I think you got some details slightly wrong. If by Apple II decisions where Jobs lost to Woz you mean the expansion slots, then though Jobs was a vocal proponent of not having them on the Mac this feature was a fundamental aspect of Jef Raskin's proposal from the very beginning.
Woz was part of the Mac project when he had his accident, but it was indeed the treatment of the Apple II group that was one of his main reasons for leaving. He did come back a few years later and worked on the 16 bit IIgs. I am not aware of any serious plans for a 32 bit Apple II but would love to hear more about it.
Tectoy is launching its Zeebo console which downloads games over a 3G network. The hardware looks a lot like a cell phone but you connect it to your TV.
This article includes a video of a demo (in Portuguese).
I don't know if these are free enough for you, but there is a 192MB AVI file you can download and a Google video with the usual advantages and limitations.
As for Sagan himself on the issue, his research seems more speculative rather than concrete. Remember he also predicted that the first Iraq war would lead to global cooling because of the particulate matter generated from the oil fires Saddam threatened to set. Well indeed Saddam did set those fires as he threatened and it had no measurable impact on our climate.
Did he really make this prediction? Given that he died more than three years before the war, I would be very impressed if he were already thinking about these issues.
They tried, but they failed because of the difficulty of reverse-engineering the Apple hardware at the time, not because of some stupid DRM law.
I didn't find redesigning the Mac particularly hard, though I see why others might think so.
In this case Apple prevented a clone from being sold through direct government to government action.
About the current story, trying to make its software run only on its hardware didn't work out too well for IBM nor for Data General and it would be a good thing for Pystar's lawyers to remind people of that.
With the "added intelligence" of the second version, the recursive search devolved into a linear one since the very first attempt at each step will lead to a good solution (add a print to the backtracking part and see if this isn't the case).
So you might as well convert the recursion into a loop and eliminate the stack overflows for large boards.
I agree entirely - the question wasn't "why are there few women in computing" but "why are there fewer and fewer?". One thing that has changed is that people who were in college 30 to 20 years ago (my own experience) didn't get to see their first computer until their had already started their CS course. And then it was about glass walls, air conditioned rooms and people walking around in white lab coats.
Growing up around computers has actually turned many away. This effect has been stronger for women but not exclusively.
"...criteria...were derived indirectly from ours."
It seems to me he is talking about the Open Source definition and from what I have read of Bruce Perens' account of the first meetings of that group, this was indeed inspired by what had been done at the FSF.
I think Alan's 1972 paper, "A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages", is still very interesting today:
http://www.mprove.de/diplom/gui/Kay72a.pdf
To be fair, he did mention that there were likely to be ads and that one of the first applications that users would write would probably be something to block them! That is about as banal as you can get.
Everyone else seems to be missing the point, here. Of course there were similar discriptions of the laptop idea in both fiction and scientific speculation. What made Alan's particular "vaporware" different is that he figured out when the technology for the hardware would be available at a reasonable cost (mid 1980s) and that the real problem would be the software - you wouldn't want to run ITS on them.
So he started actual work on the software, first on his Flex hardware and later on the Xerox Alto. This isn't the 40th anniversary of the first commercial release of the laptop (Grid, as others have pointed out) but of the start of the first laptop project. Everybody else was just talking about stuff like that.
You are pretty much describing my project. Except that model I am finishing now won't be $12 since it is based on a FPGA. But just like the expensive Commodore One became the cheap C64-in-a-joystick by using custom chip technology, this is close to the price range I am aiming at.
Looking at the linked Flicker album this actually looks like an old Nintendo system, which is also still sold in Brazil (but for much more than $15). One of the pictures did have some Sega characters but the rest looked very familiar. Somebody might have noticed the 6502 processor and thought it was an Apple II or perhaps the MIT group was inspired by this to create something similar but based on the Apple.
So they are not proposing to create this, which already exists. If I understood correctly they want to upgrade it so it can do more stuff, like surf the web.
No, they didn't. They licensed their operating system to a limited set of approved hardware. Of course, people bought that hardware instead, because it was less expensive. That's a totally different model than selling huge numbers of copies of software.
