Did I say ears? Damn it. I meant nose. Well, that's what too much, ah, never mind. Forget I said that.
There's a story (possibly an urban legend, as she denies it) about Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks having the stuff blown up her arse to avoid damaging her noise/voice.
Hey, I'll join in. I've been pissed that Comcast isn't supporting my attempts to record all my video to a wax cylinder.
You can't do it on wax cylinder, but you *can* do it on a disc.
BTW, who tagged this story "bigbrother"? Are you are aware that the point of "Big Brother" wasn't simply that he represented a large, evil, over-powerful totalitarian government (or in this case, organisation or company), but the way that it held its power by means of total surveillance and control of its subject's lives?
I agree with the person that recently complained here about the overuse and kneejerk invocation of Big Brother / 1984 when it wasn't really appropriate, and reckoned it was on its way to becoming the next Godwin. Whether or not Comcast are doing Big Brotherish things with people's data, viewing habits or whatever, that wasn't the focus of this story.
Perhaps they meant the crap TV show where they lock a bunch of attention whores in a house for a few weeks, but that would be even less applicable.
I notice that if I explicitly visit google.com, it automatically redirects me to google.co.uk. Perhaps it's related to one's ISP and location data (or guesswork)?
The rest of the industry was enamored with 256 colors while NeXT was standing here with 4096 colors.
The Commodore Amiga had 4096 colour support- albeit with minor limitations- from its launch in mid-1985, around 4 years before the NeXT actually launched.
And while the original A1000 was expensive by home computer standards, it was nowhere near $10-15k, probably a fraction of that. By 1989, the A500 was available for under UK £500. Don't know how that converts to US dollars, but it's definitely under $1000.
I'm not saying that the Amiga was more powerful than- or even equal to- then the NeXT, but don't assume that the PC's then mediocre graphical performance was the sole benchmark to measure yourself against.
Most people in other English speaking countries (the UK/Australia/NZ/SA etc.) just search in their browser search bar rather than going to google.com manually (which would redirect them to.uk,.au,.nz as appropriate)
Both Firefox and IE 8 redirected me to google.co.uk (my appropriate local website) when I typed some nonsense into the search box.
Now what might be the resource use case improvement here?
I'll start the speculation with this thought and leave it to others to fill in more.
No offence, but this does smack being the thin end of a typical wedge of rationalisation that ends up justifying and "explaining" Apple's behaviour in the absense of any explanation from them.
While I'm not accusing you (specifically) of being a fanboy necessarily, Apple's secretive nature generally benefits them when combined with their rather partisan fanbase. Say nothing concrete that can be seized upon, and let people speculate, rationalise and justify your marketing decisions.
It's up to Apple to explain- or not- the reasoning behind what they do; if the latter, that's their choice, but we're not obliged to give them the benefit of the doubt. Sorry, but I don't believe the reasons behind the decision were technical, and I'm not going to buy a third-party's speculation masquerading as explanation.
What do you mean "probably"? I DID write a copy in Z-80 assembly language in 1994, you insensitive clod!:(
I'd have been very surprised if someone hadn't, I just didn't know off the top of my head. Though it's pretty unlikely that it's ever been done commercially, as by the time Tetris was being marketed in the West, the ZX81 market was long dead.
How many users of Windows are there? Approaching 1 billion homes? That's a bigger audience than even the best-selling console (~150 million PS2s) ever reached.
There's always the question of availability vs. how much people actually play it- I don't play Minesweeper much myself personally, but I'm sure a lot of people still do.
At any rate, it reminds me of something I wondered (in the early 2000s) as to whether Nokia's "Snake" game was the most played computer game in the world. Sure, not everyone had a Nokia, but their 3210 et al were one of the most popular phone lines back then, and those that *did* have them probably played that game casually quite a lot.
That... is... SPARTA!!!
Or...
That's a space station!
Or...
THIS [tetris.com] is Tetris.
I notice that they're selling yet another of those endless contrived and gimmicky variants of Tetris they seem to churn out.
There's a sort of depressing irony in that Alexey Pazhitnov created a game which was straightforwardly brilliant, that didn't require- nor benefit from- excess bells and whistles (I mean, you could probably write a version for the 1K ZX81 without losing much except the Game Boy version's catchy music).
Look, I hate to break this to you but people like you (i.e. typical Slashdotters) are a *much* smaller and less important proportion of the user base than you'd like to think.
