Damn. I can't remember what I wrote. Something about we don't run, he's a coward, his mother has a smooth forehead, and no damn bulldozer is going to destroy our planet. The rest you've translated.:-)
Making the data object large enough to support a worthwhile PDA screen/interface is quite another. Let alone the costs for the touch-screen and stylus, and costs for the processing/battery power to run an OS and applications.
"Hi-res" Palm screens are a mere 300x300 pixels. This is not an extremely pricey screen.
Touch-screens are really just super-thin wires run through a plastic overlay. They really DO NOT cost much more than a few bucks. Mass production would bring that price down even further, making them significantly cheaper than the buttons you'd otherwise have to use.
A Stylus is a 10 cent piece of plastic. The only difference between it and a BIC is that it's a bit more dense.
As for power, you're going to lose most of it in your Bluetooth connection and micro hard drive. Occasional use of the screen facilities will not make a noticeable impact on power usage.
not to mention that the camera would probably be as big as a ~3" long highlighter (they're already this small in USB keychain variety, I just want remote storage to my data object), the music player could be even smaller (about the size of the 'remotes' that currently exist in MP3 players) and the phone wouldn't be much bigger than the music player (if it wasn't just crammed into a headset altogether).
*cough* antenna *cough* Your phone still needs an antenna. That's why phones haven't shrunk into super-small devices that fit with your pocket change. Combining the antenna along the side of an already larger device makes sense. And your point about the camera and MP3 player are irrelevant since I've already acquiesced to them being separate devices.
Maybe the police forgot to use a Bicycle, or even a Motorcycle
Chicago Police have a LOT of options for transportation:
1. Cars (of course) 2. 3 wheeled one seater 3. 4 Wheel ATV with cargo frame 4. Horses 5. Segways
The trick is that Segways are really the only one you can safely take through a crowd. All of the others require a few feet of clearance so that you don't hurt anyone. Imagine how it would look if the police lost the suspect AND injured or killed a pedestrian!
A lot of the Police here in Chicago are now on Segways. Perhaps their Segway couldn't keep up with his overclocked/turbocharged Segway?;-)
Seriously though. Segways may not sound fast, but when you see them in real life, you realize just how fast they really are. They can maintain the speed of a brisk run and quickly maneuver around obstacles. Someone on foot would have trouble keeping up and would run out of breath long before the Segway ran out of a charge.
I think we're generally agreeing now, because we're saying that like devices should be converged while dissimilar devices should be broken out. The one point I still disagree with you on is that the data storage should be broken out of the PDA. One of the purposes of convergence is to shrink the number of devices. I'm already running out of pockets, why would I want to carry around another three widgets?
Look at it this way. How long will it be before someone puts an LCD display on your bluetooth hard drive? Then they'll decide that since the device already has bluetooth, it should also be Internet enabled. All I'm suggesting is that we shortcut this tedium and deliver a GOOD device to the consumer. They can worry about their digital zooming cameras with MP3 support by themselves.:-)
Actually, the original Nintendo included a lockout chip; Tengen, I believe, was sued for circumventing it.
Correct. But Nintendo licensed to pretty much anyone who wanted to develop a game. Tengen just didn't want to pay Nintendo for the right to develop a game.
If the console makers tend to license only developers with an existing track record, then how can a new development firm bootstrap itself?
That depends on the vendor. Nintendo's loophole was that they looked at things on a case by case basis. Decisions were made by how an actual human felt about the games (past and present) rather than how it looked on some checklist.
And how can a console game use user-created modifications?
Sorry, you've got to work with the console maker on that one. If you want to make an add-on gizmo, then you need the specs for an expansion port. If you want downloadable game levels or skins, then you're going to need to talk to the console maker about standards for that type of thing.
On the bright side, most console makers work very close with their game makers. They try to provide every bit of support they can (within reason) to make sure that truly good games go out the door.
ithout a modchip or a buffer-overflow exploit, the consoles cannot run games from studios that aren't yet big enough to attract a Major Licensed Publisher's attention.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. I know many of the wippersnappers here are too young to remember it, but Nintendo began this trend after their original NES system was spammed with tons of crap games. Just about every "game company" was building a boring rip-off game of some sort (anyone remember Karate Kid?) and selling it for $$$.
