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Why aren't AI companies competing directly with their customers? (permalink)
"I often wonder what the Vintners buy/One half so precious as the Goods they sell" -The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
I first encountered that quote from someone extolling the virtues of bookstores, and it stuck with me, because for most of my childhood, every bookstore visit ended with me broke and wishing I'd had three times as much to spend.
As a larval hyperlexic, I just didn't understand what a bookseller could possibly buy with my money that was better than the books they already had? Of course, then I became a bookseller and discovered that Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is shit") applies to a bookstore's wares as much as it does to anything else. I also acquired a monthly rent obligation and discovered just how important money could be.
Nevertheless, Omar Khayyám's question stuck with me, especially when I fell down a years-long rabbit-hole of learning about scams and the finance sector (but I repeat myself). Every get-rich-quick schemer will tell you that they've found the infinite money hack, which they will sell to you for a remarkably reasonable sum. Likewise, every stock picker claims they can outperform a simple low-load index fund, and all they ask of you is a few hundred basis points in exchange for multiplying your wealth beyond the dreams of Creosote. Neither one has a good answer to Khayyám's question: if you can make all the money with your amazing system, why do you need my money?
This is a question that needs to be forcefully put to AI hucksters. In their more expansive moments, the Altmans and Amodeis of the world will tell you that they're planning to teach the word-guessing program so many words that it will wake up and become god. DOGE's broccoli-haired brownshirts laughed in the faces of the NIH lifers who begged them not to vaporize their long-running cancer research projects: "General AI is around the corner and it's going to cure cancer. Cancer research is a waste of money!"
Which all raises the question: if you've truly incubated a foetal demiurge in your "AI lab," why are you offering to sell it to me? What do the AI hucksters buy/One half so precious as the Gods they sell?"
Of course, they might answer, "We need your money now so we can make god later." That's why they want your boss to fire you and replace you with their chatbots and split your wages with your former employer. But this just raises the same question: if you have a chatbot that can do a doctor's job, why sell it to a hospital? Why not just open your own hospital? If you've got a chatbot that can do a tax accountant's job, why sell it to a tax-prep service? Why not just open a tax-prep service? If you've got a chatbot that can teach my kids, why sell it to my local school district? Why not just open a school?
If the chatbot can do the job, and if the chatbot costs less than the worker who does the job today, then the chatbot company can profitably sell services more cheaply than anyone who presently employs that worker, because the chatbot company already owns the chatbot. If you were really on a glide path to creating an all-powerful deity and just needed cash to keep the venture going until the cancer-curing word-guesser awoke from its long slumber, then wouldn't you want as much cash as possible? Why would you voluntarily split the take with some sucky, washed, non-god-generating business from before 2022?
I think the only reason this question doesn't come up more frequently is that we're stewing in what Douglas Rushkoff calls the "go meta" economy, in which the most respectable and smartest business to operate must be as many abstraction layers away from real work as possible. Don't drive a taxi, own a medallion that you rent to the cab driver. Don't own a medallion, start a "rideshare" company. Don't start a rideshare company, invest in a rideshare company. Don't invest in a rideshare company, buy options to invest in a rideshare company:
The inverse relationship between doing something useful and making money is deeply ingrained in our economic wisdom. Take the world of online grifters, who don't just peddle get-rich-quick PDFs, they also peddle tools to generate get-rich-quick PDFs, as well as tools to steal other "wealth influencers'" insta videos and deepfake yourself into their pretend private jets:
The scam economy boasts a bewildering array of ancillary services, like a $150/month service that lets you produce fake screenshots showing vast monthly income on other scam services (November Kelly calls this "The world's most expensive 'inspect element'"):
It's an old truism that in a gold rush, the only people who come out ahead are the people selling the picks and shovels. But that's not true – there's even more money to be made wholesaling picks and shovels to the retailers who operate the frontier mercantiles. Go meta!
So it's not surprising that we don't ask why these AI god-botherers need our stupid money while they're immanentizing the eschaton. Why would they operate a hospital if they could go meta and sell the doctorbots to the MBAs running the hospital?
"Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.
"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Fourth draft completed. Submitted to editor.
A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.
