Most locations in NJ with Fios already have competing DOCSIS 3.0 service via Comcast or Cablevision, so its not that rare. Chances are Verizon doesn't have a franchise agreement with your municipal government, but does with the neighboring towns.
Verizon got a statewide franchise in New Jersey, yet they seem to have halted build out in the state. Meanwhile, in areas devastated by Sandy, Verizon refuses to rebuild ANY land line network.
Broadcast material has no physical medium, so there was initially no way for the receiver to archive it. It wasn't a conspiracy, just no-one thought about the implications.
So George Lucas was hoping thousands didn't know how to program their fancy new VCRs when they aired the Star Wars Holiday Special? To think, if it aired just a few years earlier, it too might have been a "lost work".
If anything its better with shows from the 50s-60s, because video tape recording wasn't yet viable for production. Shows were still produced and edited with film and had a durable master copy. Most of the archival losses came from the 70s when many shows were recorded direct to video tape and later lost to wiping. Its a lot easier to erase a video tape.
Complete 486 systems seem to fetch some cash these days for some reason. I couldn't give the away 5-10 years ago. The biggest killer these days is shipping machines.
Is it functioning? Working ones fetch some $$$ on ebay, particularly if they have added RAM. I just got around to restoring a non-backlit one that I picked up off the curb on garbage night in its original carrying case. Just needed all the capacitors replaced, the floppy drive lubricated, and the battery rebuilt. Impressive machine for its time, more advanced than the classic compact Macs (double the speed, bigger screen), but a guaranteed hernia if you lug it around an airport.
Don't know why this was modded down, but the lack of heat was a serious concern after Sandy hit. We were lucky to have low tech gravity steam heat and a boiler run by a millivolt thermopile gas valve. The system requires no external electricity and works exactly like a gas hot water heater so we had heat even though the power was out for nearly two weeks. Sadly its no longer an option on modern steam boilers thanks to the safety and efficiency nuts banning pilot lights and requiring two stage gas valves... that requires an electrical source to operate.
The NYC metro area alone has 25+ million people, the most densely populated region in the country. Add in the rest of the Northeast Corridor and it doesn't take much for even a small sized storm to cause a lot of damage. While Texas and Florida have the numbers, they are relatively spread out and a hurricane rarely effects the entire population at once.
All of the major tropical storms that have hit NJ since I have been alive have struck between the end of September or in October, its when the ocean is the warmest. That is not including countless Nor'easters (What the "perfect storm" of 1991 began as). Many of which pack a wallop, particularly when they are fueled by remanent moisture from former tropical storms. (an October 1996 Nor'easter comes to mind there)
PCs were held back by the AT standard power supply, which used a hard wired power switch. Only a handful of OEMs used "soft" power switches. IBM was one of the first using it in their PS/1 machines back in 1992 or so. Apple started using them even earlier. It wasn't until ATX style power supplies that soft power switches became universal on PCs around 1998 or so. The introduction of ACPI really pushed for it since it needed full control of system power.
I miss the old days where I didn't have to consult Intel's website to figure out what the model numbers mean. It use to be easy, the CPU has a name and a speed rating which told you how fast the chip was and the number of cores at a glance. Now we get a jumble of numbers to decipher.
Player's Guides existed for the popular games. Walkthrus were available in the file download sections of all the major online services and BBSes of the 1990s.
The biggest puzzle to 7th Guest was actually getting it to run on your machine back in 1993-94. That blue setup program was certainly part of the "experience".
We did the same in AP Computer Science, but the game of the moment was Quake II. Whats odd is the teacher didn't care. When someone brought in GTA (the original), she flipped out about the cop killing. All the gory FPSness of Q2 wasn't a problem though.
It likely doesn't feel that long because Pentium 4 machines from that time frame are STILL in service for day-to-day use. Yet back in 2003 it wasn't all that common to see machines from 1993 still in service for day-to-day use. I can't say I have ever used Fedora Core, just the early Red Hat Linux (4.x-6.x) and CentOS.
Three semesters of Calculus in college and I don't recall solving any square roots. Checking my textbook (I saved it for some reason), its covered in chapter 3. Just goes to show that I haven't used it since then and that I tend to block out the bad memories of taking Calculus (I barely passed it).
The "official" way of finding a square root in school was to use a calculator. My teacher at the time said that it is one of the few things in math they prefer to completely automate since it is time consuming to do it by hand. Solving by hand went by the wayside before affordable electronic calculators, its one of the reasons why the slide rule was invented.
Reading this article, I'd be surprised if ANYONE had a flat panel TV, particularly a Samsung, that still works after 4-7 years. Compared to solid state chassis CRTs, the failure rate of flat panels seems to be much higher between the crap capacitors and even crappier RoHS lead free solder causing BGA mount chips to come loose from PCBs.
Prior to the big push to digital broadcasting, most people were happy using 30 year old CRTs. They were likely still working perfectly when they were replaced with a flat panel... that likely failed in less then 4 years after purchase.
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Most locations in NJ with Fios already have competing DOCSIS 3.0 service via Comcast or Cablevision, so its not that rare. Chances are Verizon doesn't have a franchise agreement with your municipal government, but does with the neighboring towns.
Verizon got a statewide franchise in New Jersey, yet they seem to have halted build out in the state. Meanwhile, in areas devastated by Sandy, Verizon refuses to rebuild ANY land line network.
