Minor correction: the ColecoVision was a Z80 based computer. Though the ADAM BASIC looked identical to AppleSoft (the Apple II's Microsoft produced 6502 FP BASIC), it was indeed a Z80 chip inside.
For what its worth, I'm not sure that there are that many ColecoVisions in existence anyway - I think I last read a count around 3-4 million?
I tried developing a palm application on an older device and even with a keyboard, it wasn't all that fun. Reverted to a proper desktop shortly thereafter.
a high speed, high quality dvd ripper/transcoder would do it for me, and it sounds (to my uneducated mind) like something that lends itself to GPU style parallelism.
There already is an application out there that does this on Windows. The name escapes me for the moment, but I've seen a review of it in Maximum PC and from memory it showed a 2-5x speed increase over just CPU.
I'm a fan of Handbrake, so I hope that their Mac OS X version will support the OpenCL library and benefit from that.
Makes me think of Futurama when Bender tried to cook for the crew. No sense of taste, too salty!
But then again, it looks like they're making something along the lines of soup which isn't terribly difficult considering there is three fairly well measured ingredients?
I can't quote exactly which episode it was, but there was a company portrayed on the show that was established to send emails to friends and loved ones when the rapture arrived. The system worked that there were two people who had to "check in" with the system periodically to prevent the emails from being sent out. Of course, being Law and Order, one of the people was murdered or something and thus didn't check in and thus the emails were sent out for a lot of displeased customers.
(No, I don't believe in any of this rapture stuff - it was just the story!)
And what the heck does Jobs have to do with VisiCalc? I haven't seen any indication that Jobs ever talked to Bricklin, or wouldn't have developed VisiCalc on a TRS-80 if the Apple II hadn't been available.
Actually, the story goes that the only reason that VisiCalc was developed for the Apple II was simply because it was available for Bricklin to hack on. From what I read, he was more familiar with the Commodore PET and would have used that if it wasn't so hard to get time on the PET they had at his office.
I have a feeling that the teenager in the far left of the picture (slightly hunched) is thinking "my family is SOOOOO WEIRD. Please take the damn picture and get it over with!"
Little did (s)he know that it would be posted on the internet:-)
My MSN4000 keyboard is a little under 2 years old now and I can say that of all the 3rd party keyboards I've bought over the years, this one is one of the poorest quality. Yes, it is flash and shiny and comfy, but the plastic used under the keys for its stroke / movement has worn in that time to the point that if you don't hit the keys dead center there is just that slight touch of resistance. Very bad for hands that are on the brink of RSI issues.
I used to be a HARD typist - pounding the keys because my young hands didn't mind. Now into my later 30s, this is all starting to become an issue and i have pains that come and go over the weeks. That slight resistance in the keys does add up. I'm almost ready to throw this thing in a drawer and buy another keyboard, but probably not the same one again.
Now become a foreign traveller in a country that has as unorganized an airport as Nepal or (in my case) Mumbai. I would have spent 2 hours in an unregulated, disorganized line waiting to get through security if it wasn't for a staffer offering to accept a small bribe for me to cut the line. In reality, it was probably about $1 USD and completely worth it.
But does OS X work with any regular PC video card? Last I read, you couldn't just drop an off-the-shelf video card from nVidia or ATi into a Mac Pro and have it work under OS X; it had to have special firmware. This isn't to say that you CAN'T install one of these video cards and use it, however. The issue is that it will work under Windows, but OS X won't recognize it.
Sure, there is apparently a way to re-flash a PC video card to have Mac compatible firmware.
Whatever you might think about how much we're over/underfunding our school system, there is a real fact that teachers (at least in the US public school system) end up paying probably around $1000 out of their pocket for materials such as (get this) copy paper, dry erase markers, graph paper, pencils, etc. You know, the things that they need to teach a kid math. Sure, they can write some of this off on their taxes, but that is hard capped at $250 a year. Now add to this that teachers are paid less than garbage men (at least in New York City) and great! Let's make sure the MPAA gets their extra money while teaching their kids.
I can remember when AOL was Commodore 64 GEOS based, before it was ported to Windows and the Mac.