Nintendo knew that poor quality of titles was what killed the Atari 2600 (E.T. anyone?). Thus they implemented a "Nintendo Seal of Quality" for their NES system. This worked well as a stop-gap measure. Then when Nintendo released the Super-NES, they used a combination of legal and technical tactics to make sure that only games that passed strict Nintendo quality standards were released to the public. This was mostly successful, so Nintendo tightened up again for the N64.
The end result of all this is that there were very few "bad" games released for the Super-NES and N64. Sure, Nintendo pushed a family friendly, "cartoony" style, but the games really were fun. Many other console manufacturers decided that this was a worthwhile strategy and have followed Nintendo's lead with various degrees of success.
Back in my day they had a bank of switches. You entered everything by flipping those switches. And we were greatful to have them.
Back in MY day we had to rewire the ENIAC and replace blown out vacuum tubes just to calculate 2+2!
(To which someone responds:)
Well, back in MY day, we had to rotate the proper component on our differential engine to calculate 2+2! And we LIKED IT that way!
(Which begets the response:)
OH YEAH?! Back in MY day, we had to slide beads on an Abacus to calculate 2+2! We liked it so much that we STILL do it! And WE could even calculate while walking uphill through the snow! Both ways!
I'm afraid I disagree with you on convergence devices being "crap". For example, my DVD player is also a CD Player, a VCD Player, and an MP3 CD Player. Does this bother me? No! I love it!
The real difficulty in convergence devices is that they're hard to do right. e.g. I think that Camera Phones are a really dumb idea. The core concept (catching impromptu moments) is sound, but the execution sucks. Similarly, I don't want to buy an extra headphone gizmo to listen to MP3s on my Sony Clie. By the time I've bought the headphones, a large memory stick, and fought through their proprietary software, I'll find that it would have been cheaper and easier just to get an MP3 player in the first place!
It's for this reason that I left MP3 and Camera features off my list. Do these features really make sense? Well, I didn't plan for headphones, so MP3s would require more hardware. (I only planned for a pullout handset for talking on the phone. You *could* listen to music that way, but holding a pencil-like object near your ear would get pretty tedious.) I also didn't add a camera, so I need more hardware still. How am I going to fit this in a device that's already packed?
Let's look at it from another angle, however. Let's take the convergence device I suggested. First and foremost, it's a bluetooth enabled hard drive. On top of that, it's an internet connected, bluetooth hard drive. Plus it can make and receive cell phone calls (using VOIP perhaps?). Add a decent screen and handwriting recognition and you've got a PDA on steroids. The projected keyboard would be "cool", but not absolutely required for a first gen device.
Now, let's say that someone comes out with a "multimedia convergence add-on". This is a device that looks like today's memory card MP3 player. But instead of an internal memory, it connects to your supercharged, bluetooth enabled, hard drive. It gets MP3s from there, and can even stream radio stations over the Internet. Now how long will it take someone to add the camera to this MP3 device? Now you can listen to music AND take pictures, but store the results (plus email, upload, etc.) on your PDA device.
I would imagine it would make more sense for PDA's (with all of their added functionality) to also act as phones. In fact, shouldn't we eventually have one single device that integrates the functions of all other devices we already carry with us (mp3 player, PDA, phone, etc.)?
Like the one I proposed here? The interesting (scary?) part of it is that the device I suggested is not really all that different from current devices. People already use Bluetooth headsets with their phones, save files to memory sticks and USB keys, trade business cards via IR, check email via BlackBerries, and sync their Palm and Cell Phone contact information via IR or Bluetooth. Just a little extension to the existing concepts, and you have the ultimate (or perhaps the penultimate as some device will come after it) PDA/Phone combo.
My cell phone can barely be called a phone based upon it's service track and they want to make it my next PC?
While I sincerely doubt that phones will be the next PC, I do think that you'll see some merging between the various carry on devices. Imagine for a moment, something about the size of a standard Palm Pilot or PocketPC device. It's fully connected to the Internet via wireless, has a built in harddrive, and a pencil thin pull out "handset" that talks to the main unit via Bluetooth.
