IN ACTION

The cartridge made a public showing at Midwest Gaming Classic 2011.

Thanks to all who came in and gave their two cents. I learned a lot from watching people use it in person, and I need to tweak a few things.



Seems like a cool little beastie! #1,765,431 on my want list.

It might be shocking to you to find out that some companies have lied about their own creation, but hey, who doesn't like a good story? From eBay to YouTube, tall tales have been spun to consumers for various reasons. Let's take a walk down liars' memory lane, shall we?

CNNMoney brings the sometimes boring truth to light with the story of five big businesses who, shall we say, have somewhat embellished stories about how they came into existence.

eBay
The story: eBay employee Mary Lou Song told reporters that founder Pierre Omidyar needed a way to find more Pez dispensers for his fiancee, who collected them.

The truth: "Nobody wants to hear about a thirty-year-old genius who wanted to create a perfect market," Song says, according to Adam Cohen's book The Perfect Store: Inside eBay. "They want to hear that he did it for his fiancée." In reality, Omidyar posted a broken laser pointer for sale on a whim and sold it for $14. He then decided to turn his hobby of selling stuff into a business.

YouTube
The story: The popular video website was said to have been started at a dinner party thrown by co-founder Steve Chen in San Francisco. He and his pal shot videos and had nowhere to post them, so they just started a site.

The truth: The third YouTube co-founder, Jawed Karim, debunks that story, saying the party never happened. And oh yeah, online video sharing? He claims it was his idea. Chen still says the party happened, but did admit to Time that the story "was probably very strengthened by marketing ideas around creating a story that was very digestible."

Starbucks
The story: Howard Schultz writes in his autobiography, Pour Your Heart Into It, that he picked the mermaid after "[Co-founder Terry Heckler] pored over old marine books until he came up with a logo based on an old sixteenth-century Norse woodcut."

The truth: There were no Norse people in the 16th century! Instead, the image was probably taken from a 15th-century German drawing of the serpent-fairy Melusine from a book published in 1971.

Google
The story: Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google in a Menlo Park garage.
The truth: Google already had $1 million in start-up capital by the time they moved to the garage, which they did to honor Hewlett-Packard's humble start, as well as help a pal who needed the rent money for her mortgage.

Facebook
The story: We've seen the movie about this one! In The Social Network, Mark Zuckerberg is sooo mad at a girlfriend who dumps him that he gets drunk and creates a site to rate hot girls at Harvard. Boom, Facebook!

The truth: The girl Zuckerberg was so ticked off at probably wasn't even his girlfriend, and FaceMash was inspired by Hot or Not. The idea of Facebook was based off Friendster, says Zuckerberg.

The truth hurts, doesn't it?

You Won't Believe Who Wins

The Most Outlandish Computer Comparison Ever!
Bloat. If you think that Americans are getting fatter, take one good look at the operating system (OS) your computer is running right now. It gets larger and more weighed down with every update. We are in the third decade of global personal computing, and have we really progressed that far?

Let's go back to the dawn of personal computing and grab an old sentimental favorite, the Apple Macintosh Plus. The Mac Plus is an icon of the '80s along with padded shoulders, big hair and Devo. It seems that we all had a little Mac, either in our college dorm room, in the upstairs bedroom, or on our office desk at some time. With its tiny 9-inch black & white screen and all-in-one packaging, the Mac Plus is a computing relic in the days of widescreen LCD monitors and dual- and quad-core systems.

However, to run these state-of-the-art PCs, we need to install one of the latest OSs. And that's where we run into trouble. Most people today have either Windows XP or Vista on their PCs. These OSs are modern, possess virtually infinite capacities and can run any of the most modern software. With the greater functionality comes size.

The Comparison

The generally recommended configuration for a Mac Plus is System 6.0.8. This is an OS that needs a legitimate minimum of 1 megabyte of RAM to be able to multitask, connect to a network, print, display WYSIWYG in millions of colours (on modular Macs), as well as run a reasonable GUI. Those are functions that usually require at least 500 times more memory under Windows XP and 1,000 times more memory under Windows Vista.

