OK, this is completely off topic, and I should be burned alive for such a crime, but there's something I've always wanted to know about the suits they wear. How on Earth do they keep them from fogging up? Do they de-humidify the air that pumps through them or something?
I second that. My wife is a chemist at a waste water treatment plant, and knows the operation forwards and backwards (We kid around that she plays with poop for a living). Working at the plant and seeing how it works first hand has made her a strong advocate for using purified waste as drinking water.
She had some friends in a lab test the water at our house when we first moved in. The water coming out of the plant is cleaner than the water coming out of our tap, and our tap water is pretty darned good (at least for Florida). Meanwhile, our fair city is scraping for money to build a desalination plant. Go figure.
The technology is mature, proven, and robust. The only problem is public acceptance, but it's a huge problem. To even propose the idea would be political suicide for a mayor, which is ironic given that we have legislation passed (face-scanning cameras on city streets and puritanical blue laws) that makes the idea of drinking piss seem positively benign. If only we lived in a world where reason and freedom were valued over ignorance and politics!
For the same reason that they think that all parody songs (no matter how foul-mouthed) come from Weird Al Yankovic. You bring up a very good point.
Personally, I was disgusted by this article. It's filled with lies and exaggerations, and thrashes the good name of one of my childhood heroes!
Sure, there was cocaine, but hey, it was the 80's, and what else would you expect from a star with a nose like that? To say that he was hooked on other inhalents, however, is pure slander! Additionally, the whole cancer aspect of the story is pure fiction! Yes, Q*Bert had cosmetic surgery, but again it was the 80's and that was the thing to do at the time.
Lately I've heard that, like so many other video game stars, he's gotten into techno music. In fact, the last time I saw he was in an Apple "Switch" ad: http://www.apple.com/switch/ads/djqbert.html
No, thanks. If I want to use UNIX for true productivity I'll simply use my Linux box or my Mac. They're more powerful and more flexible, plus a monitor beats a TV any day of the week (DoA Beach Volleyball notwithstanding).
As a "hobby box" I can understand the appeal of an X-Box, but a Dreamcast fits that role as well or better at a lower price.
A friend gave me a Dreamcast for Christmas this year. I'd never seriously looked at the system before, so it seemed a bit odd. Since then the little box has vacuumed up my free time, and I'm having an absolute blast with it (thanks Ryan!). After scoring a mouse, vga adapter, and keyboard (cheap!) on eBay, as well as a broadband adapter (not so cheap- my one complaint!), I downloaded a copy of DCLinux and was on my way. No mod chip required- no fussing about with BIOS chips- just burn a disc and go.
I've been tweaking the distro I got and I'm having a ball with it- it's been a fun learning tool. (Plus I can shell into the Mac and Linux box and send e-mail, etc. just to score geek points.)
A side benefit is that the games are dirt cheap now and surprisingly fun, but the real thrill to me is the joy of stretching a piece of hardware into uses beyond those for which it was originally intended. A lot of intelligence went into the design of this machine.
Urgh! I tried it out, and while it is definitely easier on the fingertips I can't imagine having the accuracy that having a tactile feedback allows.
I'm typing this without looking at the keyboard, and being able to feel the shape of the key tops as I hit them lets me know that I'm hitting the keys square in the middle. It's like recalibrating my position every time I hit a key. With a projected keyboard I would need to keep looking at the keys to make sure that my hands weren't straying from the regions defined for each key.
Personally, at home I still use an old AT tactile "clicky" keyboard. I find that being able to feel the microswitch in each keystroke results in greater accuracy. If I accidentally brush an incorrect key I can tell by both touch and sound if it triggered a keystroke.
Thank Gods that today is a holiday (in the US) and we have just a skeleton crew at work, `cause if my coworkers heard me laughing this hard they'd think I'm stranger than they already do. If they knew I was laughing this hard over a post about slaughtering animals have me committed!
I've gotta go get lunch now. Your posts have left me absolutely ravenous...
I made the mistake of doing a Google search for an ex-girlfriend that I never really got over. It was bad enough that half an hour later I found myself missing her so badly that I almost sent her e-mail (which would've been a mistake of bibilical proportions). What's worse is that it looks like she still has an interesting life and cool friends. Inconceivable! I still think my life is more interesting than hers, but now I can no longer fool myself into believing that she lays in bed at night thinking about what could have been.
