I have Verizon FiOS here in the US. Verizon claims the battery backup is good for up to 8 hours. The ONT goes into a low power mode when on battery where only POTS is available for use. If you need TV/internet access or longer POTS backup, you can connect the ONT to a plain old UPS without any problems.
...and here I was thinking they were all using Twitter for all that. Nothing makes you feel more important then tweeting to the world that you are driving to work, I mean everyone cares and takes the time about your mundane day to day tasks..... right? After all, Twitter is all about you, you, and you. For the insecure, nothing makes you feel more wanted then being able to follow celebrities... like Joy Behar.
There are quite a few games from the 1996-98 (some as late as 2000) period that simply don't work on modern versions of Windows. Quite a few of them are DirectDraw (many are software rendered 3D) or early Direct3D games developed for DirectX 3 or 5 runtimes. Heck, even old 3DFX GLide games don't run right anymore... even with GLide wrappers.
Ironically, 32 bit Windows versions have remained more compatible with 16 bit Windows games (due to Win16 API and WoW subsystem development freezing) then native Win32. Anyone here remember the WinG subsystem on Windows 3.1x? It later evolved into DirectDraw.
I hate that stupid plug-in, and if it didn't lock up, it made most MIDI files sound like crap. I have a real MIDI synth to play back those files, but Quicktime thinks it isn't good enough.
Then there is Star Trek: The Next Generation. Machine was rushed and pretty buggy. Most of the machines you listed were from the WMS era so they were based on shared Williams platforms. Twilight Zone was excellent, sadly it never got the DCS sound system. It was supposed to be the first to have it but.... the game was rushed out the door.
In my case I was hooking up a 68-pin SCSI HD to a 50-pin narrow bus (with other narrow devices). Why didn't I buy a narrow SCSI HD? Well they are hard to find with higher capacity drives... plus the 68 pin ones are cheaper on ebay.
The keyboard usually isn't a problem. Boot up the machine without a PS/2 mouse connected. After Windows is done loading, plug the mouse it. It usually doesn't work until you reboot. This can vary from machine to machine, some work, some don't.
Most of my woes involved an onboard Adapter AIC-7880 (chip used on the popular AHA-2940UW) I had on an old motherboard. Similar problems happened with the AHA-2940UW PCI card version as well. The card treated the 68-pin Ultrawide SCSI and 50-pin SCSI as separate buses with sometimes confusing termination settings depending on what combination of connectors you used (internal 68-pin, internal 50-pin and external plug). There was also the issue of using 68-pin Ultrawide SCSI devices on "narrow" 50-pin buses. That setup required special "upper byte" terminators.
The real issues were the configuration hassles lack of hot plugging of devices.
RS-232/422 serial: always had the hassle of setting baud rate, stop bits, etc.
Centronics/EPP/ECP Parallel port: Were an ugly hack job for true two way data (and devices other then printers) until ECP standards came into place. You also really couldn't reliably daisy chain more then one device+printer.
SCSI (the parallel variety, not SAS): Was straight forward for the most part (just set a unique ID for each device). Termination of the bus caused the most hassles, plus it wasn't hot pluggable.
One place USB did come in handy was human interface devices. It consolidated the following standards into one interface.
PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse: Not hot pluggable, limited to those two classes of input. These stuck around for awhile due to poor support in Windows 9x and early BIOS emulation for USB HID devices (most here likely have encountered at least one machine that you couldn't get into the BIOS setup with a USB keyboard). Things got better with Win2000/XP's superior USB support and DOS finally going away.
Joystick Port: Limited to game controllers for the most part. Until digital joysticks came out it was very limited in how many buttons it could support. USB wiped this one out pretty quickly
ADB: An Apple only bus for the most part. Far more elegant then what the PC had at the time (supported mouse, keyboard, joysticks on one bus) but slow, limited, and not hot pluggable. USB killed it overnight.
There is nothing stopping Google from adding it. The T.38 protocol for fax over VoIP has been around for awhile. Plus received faxes can be dumped right into your GMail or Google Voice inbox.
Make that Lexis-Nexis. They bought out Choicepoint a while back and now basically corner the market. Why that deal wasn't subject to an antitrust probe... well I don't know. Yes, there are "other" data mining services out there, but almost all of them get their source data from Choicepoint/Lexis-Nexis owned databases.
It wasn't the greatest for copying files though and only the NT versions supported long file names. The best replacement I found was the Norton File Manager. It came with the long discontinued "Norton Navigator" package that Symantec threw together after they bought out Central Point and served as an upgrade to the popular Norton Navigator and Central Point Desktop packages from Windows 3.1x.
