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Thursday, April 29, 2021

Pronto, The Home Banking System (1984)

Pronto, The Home Banking System (1984)

Haha, all you newbs who think online banking got started with the Internet era...

Pronto was the name of an online banking system from Chemical Bank. They called it "The Home Banking System". While the ad above from 1984 is promoting software for Apple and IBM PC computers, it actually got its start on Atari computers in 1982. This was considered to be the first personal computer based banking system.

This reminds me vaguely of the first time I saw my friend's Commodore 64. This would have been some time in 1985 and I asked him what this brown boxy looking thing next to the Commodore was. He told me it was something you could use to break into banks and stuff. It was a modem. I'm pretty sure I didn't use a computer to access a bank until my bank started offering online services some time well after the year 2000. I don't remember when it was actually but it wasn't THAT long ago.

While sounding vaguely familiar, I wasn't even sure who Chemical Bank was. Apparently, it was founded in 1823 as the New York Chemical Manufacturing Company by Balthazar P. Melick. Anybody else think that Balthazar is a bad-ass name or is that just me? At the end of 1995 it was the 3rd largest bank in the U.S. At that time, Chemical acquired Chase Manhattan to create the largest financial institution in the U.S. and started using that name.

Anyway, Chemical's initial online banking system wasn't terribly popular. Part of the reason was the high subscription fees. By 1984 it was "only" $12 a month but I believe it was even higher earlier on. This service carried on in one form or another until 1989 when it was discontinued. But in the early 1980s, they were decades ahead of their time.

The ad above is from the June 1984 issue of Family Computing. Check out this New York Times article from December 7th, 1983 on this system.

Wednesday, April 28, 2021

Biden’s $2 Trillion Infrastructure Plan Is Loaded With Corporate Welfare

President Biden has just unveiled a new $2.3 trillion “infrastructure” plan, but a shockingly large portion of this bill is actually unrelated to infrastructure.

The plan includes massive subsidies for corporations as well as state and local governments, and comes right after the administration’s proposed increase in the corporate tax rate, which would raise the rate from 21 percent to 28 percent.

There’s $300 billion for manufacturing, $100 billion for electric utilities, $100 billion for broadband, $174 billion for electric vehicles, and a whole lot more. A significant portion of this spending is directed at subsidizing big corporations.

What the plan overlooks is that corporations are already investing heavily in the industries they aim to subsidize. For example, companies like Tesla and Volkswagen have invested billions into developing electric automobiles and charging infrastructure. Biden’s plan would aim to influence consumer spending decisions through the creation of further incentives for such vehicles. In other words, these companies would see their profits boosted as a result of artificially increased demand. The same goes for Verizon and T-Mobile that have invested in broadband, and Mitsubishi and Siemens that have invested in wind energy.

Subsidizing multi-billion dollar corporations and pumping up their profits is corporate welfare, not an infrastructure plan. The private sector built hundreds of thousands of gas stations across the country, and if there is demand for it, they will do the same with charging stations for EVs. A federal takeover of business investment decisions in this manner will inevitably have repercussions.

The Biden administration has included $100 billion to “decarbonize” the US electric grid, essentially eliminating coal and natural gas, alongside $213 billion for affordable housing and $400 billion to bolster home health-care. Despite President Biden’s push for bipartisanship, partisan political spending runs through his plan.

This plan comes on the heels of Biden's proposed corporate tax hikes.

The current administration is betting that damage caused by jacking up taxes will be outweighed by the massive amount of federal spending in this proposal. As the president of the Tax Foundation, Scott A. Hodge put it, “Based on CBO’s (Congressional Budget Office) assessment of the economic and budgetary effects of federal investment, there is no reason to believe that the economy will be better off with such a trade.”

The CBO estimates that $2 trillion in federal spending will yield about $1.3 trillion in actual investment. Since government investment only results in half the returns of private investment, we would be much better off if the $2 trillion in corporate tax increases that Biden needs to fund this plan were left in the hands of the private sector.

This plan would be a massive circular flow of revenue with increased corporate taxes funding subsidies for large companies, ultimately decreasing investment and long term capital formation. As federal spending increases to unprecedented levels, state and local governments become nothing more than the administrators of a giant national government.

Bureaucracies are notoriously and inherently inefficient, the economist Ludwig von Mises has pointed out.

“It is a widespread illusion that the effi­ciency of government bureaus could be improved by management engineers and their methods of scientific management. . . . What they call deficiencies and faults of the management of administrative agencies are necessary properties. A bureau is not a profit-seeking enterprise; it cannot make use of any economic calculation. . . . It is out of the question to improve its management by reshaping it ac­cording to the pattern of private business."

Expanding bureaucracy will only exacerbate these effects. The expenses and delays involved in collecting trillions of dollars in additional corporate taxes, running them through Washington and eventually using them to finance countless programs only serve as further discouragement against pursuing such a plan.

