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I actually tend to side with Snopes, "Status undetermined" on this, and we'll probably never know for certain. That said, a lot of the key components of the story are demonstrably true, making for an awful lot of coincidences that all add credibility to it, including a retelling on Philips' own website and marketing materials of the time specifically mentioning the Furtwangler recording. Here's a link to a story by one of Philips' own engineers on the development process, documenting a sudden (and quite drastic) design change from Sony that had to have been triggered by something. All in all, I think there probably is some truth behind it, but were it a court of law most of the "evidence" would probably be classed as circumstantial, and I also suspect it may have been exaggerated after the fact by the marketing departments of Sony and Philips; it's a nice story, after all.

Sony invented LaserDisc, Philips invented CD. And what we now know as a CD is the result of a joint task force between the two.

Interesting reads are wikipedia or "The CD Story" written by one of the engineers on that task force: http://www.exp-math.uni-essen.de/~immink/pdf/cdstory.htm

This is what Dr. Kees A. Schouhamer Immink (one of the actual engineers that invented the CD) says about it:

"The disk diameter is a very basic parameter, because it relates to playing time. All parameters then have to be traded off to optimise playing time and reliability. The decision was made by the op brass of Philips. 'Compact Cassette was a great success', they said, 'we don't think CD should be much larger'. As it was, we made CD 0.5 cm larger yielding 12 cm. (There were all sorts of stories about it having something to do with the length of Beethoven's 9th Symphony and so on, but you should not believe them.)"

See http://www.exp-math.uni-essen.de/~immink/pdf/cdsto ry.pdf for the whole story.

There's another legend how the 44.1 kHz came into existence. The CD format was eventually fixed at 650 MBytes per disc, and Herbert Karajan wanted his take of Beethoven's 9th symphony to fit on the disc which is 74 minutes. Go do the math :-) Even if it's an urban legend, it's a nice one. According to http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Disc, the story goes as documented in http://www.exp-math.uni-essen.de/~immink/pdf/cdsto ry.pdf

There was one format that Sony pioneered with one other company, Phillips, that was relatively successful. You may even have heard of it: the Audio Compact Disk, or CD. Sure, Phillips did most of the technical work (PDF) on it, but Sony was there from the start.

The server receives an association setup request (an INIT chunk) usually in the CLOSED state, and analyzes the data contained in that chunk. From that it generates all the values needed at its side to enter an established association, and generates a secure hash of these values and a secret key (e.g. with the MD5 or SHA-1 algorithms). The values are then put into the so-called COOKIE, along with the derived message authentication code (MAC). This COOKIE is returned to the sender of the INIT chunk in an INIT-ACK chunk. The server remains in the CLOSED state, and forgets all about the received INIT chunk.

When Phillips and Sony finalized Red Book in 1979, it was done based off another technology source, Laserdiscs. If someone tried that today, they would be swamped by roughly 30 letters of patent infringment warnings

Except that Laserdiscs were also made by Philips. Someone there asked the technical people if they could use the same technology for plain audio as well as video. See The Compact Disc Story for details.

I don't actually expect Apache to support this, ever. But it's a neat idea. Here's a paper by people who know more and write better than me:
Slow PDF: http://ase.informatik.uni-essen.de/olbib/2001graun ke.pdf
Ugly HTML conversion: http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:Cx4ndEP2FHYJ: ase.informatik.uni-essen.de/olbib/2001graunke.pdf

Why not SCTP ? See RFC 2960. Already in the Linux kernel, Kame, (solaris ?) and probably others.
Intro here

- SCTP can be used in many "modes"
* Provides reliable messaging (like UDP,but reliable)
* Can be used as a stream protocol (like TCP).
* One connection/association can hold multiple streams.
* One-to-many relation for messaging.
* Better at dealing with syn flooding than TCP.

Then again, I guess inveting the wheel is more "fun" :-/

It would be rather difficult for apple to clone X Window when it wasn't even around before 1984

So, is "windows" a generic term, or not? Fair question. In 1968, Douglas Engelbart certainly thought of the desktop environment as windows. He created a "a windowed GUI" with a mouse and everything. In the early 70's (same link), Alan Kay gave us Dynabook and Smalltalk, which used overlapping "windows." In 1981, Xerox introduced the Star computer, which featured overlapping, resizable windows. Xeroc PARC called Star's interface a "WIMP" interface, for windows, icons, menus, and pointers. In 1982, Microsoft started introducing a windowed desktop, though it wasn't called "Windows" until November 1983. In the same time period, universities developed the "W Windows" system, which was quickly replaced with a new version called the "X Window" system (W to X. See where they went with that?) in 1984. The survey that MS introduced says that people think of MS Windows when you ask them what "windows" on a desktop means. Another fair survey question could be: given any GUI/WIMP interface, how many people would call it a "windows" interface? If most people generically identify any GUI/WIMP interface as "windows", then Microsoft's trademark term "Windows" is just as meaningless as Ford introducing and marketing a new vehicle called the new "Ford Car" (Yes, yes; we all remember the Renault Le Car).

