Saturday, December 30, 2023

Byte (October 1983)

Byte was probably the best general computer magazine of its time. It had a long publishing run starting in the 1970s and continuing into the 1990s. This issue is from October 1983 and includes:

Cover Story

Product Preview: The HP 150 - The HP-150 somewhat unique machine. It ran MS-DOS but was not PC compatible. It was also one of the first computers with a touch screen (though it was optional). It was fairly powerful for its time. It used an 8088 CPU but it ran at 8 MHz instead of the 4.77 MHz of the IBM PC.

An Interview: The HP 150's Design-team Leaders - An interview with Jim Sutton and John Lee, the leaders of the design team for the HP 150.

Columns

Build the Micro D-Cam Solid-State Video Camera, Part 2 - The second part of a series on building a digital camera. This part covers serial interfaces for the Apple II and IBM PC and software for the Apple II.

BYTE West Coast: Shaping Consumer Software - Trip Hawkins of Electronic Arts talks about how he judges software and the programmer as an artist.
User's Column: New Computers, Boards, Languages and Other Tidbits - Items covered include Modula-2/86, Problem Knowledge Coupler (medical software), Kaypro 4, Osborne Executive, and more.

_{Table of Contents from the October 1983 issue of Byte}

Themes

The Unix Operating System - An overview of the Unix operating system.

The Unix Tutorial, Part 3: Unix in the Microcomputer Marketplace - A look at licensed Unix OS versions as well as look-alikes and work-alikes (Linux would fall under this category though that wouldn't exist for nearly another decade).

Unix and the Standardization of Small Computer Systems - A look at the history of Unix and how it helped to standardize software and hardware of "small systems" (i.e. workstation and mini-computers).

A Tour Through the Unix File System - A tutorial on the Unix file system.

The Unix Shell - A look at both the command interpreter and programming capabilities of the Unix shell.

Unix as an Application Environment - A look at how Unix compares to other operating systems in terms of development tools and end user applications.

Reviews

The NEC Advanced Personal Computer - This machine was designed to run CPM/86 so essentially this is a 16-bit CP/M machine with 128K RAM and two 8-inch floppy drives. I don't know if it was clear at the time but CP/M would shortly disappear from the market in favor if PC compatibles. The 8-inch disk format wouldn't really be around much longer either.

_{Review of the TRS-80 Model 4}

Radio Shack's TRS-80 Model 4 - My high school was still using TRS-80 Model IIIs and 4s to teach BASIC programming at least through the early 1990s. These machines were Z80 based and had their own DOS. The Model 4 could also run CP/M software. With two 5.25" floppy disk drives and 128K of RAM a Model 4 cost about $3000.

The Morrow Micro Decision - The Osbourne 1 and Kaypro II were considered to be the main competition for the Morrow Micro Decision. It is a Z80 based CP/M computer with 64K of RAM and 5.25" floppy drive that starts at $1200.

The Microneye - A digital camera with a 256x128 sensor that could interface with various computers via an RS-232 Interface. It worked at least with the Apple II, IBM PC, Commodore 64, and Color Computer.

The M68000 Educational Computer Board - A single board computer with a 4 MHz 68000 CPU, 32K RAM, and various ports and interfaces for $495. This board fits in a Heathkit H-19 terminal.

Features

Photographics Animation of Microcomputer Graphics - A technique for generating stop motion animation using a computer to generate the images and a video camera.

The Fourth National Computer Graphics Association Conference - A look at the latest graphics hardware and software.

Echonet, Part 2: The Compiler - Part two of a multipart series on Echonet, a programming language/system. This part covers the compiler.

Computer Crime: A Growing Threat - This article looks at real-life computer crimes and some of the requirements for a secure system. Most crimes at this point involved unauthorized access. A comparison is drawn between the fictional War Games (great movie) and a real-life incident several months before that movie was released in which several teenagers gaines access to the Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory.

Mainframe Graphics on a Microcomputer - Techniques for saving mainframe graphical output via a terminal program and converting them for display on your home computer...assuming you have high resolution graphics capabilities.

_{Table of Contents from the October 1983 issue of Byte (continued)}

Nucleus

Editorial: A Challenge to Education - Radio Shack's "America's Educational Challenge" initiative.

MICROBYTES - The latest news including the first 256K DRAM chips, memory and other componenet shortages, Telelearning electronic university, Texas Instruments and Times reduce prices on their computers, Interland announces a $400 per device Ethernet link, and more.

Letters - Letters from readers about Word Tools for the IBM PC, double-spacing with Wordstar, searching in Wordstar, and more.

User to User - Questions answered about copy protection and privacy, cache RAM, public key encryption, and more.

Ask BYTE - Questions answered about joysticks for the PC, Apple disks, sharing a color monitor with multiple systems, developing games for the Atari 2600, and more.

_{Back cover of the October 1983 issue of Byte}

Sunday, December 24, 2023

I suppose the Tips & Tricks was the closest thing to a successor to VideoGames & Computer Entertainment that there was. Many of the same people were involved. However, while VG&CE was my favorite magazine while it was still around, I don't think I ever bought an issue of Tips & Trick. While I sometimes enjoyed that type of content, my main interest was in news and reviews type stuff. This is the premiere issue of Tips & Tricks from Spring 1994 and it includes:

Strategy

General Chaos - A squad based overhead action game from Electronic Arts for the Sega Genesis.

Double Switch - A full motion video game from Sega for the Sega CD that is along the lines of Night Trap.

Mortal Komba - Mortal Kombat debuts on home systems for the Super NES, Genesis, Game Boy and Game Gear. This guide helps with all of them.

Mortal Kombat II - Some tips and tricks for the Mortal Kombat II arcade game.

_{Table of Contents from the Spring 1994 issue of Tips & Tricks}

Departments

Power Up! - An introduction to a brand new magazine along with a glossary of terms including tip, trick, easter egg, bug, combo, and boss.

Readers' Tips - Tips from readers for Clay Fighter (Super NES) and Street Fighter II Turbo (SNES).

_{Table of Contents from the Spring 1994 issue of Tips & Tricks (continued)}

Tips

Genesis Tips - Tips for Battletoads/Double Dragon, Micro Machines, Pink Goes to Hollywood, Flash Back, Mortal Kombat, Aladdin, Sunset Riders, Jungle Strike, Shinobi III, and Ecco the Dolphin.
Sega CD Tips - Tips for Stellar-Fire, Double Switch, Microcosm, The Terminator, and Sonic CD.