Overall, a thorough analysis of this proposal reveals that it would ultimately do more harm than good. In addition to the high levels of political spending and unnecessary intervention in business investment decisions, this plan would be a burden on the economy, reducing investment, growth, and prosperity over the long run.

Aadi Golchha
Aadi Golchha

Aadi Golchha is the author of "The Socialist Trap: How the Leftist Utopia Will Destroy America" and an independent political analyst.

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

Biden’s $2 Trillion Infrastructure Plan Is Loaded With Corporate Welfare

Tuesday, April 27, 2021

Nintendo Magazine System – Issue Number 6

Nintendo Magazine System – Issue Number 6

Nintendo Magazine System (a bit of a play on Nintendo Entertainment system I guess) was an officially endorsed Nintendo magazine published in the U.K. (at least this iteration). Issue Number 6 (according to the cover) or issue number 4 (according to the contents page) from March? 1993? includes:

Cover Story
  • StarFox - Get set for the next generation of Nintendo gaming, and a cartridge so hot it's going to blow you out of your seat. The amazing Star Fox is here, and NMS grabs another World Exclusive with an incredible 8-PAGE Review! You've never seen anything quite like this game on any home console anywhere, so seeing is believing as you turn to page 18 and feast your eyes on the products of Nintendo's Top Secret SFX super chip.
Super NES Reviews
  • Star Fox
  • Tiny Toons
  • Ranma 1/2
  • Jaki Crush
  • Tennis
  • Ki Ki Katai
  • Chester Cheetah
  • Flying Hero
  • Syvalion
  • Wordtris
  • The Combatribes
  • Aliens V Predator
  • Congo's Caper
  • Jeopardy
  • Tetris 2
NES Reviews
  • Spider-Man
  • RC Pro-Am 2
Game Boy reviews
  • Alfred Chicken
  • Humans
Exclusive Previews
  • B.O.B.
  • Xandra's Adventure
  • Human Grand Prix
  • Super F1 Hero
Regulars
  • News - The Nintendo News Network goes into hyperdrive this month! Not only do we have all the usual white hot little items which make this section so essential, we've pushed the boat out to give you an amazing 8-page CES report across the centre too!

  • High Scores - Incredible! This month's sad and pathetic excuses for High Scores resulted in the top level NMS executive decision to drop them until next issue! This means you have four weeks to bring those scores up to the standards we expect, or we're going to start getting tough...

  • Q&A - It's that time of the month again. Jaz dons his doh-resistant motorcycle helmet to sift through the sad, misguided souls who still think Streetfighter Championship Edition is coming for the Game Boy. What words of wonder can he pour on these troubled waters? Find out with Q&A!

  • S.E.A.L's Mail Bag - There's never been anything quite like him, and the S.E.A.L. is back with his barbed comments to reel in any sad, unsuspecting readers who reckon they're a bit tasty when it comes to backchat. S.E.A.L. has all the answers, so why not check them out now!

  • NHS - Next patient, nurse. There's no need for laughing gas in the outrageously unprivate world of the Nintendo Help System. Lack of cash injection and ridiculously long waiting lists are simply not our concern, while we dissect cheats and tips for all our lovely patients.

  • Charts - Here they are - all the top-selling games in the land and your guide to what everyone else is shelling out for. This issue we have an important new addition - the NMS Chart, in which we detail our favorite games regardless of price or release dates!

  • Index - It just gets bigger and bigger! It's the comprehensive guide to EVERY game you can get your hands on, complete with review ratings and even some new info on the games. It's great, it's essential, it's right here.

  • Next Month - You've had a fabulous time, you're feeling great, but sadly NMS has come to its final page. Do you fret? Do you worry? No - you simply check out our Next Month page and wait 28 days or so for all that incredibility to arrive...
...and more!

Friday, April 23, 2021

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (913-916)

See the previous post in this series here.>/p>

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These are 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 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 having some negatives I wanted to scan is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent 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 rather 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, 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.

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.

None of the photos in this set are labeled or dated. They appear to have been taken in Mexico and were likely taken in the late 1950s or early 1960s. This is another set where I have opted to post the color corrected and Digital ICE processed versions because of quality.






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

Thursday, April 22, 2021

PC World (April 2006)

PC World (April 2006)

It can be argued whether or not Windows XP era machines are "vintage" or not but these days it certainly feels like print magazines are. The last issue of PC World was published nearly 8 years ago. The April 2006 issue includes:

Cover Story
  • Windows Hacks - With just a few simple tweaks to Windows XP's Registry, you can tailor the OS to your taste. We show you how and suggest a few utilities that make the job even easier. And if you're eager to jump from XP to the upcoming Vista, don't miss our in-depth preview of its revamped design and enhanced security features.
Features
  • Get More Out of Your Wireless Network - Suddenly, it seems, a multitude of gadgets have added wireless capability to their repertoire. Whether for making phone calls, sharing files, or streaming music and video, here are some of the best on the market.

  • Battery Boosters - Every gadget you own lives or dies by its batteries. We tell you how to wring every bit of life out of them, which tyeps last longest, and what new technologies are on the horizon.