If the phone has a CDMA 800/1900 and LTE 700 (Band 13) radio, than yes.
Broadcast material has no physical medium, so there was initially no way for the receiver to archive it. It wasn't a conspiracy, just no-one thought about the implications.
So George Lucas was hoping thousands didn't know how to program their fancy new VCRs when they aired the Star Wars Holiday Special? To think, if it aired just a few years earlier, it too might have been a "lost work".
If anything its better with shows from the 50s-60s, because video tape recording wasn't yet viable for production. Shows were still produced and edited with film and had a durable master copy. Most of the archival losses came from the 70s when many shows were recorded direct to video tape and later lost to wiping. Its a lot easier to erase a video tape.
Complete 486 systems seem to fetch some cash these days for some reason. I couldn't give the away 5-10 years ago. The biggest killer these days is shipping machines.
Is it functioning? Working ones fetch some $$$ on ebay, particularly if they have added RAM. I just got around to restoring a non-backlit one that I picked up off the curb on garbage night in its original carrying case. Just needed all the capacitors replaced, the floppy drive lubricated, and the battery rebuilt. Impressive machine for its time, more advanced than the classic compact Macs (double the speed, bigger screen), but a guaranteed hernia if you lug it around an airport.
Don't know why this was modded down, but the lack of heat was a serious concern after Sandy hit. We were lucky to have low tech gravity steam heat and a boiler run by a millivolt thermopile gas valve. The system requires no external electricity and works exactly like a gas hot water heater so we had heat even though the power was out for nearly two weeks. Sadly its no longer an option on modern steam boilers thanks to the safety and efficiency nuts banning pilot lights and requiring two stage gas valves... that requires an electrical source to operate.
Look, we don't have to re-invent the wheel. A hurricane preparedness kit is EXACTLY the same as Zombie Survival Kit minus the shotguns.
You clearly haven't waited in line for fuel in New Jersey before.....
The NYC metro area alone has 25+ million people, the most densely populated region in the country. Add in the rest of the Northeast Corridor and it doesn't take much for even a small sized storm to cause a lot of damage. While Texas and Florida have the numbers, they are relatively spread out and a hurricane rarely effects the entire population at once.
All of the major tropical storms that have hit NJ since I have been alive have struck between the end of September or in October, its when the ocean is the warmest. That is not including countless Nor'easters (What the "perfect storm" of 1991 began as). Many of which pack a wallop, particularly when they are fueled by remanent moisture from former tropical storms. (an October 1996 Nor'easter comes to mind there)
You knew it was bad when Duke Nukem Forever actually made it to stores.
Think of "1.0" as an asymptote. It'll approach 1.0 but never actually reach it.
PCs were held back by the AT standard power supply, which used a hard wired power switch. Only a handful of OEMs used "soft" power switches. IBM was one of the first using it in their PS/1 machines back in 1992 or so. Apple started using them even earlier. It wasn't until ATX style power supplies that soft power switches became universal on PCs around 1998 or so. The introduction of ACPI really pushed for it since it needed full control of system power.
I miss the old days where I didn't have to consult Intel's website to figure out what the model numbers mean. It use to be easy, the CPU has a name and a speed rating which told you how fast the chip was and the number of cores at a glance. Now we get a jumble of numbers to decipher.
Player's Guides existed for the popular games. Walkthrus were available in the file download sections of all the major online services and BBSes of the 1990s.
The biggest puzzle to 7th Guest was actually getting it to run on your machine back in 1993-94. That blue setup program was certainly part of the "experience".
We did the same in AP Computer Science, but the game of the moment was Quake II. Whats odd is the teacher didn't care. When someone brought in GTA (the original), she flipped out about the cop killing. All the gory FPSness of Q2 wasn't a problem though.
It likely doesn't feel that long because Pentium 4 machines from that time frame are STILL in service for day-to-day use. Yet back in 2003 it wasn't all that common to see machines from 1993 still in service for day-to-day use. I can't say I have ever used Fedora Core, just the early Red Hat Linux (4.x-6.x) and CentOS.
Kinda sounds like Windows XP, but about 8 years newer.
Three semesters of Calculus in college and I don't recall solving any square roots. Checking my textbook (I saved it for some reason), its covered in chapter 3. Just goes to show that I haven't used it since then and that I tend to block out the bad memories of taking Calculus (I barely passed it).
The "official" way of finding a square root in school was to use a calculator. My teacher at the time said that it is one of the few things in math they prefer to completely automate since it is time consuming to do it by hand. Solving by hand went by the wayside before affordable electronic calculators, its one of the reasons why the slide rule was invented.
Quite a few are still in service. The rolling code systems didn't come out until the mid 90s.
Typewriters still linger around the office here, next to the pile of floppy disks.
What is exactly stopping alternate OSes from booting on those machines?
Reading this article, I'd be surprised if ANYONE had a flat panel TV, particularly a Samsung, that still works after 4-7 years. Compared to solid state chassis CRTs, the failure rate of flat panels seems to be much higher between the crap capacitors and even crappier RoHS lead free solder causing BGA mount chips to come loose from PCBs.
Prior to the big push to digital broadcasting, most people were happy using 30 year old CRTs. They were likely still working perfectly when they were replaced with a flat panel... that likely failed in less then 4 years after purchase.