steem

Saturday, August 31, 2019

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (409-412)

See the previous post in this series here. Feel free to skip the quoted intro text if you have read it before.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides recently. These are pictures spanning from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s (maybe earlier and/or later but these are what I have sampled so far). These came to me second (third?) hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.
Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with some negatives is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives (an Epson V600). That was the most money I was willing to spend on one anyway. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job. The scanner has been mostly idle since finishing that task but now there is plenty for it to do.

This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer 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. He career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides (thousands of them) 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 (presumably) stamped or printed on them (month and year). I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, 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. No doubt there are some exceptions.

All of the photos in this set were processed in 1961 with the last three apparently being taken at the same time and place. I'm not sure exactly where these were taken but I would guess in Southeast Asia somewhere.

Click on one of the images or 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.


processed March 1961

processed June 1961

processed June 1961

processed June 1961

https://supload.com/HkfopsO34

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

Friday, August 30, 2019

Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (Commodore 64, Apple II, Atari ST, Amiga, DOS)






Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (Commodore 64, Apple II, Atari ST, Amiga, DOS)



Who Framed Roger Rabbit? is a game based on the movie of the same name. Versions of this game were released for a wide variety of platforms. There were really three different games produced by three different companies. The first was released in 1988 for various home computers including the Commodore 64, Apple II, Amiga, a and DOS. The second was produced by Rare and released by LJN for the NES in 1989. The final version was released by Capcom for the Game Boy in 1991. The ad above is for the first version of the game.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? is a pretty mediocre action/arcade game. Considering the fact that this is a game based on a movie license, it's terrific. Most such games are truly abysmal and this one is at least okay. This game consists of four levels, each of which has a specific goal and is really a subgame unto itself. These roughly follow the plot of the movie. In terms of gameplay, there is not a huge difference between the various versions though the Amiga and Atari ST versions will have the best graphics.
If you want to play this variation of the game, you will have to track down an original or resort to emulation. It has never been nor is it likely to be re-released. In order, I would chose the Amiga, Atari ST or Commodore 64 version of the game. Originals aren't too hard to find on eBay though it's anyone's guess how long original disks will continue to function. Alternatively, disk images for emulators are also easily found. The ad above is from the October 1988 issue of Computer Gaming World. The screen shots above are from the Commodore 64 version of the game.

Brevard Renaissance Fair 2019 – The Craic Show – Part 17 (Batucada de Craic / Barentanz)





Brevard Renaissance Fair 2019 – The Craic Show – Part 17 (Batucada de Craic / Barentanz)

Thursday, August 29, 2019

No, Wages Are Not Rising Because of Minimum Wage Laws


Before lawmakers left for August recess, the Democrat-controlled House voted to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Such a move would backfire in a major way if passed into law. It would hurt lower-skilled individuals the most, including teenagers, immigrants, and those without a high school degree. And women, who hold more low-wage jobs than men, would be hurt the most, accounting for more than 60% of the resulting lay-offs.

The push for new wage mandates comes at a puzzling time: We are in the midst of a record economic expansion in which workers in lower-wage jobs are seeing their wages grow faster than many high-wage workers.

This is no mere blip on the screen. It’s an ongoing trend, as the July jobs report shows.

Average wage growth has been above 3% for the last 11 straight months. Meanwhile, the lowest 10th percentile of wage earners (people making about $12 an hour) have benefited from more than twice that gain in wages—a 6.6% wage increase over just the last year. That’s equivalent to a roughly $1,500 raise for someone earning less than $25,000 a year.
Some are now claiming that minimum wage increases at the state level are responsible. One short study, which was repeated in the pages of The Washington Post, shows that states with minimum wage hikes since 2013 have seen faster wage growth for low-wage workers.

Not so fast. There are some serious problems with this study.

For one, many states that increased their minimum wage also instituted pro-growth reforms during the same time. New York, for example, improved its business climate in 2014 by cutting its corporate tax to its lowest rate since the 1960s. Missouri; Arizona; Washington, D.C.; Minnesota; and Maine are all among the states that cut taxes during this time period while also raising their minimum wage.

There is now ample evidence that pro-growth policies, like business tax cuts, fuel wage growth and new hiring. Research on the minimum wage tells the opposite story: one of job loss and wage stagnation.
The economic fact is that when the government forces businesses to pay an employee a mandated hourly wage, businesses are left with few options: cut hours, lay off workers, or reduce benefits—or some combination of these.

Most often, businesses are forced to cut jobs, which is why the Congressional Budget Office found that raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour could lead to over 3.7 million workers losing their jobs.

A 2011 study from The Heritage Foundation painted an even bleaker picture, finding that this policy would force seven million Americans out of work.

Economists have documented the significant negative impact of Seattle’s decision to raise the minimum wage to $13 an hour. That decision resulted in a drop in employment across the city. Workers who retained their jobs ended up working fewer hours, resulting in a net income loss.

A similar trend resulted from Illinois’s 2002 minimum wage hike.

If history is any guide, minimum wage increases lead to slower rather than faster wage growth.

A 2015 study found that workers in states with small increases in the minimum wage from 2005-2008 ended up with lower wages than they would have had if the state never increased its minimum wage. The minimum wage hike achieved the exact opposite of its goal.