While not fully rendered, DVD-quality mini movies, I felt that the endings in Deus Ex were the most thought-provoking I've ever seen in a video game. I've *never* come away from a game pondering the philosophical and moral implications of my decisions and how they affected the ending before DX (and in a first-person shooter, no less!).
I spent a lot of time afterward pondering which of the three options I would choose in real life, as well as debating them with friends who had also completed the game.
The three options boil down to a) Anarchy- Maximum personal freedom, at the expense of a total societal collapse (and the misery that would be almost certain to result) b) Technological Totalitarianism- An efficient and peaceful outcome, but one where the human race effectively becomes subjugated by a benevolent AI c) Illuminati- Continuation of the status-quo, where personal freedom is an illusion and none of the world's societal ills are rectified, but where there is no disruption of anyone's life (except Bob Page, of course!)
None are clearly better than any of the others. I think that the DX team did a magnificent job of crafting an intelligent ending worthy of the rest of the game. They'll have a tough time making the sequel live up to the original, and I can't wait to see what they come up with.
Well put- I was hoping that someone had posted such links early in the thread.
Though I personally look forward to the Singularity, I can certainly understand the apprehension these people feel regarding it, and while I find it extremely unlikely that they'll obtain the necessary funding for a venture of such magnitude it still seems like a wise idea to not put all of our eggs in one basket. Loopiness and conspiracy theories aside, having a backup plan in the face of an unknown/unknowable future makes a good deal of sense.
I wonder if this guy ever played the Sierra game Outpost. The premise was similar- Earth gets whacked by an asteroid, and the player is left in charge of a lifeboat-like ship and must find a suitable planet and build a self-sustaining colony. Though its bugginess and slow pace didn't win it a large following, the attention to technical accuracy makes this one of my favorites.
Wow! I've always wanted to visit Japan, but after reading your comments I can't wait! That sounds GREAT! If you'd included something about getting shot at I'd be booking travel plans right now, but given their draconian gun control laws I guess that'd be pushing the boundaries of believability.;)
Seriously, though, what you describe sounds remarkably like my college dorm days (my kinky sex stories are different, though)- poverty, stench, dispair, vomit, urine, intoxication, degredation, loss of cultural identity. Did you live in Rawlings Hall too?
>Any hoax believers aren't going to be convinced by a smudge
Oh really? Have you noticed all the hype over the Cydonia "Face on Mars"? It's another example of something with which the conspiracy theorists insist on wasting NASA's time. I think that the bottom line is that if someone is willing to draw vehement conclusions without doing any *real* research then they're just as likely to ignore evidence that doesn't fit with their preconceptions.
Hell, I'm a bit of a conspiracy nut myself, and these idiots make me look bad!;)
-Cybrex
It's a matter of perception
on
The Aging Gamer
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I can only speak from anecdotal evidence, but if you drop the number down a few years (say 30 or so) then this is completely in line with my experience.
I'm 32. I played my first video game when I was around 5 (Pong) and have been a hard core gamer since 1979 when I got my Atari 2600. My enthusiasm for video games (both old and new) hasn't wavered a bit since then. With the possible exception of sex, video games are my absolute favorite activity. (From a romantic relationship standpoint this isn't really a problem, since it's balanced out by my total lack of interest in sports, but I digress.)
Most of my peer group (friends and coworkers) is the same way, and we all game regularly, both alone (on PCs and consoles) and networked (LAN parties and over the `Net). I don't think I know a single person who ever "grew out of" video games.
I think that the difference in our perception is based on how we game. When we (my friends and I) deathmatch it's usually on a private server that one of us has set up. Rarely do we play on public servers, as the performance tends to be poorer and the players tend to be more obnoxious (not all of them, obviously, but the dickhead ratio is definitely higher on open games).
It could simply be that younger gamers are less likely to have access to a restricted dedicated server, and hence more likely to play together on open servers. Older gamers tend to have more disposable income and are less likely to have to justify the cost of a dedicated server to someone, as well as more opportunity to lug their machines over to a LAN party.
Just my $.02
-Cybrex
P.S.- My Titanium PowerBook is not just a handy tool; it's also loaded with every Atari 2600 game ever made and 4.5 GB of MAME ROMs.;)
>You can sue me because you don't like the shirt I'm wearing,
As a matter of fact, I'm not especially fond of that tacky shirt of yours. You can expect to hear from my lawyers shortly. And by the way, I'm not wearing pants, so don't even think about a countersuit. I'll be suing the pants off of you instead.;)
I had to take chemistry during summer school one year (Yeah, I'm a geek who failed high school chemistry. Sue me. I married a chemist to make up for it.:) ) and ended up with one of the most interesting teachers I ever had.