  • Projectors for Everyone - High-resolution, multipurpose projectors that can handle both business presentations and home entertainment? They're here, at prices as low as $899. We evaluate 16 and rank the 10 best.
Reviews & Rankings
  • Power Desktop PCs - AMD FX-60-based units from ABS, CyberPower, and Polywell
  • Top 5 Power Desktops
  • high-Resolution HDTVs - Sets from HP, JVC, and Mitsubishi
  • Satellite Radio - Sirius Satellite Radio
  • Desktop Computer - Apple iMac G5
  • Graphics Software - CorelDraw Graphics Suite X3
  • Top 5 Laser Printers
  • Digital Camera - Nikon D200
  • Finanical Software - Sage Software Simply Accounting Basic 13
  • Top 5 Value Graphics Boards
  • Notebook PC - HP Pavilion dv5000z
  • Hard Drive - Western Digital Raptor X
  • Top 5 Speakers
  • Scanner - Microtek ScanMaker i800
  • More Reviews
Departments
  • Up Front - Has television over the Internet finally arrived?
  • Letters - Excessive copy controls are cause for concern.
  • Consumer Watch - What to look for in a Web site hosting service. Plus: How much does Google know about you?
  • Hassle-Free PC - Get rid of the junk cluttering up your system tray.
  • Gadget Freak - Blu-ray vs. HD DVD: The battle has just begun.
  • Bugs and Fixes - Windows risk: booby-trapped fonts on Web sites.
  • Full Disclosure - Unwanted bundled apps are the new spam.
News & Trends
  • Spam Mutates - Filters may hold junk e-mail at bay, but spam is now invading blogs, IM, and cell phones.
  • Microsoft Offers New Web Apps - Windows Live and Office Live - still in beta - bring software and services over the Internet.
  • Internet Explorer 7: New Security, Navigation - The preview of Beta 2 offers some cool features long available in Firefox and Opera.
  • Patent Overload Hampers Tech Innovation - A huge applications backlog is swamping the U.S. Patent Office, and disputes jam the courts.
  • Plugged In - Google, Amazon move into online video; waiting for superfast wireless; a new type of high-def TV.
Here's How
  • Internet Tips - Control cookies to preserve your online privacy.
  • Answer Line - Notebook security - at home and on the road.
  • Windows Tips - Annotate a large group of files in one fell swoop.
  • Hardware Tips - Choose the right PC storage upgrades for you.
  • Power-Saving Tips - Save dollars by reducing your PC's energy costs.
Resources
  • How to Contact PC World
  • PC World Marketplace
  • Advertiser Index
...and more!

Wednesday, April 21, 2021

The Conservative Case for Cryptocurrency

If you listen to defenders of the US dollar, you might get the idea that cryptocurrencies are only good for funding terrorism and hard drugs. And when you consider that cryptocurrencies represent a pretty clear break with tradition, a conservative might be inclined to stick with what’s familiar.

That’s understandable. One of conservatism’s hallmarks is skepticism of change that happens too quickly or threatens well-established institutions. In this way, many conservatives think the US dollar is good enough: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

But I want to make the case that the dollar is broken. Indeed, I want to persuade you that adopting cryptocurrency is an act of patriotism.

“To the extent it is used,” said Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen of bitcoin, “I fear it’s often for illicit finance.”

We can expect more of this kind of rhetoric from those who see cryptocurrencies as a threat to the dollar’s hegemony. This sort of rhetoric almost always precedes regulatory zeal. In this case, regulation would be designed to keep people locked in the dollar’s matrix. Otherwise, how will authorities make the people clean up their messes?

Remember, politicians created the money for the recent $1.9 trillion “stimulus” package out of thin air. This sent US debt to GDP well past 100 percent. To pay off this debt, the choices are taxation or inflation.

But nevermind the debt. Yellen wants you to look over there, instead.

Bitcoin is “extremely inefficient” as a transaction medium, she says, as if bitcoin were the only cryptocurrency, and the US Treasury and Mastercard are one and the same. She neglects to compare bitcoin transmission to shipping stacks of dollar bills, which also happens to be a method preferred by terrorists and drug dealers. Yellen certainly doesn’t want to talk about bitcoin’s utility as an investment vehicle—particularly as a hedge against inflation.

Fealty to the dollar is fealty to her appointers.

“As measured by the Consumer Price Index,” says monetary economist Lawrence H. White in an interview, “today’s $1 buys no more than what 3.7 cents bought in 1913. The dollar has lost 96.3 percent of its purchasing power.”

In 2021, some estimates have prices rising by 2.5 percent, but inflation doesn’t just show up in almond milk and toothpaste. Asset prices seem to be in bubble territory, as well.

Despite its volatility, bitcoin hasn’t lost value. Yet throughout its eleven years of existence, skeptics have argued that the world’s first cryptocurrency is just a fad or worse, a Ponzi scheme. Others claim bitcoin has no ‘intrinsic value.’ Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, without a hint of irony, recently said of cryptocurrencies that “they’re not backed by anything.”

