When did you first learn to drive?

Post Reply New Topic

I found this article very interesting: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/michel-kel ... 11652.html

Most interesting parts: 1. Denmark is most certainly a market economy. 2. The socialist system there is, to quote a British journalist, an "unsustainable rickety derelict" 3. and that you have the shortest life expectancy of any European nation outside the former Soviet bloc and the highest rate of cancer.

Also an observation of my own. You are being overrun by Muslim immigrants. These people come to exploit your welfare system, but they hate you and have no intention of becoming good Danish citizens. IMO you need to put white guilt or whatever it is aside and do something about this problem. What they want is the Islamic Republic of Denmark.

First of all, Links Awakening is a Retro Game? Damn I am getting old. I've heard that even Halo CE is seen as "retro" these days. To me, retro games are the games of the late 70s to mid 80s. I'm talking Missile Command, Pac Man, Dig Dug, Frogger. I'm talking a big giant Ape who threw barrels at Mario. I'm talking Links FIRST attempt to rescue the Princess and reunite the Triforce. I'm talking big giant quarter driven cabinets giving way to the Atari 2600 and original NES (a highly overrated system IMO with many sh***y games). Ah that geek moment is done.

I agree with most of your criticism of Capitalism, and like I said I want a more Socalist USA. However I'm certainly not in favor of the level of socialism in a country like Denmark or Canada. I also agree with your criticism of the US prison system. Many of those people are in prison because of stupid laws in some states mandating jail time for all drug offences. The judge can not give the offender probation, can not take into account a first offence or the non violent nature of the crime, and in some cases MUST give a year or more of jail time. Its outrageous.

Ouch I never intended this to be a geopolitical debate. I was just curious to see if other Aspies learned to drive late in life like I did.

An Aspie on a motorbike? Very unusual. Most of us hate noise and cant handle them physically.

Seems like most Aspies have trouble with cars...except for those of us for whom its a special interest or super developed ability. Those people start early in life whether its legal or not.

I'm sure I would be really bad at driving cars without ASD and anxiety as well, since my visual-spatial thinking is really, really bad. But that's just me, I guess many people here are actually good at spatial tasks.

Link's Awakening is a retro game to me but I'm only 29 haha. I'm young enough to think of the Super Nintendo and the Megadrive as retro.

I like the old arcade games too. I used to play them on my MAME cabinet. I've had it for years and the picture tube has degraded, it has PSU problems and I think I need to drill the lock out. I think I know a guy who can fix it but for now it's bricked.

I agree with you that the NES is an overrated system, much like the Atari 2600. The thing that bothers me about those two systems is not that the technology is bad by today's standards but that the technology is bad by the standards of their own time. That makes them a wasted opportunity. The 2600's lack of a frame buffer made it less powerful than it should have been even for late 70s standards and the two kilobyte limit on cartridge size failed to take into account the falling price of ROM memory that would make larger games viable within the system's lifespan.

Same for the NES. As the Famicom it was released in 1983, it got a very limited release in December 1985 (real release in 1986) and didn't pick up steam until the late 80s / early 90s. In other words it didn't become popular in the west until it was nearly a decade old. Then it was not only popular, it was a near monopoly. I'm sure you already know about Nintendo's shady monopolistic practises.

I get that they had to introduce their so-called Seal of Quality to combat the glut of cheaply made third party games that sunk the 2600 but the NES has hundreds of shovelware games bearing this seal of quality. What were Nintendo thinking?

The limitations on which sprites can go on which lines were restrictive even by 80s standards. Amusingly, the 16 bit generation took Nintendo by surprise. According to developer interviews, they thought the future was the Famicom Disk System, not the SNES.

The NES produces a fairly noisy video signal even by composite standards. Appallingly, in France where it was a legal requirement for such devices to have an RGB SCART output, Nintendo installed a chip that upconverted from composite to RGB. What a shonky move!

Nintendo has made some brilliant games and some questionable hardware. At least Nintendo invented a tablet with physical controls. It gives me hope that the next generation won't grow up learning how to game with just iPad controls.

I started learning how to drive in my mid teens, its a skill I practiced a lot and something I enjoyed, I loved the freedom.

As an aspie driving is one of few things I am good at. I have always been hyper aware with my eyes so I see everything that is going on. I learned when I was 16. Like many things, when I am driving I get hyper focused.

Hello sir. I have an off topic question for you. You seem to understand computers and what not, and its not my area. Anyway, here goes. I have heard that the old NES "zapper" gun will not work on a modern flat screen TV, and I have a hypothesis as to why. I don't believe the "Zapper" actually sends out a signal like a remote control or "zaps" anything. In order for that to work, there would have to be some way for the TV to communicate with the NES, and I very much doubt the technology of 1984 was up to the task. My theory is that the "Zapper" was simply a passive light sensor. Target objects were then rendered on the screen in such a way that they were recognizable to the zapper when you hit the trigger, and it would look at the image it was pointed at, identify it as a target object or not, and report that data back to the NES. The problem with a modern flat screen is likely that the way in which it draws its image is entirely different from a cathode ray screen, and the zapper can no longer recognize target objects. Am I anywhere in the ballpark? Just curious.

Also off topic here, but yes, I believe you are correct, or at least I've read something similar somewhere.

From Wikipedia

When the trigger on the Zapper is pressed, the game causes the entire screen to become black for one frame. Then, on the next frame, all valid targets that are on screen are drawn all white as the rest of the screen remains black. The Zapper detects this change from low light to bright light, and determines if any of the targets are in the zapper's hit zone. If a target is hit, the game determines which one was hit based on the duration of the flash, as each target flashes for a different duration. After all target areas have been illuminated, the game returns to drawing graphics as usual. The whole process is almost imperceptible to the human eye, although one can notice a slight "flashing" of the image but this was easily misconstrued as a simulated muzzle flash. Although the Zapper just detects light, it can only be used on CRT displays. It will not work on LCDs, plasma displays or other flat panel displays due to display lag. This darkness/brightness sequence prevents the possible issue caused by pointing the Zapper right next to or into a light bulb. Older light guns did not use this method, making it possible to cheat and get a perfect hit score in a way not possible using the NES Zapper.

You're essentially correct. The light gun that's used with the Playstation is much more interesting. It targets by sensing the exact moment the cathode beam comes across that part of the TV screen. While the NES Zapper could only sense down a standard sprite size and only have two targets on screen at a time the gun that comes with the Playstation can sense down to the pixel and doesn't have a limit on the number of simultaneous targets on screen.

How do you like those REALLY retro games when almost all video games were in arcades?

Like Space Invaders, Asteroids, Donkey Kong, etc.

I love those games! Asteroids is one of my favourites!

Driving is probably the most useful thing I've learned to do since I learned to read.
But I was 23 I believe, which was definitely late where I was living as people were already driving at seventeen.
Now I can drive freight trucks with 3 axles.
Can't drive stick shift though which is incredibly frustrating as it seems to haunt me all the time, especially in jobs. I see an advert that would be great but whoops! Must be able to drive manual transmission. I'd like to learn both stick and to upgrade my license into road train territory, but both would mean money and driving lessons.

16 though I don't currently have a car. I think I have driven about 80,000 km in my life, thats about it.

I never learned to drive. I was sure that something was wrong (didn't find out till I was 57yo) - something that would probably cause accidents, maybe even kill somebody. That was just a hunch but a solid one. I was one helluva jay-walker, though.