Re:There was a plan to make a portable Atari 8-bit
on
Atari 800 XE Laptop
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· Score: 3, Informative
"There was actually a plan to make a portable Atari 8-bit, which was even mentioned in Atari's literature after they were bought out by Jack Tramell. The plan fell through. Basically, the technology of the time could not make a portable machine with compelling graphics (The 8-bit Atari's niche); we did not get usable color flat screens for another decade after the end of the 8-bit Ataris."
You must be referring to the 130XEP (?). It wasn't s***canned because of portability issues. It was canned because the Tramiel crew could not figure out the AMY sound chip coding. Tramiel had fired the majority of the Atari engineers after he purchased the company, and only they knew how to get the chip to function. Its a shame; the Atari 7800 could've really used the AMY sound chip added to a lot of its titles just as the POKEY (you may correct me if I am wrong - the standard soundchip of the 400/800/XL/XE computers) chip was added in game titles like *BallBlazer* to improve the sound capabilities. Hell, the ST computer line could've used the AMY chip as well.
"Slim (compared to an original SIO port) DB25 printer-style port for connecting to disk drives, printers or PC's using an SIO2PC cable."
And let us not forget that the Atari SIO (serial input output) port is the forerunner of USB. The same engineer who created the SIO port is also the same gentleman who created USB for Intel if I am not mistaken. It was a great idea then, as it is today.
"A head as disproportionately large as you suggest would suggest that these apes were very bright - so why do we rule the world?"
Who says the apes still do not run our world? After all, if you look at the half century-plus history of the European Union, the Germans "allowed" the French to believe they controlled all the shots. There might just be a correlation there. Tee hee.
And no, I am not inviting the readers to assume that one party is an ape and the other human, I just merely implied that maybe apes have allowed us humans to believe we currently rule the planet. Of course, according to Douglas Adams, the mice quite comfortably rule.
"Try to get a new cable channel on now. Even with a hundred or more slots, there isn't room for anything new. Or, if a channel does somehow get on, it is relegated to such bad 'real estate' that no one sees it."
No doubt. Just as TechTV experienced back in the day....as Martin Sargent (www.sargeworld.com) tagged TechTV's (and later, G4TechTV's) tier placing as "third tier digital plus platinum cable".
BBC America, Trio, and the Horror Channel all get lopped into equally challenged cable distribution tiers as well. I'm beginning to wonder if the "BlackBelt Channel" has met its demise already.
"Its worth mentioning that Warner is also the one studio that has really resisted the MPAA strong-arm tactics of treating customers as criminals. They wisely felt pricing their movie library competitively ($10 range) meant greater sales for them, and less piracy."
Warner Bros. Home Video was also the main studio that prevented Circuit City's DIVX format from becoming dominant over the "open" DVD format. We should give them credit for that too.
However, they get a -1 score for releasing *Catwoman* last year, and a -2 for next year's *Superman Returns*. Yet they get a +10 for *Batman Begins* this year...:)
"Did anybody else notice the disturbance in the Matrix?"
Which Matrix are you speaking of? The one that is the repository of all knowledge of the Time Lords of the planet Gallifrey or that Matrix featured in that deriviative and underperforming trilogy of films from Warner Bros. Pictures & Village Roadshow?:)
"It's not (f)ugly.... it's just incredibly bland and generic. There's a difference."
It certainly is (f)ugly when compared to any other phone that still costs $250 even with a 2 year service agreement! Place one next to a RAZR and tell me again that the ROKR is not (f)ugly.
The ROKR is Gwyneth Paltrow next to the RAZR as Monica Bellucci.
Apple did not sabotage this phone. That was done by the terrible twosome that is Motorola and Cingular.
First of all, the ROKR is (f)ugly. Had Motorola made their first iTunes phone a RAZR (which they are finally bringing to market for Q4 2005), it would've been a slam dunk. Consumers want the RAZR and adding iTunes functionality (as well as decent sized memory) only would drive up demand further. That was not Apple's fault, but Motorola's for acting greedy and assuming they could sucker in early-adopters to buy the crummy phone just for iTunes and then later get them to double-dip into purchasing an iTunes compatible RAZR model.
Then there's Cingular. Cingular would not allow the phone to use iTunes purchased tracks as ringtones. Wow, that was brilliant. Because all of us that actually have purchased tracks through iTunes would be stupid enough to pay twice the price on the same song cut in half just for the sheer pleasure of using it as a ringtone. That must be another brilliant idea dreamed up by that genius at SBC named Ed Whiteacre for sure.
