Apple didn't have that option with the 68000. They would have had to wait five years for the 68010 and would also had to add a MMU chip.
The original beige Mac, Mac Plus, and SE were crippled with the 68000 and no MMU option (there were third-party solutions available for the co-processor). The Mac II came with a 68020 and a place to put the MMU (68851) if you bought it. The IIx and above came with a 68030 and made the MMU problem a non-issue.
If anybody writes an emulator for the Macintosh, it would be nice to emulate MMU and MMU-less original Macintosh II hardware.
it would be like trying to run a full release of linux w/ all the KDE and Gnome stuff on an 8088 with 4k (as in kilobytes - not megabytes) of ram - oh and using a tape recorder for a storage device
Actually, the 8088 came with a minimum of 64k of RAM, and could be incremented in 64k blocks. The tape drive is quite true on the original PC, but removed from the XT.
Even DOS would have trouble in 4k of RAM, let alone a mouse brain. Then again, think about the space for an ant brain, but the colony of ants does pretty well for itself.
Not all of the images were generated by the Macintosh. Unless it was fitted with a color screen for the demonstration, the "Macintosh Insanely Great" is rendered in White and Blue on Black screen. That could have been done with a IIgs.
And what is the initial boot image on the screen? It's not the traditional "Welcome to Macintosh" message box.
There are some inside pictures under Tech Spec. 2.5" drive, one DIMM slot.
I'm sure someone will make an LCD screen a la PSOne to attach to the top of the box. If nothing else, an adaptor to use an existing PSOne screen. The miniMac comes with the VGA adaptor, and there are SVideo adaptors as well.
The power connector is probably a wall wart (no pics), so an in-car power supply hookup is probably doable.
For $500, the miniMac is just right for use as a local network server. Yes, it's only an original FireWire port and 10/100 network connection, but it's much cheaper/quicker/stylish to have a tiny box taking care of network logins and home directories. If 80GB isn't enough, plug in another 250G or 500G via the FireWire.
I have strugled to get an old klunker PPC 601 to use OSX Server just for headless network tasks (thanks to XPostFacto!). Bizarre RAM (5V DIMM?) and software trickery made the task difficult. I considered using an iMac for the job, but the wattage was just too high (mostly the "always on" monitor).
The tech specs claim the miniMac consumes 85W maximum continuous -- much better than the 100W for the 7500/100 or 390W(!) for the 8600/200. And how much wattage does the standard beige box P4 consume? 400W? 500W?
For $2000, you can buy four of the miniMacs and make a respectable computing cluster. Not as nifty as the XServe, but reasonable with a modest budget.
Sure, laugh it up about his communist statements -- but look at the industry moves made by Microsoft:
Partership with SBC and BellSouth to deliver digital cable TV (codec, receiver) to consumers; Window Media Player 10 with DRM out the yin-yang (licenses which make it impossible to play content that I purchased a la DivX); partership with TiVo for content encoding; the PlaysForSure DRM.
Make no mistake -- MicroSoft is positioning itself to not need the Windows monopoly in the near future -- the licensing revenue from all the (mandatory) DRM embedded in every consumer device you touch will be sufficient to keep BillG and friends afloat for the next century.
When I can use a "time-stamp" certificate from Verisign and Internet Explorer considers the entire package "signed" is where I worry.
Sure, the controls are there, buried in Internet Options, to never install software unless it's signed. Last I checked, most malware is signed by the publisher to be malware genuinely from them, not modified by any third parties enroute, and Internet Explorer is happy to install it without warning the user.
Sure, revoking the Verisign certificate (for your computer) will block the signed malware from installing, but you also block all the other software signed by the Verisign certificate. Not good.
Blocking unsigned ActiveX controls from "Install on Demand" is good for about two seconds; now all the malware is timestamp signed and installs with nary a hitch. Blocking the timestamp certificate means the malware writers buy a real certificate, of which the signing certificate then gets revoked... lather rinse repeat. I don't think this "signed code" does what the article writer thinks it does. There is no certificate for "trusted code."