You are correct that the Mac clones thing was a bit different, but what about NeXT dropping their own 68k based hardware to sell their OS exclusively for third party Intel machines? The same guy and even the same software! I doubt he would like to repeat the experience.
And are you seriously arguing that pure software companies never make money? It really hasn't harmed Microsoft too much. Are you suggesting that Microsoft can produce a general operating system that makes a lot of money, but Apple can't?
I carefully evaluated this issue in the late 1990s (I had a "bet the company" decision to make) and came to the conclusion that Linux killed the commercial PC OS market for everyone but Microsoft. There was no future for OS/2, BeOS, QNX, Plan-9 nor anyone else. Microsoft, as the number one player by far, was in a unique position and would be able to hold out for a very long time (perhaps even decades). Apple is in a far better position than any of those others I mentioned, but I think it is far too risky even for them to try this.
OLPC's educational philosophy was officially based on Papert and Kay's constructionism, which is related to constructivism but not the same thing.
The idea is that students build actual things (even if software is rather abstract) which they can share with other students and the teacher as a reflection of the knowledge they have built inside their minds.
Just a small correction: "One thing they got wrong is that when they saw Xerox's GUI, they thought they saw windows tiled over each other. Apple then had it's engineers go and figure out how this was done when Xerox actually didn't have that happening."
The windows in Smalltalk-76 were tiled. What they lacked was background updates. So only the top window would change and when you clicked on another window so that it came to the top it would be refreshed. The effect was good enough that Bill thought he had seen the window change before it was brought to the top. He had to invent regions and region algebra to reproduce what he imagined he had seen.
Rob Pike actually published a solution to the background update problem in his blitter Unix terminal article, but I think that was in 1982 when the Lisa software was mostly done already.
This technology was invented by Ernest Lawrence at Berkeley, perfected by him at Dumont Labs and then the patents were licensed by Paramount Pictures to Sony. So Sony did pay for patents anyway and probably wouldn't have minded paying RCA if they had thought it was a good technical option.
I find that equally unlikely. On the other hand, if Watson did say that in 1943 then he was right for about a decade which is pretty good as computer market predictions go.
I was thinking of adults who have some high paying position but would be interested in helping out kids on, for example, two Saturdays a month. For free.
The supply of such people would be extremely limited, but it wouldn't be zero. And though a local person would be the ideal by far, we are in the Internet age so a remote expert might be an option for some. We were talking about "geniuses" rather than the average really smart slashdotter, in which case the demand would be a bit limited as well.
Even with the main machine shut down the DCON chip can maintain the last image on the LCD since it has its own frame buffer and power domain. So you can read for as long as you want and only if you press a button will the computer wake up to change what is on the screen (to go to the next page, for example).
In the same way, the wireless chip also is in a separate power domain and can keep working (routing packets on the mesh) even when the rest of the machine is off.
Starting up mass production of a consumer product is a complicated task with many steps. Earlier this year they built a few boards (pre-A), made some modifications (A-test) and then built a lot more (around 200). These boards were distributed to developers who hooked them up to SVGA monitors and USB keyboards and mice. Later several changes were made to the design (B-test) and a very small number of boards which were used by a few key developers to adapt the low level software.
Last week they carefully assembled 10 full machines by hand to test that all the parts fit together as they should. This was certainly worth a press release as complete, working OLPC machines now existed for the very first time. This week there was a trial run through a pilot assembly line resulting in 200 more working machines. If I understood correctly, by the end of the week there should be 900 or so laptops.
But notice that none will be made next week, nor in December. Instead these first machines will be put through various tests (about 500 will be given to children for destructive testing) and also used for further software development. As a result of all this the design will certainly suffer some tweaks. Some time early next year there will be another pilot run. If all goes well this will be followed by a full production run and after any glitches are sorted out Quanta will bring more and more lines into production mode. At that point building 10 million machines will be easily done in just a couple of months.
Slashdot Mirror
Have fun:
http://www.kleinbottle.com/
His contribution to tech has been what, exactly? A keyboard layout that was rejected?
That was a different Dvorak.
Dr. August Dvorak's work.
I think you got some details slightly wrong. If by Apple II decisions where Jobs lost to Woz you mean the expansion slots, then though Jobs was a vocal proponent of not having them on the Mac this feature was a fundamental aspect of Jef Raskin's proposal from the very beginning.
