Posted on 01/01/2003 2:27:30 PM PST by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
Year's end traditionally brings a mood of reflection to those of us who write for newspapers. It may be the melancholy of short days and long nights.
But it could also be the need to fill the space when nothing much is happening.
That said, herewith the annual CompuBug Dubious Achievement in Personal Computing awards.
The DLAPAPA (Designed Liker A Picasso And Priced Accordingly) award goes to Apple Computer for the design of its latest iMac, the one that looks like half a round melon impaled with a bent easel. You have to shell out $1,499 to get one with a CD-RW drive, chugging along on a 700-megahertz processor.
The FPF (Fine Print Finesse) award goes to Compaq, now in the belly of HP, for offering a $399, 1.8 gigahertz minitower PC, where adding a monitor is listed under the ``Customize'' button on the company's Web site. I guess there are those first-time buyer elitists who like to ``customize'' their PCs with a monitor, but the rest can certainly take advantage of a good price if they happened to be born with a video socket in the back of their head. (Yeah, it's not a bad deal if you're looking to upgrade an existing system, but why not say so?)
Microsoft is awarded a LUGLY trophy (Lawyers Universally Gotta Love You), for its never-ending saga of suing and being sued, the latest effort coming Christmas week as a British mobile phone corporation filed suit in federal court over intellectual property issues. That award is tied with the ...
WIP (Work In Progress) award for Windows XP, which if it doesn't whine about automatic updates available every three days or so, must be only because the software developers are so busy testifying that they didn't have time to patch the gaping holes in their code that have popped up over the last year. As this is written, my home system is refusing to hibernate, because, it says, the keyboard drivers may have problems. That the keyboard is a Microsoft product does not swell the heart with holiday cheer.
The ASAIS (Anything, So Long As It Sells) award goes to those publishers of PC and video console games who drench each adventure in gore, rape and mayhem. Or who feature anatomically improbably heroines whose outfits cover five yards on a hundred-yard field.
Not to be entirely negative, the DIW! Award (Doggone, It Works!) goes to those DSL and cable modem providers, Verizon and Comcast among them, who have actually delivered on the promise of easy broadband connectivity over ordinary phone lines. We don't appreciate this enough.
Ten years ago, an engineer told that we could deliver 10 megabits-per-second over an ordinary twisted-pair phone line would have summoned the guys with the wraparound white-sleeve sportscoats. Twenty years ago, the AP trumpeted its new, hot stock service that delivered at 9600-baud -- around 10,000 words a minute. Today, thanks to these pioneers, that's so antique it's painful (especially if you've been around long enough to remember it).
Finally, as always, the TAL (Thanks A Lot) award to the armies of publicists, entrepreneurs, readers and critics (and, perhaps, even, maybe, editors) who devote great amounts of time and attention to making me seem brighter and more knowledgeable than God intended.
Happy New Year to all!
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Questions and comments are welcome. Send them to Larry Blasko, The Associated Press, 50 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10020-1666. Or e-mail lblasko@ap.org.
Oh, come on, where has the AP been? Computer system prices have *not* included a monitor for at least ten years now.
This guy's obviously a young whippersnapper. I remember working on 110-baud modems.
Ah, but do you remember the ASR-33 teletypes that went with those 110-baud modems? ;)
Why, back in my day we had 30 baud TTY lines fed by paper tape - 5 holes across - that were created offline. That was the upgrade following tin cans and string.
I recall an article in PC Mag or PC World years ago wherein one of the big name writers (Dvorak, I think) claimed that 300 baud modems were plenty fast enough, since no one could possible read at 1200 baud. What an idiot.
We've come a long way, baby!
You mean, "chooga chooga chooga chooga buda buda buda ding"?
Courtesy of a devilishly clever mechano-acoustical synthesizer named after the inventor of the telephone.
Stop, you're giving me flashbacks! Did you ever write a song using a program to synchronize the rhythm of the teletype with the bell, using the carriage return for emphasis?
Yeah, those were the days! With a handle like Doohickey, you're likely to appreciate this more than most people. I had the unique opportunity of being assigned to a very small detachment in Germany with 2 men on a shift - 24x7. We were responsible for operation of the TTY, Crypto, Autodin router, generator and as well as the operation, calibration and maintenance of lots of digital and analog computer equipment.
A highlight of my tour was a TDY to Permasans which was the primary Autodin switching center for Europe and Africa. All tty/crypto traffic passed through there on its way to the U.S. After a tour of the facility, which ran five Philco-Ford computers, I got to sit down with the systems programmer and pick his brain for a couple of hours.
Another time, the power supply died on the Crypto equipment. We had spares for everything but that. My commander asked if I could fix it. I assured him that I could, but warned him that we would probably both go to jail. He said to let him worry about that. We were back in business in a couple of hours. Lots of fond memories of the place, the time, the people and the USAF. Thanks for the stroll.
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