The original 64KB 5150 motherboard (4 banks of 16KB each) supported 512KB AST and other 3rd-party option cards, but carried ROMs that had a total system limit less than 640KB. The second gen motherboard supported 4x 64KB, of 256 KB on the motherboard, and 640KB of main memory overall. My recollection is of some number like 512KB + 32KB, for a total of 544KB, but it could have been 512KB+64KB, or 576KB; STILL not 640KB. I remember this because I once had to replace ROMs from gen 1 motherboards so I could get some machines up to the full 640KB memory available.
What I remember more, however, was how fast IBM's original expectations for the PC were surpassed by people using its relatively open architecture to do far more with it than IBM had planned (or anticipated). In 1980-81, few at IBM (or anywhere apparently) could conceive why one would want a PC with more than 128KB (64+64). By being open to change, the PC went quickly from that early 8-bit kind of view to one that would lead to a revolution in business and home computing. You can say what you want about PCs and Windows, but this is being typed on a garden variety home built PC vastly more powerful in every way that that distant ancestor. It has also had RAM, storage, and P/S upgraded over its lifetime (5 1/2 years thus far). Still useful, and more importantly, still usable with new OS versions (started on XP, moved to Win 7 when stable); and while I like having long HW and SW lifecycles, the point is I am not stuck with it as it was - like I am with my DVR (which is just a specialized Linux appliance really).
Thus I do wonder what the last 30+ years would have been like if the "Apple appliance computing" model had been adopted by IBM in 1980-85 instead of the more open one used for the PC / XT / AT? Even though it came out in 1984, the first gen Mac was ridiculous - a completely closed Moto 68K-based mini-workstation with an "8-bit machine" memory limit. It **could** have been built with a removable bottom plate and enough memory sockets for 4x 64KB - but only 1/2 populated (an expansion capability similar to what is now available for its distant descendant, the Mac Mini). But it wasn't - you had to physically upgrade your 1st gen MAc to get decent memory: to 512KB, aka the "Fat Mac", and then upgrade again to get a hard drive in the Mac Plus. Or you had to resort to strategies that would void your warranty (e.g., the hardware equivalent of a "jailbreak"). This Jobsian approach to evolution - via sales of more hardware - should sound familiar to Apple fanbois everywhere at this point (and why I opted not to buy this year's version of the iPad Mini, but wait for - GASP - the one with the proper CPU, camera, RAM, and screen).
Ancient history? Not really. At least two current trends (1) "wirecutters' and (2) cloud computing are going to see this "open architecture versus closed appliance/service" competition played out yet again. (A third may be iOS versus Android smartphones.) Overall I am still optimistic that on balance openness will lead to innovation that will be beneficial and also not necessarily anticipated by those who want everything tightly controlled for their own profit. This doesn't mean however that appliance advocates won't put up a good fight.
For me it is all quite simple. - SG1 is like ST-TNG / but "Doorway to the stars" instead of "Wagon train to the stars". Biggest issue is they were supposed to have done the Stargate concept because ships were costly; this was cheaper (at least initially). - SG Atlantis is like DS9 / "Gunsmoke to the stars". Both involved setting up in a remote alien environment with new enemies and new friends, and using that as a base for exploration. - SGU is like ST-Voyager / alone and far, far away from home, under constant threat.
Unfortunately, SGU (a) doesn't seem to have any ability to get the cast members home, and (b) the ship is heading away from earth. I also think they should have brought the Lucian Alliance in much earlier / maybe by show 8 or 10 in year 1. Remember - Captain Janeway and Chakotay basically buried the hatchet by the end of the the 2 hour pilot; we are in season 2, and Colonel Young still has his counterpart locked up under guard.
I do agree, however, that it was worth a shot. BSG was just a great show, and much better than I ever expected when I heard the news originally that it was going to be redone. Just as Star Trek didn't want to just keep doing the same show over and over, StarGate needed to do something different. My problem with the show was it was so sparse; almost all desolate planets, or deadly jungle planets. How many times did they find even ruins?
Secondly, they have killed too many possibly good characters. What the hell happened to the leader of the Lucian Alliance? She was introduced as a major character, and was gone in two shows. Then there is the quadriplegic scientist from Earth who just died, and the guy Colonel Young had to kill with his bare hands.
SiFy - have a talk with the BBC folks doing Dr. Who. The last 5 years have been wonderful (mostly), and quite "modern" compared to "Dr. Who - TOS" (Doctors 1 to 7 in my book). IF they can extend the life of a show originally broadcast in the early 1960s yet again, you folks ought to be able to get something else going (just no submarine shows please).
"Eth needs more b!"
Actuallty, they are stealing from Poul Anderson
on
Stargate Universe
·
· Score: 1
The basic concept - send out a starship on a very long voyage of discovery with a "transmat" / "teleporter" / "stargate" on it so you can beam in and out - I vaguely remembered when I watched the pilot. That concept is the basis for the book "The Enemy Stars", by Poul Anderson (copyright 1958), and the ship's name in the book was the "Southern Cross". (My fragile paperback copy says it cost $0.50US back in 1968 or so.) Would have been a nice tribute if this ship had been given the same name (since it originated on Earth, the Southern Cross constellation would have been visible to the ancients that launched it). Don't know about the intellectual property situation, however.
Yes, there are elements of BSG, SG-Atlantis, ST-Voyager (except this ship is heading outbound), and even ST-DS9 (since this is an alien ship that is somewhat trashed / remember the first episode of DS9?). At least this time the Colonel didn't die like he did in SG Atlantis 1-1, and leave the mission to the "young hotshot". Also, you know the rules of pilots - the B-list actor with a recognizable face gets the ax, right? Finally, the Senator would have been S-O-L once his pills ran out, so I think he made the smart move in saving his daughter's life.
The cast has promise, they appear to be reusing lots of SG1 concepts effectively, and it is at least newish (if you can ignore that ST-TNG episode when the "Traveler" took them to the edge of reality / the first "Wesley is **really** special episode). Hey, being 7 BILLION lightyears from Earth is a bit farther away than the Pegasus galaxy.
What else can I say? I liked what the SG Production Team did with Atlantis (died two years early in my opinion), and how the DVD movies wrapped up both the Ori and Baal story lines for SG1. It's not yet another teen vampire show, and I like the Eli character (again, his role shows their humor, using a game to find him - like "Last StarFighter" - then beaming him out of his own house to grab him).