When we look at OS hard disk requirements, we find similar discrepancies. System 6.0.8 requires 1MB, Windows XP requires 1.5GB and Windows Vista 15GB. Yes, Vista needs 15,000 times the hard disk space as System 6.0.8. In simple text format, you can write 175,000 words in one megabyte which is the size of System 6.0.8. That works out to about two full-length novels. Windows Vista demands enough real estate on your hard drive that you could easily fit 30,000 full-length novels into it.

System 6.0.8 is not only a lot more compact since it has far fewer (mostly useless) features and therefore less code to process, but also because it was written in assembly code instead of the higher level language C. The lower the level of the code language, the less processing cycles are required to get something done.

The Mac Plus has a Motorola 68000 CPU running at 8MHz. The AMD has an Athlon 64 X2 4800+ with two cores, each running at 2.4GHz. In absolute computing power exclusively measured in processor speed, AMD's combined 4.8GHz is 600 times faster than the Motorola. However, the AMD is a far more advanced processor, thus performs in conventional benchmarks much faster than the old 68000 per Mhz. So it's very safe to say that the AMD is at least 1,000 times faster than the Mac Plus.

We decided to splurge and fit the maximum possible 4MB RAM into the old Plus. After all it was going up against AMD with its 2x512MB RAM for a total of 1,024MB or 1GB. That's about 250 times more memory than the Mac.

The Mac was fitted with an external SCSI 40MB Hard Drive. The AMD had an internal IDE 120GB Hard Drive with a 3,000 times greater data capacity. Both drives were under 10% filled.

The Tests

In order to keep the hoots and hollers of "unfair comparison" at a minimum, we designed the tests to be as fair and equitable as possible. There was no point running PCMark or Sandra Sisoft-type benchmarks on the two computers as the AMD would have the Mac for lunch. We focussed on running tests that reflect how the user perceives the computing experience. After all, most users don't know or care whether their computer has a 65nm dual-core CPU or a tiny midget wizard squatting in their cases. All they care about is how it works and how quickly it does the tasks we most often ask it to do. And no, we didn't include processing-heavy modern software like Photoshop or Crysis! We selected very basic everyday functions that were performed equally by the 1980's and the 2007 Microsoft applications.

Since the tests involve both different computers and different versions of software, it was important to design the tests to have as much consistency as possible.

1) Test timings were performed by a single person.

2) All of the tests were performed on the latest and most effective OS configuration. For the Mac Plus, that was System 6.0.8. For the AMD that was Windows XP Professional SP2.

3) All of the tests were performed with a generally recommended amount of RAM for the OS configuration. For the Mac Plus, that was 4MB. For the AMD that was 1GB.

4) All of the tests were done on original spec systems, therefore the hard disks were freshly formatted, the OSs just installed and no third party software beyond the standard Apple and Microsoft installations.

5) All of the tests were performed with only that single application open. Nothing but background and OS tasks that are part of a standard install of either OSs were running. The computers were not connected to the Internet or a LAN.

6) All of the tests were measured to within 0.1 second.

7) Each tests was performed at least three times per test per machine and the times averaged out.

The tests themselves went off flawlessly. Neither computer crashed or misbehaved in any way. They just did what they were asked, regardless of the technolgical advancements (or lack thereof) inside the case.

We didn't try any Web Surfing since the only browsers that are supposed to work well on the Mac Plus are Mozilla 1.2.1, Mozilla 1.3.1 and early versions of WannaBe and iCab. We thought that surfing the net on a b&w 9” screen would be a bit of a bummer, so we skipped it. However, there are some die-hard enthusiasts that are doing just that!

Then again there were various ways, including the Power R Video Driver Cable and various external dongles, which would let you connect all sorts of large external monitors to the Mac Plus. I remember lugging huge 80 lb. Ikegami 24” b&w monitors up and down stairs as they were the preferred screens for the later compact Macs like the SEs an SE/30s of publishing art departments around 1990. The photo of the monitor here is of a Hitachi 21” which was the biggest one I could find. Just picture that the Ikegamis were much bigger even than this monster! I guess that's why I still have a bad back!