Super NES Tips - Tips for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Tournament Fighters, Battletoads / Double Dragon, Super Nova, Pink Goes to Hollywood, Battlemaniacs, Cacoma Knight, Tom & Jerry, Super Street Fighter II Turbo, WWF Royal Rumble, and Taz-Mania.

Jaguar Tips - Tips for Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy.

NES Tips - Tips for Battletoads / Double Dragon and Batman Returns.

_{Back cover of the Spring 1994 issue of Tips & Tricks}

Friday, December 15, 2023

Compute!’s Gazette (November 1987)

There were a few big Commodore 64 related magazines in the U.S. Compute!'s Gazette was one of them. For whatever reason, it's not one that I saw at the stores I normally went to for such things (for me it was RUN and Commodore Magazine I saw frequently). However, Compute!'s Gazette was a long running magazine that was published well into the 1990s. The November 1987 issue would have been out near the height of the popularity of the Commodore 64. This issue includes:

Features

Computers at Work - Examples of how people use there Commodore 64s and Commodore 128s in the real world. Examples here include publishing periodicals, monitoring log production for log homes, farm management, running an antique business, managing a thoroughbred horse boarding and training farm, customer database for a water filtration equipment company, and more.

Reviews

Lt. Kernal Hard Disk Drives - Hard drives were expensive luxuries in for the Commodore 64/128. The Lt. Kernal was one of the more popular options and included an external 20 MB drive for $900. Hard drives on Commodore 8-bit computers seem to have been used mostly by BBS operators.

Jeremy Silman's Guide to Chess Openings and 50 Classic Chess Games - A computerized chess tutorial system focusing on opening moves plus an analysis of 50 chess games from the past.

Maniac Mansion - One of the best point and click adventure games for the Commodore 64...or any system.

Games

Litterbug - A type-in game in which you must collect trash and avoid giant insects.

The Gumball Rally - A type-in two-player game for the Commodore 128 in which you must make more money than your opponent by buying and selling gumballs.

_{Cover of the November 1987 issue of Compute!'s Gazette}

Education / Home Applications

Sketch Pad - A type-in drawing program for the Commodore 64.

Computing for Families: Holding a Hi-Tech Yard Sale - Tips for selling your old computer hardware and software at a yard sale.

Fraction Practice II - A type-in educational program that teaches fraction multiplication and division.

Programming

Subprograms for the 64 - A type-in program that helps you create "subprograms" in BASIC. Basically, these are standalone BASIC programs that act as subroutines.

SpeedScript 128 Date and Time Stamper - A type-in program in enhance the SpeedScript 128 word processor by adding date and time stamps to your documents.

Renumber - A type-in program that will renumber your BASIC programs.

Sprite Monitor - A type-in program that will search for sprites in memory and save them to disk.

Barricade Buster: Accessing the 128's 80-Column Screen - A type-in program designed to help you use the Commodore 128's 80-column screen in your own programs. Includes an example game.

Departments

The Editor's Notes - An overview of the current issue along with the introduction of two new assistant editors.

Gazette Feedback - Letters from readers about joysticks produced by Amiga, a calculated GOTO routine for the Commodore 128, collision detection of sprites, loading programs from within other programs, searching for prime numbers, keeping time in BASIC, and more.

Horizons: The Beast with Two Brains - A look at using CP/M on the Commodore 128 on its second CPU which is a Z80. The primary CPU used for Commodore compatible stuff on the Commodore 128 is the 8502 (a 6502/6510 derivative).

_{Cover of the November 1987 issue of Compute!'s Gazette}

Sunday, December 10, 2023

Chicago’s Solution to Its Failing School System: Stop Grading Schools on Performance

In 1987, U.S. Education Secretary Bill Bennett famously traveled to Chicago, where he ruffled feathers by telling a closed-room group that the Windy City’s school system was “the worst in the nation.”

Local parents and educators bristled at the charge, which resulted in an awkward New York Times story. But decades of data would subsequently prove that Mr. Bennett was basically correct: Chicago’s schools were a total mess.

The city’s own accountability report card would later demonstrate that huge majorities of students in the city’s worst schools—75 percent in elementary and 95 percent in high school—failed to meet the state standards.

Things hardly improved during the pandemic, even though the Chicago Public School (CPS) system was spending roughly $28,000 per student (partly thanks to federal bailout cash).

“Just 30% of Black students meet or exceed reading standards in the third grade, and the number falls to 14% for 11th graders, according to data from the Illinois State Board of Education,” The Chicago Tribune pointed out last year.

Chicago schools clearly aren't getting the job done, but political leaders in the city have discovered a solution to the problem: stop grading schools.

“I personally don’t give a lot of attention to grades,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said during a recent interview. “How do you grade a system, when the system has not fulfilled its basic obligation of providing an equitable system that speaks to the needs [of students].”

Mr. Johnson went on to explain a better way to evaluate Chicago’s school system.

“My responsibility is not simply to just grade the system, but to fund the system,” he said. “That’s how I’m ultimately going to grade whether or not our public school system is working: based upon the investments that we make to the people who rely on it.”

This isn't mere idle chatter.

Earlier this year, the Chicago Board of Education scrapped its school rating policy, which was designed to rate schools on a range of performance goals, including how students performed on state tests.

WBEZ, an NPR-affiliated Chicago radio station, reported that Chicago’s system had been criticized for “relying too heavily on test scores and unfairly branding schools,” adding that the “new accountability policy veers away from any rating.”

One can see why leaders in Chicago favor grading schools by the amount of money they receive versus the academic performance of students.

Data from the Illinois State Board of Education show that not one student in the 22 schools analyzed in a widely read report can read at grade level. In 18 of those schools, there wasn't a single student who demonstrated proficiency in math or reading. (Despite this, some of these schools were given the rating “commendable.”)

Again, this is the state of Illinois’ own data.

If you grade these schools by funding, it’s a different story, of course. Per-student funding at Chicago Public Schools is now approaching $30,000 ($29,400, according to WBEZ). That is nearly double the national average ($14,347), according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Just like that—simply by grading schools by the funding they receive instead of their actual performance—CPS goes from one of the worst school districts in the United States to one of the best.