So SGU production team - please steal as much as you can from "classic" SciFi; we will all be thankful.
Other random comments: - B5 was great, mainly because of the people. What other US SciFi show lets people have drinks, sit around in their rooms, cry like they mean it, and try to live real lives? DS9 did a lot of the same things, but B5 still seems more likable (and I liked DS9; but I own B5). Still, as much as I liked B5, I can't see it continuing without G'Kar; it just wouldn't be the same.
- Sliders / more stealing from my favorite books; this time from Keith Laumer's "Imperium" stories (except his device was the size of a 1950's phone booth or bigger, not a handheld remote control).
- Everyone steals, so why not SGU? / remember the ST-Enterprise episode with the derelict timeship that was "bigger on the inside than the outside"? (Someone should have just said: Q. "What model is it? A. Type 40!")
- Dollhouse / I hate to say it, but as much as I enjoy the hell out of it, I just know Fox is going to kill it as soon as they can. Why can't they sell this kind of show to NewsCorp / SkyNET (perhaps they do, but it may not be enough). While it is still a fairly original show (relatively / not about space, time travel, or robots), it is likely too expensive for its own good (**cough** Farscape **cough**).
- Someone find Claudia Black and Ben Browder some new work. I suggest Robert Heinlein's "The Glory Road". Read it and see what I mean.
in 1981 I joined a company that had "thicknet" running down the halls of the "experimental" zone in the IT building. We had at least 2 XEROX "Portrait Display" GUI workstations and a file server with an attached laser printer (all of which appeared to be used mainly to create decks of nicely formatted presentation foils; main value of this system IMHO).
I didn't see a Lisa on that site for at least a year, and my understanding of what happened then - at least as a customer - was the Lisa was a $10K version of what Xerox wanted us to pay $18K for per seat. Ironically, that company (and most others at that time in the Fortune 50) went instead with IBM PC's and XT's (which at up to $6K per seat fully configured were cheaper than either option, if obviously inferior in capability at that point in time).
I write this because one aspect of this thread has been to discuss multiple sources of things that came later. Are individuals the key, or are some outcomes inevitable? Raskin is claimed in the preceding entry to be the single source of both the Apple and PARC GUI evolution (.i.e., the "key individual"); but clearly both were interconnected, and PARC - at least to me - had a quasi-commercial product on the market before Apple. Just as the Macintosh was evolved from the Lisa, I would say the "big picture" view - networked Macintoshes connected to a shared postscript printer with file services - was being offered to the market by PARC prior to Apple's commercial delivery of it - my direct experience.
Perhaps Apple could have come up with all the same concepts w/o PARC getting there first from a production standpoint . But to me, BOTH were needed - XEROX with the corporate PoC, and Apple then making it a commercial reality (Lisa to Mac to the Mac family, etc.). This is the point here about the web as well. If Gopher had evolved to look more like the web, it wouldn't have been the Gopher from 1990, but something else derived from Gopher. To me classic Gopher "lost" because Mosaic (at least beta.7 and forward) was better - I and other tech-heads could use Gopher, but anyone (my wife and my children in my own case) could use Mosaic. I switched, along with everyone else; but Gopher had its in this story, as PARC did in the GUI PC story.
Apple eventually beat Xerox in this space in my opinion because they commercialized an advanced workstation concept at a mass-market level (i.e., taking the view of a "PC" vendor versus a "scientific workstation" or "office automation" vendor). I think we can all agree with that as a fact of history; but the foundation for the GUI-based PC and all the things that made it work link back decades. In short, this was not just based on the work and insights of one or two key people. Those people that were key to Apple's success - Jobs, Rankin, the Macintosh Development team, etc. - deserve the credit they have been given. Just don't tell me they weren't also standing on the shoulders of others.
All this needs to be put into proper context: - My current corporate laptop will be replaced with one that must last 4 years. - Windows XP Pro gets to be maintained until 2011 (at least for business customers). - If MS releases "Windows 7" by 2010, and my next laptop (shipped this year)
starts out with an XP image, what possible incentive does my company have to
upgrade it during its expected life-cycle?
I say all this because this is *exactly* what happened the last time; I needed XP, but my laptop (originally released with Win2000) was not upgraded. Instead, only when I was shipped a new laptop was I permitted to run a standard image based on Win XP. Of course, I could have built my own image, but that just won't work for 99% of the "Almost One Billion" PC users out there. And as with most companies, I don't get install disks to the components of the image.
So to all the Vista fanboys out there - can you give my company a good reason to _upgrade_ existing XP machines from the original OS image to a Vista one? If there isn't one, then Vista will be a gradual adoption over three to four years - driven by the hardware life-cycle, by which time Win 7 will be out and the process can start all over again. Since I have servers from the turn of the millennium still running (Win NT 4 Server => Win2000 Server => Win Server 2003 => RHEL v4!!) I would say an OS "upgrade strategy" makes more sense for server boxes than business workstations. Of course, the volumes (thus $$$) are at the desktop.
To me all this puts a kink in the MS typical upgrade cycle of: New HW / New OS / New Office bundle => drives demand for the rest that don't have the latest stack. We are still using Office XP (2002); same logic applies to why we didn't upgrade to Office 2003 (no value in running two different office versions, especially since we still had Office 2000 users). Thus to me the real question is what happens to Office 2007 upgrades? Vista is only have the story.
But I also have a personal recollection. When in University, I was an engineering student at a major US "ivy league" school. Naturally we had people from industry who would visit on occasion and discuss the ways in which engineering were used in businesses (so as to appear attractive to as as potential career choices for employment). One such presentation was in 1974 or 1975 on Pringles from a guy from Procter & Gamble (don't think it was the inventor, but someone related to the product).
What was interesting was his perspective on the "why" of Pringles. The key points as I remember them are:
- Pringles could be made from "dehydrated cooked potatoes" as the Wiki article mentions. Given that dehydrated potatoes were a _big thing_ in the US in the '60s, there would be an advantage to P&G to do this. (This was the case at least where I lived - part of the whole "prepared foods" marketing effort to get us Boomer children to eat things developed for feeding troops in WWII in many cases / in other words, surplus production capacity - but this my opinion, not what was discussed).