We ran a variety of tests on two major software applications. The AMD got Word and Excel from Microsoft Office 2007. The Mac Plus got Word 3.01 and Excel 1.5. Yes, we know that these software versions were released one and two years respectively after the 1986 Mac Plus. But we just couldn't bring ourselves to run the earlier and hopelessly buggy versions.

Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is the single software application most often used by people around the world. The tests that hold the greatest relevance to everyday office and personal use of Word are the most basic ones: Application Launch, Find & Replace, Open File, Pasting, Saving, Scrolling, Typing and Word Count.

Microsoft Excel

With Excel, we concentrated again on the most repetitive and common tasks. We chose: Application Launch, Arrange Windows, Autoformat, Fill Range, In-Cell Editing, Scroll Vertical, Subtotals and Zoom Out. Most users use relatively small spreadsheets so we used a 640 filled-cell format.

Time To Boot

Just for fun, we thought we'd throw in a Boot timing as well, just to see how long the OS takes from the time the button is pushed until the desktop is ready to use.

Conclusion

Check out the results! For the functions that people use most often, the 1986 vintage Mac Plus beats the 2007 AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+: 9 tests to 8! Out of the 17 tests, the antique Mac won 53% of the time! Including a jaw-dropping 52 second whipping of the AMD from the time the Power button is pushed to the time the Desktop is up and useable.

We also didn't want to overly embarrass the AMD by comparing the time it takes to install the OS vs. the old Mac. The Mac's average of about a minute is dwarfed by the approximately one hour install time of Windows XP Pro.

Is this to say that the Mac Plus is a better computer than the AMD? Of course not. The technological advancements of 21 years have placed modern PCs in a completely different league of varied capacities. But the "User Experience" has not changed much in two decades. Due to bloated code that has to incorporate hundreds of functions that average users don't even know exist, let alone ever utilize, the software companies have weighed down our PCs to effectively neutralize their vast speed advantages. When we compare strictly common, everyday, basic user tasks between the Mac Plus and the AMD we find remarkable similarities in overall speed, thus it can be stated that for the majority of simple office uses, the massive advances in technology in the past two decades have brought zero advance in productivity.

And that's just plain crazy.

Thanks to Hal Licino, for a thought provoking and head scratching comparison!

August 29, 2010 Filed under: Hardware,Site News,Tools — kyle @ 7:29 pm
On Monday, iFixit is changing the game console industry forever.

Repair—for devices of all kinds—is stuck in the 20th century. iFixit is methodically changing one industry at a time: we started with Apple repair guides, replacement parts, and tools, and now we’re empowering game console owners in the same way.

The bottom line:

We are releasing a free, community-authored repair manual—composed of hundreds of step-by-step guides and thousands of photos—for every major game console.
Simultaneously, iFixit is launching a repair parts and tools store for game consoles.
To celebrate, we are going to publish five retro game console teardowns showcasing the roots of today’s consoles.


The game console industry is hostile to consumers: goliath manufacturers have shipped hundreds of millions of units to consumers with no information on how to maintain or repair them. Console owners are left with few options when their warranty expires, causing many to throw away broken units.

That changes now. We are releasing a free, open source, community-authored repair manual for every major game console.

http://www.ifixit.com/blog/blog/2010/08 ... le-repair/


Frequently Asked Questions

What is iFixit?
iFixit is the free repair manual that you can edit. We are a community of people helping each other fix stuff. Come hang out with us—you'll find a friendly, helpful bunch of people who care about things and want to make them last longer.


We are building a free repair manual for every device. That's a monumental undertaking, but we're making great progress—one photo at a time. We'd love your help!

Do you have a repair manual for X?
Maybe! We have a lot of manuals. Try searching for it or browsing our manuals.

If you don't find a manual for your device, consider starting one. It's easy, and you don't have to be an expert!