I don't think it was Commodore 64, though they share the same legacy. It came from Quantum computer services which had the C64 QuantumLink, but there is also lineage to AppleLink on the Apple II and Mac platform. In fact, I was a beta tester for AppleLink back in the late 80's and still have the original mailer, cover sheet, and 5.25" diskette for the Apple II (not GS, we're talking//e) that says America Online and the letter describing how they're changing their names.
Always figured I'd throw it on eBay one day and make a few bucks, but haven't gotten around to it yet. Might want to take an ADT dump of the thing first just to be safe:-)
Alright, I admit I had to try and search a bit to figure out if by FFS they meant Amiga Fast File System. Didn't dig that deep, but realized they must be referring to Berkeley Unix File System.
Hey, anything that looks like an Amiga reference props my interest;-)
not wasted space like a blackberry, but maybe space in that the device has to house the keyboard somewhere?
personally, I have an old Motorola E815 (hacked to enable OBEX) and a BlackBerry 8320 (for work). I have little desire to buy an iPhone, the wife has a Palm Centro (I'm a 12 year loyal Palm user myself). I might actually buy a Pre if it doesn't have some glaring problems when it comes out.
I've read a lot of comments on this story and it ranges from people who are still afraid and panicked, people who think that all of us "wussy new yorkers" have a mental illness, and finally those who are trying to defend things a bit.
Instead of ranting one way or another, let me just say that for those people who criticize the people who evacuated or otherwise felt concerned, consider this: just like how you may catch a whiff of some smell that reminds you of your grandmother's apple cobbler and puts a smile on your face, you can also see something like a 747 circling around downtown Manhattan to remind you of one of the most terrible days in your life and make you panic a bit.
I'm personally quite mentally sane over the whole event, but I don't blame people at all for how they reacted downtown when seeing Airforce One flying the way it did. The comments Bloomberg made of it being "insensitive" hit it right on the nose, since I'm sure there are thousands of people still that aren't as well adjusted as I.
disclaimer: I didn't know about this event until the next day, so I don't know how I would have reacted.
The Amiga clicked because it was detecting if a floppy had been inserted. It would cycle between seeking to track 1 and track 0, which would cause the small click and would reset a latch used for this detection. In later versions of the Amiga OS, they realized that if they cycled between track 0 and track -1, there was no click. However, this was a problem with some 3rd party drives because they didn't implement the right sensors to detect that you were stepping to the -1 track and would actually hurt the drive.
Either way, yes. The click was a way of making sure it knew if a disk was inserted or removed.
For someone else one day to say "to heck with it" and rip the packaging open.
Alternatively, you could leave it sealed forever until someone decides to do magnetic resonance imaging of the contents COMPLETELY wiping out the contents of the Atari DOS disk. (You insensitive clod)
This has bothered me for a while. Sikorsky Helicopter has been producing the presidential helicopter (Marine One) for the last 50 years or so. Under the Bush presidency, he made a deal to switch to a British model (Airbus? Can't quite remember). There is no advantage to the UK model over the Sikorsky S-92 that has been used over the last several years other than a 3rd engine (instead of two), however, engineers agree that the 3rd engine is unnecessarily redundant since the S-92 can run perfectly well with only a single engine.
Technical details aside, I'm really more disappointed in the fact that this is a vehicle used by the president of the USA and it is NOT American. I don't mind if Joe Consumer drives a Toyota, but the President? C'mon, you better show your American Pride and drive/fly/buy American, especially when it comes to the vehicle that has our presidential seal on it!
I would imagine that it must have been purely political to get some kind of deal with a foreign party. Who knows.
Slashdot Mirror
For what its worth, I'm not sure that there are that many ColecoVisions in existence anyway - I think I last read a count around 3-4 million?
I tried developing a palm application on an older device and even with a keyboard, it wasn't all that fun. Reverted to a proper desktop shortly thereafter.
There already is an application out there that does this on Windows. The name escapes me for the moment, but I've seen a review of it in Maximum PC and from memory it showed a 2-5x speed increase over just CPU.
I'm a fan of Handbrake, so I hope that their Mac OS X version will support the OpenCL library and benefit from that.
But then again, it looks like they're making something along the lines of soup which isn't terribly difficult considering there is three fairly well measured ingredients?
(No, I don't believe in any of this rapture stuff - it was just the story!)
But your mileage may vary.
