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Says somebody typing on a computer, that is direct product of competition between businesses for customer money.

Basic research is done by private sector absent government crowding out all sorts of credit, money, people and other resources, which governments always crowd out of the private sector into the public sector in search for a better bomb to kill you.

Invention of transistor was done privately and without it we still would be stuck with vacuum tubes, which were also invented privately.

The history of telegraph is a history of private inventors, same as the history of telephone. Radio.

History of television is fascinating in yet another aspect, since the inventor of Kinescope had to escape h his new Soviet government while doing it.

--

You are saying: not ALL invention comes from private sector. Well, of-course the governments steals so much money, that they can throw nearly unlimited funds at a problem. That's a huge waste of resources. Just like the Langley Aerodrome compared to the Wright brothers airplane. Langley had 50,000 USD thrown at him at the beginning of 20th century. Wright brothers had their own bicycle shop and under 1000 bucks of money over they years. Results are in the studio.

Yes, we can have money stolen from us by government and piles of it can be thrown at problems, like money thrown at Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea, War on Drugs, War on Poverty, etc.etc. It doesn't matter to the government how the money is spent, the only solution to all problem is: steal more money and spend it.

Would the Internet be here without government? OF-COURSE! Of-course it would be, just like all other forms of communications that we invent. Would it be using a protocol similar to what we are using today? Most likely, it's not like the idea of packet switching is so far fetched from the ideas that were already implemented in telephone circuit switching exchanges, the difference being that the telephone circuit had to be on and with data the speed removes the need for completely synchronous data exchange.

Besides, as I said, the people who were crowded out by the government from the private sector into the public sector, most of those people were already working on similar or exactly the same projects. Stealing them for the purposes of running wars more efficiently by governments is not what I would call a 'moral' enterprise. AFAIC the public sector is definitely immoral, it's based on theft and coercion and murder.

The private sector absent the government is based on voluntary exchange and pursuit of profits, which is the most moral way that we have invented as a species to run an economy, specifically because it's based on voluntary exchange among willing participants.

Wikipedia claims that because, believe it or not, it is correct. One of the Wikipedia citations is a Time Magazine article from 1980, the week of Empire Strikes Back's release. In the article, they talk about how "Episode V" was confusing viewers, and that a re-release of Star Wars slated for "next year" (e.g., 1981) will contain the "Episode IV" subtitle, reassuring viewers that they had not missed three movies in between the original Star Wars and Empire.

If that is not good enough for you, how about the research of some hardcore Star Wars geeks who answered this question way back in 1995 by reviewing all known prints of Star Wars up to that time. From that site:

The reissue of "Star Wars" that ran for three weeks starting on Wednesday, August 15, 1979, DID NOT contain the "Episode IV: A NEW HOPE" subtitle. A trailer for "Empire" was shown, however, and a Kenner toys discount booklet was given out (both of which are announced on the poster for the reissue).
The first appearance of "Episode IV: A NEW HOPE" was on the new prints struck for the two-week reissue of "Star Wars" on April 10, 1981, nearly one year after the premiere of "Empire."

Too bad modern PC keyboards don't allow detection of very many keys being pressed at the same time.

FWIW, Douglas Engelbart had a chorded keyboard - keyset decades ago:

http://www.cedmagic.com/history/first-computer-mouse.html

That thing only plays music? Bah. MY record plays 2-hour long movies. True it's not portable but it's still fun with cool Disney movies like Parent Trap and The "Love" Bug:

http://www.cedmagic.com/selectavision.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitance_Electronic_Disc

Sorry, I should have done the linkage in my original post. The Capacitance Electronic Discs is what I'm talking about there.

Watched Soylent Green on one of these. The classic vinyl "skip" produced some pretty entertaining results.

Maybe you're right about me, but I don't think so. You're incorrect about the driving force to use Microsoft (kindly see Daengbo's and my follow-on comments, above).

I was trying to give the GP the benefit of the doubt - so I used PC as a generic term, and asked myself which PC-type machine was actually designed by IBM in those days rather than simply integrated - and as I recall, that was the PS/2. In those days, the only thing "protectable" or proprietary, really, about the IBM-PC was its BIOS - hence the ease of COMPAQ, Zenith and others developing the clone market. The PS/2 changed all of that for IBM - it used the proprietary microchannel architecture - http://www.cedmagic.com/history/ibm-ps2-1987.html

And as it turned out, they did end up having to develop the OS for the machine they ended up having to develop - the PS/2.

