You might be thinking of plasma tweeters. Back in the late 70s/early 80s. 10K1980$ a pair. Just tweets.
They had a gas flame that was made to generate sound with an electric field.
[snip]
You may be thinking of Hill Type 1 Plasmatronics that were $10k a pair back in the late 70s. The tweeters were both amazing and possibly hazardous to your health due to the ozone emitted into the room. The sound from the other drivers in the speakers couldn't keep up with the tweeters, though, especially the woofers. And unfortunately the tube amps built in to drive them were horribly unreliable, and each speaker had a helium tank you would have to get filled once in a while. Not to mention cosmetics that made them look like cobbled together lab equipment, not something you would put in your living room.
Note: Typical electrostatics already have membranes that weigh less then the air they're moving.
Your dog _might_ be able to distinguish between plasma and normal electrostatics. Not that electrostatics are exactly cheap or small.
Electrostatics that do real bass are by necessity large due to dipole cancellation. I own and sell Sound Lab electrostatics, which are some of the largest and most expensive of their type. While I will admit that a full range plasma speaker could potentially outperform an electrostatic, almost no full range plasma speakers have ever been built. In 1992 a French company showed a prototype full range cold air plasma speaker at the Consumer Electronics Show, but it never saw the light of day and the company went out of business. Nelson Pass of Threshold and Pass Labs had a full range plasma speaker but had to dismantle it due to the large amounts of ozone produced.
The use of H.P. is pretty rare. Nearly as bothersome is the use of H-P by the press. Nobody says I.B.M., do they? Then why H.P.?
I've never owned an H.P. product or H-P product, but lots of HP calculators, printers, computers, etc.
He'd have almost certainly escaped any legal problems once everything was shut down, and he could've just quietly taken his money and lived high off the hog for the rest of his life.
One look at Kim and you know the guy didn't miss many meals. Talk about living high off the hog...he was a living example.
I'm betting he'll commit suicide. He's already tried eating himself to death.
In related news, HP's soon to be not yet CEO Meg Whitman announced a plan to spin off every line of business in HP's portfolio but calculators. "We see a tremendous opportunity in handheld calculating devices," Whitman stated, in a not actually quite yet a CEO interview with selected members of an online calculator forum. "The value of physical buttons cannot be over-emphasized. Take that, iPhone!"
In separate interview, almost pre-announced HP CEO Meg Whitman announced a patent suite against Google, Oracle, Microsoft, Facebook and IBM. Two patents are at issue. The first describes a "method and apparatus for summing two numbers." The second concerns "A cookbook recipe for making calculator keys feel nice and clicky without necessarily indicating a successful registering of the keystroke."
The announcement was coupled with a new video depicting Google CEO Eric Schmidt as a bizarrely garbed wolf among a flock of hapless calculator toting sheep.
The WSJ article, among other news stories, makes it clear that HP is spinning off the PC division, i.e. selling it, not shutting it. Conversely, they aren't spinning off the WebOS/Palm division, they're killing it.
Not only do they want to give you lower fidelity, they want to force manufacturers to build their products with such inferior plugs, in which no doubt Apple will be heavily invested and for which they will charge exorbitant licensing fees to plug makers.
Maybe it's time to patent the half-cylindrical shape.
Slashdot Mirror
You might be thinking of plasma tweeters. Back in the late 70s/early 80s. 10K1980$ a pair. Just tweets.
They had a gas flame that was made to generate sound with an electric field.
[snip]
You may be thinking of Hill Type 1 Plasmatronics that were $10k a pair back in the late 70s. The tweeters were both amazing and possibly hazardous to your health due to the ozone emitted into the room. The sound from the other drivers in the speakers couldn't keep up with the tweeters, though, especially the woofers. And unfortunately the tube amps built in to drive them were horribly unreliable, and each speaker had a helium tank you would have to get filled once in a while. Not to mention cosmetics that made them look like cobbled together lab equipment, not something you would put in your living room.
Note: Typical electrostatics already have membranes that weigh less then the air they're moving.
Your dog _might_ be able to distinguish between plasma and normal electrostatics. Not that electrostatics are exactly cheap or small.
Electrostatics that do real bass are by necessity large due to dipole cancellation. I own and sell Sound Lab electrostatics, which are some of the largest and most expensive of their type. While I will admit that a full range plasma speaker could potentially outperform an electrostatic, almost no full range plasma speakers have ever been built. In 1992 a French company showed a prototype full range cold air plasma speaker at the Consumer Electronics Show, but it never saw the light of day and the company went out of business. Nelson Pass of Threshold and Pass Labs had a full range plasma speaker but had to dismantle it due to the large amounts of ozone produced.
Jesse White, the Maytag repairman, died in January 1997. We live in an increasingly disposable world.
A patent application has been filed for "Single Seating Furniture Anger Relief System", submitted by, you guessed it, Steve Ballmer.
So where are Compuserve and AOL going to get all their customers?
...he will have trouble monitizing the service without becoming obnoxious.
Too late. He's got that covered.
For $450 I can buy a pretty decent office chair.
The day this becomes popular will be the day the US goes metric. Nuff sed.
Lanai. Aloha, Larry!
the honeymoon is over for Zuckerberg.
The use of H.P. is pretty rare. Nearly as bothersome is the use of H-P by the press. Nobody says I.B.M., do they? Then why H.P.? I've never owned an H.P. product or H-P product, but lots of HP calculators, printers, computers, etc.
He sounds like some kind of....oh wait, that's the company name.
Not until Sergei starts throwing chairs.
Because they wanted to make sure they got it right the first time?
All your data belong to us.
Looks like a solution in search of a problem.
that you are what you eat.
One look at Kim and you know the guy didn't miss many meals. Talk about living high off the hog...he was a living example.
I'm betting he'll commit suicide. He's already tried eating himself to death.
Don't let any chairs hit you on the way out!
So what about spitting on people (Gates) and throwing chairs (you know who)? And what about cursing?
In related news, HP's soon to be not yet CEO Meg Whitman announced a plan to spin off every line of business in HP's portfolio but calculators. "We see a tremendous opportunity in handheld calculating devices," Whitman stated, in a not actually quite yet a CEO interview with selected members of an online calculator forum. "The value of physical buttons cannot be over-emphasized. Take that, iPhone!"
In separate interview, almost pre-announced HP CEO Meg Whitman announced a patent suite against Google, Oracle, Microsoft, Facebook and IBM. Two patents are at issue. The first describes a "method and apparatus for summing two numbers." The second concerns "A cookbook recipe for making calculator keys feel nice and clicky without necessarily indicating a successful registering of the keystroke."
The announcement was coupled with a new video depicting Google CEO Eric Schmidt as a bizarrely garbed wolf among a flock of hapless calculator toting sheep.
(credit to Howard Owen)
Page should know you don't negotiate with terrorists. Ellison is a software terrorist.
that the XXX URL suffix is typed with one hand?
The WSJ article, among other news stories, makes it clear that HP is spinning off the PC division, i.e. selling it, not shutting it. Conversely, they aren't spinning off the WebOS/Palm division, they're killing it.
Maybe it's time to patent the half-cylindrical shape.
Larry Ellison is becoming more of a software terrorist every day.