The Atari ST *was* the leading 16-bit machine at one stage, probably peaking when they dropped the price to £300 circa late 1987. The Amiga was significantly more expensive at first, but did better and overtook the ST when the price came down a bit.
That's not Bruce Perens. Note the . in front of the name. Yeah, I noticed that troll account a few days ago too. There's a similar case with Miguel de Icaza.
Anyway, since the AC obviously didn't know who Bruce Perens was meant to be , I'm only half-joking when I ask what made he/she think that ".Bruce Perens" wasn't (e.g.) some horny, socially-inept 12-year-old boy?
Okay, so they still wouldn't want the little git anywhere near their daughter, but it wouldn't make him a pedo, would it?
This guy just have a fetish for the number 9 or something? At least it's a new one, can't find a term for it anywhere. Turn it upside down and all will be clear.
BURN THE SATANIST! You might be amused to learn that the British phone number for the emergency services is 999.:)
The sterling specifies that the currency is GBP, Great British Pound...or Sterling (for the old timers). Uh... "old timers" has nothing to do with it. Sterling is the official name of the currency- period.
GBP is the official ISO *code*, but that's because ISO follows a fixed format (2 letters for country, one for the currency, so it's technically "Great Britain" "Pounds" if you want to view it that way). As an informal expansion, it's fine, but it doesn't change the "real" name.
Yes. HP, UMAX and others used to sell rock solid SCSI flatbed scanners for I don't know what this was meant to say, but I suspect that the examples you quote would have been (at best) mid-range models.
My first scanner circa 2000 was a dirt-cheap UKP 40.00 bottom-of-the-range Umax model (and a POS, but that's another issue). It had a parallel interface, not Firewire, and there's no way on earth a scanner that price at that time would have had a Firewire interface.
The modern equivalent (and indeed, the one I replaced it with) would have a USB interface.
But to the best of my knowledge, SCSI never slugged it out at the bottom of the market, and (for example) IDE drives were always cheaper.
In truth, what you probably meant was that some of the upper-mid-market applications of SCSI have been supplanted by good-enough other interfaces, and that it has been left in the high-end market where its advantages outweigh the difference in cost.
It's more that competing technologies became cheaper, and far closer to SCSI in performance. True, but I prefer to call them complementary technologies. You can call them that if you like, but there's enough overlap in for most non high-end uses that alternative technologies are "good enough"
Firewire may some day be forced upmarket like SCSI Are you implying that SCSI was *ever* anything other than "upmarket"?! It was *never* a cheap, mass-market computer technology, not even in a relative way when PC-type computers were neither as cheap nor mass-market as they are today.
It's more that competing technologies became cheaper, and far closer to SCSI in performance.
Am I the only person who thought the title sounded like a pun on "Halloween" at first?
I'm looking forward to the third book in the series, which will be totally unrelated to the first two, but will educate the reader on how to replace the nation's children with an army of robots.
/ Obscure // Oops this is not Fark.... /// I don't care!
Because, you know, on this side of the pond (Europe), good guy and bad guy are virtually not distinguishable at first sight. [..] maybe in the US the good guy are tattooed "GOOD" on their face in the USA, and bad guy are tattooed with "EVIL" or "666" or "I AM A BADDY", so you can easily recognize a bad guy with a rifle from a good guy with a riffle. Actually, smartass, it *is* easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys in the US. The good guys wear white hats, and the bad guys wear black ones.
From where I am C64 did not exist, it was more like MSX vs Spectrum vs Apple II. I assume that you're not from the UK (where Codemasters are from) then; in terms of user base and (consequentially) software that supported the machine, MSX was (at best) a very minor player here. Since Codemasters were originally selling in the UK market, that'd be why they didn't do many MSX games.
Here it was ZX Spectrum (first) vs. C64 (clear second, but still successful) vs. Amstrad CPC (some way behind, but still usually a chosen "third format" for mainstream games).
Owners of other formats, e.g. Atari 8-bit, Commodore 16/Plus4, BBC Micro/Electron had lesser and patchier support. I'd go so far as to say that MSX was even behind them, because I can't recall seeing any MSX games on sale in the shops.
I think that MSX did little here because it came out pretty late, trying to become a "standard" in an established market that had already "standardised" around other formats, mainly the Spectrum and C64. Plus, I read that the MSXs were quite conservatively specced for the price. (I heard it did quite well in the Netherlands due to Philips' support, but other than that I think that MSX was only really successful in Japan).