Trouble is, nothing has intrinsic value. Value is subjective. Even if we agree that people tend to value gold or silver, which might justify staying with a gold-backed dollar, the dollar hasn’t been on a gold standard since 1933. Anyone waiting for the dollar to return to a gold standard will be waiting a long time. That includes Jerome Powell.

“Our monetary system today is too centralized and too political,” says Lawrence H. White. “The supply of money depends on a single committee of political appointees at the Fed. They have no crystal ball and are subject to fads in macroeconomic thinking.”

White thinks we’d be better off with a private monetary system similar to that envisioned by F. A. Hayek. He adds: “A better alternative is a decentralized commodity standard with competition among private money issuers.”

Progressives created the Federal Reserve in 1913, purportedly to stabilize the financial system. Whether the mandarins achieved that stability is arguable, they succeeded in concentrating on outsized financial power in Washington and New York. The Federal Reserve is thus tangled in an unholy relationship with the federal government. That fact enables political authorities to spend beyond their means and tax people surreptitiously through inflation.

So, when I say the dollar is broken, I mean both the federal government and the Federal Reserve systems are broken. In my latest book, I thus argue that the United States is headed for collapse.

Ah, but surely we shouldn’t underestimate the resilience of the mighty US economy. Can’t we grow our way out of the US debt and unfunded liabilities?

Here’s Lawrence White for an encore:

Even if Congress were to balance the federal budget, which it won’t, it would take decades for economic growth to bring the debt/GDP ratio (currently 130 percent of GDP) down to where it was 20 years ago (54 percent of GDP). It’s mathematically impossible to grow our way out of the national debt when federal budget deficits are so large on average as to make the stock of debt grow faster than the real economy.

Unlike central banks, private issuers can’t afford to get things wrong. And this is precisely the insight understood by the creators of cryptocurrencies. All of them are competing to provide the properties people want to see in 21st century assets.

The dollar’s defenders tend to pick on bitcoin, say, for its volatility. But myriad alternatives offer different properties, many of which have pre-programmed price stability. Some have higher transaction speeds, including hard forks of bitcoin. Consider, for example, the average transactions per second (tps) for each:

  • Bitcoin (BTC) - 7 tps
  • Bitcoin Cash (BCH) - 300 tps
  • Bitcoin SV (BSV) - 224 tps

All of these options have sprung up in the last four years. Imagine if you could fork the US dollar and give users the choice of a gold-backed version. A lot of people would quite happily choose that forked dollar. Alas, no such option is available. So we criticize by creating.

None of the versions of bitcoin are themselves a static system. Instead, each evolves and improves. If higher transaction speeds were all anyone was looking for in a property, one might choose other blockchains. But a lot of people are happy with “digital gold,” at least for now.

The thing about cryptocurrencies is this: Nearly any property is programmable. People want myriad features in their tokens, though sometimes these properties require tradeoffs one against another. Yet these decentralized systems are continuously improving. Here are some of their key features:

  • Sovereign and permissionless
  • Anonymous
  • Secure
  • Medium of exchange
  • Transaction speed
  • Deflationary
  • Stable
  • Low transaction fees
  • Store of value
  • Liquid
  • Smart contracts
  • Tokenization

With each passing day, programmers are developing new properties. That means each offers people more of exactly what they’re looking for in an asset. In this way, the systems themselves have instrumental value, depending on what properties you want and the emergent network effects they give rise to. The dollar has legacy network effects, to be sure. Still, it is tied to the capricious nature of politics—a fact which America’s Founders would surely have despised.

Thomas Jefferson didn’t want a central bank. And in an 1803 letter to Albert Gallatin, he wrote:

The Bank of the United States is one of the most deadly hostilities existing, against the principles and form of our Constitution. An institution like this, penetrating by its branches every part of the Union, acting by command and in phalanx, may, in a critical moment, upset the government.

Jefferson tried to warn us, and yet his worries turned out to be only half the story. The government and the central bank are mutually corruptive.

Jefferson would have been happy to water the tree of liberty with a bleeding US dollar. I bet he would have cheered the rise of cryptocurrencies, even if only because they represent a popular revolt against political elites in collusion with central bankers.

So, is cryptocurrency for conservatives?

Patriotism should never be confused with nostalgia. While some conservatives might be willing to settle for a system that props up the political class and their profligacy, most understand Russell Kirk’s Seventh Law of Conservatism, which says that freedom and property are linked:

“Separate property from private possession, and Leviathan becomes master of all,” Kirk wrote. “Upon the foundation of private property, great civilizations are built. The more widespread is the possession of private property, the more stable and productive is a commonwealth.”

Cryptocurrencies are designed to create financial sovereignty for everyone. If conservatives continue to stay locked in the dollar’s matrix, they will be playing into the hands and plans of people they most oppose.

