The original Firewire (IEEE1394) would've been a much stronger interface platform had Apple introduced it throughout the entire product platform from its inception. But Apple took 2 years to get Firewire on all Macs from the PowerMac line down to the iMacs. That was a big mistake. Apple saved the USB standard by introducing it on all Macs when the iMac debuted. Now we have Macs that have chipsets capable of USB 2.0 (because the chips cost the same whether they are USB 1.1 or 2.0) but Apple is not advertising this or natively supporting it because of it weakening the need for Firewire (400, iLink, IEEE1394a, etc.). But if Joe Blow wants a decent scanner for a new computer purchase and doesn't want to spend $400 for a Canon Firewire based scanner, he/she/it has to settle for USB 1.1 speeds (without software driver hacks) on a new $100 USB 2.0 enabled scanner. If anything, Apple should have iPods with Firewire800 support on them to further their advantage over all the other MP3 players (yes yes, iTunes store monopoly). It would also make sense for Apple to use internal Firewire connections for the CD/DVD/Superdrives instead of relying on the ATA standard. Apple now has a great operating system, but it really needs to polish its hardware to attract more geeks with cash to switch platforms. The Apple platform holds so much promise!
What was the name of that *hacker* Palm OS program back in the day that would send out an IR blast that could turn up the volume on room full of televisions at once? I remember when I'd every-once-in-a-while sell Palm V's, I met a customer who showed me the program on his Palm III. He had went into the local Worst Buy and mozied into the television department and used the program to turn all of the televisions to full blast. He then waited for the employees to turn down the volume on each set and then did it again. I wish I remembered the name of that program. Does anyone have any leads on the name of that program?
And the Atari 800 also had the SIO (serial-input-output) port on it too: a universal connector for all peripherals outside of joysticks. They even had a hub for the SIO port as well. Its no wonder that the engineer responsible for the SIO port now works for Intel and holds co-patents for USB, an updated idea from Atari's heyday...
Maybe the internet experience isn't living up for BabyBoomers, but find me a GenXer or GenYer who doesn't use the net. Hmmm...for the price of an ISP (POTS, wireless, or cable/DSL), you can talk to your friends through instant messaging for free (so to speak); you can download purchased or *creatively acquired* software, music, and motion pictures; and you always have the most up-to-date news vs. from television. Spam? You just delete it. At least you don't have to physically shred it like junk mail because you don't want credit card account numbers getting into the hands of prisoners sorting the trash before it arrives at the landfill. So how is this internet do-hicky dying? And sitting in front of a noisy computer hasn't proven to cause you brain cancer, unlike a cell phone... I'd rather have my computer and broadband access than television, wired or wireless phone access, and cable television...or radio...
'cos if you have, e-voting fraud or even the results from the 2000 Presidential Election won't bother you so much... When IBM refuses to get involved in the vote tabulation business because of its perceived "shady" nature, that is sure to raise your eyebrows. And after reading this book, you'll never think the same way about the League of Women Voters again. They sure are making up for being excluded from representative democracy until this last century, big time.
...would the same Microsoft Executive authorize the company to give me free Xbox games? After all, if Microsoft isn't going to gain my dollars, why should Sony? Please oh please oh please...
Audio CDs and interactive videogames are apples and oranges. Most *walkmen* these days have buffer memory to lessen the chances of skips in the music. But that would not be practical for a videogame. You are talking about a lot more information being passed back and forth versus a one way stream of audio...thus, solid state memory is more practical, albeit more expensive.
...the Atari Lynx, the world's first color handheld (and still the best!); the NEC TurboExpress; the Sega GameGear; and the Sega Nomad.
Making a portable that uses optical media is asking for trouble. A proprietary SD memory card would be the better route for vibrations, although the media would be more expensive.
maybe Motorola did have bugs with MMU design but that has nothing to do with my point. I illustrated the point that all the other 680x0 based computer platforms used their own designs for their "custom silicon" including MMUs, blitters, etc. Judging with hindsight, it was too bad that Amiga, Apple, and Atari all failed to include the math co-processors (68881 and 68882) standard on their platforms. That would've given them even more processing firepower...
What computer platform that used Motorola 680x0 microprocessors DIDN'T use their own MMU and other *custom silicon*? Atari ST? Check. Amiga? Check. (I'm sure NeXT used custom chips as well). That's why those systems had more power than their PC counterparts in the day...