Now, if there was a signature to validate that the downloaded package from a mirror is exactly what mozilla.org sent to the mirror, that would be great. But, that's what MD5 is for, right? Some Hack-Fu should fix that right up... unless the mozilla.org web site is overridden in the HOSTS file, or unavailable, or overloaded (the source of the "correct" MD5). Now you need more Hack-Fu to make sure the "bad hats" don't override the MD5 check on the executable, and... at some point, something's gotta execute on the CPU.
Sandboxes to keep code from doing damage (when implemented properly and bug-free) exist. A non-gameable system for individuals to mark "trusted" and "untrusted" code is still far away. We're doing good to try catching viruses with heuristics, let alone complex applications.
Among the intrigue of negotiations with AOL and Apple, and feature-itis competition with SoundJam, is a link to what Alvin and the Chipmunks sound like at normal speed. Very amusing.
A solid tale of adventure, including the Reality Distortion Field.
The second settlement today was with Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), who have encouraged many of the anti-trust lawsuits. A little cash, and they've gone back home as well.
However, there's still the matter of Eolas and the "use form tags, violate our IP" patent 5,838,906. Will Microsoft buy off/out Eolas and truly "own the Internet," or will the patent be found invalid? PHBs and geeks would like to know.
Perhaps clearing all of these lawsuits by "throwing money at them" (including the pending WordPerfect lawsuit by Novell) is the best return for shareholders; why bother with developing innovative operating systems or office automation software, or at least fixing the bugs in the current one, when you're a monopoly?
Then again, maybe Gates and Ballmer developed a ethical side and couldn't sleep at night, knowing how they wronged other businesses in the past. Nah. A couple of billion bucks in the bank would put most people's conscience to sleep.
People *will* have copies of these files still floating around *somewhere* in e-mail or im history, at least. You may not, I may not, but that's where this will come in handy.
That is, until their hard drive with a three year warranty coughs up the virtual hairball.
If this information is so important, how do we get people to back up their personal machines? Especially with Windows machines where the remedy for all ills is "nuke and reinstall" (spyware, virus, misconfiguration, ID10T, bad hair day). Apple has iBackup (free with your $99/year iMac subscription, grr), Windows has various free tools, but for individuals that meta-data lasts only as long as the current storage media does.
Those NES Classics aren't exactly flying off the shelves, and they have a much broader appeal.
If Nintendo would get off their profit high horse and sell the games at $10/each, or bundle three or four games at $20/each, they'd probably sell more of them. Maybe the breakeven point of manufacturing + profit margin for a cart is $20/unit.
They'd move more volume of the games if they sold, for example, a multi-Zelda GBA cart (NES Zelda, NES Zelda II, GB Zelda, GBC Zelda) for up to $30. I'd buy all the previous Zelda games on one GBA cart.
Or how about all the previous Mario games on one GBA cart? NES Mario Bros, SMB1-3, Lost Levels (like the SNES version), GBC Mario games, etc., all for $30. An excellent price point, and plenty of profit for the company and value for the gamer.
But why leave any potential profit on the table? That's ok, they can have my money when the deliver the product I want.
Although I cannot find much, the first version of Maze for the Macintosh was MazeWars+, which was made by MacroMind (link) as a demonstration of their VideoWorks animation engine (link). It was black and white program on a 400K disk (bootable stripped System), and ran on almost any old Macintosh up to the SE and SE/30 (later systems reorganized how video memory worked, but MazeWars+ wrote to video memory directly for additional speed instead of using QuickDraw).
In a school lab, we had up to sixteen people playing as various shapes (eyeball, arcade game, taxi, boot, and one other) over an AppleTalk network. The fun was that MazeWars+ had four different levels (each level had an elevator to every other level) , and included four types of robots (one was a TARDIS that you could use to teleport randomly in the same level (much fun to teleport your opponent unexpectly), another was a Shadow Killer (only saw the shadow in the maze), a dummy (immobile target), and a very dumb AI robot)).
A later version of Maze was Super Maze Wars, with color and other features. Apple shipped it with some Macintosh models.
