The Independent Kixmiller Pigeon MrkII

Windows Mobile 6 was a very interesting release, even though not so much in the technical manner. WinMobile 6 was powered by the Windows CE 5 operating system, geared towards PDA's and smartphones. Stability was further improved. The user interface was largely the same, but with a Windows Vista-ish theme applied to it now.  The home screen for Windows Mobile 6.1. The Today program had been installed, providing the Lunar phase illustration next to the LED clock. Using VMware Player 16, my XP VM had two cores allocated to it, along with 3GB's of RAM. The device emulator still wasn't the fastest in the world. This is due to the emulated ARM processor. Code translation would always be a bottleneck. However, this was to be expected, thus, so surprises here. With two cores though, performance of the emulated PDA was significantly improved. Thus, I could actually achieve video playback within Windows Media Player without too much skipping. My sample video was encoded using the WMV...

People were ecstatic when Lotus Software, along with Microsoft, became software partners working alongside Apple to bring Macintosh applications to there new platform.  For many, this excitement was justified. Lotus 1-2-3 had taken the PC world by storm. With it's success, the IBM PC/XT became a staple in corporate offices around the country. Would Lotus Software transform the Macintosh in the same way they transformed the PC? With this excitement, everybody was asking the following: "When will Lotus 123 for the Mac arrive". However, that excitement turned to a puzzled and dumbfounded look when the company announced that they were not going to release 123 for the Mac. Lotus Software intended on redefining the Mac through a integrated software package with a very intriguing name: Jazz. In retrospect, Lotus Software release Jazz is considered one of the dumbest decisions every made in the field of computing. Everybody wanted a version of Lotus 123 for the Mac. Because Lotus...

When I give my opinion on a topic, I'm not just going to say that this or that is stupid; I'm going to tell you why I think that a particular topic is dumb and stupid. NFT's have consumed our headlines the past couple months. While many try to put a positive spin on it, they been nothing but trouble. The wild speculation has caught the attention of grifters looking for that quick buck. The founders of the NFT marketplaces and collections are rapidly becoming the self-entitled oligarchs who are beyond the rules. Massive corporations already loaded with money see NFT's as yet another tool to squeeze even more money out of their customers. The typical customer doesn't want them and have voiced their displeasure strongly . It's a given why the major corporations have wholeheartedly embraced them despite its recent appearance and their general negative response. NFT's do not serve a benefit for us, the consumer. Yet, many are now Hellbent on shoving them down ou...

The screenshots above is quite represented of what a typical cellphone was like in the middle-late 2000's. They ran a small, embedded OS that was tailed for that particular phone. The interface was quite simplistic, and the phones was just exactly that: a phone. The marriage of the phone and PDA was occurring, but it was still in progress. For the vast majority of want their media on the go, they would need to maintain a separate MP3 player/PDA if they wanted their entertainment on-demand.   These phones were not multimedia capable. The furthest extent of their multimedia capabilities was the ability to play short ringtones and display pictures at low resolution. As time went by, the flip-phone gained more features like playing short video clips at very low resolutions. However, by the time of those developments, smartphones were already leaving them behind in the dust. These flip-phones were very low-spec, and only had enough memory for the bare necessities, and nothing more. Yet,...

While the Apple II did well enough when it was first introduced, sales of the computer skyrocketed when VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet, was released in late 1979. VisiCalc, referred to as a "killer application", became so popular that it caused a increase in hardware sales. People wanted VisiCalc, and they didn't care how much they needed to run it, computer and all.  We fast forward to 1982. Apple realizes that in order for their new platform-in-progress to succeed, they needed killer applications to spur adaption. Even though Apple was able to provide some of their own worthy killer applications in the form of MacPaint and MacWrite, Apple would need to court third-party developers. In their quest, one developer would become essential for the Mac's success: Microsoft. Microsoft was no stranger to Apple's products. The version of BASIC used in the Apple II, Applesoft BASIC, was licensed from Microsoft. It's interesting to note that during this point in comput...

Continuing from the last article, one is exposed to a lot of hypocrisy from the respective party running the state. Often times, phrases like "Big Government/Small Government" are abused to the point of becoming empty platitudes with no meaning. At the end of the day, one wonders what those phrases even mean. There arbitrary terms that one can't measure and only have meaning for those using them. What about those who proclaim themselves as small government while using the power of the state to suppress ordinariness passed and supported by local governments. Local governments that are directly elected by the people and serve the local interest of the community. Their ordnances are overridden by those who claim to support “small government”. The actions that those who claim to embrace "small government" are similar to the actions of those that they demonize, just directed in different causes and interest. How is that different at the end of the day? As mentioned i...

Working title for this post was "But Mama, That's Where The Fun Is!". Appropriate as by the middle 2000's, Windows Mobile was where all the action was at. The sky was only getting brighter for Microsoft as Palm was slowly imploding on itself. With Microsoft's mobile offerings becoming more widespread by the day, the Redmond Giant followed up with the newest version of WM, version 5.0, on May 2005. On the surface, it appears that little changed. However, the biggest change were "under the hood" with the incorporation of the .NET Compact Framework, which is basically the mobile version of .NET. Also, WM 5.0 introduced newer power-saving capabilities which often improved the battery life of devices by as much as 50%. WM backed up everything to flash memory. WinMobile would use a combination of RAM and flash memory to preserve battery life. This wasn't noticeable by the user.  As such, their is no data loss if power is lost.  Windows Media Player was upd...