The Revolution of 1985

Dave Farquhar Hardware, Retro Computing , , , , , , , , ,

Twenty five years ago yesterday, a revolution happened. Nobody really noticed, and nobody thinks about it today, but the effects are still here. That we take these things for granted today shows just how wide-reaching the revolution was.

It took the form of a computer with a 32-bit Motorola CPU, full stereo sound, a display capable of 4,096 colors, and a fully pre-emptive multitasking operating system. At a starting price of $1,295, though it rose to closer to $2,000 by the time you added a second drive and a monitor.

The specs on that machine don’t sound all that impressive today, but keep in mind what else was available in 1985. The state of the art from IBM was the 16-bit IBM PC/AT with very limited sound capability, color as an expensive option, and DOS 2.1. Windows at the time was little more than a glorified DOS shell. Apple had its Macintosh, but it cost twice as much as an Amiga, had only slightly better sound than that IBM, and just a tiny black and white display.

Over the course of the next nine years, Commodore sold 3 million Amigas. Along the way, they worked out the early glitches in the machine, and upgraded the capabilities, though not always as quickly as the competition. But the machine aged remarkably well. And ultimately it did for television production what the Macintosh did for publishing, replacing hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of specialized equipment with equipment that merely cost thousands, and fit comfortably on a large desk.

The big problem was that Commodore sold those three million machines to one million people, and never really knew what to do with it. It should have been a great business computer. It was the ultimate home computer. It could have been the ultimate education computer. And it was the ultimate video editing computer. But Commodore never marketed it effectively as any of those.

Mostly the company went through the motions while financier Irving Gould lined his pockets with whatever money was left after Commodore got done paying the bills each quarter. Some years, Commodore spent more money on Gould’s and his yes-man company president’s salaries than they spent on Amiga development.

So, slowly but surely, the competition caught up. VGA was better in some regards than the Amiga graphics and worse in others, but over time, the combination of VGA and fast 386 and 486 CPUs became enough to keep pace. Macintosh graphics followed a similar curve. Affordable sound cards for PCs started appearing in the late 1980s and were commonplace by 1992 or 93. It was a lot harder to get it all working on a PC, but when it worked, it worked pretty well. But making DOS boot disks to get it all working was a black art, an art I remember practicing at least until 1998.

It was in the early 1990s that PCs and Macs got multitasking. First it was horrible cooperative multitasking, followed later by pre-emptive multitasking like the Amiga had. Eventually they even added memory protection, something Amiga didn’t have (when it was initially designed with an 8 MHz CPU and 256K of RAM, that was the one thing they had to leave out).

The money ran out in 1994, and the rights to the architecture changed hands more times than most people can count. The Amiga’s days as a mainstream computer–if it ever could claim to be one–ended then.

The rest of the world spent the 1990s catching up. When Windows 95 came out with its promise of Plug and Play, improved multimedia, and pre-emptive multitasking, it was all old news to Amigans. Amigas had been doing all that for 10 years already.

For a long time after 1994, I was bitter. I’m less so now that the rest of the world has caught up. But I still wonder sometimes what might have been, if the industry had spent the 15 years between 1985 and 2000 innovating, rather than just catching up.

Turn off that stupid IE "throbber" in Explorer windows

Dave Farquhar Windows , ,

You know how Microsoft decided in 1997 to make Windows look like a web browser? And continued that decision for the next 20 years? Don’t like seeing that stupid Windows logo moving while you’re waiting for Windows to display your files?

Me neither. Go download Throboff, which works on all versions of Windows up to XP. I don’t know about Vista or 7, sorry.

Even if the throbber doesn’t bother you all that much, turning it off regains some screen real estate, which is useful on netbooks.

A better, faster Firefox for Windows

Dave Farquhar Software , , , , , ,

Compiling Firefox for modern-ish (Pentium 4 and newer) CPUs is relatively common on Linux, and presumably on Mac OS X also, but not for Windows. On Windows, Firefox assumes you have a first-generation Pentium CPU, since that’s the slowest CPU that will boot Windows XP.

Enter Pale Moon.Pale Moon is compiled to use the instruction set in newer Pentium and Athlon 64 CPUs. In layman’s terms, this results in about a 25% increase in performance, which is significant.

Also significant is that the current version is based on 3.6.3 of Firefox, before Firefox broke Farmville, people started laying eggs, and they started breaking Firefox to keep Farmville working.

I couldn’t care less about Farmville and other stupid Facebook games; I just want Google Maps to be fast.

And in my quick tests, Pale Moon is fast. It loads faster than the standard Firefox build. It renders complex pages like Google Maps faster.