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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla
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In brief: Houston will see favorable conditions for widespread showers and thunderstorms today and Tuesday, and accordingly we have put a Stage 1 flood alert into place. On Wednesday we should transition to warmer and drier conditions. By this weekend, and into next week, we can expect hot and sunny conditions to prevail.
Stage 1 flood alert
Atmospheric moisture levels will surge today and Tuesday, and the absence of high pressure will support the development of widespread showers and thunderstorms. Generally, beginning later this morning, we expect rounds of storms to develop and slowly propagate through the region. Some of these storms may be slow moving. Although there will be some thunder and lightning, the primary threat will be heavy rainfall.
Most of Houston will pick up 1 to 3 inches of rainfall over the next couple of days. These are manageable totals. However some locations, beneath slower moving storms, may see as much as 5 inches. For this reason we are putting a Stage 1 flood alert into place through Tuesday night. Essentially this means we are concerned about flooding on freeway frontage roads and low-lying streets.
Monday and Tuesday
Generally, we expect storms to develop offshore this morning and then move inland. By around noon, or the early afternoon, we should see showers and thunderstorms develop across the majority of the region. There may be a brief pause later this afternoon or evening before another round of showers later tonight. This pattern will likely repeat itself through Tuesday.
Skies will be mostly cloudy when it is not raining, and the storms should should help to limit high temperatures. Today will likely reach the upper 80s for most locations, with mid-80s possible on Tuesday. Except in stronger thunderstorms, winds will be light. Basically, you’ll want to be weather aware the next couple of days, and give yourself a little more time before venturing to work or running errands.
Wednesday
This will be a bit of a transition day, with some additional showers possible, but less coverage and intensity than previous days. High temperatures will likely be around 90 degrees, or a tick higher, for most of the region.
Thursday and Friday
Skies will turn partly to mostly sunny to end the work week, with rain chances falling to around 10 percent. Expect highs in the mid-90s.
NOAA rain accumulation forecast for now through Tuesday. Expect wide variations in totals. (Weather Bell)
Saturday and Sunday
Temperatures this weekend will be quite hot, with sunny skies. Expect highs in the mid- to upper-90s as high pressure builds in. If you have outdoor plans on Saturday and Sunday make sure they involve a lot of sunscreen. Rain chances are near zero so it will be good weather for the beach or a backyard pool.
Next week
I expect this hot and sunny pattern to prevail through at least the first half of next week. Our next chance of rain would probably not come before Thursday or Friday of next week, and even then, who knows? Bottom line is that rains over the next couple of days will be beneficial for our soils before a drier period settles in.
The rupture in December 2022 dumped nearly 13,000 barrels of heavy crude oil into a creek running through a rural pasture in Washington County, Kansas, about 150 miles northwest of Kansas City.
The statement his office posted on social media did not provide any additional details about the circumstances surrounding the Saturday night death of the South Carolina Republican, a former Air Force lawyer who served in Congress for three decades.
1. Two coworkers stopped talking to me after I mentioned my wife
I’m a man who is friendly and open at the workplace, I like to discuss any and all (safe for work) subjects with my coworkers, and I strive to treat men and women the same. Thus, more often than not I’ve managed to increase the number of people I call friends, keeping in contact with them after leaving the organization.
However, recently two female colleagues who used to be as friendly to me as I am to them have radically changed their demeanor to nothing. No “hello,” no small talk in the offices, both pass me in the hallway without even looking at me. Nothing.
In both instances, the change in demeanor has come afterwards I mention my wife (same company, not in the same department) in passing. Something along the lines of, “My wife also loved that movie, she mentioned it was great!” and then the conversation steered in any other direction.
Am I overthinking it? Should I say something to them? I seldom work with both (they are in my department), but recently we have not been together in any assignment.
I’m stumped. Sometimes someone will mention their partner in a way that comes across as very awkwardly “I am specifically mentioning my partner to let you know that I am not interested in you romantically” — but (a) that doesn’t sound like the case from your example, and (b) even if it was, it wouldn’t explain them then freezing you out.
Any chance there’s something entirely unrelated that could explain it? That could be anything from it just being a stressful time at work for each of them to you doing something totally unrelated to your wife that they’re upset about. If you worked with them more frequently, I might suggest saying at some point, “I might be misreading, but have I done anything to upset you? If so, I’d welcome the opportunity to make it right.” But since you don’t work with them often, I’d just give it some time and see if anything changes.