There's something that would be painful to watch....a match of wits between Ed Whiteacre and Edgar Bronfman. In a version of Thunderdome hosted by the EFF.
"IE 7 (beta) still has some pretty sweet features that this version of Firefox doesn't. One of the coolest is the feature that lets you quickly see an image of all open tabs. For the common end user, another is the phishing filter, which is pretty good."
"Personally, I've bought one TV episode from iTunes music store -- I bought the premiere of The Night Stalker both to see if the show was any good, and to see what the video quality was like. To me, the initial TV offerings aren't enough to make me want to spend a lot of money on it so far; but if Apple were to get SciFi on board, and offer episodes of Battlestar Galactica? Hmm..."
Or the BBC and offer the new *Doctor Who* exclusively through iTunes here in the States...
"I want to see all the networks do this. I've got a certified Divx player (Philips DVP642) that has a DRM passphrase and no content to buy for it, except porn and instructional videos (about sailboating). When can I see sales of full size (ie: progressive, high resolution) shows? I'd even deal with a few ads, like one in the start and one at the end."
Download the posted episodes of *Doctor Who* from this year. The DVP-642 also does Xvid files, which is what the posted *Who* episodes were encoded with. Or you could buy the R2 DVD box set that will be released in Europe at the end of the month and you could also watch it on the DVP-642 thanks to its liberal use of non-Region1 discs.
Pr0n and sailboating instructional videos? Are you sure you aren't referencing *Captain Stabbin'*?:)
"OK, I have a question. Do you see greater value in purchasing a version that you can watch on your iPod than you do in purchasing the DVD? After reading your post, I personally thought you got screwed."
Funny. I thought he got screwed because he was paying for the trite known as *Lost* as opposed to a truly classic television series about a man stuck on an island and trying to escape. That being *The Prisoner*.:)
"Also, the following quotes are spoken by Steve Jobs' character in the movie Pirates of the Silicon Valley. Steve Wozniak has verified the movie as accurate."
Pirates is a great flick although I think it totally passed over the little tidbit about Jobs (and Woz indirectly) working for Atari prior making the Apple I. There's no exploration of the relationship between Jobs and Bushnell consequently, yet the film proceeds to spare no expense at showing MIPS and the impact that had on Gates & Co.
"That's right, the second...who can guess the first? Sorry Jobs, it was Microsoft, with the X-box."
Except for the fact that the Xbox is nowhere near the success that the iPod is. The iPod dominates the MP3 player market. The Xbox does not dominate the videogame industry. That would be the Sony Playstation2.
Re:I don't care what they call it, it ain't Ma Bel
on
Ma Bell is Back
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· Score: 1
"Try starting up your own cable provider/ISP company, for example. Chances are you won't find a city willing to let you in. They've already sold a monopoly franchise to TimeWarner/BrightHouse etc."
Well, here in Sacramento, we now have two cable companies in certain areas. You may have heard of them from the press they've received in the past week due to their IPTV plans over their fiber. That company is SureWest...who bought up the bankrupt WinFirst, which was a casualty of the dot-bomb collapse but had the noble idea of bringing fiber optics to every home in their market. SureWest is in addition to Comcast who has the shrinking monopoly in this town.
Re:I don't care what they call it, it ain't Ma Bel
on
Ma Bell is Back
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· Score: 1
"There were all sorts of other rules, too. If anything, AT&T is the reason the internet came so late. The Internet was technologically possible for a long time, but the biggest electronic communications network in the country was mostly off-limits."
Hey, even the BabyBells were also as guilty as MaBell in terms of slowing down the adoption rate of new technologies. I think back to the fact that my Atari 1040ST back in 1986 was compatible with ISDN straight out of the box, but did Pacific Bell offer residential ISDN service back then? Nope. When did Pacific Bell get semi-serious about residential ISDN? Oh, try 1998.
Re:I don't care what they call it, it ain't Ma Bel
on
Ma Bell is Back
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· Score: 1
"So, the word MILF has been coined after Ma Bell disappeared, i'm kind of curious... what do you call a Ma who wants to screw you?"
"How long before Microsoft lose its monopoly on desktop computing software?"
