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Gateway Puts Wasted Cycles to Work

Posted by michael on from the waste-not-want-not dept.

f. liszt writes "Gateway will be offering for sale to corporations the processing power available from networked display PCs in their stores -- seems like a logical enough idea."

7 of 268 comments (clear)

  1. Hahahaha by zatz · · Score: 4, Funny

    They must have one hell of an inventory problem if they are resorting to this for some extra cash!

    --

    Java: the COBOL of the new millenium.
  2. other companies should follow... by bje2 · · Score: 4, Funny

    hmmmm...a company selling idle time with their product models to make money...doesn't sound like a bad idea...i think victoria's secret should get in on this...

    --

    "Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
  3. Re:Would you want,... by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 5, Funny
    Your company payroll dependant on machines that shoppers can tinker with wihle on display at a store?

    This has been a problem since the 1970s. Back then, for some reason whenever we were in a Radio Shack it seemed funny to stop by a TRS-80 display model and type in something like:

    10 PRINT "FART! FART! FART!"
    20 GOTO 10
    RUN

    The salespeople probably would have chased us out of the store if they weren't so busy scribbling down every customer's address and the part numbers of every blister pack in the store on those little paper sales slips.

  4. Coming Soon... by pr0t0plasm · · Score: 5, Funny

    Pet store hamster wheels sell power to the grid!

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    - - - Patent applied for and deliver us from evil
  5. How Gateway Plans to Make Money by Tsar · · Score: 4, Funny

    "Gateway has 272 Gateway Country stores. With 7,800 floor model PCs, ..."

    1. Install distributed computing client on first PC.
    2. Install distributed computing client on second PC.
    3. Install distributed computing client on third PC.
    4. ...
    ...
    ...
    7801. Profit!

    I have a suggestion for Gateway's CTO: Calculate the money you've made running SETI@Home and the cancer project on your desktop for the last year, and multiply that by 7,800. That's what you can expect.

  6. Re:Would you want,... by slipgun · · Score: 3, Funny
    Or the other classic:

    10 PRINT "Welcome to the Spectrum 48k display model"
    20 INPUT "What is your name? ", NAME$
    30 PRINT NAME$, ", you are a tosser!"
    40 GOTO 30
    RUN

    Ok, I may have forgotten some of the details of Sinclair BASIC, but you get the idea :-)
    --
    SpamNet - a spam blocker that really works
  7. Re:Would you want,... by operagost · · Score: 5, Funny

    I used to do something like:

    10 input "Hi! What's your name";a$
    20 print "You sure are ugly, ";a$;"!"
    30 goto 10

    Coming back later, I noted that people would say very nasty things to the insolent Commodore 64.

    It's too bad I wasn't more enterprising then, or else I would have typed:

    10 input "Hi! Please enter your SSN or credit card number for a free gift!";a$
    20 open "goodies",8,4,1
    30 print#1 a$
    40 close#1
    50 print "Thanks! I love you lots!"
    100 goto 10

    Good thing they usually didn't have a disk drive attached.

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