I was just checking to be sure. I actually work with a guy named Gerard, and I've made the same mistake a billion times or so.
but will point out that you cannot seem to spell "Tramiel" correctly in two postings.:)
Touche.:-)
Your posting from Gamespot is not as accurate as from the book *Game Over*.
According to "Phoenix: The Fall & Rise of Videogames", the entire incident between Kassar and Famicom was where the damage to the relationship came from. Every source I've found on that period states that Atari was losing one to two million dollars a day. Atari posted over a half-a-billion loss for 1983. (Note that the article is from 1984.) I don't see how Atari could have been left with much in the way of money.
I guess we'll just have to step out of this one for now, and let the historians argue it out.:-)
Atari never intended on releasing the Famicom. It was a defensive move, and Atari Inc. would have sat on the Famicom while selling the 7800.
I could see that. Sun Microsystems later did the same thing to Microsoft with an exclusive license to produce Windows NT for SPARC. Unfortunately for Atari, that was a REALLY bad time to be playing those games. Tramiel (I think I got it right that time.;-)) didn't want to release the 7800 once he got ahold of Atari, and it sat on the shelf for a couple of years before being released. By then, Nintendo was already starting to attack the market with fresh new games. The 7800 just couldn't compete with the updates to tired old Arcade games that it offered. (I mean, how many times were people going to buy Space Invaders, Asteroids, and Pacman?)
That being said, a lot of people in the retro crowd seem to like the 7800 better than the Nintendo. I can't understand why. The Nintendo did better on graphics, sound, and gameplay at every turn. For an example, just look at the compromises made for Double Dragon on the 7800 vs. the NES. The NES was definitely closer to the arcade.
There is no evidence that Atari overspent on R&D. They just added to their intellectual property library. The MindLink system was not a waste of money, nor was the research on holographics. I have no idea what patents Atari gained from Alan Kay's "amplification" projects, but I'm pretty sure Infogrames has squandered whatever they have in the portfolio due to their massive inaction with their Atari ownership.
Those profits would have been far too late for the Atari of 1983-84. i.e. They didn't wait until they had a return on the technology they produced, thus spending WAY too much money. For example, the entire point of all the holographic IP they had was to produce a series of "hi-tech" handheld consoles. These were canceled after the unit was ready for release.
No. Kassar did not screw up the Famicom deal. Kasser was gone.
A funny (or horrifying, depending on whom you ask) thing happened at CES. Coleco was showing off its new (and ill-fated) ADAM computer system, and had decided to use Donkey Kong as the demo game. While Coleco did own the home console rights to Donkey Kong, it was Atari that had earlier secured the computer rights. Once Atari's Ray Kassar caught wind of what was at the Coleco booth, he accused Nintendo of cheating and double-dealing behind Atari's back. Utterly furious, he threatened to cancel the Famicom deal and sue Nintendo out of existence.
Nintendo did its best to rectify the situation, and was aghast when Kassar was ousted from Atari a month later. The contracts were still unsigned, and with Kassar seemed to go all hope of getting the Famicom marketed in the US.
Manny Gerald was running the Company at the behest of Steve Ross when Atari was negotiating the Nintendo deal.
1. I assume you mean Manny Gerard? 2. Bristow admitted that he had let the deal slide after Kassar was ejected. According to Bristow, the problem was that the 2600 was a never-ending cash cow. Others, however, have pointed out the incredible amount of money that Atari was losing at the time, and have come to the conclusion that Atari couldn't have afforded to produce the Famicom in America.
Of course, there's still plenty of confusion about who actually terminated the talks, but it would probably be fair to say that both sides did.
Are you high? Atari released the 400/800 8-bit computer line in 1979/1980. The XL line circa 1982/83. The later XLs were to debut in 1984 and the Amiga project in 1985+.
No, just not paying enough attention to what I'm typing. That should have read "The only reason why Atari ever produced the Atari ST home computer was that Tremiel infused the home section of the company with the cash to do it."
Read up on the history of Atari at places like atarihistory.org.
Research into Mind Controller devices, a Pizza Place, consoles that were never released, expensive movie/tv/comic licenses that were never released, dozens (hundreds?) of games cancelled at or near completion, massive R&D departments, etc., etc., etc. Atari overspent BIG TIME. At one point Atari estimated that the company was losing about a million dollars a day and began to close down every division possible within the company. Only a few of the games under development survived this purge, thus giving us a wealth of unreleased prototypes.
The problem was that Atari made all the retailers place their orders for the holiday 1982 season many months in advance based upon the sales figures from the prior year. They banked on it and didn't expect people to stop buying games such as *Pac-Man*, *E.T.*, *Raiders of the Lost Ark*, and the *Swordquest* series.
This was where Atari actually contributed to the crash. Had Atari ensured that its name continued to mean "quality", then the low prices of third party carts might not have meant much. Unfortunately, the E.T. game bombed so badly that Atari buried the remaining and returned cartriges. (Supposedly in the foundation of Atari HQ.)
As I said, the crash hurt Atari, but it didn't kill them. Also, manufacturing more games than had ever been sold in a single title was DEFINITELY a bit of overspending (and overconfidence) on Atari's part. Their choices left them with little cash reserves, and Warner didn't feel like bailing them out.
Not to mention the Amiga hardware which was going to debut under the Atari brand in 1985, and the worldwide rights to the Nintendo Famicom Atari was about to acquire.
Kassar screwed up the Fanicom deal. He saw Coleco present their Adam computer with Donkey Kong on it (Atari owned the rights to Donkey Kong on home computers) and tore into Nintendo. Nintendo tore into Coleco in turn (who only had console rights), but Kassar had done enough damage to the relationship that the execs who took over (after Kassar was asked to leave) had to start over from scratch. One thing lead to another, and the 7800, the Amiga 'Mickey', the Fanicom, and many other Atari projects all fell through because Atari no longer had the money to be producing new consoles OR computers.
