"Grocer cards"? "Loyalty cards"? "Discount cards"? Let's call them what they are. TRACKING cards.
Sure, they may not turn the information over to your health insurance provider... yet. But they do use the cards to track purchases in aggregate. That is the entire reason for their existence.
Microsoft usually can see the train coming long before it arrives.
In my reading of its history, Microsoft has spent a good deal of its existence catching up with one train or another. Two notable examples: GUIs and the internet.
That is what it looks like in retrospect, but to put it metaphorically, Microsoft was already on a different train hoping it would take them where THEY wanted to go.
In the case of the Internet, they were on the train headed for making their proprietary MSN service the one true ultimate information service. I think they kind of hoped the Internet would just go away, but that didn't happen.:)
In the case of the GUI, they were already on the train of supporting and enhancing existing DOS software. It wasn't even entirely in their hands as they weren't the ones producing the hardware (How would you do a GUI when you were expected to support IBM monotext video cards?)
And now they are on they are on the tablet craze train, when outside of Apple, that is not where the rest of the world is going.
In the modern context of computers "recycling" often means shipping to trash dumps in third world countries where they burn them down for gold.
Anything pre-VLSI can be truly recycled as parts or repaired to a functional condition in the right hands. Or even extended to do new things.
Unfortunately, since software doesn't contain gold or other valuable metals those always seem to wind up in the trash, yet can also be valuable to those operating vintage systems. (database software and manuals can go for quite a bit sometimes)
486 and Pentium 1 based systems frequently sell as retro gaming machines. There were a large number of games made for machines of this class that will not run or run acceptably on newer computers or emulators.
They also make good "tweener" systems for moving data in between newer and even older systems. They often have networking, CD drives, and USB but can handle 360k drives and ISA devices.
If anyone has "vintage" computers or software they want to know more about they should hop over to the Vintage Computing forum http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/ . Just be upfront if your intent is to sell it.
There are lots of people interested in "retro" computing for various reasons. And it is not always nostalgia. Personally I like to lean about early machines and software that I never heard of or used before.
One aspect of it is history. Each machine has it's own story. For example the other day I saw a complete IBM 5150 original IBM PC on craigslist crammed next to all the entries for iPhones and Dells. It even had a huge monitor, printer and the software - some ledger accounting software - with it. You could tell that was not used for games or looking at pictures of cats. It served a real business purpose - the kind that people spent huge sums of money on, and was what helped bring about the personal computing revolution.
And just watch this new design go through mostly as-is just because some really high higher up thinks it looks cool. That's the problem with something owned by a company, can't leave well enough alone and got to screw it up to make it look "new".
Taco had it right back in 1997 when it was his personal blog.
It looks like a mess in SeaMonkey 1.1 and only slightly less so in Opera 10.10. Please keep in mind that there are some OSes that the geek crowd may wish to use but do not have more recent browsers. (BeOS/Haiku and OpenVMS come to mind).
Back when Slashdot worked in HTML 3 browsers, I used to love getting screen shots of different OSes and oddball browsers viewing Slashdot. So we now have to exclusively use Mac, Linux, or Windows on a supported version of Firefox/Chrome/Opera/IE? Guess I should be glad there is still some choice out there, but why make it so much harder?
Better yet, imagine where the "PC" would be today if IBM had tried something like this.
Imagine if you you were in the early 80s, bought an IBM PC, and the only devices you could add were from IBM?
People bought IBM PCs and clones because there was so much choice and competition. Instead of having separate serial/fdd/parallel/whatever cards from IBM you could throw in some cheap Tiwanese card that did all of that in one. IBM wouldn't support it, and you might wind up blowing up your motherboard and printer, but that is a risk you could CHOOSE to take.
The fact was, a lot of other vendors back then tried to create lock-in like that - upgrades only available from said vendor. And with really only one exception (Apple), where are they now? Long gone and forgotten to history, that is where!
It is because back in the 1990s Microsoft intermingled parts of their OS and browser and insisted their browser was "integrated" in such a way that it could not be removed.