Can I really fix X myself?
Probably! But it depends how well your skills match the task. Every repair guide has a difficulty rating at the top that will give you some idea of what's involved. But you don't have to take that rating as gospel! Try looking through the guide ahead of time to see if it's a procedure you feel matches your skill level. And if it's completely broken now, you might not have anything to lose!

Who started iFixit?
We got started by Kyle and Luke when they were engineering students wanting to make a difference. Kyle has traveled extensively studying our materials ecosystem. a


Isn't it cheaper to just buy a new one?
Sometimes. But there are other costs baked into products: the energy required to manufacture it in the first place, and the environmental challenges with recycling it properly.

Many people don't know that electronics have all kinds of nasty chemicals in them. For example, the glass in a typical CRT has about ten pounds of lead in it. Most flat panel displays contain significant amounts of mercury. Plastic cases come coated with fire-resistant chemicals called poly-brominated flame retardants, some of the nastiest chemicals around. You can't just throw those kind of chemicals into a landfill because they contaminate soils and leach into the water supply.

And it's a whole lot more satisfying to fix something yourself. We like to say that if you haven't opened it, you don't really own it.

I'm having trouble with X, what do I need to do to fix it?
We have all sorts of troubleshooting resources. Poke around for a while, it's quite possible someone else has had the same problem! If you can't find an answer, then post a question. Pro tip: the more effort and detail you put into your question, the more likely you'll get an answer.

I don't want to fix it myself. Can I pay someone to do it?
Well, we aren't a repair company. But a lot of our contributors are, and you can probably find someone near you that can do the repair for you. Members with a high reputation score are well regarded by the community and can be a great resource.


Where can I get repair parts and tools?
We sell quite a few parts and tools, particularly for Macs, iPods, iPhones, iPads, and game consoles.

Wow, this is great! Can I help?
Absolutely! We need all the help we can get. You don't have to be a repair expert! Here are a few examples of things anyone can do: take new photos, complete device pages, enforce style consistency, fix grammatical errors, and patrol new contributions.

Here's a list with lots of great information on how iFixit works and how to contribute.

Other people can edit my stuff?!
Like Wikipedia, iFixit is collaboratively edited. If you are not comfortable with the idea of your contributions being edited by other users, this may not be the site for you.

What's this reputation thing I keep hearing about?
Reputation is an optional way to represent the community's trust in you. Earning reputation is easy! You get points every time someone votes up one of your posts or successfully follows a repair guide you contributed to. For example, you earn 30 points if someone says that your answer solved their problem.

You can always ask a question or post an answer. As your reputation increases, the system trusts you more and gives you more power features.

Your reputation can go up and down based on how others perceive you, just like it would in real life. Certain actions, such as voting down a post, cost a little bit of reputation. Not much, but enough to encourage you to be sparing with your criticism.

Is all the information here free?
Yes, all of our repair manuals are free to use. They are also free to modify, copy, and redistribute. Everything on iFixit is licensed under the open-source Creative Commons CC-BY-NC license.

Can I donate to the cause?
We're a little different than the non-profit Wikipedia. Rather than asking our users for money, we sell parts to pay for server time and developers. So rather than donating, buy a toolkit or tell your friends about us.

In fact, we're quite active supporting the non-profit community ourselves.

In my web searching for the ideal topic to write a blog about, in recent days the search has seen, at least to me an alarming number of security breaches to not only the average computer user but also to large websites that handle and distribute the personal data of users like you and I.

The cyber thieves are getting more sophisticated in their attacks, and are finding better ways of mining your personal information. I am no security expert, or computer expert and as such would just like to point you in directions which may be helpful in choosing some personal security measures for yourself.

None of the suggestions below are meant to be given as the do all, or even as the best solutions. They are items culled from other blogs which are referenced often.

Protecting your privacy is not a one step process. There are steps beyond a privacy service that you should also take to ensure your privacy. Choosing the correct software is a big piece.

All recommended applications and utilities are free of charge. Most are open source.