The vast majority will probably upgrade sooner or later because there's some neat feature or new game they want that requires that. Even Slashdotters (not necessarily you, but in general) will often bleat about stuff like this endlessly, but when push comes to shove, they'll hand over their money- and principles- for whatever it is they're into.
So forced to choose between losing the business of a small number of genuinely principled geeks, or fixing a hole in their ability to make money off the mainstream masses, they'll go with the latter. That's why the PSP is an annoyingly locked down piece of hardware that I'm not interested in, despite the fact that it would be pretty spiffy- and I'd possibly have bought one- if it wasn't so closed. I'm under no illusions as to Sony's reasoning.
Re:Like Woz didn't move on a LONG time ago?
on
The Apple Two
·
· Score: 1
Do you know what came from Apple *before* the Apple II?
I won't give you any hints.
That depends on where one draws the line between machines like the Altair 8800, which while unarguably a microcomputer wasn't a "personal computer" in the Apple II sense, and... well, the Apple II et al.
From what I understand, the Apple I was more complete and user-friendly than the Altair, but it still didn't come with a case, keyboard or power supply, all of which were to be supplied by the user.
Re:"Apple Inc -- creator of the personal computer"
on
The Apple Two
·
· Score: 1
A few PCs existed before Apple's brand. Off the top of my head - the Altair.
Umm... to the best of my knowledge the Altair was a hobbyist (read; hardcore) oriented machine that relied on flipping switches at the front of the machine to program it, and didn't come with a keyboard (or display?) as standard.
The Altair was definitely revolutionary, and deserves its prominent place in history as one of the first and most important *microcomputers*, but it really wasn't a "personal computer" in the way that most people know it. That (IMHO) came with the Apple II, Commodore Pet and TRS-80.
I agree with you entirely (and was never disputing) that the ultimate success of the PC was down to its generic, cloneable and standardised nature.
My point was originally that IBM didn't invent the original concept of a personal computer, and that though they invented "the" now-standard PC design, there was nothing new or brilliant about it in itself. It sold originally because of the nameplate... and the cloneable, generic nature that made it a success sure as heck wasn't an intentional part of IBM's plan!:-)
Small series / Proprietary series
I see what you're trying to say... but you forget that the IBM PC *was* originally a proprietary machine in intent. It wasn't compatible with existing software (written for CP/M, etc.), and ran a proprietary OS owned by one company, albeit not IBM. (There were other versions of MS-DOS for other machines, but they couldn't run IBM software. In all honesty, IBM probably didn't see the threat).
Everything you're saying is with the benefit of hindsight! The BIOS was closed, IBM didn't have compatibility with previous business-oriented machines. When you say
Not the massive amount of unit that the various IBM models (and later clones) shipped.
...the point is that the clones came after the proprietary aspects of IBM's PC had been overcome. And even though the IBM PC was probably very successful by the standards of the time, its sales figures are likely *massively* dwarfed by the number of "clones" sold.
Essentially my arguments are that IBM don't deserve credit for inventing the personal computer as a concept (because they didn't). And nor do they deserve credit for the design that ultimately revolutionised the computer world, because that design itself wasn't revolutionary, it was circumstances that made it so.
Helps you sleep at night by filling your room with the sound of doves and seagulls
Speaking as someone who lives near an area with a fair number of seagulls, I can assure you that (a) they are definitely *not* songbirds and (b) having frequently to shut my window due to the noise of those fuckers, I can assure you that it's the *last* thing that would help you sleep at night.
Yes. Small machine targeted at individuals have existed before the PC. The huge difference: all these previous machine were either home-made kits or small proprietary series.
I'm not clear on what you mean by "small proprietary series"- the Apple II was definitely a personal computer (one of the first) rather than the hobbyist kit machines that had preceded it, and that came out in 1977, four years before the IBM PC. (Where one counts the early weird-keyboard Commodore Pets in the same category is a matter of opinion).
And it was a pretty major success- not mass market like the later C64 etc., but then neither were the early (and very expensive) IBM PCs.
The IBM PC was also preceded by the business-oriented Apple III which (AFAIK) flopped because it had a number of serious flaws.
But back to the point- yeah, the IBM PC's unintentional openness ultimately transformed the market, but that wasn't what sold it initially, and one might question whether the market wouldn't have moved towards such a model anyway.
For example, the mid-80s MSX format was an attempt by primarily Japanese companies to agree on a standard. (It probably flopped in the US and the UK because the 8-bit market was already well-established with proprietary standards; e.g. C64 and ZX Spectrum- MSX was just another format).