The only reason why Atari ever produced a home computer was that Tremiel infused the home section of the company with the cash to do it.
It's a shortening of the old term for technology departments: MIS (Management Information Systems)
MIS was commonly used back in the days of mainframes, because the department encompassed a lot more than just administration. They were responsible for the development, deployment, and operation of all mainframe programs, as well as all hardware related to information flow. Key punchers were also often assigned to MIS. In the olden days, they formed the core of a company's ability to produce bills, compute sales, and just about every other function that required data processing.
Today, many companies have eschewed the idea of central processing for a technology department (IT) that merely installs the applicaitons that users run to do their own processing. Larger companies also have a software development department which is usually at odds with IT.
That's because there was no such thing as a third party video game company when the Atari 2600 VCS originally debuted in 1977.
It's even more complex than that. The VCS was only intended to play the dozen or so games released at launch. The idea of a truely generic console hadn't entered anyone's mind yet. Activision was one of the driving forces behind the idea that the VCS could be used generically.
he renegade Atari employees who created Activision founded the third-party industry. The same industry that pretty much caused the 1982-84 videogame industry collapse that ruined Atari which it never truly recovered from which is why "carpet-bagging" companies like Sony and Microsoft now control the industry.
Atari killed Atari. Sure, they were making a pretty penny off the VCS, but they assumed the revenue and continuously overspent. The market crash thus creamed Atari, but didn't kill them. Atari still released the 7800 post-crash, but wasn't able to convince the market to pick it. Further mis-management caused Atari to miss the boat on licensing the Nintendo, causing them to get their asses handed to them on a plate in the market.
Sony gained control of the market much later thanks to a screwup by Nintendo which left Sony with Nintendo's next-gen hardware. (i.e. The Playstation) Microsoft just forced their way into the market, and hasn't had anywhere near the success as they'd have people believe.
Nintendo put a lock-out chip in the NES to prevent games like *Custer's Revenge* from ever appearing on their console.
That's only half the story. Nintendo definitely didn't want another Custer's Revenge (which didn't stop a few from coming along anyway), but they realized that the real problem was the glut of games. Quality suffered because there was no incentive to produce a good seller. So Nintendo restricted licensees to only 5 games per year. This restriction was mostly effective, and didn't produce problems similar to the crash of '83 until late into the Nintendo's life. The fight with the Genesis and the release of the Super Nintendo both headed off another crash.
It should be remembered that Atari gained a 90% controlling interest in the earlier gaming industry without such tactics.
Atari had competition from the Channel F (VES) before it ever released the 2600. However, the market was still fresh at the time, and the two consoles didn't directly compete like consoles do today. (Remember, the Atari 2600 was created only for a few games. It wasn't intended to be generic.) The Video Game crash of 1977, however, caused the Channel F to exit the market, leaving Atari with a 100% market share. That share would later be challenged by the more expensive Intellivision and Colecovision, but those two consoles would suffer heavily in the '83 market crash, again giving Atari the lead.
The 7800, BTW, also had a lockout system to prevent a situation like the '83 crash.
Atari took no precautions to prevent third party games. The judge ruled that Atari didn't have a legal leg to stand on.
Nintendo took a look at the case and added a patented algorithm to their systems called the "Lockout Chip". Atari asked the patent office for the info on the lockout chip so that they could reproduce it without paying Nintendo royalties. Nintendo sued on patent infringment and won.
Nintendo was WAY more cut-throat than Atari ever was. Atari was just... bumbling.
Yay, a three-front war! And one of our enemies has nuclear weapons! What could go wrong with that?
1. Since the primary objective would be to wipe out the nuclear weapons, the nuclear part is intended to be removed from the equation. The Israeli backup plan probably includes something like "nuke them first".
2. Afganistan and Iraq are not wars. An occupation isn't the same thing as a war. Very few of our high-tech resources are actually in use at the moment. At least some ground troops can be redeployed as necessary. We can actually pull out of those two countries without exposing to the US to any immediate threats.
3. To have a war on three fronts, you have to have three fronts. These three countries are right next to each other. We'd actually be consolidating two fronts into one, allowing us to better deploy our resources. Plus, we can hit Iran from both sides if we need to.
Whether or not it was Israel doesn't matter: if it came from Iraqi airspace, US forces occupying Iraq gave them aid and comfort (by allowing them overflight), making them complicit in the attacks.
You know, you're acting as if we should actually be worried about the retalitory ability of Iran. That has never been much of a concern. Pretty much the highest tech stuff they have are 30 year old F-14s which have been serviced only through deals with Russia. (Which were probably disrupted by the fall of the Soviet Union.) Iran doesn't have a chance in hell of standing up to Israel, much less the US. That's why nuclear weapons are important to them.
With all our forces tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan, there's nothing left to galvanize.
I wasn't aware that all of the US Citizens were in Iraq and Afghanistan. Silly me, I thought I was talking about galvanizing public opinion against Iran. Right now public opinion is pretty low due to the issues with occupying Iraq.
It's not history, it's current events. We can have soldiers in:
* Afghanistan
* Iraq
* Iran
Pick only two.
Why? Pick only two, that is. We have more than enough resources to wage war. We just don't have enough resources to occupy Iran. Which would be a bad idea anyway. (No dictators being overthrown, or anything else like that.) There's no real reason why we can only have two. Especially if we can consolidate our theater of operations.