Recommended Cross Platform Programs and Utilities (meaning they work on Windows, MAC, and *nix)
Browser

Firefox
Firefox with NoScript and AdBlockPlus extensions.

Email
Thunderbird with Penelope
(Eudora 8.0)

Thunderbird with Penelope (the Eudora Interface and features). It is Open Source, free, and extremely robust. It also provides the privacy and security you require.
Email encryption

Gnupg
Encrypt your messages and files with the best and highest rated encryption so that only you and your receiver can read, reply, or open. Also digitally sign text to prove it was from you.
Email encryption made easy

Enigmail
Integrates gnupg encryption and signing into Thunderbird, Eudora, Mozilla, and SeaMonkey clients. Automatic encrypt/decrypt/sign/verify e-mail. Eudora 8.07b users should download Enigmail for SeaMonkey 2.0.
Encrypt entire drives.

TrueCrypt
Open Source Disk Encryption. Create virtual encrypted storage containers that can be mounted as a disk, encrypt USB flash drives and other USB devices, and it will even encrypt partition where OS is installed for boot auth prior to launch.

Windows Recommended Utilities

Gnupg Encryption Utilities

GpgOL
Outlook extension to add gnupg to Outlook similar to how Enigmail adds it to Thunderbird/Eudora.


Gpgee
Adds GPG functions to Explorer shell allowing right click to encrypt or sign files.


WinPT
Although no longer being developed this still works to add the ability to to encrypt/decrypt/sign/verify clipboard contents as well as text in open windows. Does work with Windows 7 but you must right click and copy rather than using CTRL-C for it to see text in the clipboard.

Firewall

Comodo
Free firewall, advanced.

Remove deleted files and wipe slack space.
Eraser
Open Source. Far better rated than any of the overly-hyped "eliminators". Free.

Detect and remove spyware.
SpyBot
One of the must have's for spyware detection and removal.
AdAware
The other must have for adware and spyware detection and removal. Free.

Detect and remove viruses.
AVG
A good antivirus free for home use.
Avast
Another good antivirus for home use. Run with AVG.
Microsoft Security Essentials
It gets good reviews and catches things the above two miss, but read below before using.

Note: Microsoft Security Essentials forces membership in MS Spynet, an "online community dedicated to reporting and stopping malware", or rather, everyone else running this. Basic membership in Spynet means reports are sent to MS by MSE. Reports could include a list of running processes, installed programs, and information on the files identified as malware and the action taken. Not very privacy concious, but quite frankly, MS has access to all this anyway, so if you are trying to keep your Windows computer a secret from Microsoft, good luck.

Useful System Utilities

Autoruns
Control everything that is automatically started

Process Monitor
Monitor processes and what they are doing, stack calls, dll calls, network calls, and more

Process Explorer
Explore your currently running processes as well as previously launched processes

TCPView
List all network listening applications

MAC only utilities
We could use suggestions

More Advanced Tools:
Privoxy
Set up your own local filtering proxy to protect your web surfing.
Tor
A connection-based low-latency anonymous communication system that protects TCP streams: web browsing, instant messaging, irc, ssh, etc.

mixweb
Perl based mixmaster mail and usenet web interface. Automatic flood protection, bot detection, feature rich, easy to install. Almost anyone can now add a remailer web interface to their site. Download the tgz file and read mixmaster.cgi for setup information. Free for non-commercial use.

Some people will go to great lengths to enable their Twitter addiction. Japan created an entirely new species. The Twitter Animal, or Twimal, from Takara TOMY is a cute little blob that will read incoming tweets to you so you don’t have to go through all the tiring effort of checking your Twitter feed yourself.

The small USB powered device will vocalize your tweets, the tweets you follow, up to three different hashtags, and various other feeds. Available in either white (female) or blue (male), Twimal has a pretty decent reading voice, and you can modulate speed or pitch to give it up to ten different variations which can be connected to one of the categories of tweet you specify. Not bad for just [Y] 2480 (~$30). Recently launched in Japan on March 31st, you can get a taste of Twimal’s capabilities in the commercial below (sorry it’s only available in Japanese). While I’m sure you could rig up a system on your laptop to do the same thing for free, Twimal shows our growing fascination with pulling the digital world into our physical reality.