- Pringles needed a differentiator, given this somewhat artifical origin; I expect P&G would understand that Frito-Lays would be able to attack their new product as "unnatural" in some way otherwise (the 70's were a time of some backlash against big business food production, due to communes, big-business backlash, and the early "whole foods" movement - aqain my opinion). The answer was the Pringles can, which would permit production of a uniform size chip and would protect them from breakage, while being much more compact to ship, store, and position on shelves (all quite valuable to both P&G and their customers).
My point here was that Procter & Gamble needed to be able to come up with some "new" angle on the potato chip to gain traction in a competitive marketplace for a new product offering. By combining manufacturing (using pre-processed dehydrated potatoes, so no "green edges", no losses of raw materials due to spoilage, and the ability to buy source material from multiple suppliers as well as share production with manufacturing for dehydrated mashed potatoes / a larger product line at that time) with packaging (uniform chip size in a hardened container, at least as compared with chip bags from Lays and Wise, the main competitors in my area) P&G could offer a chip that maintained its shape and volume in the packaging, while being more resistent to attack by vermin as well as more compact to ship (I still wonder what the cost advantage is to ship an equivalent weight in Pringles compared with regular chips) as well as display. Notice how much less space Pringles take up in a grocery store, compared with Lays (even if there are now many more choices than the "original" flavor and can size)?
This must have been a very successful strategy for P&G, given both the longevity and the continued market presence of Pringles. I bought a can on the airline flight I took home just this past Thursday - the short cans are great for tight spaces where long shelf-life would be valued, such as in airplane food carts or hotel minibars (often see only Pringles on both).
All in all, it was a good lesson to a young engineering student - of both the good and bad aspects of business uses of science and engineering. Since many of the accidential "discoveries" or "products" come from similar confluences of science/engineering/manufacturing/marketing (can you say "Viagra"?), I thought this would be a useful addition to this thread.
For all the ranting about the Firefly movie being a "bomb", I was happy with both show endings. Farscape and Firefly were "post-Star Wars" / "post-Star Trek" sci-fi, with good casting, reasonable story arcs, and somewhat original 'verse settings. While I could see additional extentions, they were both good endings in my book.
Restarting "Futurama" seems like a much easier time, however. Much of the magic to both live shows were the casts; the longer they remain apart, the less the energy of the original show would remain. Here's where I offer Star Trek movies I to VI as evidence; "ST-IV / Save the Whales" was the last one with any real energy and style for me, before the TNG cast took over. And they are having the same problem at this point.
Finally, I find I watch the "Futurama" reruns on the Comedy Channel more than the "Simpsons"; the humor seems gentler, less harsh somehow. So adding more shows to the pile is a "good thing" for me, if the group that put the first shows together are still able to recapture the "team spirit" that made me want to watch in the first place.
Those pictures look more like "Mighty Joe Young" to me. Also makes me feel better about that movie as being more likely than "King Kong" (at least both original versions). I always liked "Joe" better, myself.
Kong was always impossibly large; and he would have to be in order to fight his "rubber suit" counterpart in the later "Godzilla vs. King Kong", but that didn't make him real to me. OTOH, Mighty Joe Young seems more like an actual possibility - given the existence of larger versions of many animals as recently as 10,000 BC. (Think larger bison, tigers, etc.) Could one be found deep in some jungle somewhere that coexisted with humans? Not today, perhaps, given the reduced habitat - but ~60,000 years ago, when humans first migrated to Asia... Yes, it does makes me wonder.
And of course, as someone else implied in an earlier post, finding one in today's jungle would be about as likely as finding a "Bigfoot" skeleton; so both would appear to be just mythic expressions of some primordial fear of predators larger than ourselves. Kong at least is so big that something larger than standard rifles were needed to take him down from the Empire State Building. Even so, a 10 ft. giant ape still makes more sense to me as a myth than a 100 ft. one.
Anyone else think that remaking "King Kong" **yet again** seems as necessary as a remake of "Attack of the 50 ft. Woman" would be? Still, given that we've been treated to Godzilla in modern NYC, and Hollywood is is full "retread" mode, so this movie may have been unavoidable. At least it's not yet another old TV show on the big screen.
Well, this does remind me of Novell versus NT 4 Server. I wonder what "Microsoft is 1st" really means.
As a two-time Palm buyer, I certainly agree with many of the comments on the thread about Palm not working hard enough to keep up. But the last time I owned a product that MS targeted (RealPlayer Plus - still have my version 4.0 CD), the vendor retailated by trying to milk me as a loyal user - charging an annual fee in order to get continual access to their "new improved" product releases, as they attempted to fend off MS' attack. So of course I switched, not to MS Media Player, but WinAmp and MusicMatch. Yes, I have multiple players now, but I won't be abused by any vendor - Ms or whomever.
For the Palms, I use observation here. I think there are 4 markets now: (1) PDA Classic, (2) PDA-Phone, (3) PDA-Email, and (4) PDA-Wireless. Palm seems to be moving from type 1 to type 2, while RIM is focused on Type 3, and WINCE on type 4. I think for many of us, our expectation was for PALM to do #1, and #3/#4 (both email and real 802.11x wireless). Type 2 is really where Handspring went, and their acquisition meant Palm became mainly #1 and #2. So the real question is can one vendor do all types?
Why this is important is again based on observation. I use a Zire 71 as a type #1; and I carry a cell phone. I bought the Zire knowing it would likely be the last type #1 I would buy, but I am happy with it. I also have a significant ($100+) investment in 3rd party programs and a 128MB SD card. I figured this would all last a while (3 years / 2003-2006). My cell on the other hand is quite **flakey**, and is only 3 years old. Seems to me its problems are due to some cell phone lifecyle expectation of only 24 to 36 months of life. If this is also the PALM expectation, then I can see part of the problem. A PDA is a platform just like any other; I don't want my investment abandoned. Those calling for less backward compatibility are fine with me, but if I have to abandon everything I have, why stay with PALM? Less investment might have meant I would have gone WINCE last time.
Back to the types, and Palm's market share. ISSUE 1: Type 4 - wireless - is really important to the commercial market, where WinCE to Windows development similarity becomes important. How many of the Symbol and other industrial Wireless handhelds are now WINCE based? PalmSource was supposed to have addressed this, but they are focused on the phones.