This happens, in part, because minimum wages shrink the number of jobs available, meaning there are equally qualified workers competing for fewer jobs. Workers who are lucky enough to retain their job see slower wage growth than they would have otherwise because the job market is full of people who can easily replace them.
Minimum wages also have been shown to incentivize low-income youth to drop out of school, which lowers their future earnings. And, they cut off employment opportunities entirely for workers who cannot yet produce the minimum wage.

At $15 per hour, workers must be able to produce upward of $35,000 per year. That’s a high bar for anyone just starting out and especially high for teenagers trying to get their first job, perhaps to save for college.

A study on the long-run effects of minimum wages found that the longer individuals were exposed to higher minimum wages at young ages, the less they worked and earned by their late 20s. The study also noted that “the adverse longer-run effects are stronger for blacks.”

It may be true that some minimum wage hikes raise wages for a few lucky workers, but it comes at the expense of layoffs and shorter hours for others.
Workers have much more to gain from sustainable wage increases, and so do employers and customers since both groups want better performance from workers.

Our economy is currently booming, and a key feature of that is the strong job market. There are now over a million more jobs available than people looking for work. Employers are offering wage increases, bonuses, new training opportunities, and better benefits to retain and upskill their best employees.

Employers are competing for labor. That puts workers in the driver’s seat, allowing them to demand higher wages and better benefits.

Moreover, productivity is a major leverage point for workers. When workers are more productive, they bring more value to the company and can therefore demand higher wages.

The current economic environment has benefited from two things: the 2017 tax cuts and ongoing deregulation. These policies are making American workers more productive.

The 2017 tax cuts significantly lowered the cost of new investment by cutting the corporate tax rate and allowing companies to write off the full cost of many new investments from their taxes. Now, companies have a greater incentive to re-invest their profits into the tools and research workers need to be more productive employees.

And, as workers become more valuable through increased productivity, they are empowered to demand higher wages.

But these tax cuts need to be made permanent to ensure workers continue to experience benefits they currently enjoy.

The United States’ record-long economic expansion has helped lower-income workers the most, and the whole gamut of pro-growth policies has helped prolong the current expansion. These gains are impressive despite the economic uncertainty exacted by President Donald Trump’s tariff policy and our ever-expanding federal debt, which must be addressed.

Congress should not tempt the resilience of the American economy by mandating a higher federal minimum wage. Lower-wage workers are feeling a boon like no other in recent memory. The last thing we should do is bring it to a premature end.

This article was reprinted from The Daily Signal.




Adam Michel
Adam N. Michel focuses on tax policy and the federal budget as a Senior Policy Analyst in the Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget at The Heritage Foundation. His research focuses on how taxes impact the well-being and opportunity of Americans.

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

Monday, August 26, 2019

Sorry, Sen. Sanders: Minimum Wage Hikes Reduce Real Income for Workers


Many of us remember the anticipation and pride of opening our first paycheck, only to feel sick and indignant at that tiny after-tax total. We might feel salty toward that stingy grocery store or restaurant chain that couldn’t cough up more than minimum wage. The truth is, your employer pays far more to employ you than your hourly rate. Thanks to government-imposed burdens, your bosses could be paying twice as much to employ you as you’ll see in your take-home pay.

Presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders was blasted from all sides in July after his staff’s complaints about their pay were leaked to The Washington Post. Sanders made the “Fight for $15” minimum wage cause a centerpiece of his campaign, but his lowest-tier employees reported salaries and long hours that amounted to less than $13 per hour.

Campaign field organizers, usually recent graduates seeking the prestige of a national candidate, generate relatively little value and are sometimes volunteers. Rather than boost salaries, Sanders initially suggested cutting staffers’ hours, upping their per-hour pay but cutting the valuable experience and face-time many had signed up for. The proposal was met with contempt from his supporters and sighs from economists who’d predicted that’s just what employers would do under Sanders’s proposed policies. Battered by the negative press, the campaign relented, goosing lower-tier salaries to $42,000. But at what cost?
It’s not hard to imagine a field organizer—let’s call him Leon—experiencing the same annoyance and resentment many of us felt opening those first paychecks. If Leon is paid $15 per hour to work full-time, he earns $31,200 per year. But under federal law, his employer also pays $1,934.40 in Social Security taxes and another $452.40 in Medicare taxes. Sometimes you’ll see these two items combined as “FICA” or the “Federal Insurance Contributions Act.” Your employer pays FICA taxes in addition to your wages and by law must withhold your individual share, as well; independent contractors pay both portions themselves. Federal unemployment and retraining taxes cost employers another $427.

Sanders’s campaign, like other employers, also has to pay health insurance premiums for employees—by far the fastest-growing portion of employee compensation—an average of $15,000 per employee per year.

All told, Leon’s wage is $31,200, but the cost to employ him under federal law is $49,012. This does not include state and local taxes, unemployment insurance, uniforms, onboarding, and other employment costs.

But it’s unlikely that Leon actually works 2,080 hours a year. If, like most Americans, he took some paid time off—perhaps a few sick days, even a short vacation—he actually worked more like 1,990 hours.

If Leon earns $15 per hour, taxes and top-down mandates mean he takes home about $12, but his employer pays $24.63 per hour for his labor ($49,011.80/1,990).