BTW, on the F-22, you may find this bit of interest:
In mock combat the F-22 Raptor showed that it would be a very effective fighter, taking on up to eight F-15s at once and easily winning. In one well publicized incident, an F-15 pilot flying against the Raptor located his F-22 adversary only after the Raptor flew directly over his cockpit. In real combat this pilot would probably be dead, as the Raptor's pilot had no trouble locating and locking on to the F-15 with his powerful radar.
If an Israeli attack hits Iran from Iraqi airspace, Iran will cross the border into Iraq.
...and meet head on with US forces. Which gives the US a reason to enter the fray without actually entering the fray.
People look up, see planes flying south by southwest. Iranians put 2 and 2 together, invade Iraq.
Heck, that's even worse: it allows the Iranians to assume the planes were US forces.
I seriously doubt it would take very long for Israel to claim responsibility for the attack. Iran could persecute the US for it, but that would only galvanize US citizens into defending ourselves against "those middle east nuts". Iran wouldn't last long under US siege, regardless of our history with the occupation of Iraq.
By the way, if you're jamming radar, you are the exact opposite of stealth.
I never claimed any different. The F-22 is equipped with both Stealth capabilites AND focused radar jamming equipment. Depending on the mission profile, it can easily use stealth at long range, radar jamming at close range, and still make it the hell out at supersonic velocities without anyone knowing what hit them. Or so the brochure says.;-)
But if they fly over Iraq on their way to Iran without getting shot down, the US gets dragged into it more than usual.
Most countries have agreements about allowing flyovers of friendly territories. The US would just say that Israel worked out something with the Iraqi government, and feign complete innocence.
Either that, or the Israelis will be flying F-22 stealth fighters with full radar jamming and supercruise capability. In which case you'd never even see them coming.
If you have any information, please do share. I've tried to detangle the sections on Wiretapping and the like, but it appears to be a mess that involves stitching together 3 or more laws written over the last half century.
if you've heard the rhetoric coming out of Iran (from their president no less) directed towards Israel, you'll understand why he's behind our military's occupation of that region.
Lemme see, the Iranian President has claimed that the Holocaust never happened. It was entirely made up by the media to gain support the Jews. He also states that Israel should be wiped off the map and moved to Europe or Alaska. In short, the guy is nuts.
A commentator wrote an article in the Chicago Sun Times this morning that pretty well covered how it's going to go down:
1. The US has used up its "attack bad country" card for the time being, so they won't do anything.
2. Israel will take the threat seriously and bomb the hell out of Iran's caches of missiles and nuclear weapons facilities.
3. The UN will make more pointless resolutions condemning Israel.
Just playing devils advocate for a moment (since it appears that Slashthink(TM) is in full force), but isn't this EXACTLY the type of thing that the Patriot Act made legal? I'm not saying that I like the Patriot Act, but it did get passed by a majority of the house and senate.
I think it's a nice idea. I can't count how many times I've had a snippet of a song stuck in my head, but I didn't know what the song was. I always turn to Google first to find the song, then iTunes second to purchase it. Now I can do both at the same time.;-)
That being said, this tool still needs some serious work. My last search for a song was for "Desert Rose" by Sting. I typed "Desert Rose" into the search bar and didn't see any ads. Sting works, but that wouldn't have helped me any. Even ["dream of love" lyrics] (the search I originally used) didn't produce any results.
So only the display part is flexible, but there is a seperate PCB for circuitry? What connects the PCB to the display then, if not wires?
Not exactly. First off, I didn't say it was printed on PCB. I said it was printed (though it could be etched) directly into the device. The "wires" between the screen, the CPU, and the memory are printed or etched into place. Presumably, this ePaper has a method for stitching the "wires" throughout the paper (to control individual pixels) that aren't damaged by the device being flexed. However, CPUs and memory cicuits tend to be a bit more fragile, and would be printed onto a less flexible surface. If they do it right, the rigid part wouldn't be immediately obvious, but it would be there.
For example, many book retailers are now slapping electronic tags on the back of their books. If you pay attention, you'll note that these are semi-rigid. But since they're small enough, you probably won't notice them as you open the cover to a paperback book.
$10 is hideously expensive compared to the cost of the product you're bundling this display with (A cereal box).
Of course it is. My only point was that the technology for this sort of thing is highly advanced. I don't see ePaper for a cereal box needing 1MB of flash memory, DES and RSA codecs, wireless (aka contactless) support, or even 8KB of RAM. It's far more likely that the device will have a simple CPU/Controller combination with 1 or 2 kilobytes of ROM, plus 128-512 bytes of RAM. (That's more than the Atari 2600!)
Assuming one bit per pixel and no compression (Too expensive to decode), that is about one single 320x256 black and white image.
Don't assume a framebuffer. When you're looking at devices this small, a framebuffer would be a waste of valuable memory. The images will probably be procedurally computed on the fly. Also, don't assume that compression is too expensive. Decompressors can be etched directly into the hardware.
If we set a limit of 50 cents for all components, the ePaper is 30 cents (according to the article), the storage is 10 cents, that leaves 10 cents for components to get the data from the memory to the display.
You're assuming that the storage isn't already included in the ePaper. Given the level of integration necessary to keep the price down, I'd say that the $0.30 is an approximate quote for the total system, subject to minor variations based on the individual designs.
While I recall a recent article detailing the etching of a functional Z80 onto glass, I question the ability to integrate large amounts of storage (comparatively) onto a flexible substrate.
The largest SmartCards currently on the market have 8MBits(1MB) of flash memory on board, plus a 16 bit CPU, plus 8KB of RAM, plus 8KB of ROM, plus RSA and DES accelerators, plus tamper and malfunction sensors. All in a credit card sized device sandwiched between solid PVC, and produced for ~$10 a unit. (You could open a lot of hotel doors with that SmartCard.;-))
The key is that it's much cheaper to print all the circuitry in one piece rather than run wires or pins. As for the flexibility, I'm guessing that the circuitry isn't actually flexible, just the display part. If you had a piece in your hand, you'd probably be able to find a "lump" where the printed controllers, memory, and CPU are housed.
