Why not? For the purposes of the argument being made with respect to the UK market, they were both in the same boat.

Besides which, there were two versions of the Spectrum when originally released; the aforementioned 16K model, and an otherwise identical 48K model. The 16K spec was rendered increasingly irrelevant as time went on and the 48K version became the de facto "base model" required for Spectrum games.

Still wasn't as good a machine overall as the C64 (BASIC and faster CPU aside), but that's neither here nor there.

Assuming a company's only aim is to make money, then whatever happens to their products after they die is essentially irrelevant in that respect. (*)

Of course, I'm sure that there are those working within a company (more likely to be in engineering and development) that feel otherwise. But ultimately this will be overridden by those in sales, marketing et al, unless it offers a clear benefit to the company.

Yes, some companies will offer well-backed guarantees or promises about what happens with respect to various things should they go under (e.g. release of source code). But even that is ultimately a means to attract more paying customers- by providing a level of certainty that is valuable to them- while the company is still in existence.

(*) Unless, of course, those in power have a conflict of interest and something to gain from the company's demise.

Which would significantly reduce the appeal of the "new language" and probably result in people continuing to use the old version- with masses of support, extensions, accumulated wisdom, and software already built on it- probably forking it at some point if the current owners tried to force the change through.

Let's be honest; VB.Net was a good example of one that *didn't* succeed. It was very different to VB6, effectively a whole new environment and tech tied together with a similarly-syntaxed language, and it never achieved the popularity of its predecessor.

Yes, MS may have forced many to move to .Net by making clear that VB6 and its related infrastructure was obsolescent, but that translated to C# use, not VB. Presumably people either remained with VB6 and those who used .Net were either newcomers who had no need of a legacy language (*) or VB6 users who decided that C# was a more sensible choice (since it was clearly MS's favoured language for .Net, and wasn't hobbled by syntax that was effectively a comfort-blanket holdover from 8-bit home computer BASICs).

(*) I'm guessing that classic VB gained its userbase from the generation (and group) who started with "old school" 8-bit BASICs, and found its syntax accessible, then were able to grow while their "BASIC" grew in capability. Thing is, if you didn't start or grow with VB, then what it became is no simpler or easier to learn than C-influenced syntax like C# (and I'm speaking as someone who *did* use old-school BASIC as my first language, but not VB, and I'd much rather use a C-style language).

No idea what happened there, sorry; suspect I copied my work to a second window for replying then accidentally submitted the first as well.

Yeah, but unfortunately it's *way* to late in the day to avoid having to retain (and, ironically, formalise) the ad-hoc mess without breaking countless existing programs.

The most notorious example being one of the simplest, but also the most obviously naff; the fact that the ternary "?:" operator has incorrect precedence in PHP (compared to every other C-derived-syntax language). This quite obviously *was* a fsck-up early on (IIRC they said as much), but will always have to be kept in, an unwelcome reminder of PHP's amateur, ad-hoc origins that'll look bad to anyone learning the language, regardless of how well it improves in other areas.

Indeed. This is specifically the police force of the City of London "square mile", i.e. the historic, tiny core of London, long-dominated by financial businesses, and not the police force of London as a whole.

In fact, the rest of London is served by the Metropolitan Police Service. Why would the City need its own special police force? Hmm...

This article may also be of interest.

Indeed. To clarify, this is specifically the police force of the small area confusingly titled the "City of London" (AKA the "square mile"), i.e. the historic, tiny core of London, long-dominated by financial businesses, and not the police force of London as a whole.

In fact, the rest of London is served by the Metropolitan Police Service. Why would The City need its own special police force? Hmm...

This article may also be of interest.

Not sure how you come to that conclusion. If anything, I'd expect nerds to be the ones more likely to care that the underlying tech was the authentic original, beyond its external appearance.

Or perhaps this is one of the differentiators between a "nerd" and a "geek".

Either way, whatever one thinks of this sort of thing, it isn't really a story. People have been shoving small-form factor PCs inside old computer cases for years now, leading to stupid headlines like "upgraded Commodore 64 runs 10,000 times faster" when it should say "midrange Micro-ATX PC shoved inside gutted and mutilated Commodore 64 case (with holes cut for ports and slimline DVD drive) runs at its usual speed, supports C64 emulator like every other PC, doesn't even use the original keyboard".

I doubt this is even the first time something like this has been done with a Raspberry Pi. I'm not attacking this submitter in particular, and I don't dislike it as much as I would had he destroyed a much rarer retro device for such purposes, but it's still not news.

That rings a bell; I think someone made that point the last time I referenced that article- as I mentioned, that post above is mostly just an unmodified cut-and-paste of the original one I made years back, but still pretty relevant. I should have updated that part, but as I said I'm at work just now. :-)

I'm at work, so haven't had the time to properly read the articles et al. However, it's been known for years that MS *have* been doing a lot of serious research with talented people- the research they needed to avoid the position they're now in. The problem is that the vast majority never made its way out for short-term business and political reasons, and they're reaping that failure now. Here's a post I originally made in early 2012 in turn referencing someone else's *very* informative comment (itself dating back to 2010):-

This story rang some bells with me, and yes, it does appear to be the same case already reported on Slashdot (the figure given in the linked article there was also 640kg).

That time, however, the slant was on the Chinese being concerned that the Japanese may have been "stockpiling" this missing plutonium for weapons.

Which begs the question as to why, if it couldn't be used to make an atomic bomb?

To be fair, I wouldn't expect a cannon to render *any* images very well. On the other hand, it probably does better than an Epson in defending ships against pirate vessels. (Well, perhaps not a $50 model...)

I guess the Russians found out that under "Summer Time" the livin' wasn't...

(puts on sunglasses)

...so easy.

YEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Fair point, but I'll put that stupidity down to the fact I was on a five-minute break at work :-)

Let me guess... eventually it burned a hole all the way through the centre of the screen until one day it got through and (a) blasted the woman whose job it was to collect the change from the machines' head off or (b) lasered her, segment-by-segment- via an early-80s pseudo-computer-effect- into the Asteroids machine itself where she was forced to play life and death computer games and interact with anthropomorphic, sentient realisations of abstract computer concepts, while finding some way to prove that she *was* due the five hours overtime they'd refused to pay her?