Windows is not a generic term now. If someone says Linux, you know what they are talking about (the specific OS). By the same terms, if someone says that a program they wrote "runs on Windows" you know, with 100% certainty, that they are referring to the specificMS OS called Windows.

But if someone says their program "runs on X windows" we will also know what it means, that their program folllows the X11 Windowing System Protocol and probably runs on UNIX. This suggests to me that while the word Windows alone, used as if it were a software platform, is very not generic, "it sounds like Windows" is certainly a generic at this point. "Lindows" seems about as close to "Windows" as "X Windows", and it has X11 *in* it, so..

I'm not sure they could win this case even were the trademark a valid one when it was filed. According to this X-windows was developed and in use in MIT student labs in 1984 (although W, the precursor to X, existed before that) and was being commercially deployed by 1988. According to this MSWindows was announced in 1983 and was being commercially deployed by 1985. As far as i'm concerned, if Microsoft has problems with things that sound like 'cheap knock-offs' of their Windows trademark.. well, if Windows is a microsoft trademark, then 'X Windows' certainly sounds like a cheap knock-off to me (X-Windows isn't the product's name, but a lot of people call it that.). Microsoft didn't do anything about this in 1988, their trademark is now diluted, and they can't complain about this now.

Beyond this, it seems to me any arguments you could use to claim Windows is a non-generic could be equally applied to Office: If you say "this is an Office document" people know exactly what you mean. Microsoft has spent ungodly amounts of money on marketing the name Office. But yesterday in CompUSA, i quite definitely saw a box for sale clearly marked "Hancom Office".. with "Hancom" in little tiny letters, and the visual design of the box very similar to that of the MSOffice v.X packaging. That seems more to me to be profiteering off of a trademark MS has built up than "Lindows".

Here's the thing.. everything i've said above makes perfect sense to me. However, I'm not sure it means a damn thing from a legal standpoint. Is the whole "X Windowing System therefore MSWindows can't trademark-collide with similar-sounding products" a valid legal argument? Is there some SPECIFIC legal reason that it's okay for people to stomp all over the Office trademark but not the Windows one?

For example, when you say "hand me a Kleenex" you probably don't give a hoot if I give you Kleenex brand tissues, Puffs brand, or Wal-Mart brand. But if I say I want a Windows program, you know that I don't want some program written for Linux.

So what would you assume if i told you "Hand me some Leenex"? ^_^

I agree that you should avoid those cheep FM transmitter thingy's. You'll actually be lucky if they work most of the time, and when they do you don't want to annoy other drivers with your FM transmitter.

I would suggest an FM Modulator that plugs directly into your antenna line. You will get much better quality and reliability from them than your average $25 transmitter.

Of course, if you don't mind spending money, just get a head unit with an aux line-in and use that.

X-Windows (The Xerox Windowing System)

How ironic. You attempt to lambaste another poster and show off your ignorance.

X-Windows was created in 1984 at MIT as part of Project Athena. Its name, X Window System, is because it was based upon an earlier windows systems, "W" for the "V" research project at Stanford. (References: here, here, here, and here.)

If you are going to attempt to be kewl RootAksess, might I suggest, you do some research first?

Okay, so just so that I'm clear on this. The BSD code contributions were made freely by volunteers, who were not compensated for their contributions, nor did they hold on to the source code. (Indeed, as your own quote clearly states, BSD was never distributed without source code.) BSD was built off of the AT&T source code and for most of it's early history the developers never seperated the BSD code from the AT&T code, and a consequence, you needed the AT&T source code license to get it. This is all consistent with what I've said before.... so I'm not sure I understand what your point is.

The BSD distribution certainly included many, many innovations over the original AT&T code base. Nobody paid for those innovations, and the innovations were distributed in source form without requiring the source be kept proprietary. Certainly, the AT&T source code license didn't include a license for the BSD code.

I think it's a pretty good counter example to Microsoft's argument that innovation will not occur without the benefit of being able to keep the source code proprietary.

Please reread my posts. I never claimed that GCC was the living embodiment of the latest compiler theory. If your going to apply that kind of criteria there really isn't any software in the Windows or Macintosh world at least that qualifies as "innovative". As I've said before, GCC was one of the first cross-platform compilers, and later iterations included the innovation of being a cross-language compiler as well. On top of that, despite being so old and unsophisticated, GCC still manages to generate more efficient code than the most popular compilers out there. (I seem to recall the Metrowerks compiler has been hailed by the Macintosh community as innovative several times, yet GCC generates far more efficient code.) If you're going to continue to just say, "that's not innovative," I'd like to suggest you present the innovation that supports your point.