This device would let you check your email, store extra files (which can be synced via bluetooth), keeps track of your calendar and alerts, and would allow an exchange of business cards via wireless connections (IR or Bluetooth). When a phone call comes in, it will buzz until you remove the handset (fitted similar to a the stylus of a typical Palm) and press the accept button. Notes can be entered via handwriting recognition, or a virtual keyboard projected onto a surface.
Now you may not find this device tremendously useful. But it would be a God-send for people who carry a Cell Phone, PDA, BlackBerry, and Laptop.
Like we're supposed to believe that just because McDonald's gave her a stupid step counter, that she's not going to be lazy and take the elevator.
Ok, lesson 101 about women. Many of them are obsessed with their weight (especially those in a big city) and will do just about anything to stay slim. In fact, many push this obsession to near anorexia. If you give one of these women a Stepometer (the McD's name for a pedometer), she will do a lot of strange things to increase the number of steps it shows.
Wouldn't it have done you more good to run back to the place?
Believe it or not, it was raining that day. And to be perfectly honest, I was already pissed about the pizza guy who never arrived. We had ordered a pizza from our favorite pizza joint, but their new driver was such a f***up that he couldn't find a friggin' high rise building along one of the best known highways in the Chicago Loop area. Even after I gave the guy EXPLICIT instructions, he STILL couldn't find the place. So, with two hungry kids waiting, I told the pizza place that their driver was worthless and I went and got McDonald's drive-thru. As you might imagine, I was NOT happy that they forgot the walking gizmo.
With a pace counter, salad, water bottle and everything! That would be funnier if I was kidding.
Hey now! I'll have you know that my wife loves her Stepometer! She's always checking it after going for a run. And do you know the pain I had to go through to get it?! The drive-thru people didn't put it in her "adult meal", so I had to drive all the way back and wrangle it out of them!
With one exception, that is: Linux, which is right next door, and which is not a business at all. It's a bunch of RVs, yurts, tepees, and geodesic domes set up in a field and organized by consensus. The people who live there are making tanks. These are not old-fashioned, cast-iron Soviet tanks; these are more like the M1 tanks of the U.S. Army, made of space-age materials and jammed with sophisticated technology from one end to the other. But they are better than Army tanks. They've been modified in such a way that they never, ever break down, are light and maneuverable enough to use on ordinary streets, and use no more fuel than a subcompact car. These tanks are being cranked out, on the spot, at a terrific pace, and a vast number of them are lined up along the edge of the road with keys in the ignition. Anyone who wants can simply climb into one and drive it away for free.
Unfortunately, the shear number of inexperienced volunteers has resulted in odd occurrences in some tanks. Anyone reporting broken treads, turrets that turn one way, tanks stuck in reverse, and shells that fail to fire are told that they're doing it wrong and should get out of the tank. This has lead a few upstart car dealers to resell these tanks for money in exchange for a worthless guarantee that these problems won't occur. One has added a coat of neon pink paint and fuzzy dice to differentiate their vehicle. Another has removed the transmission, clamped the gun shut, removed the hatch and proclaimed it "free from infringing parts". No one has yet figured out quite what they mean by this, but they do seem to be selling their tanks at an exceptional rate.
I also seem to remember GEM (better product IMHO) coming out around the same time, so the marketplace had plenty of competitors at that time.
Didn't GEM go on to become popular on various early handheld devices? In fact, I seem to remember that it was GEM handhelds that first introduced the "Graffiti" handwriting recognition that was later used in US Robotics Palm Pilots.
I think you are confusing TopView, which was an IBM product, with early versions of Windows.
No, I'm talking about the pre-release stuff that Microsoft sent to the computer mags of the time. They described how a slight change to your DOS code would make it "Windows Compatible", which basically meant that it could be suspended and replaced on the screen at any time.