One nifty thing about the software is that it came with a disk label for an "official copy" of the game. Very thoughtful of them.
A French language website has screenshots of MazeWars+, along with other early Macintosh applications.
Drive-by downloading of ad-ware is illegal. Installing ad-ware after "acquiring" a "business relationship" with you is perfectly legal. Read your EULAs carefully.
From what I remember eGames was (and their older releases still are) pulling this type of stunt. If you were using some of the free ISP connectivity, your "spare" CPU time was sold to the highest bidder.
The illegal act is not notifying the end user of the software and its purpose. As long as you are notified, its legal. (The notice could be similar to the "privacy statements" from financial instutions -- "We value your privacy.... We share only with [highest bidding] business partners your confidential information.")
For Mac OS X, you are correct that there is no serial number, just the survey questions. However, for Mac OS X Server, you are required to enter a serial number. There are two versions of OS X Server, the serial number activates / deactivates the 10 simultaneous file sharing client restrictions.
Without the serial number, OS X Server doesn't install. Now, if you buy the $500 ADC membership, you get a (limited) OS X Server serial number, and access to OS X Server software for testing purposes.
If you want the server version of OS X, should you get OS X Server (10 client) for $499.95, OS X Server (unlimited) for $999.95, or ADC Select membership for $500 and get OS X Server (10 client) (for testing purposes) and the latest OS X releases for one year? Not a hard decision.
There were several nifty uses for an MDA/Hercules and CGA/EGA/VGA monitor card in the same system; for several years I used it with Borland's products to debug VGA applications.
There was a device driver called OX.SYS that would redirect debugging output from Windows (via the AUX device) onto a monochrome screen -- always fun for debugging Windows applications.
For the terminally curious, Hercules made a monochrome video card called the RamFont, in which you could load your own text font for use. It came with several very interesting text fonts like computer OCR and Old World. The MDA and CGA cards of the day could not redefine fonts. You could detect a RamFont in a system by looking at one of the undefined bits in the CRTC registers. I think there was a WordPerfect driver that took advantage of the feature.
Even more weird was the Hercules InColor card. Looked like a monochrome video card to the system, but was actually a EGA card in registers and resolution. Not many applications took advantage of the extra hardware, but writing programs to use the features was loads of fun.
Technical notes on classic dual-head setup is here. With the advent of Plug'n'Pray systems and the ability to move I/O and Interrupts, it's possible to have several VGA video cards in a system without much difficulty. Does Windows XP even recognize an MDA or CGA card?
I dreamed of a day when everybody could use email to talk to not only geeks, but also friends and relatives. Now we have the day. The PC doesn't buzz at the end of my bed anymore, but instead I'm plagued by spam and spy-ware.
If you have an always-on internet connection (and TOS allows), you can still run your own email server for family and friends. Or, implement a closed Wiki or bulletin board on your personal machine, and hand out accounts.
Even on bulletin boards, you had to deal with lusers and spammers; it was just easier to cancel their accounts. It still takes work and dedication, but it's possible to keep a local community running.
With the availability of personal computers powerful enough to do video editing, and digital cameras that are "good enough", expect to see more documentaries on many different niche subjects. The life cycle of the keyboard, design of the 74LS244 chip, the inventor of the 2.44MB floppy disc and why the market never adopted it. More documentaries is good; I would like to see more computer history recorded for future generations.
At this point, however, it's comparable to documenting every contributor to steam engines and printing presses -- we don't know what's important and what's not to people fifty years in the future. Cisco routers use XModem and ZModem to transfer IOS images to the firmware -- seeing interviews with the people who designed the protocol helps me see their decision-making process at the time, and design better protocols today.
Also, the music used in the documentary is composed by Paul Slocum, who uses an Atari 2600 along with dot-matrix printers and other assorted 80's computer hardware in the composition of his music. Band website and random interview, along with Atari 2600 programming for more information.
Wal-Mart is a predatory company. They open a store in a location and have the lowest prices in town -- until most of the smaller stores close. Once there's no competition, the prices start rising. In urban locations, it's difficult to bump prices up; but in rural areas, Wal-Mart is the only game in town.