2. Is it okay to hug my coworker goodbye?
I have a coworker who’s moving back home (overseas) after working together for four years. I have known about her planned departure for a month, and have restrained myself from giving her a hug goodbye but I find myself regretting waiting so long, as she’s given me a great deal of useful advice and has been the sort of wonderful person you love to know.
Am I correct in assuming that this sort of affection is very contextual? There are fewer than 10 of us in the office, and we’re a pretty close knit group. Is it appropriate to hug her on her last day, or in the lead up to the last day, such as getting the heads up that it’s coming? I think I’d regret it far more if I didn’t let her know how much she’d be missed.
It’s very person-dependent! Some people are huggers and some people aren’t, and a person’s preference for not hugging always trumps someone else’s preference to hug.
With that said: it’s not inherently inappropriate to hug a coworker goodbye, but you should pay attention to their physical cues and what you know about them generally. If you’re not sure, you can always ask, “Can I give you a hug goodbye?”
3. Is it OK for your boss not to mention her maternity leave until the last minute?
A while back, I took on a marketing role at a tech startup because I thought it would be good for some skill building and training. Sadly, it wasn’t and I was only there for 10 months. I was a huge misfit in the company culture (It was very much a “live to work” environment, which I can’t stand; the CEO would message me at 10pm about typos in old pages on our website uploaded months before I started, but that’s another story) and I had literally no teammates save for my boss, the marketing director (who I never met until I started, which in hindsight was probably a red flag).
The first two months on the job were really rough. It was a lot of my boss offloading work onto me, her not really having enough time to explain our process or procedures (or train me on things that seemed necessary), and then critiquing everything I did (meanwhile she would AI generate almost everything and call it good).
At around the two-month mark, she messaged me that she was pregnant. I, of course, congratulated her. Then she dropped the bombshell that she was due in about a week. I hadn’t known because the job was remote so when I saw her on calls it was just her head. I panicked because I didn’t have the marketing chops to run anything on my own.
A consultant the company brought on and I kept things afloat for the six months she was gone, but I was already frustrated with the work before her announcement and after that, I just felt nothing for the job. I just can’t imagine why anyone in their right mind would wait until that late to tell a new hire on a team of two that kind of news, especially when the hire mentioned they needed training in some aspects of the role.
Is it okay for someone you report to not inform you that they’re going on an extended leave of absence? My male friends (I’m a man as well) agree with me that she should have mentioned it much earlier, while my female friends were a bit more torn, mentioning that it’s her decision to not mention anything and it’s not my place to be upset. What are your thoughts?
If she was sure about her plans for leave, she should have mentioned it to you earlier than the week before the leave was supposed to start. That’s true with plans for any type of leave that’s known about in advance, not just maternity leave.
It’s possible that her situation was more complicated for reasons we don’t know, so I wouldn’t rush straight to condemning her — we don’t know what else might have been going on — but absent something that would explain it, it’s weird that she waited that long to tell you. It sounds, though, like there were far bigger issues at that job, and this was a relatively minor one in the scheme of things. It might be the easiest one to focus on, but this on its own would have been salvageable if all the other stuff hadn’t been going wrong.
4. Applied for a job, then found out the org engaged in union-busting
I’m a subject matter expert interested in moving upward into a role with more decision-making and leadership. Unfortunately, my field has been especially hard hit by cuts in federal grants. While I’m fortunate to be in a position that I generally like, it comes with frustrations, including relatively low pay for someone with my particular focus. I was really excited to find an opening at a high-profile, well-funded nonprofit in my region, and thrilled when I was offered an interview a couple of weeks after applying, as the market is currently packed with competition. The posted role would mean a substantial salary increase for me, and be a real career bump.
After scheduling an initial interview, I started catching up on news from this nonprofit and was alarmed to find that they appear to have engaged in some pretty egregious union-busting around a year ago: furloughing employees who were active in unionizing efforts (despite having a substantial endowment) before ultimately terminating them and “restructuring” the staff. The position I applied for is in part a result of that restructuring.