I’m not ready to make it my default browser yet, but so far I like what I see. It at least narrows the performance gap with Chrome, while retaining the user interface and keyboard shortcuts I’ve been using since those pre-release versions of Netscape I was using in 1994.

Experimental, optimized Firefox builds have come and gone over the years. Hopefully this one sticks around a while.

The best band I forgot about?

Dave Farquhar Music , , , ,

A couple of days ago I ran across a Material Issue CD at a secondhand store. It was priced at $1, so I couldn’t pass that up. They were a band that was always on my list of CDs to buy, but never moved high enough on the list that I ever got around to it. And of course, in 1995 they just dropped off the radar entirely.

Like most bands I like, it seems, they have a sad story.Material Issue was a Chicago band whose major-label debut sold 300,000 copies, which wasn’t bad for an alternative band in 1990-91. Their songs ranged from power pop ballads to the just plain weird, and I remember hearing their songs “Valerie Loves Me” and “What Girls Want” on Les Aaron’s “New Music Sunday” radio show on 97.1 FM in St. Louis in the early 1990s. That stuff was just too weird to get much play on the right-hand side of the FM dial in those days, and for that matter, I don’t know that even Les Aaron played them every week.

Alternative music became the new big thing (and ceased being alternative, in a lot of ways) in 1992-93, due in large part to Nirvana bursting onto the scene. I remember every station with alternative sympathies in St. Louis and Columbia, Mo. having them in rotation after that, and critics always thought highly of their work, but for some reason their stuff just didn’t catch on.

In 1995, their record label dropped them after their third record sold a mere 50,000 copies. (In 1975, Lou Reed proved that a recording of 60 minutes of guitar feedback could sell 100,000 copies.) A year later, their lead singer/guitarist Jim Ellison was dead, committing suicide about a month after his 32nd birthday.

Ellison and Material Issue really could have been a Cars for the 1990s. Like Cars leader Ric Ocasek, Ellison penned quirky, disturbed lyrics, and he even had a slightly odd look, like Ocasek.

The song I really remember Material Issue for was “Kim the Waitress,” which was pretty much their last hurrah. And it wasn’t even their song, originally. I was vaguely aware that it was a cover, and I dug up the original, by a Seattle band called Green Pajamas, on Youtube. Material Issue’s version is faithful to the original, but still sounds like Material Issue. The original is a bit quirkier still, featuring a sitar, but Ellison sang it with a bit more urgency than the Green Pajamas did. To the Green Pajamas, Kim the Waitress comes off as a crush, whereas Material Issue sounds like they’re head over heels in love with a girl they barely know.

In the early 2000s, Stereo Fuse scored a minor hit covering Material Issue’s ballad “Everything.” Stereo Fuse electrified it (the original was largely acoustic), and in a way Stereo Fuse’s version ended up sounding more like Material Issue than Material Issue did, but Stereo Fuse didn’t capture Jim Ellison’s urgency in the lyrics.

It’s really too bad I didn’t pay more attention to them in the early 1990s. They were the kind of band that any shy, slightly neurotic guy would really relate to.

I guess Material Issue came in with too much emo too soon, and sounded a little too psychedelic too late. If they’d come around 20 years earlier or later than they did, they might have done better. Or, maybe Jim Ellison was just a shade too honest in his songwriting, and people were afraid of what others might think if they admitted to liking his stuff.

Fixing reverting TCP/IP settings in Windows XP

Dave Farquhar Windows , , , ,

My ISP’s DNS, to put it politely, leaves a lot to be desired. I wanted to change them, but my network settings kept reverting. I’d change them, and they would change right back.

That pretty much made the fantastic DNSBench useless. I could find the fastest DNSs, but I couldn’t use them.At one point I thought it was Microsoft Security Essentials blocking the change, but nobody else reported that symptom, so I think that was just coincidence.

The solution is to completely reset TCP/IP. Either open a command line and follow Microsoft’s instructions, or click the little applet to let Microsoft do it for you. Then reboot.

Microsoft’s instructions are good, but they don’t go into much detail as to why you might need to do the procedure.

Theoretically at least, the same problems could happen in Vista and Windows 7 as well. The same fix would apply. If earlier versions of Windows break like this, you could remove TCP/IP and re-add it.

I’m happy to say now my PC is using the DNS settings I want.

Release Watson, IBM. Now.

Dave Farquhar Software , , , ,

Remember Deep Blue? The computer that beat Gary Kasparov? It seems IBM’s next target might be a Jeopardy-playing computer.