We all know this is no way to judge schools, of course. Accountability matters, and it’s hard to think of a worse solution than simply sending more and more money to failing systems and demanding less accountability for how that money is spent.

Indeed, it's this paradigm that has brought us the failed, bureaucratic education system America sees today.

More than 30 years ago, John Hood, the author and president of the John W. Pope Foundation, explained why the government was wholly unsuited to teach America’s students, and predicted U.S. schools would continue to decline despite steadily increasing government spending:

“When every call for fundamental change in American education is rebutted not by arguments about student achievement but by arguments focusing on race, class, social mixing, and other social concerns, it is difficult to imagine real progress.

"When teachers spend much of their day filling out forms, teaching quasi-academic subjects mandated from above, and boosting student self-esteem (as contrasted with serf-respect, which is earned rather than worked up), learning is difficult if not impossible.”

Mr. Hood had gleaned the same truth the famous educator John Taylor Gatto (1935–2018) had learned.

Mr. Gatto, the Teacher of the Year in New York State in 1991 and author of "Dumbing Us Down," understood it wasn't “bad teachers” or a lack of funds responsible for America’s failing schools. It was the system itself, which was built on coercion, bureaucracy, and obedience instead of actual learning, discovery, and collaboration with families.

“Independent study, community service, adventures and experience, large doses of privacy and solitude, a thousand different apprenticeships—the one-day variety or longer—these are all powerful, cheap, and effective ways to start a real reform of schooling. But no large-scale reform is ever going to work to repair our damaged children and our damaged society until we force open the idea of ‘school’ to include family as the main engine of education," he wrote.

"If we use schooling to break children away from parents—and make no mistake, that has been the central function of schools since John Cotton announced it as the purpose of the Bay Colony schools in 1650 and Horace Mann announced it as the purpose of Massachusetts schools in 1850—we’re going to continue to have the horror show we have right now.”

Mr. Gatto wrote these words more than 30 years ago. And though I wouldn't have described U.S. schools as a “horror show” in 1992 (I was only 13), I certainly would today.

Despite an objective decline in U.S. schools, which has resulted in a mass exodus of students, politicians seek to continue pumping more and more money into struggling schools.

This wouldn't have surprised Mr. Gatto, who observed years ago that the primary purpose of schools in modern America was no longer education (if it ever was).

“We must wake up to what our schools really are: laboratories of experimentation on young minds, drill centers for the habits and attitudes that corporate society demands,” he wrote.

Years ago I would have brushed off Mr. Gatto’s words as fanciful hyperbole. I don’t today.

Moreover, I think it’s become abundantly clear that the greatest obstacle to educational reform is the government itself—and politicians who want to grade schools by how much money they receive from taxpayers instead of whether students are actually learning.

This article originally appeared on The Epoch Times.

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Editor at Large of FEE.org at the Foundation for Economic Education.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Chicago’s Solution to Its Failing School System: Stop Grading Schools on Performance

Monday, December 4, 2023

PC World (February 1985)

PC World was one of the most popular magazines dedicated to IBM PC and compatible computers. I thrived in the 1980s and 1990s and survived well into the second decade of the new century. However, like pretty much all computer magazines, this one eventually died as a result of the Internet. The February 1985 issue includes:

Getting Started

Strategies for Sharing Resources - A multi-user system with multiple terminals or a LAN may be a better alternative to simply buying more PCs when your business needs to expand.

Community

The Organization LAN - The necessity of networking when dealing with a multitude of PCs.

Review

Six Leading LANs - A comparison of the six leading Local Area Network solutions, including Netware/S-Net (Novell), EtherSeries (3Com), Omninet (Corvus Systems), PLAN 3000 (Nestar Systems), PCnet (Orchid Technology), and Net/One (Ungermann-Bass).

The Multiuser Dimension - An alternative to a LAN was a multi-user system with IBM PCs basically used as smart terminals. This article looks specifically at the North Star Dimension which supported 12 workstation, ran a custom OS and was compatible with MS-DOS 2.11.

Breaking Ground in Construction - A review of Software Shop, an accounting package specialized for the construction industry.

_{Table of Contents from the February 1985 issue of PC World}

PCjr World

Color on Command - A look at the Palette command provided on cartridge BASIC for the IBM PCjr. This was a command designed to allow for easily changing colors or even doing simple animations.

A Drive to Succeed - The PCjr was limited in a variety of ways compared to the PC. However, there were several add-ons that were made by third parties to improve the situation. This article looks at one such product, the "Drive Two Enhancement Package" from Rapport. This package includes a second disk drive, a parallel printer port, a clock/calendar with battery backup, and an optional 128K-384K memory expansion. It also increases compatibility with PC software.

State of the Art

A New Focus on Data Management - A look at PC/Focus, a "fourth generation" computer language (Focus) for the PC. It's main advantage seems to be making data management easier.

Hands On

Untangling Networks - A guide to finding the Local Arean Network product that will work best for you.

_{Table of Contents from the February 1985 issue of PC World (continued)}

Departments

Davin Bunnell - An interesting story in which a user planted stolen credit card numbers on a BBS without the sysops knowledge. The phone company somehow discovered this through its own BBS snooping software and notified the police. The poor guy who ran the BBS had is computer confiscated (stolen) and was charged as an accessory to the crime. An argument is presented here as to whether the BBS operator is equivalent to a newspaper publisher or simply providing a communications medium. This argument has come up more recently with social media but as you can see, it's nothing new.

Letters - Letters from readers about indexes of old articles, a tip for entering a date in Lotus 1-2-3 that auto updates, the PCs chess playing skills, Sargon III, and more.

PC World View - Microsoft debuts the Microsoft Press International Publishing Consortium through which it will publish various books around the world; the usage of personal computers in political campaigns increased greatly in 1984...most of the time, those using computers won; a prototype IBM PC AT was stolen from an IBM lab in Palm Beach County, Florida. The thief was not caught; IBM announces its own local area network product; and more.

The Help Screen - Questions answered about using RAM disks.

Compatibles Update - AT&T releases a video display adapter, image capture board, and other products for "AT&T and compatible computers"; Zenith awarded contract for 30,000 Tempest certified Z-150 PCs; Ford Aerospace buys $1.5 million worth of Seequa PC and XT desktop computers which will go to NASA engineers in Houston; the IRS field-tests GRiD Compass portable computers; and more.