Mr. B (I'll refrain from using his full name, but so that he recogizes himself if he's reading this he was an ex-cop who'd become a teacher after getting shot in the back. He taught summer school in Tampa in `87.) made otherwise boring subject matter interesting by peppering his lectures with personal anecdotes about how he'd utilized the chemistry we were being taught to raise hell in one form or another. They'd faked a gas leak in a chem lab and had the whole class pretend to be passed out (the teacher threw a chair through a window to try to ventilate the room faster), used miniature hot air balloons to drop m-80s into neighborhoods a few blocks down at 2am, and once wrapped a chunk of sodium in vaseline and flushed it down the school toilet, blowing out a good bit of the building's plumbing.
I don't know how many of his stories were true or not (they sure seemed convincing at the time), but the class was a riot.
Seriously, I love the idea. Unfortunately, "Plan 9" rolls off the tongue much more smoothly than "Oscillation Overthruster". Still, YoYoDyne would be a great name for project.
When my wife and I were first dating back in college I was moving into a new dorm room and she was helping me unpack. She was fiddling with the phone while I was doing something else, and she handed me a phone cord and casually said "here, lick this."
Now, we're pretty strange people, so a request like this didn't faze me in the least, and I did it. She didn't think I'd really do it. I didn't think she'd hand me a live cable and ask me to put it in my mouth. We were both wrong.
It was an amazing experience, and not in a good way. It felt like I got punched in the head from the inside. There was no real damage, (though she may disagree) so we laugh about it now. It was 11 or 12 years ago, and I like to remind her of it just before I drop a piece of ice down the back of her shirt.
I agree that, by default, the dock is much too large. You can configure it by going to System Prefs, then selecting Dock (It's on the top row, second item). There it'll let you configure the location, size, mouseover zoom, etc.
Legal issues aside, you've hit the nail on the head. I've got it on my PowerBook, and it makes long trips soooo much nicer! Between that, DVDs, and.MP3s (the new version of iTunes is quite nice) it's a mobile entertainment system. (No, I'm not the one who usually drives!) A power inverter won't help you out much on a plane, but I highly recommend one for car trips!
I've also got GLTron, Zork (I so love the idea of using a UNIX supercomputer to play Zork!), and a cute little shareware game called Airburst, but MAME takes the cake for mobile gaming.
In another post someone mentioned deathmatching with a friend on the plane. I can think of no better use for an AirPort (802.11b) card!
Enjoy your flight. I recommend bringing along some food of your own to supplement the dry toast and moldy fruit you're likely to get on a flight of that length.
You're missing his point. He's saying that he never gets a BSOD, then mentions that he does get a kernel panic from time to time.
A kernel panic is the OS X equivalent of a Windows BSOD. (I don't know if it's called that under other unices, but I've only ever heard it in reference to OS X.) I think what he's trying to argue is that PC is a generic term for personal computer, and shouldn't be used to mean just x86 machines.
Personally, I feel that the term PC ceased to be a generic term when IBM introduced the IBM PC, and has meant x86 ever since. My Mac is a Mac, my Amiga is an Amiga, and my Linux and Windows boxen are PCs.
Of course, I could be missing his point entirely.
-Cybrex
They wouldn't be war memorials...
on
The Chronoliths
·
· Score: 2
More likely, M$ would buy the chronolith technology, engrave the TCP/IP specification on one, send it back in time, and patent it in the future using the `lith as an example of prior art. Poof- they own the internet.
The possibilities of governments and corporations trying to chronologically trump each other with this technology could be both frightening and humorous.
-Cybrex
"Put CP/M on the PC, not MS-DOS!"
-Chronolith that appeared in Boca Raton, FL, 1980
Re:No, that was "Back to the Future II"
on
The Chronoliths
·
· Score: 1
Slashdot Mirror
OK, this is completely off topic, and I should be burned alive for such a crime, but there's something I've always wanted to know about the suits they wear. How on Earth do they keep them from fogging up? Do they de-humidify the air that pumps through them or something?
Sorry, I've just always wondered.
-Cybrex
I second that. My wife is a chemist at a waste water treatment plant, and knows the operation forwards and backwards (We kid around that she plays with poop for a living). Working at the plant and seeing how it works first hand has made her a strong advocate for using purified waste as drinking water.