Whether this computer can ever beat Ken Jennings at Jeopardy is irrelevant. If it were commercialized, this thing could change everything overnight.The New York Times article goes into it. Here’s the thing. Being good at Jeopardy requires several skills, one of which is being able to retain and cross-reference information. Watson is amazing at that. Better than a human being, right now. Second is being able to understand questions. It might be better at understanding a tricky question than my two-year-old son, but not much. It’s better than any other computer I’ve seen.

When I played the demo hosted at the New York Times, I won, but it came down to the last question. Mostly it came down to the questions that included puns and, let’s face it, misuses and abuses of language.

But in the real world, we don’t ask questions like Alex Trabek does on Jeopardy. At least we don’t if we don’t want our colleagues to hit us with a broom. And in the real world, we don’t mind re-phrasing a question when we have to, if it gets us better answers.

The article in the Times cited a possible application. Feed Watson all available medical journals and textbooks. It could then dispense medical advice. But would a surgeon trust it when seconds count?

I think that’s the wrong question. In trial runs playing Jeopardy, Watson isn’t at its best when seconds count, which is why Ken Jennings will probably beat Watson every single time.

But imagine situations where there’s lots of available time. A patient is describing symptoms. Enter the symptoms into Watson. What does Watson think? But more importantly, why does Watson think that? Watson should spit out the opinion and the articles that led it to that conclusion. Let the doctor read the articles and come to a reasoned conclusion.

What about when seconds count? Run drills through Watson when seconds don’t count, so doctors can practice their imprecise science and get better. Don’t rely on the technology directly when seconds count–rely indirectly instead.

But doctors aren’t the only ones who can benefit from Watson. I once worked someplace that referenced every shred of data it had through a search engine called htdig. It was next to useless. It could give me a list of documents that contained words I was looking for, but had no way to rank them. It was marginally better than connecting to a file server and using FIND or FINDSTR or grep from a command line. Which was something that’s worked since at least 1990, possibly longer.

Today I work someplace that has a Google search appliance. It’s marginally better than htdig. But not much. When a complicated question comes across my desk, I still spend 8 hours digging through semi-relevant documents in search of an answer.

Watson provides a different approach. Ask Watson how far apart two computers have to be in order to avoid TEMPEST, by policy. Because of its ability to link related concepts, it would be able to spit out an answer, and an excerpt from each document that led it to believe that. A question that takes me hours to answer (unless I know it off the top of my head) takes minutes to answer instead.

Even when Watson is wrong, it’s still useful. It got that opinion from somewhere, right? Read those documents. It could be the problem is that the available documents contradict themselves. So Watson could expose holes in policy and/or technical documentation that nobody is aware of.

The problem with the Information Age is that humans now are burdened with information overload. There’s too much useless information out there. A technology like Watson offers the possibility of filtering through all the noise and showing us what’s relevant. And, used creatively, it could tell us what we know but forgot to write down anywhere.

At first the idea of a computer capable of making decisions and beating Ken Jennings at Jeopardy scared me. And it probably should. But that’s not what Watson is. It’s not good enough right now to do either of those things, and, frankly, I think morally we shouldn’t make a machine and put it in charge of making life-or-death decisions for us.

But it’s good enough to change the world right now. So I think it needs to be commercialized, however that looks. One of the problems is cost, since it requires $1 million worth of hardware to run on.

Offer it as a $10 million box for governments and huge companies to use to untangle their mess of documents. The U.S. government should be clamoring to feed all it knows about Pakistan, Afghanistan, al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden into it, then ask where Osama bin Laden is, if only to see what answer it gives. It may not be able to answer that question, but I’ll bet it could answer lots of other important ones.

Feed the entire contents of The New York Times into it and charge a subscription to ask it questions. I’m sure Google could find a way to commercialize it by feeding the contents of Google Books into it.

For that matter, IBM could feed the documentation for all of its products into a standalone instance of Watson, and call it a technical support site. In reality it would just be the world’s foremost expert on AIX, DB2, Tivoli, Lotus Domino, and whatever else IBM owns these days. Why would I ever spec a competing product when I could ask IBM any question and get really good answers in seconds?

I hope IBM realizes what it has here. I really hope IBM realizes what it has. But I fear it may not.

Of cameras and manhandling

Dave Farquhar Journalism , ,

If you haven’t heard, Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-N.C.) is the new Internet meme.

Two younger men, claiming to be college students, approached Etheridge on the street as he left a meeting. They asked if he supported Obama’s agenda. Etheridge demanded to know who they were, manhandled one of them, then finally walked away. Although he succeeded in disabling one camera, the other camera was rolling. After some editing, he became a You Tube sensation.