There still has to be a digital input to the ePaper. Like an LCD, it will always be possible to hack it to display something else.
You mean, in the same way it's possible to "hack" the FPU out of a CPU into another unit? THINK about it. If they print all the circuitry as a single device, you'd have to have fab-quality tools to directly interface with the ePaper. That is NOT my idea of a "hackable" piece of ePaper. (Especially since it would be cheaper and easier just to purchase a generic ePaper display.) And that's assuming that they don't further cut corners with tricks like not adding eInk to areas that don't change in the animation.
I envision the day when cereal company is selling hackable E-Paper that comes with edible cereals
Not everything is hackable. For example, if you get software on a SmartCard, you probably can't hack it to run your own programs because the ROM is printed between the PVC along with the microprocessor. Same type of problem here. The ePaper will probably be "printed" with the desired animation, and can't be changed. It'll be the moving "holograms" of the 21st century!
Information sharing is what allows one part of the company to see what the other part is doing and adjust accordingly, with a minimum of fuss, thus producing your "well-oiled machine" analogy.
Agreed.
Without wide data paths between groups, teams don't know what other other teams are doing and either work to cross purposes, or make incorrect assumptions that lead to product failure.
I'm certainly not going to argue that wide data paths are important. However, the amount of information they carry is not indicitive of their importance or performance. Take Atari as an example. Here was a company generating TONS of data on schematics, games, technology, pizza restaurants, mind reading devices (I'm not making this stuff up), holographics, and billions of other things that were completely unrelated to their business. Atari was in trouble for a long time before they finally folded in a reverse merger. If you use the formula that Health == Information Quantity, then Atari should have been the healthiest company in the history of mankind.
On the other end of the spectrum, you have Apple. In the days of Mac development, Information did NOT flow. At all. In fact, information was kept to the minimum necessary to do the job. They didn't generate tons of documents, prototypes, interdepartment memos, or millions of other things that would be considered Information creation and flow. Yet the Mac was extremely successful. In part, its success was because information flow was tightly controlled. It flowed as it needed, but only as it was needed.
To create a parallel with computers, the slowest part of any distributed system is always the communications channels. As a result, you always get a bigger bang for your buck if you reduce the amount of information flowing through the pipes. That's why SETI@Home or the Distributed Key Cracking Contest both download the necessary data to you once, then make as much use of your machine before turning over the data. Imagine if every computation was exchanged over the network!
The contractor (Lockheed Martin?) assumed that certain data was being received in standard units. NASA, however, assumed that all data would handled in metric units. The result: the probe burned up in the atmosphere, after failing to slow itself properly. If the teams from NASA and the contractor had communicated more often, it would have been easier to weed out these incorrect assumptions.
Your own example betrays you. The problem was not the quantity of communication. There's no guarantee that more open lines wouldn't have meant more confusion and bickering. (In fact, that's a far more likely outcome.) What was needed was more precise communication that covered issues like this in detail. That's a matter for engineering planning and testing. Throwing more communications bandwidth at it wouldn't have solved the problem any more than throwing 100 Chevettes at a quarry would help transport 30 tons of rock.
I have read this book and a very interesting concept that I gathered from it was that a business could be measured by the speed at which information passes through it.
That sounds like a typical Bill Gates idea.
Q: What happens when you have a lack of organization in a company? A: A lot more communication occurs as everyone throws around questions about "who knows this" or "who is responsible for this" and "I *think* that ABC is true, but I'm not sure."
A well oiled company should only need a minimum of information exchange. So as metrics go, information flow is a pretty poor one.
Same thing goes for nations. What happens when the infrastructure is poorly managed? You get a lot more emergencies, and overtax the resources available.
Ahh Starfire. The original pocket edition is one of the best games of its generation. It hasn't stood up well
Indeed. The current owner is only maintaining the game part time, and is 100% focused on distributing rules over the Internet rather than complete game packages. The fourth edition rules have been clarified (as promised), but in the process completely lost any hope of explaining to a new player how to play the game. It was a full two weeks before something finally clicked in my head and I was able to play a one ship on one ship game. Considering how easy such a game is, that's just pathetic. I still haven't managed to work out the empire building, but that may be in part because of how busy I am.
Weber came along for the 2nd edition and rewrote the game to be more complex to handle the large battles he wanted (yes, that's what happened). And he wrote novels. They degenerated into one massive assault through a warp point after another.
I'm thinking that's because of the introduction of Imperial Starfire. He first created a separate game set in the same universe so that he could have the empite building aspect. Then he went about combining the two concepts into one, with predictably unpredictable results. Still, a lot of players swear up and down by the Third Edition. I would have gone for third instead of fourth, but I couldn't figure out all the materials I needed to order. Galactic Starfire came in a bundled set (two manuals, two counter sheets, two hexmaps, and a 10 sided die), so it was much easier at the time to order that.
On the other hand, the game for the Honor Harrington series is based on the excellent Attack Vector, which manages to put 3d Newtonian space combat on the tabletop. They're calling it the Saganami Island Tactical Simulator
I've been hearing nothing but good things about both Attack Vector and Saganami Island Tactical Simulator. Is the latter really as good as everyone is claiming? At the very least, the idea of getting a well thought out, well commercialized, game with professionally crafted pieces for about the same cost as Starfire is very appealing. When I got the Starfire kit, I couldn't help but feel a bit disappointed in the artwork on the counter sheets. (Yes, they're still using the same artwork that goes all the way back to 1st edition.) The 3D artwork on the manual covers isn't much better.:-(
Anybody who has read more than his trendy stuff and/or the backs of pretty much any of his books?
