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10 Technologies MIA
Fantasy Football writes "CNet lists ten technologies they miss, which includes Napster, the originial Palm Pilot, good keyboards, and more. From the article: 'Technology evolves. Good technologies and products usually survive; poor ones usually go extinct. But not all of the technologies and tech products that have swirled down the drain of the tech gene pool deserved their fate. Here are some big, and some small, ideas that we thought we'd have with us forever, but that unfortunately have gone the way of the dodo.'"
there buisness model was fatally flawed, they didnt make any proffit because they basically sold everything at what it cost them, and didnt charge shipping.
You can still buy a real keyboard. Those guys bought the design from IBM and still produce it in the USA.
I like the feel of an old Antec clicky keyboard better, but the layout on the Unicomp is better.
Get a PS2USB adaptor and it even works great on a Mac.
Microsoft BOB
*Sniff*
Wow, it sounds like CNet must have pretty poor editorial standards to post another article with an identical subject so soon after their last one.
Alphanos
Just goes to show that cheap & mass produced do not mean quality.
"Does your computer have IP on it?"
Space is essentially the only frontier we have left, and I think humanity needs a frontier. The Earth is fully populated now, in the sense that only the very remotest regions remain unexplored and all regions are claimed.
:-(.
Practical is good and all, but if we wait until we solve all our problems here on Earth first we'll be stuck on this dirtball until the sun hits Red Giant phase. Human nature being what it is.
I say Let's Get Out There! Now! It pushes limits, it's positive, and it pushes technology. Sounds good to me! May China can provoke another space race - I sure hope so. One-upmanship seems to be the only real way to get any serious funding
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
1. Manned Space Exploration
Well, I agree that reestablishing travel to the moon and beyond is important, the International Space Station is an important stepping stone that deserves focus. The reason I think so is that I truly believe it's going to take a multinational effort to get to Mars and back.
2. Kozmo.com
Make up your mind, CNET, technology you miss, or giant flop. I suppose it could be both, but even if Kozmo had stayed in business, it could never compete with my neighborhood grocery store.
3. Napster
Any opinion I might express about this would likely start a flame war, so I'll leave this one alone.
4. Concorde
You can't really miss what even yourselves admit was out of reach to almost everyone. I don't seem to miss it at all. How do you miss something you never really had?
5. GM's EV1
Zero Emission Vehicle. ROFLMAO. Zero-emission as long as you don't count the power plant that burned (coal|oil|gas|atomic nuclei) and polluted somone else's back yard. Sure, I suppose the power could have been photoelectric or wind produced, but if you believe no harm to the earth was done in the process of manufacturing those systems, you're clueless. (Hint: Strip mining for metals, processing ore, smelting, doping chemicals for solar, etc). Not that I have a problem with any of the above, but let's be realistic here. There's no such thing as a "Zero Emission Vehicle".
6. The Original Palm Pilot
I don't know. My Zire 31 does everything the original did, plus color and MP3s. I've been eying the Tungsten E2 as an upgrade. Only third party apps have ever crashed it, and that's only twice after over a year of use. The Palm-supplied apps have been rock solid. A lot like the original Palm Pilot.
7. Good Keyboards
Agreed.
8. Wires
You miss wires? Uh, you made the choice to go wireless. If you truly miss wires, just switch back, right? It's not like your old phone company disappeared, and you can't buy ethernet cables. Oh wait... the convenience outweighs the disadvantages of wireless you point to. I guess you don't really miss wires after all.
9. LPs
My wife is an archaeologist. She's told me about digging these up.
10. The Newton
The Newton was good for a laugh, but it was also a good lesson for future manufacturers of PDAs. Without Apple's failure, would we really have seen Palm's success?
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Hoo yah! I'm still using the same phone I bought in 1985 from Western Electric. This was not long after the break-up and they were still making 'em like they were going to lease 'em out to you and didn't want to have to come out and do repairs more often then every 25 years. It's built like a tank and has survived dozens of 6 foot dives to the kitchen floor. I'll probably be leaving it in my will to the grandkids.
Got the old-fashioned actual real bell on it, too, none of these namby-pamby tweedle-eedle-eep electronic imitations...harumph...
