How hard would it be to take Ultima Underworld I and II, Shadowcaster, update the code to a Win32/OSX/Linux base...
A LOT harder then you might think. Before Windows 95, games were mostly written for DOS and were tied to the good old 16 bit/640K limits of the hardware. Other things you had to deal with were hard coded delay loops, direct access/support of hardward, bizarre 5 1/4" floppy-based protection schemes and VGA 16 color graphics. Then you have to test it on a wide range of current platforms (5 Windows OS's alone) before you can even think about releasing it.
Given the market I doubt you can sell it for more then $10, which means $5 to you after the retailer steals their share. You're proably talking $500K development costs, which means 100K units just to break even, before advertising, manufactoring, etc...
Some folks, mainly from New Zealand, make a strong case that Richard Pearse made the first powered flight. Pearse belives it was in March, 1904, but others claim March, 1903 or even 1902. Even if he wasn't first, his design is surprising modern: " a monoplane configuration, wing flaps and rear elevator, tricycle undercarriage with steerable nosewheel, and a propeller with variable-pitch blades driven by a unique double-acting horizontally opposed petrol engine."
18?? Over 21 by my calendar. I interviewed at Xerox Parc in 1981 and saw 90% of today's enviroments running there. Ethernet, windows, icons, desk tops, full page displays, laser printers (I think). About the only thing missing was 24-bit color and video. And they had been working on that for years before. I'm still waiting for something innovative...
El Paso County Texas has been doing this for several years (since '96 I believe) using FVC teleconferencing system. See the this document for the proposal. They use it for criminal pre-trial hearings because of the distance from the jail to the courthouse. They also use it within the sheriffs department as well.
This history of the Mac OS is both incomplete and incorrect. Isn't there a (-1,Wrong) mod? I know some of the people involved during this time so this corrects the errors in the above
Apple *bought* the UCSD Pascal system
IIRC, SoftTech owned the commerical rights to UCSD Pascal (from U.C. San Diego, where it was developed) and licensed it to Apple for the ][ and///. Apple probably licensed the source code as well. For those of you too young to remember, UCSD Pascal was the Java of it's day. I first used it iin '76 on a DEC LSI 11-based desktop machine whose name I now forget.
Apple took UCSD Pascal and ported it to the Lisa then Mac
Apple actually bought a compiler from a 3rd party that generated 68000 code from UCSD Pascal source. This included the wonderful segment manager from UCSD Pascal that all Mac programmers love to hate. UCSD Pascal was never ported to either system AFAIK.
and further developed the UI using ideas copied from Xerox PARC and SUN Windows
Jef Raskin was the original proponent of the Lisa and Mac at Apple and it was he who convinced Jobs to start development on these projects. His PHD thesis was called "A Quick Draw Engine" and laid out the basis for the UI that was later developed at Xerox Parc. So in reality, Xerox Parc took the ideas from his thesis and he later took them back. See this search at google for more details.
In fact, sometimes it's BETTER to have a monopoly than not. Look at the mess in California's power when they tried to introduce competition.
Actually, no. California's problems were to due to the goverment stupidly stoping the market from working by preventing the energy companies from raising their prices when their costs raise.
The energy companies were required by law to sell power at a loss if the costs exceeded their prices. If the market had been truly open and competitive, prices would have risen to match the cost of goods, demand would have dropped and the companies would still be in business instead of going bankrupt. Instead the taxpayers were gouged for millions of dollers to pay for energy on the spot market and companies went bankrupt.
Slashdot Mirror
What if Google links to this story? Too late, it already has. Here's the link Now watch the Internet implode...
Only took them 15 minutes or so to find the story too.
15-30 miles?
Hell, I'm in a major metropolitan area and can't get DSL. What really sucks is there is a Bellsouth building 2 blocks from my house.
Wonder what they'd say if I showed up there office with the end of a long cable and asked if I could plug it in??
Two words:
Educational Discount
Adobe Educational Discount
Macromedia Education Discount
A continuous three Megabits per second works out to somewhere just under a Terabyte a month. Not going to be cheap.