As for preannouncing, my source is the book "Barbarians Led by Bill Gates", an insider's description of what happened inside Microsoft. It's really a great read. My favorite part was how the author inadvertantly insulted Bill Gates for his lousy BASIC code.:-)
Anyway, it's interesting that one of Microsoft's first attempt to unseat a software application was targeted at Visicalc. Did they succeed?
Nope. In fact, Microsoft kept failing at spreadsheets until long after Lotus 123 became popular. It wasn't until Microsoft was able to leverage Windows that they finally gained a foothold. Of course, that's a story in itself.
Interestingly enough, the whole Windows story has a lot to do with VisiCalc. You see, VisiCalc took all their hard earned money and put it into creating a piece of software known as VisiOn. VisiOn was the first PC GUI for DOS. Given that Graphical User Interfaces had been the domain of expensive Unix machines, this worried Microsoft a great deal. So they announced Microsoft Windows.
In typical Microsoft fashion, they really didn't have anything. But they managed to spam the media and make everyone put off purchasing VisiOn in hopes that this mystical "Windows" would be a far better investment.
The early betas of MS Windows were actually nothing more than a way of multitasking different DOS apps. By pressing certain keys, you could switch from one "Full Screen Window" to another. About that time, Apple introduced the world to a true WIMP interface. This caused Microsoft to change directions. When the first version of MS Windows was delivered, it allowed for multiple programs to run in tiled windows. One window could be maximized at any time, thus obscuring the other windows. To be blunt, this sucked.
Windows 2.0 was only slightly better, but it sucked too. Windows 3.0 finally hit the mark by delivering a full WIMP interface and a program manager. Why Microsoft thought the program manager was a good idea when the Macintosh showed otherwise, is a mystery that will forever remain unsolved.
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Damn. I can't remember what I wrote. Something about we don't run, he's a coward, his mother has a smooth forehead, and no damn bulldozer is going to destroy our planet. The rest you've translated. :-)
Making the data object large enough to support a worthwhile PDA screen/interface is quite another. Let alone the costs for the touch-screen and stylus, and costs for the processing/battery power to run an OS and applications.
"Hi-res" Palm screens are a mere 300x300 pixels. This is not an extremely pricey screen.
Touch-screens are really just super-thin wires run through a plastic overlay. They really DO NOT cost much more than a few bucks. Mass production would bring that price down even further, making them significantly cheaper than the buttons you'd otherwise have to use.
A Stylus is a 10 cent piece of plastic. The only difference between it and a BIC is that it's a bit more dense.
As for power, you're going to lose most of it in your Bluetooth connection and micro hard drive. Occasional use of the screen facilities will not make a noticeable impact on power usage.
not to mention that the camera would probably be as big as a ~3" long highlighter (they're already this small in USB keychain variety, I just want remote storage to my data object), the music player could be even smaller (about the size of the 'remotes' that currently exist in MP3 players) and the phone wouldn't be much bigger than the music player (if it wasn't just crammed into a headset altogether).
*cough* antenna *cough* Your phone still needs an antenna. That's why phones haven't shrunk into super-small devices that fit with your pocket change. Combining the antenna along the side of an already larger device makes sense. And your point about the camera and MP3 player are irrelevant since I've already acquiesced to them being separate devices.
Anywho, I've got to jet, so I'll post more later.
Maybe the police forgot to use a Bicycle, or even a Motorcycle
Chicago Police have a LOT of options for transportation:
1. Cars (of course)
2. 3 wheeled one seater
3. 4 Wheel ATV with cargo frame
4. Horses
5. Segways
The trick is that Segways are really the only one you can safely take through a crowd. All of the others require a few feet of clearance so that you don't hurt anyone. Imagine how it would look if the police lost the suspect AND injured or killed a pedestrian!
A lot of the Police here in Chicago are now on Segways. Perhaps their Segway couldn't keep up with his overclocked/turbocharged Segway? ;-)
Seriously though. Segways may not sound fast, but when you see them in real life, you realize just how fast they really are. They can maintain the speed of a brisk run and quickly maneuver around obstacles. Someone on foot would have trouble keeping up and would run out of breath long before the Segway ran out of a charge.