I’m pretty conflicted at this stage in that I don’t have direct information about what happened — just things that I’ve gleaned from social media posts and following digital breadcrumbs. If this nonprofit did engage in union-busting, I don’t want to get entangled with them, but they do have a high profile within the field, and I will encounter staff and leadership somewhat regularly and need to have good working relationships with them. Do you have any advice on how to determine what happened from a less biased source than the organization itself/the people who were laid off, or how to navigate disentangling myself if I can’t bring myself to work there? At this point, I’m considering seeing the hiring process through and directly asking about the unionization efforts, but I’m not sure there’s anything they could say that would convince me they acted in good faith (and worried I would burn a bridge.) Should I just make an excuse to withdraw entirely?
If you have any connections to the people who were laid off and/or people who are still there and who might be willing to talk to you off-the-record, talk to them before you decide anything. It’s true that people who were laid off might bring their own biases to the discussion, but those are still conversations worth having. It’s even better if you’re able to talk with people who are still there — or people in your field who know some of the players involved. You might or might not learn enough to make you confident about moving forward, but you’ll have more data than you have right now. I’d at least try that before deciding to withdraw.
And if you are at the point where you’d rather withdraw, you really don’t have much to lose by asking your interviewer about it directly. You’re not likely to burn a bridge for future contact if you calmly say, “My understanding is that there were some unionization efforts on the staff last year but some of the roles involved were restructured; what can you tell me about that?” They might decide you sound too sympathetic to unionizing to want to hire you, but if you’ve already decided you’d withdraw anyway, that doesn’t really matter. It’s not the kind of question that’s likely to make them bristle at ever encountering you in a non-employee capacity in the future.
5. Recruiter told me they have flexibility on the salary
I had a recruiter interview and, when asked for my salary expectations, I asked them for the budgeted range and if there is any flexibility in the posted range. They said there was flexibility but didn’t give a top number, and I blanked and just thanked them but also didn’t give the salary I’m looking for.
If I get to the offer stage, would it be okay to mention the flexibility when I ask for the salary I want? What I’m looking for would be 11% over their top range. It’s a little higher than average market for companies of their size but not outrageous, especially as my experience matches everything they are looking for.
The recruiter’s mention that they have some flexibility is useful background info for you to have, but not something it will help to cite in the actual negotiation.
So rather than saying, “The recruiter said you have flexibility on the number,” just ask for the number you want. Either they have flexibility or they don’t, but citing the recruiter doesn’t give your request any additional weight.
WASHINGTON D.C. – Under the terms of the contract signed ten years ago, President Trump ordered his longtime ally Lindsay Graham to undertake the sacred ritual of transferring his life’s essence to fellow Senator Mitch McConnell. Sources report this will allow McConnell to extend his own life, via unholy and unnatural means, until his planned […]
This comic has reminded me that I made this comic after watching the Death Note anime. Lottie’s persona here is very influenced by Death Note’s detective protagonist L. My idea was just that she’d watched Death Note at some point and decided that this was the way forward. I really enjoy her pose in panel one, and the thrill of a Dutch angle in panel three. Had I ever done a Dutch angle before? Don’t go looking. It doesn’t matter.
The statement his office posted on social media did not provide any additional details about the circumstances surrounding the Saturday night death of the South Carolina Republican, a former Air Force lawyer who served in Congress for three decades.
The city health department on Friday released a list of 31 buildings on the Upper East Side that have been ordered to clean and disinfect their cooling towers as the city deals with the latest outbreak of the disease.
When IBM released the Personal Computer back in 1981, it gave the buyer two choices for the video output. The buyer could buy a monochrome card and a special high resolution green screen monitor to go with it, or a color card and connect it to a color monitor. The buyer could even run both cards in the same system. If someone was on a tight budget, they could use a monochrome monitor with a color card, in this blog article we will explore what the results of that would be.
CGA 16-Color Palette
Basic Capabilities of IBM's First Video Adapters
IBM's MDA card provided a digital video output to the IBM 5151 Display. This card only supports one PC BIOS video mode, Mode 07. This mode was a text mode showing 80 columns and 25 lines with character cells of 9x14 pixels. The card ran the monitor at a 50Hz refresh rate and could set the foreground and background of each text cell to on, off or intensity. The 9-pin DE-9 connector has a pin for video, a pin for intensity, a pin for horizontal sync and a pin for vertical sync. It also permitted each text cell to blink, show inverse video or underlining. The card possessed 4KiB of RAM, sufficient for only one video text page and insufficient for any kind of pixel graphics.
