The "clever" marketing company was Atari with the 520ST - they wanted to make it sound better than the Amiga with 520K of memory (it had 512K like anything else, but it was 520 in marketing terms). The same reason they has the 1040ST.
Note that it was sometime after that point in time (don't have the exact year) that some hard drive manufacturers started to play the same games. (Only with megabytes). Back then it was common to look at a 30meg vs 32meg drive and pick the 32meg drive. So when a marketing person figured out that a "real" 40meg drive could be called 42meg "unformatted" and get away with it, well, they did. And the other manufacturers followed and, well, everything was different by the time 1990 happened... (or so, maybe 1991 for the last holdout)
It really does not matter much now - but when different manufacturers followed different rules, it was a real problem.
(ps - Jack was always pushing the marketing envelope - albeit I can not claim to know if he did come up with the 520-vs-512 idea himself, he did push it rather hard)
The only way that calculation remains correct is if monitors were still all CRTs. In an LCD setup the backlight is always on (and usually highly efficient) and the LCD "blocks" light. Thus, a black background just causes more light to be blocked and thus heating up the monitor more rather than letting the light out. (Again, with CFL or LED backlights this is relatively minor)
So, I would say that over the next few years that this will correct itself anyway.
If you are caught downloading copyrighted material, you will lose your ResNet privileges forever
So, I guess this is the next step in the fight against open source - make any download of copyrighted material illegal. Given the statement, a literal quote from TFA, there is little that one can do with respect to downloading.
Ok, that was supposed to be funny but now that I look at it, that statement really does seem to say something rather silly...
From today's perspective (and even 10 years ago) the Amiga has many limitations. But lets not forget that the Amiga started over 20 years ago! (Boy, I must be getting old...)
Multi-threaded programming was a core feature of the Amiga. The UI, Filesystem, core input management, sound, etc. All were managed via threads. This is what allowed some of the very smooth behaviors that so many still talk about today. (Albeit with some rose colored glasses)
Yes, multi-threaded programming is hard for those who learned with BASIC on C64/Apple-II and MS-DOS environments. But that does not mean it is (or was) fundamentally hard. It just takes a slightly different mindset and approach.
There are many times I had wished other platforms had good multi-threading. After leaving Commodore-Amiga, I actually built/designed something known as MMOS on top of which Scala technology then moved to. Multi-tasking/multi-threading makes some of the harder problems just so much easier to solve. (Especially in event-based or near-real-time systems)
I am generally amazed at how many people have difficulty with the multi-threading concept. I was amazed back then and even more so now. One time, I worked with a 3rd party ISV to help them with some software design of a game for the Amiga. They ended up really "getting" the treading concept, so much so that they had to write their own threading OS layer on top of DOS in order to port the game to MS-DOS. (A hockey game where each computer player AI ran in its own thread and the display thread did the coordination of behaviors - it was a great game for its time).
BTW - The entire AmigaOS software team could fit in a single van (and did a number of times when going out to events). (Ok, a large van, but still a van). Our whole team was less than 1/30th the size of the Apple OS team in the late 80's and an unimaginable amount less than the Microsoft Windows team. As far as slow/late software upgrades - the AmigaOS 2.0/2.04 software upgrade was a long time in coming as the target kept moving and we had this "99.99% compatible" requirement, even for software that was doing silly things like assuming certain values in undocumented OS data structures. Even so, the upgrade was only 16 months late relative to the initial target date, of which 6 months was trying to convince the marketing department that they should actually sell the upgrade. (They thought that the Amiga was not worth doing upgrades - users should buy new ones)
-- ex-Commodore-Amiga OS Systems Engineer (Exec/Expansion/680x0/Audio/Layers/Workbench/IEEE/ etc.)
Threads (multiple threads) can actually simplify the software rather than making it more complex. Or, rather, simplify writing the software.
Ok, so maybe I am an old hand at multi-threaded programming (over 20 years of doing this stuff) but it just makes sense for so many things. Past examples that the general public may have seen are things I wrote on the Amiga, machines with interrupts, Apache, etc. (Imaging writing a high-volume web server without multiple threads!)
There was a Hockey game on the Amiga that had each player on the ice having its own thread and own IA behavior. The code became so much easier than the traditional multiple interlocking state machines that such simulation games had to run that in order to port it to the PC they ended up writing their own multi-threading environment that ran on top of DOS.