The IBM-PC wasn't related to typical IBM monopolistic actions - not everyone at IBM was evil and the Boca Raton crew was pretty ok - they were market-driven.

However, after success of the IBM-PC, IBM decided to get up to their old tricks with complete lock-out - hence, the PS/2, hence my response.

~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm sorry to sound like a big know-it-all - I'm really not. I am however an old fart (of the stay-and-play-on-lawn, that's-what-it's-there-for variety) whose memory hasn't given out (completely). I started writing code in 1972, and was rooting like hell for the DOJ in their anti-IBM actions back in the day. Pre-internet, best source of info for that was Datamation magazine. I've followed PC developments very closely since the Altair days - so I had no illusions about the history of the PC or how it came to be that IBM used Microsoft for the PC's OS. The PC was a thing of great wonder for the popular press of the day, but not for the focused press in that day or the many small-architecture computing newsletters that used to circulate about.

I am common of my age and group and was confused that there could be a question that IBM was driven to Microsoft by DOJ actions, which began in the 1960s and dragged on until 1983 - and accomplished nothing.

Use of outside software vendors applied to the sales force - not development - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_IBM

PC-DOS was licensed and vended by IBM - as the OS, it didn't fall under the antitrust rule-of-three. The first competing OS for the original 5150 was DR's CP/M-86 and later, MS-DOS, if memory doesn't fail me.

IBM's outsourcing, BIOS development for the 5150 and expectations for the Microsoft relationship to succeed were directed at extending their monopolistic practices. If things had gone their way, they'd have simply bought Microsoft - or so many of us feared at the time.

IBM had the political and legal juice to drag out the DOJ for decades - they had no fear and were thus not fear driven.

Well - that's my long-winded opinion.

The Epyx 500XJ. Microswitchez, bitchez!

how long have these flat tvs been on the market? i seem to remember them advertised 8 years ago, so where the heck are the AFFORDABLE ones!

What a 20x drop in Plasma prices over 10 years isn't good enough for you?

The first Phillips 42" plasma sold for $20,000

I can pick up a 42 plasma or LCD at Costco today for $999

I spent more than that on a 50" rear projection TV in 2001 and that technology has been around since the 40's! http://www.cedmagic.com/history/rca-first-project- 648ptk.html

Close, but you didn't get it quite right. 5MB = 5,000,000 bytes with 7 bits/byte. (See http://www.cedmagic.com/history/ibm-305-ramac.html and http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2006/05/19/1956-fir st-hard-drive-5mb/ )

Creativity comes in many forms. Sometimes one who knows less than experts can break out of the mental boxes we so frequently build for ourselves.

You should also pick a better example the next time you want to flame someone.
CRT's were originally used as storage devices.
(e.g., see http://www.cedmagic.com/history/williams-tube.html )

OK, so vinyl sounded better, but did it look better on TV?

(Answer: No, not really)

Then you don't know about SelectaVision.

http://www.cedmagic.com/selectavision.html

Le Stick for the Atari 2600.

(Ok it's not exactly the same thing hehe, but I like to say "Le Stick" as in "grip Le Stick with my Power Glove")

You can go back much further than the MS effort. In the very early 80's we had a motion sensitive joystick - Le Stick Was mercury filled, and sensed movement when tilted. In practice, it made game playing more difficult since it was hard to keep it centered.

...is this one.

While the Mac mini is not the perfect media PC it's pretty damn good. Very small, you can buy videos directly with ITMS and it's powerful enough to PVR OTA HDTV feeds if you like (via EyeTV).

It's funny that a computer never explicitly mentioned as a media PC is so well sited to the tast while ViiV is not. I was wondering when Intel announced Viiv if we would see a Viiv box from Apple too, but I don't think they saw any profit in playing with Viiv - they have thier own path to follow.

As you wish, sir.

Voila.

So if those are the 10 worst, what are the ten best? The Logitech wireless PS/2 controller?

My top three:

3) The Epyx 500XJ for Commodore 64 or anything else that had that interface. Durable as hell, much more ergonomic, and quick reaction time on the button after the learning curve.

2) The Logitech wireless PS/2 that you mentioned. 50+ hours battery life, no lag, great distance.