If Leon and his employer had the flexibility to negotiate, they could easily create a much more equitable agreement for the value of Leon’s labor, but this is illegal. Instead, federal mandates limit their choices and enforce trade-offs to which neither of them agreed.
Setting a minimum wage doesn’t make everyone’s labor more valuable. It simply makes it illegal for lower-skill, less-experienced workers to be employed at all. By definition, the minimum wage permanently excludes some people from the workforce. Teenagers, the disabled, the recently incarcerated, and exactly the kind of low-experience, low-skill workers the minimum wage purports to protect will be priced out of the job market, trapped in poverty.

Fewer than 1 percent of total US workers make the federal minimum wage. That small but vulnerable population is statistically much more likely than the workforce in general to be under 20, lack a high school diploma, work part-time, and work in food preparation.

Workers just starting out will not be helped by making their labor more expensive to employers.

For presidential campaigns, which nearly always end in debt, $25 an hour may be feasible. But for the kind of businesses that employ most minimum wage workers (retailers, food service), profit margins are extremely thin. If low-skilled labor gets suddenly more expensive, those employers will hire fewer low-skilled workers. Maybe they’ll install more self-checkout stations or a burger-flipping robot. Maybe they’ll have to raise prices or cut hours to make up the margin.

The Congressional Budget Office released a report confirming that federal wage increases mean less real income for all affected families. At best, government has selected the winners and losers—but in fact, we are all losers.
Denmark, like other Nordic countries, has no national minimum wage. Instead, minimum wages are negotiated voluntarily by each economic sector. As in the United States, only 1-2 percent of employees actually earn the minimum for their sector, and employment is fairly flexible. In spite of their reputation for a decadent social welfare scheme, pension accounts are private, rather than government-run, meaning your contributions are earmarked for you personally. Personal income taxes are very high (56 percent on average), but the added cost to employers is below 2 percent of wages.

With the cost of labor kept low, employment is steadily high. With the confidence that they’ll be able to fire an employee who turns out to be a bad investment, companies will “take a risk” to hire and train individuals who otherwise might be excluded from even interviewing. A much closer relationship between individual wage and cost-to-employer also aids low-margin workers in getting the positions they need to gain skills and move up to higher tiers of employment.

The instinct to help the least fortunate among us is a noble one, but hiking the minimum wage punishes exactly those Sen. Sanders hopes to help.


Laura Williams

Laura Williams
Dr. Laura Williams  teaches communication strategy to undergraduates and executives. She is a passionate advocate for critical thinking, individual liberties, and the Oxford Comma.

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

Friday, August 23, 2019

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (405-408)

See the previous post in this series here. Feel free to skip the quoted intro text if you have read it before.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides recently. These are pictures spanning from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s (maybe earlier and/or later but these are what I have sampled so far). These came to me second (third?) hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.
Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with some negatives is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives (an Epson V600). That was the most money I was willing to spend on one anyway. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job. The scanner has been mostly idle since finishing that task but now there is plenty for it to do.

This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer 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. He career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides (thousands of them) 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 (presumably) stamped or printed on them (month and year). I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, 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. No doubt there are some exceptions.

All of the slides in this set were processed in the 1960s. The first one shows a stone "beehive" oven from somewhere while the rest show 1960s era kitchens.

Click on one of the images or 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.


Stone Oven - processed April 1965

processed April 1966

processed March 1969

processed March 1969

https://supload.com/Sk5Ojs_3V

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

Compute!’s Apple (Spring 1986)






Compute!’s Apple (Spring 1986)




While Compute! was a multiformat computer magazine, there were also a number of spin-offs that were dedicated to particular machines. Compute!'s Gazette covering Commodore 8-bit computers like the Commodore 64 was the only really successful one. Compute!'s Apple, covering the Apple II and Macintosh, only lasted a few issues. The Spring 1986 issue of Compute!'s Apple includes:
  • Editor's Notes
Business Applications
  • '86 Apple: An Interview with John Sculley
  • Buyer's Guide to Business Software
  • The Expanding Macintosh
The Ultimate Apple
  • It's New II
  • Off the Beaten Software Path
  • MacAdds: More for the Macintosh
  • Apple Users Groups
Reviews
  • Andrew Tobias' Managing Your Money
  • Balance of Power
  • Fantavision
Recreation
  • Lexitron
  • Backgammon
  • New Products
  • Ad Index
Education
  • Apple Rules the Schools
  • Computers in the Humanities: Liberal Arts Enter the Computer Age
  • Buyer's Guide to Educational Software
Utilities and Tutorials
  • Windows
  • MouseCursor
  • Your Personal Ledger
  • Keynote
  • Personal Publishing with Your Macintosh
  • Apple Automatic Proofreader
...and more!