Personally, I think that too many people are scared away from multi-threaded programming because of the "horror stories" and a few "old guard" that don't feel comfortable in such an environment. For me, many problems are so much easier in the multi-threaded solution space that I rarely think of non-multi-threading. (Well, co-routines are sometimes required when the platform does not support true multi-threading)
I have used S5 for my presentations for a while now, and mainly for two reasons:
I almost always have an internet connection (or network connection) and thus can get at any of the presentations I need. I also can let the viewers see the presentation any time they want - just need that browser...
The ability to have both the printed and presentation form in one simple text document is so nice. Editing, updating, version control, etc. is just so much easier. And with the document being usable by all users, I don't need the "Windows" or "Mac" (and, rarely, the "Linux") compatible presentation system - I just do it all in one place and it just works.
I think Google may have something here. For most presentations (those that don't look like a 1990's MTV spot) this stuff just works. I just hope that they do something similar.
All I want is that all of the hardware is documented and working with available Linux divers/support. If that means having them preload some Linux, that is fine by me. I really don't care much as to which one it is (as long as it is a reasonably standard kernel) as I will be reinstalling anyway.
Hey, look, most of us would say the same thing about Windows - the initial install is good for validating that the system works but let me install it correctly and without the cruft. We should be the same with Linux.
This is especially true of the Laptop hardware since that is one place where building your own is really a long way away from current best-of-breed laptops.
I agree - I have been with Sprint (both wireless and before that wired) for quite some time. Every time I think I may want to switch, I do some research and it comes out that Sprint is the best.
And with my Treo 650, I can run anything I can write (or others have written) for the Palm and there is no restriction or extra costs. Just the $10/month unlimited data plan (on top of the phone costs, which also are very competitive if not the best)
One "problem" Sprint has is that they don't give away the phones as much as other carriers. I paid $325 for my Treo back when I got it. From Verison I could have gotten the phone for $50 (AR). However, by now, I would have ended up paying much more and had more problems with some of their service. (They have a number of dead spots in this area, about twice to three times as many as Sprint)
The first digital computer systems did not solve anything "amazing" but the fact that they solved anything at all was the amazing bit.
Quantum computing is very new (in the physically exists sense) and the fact that they figured out how to build, program, and extract the solutions for some, albeit relatively simple, problems is a major step forward.
Once the understanding is complete enough and reliable enough then the really tough problems will be sure to follow.
Well, it may not be real but did any of you ever see the original Miracle on 34th Street? In that movie, there was a major plot point where the "Santa" gave out advice that sometimes told people to buy at another store. This was such a major positive PR move that it brought in more customers than it may have lost. This same concept is what seems to be going on here (or, more correctly, wishing was going on here).
Now, I am not saying that the Google thing is actually an issue but the point is that sometimes playing fair / even handed is actually a win in the long run.
Over all, however, I must say that Google does play rather fair - more so than many (most) other companies in the same space or even other businesses. This does not mean that they could not try harder, but it also does not mean that they should give themselves a disadvantage.
While this is unfortunate that there was such a bug, there is something to be learned here, beyond the fact that any software can have such flaws:
Homeland Security was able to do the code audit on X11.
Maybe that really should be written as, because the source code was publicly available, Homeland Security was able to do this. How many of these types of faults exist in closed source software that no outside group had the chance to dig into like with X11 or OpenBSD or...
For those of us old enough to remember, the Sony Walkman, a truly remarkable device at the time, helped bring these same style of reports at the time. Using the lightweight headphones and listening to loud music for too long was damaging the hearing of all of the Walkman owners.
It was interesting how all of this died down once the knockoffs of the Walkman started to actually work well enough to take some sales away from Sony.
Not that I am claiming that there is no hearing loss danger, but the media attention and uproar is strange since this is nothing new...
Actually, the law is from the late 1920's and was not invented by the tight grip of Mr. Giuliani.
Now, his administration did start enforcing the law again, along with pushing many nightclubs out of business, but that is different than actually inventing the law.
Footloose may be a movie but, would you believe that dancing is illegal in much of New York?
So, you want links - here is the main site that is trying to coordinate the fight to legalize dancing: http://www.legalizedancingnyc.com/
There was a great story on NPR some weeks ago (months) about this problem. Bar owners being fined a lot of money due to patrons "swaying and moving to background music"! (Warning, you need to listen to the story)
The amazing thing is the link to the Footloose movie - there are some people from that movie that are now working to address this law in New York. Some of them even claimed that when they first saw the script for the movie that they thought it was "too unbelievable" until they did the research.