1) The hulking NES Advantage. The only controller I've ever used that came close to simluating an arcade experience. It cost $40, which was like $1,000,000 at the time, but I loved it so much I bought another to replace the one my friend broke.

Best ever: Epyx 500XJ

http://www.cedmagic.com/tech-info/remote-control/e pyx-500xj-joystick.jpg

Yes, the Intellivision controller was tragic, indeed. Every catalog I saw selling Intellivisions also sold little snap-on sticks that converted the disc to a joystick. People swore by the things.

Now, if you want to see an ergonomic controller from the 80s, you want the Epyx 500XJ controller, which was Atari 2600 and Commodore 64 compatible. That thing was comfortable to use and lasted forever.

It looks funny, but it works by putting the button under your left index finger, giving your ring and pinky fingers a case-cutout to rest in (so the thing didn't pop out like a bar of soap when your hand got sweaty from holding it in a deathgrip for hours), and there were grooves in the case for each finger.

The stick itself had a steel rod in it that was balanced on a ball bearing on the bottom of the controller, so it had only about 3/4 inch of throw at the top; it was like the Mazda Miata shifter, before there was a Mazda Miata. The switches were Cherry switches, which made a clicking noise when activated. You could also feel the switches activating. No more wondering if you were really doing a diagonal or not. It was the joystick equivalent of a buckling-spring Dvorak keyboard.

And did I mention that it was built tough? ABS plastic, 1/8 inch thick, with plenty of reinforcing ribs. Between that and the steel joystick, you had a controller that, if thrown at the wall, would easily defeat drywall.

I miss that thing.

Fuck that!
Epyx 550 XJ totally owned.

Pshaw! "Power Stick". Loser. You probably use emacs... :)

What tends to make weapons easier to aim with a mouse than with a joystick is the mouse ballistics. Move it fast, and the mouse automatically decreases the resolution so your onscreen cursor covers a lot of ground. Slow it down, the resolution increases for pixel-perfect accuracy.

Joysticks don't lend themselves well to this sort of thing, especially the new thumbstick variety that have all of an inch of throw between zero and max. The Xbox controller has worked better for me in that respect, but it's more me than the controller, because I have friends who feel far more comfortable with the PS2 controller. Different strokes and all that.

I think the bottom line here is that we need more standardised controller customisation in console games. We should be able to set the sensitivity of our thumbsticks, and the ballistic level if we're satisfied with how that works, and reverse the X and/or Y axis. Every button should be reassignable. The strength of the vibration function should be customisable. And all of this should be provided in a standard library from the console manufacturer, so every game for that console has the exact same capability.

The Revolution's gyroscopic controller notion is stupid, as all of us who remember "le Stick" can attest. The idea resurfaces every few years as "the next big thing", fails miserably in the marketplace because it's STUPID, and goes back underground until some other moron digs it up.

Try using a tilt-sensitive controller for several hours, and let me know how cool it is then. It doesn't matter how well-engineered the controller is now, the human body still has the same design, and will still have the exact same problems.

This is why I don't like electronics anymore, everything is too simple now. Back then, you really needed smarts, talent, intuition and creativity to get things done. Hell, most of the time, you didn't even know what the "thing" was, you had to invent it yourself! Awesome!

She's not buff enough to play Skeletor. Maybe you never watched the cartoon but Skeletor was RIPPED.

http://www.cedmagic.com/featured/he-man/skeletor.j pg
Only his face was a skull, the rest of him was solid muscle.

For those who do not know, Jef Raskin was the man who designed the GUIs for several different Apple operating systems.

Which he "borrowed" from the Xerox Alto.

Well, it's possible in theory, there was a vinyl-based video system called SelectaVision / VideoDisc.

Though, the discs themselves used read mechanism that was very different from LPs, and also had far higher groove density than LPs; if you store analog video on LPs, you probably get either a very short video or a very bad resolution.

Apple INVENTED the standard GUI interface.

Yeah, okay, so I'm not 100% there on when Alley Cat was released. But the hardware was there (okay, so I don't know if the CGA card was available then) which is what you seem to care about.

Using ZX81 screenshots is misleading. They were neat machines, but there was much better (if somewhat higher chip-count) hardware available at the time, such as the TI-99/4.