Woz was part of the Mac project when he had his accident, but it was indeed the treatment of the Apple II group that was one of his main reasons for leaving. He did come back a few years later and worked on the 16 bit IIgs. I am not aware of any serious plans for a 32 bit Apple II but would love to hear more about it.
Tectoy is launching its Zeebo console which downloads games over a 3G network. The hardware looks a lot like a cell phone but you connect it to your TV.
This article includes a video of a demo (in Portuguese).
I don't know if these are free enough for you, but there is a 192MB AVI file you can download and a Google video with the usual advantages and limitations.
Ooops - I got 1986 and 1996 confused. Sorry about that.
As for Sagan himself on the issue, his research seems more speculative rather than concrete. Remember he also predicted that the first Iraq war would lead to global cooling because of the particulate matter generated from the oil fires Saddam threatened to set. Well indeed Saddam did set those fires as he threatened and it had no measurable impact on our climate.
Did he really make this prediction? Given that he died more than three years before the war, I would be very impressed if he were already thinking about these issues.
The story is also available online at
http://www.pc-history.org/
I assume the upcoming parts will come from here (and the book) as well.
They tried, but they failed because of the difficulty of reverse-engineering the Apple hardware at the time, not because of some stupid DRM law.
I didn't find redesigning the Mac particularly hard, though I see why others might think so.
In this case Apple prevented a clone from being sold through direct government to government action.
About the current story, trying to make its software run only on its hardware didn't work out too well for IBM nor for Data General and it would be a good thing for Pystar's lawyers to remind people of that.
With the "added intelligence" of the second version, the recursive search devolved into a linear one since the very first attempt at each step will lead to a good solution (add a print to the backtracking part and see if this isn't the case).
So you might as well convert the recursion into a loop and eliminate the stack overflows for large boards.
I agree entirely - the question wasn't "why are there few women in computing" but "why are there fewer and fewer?". One thing that has changed is that people who were in college 30 to 20 years ago (my own experience) didn't get to see their first computer until their had already started their CS course. And then it was about glass walls, air conditioned rooms and people walking around in white lab coats.
Growing up around computers has actually turned many away. This effect has been stronger for women but not exclusively.
"...criteria...were derived indirectly from ours."
It seems to me he is talking about the Open Source definition and from what I have read of Bruce Perens' account of the first meetings of that group, this was indeed inspired by what had been done at the FSF.
I think Alan's 1972 paper, "A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages", is still very interesting today:
http://www.mprove.de/diplom/gui/Kay72a.pdf
To be fair, he did mention that there were likely to be ads and that one of the first applications that users would write would probably be something to block them! That is about as banal as you can get.
Everyone else seems to be missing the point, here. Of course there were similar discriptions of the laptop idea in both fiction and scientific speculation. What made Alan's particular "vaporware" different is that he figured out when the technology for the hardware would be available at a reasonable cost (mid 1980s) and that the real problem would be the software - you wouldn't want to run ITS on them.
So he started actual work on the software, first on his Flex hardware and later on the Xerox Alto. This isn't the 40th anniversary of the first commercial release of the laptop (Grid, as others have pointed out) but of the start of the first laptop project. Everybody else was just talking about stuff like that.
You are pretty much describing my project. Except that model I am finishing now won't be $12 since it is based on a FPGA. But just like the expensive Commodore One became the cheap C64-in-a-joystick by using custom chip technology, this is close to the price range I am aiming at.
Looking at the linked Flicker album this actually looks like an old Nintendo system, which is also still sold in Brazil (but for much more than $15). One of the pictures did have some Sega characters but the rest looked very familiar. Somebody might have noticed the 6502 processor and thought it was an Apple II or perhaps the MIT group was inspired by this to create something similar but based on the Apple.
One of the developers bought one.
So they are not proposing to create this, which already exists. If I understood correctly they want to upgrade it so it can do more stuff, like surf the web.
They tried that before.
No, they didn't. They licensed their operating system to a limited set of approved hardware. Of course, people bought that hardware instead, because it was less expensive. That's a totally different model than selling huge numbers of copies of software.