Atarian – (September/October 1989)






Atarian – (September/October 1989)




I think most console makers tried their hand at an official magazine to varying degrees of success. Nintendo Power is perhaps the most successful of those. At the other end of the scale is Atarian which only had a handful of issues. Not necessarily because it was a terrible magazine (for the most part) but because Atari just didn't survive long enough as a console maker after the Magazine started. The September/October 1989 issue of Atarian includes: Reviews
  • Off the Wall
  • Jinks
  • Super Huey
  • Radar Lock
  • Ace of Aces
  • Gato
  • Airball
  • Tank Command
  • Touchdown Football
  • Glacier Patrol
Playing Strategy
  • Dark Chambers
  • Xevious
  • Rescue on Fractulus
  • River Raid
Departments
  • Mailbag - Our mailbox overflowith
  • Top 30 - Your favorite 10 games for 2600, 7800, and XE
  • 10 Years Ago - The great autumn of 1979
  • Tips & Tricks - Reader tips for maxing your scores
  • Gameslist - Games made by other manufacturers
  • Adventures of Atari - The evil Ninja-Endo marshals an army of mutant sea creatures against Beth and Atari.
  • Puzzlers - Challenge your mind with these stumpers
Features
  • Consumer Electronics Show - Atarian goes to a fantastic trade show
  • Previews - Sneak peeks of new games coming out soon
Classics
  • Donkey Kong
  • Millipede
...and more!

Wednesday, August 21, 2019

dp030 - Dirty Pair





Brevard Renaissance Fair 2019 – The Craic Show – Part 11 (Sons of Neidhard)





Brevard Renaissance Fair 2019 – The Craic Show – Part 11 (Sons of Neidhard)

‘IBM PC Compatible’: How Adversarial Interoperability Saved PCs From Monopolization




Adversarial interoperability is what happens when someone makes a new product or service that works with a dominant product or service, against the wishes of the dominant business.

Though there are examples of adversarial interoperability going back to early phonograms and even before, the computer industry has always especially relied on adversarial interoperability to keep markets competitive and innovative. This used to be especially true for personal computers.

From 1969 to 1982, IBM was locked in battle with the US Department of Justice over whether it had a monopoly over mainframe computers; but even before the DOJ dropped the suit in 1982, the computing market had moved on, with mainframes dwindling in importance and personal computers rising to take their place.

The PC revolution owes much to Intel's 8080 chip, a cheap processor that originally found a market in embedded controllers but eventually became the basis for early personal computers, often built by hobbyists. As Intel progressed to 16-bit chips like the 8086 and 8088, IBM entered the PC market with its first personal computer, which quickly became the de facto standard for PC hardware. There are many reasons that IBM came to dominate the fragmented PC market: they had the name recognition ("No one ever got fired for buying IBM," as the saying went) and the manufacturing experience to produce reliable products.

IBM's success prompted multiple manufacturers to the market, creating a whole ecosystem of Intel-based personal computers that competed with IBM.

In theory, all of these computers could run MS-DOS, the Microsoft operating system adapted from 86-DOS, which it acquired from Seattle Computer Products, but, in practice, getting MS-DOS to run on a given computer required quite a bit of tweaking, thanks to differences in controllers and other components.

When a computer company created a new system and wanted to make sure it could run MS-DOS, Microsoft would refer the manufacturer to Phoenix Software (now Phoenix Technologies), Microsoft's preferred integration partner, where a young software-hardware wizard named Tom Jennings (creator of the pioneering networked BBS software FidoNet) would work with Microsoft's MS-DOS source code to create a custom build of MS-DOS that would run on the new system.

While this worked, it meant that major software packages like Visicalc and Lotus 1-2-3 would have to release different "PC-compatible" versions, one for each manufacturer's system. All of this was cumbersome, error-prone, and expensive, and it meant, for example, that retailers would have to stock multiple, slightly different versions of each major software program (this was in the days when software was sold from physical retail locations, on floppy disks packaged in plastic bags or shrink-wrapped boxes).

The PC marked a departure for IBM from its usual business practice of pursuing advantage by manufacturing entire systems, down to the subcomponents. Instead, IBM decided to go with an "open" design that incorporated the same commodity parts that the existing PC vendors were using, including MS-DOS and Intel's 8086 chip. To accompany this open hardware, IBM published exhaustive technical documentation that covered every pin on every chip, every way that programmers could interact with IBM's firmware (analogous to today's "APIs"), as well as all the non-standard specifications for its proprietary ROM chip, which included things like the addresses where IBM had stored the fonts it bundled with the system.

As IBM's PC became the standard, rival hardware manufacturers realized that they would have to create systems that were compatible with IBM's systems. The software vendors were tired of supporting a lot of idiosyncratic hardware configurations, and IT managers didn't want to have to juggle multiple versions of the software they relied on. Unless non-IBM PCs could run software optimized for IBM's systems, the market for those systems would dwindle and wither.

Phoenix had an answer. They asked Jennings to create a detailed specification that included the full suite of functions on IBM's ROMs, including the non-standard features that IBM had documented but didn’t guarantee in future versions of the ROM. Then Phoenix hired a "clean-room team" of programmers who had never written Intel code and had never interacted with an IBM PC (they were programmers who specialized in developing software for the Texas Instruments 9900 chip). These programmers turned Jennings's spec into the software for a new, IBM-PC-compatible ROM that Phoenix created and began to sell to IBM's rivals.

These rivals could now configure systems with the same commodity components that IBM used, and, thanks to Phoenix's ROMs, could also support the same version of MS-DOS and the same application programs that ran on the IBM PC.

So it was that IBM, a company that had demonstrated its expertise in cornering and dominating computing markets, was not able to monopolize the PC. Instead, dozens of manufacturers competed with it, extending the basic IBM architecture in novel and innovative ways, competing to find ways to drive down prices, and, eventually, giving us the modern computing landscape.