I think we're generally agreeing now, because we're saying that like devices should be converged while dissimilar devices should be broken out. The one point I still disagree with you on is that the data storage should be broken out of the PDA. One of the purposes of convergence is to shrink the number of devices. I'm already running out of pockets, why would I want to carry around another three widgets?
:-)
Look at it this way. How long will it be before someone puts an LCD display on your bluetooth hard drive? Then they'll decide that since the device already has bluetooth, it should also be Internet enabled. All I'm suggesting is that we shortcut this tedium and deliver a GOOD device to the consumer. They can worry about their digital zooming cameras with MP3 support by themselves.
Actually, the original Nintendo included a lockout chip; Tengen, I believe, was sued for circumventing it.
Correct. But Nintendo licensed to pretty much anyone who wanted to develop a game. Tengen just didn't want to pay Nintendo for the right to develop a game.
If the console makers tend to license only developers with an existing track record, then how can a new development firm bootstrap itself?
That depends on the vendor. Nintendo's loophole was that they looked at things on a case by case basis. Decisions were made by how an actual human felt about the games (past and present) rather than how it looked on some checklist.
And how can a console game use user-created modifications?
Sorry, you've got to work with the console maker on that one. If you want to make an add-on gizmo, then you need the specs for an expansion port. If you want downloadable game levels or skins, then you're going to need to talk to the console maker about standards for that type of thing.
On the bright side, most console makers work very close with their game makers. They try to provide every bit of support they can (within reason) to make sure that truly good games go out the door.
ithout a modchip or a buffer-overflow exploit, the consoles cannot run games from studios that aren't yet big enough to attract a Major Licensed Publisher's attention.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. I know many of the wippersnappers here are too young to remember it, but Nintendo began this trend after their original NES system was spammed with tons of crap games. Just about every "game company" was building a boring rip-off game of some sort (anyone remember Karate Kid?) and selling it for $$$.
Nintendo knew that poor quality of titles was what killed the Atari 2600 (E.T. anyone?). Thus they implemented a "Nintendo Seal of Quality" for their NES system. This worked well as a stop-gap measure. Then when Nintendo released the Super-NES, they used a combination of legal and technical tactics to make sure that only games that passed strict Nintendo quality standards were released to the public. This was mostly successful, so Nintendo tightened up again for the N64.
The end result of all this is that there were very few "bad" games released for the Super-NES and N64. Sure, Nintendo pushed a family friendly, "cartoony" style, but the games really were fun. Many other console manufacturers decided that this was a worthwhile strategy and have followed Nintendo's lead with various degrees of success.
Back in my day they had a bank of switches. You entered everything by flipping those switches. And we were greatful to have them.
Back in MY day we had to rewire the ENIAC and replace blown out vacuum tubes just to calculate 2+2!
(To which someone responds:)
Well, back in MY day, we had to rotate the proper component on our differential engine to calculate 2+2! And we LIKED IT that way!
(Which begets the response:)
OH YEAH?! Back in MY day, we had to slide beads on an Abacus to calculate 2+2! We liked it so much that we STILL do it! And WE could even calculate while walking uphill through the snow! Both ways!
(ad infinitum)
You might want to check my response to his response. :-)
;-)
I think that would be the penultimate in integration.
What would be the ultimate?
I'm afraid I disagree with you on convergence devices being "crap". For example, my DVD player is also a CD Player, a VCD Player, and an MP3 CD Player. Does this bother me? No! I love it!
The real difficulty in convergence devices is that they're hard to do right. e.g. I think that Camera Phones are a really dumb idea. The core concept (catching impromptu moments) is sound, but the execution sucks. Similarly, I don't want to buy an extra headphone gizmo to listen to MP3s on my Sony Clie. By the time I've bought the headphones, a large memory stick, and fought through their proprietary software, I'll find that it would have been cheaper and easier just to get an MP3 player in the first place!
It's for this reason that I left MP3 and Camera features off my list. Do these features really make sense? Well, I didn't plan for headphones, so MP3s would require more hardware. (I only planned for a pullout handset for talking on the phone. You *could* listen to music that way, but holding a pencil-like object near your ear would get pretty tedious.) I also didn't add a camera, so I need more hardware still. How am I going to fit this in a device that's already packed?
