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The Most Incorrect Assumptions In Computing?
Miss Muis writes "After reading once again that Moore's Law will become obsolete, I amused myself thinking back to all the predictions, absolutes and impossibles in computing that have been surpassed with ease. In the late 80s I remember it being a well regarded popular 'fact' that 100MHz was the absolute limit for the speed of a CPU. Not too many years later I remember much discussion about hard drives for personal computers being physically unable to go much higher than 1GB. Let's not forget "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers" from the chairman of IBM in 1943, and of course 'Apple is dying...' (for the past 25 years). What are your favorite beliefs-turned-on-their-heads in the history of computing?"
"We'll never need more than 640K of RAM!"
Homestarrunner.net -- It's Dot Com!
Isn't it interesting that all of these "limits" are convenient base-10 numbers? Seems something like the odometer effect to me.
640K is enough for anyone. (that one was easy)
This Internet thing is a fad.
No one will want to look at a man stretching his bottom wide open.
Trolling is a art,
I swear, this will be the last batch of RAM I'll ever need...
...I predict that within 100 years computers will be twice as powerful, 10,000 times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them. --Prof Frink, Much Apu About Nothing
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Right...
I always save my last mod point to mod up a good troll. You people are too serious.
And one I hope to see laughed at soon...
"Linux will never make it on the desktop"
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
My favorite bad product assumption is right in its title:
Microsoft Works
The whole "Apple is doomed" senerio seems to keep coming up despite never actually living up to promise...
people will be thankful to have a anthropomorphic paperclip tell them what to do.
Flashing my dual 2.0 ghz g5 hasn't gotten me laid yet, I guess I was wrong !
If the dollar is an "I owe you nothing", then the Euro is a "Who owes you nothing." - Doug Casey
Slashdot - News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters?
"Windows is the best OS because the most people use it."
~Philly
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." - Ken Olsen, Founder, Digital Equipment Corporation
Or my personal favorite...
"Trust me, this is way better than OS/2." - The dude at Computer City that sold me my copy of WIndows 95. Bastard.
....the assumption that people will pay $500 for hardware that will be obsolete in a year?
oh, wait....
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
100MHz was the absolute limit for the speed of a CPU
Yeah, but that was because your MHz display had only two digits.
"SCO will remain on course to require customers to license infringing Linux implementations as a condition of further use." 8/7/2003
"Why would anyone want a computer in their home?" -- Ken Olson of DEC in late 1970's regarding personal computers.
or something to that effect.
"Whereas computers today weigh 1 ton and require 18,000 vaccum tubes, computers in the future will weigh only 1/2 ton and have under 1,000 vaccum tubes." -- Popular Mechanics, 1949.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Demonstrate with a beer.
Upload it to the refrigerator.
Download it from the refrigerator.
Install it.
Uninstall it.
t
and given enough venture capital, an internet start up will be super profitable on the internet even though it has never made a profit, and doesn't have a sound business plan, and has a super inflated stock price.
But, it does have a great shiny mission statement:
"It's our responsibility to synergistically provide access to world-class sources as well as to assertively facilitate enterprise-wide opportunities" - Dilbert Mission Statment Generator
(Stock brokers in a flurry) BUY! BUY! BUY! BUY! BUY!
"There is no spoon." - The Matrix
So now that Apple uses *BSD, is it dying twice as fast?
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
Apple has now switch to a BSD system, and everybody knows that BSD is dead. So Apple should be doubly dead very soon...
Its not computers, but in the early 1900, or maybe late 1800, it was believed that the human brain couldnt process all the information necessary to travel over 35 mph. And if you did travel faster than that speed you would go insane. Its a good thing that we have cell phones now, so we can drive whit out abosorbing insane amounts of information from the road.
I can hide links very well too!
Will this link take you to a picture of a widely stretched bottom hole, a girl covered in brown and yellow substance, or something more soothing?
Only clicking will tell!
ARE THEY OUT OF THEIR MINDS?! THE PHONE LINES WILL BURN UP!
This space for rent.
Indeed. In 1982 I had a BBS running on an Apple ][+ with 2x 143K floppies. In '84 I bought a 10 MB hard drive for the BBS and thought "Holy moly.. I'll never fill this up.."
Trolling is a art,
I have a Mac friend who say his G5 is "faster than the Internet" becuase everytime he opens his browser he gets "a page not found messege" and has to hit the refresh button.