As for the Apple II; although there were some here (my Dad used them at his work), they were *never* a widespread home format and not even in education, where the BBC Micro had its niche.
Incidentally, what you say about MSX conversions apparently also applied to the Amstrad CPC, which due to its shared Z80 architecture, got a lot of Spectrum games copied over without taking advantage of the CPC's superior capabilities.
Mostly though they were the pioneers of the [UK £] 1.99 game if i recall correctly. Not that that means they were no good Not quite... Mastertronic were the ones who really pioneered the budget games market in the UK (i.e. tape-based games sold at the £1.99 and later £2.99 pricepoints, typically without significant advertising) (*).
According to WP (uncited), Codemasters were formed in 1985, and Mastertronic in 1983; but I certainly know that Mastertronic were releasing games in 1984. (In fact, having scanned the WP article for this comment, I find that apparently (uncited, again) the Darling brothers supplied many of the early Mastertronic games before going on to form Codemasters).
(*) Interestingly, I've seen no evidence that an equivalent segment existed in the US. Although the 8-bit market there was (AFAIK) mainly disc-based by that time, and Mastertronic did release some of their stuff over there on disc, you never hear Americans discussing it, which implies that it didn't really have the same success or cultural importance it did here- I mean, anyone who grew up in the UK during the 1980s had some Mastertronic/Codemasters/Firebird/etc games. Anyway, this might be because this was around the same time that the NES started doing really well in the US (**)- cartridge-based consoles being pretty unsuited to Mastertronic's business model- but I assume that the C64 market was still in reasonably good shape then.
(**) This contrasts with the UK, where (although the NES sold moderately (***)), the games market remained overwhelmingly computer-based until the early 1990s, when the Mega Drive (Genesis) and SNES started doing really well.
(***) Actually, the NES wasn't even dominant in its 8-bit console niche- it was outsold by the Sega Master System here, strange though that might seem (****) to the Americans or Japanese.
(****) How many levels of nested footnotes are too much?
Is there some reason why a router in orbit would behave differently in any way from a router sitting in a rack in the server room? I suspect there may be some timeout issues due to the network cable connecting them to ground control slightly exceeding the Ethernet spec's maximum length.
I once saw a conference with bill gates, where a child popped his hand up to ask a question. We never got to hear the question. He got as far as "my dad bought me a copy of windows". He interrupted to say "he didn't buy it, he/licensed/ it" before going off on a diatribe that instead of owning a tangible object (a CD with windows on it), you are licensing the 1s and 0s on it. He was about 12 years old. What a cunt. Hey, the child was only asking a question... 'Course, some people might assume that this referred to Bill Gates. However, I'd cut Gates some slack- it's mighty impressive that he was conducting press conferences when he was just 12 years old.
Tsk, tsk. Bad submitter. How could you have posted this without the URL? I mean... we need to be able to judge the material for ourselves, right? Oh well.... you really want to see it? Here it is!
From what I've seen, that is for very large values of "normal" Large breasts *are* normal on the average Slashdotter. Unfortunately, the average Slashdotter is also male.
In this post it sounds like you're implying that almost anything that someone does that isn't purely for the pleasure of it is a sell-out. Have I misunderstood? If not, why is working for food any worse than working for money- and (see above) where do you draw the line?
I'm actively working towards it, being involved in sustainable local food production What happens if you lose your love of food production?
I don't want to be kept in this consumer-lifestyle-prison. Do you consider it possible to enjoy the benefits of the modern world without consumerism dictating your life? Personally, I'd like to think that it was.
If I didn't have a child to care for, I'd probably go live in the woods again and say the fuck with the rest of you. Your desire to do that is fine; it probably suits your temprament. What I dislike is your presenting of it- and your other views- as morally superior (going by all your posts in this thread), when in truth they're lifestyle choices.
You think I'm short sighted. Well, the gas stations have started running dry around here Already? You must have a distribution problem in your area, because whatever the potential scarcity of oil in the future, the shit hasn't hit the fan yet.
Personally, I consider vapid-consumerist vs. total-self-sufficiency a false dichotomy. True, I find a lot of aspects of modern life less and less normal (and dubiously abstract) when I think about them (e.g. "picking" my fruit from a supermarket shelves- having been flown halfway around the world- rather than a tree).