My personal CD collection is a bit over 1200 CDs. (And some are multi-disc titles) Add in around 800 LPs plus some old collectors 78s and 45s and I get a ton of music to encode. I am almost done with my CD collection and I did a few LPs already but the LPs take a long time (there is no 10x RIP speed:-()
So, while I may not have a huge collection, I do have a reasonably large one and at high bit rates (192+ VBR) they tend to take up some room.
Plus, my iPod has a few essential data files on it (such as the code to manage the iPod written in Perl) and some pictures of the family.
Linux/GPL in a 52-inch HDTV by Panasonic
on
CNET's HDTV World
·
· Score: 1
Yesterday I just got a new Panasonic PT-52LCX65 - mainly because it had the best picture and size/features in that price range.
After playing with it some, I am annoyed at some of the UI behaviors but overall, it is a great TV.
This got me thinking: Maybe this TV can be hacked and new code installed into it. After all, it does have a nice SD slot - now all we need to do is find out if there is a back-door into the box for updates...
Anyway, nice to see that the true consumer industry (TVs are about as consumer as you can get) are making good use of OSS. I wonder if they would even be willing to help enable the hacking such that more/better UI features could be implemented by others...
Actually, you forget that Apple had an AppleUnix that ran on their Apple MacII machines. In fact, there were a number of high-end applications for it. (Not many, but some) It also had some of the better (for the time) user interface features for system admin.
I totally agree - and more than just not having useless features, but having a solid, reliable, quality product.
As many/. readers are "Linux" or "Unix" friendly, remember the KISS method - small, simple, solid, reliable tools.
The iPod is very solid. (Ok, I would like gap-less playback, but that is related to the core reason I have an iPod - to listen to music.)
Now, if only other manufacturers would get on the ball and make a quality product rather than a "checklist" product. It is the attention to detail and the single-minded focus on the task at hand that makes the iPod great.
"networking is too new to have good security" - BG
on
Bill Gates Speaks Out
·
· Score: 1
I wonder if he is blind or is talking only of the software that ran/runs
on MS-DOS/Windows...
Oh, hold on, Windows had networking since 3.11 (Windows for Workgroups)
and before that, Novell and others provided networking even on the DOS
platform.
And what about the VMS (DEC) and VMS (IBM) and Unix (various/ATT) systems -
all of which were "networked" from basically day one (well, maybe not the
first versions of Unix, but my the mid/late 1970s Unix was too)
So, who was not connected/networked when? 3.11 is over 15 years old.
Hell, Win95 is over 10 years old now and it had lots of networking as
standard features.
Given that Win95 and WinNT are the first Win32 platforms and WinNT was
specifically designed for networking (to kill the NetWare market), it would
be safe to say that the Win32 API platform has *always* had networking as
part of its core feature set - thus, well, it really should not be a
new thing for any 32-bit Windows application.
While the fact that RSS and other headlines show up in the GDS, the full story is still a browser-click away. This means that in a way, this promotes more efficient use of the browser. That is, no more looking at the Slashdot main page, just the one or two stories a day that sound interesting and are not repeats.
Now, if the GDS worked on a desktop that I used rather than the one I dispise, it would be that much better.
Slashdot Mirror
And all this time I thought "M" was for Murder...
The "clever" marketing company was Atari with the 520ST - they wanted to make it sound better than the Amiga with 520K of memory (it had 512K like anything else, but it was 520 in marketing terms). The same reason they has the 1040ST.
Note that it was sometime after that point in time (don't have the exact year) that some hard drive manufacturers started to play the same games. (Only with megabytes). Back then it was common to look at a 30meg vs 32meg drive and pick the 32meg drive. So when a marketing person figured out that a "real" 40meg drive could be called 42meg "unformatted" and get away with it, well, they did. And the other manufacturers followed and, well, everything was different by the time 1990 happened... (or so, maybe 1991 for the last holdout)
It really does not matter much now - but when different manufacturers followed different rules, it was a real problem.
(ps - Jack was always pushing the marketing envelope - albeit I can not claim to know if he did come up with the 520-vs-512 idea himself, he did push it rather hard)
The only way that calculation remains correct is if monitors were still all CRTs. In an LCD setup the backlight is always on (and usually highly efficient) and the LCD "blocks" light. Thus, a black background just causes more light to be blocked and thus heating up the monitor more rather than letting the light out. (Again, with CFL or LED backlights this is relatively minor)
So, I would say that over the next few years that this will correct itself anyway.
So, I guess this is the next step in the fight against open source - make any download of copyrighted material illegal. Given the statement, a literal quote from TFA, there is little that one can do with respect to downloading.
Ok, that was supposed to be funny but now that I look at it, that statement really does seem to say something rather silly...