...speak for yourselves. I'm watching *Spider-Man & His Amazing Friends* on ABC (ick) Family Channel every Saturday morning, just like I did when I was 7... 'cept its not on NBC and they aren't showing it along with the animated *Incredible Hulk*. Sure, its terrible, but it brings back memories. It was definitely inferior to the solo Spider-Man cartoon from the late 70s, which I found better than the 90s cartoon (boring!)... I hope MTV's upcoming version is better...
check out future TiVo features...
on
TiVo Basic
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· Score: 1
Check out the following employment link on the TiVo website. They are in need of someone with C and assembly language programming in UNIX environments for creating device drivers. They even specifically mention Firewire (IEEE1394) as an example. I suppose this will debut in the Series3. Fingers crossed it will be the Firewire800 implementation by then. I hope a/.'er gets the job!:)
http://www.tivo.com/5.8.2.4.asp
progressive output...
on
TiVo Basic
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· Score: 2, Informative
Progressive scan output will only benefit DVD presentation on a compatible television set. Because just as TiVo notes (when comparing the existing Series2 units to Replay), progressive output to a television won't benefit watching anything off the TiVo unit since analog cable boxes do not output a progressive signal. The only benefit would be leaving the S-Video and/or the compositve video jacks on the television available for other devices.
While this would not benefit me as an existing Series2 owner, TiVo really needs to equip their units with MPEG4 decoder chips because they could get so many more recordable hours onto the same size hard drives they currently use. You'd be surprised how many more people will buy the units if magically you can get 80 hour recording at the existing price of the 30/40 hour units.
Equipping the units with quieter fans and moving towards Serial ATA hard drives will both solve heat and noise issues currently effecting Series2 units in future releases...
Seems to me if I was on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I'd have some satellites sent to Mars to photograph everything. Considering how resource hungry this administration is and how forward-thinking their military battle plans are, they should be identifying every valuable resource that might be easily tapped. I'm thinking they need to find as much gold as they can if they ever hope to defend our planet from those pesky metallic beings from the planet Mondas if they ever wake up...
I live in Sacramento. We had our local cable monopoly that sold out to Comcast. Then when AT&T Broadband swapped assets with Comcast, they took the Sacramento/Davis market(s). Now Comcast is once again in control since they bought AT&T Broadband. They still haven't phased out analog cable and we still do not have cable telephony in this market. I believe it is scheduled for next year...
Hmmmm...me thinks Principal Wood used the iTunes Music Store to buy that 19th Century English folk song to turn on Spike's rage last month. Principal Wood did use his iMac 17" Lampshade and iTunes to play that ditty... I guess the iTunes Store was available in Sunnydale before anywhere else in the world. Wow, Apple was really on the ball; they knew the end was coming for Sunnydale so they figured out the time was right to earn some profits ahead of time!
DSL sucks... We'd all be better off if the teleco's go under instead of propping up those dinosaurs.
You have to ask yourself, who do you like less? Your cable company or SBC? After all, SBC is trying to re-create "Ma Bell." Only prob is, its a different world than pre 1984. Once the cable companies have switched over to pure digital transmission and offer telephone service, say goodbye to SBC.
Amen... I can remember the days in Atari ST land when some German hackers got mad at the performance of the TOS operating system and they decided to rewrite it line by line into 68000 machine language... I can't remember if TOS (C/PM 68K) was written in assembly or C (probably C)...
Can you imagine rewriting Windows in x86 machine language versus C++?
darn, I read this as a GEM2003 announcement...
on
DRI Comes to DirectFB
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· Score: 1
...you know, a 21st Century version of the GUI by (Intergalactic) Digital Research, Inc. (DRI)... you know, the originators of DOS, when it was known as *cough* *cough* C/PM... I'll go find my Atari ST for comfort...
VPR Matrix is Best Buy's house brand. Don't let one of the "Product Specialists" try to claim it is a different company. The name is so dumb it had to have been thought up by the same internal geniuses that produce "Tag TV" for the employees. VPR stands for "Value" and "Price." They then threw in "Matrix" due to the popularity of the movie(s). Isn't it ironic they'd christen their own computer line with such a generic name yet then they hire Porsche to design their premiere laptop? Its like Walmart hiring Versace to design their signature *wife beater* under shirts...
Could someone tell me how Unisys got .GIF?
on
AAC vs. OGG vs. MP3
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· Score: 1
Seems to me from my history lesson that Compuserve created the.GIF format and didn't start pressuring BBSes and other services for royalties until the late 80s. How did Unisys get their grubby hands on it? Did Compuserve sell the format before AOL acquired them?