ISSUE 2: RIM has really taken off for Type 3 (PDA-Email). Even though my company (Global IT Services) has no "official" PDA policy, so many of the managers now own RIMs that it is becoming impossible not to be a delivery or sales manager w/o one (I am neither, and don't want more than the cell phone as a leash for now). Many of these folks used to carry PALMs, but being able to get to email (and for folks to get to them) has become indespensible. Many of the RIMS are also Phones, but most still carry cell phones and the RIMs. We just need to add instant messaging to the RIMS for two-way conversations, and I think it will have a lock.
ISSUE 3: Lots of competition for Type 2. While Palm has a good entry in the Trio series, this is a much tougher market - competing with SONY-Erikson, Moto, Nokia, et. al. More competition = fewer overall sales, lower margins, and more frequent (and costly) product cycles.
ISSUE 4: New competition in the original Type 1 space. I was surprised to see that the iPod has calendaring and address capability. I suppose I shouldn't be; what I am saying is it is not enough for PALM to just sell Type 1's that are just PDA's any longer. This market seems to be in the process of morphing into stand-alone devices that replicate mainly for other purposes - like music and pictures. Too bad PALM didn't recognize this earlier / where is the ZIRE with the 4 GB hard drive?? Would make music and making movies to disk much easier.
To me it is the additional competition and the evolution of the market that is killing PALM
Both HP and whatever Unix group remains at Compaq (the remenants of the DEC Alpha team) will continue to sell RISC for at least 2 more years (and probably longer). The Roadmap on the "new HP" site showed continued use of the PA-RISC as well as EV7 and EV79 for the Alphas, so this is roughly through 2004. I would bet that until the Itanium Family CPU's significantly exceed either RISC CPU family in terms of price/performance, we will still see the older CPUs continue.
The earlier poster made the mistake of confusing NT itself with applications on NT. NT itself was a native compile for the Alpha (as it had been earlier for PowerPC until that CPU also was deemed to be unusable/unsellable for NT). Of course, this created a problem, because almost nobody created native Alpha binary versions of their applications. So DEC had a OS "smart" emulator that worked as was described (e.g., more you used it the better the speed). But this emulator was used for i86 binaries running on Alpha, not for native code.
One of the avantages of NT Alpha was it was a cheaper box than Unix Alpha (or at least it was when I still worked for DEC). Still, it was always more expensive than the comparable x86 32-bit boxes. Still, if Microsoft had produced NT 5 in 1998 as planned in both 32- and 64-bit versions, then the Alpha would have been the only platform besides IA-64 that would have been available, but 4 years later this is all just old news (and getting more useless every day, except for the "learn by example" of what not to do if you want your Tech company to continue living).
Regarding the suit between DEC and Intel, my money was on Intel having "borrowed" IP from the Alpha team, especially the wetware they hired away from DEC to learn how to build high-speed silicon. At any rate, I don't believe Intel paid for the suit, but for the Alpha FAB in Hudson Ma., which would still have been worth some $$$ prior DEC to getting sold to Compaq. This freed DEC of some debt, as well as having the cloud of the underlying lawsuit eliminated prior to the buyout.
Given "The Register" comments a few weeks back about even 2nd Gen IPF CPU's merely being almost equal to current RISC CPU's because the complier engineers are still trying to figure out how to build EPIC-savvy compilers, I'd say we still have a ways to go before we see the IPF CPU's killing off the other CPUs. Remember, Compaq declared Alpha "Dead" just before the HP merger announcement, just like DEC sold off the Alpha FAB just before the Compaq merger announcement. Lots of this just seems to be business, not technical.
Intel has the megabucks needed to continue building FABs; neither HP or Compaq do, and certainly not now after the merger. Both went
"fabless" just like SUN, and for the same reason. This ties them to the IA-64 EPIC architecture in a "bet-the-company" fashion, so it is also no surprise that Compaq sent some of its best Alpha Compiler people over to Intel as part of the Alpha death announcment; Intel needs good 64-bit Compiler designers, and the Alpha team was some of the best around.
And for all those reading this and thinking - "Why should I care about the Alpha?" just remember. Alpha CPUs used to win benchmarks by wide margins once upon a time, especially floating point ones. And this was at a time when all the other CPUs were still 32-bit (1993-1994 - except MIPS), so they had an advantage over Alpha - no extra overhead from doing everything in 64-bit mode. So the Alpha's won even though they were "handicapped" by the 64-bit overhead, at least until DEC sold the fab, and Compaq took over. Just go back and look up the benchmark results - Alphas stayed at the top or at least competitive until their speed stopped rising, because of lack of investment.
So all you SUN lovers out there - keep your eye on the "Solaris on IA-64" story; if HP/Q get the IPF CPUs competitive (with appropriate compilers of course), they will have a significant price advantage over SPARC. IBM of course owns its own fabs, and had "built-in" market share for the z-Series (Mainframe) and i-Series (AS/400) boxen, so it can still make high-end RISC CPUs. I just wonder how SUN will be able to continue with SPARC past this next generation coming.
SO this then is the "real issue". There will be a niche market for some 4-8 years for HDTV owners that want to either tape or play true HDTV video. Recognizing this opportunity, some manufacturer has turned to the only medium available today for this - tape (in terms of data density as well as commercial infrastructure).
For those that doubt there *will* be buyers, remember that many questioned the logic decades ago of having a satellite station in your back yard if you lived in an area served by cable. What happened was the large dish market (at least until recently).
Even the original VHS market was doubted, because of some unimaginative thinking on the part of video tape machine makers (similar to Ken Olsen's famous "who wants to have a computer in his home?" gaff).
So don't laugh about this just yet - it's still hard to understand that VHS machines now selling for $79.95 once cost $1400+ in the early days. (And for those that want to use this box for data backup, please consider that the "8-track"-style DLT worked out much better than the cassette-style DAT IMHO. I wouldn't use a DAT unless there were no other choice.)
Any desktop environment that old that is also still useful should serve as a positive object lesson (and/or a source of decent ideas). I bought my kids Magnavox/Philips PC's in the early 1990s, and these machines came bundled with GeoWorks Ensemble (DOS based machines, I think / this was all ). As I recall my son liked the Ensemble desktop quite a bit.