But essentially we agree that IBM didn't intend that outcome, it's just a question of whether it would have happened via another path without them.
That's probably why they chose to go for an inferior architecture (8086 and 8088 at an era when 16/32 processors like the 68k were starting to appear) and a rather limited OS (so the PC doesn't pose a menace to their "big brain" business) designed (stolen) by an idiot who couldn't properly plan memory mapping for the next decade.
The Wikipedia article suggests that there may have been various other reasons for going with the 8086.
Though the PC was clearly more than a terminal- which already existed- I'm inclined to agree with you broadly that IBM probably hoped that they'd be able to nudge people back in that direction under the guise of selling them a "real" microcomputer.
But in the end, if the PC won against the Amigas and Atari ST, it was not because of superior qualities or capabilities.
It was because Commodore and Atari weren't only battling against IBM, but against Compaq, and countless of other clone makers, all trying to sell their clones cheaper than the concurrence.
It was also because those companies marketed the computers very badly. The Amiga in particular was perfectly capable of functioning as a high-quality business computer- and indeed, the features that it had that the mid-80s PCs didn't, such as pre-emptive multitasking, a proper GUI (albeit one that wasn't as slick as Apple's) and fantastic graphics- are ones that are now essential to any "business" machine.
Instead, with the arrival of the PC (ironically by IBM themselves !)
Well, that depends if you mean the personal computer as a generic concept- which existed for a number of years before IBM released theirs- or the later meaning of the term "PC" as "IBM PC compatible".
But IBM only released *their* PC a number of years after others had done so already, and it was clear that they weren't going away. I'm very sure that given the choice IBM would have preferred the computer world to remain focused on the mainframe market that they dominated, but that wasn't going to happen. Had IBM not released their own computer, someone else- possibly Apple- would eventually have grabbed the market.
Even then, the IBM PC only came out of a "skunkworks" project, semi-detached from the rest of the company.
IBM's PC became the standard for business because- although it was a pretty generic product- it was powerful enough and came from a company who already dominated the business market. But don't believe for a second that IBM willingly opened up the PC market or that it wouldn't have happened if they hadn't done that. They were already quite late to the party and did it because, one suspects, they realised that they *had* to do it or risk losing a whole new market to someone else. They got away with being late because they were IBM- had they not been, they probably wouldn't have had as much success- but they couldn't get away with being much later.
Learn to read. GP claims he will be modded down. As he is now at +4 I think his claim has been proven false.
Wrong.
As of the last time I refreshed this page a couple of minutes ago, he was at +4, but that broke down as follows:-
50% Insightful
20% Flamebait
20% Overrated
I don't know which came first, but the guy *was* modded down- he just also got modded up enough to compensate.
The BBC itself has to keep BBC Worldwide at arm's length as it is supposed to be a non-commercial organisation; treating it differently because it happened to be owned by the BBC might land it in commercial hot water.
I don't know how exactly that might apply to the current situation, but I do know that it's an issue in general.
there is the little issue of China having electricity and India not
Yeah, it's impressive that like half the world's CD-Rs and DVD-Rs are made there in steam-powered plants. Actually, I heard that in some plants they do it by hand!
No, really.
This probably explains why I'm having trouble getting them for under 10p each.
When since the death of Mao and the rise of the "Gang of Seven" has anyone thought China was Communist?
Someone called present-day China something like "the world's first mature fascist state", by which I assume they meant something akin to Mussolini's original definition where the interests of the state and of business were closely associated and effectively one and the same thing.
It has also been said that China went straight from being a traditional society to being a corporatist one without going through the transitional democratic phase. At any rate, those in power in the West thought that encouraging capitalism in China would inherently result in greater democracy over the longer term and in them moving closer to the West. Both of which are now very questionable if not downright wrong.
Assuming they meant that of course, and it wasn't just them exploiting the "capitalism == democracy" sentiment in the West (particularly America) to justify the cheap labour and potentially huge market they were salivating over, and damn the long-term consequences, which- blinded by dollar signs- they probably assumed would be in their favour anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
...that they missed the opportunity to make it a pop-up.
Did I say ears? Damn it. I meant nose. Well, that's what too much, ah, never mind. Forget I said that.
There's a story (possibly an urban legend, as she denies it) about Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks having the stuff blown up her arse to avoid damaging her noise/voice.