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The original Firewire (IEEE1394) would've been a much stronger interface platform had Apple introduced it throughout the entire product platform from its inception. But Apple took 2 years to get Firewire on all Macs from the PowerMac line down to the iMacs. That was a big mistake. Apple saved the USB standard by introducing it on all Macs when the iMac debuted. Now we have Macs that have chipsets capable of USB 2.0 (because the chips cost the same whether they are USB 1.1 or 2.0) but Apple is not advertising this or natively supporting it because of it weakening the need for Firewire (400, iLink, IEEE1394a, etc.). But if Joe Blow wants a decent scanner for a new computer purchase and doesn't want to spend $400 for a Canon Firewire based scanner, he/she/it has to settle for USB 1.1 speeds (without software driver hacks) on a new $100 USB 2.0 enabled scanner. If anything, Apple should have iPods with Firewire800 support on them to further their advantage over all the other MP3 players (yes yes, iTunes store monopoly). It would also make sense for Apple to use internal Firewire connections for the CD/DVD/Superdrives instead of relying on the ATA standard. Apple now has a great operating system, but it really needs to polish its hardware to attract more geeks with cash to switch platforms. The Apple platform holds so much promise!
Isn't Business Week an AOL Time Warner publication, just like Time and Fortune?
What was the name of that *hacker* Palm OS program back in the day that would send out an IR blast that could turn up the volume on room full of televisions at once? I remember when I'd every-once-in-a-while sell Palm V's, I met a customer who showed me the program on his Palm III. He had went into the local Worst Buy and mozied into the television department and used the program to turn all of the televisions to full blast. He then waited for the employees to turn down the volume on each set and then did it again. I wish I remembered the name of that program. Does anyone have any leads on the name of that program?
And the Atari 800 also had the SIO (serial-input-output) port on it too: a universal connector for all peripherals outside of joysticks. They even had a hub for the SIO port as well. Its no wonder that the engineer responsible for the SIO port now works for Intel and holds co-patents for USB, an updated idea from Atari's heyday...
Maybe the internet experience isn't living up for BabyBoomers, but find me a GenXer or GenYer who doesn't use the net. Hmmm...for the price of an ISP (POTS, wireless, or cable/DSL), you can talk to your friends through instant messaging for free (so to speak); you can download purchased or *creatively acquired* software, music, and motion pictures; and you always have the most up-to-date news vs. from television. Spam? You just delete it. At least you don't have to physically shred it like junk mail because you don't want credit card account numbers getting into the hands of prisoners sorting the trash before it arrives at the landfill. So how is this internet do-hicky dying? And sitting in front of a noisy computer hasn't proven to cause you brain cancer, unlike a cell phone... I'd rather have my computer and broadband access than television, wired or wireless phone access, and cable television...or radio...
'cos if you have, e-voting fraud or even the results from the 2000 Presidential Election won't bother you so much... When IBM refuses to get involved in the vote tabulation business because of its perceived "shady" nature, that is sure to raise your eyebrows. And after reading this book, you'll never think the same way about the League of Women Voters again. They sure are making up for being excluded from representative democracy until this last century, big time.
If this chair operates the same way, count me out...and I don't mean *out* in that way either...
...would the same Microsoft Executive authorize the company to give me free Xbox games? After all, if Microsoft isn't going to gain my dollars, why should Sony? Please oh please oh please...
Audio CDs and interactive videogames are apples and oranges. Most *walkmen* these days have buffer memory to lessen the chances of skips in the music. But that would not be practical for a videogame. You are talking about a lot more information being passed back and forth versus a one way stream of audio...thus, solid state memory is more practical, albeit more expensive.
...the Atari Lynx, the world's first color handheld (and still the best!); the NEC TurboExpress; the Sega GameGear; and the Sega Nomad. Making a portable that uses optical media is asking for trouble. A proprietary SD memory card would be the better route for vibrations, although the media would be more expensive.
maybe Motorola did have bugs with MMU design but that has nothing to do with my point. I illustrated the point that all the other 680x0 based computer platforms used their own designs for their "custom silicon" including MMUs, blitters, etc. Judging with hindsight, it was too bad that Amiga, Apple, and Atari all failed to include the math co-processors (68881 and 68882) standard on their platforms. That would've given them even more processing firepower...
What computer platform that used Motorola 680x0 microprocessors DIDN'T use their own MMU and other *custom silicon*? Atari ST? Check. Amiga? Check. (I'm sure NeXT used custom chips as well). That's why those systems had more power than their PC counterparts in the day...