-

Max Borders is author of After Collapse: The Death of America and the Rebirth of Her Ideals. Support his work with cryptocurrency here.

Max Borders
Max Borders

Max Borders is author of The Social Singularity. He is also the founder and Executive Director of Social Evolution—a non-profit organization dedicated to liberating humanity through innovation. Max is also co-founder of the Voice & Exit event and former editor at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE). Max is a futurist, a theorist, a published author and an entrepreneur.

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

The Conservative Case for Cryptocurrency

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

EDGE (November 2007)

EDGE (November 2007)

Edge was is a magazine that was published in the U.K. that was sort of the sister magazine to Next Generation in the states. At least, they shared some of the same content. If you liked one, you would probably like the other and I really liked Next Generation. Now 2007 really isn't all that retro to me. Games like Halo 3 and RockBand just seem a little old. However, 13 years is a long time and if you were playing these games when you were 13 there is no doubt they will be retro to you. The November 2007 issue of Edge includes:

This Month
  • Conflict Of Interest - A jaunt through the English countryside to talk with Pivotal about its twoplayer spin on the Conflict series.

  • Our Benefactors - Polymaths, prodigies and Portal: we drop by Valve's Seattle offices to find out how it plays with gaming's rules.

  • Arcadia - Though only a shadow of its former self, the arcade industry is showing signs of getting back on its feet

  • Time Extend: Metal Arms - Chaos, sadism and comedy German accents: Swingin' Ape's thirdperson shooter was an ode to expression
Every Month
  • Start - News, interviews and more
  • Something About Japan - Koji Aizawa will have his medication now
  • The Making Of... - NES isometric-3D legend, Solstice
  • Edge Moves - Your chance to work in the videogame industry
  • Codeshop - Autodesk's 2008 interations
  • Gaming in the dark - With new columnist N'Gai Croal
  • Biffovision - Mr Biffo looks for the soul, man
  • Inbox - Your letters, plus Crashlander
Hype
  • Far Cry 2 (PC)
  • Spore (PC)
  • Hellgate: London (PC)
  • Kayne And Lynch: Dead Men (360, PC, PS3)
  • Alone in the Dark (360, PC, PS3)
  • Nights: Journey of Dreams (Wii)
  • Mario and Sonic (DS, Wii)
  • Viking: Battle for Asgard (360, PS3)
  • Rise of the Argonauts (360, PC, PS3)
  • Speedball 2 (PC)
  • Tony Hawk's Proving Ground (360, PS3)
  • Borderlands (360, PC, PS3)
  • Wet (360, PS3)
  • Civilization: Revolution (360, DS, PS3, Wii)
  • Race Driver One (360, PC, PS3)
  • Guilty Gear Overture (360)
  • Rachet & Clank Future (PS3)
Review
  • Halo 3 (360)
  • Quake Wars (360, PC)
  • Skate (360, PS3)
  • Grimgrimoire (PS2)
  • Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (Wii)
  • Project Gotham Racing 4 (360)
  • Sega Rally (360, PS3)
  • Lair (PS3)
  • Stranglehold (360, PC, PS3)
  • Persona 3 (PS2)
  • Singstar (PS3)
  • Two Worlds (360, PC)
  • Jam Sessions (DS)
  • Final Fantasy Tactics (PSP)
  • World in Conflict (360, PC)
  • Eternal Sonata (360)
  • Phoenix Wright 3 (DS)
  • Sonic Rush Adventure (DS)
Start
  • One for all and all for one - How Sony's multimedia strategy is shaping the PlayStation family
  • The view from Germany - Game Convention shows how to put on a videogame event
  • Judgement calls - The thinking behind PlayStation Eye's game of decks and effects
  • City slickers - Nottingham's GameCity festival offers up some treats for October
  • On the move - More from Nokia on the revamp of the N-Gage mobile platform
  • Myth and legend - We talk to the man behind Folklore about mixing Irish myth into gaming
  • Still silent - The producer of Silent Hill Origins on fear, intensity and playing alone
...and more!

Monday, April 19, 2021

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (909-912)

See the previous post in this series here.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These are 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 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 having some negatives I wanted to scan is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent 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 rather 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, 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.

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.

None of the photos in this set are labeled or dated. They were probably taken in the late 1950s or early 1960s give or take. This appears to be a bunch of guys camping someplace really cold...







Usually I post unedited scans without any post processing, flaws and all. However, the quality was bad enough in this case that I used versions processed with color restoration and Digital ICE via my scanner. Here's what the first image looks like without that:

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

Premiere Software (August 1992)


Premiere Software (August 1992)

Public Domain software seemed to reach its peak in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I'm talking about closed source, but no cost software. This included both completely free programs, donationware, and shareware programs that were free but limited unless you bought the full version. I'm not necessarily referring to open source stuff here. That was somewhat less common during that time period.

Anyway, in 1992 when this ad was published, the Internet was still a few years away from being widely available. Other online services were available like Compuserve and AOL but downloads could be expensive and there were a great many computer users who did not subscribe to such services. So how did one go about getting all this great "free" software? Why by buying disks with the software on it of course.