Oh, probably until the second coming of AmigaOS or BeOS if you believe what a lot of people post on Slashdot. Of course, Jesus will stop by for a cup of tea before either of those scenarios becomes a reality.:)
Re:Ma Bell? Yo no entiendo - SHORT VERSION
on
Ma Bell is Back
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· Score: 1
"*cough* cingular *cough* was pacific bell mobile. which is now part of SBC.:P"
You forgot to mention that Pac Bell's original cell phone division was renamed "Airtouch Communications" and spun off because Pacific Bell thought its divesture would allow it to gain a large chunk of the PCS phone spectrum and when they failed at that, management lost faith in PacBell remaining independent and then sold their souls and the company out to SBC Communications.
Airtouch merged itself into what became Verizon Wireless, 50% owned by Verizon and 50% owned by Vodafone.
And had SBC had less monopoly cash to sweeten the deal for Cingular to buy AT&T Wirless, Vodafone would have acquired it and sold off their 50% stake in Verizon Wireless. And since Vodafone is so large worldwide, the GSM handsets sold by a Vodafone owned AT&T Wireless would be cheaper (yet still more profitable for them) than what we now are offered by the Cingular+AT&T Wireless entity.
*Make Microsoft Search so powerful that Microsoft itself can find all the bugs and security holes in each new Windows release.
Nah, it would still take the power of Google to accomplish that. And even then, it would probably require a distributed processing load to accomplish it quickly.
Microsoft Bugs @ Home
great choice...AT&T is a better name
on
Ma Bell is Back
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· Score: 1
Well, there goes my favorite way to criticize SBC...by referring to them as the *Sucks Ballz Corporation*.
Granted, if they went by that name officially, there would be truth in advertising once again...
"They tried switching to windows to lower costs, but mac users rioted and Apple paid Adobe to port photoshop for MacOSX by purchasing %10-15 stock since they refused."
If Apple is willing to do this, why don't they pull the same thing to get AutoCAD on OS X? Or, to increase the company's consumer base, start buying up shares in Activision, Atari/Infogrames, EA, and UbiSoft in order to "encourage" those companies into porting their titles over to OS X instead of having to rely upon contract companies to do those ports that sometimes takes a full year after the initial Windows release before it can be played on OSX?
I realize that such time frames will probably shorten once Macintoshes begin the transition over to Intel chips in 2006, but still, nothing like direct influence.
Slashdot Mirror
"There was actually a plan to make a portable Atari 8-bit, which was even mentioned in Atari's literature after they were bought out by Jack Tramell. The plan fell through. Basically, the technology of the time could not make a portable machine with compelling graphics (The 8-bit Atari's niche); we did not get usable color flat screens for another decade after the end of the 8-bit Ataris."
You must be referring to the 130XEP (?). It wasn't s***canned because of portability issues. It was canned because the Tramiel crew could not figure out the AMY sound chip coding. Tramiel had fired the majority of the Atari engineers after he purchased the company, and only they knew how to get the chip to function. Its a shame; the Atari 7800 could've really used the AMY sound chip added to a lot of its titles just as the POKEY (you may correct me if I am wrong - the standard soundchip of the 400/800/XL/XE computers) chip was added in game titles like *BallBlazer* to improve the sound capabilities. Hell, the ST computer line could've used the AMY chip as well.
"Slim (compared to an original SIO port) DB25 printer-style port for connecting to disk drives, printers or PC's using an SIO2PC cable."
And let us not forget that the Atari SIO (serial input output) port is the forerunner of USB. The same engineer who created the SIO port is also the same gentleman who created USB for Intel if I am not mistaken. It was a great idea then, as it is today.
"What's next, a Beowulf cluster of Bill Gates?"
I suspect that even with a Beowulf cluster of Bill Gates, the end results would still be described as "micro" and "soft".
"'There were giants in the earth in those days' - Genesis 6:4"
And the sons of God married the daughters of man...and somewhere in the world Eric von Daniken is getting excited...
So, who is the ape out of that equation? And why would a celestial entity mate with a damn-dirty-ape?
"A head as disproportionately large as you suggest would suggest that these apes were very bright - so why do we rule the world?"
Who says the apes still do not run our world? After all, if you look at the half century-plus history of the European Union, the Germans "allowed" the French to believe they controlled all the shots. There might just be a correlation there. Tee hee.
And no, I am not inviting the readers to assume that one party is an ape and the other human, I just merely implied that maybe apes have allowed us humans to believe we currently rule the planet. Of course, according to Douglas Adams, the mice quite comfortably rule.
