For cars I can imagine something similar to car audio. You get something up-to date with a new car, and you put up with the fact that it ages. Eventually someone purchases it as a used car and decides the audio isn't good enough, and fits an updated one.

Completely agreed, which is why I think form factor and interface need to be standardised rather than operating system. I can fit another stereo because I reliably know the original is a single or double DIN device, so my replacement will fit and can be powered/connected. What about the tablets?

Cheers,
Ian

I don't know, is the honest answer. People have found the binaries in iOS5, but Apple have stated they don't support it under that version. So honestly? No idea.

An interesting chat about the whole thing can be found on The Register.

Cheers,
Ian

DRM on iTunes (at launch and for a time afterwards) being the reason it grew so big?

He specifically said iTunes [program], not iTMS. He's talking about the application that runs on your computer, not the music store.

He's right as well - remember the original advertising slogan of Rip, Mix, Burn? You took your CDs, turned them into un-DRM'd AAC or MP3, and that was that. That's what helped the original iPad/iTunes combination get so big - simplicity.

Cheers,
Ian

Yep, here's my post from around nine years ago saying it was Quicken keeping me on Windows.

I've since relented and am using VMware to run Quicken 2011 on OS X, but I'd far rather have a decent native solution for it. I've tried the alternatives such as iBank etc. and they're not really there for what I do.

Still holding out some hope that Quicken Essentials might eventually lead to a Quicken 'proper', but we'll see how it goes. Meanwhile, VMware for me (because I already owned it - these days I'd probably have gone VirtualBox).

Cheers,
Ian

How many bee transport journeys were made? What percentage of those journeys resulted in accidents? How does that compare as a percentage to the transportation of other goods?

It's not a possible question to answer without a lot more data. It's not even possible to determine the question has a valid premise as yet.

Cheers,
Ian

"The fact remains, however, that the iPod was lame and continued to be lame until it got wireless. And it didn't have much storage space. Also, it was DRM-laden back then, too."

No, the fact does not remain. It had 5Gig - a massive amount for a pocketable player at the time. Forget CD player-sized Nomads, the correct comparison is to pocket-sized Diamond Rios and similar. They had 64Mb and 128Mb typically (my memory fails, there might have been 256Mb ones as well by then).

DRM-laden? Rip, Mix Burn was the advert - you ripped your own CDs, DRM-free. The iTunes Music Store came later than the iPod.

It's perfectly possible not to like them without falsely belittling them.

Cheers,
Ian

Yeah, it's missing Jack Tramiel and Commodore - the company which built the best selling single model of all time?

Cheers,
Ian

Yeah, but the BBC will take an idea, publicize it, and take credit for it. That's what they did with iPlayer, the super-amazing first-of-a-kind Flash video player, invented by the BBC years after YouTube was launched."

Don't forget it started out as a p2p fat client-only app and that streaming was only available to Windows users as it was all based on Windows Media 10. The fact it was originally overseen by the ex-UK head of MS's media division was entirely co-incidental.

Cheers,
Ian

"I thought that Google had tech that could scan the pages of an original book and automatically compensate for any curvature. IIRC** it did something like flash a test pattern onto the page to determine how to straighten the final image."

We did that too - the Kofax card and driver software could take care of deskewing and it did a reasonably good job. Again, this was a while ago so I imagine things have improved but it wasn't too bad.

Cheers,
Ian

I worked at company that did the same for the French National Library, about fifteen to eighteen years ago. To go through your questions:

We had a mix of temps and perms, mostly temp scanner operators and perm developers.

Professionals - yes, there were clauses in the contract about how much we paid if things were damaged.

Team size? Smaller than you might think - we had about ten at its peak. Around the clock - not quite, but there were definitely early and late shifts.

We used then-flash Bell & Howell scanners with expensive document feeders to avoid ripping the papers. We used Kofax image processing cards at a staggering 1Mb VRAM (yes - feel the power...) and super-powerful PCs too (486DX2 66Mhz). We stored the resulting TIFFs on a vast network server (a Network 3 1gb machine called Leviathan. Inconceivably it ran out of space so we bought a second called Behemoth). Actual process was to guillotine the books and feed them through the scanners, some books would then be restitched. In the case of rare books we'd photograph them instead (and then scan the photo - this predates digital cameras).

Yes, we then OCR'd them, and the contract stipulates that x pages in 100 have to then be proof-read.

Clearly the tech is now completely outclassed, but I'd be surprised if the contract and physical side has changed much. Am not terribly surprised to hear the British Library have taken the best part of two decades to catch up, we were talking to them at the time and they were terribly, terribly slow to see the potential in this.

Cheers,
Ian

25 places it at 1986, which is just slightly before I started using it (1989 for me).

Text only, kermit transfers, cursing as once again you realised you forgot to put FTP into image mode before you downloaded that shareware from funet.fi...all of it.

Do wish there was still a way to play MIST though, and the associated Cheeseplant's House. We would hang out in Cheeseplant's House waiting for a slot on MIST. Interesting (well to me at least) that they describe it as the second talker - must admit I thought it was the first.

All good fun. I don't wish away what currently exists, but it would be nice if the older stuff had made it through too.

Cheers,
Ian

The 10.3 beta tells you when a Flash application is trying to write to your local machine. I've been hitting 'Deny' on everything and no ill effects been seen so far.

Cheers,
Ian

Dude, the very CmdrTaco quote the grandparent is defending lists a player that had more than 5Gb at the time, the Nomad. So no, definitely not "unheard of in a portable player at that time.

It was the Nomad at 20Gb. The Nomad though, was not pocket-sized. That was the whole thing - the iPod fit in a pocket. The Nomad did not.

Neither of you provides any citations to go with your observations, there.

That's true - like you I was going from memory and having been there at the time. I agree with you that Mac sales were helped by the iPod but that the majority by far will be being used with Windows these days. The gen 1 days though - Windows users didn't have much of a choice, they bought a Mac or they didn't use it (Well, actually that's not quite true, I used to use the beta of a utility called XMedia so I could drag'n'drop albums from Windows Exporer I seem to remember, but that kind of thing was hardly mainstream).

I don't think we disagree that much to be honest - just over the Nomad, which yes was bigger capacity but no wasn't pocket-sized. Pocket-sized was the key.

Cheers,
Ian

In defense of CmdrTaco, the first generation iPod was a piece of crap. It was expensive, only had 5 GB of storage space, required a FireWire port, and only had software available for the Mac.

'Only' 5Gb? Unheard of in a portable player at that time. There's a reason they advertised 5,000 songs in your pocket - it's because at the time no-one was doing anything close. Most things were either CD player-sized Nomads at 20Gb or 128Mb 5-songs-at-64kbps Flash players like the 32Mb Diamond Rios.

Required a Firewire port and 'only' for the Mac? Yes, because they literally couldn't make them fast enough and sold each and every one of 'em that rolled out of the manufacturing plant. It also acted as a gateway drug that helped Mac sales along their merry way.

They were flying off the shelves long before gen 3. Indeed, I remember the gen 2 (with the daft Quicktime Player-alike buttons, now that really was a mistake) being ubiquitous at the time.

Cheers,
Ian

It's essentially an ATI. It's actually an ArcadeVGA, which is a Radeon with custom firmware.

Interesting link - thanks. Will see if it works on the Hanterax 24" I've got (MTC9000 I think).

Cheers,
Ian