I'm mentioning this in the context of the whole KDE/Gnome process (and please don't flame me about GEOS being commercial software - so were most UNIX variants until *recently*). My parents bought a PC last year, and the WIN9x interface is a great source of mystery for them. So any interface that can be used for 10 years or so might be worth another look.
Slashdot Mirror
The original 64KB 5150 motherboard (4 banks of 16KB each) supported 512KB AST and other 3rd-party option cards, but carried ROMs that had a total system limit less than 640KB. The second gen motherboard supported 4x 64KB, of 256 KB on the motherboard, and 640KB of main memory overall. My recollection is of some number like 512KB + 32KB, for a total of 544KB, but it could have been 512KB+64KB, or 576KB; STILL not 640KB. I remember this because I once had to replace ROMs from gen 1 motherboards so I could get some machines up to the full 640KB memory available.
What I remember more, however, was how fast IBM's original expectations for the PC were surpassed by people using its relatively open architecture to do far more with it than IBM had planned (or anticipated). In 1980-81, few at IBM (or anywhere apparently) could conceive why one would want a PC with more than 128KB (64+64). By being open to change, the PC went quickly from that early 8-bit kind of view to one that would lead to a revolution in business and home computing. You can say what you want about PCs and Windows, but this is being typed on a garden variety home built PC vastly more powerful in every way that that distant ancestor. It has also had RAM, storage, and P/S upgraded over its lifetime (5 1/2 years thus far). Still useful, and more importantly, still usable with new OS versions (started on XP, moved to Win 7 when stable); and while I like having long HW and SW lifecycles, the point is I am not stuck with it as it was - like I am with my DVR (which is just a specialized Linux appliance really).
Thus I do wonder what the last 30+ years would have been like if the "Apple appliance computing" model had been adopted by IBM in 1980-85 instead of the more open one used for the PC / XT / AT? Even though it came out in 1984, the first gen Mac was ridiculous - a completely closed Moto 68K-based mini-workstation with an "8-bit machine" memory limit. It **could** have been built with a removable bottom plate and enough memory sockets for 4x 64KB - but only 1/2 populated (an expansion capability similar to what is now available for its distant descendant, the Mac Mini). But it wasn't - you had to physically upgrade your 1st gen MAc to get decent memory: to 512KB, aka the "Fat Mac", and then upgrade again to get a hard drive in the Mac Plus. Or you had to resort to strategies that would void your warranty (e.g., the hardware equivalent of a "jailbreak"). This Jobsian approach to evolution - via sales of more hardware - should sound familiar to Apple fanbois everywhere at this point (and why I opted not to buy this year's version of the iPad Mini, but wait for - GASP - the one with the proper CPU, camera, RAM, and screen).
Ancient history? Not really. At least two current trends (1) "wirecutters' and (2) cloud computing are going to see this "open architecture versus closed appliance/service" competition played out yet again. (A third may be iOS versus Android smartphones.) Overall I am still optimistic that on balance openness will lead to innovation that will be beneficial and also not necessarily anticipated by those who want everything tightly controlled for their own profit. This doesn't mean however that appliance advocates won't put up a good fight.
For me it is all quite simple.
- SG1 is like ST-TNG / but "Doorway to the stars" instead of "Wagon train to the stars". Biggest issue is they were supposed to have done the Stargate concept because ships were costly; this was cheaper (at least initially).
- SG Atlantis is like DS9 / "Gunsmoke to the stars". Both involved setting up in a remote alien environment with new enemies and new friends, and using that as a base for exploration.
- SGU is like ST-Voyager / alone and far, far away from home, under constant threat.
Unfortunately, SGU (a) doesn't seem to have any ability to get the cast members home, and (b) the ship is heading away from earth. I also think they should have brought the Lucian Alliance in much earlier / maybe by show 8 or 10 in year 1. Remember - Captain Janeway and Chakotay basically buried the hatchet by the end of the the 2 hour pilot; we are in season 2, and Colonel Young still has his counterpart locked up under guard.
I do agree, however, that it was worth a shot. BSG was just a great show, and much better than I ever expected when I heard the news originally that it was going to be redone. Just as Star Trek didn't want to just keep doing the same show over and over, StarGate needed to do something different. My problem with the show was it was so sparse; almost all desolate planets, or deadly jungle planets. How many times did they find even ruins?
Secondly, they have killed too many possibly good characters. What the hell happened to the leader of the Lucian Alliance? She was introduced as a major character, and was gone in two shows. Then there is the quadriplegic scientist from Earth who just died, and the guy Colonel Young had to kill with his bare hands.
SiFy - have a talk with the BBC folks doing Dr. Who. The last 5 years have been wonderful (mostly), and quite "modern" compared to "Dr. Who - TOS" (Doctors 1 to 7 in my book). IF they can extend the life of a show originally broadcast in the early 1960s yet again, you folks ought to be able to get something else going (just no submarine shows please).
"Eth needs more b!"
The basic concept - send out a starship on a very long voyage of discovery with a "transmat" / "teleporter" / "stargate" on it so you can beam in and out - I vaguely remembered when I watched the pilot. That concept is the basis for the book "The Enemy Stars", by Poul Anderson (copyright 1958), and the ship's name in the book was the "Southern Cross". (My fragile paperback copy says it cost $0.50US back in 1968 or so.) Would have been a nice tribute if this ship had been given the same name (since it originated on Earth, the Southern Cross constellation would have been visible to the ancients that launched it). Don't know about the intellectual property situation, however.
Yes, there are elements of BSG, SG-Atlantis, ST-Voyager (except this ship is heading outbound), and even ST-DS9 (since this is an alien ship that is somewhat trashed / remember the first episode of DS9?). At least this time the Colonel didn't die like he did in SG Atlantis 1-1, and leave the mission to the "young hotshot". Also, you know the rules of pilots - the B-list actor with a recognizable face gets the ax, right? Finally, the Senator would have been S-O-L once his pills ran out, so I think he made the smart move in saving his daughter's life.
The cast has promise, they appear to be reusing lots of SG1 concepts effectively, and it is at least newish (if you can ignore that ST-TNG episode when the "Traveler" took them to the edge of reality / the first "Wesley is **really** special episode). Hey, being 7 BILLION lightyears from Earth is a bit farther away than the Pegasus galaxy.