Wal-Mart has also brought their business practices to the banking and finance arenas. They have their own line of ATMs and their own money orders. I fully expect to see a Wal-Mart Bank in the near future, with convenient lending terms for purchases at their stores.
I have not shopped at a Wal-Mart (or Sam's Club) in several years, even at the lowest price. I can't afford to let Wal-Mart become the only retailer in town. Much of the specialized knowledge contained in smaller stores (gardening, paint, food preparation) disappears when a retailer of 50+ years closes its doors. Smaller businesses are more willing to help you find that specialized part, or give a time-saving tip they learned the hard way. And, to be honest, I'd rather pay a little extra for my goods and services and know I'm directly helping keep a place in business.
Capitalism is ruthless when taken to the extreme. When the acquisition of currency is the only measure of success, the system will find the most efficient and effective ways to extract them at every opportunity. When it comes to price, the economy of scale (high volume, low price per unit) trumps all other competitive advantages. At this point in history, Wal-Mart is the largest reseller of goods. And companies in a position of dominance are not benelovent for long.
Just some suggestions using Microsoft Office on your requests:
Title pages -- Starting your document, type the information for your title page, then insert a section break. Now your document is in two sections, and you can Page Format the first section to be centered vertically, and the second section (your report) is still at the top vertically.
Bullets and Numbering -- If you're making two columns of names, use the newspaper column formatting (on the "new document" toolbar, tot he right of the "Excel" icon). If you're really having trouble bulleting, just type the list items, then format the listings all at once (select all the text, and then apply the desired format).
Blockquotes -- the two buttons on the formatting toolbar (the "font" toolbar) to the right of the 123 and bullet buttons are the decrease and increase indent buttons. Highlight the desired paragraph, and increase indenting. If you're feeling frisky, hilight the paragraph in question and select Paragraph from the Format menu. Instant blockquote indenting is yours, in a variety of sizes, under the "indentation" section.
Defaulting fonts -- I absolutely *hate* the "styles" that MSWord tries to enforce. Usually, when I want to delete a paragraph, I "black hole" delete with the delete, never by backspacing into a previous paragraph. MSWord copies the format of the paragraph you pressed enter in as the format for the newly created paragraph. Use copy and paste if you must to copy paragraph formatting around your document. At worst, hilight your entire document and reset the font and size.
Many of your problems with MSWord could be solved by knowing how the program operates. Unfortunately, most classes on "Word Processing" don't cover these skills; they just show how to insert pretty graphics and use the wizards. Ick.
Re:I played a mechanical version of pong in the 70
on
Mechanical Pong
·
· Score: 1
I can't remember who made it or what is was called, but it was definitely mechnical and definitely very pong-ish (if not a a fully faithful reproduction).
The name of the game is Blip, by Tomy Electronics. Non-linky to a few pictures is http://users2.ev1.net/~rik1138/Tomy/Blip.htm. A picture also appears on this site, near the middle. Or here, with pictures of other Tomy mechanical games.
I still have mine, along with the digital diamond game, and an unlisted car racing game.
She then proceeded to ask me if Cablevision explained to me about not getting "911" or "0" service....
It is a federal mandate that all cell-phone providers must provide E911 service for cell phones, even if the cell-phone is disconnected. Unfortunately, landline providers are dragging their feet on implementing the same policy for landlines, citing phrases such as "unconstitutional mandate", though there are people fighting for the same functionality for landline phones. Some states have implemented the "disconnected 911" policy for their landline phones, yet others have not.
I suppose the landline providers fight providing 911 service on disconnected phones, since not having it will scare some people from disconnecting their landline.
As for "0" service, looking up a phone number is easy with Google or online phone directories. As for phone calls, who uses the operator to place a call today? Especially at $99.99 per minute (operator assisted rate (slightly) exaggerated).
So, if the driver is sleepy, will the headlights go out? Or if the driver is drunk, will the headlights go blurry?
It would be interesting to use the car lighting to determine the mood and attitude of the driver. Of course, we already have a version of that today: bass-pounding music and ground lighting effects, or the soccer ball on the back of the urban assault vehicle.