In many ways, Twimal is only something you find in Japan. (Literally this is true as I don’t know any retailers selling the product elsewhere.) Twitter is huge there, as is their love for small cute blobs that speak with charming human voices. To add a layer of meta-recursiveness to the whole affair, they even gave the device its own Twitter feed. But Twimal is more than a taste of Japan WTF-ary. A personal assistant that can help you manage your social media is certainly going to appeal to people all over the globe. Taking that personal assistant and making them a physical creature…that’s actually fairly ingenious. Afterall, this isn’t simply a generic text to speech device – it’s a face to put on your social network. The whole reason we dive into these bottomless pits of 140 character exchanges is ostensibly so we can better communicate with people we care about. We don’t want a disembodied voice, we want a socially meaningful interaction with something that’s in the room with us. We want presence, and to some degree Twimal has that. In the future, I expect we’ll see more critters like Twimal that vocalize a wide range of social media sites, perhaps with a wider variety of voices and a greater selection in the physical avatar. When they have a dead looking parrot that can read my Facebook status updates in the voice of Monty Python’s Michael Palin I’ll definitely buy one. Until then, try not to hurt yourselves while reading your morning tweets.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=immKNjzqwI8&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

http://singularityhub.com/2011/04/04/japans-twimal-usb-device-will-read-your-twitter-feed-to-you-video/

A new Amazon.com Inc service that lets customers store songs and play them on a variety of phones and computers is facing a backlash from the music industry that could ignite a legal battle.

Amazon's Cloud Drive, announced on Tuesday, allows customers to store music files on the company's Web servers instead of their own hard drives and play them over an Internet connection directly from Web browsers and on phones running Google Inc's Android software.

Amazon beat rivals Google and Apple Inc into the market for "music locker" services, which are meant to appeal to consumers frustrated by the complexities of storing their favorite songs at work, home and on their smartphones. Apple and Google were expected to launch their services at the end of last year.

Shares of Amazon rose nearly 3 percent, but Cloud Drive may push the company into legal gray area.

Sony Music, home to artists such as Shakira and Kings of Leon, was upset by Amazon's decision to launch the service without new licenses for music streaming, said spokeswoman Liz Young.

"We hope that they'll reach a new license deal," Young said, "but we're keeping all of our legal options open."

Music labels were alerted of the plans last week. Only later did Amazon address the issue of negotiating licenses, one source close to the discussions said.

That executive called the move "somewhat stunning" and said some within the media industry said the service might illegal.

"I've never seen a company of their size make an announcement, launch a service and simultaneously say they're trying to get licenses," said the executive, who requested anonymity because the discussions were not public.

In 2007, EMI sued MP3tunes, which offered a similar service. Consumers are allowed to store music files on their own computers, but it is unclear whether they have that right when they use remote storage services offered by cloud computing.

Amazon's service is part of Amazon's plan to be a bigger player in the digital content business and reduce its reliance on the sales of CDs and books.

"They don't have leadership in digital formats," said BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis. "The next big race is locker services -- that's what we want."

Gillis said he expected Google to introduce a remote music storage service in May and for Apple to follow suit in June.

Although Amazon's service lets users listen to music from most computers or phones regardless of where they bought the song, it will not work on Apple's iPhones or have an "app" on that company's devices.

Amazon said customers would initially get 5 gigabytes of free storage, enough for 1,000 to 1,250 songs. They can buy another 20 gigabytes for $20 a year.

Alternatively, a customer can get an upgrade to 20 gigabytes of free storage with the purchase of any MP3 format album from Amazon. New music purchases from Amazon saved directly to the cloud service will not count against any storage quota.

Users can save music files in MP3 as well as the AAC format, which is the standard for Apple's iTunes service.

Amazon is also offering Cloud Player, which will allow music fans to listen to, download and make playlists on any Web browser as well as any application using Google's Android operating system.