Lemme see: I'm pissed off because he didn't write more Dahak, Starfire is almost better than HH because it spans a much greater period of time, and I really wish he hadn't helped write 1633. 1632 was much more realistic without Weber's hard edge "those BASTARDS!" style of writing in it. Of course, 1634 is a snooze, so who am I to talk? No, I haven't read the March Up Country series. It hasn't interested me yet.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
I will concede that
:)
:-)
:-)
;-)) didn't want to release the 7800 once he got ahold of Atari, and it sat on the shelf for a couple of years before being released. By then, Nintendo was already starting to attack the market with fresh new games. The 7800 just couldn't compete with the updates to tired old Arcade games that it offered. (I mean, how many times were people going to buy Space Invaders, Asteroids, and Pacman?)
I was just checking to be sure. I actually work with a guy named Gerard, and I've made the same mistake a billion times or so.
but will point out that you cannot seem to spell "Tramiel" correctly in two postings.
Touche.
Your posting from Gamespot is not as accurate as from the book *Game Over*.
According to "Phoenix: The Fall & Rise of Videogames", the entire incident between Kassar and Famicom was where the damage to the relationship came from. Every source I've found on that period states that Atari was losing one to two million dollars a day. Atari posted over a half-a-billion loss for 1983. (Note that the article is from 1984.) I don't see how Atari could have been left with much in the way of money.
I guess we'll just have to step out of this one for now, and let the historians argue it out.
Atari never intended on releasing the Famicom. It was a defensive move, and Atari Inc. would have sat on the Famicom while selling the 7800.
I could see that. Sun Microsystems later did the same thing to Microsoft with an exclusive license to produce Windows NT for SPARC. Unfortunately for Atari, that was a REALLY bad time to be playing those games. Tramiel (I think I got it right that time.
That being said, a lot of people in the retro crowd seem to like the 7800 better than the Nintendo. I can't understand why. The Nintendo did better on graphics, sound, and gameplay at every turn. For an example, just look at the compromises made for Double Dragon on the 7800 vs. the NES. The NES was definitely closer to the arcade.
Those profits would have been far too late for the Atari of 1983-84. i.e. They didn't wait until they had a return on the technology they produced, thus spending WAY too much money. For example, the entire point of all the holographic IP they had was to produce a series of "hi-tech" handheld consoles. These were canceled after the unit was ready for release.
No. Kassar did not screw up the Famicom deal. Kasser was gone.
*cough*
Manny Gerald was running the Company at the behest of Steve Ross when Atari was negotiating the Nintendo deal.
1. I assume you mean Manny Gerard?
2. Bristow admitted that he had let the deal slide after Kassar was ejected. According to Bristow, the problem was that the 2600 was a never-ending cash cow. Others, however, have pointed out the incredible amount of money that Atari was losing at the time, and have come to the conclusion that Atari couldn't have afforded to produce the Famicom in America.
Of course, there's still plenty of confusion about who actually terminated the talks, but it would probably be fair to say that both sides did.
Are you high? Atari released the 400/800 8-bit computer line in 1979/1980. The XL line circa 1982/83. The later XLs were to debut in 1984 and the Amiga project in 1985+.
No, just not paying enough attention to what I'm typing. That should have read "The only reason why Atari ever produced the Atari ST home computer was that Tremiel infused the home section of the company with the cash to do it."
Read up on the history of Atari at places like atarihistory.org.
??? Do you mean atarimuseum.com?
Atari didn't overspend.
Research into Mind Controller devices, a Pizza Place, consoles that were never released, expensive movie/tv/comic licenses that were never released, dozens (hundreds?) of games cancelled at or near completion, massive R&D departments, etc., etc., etc. Atari overspent BIG TIME. At one point Atari estimated that the company was losing about a million dollars a day and began to close down every division possible within the company. Only a few of the games under development survived this purge, thus giving us a wealth of unreleased prototypes.
The problem was that Atari made all the retailers place their orders for the holiday 1982 season many months in advance based upon the sales figures from the prior year. They banked on it and didn't expect people to stop buying games such as *Pac-Man*, *E.T.*, *Raiders of the Lost Ark*, and the *Swordquest* series.
This was where Atari actually contributed to the crash. Had Atari ensured that its name continued to mean "quality", then the low prices of third party carts might not have meant much. Unfortunately, the E.T. game bombed so badly that Atari buried the remaining and returned cartriges. (Supposedly in the foundation of Atari HQ.)
As I said, the crash hurt Atari, but it didn't kill them. Also, manufacturing more games than had ever been sold in a single title was DEFINITELY a bit of overspending (and overconfidence) on Atari's part. Their choices left them with little cash reserves, and Warner didn't feel like bailing them out.
Not to mention the Amiga hardware which was going to debut under the Atari brand in 1985, and the worldwide rights to the Nintendo Famicom Atari was about to acquire.
Kassar screwed up the Fanicom deal. He saw Coleco present their Adam computer with Donkey Kong on it (Atari owned the rights to Donkey Kong on home computers) and tore into Nintendo. Nintendo tore into Coleco in turn (who only had console rights), but Kassar had done enough damage to the relationship that the execs who took over (after Kassar was asked to leave) had to start over from scratch. One thing lead to another, and the 7800, the Amiga 'Mickey', the Fanicom, and many other Atari projects all fell through because Atari no longer had the money to be producing new consoles OR computers.
The only reason why Atari ever produced a home computer was that Tremiel infused the home section of the company with the cash to do it.
