Old-School Gazette: Your source for the "latest" in technology and entertainment.
Friday, December 3, 1982.
Technology
The day after Thanksgiving, DOS received its first release of WordPerfect from Satellite Software International, being WordPerfect 2.20. The software was written in x86 assembly language, as no C compiler is available for DOS at this time. Ironically, this gives it a notable advantage in performance against its main competitor, WordStar, which uses DOS API functions.
A computer show was held in Las Vegas called the COMDEX trade show, with over 1,000 companies and 50,000 people, with a number of interesting products being introduced.
The first product is the Franklin Ace 1200. This machine is an Apple II compatible, meaning that it can run any software designed for Apple II computers. It has a Zilog Z-80 CPU and also has the ability to run CP/M.
The second is VisiCorp, the organization behind VisiCalc, has created "Applications Manager" software called VisiOn for MS-DOS. This is a graphical program that allows you to run other graphical programs within it. The bleeding-edge interface features applications useful for office workers and is extendable by third-party developers. It seems to be marketed towards corporations rather than a home user, judging by the price of $299 and the high system requirements. It is currently only known to be available for MS-DOS, but is designed in such a way that it would be easy to port to other systems.
Thirdly and finally for our listings of the COMDEX trade show, Lotus Development announced Lotus 1-2-3, spreadsheet software for IBM PCs, retailing at $495.
Video Games
General Consumer Electronics has release the Vetrex. This is a home console that uses vector-based graphics, and as such has its own display rather than hooking up to a television. It comes with a game similar to Asteroids built-in, and boasts an impressive library of games.
Film
Today, a film called "Frances" was released to theaters. This is a biopic about actress Frances Farmer, and focuses on the parts of her life that led to her struggles with mental illness and how it impacted her career and led to her institutionalization.
Television
A made-for-tv movie was aired on NBC this past Sunday called "The Executioner's Song". The film is a crime drama based on the real-life events of Gary Gilmore, the first person to be executed in the United States after capital punishment was reinstated by the supreme court in 1976.
On Saturday the 20th of November, Drew Barrymore, of E.T. fame, became the youngest person in history to host Saturday Night Live at just seven years old. The same episode held a fateful call-in election nation-wide (excluding the west coast) to determine whether controversial comedian Andy Kaufman would ever be allowed back onto the show. In an election of over 360,000 votes, Kaufman was rejected by the audience by over 25,000 votes, and will no longer be allowed onto the show.
Yesterday, ABC aired a boxing match between Larry Holmes and Randall "Tex" Cobb, with Howard Cosell covering. The match was brutal against Cobb, and Cosell was not quiet about his frustration at the referee not stopping the fight, saying "I wonder if that referee understands that he is constructing an advertisement for the abolition of the very sport that he's a part of?" After the fight, Cosell said that he had broadcast his last boxing match.
Sources, all of which are awesome and worth exploring independently:
http://kpolsson.com/comphist/comp1982jul.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPerfect
http://oldcomputers.net/ace1200.html
http://toastytech.com/guis/vision.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_in_video_games
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectrex
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_in_film
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_(film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_in_American_television
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Executioner%27s_Song_(film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Gilmore
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Cosell
This was supposed to be out over a week ago, but things have been nuts for me lately!
This is a not-quite-official announcement of the Discord server I just created. Completely free. Don't need to be a supporter on Locals. Don't even need to be a member.
It's definitely not a secret that this community hasn't been active since Matt Hartley hasn't been involved. I think there are a few reasons why (one being that I had a lot less time to devote to it than I realized), and I think that making a completely free alternative would help, and I unfortunately don't think I can do that on Locals! You have to pay if you want to post. Discord should be free (unless I did it wrong).
Feel free to come join! It's still kind of experimental at this point, and I don't know how well I'll handle content moderation, which will probably be the biggest challenge.