You say my statements about Timbuktu and X/Windows are unsupported, but you have not provided any supporting data. You're consistently stating that I'm making false, and yet you're making claims that you are not even sure of yourself. As I said before, I am sure of my claims about Timbuktu. I was there when it first came out.

So, let's review that one. First, Timbuktu is the same kind of technology as X/Windows. Timbuktu allows remote control of a GUI desktop. X/Windows' key capabilities aren't about remote control (although one could implement remote control using it's capabilities). X/Windows is a cross platform network GUI.

Now, since you couldn't be bothered to check up on X/Window's history, but it in fact was first developed at MIT in 1984. It was developed to solve problems they were facing with Project Athena. There was a lot of interest from the outside world for a standardized/hardend/freezon release. In 1988 MIT released version 11 release 2 to the general public. You can find documentation of this here.

Timbuktu was of course not developed in 1984. Indeed, it's resource requirements were far too much for the original Macintosh. I was unable to find any clear documentation about the origins of Timbuktu remote. However, rather than assuming that your claims are false, and despite the fact that I distinctly remember that X/Windows existed when Timbuktu came out, I checked for some kind of documentation. I finally found version 1.0.1 winning a 1989 Eddy award. I guess the product wasn't quite as early as you'd imagined.

So, to review, you're wrong about both when X/Windows was created, and when Timbuktu was created. You're also missing the point about the differences between X/Windows and Timbuktu.

Now on to the TeX link. I'm surprised that someone who's been around in the business as long as you would not know anything about Donald Knuth (author of The Art of Computer Programming). He's the original author of TeX, and he very much always intended it to be available to anyone who wanted it, source code included. He started work on to assist with his development of The Art of Computer Programming books. He took a 10 year hiatus from working on it after publishing volume 3 of the series, during which time he focused on the development of TeX (and Metafont). Check his CV. I noticed while looking at the CV that he actually published a book on TeX in 1979.

I also can't believe that you think that the first sentence on the home page of the TeX user's group would being in error about when the group was formed, particularly given the fact that you have no evidence to suggeset this was wrong.

Again, the specific date of TeX's development really doesn't matter anyway. TeX was (and still is) very innovative in the field of typesetting. So much so that it continues to be used today despite the fact that Knuth hasn't done much work on it since the 80's.

Finally, a comment about flames. Let's review your own postings. Despite your apparent ignorance of the history of computer science you are consistently claiming I'm making false statements (without providing any evidence to suggest your claims). When I do provide evidence, you seem to be either ignoring it, or in one case claiming it is incorrect (again, without counter-claiming evidence). For whatever rason, you seem to be clinging to your own revisionist history where software innovation has only occured in proprietary software; this is an increadible claim considering all the innovation that occured in the software industry both before the concept of source code existed, let alone the notion of copyrighting source code and providing binary-only licenses. On top of all that, you write a paragraph treatise about the tastes of the open source development being for 20 year old technology, while simultaneously disputing that any of the technologies I've brought up existed that long ago.

In short, you are flaming.

I promised myself I'd never post to slashdot...

I'm surprised no one has already mentioned it, but there is another free pascal out there, GNU Pascal. You can find it at http://agnes.dida.physik.uni-ess en.de/~gnu-pascal/

It uses the GCC back-end, and is (IMO) a nicely-designed system. Check i tout if you're into Pascal!

Actually you can get pascal, I found a link to GNU Pascal here. If you go to any decent sized public library you should be able to find books on Pascal, probably more than perl or python. That site has links for a DOS version of Pascal so if you aren't running Linux it will work for you.

You are almost right about Delphi. Delphi is not a language. Delphi is an IDE for Object Pascal, Borland's mutilated child of Pascal. There are open-source Pascal environments that support many of Delphi's features.

GNU pascal starts from a POSIX standard pascal base and tacks on some OO features from Borland Pascal, the ancestor of Object Pascal.

free pascal aims to be a replacement for Object Pascal, supporting exceptions, Objects, ansistrings, etc. When I have had to use Delphi at work, I have often used FreePascal at home to hammer out the algorithm. Delphi is a nice tool for slapping together a UI, but it really gets in the way for designing deeply involved programs.

Check out Free Pascal or GNU Pascal or Lazarus and see if any of them might work for you.

There's a GNU Pascal project that's based on GCC (and, last I heard, work is being done to merge it with egcs/gcc). It has supports most, if not all, of the Borland language extensions and I think there was support for the graphics library at the API level (NOTE, it's been two years since I've been involved, I just grabed the URL, not read the page).

Look at this. I don't know if it still works as advertised, but there is an HTML Xt widget hidden in there, not very big and ready for embedding...