Posts by saundby

The Beatles Yellow Submarine restored

The Point

When does Ringo's little allegory get the Blu-Ray treatment?

Door creaks and girl farts: computing in the real world

A Socket 1155 Mobo with Parallel and Serial Ports

ASUS P8P67-M PRO

They need to be brought out from IDC headers, but they're there.

Good for CNC, at least (Gecko G540)

Personally, I'm looking forward to market bifurcation that sends the consumers out of the real computer market. The low prices on hardware have been nice, but not worth hassles like having hardware "standards" become non-standard after a couple rapid release cycles and hardware product lifetimes shorter than a mayfly's.

Bring on the fondleslabs for consumers, leave computers to those that compute.

Ex-Soviet space gunboats to be FOUND ON MOON

1 year training = liability reduction

The participants are trained for a year so that when the trial comes Excalibur/Almaz can claim the deceased were capable of "informed consent".

Let's strangle space tourism in its cradle, why don't we?

Ten... Father's Day gifts

Glad you're not my kid. Try one of these:

1.Macallan 18 yr.

http://www.themacallan.com/shop/detail.asp?pid=841614

2. Wireless TV headphones, so I can watch loud movies without bothering your mum. RF not IR so I can turn my head without losing the signal. Sony or Sennheiser, don't worry about the sound fidelity, worry about any delay to the sound. Music headphones I'll buy for myself, because you'll foolishly try to anticipate my tastes for "retro" for a time you never lived through.

3. Propellor Starter Kit

http://www.parallax.com/

4. Samsung Galaxy Tablet 10.1 preloaded with Jack Vance ebooks:

http://www.samsung.com/global/microsite/galaxytab/10.1/index.html

http://www.jackvance.com/

5. A pan of brownies, first one served up warm with ice cream.

Got no idea what Hadoop is, but think you need it? You're not alone

Think JDBC for the cloud.

A programming framework for data analysis that, to a large degree, hides the fact that it's distributed through the underlying tech it uses to do its job. Inaccurate, but it might be a useful mischaracterization. ;)

Hackers expose 6.5 MILLION 'LinkedIn passwords'

Secured into Uselessness

Now that LinkedIn requires that I know a recipient's email address before I send an invite, it's become useless to me. If I already have their email, I have no use for LinkedIn. If LinkedIn won't let me contact them without it, it's just a source of unnecessary frustration.

Steve Jobs' Atari memo, Apple I to go under the hammer

Smelly Movement

I remember the stuff about the cosmetics industry creating demand for their own products that was around then, too. Theory was that the soaps sold would cut your natural skin oils and actually make you stink so that you needed to keep using deodorants and antiperspirants. Literally wash-rinse-repeat-profit. Plus the overall effect was supposed to be to cause skin problems that required powders, cover-ups, etc.

As cyberelic says, "recovery" from the use of soaps, antiperspirants, etc was supposed to take a week or two, after which your body's natural cleansing processes were supposed to take over. You'd have a body odor, but it was claimed that it wouldn't be unpleasant and would be even better than the artificial scents--making you a hit with those you wished to bed.

A lot of people found that an attractive idea, for lots of reasons (money, effort, emotion, etc.)

Never subscribed to it, personally, but heard plenty of it. I only went so far as to give up antiperspirants and shower twice or more each day.

I remember a woman at one workplace who couldn't even use the shower/bath at her home. She'd filled it with her plants. One day, she was given the key to the room at a local hotel room the company kept for visiting source inspectors and such and told to not come back till she'd washed and put on fresh clothes.

CD: The indestructible music format that REFUSES TO DIE

Re: Plastic forever - reasons why CDs won't die

You nailed it.

You can't show off a rack of downloads or see someone else's to get an idea of their tastes and strike up a conversation.

An iTunes card is a cop-out gift, a specific CD or LP chosen with the recipient's tastes in mind is special.

Music is social, and that socializing happens at levels that an invisible file won't reach.

Warp-Speed Planets?

Not if they just followed their star out of the galaxy. Think of the view from a bit above and outside of the galactic disk.

They'd live longer at that speed, too, though they wouldn't necessarily realize it, with everything locally travelling at the same pace.

TV?

Re: TV?

Mine plays World of Warcraft when I get sick of buffer underflows on Hulu and Netflix. I don't get a usable OTA signal here, and I've been here for 15 years now. It's pretty much disks for us, or internet if my neighbor isn't destroying my bandwidth with P2P.

Last game I played was Wumpus ...