As everyone can clearly see now, this was a dumb thing to do. They did it purely to dissuade vendors from bundling other competing browsers. But now they are committed to supporting the OS and browser as the same piece of software.
Had they not "integrated" the products, even if they had bundled them, they could have chosen to EOL the browser application version prior to the operating system.
Keep in mind that Windows "8.1" is really just a service pack for Windows 8. Only the marketing department ran amok and decided to bump the version number to make it look like this "rapid release" shit.
It is hilarious watching all the betaz folks getting all crazy excited over a damn service pack.
Microsoft has changed UI name, seemingly due to trademark clash. It was even on/.
Since then "Metro" has taken on a slightly derogatory connotation for this user interface. Some who refer to it as Metro do so to be mildly insulting.
You know, Microsoft also tried to call it "Modern UI" for a while, which was very ironic since much of this design of full screen, typing commands in to a box, and memorizing key combinations is a major throwback to the DOS/Windows 1.x days.
I thought the plan was to keep the Windows 8 Numbering for now, and then push towards yearly updates for Microsoftâ(TM)s OS. In fact I thought that is what 8.1 was. I thought it was a great idea.
It is not a great idea. Unless they plan to give it away as an update to 8.0 users, (it is not quite 100% clear if they are going to do that), then they will fragment their market. And on the other hand even if they give it away, if they make more "above the hood" changes than a service pack would normally include, then it will likely break things for vendors and companies trying to support the platform.
But releasing every year gives the "latest and greatest" kids a hard on, so it must be the right thing to do, right?
During Windows 95 setup you could choose to use the Program Manager. No hacks or third party software needed. No such luck with Windows 8, it's either metro or the highway.
I remember how many problems the Start menu solved. When helping someone over the phone, Start -> Settings -> Control Pannel was ALWAYS in the same place. (No more finding the Program Manager window, clicking File->Run and then typing CONTROL.EXE !)
And if they wanted large icons, they could create a shortcut to the Start Menu folder on their desktop and browse it through Windows Explorer. - That is actually how early Chicago builds did it. Feels just like the Program Manager except no MDI window and more flexible.
The big problem with the Start Menu at the time was that vendors continued to organize things just like in the old Program Manager. That is, a program group for each program with a dozen different icons instead of just one icon in the root of the menu.
Not that anyone cares, but there was also a less common "Windows 3.1 for Workgroups" that bundled Microsoft's DOS network client, as well as a non "Workgroups" version of Windows 3.11. There was even a patch that updated the core Windows 3.1 files to the 3.11 versions. And on top of that, Windows 9x basically used the same protected-mode network stack as WFWG 3.11, just with a whole new UI so people thought it was completely different.
In a way, WFWG and Win9x was revolutionary at the time, as it meant people could easily share files and printers across a network without paying $$$$$$ for some big dedicated file server.
If you are going to encode it in a non human readable format, there is little point to storing it on hardcopy over electronic storage medium (hard disk, USB flash, floppy, etc). You will still need a computer to access it.
There are some fonts out there specifically designed for OCR, but in practice any little spec of dust or dirt can change how the computer reads it (an "O" can become a "Q" for example. And "1" is easily misread as "i" - in some fonts they are even 100% identical). So OCR is OK for text that you can spellcheck, but not for other kinds of data.
Depending on the kind of data, you could include something like a printed checksum to verify you read it write.
To conserve space, just make the fonts as small as you feel comfortable reading, use both sides of the paper, possibly reformat the data to utilize more space on the page, and use thin lightweight paper. And include an additional electronic backup so you don't have to bother OCRing until the world ends next Thursday.
They're only photographing the *outside* of the mail
Are you sure about that? It took this long to find out they were photographing the outside. They very likely do have some way to examine the general contents of the inside, probably using x-rays or something similar. And you can be sure any information gathered is also stored.
In the early days it even recognized Pathworks Mosaic 1.0 by its user agent, and served up a really, really simple HTML page just for it.