At that time (and today also though it is rarely needed), it was perfectly acceptable and legal in most cases to distribute such free software and charge money provided the amount being charged was only a nominal amount for the cost of the media, shipping and any other services and not for the software itself. It was quite common for authors and third party companies to sell such media. This ad from the August 1992 issue of Amiga News is for one such company. They charged anywhere from $2 to $4 per disk depending on how many disks you were buying and whether or not they were multi-disk sets, etc. They also charged a separate $3 shipping and handling fee. Presumably that was for your whole order regardless of the number of disks. I'm guessing blank 3.5" disks retailed for around $1 at that time so a few dollars per disk was probably pretty reasonable for duplication and labeling.

Public domain software had been available in this fashion probably nearly as long as the personal computer had been around. I remember public domain software being "sold" for the Commodore 64. However, it seemed like there was a massive increase in the availability of free software after the arrival of the Amiga. Public domain software also helped to keep the Amiga live years after Commodore had bit the dust. Anybody for a game of Star Trek "The Next Generation" Trivia Challenge Season I and II?

Friday, April 16, 2021

Jeff Bezos Just Endorsed Corporate Tax Hikes. Here’s Why Amazon’s Support Should Be a Giant Red Flag

The Biden administration and some (but not all) of their Democratic allies in Congress want to raise the corporate tax rate to 28 percent. They say this would help the working class and hurt Big Business, finally making corporations “pay their fair share.” But if that were true, giant corporations like Amazon wouldn’t be endorsing the change. 

Yet that’s exactly what Jeff Bezos just did. 

“We support the Biden Administration’s focus on making bold investments in American infrastructure,” the Amazon CEO wrote in a public statement. "We recognize this investment will require concessions from all sides—both on the specifics of what’s included as well as how it gets paid for... we’re supportive of a rise in the corporate tax rate.” (Emphasis mine).

Amazon has also lobbied aggressively for other big-government policies like a $15 federal minimum wage. At first glance, this might seem like an endorsement of the policies: see, they wouldn’t be so bad for business after all. Yet it’s actually a giant red flag. 

When Big Business comes together to collude with Big Government, it usually means everyday people are about to get ripped off. 

When CEOs and politicians are able to agree on seemingly anti-business policies, it’s often because they know the government roadblocks instituted will entrench their market dominance and ultimately redound to the C Suite’s benefit. Amazon knows it can weather the storm of higher corporate taxes (right now it pays very little in corporate tax because it exploits tax breaks) but many of its smaller competitors cannot. Meanwhile, Bezos also knows that his company can afford armies of tax experts, accountants, and lawyers to exploit every loophole to minimize the damage; a luxury many less-dominant rivals won’t have. 

And, most importantly, a wealth of economic research shows that workers and consumers really bear the majority of the costs of corporate taxes through lower wages and higher prices. 

“The elementary fact is that ‘business’ does not and cannot pay taxes,” Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman once explained. “Only people can pay taxes. Corporate officials may sign the check, but the money that they forward to Internal Revenue comes from the corporation’s employees, customers or stockholders.”

More specifically, a study by the Tax Foundation found that Biden’s proposed corporate tax hike would shrink the overall size of the economy, reduce wages, and eliminate 159,000 jobs

Of course, Bezos would hardly notice a blip in his bank account. The workers left unemployed would have a different experience.

Amazon is not truly altruistic or “woke.” The company knows that the costs of proposed corporate tax hikes would mostly fall on workers and hurt smaller retail competitors. Amazon just hopes that you don’t know that—and that Americans mistake its cronyism for altruism.

Brad Polumbo
Brad Polumbo

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a libertarian-conservative journalist and Policy Correspondent at the Foundation for Economic Education.

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

Thursday, April 15, 2021

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (905-908)

See the previous post in this series here.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These are 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 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 having some negatives I wanted to scan is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent 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 rather 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, 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.

Click on 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 first photo features a baby and is dated June 1952. The others are nature shots, probably from somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. These are also likely from the 1950s.


June 1952




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

Friday, April 9, 2021

RUN (August 1986)

RUN (August 1986)

RUN, subtitled "The Commodore C-128/C-64 Home Computing Guide", was one of a few magazines I spent my scarece resources on as a kid. I loved my Commodore 64 and essentially learned BASIC programming with magazines like this and got "free" software via the type-in programs provided. The August 1986 issue includes:

Features
  • Enter The On-Line World of Lucasfilm - Lucasfilm and QuantumLink have teamed up to bring you a new concept in on-line interactive game-playing.

  • Disk Keeper - Do all your diskkeeping chores, from formatting to making disk jacket labels, with this one program.

  • Bootmaker 128/64 - If you like the autoboot capbility of the C-128 in 128 mode, you'll love this program that lets you autoboot in 64 mode, too.

  • Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker - Choose a software package that will point you toward the right career and then help you shine in it.