Typical. Screenshots of AmigaOS and Mac, but nothing from the Atari ST/TT/Falcon experience...
...speak for yourselves. I'm watching *Spider-Man & His Amazing Friends* on ABC (ick) Family Channel every Saturday morning, just like I did when I was 7... 'cept its not on NBC and they aren't showing it along with the animated *Incredible Hulk*. Sure, its terrible, but it brings back memories. It was definitely inferior to the solo Spider-Man cartoon from the late 70s, which I found better than the 90s cartoon (boring!)... I hope MTV's upcoming version is better...
Check out the following employment link on the TiVo website. They are in need of someone with C and assembly language programming in UNIX environments for creating device drivers. They even specifically mention Firewire (IEEE1394) as an example. I suppose this will debut in the Series3. Fingers crossed it will be the Firewire800 implementation by then. I hope a /.'er gets the job! :)
http://www.tivo.com/5.8.2.4.asp
Progressive scan output will only benefit DVD presentation on a compatible television set. Because just as TiVo notes (when comparing the existing Series2 units to Replay), progressive output to a television won't benefit watching anything off the TiVo unit since analog cable boxes do not output a progressive signal. The only benefit would be leaving the S-Video and/or the compositve video jacks on the television available for other devices. While this would not benefit me as an existing Series2 owner, TiVo really needs to equip their units with MPEG4 decoder chips because they could get so many more recordable hours onto the same size hard drives they currently use. You'd be surprised how many more people will buy the units if magically you can get 80 hour recording at the existing price of the 30/40 hour units. Equipping the units with quieter fans and moving towards Serial ATA hard drives will both solve heat and noise issues currently effecting Series2 units in future releases...
Seems to me if I was on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I'd have some satellites sent to Mars to photograph everything. Considering how resource hungry this administration is and how forward-thinking their military battle plans are, they should be identifying every valuable resource that might be easily tapped. I'm thinking they need to find as much gold as they can if they ever hope to defend our planet from those pesky metallic beings from the planet Mondas if they ever wake up...
I live in Sacramento. We had our local cable monopoly that sold out to Comcast. Then when AT&T Broadband swapped assets with Comcast, they took the Sacramento/Davis market(s). Now Comcast is once again in control since they bought AT&T Broadband. They still haven't phased out analog cable and we still do not have cable telephony in this market. I believe it is scheduled for next year...
Hmmmm...me thinks Principal Wood used the iTunes Music Store to buy that 19th Century English folk song to turn on Spike's rage last month. Principal Wood did use his iMac 17" Lampshade and iTunes to play that ditty... I guess the iTunes Store was available in Sunnydale before anywhere else in the world. Wow, Apple was really on the ball; they knew the end was coming for Sunnydale so they figured out the time was right to earn some profits ahead of time!
DSL sucks... We'd all be better off if the teleco's go under instead of propping up those dinosaurs. You have to ask yourself, who do you like less? Your cable company or SBC? After all, SBC is trying to re-create "Ma Bell." Only prob is, its a different world than pre 1984. Once the cable companies have switched over to pure digital transmission and offer telephone service, say goodbye to SBC.
Great...someone had to bring up the "World's Most Successful Peter Gabriel impersonator" (Dave Matthews)...or is it "wannabe"?
Amen... I can remember the days in Atari ST land when some German hackers got mad at the performance of the TOS operating system and they decided to rewrite it line by line into 68000 machine language... I can't remember if TOS (C/PM 68K) was written in assembly or C (probably C)... Can you imagine rewriting Windows in x86 machine language versus C++?
...you know, a 21st Century version of the GUI by (Intergalactic) Digital Research, Inc. (DRI)... you know, the originators of DOS, when it was known as *cough* *cough* C/PM... I'll go find my Atari ST for comfort...
VPR Matrix is Best Buy's house brand. Don't let one of the "Product Specialists" try to claim it is a different company. The name is so dumb it had to have been thought up by the same internal geniuses that produce "Tag TV" for the employees. VPR stands for "Value" and "Price." They then threw in "Matrix" due to the popularity of the movie(s). Isn't it ironic they'd christen their own computer line with such a generic name yet then they hire Porsche to design their premiere laptop? Its like Walmart hiring Versace to design their signature *wife beater* under shirts...
Seems to me from my history lesson that Compuserve created the .GIF format and didn't start pressuring BBSes and other services for royalties until the late 80s. How did Unisys get their grubby hands on it? Did Compuserve sell the format before AOL acquired them?