Phoenix's adversarial interoperability meant that IBM couldn't exclude competitors from the market, even though it had more capital, name recognition and distribution than any rival. Instead, IBM was constantly challenged and disciplined by rivals who nipped at its heels, or even pulled ahead of it.

Today, computing is dominated by a handful of players, and in many classes of devices, only one vendor is able to make compatible systems. If you want to run iPhone apps, you need to buy a device from Apple, a company that is larger and more powerful than IBM was at its peak.

Why have we not seen an adversarial interoperability incursion into these dominant players' markets? Why are there no iPhone-compatible devices that replicate Apple's APIs and run their code?

In the years since the PC wars, adversarial interoperability has been continuously eroded.
  • In 1986, Congress passed the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a sweeping "anti-hacking" law that Facebook and other companies have abused to obtain massive damages based on nothing more than terms-of-service violations.
  • In 1998, Congress adopted the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, whose Section 1201 threatens those who bypass "access controls" for copyrighted works (including software) with both criminal and civil sanctions; this has become a go-to legal regime for threatening anyone who expands the functionality of locked devices, from cable boxes to mobile phones.
  • Software patents were almost unheard of in the 1980s; in recent years, the US Patent and Trademark Office's laissez-faire attitude to granting software patents has created a patent thicket around the most trivial of technological innovations.
Add to these other doctrines like "tortious interference with contract" (which lets incumbents threaten competitors whose customers use new products to get out of onerous restrictions and terms of service), and it's hard to see how a company like Phoenix could make a compatible ROM today.

Such an effort would have to contend with clickthrough agreements; encrypted software that couldn't be decompiled without risking DMCA 1201 liability; bushels of low-quality (but expensive to litigate) software patents, and other threats that would scare off investors and partners.

And things are getting worse, not better: Oracle has convinced an appeals court to ban API reimplementations, which would have stopped Phoenix's ROM project dead in its tracks.

Concentration in the tech-sector is the result of many factors, including out-of-control mergers, but as we contemplate ways to decentralize our tech world, let's not forget adversarial interoperability. Historically, adversarial interoperability has been one of the most reliable tools for fighting monopoly, and there's no reason it couldn't play that role again, if only we'd enact the legal reforms needed to clear the way for tomorrow's Phoenix Computers and Tom Jenningses.

Images below: IBM PC Technical Reference, courtesy of Tom Jennings, licensed CC0.












Source: 'IBM PC Compatible': How Adversarial Interoperability Saved PCs From Monopolization | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Tuesday, August 20, 2019

A.N.A.L.O.G. Computing (February 1986)






A.N.A.L.O.G. Computing (February 1986)

ANALOG Computing was probably the most popular Atari 8-bit computer magazine, at least in North America. However, it also covered the Atari ST at times and that includes Atari's display at COMDEX 1985. Also prominently displayed at COMDEX that year was the Atari 130XE. The XE line represented the last of the Atari 8-bit computers. The Feburary 1986 issue of ANALOG Computing includes: Features
  • Unicheck - ANALOG Computing's universal checksum program.
  • High Noon - The showdown between Atari's 520ST and Commodore's Amiga for first place in home computing.
  • Load It - Autoboots any BASIC or machine language program.
  • Adventurous Programming - Dare to write your own adventure? Clayton gets you started.
  • Utilities for the 520ST - An in-depth look at what "tools" are available now for the Atari 520ST.
  • Formatter - Format 5.25-inch disks endlessly - and quickly!
  • Debug+ - A screen-oriented, machine language debugging utility.
  • C-manship, Part 1 - The first of a series of C programming tutorials for the beginner.
  • COMDEX 1985: Atari's back! - Atari can say, "We came, we saw, we conquered."
  • Calc Pi - A simple example of programming in C for the ST, in BASIC for the 8-bit users.
  • DOS Mods - Keep track of updated programs without losing the originals.
  • Program Helper - Convert constants to variables to save RAM.
  • XL CAPS Toggle - A modification for our Home-made Translator.
Reviews
  • SmartDOS - (The Programmer's Workshop) This DOS has a number of nice features, is it really the best?
  • Sparta DOS - (ICD, Inc.) We evaluate the performance of another DOS for the Atari.
  • Hippo ST Ramdisk - (Hippopotamus Software) Set aside any size portion of memory for use as a ramdisk.
  • XM301 - (Atari Corp.) This classy little modem is just what we've been waiting for.
  • Disk Wizard II - (C.A.P. Software) Four menu-driven disk utlities.
  • Critical Connection - (USS Enterprises) This powerful accessory means business.
  • Kennedy Approach - (Microprose Software) A fascinating, entertaining, and nerve-wracking experience.
Columns
  • Editorial
  • Reader Comment
  • New Products
  • ST News
  • The End User
  • Index to Advertisers
...and more!


Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (401-404)

See the previous post in this series here. Feel free to skip the quoted intro text if you have read it before.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides recently. These are pictures spanning from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s (maybe earlier and/or later but these are what I have sampled so far). These came to me second (third?) hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.
Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with some negatives is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives (an Epson V600). That was the most money I was willing to spend on one anyway. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job. The scanner has been mostly idle since finishing that task but now there is plenty for it to do.