There was even a Personal version of the search engine that you could download and run on your own server to index your Intranets.
Sad to see it go because the world really needs more diversity when it comes to search engines. If there is something the Big Engines don't want you to have, it might as well not exist.
Until the first big virus hits that exploits a security hole that won't be fixed. When you realize you machines that can't be patched and will continuously be infected you may think differently about corporate security.
At which time you discover that continuously re-cleaning the machines is STILL easier and less work and money than replacing the poorly written proprietary corporate dreck resembling a Rube Goldberg machine that only runs under Windows XP.
Of course, I've already dropped FIrefox's power consumption significantly using Adblock, Noscript and so on, so it's unlikely I'll see a full Watt of improvement by switching to IE, but for others, this could be huge.
And you have found the real power guzzling culprit!
Browsers wouldn't have to waste so much power if they didn't have to spend so much time processing crap rather than just displaying your content. On some web sites I have managed to vastly increase the speed and responsiveness of the sites just by blocking certain "analytics" scripts. And only the insane would browse the modern web without Adblock. Less processing time translates in to power savings, and which browser someone is using is mostly irrelevant since they all have to process the same junk.
If a large company really wanted to save power and increase productivity, they would install such blockers on clients or a central proxy. Or better yet, demand sites embed less of this crap to start with.
I've still got my ET cartridge somewhere. I played it back in the day, an I don't recall it being all that horrible. Like most games of the time you HAD to read the manual to know what each little pixelated object was supposed to be and what to do with it. There was one really nasty "bug" or perhaps mis-feature where trying to get out of a pit involved immediately changing directions right as you reached the top. Not obvious, no visible indication it was needed, and not mentioned in the manual - but most Windows 8 users should be used to that sort of things these days.
Anyway once you got past that, the game was rather easy.
If you want to talk about stupid games, I remember an arcade game called "Firetruck" where you drive a fire truck... and that is it. No score, no fire... just driving. Nice scrolling random monochrome graphics... to just drive through. It is emulated in MAME if you want to gawk at that.
Slashdot Mirror
"Grocer cards"? "Loyalty cards"? "Discount cards"? Let's call them what they are. TRACKING cards.
Sure, they may not turn the information over to your health insurance provider... yet. But they do use the cards to track purchases in aggregate. That is the entire reason for their existence.
That is what it looks like in retrospect, but to put it metaphorically, Microsoft was already on a different train hoping it would take them where THEY wanted to go.
In the case of the Internet, they were on the train headed for making their proprietary MSN service the one true ultimate information service. I think they kind of hoped the Internet would just go away, but that didn't happen. :)
In the case of the GUI, they were already on the train of supporting and enhancing existing DOS software. It wasn't even entirely in their hands as they weren't the ones producing the hardware (How would you do a GUI when you were expected to support IBM monotext video cards?)
And now they are on they are on the tablet craze train, when outside of Apple, that is not where the rest of the world is going.
In the modern context of computers "recycling" often means shipping to trash dumps in third world countries where they burn them down for gold.
Anything pre-VLSI can be truly recycled as parts or repaired to a functional condition in the right hands. Or even extended to do new things.
Unfortunately, since software doesn't contain gold or other valuable metals those always seem to wind up in the trash, yet can also be valuable to those operating vintage systems. (database software and manuals can go for quite a bit sometimes)
486 and Pentium 1 based systems frequently sell as retro gaming machines. There were a large number of games made for machines of this class that will not run or run acceptably on newer computers or emulators.
They also make good "tweener" systems for moving data in between newer and even older systems. They often have networking, CD drives, and USB but can handle 360k drives and ISA devices.
If anyone has "vintage" computers or software they want to know more about they should hop over to the Vintage Computing forum http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/ . Just be upfront if your intent is to sell it.
There are lots of people interested in "retro" computing for various reasons. And it is not always nostalgia. Personally I like to lean about early machines and software that I never heard of or used before.
