Alan Miller stated that Accolade developed first for the C64 because "it will sell the most on that system". In Europe, the primary competitors to the C64 were British-built computers: the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, the BBC Micro, and the Amstrad CPC 464. In the UK, the 48K Spectrum had not only been released a few months ahead of the C64's early 1983 debut, but it was also selling for £175, less than half the C64's £399 price. The Spectrum quickly became the market leader and Commodore had an uphill struggle against it in the marketplace. Rumors spread in late 1983 that Commodore would discontinue the C64. By early 1985 the C64's price was $149; with an estimated production cost of $35-50, its profitability was still within the industry-standard markup of two to three times. Commodore sold about one million C64s in 1985 and a total of 3.5 million by mid-1986. Although the company reportedly attempted to discontinue the C64 more than once in favor of more expensive computers such as the Commodore 128, demand remained strong.
It didn't win those categories, but did take home Best Movie at the BET Awards, Outstanding Motion Picture at the NAACP Image Awards, Best Action or Adventure Film at the Saturn Awards, and other accolades. Women working as so-called "human computers" dates back decades before space exploration. In the late 19th century, the Harvard College Observatory employed a group of women who collected, studied, and cataloged thousands of images of stars on glass plates. As chronicled in Dava Sobel's book The Glass Universe, these women were every bit as capable as men despite toiling under less-than-favorable conditions. Williamina Fleming, for instance, classified over 10,000 stars using a scheme she created and was the first to recognize the existence of white dwarfs. While working six-day weeks at a job demanding "a large capacity for tedium," they were still expected to uphold societal norms of being a good wife and mother. In 1935, the NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, a precursor to NASA) hired five women to be their first computer pool at the Langley campus.
“But this evaluation isn’t quite as straightforward as it seems. Hurt uses the example of a cracked screen. If the crack is small, it might just be a minor annoyance. Do you want to have it fixed, or are you fine dealing with the annoyance in order to save the money? “Next, it’s important compare how much it’s going to cost to fix the problem to the computer’s current ‘market value,’ as well as how much it would cost to replace the equipment,” Hurt continues. This issue is perhaps the most interesting. If it’s going to cost you $400 to fix an issue with your computer, but the laptop is only worth $500 to begin with, do you fix it or move on? This cuts to the heart of the sunk cost fallacy, which causes most people’s decision making to be tainted by the emotional and financial investments they already have in an item. The biggest takeaway is that everything is relative.
0 Comments