Got to go take my medication now....
... as in:
* Spamless Internet
* Virusless Internet
* Popupless Internet
* Bannerless Internet
* etcless Internet
Of course that the net has evolved, and a lot, but sometimes one miss those old days when your mail were mail, when browsing pages retrieved almost only the content you wanted, and even the pages were really static, without things popping up, moving, blinking or weighting far more than the useful content of what you really want to read.
Yeah, CNET is having a top 10 celebration for its 10th aniversary... can we just point everyone to it rather than having to make each one a new article!?
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http://www.cnet.com/4520-11136_1-6250162-1.html?t
Actually, they provide better quality playback for the human-audible range, because they have much lower noise.
While it's true that CDs cut off sharply above 20 kHz and thus can't produce ultrasonics at all, it's a misconception that LPs don't also have high frequency limitations. It's tempting to believe that, because they're analog, they are producing the sound with infinite detail, but it's just not true: the higher frequency sounds require smaller features in the groove, and those small pieces are easy to wear off. After a few playings, ultrasonics, if they ever were present on the LP in the first place, are gone because the ridges that correspond to the ultrasonic frequencies are just too tiny (and therefore thin and weak) to stand up to the stress of colliding with the needle. It's much the same as the concept of keeping a really fine edge on a knife -- the finer it is, the sharper it is, but as you get finer and finer, the faster you lose the fineness of the edge you've put on there.
The bottom line is that CDs have LPs beat in the area of signal-to-noise ratio and they also have them beat in frequency response. While it is possible to hear the difference between LPs and CDs (because they each introduce their own kinds of distortions), it is tough to make an argument that LPs are superior unless it's based on a personal preferences for the distortions you can hear.
The handshake noise of dial-up modems.
Good keyboards
There are plenty of good keyboards, Microsoft even makes some good ones. What they are asking for are those loud IBM keyboards that feel like the clumsy typewriters they were adapted from.
Microsoft makes some good ones? I've oned one MS natural and one MS natural elite, but both died due to the contacts wearing out.
While the IBM clicky keyboard (can't remember the model number off hand) might not be your bag IIRC they used metal on metal contacts basicly looking like tweesers inside the key hole.. where the pressing down action caused the contacts to meet and behold a key press is registered. Dec keyboards I believe are made in much the same way though i'd have to check mine... but you phone up support if you dumped coffee in your keyboard and they tell you to put it in a bucket full of soap and water and let dry, and most of the time the problem was resolved.
The current keyboard trend is circuit traces on one membrain, a seperator, and a membrain with a solid contact spot. They are cheap, easy to mass produce, and rub away after a couple of years. I mean it "nice" not having to spend $50 to $100 on a keyboard, but those who spent $50 to $100 on a keyboard likely have something that can still be used today.
There was a time when the keyboards were made by using a large PC board with basic contacts, with a flexable bubble material on top with a little metal contact. While these will eventually wear away, they don't do so nearly as quickly as plastic membrains.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
It seems to me that fewer manned space trips is actually a boon for us technologists.
:-)
Sending humans that weren't designed for, or evolved to, going into outer space is inefficient and costly when compared to specific tools that humans have created and are continuing to improve upon.
Let's compare what we could lose against what we could gain. Gone will be photo opportunities, of one man in a space suit, planting a flag on another planet, as seen in the article. Gained will be 'spin-offs', from research and developement efforts, that will come from advancements in robotics and artificial intelligence systems, because remote control over such great (time) distances is simply not feasable.
I don't know about you, but I'd rather be a unsung computer science nerd, than a glorified trained monkey in space.
Do not think that I'm belittling the efforts of those that made significant contributions to our space programs in the past. But, as we gain the capability to explore safer, better, and cheaper, then we also have the responsibility to set aside our old pride (photo of man next to flag) for new pride (photo of man next to robot).
I have an original IBM PS2 keyboard (on which i am typing this) and its just not equalled by anything else i've ever used. Sad really - its dated 1984, weighs more than the Shuttle its plugged into, and you could beat your boss to death with it, wipe off the blood and it'll still work perfectly.
Hmm, i now start to see why they changed them...