Slashdot Mirror
If anybody writes an emulator for the Macintosh, it would be nice to emulate MMU and MMU-less original Macintosh II hardware.
There was no Apple product which ran the 68010.
Actually, the 8088 came with a minimum of 64k of RAM, and could be incremented in 64k blocks. The tape drive is quite true on the original PC, but removed from the XT.
Even DOS would have trouble in 4k of RAM, let alone a mouse brain. Then again, think about the space for an ant brain, but the colony of ants does pretty well for itself.
Hmm, colonies... clusters... 8088... beowulf...
I think I see the new form of the Beowulf!
Not all of the images were generated by the Macintosh. Unless it was fitted with a color screen for the demonstration, the "Macintosh Insanely Great" is rendered in White and Blue on Black screen. That could have been done with a IIgs.
And what is the initial boot image on the screen? It's not the traditional "Welcome to Macintosh" message box.
I'm sure someone will make an LCD screen a la PSOne to attach to the top of the box. If nothing else, an adaptor to use an existing PSOne screen. The miniMac comes with the VGA adaptor, and there are SVideo adaptors as well.
The power connector is probably a wall wart (no pics), so an in-car power supply hookup is probably doable.
I have strugled to get an old klunker PPC 601 to use OSX Server just for headless network tasks (thanks to XPostFacto!). Bizarre RAM (5V DIMM?) and software trickery made the task difficult. I considered using an iMac for the job, but the wattage was just too high (mostly the "always on" monitor).
The tech specs claim the miniMac consumes 85W maximum continuous -- much better than the 100W for the 7500/100 or 390W(!) for the 8600/200. And how much wattage does the standard beige box P4 consume? 400W? 500W?
For $2000, you can buy four of the miniMacs and make a respectable computing cluster. Not as nifty as the XServe, but reasonable with a modest budget.
Partership with SBC and BellSouth to deliver digital cable TV (codec, receiver) to consumers; Window Media Player 10 with DRM out the yin-yang (licenses which make it impossible to play content that I purchased a la DivX); partership with TiVo for content encoding; the PlaysForSure DRM.
Make no mistake -- MicroSoft is positioning itself to not need the Windows monopoly in the near future -- the licensing revenue from all the (mandatory) DRM embedded in every consumer device you touch will be sufficient to keep BillG and friends afloat for the next century.
Link to USA Today Interview
Sure, the controls are there, buried in Internet Options, to never install software unless it's signed. Last I checked, most malware is signed by the publisher to be malware genuinely from them, not modified by any third parties enroute, and Internet Explorer is happy to install it without warning the user.
Sure, revoking the Verisign certificate (for your computer) will block the signed malware from installing, but you also block all the other software signed by the Verisign certificate. Not good.
Blocking unsigned ActiveX controls from "Install on Demand" is good for about two seconds; now all the malware is timestamp signed and installs with nary a hitch. Blocking the timestamp certificate means the malware writers buy a real certificate, of which the signing certificate then gets revoked... lather rinse repeat. I don't think this "signed code" does what the article writer thinks it does. There is no certificate for "trusted code."
Now, if there was a signature to validate that the downloaded package from a mirror is exactly what mozilla.org sent to the mirror, that would be great. But, that's what MD5 is for, right? Some Hack-Fu should fix that right up... unless the mozilla.org web site is overridden in the HOSTS file, or unavailable, or overloaded (the source of the "correct" MD5). Now you need more Hack-Fu to make sure the "bad hats" don't override the MD5 check on the executable, and... at some point, something's gotta execute on the CPU.
Sandboxes to keep code from doing damage (when implemented properly and bug-free) exist. A non-gameable system for individuals to mark "trusted" and "untrusted" code is still far away. We're doing good to try catching viruses with heuristics, let alone complex applications.
Get The Bat to export its email as mbox format. Then you can import into Thunderbird.
A solid tale of adventure, including the Reality Distortion Field.