Ding, dong, the d-pad's gone,
wicked pad,
stupid pad,
Ding, dong, the dumb-ass d-pad's dead!

Gosh, and it only took what, 20 years for Nintendo, the original perpetrators, to abandon this atrocity. The d-pad is a sadist's exercise in reverse ergonomics. You make the player hit four buttons instead of using one stick, then you put it under his left thumb when he's probably right-handed. Brilliant!

If you want a glimpse of how game controllers should look, go back in time and check out the epyx joystick: http://www.cedmagic.com/tech-info/remote-control/e pyx-500xj-joystick.html

These things were incredibly comfortable to use. Unfortunately they weren't manufactured very well and would break all the time, but the ergonomics were fantastic.

Now if only Sony and MS would follow suit...

and I don't mean the codec, but the ill-conceived "pay to watch a disc you also purchase on a player you purchase too" concept that didn't last 9 months. If there's a format war, I'm not exactly sure what the Disney company's clout will buy.

*stares at the pile of 80 minidiscs on my desk*
HEY
minidiscs are quite usefull. i purchased my portable player/recorder in 1998, when there were no hard drive based mp3 players, and a minidisc recorder and a 64 meg mp3 player cost the same. the reason minidisc was better was i could carry another 74 minutes of music in my pocket for only a dollar. if i wanted to take more than 64 megs of mp3s with me, i'd have to spend a lot more money, or hook it up to a computer and swap songs out. this simply was not acceptable for plane flights, etc.
the reason the minidisc never caught on was the way you obtained the music itself. i was one of VERY few people with a cable modem at that time, so most people were still relying on copying from a CD to get music onto their mp3 player or minidisc, because record companies hardly released anything on a MD because the Japanese market had already for 2 or 3 years shown it was the replacement of the tape, not the compact disc. a replacement for the most popular recordable format.
anyways...hd-dvd or blu-ray won't be that way. they will "go the way" of the SACD or DVD-A....and by that i mean onto my shelf in mass quantities. sure, wal mart doesn't sell them, but best buy and circuit city have a nice collection of the 2 "better than cd" audio formats, even though most people dont care.
if it's not adopted instead of a dvd, i think it will still fall into the specialty market...like 7.1 channel recievers, and recievers with HD video switchting and upmixing. people still buy them, but who do you know that actually has it?
it's not going to go the way of the SelectaVision CED disks of the early 80's. (a video disc that plays with a stylus like a record?!?!?! turns out my girlfriend's father was VP of that whole disaster RCA had there... http://www.cedmagic.com/mem/whos-who/babcock-bruce .html)

It was UNIVAC.

(btw, this took all of a Google search on "computer 1952 election".)

See the famous Star Wars Compendium of Lost Footage (the "Re-editing Star Wars" section) for details. Of course wanting to own the original mono sound mix is pretty hardcore ;-)

That's just what I'm sure of off the top of my head.

Yeah, you left out the RCA SelectaVision CED version.

How about Video Disk? Video Disk I only have Empire though.

Re: Video on records.

They did, they're called VideoDiscs CED Magic - The RCA SelectaVision VideoDisc Web Site

Given your logic I'd suggest you pick up one of these and play with it for a while, then come back and post how much better the video quality is on these vs modern DVD's!

After all, they do have James Bond.

Green Pussy

Well there were the RCA SelectaVision videodiscs. Those things were like playing a movie on a vinyl LP. I don't recall laserdiscs ever having cartridges either.

Google stole Orko??

Oh, Orkut... never mind :)

Yeah, but when you played it on the C64, you had to use a joystick, which came with two buttons...

You had a two button joystick for your C64? I certainly didn't. I used the old-school Atari 2600 joysticks, then the ahead-of-it's-time Epyx 500XJ. Oh yeah. I still remember the model number.

Then isn't the two-button PC mouse also crippled?

From what I can make out of this image, the first mouse was a three-button one.

If someone made a 200-button mouse, would it be less crippled? Would a keyboard without the Scroll Lock key be crippled?
If the UI doesn't need a second button on the mouse why should there be one?

I don't know if Apple had much to do with the expansion of USB, but at least they figured it was better to have one interface rather than all the different ones we have on our pcs.
How often do you use the COM-port, and how often do you use it because it's better than USB?
How about those annoying floppy drives?

