They also cause impotence due to extra pressure on the perineum from the skinny seat and bent over posture. It's much better from your manly bits to be in an upright position. Much less pressure on the nerves and blood vessels supplying those vital areas.

I never liked the old "ten speed" or racing bikes. Maybe it's because I'm older now, but I'm much happier on a "comfort" or "cruiser" bike. It's easier on my carpal tunnel wrists as well.

....all the hatred for Kinect. People cite privacy and all that, but the hatred for Kinect goes back much farther than that. There was incredible hatred for the device at the initial release well before there were any privacy concerns. That's a shame, since it is the most innovative thing that Microsoft has ever developed. Download Kinect Party and play the demo for awhile--it's incredible that they actually were able to make something like this even work!! I have always thought it was very cool. The kids love it--a lot of them don't even know how to play a standard controller game. In fact, the only real "failure" of the Kinect system was by developers failing to realize its full potential. The reason it wasn't "optional" in the XBox One was that it's an important interface into the whole system--ideally, with its incredible revolution, it would also act as an add on controller in games (although that's not been realized, yet). I don't understand why people clutch so tightly to their 20 year old controllers like it's the Bible. Can't we try something new?

Diskless consoles are great in theory. After all, who wants to go around physically inserting discs like it's the 1980's or somethin?. But, it comes with a cost--the inability to buy used discs or discs from third parties at a discount will keep prices outrageously high for games. Yes, in theory, they could reduce the price to make up for savings from using physical media, but they won't. A $60 game (which is way too expensive to begin with), will always be $60 as a download, whereas a $60 disc can be acquired cheaper new at amazon.com or ebay, and even less used. The only way a disc-less console would be attractive to the cost conscious consumer would be if they would guarantee a significantly lower price for content--like $30. That would be a big selling point.

The big problem for OS/2 Warp was that the consumer version did not let you run windows apps in an OS/2 window. It was a dual boot machine. Only the much more expensive professional version had the ability to run windows apps actually within OS/2. If you wanted to run a windows app in the consumer version, you had to reboot. The marketing was really good. People bought OS/2 Warp in droves. Then they returned it 'cos it did not do what the ads said it did. Had full windows integration been part of the consumer version, I think OS/2 would have survived and possibly thrived as people got to appreciate the inherently superior interface of warp and tell their family and friends.

If you are not actively selling or supporting a version of publicly available software, then there is no reason for you to have any protections for said software. If someone cannot acquire or purchase the license from you, how can you claim "theft" if someone copies it or acquires it from third parties? There really should be allowances fro abandonware in IP law. There are some provisions dealing with abandonware, but they don't nearly go far enough. If you want to make some new version of Pac Man for the X-Box One, you can keep the protections for the character and such, but unless you actively support and sell the Commodore 64 version, you shouldn't get any special protections for that.

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...