It's a shortening of the old term for technology departments: MIS (Management Information Systems)
MIS was commonly used back in the days of mainframes, because the department encompassed a lot more than just administration. They were responsible for the development, deployment, and operation of all mainframe programs, as well as all hardware related to information flow. Key punchers were also often assigned to MIS. In the olden days, they formed the core of a company's ability to produce bills, compute sales, and just about every other function that required data processing.
Today, many companies have eschewed the idea of central processing for a technology department (IT) that merely installs the applicaitons that users run to do their own processing. Larger companies also have a software development department which is usually at odds with IT.
That's because there was no such thing as a third party video game company when the Atari 2600 VCS originally debuted in 1977.
It's even more complex than that. The VCS was only intended to play the dozen or so games released at launch. The idea of a truely generic console hadn't entered anyone's mind yet. Activision was one of the driving forces behind the idea that the VCS could be used generically.
he renegade Atari employees who created Activision founded the third-party industry. The same industry that pretty much caused the 1982-84 videogame industry collapse that ruined Atari which it never truly recovered from which is why "carpet-bagging" companies like Sony and Microsoft now control the industry.
Atari killed Atari. Sure, they were making a pretty penny off the VCS, but they assumed the revenue and continuously overspent. The market crash thus creamed Atari, but didn't kill them. Atari still released the 7800 post-crash, but wasn't able to convince the market to pick it. Further mis-management caused Atari to miss the boat on licensing the Nintendo, causing them to get their asses handed to them on a plate in the market.
Sony gained control of the market much later thanks to a screwup by Nintendo which left Sony with Nintendo's next-gen hardware. (i.e. The Playstation) Microsoft just forced their way into the market, and hasn't had anywhere near the success as they'd have people believe.
Nintendo put a lock-out chip in the NES to prevent games like *Custer's Revenge* from ever appearing on their console.
That's only half the story. Nintendo definitely didn't want another Custer's Revenge (which didn't stop a few from coming along anyway), but they realized that the real problem was the glut of games. Quality suffered because there was no incentive to produce a good seller. So Nintendo restricted licensees to only 5 games per year. This restriction was mostly effective, and didn't produce problems similar to the crash of '83 until late into the Nintendo's life. The fight with the Genesis and the release of the Super Nintendo both headed off another crash.
It should be remembered that Atari gained a 90% controlling interest in the earlier gaming industry without such tactics.
Atari had competition from the Channel F (VES) before it ever released the 2600. However, the market was still fresh at the time, and the two consoles didn't directly compete like consoles do today. (Remember, the Atari 2600 was created only for a few games. It wasn't intended to be generic.) The Video Game crash of 1977, however, caused the Channel F to exit the market, leaving Atari with a 100% market share. That share would later be challenged by the more expensive Intellivision and Colecovision, but those two consoles would suffer heavily in the '83 market crash, again giving Atari the lead.
The 7800, BTW, also had a lockout system to prevent a situation like the '83 crash.
Atari took no precautions to prevent third party games. The judge ruled that Atari didn't have a legal leg to stand on.
Nintendo took a look at the case and added a patented algorithm to their systems called the "Lockout Chip". Atari asked the patent office for the info on the lockout chip so that they could reproduce it without paying Nintendo royalties. Nintendo sued on patent infringment and won.
Nintendo was WAY more cut-throat than Atari ever was. Atari was just... bumbling.
1. Since the primary objective would be to wipe out the nuclear weapons, the nuclear part is intended to be removed from the equation. The Israeli backup plan probably includes something like "nuke them first".
2. Afganistan and Iraq are not wars. An occupation isn't the same thing as a war. Very few of our high-tech resources are actually in use at the moment. At least some ground troops can be redeployed as necessary. We can actually pull out of those two countries without exposing to the US to any immediate threats.
3. To have a war on three fronts, you have to have three fronts. These three countries are right next to each other. We'd actually be consolidating two fronts into one, allowing us to better deploy our resources. Plus, we can hit Iran from both sides if we need to.
Whether or not it was Israel doesn't matter: if it came from Iraqi airspace, US forces occupying Iraq gave them aid and comfort (by allowing them overflight), making them complicit in the attacks.
You know, you're acting as if we should actually be worried about the retalitory ability of Iran. That has never been much of a concern. Pretty much the highest tech stuff they have are 30 year old F-14s which have been serviced only through deals with Russia. (Which were probably disrupted by the fall of the Soviet Union.) Iran doesn't have a chance in hell of standing up to Israel, much less the US. That's why nuclear weapons are important to them.
With all our forces tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan, there's nothing left to galvanize.
I wasn't aware that all of the US Citizens were in Iraq and Afghanistan. Silly me, I thought I was talking about galvanizing public opinion against Iran. Right now public opinion is pretty low due to the issues with occupying Iraq.
It's not history, it's current events. We can have soldiers in:
* Afghanistan
* Iraq
* Iran
Pick only two.
Why? Pick only two, that is. We have more than enough resources to wage war. We just don't have enough resources to occupy Iran. Which would be a bad idea anyway. (No dictators being overthrown, or anything else like that.) There's no real reason why we can only have two. Especially if we can consolidate our theater of operations.
BTW, on the F-22, you may find this bit of interest:
I gotta get me one of those!
If an Israeli attack hits Iran from Iraqi airspace, Iran will cross the border into Iraq.
...and meet head on with US forces. Which gives the US a reason to enter the fray without actually entering the fray.
;-)
People look up, see planes flying south by southwest. Iranians put 2 and 2 together, invade Iraq.
Heck, that's even worse: it allows the Iranians to assume the planes were US forces.
I seriously doubt it would take very long for Israel to claim responsibility for the attack. Iran could persecute the US for it, but that would only galvanize US citizens into defending ourselves against "those middle east nuts". Iran wouldn't last long under US siege, regardless of our history with the occupation of Iraq.
By the way, if you're jamming radar, you are the exact opposite of stealth.
