The original idea for the Macintosh was not even remotely close to what it eventually became. The original machine was an 8-bit machine that the user navigated around via the function keys on the keyboard. The only idea from the mac that held over to the final design was the idea of a computer "appliance".
Mainframes and minis apparently don't count, which makes no sense. IBM still sells plenty of computers, just not PC's. The apple spokesman's quote did not specify PC's. They said computers as a whole, so they are wrong on two counts at least.
I remember my first time. It was at a department store that had decided to open up a "business computer" shop. I remember going in and seeing the mac, and trying it out. I was blown away. It was such a completely different paradigm, I didn't know what to do or how to use the machine. Even the text was different--black on white? Who would have ever thought of that? Is there any reason to even have a keyboard? I didn't manage to use it once while I was there. I played around with McPaint for about an hour and left disoriented. I looked at the other PC's, Compaq's, and PC clones around the store, and they seemed so incredibly antiquated. My mind was blown. I knew that whatever this Macintosh was, it was going to change a lot of things with computing. I wasn't sure if I was going to like that or not, but change was inevitable... and it was.
It was the ultimate fantasy of nerds who lived in the 80's: Girls who were interested in computers... and even more interested in guys who were interested in computers? Heaven! That idea alone should have broken any suspension of disbelief right there, since back in the 80's, such a dream situation was just that... a nice dream and nothing more.:-(
War Games featured an IMSAI 8080 with 8" floppies. Why they chose that computer is unknown, since no one really was using those machines by the time of filming.
They mentioned the Commodore PET in the article, but neglected its greatest cameo appearance in Captain Kirk's quarters in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Most movies do an awful job of portraying computers realistically. Take, for example, the attempt to force a C:> prompt on an Apple Macintosh in the movie Office Space. The one movie that really tried hard to get it right, ironically enough, was the Jobs movie last summer. They even went so far as to order a bunch of Mimeo 1 Apple 1 clone kits for realism. It's a shame that they got everything else in the movie wrong, when they did such an excellent job of getting the technical stuff right.
I don't know why he gave me a hard time. There was no one else in the store at the time. I did everything right, I think. I got a customer who came in buying a battery or something, and after he mentioned this fake car alarm he wanted for his car, my eyes lit up and I told him we could build one. We spend maybe 15 minutes at most, but I ended up selling him $27 worth of high markup parts (The exact amount was burned in my brain, it probably would be like $60 today) with many lines per ticket (corporate was big on pushing their salesfolk to sell more than one item at a time the checkout). The customer was pleased as punch. Next week, the guy came in and bought another treasure trove of parts for another box for his other car. I was really proud of myself, and I figured the company would be pleased if they knew about it, but then my boss gives me a hard time about it telling me I took too much time away form cleaning the store or something. The incident still sticks in my craw many years later. I liked my boss very much. He was a good guy and he hired me when he saw me giving advice to another customer when I was buying something, but that day, he really pissed me off. I still don't get what I did "wrong". I made a customer happy, got him to buy lots of stuff, and he came back for more. Go figure...
Second that. I was introduced to Forrest's work back in the TRS-80 days, but his quintessential work for me was the Radio Shack publication, "Getting Started in Electronics." Handwritten on graph paper and printed on 8.5" by 11" newsprint with a soft cover, this was the ultimate intro guide for anyone who had any interest in electronics. Many years ago, I worked at Radio Shack as a summer and holiday job, and every time my manager was away, I'd sneak away the a copy and read it (along with some ham radio books as well). One time a customer came in asking about a fake car alarm box, and I grabbed out the book and we used that to build one. He bought dozens of parts that day (oddly enough, I got in trouble with my manager for that, despite really cleaning house). An original copy of that book still sits prominently on my shelf--one of the biggest influences in my life. So, yes, thank you very much Mr. Mims!
Good one! When I read that line in the description, my first thought was that they were spending a lot more money to get apple stuff, but then I remembered that Microsoft corporate licensing is an expensive nightmare. They are probably getting a better deal from Apple, which is incredibly ironic.
This court also has a history of being skeptical of the scope of patent protection, having dealt several anti-patent rulings in the last few years. Of course, all of that means nothing, since past performance is no guarantee of future results. They could just as easily reverse the trend this time. What is important is to fund out which side has hired Paul Clement, since the conservative justices love him and pretty much do whatever he wants, most of the time.
I can imagine the wonderful goodwill Microsoft will engender when their loyal XBox customers get suddenly left out in the cold. Microsoft won't sell XBox. They can't. There are too many windows OS and other intellectual property crucial to the Microsoft that they won't give up to a potential competitor. It's crazy to give up the XBox. Yes, it loses money. So does advertising. No one suggests that Microsoft cut advertising and marketing, yet the XBox is their biggest marketing tool available to them. Dumb. How do CEO's get these types of jobs. So many of them, like Elop, stink at what they do, yet they never have trouble finding work.
