Posted on 03/08/2005 12:06:04 PM PST by r5boston
Nearly a decade ago, just a few months after Microsoft shipped Windows 95, I asked Bill Gates if it was a conscious decision in the development of that product to give Windows more of a Mac look and feel. Of course I knew he'd say it wasn't, but I couldn't resist asking. "There was no goal even to compete with Macintosh," Gates proclaimed. "We don't even think of Macintosh as a competitor."
That was a crock, so I pressed the issue a little. I asked him how he accounted for the widespread perception that Windows 95 looked a lot like Mac 88, and whether the similarity was just a coincidence. I didn't expect a sobbing confession of mimicry, but I thought it would be cool to see how he'd respond. Surprisingly enough, Gates shifted gears and became more forthcoming.
(Excerpt) Read more at macworld.com ...
You are right it is partially true... partially wrong.
In sound, particularly music, tonal quality is not something that can be quantified. There are secondary frequencies called "beat frequencies" that are the result of one frequency harmonically adding or subtracting to another frequency and producing a third (or even more) frequency that adds to the tonal quality and overall sound. Some of the frequencies that produce audible beat frequencies are beyond the range of normal human hearing. If the high frequencies are missing in the reproduction, the beat frequecies that add to tonal quality will also be missing... resulting in an obvious perceived difference in what the listener hears.
Like usual your statement is factually incorrect - maybe you should stick with trying to explain how smart you think you are. Nothing I said about the Ipod was wrong and you clearly do not understand the point I was arguing so don't embarrass yourself. You should probably stick with talking about how smart you think you are.
Back in the day, a "computer" was a sexy young keypunch girl who operated data-entry devices, crunching thousands of calculations for things like the Manhattan project.
"firm 1" is defined as:
1. Strong; compact; steady.
Thesaurus: stable, fixed, solid, rooted, immovable, secured, steady, rigid;
Antonym: unsound, loose, mobile.
2. Solid; not soft or yielding.
3. Definite.
Example: a firm offer
4. Said of prices, markets, etc: steady or stable, with a slight upward trend.
5. Determined; resolute.
Thesaurus: determined, steadfast, constant, resolute, obdurate, staunch, definite, adamant, committed, reliable, dogged, unwavering.
6. Said of a mouth or chin: suggesting determination.
"firm 2 is defined as:
1. Any organization or individual engaged in economic activity with the aim of producing goods or services for sale to others; a business or company.
Thesaurus: company, business, corporation, association, organization, enterprise, outfit, establishment, conglomerate, concern, syndicate, institution.
2. A business partnership.
Note that the second definition of "firm" has an etymology from Latin... Firma - one's signature.
Thus we have firmware having a dual meaning of "stable, fixed, solid, rooted, immovable, secured, steady, rigid" instructions for hardware/equipment provided by a" company, business, corporation, association, organization, enterprise, outfit, establishment, conglomerate, concern, syndicate, institution" who has provided the hardware/equipment for which the instructions are required.
No, we are only concerned with your flawed logic... and information... and assumptions.... not to mention your insulting ad hominem style of discussion.
And YOU have been spending your days arguing with logic that would flunk you from any logic class that I have attended.
Both of these acronyms are misspelled when you insert an extraneous apostrophe:
"EPROM's are PROM's"
as YOU have repeatedly done. They are misspelled unless, perhaps, you mean "belonging to the EPROM are belonging to the PROM" or perhaps it is a contraction of "EPROM is are PROM is". But you cannot mean those because they would not fit the context. Ergo, they are misspelled.
Did you sleep throug English as well?
In the arena of "finding something to attack," you are the 2005 Poster Boy of the phrase "target rich environment."
Perhaps the EPROMs and PROMs possess something relevant to his point.
Nah.
You'll probably want an 'h' at the end of throug. ;O)
But at least when this is pointed out to you, you won't issue a blanket, and blank, denial of the correct spelling.
Firmware can include:
Jump tables relating to hardware.
Model and revision numbers.
Serial Numbers
Coded Trade Secrets
Data required for specific actions
Secret data having nothing to do with the operation of the equipment that is placed there for product marking for copyright protection.
Software that instructs hardware to do specific actions
Anything else the firm that creates the hardware and firmware wants.
It can be hard-coded into a piece of hardware... as was the case of the ROM, not PROM, or EPROM, or EEPROM, installed on the original IBM-PCs, which IBM burned at their chip foundry. It became a piece of hardware, a black box, so to speak, which took input and provided specific output for certain input. Compaq hired a team of 18 engineers, some of whom did indeed take a BIOS ROM from a working IBM-PC and map the inputs provided by an IBM-PC and make a second related map of the output sent to the IBM-PC. This chart of input = output was then handed to a team who had not touched the BIOS ROM who then REVERSE ENGINEERED a set of instructions that duplicated the output with the given input. They then burned that data to their own piece of hardware, a COMPAQ BIOS ROM.
Some companies, attempting to build computers that operated exactly like an IBM-PC, merely cloned the IBM-PC BIOS ROM... and were rightly sued for copyright infringement and appropriation and conversion of IBM trade secrets. IBM tried to aggressively protect its market with its only protect-able item... the BIOS ROM.
This black box, this piece of hardware, was the only IBM created TRADE SECRET and PROPRIETARY item included in their IBM-PC. The legal reverse engineering of the contents of this piece of hardware resulted in IBM's control of the PC hardware being abrogated.
Kudos to the folks at Phoenix who did about (or exactly?) the same thing and began selling just the BIOS for about twenty bucks to all takers.
:^) - Sometimes my brain knows the spelling but my fingers are on automatic pilot... but in this instance, the batteries in my Apple bluetooth keyboard are dying... and tossing extra keypresses including the delete keys. It can be frustrating trying to type "Petronski" and getting "PPPPPPPPPeeeeeetronski." I then hit the backspace key and it does the same thing... and sometimes I don't catch the extra deleted characters. I guess I should go the to store and get a set of AA batteries.
You know, proofreading one's own work is extremely difficult. My brain fills in what I meant to type.
Oh yeah? Try writing a f***kin' novel.
LOL
I particularly liked the part about EPROMs and PROMs.
What's with the photo?
I warned you twice about the invasion of privacy...
And sometimes the only data-entry device was a pencil and paper...
Or a slide rule...pritty-sexy if you ask me...
I am. Thank God my 29 year old daughter and 89 year old mother are excellent proofreaders... and thank Microsoft, Apple, Wordperfect, et al, for computerized spelling checkers!
It's strange... I can proofread other's work... but my own? Only if I don't look at it for a couple of months.
Look again, Pretronski. That isn't you. That's my Uncle Fred. If it were you, there'd be a laptop on the gut...
Truth!
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