Shares of Amazon were up 2.6 percent at $173.81 in afternoon trading, while Google rose 0.6 percent to $579.00. Apple fell 0.5 percent to $348.80.

Source

Microsoft Bob
Version 1.00
You may have heard jokes about some old failed Microsoft product called "Bob" or seen that big yellow smily face wearing nerdy glasses, and wondered "what the heck was that all about?".

Well, in early 1995 Microsoft released a software program called "Bob" designed to replace the desktop of Windows 3.1 and 95 with an interface designed mainly for novice users.

Microsoft held a big advertising campaign and loaded up stores with copies of Bob expecting huge sales. It totally flopped.

A few possible reasons that Bob flopped:

Bob required a minimum of a 486 with 8 megs of ram, 30 megs of free disk space, and 256 color VGA. Many computers of the day did not meet these minimum requirements.
It was too "cute" for the average PC users of the day.
Most people at the time who wanted ease of use would just get a Macintosh.
Bob was not useful enough to justify its initial sale price of almost $100.
Windows 95, which was released later that year, had the new Windows Explorer user interface which wiped the floor with Bob.
And so Microsoft Bob disappeared in to obscurity.


The Microsoft Bob splash screen.

There appear to be two releases of Bob. These screen shots are of version 1.00 which has a time stamp of 1/30/1995. Then there is a second release, version "1.00a" dated 8/14/95, which included some additional guides, rooms, and objects.

Microsoft Bob can be run as a regular application or it can be set to start up automatically when the computer starts.



Before you can use Bob you must identify yourself. Use the knocker and select from a list of Bob users. If you are not in the list of users you must fill in some information to identify yourself. (This information is used later by the Bob programs). While users can can have "private" areas in Bob, there is no real security.


An interesting thing about Bob is that just about everything on the screen is drawn using vector graphics (Windows meta files). All objects can be resized to any size or stretched. This allows rooms to render smoothly at any screen resolution.

One odd thing about the rendering, perhaps there is some reason, even on a display with millions of colors all graphics seem to be dithered to a 256 color palette.

Many of the objects in the room are just decoration, but some of them launch special applications that only work inside Bob.

The critter in the corner is "Rover", your guide.


Ummmm.... "scrumptious"? Perhaps they should have named him "Fruit Loop" instead.

On a more technical note, the different guides insert different descriptive words in to many of the common dialogs. This customizes the text to the "personality" of the selected guide. "scrumptious" is one of Rover's words.

You can select other guides, but Rover comes back at various times.

For more information on " Microsoft Bob" visit:
http://toastytech.com/guis/bob.html

Son of Transputer powers new Amiga box

There was only one place to be for Amiga enthusiasts this weekend: a tent at Bletchley Park. Saturday saw the unveiling of the first dedicated Amiga box for some time, in the shape an unusual and technically advanced system that maintains the Amiga's bleeding edge reputation.



The AmigaOne X1000 is a custom dual core PowerPC board with plenty of modern ports and I/O interfaces. It runs AmigaOS 4, and is supported by Hyperion, a partner in the project. The most interesting bit, though, is the use of an 500Mhz XCore co-processor, which the X1000's hardware designer describes as a descendant of the transputer - once the great hope of British silicon.


Trevor Dickinson: over 150 Amigas at home

The XCore allows fine-grained parallel processing and the equivalent of 256 loosely coupled cores. At least eight threads are available at any one time.

The Amiga brought multitasking to personal computing, and when it first appeared in 1985 it made the rest of the market, including Apple's much vaunted Macintosh, look like overpriced toys. Commodore made its last Amiga in 1994. Various companies have rolled out PPC boards compatible with AmigaOS, since the last update in 2006, but this is the first new box for some time.


Son of Transputer powers new Amiga box

Long-time Amiga enthusiast Trevor Dickinson, director of the company set up to create the X1000, A-Eon, said the team hadn't set a price for the box, but suggested it would be "North of £1,500", hopefully allowing the company to make something to reinvest. The X1000 should future proof the AmigaOS for some time.