This is a very clear-cut case.Some are speculating the two "students" were trying to trap a Democrat in an embarrassing situation. In this case, the motives don’t matter. The two men were on a public sidewalk. They had every right to be there, cameras rolling or no.

Etheridge wanted the two men to identify themselves. However, this is a courtesy, not a right. When I was reporting, I always identified myself. I told my sources my name, the name of the publication I was working for, and, usually, the subject of the story I was working on. A few times I flashed my press pass, but usually nobody cared. Such courtesies lend credibility, but a journalist isn’t required to disclose any of that.

What did these two men say? "We’re two college students working on a project." Credentials like that will get you the brush-off about 99% of the time, and for good reason.

So what’s an appropriate brush-off? Say "No comment," then keep on walking. Make an excuse, like you’re late for another appointment, and keep walking. Hand them a business card and tell them to call you some other time.

Or, just answer the question. The question was whether he supports Obama’s agenda. The answer, of course, is, not all of it. Etheridge represents the second district of North Carolina, and the president does not. Since they’re both members of the same political party, there should be some overlap, but two representatives from adjacent districts who are members of the same party will disagree at times. Assuming they aren’t letting the party dictate everything to them.

Saying that takes less time and effort than grunting "Who are you?" a half dozen times and manhandling someone. And if they really are students, it gives them the material they need and they’ll leave you alone. If they’re political operatives for a rival party, it shuts them right down.

I started in journalism school a long 15 years ago. You Tube was a technical impossibility then, although it was something we expected would exist someday. Back then, the saying was that you should never do anything you wouldn’t want to see plastered across the front page of the New York Times.

There was another saying too. Freedom of the press is for those who own one.

A lot has changed. Today you can buy a video camera that fits in a shirt pocket for $70. Every computer sold in the last 8 years came with at least basic video editing software. And anyone can upload to You Tube.

Anyone can register for a blog and write whatever they want, and Google will index it. The overwhelming majority of it will be ignored, but there are legions of bored people out there. Never underestimate their ability to find stuff.

In 1995, there were serious barriers to entering journalism. Today, the traditional institutions like the New York Times are losing influence, but anyone who wants to practice journalism can do it.

I guess the saying today ought to be "Don’t do anything you wouldn’t want to see on the home page of You Tube."

Cameras can be used to restrict freedom and privacy. But they can also be used to prevent (or at least expose) abuses of power. This is still pretty new stuff, and a lot of people are having trouble adjusting to it.

Etheridge is trying to spin this as a mistake made at the end of a long day. That sounds plausible. But it’s a mistake that’s going to be around a long time. He’s up for re-election, and there’s no doubt in my mind that his opponent will use it in political advertisements from now until November.

Until this week, Etheridge looked like an automatic re-election. But video footage of an authority figure going all WWF Smackdown on two young men after asking a simple question has a way of changing things.

Why working fast food and retail was good for me

Dave Farquhar Careers , , , , , , , ,

One of my former high school classmates is concerned. Her seven-year-old’s life ambition is to work at McDonald’s.

I told her not to worry. I didn’t work at McDonald’s, but I spent 2 1/2 years working another, nearly defunct fast-food chain, and that motivated me more than anything to go to college. And then, working two years off and on in retail motivated me to finish college.

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Dinosaur hunting

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Today I slipped over to Laclede Computer Trading Company for the first time in many years. I was in search of an ISA parallel card. They’re not easy to find these days, mostly because they aren’t particularly useful to most people these days, but I figured if anyone would have one, it would be them.

No dice. But man, what memories.

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He likes ’em young

Dave Farquhar Personal

My two-year-old got a hand-addressed letter in the mail today from his bank. He has a kids’ club account there. They give kids some ridiculous interest rate (7% or so) on balances up to $500, up until age 13. It’s an effective tactic to get parents in the door so they can sell them other accounts and services.

The contents of the letter weren’t exactly what I expected. My wife couldn’t figure out why I was laughing uncontrollably.The letter, you see, was from the senior loan officer. It was offering him a mortgage, and offering to get him pre-approved at no charge.

I have visions of a red Radio Flyer pedal car and a red tricycle parked in the driveway of the house for sale down the street. My two year old getting his own crib, if you know what I mean. A place he can call his own, and draw on the walls with crayons all he wants.

But wait, there’s more! What if he already has a mortgage? Hey, it’s not unfathomable. Perhaps some rival bank beat them to the punch–they’ve had two years to do it, after all. In that event, they’re prepared to offer him a home equity line of credit.

I can’t tell you how badly I want to get an application form, fill it out in crayon, and send it in.

After my two year old gets a chance to scribble on it, of course.