What else can I say? I liked what the SG Production Team did with Atlantis (died two years early in my opinion), and how the DVD movies wrapped up both the Ori and Baal story lines for SG1. It's not yet another teen vampire show, and I like the Eli character (again, his role shows their humor, using a game to find him - like "Last StarFighter" - then beaming him out of his own house to grab him).
So SGU production team - please steal as much as you can from "classic" SciFi; we will all be thankful.
Other random comments:
- B5 was great, mainly because of the people. What other US SciFi show lets people have drinks, sit around in their rooms, cry like they mean it, and try to live real lives? DS9 did a lot of the same things, but B5 still seems more likable (and I liked DS9; but I own B5). Still, as much as I liked B5, I can't see it continuing without G'Kar; it just wouldn't be the same.
- Sliders / more stealing from my favorite books; this time from Keith Laumer's "Imperium" stories (except his device was the size of a 1950's phone booth or bigger, not a handheld remote control).
- Everyone steals, so why not SGU? / remember the ST-Enterprise episode with the derelict timeship that was "bigger on the inside than the outside"? (Someone should have just said: Q. "What model is it? A. Type 40!")
- Dollhouse / I hate to say it, but as much as I enjoy the hell out of it, I just know Fox is going to kill it as soon as they can. Why can't they sell this kind of show to NewsCorp / SkyNET (perhaps they do, but it may not be enough). While it is still a fairly original show (relatively / not about space, time travel, or robots), it is likely too expensive for its own good (**cough** Farscape **cough**).
- Someone find Claudia Black and Ben Browder some new work. I suggest Robert Heinlein's "The Glory Road". Read it and see what I mean.
= = = = = = = = = = ...
dave | i-can-feel-my-mind-going
in 1981 I joined a company that had "thicknet" running down the halls of the "experimental" zone in the IT building. We had at least 2 XEROX "Portrait Display" GUI workstations and a file server with an attached laser printer (all of which appeared to be used mainly to create decks of nicely formatted presentation foils; main value of this system IMHO).
I didn't see a Lisa on that site for at least a year, and my understanding of what happened then - at least as a customer - was the Lisa was a $10K version of what Xerox wanted us to pay $18K for per seat. Ironically, that company (and most others at that time in the Fortune 50) went instead with IBM PC's and XT's (which at up to $6K per seat fully configured were cheaper than either option, if obviously inferior in capability at that point in time).
I write this because one aspect of this thread has been to discuss multiple sources of things that came later. Are individuals the key, or are some outcomes inevitable? Raskin is claimed in the preceding entry to be the single source of both the Apple and PARC GUI evolution (.i.e., the "key individual"); but clearly both were interconnected, and PARC - at least to me - had a quasi-commercial product on the market before Apple. Just as the Macintosh was evolved from the Lisa, I would say the "big picture" view - networked Macintoshes connected to a shared postscript printer with file services - was being offered to the market by PARC prior to Apple's commercial delivery of it - my direct experience.
Perhaps Apple could have come up with all the same concepts w/o PARC getting there first from a production standpoint . But to me, BOTH were needed - XEROX with the corporate PoC, and Apple then making it a commercial reality (Lisa to Mac to the Mac family, etc.). This is the point here about the web as well. If Gopher had evolved to look more like the web, it wouldn't have been the Gopher from 1990, but something else derived from Gopher. To me classic Gopher "lost" because Mosaic (at least beta .7 and forward) was better - I and other tech-heads could use Gopher, but anyone (my wife and my children in my own case) could use Mosaic. I switched, along with everyone else; but Gopher had its in this story, as PARC did in the GUI PC story.
Apple eventually beat Xerox in this space in my opinion because they commercialized an advanced workstation concept at a mass-market level (i.e., taking the view of a "PC" vendor versus a "scientific workstation" or "office automation" vendor). I think we can all agree with that as a fact of history; but the foundation for the GUI-based PC and all the things that made it work link back decades. In short, this was not just based on the work and insights of one or two key people. Those people that were key to Apple's success - Jobs, Rankin, the Macintosh Development team, etc. - deserve the credit they have been given. Just don't tell me they weren't also standing on the shoulders of others.
All this needs to be put into proper context:
...
- My current corporate laptop will be replaced with one that must last 4 years.
- Windows XP Pro gets to be maintained until 2011 (at least for business customers).
- If MS releases "Windows 7" by 2010, and my next laptop (shipped this year)
starts out with an XP image, what possible incentive does my company have to
upgrade it during its expected life-cycle?
I say all this because this is *exactly* what happened the last time; I needed XP, but my laptop (originally released with Win2000) was not upgraded. Instead, only when I was shipped a new laptop was I permitted to run a standard image based on Win XP. Of course, I could have built my own image, but that just won't work for 99% of the "Almost One Billion" PC users out there. And as with most companies, I don't get install disks to the components of the image.
So to all the Vista fanboys out there - can you give my company a good reason to _upgrade_ existing XP machines from the original OS image to a Vista one? If there isn't one, then Vista will be a gradual adoption over three to four years - driven by the hardware life-cycle, by which time Win 7 will be out and the process can start all over again. Since I have servers from the turn of the millennium still running (Win NT 4 Server => Win2000 Server => Win Server 2003 => RHEL v4!!) I would say an OS "upgrade strategy" makes more sense for server boxes than business workstations. Of course, the volumes (thus $$$) are at the desktop.
To me all this puts a kink in the MS typical upgrade cycle of: New HW / New OS / New Office bundle => drives demand for the rest that don't have the latest stack. We are still using Office XP (2002); same logic applies to why we didn't upgrade to Office 2003 (no value in running two different office versions, especially since we still had Office 2000 users). Thus to me the real question is what happens to Office 2007 upgrades? Vista is only have the story.
Of course, your mileage may vary
Old_Fortran
For the general reference, see this Wiki article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pringles
But I also have a personal recollection. When in University, I was an engineering student at a major US "ivy league" school. Naturally we had people from industry who would visit on occasion and discuss the ways in which engineering were used in businesses (so as to appear attractive to as as potential career choices for employment). One such presentation was in 1974 or 1975 on Pringles from a guy from Procter & Gamble (don't think it was the inventor, but someone related to the product).