Hey, I'll join in. I've been pissed that Comcast isn't supporting my attempts to record all my video to a wax cylinder.
You can't do it on wax cylinder, but you *can* do it on a disc.
BTW, who tagged this story "bigbrother"? Are you are aware that the point of "Big Brother" wasn't simply that he represented a large, evil, over-powerful totalitarian government (or in this case, organisation or company), but the way that it held its power by means of total surveillance and control of its subject's lives?
I agree with the person that recently complained here about the overuse and kneejerk invocation of Big Brother / 1984 when it wasn't really appropriate, and reckoned it was on its way to becoming the next Godwin. Whether or not Comcast are doing Big Brotherish things with people's data, viewing habits or whatever, that wasn't the focus of this story.
Perhaps they meant the crap TV show where they lock a bunch of attention whores in a house for a few weeks, but that would be even less applicable.
My FireFox sends me to google.com.
That's odd. Do you live in the UK?
I did my test on Firefox 3.6.3.
I notice that if I explicitly visit google.com, it automatically redirects me to google.co.uk. Perhaps it's related to one's ISP and location data (or guesswork)?
The rest of the industry was enamored with 256 colors while NeXT was standing here with 4096 colors.
The Commodore Amiga had 4096 colour support- albeit with minor limitations- from its launch in mid-1985, around 4 years before the NeXT actually launched.
And while the original A1000 was expensive by home computer standards, it was nowhere near $10-15k, probably a fraction of that. By 1989, the A500 was available for under UK £500. Don't know how that converts to US dollars, but it's definitely under $1000.
I'm not saying that the Amiga was more powerful than- or even equal to- then the NeXT, but don't assume that the PC's then mediocre graphical performance was the sole benchmark to measure yourself against.
Most people in other English speaking countries (the UK/Australia/NZ/SA etc.) just search in their browser search bar rather than going to google.com manually (which would redirect them to .uk, .au, .nz as appropriate)
Both Firefox and IE 8 redirected me to google.co.uk (my appropriate local website) when I typed some nonsense into the search box.
Now what might be the resource use case improvement here? I'll start the speculation with this thought and leave it to others to fill in more.
No offence, but this does smack being the thin end of a typical wedge of rationalisation that ends up justifying and "explaining" Apple's behaviour in the absense of any explanation from them.
While I'm not accusing you (specifically) of being a fanboy necessarily, Apple's secretive nature generally benefits them when combined with their rather partisan fanbase. Say nothing concrete that can be seized upon, and let people speculate, rationalise and justify your marketing decisions.
It's up to Apple to explain- or not- the reasoning behind what they do; if the latter, that's their choice, but we're not obliged to give them the benefit of the doubt. Sorry, but I don't believe the reasons behind the decision were technical, and I'm not going to buy a third-party's speculation masquerading as explanation.
What do you mean "probably"? I DID write a copy in Z-80 assembly language in 1994, you insensitive clod! :(
I'd have been very surprised if someone hadn't, I just didn't know off the top of my head. Though it's pretty unlikely that it's ever been done commercially, as by the time Tetris was being marketed in the West, the ZX81 market was long dead.
How many users of Windows are there? Approaching 1 billion homes? That's a bigger audience than even the best-selling console (~150 million PS2s) ever reached.
There's always the question of availability vs. how much people actually play it- I don't play Minesweeper much myself personally, but I'm sure a lot of people still do.
At any rate, it reminds me of something I wondered (in the early 2000s) as to whether Nokia's "Snake" game was the most played computer game in the world. Sure, not everyone had a Nokia, but their 3210 et al were one of the most popular phone lines back then, and those that *did* have them probably played that game casually quite a lot.
That... is... SPARTA!!! Or... That's a space station! Or... THIS [tetris.com] is Tetris.
I notice that they're selling yet another of those endless contrived and gimmicky variants of Tetris they seem to churn out.
There's a sort of depressing irony in that Alexey Pazhitnov created a game which was straightforwardly brilliant, that didn't require- nor benefit from- excess bells and whistles (I mean, you could probably write a version for the 1K ZX81 without losing much except the Game Boy version's catchy music).
Yet- particularly since he didn't get the right to profit from his own creation until 1996, his Tetris Company's continued ability to exploit and profit from the game that he created relies on exactly that- lots of gimmick-laden excuses to resell a game that didn't need it.
Look, I hate to break this to you but people like you (i.e. typical Slashdotters) are a *much* smaller and less important proportion of the user base than you'd like to think.