One aspect of it is history. Each machine has it's own story. For example the other day I saw a complete IBM 5150 original IBM PC on craigslist crammed next to all the entries for iPhones and Dells. It even had a huge monitor, printer and the software - some ledger accounting software - with it. You could tell that was not used for games or looking at pictures of cats. It served a real business purpose - the kind that people spent huge sums of money on, and was what helped bring about the personal computing revolution.
That's great, but that button doesn't display in my browser.
And just watch this new design go through mostly as-is just because some really high higher up thinks it looks cool. That's the problem with something owned by a company, can't leave well enough alone and got to screw it up to make it look "new".
Taco had it right back in 1997 when it was his personal blog.
It looks like a mess in SeaMonkey 1.1 and only slightly less so in Opera 10.10. Please keep in mind that there are some OSes that the geek crowd may wish to use but do not have more recent browsers. (BeOS/Haiku and OpenVMS come to mind).
Back when Slashdot worked in HTML 3 browsers, I used to love getting screen shots of different OSes and oddball browsers viewing Slashdot. So we now have to exclusively use Mac, Linux, or Windows on a supported version of Firefox/Chrome/Opera/IE? Guess I should be glad there is still some choice out there, but why make it so much harder?
The RIAA and MPAA message to children:
"To care is not to share"
The message I hope this sends to children is that possessing music or movies, even if legally bought, is potentially dangerous and to be avoided.
Lets move towards a world that is devoid of song and stories, and forget the fact these were a part of the fabric of humanity for thousands of years.
Better yet, imagine where the "PC" would be today if IBM had tried something like this.
Imagine if you you were in the early 80s, bought an IBM PC, and the only devices you could add were from IBM?
People bought IBM PCs and clones because there was so much choice and competition. Instead of having separate serial/fdd/parallel/whatever cards from IBM you could throw in some cheap Tiwanese card that did all of that in one. IBM wouldn't support it, and you might wind up blowing up your motherboard and printer, but that is a risk you could CHOOSE to take.
The fact was, a lot of other vendors back then tried to create lock-in like that - upgrades only available from said vendor. And with really only one exception (Apple), where are they now? Long gone and forgotten to history, that is where!
It is because back in the 1990s Microsoft intermingled parts of their OS and browser and insisted their browser was "integrated" in such a way that it could not be removed.
As everyone can clearly see now, this was a dumb thing to do. They did it purely to dissuade vendors from bundling other competing browsers. But now they are committed to supporting the OS and browser as the same piece of software.
Had they not "integrated" the products, even if they had bundled them, they could have chosen to EOL the browser application version prior to the operating system.
Isn't there an app so simulate arresting him? That sounds like it would have been more appropriate.
Keep in mind that Windows "8.1" is really just a service pack for Windows 8. Only the marketing department ran amok and decided to bump the version number to make it look like this "rapid release" shit.
It is hilarious watching all the betaz folks getting all crazy excited over a damn service pack.
Congratulations, you just rediscovered the command line.
Since then "Metro" has taken on a slightly derogatory connotation for this user interface. Some who refer to it as Metro do so to be mildly insulting.
You know, Microsoft also tried to call it "Modern UI" for a while, which was very ironic since much of this design of full screen, typing commands in to a box, and memorizing key combinations is a major throwback to the DOS/Windows 1.x days.
It is not a great idea. Unless they plan to give it away as an update to 8.0 users, (it is not quite 100% clear if they are going to do that), then they will fragment their market. And on the other hand even if they give it away, if they make more "above the hood" changes than a service pack would normally include, then it will likely break things for vendors and companies trying to support the platform.
But releasing every year gives the "latest and greatest" kids a hard on, so it must be the right thing to do, right?
During Windows 95 setup you could choose to use the Program Manager. No hacks or third party software needed. No such luck with Windows 8, it's either metro or the highway.
I remember how many problems the Start menu solved. When helping someone over the phone, Start -> Settings -> Control Pannel was ALWAYS in the same place. (No more finding the Program Manager window, clicking File->Run and then typing CONTROL.EXE !)