From today's perspective (and even 10 years ago) the Amiga has many limitations. But lets not forget that the Amiga started over 20 years ago! (Boy, I must be getting old...)
Multi-threaded programming was a core feature of the Amiga. The UI, Filesystem, core input management, sound, etc. All were managed via threads. This is what allowed some of the very smooth behaviors that so many still talk about today. (Albeit with some rose colored glasses)
Yes, multi-threaded programming is hard for those who learned with BASIC on C64/Apple-II and MS-DOS environments. But that does not mean it is (or was) fundamentally hard. It just takes a slightly different mindset and approach.
There are many times I had wished other platforms had good multi-threading. After leaving Commodore-Amiga, I actually built/designed something known as MMOS on top of which Scala technology then moved to. Multi-tasking/multi-threading makes some of the harder problems just so much easier to solve. (Especially in event-based or near-real-time systems)
I am generally amazed at how many people have difficulty with the multi-threading concept. I was amazed back then and even more so now. One time, I worked with a 3rd party ISV to help them with some software design of a game for the Amiga. They ended up really "getting" the treading concept, so much so that they had to write their own threading OS layer on top of DOS in order to port the game to MS-DOS. (A hockey game where each computer player AI ran in its own thread and the display thread did the coordination of behaviors - it was a great game for its time).
BTW - The entire AmigaOS software team could fit in a single van (and did a number of times when going out to events). (Ok, a large van, but still a van). Our whole team was less than 1/30th the size of the Apple OS team in the late 80's and an unimaginable amount less than the Microsoft Windows team. As far as slow/late software upgrades - the AmigaOS 2.0/2.04 software upgrade was a long time in coming as the target kept moving and we had this "99.99% compatible" requirement, even for software that was doing silly things like assuming certain values in undocumented OS data structures. Even so, the upgrade was only 16 months late relative to the initial target date, of which 6 months was trying to convince the marketing department that they should actually sell the upgrade. (They thought that the Amiga was not worth doing upgrades - users should buy new ones)
-- ex-Commodore-Amiga OS Systems Engineer (Exec/Expansion/680x0/Audio/Layers/Workbench/IEEE/ etc.)
Threads (multiple threads) can actually simplify the software rather than making it more complex. Or, rather, simplify writing the software.
Ok, so maybe I am an old hand at multi-threaded programming (over 20 years of doing this stuff) but it just makes sense for so many things. Past examples that the general public may have seen are things I wrote on the Amiga, machines with interrupts, Apache, etc. (Imaging writing a high-volume web server without multiple threads!)
There was a Hockey game on the Amiga that had each player on the ice having its own thread and own IA behavior. The code became so much easier than the traditional multiple interlocking state machines that such simulation games had to run that in order to port it to the PC they ended up writing their own multi-threading environment that ran on top of DOS.
Personally, I think that too many people are scared away from multi-threaded programming because of the "horror stories" and a few "old guard" that don't feel comfortable in such an environment. For me, many problems are so much easier in the multi-threaded solution space that I rarely think of non-multi-threading. (Well, co-routines are sometimes required when the platform does not support true multi-threading)
I have used S5 for my presentations for a while now, and mainly for two reasons:
-
I almost always have an internet connection (or network connection) and thus can get at any of the presentations I need. I also can let the viewers see the presentation any time they want - just need that browser...
-
The ability to have both the printed and presentation form in one simple text document is so nice. Editing, updating, version control, etc. is just so much easier. And with the document being usable by all users, I don't need the "Windows" or "Mac" (and, rarely, the "Linux") compatible presentation system - I just do it all in one place and it just works.
I think Google may have something here. For most presentations (those that don't look like a 1990's MTV spot) this stuff just works. I just hope that they do something similar.All I want is that all of the hardware is documented and working with available Linux divers/support. If that means having them preload some Linux, that is fine by me. I really don't care much as to which one it is (as long as it is a reasonably standard kernel) as I will be reinstalling anyway.
Hey, look, most of us would say the same thing about Windows - the initial install is good for validating that the system works but let me install it correctly and without the cruft. We should be the same with Linux.
This is especially true of the Laptop hardware since that is one place where building your own is really a long way away from current best-of-breed laptops.
I agree - I have been with Sprint (both wireless and before that wired) for quite some time. Every time I think I may want to switch, I do some research and it comes out that Sprint is the best.