Let's look at it from another angle, however. Let's take the convergence device I suggested. First and foremost, it's a bluetooth enabled hard drive. On top of that, it's an internet connected, bluetooth hard drive. Plus it can make and receive cell phone calls (using VOIP perhaps?). Add a decent screen and handwriting recognition and you've got a PDA on steroids. The projected keyboard would be "cool", but not absolutely required for a first gen device.
Now, let's say that someone comes out with a "multimedia convergence add-on". This is a device that looks like today's memory card MP3 player. But instead of an internal memory, it connects to your supercharged, bluetooth enabled, hard drive. It gets MP3s from there, and can even stream radio stations over the Internet. Now how long will it take someone to add the camera to this MP3 device? Now you can listen to music AND take pictures, but store the results (plus email, upload, etc.) on your PDA device.
How's that for a good design?
I would imagine it would make more sense for PDA's (with all of their added functionality) to also act as phones. In fact, shouldn't we eventually have one single device that integrates the functions of all other devices we already carry with us (mp3 player, PDA, phone, etc.)?
Like the one I proposed here? The interesting (scary?) part of it is that the device I suggested is not really all that different from current devices. People already use Bluetooth headsets with their phones, save files to memory sticks and USB keys, trade business cards via IR, check email via BlackBerries, and sync their Palm and Cell Phone contact information via IR or Bluetooth. Just a little extension to the existing concepts, and you have the ultimate (or perhaps the penultimate as some device will come after it) PDA/Phone combo.
My cell phone can barely be called a phone based upon it's service track and they want to make it my next PC?
While I sincerely doubt that phones will be the next PC, I do think that you'll see some merging between the various carry on devices. Imagine for a moment, something about the size of a standard Palm Pilot or PocketPC device. It's fully connected to the Internet via wireless, has a built in harddrive, and a pencil thin pull out "handset" that talks to the main unit via Bluetooth.
This device would let you check your email, store extra files (which can be synced via bluetooth), keeps track of your calendar and alerts, and would allow an exchange of business cards via wireless connections (IR or Bluetooth). When a phone call comes in, it will buzz until you remove the handset (fitted similar to a the stylus of a typical Palm) and press the accept button. Notes can be entered via handwriting recognition, or a virtual keyboard projected onto a surface.
Now you may not find this device tremendously useful. But it would be a God-send for people who carry a Cell Phone, PDA, BlackBerry, and Laptop.
Like we're supposed to believe that just because McDonald's gave her a stupid step counter, that she's not going to be lazy and take the elevator.
Ok, lesson 101 about women. Many of them are obsessed with their weight (especially those in a big city) and will do just about anything to stay slim. In fact, many push this obsession to near anorexia. If you give one of these women a Stepometer (the McD's name for a pedometer), she will do a lot of strange things to increase the number of steps it shows.
Wouldn't it have done you more good to run back to the place?
Believe it or not, it was raining that day. And to be perfectly honest, I was already pissed about the pizza guy who never arrived. We had ordered a pizza from our favorite pizza joint, but their new driver was such a f***up that he couldn't find a friggin' high rise building along one of the best known highways in the Chicago Loop area. Even after I gave the guy EXPLICIT instructions, he STILL couldn't find the place. So, with two hungry kids waiting, I told the pizza place that their driver was worthless and I went and got McDonald's drive-thru. As you might imagine, I was NOT happy that they forgot the walking gizmo.
With a pace counter, salad, water bottle and everything! That would be funnier if I was kidding.
Hey now! I'll have you know that my wife loves her Stepometer! She's always checking it after going for a run. And do you know the pain I had to go through to get it?! The drive-thru people didn't put it in her "adult meal", so I had to drive all the way back and wrangle it out of them!
Oops. Did I just say that out loud?
Maybe because it was already reported?
