August 20, 2001– Newsletter #144

Greetings, Weekend Silicon Warriors,

How much would you spend for something on Ebay? I
am a huge fan of Delta Blues music and a 78 from Robert
Johnson is coming to an end on Ebay. The current bid is
over $1500.00. If it’s real, it’s a once in a lifetime
chance. Most sources say that only 15 to 30 copies even
exist. If this was in a store or I was buying it in person
from a collector, I’d jump all over it. It’s just that it’s on
Ebay, you know?

I’ll finish writing this newsletter while my copy of “The
Complete Vocalion Recordings” plays in the background
to boost my courage.

Did you hear…

If you’re a fan of Christian music, you can now break out
of the copyright concerns of streaming your favorite
music. For $14 a month, you can download what you’d
like from the EMI Christian Music Group thanks to
Higherwaves.com. Make sure your cookies are enabled
when you go. The site needs them to run.

Look out Gateway country – The Apple Store just opened
up in the Mall of America. Take a trip and check it out,
or don’t. Apple expects to open 24 more within a year.

Even with the merger, AOL will be cutting “hundreds” of
jobs to meet their financial expectations. The lay-offs
should come before the end of the month.

CNN is reporting that the U.S. government spent 6.2
million to allow overseas soldiers to vote online. The
experiment netted 84 votes. Do the math – it’s pushing
$74,000 per vote. Critics are starting to make their
opinions known.

Have you hear about the couple making it known that
they will name their child after a corporate logo for a half
a million dollars? These are the times when I wish I had
all the money in the world. I’d just have to pay and get
that kid named “Goodies”.

Now onto today’s topic…

Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday dear PC
Happy birthday to you.

Well, the PC is 20 years old according to all those that
matter. That means in just another year, it’ll be legal to
drink.

The IBM PC was “born” in Boca Raton, Florida when
Bill Lowe convinced the top people at IBM to build
computers for the end user. The computers would be
composed of parts bought from other companies, which
was rather odd to IBM at the time. It’s also the reason
you see so much open hardware standards when it comes
to IBMs. There are a few IBM knock-offs to say the
least. The personal computer made Intel a rather rich
company.

Bill Gates and Paul Allen convinced Big Blue to use their
basic formatting and operating system. The rest, as they
say, is history.

The first PC, nicknamed “the acorn,” contained a
charging 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 microprocessor. The
RAM was a standard 16 kilobytes. Of course it was
expandable…right up to 256k. You could have one or
two 160k floppy disk drives. The monochrome monitor
came standard, but one could upgrade to the amber-
chrome or a color monitor.

All of this for the low, low price of around $1500. In
today’s prices, that’s somewhere around four grand.

You can’t have a birthday without a party, so the PC
world threw one. Last Wednesday, those who received
an invitation gathered for a wonderful PC birthday party.

Here are some of the highlights from that party:

When everyone arrived, the Apple people seemed
confused proclaiming they had been around for a while
wondering when everyone else would show up.

Cake was served on 5 and a quarter inch disks. Those in
attendance couldn’t find much else of a need for them.

Wang, Tandy, and Amiga were sat next to Jugdish,
Sidney, and Mohammad.

The cake was beautiful. Everyone was surprised when a
young lady jumped out. Where her bikini was supposed
to be, it simply read, “data missing”. It was very
exciting.

The presents were given later on. They were peripherals
mainly. The problem was each time the PC was given a
new gift, someone else would give the same thing
proclaiming his or hers was faster, or better, or
something.

Some of the presents made the PC blue…at least the
screen.

We all played pin the floppy on the iMAC. There wasn’t
anywhere else to put it, so we just pinned it on.

The one unpleasant part of the night was when a drunk
386 proclaimed Big Blue was a “big phony” and that he
could beat Kasparov any day of the week.

Many at the party asked why the woman had to throw the
hammer in that Super Bowl commercial, breaking the big
TV and ruining such a good thing.

The desktops, laptops, and PDAs all posed for lovely
family pictures.

Pentium 75s and 100s assured one another that they
weren’t getting obsoleter, they were getting better. They
also said something about a fine wine.

One funny part of the evening was when someone taped a
sign to the back of an IBM Think Pad that read, “Upgrade
Me”.

A lot of the PCs that attended the party were out of work
so a great deal of networking was going on.

Everyone was enjoying the party until that Gates kid
showed up. Man, he has to run everything.

A Gateway was hung from the ceiling while smaller
computers with their monitors disconnected hit it with
sticks. Everyone loved it when colorful transistors fell
out everywhere.

A few 486 computers came dressed in corsets and riding
on a horse and buggy saying something about it being
1901.

The party finally shut down by everyone pushing their
collective START buttons.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

That’s that. Thanks for reading.

Joe Burns, Ph.D.

And remember: A big blood drive is underway around
my neck of the woods. When you go to give blood, here
are some facts that will show the person with the needle
that you know what you’re talking about. The most
common blood type is “O”. The most rare is AB. If you
factor in the Rh factor, AB Rh-negative becomes the
most rare blood type. It is estimated that only 1 percent
of people have this blood type. It’s been suggested that
here in the U.S., only five percent of our citizens donate
blood. That funny, since we all have so much to give.
The average male has 12 pints gushing around while the
average female has about nine pints coursing through
60,000 miles of blood vessels.