This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer 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. He career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides (thousands of them) 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 (presumably) stamped or printed on them (month and year). I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, 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. No doubt there are some exceptions.

Most of the slides in this set show various remodeling from the 1960s. The first image just shows a kitchen from 1966. The subsquent photos show construction. It appears that a garage is being added to a house in one of the photos. The other photo appears to also be work on a garage but perhaps of a business as it seems rather large.

Click on one of the images or 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.


processed June 1966

Garage - 2575 W. ark - processed February 1964

Garage - So Raleigh - processed February 1964

Garage - w. ark - processed February 1964

https://supload.com/ByYU6DPhN

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

Brevard Renaissance Fair 2019 – Rowan and the Rose – No Shade Never





Brevard Renaissance Fair 2019 – Rowan and the Rose – No Shade Never

Friday, August 16, 2019

“Fast-Track” Deportation Threatens Due Process


Everyone’s entitled to their day in court—except illegal immigrants, apparently.

At least, that’s the Trump administration’s position, in light of its recent expansion of the “fast-track” deportation process. The Associated Press reports that in an attempt to address the crisis on our southern border, immigration authorities have extended the “expedited removal” process to apply to millions more immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. This process allows for the deportation of these immigrants without any appearance before an immigration judge, a shortcut previously reserved for illegal immigrants who had just crossed the border.
Now, it will apply to any illegal immigrant who has spent less than two years in the country, which potentially includes millions who live, work, and even have children in America. While immigration enforcement is important and the border crisis in dire need of a solution, this is a misstep from the Trump administration. It threatens the right to due process that all people ought to enjoy.

Yet Trump officials
expect that the full use of expedited removal statutory authority will strengthen national security, diminish the number of illegal entries, and otherwise ensure the prompt removal of aliens apprehended in the United States.
Yes, there’s a backlog in our immigration courts that’s interfering with proper, timely immigration enforcement, but the solution there is to expand the number of immigration judges and expedite the judicial process, not skip it entirely.

Of course, expedited removal does make sense for recent border crossers. If immigration officers catch some sneaking across the border, they shouldn’t have to take them to court before sending them back. But once someone has lived and worked in the United States for two years, they are at the very least entitled to their day in court before being apprehended and deported. Anything less is a betrayal of the principles of due process that make our constitutional system the best in human history.
As the American Civil Liberties Union’s Omar Jawdat told the AP,
Under this unlawful plan, immigrants who have lived here for years would be deported with less due process than people get in traffic court.
Clearly, this kind of system is rife for abuse.

After all, how are immigration authorities supposed to know who has been here for two years and who hasn’t? It’s not as if illegal immigrants have documentation to prove when they arrived. So in expanding the fast-track deportation process, immigration officials are essentially paving the way for it to be used against many of the millions of illegal immigrants in our country. No matter your views on immigration policy, you should oppose the carrying out of such enforcement without proper process and respect for the rights of all involved.

Take, for example, the case of Francisco Erwin Galicia, the American-born citizen immigration authorities recently mistook for an illegal immigrant and subjected to abuse so bad he almost self-deported anyway.

He claims he lost nearly 30 pounds due to hunger while in custody, and wasn’t allowed to shower. It’s certainly true that these horror stories in immigration enforcement are rare, but giving government officials overly broad and dangerously expansive powers exponentially increases the chances of abuse.

Beth Werlin of the left-leaning American Immigration Council said the Trump administration’s new policy “denies a fair day in court to people who could face death when sent back to their countries.” She makes a chilling point.

Enforcing our nation’s laws is of the utmost importance. But so, too, is respecting the dignity and rights of all who live in the land of the free—something the Trump administration’s expansion of fast-track deportation simply doesn’t do.

This article is republished from the Washington Examiner. 




Brad Polumbo
Brad Polumbo is an editor at the libertarian media nonprofit Young Voices. His work has appeared in USA Today, The Daily Beast, and National Review. You can find him on Twitter @Brad_Polumbo.

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

MSD Systems, Inc.






Ahoy! (September 1984)

There were a large number of companies that made add-on hardware and peripherals for Commodore computers. MSD is perhaps one of the most well known on the 8-bit side of things. This ad from the September 1984 issue of Ahoy! features several of their products for the Commodore 64 (as well as the PET and VIC-20).

Featured most prominently at the top is MSD's Super Disk I and Super Disk II. The primary difference between the two is that one was a single drive and the other contained two disk drives in one enclosure. These were probably MSD's most well known products. They were 5.25" disk drives that were mostly compatible with Commodore's 1541. Being only "mostly" compatible, if your primary goal was playing games then these were perhaps not the drives for you. They were more expensive than the standard 1541 model. However, their primary advantages were that they were very fast and very reliable. We are talking 20 times faster at least and sometimes much more. These would be great drives if you were running a BBS or doing any kind of serious work with your Commodore. Not quite as fast or nearly as much storage as a hard drive but much more affordably at the time.

The other items mentioned in this ad were:

1) An RS-232 Serial Interface - basically these were used to connect modems and other serial devices to Commodore 8-bit computers. They lacked a standard serial interface but simple adapters like this one solved that problem.

2) Parallel Interface - Again, Commodore 8-bit computers did not come with the common standard parallel interface so an adapter was needed for things like printers.

