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Sim Wong Hoo has died

theedgesingapore.com

51–60 of 71 posts

Re: Sim Wong Hoo has died

#51
post #32

a full year before the iPod, I remember getting the Creative Nomad Jukebox ( https://www.iretron.com/blog/posts/technology-flashback-crea... ) with its whopping 6GB of space and showing it off at school. it had a great display and the icons on the physical buttons were worn off from me pressing them. more importantly as a kid from a tiny country, Mr. Sim and Creative Technologies showed promise that you could make an…

Some of their Jukeboxes have great sound quality and character. I still have a Muvo^2 (Square) which has a very nice character of its own.

Their Gigaworks speakers also very nice. I have their T20 series II and it's sound stage is amazing for its size.

I have used their Live!, Audigy and Audigy2 ZS cards, which were sounded nice for their time. However, I still won't forgive them for being strictly Windows only and refusing to cooperate with Linux explicitly.

I now have an Asus Xonar D2X, and this thing sings, and it has native Linux support.

Re: Sim Wong Hoo has died

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was E-Mu the brand with the unicorn logo? I knew a few musicians that had racks of 1RU pieces of gear. I remember the E-Mu name and the unicorn logo, and in my brain they are on the same gear. But in my brain, things get fuzzy when reaching back further than 15 minutes ago let alone 30 years.

That was probably MOTU (Mark of the Unicorn) which is based in Massachusetts if memory serves. I just upgraded to a MOTU interface and it's good kit. Creative apparently did some less-than-desirable things in their heyday but I was a fanboy of theirs because of their Zen and Nomad series of MP3 players. They were arguably superior to the iPod line in virtually every respect but got no recognition, i.e. a perfect comb…

I think the MP3 players from Creative were the first? Or did another device exist before that? Except, obviously the computer itself.

Edit: just checked and this is a timeline, including previous devices: https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/mp3-players-throughout-h...

Re: Sim Wong Hoo has died

#54

Creative Technology shares jumped[0] by 25% after the news. Can anybody share more on the reasoning? Was he being seen as a founder who was holding the company back? [0]: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/business/creative-sim-wong-h...

i wouldnt read too much into it. it's now a $100m market cap, basically a penny stock. at that level any media mention leads to random spikes from boiler room types

edit: browsing a bit turned up this thing:

> According to the company’s most recent annual report, for FY2022 ended June, Sim held 33.1 per cent of Creative. He was also the only substantial shareholder.

> The Singapore Code on Take-overs and Mergers requires anyone acquiring 30 per cent or more of the voting rights of a company to extend an offer for all other shares in the company.

Re: Sim Wong Hoo has died

#55
post #32

a full year before the iPod, I remember getting the Creative Nomad Jukebox ( https://www.iretron.com/blog/posts/technology-flashback-crea... ) with its whopping 6GB of space and showing it off at school. it had a great display and the icons on the physical buttons were worn off from me pressing them. more importantly as a kid from a tiny country, Mr. Sim and Creative Technologies showed promise that you could make an…

In the late 90s I had a little 32MB(!) Creative Nomad player that I carried around in my pocket for a long time in the early days of MP3s...

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Creative_Nomad_MP3_P...

This was the first thing I owned that really felt like it was from the future.

Re: Sim Wong Hoo has died

#56
post #22

Practically every computer geek/nerd of the 80s and 90s has come across and used a Sound Blaster at some point. Part of our childhoods, as the saying goes. RIP, not many get to affect quite as many people as Creative did across entire generations.

When soundcards were cool like GPUs are now, great times.

Re: Sim Wong Hoo has died

#57
post #55
post #32

a full year before the iPod, I remember getting the Creative Nomad Jukebox ( https://www.iretron.com/blog/posts/technology-flashback-crea... ) with its whopping 6GB of space and showing it off at school. it had a great display and the icons on the physical buttons were worn off from me pressing them. more importantly as a kid from a tiny country, Mr. Sim and Creative Technologies showed promise that you could make an…

In the late 90s I had a little 32MB(!) Creative Nomad player that I carried around in my pocket for a long time in the early days of MP3s... https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Creative_Nomad_MP3_P... This was the first thing I owned that really felt like it was from the future.

I had a RIO 300.. then later got the 500... would compress to wma 64 K so I could load a decent amount of songs.....

Re: Sim Wong Hoo has died

#58
post #32

a full year before the iPod, I remember getting the Creative Nomad Jukebox ( https://www.iretron.com/blog/posts/technology-flashback-crea... ) with its whopping 6GB of space and showing it off at school. it had a great display and the icons on the physical buttons were worn off from me pressing them. more importantly as a kid from a tiny country, Mr. Sim and Creative Technologies showed promise that you could make an…

I wanted one of those so bad. I opted for the Diamond Rio CD Player (SP250)

I loved that thing. That was an exciting time in tech because prices were falling into the affordable range for a lot of portable/mobile tech. (It was clunky and prohibitively expensive prior to that.)

Re: Sim Wong Hoo has died

#59
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> losing repeatedly > bankruptcy due to legal fees. Don't the legal fees get paid by the losing side?

In the American legal system, each party pays its own legal fees unless there is (1) a statute that specifies fee-shifting or (2) a contract between the parties that specifies fee-shifting. The reasoning behind this is that to require the loser to pay all fees would discourage "good" lawsuits. (e.g., an individual with a decent case against a big company, may be discouraged from filing because of the potentially cata…

> because of the potentially catastrophic costs if he doesn't win

Well, a judge could rule how much of a company's costs are fit for compensation, also considering the material situation of the plaintiff.

Re: Sim Wong Hoo has died

#60
post #42

Creative Labs also made one of the strangest keyboard keyboard (not a typo) contraptions, the Prodikeys[0] [0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Creative+Labs+ProdiKeys&t=h_&iax=i...

In action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h73kd6wsBq0

Wait, is that Sim Wong Hoo himself? It's kind of hard to tell at the 240p resolution.
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