What was interesting was his perspective on the "why" of Pringles. The key points as I remember them are:
- Pringles could be made from "dehydrated cooked potatoes" as the Wiki article mentions. Given that dehydrated potatoes were a _big thing_ in the US in the '60s, there would be an advantage to P&G to do this. (This was the case at least where I lived - part of the whole "prepared foods" marketing effort to get us Boomer children to eat things developed for feeding troops in WWII in many cases / in other words, surplus production capacity - but this my opinion, not what was discussed).
- Pringles needed a differentiator, given this somewhat artifical origin; I expect P&G would understand that Frito-Lays would be able to attack their new product as "unnatural" in some way otherwise (the 70's were a time of some backlash against big business food production, due to communes, big-business backlash, and the early "whole foods" movement - aqain my opinion). The answer was the Pringles can, which would permit production of a uniform size chip and would protect them from breakage, while being much more compact to ship, store, and position on shelves (all quite valuable to both P&G and their customers).
My point here was that Procter & Gamble needed to be able to come up with some "new" angle on the potato chip to gain traction in a competitive marketplace for a new product offering. By combining manufacturing (using pre-processed dehydrated potatoes, so no "green edges", no losses of raw materials due to spoilage, and the ability to buy source material from multiple suppliers as well as share production with manufacturing for dehydrated mashed potatoes / a larger product line at that time) with packaging (uniform chip size in a hardened container, at least as compared with chip bags from Lays and Wise, the main competitors in my area) P&G could offer a chip that maintained its shape and volume in the packaging, while being more resistent to attack by vermin as well as more compact to ship (I still wonder what the cost advantage is to ship an equivalent weight in Pringles compared with regular chips) as well as display. Notice how much less space Pringles take up in a grocery store, compared with Lays (even if there are now many more choices than the "original" flavor and can size)?
This must have been a very successful strategy for P&G, given both the longevity and the continued market presence of Pringles. I bought a can on the airline flight I took home just this past Thursday - the short cans are great for tight spaces where long shelf-life would be valued, such as in airplane food carts or hotel minibars (often see only Pringles on both).
All in all, it was a good lesson to a young engineering student - of both the good and bad aspects of business uses of science and engineering. Since many of the accidential "discoveries" or "products" come from similar confluences of science/engineering/manufacturing/marketing (can you say "Viagra"?), I thought this would be a useful addition to this thread.
Y.A.A.C.
For all the ranting about the Firefly movie being a "bomb", I was happy with both show endings. Farscape and Firefly were "post-Star Wars" / "post-Star Trek" sci-fi, with good casting, reasonable story arcs, and somewhat original 'verse settings. While I could see additional extentions, they were both good endings in my book.
Restarting "Futurama" seems like a much easier time, however. Much of the magic to both live shows were the casts; the longer they remain apart, the less the energy of the original show would remain. Here's where I offer Star Trek movies I to VI as evidence; "ST-IV / Save the Whales" was the last one with any real energy and style for me, before the TNG cast took over. And they are having the same problem at this point.
Finally, I find I watch the "Futurama" reruns on the Comedy Channel more than the "Simpsons"; the humor seems gentler, less harsh somehow. So adding more shows to the pile is a "good thing" for me, if the group that put the first shows together are still able to recapture the "team spirit" that made me want to watch in the first place.
old_fortran
Those pictures look more like "Mighty Joe Young" to me. Also makes me feel better about that movie as being more likely than "King Kong" (at least both original versions). I always liked "Joe" better, myself.
Kong was always impossibly large; and he would have to be in order to fight his "rubber suit" counterpart in the later "Godzilla vs. King Kong", but that didn't make him real to me. OTOH, Mighty Joe Young seems more like an actual possibility - given the existence of larger versions of many animals as recently as 10,000 BC. (Think larger bison, tigers, etc.) Could one be found deep in some jungle somewhere that coexisted with humans? Not today, perhaps, given the reduced habitat - but ~60,000 years ago, when humans first migrated to Asia... Yes, it does makes me wonder.
And of course, as someone else implied in an earlier post, finding one in today's jungle would be about as likely as finding a "Bigfoot" skeleton; so both would appear to be just mythic expressions of some primordial fear of predators larger than ourselves. Kong at least is so big that something larger than standard rifles were needed to take him down from the Empire State Building. Even so, a 10 ft. giant ape still makes more sense to me as a myth than a 100 ft. one.
Anyone else think that remaking "King Kong" **yet again** seems as necessary as a remake of "Attack of the 50 ft. Woman" would be? Still, given that we've been treated to Godzilla in modern NYC, and Hollywood is is full "retread" mode, so this movie may have been unavoidable. At least it's not yet another old TV show on the big screen.
"That's right - Bit my S.M.A.!"
Old_Fortran
Well, this does remind me of Novell versus NT 4 Server. I wonder what "Microsoft is 1st" really means.
As a two-time Palm buyer, I certainly agree with many of the comments on the thread about Palm not working hard enough to keep up. But the last time I owned a product that MS targeted (RealPlayer Plus - still have my version 4.0 CD), the vendor retailated by trying to milk me as a loyal user - charging an annual fee in order to get continual access to their "new improved" product releases, as they attempted to fend off MS' attack. So of course I switched, not to MS Media Player, but WinAmp and MusicMatch. Yes, I have multiple players now, but I won't be abused by any vendor - Ms or whomever.
For the Palms, I use observation here. I think there are 4 markets now: (1) PDA Classic, (2) PDA-Phone, (3) PDA-Email, and (4) PDA-Wireless. Palm seems to be moving from type 1 to type 2, while RIM is focused on Type 3, and WINCE on type 4. I think for many of us, our expectation was for PALM to do #1, and #3/#4 (both email and real 802.11x wireless). Type 2 is really where Handspring went, and their acquisition meant Palm became mainly #1 and #2. So the real question is can one vendor do all types?
Why this is important is again based on observation. I use a Zire 71 as a type #1; and I carry a cell phone. I bought the Zire knowing it would likely be the last type #1 I would buy, but I am happy with it. I also have a significant ($100+) investment in 3rd party programs and a 128MB SD card. I figured this would all last a while (3 years / 2003-2006). My cell on the other hand is quite **flakey**, and is only 3 years old. Seems to me its problems are due to some cell phone lifecyle expectation of only 24 to 36 months of life. If this is also the PALM expectation, then I can see part of the problem. A PDA is a platform just like any other; I don't want my investment abandoned. Those calling for less backward compatibility are fine with me, but if I have to abandon everything I have, why stay with PALM? Less investment might have meant I would have gone WINCE last time.