Still- the dichotomy. Didn't "Brave New World" ask that question. Oh, hang on; you won't want to read that. It's a book, written by a guy you probably would never have met (even if he was still alive), printed on paper by people who "don't give a shit". And you're typing this on a computer (I assume) built... no need to make my point there.
I never accepted the view that using the products of a (supposedly) corrupt/damaged society/whatever as a means to bring down that society was hypocritical in itself. Or even that accepting a society's pleasures as "second best" when you have no choice anyway is always bad. But still, it's easy to use that as an excuse when you can't quite put all your money where your mouth is. (And believe me, with your no-room-for-compromise-and-compromise-is-morally wroing screed, it's quite legitimate to question every compromise that you make).
However, when you live in the woods, will you cut wood with a saw? Will you have been involved in the creation of that saw; dug up the ore, refined the metal, forged the blade, cut its teeth. Let's cut some slack- will you even have known all the people involved in its production? Cutting you even more slack, did all the people involved in its production do it for the love of it? What form of reward did they receive? Not money, I hope.
If not, you have- by your own standards- morally compromised. Personally, I think that living your lifestyle up to your standards would essentially reduce someone to being a caveman. You might be happy with that, but that would- I suspect- be more because it suited your preferred lifestyle than because it represented any morally-superior or desirable way forward for the human race.
If Intel is guilty of keeping other processors out of machines by being anti competitive, they are going to see some sanctions and fines. If the senior management were likely to get thrown in prison, could we make jokes about "Intel Inside"?
Really, cause in my old school district, in the 90's, they had teachers working in the wharehouse If my teachers were anything to go by, I doubt they'd have made much money that way:O
they gave Formula One [wikipedia.org] rights to the people of Micro Machines [wikipedia.org]? They gave the Formula One rights to the people who published those countless "x Simulator" budget games during the 1980s that were *absolutely* nothing like simulations?!
Ironically, having thought that they did, I looked it up and it turns out Codemasters never released a "Formula 1 Simulator"... but that's probably got less to do with licensing than because their budget rivals, Mastertronic did it first. (Did Mastertronic pay a licensing fee for their £1.99 computer game? My guess is... did they ****!)
But they *did* release a "Grand Prix Simulator" instead, so going by past experience, expect their new Formula One Simulator to look something like this.
Mind you, I'm not sure if it's going to be out on a £1.99 tape for the ZX Spectrum and Atari 800 this time round...
(Actually, it was a fun game, but not remotely a simulator, not even by the standards of the time).
Might it have anything to do with Time magazine? Not that I've ever heard of, and it's highly unlikely. Their corporate identities aren't anything alike, Time was/is a dodgy family-owned company and besides, it's quite possible for two unrelated companies to have trademarks on the same name if it's being used in different fields.
Well, since they bought the name, they probably want to benefit from the recognition of the old company, so they're not going to play up the fact that they're a legally different entity.
Brands are in truth increasingly meaningless these days. Take Polaroid for example. The original company went bankrupt a few years back, and the current "Polaroid" is a legally separate company that took over their business and the name. With the exception of film cameras (which they continued for a while, but I believe they've stopped doing now), almost all "Polaroid" products are made by third-party companies who've licensed the name and slapped it on some cheapass LCD TVs (or whatever) in an attempt to trade off the reputation of and goodwill towards the original Polaroid.
In other words, "Polaroid" is totally meaningless as a brand (in the traditional sense) nowadays.
What I don't understand is companies taking over names like "Time Computers". For those who don't know, Time are a UK company that's gone bankrupt and had its name bought at least twice, despite having a really manky reputation in all its incarnations. I guess that "brand recognition" has some value, no matter how bad the associations with that brand are.
Slashdot Mirror
The Atari ST *was* the leading 16-bit machine at one stage, probably peaking when they dropped the price to £300 circa late 1987. The Amiga was significantly more expensive at first, but did better and overtook the ST when the price came down a bit.
Anyway, since the AC obviously didn't know who Bruce Perens was meant to be , I'm only half-joking when I ask what made he/she think that ".Bruce Perens" wasn't (e.g.) some horny, socially-inept 12-year-old boy?
Okay, so they still wouldn't want the little git anywhere near their daughter, but it wouldn't make him a pedo, would it?