And if they wanted large icons, they could create a shortcut to the Start Menu folder on their desktop and browse it through Windows Explorer. - That is actually how early Chicago builds did it. Feels just like the Program Manager except no MDI window and more flexible.
The big problem with the Start Menu at the time was that vendors continued to organize things just like in the old Program Manager. That is, a program group for each program with a dozen different icons instead of just one icon in the root of the menu.
This reminds me more of what happened to the TI-99/4a right before TI dropped it and got out of the home computer market.
These things will be sitting in peoples attics for the next 30 years.
Not that anyone cares, but there was also a less common "Windows 3.1 for Workgroups" that bundled Microsoft's DOS network client, as well as a non "Workgroups" version of Windows 3.11. There was even a patch that updated the core Windows 3.1 files to the 3.11 versions. And on top of that, Windows 9x basically used the same protected-mode network stack as WFWG 3.11, just with a whole new UI so people thought it was completely different.
In a way, WFWG and Win9x was revolutionary at the time, as it meant people could easily share files and printers across a network without paying $$$$$$ for some big dedicated file server.
If you are going to encode it in a non human readable format, there is little point to storing it on hardcopy over electronic storage medium (hard disk, USB flash, floppy, etc). You will still need a computer to access it.
There are some fonts out there specifically designed for OCR, but in practice any little spec of dust or dirt can change how the computer reads it (an "O" can become a "Q" for example. And "1" is easily misread as "i" - in some fonts they are even 100% identical). So OCR is OK for text that you can spellcheck, but not for other kinds of data.
Depending on the kind of data, you could include something like a printed checksum to verify you read it write.
To conserve space, just make the fonts as small as you feel comfortable reading, use both sides of the paper, possibly reformat the data to utilize more space on the page, and use thin lightweight paper. And include an additional electronic backup so you don't have to bother OCRing until the world ends next Thursday.
Are you sure about that? It took this long to find out they were photographing the outside. They very likely do have some way to examine the general contents of the inside, probably using x-rays or something similar. And you can be sure any information gathered is also stored.
I remember when the original URL was http://altavista.digital.com/
In the early days it even recognized Pathworks Mosaic 1.0 by its user agent, and served up a really, really simple HTML page just for it.
There was even a Personal version of the search engine that you could download and run on your own server to index your Intranets.
Sad to see it go because the world really needs more diversity when it comes to search engines. If there is something the Big Engines don't want you to have, it might as well not exist.
At which time you discover that continuously re-cleaning the machines is STILL easier and less work and money than replacing the poorly written proprietary corporate dreck resembling a Rube Goldberg machine that only runs under Windows XP.
And you have found the real power guzzling culprit!
Browsers wouldn't have to waste so much power if they didn't have to spend so much time processing crap rather than just displaying your content. On some web sites I have managed to vastly increase the speed and responsiveness of the sites just by blocking certain "analytics" scripts. And only the insane would browse the modern web without Adblock. Less processing time translates in to power savings, and which browser someone is using is mostly irrelevant since they all have to process the same junk.
If a large company really wanted to save power and increase productivity, they would install such blockers on clients or a central proxy. Or better yet, demand sites embed less of this crap to start with.
I've still got my ET cartridge somewhere. I played it back in the day, an I don't recall it being all that horrible. Like most games of the time you HAD to read the manual to know what each little pixelated object was supposed to be and what to do with it. There was one really nasty "bug" or perhaps mis-feature where trying to get out of a pit involved immediately changing directions right as you reached the top. Not obvious, no visible indication it was needed, and not mentioned in the manual - but most Windows 8 users should be used to that sort of things these days.
Anyway once you got past that, the game was rather easy.
If you want to talk about stupid games, I remember an arcade game called "Firetruck" where you drive a fire truck... and that is it. No score, no fire... just driving. Nice scrolling random monochrome graphics... to just drive through. It is emulated in MAME if you want to gawk at that.