Back to the types, and Palm's market share. ISSUE 1: Type 4 - wireless - is really important to the commercial market, where WinCE to Windows development similarity becomes important. How many of the Symbol and other industrial Wireless handhelds are now WINCE based? PalmSource was supposed to have addressed this, but they are focused on the phones.
ISSUE 2: RIM has really taken off for Type 3 (PDA-Email). Even though my company (Global IT Services) has no "official" PDA policy, so many of the managers now own RIMs that it is becoming impossible not to be a delivery or sales manager w/o one (I am neither, and don't want more than the cell phone as a leash for now). Many of these folks used to carry PALMs, but being able to get to email (and for folks to get to them) has become indespensible. Many of the RIMS are also Phones, but most still carry cell phones and the RIMs. We just need to add instant messaging to the RIMS for two-way conversations, and I think it will have a lock.
ISSUE 3: Lots of competition for Type 2. While Palm has a good entry in the Trio series, this is a much tougher market - competing with SONY-Erikson, Moto, Nokia, et. al. More competition = fewer overall sales, lower margins, and more frequent (and costly) product cycles.
ISSUE 4: New competition in the original Type 1 space. I was surprised to see that the iPod has calendaring and address capability. I suppose I shouldn't be; what I am saying is it is not enough for PALM to just sell Type 1's that are just PDA's any longer. This market seems to be in the process of morphing into stand-alone devices that replicate mainly for other purposes - like music and pictures. Too bad PALM didn't recognize this earlier / where is the ZIRE with the 4 GB hard drive?? Would make music and making movies to disk much easier.
To me it is the additional competition and the evolution of the market that is killing PALM
What about "He that controls the Spice controls the Universe!"
-Usul-
The earlier poster made the mistake of confusing NT itself with applications on NT. NT itself was a native compile for the Alpha (as it had been earlier for PowerPC until that CPU also was deemed to be unusable/unsellable for NT). Of course, this created a problem, because almost nobody created native Alpha binary versions of their applications. So DEC had a OS "smart" emulator that worked as was described (e.g., more you used it the better the speed). But this emulator was used for i86 binaries running on Alpha, not for native code.
One of the avantages of NT Alpha was it was a cheaper box than Unix Alpha (or at least it was when I still worked for DEC). Still, it was always more expensive than the comparable x86 32-bit boxes. Still, if Microsoft had produced NT 5 in 1998 as planned in both 32- and 64-bit versions, then the Alpha would have been the only platform besides IA-64 that would have been available, but 4 years later this is all just old news (and getting more useless every day, except for the "learn by example" of what not to do if you want your Tech company to continue living).
Regarding the suit between DEC and Intel, my money was on Intel having "borrowed" IP from the Alpha team, especially the wetware they hired away from DEC to learn how to build high-speed silicon. At any rate, I don't believe Intel paid for the suit, but for the Alpha FAB in Hudson Ma., which would still have been worth some $$$ prior DEC to getting sold to Compaq. This freed DEC of some debt, as well as having the cloud of the underlying lawsuit eliminated prior to the buyout.
Given "The Register" comments a few weeks back about even 2nd Gen IPF CPU's merely being almost equal to current RISC CPU's because the complier engineers are still trying to figure out how to build EPIC-savvy compilers, I'd say we still have a ways to go before we see the IPF CPU's killing off the other CPUs. Remember, Compaq declared Alpha "Dead" just before the HP merger announcement, just like DEC sold off the Alpha FAB just before the Compaq merger announcement. Lots of this just seems to be business, not technical.
Intel has the megabucks needed to continue building FABs; neither HP or Compaq do, and certainly not now after the merger. Both went "fabless" just like SUN, and for the same reason. This ties them to the IA-64 EPIC architecture in a "bet-the-company" fashion, so it is also no surprise that Compaq sent some of its best Alpha Compiler people over to Intel as part of the Alpha death announcment; Intel needs good 64-bit Compiler designers, and the Alpha team was some of the best around.
And for all those reading this and thinking - "Why should I care about the Alpha?" just remember. Alpha CPUs used to win benchmarks by wide margins once upon a time, especially floating point ones. And this was at a time when all the other CPUs were still 32-bit (1993-1994 - except MIPS), so they had an advantage over Alpha - no extra overhead from doing everything in 64-bit mode. So the Alpha's won even though they were "handicapped" by the 64-bit overhead, at least until DEC sold the fab, and Compaq took over. Just go back and look up the benchmark results - Alphas stayed at the top or at least competitive until their speed stopped rising, because of lack of investment.
So all you SUN lovers out there - keep your eye on the "Solaris on IA-64" story; if HP/Q get the IPF CPUs competitive (with appropriate compilers of course), they will have a significant price advantage over SPARC. IBM of course owns its own fabs, and had "built-in" market share for the z-Series (Mainframe) and i-Series (AS/400) boxen, so it can still make high-end RISC CPUs. I just wonder how SUN will be able to continue with SPARC past this next generation coming.
Of course, your mileage may vary ...
**AC**
For those that doubt there *will* be buyers, remember that many questioned the logic decades ago of having a satellite station in your back yard if you lived in an area served by cable. What happened was the large dish market (at least until recently).
Even the original VHS market was doubted, because of some unimaginative thinking on the part of video tape machine makers (similar to Ken Olsen's famous "who wants to have a computer in his home?" gaff).
So don't laugh about this just yet - it's still hard to understand that VHS machines now selling for $79.95 once cost $1400+ in the early days. (And for those that want to use this box for data backup, please consider that the "8-track"-style DLT worked out much better than the cassette-style DAT IMHO. I wouldn't use a DAT unless there were no other choice.)
I'm mentioning this in the context of the whole KDE/Gnome process (and please don't flame me about GEOS being commercial software - so were most UNIX variants until *recently*). My parents bought a PC last year, and the WIN9x interface is a great source of mystery for them. So any interface that can be used for 10 years or so might be worth another look.