1024*768 was pretty much the standard in 1999. Though a lot of idiots may have ran at 800*600 no one ran at 640 * 480 unless they were still running windows 3.0!

Actually, I knew of people running at 640x480 because "it was easier to read". Tried to show them that if they increased to 800x600 or 1024x768 they could increase the font size, but then your icons got smaller and thus the cycle repeats...

True, the revision A board wouldn't work. There was actually a jumper on the Apple Extended 80-column Card that existed because of this (I'm figuring it simply enabled/disabled the feature). However, since this only affected the initial run of motherboards and Apple did offer free upgrades, I left that detail out.

I got my //e in May 1984 and it wasn't a revision A.

Back then the Apple II had swappable video cards. Huh? *If* such cards existed they were certainly so rare that hardly anyone had them, a real niche thing. Are you thinking of the 80 column card? It added 64K RAM too but I don't recall this card enhancing graphics. My recollection as a former Apple II, //e, and C-64 programmer is that on the Apple II you had bitmapped graphics and that on the C-64 you also had bitmapped graphics, but it was better, plus specialized hardware support for sprites. The Apple was primitive in comparison.

Actually, the 80 column card on the Apple //e did enhance the graphics capabilities. It added what was referred to as Double-LoRes and Double-HiRes modes.

On the Apple ][ series, there was always Lo-Res graphics that were 40x40 with 16 fixed colors. Good for things like Breakout and used the memory space of the text mode display. Hi-Res originally was 280x192 with 4 colors on revision 0 boards, but updated to 6 unique colors shortly thereafter (we're talking 1977). There were 80 column boards made by various companies back in the day for the Apple ][ series, but they tended to be separate output connectors and non-standard. As well, there was at least one graphics board that used some TMS chips (I think), but I don't recall ever seeing software utilizing it. As well, there were later RGB boards but similar fate, if I remember correctly.

When the Apple //e came out, most people installed 80 column boards in the AUX slot to enable a standard 80 column mode and add an additional 64KB with the "extended" version. The "double modes" were basically taking advantage of bank switching and doubled the horizontal resolution of text (80 cols!), lo-res (now 80x40) and hi-res (now 560x192). Lo-res didn't gain color capability, only resolution. Hi-res, on the other hand, since the original mode was basically an NTSC hack, it allowed the Apple to tweak the colorburst and phasing more to produce 16 colors instead of just the original 6.

So in short, the 80 column card in an Apple //e (and subsequent models) did enhance the graphics, but only for applications which used it. However, unlike other graphics boards that did exist, the double hi-res mode was far more commonly taken advantage of.

They basically had huge, fat, margins, essentially no competition in the smartphone arena, for almost five years - and freaking sat on it and did almost nothing. Meanwhile Apple and Google were in the lab inventing the future. Unbelievable.

Sounds like Palm (pre-WebOS) all over again. This is what happens when a company takes over a market segment and then doesn't aggressively push forward. Nobody is steering the company vision.

money can be brought into existence regardless of whether it actually represents anything

This is exactly what new regulations like Basel 3 are addressing. In short, banks need to have a certain percentage of capital to backup any financial objects they create. In other words, with this regulation you can no longer just create money out of thin air.

I skipped my High School reunion primarily because the cost of going to it was pretty high considering that I already was in touch with everyone through Facebook.

There was a period a few years ago when it seems that I friended or was friended-by everyone I was friends with or socially on neutral terms with (I refused to connect with the few ass hats I never liked from those years). I can pretty much find out whatever I want at any time and if I felt compelled to make an impromtu reunion, I could (and "we" have, speaking from the network of people). When the official reunion came up asking for over $100/person, I had a hard time justifying it.

Sure, people went and now I actually regret somewhat not going since there is something to be said about having a proper organized place for all these people to get together. And for the folks who say that "why would I ever want to see XXXX?" The most common thing I heard from a range of friends was that they had a blast hanging out with people that they weren't friends with or never talked to in their life.

I'll definitely go to the next one.

Coming to NYC from just about anywhere else in the country will be a shock. I've got a friend from the mid-west who is basically Larry the Cable Guy and whenever I've talked with him about coming to NYC there seems to be a general concern (I'd almost say fear in his gut) of coming here. Too many people. Too busy. Too easy to get "run over" (hypothetically and literally) compared to the easy country roads of where he's from. Heck, I had the reverse culture shock going out there for the first time in my life for college.