I never claimed any different. The F-22 is equipped with both Stealth capabilites AND focused radar jamming equipment. Depending on the mission profile, it can easily use stealth at long range, radar jamming at close range, and still make it the hell out at supersonic velocities without anyone knowing what hit them. Or so the brochure says.
But if they fly over Iraq on their way to Iran without getting shot down, the US gets dragged into it more than usual.
Most countries have agreements about allowing flyovers of friendly territories. The US would just say that Israel worked out something with the Iraqi government, and feign complete innocence.
Either that, or the Israelis will be flying F-22 stealth fighters with full radar jamming and supercruise capability. In which case you'd never even see them coming.
Evil will always triumph because Good is dumb. -Dark Helmet
If you have any information, please do share. I've tried to detangle the sections on Wiretapping and the like, but it appears to be a mess that involves stitching together 3 or more laws written over the last half century.
if you've heard the rhetoric coming out of Iran (from their president no less) directed towards Israel, you'll understand why he's behind our military's occupation of that region.
Lemme see, the Iranian President has claimed that the Holocaust never happened. It was entirely made up by the media to gain support the Jews. He also states that Israel should be wiped off the map and moved to Europe or Alaska. In short, the guy is nuts.
A commentator wrote an article in the Chicago Sun Times this morning that pretty well covered how it's going to go down:
1. The US has used up its "attack bad country" card for the time being, so they won't do anything.
2. Israel will take the threat seriously and bomb the hell out of Iran's caches of missiles and nuclear weapons facilities.
3. The UN will make more pointless resolutions condemning Israel.
Sound about right?
Just playing devils advocate for a moment (since it appears that Slashthink(TM) is in full force), but isn't this EXACTLY the type of thing that the Patriot Act made legal? I'm not saying that I like the Patriot Act, but it did get passed by a majority of the house and senate.
I think it's a nice idea. I can't count how many times I've had a snippet of a song stuck in my head, but I didn't know what the song was. I always turn to Google first to find the song, then iTunes second to purchase it. Now I can do both at the same time. ;-)
That being said, this tool still needs some serious work. My last search for a song was for "Desert Rose" by Sting. I typed "Desert Rose" into the search bar and didn't see any ads. Sting works, but that wouldn't have helped me any. Even ["dream of love" lyrics] (the search I originally used) didn't produce any results.
Soo... keep working on it Google.
Indeed. I called it a CPU, but a simple decoder is more than enough for many electronic products. Handheld videogames, anyone? :-)
So only the display part is flexible, but there is a seperate PCB for circuitry? What connects the PCB to the display then, if not wires?
Not exactly. First off, I didn't say it was printed on PCB. I said it was printed (though it could be etched) directly into the device. The "wires" between the screen, the CPU, and the memory are printed or etched into place. Presumably, this ePaper has a method for stitching the "wires" throughout the paper (to control individual pixels) that aren't damaged by the device being flexed. However, CPUs and memory cicuits tend to be a bit more fragile, and would be printed onto a less flexible surface. If they do it right, the rigid part wouldn't be immediately obvious, but it would be there.
For example, many book retailers are now slapping electronic tags on the back of their books. If you pay attention, you'll note that these are semi-rigid. But since they're small enough, you probably won't notice them as you open the cover to a paperback book.
$10 is hideously expensive compared to the cost of the product you're bundling this display with (A cereal box).
Of course it is. My only point was that the technology for this sort of thing is highly advanced. I don't see ePaper for a cereal box needing 1MB of flash memory, DES and RSA codecs, wireless (aka contactless) support, or even 8KB of RAM. It's far more likely that the device will have a simple CPU/Controller combination with 1 or 2 kilobytes of ROM, plus 128-512 bytes of RAM. (That's more than the Atari 2600!)
Assuming one bit per pixel and no compression (Too expensive to decode), that is about one single 320x256 black and white image.
Don't assume a framebuffer. When you're looking at devices this small, a framebuffer would be a waste of valuable memory. The images will probably be procedurally computed on the fly. Also, don't assume that compression is too expensive. Decompressors can be etched directly into the hardware.
If we set a limit of 50 cents for all components, the ePaper is 30 cents (according to the article), the storage is 10 cents, that leaves 10 cents for components to get the data from the memory to the display.
You're assuming that the storage isn't already included in the ePaper. Given the level of integration necessary to keep the price down, I'd say that the $0.30 is an approximate quote for the total system, subject to minor variations based on the individual designs.
While I recall a recent article detailing the etching of a functional Z80 onto glass, I question the ability to integrate large amounts of storage (comparatively) onto a flexible substrate.
;-))
The largest SmartCards currently on the market have 8MBits(1MB) of flash memory on board, plus a 16 bit CPU, plus 8KB of RAM, plus 8KB of ROM, plus RSA and DES accelerators, plus tamper and malfunction sensors. All in a credit card sized device sandwiched between solid PVC, and produced for ~$10 a unit. (You could open a lot of hotel doors with that SmartCard.
The key is that it's much cheaper to print all the circuitry in one piece rather than run wires or pins. As for the flexibility, I'm guessing that the circuitry isn't actually flexible, just the display part. If you had a piece in your hand, you'd probably be able to find a "lump" where the printed controllers, memory, and CPU are housed.
There still has to be a digital input to the ePaper. Like an LCD, it will always be possible to hack it to display something else.
You mean, in the same way it's possible to "hack" the FPU out of a CPU into another unit? THINK about it. If they print all the circuitry as a single device, you'd have to have fab-quality tools to directly interface with the ePaper. That is NOT my idea of a "hackable" piece of ePaper. (Especially since it would be cheaper and easier just to purchase a generic ePaper display.) And that's assuming that they don't further cut corners with tricks like not adding eInk to areas that don't change in the animation.