She had some friends in a lab test the water at our house when we first moved in. The water coming out of the plant is cleaner than the water coming out of our tap, and our tap water is pretty darned good (at least for Florida). Meanwhile, our fair city is scraping for money to build a desalination plant. Go figure.
The technology is mature, proven, and robust. The only problem is public acceptance, but it's a huge problem. To even propose the idea would be political suicide for a mayor, which is ironic given that we have legislation passed (face-scanning cameras on city streets and puritanical blue laws) that makes the idea of drinking piss seem positively benign. If only we lived in a world where reason and freedom were valued over ignorance and politics!
-Cybrex
For the same reason that they think that all parody songs (no matter how foul-mouthed) come from Weird Al Yankovic. You bring up a very good point.
Personally, I was disgusted by this article. It's filled with lies and exaggerations, and thrashes the good name of one of my childhood heroes!
Sure, there was cocaine, but hey, it was the 80's, and what else would you expect from a star with a nose like that? To say that he was hooked on other inhalents, however, is pure slander! Additionally, the whole cancer aspect of the story is pure fiction! Yes, Q*Bert had cosmetic surgery, but again it was the 80's and that was the thing to do at the time.
Lately I've heard that, like so many other video game stars, he's gotten into techno music. In fact, the last time I saw he was in an Apple "Switch" ad:
http://www.apple.com/switch/ads/djqbert.html
-Cybrex
(OK, maybe I should get a life)
No, thanks. If I want to use UNIX for true productivity I'll simply use my Linux box or my Mac. They're more powerful and more flexible, plus a monitor beats a TV any day of the week (DoA Beach Volleyball notwithstanding).
As a "hobby box" I can understand the appeal of an X-Box, but a Dreamcast fits that role as well or better at a lower price.
A friend gave me a Dreamcast for Christmas this year. I'd never seriously looked at the system before, so it seemed a bit odd. Since then the little box has vacuumed up my free time, and I'm having an absolute blast with it (thanks Ryan!). After scoring a mouse, vga adapter, and keyboard (cheap!) on eBay, as well as a broadband adapter (not so cheap- my one complaint!), I downloaded a copy of DCLinux and was on my way. No mod chip required- no fussing about with BIOS chips- just burn a disc and go.
I've been tweaking the distro I got and I'm having a ball with it- it's been a fun learning tool. (Plus I can shell into the Mac and Linux box and send e-mail, etc. just to score geek points.)
A side benefit is that the games are dirt cheap now and surprisingly fun, but the real thrill to me is the joy of stretching a piece of hardware into uses beyond those for which it was originally intended. A lot of intelligence went into the design of this machine.
-Cybrex
Urgh! I tried it out, and while it is definitely easier on the fingertips I can't imagine having the accuracy that having a tactile feedback allows.
I'm typing this without looking at the keyboard, and being able to feel the shape of the key tops as I hit them lets me know that I'm hitting the keys square in the middle. It's like recalibrating my position every time I hit a key. With a projected keyboard I would need to keep looking at the keys to make sure that my hands weren't straying from the regions defined for each key.
Personally, at home I still use an old AT tactile "clicky" keyboard. I find that being able to feel the microswitch in each keystroke results in greater accuracy. If I accidentally brush an incorrect key I can tell by both touch and sound if it triggered a keystroke.
Just my $.02.
-Cybrex
Thank Gods that today is a holiday (in the US) and we have just a skeleton crew at work, `cause if my coworkers heard me laughing this hard they'd think I'm stranger than they already do. If they knew I was laughing this hard over a post about slaughtering animals have me committed!
I've gotta go get lunch now. Your posts have left me absolutely ravenous...
-Cybrex
I'd send you the plug-in, but I downloaded it off of KaZaA and ended up getting that damned RIAA worm. ;-)
-Cybrex
Mod parent up- that's just plain cool! I live with a language geek and she'll love this (assuming she doesn't already know).
-Cybrex
I made the mistake of doing a Google search for an ex-girlfriend that I never really got over. It was bad enough that half an hour later I found myself missing her so badly that I almost sent her e-mail (which would've been a mistake of bibilical proportions). What's worse is that it looks like she still has an interesting life and cool friends. Inconceivable! I still think my life is more interesting than hers, but now I can no longer fool myself into believing that she lays in bed at night thinking about what could have been.
;)
The nerve of her!