The event took place at Britain's first Vintage Computer Fair (report to follow) in a tent sponsored by the Amiga enthusiast groups. These seem to be as busy as ever: the AmigaOS looks terrific, and ports of FireFox and OpenOffice are close to bearing fruit.


Inside the X1000
The box also houses an ATI Radeon R700 graphics card, 10 USB ports, four PCIe and two PCI slots, besides much else. A recent interview with Dickinson here provides a good history of the project, and more pics.

Bootnote
Before you all write in at once, yes - the original Amiga could house a transputer board.

Did you know that...

After releasing Windows 98, Microsoft raised the price charged to OEMs for Windows 95?

In the name of "combating piracy", Microsoft advised OEMs that they would be charged a higher price for Windows unless they drastically limited the number of PCs that they sold without an OS pre-installed?

When Microsoft set the price for Windows 98 they did not even bother to consider the prices of other vendors' Intel-compatible PC operating systems?

Microsoft charges a lower price to OEMs who agree to ensure that all of their Windows machines are powerful enough to run Windows NT for Workstations?

After Netscape Navigator was first announced, Microsoft tried to convince Netscape not to make a Windows version? And later they tried to convince Netscape to design Navigator to rely upon their "Internet-related APIs in Windows 95" (the Internet Explorer core?)? and perhaps be as little as a "user-interface shell"?

Microsoft made Intel stop promoting their software that exposed APIs for their Native Signal Processing hardware by pressuring OEMs not to install it, and later made Intel altogether agree to stop developing any platform-level interfaces that might draw support away from interfaces exposed by Windows?

Microsoft punished the IBM PC Company with higher prices, a late license for Windows 95, and the withholding of technical and marketing support because IBM refused to move its business away from products that themselves competed directly with Windows and Office (OS/2 and SmartSuite)?

When Microsoft managed to bundle Internet Explorer 1.0 with the first version of Windows 95 licensed to OEMs in July 1995 it also included a term in its OEM licenses that prohibited the OEMs from modifying or deleting any part of Windows 95, including Internet Explorer, prior to shipment?

That Gateway had specifically requested that Microsoft provide a way to uninstall Internet Explorer 4.0 from Windows 98?

In 1996, after Compaq removed the MSN and Internet Explorer icons from the desktops on their Presarios to instead promote AOL and Netscape Navigator, Microsoft sent Compaq a letter stating its intention to terminate Compaq's license for Windows 95 if Compaq did not restore the MSN and Internet Explorer icons to their original positions?

About the same time, Compaq announced its intention to work with Netscape for its internal Internet needs and on Internet server initiatives. In response, Microsoft insisted that Compaq support Microsoft's Internet initiatives throughout its business (MS forced them to install IE on all of their computers). Microsoft also threatened Gateway about its own use of Navigator on it's corporate network and they did the same with Apple?

Compaq's license fee for Windows are lower than any other OEMs, they do not have to meet all of the conditions for the lower license fees, and has had free internal use of all Windows products for PCs since March 1998?

Microsoft threatened IBM to make them stop promoting Netscape Navigator, but IBM Refused?

Microsoft promised to give preferential support, in the form of early Windows 98 and Windows NT betas, other technical information, and the right to use certain Microsoft seals of approval, to important ISVs, but only if they use Internet Explorer as the default browsing software for any software they develop with a hypertext-based user interface and they use IEs "HTML Help"?

Microsoft tainted its java tools in such a way that Java applications written with their tools would, unknowingly to the developer, be incompatible with other JVMs and, once written, would be difficult to port, and that they refused to change this until November 1998 when ordered to do do by a court?

Microsoft pressured Intel, which was developing a high-performance Windows-compatible JVM, to not share its work with either Sun or Netscape, much less allow Netscape to bundle the Intel JVM with Navigator?

Microsoft took steps to thwart the creation of cross platform Java interfaces by stopping Intel from helping Sun to develop class libraries that offered cutting-edge multimedia support?