However, there's still the matter of Eolas and the "use form tags, violate our IP" patent 5,838,906. Will Microsoft buy off/out Eolas and truly "own the Internet," or will the patent be found invalid? PHBs and geeks would like to know.
Perhaps clearing all of these lawsuits by "throwing money at them" (including the pending WordPerfect lawsuit by Novell) is the best return for shareholders; why bother with developing innovative operating systems or office automation software, or at least fixing the bugs in the current one, when you're a monopoly?
Then again, maybe Gates and Ballmer developed a ethical side and couldn't sleep at night, knowing how they wronged other businesses in the past. Nah. A couple of billion bucks in the bank would put most people's conscience to sleep.
If this information is so important, how do we get people to back up their personal machines? Especially with Windows machines where the remedy for all ills is "nuke and reinstall" (spyware, virus, misconfiguration, ID10T, bad hair day). Apple has iBackup (free with your $99/year iMac subscription, grr), Windows has various free tools, but for individuals that meta-data lasts only as long as the current storage media does.
I wonder what good movie movie idea was scrapped in favor of filming this... tripe. Oh, wait. This WAS the good movie idea. Nevermind.
Good story trumps production and set decoration. Break a leg, Pixar!
They'd move more volume of the games if they sold, for example, a multi-Zelda GBA cart (NES Zelda, NES Zelda II, GB Zelda, GBC Zelda) for up to $30. I'd buy all the previous Zelda games on one GBA cart.
Or how about all the previous Mario games on one GBA cart? NES Mario Bros, SMB1-3, Lost Levels (like the SNES version), GBC Mario games, etc., all for $30. An excellent price point, and plenty of profit for the company and value for the gamer.
But why leave any potential profit on the table? That's ok, they can have my money when the deliver the product I want.
In a school lab, we had up to sixteen people playing as various shapes (eyeball, arcade game, taxi, boot, and one other) over an AppleTalk network. The fun was that MazeWars+ had four different levels (each level had an elevator to every other level) , and included four types of robots (one was a TARDIS that you could use to teleport randomly in the same level (much fun to teleport your opponent unexpectly), another was a Shadow Killer (only saw the shadow in the maze), a dummy (immobile target), and a very dumb AI robot)).
A later version of Maze was Super Maze Wars, with color and other features. Apple shipped it with some Macintosh models.
One nifty thing about the software is that it came with a disk label for an "official copy" of the game. Very thoughtful of them.
A French language website has screenshots of MazeWars+, along with other early Macintosh applications.
From what I remember eGames was (and their older releases still are) pulling this type of stunt. If you were using some of the free ISP connectivity, your "spare" CPU time was sold to the highest bidder.
The illegal act is not notifying the end user of the software and its purpose. As long as you are notified, its legal. (The notice could be similar to the "privacy statements" from financial instutions -- "We value your privacy.... We share only with [highest bidding] business partners your confidential information.")
Without the serial number, OS X Server doesn't install. Now, if you buy the $500 ADC membership, you get a (limited) OS X Server serial number, and access to OS X Server software for testing purposes.
If you want the server version of OS X, should you get OS X Server (10 client) for $499.95, OS X Server (unlimited) for $999.95, or ADC Select membership for $500 and get OS X Server (10 client) (for testing purposes) and the latest OS X releases for one year? Not a hard decision.
There was a device driver called OX.SYS that would redirect debugging output from Windows (via the AUX device) onto a monochrome screen -- always fun for debugging Windows applications.
For the terminally curious, Hercules made a monochrome video card called the RamFont, in which you could load your own text font for use. It came with several very interesting text fonts like computer OCR and Old World. The MDA and CGA cards of the day could not redefine fonts. You could detect a RamFont in a system by looking at one of the undefined bits in the CRTC registers. I think there was a WordPerfect driver that took advantage of the feature.
Even more weird was the Hercules InColor card. Looked like a monochrome video card to the system, but was actually a EGA card in registers and resolution. Not many applications took advantage of the extra hardware, but writing programs to use the features was loads of fun.