You are correct that the Mac clones thing was a bit different, but what about NeXT dropping their own 68k based hardware to sell their OS exclusively for third party Intel machines? The same guy and even the same software! I doubt he would like to repeat the experience.
And are you seriously arguing that pure software companies never make money? It really hasn't harmed Microsoft too much. Are you suggesting that Microsoft can produce a general operating system that makes a lot of money, but Apple can't?
I carefully evaluated this issue in the late 1990s (I had a "bet the company" decision to make) and came to the conclusion that Linux killed the commercial PC OS market for everyone but Microsoft. There was no future for OS/2, BeOS, QNX, Plan-9 nor anyone else. Microsoft, as the number one player by far, was in a unique position and would be able to hold out for a very long time (perhaps even decades). Apple is in a far better position than any of those others I mentioned, but I think it is far too risky even for them to try this.
OLPC's educational philosophy was officially based on Papert and Kay's constructionism, which is related to constructivism but not the same thing.
The idea is that students build actual things (even if software is rather abstract) which they can share with other students and the teacher as a reflection of the knowledge they have built inside their minds.
Just a small correction: "One thing they got wrong is that when they saw Xerox's GUI, they thought they saw windows tiled over each other. Apple then had it's engineers go and figure out how this was done when Xerox actually didn't have that happening."
The windows in Smalltalk-76 were tiled. What they lacked was background updates. So only the top window would change and when you clicked on another window so that it came to the top it would be refreshed. The effect was good enough that Bill thought he had seen the window change before it was brought to the top. He had to invent regions and region algebra to reproduce what he imagined he had seen.
Rob Pike actually published a solution to the background update problem in his blitter Unix terminal article, but I think that was in 1982 when the Lisa software was mostly done already.
This technology was invented by Ernest Lawrence at Berkeley, perfected by him at Dumont Labs and then the patents were licensed by Paramount Pictures to Sony. So Sony did pay for patents anyway and probably wouldn't have minded paying RCA if they had thought it was a good technical option.
In this 1982 talk, Robert Noyce says John Von Neuman made that prediction:
http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/moving-image/robert_noyce.102630513.wmv
I find that equally unlikely. On the other hand, if Watson did say that in 1943 then he was right for about a decade which is pretty good as computer market predictions go.
I was thinking of adults who have some high paying position but would be interested in helping out kids on, for example, two Saturdays a month. For free.
The supply of such people would be extremely limited, but it wouldn't be zero. And though a local person would be the ideal by far, we are in the Internet age so a remote expert might be an option for some. We were talking about "geniuses" rather than the average really smart slashdotter, in which case the demand would be a bit limited as well.
1) don't let school get in their way too much
2) hook them up with at least one really smart adult who works in an area they are interested in
This would probably cost even less than whatever is being done now and would get far better results.
Even with the main machine shut down the DCON chip can maintain the last image on the LCD since it has its own frame buffer and power domain. So you can read for as long as you want and only if you press a button will the computer wake up to change what is on the screen (to go to the next page, for example).
In the same way, the wireless chip also is in a separate power domain and can keep working (routing packets on the mesh) even when the rest of the machine is off.
Starting up mass production of a consumer product is a complicated task with many steps. Earlier this year they built a few boards (pre-A), made some modifications (A-test) and then built a lot more (around 200). These boards were distributed to developers who hooked them up to SVGA monitors and USB keyboards and mice. Later several changes were made to the design (B-test) and a very small number of boards which were used by a few key developers to adapt the low level software.
Last week they carefully assembled 10 full machines by hand to test that all the parts fit together as they should. This was certainly worth a press release as complete, working OLPC machines now existed for the very first time. This week there was a trial run through a pilot assembly line resulting in 200 more working machines. If I understood correctly, by the end of the week there should be 900 or so laptops.
But notice that none will be made next week, nor in December. Instead these first machines will be put through various tests (about 500 will be given to children for destructive testing) and also used for further software development. As a result of all this the design will certainly suffer some tweaks. Some time early next year there will be another pilot run. If all goes well this will be followed by a full production run and after any glitches are sorted out Quanta will bring more and more lines into production mode. At that point building 10 million machines will be easily done in just a couple of months.