And with my Treo 650, I can run anything I can write (or others have written) for the Palm and there is no restriction or extra costs. Just the $10/month unlimited data plan (on top of the phone costs, which also are very competitive if not the best)
One "problem" Sprint has is that they don't give away the phones as much as other carriers. I paid $325 for my Treo back when I got it. From Verison I could have gotten the phone for $50 (AR). However, by now, I would have ended up paying much more and had more problems with some of their service. (They have a number of dead spots in this area, about twice to three times as many as Sprint)
The first digital computer systems did not solve anything "amazing" but the fact that they solved anything at all was the amazing bit.
Quantum computing is very new (in the physically exists sense) and the fact that they figured out how to build, program, and extract the solutions for some, albeit relatively simple, problems is a major step forward.
Once the understanding is complete enough and reliable enough then the really tough problems will be sure to follow.
Well, it may not be real but did any of you ever see the original Miracle on 34th Street? In that movie, there was a major plot point where the "Santa" gave out advice that sometimes told people to buy at another store. This was such a major positive PR move that it brought in more customers than it may have lost. This same concept is what seems to be going on here (or, more correctly, wishing was going on here).
Now, I am not saying that the Google thing is actually an issue but the point is that sometimes playing fair / even handed is actually a win in the long run.
Over all, however, I must say that Google does play rather fair - more so than many (most) other companies in the same space or even other businesses. This does not mean that they could not try harder, but it also does not mean that they should give themselves a disadvantage.
Homeland Security was able to do the code audit on X11.
Maybe that really should be written as, because the source code was publicly available, Homeland Security was able to do this. How many of these types of faults exist in closed source software that no outside group had the chance to dig into like with X11 or OpenBSD or...
It was interesting how all of this died down once the knockoffs of the Walkman started to actually work well enough to take some sales away from Sony.
Not that I am claiming that there is no hearing loss danger, but the media attention and uproar is strange since this is nothing new...
Now, his administration did start enforcing the law again, along with pushing many nightclubs out of business, but that is different than actually inventing the law.
So, you want links - here is the main site that is trying to coordinate the fight to legalize dancing: http://www.legalizedancingnyc.com/
There was a great story on NPR some weeks ago (months) about this problem. Bar owners being fined a lot of money due to patrons "swaying and moving to background music"! (Warning, you need to listen to the story)
The amazing thing is the link to the Footloose movie - there are some people from that movie that are now working to address this law in New York. Some of them even claimed that when they first saw the script for the movie that they thought it was "too unbelievable" until they did the research.
So, while I may not have a huge collection, I do have a reasonably large one and at high bit rates (192+ VBR) they tend to take up some room.
Plus, my iPod has a few essential data files on it (such as the code to manage the iPod written in Perl) and some pictures of the family.
After playing with it some, I am annoyed at some of the UI behaviors but overall, it is a great TV.
But, even more interesting is that the manual has the GPL printed in it along with references to the AM Linux Project which ported Linux to the AM microcontroller.
This got me thinking: Maybe this TV can be hacked and new code installed into it. After all, it does have a nice SD slot - now all we need to do is find out if there is a back-door into the box for updates...
Anyway, nice to see that the true consumer industry (TVs are about as consumer as you can get) are making good use of OSS. I wonder if they would even be willing to help enable the hacking such that more/better UI features could be implemented by others...
Actually, you forget that Apple had an AppleUnix that ran on their Apple MacII machines. In fact, there were a number of high-end applications for it. (Not many, but some) It also had some of the better (for the time) user interface features for system admin.
As many /. readers are "Linux" or "Unix" friendly, remember the KISS method - small, simple, solid, reliable tools.
The iPod is very solid. (Ok, I would like gap-less playback, but that is related to the core reason I have an iPod - to listen to music.)
Now, if only other manufacturers would get on the ball and make a quality product rather than a "checklist" product. It is the attention to detail and the single-minded focus on the task at hand that makes the iPod great.
Oh, hold on, Windows had networking since 3.11 (Windows for Workgroups) and before that, Novell and others provided networking even on the DOS platform.
And what about the VMS (DEC) and VMS (IBM) and Unix (various/ATT) systems - all of which were "networked" from basically day one (well, maybe not the first versions of Unix, but my the mid/late 1970s Unix was too)
So, who was not connected/networked when? 3.11 is over 15 years old. Hell, Win95 is over 10 years old now and it had lots of networking as standard features.
Given that Win95 and WinNT are the first Win32 platforms and WinNT was specifically designed for networking (to kill the NetWare market), it would be safe to say that the Win32 API platform has *always* had networking as part of its core feature set - thus, well, it really should not be a new thing for any 32-bit Windows application.
Now, if the GDS worked on a desktop that I used rather than the one I dispise, it would be that much better.