From the Software Shelf - First impressions of various software including Macro-Toolkit for Lotus, SideKick Version 1.10A, A>Cook: The Complete Computer Recipe System, PC Abstracts, and Textra.

_{Back cover of the February 1985 issue of PC World}

...and more!

Tuesday, November 28, 2023

Electronic Gaming Monthly (January 1995)

This was one of the best and biggest selling gaming magazines in the U.S. for a long time. I was never a subscriber but I bought issues when I could between probably 1989 and 2002 give or take. The January 1995 issue includes:

Features

Shoshinkai Show Unveils New Products! - The big news was the unveiling of the Virtual Boy and what a flop that was. Some of the first games were Mario Bros. VB, Pinball VB, and Teleroboxer.

Getting "Tricky" With The King of the Super NES Jungle! - Tips and tricks for the latest and greatest 2D platform game on the Super NES, Donkey Kong Country.

Earthworm Jim Strategy Guide - A level by level guide to this humorous platform game from Shiny Entertainment.

_{Table of Contents from the January 1995 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly}

Departments

Insert Coin - A commentary on the Virtual Boy's introduction and how Nintendo was already stumbling out of the gate with its release.

Interface: Letters to the Editor - Letters from readers about the 32X, bug spray and CDs, Sega CD fighting games, developing games for the Turbo Duo, NAM-1975, full motion video on the SNES, Bloodstorm, and more.

Review Crew - Reviews of Samurai Showdown II (Neo Geo, game of the month), X-Men (Super NES), Indiana Jones (Super NES), Jurassic Park 2 (Super NES), Wolverine (Genesis), Aero The Acro Bat 2 (Genesis), Star Wars Arcade (32X), Heart of the Alien (Sega CD), Street Fighter II Turbo (3DO), Doom (Jaguar), Space Invaders (Game Boy), The Marvin Missions (Game Boy), and Ecco 2: The Tides of Time (Game Gear).

EGM's Hot Top Tens - Several top tens lists including Top Ten video Babes (Mai Shiranui from The King of Fighters '94 gets the top spot), Editor's Top Ten (Samurai Showdown II for the Neo Geo is at the top), and Readers' Top Ten (the arcade version of Mortal Kombat II tops the list). There are also top 10 games lists for several systems. Number one games include FIFA International Soccer (3DO), Donkey Kong Country (Super NES), Madden '95 (Genesis), ESPN National Hockey Night (Sega CD), and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (Game Gear).

Gaming Gossip - The latest news and rumors about Mortal Kombat III, NBA Jam Tournament Slam, Diddy Kong, Virtual Boy, Saturn and the 32X, Sonic on the 32X, the Sega Neptune, and more.

Press Start - Nintendo teams up with Paradigm to create a flight sim for the Ultra 64 (Nintendo 64); Earthworm Jim commercial featuring worm eating; Flightstick Pro from CH Products for the 3DO; a Super Game Boy to Game Genie adapter; Donkey Kong Country launched worldwide; Xband Catapult Modem for the Genesis; and more news and new products.

Arcade Action - A look at some of the latest arcade games including Tattoo Assassins (Data East), Ace Driver (Namco), Locked 'N' Loaded (Data East), and Point Blank (Namco).

_{Table of Contents from of the January 1995 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly (continued)}

Fact Files

Super NES Times - A quick look at Home Improvement (95% complete), Ogre Battle (90% complete), The Ignition Factor (100% complete), Pinball Fantasies (95% complete), and Savage Empire (95% complete).

Outpost Sega - Previews of Mega Bomberman (95% complete), The Death and Return of Superman (100% complete), Mighty Max (100% complete), Cosmic Carnage (32X, 100% complete), Samurai Showdown (Sega CD, 50% complete), Fatal Fury Special (Sega CD, 50% complete), Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (Sega CD, 100% complete), Ecco II: The Tides of Time (Sega CD, 100% complete), and Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure (Sega CD, 100% complete).

Neo Geo Challenge - Preview of Samurai Showdown II (100% complete).

Planet 3DO - Previews of Super Street Fighter II Turbo (100% complete), The Need for Speed (85% complete), Shockwave: Operation Jumpgate (90% complete), Shanghai: Triple Threat (95% complete).

_{Back cover of the January 1995 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly}

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (1257-1260)

See the previous post in this series here.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These pictures span from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s. These came to me second hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are many thousands of these slides. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.

Getting your pictures processed as slides used to be pretty common but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides from the late 1950s that I acquired after he died. That along with having some negatives I wanted to scan is what prompted me to buy a flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives, an Epson V600. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job.

This set continues a large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer (or perhaps a friend or family member) from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. His career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/

Many of these slides had the date they were processed stamped or printed on them. I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date.

Click the link below to also see versions processed with color restoration and Digital ICE which is a hardware based dust and scratch remover, a feature of the Epson V600 scanner I am using. There are also versions processed with the simpler dust removal option along with color restoration.

The photos in this set feature various people. They are unlabeled but were all processed in May 1966 and probably taken around that time.

processed May 1966

The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can also be found here.

Monday, November 27, 2023

Why Justin Trudeau Is Blaming Grocers for Surging Food Prices in Canada

New government data emerged this week showing that food prices in Canada continue to climb.

Though year-over-year inflation of consumer prices overall cooled to 3.8% in September, food prices increased 5.8% from a year ago, driven by surging prices of bakery products (up 8%), fresh vegetables (7.6%), pasta products (10.8%), and poultry (6.5%).

Food prices have long been a sore spot for Canadians. Even prior to 2023, statistics showed that some 7 million Canadians, including 1.8 million children, were in households struggling to put food on the table.

As inflation continued to drive food prices upward in 2023, consumer outrage quickly mounted.

“If I’m paying that much, I hope there’s gold in that chicken,” one user responded to a viral tweet in January showing a $37 price tag on a package of chicken breasts.

The episode prompted accusations of price gouging and a high-profile story in the New York Times — but the paper reported that outrage at grocers was misplaced.

“While it’s easy to get angry at the grocer, there’s very little evidence that the grocers are actually taking advantage of the situation,” said Mike von Massow, a food economics professor at the University of Guelph in Ontario.