It's going to run about $600/month plus server costs. Bandwidth prices have been dropping rapidly over the past year.
How hard would it be to take Ultima Underworld I and II, Shadowcaster, update the code to a Win32/OSX/Linux base...
A LOT harder then you might think. Before Windows 95, games were mostly written for DOS and were tied to the good old 16 bit/640K limits of the hardware. Other things you had to deal with were hard coded delay loops, direct access/support of hardward, bizarre 5 1/4" floppy-based protection schemes and VGA 16 color graphics. Then you have to test it on a wide range of current platforms (5 Windows OS's alone) before you can even think about releasing it.
Given the market I doubt you can sell it for more then $10, which means $5 to you after the retailer steals their share. You're proably talking $500K development costs, which means 100K units just to break even, before advertising, manufactoring, etc...
Still want to try it???
Some folks, mainly from New Zealand, make a strong case that Richard Pearse made the first powered flight. Pearse belives it was in March, 1904, but others claim March, 1903 or even 1902. Even if he wasn't first, his design is surprising modern: " a monoplane configuration, wing flaps and rear elevator, tricycle undercarriage with steerable nosewheel, and a propeller with variable-pitch blades driven by a unique double-acting horizontally opposed petrol engine."
18?? Over 21 by my calendar. I interviewed at Xerox Parc in 1981 and saw 90% of today's enviroments running there. Ethernet, windows, icons, desk tops, full page displays, laser printers (I think). About the only thing missing was 24-bit color and video. And they had been working on that for years before. I'm still waiting for something innovative...
The company
The Press Release
The SWE-DISH site (requires flash) Also has a PDF of the specs for this boxes.
From the specs:
Encodes live Windows MEdia, Mpeg 4, Real Media and Mpeg 2.
Also has e-mail, ftp, internet as well.
El Paso County Texas has been doing this for several years (since '96 I believe) using FVC teleconferencing system. See the this document for the proposal. They use it for criminal pre-trial hearings because of the distance from the jail to the courthouse. They also use it within the sheriffs department as well.
This history of the Mac OS is both incomplete and incorrect. Isn't there a (-1,Wrong) mod? I know some of the people involved during this time so this corrects the errors in the above
///. Apple probably licensed the source code as well. For those of you too young to remember, UCSD Pascal was the Java of it's day. I first used it iin '76 on a DEC LSI 11-based desktop machine whose name I now forget.
Apple *bought* the UCSD Pascal system
IIRC, SoftTech owned the commerical rights to UCSD Pascal (from U.C. San Diego, where it was developed) and licensed it to Apple for the ][ and
Apple took UCSD Pascal and ported it to the Lisa then Mac
Apple actually bought a compiler from a 3rd party that generated 68000 code from UCSD Pascal source. This included the wonderful segment manager from UCSD Pascal that all Mac programmers love to hate. UCSD Pascal was never ported to either system AFAIK.
and further developed the UI using ideas copied from Xerox PARC and SUN Windows
Jef Raskin was the original proponent of the Lisa and Mac at Apple and it was he who convinced Jobs to start development on these projects. His PHD thesis was called "A Quick Draw Engine" and laid out the basis for the UI that was later developed at Xerox Parc. So in reality, Xerox Parc took the ideas from his thesis and he later took them back. See this search at google for more details.
In fact, sometimes it's BETTER to have a monopoly than not. Look at the mess in California's power when they tried to introduce competition.
Actually, no. California's problems were to due to the goverment stupidly stoping the market from working by preventing the energy companies from raising their prices when their costs raise.
The energy companies were required by law to sell power at a loss if the costs exceeded their prices. If the market had been truly open and competitive, prices would have risen to match the cost of goods, demand would have dropped and the companies would still be in business instead of going bankrupt. Instead the taxpayers were gouged for millions of dollers to pay for energy on the spot market and companies went bankrupt.
Click10.com has live video, mirrored by akami.