Video Signal to Noise Ratio: >46dB (CCIR)
Chrominance Signal-to-Noise Ratio: >40dB
Chrominance Bandwidth: 0.5MHz
Luminance Bandwidth: 3.0MHz
Horizontal Resolution: 240-270 lines
Audio Signal-to-Noise Ratio: >50dB (USASI), 70 dB (with CX)
Audio Bandwidth: 15KHz
Stereo Separation at 1KHz: 26dB
Dynamic Range Mono: 50dB
Dynamic Range Stereo: 70dB
Audio FM Signal Deviation: +/- 50KHz
Audio Carrier, Mono: 716KHz
Audio Carrier, Additional Stereo: 905KHz

Video Signal to Noise Ratio: >46dB (CCIR)
Chrominance Signal-to-Noise Ratio: >40dB
Chrominance Bandwidth: 0.5MHz
Luminance Bandwidth: 3.0MHz
Horizontal Resolution: 240-270 lines
Audio Signal-to-Noise Ratio: >50dB (USASI), 70 dB (with CX)
Audio Bandwidth: 15KHz
Stereo Separation at 1KHz: 26dB
Dynamic Range Mono: 50dB
Dynamic Range Stereo: 70dB
Audio FM Signal Deviation: +/- 50KHz
Audio Carrier, Mono: 716KHz
Audio Carrier, Additional Stereo: 905KHz

Video Signal to Noise Ratio: >46dB (CCIR)
Chrominance Signal-to-Noise Ratio: >40dB
Chrominance Bandwidth: 0.5MHz
Luminance Bandwidth: 3.0MHz
Horizontal Resolution: 240-270 lines
Audio Signal-to-Noise Ratio: >50dB (USASI), 70 dB (with CX)
Audio Bandwidth: 15KHz
Stereo Separation at 1KHz: 26dB
Dynamic Range Mono: 50dB
Dynamic Range Stereo: 70dB
Audio FM Signal Deviation: +/- 50KHz
Audio Carrier, Mono: 716KHz
Audio Carrier, Additional Stereo: 905KHz

The apex of multimedia vinyl technology in the 1980s was probably RCA's videodisc system. This vinyl-based analog video system competed against early Laserdisc.

Of *course* people are still fleabaying them. You can even get the Original Star Wars Trilogy on black vinyl videodisc...

For that matter, what's a "right-click" anyway?

One thing Apple and Microsoft have in common is that they both copied the mouse incorrectly. Indeed, the mouse is only half the user interface; in Engelbart's original system the "keyboard" was a five-key item for the left hand, and the mouse had only three keys because the thumb and little finger were busy gripping the mouse itself. If you ever saw anyone use that original mouse system you'd be amazed. It's been compared to the difference between walking and riding a bicycle.

P.S. Like most Mac bigots, you think the Mac UI is "obvious" only because it's what you're used to. Open your mind to alternate possiblities.

LaserDisc is not a digital technology. If you look closely at a CAV laserdisc, you can see the individual frames reflected off the light. It's basically a record player that reads frames (not to be confused with the CED.

In the later years, they kludged some digital stuff into it to do digital sound (AC-3).

But the video itself is not digital. It's an old-ass technology...as a matter of fact, it was originally called 'DiscoVision'. That should give you a hint of its age.

On the other hand, it would be the perfect uncompressed, copy-protection free source for anyone trying to make the 'original' on DVD. They could even sub in the soundtrack from the AC-3 versions of the special edition. That gives me an idea!

Archaic as it is, the 5-level Baudot code is still very much in use by Amateur Radio operators worldwide. Now we use computers and sound cards instead of klanky old TTYs and TD units with the crossed-pulse oscilloscopes.

It's not a plain old LP record, it's a different system with finer tracks and faster speed (I think about 20x finer tracks and 450 RPMs). The page linked by the grandparent is cool (yet a bit difficult to navigate to the technical specs), but I found a very cool 20 minute video explaining both disc and player manufacturing made in 1981 here (beware, it's 101 MB)!

It's not a plain old LP record, it's a different system with finer tracks and faster speed (I think about 20x finer tracks and 450 RPMs). The page linked by the grandparent is cool (yet a bit difficult to navigate to the technical specs), but I found a very cool 20 minute video explaining both disc and player manufacturing made in 1981 here (beware, it's 101 MB)!