Food prices have only gotten worse since then, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, apparently not a reader of the New York Times, has found the same scapegoat as many others unversed in basic economics: grocers.

Last month, Trudeau threatened to slap grocery stores with new taxes if they don’t find a way to lower food prices.

“Large grocery chains are making record profits. Those profits should not be made on the backs of people who are struggling to feed their families,” Trudeau told an Ontario crowd.

By taking aim at grocers and “record profits,” Trudeau is parroting the rhetoric of some U.S. politicians, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who has argued that inflation is being driven by “corporate greed.”

The idea that corporations suddenly became greedy in the aftermath of the pandemic never passed the economic smell test, and it was recently rebutted in a Federal Reserve paper.

“Corporate profit margins were not abnormally high in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, once fiscal and monetary interventions are accounted for,” noted Dino Palazzo, senior economist at the Federal Reserve Board.

Yet politicians such as Trudeau, who less than a year ago criticized the idea of using a windfall tax on grocery companies to lower food prices, have repeated the claim over and over again that greedy corporations are the root cause of inflation. Why?

The answer is simple: the true blame for inflation lies with them.

Pierre Poilievre, leader of Canada’s Conservative Party, hit the nail on the head in a recent interview when he pointed out that the Canadian government’s policies are to blame for inflation — as are those who lead it.

“[Trudeau] prints $600 billion, grows our money supply by 32% in three years,” Poilievre said. “That’s growing the money eight times faster than the economy. No wonder we have the worst inflation in four decades.”

This is the mystery of inflation. (It’s not really a mystery.) Politicians and central banks flooded the economy with money, which devalued the currency.

Basic economics teaches that increasing the money supply faster than an economy can provide new goods and services will result in price inflation, and that is precisely what we’ve witnessed. Indeed, for much of modern history, inflation was defined as expansion of the money supply, not an increase in prices (which is the consequence of expanding the money supply). Henry Hazlitt famously explained the difference in Economics in One Lesson.

“Inflation is an increase in the quantity of money and credit. Its chief consequence is soaring prices,” Hazlitt explained. “Therefore inflation — if we misuse the term to mean the rising prices themselves — is caused solely by printing more money.”

Politicians such as Trudeau cannot, of course, admit it’s their own policies and money printing that are to blame for high food prices. So they hold speeches blaming grocery stores and food producers for the inflation they caused and threaten them with new taxes.

Whether Canadians will see through Trudeau’s crude charade is unclear. What is clear is that Canadian grocers are not responsible for the skyrocketing price of food in Canada. Justin Trudeau and the Bank of Canada are.

This article originally appeared on The Washington Examiner.

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Editor at Large of FEE.org at the Foundation for Economic Education.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Why Justin Trudeau Is Blaming Grocers for Surging Food Prices in Canada

Tuesday, November 14, 2023

PC Magazine (March 1983)

Old computer magazine sure were big. Big doesn't really even begin to cover it. This issue of PC Magazine from March 1983 is 562 pages. How many reading this have ever even seen a magazine that large? Obviously there were a huge number of ads but there was also a lot of content. This issue includes:

First Look

Introducing the IBM PC-XT and Company - IBM introduces a number of new products, most notable were the IBM PC XT, an enhancement to the original PC. A basic PC-XT system that included 128K of RAM, a 10 MB hard drive and 360K floppy drive would set you back $4,995. According to the first inflation calculator Google threw at me, that's equivalent to $15,429.89 today.

Cover Stories

Avoiding The Worst: How To Care For Your PC - Basic tips for caring for your PC, floppy disks, and more. Useful advice includes not spilling drinks on your keyboard, keeping disks in their protective sleeves, not smoking around your computer, and more.

Block That Bolt, Hey! - Power surges and other power line problems were estimated to be responsible for 70-90 percent of computer equipment malfunctions. This article gives advice on using surge protectors and power line filters and compares several options.

Living With Lapses In Your Power Line - Tips for handling power outages and brown outs including the use of uninterruptable power supplies and battery backed-up memory.

Legal

The Ultimate Backup: Insuring Your PC - Making sure your computer is insured might sound like overkill but then considering a basic IBM PC XT system cost the equivalent of fifteen grand, maybe not so much.

_{Table of Contents from the March 1983 issue of PC Magazine}

Languages

Programming With Funny Symbols - A look at the APL programming language.

PC APLication - An evaluation of an APL implementation for the PC along with a performance comparison to BASIC.

Keynotes - Customizing function keys to aid BASIC programming.

Software

1-2-3: A Program You Can Count On - A look at Lotus 1-2-3 which combined spreadsheet and database functionality into one application.

The Ultimate Spreadsheet - A look at MicroPlan and a comparison to VisiCalc.

Applications

BankAmerica Plugs In To PC Power - BankAmerica invests heavily in IBM PCs to improve productivity.

The Automated Agent Helps Performers Get Gigs - A look at Ibis, software that helps talent agents schedule events for the talent they represent.

_{Table of Contents from the March 1983 issue of PC Magazine (continued)}

PC Arcade

At Ease With PC - Reviews of PC games including Apple Panic, Kaleida, Micro-Football, and The Chrome Ranger.

Word Processing

The Select Approach - Review of Select, a word processor/spelling checker/mail merge program targeted at the business/professional market.

Letter Imperfect - Review of TypeFaces, a product designed to allow you to produce various typefaces on certain dot matrix printers.

Business

Parlez-Vous PC? - The IBM PC's introduction to France.

Tie Me IBM Down, Boys - Marketing PCs in Australia vs. the U.S.

Communications

Let there Be Ethernet - A case stud of one of the first PC Ethernet installations.

1200 Baud: Speed Of Choice For PC Communications - How technological improvements will make 1200 baud modems affordable for most people.

Sight And Sound

The PC Talks Back - A look at PC Parrot, a low cost voice synthesizer for the PC.

Utilities

SimpliFile Takes The Mystery Out Of File Names - A review of SimpliFiles, a utility for adding descriptions to files so that it makes things easier to find than the default 8.3 filename restrictions in DOS.

PC Program Exchange

How To Tell Time With TellTime - An educational program for teaching kids to tell time with analog clocks.

IBM Eye

Anatomy Of A Colossus, Part III - The third part in a series on IBM and their future.

Book Excerpt

Back To Basic - Excerpt of the book "Learning IBM BASIC For The Personal Computer" by David A. Lien.