  • Add Some Character to Your C-64 - Run this program and you'll whip up some "instant" custom characters.
Departments
  • RUNning Ruminations - Discover ReRUN

  • Magic - The original column of hints and tips that lets you perform computing wizardry.

  • Software Gallery
    • Grover's Animal Adventures
    • Superscript
    • Elite and the Silver Disk Series
    • Leader Board
    • Bank Street Filer
    • WillWriter

  • Second Annual RUNaway Contest - Here's your chance to be a winner in RUN's giveaway sweepstakes worth over $25,000 in prizes. And, just for entering, you'll receive a free QuantumLink terminal program!

  • Basically Speaking - An exploration of Basic programming fundamentals.

  • Telecomputing Workshop - Advice and answers to your questions on modems, terminal programs, on-line networks, bulletin boards and more.

  • Q-Link Happenings - This month we introduce a new feature that keeps you informed about the latest services on QuantumLink.

  • The Resource Center - Teachers, administrators and students are getting on-line as the nation's schools enter the telecommunications age.

  • New Products RUNdown

  • How To Type In Listings

  • RUN Amok - We run corrected.

  • Coming Attractions
...and more!

Thursday, April 8, 2021

Why the Push Is on to Make Pandemic Life ‘Permanent’

One year after Americans were ordered to close down society for “two weeks to flatten the curve,” Bloomberg columnist Andreas Kluth warned, “We Must Start Planning for a Permanent Pandemic.”

Because new variants of SARS-COV-2 are impervious to existing vaccines, says Kluth, and pharmaceutical companies will never be able to develop new vaccines fast enough to keep up, we will never be able to get “back to normal.”

“Get back to normal” means recovering the relative liberty we had in our already overregulated, pre-Covid lives. This is just the latest in a long series of crises that always seem to lead our wise rulers to the same conclusion: we just cannot afford freedom anymore.

Covid-19 certainly wasn’t the beginning. Americans were told “the world changed” after 9/11. Basic pillars of the American system, like the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, were too antiquated to deal with the “new threat of terrorism.” Warrantless surveillance of our phone, e-mail, and financial records and physical searches of our persons without probable cause of a crime became the norm. A few principled civil libertarians dissented, but the public largely complied without protest.

“Keep us safe,” they told the government, no matter the cost in dollars or liberty.

Perhaps seeing how willingly the public rolled over for the political right during the “War on Terror,” authoritarians on the left turbocharged their own war on “climate change.” Previously interested in merely significantly raising taxes and heavily regulating industry, they now wish to ban all sorts of things, including air travel, gasoline-powered cars, and even eating meat.

Since Covid-19, however, even the freedom to assemble and see each other’s faces may be permanently banned to help the government “keep us safe.”

Assaulting our liberty isn’t the only characteristic these crisis narratives have in common. They share at least two others: dire predictions that turn out to be false and proposed solutions that turn out to be ineffective.

George W. Bush warned Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction” capable of hitting New York City within 45 minutes. He created the Department of Homeland Security and the TSA to prevent, among other things, a “mushroom cloud” over a major American city.

Twenty years later, we know there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the terrorist threat was grossly exaggerated, and the TSA has still never caught a terrorist, not even the two people who tried to set off explosives concealed in their shoes and underwear, respectively.

The only effective deterrent of terrorism so far has been the relatively calmer foreign policy during the four years of the Trump administration, during which regime change operations ceased and major terrorist attacks in the United States virtually disappeared.

Predictions of environmental catastrophe have similarly proven false. Younger people may not remember that in the early 1970s, long before Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was born, environmentalists were predicting worldwide disasters that subsequently failed to materialize. In 1989, the Associated Press reported, “A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.” The same official predicted the Earth’s temperature would rise 1 to 7 degrees in the next 30 years.

Ocasio-Cortez is famous for predicting in 2019, “The world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.” But Al Gore had warned in 2006 that “unless drastic measures to reduce greenhouse gases are taken within the next 10 years, the world will reach a point of no return.” So, isn’t it too late anyway?

As with the war on terrorism, the war on climate change asks us to give up our freedom for solutions that don’t work. Assuming climate change proponents have diagnosed the problem correctly and haven’t exaggerated the threat—huge assumptions by themselves— implementing their proposed solution won’t solve the problem, even by their own standards.

Its proponents know this. The U.S. has already led the world in reducing carbon emissions without the draconian provisions of the Green New Deal. If you listen to them carefully, the Green New Deal’s proponents propose the U.S. give up what freedom and prosperity remain to them merely as an example to developing nations, whom they assume will forego the benefits of industrialization already enjoyed by developed countries because of the shining example of an America in chains and brought to its economic knees to “save the earth.”

Fat chance, that.

The latest remake of this horror movie is Covid-19. While undeniably a serious pathogen that has likely killed more people than even the worst flu epidemics of the past several decades (although this is hard to confirm since public health officials changed the methodology for determining a virus-caused death), the government and its minions have still managed to grossly exaggerate this threat.