I envision the day when cereal company is selling hackable E-Paper that comes with edible cereals
Not everything is hackable. For example, if you get software on a SmartCard, you probably can't hack it to run your own programs because the ROM is printed between the PVC along with the microprocessor. Same type of problem here. The ePaper will probably be "printed" with the desired animation, and can't be changed. It'll be the moving "holograms" of the 21st century!
Information sharing is what allows one part of the company to see what the other part is doing and adjust accordingly, with a minimum of fuss, thus producing your "well-oiled machine" analogy.
Agreed.
Without wide data paths between groups, teams don't know what other other teams are doing and either work to cross purposes, or make incorrect assumptions that lead to product failure.
I'm certainly not going to argue that wide data paths are important. However, the amount of information they carry is not indicitive of their importance or performance. Take Atari as an example. Here was a company generating TONS of data on schematics, games, technology, pizza restaurants, mind reading devices (I'm not making this stuff up), holographics, and billions of other things that were completely unrelated to their business. Atari was in trouble for a long time before they finally folded in a reverse merger. If you use the formula that Health == Information Quantity, then Atari should have been the healthiest company in the history of mankind.
On the other end of the spectrum, you have Apple. In the days of Mac development, Information did NOT flow. At all. In fact, information was kept to the minimum necessary to do the job. They didn't generate tons of documents, prototypes, interdepartment memos, or millions of other things that would be considered Information creation and flow. Yet the Mac was extremely successful. In part, its success was because information flow was tightly controlled. It flowed as it needed, but only as it was needed.
To create a parallel with computers, the slowest part of any distributed system is always the communications channels. As a result, you always get a bigger bang for your buck if you reduce the amount of information flowing through the pipes. That's why SETI@Home or the Distributed Key Cracking Contest both download the necessary data to you once, then make as much use of your machine before turning over the data. Imagine if every computation was exchanged over the network!
The contractor (Lockheed Martin?) assumed that certain data was being received in standard units. NASA, however, assumed that all data would handled in metric units. The result: the probe burned up in the atmosphere, after failing to slow itself properly. If the teams from NASA and the contractor had communicated more often, it would have been easier to weed out these incorrect assumptions.
Your own example betrays you. The problem was not the quantity of communication. There's no guarantee that more open lines wouldn't have meant more confusion and bickering. (In fact, that's a far more likely outcome.) What was needed was more precise communication that covered issues like this in detail. That's a matter for engineering planning and testing. Throwing more communications bandwidth at it wouldn't have solved the problem any more than throwing 100 Chevettes at a quarry would help transport 30 tons of rock.
I have read this book and a very interesting concept that I gathered from it was that a business could be measured by the speed at which information passes through it.
That sounds like a typical Bill Gates idea.
Q: What happens when you have a lack of organization in a company?
A: A lot more communication occurs as everyone throws around questions about "who knows this" or "who is responsible for this" and "I *think* that ABC is true, but I'm not sure."
A well oiled company should only need a minimum of information exchange. So as metrics go, information flow is a pretty poor one.
Same thing goes for nations. What happens when the infrastructure is poorly managed? You get a lot more emergencies, and overtax the resources available.
Empire From the Ashes
:-)
Empire From the Ashes is the collected 3 book Dahak series, so I don't think that really counts as "non-series".
P.S. I can't stand Ringo, so that's not exactly a ringing endorsement. ;-)
Ahh Starfire. The original pocket edition is one of the best games of its generation. It hasn't stood up well
:-(
Indeed. The current owner is only maintaining the game part time, and is 100% focused on distributing rules over the Internet rather than complete game packages. The fourth edition rules have been clarified (as promised), but in the process completely lost any hope of explaining to a new player how to play the game. It was a full two weeks before something finally clicked in my head and I was able to play a one ship on one ship game. Considering how easy such a game is, that's just pathetic. I still haven't managed to work out the empire building, but that may be in part because of how busy I am.
Weber came along for the 2nd edition and rewrote the game to be more complex to handle the large battles he wanted (yes, that's what happened). And he wrote novels. They degenerated into one massive assault through a warp point after another.
I'm thinking that's because of the introduction of Imperial Starfire. He first created a separate game set in the same universe so that he could have the empite building aspect. Then he went about combining the two concepts into one, with predictably unpredictable results. Still, a lot of players swear up and down by the Third Edition. I would have gone for third instead of fourth, but I couldn't figure out all the materials I needed to order. Galactic Starfire came in a bundled set (two manuals, two counter sheets, two hexmaps, and a 10 sided die), so it was much easier at the time to order that.
On the other hand, the game for the Honor Harrington series is based on the excellent Attack Vector, which manages to put 3d Newtonian space combat on the tabletop. They're calling it the Saganami Island Tactical Simulator
I've been hearing nothing but good things about both Attack Vector and Saganami Island Tactical Simulator. Is the latter really as good as everyone is claiming? At the very least, the idea of getting a well thought out, well commercialized, game with professionally crafted pieces for about the same cost as Starfire is very appealing. When I got the Starfire kit, I couldn't help but feel a bit disappointed in the artwork on the counter sheets. (Yes, they're still using the same artwork that goes all the way back to 1st edition.) The 3D artwork on the manual covers isn't much better.
Anybody who has read more than his trendy stuff and/or the backs of pretty much any of his books?
:-)
Lemme see: I'm pissed off because he didn't write more Dahak, Starfire is almost better than HH because it spans a much greater period of time, and I really wish he hadn't helped write 1633. 1632 was much more realistic without Weber's hard edge "those BASTARDS!" style of writing in it. Of course, 1634 is a snooze, so who am I to talk? No, I haven't read the March Up Country series. It hasn't interested me yet.