When did this start happening? I just downloaded something from them a few weeks ago. Is this recent? Is there any way to bypass this "custom installer"?
No, the casting and acting in this new version is much better, even though there's been improvement in the more recent series (the beginning ones were just plain awful). It also has better production values overall, I don't see why both can't coexist together.
Except the New Voyages Phase II is... well... awful. They did a good job with sets and such, but the acting is absolutely terrible... pretty much unwatchable. I mean the guy who plays Mr. Spock has a giant beer gut. It's just not that good, especially compared to this recreation. This episode really captures the feel of the original series, and it has decent acting. I mean they even have the light shining on Kirk's face just like the original. They really did a good job here. I wish the actors had lower pitched voices, but if that's the only complaint, that's not too bad.
Garage Band on an iPad (or even an iPhone) is as good as $100/hr trip at the local recording studio. Heck, it's better than what you could get even 20 years ago, back when the only real home recording option was multitrack cassette tape. Technology improved enough in the 90's to allow home computers to do good multitrack recordings, and suddenly everything changed. Nowadays, you can whip up a quick demo on your iPhone without the need of any musical instruments, and it would be just as good as that $500 demo tape you had produced in the 1980's. A 10 year old can do it in no time at all and without any help. It's really amazing!
Is is certain that these apps are meant for the app store? When Android had their app inventor program going, they specifically prevented those apps from going to the app store. The limitation could be removed by clever hacking of the apk, but Google really wanted these programs to be of very limited distribution.
Unless they changed things recently, getting a developers license for Windows Phone is trivial and cost free. Yes, you still need to apply for a license for sideloading, which is obnoxious, but it's only a minor hindrance.
One of the big drawbacks of Apple is the idea that you should be able to easily use apple products to promote creativity, as long as the creativity doesn't involve creating an "app" or programming an Apple product in any personal way. At that point, you're shoved into massive restrictions, high cost, and weird programming languages to discourage kids and novices from coding. Android is much more open with their philosophy, but their tools are hardly user friendly for the curious would-be programmer. Microsoft is being smart here and sticking with their roots. While Apple diverged from what made them a big company in the first place (the openness and flexibility of the Apple II), Microsoft seems to be returning to their core philosophy of "Developers, developers, developers" of all types, shapes and sizes. Remember that Microsoft got its start with BASIC for beginning programmers, and one of their biggest products of all time has been Visual Basic--a tool for simple programming. Allowing people to easily create smartphone content for themselves is one easy and smart way to differentiate themselves from their competitors. It seems that after flirting with the idea that they must copy Apple, Microsoft has hopefully decided to do what Microsoft does best--make semi-open systems that are easy to program and customize for users.
There was plenty of interest, but Google decided to listen to Steve Jobs's advice and "shut down" anything that wasn't "core" to their operations. Why someone would take advice from a competitor that has promised to "bury you" is beyond me, but they did. App Inventor was quite popular. It's main limitation was the inability to create "multi form" screens. Otherwise it was pretty powerful and useful for a point and click interface.
And yet, on the same day, this same panel ruled against Jim Brown's likeness lawsuit against EA, saying that personal trademarks were not violated by EA's Madden all star team.
The players do get a cut of the money that the NCAA makes on the games. They not only get scholarships, but they get new facilities, equipment, training staff, etc. The money that comes from big name programs goes right back into big name programs. Very few athletic programs actually make a profit. Most lose money. Why? Well, the non-revenue sports such as women's volleyball, crew, soccer, etc. can get very expensive, too, and football and/or basketball subsidize those sports. In many schools, even football loses money, since it is the most expensive sport of them all. This idea that schools are raking in the dough while these poor athletes suffer being treated as gods on campus is an erroneous one. Unfortunately, it seems that the courts are really being affected by the sob stories instead of reality. The result is that we, the ordinary consumer, lose. There will be no more historical games, not just in sports, but anything involving the last century involving any real people. The dissenting opinion stated that under this ruling, the movie Forrest Gump would have been illegal. Historical sporting games are out, of course, and any current realistic amateur sporting games are also toast. It's a broadly dangerous ruling that pretty much tramples historical legal precedent on the first amendment. I hope that someone takes this appeal and somehow rights this wrong, but I doubt it. I don't think the judges are aware how broad and artistically stifling this ruling is.
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The original idea for the Macintosh was not even remotely close to what it eventually became. The original machine was an 8-bit machine that the user navigated around via the function keys on the keyboard. The only idea from the mac that held over to the final design was the idea of a computer "appliance".