Having grown up in the LP era and spent large amounts of hard-earned lawn mowing and snow-shovelling money on them, I can honestly say about them "Good Riddance!".
They are primitive sound technology. They are expensive, fragile, and don't sound good. You can always tell an MP3 file of an old 60's pop song made from an LP as opposed to one ripped from a CD. The fidelity is just not there.
An LP held 45 minutes of music for most of its life and about 60 minutes at its most advanced. It cost about $20 (in today's US dollars). Now a blank DVD ROM holds about 4000 minutes in high-quality MP3 or OGG files and sells for $0.39 (in today's US dollars). An exact copy of this set of 4500 minutes can be made on another 39 cent blank disk in about 15 minutes. And you can control which selections will be copied and the order.
To get ultra high fidelity audio from LPs requires thousands of dollars of precision equipment, very fragile and sensitive to the local room conditions. To get the same fidelity from high quality 320kbps MP3 and OGG files takes a $59 player. And it even puts out this high fidelity sound when you are running with it.
And some silly people want to go back to LP?
I really miss the days when a new computer release was really that. In the good old days before PC homogenization we used to get new and interesting computers released every month it seemed. I know, I know the PC industry had to mature and standards were required blah blah.
It was fun though...
1) Audiogalaxy. Wonderful as BitTorrent is, it's simply not as good for finding incredibly obscure music that only 3 people in the world are interested in.
2) Games written in Basic. Oh for the glory days when any schoolkid could write from scratch something that his mates would be interested in playing.
3) The 12" single. For the sleeves - CD singles are great, but I really miss getting a square foot of artwork thrown in for free.
4) Booting from ROM. The Amiga started the rot, back in the old days you could turn a PC on and start to use it in seconds. Hard OSes were practically immune to piracy, and the 'it has to be right, we can't patch it' OS coding ethos has a lot going for it too!
5) Trackballs. The mouse you don't need a pad for, perfect for laptops too, but we ended up smearing our fingers over horrible 'trackpads' instead - how did that happen?
6) Analogue TV. Still hobbling on but it's days are numbered. My 30 years of compression-artefact-free viewing are already over.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
You see when you're listening to a digital CD the sound comes out all like _|-|_|-|_|-|_ and it sounds terrible, but if you're listening to an analogue LP the sound is all like v^v^v^u^v^U^wooooOOOooo000ooo. So basically the sound quality is smoother and easier from an LP, and it's got all those extra harmonics and sounds, which come free! I mean, you don't get any pops and crackles on CD, and those give the music all their character. The beatles sound sterile and dead without the pops and crackles. I think we need to invest some serious research $$$ in a portable LP player, that you can use like an iPod, I mean, an iPod has what, 40Gb of storage, that's about 4000 minutes... So if you had some kind of barrel, with 40 LPs in it, and a player, and some gyroscopes, you could have that great L:P quality wherever you run. And you'll get fitter faster.
But, anyway, back to my point. For things to sound good, you need an LP, some really thick cables, a gold plated power supply, some of those special bricks which go on top of cables, and a whole bunch of tetrodes & pentodes. Also, once, I saw the beatles in concert, they sucked - they were nothing like they are on an LP - I mean, between the lot of them they couldn't make a single crackle or pop, and they didn't skip once!!!! Where's the warmth?!?!?! Remember, it's w000oo000OOO000oooo))oo which is great not 101010101010101010111 all those ones sound terrible.
I think you'll find that "famine, malnutrition, drought, disease, conflict" has historically been much more widespread than it is presently, even in sub-Saharan Africa--and this despite our ever-increasing population. How, then, is this an indication that technology hasn't boosted the sustainable population size?
HP RPL calculators. Yes, they still make them, but it not exactly as if they evolved with time. Well, perhaps I don't miss them, since I haven't had much use for them since I left university, but still.
HP calculators are (used to be) fine pieces of engineering. A few months ago I needed to calculate something and since there really isn't anything that compares to the HP RPL calculator interface I digged out my HP48 from a deskdrawer. I turned it on. The batteries had not drained! It must have been roughly ten years since I used it last. There was stuff lying around on the stack since I last used it.