"Try to get a new cable channel on now. Even with a hundred or more slots, there isn't room for anything new. Or, if a channel does somehow get on, it is relegated to such bad 'real estate' that no one sees it."
No doubt. Just as TechTV experienced back in the day....as Martin Sargent (www.sargeworld.com) tagged TechTV's (and later, G4TechTV's) tier placing as "third tier digital plus platinum cable".
BBC America, Trio, and the Horror Channel all get lopped into equally challenged cable distribution tiers as well. I'm beginning to wonder if the "BlackBelt Channel" has met its demise already.
"Its worth mentioning that Warner is also the one studio that has really resisted the MPAA strong-arm tactics of treating customers as criminals. They wisely felt pricing their movie library competitively ($10 range) meant greater sales for them, and less piracy."
:)
Warner Bros. Home Video was also the main studio that prevented Circuit City's DIVX format from becoming dominant over the "open" DVD format. We should give them credit for that too.
However, they get a -1 score for releasing *Catwoman* last year, and a -2 for next year's *Superman Returns*. Yet they get a +10 for *Batman Begins* this year...
"Did anybody else notice the disturbance in the Matrix?"
:)
Which Matrix are you speaking of? The one that is the repository of all knowledge of the Time Lords of the planet Gallifrey or that Matrix featured in that deriviative and underperforming trilogy of films from Warner Bros. Pictures & Village Roadshow?
"It's not (f)ugly.... it's just incredibly bland and generic. There's a difference."
It certainly is (f)ugly when compared to any other phone that still costs $250 even with a 2 year service agreement! Place one next to a RAZR and tell me again that the ROKR is not (f)ugly.
The ROKR is Gwyneth Paltrow next to the RAZR as Monica Bellucci.
Apple did not sabotage this phone. That was done by the terrible twosome that is Motorola and Cingular.
First of all, the ROKR is (f)ugly. Had Motorola made their first iTunes phone a RAZR (which they are finally bringing to market for Q4 2005), it would've been a slam dunk. Consumers want the RAZR and adding iTunes functionality (as well as decent sized memory) only would drive up demand further. That was not Apple's fault, but Motorola's for acting greedy and assuming they could sucker in early-adopters to buy the crummy phone just for iTunes and then later get them to double-dip into purchasing an iTunes compatible RAZR model.
Then there's Cingular. Cingular would not allow the phone to use iTunes purchased tracks as ringtones. Wow, that was brilliant. Because all of us that actually have purchased tracks through iTunes would be stupid enough to pay twice the price on the same song cut in half just for the sheer pleasure of using it as a ringtone. That must be another brilliant idea dreamed up by that genius at SBC named Ed Whiteacre for sure.
There's something that would be painful to watch....a match of wits between Ed Whiteacre and Edgar Bronfman. In a version of Thunderdome hosted by the EFF.
"IE 7 (beta) still has some pretty sweet features that this version of Firefox doesn't. One of the coolest is the feature that lets you quickly see an image of all open tabs. For the common end user, another is the phishing filter, which is pretty good."
:)
Isn't it also better at acquiring spyware?
Sorry, couldn't resist...the humor, the humor!
"Personally, I've bought one TV episode from iTunes music store -- I bought the premiere of The Night Stalker both to see if the show was any good, and to see what the video quality was like. To me, the initial TV offerings aren't enough to make me want to spend a lot of money on it so far; but if Apple were to get SciFi on board, and offer episodes of Battlestar Galactica? Hmm..."
Or the BBC and offer the new *Doctor Who* exclusively through iTunes here in the States...
"I want to see all the networks do this. I've got a certified Divx player (Philips DVP642) that has a DRM passphrase and no content to buy for it, except porn and instructional videos (about sailboating). When can I see sales of full size (ie: progressive, high resolution) shows? I'd even deal with a few ads, like one in the start and one at the end."
:)
Download the posted episodes of *Doctor Who* from this year. The DVP-642 also does Xvid files, which is what the posted *Who* episodes were encoded with. Or you could buy the R2 DVD box set that will be released in Europe at the end of the month and you could also watch it on the DVP-642 thanks to its liberal use of non-Region1 discs.
Pr0n and sailboating instructional videos? Are you sure you aren't referencing *Captain Stabbin'*?
"OK, I have a question. Do you see greater value in purchasing a version that you can watch on your iPod than you do in purchasing the DVD? After reading your post, I personally thought you got screwed."