Mainframes and minis apparently don't count, which makes no sense. IBM still sells plenty of computers, just not PC's. The apple spokesman's quote did not specify PC's. They said computers as a whole, so they are wrong on two counts at least.
I remember my first time. It was at a department store that had decided to open up a "business computer" shop. I remember going in and seeing the mac, and trying it out. I was blown away. It was such a completely different paradigm, I didn't know what to do or how to use the machine. Even the text was different--black on white? Who would have ever thought of that? Is there any reason to even have a keyboard? I didn't manage to use it once while I was there. I played around with McPaint for about an hour and left disoriented. I looked at the other PC's, Compaq's, and PC clones around the store, and they seemed so incredibly antiquated. My mind was blown. I knew that whatever this Macintosh was, it was going to change a lot of things with computing. I wasn't sure if I was going to like that or not, but change was inevitable... and it was.
The late 70's movie Airplane had a cameo of the Atari 2600 Basketball game: http://user.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/~cieslik/homeblog/pics/atari-in-film_airplane_t.jpg
It was the ultimate fantasy of nerds who lived in the 80's: Girls who were interested in computers... and even more interested in guys who were interested in computers? Heaven! That idea alone should have broken any suspension of disbelief right there, since back in the 80's, such a dream situation was just that... a nice dream and nothing more. :-(
War Games featured an IMSAI 8080 with 8" floppies. Why they chose that computer is unknown, since no one really was using those machines by the time of filming.
They mentioned the Commodore PET in the article, but neglected its greatest cameo appearance in Captain Kirk's quarters in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Most movies do an awful job of portraying computers realistically. Take, for example, the attempt to force a C:> prompt on an Apple Macintosh in the movie Office Space. The one movie that really tried hard to get it right, ironically enough, was the Jobs movie last summer. They even went so far as to order a bunch of Mimeo 1 Apple 1 clone kits for realism. It's a shame that they got everything else in the movie wrong, when they did such an excellent job of getting the technical stuff right.
They hardly ever were able to get an answer anyways. The computer was almost always busy--not a very robust multitasking operating system.
How could he read them? Isn't it very dark in that cave?
I don't know why he gave me a hard time. There was no one else in the store at the time. I did everything right, I think. I got a customer who came in buying a battery or something, and after he mentioned this fake car alarm he wanted for his car, my eyes lit up and I told him we could build one. We spend maybe 15 minutes at most, but I ended up selling him $27 worth of high markup parts (The exact amount was burned in my brain, it probably would be like $60 today) with many lines per ticket (corporate was big on pushing their salesfolk to sell more than one item at a time the checkout). The customer was pleased as punch. Next week, the guy came in and bought another treasure trove of parts for another box for his other car. I was really proud of myself, and I figured the company would be pleased if they knew about it, but then my boss gives me a hard time about it telling me I took too much time away form cleaning the store or something. The incident still sticks in my craw many years later. I liked my boss very much. He was a good guy and he hired me when he saw me giving advice to another customer when I was buying something, but that day, he really pissed me off. I still don't get what I did "wrong". I made a customer happy, got him to buy lots of stuff, and he came back for more. Go figure...
Second that. I was introduced to Forrest's work back in the TRS-80 days, but his quintessential work for me was the Radio Shack publication, "Getting Started in Electronics." Handwritten on graph paper and printed on 8.5" by 11" newsprint with a soft cover, this was the ultimate intro guide for anyone who had any interest in electronics. Many years ago, I worked at Radio Shack as a summer and holiday job, and every time my manager was away, I'd sneak away the a copy and read it (along with some ham radio books as well). One time a customer came in asking about a fake car alarm box, and I grabbed out the book and we used that to build one. He bought dozens of parts that day (oddly enough, I got in trouble with my manager for that, despite really cleaning house). An original copy of that book still sits prominently on my shelf--one of the biggest influences in my life. So, yes, thank you very much Mr. Mims!
Good one! When I read that line in the description, my first thought was that they were spending a lot more money to get apple stuff, but then I remembered that Microsoft corporate licensing is an expensive nightmare. They are probably getting a better deal from Apple, which is incredibly ironic.
This court also has a history of being skeptical of the scope of patent protection, having dealt several anti-patent rulings in the last few years. Of course, all of that means nothing, since past performance is no guarantee of future results. They could just as easily reverse the trend this time. What is important is to fund out which side has hired Paul Clement, since the conservative justices love him and pretty much do whatever he wants, most of the time.
I can imagine the wonderful goodwill Microsoft will engender when their loyal XBox customers get suddenly left out in the cold. Microsoft won't sell XBox. They can't. There are too many windows OS and other intellectual property crucial to the Microsoft that they won't give up to a potential competitor. It's crazy to give up the XBox. Yes, it loses money. So does advertising. No one suggests that Microsoft cut advertising and marketing, yet the XBox is their biggest marketing tool available to them. Dumb. How do CEO's get these types of jobs. So many of them, like Elop, stink at what they do, yet they never have trouble finding work.