3) Monitor cables - Commodore computers typically used monitors with separate chroma and luma cables in addition to sound. Using such a monitor provided a much better picture than using a TV with an RF interface which could also be done. And sometimes you just need an extra cable.

3) The CEX-4 Expandoport - This basically expanded the User Port into multiple ports that you could switch between various add-ons. This saved you from unplugging and plugging things if you had more than one device.

4) IEEE Interface - This is a high speed IEEE-488 bus interface. You needed to use this with the SD-1 and SD-2 drives if you wanted to get that extra speed out of them. Using the standard serial interface they would be no faster than a standard 1541 drive. They were useful for interfacing other devices as well.


Wednesday, August 14, 2019

Quake II (PlayStation)






Quake II (PlayStation)

The Quake series was id's follow up to the Doom series. At this point in time, first person shooters were still progressing rapidly in terms of the technology and game play features. For instance, in the Doom games you were primarily limited to 2 dimensional movement and shooting at only what was directly in front of you. Quake added the novel feature of being able to look up and down. Quake II was the second game in a series that continues to this day.
Quake II, like its predecessor and the Doom games before it were all developed first as PC games. Quake II was the first of id's games to support hardware 3D acceleration out of the box (though it was added in later patches for the original Quake as well). The ad above is for the PlayStation version of Quake II. the PlayStation version (and also the Nintendo 64 version) was released two years after the original PC game. Because of the limitations of the PlayStation, Quake II ran at a lower resolution and featured fewer levels. There were assorted other various changes as well, including some different enemies and music. Despite the PlayStation's relative limitations, the graphics were still well done. However, there is one huge negative with the PlayStation version. There was no network multiplayer. To me this was the feature that made the Doom and Quake games truly great. The PlayStation version did feature split-screen multiplayer but it's just not the same.
There were several official add-ons to Quake II, including The Reckoning, Ground Zero, and Extremeties. However, there were no add-ons released for the PlayStation as such. Also, the source code has been released so there are a number of games, both free and commercial, that were based on that code. Hexen II was my personal favorite.
If you are a PlayStation collector, then Quake II is still a game worth having. Some may even prefer the split-screen approach for multiplayer. However, for the best Quake II experience, it needs to be played on a PC. Fortunately, there are easy and cheap ways to do this today, including buying the game for $4.99 from Steam. Or you can always go old school and install the original game on a Pentium II. The ad above, a rather unique supermarket parody ad, is from the October 1999 issue of The Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine. Screen shots above are from the PlayStation version of the game.


Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (397-400)

See the previous post in this series here. Feel free to skip the quoted intro text if you have read it before.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides recently. These are pictures spanning from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s (maybe earlier and/or later but these are what I have sampled so far). These came to me second (third?) hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.
Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with some negatives is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives (an Epson V600). That was the most money I was willing to spend on one anyway. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job. The scanner has been mostly idle since finishing that task but now there is plenty for it to do.

This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer 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. He career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides (thousands of them) 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 (presumably) stamped or printed on them (month and year). I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, 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. No doubt there are some exceptions.

All of the slides in this set appear to be from 1959 or 1960 though none of them are otherwise labeled. The first is of a dog, the next two are of people boating, skiing and fishing on a lake or river and last shows two girls walking in a courtyard somewhere.

Click on one of the images or 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.


processed August 1960

processed August 1960

processed August 1960

processed May 1959

https://supload.com/SJMBXNP2V

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

Tuesday, August 13, 2019

Mass Shootings Aren’t Becoming More Common–and Evidence Contradicts Stereotypes about the Shooters


When 22 people were killed in El Paso, Texas, and nine more were killed in Dayton, Ohio, roughly 12 hours later, responses to the tragedy included many of the same myths and stereotypes Americans have grown used to hearing in the wake of a mass shooting.

As part of my work as a psychology researcher, I study mass homicides, as well as society’s reaction to them. A lot of bad information can follow in the wake of such emotional events; clear, data-based discussions of mass homicides can get lost among political narratives.

I’d like to clear up four common misconceptions about mass homicides and who commits them, based on the current state of research.
By Monday morning after these latest shootings, President Donald Trump along with other Republican politicians had linked violent video games to mass shootings.

I’ll admit my surprise, since only last year the Trump administration convened a School Safety Commission which studied this issue, among many others. I myself testified, and the commission ultimately did not conclude there was sufficient evidence to link games and media to criminal violence.

Long-term studies of youth consistently find that violent games are not a risk factor for youth violence anywhere from one to eight years later. And no less than the U.S. Supreme Court declared in 2011 that scientific studies had failed to link violent games to serious aggression in kids.

A 2017 public policy statement by the American Psychological Association’s media psychology and technology division specifically recommended politicians should stop linking violent games to mass shootings. It’s time to lay this myth to rest.
Early reports suggest that the El Paso shooter was a white racist concerned about Latino immigration. Other shooters, such as the perpetrator of the Christchurch, New Zealand, attack, have also been white supremacists.

Overall, though, the ethnic composition of the group of all mass shooters in the U.S. is roughly equivalent to the American population.



Hateful people tend to be attracted to hateful ideologies. Some shootings, such as the 2016 shooting of police officers in Dallas, were reportedly motivated by anti-white hatred. Other shooters, such as the 2015 San Bernardino husband and wife perpetrator team, have espoused other hateful ideas such as radical Islam.

