, HES had plenty of idealism to accompany their excess. If they oversold how much the computers for which they produced software could actually do, well, that was down at least as much to their own dreamy technological utopianism as a simple need to move product. It was a strange, heady time in computer games.
Of course, it also couldn't last, and for the overextended, over-expanded HES least of all. As these things so often do, the downfall came amazingly quickly. Leonard Nimoy debuted as HES's spokesman in March of 1984. InfoWorld published the aforequoted ebullient profile of HES and Balakrishnan in their September 3, 1984, issue. Six weeks later the same magazine announced that "HES nears bankruptcy," that they were casting about desperately for a buyer from amidst their erstwhile competitors while the investors bayed in outrage and flatly refused to throw good money after bad and the axe fell on two-thirds of their 90-person workforce. Days later they filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy. When asked what had happened, Morgan didn't have a whole of insight to offer: "People stopped buying products."
The remnants of HES were eventually acquired by Avant-Garde Publishing of Eugene, Oregon, a company which dated from the same year as HES and had its own fleet of eager venture capitalists behind it. Avant-Garde kept the HES name alive for a while; the original plan for the merger had the HES name being used for lower-end, mass-market software, the Avant-Garde name for higher-end IBM and Apple software to be sold through dealers. But, while Avant-Garde did keep a number of older HES titles in circulation for a time, they released just one new one under the label. Within a couple of years Avant-Garde too would be gone, justifiably so in light of cheesy efforts like Joe Theismann's Pro Football, Dave Winfield's Batter Up!, and Slugfest: Chris Evert-Lloyd Tennis, which purported to teach you or your kids how to play their respective sports with the help of their respective athlete endorsers.
Jay Balakrishnan continued undeterred as a serial entrepreneur. By the January 1985 Consumer Electronics Show he had already started a new outfit called Solid State Software to develop a new line of productivity software for the trusty old Commodore 64. The circumstance were, mind you, quite a bit different from the glory days of HES. At the January 1984 CES you couldn't get behind the facade of HES's grandiose exhibit to see him unless you were a VIP. In January 1985 Info magazine found him sitting behind "a card table in an 8′ X 8′ booth with a stack of 2-color brochures. How times change."
(Print sources include: the January 1985 Creative Computing; the May 19 1983 Popular Computing Weekly; the September 3 1984, October 15 1984, October 29 1984, and November 19 1984 InfoWorld; Info #6; the October 11 1985 MicroTimes; the February 1981 and April 1986 Compute!. Online sources include articles in The New Indian Express and Rick Melick's site. The photographs come from InfoWorld. And my anonymous source for the US Festival anecdote shall remain anonymous…)
Tags: c64, hes, vic-20


Farmingville, NY - On June 9, Supervisor Ed Romaine and Councilwoman Valerie Cartright visited the Eastern Long Island Mini Maker Faire held at the Port Jefferson Village Center and Harborfront Park. The event featured innovative robots, kinetic and interactive art, fire sculptures, ocean exploration through virtual reality and many more cutting edge creative experiences through hands-on, minds-on exhibits and performances. Maker Faire originated in 2006 in the San Francisco Bay Area as a project of the editors of Make: magazine. It has since grown into a significant worldwide network of both flagship and independently-produced events. To learn more about Maker Faire, go to the Maker Faire website.