Departments

From the Editor's Screen - A look at the current issue and what went into it.

Letters to PC - Letters from readers about LOGO, exponential growth in the PC market, spelling programs, pagination problems, and much more.

PC Comminques - Computer news including IBM talking with Matsushita about producing third party products with the IBM logo, a program for indexing books, and more.

PC Tutor - Questions answered about DOS, including un-erasing files, chkdsk error messages, generating superscripts and subscripts, the difference between diskcopy and copy, hidden files, and more.

_{Back cover of the March 1983 issue of PC Magazine}

Sunday, November 12, 2023

PC World (July 2003)

PC World was probably the most popular PC magazine throughout much of the 1990s and beyond. However, by 2003 I was mostly just reading Maximum PC which was more of an "enthusiast" magazine. The July 2003 issue of PC world includes:

Features

Best of 2003 - July seems a bit early to have a best of the year feature to me but I guess that's just how PC World did things. Winners include:

Best Entertainment PC: ABS Media Center PC 8500 featuring a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 for $1799
Product of the Year: T-Mobile Sidekick ($300)
Best Desktop Power PC: Dell Dimension 8300
Best Input Device: Logitech Cordless Elite Duo (wireless mouse and keyboard, $100)
Best Operating System: Windows XP Professional ($299)
Best Ink Jet Printer: Canon i850 ($170)
...and much more.

One-Stop Digital Photography Guide - A digital photography guide that includes advice for choosing a digital camera, organizing your digital photos, printing your photos, and more.

Pest Zappers - A review and comparison of sever anti-virus software packages including EXtendia AVK Professional, F-Secure Anti-Virus 2003, GeCad Software RAV AntiVirus Desktop for Windows 8.6, Kaspersky Anti-Virus Personal 4, McAfee VirusScan 7 Home Edition, Panda Software Antivirus Platinum 7, Norton AntiVirus 2003, and Trend Micro PC-cillin 2003.

_{Table of Contents from the July 2003 issue of PC World}

Top 100

Pentium M Has Juice - New Pentium M based laptops impress with battery life.

Top 15 Desktops - The top power system this month is the ABS Awesome 3450 featuring an Athlon XP 3000+, 1 GB DDR400 RAM, 128MB Sapphire Radeon 9700 Pro, and more for $1929. The top value system is the ABS Awesome 3380 featuring an Athlon XP 2800+, 512 MB DDR400 RAM, 128MB ATI Radeon 9700 Pro and more for $1749. The top corporate PC is the Compaq Evo D510 Convertible Minitower featuring a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4, 512 MB DDR266 RAM, 64MB NVidia Quadro4 200NVS, and more for $2012.

Top 15 Notebook PCs - The Top Power Notebook is the IBM ThinkPad T40 featuring a 1.6 GHz Pentium M and 512 MB RAM for $3249. The top Value Notebook is the Compaq Presario 2100Z featuring a Mobile Athlon 4 XP 1800+ and 512 MB RAM for for $1024.

Top 10 Ink Jet Printers - The winner this month is the Canon i320 Color Bubble Jet Printer for $55.

Departments

Up Front - Predictions for best products in 2004 including an OLED equipped camera, reliable wireless router, broadband on airplanes, a great phone that is also a great PDA, and more.

Letters - Reader letters about wiping data from old drives, reducing spam, the death of Adam Osborne, and more.

Plugged In - News and rumors including a pilot program providing broadband access via power lines, laws cracking down on spammers, Sony's new Blu-ray recorder, AMD's new 64-bit Opteron, and more.

Consumer Watch - Be careful buying the latest high-tech gadgets. They may not come with needed accessories.

_{Table of Contents from the July 2003 issue of PC World (continued)}

News & Trends

E-Mail Evolves - New programs and web services offer more ways to control, sort and search your e-mail.

AMD Keeps Its Value Crown - A look at the new Athlon XP 3200+ and a couple of PCs based on it including the Poly 880NF3-3200 and Sys Performance 3200+.

Flash-Memory Bargains Bloom - Bargain is a relative term. Flash memory was rapidly declining in price but was still very expensive compared to today. For example, new 512MB and 1GB SD cards were expected to cost $170 and $330.

New Products

Personal Digital Assistants - A look at some of the latest PDAs including the Palm Zire 71, Palm Tungsten Z, and the Toshiba Pocket PC E755.

Remote-Access Software - A look at new software for remote access including LapLink Everywhere 2.01 and PCAnywhere 11.

Scanner - A look at the Fujitsu ScanSnap, a sheet-fed document scanner for $495.

Here's How

Windows Tips - Tips for password protecting files and folders, stopping Windows Messenger from launching, and more.

Step-By-Step - A guide to building your own PC.

Internet Tips - Tips for making money on eBay.

_{Back cover of the July 2003 issue of PC World}

Wednesday, November 8, 2023

The Incandescent Ban and the Lie of LED Efficiency

It happened as I went to grab a new package of baby wipes from under the sink. I flipped on my bathroom light, and I noticed something strange—one of my three mirror light bulbs began flickering and ultimately settled at a barely luminous dim setting.

My LED light went out.

The problem is, I changed that light bulb around a month ago as memory serves. Aren’t LED lights supposed to outlast the heat death of the universe or some unbelievably long amount of time?

Under this guise and the guise of energy efficiency, the Biden administration finally allowed a 2007 ban on incandescent light bulbs to go through at the end of July this year.

The problem is that LED lights are not more efficient in a meaningful economic sense, and, as my story illustrates, they don't necessarily last longer. To understand why, let’s explore some of the technical and economic details behind the mythical efficient LED.

The Lie of LED Efficiency

The ban on incandescent lights isn’t a ban on them specifically. Rather, the standard is that a light bulb must illuminate 45 lumens per watt. Most incandescent bulbs are incapable of doing this, so the regulation effectively bans them except in particular circumstances.

It is by this scientific jargon of an arbitrary lumens per watt standard that the government claims LEDs are more efficient.

The problem is that just because the LED bulbs (when they work) have a higher lumens per watt ratio, that doesn’t make them more efficient.

Consider an example to see why. Imagine we have two ice cream trucks. One ice cream truck is just an empty van. The driver throws a bunch of tubs of ice cream in the van and sets out for the day. The second truck is a van equipped with freezers to preserve the ice cream. Tell me, reader, which truck uses more energy?