Most mass homicide perpetrators don’t proclaim any allegiance to a particular ideology at all.

Of course, mass homicides in other nations—such as several deadly knife attacks in Japan—don’t involve U.S. race issues.

As far as gender, it’s true that most mass homicide perpetrators are male. A minority of shooters are female, and they may target their own families.
Whether mental illness is or is not related to mass shootings—or criminal violence more broadly—is a nuanced question. Frankly, proponents on both sides often get this wrong by portraying the issue as clear-cut.

As far back as 2002, a U.S. Secret Service report based on case studies and interviews with surviving shooters identified mental illness—typically either psychosis or suicidal depression—as very common among mass homicide perpetrators.

As for violence more broadly, mental illness, such as psychosis as well as a mixture of depression with antisocial traits, is a risk factor for violent behavior.

Some people suggest mental illness is completely unrelated to crime, but that claim tends to rely on mangled statistics. For instance, I’ve seen the suggestion that individuals with mental illness account for just five percent of violent crimes. However, that assertion is based on research like one Swedish study that limited mental illness to psychosis only, which is experienced by about one percent or less of the population. If one percent of people commit five percent of crimes, that suggests psychosis elevates the risk of crime.

It’s also important to point out that the vast majority of people with mental illness do not commit violent crimes. For instance, in one study, about 15 percent of people with schizophrenia had committed violent crimes, as compared to 4 percent of a group of people without schizophrenia. Although this clearly identifies the increase in risk, it also highlights that the majority of people with schizophrenia had not committed violent crimes. It’s important not to stigmatize the mentally ill, which may reduce their incentive to seek treatment.

So improving access to mental health services would benefit a whole range of people and, by coincidence, occasionally bring treatment to someone at risk of committing violence. But focusing only on mental health is unlikely to put much of a dent in societal violence.
Mass homicides get a lot of news coverage which keeps our focus on the frequency of their occurrence. Just how frequent is sometimes muddled by shifting definitions of mass homicide, and confusion with other terms such as active shooter.

But using standard definitions, most data suggest that the prevalence of mass shootings has stayed fairly consistent over the past few decades.



To be sure, the U.S. has experienced many mass homicides. Even stability might be depressing given that rates of other violent crimes have declined precipitously in the U.S. over the past 25 years. Why mass homicides have stayed stagnant while other homicides have plummeted in frequency is a question worth asking.

Nonetheless, it does not appear that the U.S. is awash in an epidemic of such crimes, at least comparing to previous decades going back to the 1970s.

Mass homicides are horrific tragedies and society must do whatever is possible to understand them fully in order to prevent them. But people also need to separate the data from the myths and the social, political and moral narratives that often form around crime.

Only through dispassionate consideration of good data will society understand how best to prevent these crimes.

This article is reprinted from the conversation.




Christopher J. Ferguson
Christopher Ferguson holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Central Florida. He has clinical experience particularly in working with offender and juvenile justice populations as well as conducting evaluations for child protective services. In 2013 he was awarded a Distinguished Early Career Professional Award from Division 46 (media psychology and technology) of the American Psychological Association. In 2014 he was named a fellow of the American Psychological Association through Division 1 (General Psychology, effective January, 2015). In addition to his academic work he has published a historical mystery novel entitled Suicide Kings. He lives in Casselberry, FL with his wife and son.

He's coauthor of "Moral Combat: Why the War on Violent Video Games is Wrong."

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

K-Power (November/December 1984)





K-Power (November/December 1984)

In the early 1980s, there were several computer magazines oriented towards kids. Most of them didn't really last very long. K-Power, despite incorporating another short-lived kids computer magazine, didn't survive much longer than a year. The November/December 1984 issue includes: Features
  • Space: The Fun Frontier - A look at computer games for Trekkies!
  • Let Your Computer Organize Your Hobby! - Need help sorting out your collection? Here it is! Plus, a look at hobby software. And a program to help you organize your hobby!
  • Computer To Go - K-POWER's guide to buying a portable computer. And a chart of portables you might go for.
Departments
  • Editor's Note - How to make your computer part of the holidays.
  • Logon - Pen pal information, reader requests, and a coconut!
  • Compuzine - The lowdown on new computer TV shows. Plus, an exclusive repot from a computer trade show, Silicon Alley, and Scrolling Dough.
  • Dr. Kursor's Klinic - The Dvorak keyboard, and big news for Timex owners.
  • K-Net - How to battle on-line frustration.
  • Screening Room - Reviews of Amazon, Cell Defense, Beyond Castle Wolfenstein, Jack Attack, and Castles of Dr. Creep.
  • Strategy - Zork hints! And, how to survive fantasy/role playing games.
  • Classified
  • Contest - What's the use of computers?
Hacker Heaven
  • Programs - Palindrome Construction Kit, Music Gizmo, Amazing Drumulator, and Melodies from Mars. Plus, the winners of the Word Twister Contest.
  • Pixel That! - Take off with the E-Z Flight Simulator.
  • Compucopia - Encoder/Decoder Contest winners.
  • Microtones - Musical Stings - mini-routines that play tunes! For the Apple, ADAM, CoCo, and more.