Norton Navigator was pretty advanced at the time and many of its features still aren't included in Windows. It added ZIP file integration (added in XP), extended file attribute editing (could modify date stamps), the file manager (which could write/format DMF disks and encrypt files, even had an XTree style view!), enhanced task bar (quick launch, and button rearranging-later added in 98 and Vista) virtual desktops, LFN support for 16bit apps, and smart folders (feature kinda added to Windows 7)
"crub" (instead of curb) is very common after an infamous post on a car forum. People will purposely use it in the phase "I crubbed my rims yo" both posting and speaking.
Of course this may seem as though I'm implying that the English internet is the one true internet, which obviously isn't true, but it's got to be the largest, and with the most influential content.
This notion has to do more with heritage. The Internet originated in the USA and primarily used the English language and the Roman alphabet. Until IDN came along, domain names were strictly Roman alphabet with no symbols.
Computing itself is deeply rooted with the Roman alphabet (ASCII charset in particular) due to early US dominance in the industry. That drives some Europeans crazy because that dominance resulted in things like monitor size and printer resolution (dpi) are measured in non-SI units....oh and PC LOAD LETTER anyone?
Mine has one too (with RDS, fancy that, too bad its useless in the US), but it goes unused because you need a headset connected (to use as an antenna). Who uses wired headsets with cellphones these days?
Most cell phones with internet already have this capability via a built in widget or on its WAP homepage. If not, a quick visit to a weather website will get the info you need.
I wonder if the PEZ is still setting high scores on all the pinball machines on the Jersey Shore boardwalks. Sadly pinball machines are maintenance heavy (lots of mechanical bits) compared to video arcade games so they tend to be first on the list of things to go when arcades downsize. I never really cared for arcade video games, I always went for the pinball. Its cheaper too, I have never seen a machine for more then 50 cents a play and most of the older machines are 25 cents.
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I have Verizon FiOS here in the US. Verizon claims the battery backup is good for up to 8 hours. The ONT goes into a low power mode when on battery where only POTS is available for use. If you need TV/internet access or longer POTS backup, you can connect the ONT to a plain old UPS without any problems.
...and here I was thinking they were all using Twitter for all that. Nothing makes you feel more important then tweeting to the world that you are driving to work, I mean everyone cares and takes the time about your mundane day to day tasks..... right? After all, Twitter is all about you, you, and you. For the insecure, nothing makes you feel more wanted then being able to follow celebrities... like Joy Behar.
I actually own legit copies of Windows 98 and 98SE from being a beta tester.
There are quite a few games from the 1996-98 (some as late as 2000) period that simply don't work on modern versions of Windows. Quite a few of them are DirectDraw (many are software rendered 3D) or early Direct3D games developed for DirectX 3 or 5 runtimes. Heck, even old 3DFX GLide games don't run right anymore... even with GLide wrappers.
Ironically, 32 bit Windows versions have remained more compatible with 16 bit Windows games (due to Win16 API and WoW subsystem development freezing) then native Win32. Anyone here remember the WinG subsystem on Windows 3.1x? It later evolved into DirectDraw.
The 70's weren't good to the Shat. That and Star Trek V. The only reason there were so many horses in that movie is because he liked them.
I hate that stupid plug-in, and if it didn't lock up, it made most MIDI files sound like crap. I have a real MIDI synth to play back those files, but Quicktime thinks it isn't good enough.
Then there is Star Trek: The Next Generation. Machine was rushed and pretty buggy. Most of the machines you listed were from the WMS era so they were based on shared Williams platforms. Twilight Zone was excellent, sadly it never got the DCS sound system. It was supposed to be the first to have it but.... the game was rushed out the door.
In my case I was hooking up a 68-pin SCSI HD to a 50-pin narrow bus (with other narrow devices). Why didn't I buy a narrow SCSI HD? Well they are hard to find with higher capacity drives... plus the 68 pin ones are cheaper on ebay.
The keyboard usually isn't a problem. Boot up the machine without a PS/2 mouse connected. After Windows is done loading, plug the mouse it. It usually doesn't work until you reboot. This can vary from machine to machine, some work, some don't.
To clarify, the past tense was referring to parallel SCSI, I am well aware that SCSI is alive and well with SAS.
Most of my woes involved an onboard Adapter AIC-7880 (chip used on the popular AHA-2940UW) I had on an old motherboard. Similar problems happened with the AHA-2940UW PCI card version as well. The card treated the 68-pin Ultrawide SCSI and 50-pin SCSI as separate buses with sometimes confusing termination settings depending on what combination of connectors you used (internal 68-pin, internal 50-pin and external plug). There was also the issue of using 68-pin Ultrawide SCSI devices on "narrow" 50-pin buses. That setup required special "upper byte" terminators.