At least it's a new one, can't find a term for it anywhere. Turn it upside down and all will be clear.
BURN THE SATANIST! You might be amused to learn that the British phone number for the emergency services is 999.
GBP is the official ISO *code*, but that's because ISO follows a fixed format (2 letters for country, one for the currency, so it's technically "Great Britain" "Pounds" if you want to view it that way). As an informal expansion, it's fine, but it doesn't change the "real" name.
My first scanner circa 2000 was a dirt-cheap UKP 40.00 bottom-of-the-range Umax model (and a POS, but that's another issue). It had a parallel interface, not Firewire, and there's no way on earth a scanner that price at that time would have had a Firewire interface.
The modern equivalent (and indeed, the one I replaced it with) would have a USB interface.
But to the best of my knowledge, SCSI never slugged it out at the bottom of the market, and (for example) IDE drives were always cheaper.
In truth, what you probably meant was that some of the upper-mid-market applications of SCSI have been supplanted by good-enough other interfaces, and that it has been left in the high-end market where its advantages outweigh the difference in cost. It's more that competing technologies became cheaper, and far closer to SCSI in performance. True, but I prefer to call them complementary technologies. You can call them that if you like, but there's enough overlap in for most non high-end uses that alternative technologies are "good enough"
It's more that competing technologies became cheaper, and far closer to SCSI in performance.
...what'd *really* be cool would be a Dalek server.
Provided it was capable of saying "Exterminate" in a harsh metallic voice and had real death rays for those troublesome cases of PEBKAC.
Actually, forget the server bit, you just want a Dalek, full stop.
Am I the only person who thought the title sounded like a pun on "Halloween" at first?
// Oops this is not Fark....
/// I don't care!
I'm looking forward to the third book in the series, which will be totally unrelated to the first two, but will educate the reader on how to replace the nation's children with an army of robots.
/ Obscure
Jeez, have you *never* seen a Western?!
Here it was ZX Spectrum (first) vs. C64 (clear second, but still successful) vs. Amstrad CPC (some way behind, but still usually a chosen "third format" for mainstream games).
Owners of other formats, e.g. Atari 8-bit, Commodore 16/Plus4, BBC Micro/Electron had lesser and patchier support. I'd go so far as to say that MSX was even behind them, because I can't recall seeing any MSX games on sale in the shops.
I think that MSX did little here because it came out pretty late, trying to become a "standard" in an established market that had already "standardised" around other formats, mainly the Spectrum and C64. Plus, I read that the MSXs were quite conservatively specced for the price. (I heard it did quite well in the Netherlands due to Philips' support, but other than that I think that MSX was only really successful in Japan).
As for the Apple II; although there were some here (my Dad used them at his work), they were *never* a widespread home format and not even in education, where the BBC Micro had its niche.
Incidentally, what you say about MSX conversions apparently also applied to the Amstrad CPC, which due to its shared Z80 architecture, got a lot of Spectrum games copied over without taking advantage of the CPC's superior capabilities.
According to WP (uncited), Codemasters were formed in 1985, and Mastertronic in 1983; but I certainly know that Mastertronic were releasing games in 1984. (In fact, having scanned the WP article for this comment, I find that apparently (uncited, again) the Darling brothers supplied many of the early Mastertronic games before going on to form Codemasters).
(*) Interestingly, I've seen no evidence that an equivalent segment existed in the US. Although the 8-bit market there was (AFAIK) mainly disc-based by that time, and Mastertronic did release some of their stuff over there on disc, you never hear Americans discussing it, which implies that it didn't really have the same success or cultural importance it did here- I mean, anyone who grew up in the UK during the 1980s had some Mastertronic/Codemasters/Firebird/etc games. Anyway, this might be because this was around the same time that the NES started doing really well in the US (**)- cartridge-based consoles being pretty unsuited to Mastertronic's business model- but I assume that the C64 market was still in reasonably good shape then.
(**) This contrasts with the UK, where (although the NES sold moderately (***)), the games market remained overwhelmingly computer-based until the early 1990s, when the Mega Drive (Genesis) and SNES started doing really well.
(***) Actually, the NES wasn't even dominant in its 8-bit console niche- it was outsold by the Sega Master System here, strange though that might seem (****) to the Americans or Japanese.