IBM's CGA card provided a digital video output which would eventually be fully utilized by the IBM 5153 Color Display which supported sixteen digitally-defined colors and an analog composite video output. The digital connector is a 9-pin DE-9 connector using a pin for the red signal, a pin for the green signal, a pin for the blue signal, a pin for an intensity signal, a pin for horizontal sync and a pin for vertical sync. IBM defined seven modes for this adapter in the IBM PC BIOS:
Mode 00 - 40x25 Text B&W Mode 01 - 40x25 Text Color Mode 02 - 80x25 Text B&W Mode 03 - 80x25 Text Color Mode 04 - 320x200 Graphics Color Mode 05 - 320x200 Graphics B&W Mode 06 - 640x200 Graphics B&W (Color)
All CGA modes run at 60Hz and all its text modes use 8x8 pixel character cells. CGA can set individual text cells to blink and can freely assign one color to the foreground and another color to the background of each cell.
CGA Palettes Modes 4 & 5
In the Mode 04 four colors can be shown but three of them are dictated by the palette selected. Palette 0 shows red, green and brown, Palette 1 shows cyan, magenta and white. Mode 05 allows only one palette to be selected, cyan, red and white. Intense versions of these palettes can be selected.
The border color can be freely set in the text mode. The background and border color can be freely set to the same color in 320x200 graphics modes. The foreground color can be freely set in the 640x200 graphics mode, the background and border will always be black.
The CGA card has 16KiB of RAM, supporting eight 40-column video pages, four 80-column video pages or a single page of graphics.
The 40 and 80-column text modes can be reprogrammed to show 80x100 and 160x100 pixels with all sixteen colors freely selectable but 80-column modes on an IBM CGA cards suffer from snow.
Composite Video
A composite video signal provides three elements over a single wire: sync, luminance and chrominance. Black and white video only requires the first two components, color needs the third. Color was added onto a black and white signal in such a way that existing black and white TVs could still show a picture with minimal loss of detail by filtering out the color components of the signal.
Luminance is a a continuously variable analog waveform where the voltage level of the signal determines the brightness of the beam at any given point on a CRT. Chrominance is a 3.58MHz sine or square wave which determines the color hue to be produced by the beam at any given point on a CRT by shifting the phase of the wave relative to a color burst signal produced at the beginning of each scanline. The strength of the waveform determines the saturation of the color.
Edit.com with default Blue Background
As personal computers became more affordable and popular, they needed monitors which could display sharp text. A black and white signal can be very sharp, especially when it does not need to be demodulated from a broadcast antenna and separated from an audio signal. Special monitors were made to accept a composite monochrome signal and often supported green or amber phosphors instead of white as white can be hard on the eyes and can decay at a slower rate. These monitors were among the first which could display 80-column text with clarity that would be acceptable in the office for a 9-5 job.
A black and white TV normally filters out the color signal without too much loss to the underlying fidelity of the luma. A monochrome composite monitor does not filter the video signal more than necessary as video filtering leads to quality loss. What does it do with a color signal? The monitor treats it like it is modifying the black and white signal. Instead of seeing solid areas of color turned into gray, instead you will see patterns of stripes until the color changes on the line. In other words, you are seeing the peaks and valleys of a square wave affect the luma signal, which the eye will perceive as stripes or "jailbars".
Edit.com with black background
Apple vs. IBM
The Apple II only supports composite video output and its video signal is "almost" a black and white signal. A pixel is either on or off, there is no corresponding color signal (produced by phase shifts) on the scanline. However, there is a color burst signal transmitted before each scanline (except in pure text modes). The color burst, combined with the high frequency components of the black and white signal at integer multiples of the color burst signal, tricks the NTSC color decoding circuitry into showing colored pixels at predictable points on the scanline.
Mode 04 Cyan/Magenta/White Palette Monochrome
IBM CGA's card works almost identically to the Apple II in the video domain but it adds the feature of being able to generate hues directly. It shifts the color signal's phase over the scanline, something the Apple II cannot do. Although the CGA card can produce 16 direct composite "hues", four of them are just pure luma (black, light gray, dark gray, white). It does not modify the saturation of the signal.
