When can I order my "Cone of Silence"? I can't wait to be finally able use my shoe phone in public knowing my conversation will be secure and private!

The original idea for the Macintosh was not even remotely close to what it eventually became. The original machine was an 8-bit machine that the user navigated around via the function keys on the keyboard. The only idea from the mac that held over to the final design was the idea of a computer "appliance".

Mainframes and minis apparently don't count, which makes no sense. IBM still sells plenty of computers, just not PC's. The apple spokesman's quote did not specify PC's. They said computers as a whole, so they are wrong on two counts at least.

I remember my first time. It was at a department store that had decided to open up a "business computer" shop. I remember going in and seeing the mac, and trying it out. I was blown away. It was such a completely different paradigm, I didn't know what to do or how to use the machine. Even the text was different--black on white? Who would have ever thought of that? Is there any reason to even have a keyboard? I didn't manage to use it once while I was there. I played around with McPaint for about an hour and left disoriented. I looked at the other PC's, Compaq's, and PC clones around the store, and they seemed so incredibly antiquated. My mind was blown. I knew that whatever this Macintosh was, it was going to change a lot of things with computing. I wasn't sure if I was going to like that or not, but change was inevitable... and it was.

The late 70's movie Airplane had a cameo of the Atari 2600 Basketball game: http://user.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/~cieslik/homeblog/pics/atari-in-film_airplane_t.jpg

It was the ultimate fantasy of nerds who lived in the 80's: Girls who were interested in computers... and even more interested in guys who were interested in computers? Heaven! That idea alone should have broken any suspension of disbelief right there, since back in the 80's, such a dream situation was just that... a nice dream and nothing more. :-(

War Games featured an IMSAI 8080 with 8" floppies. Why they chose that computer is unknown, since no one really was using those machines by the time of filming.

They mentioned the Commodore PET in the article, but neglected its greatest cameo appearance in Captain Kirk's quarters in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Most movies do an awful job of portraying computers realistically. Take, for example, the attempt to force a C:> prompt on an Apple Macintosh in the movie Office Space. The one movie that really tried hard to get it right, ironically enough, was the Jobs movie last summer. They even went so far as to order a bunch of Mimeo 1 Apple 1 clone kits for realism. It's a shame that they got everything else in the movie wrong, when they did such an excellent job of getting the technical stuff right.

They hardly ever were able to get an answer anyways. The computer was almost always busy--not a very robust multitasking operating system.

How could he read them? Isn't it very dark in that cave?

I don't know why he gave me a hard time. There was no one else in the store at the time. I did everything right, I think. I got a customer who came in buying a battery or something, and after he mentioned this fake car alarm he wanted for his car, my eyes lit up and I told him we could build one. We spend maybe 15 minutes at most, but I ended up selling him $27 worth of high markup parts (The exact amount was burned in my brain, it probably would be like $60 today) with many lines per ticket (corporate was big on pushing their salesfolk to sell more than one item at a time the checkout). The customer was pleased as punch. Next week, the guy came in and bought another treasure trove of parts for another box for his other car. I was really proud of myself, and I figured the company would be pleased if they knew about it, but then my boss gives me a hard time about it telling me I took too much time away form cleaning the store or something. The incident still sticks in my craw many years later. I liked my boss very much. He was a good guy and he hired me when he saw me giving advice to another customer when I was buying something, but that day, he really pissed me off. I still don't get what I did "wrong". I made a customer happy, got him to buy lots of stuff, and he came back for more. Go figure...

Second that. I was introduced to Forrest's work back in the TRS-80 days, but his quintessential work for me was the Radio Shack publication, "Getting Started in Electronics." Handwritten on graph paper and printed on 8.5" by 11" newsprint with a soft cover, this was the ultimate intro guide for anyone who had any interest in electronics. Many years ago, I worked at Radio Shack as a summer and holiday job, and every time my manager was away, I'd sneak away the a copy and read it (along with some ham radio books as well). One time a customer came in asking about a fake car alarm box, and I grabbed out the book and we used that to build one. He bought dozens of parts that day (oddly enough, I got in trouble with my manager for that, despite really cleaning house). An original copy of that book still sits prominently on my shelf--one of the biggest influences in my life. So, yes, thank you very much Mr. Mims!

Good one! When I read that line in the description, my first thought was that they were spending a lot more money to get apple stuff, but then I remembered that Microsoft corporate licensing is an expensive nightmare. They are probably getting a better deal from Apple, which is incredibly ironic.

This court also has a history of being skeptical of the scope of patent protection, having dealt several anti-patent rulings in the last few years. Of course, all of that means nothing, since past performance is no guarantee of future results. They could just as easily reverse the trend this time. What is important is to fund out which side has hired Paul Clement, since the conservative justices love him and pretty much do whatever he wants, most of the time.

I can imagine the wonderful goodwill Microsoft will engender when their loyal XBox customers get suddenly left out in the cold. Microsoft won't sell XBox. They can't. There are too many windows OS and other intellectual property crucial to the Microsoft that they won't give up to a potential competitor. It's crazy to give up the XBox. Yes, it loses money. So does advertising. No one suggests that Microsoft cut advertising and marketing, yet the XBox is their biggest marketing tool available to them. Dumb. How do CEO's get these types of jobs. So many of them, like Elop, stink at what they do, yet they never have trouble finding work.

When did this start happening? I just downloaded something from them a few weeks ago. Is this recent? Is there any way to bypass this "custom installer"?