More on this mess here: http://www.scsita.org/aboutscsi/SCSI_Termination_Tutorial.html
SAS (along with SATA, USB 2.0, and Firewire in consumer level devices) has thankfully killed this mess off for the most part.
The real issues were the configuration hassles lack of hot plugging of devices.
RS-232/422 serial: always had the hassle of setting baud rate, stop bits, etc.
Centronics/EPP/ECP Parallel port: Were an ugly hack job for true two way data (and devices other then printers) until ECP standards came into place. You also really couldn't reliably daisy chain more then one device+printer.
SCSI (the parallel variety, not SAS): Was straight forward for the most part (just set a unique ID for each device). Termination of the bus caused the most hassles, plus it wasn't hot pluggable.
One place USB did come in handy was human interface devices. It consolidated the following standards into one interface.
PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse: Not hot pluggable, limited to those two classes of input. These stuck around for awhile due to poor support in Windows 9x and early BIOS emulation for USB HID devices (most here likely have encountered at least one machine that you couldn't get into the BIOS setup with a USB keyboard). Things got better with Win2000/XP's superior USB support and DOS finally going away.
Joystick Port: Limited to game controllers for the most part. Until digital joysticks came out it was very limited in how many buttons it could support. USB wiped this one out pretty quickly
ADB: An Apple only bus for the most part. Far more elegant then what the PC had at the time (supported mouse, keyboard, joysticks on one bus) but slow, limited, and not hot pluggable. USB killed it overnight.
There is nothing stopping Google from adding it. The T.38 protocol for fax over VoIP has been around for awhile. Plus received faxes can be dumped right into your GMail or Google Voice inbox.
Make that Lexis-Nexis. They bought out Choicepoint a while back and now basically corner the market. Why that deal wasn't subject to an antitrust probe... well I don't know. Yes, there are "other" data mining services out there, but almost all of them get their source data from Choicepoint/Lexis-Nexis owned databases.
I was fairly late to the PC to really have exposure to XTree, but some people find it much more productive for file management then modern GUIs.
It wasn't the greatest for copying files though and only the NT versions supported long file names. The best replacement I found was the Norton File Manager. It came with the long discontinued "Norton Navigator" package that Symantec threw together after they bought out Central Point and served as an upgrade to the popular Norton Navigator and Central Point Desktop packages from Windows 3.1x.
Norton Navigator was pretty advanced at the time and many of its features still aren't included in Windows. It added ZIP file integration (added in XP), extended file attribute editing (could modify date stamps), the file manager (which could write/format DMF disks and encrypt files, even had an XTree style view!), enhanced task bar (quick launch, and button rearranging-later added in 98 and Vista) virtual desktops, LFN support for 16bit apps, and smart folders (feature kinda added to Windows 7)
Old archived info page here: http://www.xtreefanpage.org/docs/nnav.htm
Its a shame Symantec has gotten out of the utilities business, they used to make some cool products.
A fan of the Kawf forum software I presume? Its primary view was threaded, many people would just send short replies filling out just the subject.
"crub" (instead of curb) is very common after an infamous post on a car forum. People will purposely use it in the phase "I crubbed my rims yo" both posting and speaking.
Of course this may seem as though I'm implying that the English internet is the one true internet, which obviously isn't true, but it's got to be the largest, and with the most influential content.
This notion has to do more with heritage. The Internet originated in the USA and primarily used the English language and the Roman alphabet. Until IDN came along, domain names were strictly Roman alphabet with no symbols.
Computing itself is deeply rooted with the Roman alphabet (ASCII charset in particular) due to early US dominance in the industry. That drives some Europeans crazy because that dominance resulted in things like monitor size and printer resolution (dpi) are measured in non-SI units....oh and PC LOAD LETTER anyone?
But unlike college, you can reference the trig. substitution identities in the book when you need them.
Mine has one too (with RDS, fancy that, too bad its useless in the US), but it goes unused because you need a headset connected (to use as an antenna). Who uses wired headsets with cellphones these days?
Most cell phones with internet already have this capability via a built in widget or on its WAP homepage. If not, a quick visit to a weather website will get the info you need.
Didn't Windows 7 remove all the extra junk (DVD maker, moviemaker, etc.) and make them download only?
I wonder if the PEZ is still setting high scores on all the pinball machines on the Jersey Shore boardwalks. Sadly pinball machines are maintenance heavy (lots of mechanical bits) compared to video arcade games so they tend to be first on the list of things to go when arcades downsize. I never really cared for arcade video games, I always went for the pinball. Its cheaper too, I have never seen a machine for more then 50 cents a play and most of the older machines are 25 cents.
Or monitors. Trigger the right registers in a graphics card and early fixed frequency monitors are toast.