When did this start happening? I just downloaded something from them a few weeks ago. Is this recent? Is there any way to bypass this "custom installer"?
No, but I could use an 8-bit ISA CGA video card and a CGA monitor if you have one. :-)
This trekkie prefers the original TOS series, since that's what I grew up with. I'm loving this new series, and I hope it lives long and prospers!
No, the casting and acting in this new version is much better, even though there's been improvement in the more recent series (the beginning ones were just plain awful). It also has better production values overall, I don't see why both can't coexist together.
Except the New Voyages Phase II is... well... awful. They did a good job with sets and such, but the acting is absolutely terrible... pretty much unwatchable. I mean the guy who plays Mr. Spock has a giant beer gut. It's just not that good, especially compared to this recreation. This episode really captures the feel of the original series, and it has decent acting. I mean they even have the light shining on Kirk's face just like the original. They really did a good job here. I wish the actors had lower pitched voices, but if that's the only complaint, that's not too bad.
Garage Band on an iPad (or even an iPhone) is as good as $100/hr trip at the local recording studio. Heck, it's better than what you could get even 20 years ago, back when the only real home recording option was multitrack cassette tape. Technology improved enough in the 90's to allow home computers to do good multitrack recordings, and suddenly everything changed. Nowadays, you can whip up a quick demo on your iPhone without the need of any musical instruments, and it would be just as good as that $500 demo tape you had produced in the 1980's. A 10 year old can do it in no time at all and without any help. It's really amazing!
Is is certain that these apps are meant for the app store? When Android had their app inventor program going, they specifically prevented those apps from going to the app store. The limitation could be removed by clever hacking of the apk, but Google really wanted these programs to be of very limited distribution.
Unless they changed things recently, getting a developers license for Windows Phone is trivial and cost free. Yes, you still need to apply for a license for sideloading, which is obnoxious, but it's only a minor hindrance.
One of the big drawbacks of Apple is the idea that you should be able to easily use apple products to promote creativity, as long as the creativity doesn't involve creating an "app" or programming an Apple product in any personal way. At that point, you're shoved into massive restrictions, high cost, and weird programming languages to discourage kids and novices from coding. Android is much more open with their philosophy, but their tools are hardly user friendly for the curious would-be programmer. Microsoft is being smart here and sticking with their roots. While Apple diverged from what made them a big company in the first place (the openness and flexibility of the Apple II), Microsoft seems to be returning to their core philosophy of "Developers, developers, developers" of all types, shapes and sizes. Remember that Microsoft got its start with BASIC for beginning programmers, and one of their biggest products of all time has been Visual Basic--a tool for simple programming. Allowing people to easily create smartphone content for themselves is one easy and smart way to differentiate themselves from their competitors. It seems that after flirting with the idea that they must copy Apple, Microsoft has hopefully decided to do what Microsoft does best--make semi-open systems that are easy to program and customize for users.
There was plenty of interest, but Google decided to listen to Steve Jobs's advice and "shut down" anything that wasn't "core" to their operations. Why someone would take advice from a competitor that has promised to "bury you" is beyond me, but they did. App Inventor was quite popular. It's main limitation was the inability to create "multi form" screens. Otherwise it was pretty powerful and useful for a point and click interface.
And yet, on the same day, this same panel ruled against Jim Brown's likeness lawsuit against EA, saying that personal trademarks were not violated by EA's Madden all star team.
The players do get a cut of the money that the NCAA makes on the games. They not only get scholarships, but they get new facilities, equipment, training staff, etc. The money that comes from big name programs goes right back into big name programs. Very few athletic programs actually make a profit. Most lose money. Why? Well, the non-revenue sports such as women's volleyball, crew, soccer, etc. can get very expensive, too, and football and/or basketball subsidize those sports. In many schools, even football loses money, since it is the most expensive sport of them all. This idea that schools are raking in the dough while these poor athletes suffer being treated as gods on campus is an erroneous one. Unfortunately, it seems that the courts are really being affected by the sob stories instead of reality. The result is that we, the ordinary consumer, lose. There will be no more historical games, not just in sports, but anything involving the last century involving any real people. The dissenting opinion stated that under this ruling, the movie Forrest Gump would have been illegal. Historical sporting games are out, of course, and any current realistic amateur sporting games are also toast. It's a broadly dangerous ruling that pretty much tramples historical legal precedent on the first amendment. I hope that someone takes this appeal and somehow rights this wrong, but I doubt it. I don't think the judges are aware how broad and artistically stifling this ruling is.