Gone is any sense of proportion when discussing Covid-19. Yes, it is certainly possible to spread the virus after one has been vaccinated or acquired natural immunity. But how likely is it? Is it any more likely than spreading other pathogens after immunity?

If not, then why are we treating people with immunity differently than we have during more dangerous pandemics in the past? Similarly, it is likely possible for asymptomatic people to spread the virus—a key pillar of the lockdown argument—but again, how likely is it?

The theory Covid-19 could be spread by asymptomatic people was originally based on the case of a single woman who supposedly infected four other people while experiencing no symptoms. Anthony Fauci said this case “lays the question to rest.”

The only problem was no one had asked the woman in question if she had symptoms at the time. When it turned out she did, the study on her was retracted. A subsequent study “did not link any COVID-19 cases to asymptomatic carriers,” and yet another after that concluded transmission of the disease by asymptomatic carriers “is not a major driver of spread.” Yet, policies based on this falsehood, like lockdowns and forcing asymptomatic people to wear masks, remain in place.

Most importantly, none of the government-mandated Covid-19 mitigation policies work. No retrospective review conducted with any semblance of the scientific method has found a relationship between lockdowns, mask mandates, or social distancing and the spread of Covid-19. In fact, the most recent study suggests lockdowns may have increased Covid-19 infections, in addition to all the non-Covid excess deaths they caused.

Over and over, authoritarians overhype crises to scare the living daylights out of the public and propose solutions that have two things in common: they demand more of our freedom and they don’t work. It’s always all pain and no gain. One wonders how many repetitions of this crisis drill it will take before the citizens of the so-called “land of the free” finally think to ask:

Why is freedom always the problem?

This article was republished with permission.

Tom Mullen

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

https://www.megalextoria.com/wordpress/index.php/2021/04/08/why-the-push-is-on-to-make-pandemic-life-permanent-foundation-for-economic-education/

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

PSM (March 1998)

PSM (March 1998)

PSM, short for PlayStation Magazine, got it's start in late 1997 and initially covered the original PlayStation. It would eventually become PlayStation: The Official Magazine a decade later. The March 1998 issue of PSM includes:

Cover Story
  • Dead or Alive - If you want to get busy with Dead or Alive, you're gonna have to know what buttons to push. That's where we come in - we've got all the moves and tips you'll ever need to take charge of this hot new fighter!
Features
  • Resident Evil 2 - Are you up to the horror of Resident Evil 2? the game of the year is here, and it's friggin' HUGE!!! If you ever want to get out of Raccoon City alive, you're gonna need our help. And we have more help than you'll know what to do with!

  • Final Fantasy Tactics - That's right, we're not finished with Tactics yet! We've got another load of top-secret strategies, items and tips to drop on you this month! This game just doesn't want to end!

  • Riven Walkthrough - Riven picks up where Myst left off, and the game's quality has been much improved along the way. The world of Riven is huge, so to get through it all in this century you just might need some help. Our walkthrough will get you through any tough spots and take you all the way to the end!

  • Bloody Roar - You'll have plenty of moves to learn in Bloody Roar before you can master this beast of a game! Our guide not only includes every move for every character, we also have quite a few useful strategies to help out. We'll even show you how to unlock some of the cooler features of the game, so get ready to get savage!

  • Tip Sleeves - Cool strategies that you can pull out and take with you!
    • Gex2: Enter the Gecko
    • Monster Rancher

  • Memory Card Stickers - Keep those saves organized with the coolest card stickers around!

  • Japan Gaming - Ever wonder what the gaming scene is like across the Pacific? Our main man Bill Paris is here to give you the ultimate lowdown on the world of video games in Japan. Bill takes you on a tour of their deluxe arcades, used game shops, anime, naughty games, and more!
Monitor - The latest PlayStation news and up-to-the-minute info
  • Feature Story: New Character in Tekken 3!
  • Yaroze News
  • Gossip
  • Nihon Game Otaku!
Reviews - This month's new games, thoroughly tested by PSM experts
  • Flashback/Backlog
Previews - All the best dirt on tomorrow's hottest games
  • Dead or Alive
  • MLB '99
  • Crime Killer
  • Ninja
  • Grand Theft Auto
  • Mega Man Nova
  • Einhander
  • Gran Turismo
  • Tomba
  • Running Wild
  • Reboot
  • SaGa Frontier
Code Junkies - The latest codes for all you addicts Letters - You've got questions, we've got answers
  • Link-Up
  • Pause
  • Fan Art
  • Top This!
  • PS
  • Marketplace
Reset - A sneak-peek at what's gonna be hot for next month ...and more! ---

Tuesday, April 6, 2021

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (901-904)

See the previous post in this series here.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These are 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 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 having some negatives I wanted to scan is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent 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 rather 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, 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.

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.

A bunch of nature shots in this set. The first looks like a lake or river somewhere while the other feature flowers. None of these are dated or otherwise labeled but they are probably from the 1950s.






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