I obviously wasn't clear enough in this post as at least 4 people have read it and think I am suggesting that we launch poor people into space to get rid of them. The point of my post was that the earth has limited resources and therefore cannot support the current or future world population at a standard of living that is acceptable. As such, I believe we must bring the resources of space down to earth so that it can support an increasing population. And no, this isn't fantasia bullshit. For $20 billion the US could build a sustainable manned moon colony which could send down unthinkably large amounts of resources. Of course, next you're gunna claim there are no resources on the moon and that the only way forward is to huddle in the dark as we use up all the resources on earth.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Top tech I miss, is people putting top ten lists all on one page, rather than having to click "continue" ten times. Congrats to cNet for being concise on this one... Reminds me of the old days...
Good keyboards? I find bang for the buck for key boards has come a *long* way. I buy $7.95 Cicero keyboards at Future Shop (argh), which have an incredibly good feel to them. They way my kids (okay, okay, and I), go through keyboards, I'm glad I have have "disposable" keyboards with a great feel. Other than that, thought it was a cool article.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
"The point of my post was that the earth has limited resources and therefore cannot support the current or future world population at a standard of living that is acceptable."
Ok, I'll bite. _Which_ resources doesn't it have enough to sustain an 8 billion population? Because it produces currently a surplus of food, has enough uranium for centuries, has iron under almost literally every hill or mountain, and it can synthetize fuel and plastics from any other source of energy (e.g., nuclear.) So _what_ materials do you absolutely need to bring from the moon?
"For $20 billion the US could build a sustainable manned moon colony which could send down unthinkably large amounts of resources."
"Unthinkably large" sounds cool, but:
A) Exactly how much _is_ "unthinkably large"? More than the exact same money (including, salaries, supplies, shipping, etc) would get you from a mine on Earth? Enough to not be lost in the decimals, compared to what millions of people already extract on Earth?
B) What's the price per ton to transport it, and to transport supplies back? There's a good reason why you get raw materials or oil imported by train or ship, not by airplane: cost per ton transported.
"Of course, next you're gunna claim there are no resources on the moon and that the only way forward is to huddle in the dark as we use up all the resources on earth."
Actually, next I'm gonna claim you need to read a book on economics. Might be a fascinating read.
The question isn't just whether there are resources on the Moon worth getting, but whether it's cheaper to get them from there. That's how the economy still works here on Earth, I'm affraid.
There's a lot of "plan B"s out there, that are perfectly feasible, but aren't done because "plan A" is still cheaper. E.g., why the USA prefers to import oil than to extract its own. Or for that matter than to synthesize it from coal, or to switch to hydrogen cars and nuclear power to produce the hydrogen, or whatever.
If 20 billion USD was all it takes to bring a lot of cheap resources from the moon, that is, cheaper than you can get them on Earth, some corporation would already do that.
But maybe we'll do something else first. Yours is not the only solution, but just one possible "plan B" in a list of _thousands_. Humanity has a _lot_ of already existing options before huddling in the dark or mass-murder, and more are already being researched. (Of course, it makes a better doomsday whine if you ignore them.)
Which of them will be used next and when, will have to do with economics, not with what looks way cool to SF fanboys. _Maybe_ some day bringing iron ore from the moon will be cheaper than digging it from under a mountain on Earth. But maybe we'll just use plastics and composite materials produced with fusion power instead. Or maybe something else.
When one such "plan B" becomes cheaper, or the current "plan A" becomes too expensive, we will know it, and do it then. That's how the economy works.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Kozmo started charging for delivery on orders under $30 at least a year or so before they went under.
Further, they were turning a profit in both Boston and New York -- both very dense cities where deliveries were easily made via bicycle. Not so in some of their later expansions (Dallas comes to mind).
If you think spending 40 quid on a good soundcard and another 40 quid for some "good speakers for my PC" is what fidelity is about then you need to have your hearing checked out.
And if you think "fidelity" is what music appreciation is about then you need to have your brain checked.
Play me a good song, and I won't care whether it's a 96kbps MP3 stream or pristine vinyl on a $2000 turntable -- I'm going to enjoy it. Likewise, play me a bad song and I'm NOT going to enjoy it, irregardless of "fidelity".
With obesity problems nowadays, this might not be such a bad idea.