With one exception, that is: Linux, which is right next door, and which is not a business at all. It's a bunch of RVs, yurts, tepees, and geodesic domes set up in a field and organized by consensus. The people who live there are making tanks. These are not old-fashioned, cast-iron Soviet tanks; these are more like the M1 tanks of the U.S. Army, made of space-age materials and jammed with sophisticated technology from one end to the other. But they are better than Army tanks. They've been modified in such a way that they never, ever break down, are light and maneuverable enough to use on ordinary streets, and use no more fuel than a subcompact car. These tanks are being cranked out, on the spot, at a terrific pace, and a vast number of them are lined up along the edge of the road with keys in the ignition. Anyone who wants can simply climb into one and drive it away for free.
Unfortunately, the shear number of inexperienced volunteers has resulted in odd occurrences in some tanks. Anyone reporting broken treads, turrets that turn one way, tanks stuck in reverse, and shells that fail to fire are told that they're doing it wrong and should get out of the tank. This has lead a few upstart car dealers to resell these tanks for money in exchange for a worthless guarantee that these problems won't occur. One has added a coat of neon pink paint and fuzzy dice to differentiate their vehicle. Another has removed the transmission, clamped the gun shut, removed the hatch and proclaimed it "free from infringing parts". No one has yet figured out quite what they mean by this, but they do seem to be selling their tanks at an exceptional rate.
Dumb question, but have you used this mouse under Windows with the same USB chipset with no problem?
:-) BTW, there's more info on the problem in my journal.
Windows 2000 and FreeBSD both work fine on the same machine. Thanks for asking though.
I also seem to remember GEM (better product IMHO) coming out around the same time, so the marketplace had plenty of competitors at that time.
Didn't GEM go on to become popular on various early handheld devices? In fact, I seem to remember that it was GEM handhelds that first introduced the "Graffiti" handwriting recognition that was later used in US Robotics Palm Pilots.
I think you are confusing TopView, which was an IBM product, with early versions of Windows.
:-)
No, I'm talking about the pre-release stuff that Microsoft sent to the computer mags of the time. They described how a slight change to your DOS code would make it "Windows Compatible", which basically meant that it could be suspended and replaced on the screen at any time.
As for preannouncing, my source is the book "Barbarians Led by Bill Gates", an insider's description of what happened inside Microsoft. It's really a great read. My favorite part was how the author inadvertantly insulted Bill Gates for his lousy BASIC code.
Anyway, it's interesting that one of Microsoft's first attempt to unseat a software application was targeted at Visicalc. Did they succeed?
Nope. In fact, Microsoft kept failing at spreadsheets until long after Lotus 123 became popular. It wasn't until Microsoft was able to leverage Windows that they finally gained a foothold. Of course, that's a story in itself.
Interestingly enough, the whole Windows story has a lot to do with VisiCalc. You see, VisiCalc took all their hard earned money and put it into creating a piece of software known as VisiOn. VisiOn was the first PC GUI for DOS. Given that Graphical User Interfaces had been the domain of expensive Unix machines, this worried Microsoft a great deal. So they announced Microsoft Windows.
In typical Microsoft fashion, they really didn't have anything. But they managed to spam the media and make everyone put off purchasing VisiOn in hopes that this mystical "Windows" would be a far better investment.
The early betas of MS Windows were actually nothing more than a way of multitasking different DOS apps. By pressing certain keys, you could switch from one "Full Screen Window" to another. About that time, Apple introduced the world to a true WIMP interface. This caused Microsoft to change directions. When the first version of MS Windows was delivered, it allowed for multiple programs to run in tiled windows. One window could be maximized at any time, thus obscuring the other windows. To be blunt, this sucked.
Windows 2.0 was only slightly better, but it sucked too. Windows 3.0 finally hit the mark by delivering a full WIMP interface and a program manager. Why Microsoft thought the program manager was a good idea when the Macintosh showed otherwise, is a mystery that will forever remain unsolved.
bIjatlh 'e' yImev, pujwI'! Hab SoSlI' Quch! No ghuy' bulldozer is going to Qaw' our planet! tlhIngan maH! Heghlu'meH QaQ jajvam!
There are three different transliterations:
1. Kronos
2. Q'onos
3. Qo'noS
Not sure why the 'r' comes and goes, though.
Q'onos? Isn't that like the Klingon homeworld or something?