I keep on telling him that its just a bug and his computer isn't faster than his broadband connection. But, he doesn't beleive me.
I think I think, therefore I think I am.
With all the porn on the internet, you'd think there would be a lot more blind men around.
And they'd like their joke back.
But he definitely wrote (or at least took the "credit" for writing):
in "The Road Ahead".
-Peter
Would most of the planet know about it today without his help? Doubtful
I think I just found my new favorite!!!
THANKS!
That was a good one!
Umm, can I surmize that your 10mb harddrive was quickly filled with ascii fisting porn, based on the link you left in your sig?
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
you're right! He even got his name into it! The whole thing is, after all, based on Al-Gore-ithms. [sound of a million /.'ers groaning]
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
I get informe by simpering users at least half a dozen times a day that the "modem thing" isn't working. They're referring to the large box under the desk that happens to be the PC.
None of our PC's have modems in them. I wish I had a dollar for every time I told a user that the big box thing isn't a modem, it's a PC.
Was it running *BSD?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
"With Macrovision we will eliminate bootleg VHS copies once and for all!"
"With Laserlok we will eliminate software piracy once and for all!"
"With Cactus Datashield we will eliminate Audio CD ripping once and for all!"
for each $drm_product
for each $technology
"With {$drm_product} we will eliminate {$technology} piracy once and for all!"
end
end
What are your favorite beliefs-turned-on-their-heads in the history of computing?
"Slashdots readers (and story submitters) are among the most intelligent people on the Internet."
Of course the adoption of a dying OS (BSD) by a dying computer company (Apple) was a well calculated plan to use double negatives to become a living force in the computer market once again ... or would that simply make them undead?
Any zombie hunters or grammar police out there?
Pardon me?
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
John Romero is going to make you his bitch...
That was a good one.
Actually you have that backwards, I think EVERYONE can factor a prime number no matter how large.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Does anyone remember the whole Dot-Com Bubble?
I like how you present that as new information. As if we might all be going "yeeaaahhhh...I totally forgot about that!"
-Waldo Jaquith
Al Gore invented the algorithm, true or false.
You'd be suprised how many people circled true....
"There is no spoon." - The Matrix
It also tends to make the system halt. An emergency uninstall generally occurs if you install too quickly or use an inferior delivery mechanism. In my experience, system instability and eventual halt are more generally associated with quantity than speed.
As much as people say (wish?) that Apple is dying, there are as many saying the Amiga's coming back!
Uh... yeah... I'll stick with my Macs...
Incorrect assumption. And I've got the pictures to prove it...
After some 10-15 upgrades it might get even uglier
ahh the slashdot troll...
Yes, but admit that you would miss it if it was gone.
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
"Hi, I'm Al Gore, the inventor of the environment and first emperor of the moon." - Al Gore (futurama)
"There is no spoon." - The Matrix
I once sat next to a really nice older woman on a plane who told me that her grandson had downloaded the internet the night before.
Well this is the US and all. Guilty until you pay enough to become innocent. Or something like that =)
Hell, when I was in the 9th grade we managed to fill up a 40 meg drive with porn GIF's downloaded at 2400 baud using bogus BBS accounts.
Hmm, that ought to be a law of some sort... like 'the availability of pornography will increase at a rate sufficient to match any advances in data storage and transfer technology.' Yeah, I like that. Scott's law on digital smut. Bound to hold true longer than Moore's Law.
"9600bps is the maximum speed able to be sent over copper phone lines."
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching on magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music."
Kristian Wilson, Nintendo, Inc. 1989
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
With Mac OS X, I guess Apple and BSD can die together!
vi ~/.emacs
is fair and accurate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
"Now, except for the one knob on the 'scope under my desk, all my interfaces to the outside world ARE buttons."
Well with a MCSE you can get a job clicking icons.
http://saveie6.com/
G5 is the fastest desktop processor in the world--Apple
That's funny stuff
eat shit: bilions of flies cant be wrong
\m/
Subject says it all.
I can count to 1023 on my hands. Ask me about #132.
How easily do you believe we are fooled?
"Bill Gates didn't say that, Achmed noted while surfing the web on his Commodore 64, in the Afghan mountains."
Reliable sources, yours are not. Mhmm.