Mode 04 Green/Red/Yellow Palette Monochrome
From the start, IBM realized that some of its users would like the ability to use their existing color composite monitors and TVs. IBM did not have a color TTL RGB monitor for sale at launch. Such monitors were available but still rather unstandardized and pricey. To this end they included the RCA connector and a pin header on the board to attach an RF modulator for output to a TV. While the CGA card cost more than an MDA card, the MDA card and its special monitor cost more than a CGA card if the PC owner already had a monitor or TV set he or she intended to use with their new system.
Mode 05 Cyan/Magenta/White Palette
In order to accommodate those customers who actually wanted to get work done with their PC and their TVs, IBM added in the "black and white" modes. With the black and white modes, no color burst or color signal is generated by the CGA card, only a luma signal is present. Color modes include the chroma signal. The black and white modes significantly improved the legibility of 40 and 80 column text by eliminating color fringing on the edges of text characters (if the text was on a black background as it usually was).
For Mode 06, the 640x200 graphics mode, the color burst is disabled as that mode is defined but can be turned on by flipping a bit in one of the CGA's registers. Mode 06 only supports one direct color but when the color signal is added, it can support sixteen via artifact colors. Mode 06 Color is not an official mode offered by the IBM PC BIOS but trivial to turn on via software.
This distinction only matters with composite video, not with RGBI video. The mode distinction was lost when video cards stopped supporting composite video output with EGA and later adapters with one exception. That exception is Mode 05. Mode 05 changes the colors shown on an RGBI monitor. If an EGA or VGA card has a special CGA compatibility mode which can be enabled, it may show Mode 05's special palette. Otherwise it will show Mode 04's palettes. Other black and white modes will appear identical to their color modes with the later cards.
Old CGA Monochrome Shades
Old CGA vs. New CGA
80-column text proved challenging for monitors and displays of the time. The characters are packed in so tightly that many screens could not produce easily readable text. One early solution was the RGBI monitor, a monitor with a digital color input to eliminate any interference from the PC. The best RGBI monitors like the IBM 5153 came with high TVL/low dot pitch tubes. (Tandy's CM-4 & CM-5 are examples of crappy RGBI monitors).
The other solution was the monochrome monitor. Apple IIs more often than not used a green screen monitor like the Monitor II. For the Apple IIc it released a "portable" 9" green screen CRT called the Monitor IIc (which is being used for the photos incorporated into this blog). IBM released a monitor called the IBM 5144 for the IBM PC Convertible laptop which looks very similar to the Monitor IIc and functions identically.
Back in 1981 if someone wanted to use a monochrome monitor like the Monitor II (or III) they certainly could with CGA and the monitor would show 80-column text just fine, but it might be on the very edge of the bezel. But in 1984 IBM released a new product, the IBM 5155 Portable PC. This machine was an IBM PC/XT in a portable enclosure and included a 9" amber screen. This screen was a standard definition screen and the computer came with a full-length CGA card. But the CGA card as designed to then only supported four pure monochrome shades, which when dealing with programs designed to use color, was limiting.
New CGA Monochrome Shades
IBM used discrete logic to turn all the digital signals into composite video. The circuit combines horizontal and vertical sync into composite sync. The RGBI bits are transformed into luma values through a simple DAC and color hue phases through flip flops and delay lines. Old CGA mixes all these signals and sends it to the video amplifier transistor and that goes out of the card. IBM's initial solution provided only 4 monochrome shades, with colors 1-7 and 9-15 sharing the same luminance.
IBM's solution was to redesign the composite video output path in the CGA cards that would accompany these machines and be available for purchase separately for IBM PC, XT, AT and XT/286 owners. In IBM's new design after the RGB color bits generate the chroma hue phases the circuitry passes these bits through a crude DAC with differently weighted outputs and mixes them again with video signal. The result is that a different extra voltage is added for each color to the output, which translates into new luma shades. While many of the shades are not very distinguishable when shown side by side, most of the time these combinations of shades are quite usable.