Actually, the story goes that the only reason that VisiCalc was developed for the Apple II was simply because it was available for Bricklin to hack on. From what I read, he was more familiar with the Commodore PET and would have used that if it wasn't so hard to get time on the PET they had at his office.
Little did (s)he know that it would be posted on the internet :-)
I used to be a HARD typist - pounding the keys because my young hands didn't mind. Now into my later 30s, this is all starting to become an issue and i have pains that come and go over the weeks. That slight resistance in the keys does add up. I'm almost ready to throw this thing in a drawer and buy another keyboard, but probably not the same one again.
Excel has had that functionality for probably as long as it has been available on the PC.
I will agree, however, that I can't think of another program that uses it though..
Now become a foreign traveller in a country that has as unorganized an airport as Nepal or (in my case) Mumbai. I would have spent 2 hours in an unregulated, disorganized line waiting to get through security if it wasn't for a staffer offering to accept a small bribe for me to cut the line. In reality, it was probably about $1 USD and completely worth it.
Snake! I thought they said you were dead?
(sorry)
Sure, there is apparently a way to re-flash a PC video card to have Mac compatible firmware.
So does that make you feel like you're REALLY an evil overlord in a secret lair?
(reference to a dilbert cartoon about getting a second monitor)
Whatever you might think about how much we're over/underfunding our school system, there is a real fact that teachers (at least in the US public school system) end up paying probably around $1000 out of their pocket for materials such as (get this) copy paper, dry erase markers, graph paper, pencils, etc. You know, the things that they need to teach a kid math. Sure, they can write some of this off on their taxes, but that is hard capped at $250 a year. Now add to this that teachers are paid less than garbage men (at least in New York City) and great! Let's make sure the MPAA gets their extra money while teaching their kids.
I don't think it was Commodore 64, though they share the same legacy. It came from Quantum computer services which had the C64 QuantumLink, but there is also lineage to AppleLink on the Apple II and Mac platform. In fact, I was a beta tester for AppleLink back in the late 80's and still have the original mailer, cover sheet, and 5.25" diskette for the Apple II (not GS, we're talking //e) that says America Online and the letter describing how they're changing their names.
Always figured I'd throw it on eBay one day and make a few bucks, but haven't gotten around to it yet. Might want to take an ADT dump of the thing first just to be safe :-)
Hey, anything that looks like an Amiga reference props my interest ;-)
personally, I have an old Motorola E815 (hacked to enable OBEX) and a BlackBerry 8320 (for work). I have little desire to buy an iPhone, the wife has a Palm Centro (I'm a 12 year loyal Palm user myself). I might actually buy a Pre if it doesn't have some glaring problems when it comes out.
My credentials: Slashdot story from 9/13
Instead of ranting one way or another, let me just say that for those people who criticize the people who evacuated or otherwise felt concerned, consider this: just like how you may catch a whiff of some smell that reminds you of your grandmother's apple cobbler and puts a smile on your face, you can also see something like a 747 circling around downtown Manhattan to remind you of one of the most terrible days in your life and make you panic a bit.
I'm personally quite mentally sane over the whole event, but I don't blame people at all for how they reacted downtown when seeing Airforce One flying the way it did. The comments Bloomberg made of it being "insensitive" hit it right on the nose, since I'm sure there are thousands of people still that aren't as well adjusted as I.
disclaimer: I didn't know about this event until the next day, so I don't know how I would have reacted.
Either way, yes. The click was a way of making sure it knew if a disk was inserted or removed.
(the card, not the buddy)
Worth pointing out that he's in the paper industry, so his coming across this stuff isn't too far of a stretch for him.
Now WHY did this get a tag of Amiga? Must be the like a flash mob .. err.. flash taggers or something.
Alternatively, you could leave it sealed forever until someone decides to do magnetic resonance imaging of the contents COMPLETELY wiping out the contents of the Atari DOS disk. (You insensitive clod)
Thanks, BTW.
Technical details aside, I'm really more disappointed in the fact that this is a vehicle used by the president of the USA and it is NOT American. I don't mind if Joe Consumer drives a Toyota, but the President? C'mon, you better show your American Pride and drive/fly/buy American, especially when it comes to the vehicle that has our presidential seal on it!
I would imagine that it must have been purely political to get some kind of deal with a foreign party. Who knows.