But the key thing from what I just said is "too many people". In a city like New York, you can't have 8 million people PLUS visitors and not have that many cops. Sure, you did see one on every corner, but was that in Times Square? Financial District? Some other tourist area? As well, some of those might just be the parking meter or traffic staff which typically don't carry a weapon, only a billy club, radio and maybe handcuffs / zip-ties at best.

Not saying it doesn't look like a police state, but as someone who has spent most of his life on this side of the country, I'd say it doesn't really bother you and when something bad does happen, you're glad there are these patrols around to respond quickly. A city the size of NYC would fall into chaos if they weren't there. In general the police aren't here to mess with you and they've got bigger things to worry about. When I was in high school, I remember drinking a beer on the sidewalk and asking a cop a question and there was no problem (yes, that would be underage btw). They're just doing their job but when the order comes to preserve order, they need to be tough because the city is a tough place. Heck, the city is safer now than it has been in many decades.

Unfortunately, that's a documented way to get fired.

It isn't that I couldn't as I certainly know how to do it a few different ways, it's just that defeating any mechanisms put in place by the company will result in discipline or termination. And for an obituary, I don't find that justified :-)

Sorry to rant about this, but for the folks who live behind a websense firewall, a social networking site like Google+ is as good as no link at all.

Spent 5 seconds to find one that isn't blocked by proxy servers:

Father of C and UNIX Dennis Ritchie passes away at age 70

I remember talking with someone at an "art museum" (read: an old worn down to the point of being dangerously condemned ex-paper plant) noting how the town's power problems could be solved by somehow tapping the energy of the freight trains that would rumble by.

For some reason, I guess this guy figured there was no degenerative effect on the freight train by capturing its power or like it just comes for free. It has to come from somewhere.

Not entirely related to TFA, but felt like making a rant.

But what about the average cost of a UNIX workstation or server was traditionally much higher than a white box x86 PC?

Go back to 1997 when I was working at a firm that had a huge deployment of Sun workstations and servers globally. The SparcStation 20's or Ultra 1's on peoples' desk easily ran several thousand dollars (I think my Ultra 1 167MHz box without Creator 3D or fancy stuff like that ran nearly $15k). Don't even talk about the servers. Now compare that to some Compaq PC for $3000?

(yes, I know you can build a PC for cheaper but large organizations that do cause these trends tend to use vendor suppliers that charge a LOT more for this stuff than you could at best buy)

I was hoping that this is going to do one of two things:

1. 1. Dump (from an economics perspective) WebOS devices on the market with the side effect of generating interest and developers on WebOS. Then, introduce new WebOS devices for the sudden influx of applications that appear.
2. 2. Completely bail-out.

Unfortunately, I think if people convert these things to Android, #2 is more or less inevitable. I do think that WebOS is a real fine piece of work, but Palm screwed up early on with their developer relations (a good example here). I do hope something along the lines of #1 does happen, though...

So can these cyber warriors work out of their mom's basement?

"Jimmy! Go upstairs and clean your room!"

'MaaaaAAAAAAHHHH!!! I'm fighting off cyber terrr-ists!!!'

I recently pulled my old Apple ][+ and //e out of storage and set it up on my workbench in the basement. The three shoeboxes of floppy disks were kept on a shelf in a living space (rather than attic), so they appeared to be fine.

Turned it on and it all worked. Surprisingly, the disks I've tried are still working perfectly as far as I can tell.

I don't know what I'll do with this equipment in another 30 years, but it was satisfying to hear my wife exclaim "wow! I forgot how primitive those things looked!" when she saw the green monochrome display and fixed font. Now will my kid be impressed in a few years? Who knows.

Apologies or whatever, the point is that everyone is getting nagged to upgrade to FF5 now. Personally, I see that it says "oh, TACO and some other plugin isn't going to work until they upgrade".

That same message has been appearing for over a week now. As such, I'm not touching FF5.

If FF doesn't learn from this and realize that they need to be a bit better about this, I'll probably just switch to Chrome full time.