Tandy Mode Mono Command Shades
Tandy MODE MONO
Unfortunately one problem with getting nice solid monochrome shades is that programs rarely invoke the black and white CGA modes, 01, 03 & 05. Tandy had a solution to this problem. By default, Tandy functions like new IBM CGA on monochrome monitors. Tandy must have seen what the standard CGA color modes did with monochrome monitors it sold like the VM-2 & VM-4. It came up with a unique solution to try to fix the ugly stripes for the Tandy 1000s. The Tandy 1000 could support 16 colors just like CGA but unlike CGA the Tandy graphics hardware supported 16 programmable palette registers. The palette registers are available in all modes, both the enhanced Tandy graphics modes, the standard CGA graphics modes and the CGA text modes. By manually programming the palette registers, you could assign any color to any pixel or text cell foreground or background. This can be useful for fast color cycling but it can also be useful by allowing Tandy 1000s to show better colors for graphics than CGA can in 4-color or 2-color modes.
Tandy decided to use the power of these programmable palettes with a special PC/MS-DOS MODE command, MODE MONO. While on an IBM PC MODE MONO switched between MDA and CGA cards, on a Tandy MS-DOS it reprogrammed all the palette registers to the four black and white shades, colors 0, 7-8 & 15. This eliminated stripey graphics in areas of solid hue for a monochrome monitor. Unfortunately it reduced the number of shades shown on the screen to 4 like old CGA. Moreover, colors 1-7 & 9-15 all shared the same shade. This often reduced the number of shades with 16-color and 4-color graphics to just 4 and 2! The command can turn this function ON and OFF by supplying those arguments after MODE.
Had Tandy reprogrammed the registers more intelligently to stagger the colors or offered the user the ability to assign shades, this problem of graphics loss would have been significantly mitigated. But it offered users a better way to address this problem, although it did not advertise it as such...
Tandy Mode Colormap Example Shades
Tandy MODE COLORMAP
Another Tandy MS-DOS exclusive parameter was COLORMAP. It permits the user to redefine one color with another, in effect permitting the user to reprogram the palette registers at the DOS prompt. It takes the form of MODE COLORMAP [old color new color]. For the command the colors are named black, blue, green, cyan, red, magenta, yellow, gray, dark gray, light blue, light green, light cyan, light red, light magenta, light yellow & white. So for example if you want to replace magenta with red, you enter MODE COLORMAP MAGENTA RED. You can replace multiple colors by entering this command again and again with the color arguments changed.
When I discovered the COLORMAP parameter, I decided to try out color to grayscale substitutions in a batch file:
MODE COLORMAP BLUE DARK GRAY
MODE COLORMAP RED GRAY
MODE COLORMAP GREEN WHITE
MODE COLORMAP YELLOW DARK GRAY
MODE COLORMAP CYAN GRAY
MODE COLORMAP MAGENTA DARK GRAY
MODE COLORMAP LIGHT RED DARK GRAY
MODE COLORMAP LIGHT GREEN GRAY
MODE COLORMAP LIGHT YELLOW WHITE
MODE COLORMAP LIGHT CYAN GRAY
MODE COLORMAP LIGHT MAGENTA DARK GRAY
MODE COLORMAP LIGHT BLUE DARK GRAY
My idea was to assign colors to perceived luminance but otherwise to keep colors likely to be adjacent to each other from being the same shade of monochrome. You can see the result in the screenshot above. This is especially important for CGA modes. There are still only 4 monochrome shades to map 12 colors, so these choices may not be ideal for every program. Usually these assignments will "stick" when a program runs because most programs do not reprogram the color palette registers. Of course this will work on a color monitor as well, so if you do not like the default colors that a game gives, you can reassign them. This may be useful in CGA-only games which are only using 4-color modes. Of course the game must be runnable in DOS, PC booters cannot be recolorized. And of course, the colormap cannot be reprogrammed during a game.
Colormap Examples
Here are a pair of screenshots from Arkanoid and King's Quest I showing the default colors produced by a Tandy 1000 through a monochrome connection and after the Colormap batch file is applied:
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Today: Gauzy Portraits
Jason Salavon, “Figure 1 (Every Playboy Centerfold, 1988-1997),” 1998, Cibachrome, 48 x 22 inches. Ed. 5 + 2 APsAnn Hamilton, “ONEEVERYONE: Jessica,” 2017, porcelain enamel panel. Installed at the Dell Medical School Health Discovery Building
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