Obviously the truck with freezers. So which truck has the best ratio of gallons of ice cream moved per unit of energy? Well that would be the truck without freezers. By our arbitrary technical measure, the freezerless ice cream truck is more efficient.

The problem, as you know, is that frozen ice cream is better than room temperature ice cream soup. The issue with our efficiency measure is that it ignores the important fact that the two trucks are accomplishing different goals. One is delivering ice cream people want, the other is delivering inedible slop.

You cannot compare the efficiency of two things which accomplish different outcomes for consumers. The same issue is true of light bulbs.

Incandescent bulbs put out a consistent, pleasing light output. LED lights do not. The Department of Energy website tries to debunk this obvious truth with an appeal to technical jargon. In response to the criticism that LED lights are dim compared to incandescent, the website says,

“LED bulbs produce more lumens per watt and last up to 25 times longer than incandescent bulbs. A 10W LED bulb emits as much light as a 60W incandescent bulb, making them both brighter and more energy efficient.”

This is akin to claiming that melted ice cream is still ice cream.

It is sometimes true that LED bulbs emit as many or more lumens than incandescent bulbs, but what people colloquially refer to as “brightness” is not the same as what scientists call “lumens.”

When people talk about brightness, they aren’t just talking about lumens. They’re also talking about the extent to which different light sources make things like color easier to see. An essential component of whether something is easier to see is how warm or cool light is.

This is where things get complicated. For incandescent bulbs, wattage is what mattered. More watts meant more visibility. For LEDs, things are different. Lumens measure the brightness but Kelvin (a temperature scale) determines how “warm” or “cool” the light appears. There is an in-depth piece by Tom Scocca in New York Magazine’s website The Strategist which describes this very well.

The summary is that LED light bulbs, though usually bright in terms of “lumens,” often do not always illuminate colors well. Scocca points out:

“If you want the objects that the light shines on to look the same, you’re getting into a different color question, specifically the color-rendering index. Your incandescent bulb — a glowing analog object, its light coming from a heated wire — had a CRI of 100 for a full unbroken spectrum. Your typical LED bulb, shining with cold digital electroluminescence, will not. Some colors will be missing or just different. If you’re lucky, the LED will have a CRI of 90 or higher. The box may not list any CRI at all.”

He then highlights that so-called experts often downplay the importance of the CRI index, but provide no substitute measure for color-rendering.

So lumens alone is not brightness—at least not the way you and I talk about brightness. But that isn’t the only problem.

LEDefective

Remember my flickering bathroom light bulb? Turns out this isn’t a one-off complaint by yours truly. All over the internet I found people complaining about LED lights malfunctioning in much shorter time spans than it takes an incandescent to burn out.

When searching, I found several answers for why. One common answer is that the driver in the power base (bottom opaque plastic part of each light bulb) often fails in the less expensive LED lights. Temperature issues were also listed as a possible cause as well as the building providing “too much” power.

The bad driver in cheap LED bulbs could be explained away by saying you simply have to buy more expensive bulbs, but the up front cost of LEDs being higher was already an issue. Now we can’t even buy the best value version of the more expensive bulb?

In Scocca’s piece, he highlights well how good lighting is more expensive with LEDs:

“I checked my nearest dollar store and discovered that there were plenty of LED bulbs to be had there. Their color temperature was 6,400 Kelvin — the harshest, cheapest possible light, a light so blue that when I Googled it, what came up were grow bulbs. The efficient future of lighting now includes poor people; it just does it by making lighting one more form of privation.”

Even worse, it’s not always obvious when the driver isn’t working or that the power base is too hot. Sometimes the bulb just gets subtly dimmer. The Department of Energy can kiss its “lumens” argument goodbye. It may be the case that LED bulbs can produce more lumens in theory, but if they dim frequently without warning in practice, who cares?

LED lighting advocates will be quick to argue you can get the same results as incandescent light if you just approach it correctly. “Make sure your lumens are high enough. Don’t forget to memorize which degree Kelvin is best for each setting! But be careful not to buy one with a bad driver. You may need to rewire your house for best results, of course.” The list of excuses—and extra work for consumers—goes on.

Unfortunately, not all of us have time to get a degree in electrical engineering to make sure our home doesn’t look like the inside of an alien spaceship.

Let the Market Decide

As I’ve demonstrated, technological efficiency is not the proper way to evaluate the efficiency of a product. So how should we evaluate it?

Let’s return to our ice cream truck example. Which truck will consumers buy ice cream from? Obviously the one with freezers. It may cost a bit more than Uncle Sam’s ice cream soup, but people will pay the cost.

When discussing efficiency as it applies to people’s choices, economic efficiency is king. The idea behind economic efficiency is there are lots of technologically feasible combinations of goods and services that can hypothetically be produced. The question is, which combination yields the most value? Economic efficiency is the criterion that separates the highest valued use of scarce resources from all other possible combinations.

How is this point determined? By consumers! If consumers value frozen ice cream enough, they’ll be willing to pay more for an ice cream truck with a freezer. These higher prices enable the truck owner to buy the higher energy costs associated with running the freezers.

The same is true with light bulbs.

Who pays for an “inefficient” incandescent light bulb? The homeowner who installs the light bulb does in the form of higher energy bills! So how would we know if the better (or at least more consistent) lighting is worth the higher energy usage?

Well, if the consumer chooses an incandescent bulb over an LED bulb, they are confirming they value the services of the incandescent bulb even after accounting for the cost of using more energy.

The same principle operates with cars. Is the purchaser of an SUV tricked into buying a product which is not as efficient with fuel as a small sedan? Obviously not! The SUV owner prefers the additional space and larger size more than the cost of the extra gasoline. Since the SUV is assigned higher value than the extra gasoline that must be purchased to use it, the “inefficient” fuel economy is completely compatible with economic efficiency!

If LED light bulbs are truly unquestionably superior, you would not need to pass a law stopping consumers from purchasing incandescent bulbs. Consumers would make the switch themselves to save money. Good ideas don’t require force, as they say.

The fact that a law was needed to displace incandescent bulbs highlights a simple truth: on many margins LED lights are frankly worse for consumers. And all the bureaucratic gobbledygook in the world will not change that fundamental fact.