-Cybrex
(Wondering if she reads Slashdot...)
*** SPOILER WARNING ***
While not fully rendered, DVD-quality mini movies, I felt that the endings in Deus Ex were the most thought-provoking I've ever seen in a video game. I've *never* come away from a game pondering the philosophical and moral implications of my decisions and how they affected the ending before DX (and in a first-person shooter, no less!).
I spent a lot of time afterward pondering which of the three options I would choose in real life, as well as debating them with friends who had also completed the game.
The three options boil down to
a) Anarchy- Maximum personal freedom, at the expense of a total societal collapse (and the misery that would be almost certain to result)
b) Technological Totalitarianism- An efficient and peaceful outcome, but one where the human race effectively becomes subjugated by a benevolent AI
c) Illuminati- Continuation of the status-quo, where personal freedom is an illusion and none of the world's societal ills are rectified, but where there is no disruption of anyone's life (except Bob Page, of course!)
None are clearly better than any of the others. I think that the DX team did a magnificent job of crafting an intelligent ending worthy of the rest of the game. They'll have a tough time making the sequel live up to the original, and I can't wait to see what they come up with.
-Cybrex
Well put- I was hoping that someone had posted such links early in the thread.
Though I personally look forward to the Singularity, I can certainly understand the apprehension these people feel regarding it, and while I find it extremely unlikely that they'll obtain the necessary funding for a venture of such magnitude it still seems like a wise idea to not put all of our eggs in one basket. Loopiness and conspiracy theories aside, having a backup plan in the face of an unknown/unknowable future makes a good deal of sense.
I wonder if this guy ever played the Sierra game Outpost. The premise was similar- Earth gets whacked by an asteroid, and the player is left in charge of a lifeboat-like ship and must find a suitable planet and build a self-sustaining colony. Though its bugginess and slow pace didn't win it a large following, the attention to technical accuracy makes this one of my favorites.
-Cybrex
They'll pay you in Moon Pies and Confederate money.
-Cybrex (A Transplanted Yankee in the Land of Dixie)
Wow! I've always wanted to visit Japan, but after reading your comments I can't wait! That sounds GREAT! If you'd included something about getting shot at I'd be booking travel plans right now, but given their draconian gun control laws I guess that'd be pushing the boundaries of believability. ;)
:)
Seriously, though, what you describe sounds remarkably like my college dorm days (my kinky sex stories are different, though)- poverty, stench, dispair, vomit, urine, intoxication, degredation, loss of cultural identity. Did you live in Rawlings Hall too?
God I miss those days.
-Cybrex
>Any hoax believers aren't going to be convinced by a smudge
;)
Oh really? Have you noticed all the hype over the Cydonia "Face on Mars"? It's another example of something with which the conspiracy theorists insist on wasting NASA's time. I think that the bottom line is that if someone is willing to draw vehement conclusions without doing any *real* research then they're just as likely to ignore evidence that doesn't fit with their preconceptions.
Hell, I'm a bit of a conspiracy nut myself, and these idiots make me look bad!
-Cybrex
I can only speak from anecdotal evidence, but if you drop the number down a few years (say 30 or so) then this is completely in line with my experience.
;)
I'm 32. I played my first video game when I was around 5 (Pong) and have been a hard core gamer since 1979 when I got my Atari 2600. My enthusiasm for video games (both old and new) hasn't wavered a bit since then. With the possible exception of sex, video games are my absolute favorite activity. (From a romantic relationship standpoint this isn't really a problem, since it's balanced out by my total lack of interest in sports, but I digress.)
Most of my peer group (friends and coworkers) is the same way, and we all game regularly, both alone (on PCs and consoles) and networked (LAN parties and over the `Net). I don't think I know a single person who ever "grew out of" video games.
I think that the difference in our perception is based on how we game. When we (my friends and I) deathmatch it's usually on a private server that one of us has set up. Rarely do we play on public servers, as the performance tends to be poorer and the players tend to be more obnoxious (not all of them, obviously, but the dickhead ratio is definitely higher on open games).
It could simply be that younger gamers are less likely to have access to a restricted dedicated server, and hence more likely to play together on open servers. Older gamers tend to have more disposable income and are less likely to have to justify the cost of a dedicated server to someone, as well as more opportunity to lug their machines over to a LAN party.
Just my $.02
-Cybrex
P.S.- My Titanium PowerBook is not just a handy tool; it's also loaded with every Atari 2600 game ever made and 4.5 GB of MAME ROMs.