:)
Funny. I thought he got screwed because he was paying for the trite known as *Lost* as opposed to a truly classic television series about a man stuck on an island and trying to escape. That being *The Prisoner*.
Excuse me, MITS.
"Also, the following quotes are spoken by Steve Jobs' character in the movie Pirates of the Silicon Valley. Steve Wozniak has verified the movie as accurate."
Pirates is a great flick although I think it totally passed over the little tidbit about Jobs (and Woz indirectly) working for Atari prior making the Apple I. There's no exploration of the relationship between Jobs and Bushnell consequently, yet the film proceeds to spare no expense at showing MIPS and the impact that had on Gates & Co.
"That's right, the second...who can guess the first? Sorry Jobs, it was Microsoft, with the X-box."
Except for the fact that the Xbox is nowhere near the success that the iPod is. The iPod dominates the MP3 player market. The Xbox does not dominate the videogame industry. That would be the Sony Playstation2.
"Try starting up your own cable provider/ISP company, for example. Chances are you won't find a city willing to let you in. They've already sold a monopoly franchise to TimeWarner/BrightHouse etc."
Well, here in Sacramento, we now have two cable companies in certain areas. You may have heard of them from the press they've received in the past week due to their IPTV plans over their fiber. That company is SureWest...who bought up the bankrupt WinFirst, which was a casualty of the dot-bomb collapse but had the noble idea of bringing fiber optics to every home in their market. SureWest is in addition to Comcast who has the shrinking monopoly in this town.
"There were all sorts of other rules, too. If anything, AT&T is the reason the internet came so late. The Internet was technologically possible for a long time, but the biggest electronic communications network in the country was mostly off-limits."
Hey, even the BabyBells were also as guilty as MaBell in terms of slowing down the adoption rate of new technologies. I think back to the fact that my Atari 1040ST back in 1986 was compatible with ISDN straight out of the box, but did Pacific Bell offer residential ISDN service back then? Nope. When did Pacific Bell get semi-serious about residential ISDN? Oh, try 1998.
"So, the word MILF has been coined after Ma Bell disappeared, i'm kind of curious... what do you call a Ma who wants to screw you?"
:)
Help me out...I forgot your mom's name again...
"How long before Microsoft lose its monopoly on desktop computing software?"
:)
Oh, probably until the second coming of AmigaOS or BeOS if you believe what a lot of people post on Slashdot. Of course, Jesus will stop by for a cup of tea before either of those scenarios becomes a reality.
"*cough* cingular *cough* was pacific bell mobile. which is now part of SBC. :P"
You forgot to mention that Pac Bell's original cell phone division was renamed "Airtouch Communications" and spun off because Pacific Bell thought its divesture would allow it to gain a large chunk of the PCS phone spectrum and when they failed at that, management lost faith in PacBell remaining independent and then sold their souls and the company out to SBC Communications.
Airtouch merged itself into what became Verizon Wireless, 50% owned by Verizon and 50% owned by Vodafone.
And had SBC had less monopoly cash to sweeten the deal for Cingular to buy AT&T Wirless, Vodafone would have acquired it and sold off their 50% stake in Verizon Wireless. And since Vodafone is so large worldwide, the GSM handsets sold by a Vodafone owned AT&T Wireless would be cheaper (yet still more profitable for them) than what we now are offered by the Cingular+AT&T Wireless entity.
*Make Microsoft Search so powerful that Microsoft itself can find all the bugs and security holes in each new Windows release.
Nah, it would still take the power of Google to accomplish that. And even then, it would probably require a distributed processing load to accomplish it quickly.
Microsoft Bugs @ Home
Well, there goes my favorite way to criticize SBC...by referring to them as the *Sucks Ballz Corporation*.
Granted, if they went by that name officially, there would be truth in advertising once again...
"They tried switching to windows to lower costs, but mac users rioted and Apple paid Adobe to port photoshop for MacOSX by purchasing %10-15 stock since they refused."
If Apple is willing to do this, why don't they pull the same thing to get AutoCAD on OS X? Or, to increase the company's consumer base, start buying up shares in Activision, Atari/Infogrames, EA, and UbiSoft in order to "encourage" those companies into porting their titles over to OS X instead of having to rely upon contract companies to do those ports that sometimes takes a full year after the initial Windows release before it can be played on OSX?
I realize that such time frames will probably shorten once Macintoshes begin the transition over to Intel chips in 2006, but still, nothing like direct influence.