Technical notes on classic dual-head setup is here. With the advent of Plug'n'Pray systems and the ability to move I/O and Interrupts, it's possible to have several VGA video cards in a system without much difficulty. Does Windows XP even recognize an MDA or CGA card?
Even on bulletin boards, you had to deal with lusers and spammers; it was just easier to cancel their accounts. It still takes work and dedication, but it's possible to keep a local community running.
At this point, however, it's comparable to documenting every contributor to steam engines and printing presses -- we don't know what's important and what's not to people fifty years in the future. Cisco routers use XModem and ZModem to transfer IOS images to the firmware -- seeing interviews with the people who designed the protocol helps me see their decision-making process at the time, and design better protocols today.
Also, the music used in the documentary is composed by Paul Slocum, who uses an Atari 2600 along with dot-matrix printers and other assorted 80's computer hardware in the composition of his music. Band website and random interview, along with Atari 2600 programming for more information.
Wal-Mart has also brought their business practices to the banking and finance arenas. They have their own line of ATMs and their own money orders. I fully expect to see a Wal-Mart Bank in the near future, with convenient lending terms for purchases at their stores.
I have not shopped at a Wal-Mart (or Sam's Club) in several years, even at the lowest price. I can't afford to let Wal-Mart become the only retailer in town. Much of the specialized knowledge contained in smaller stores (gardening, paint, food preparation) disappears when a retailer of 50+ years closes its doors. Smaller businesses are more willing to help you find that specialized part, or give a time-saving tip they learned the hard way. And, to be honest, I'd rather pay a little extra for my goods and services and know I'm directly helping keep a place in business.
Capitalism is ruthless when taken to the extreme. When the acquisition of currency is the only measure of success, the system will find the most efficient and effective ways to extract them at every opportunity. When it comes to price, the economy of scale (high volume, low price per unit) trumps all other competitive advantages. At this point in history, Wal-Mart is the largest reseller of goods. And companies in a position of dominance are not benelovent for long.
Though, they could combine the two products and make OutlookLookout, your friendly one-source e-mail/search/virus_scanning solution.
Followed closely by LookOutExplorer, then FireLookOut, LookOut.NET, etc.
Title pages -- Starting your document, type the information for your title page, then insert a section break. Now your document is in two sections, and you can Page Format the first section to be centered vertically, and the second section (your report) is still at the top vertically.
Bullets and Numbering -- If you're making two columns of names, use the newspaper column formatting (on the "new document" toolbar, tot he right of the "Excel" icon). If you're really having trouble bulleting, just type the list items, then format the listings all at once (select all the text, and then apply the desired format).
Blockquotes -- the two buttons on the formatting toolbar (the "font" toolbar) to the right of the 123 and bullet buttons are the decrease and increase indent buttons. Highlight the desired paragraph, and increase indenting. If you're feeling frisky, hilight the paragraph in question and select Paragraph from the Format menu. Instant blockquote indenting is yours, in a variety of sizes, under the "indentation" section.
Defaulting fonts -- I absolutely *hate* the "styles" that MSWord tries to enforce. Usually, when I want to delete a paragraph, I "black hole" delete with the delete, never by backspacing into a previous paragraph. MSWord copies the format of the paragraph you pressed enter in as the format for the newly created paragraph. Use copy and paste if you must to copy paragraph formatting around your document. At worst, hilight your entire document and reset the font and size.
Many of your problems with MSWord could be solved by knowing how the program operates. Unfortunately, most classes on "Word Processing" don't cover these skills; they just show how to insert pretty graphics and use the wizards. Ick.
I still have mine, along with the digital diamond game, and an unlisted car racing game.
I suppose the landline providers fight providing 911 service on disconnected phones, since not having it will scare some people from disconnecting their landline.
As for "0" service, looking up a phone number is easy with Google or online phone directories. As for phone calls, who uses the operator to place a call today? Especially at $99.99 per minute (operator assisted rate (slightly) exaggerated).
It would be interesting to use the car lighting to determine the mood and attitude of the driver. Of course, we already have a version of that today: bass-pounding music and ground lighting effects, or the soccer ball on the back of the urban assault vehicle.