Oh, sorry. We're all out of cake.
>You can sue me because you don't like the shirt I'm wearing,
;)
As a matter of fact, I'm not especially fond of that tacky shirt of yours. You can expect to hear from my lawyers shortly. And by the way, I'm not wearing pants, so don't even think about a countersuit. I'll be suing the pants off of you instead.
-Cybrex
I had to take chemistry during summer school one year (Yeah, I'm a geek who failed high school chemistry. Sue me. I married a chemist to make up for it. :) ) and ended up with one of the most interesting teachers I ever had.
Mr. B (I'll refrain from using his full name, but so that he recogizes himself if he's reading this he was an ex-cop who'd become a teacher after getting shot in the back. He taught summer school in Tampa in `87.) made otherwise boring subject matter interesting by peppering his lectures with personal anecdotes about how he'd utilized the chemistry we were being taught to raise hell in one form or another. They'd faked a gas leak in a chem lab and had the whole class pretend to be passed out (the teacher threw a chair through a window to try to ventilate the room faster), used miniature hot air balloons to drop m-80s into neighborhoods a few blocks down at 2am, and once wrapped a chunk of sodium in vaseline and flushed it down the school toilet, blowing out a good bit of the building's plumbing.
I don't know how many of his stories were true or not (they sure seemed convincing at the time), but the class was a riot.
-Cybrex
"One-a more-a word out of you Big Booty!!!"
Seriously, I love the idea. Unfortunately, "Plan 9" rolls off the tongue much more smoothly than "Oscillation Overthruster". Still, YoYoDyne would be a great name for project.
God, I love that movie.
-Cybrex
When my wife and I were first dating back in college I was moving into a new dorm room and she was helping me unpack. She was fiddling with the phone while I was doing something else, and she handed me a phone cord and casually said "here, lick this."
Now, we're pretty strange people, so a request like this didn't faze me in the least, and I did it. She didn't think I'd really do it. I didn't think she'd hand me a live cable and ask me to put it in my mouth. We were both wrong.
It was an amazing experience, and not in a good way. It felt like I got punched in the head from the inside. There was no real damage, (though she may disagree) so we laugh about it now. It was 11 or 12 years ago, and I like to remind her of it just before I drop a piece of ice down the back of her shirt.
Like I said, we're strange people.
-Cybrex
I agree that, by default, the dock is much too large. You can configure it by going to System Prefs, then selecting Dock (It's on the top row, second item). There it'll let you configure the location, size, mouseover zoom, etc.
-Cybrex
Legal issues aside, you've hit the nail on the head. I've got it on my PowerBook, and it makes long trips soooo much nicer! Between that, DVDs, and .MP3s (the new version of iTunes is quite nice) it's a mobile entertainment system. (No, I'm not the one who usually drives!) A power inverter won't help you out much on a plane, but I highly recommend one for car trips!
I've also got GLTron, Zork (I so love the idea of using a UNIX supercomputer to play Zork!), and a cute little shareware game called Airburst, but MAME takes the cake for mobile gaming.
In another post someone mentioned deathmatching with a friend on the plane. I can think of no better use for an AirPort (802.11b) card!
Enjoy your flight. I recommend bringing along some food of your own to supplement the dry toast and moldy fruit you're likely to get on a flight of that length.
-Cybrex
You're missing his point. He's saying that he never gets a BSOD, then mentions that he does get a kernel panic from time to time.
A kernel panic is the OS X equivalent of a Windows BSOD. (I don't know if it's called that under other unices, but I've only ever heard it in reference to OS X.) I think what he's trying to argue is that PC is a generic term for personal computer, and shouldn't be used to mean just x86 machines.
Personally, I feel that the term PC ceased to be a generic term when IBM introduced the IBM PC, and has meant x86 ever since. My Mac is a Mac, my Amiga is an Amiga, and my Linux and Windows boxen are PCs.
Of course, I could be missing his point entirely.
-Cybrex
More likely, M$ would buy the chronolith technology, engrave the TCP/IP specification on one, send it back in time, and patent it in the future using the `lith as an example of prior art. Poof- they own the internet.
The possibilities of governments and corporations trying to chronologically trump each other with this technology could be both frightening and humorous.
-Cybrex
"Put CP/M on the PC, not MS-DOS!"
-Chronolith that appeared in Boca Raton, FL, 1980
Great Scott!
-Cybrex