The vast majority will probably upgrade sooner or later because there's some neat feature or new game they want that requires that. Even Slashdotters (not necessarily you, but in general) will often bleat about stuff like this endlessly, but when push comes to shove, they'll hand over their money- and principles- for whatever it is they're into.
So forced to choose between losing the business of a small number of genuinely principled geeks, or fixing a hole in their ability to make money off the mainstream masses, they'll go with the latter. That's why the PSP is an annoyingly locked down piece of hardware that I'm not interested in, despite the fact that it would be pretty spiffy- and I'd possibly have bought one- if it wasn't so closed. I'm under no illusions as to Sony's reasoning.
Do you know what came from Apple *before* the Apple II? I won't give you any hints.
That depends on where one draws the line between machines like the Altair 8800, which while unarguably a microcomputer wasn't a "personal computer" in the Apple II sense, and... well, the Apple II et al.
From what I understand, the Apple I was more complete and user-friendly than the Altair, but it still didn't come with a case, keyboard or power supply, all of which were to be supplied by the user.
A few PCs existed before Apple's brand. Off the top of my head - the Altair.
Umm... to the best of my knowledge the Altair was a hobbyist (read; hardcore) oriented machine that relied on flipping switches at the front of the machine to program it, and didn't come with a keyboard (or display?) as standard.
The Altair was definitely revolutionary, and deserves its prominent place in history as one of the first and most important *microcomputers*, but it really wasn't a "personal computer" in the way that most people know it. That (IMHO) came with the Apple II, Commodore Pet and TRS-80.
My point was originally that IBM didn't invent the original concept of a personal computer, and that though they invented "the" now-standard PC design, there was nothing new or brilliant about it in itself. It sold originally because of the nameplate... and the cloneable, generic nature that made it a success sure as heck wasn't an intentional part of IBM's plan!
Small series / Proprietary series
I see what you're trying to say... but you forget that the IBM PC *was* originally a proprietary machine in intent. It wasn't compatible with existing software (written for CP/M, etc.), and ran a proprietary OS owned by one company, albeit not IBM. (There were other versions of MS-DOS for other machines, but they couldn't run IBM software. In all honesty, IBM probably didn't see the threat).
Everything you're saying is with the benefit of hindsight! The BIOS was closed, IBM didn't have compatibility with previous business-oriented machines. When you say
Not the massive amount of unit that the various IBM models (and later clones) shipped.
...the point is that the clones came after the proprietary aspects of IBM's PC had been overcome. And even though the IBM PC was probably very successful by the standards of the time, its sales figures are likely *massively* dwarfed by the number of "clones" sold.
Essentially my arguments are that IBM don't deserve credit for inventing the personal computer as a concept (because they didn't). And nor do they deserve credit for the design that ultimately revolutionised the computer world, because that design itself wasn't revolutionary, it was circumstances that made it so.
Helps you sleep at night by filling your room with the sound of doves and seagulls
Speaking as someone who lives near an area with a fair number of seagulls, I can assure you that (a) they are definitely *not* songbirds and (b) having frequently to shut my window due to the noise of those fuckers, I can assure you that it's the *last* thing that would help you sleep at night.
Thanks, I'll have a pint of McEwan's. (1980s UK TV advert)
Hey, look at those shores!
Yes. Small machine targeted at individuals have existed before the PC. The huge difference: all these previous machine were either home-made kits or small proprietary series.
I'm not clear on what you mean by "small proprietary series"- the Apple II was definitely a personal computer (one of the first) rather than the hobbyist kit machines that had preceded it, and that came out in 1977, four years before the IBM PC. (Where one counts the early weird-keyboard Commodore Pets in the same category is a matter of opinion).
And it was a pretty major success- not mass market like the later C64 etc., but then neither were the early (and very expensive) IBM PCs.
The IBM PC was also preceded by the business-oriented Apple III which (AFAIK) flopped because it had a number of serious flaws.
But back to the point- yeah, the IBM PC's unintentional openness ultimately transformed the market, but that wasn't what sold it initially, and one might question whether the market wouldn't have moved towards such a model anyway.
For example, the mid-80s MSX format was an attempt by primarily Japanese companies to agree on a standard. (It probably flopped in the US and the UK because the 8-bit market was already well-established with proprietary standards; e.g. C64 and ZX Spectrum- MSX was just another format).