Re: Last game I played was Wumpus ...

I took an old Osborne 1 into the classroom earlier the school year and got all my students hooked on Zork.

This last week I started them playing a diku/merc derived MUD. In between they've been writing text games in Python.

Ages 11-13. Text games FTW. :)

Currently re-reading:

Re: Currently re-reading:

I love this one. Hobo cities riding the rails of space. A great read, and a great period piece.

Toshiba outs monster tablet 'concept'

I'm ready for one this size

to read PDFs of technical documents with drawings close to paper size. Sign me up.

LOHAN's flying truss: One orb or two?

Balloon Restraint Apparatus needed

To share lift, and separate orbs for passage of thrusting vehicle between.

Black Ops has best videogame ending ever

Karateka...

Beach Head 2

Manic Mansion

Jumpman

Make everyone who voted play a selection of top games from 1972 to present then vote again.

Jobs: Apple succession plans are 'hogwash'

Bring Back Scott McNealy

As title. We need his commentary back at the forefront of the business. But this time we want him without the pony-tail guy.

US Navy invents 'Zero-Power Autonomous' ocean probe

...and more.

This is clearly all in support of laser-bearing sharks:

The ZPBC could also be used to provide in-water optical data to enhance models for underwater visibilities, [for sharks] laser penetration depths [and distances], diver and target vulnerability assessments [vulnerability too laser-wielding sharks], electro-optical system performance predictions [lasers], and refining numerical models [size/weight/number of sharks with lasers].

The subscript here is clear as can be.

Music on plastic discs still popular, apparently

CDs make better gifts

A CD is a gift that shows some care for the recipient's taste in music.

An iTunes card or the like is just another gift certificate. Money thrown into a particular till that you'll have to throw more into to get the full value already spent. Even cash is a better gift.

A CD is a gift that I know I really appreciate getting. I've received several this last year, in fact many more than for several years--perhaps CD is making a comeback along with vinyl?

This 3 year old data wouldn't show it.

Eclipse splashes Indigo release for Java devs

Eclipse, Netbeans, Vim, and BlueJ

Each one has its place. I use them all.

High Performance Computing for the masses? Oh yes!

Why does the average person need HPC?

The answer is obvious, once you know it.

Gold farming.

Ten... fantasy gadgets you wish you owned

Two thumbs up for the Lens

Once I wasn't sure which I'd want more--a Lens or the powers of the Mule/Second Foundation.

Things missing from the list:

Foundation shield belt.

Dune shield belt (are they compatible?)

Tantalus Field

Slidewalks.

And I'll second the Larry Niven teleportation pads and Krell mind device (suitably modified for humans.) Add to that the Krell power plant and my personal id monster.

Project Ceylon – Red Hat builds Java killer replacement

They hit the nail on the head

This is about SE being the unfinished slap-dash that it is, and the Heath Robinson code it takes to build a desktop app or client. They're going after the very things that have frustrated me for a long time.

Naked at 30: Osborne 1 stripped to its chips

Still Using Mine

I got one this last year that I'm using, along with an Ampro, Big Board, and Kaypro IV. The Ampro and Osborne are my favorites.

I mostly write code in assembly and Turbo Pascal.

I also use mine as a luggable. For a week I take it into the computer classes I teach to demonstrate some visible computer hardware for my students. It's not an Eee PC 900 by any means (my usual portable), but it does travel very well in spite of its weight. The students _love_ floppy drives (and Zork).

Good writeup!

Your mystery chips have the date code on top, designation on the bottom. You've got National Semi MM5290N-2 memory chips produced in the 29th week of 1982. Be sure to list them as *****RARE***** on ebay. ;)

Two floppies req'd

It took two floppies to be useful, especially with single density drives. One had the program & its overlays, the other your data disk.

As it was there was software that wouldn't fit because it expected the greater capacity of the IBM-format 8" disks. When double-density became common, it helped, but it wasn't until quad density came along (not to be confused with high density 1.2MB diskettes) that mini-floppies had the same space available.

Apple's 'App Store trademark': A farce of Jobsian proportions

App for Application

@Stuart: "app" has been in use since the late '70s at least. It got broadly popularized as part of the term "killer app" in the early 80's when 1-2-3 seemed to be driving sales of the original IBM PC (another trade name co-opted from common parlance. At about that time app came to refer more to application software than to a purpose to which the computer system was applied (e.g. a "control application" or "control app" involving both software & hardware.)

Apple didn't invent the "app" with OS X's .app files.