Ceterum censeo Microsoftem esse delendam
I remember that computing was supposed to make our lives paperless. I never had so many stacks of paper sitting around before I got a computer.
SharkJumper
Dang APL! Trust it to be different!
And next year, we're going to do 3-D calculations.
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
Microsoft/Dell are leaders in innovation...
What I do know is that if I was a leader in the computer industry back then, and there was a memory limit that I could not break through (yet), I would try to make it seem as if that limit wasn't an issue.
If 640K were enough for anybody, then who cares if there is a limit.
Windows 1.0 - "Yes! This new version of Windows is a preemptive multitasker!"
Windows 3.0 - "Yes! This new version of Windows is a preemptive multithreaded multitasker!"
Windows 3.1 - "Yes! This new version of Windows is a preemptive multithreaded multitasker!"
Windows 3.11 - "Yes! This new version of Windows is a preemptive 32bit multithreaded multitasker!"
Windows 95 - "Yes! This new version of Windows is a preemptive multithreaded multitasker!"
Windows 95OSR2 - "Yes! This new version of Windows is a preemptive multithreaded multitasker!"
Windows 98 - "Yes! This new version of Windows is a FASTER preemptive multithreaded multitasker!"
Windows 98SE - "Yes! This new version of Windows is a FASTER preemptive multithreaded multitasker!"
Windows ME - "Yes! This new version of Windows is a FASTER preemptive multithreaded multitasker!"
NT 3.5 - "Yes! This new version is rock solid stable, and rock solid secure!"
NT 4 - "Yes! This new version is rock solid stable, and rock solid secure!"
NT 4 SP1 - "Yes! This new version is rock solid stable, and rock solid secure!"
NT 4 SP3 - "Yes! This new version is rock solid stable, and rock solid secure!"
NT 4 SP5 - "Yes! This new version is rock solid stable, and rock solid secure!"
NT 4 SP6 - "Yes! This new version is rock solid stable, and rock solid secure!"
NT 4 SP6A - "Yes! This new version is rock solid stable, and rock solid secure!"
NT 4 SP6ASRP - "Yes! This new version is rock solid stable, and rock solid secure!"
2K - "Yes! This new version is FASTER! Rock solid stable, and rock solid secure!"
XP - "Yes! This new version is FASTER! Rock solid stable, and rock solid secure!"
AS2k2 - "Yes! This new version is FASTER! Rock solid stable, and rock solid secure!"
Longhorn - "Yes! This new version is Trustworthy(tm)!"
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
I remember some news stories from '95 or so, back when the Web was really taking off. Bill Gates made an announcement that Microsoft would never have an Internet division, because "the Internet is like air, it permeates through all our divisions and products," or something like that.
Then, some months or a year later, Microsoft formed an Internet division. "Air is good," Gates announced, "we like air."
I don't recall the exact quote, and I can no longer find the articles, so if anyone else has a better recollection of this, please speak up!
Sorry, kept trying to post the proof of P = NP here but /. lameness filters won't let me.
;-)
Oh well, I'll leave the proof as an exercise for the reader...
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
Well they both won't run on a 100MHz processor, and can't fit on a 1GB hard drive, so they must've died years ago!
Just five more minutes.
Windows NT will be "a better Unix than Unix"
- Bill Gates
Did anyone ever actually use the POSIX API under Windows NT?
Steve Jobs, 1984: "A floppy's good enough. Nobody really needs a hard drive."
Steve Jobs, 1998: "A hard drive's good enough. Nobody really needs a floppy drive."
(paraphrased)
I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
And so Melinda is still 'bobbing' for Bill...
not anymore. didn't you hear? they got married..
Would most of the planet know about it today without his help? Doubtful.
.000000001% of credit for the internet. Al does deserve 100% of the credit for making "I invented the ___________," "risky _____ shcheme" and "I demand a recount" jokes popular, and for a brief time funny.
LOL. He deserves 1/(Senators+USReps+Lobyists+Bureaucrats) of credit. By my "fuzzy math" that would be 1/(100+457+3,210+several million) or approximately
Gore has went on the join the irrelevent think tank of could-have-been winners with Bob Dole, Michael Dukakis and Walter Mondale. To bad - the current crop of democratic presidential candidates makes Al Gore look very, very good.
-- $G
I suppose it could be worse, imagine goatse in braille!
See my journal, I write things there
Fuckin' A