But essentially we agree that IBM didn't intend that outcome, it's just a question of whether it would have happened via another path without them.
That's probably why they chose to go for an inferior architecture (8086 and 8088 at an era when 16/32 processors like the 68k were starting to appear) and a rather limited OS (so the PC doesn't pose a menace to their "big brain" business) designed (stolen) by an idiot who couldn't properly plan memory mapping for the next decade.
The Wikipedia article suggests that there may have been various other reasons for going with the 8086.
Though the PC was clearly more than a terminal- which already existed- I'm inclined to agree with you broadly that IBM probably hoped that they'd be able to nudge people back in that direction under the guise of selling them a "real" microcomputer.
But in the end, if the PC won against the Amigas and Atari ST, it was not because of superior qualities or capabilities. It was because Commodore and Atari weren't only battling against IBM, but against Compaq, and countless of other clone makers, all trying to sell their clones cheaper than the concurrence.
It was also because those companies marketed the computers very badly. The Amiga in particular was perfectly capable of functioning as a high-quality business computer- and indeed, the features that it had that the mid-80s PCs didn't, such as pre-emptive multitasking, a proper GUI (albeit one that wasn't as slick as Apple's) and fantastic graphics- are ones that are now essential to any "business" machine.
Instead, with the arrival of the PC (ironically by IBM themselves !)
Well, that depends if you mean the personal computer as a generic concept- which existed for a number of years before IBM released theirs- or the later meaning of the term "PC" as "IBM PC compatible".
But IBM only released *their* PC a number of years after others had done so already, and it was clear that they weren't going away. I'm very sure that given the choice IBM would have preferred the computer world to remain focused on the mainframe market that they dominated, but that wasn't going to happen. Had IBM not released their own computer, someone else- possibly Apple- would eventually have grabbed the market.
Even then, the IBM PC only came out of a "skunkworks" project, semi-detached from the rest of the company.
IBM's PC became the standard for business because- although it was a pretty generic product- it was powerful enough and came from a company who already dominated the business market. But don't believe for a second that IBM willingly opened up the PC market or that it wouldn't have happened if they hadn't done that. They were already quite late to the party and did it because, one suspects, they realised that they *had* to do it or risk losing a whole new market to someone else. They got away with being late because they were IBM- had they not been, they probably wouldn't have had as much success- but they couldn't get away with being much later.
Learn to read. GP claims he will be modded down. As he is now at +4 I think his claim has been proven false.
Wrong.
As of the last time I refreshed this page a couple of minutes ago, he was at +4, but that broke down as follows:-
50% Insightful
20% Flamebait
20% Overrated
I don't know which came first, but the guy *was* modded down- he just also got modded up enough to compensate.
Con'raction?
She was the lead Vulcan in a Star Trek novel with gold lettering and bad airbrushed artwork on the cover.
The BBC itself has to keep BBC Worldwide at arm's length as it is supposed to be a non-commercial organisation; treating it differently because it happened to be owned by the BBC might land it in commercial hot water.
I don't know how exactly that might apply to the current situation, but I do know that it's an issue in general.
Not only that, my graduation project consisted not only of CUT code, but also COPY and PASTE code! So, how much will I earn a month?
$10,000. However, we'll need it back after you've photocopied it.
I don't think it has been done before though. At least not as a hardware implementation.
The requirement for an infinite length of tape may have been a minor problem, IMHO.
there is the little issue of China having electricity and India not
Yeah, it's impressive that like half the world's CD-Rs and DVD-Rs are made there in steam-powered plants. Actually, I heard that in some plants they do it by hand!
No, really.
This probably explains why I'm having trouble getting them for under 10p each.
When since the death of Mao and the rise of the "Gang of Seven" has anyone thought China was Communist?
Someone called present-day China something like "the world's first mature fascist state", by which I assume they meant something akin to Mussolini's original definition where the interests of the state and of business were closely associated and effectively one and the same thing.
It has also been said that China went straight from being a traditional society to being a corporatist one without going through the transitional democratic phase. At any rate, those in power in the West thought that encouraging capitalism in China would inherently result in greater democracy over the longer term and in them moving closer to the West. Both of which are now very questionable if not downright wrong.
Assuming they meant that of course, and it wasn't just them exploiting the "capitalism == democracy" sentiment in the West (particularly America) to justify the cheap labour and potentially huge market they were salivating over, and damn the long-term consequences, which- blinded by dollar signs- they probably assumed would be in their favour anyway.