(****) How many levels of nested footnotes are too much?
...it's just cruel to describe him as an elephant.
Don't get too titillated now
In this post it sounds like you're implying that almost anything that someone does that isn't purely for the pleasure of it is a sell-out. Have I misunderstood? If not, why is working for food any worse than working for money- and (see above) where do you draw the line? I'm actively working towards it, being involved in sustainable local food production What happens if you lose your love of food production? I don't want to be kept in this consumer-lifestyle-prison. Do you consider it possible to enjoy the benefits of the modern world without consumerism dictating your life? Personally, I'd like to think that it was. If I didn't have a child to care for, I'd probably go live in the woods again and say the fuck with the rest of you. Your desire to do that is fine; it probably suits your temprament. What I dislike is your presenting of it- and your other views- as morally superior (going by all your posts in this thread), when in truth they're lifestyle choices. You think I'm short sighted. Well, the gas stations have started running dry around here Already? You must have a distribution problem in your area, because whatever the potential scarcity of oil in the future, the shit hasn't hit the fan yet.
Personally, I consider vapid-consumerist vs. total-self-sufficiency a false dichotomy. True, I find a lot of aspects of modern life less and less normal (and dubiously abstract) when I think about them (e.g. "picking" my fruit from a supermarket shelves- having been flown halfway around the world- rather than a tree).
Still- the dichotomy. Didn't "Brave New World" ask that question. Oh, hang on; you won't want to read that. It's a book, written by a guy you probably would never have met (even if he was still alive), printed on paper by people who "don't give a shit". And you're typing this on a computer (I assume) built... no need to make my point there.
I never accepted the view that using the products of a (supposedly) corrupt/damaged society/whatever as a means to bring down that society was hypocritical in itself. Or even that accepting a society's pleasures as "second best" when you have no choice anyway is always bad. But still, it's easy to use that as an excuse when you can't quite put all your money where your mouth is. (And believe me, with your no-room-for-compromise-and-compromise-is-morally wroing screed, it's quite legitimate to question every compromise that you make).
However, when you live in the woods, will you cut wood with a saw? Will you have been involved in the creation of that saw; dug up the ore, refined the metal, forged the blade, cut its teeth. Let's cut some slack- will you even have known all the people involved in its production? Cutting you even more slack, did all the people involved in its production do it for the love of it? What form of reward did they receive? Not money, I hope.
If not, you have- by your own standards- morally compromised. Personally, I think that living your lifestyle up to your standards would essentially reduce someone to being a caveman. You might be happy with that, but that would- I suspect- be more because it suited your preferred lifestyle than because it represented any morally-superior or desirable way forward for the human race.
Sorry...
You: Well I think THEY are the robot. I don't know if I can win this argument...
Elizamazon: Do you wish that you can win this argument?
Ironically, having thought that they did, I looked it up and it turns out Codemasters never released a "Formula 1 Simulator"... but that's probably got less to do with licensing than because their budget rivals, Mastertronic did it first. (Did Mastertronic pay a licensing fee for their £1.99 computer game? My guess is... did they ****!)
But they *did* release a "Grand Prix Simulator" instead, so going by past experience, expect their new Formula One Simulator to look something like this.
Mind you, I'm not sure if it's going to be out on a £1.99 tape for the ZX Spectrum and Atari 800 this time round...
(Actually, it was a fun game, but not remotely a simulator, not even by the standards of the time).
Well, since they bought the name, they probably want to benefit from the recognition of the old company, so they're not going to play up the fact that they're a legally different entity.
Brands are in truth increasingly meaningless these days. Take Polaroid for example. The original company went bankrupt a few years back, and the current "Polaroid" is a legally separate company that took over their business and the name. With the exception of film cameras (which they continued for a while, but I believe they've stopped doing now), almost all "Polaroid" products are made by third-party companies who've licensed the name and slapped it on some cheapass LCD TVs (or whatever) in an attempt to trade off the reputation of and goodwill towards the original Polaroid.
In other words, "Polaroid" is totally meaningless as a brand (in the traditional sense) nowadays.
What I don't understand is companies taking over names like "Time Computers". For those who don't know, Time are a UK company that's gone bankrupt and had its name bought at least twice, despite having a really manky reputation in all its incarnations. I guess that "brand recognition" has some value, no matter how bad the associations with that brand are.