Peter Jacobsen

Peter Jacobsen is a Writing Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

The Incandescent Ban and the Lie of LED Efficiency

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (1253-1256)

See the previous post in this series here.

It isn't obvious to me where any of the photos in this set were taken but I'm guessing the first, third and fourth images were taken somewhere in Europe. The second photo was taken a couple of years earlier and shows a house...somewhere in the U.S. most likely. They all appear to have been taken in the 1960s (see captions below).

processed May 1966

processed May 1964

processed May 1966

The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can also be found here.

Byte (February 1989)

Byte was one of the better computer magazines available. It also tended to have a slightly more technical slant than the average PC magazine. It covered a variety of systems but gradually became more PC oriented towards the latter part of its life. The first issue of Byte was published all the way back in 1975 and the final issue was the July 1998 issue. The February 1989 issue weighed in at over 380 pages and includes:

Products in Perspective

What's New - A look at new products including the Crayon 386 20/20 SP, a ruggedized computer for industrial environments ($7495); Chorus Transputer box for Macintosh networks ($25,000); the VIP SX386 tower PC from ALR that features a 16-MHz 386 which is upgradeable to a 20-MHz 386 ($2395); A small 8-ounce 20 MB hard drive for $1195; a data acquisition board for the Mac SE ($595 + $95 for the driver + $595 for LabView software); Sony 68030 based Unix workstation ($13,900-$54,200 depending on specs); Toshiba T5100 386-based portable Unix workstation ($7199-$8750); The Headstart II Plus (8088-1 based, $2295) and Headstart III (80286 based, $2995) and lots more.

Short Takes - Brief hands-on views of new products including the MegaMate (external 3.5" disk drive for $349), Unix Tools for DOS (including MKS Make, Lex and Yacc), Wordbench (word processor with tools for writers, $189), Data Sentry (hardware based copy protection, $125), and Sourcer (a disassembler, $99.95).

Paradox 3: Neither Enigma nor Riddle - A first look at an upgrade to Borland's DBMS package.

Cover Story: The Mac SE Takes Off - A first look at the Mac SE/30 which features a 68030 CPU, 68882 FPU. You could get the 2 MB RAM/40 MB hard drive model fro $5069 or the 4 MB RAM/80 MB hard drive model for $6369.

_{Macintosh SE/30 Motherboard}

Product Focus: Smoothing Out C - Optimization techniques for C compilers and a comparison of several compilers including Borland Turbo C Professional 2.0, Manx Aztec C86 Commercial 4.1d, MetaWare high C 286 1.4, Microsoft C 5.1, Watcom C 6.5, and Zortech C 1.07.

A Pair of Sophisticated Laptops - Reviews of two new laptops including the Zenith SupersPort 286 featuring an 80C286 CPU running at 6 or 12 MHz, 1 MB RAM, one 1.44-MB 3.5" floppy drive; 20 or 40 MB hard drive, and more for $4999-$5599 and the Mitsubishi MP-286L featuring an 80286 running at 8 or 12 MHz, 640K RAM, one or two 1.44-MB 3.5" floppy drives, 20 MB hard drive, and more for $3195-$5395.

A PS/2 in Channel Only - A review of the Tandy 5000 MC, Tandy's PS/2 clone...or at least it used the Micro Channel bus. It features a 20-MHz 80386, 2 MB of RAM, 1.44-MB 3.5" floppy drive, 80 MB hard drive, and more starting at $4999.

_{Table of Contents from the February 1989 issue of Byte}

Expert Advice

Computing at Chaos Manor: Ready Line Overload - A look at new products shown at COMDEX, including Intel's Visual Edge print-enhancement system, Logic Gem (a software package for turning flow charts into code), DESQview 386 (a popular DOS multitasking system), Norton Utilities 4.5, ConvertUnits (unit conversion program), and more.

Applications Plus: New Friends and Old - A look at the evolution of integrated software, the Canon Cat printer, Framework III database software, and The Perfect Career...software that is supposed to help you identify the ideal career for you.

Down to Business: Getting into Bigger LANs - A look at strategies to create larger local area networks.

Macinations: Hey Apple, I Need a Laptop - Apple had yet to release an official Mac based laptop though this author really wanted one. Apparently there were third party companies who hacked such things together and they were planning something called the WalkMac SE that was based on the Mac SE motherboard and featured a backlit LCD screen and rechargeable battery for $5449.

In Depth

Introduction: Personal Workstations - The line between professional workstations and high-end PCs starts to blur.

Two Worlds Converge - A low-end workstation or high-end PC could be considered basically the same thing. A personal workstation. This article lists three main architectures: VME, Multi-Bus and the IBM PC AT bus. Perhaps the key to the "workstation" label is a high res display and networking capabilities.

The Current Crop - A look at existing professional workstations as well as building your own. Pre-built workstations mentioned include the Apollo DN3000, Sun-3/50, NeXT, Sun386i/150, Sun-3/60, Apollo DN3500, Sun 386i/250, SGI Personal Iris, Sun-4/110, and Apollo DN4500. They range in price from $4990 to $18990. The author's self built workstation consists of an ALR 386/220 with 20 MHz 80386, and 3 MB of RAM running Unix System V 3.0.

Worth the RISC - An overview or RISC technology including the CPUs available now.

_{Table of Contents from the February 1989 issue of Byte (continued)}

Features

Digital Paper - A look at the technology behind write-once optical media that can store up to a gigabyte of data on floppy disk sized cartridges.

Turbo Pascal Windowing System - Pascal's windowing system, called TWindows, lets you add windows to the application programs you write. This article includes examples and other techinical details.

Under the Hood: Hard Disk Interfaces - An overview and techinical comparison of the various hard disk interface standards including ST506, RLL, Advanced and Enhanced RLL, ESDI, SMD, and SCSI.

Departments

Editorial: The End of Application Software - IBM and Microsoft start including more application features in to OS/2 and Windows.

Microbytes - Highlights of new developments in the computer industry including new embedded processors from Intel and AMD, analog emulation of the nervous system, flexible superconductors, and much more.

Letters - Letters from readers about the high cost of RAM, getting started on BIX, MIX, and Compuserve, the origin of various computer terms, and more.

Chaos Manor Mail - Using PC-MOS/386 and Nota Bene (a word processor).

_{Back cover of the February 1989 issue of Byte}