Well, first off. I use my 486 as a great monitor stand, punch out the front panel and I even have a "shelf".
My main "hope" was that portable pcs would actually become trully useful. I'm really dissapointed about how slow they are - I have a 300mhz pocket pc and it is painfully slow - my palm m105 is roughly as fast and has a better battery life. I know a new generation of pocket pcs is coming out, but my 486 sx33 can open big text documents faster than the 300mhz pocket pc can. Not cool. The newton kicked ass as an idea, but never picked up. Upsetting really, but hey. The tablet pc is going in the right direction I think. A bit bigger, but the screen space doesn't hurt.
Voice recognition also blows - I'd rather type. I type faster than speak to the computer and have it understand me. This tech is still a pat pat"That's nice dear" technology. I just can't take it seriously. I'm sure people who can't type find it useful, but I don't really.
Removable storage. When I got my first zip drive with my 200mb hard drive, it was very "WOW". A dvd does hold 4.7GB, but just doesn't have the same "wow, this is half my hard drive" effect. Tape drives and tapes have remained hellishly expensive for the home users. And why the hell are floppies still used, someone, please kill the floppy - the usb "keychain" is a great replacement, especially with regards to price per mb now.
Where the hell are the touchscreens? The technology is cheap, but nobody has implemented it. Another reason I think the tablet pc is a good idea.
The "quality" of lcds. I have 486 laptops with no dead pixels, my friend bought a new laptop and it came with 3 dead ones - WTF?
I have a lot of gripes, but what has surpassed my expectations: - 3d rendering, lightwave and the like. Sure, what I can do in lightwave might look as good as something for Babylon 5 in its first couple seasons, but I do this on my own box and it doesn't take too long at all. I set up all my boxes to be render nodes for one project, but Of course, I'm a nUb with lightwave compared to others, but just the fact this technology is available to the masses. - photoshop - a-friggin-mazing. What it can do today was inconceivable in '93 - Games / on the fly rendering. Also really good, I'm not jumping in glee, but it definately has improved. -Cheap old server hardware still surviving - perhaps this is a testament to how computers used to be built (at least servers, workstations began to suck for longevity after 386s came along ) Anyways, there is so much of this great equipment still around, working and available for cheap, it is really cool. Nothing is wrong with a quad xeon system with a raid array for $400 (proliant 6500s, great boxes).
As for the future? feh, work on getting my flying car goddamnit;)
ATI has gotten their act together - it seems the drivers for their "good" cards, i.e. 8500, 9700 actually work, however their support for their older cards is terrible and I don't see that changing in future. ATI just doesn't think supporting older cards is a priority, and it shows clearly. I think the same with their lower end consumer cards, the 7500, etc. The drivers aren't that bad, but from what I've heard the 9700, etc are solid. Of course, the all-in-wonder pro I have is old (1998?) - so I can see why they want to kill it off, but dragging your customers kicking and screaming to a new product isn't very good for customer relations - and ATI knows this now. Nvidia and other companies made them wake up. Unfortunately they do have only 1 real competitor for the retail box market, so they aren't that concerned, but competition does help. Not that they will ever fix the drivers for the AIW Pro and their older cards, the PR damage has already been done, and the cards replaced.
Their support is, of course, useless, just because they have to deal with so many buggy - and often weekly - releases. There just isn't time for them to find the problems. No point to call / ask for support because it will not be helpful. Of course venting is fun, but hey. Besides, half the games out there don't work properly and cause issues by themselves.
Every once in a while, they get it mostly right, but it is a crapshoot. I've had drivers for my 7500 that would refuse to let me log on to 2k, but also the current version which works in both xp and 2k3 without any problems - i.e. I've had 0 bsod under 2k3 w/ my box with the 7500 in it since rc2 came out. A couple with "recording", or trying to with the AIW Pro - although that was expected. (the release for the 7500 is 6.14.1.6307 2/28/2003 if it helps anybody).
As far as I can tell, 2k3 IS stable. I've abused my system - knocking out ide cables while the system is running, "hot pulled" pci cards, etc. Basically anything that would not cause the computer to reboot due to a short would keep the system up. My processer fan came out for a couple minutes, I saw it running at 95C and dove for the power switch, but 2k3 stayed up. Granted, it isn't that hot, but still.
If I still lived in Ontario, I'd probably drive by at 120kph and throw a used tire rotor at their front door, it might cure an ulcer or two;)
fyi, fully patched clients crashed occasionally from msblast attacks. Seriously, MS - or someone else should take control, use the exploit for "good". Instead of spreading a destructive payload, patching the flaws. Perhaps set something in the registry / create an empty file which would act as a "do not patch" flag, but the next time a serious (you know, root and stuff) exploit is released, release a counter exploit.
(of course, have a keep alive, in order to propagate to other clients, but once it's subnet, etc, is healed, it self terminates)
Unethical? I mean, come on. It is unethical to leave these machines infected on the net - I still get code red hits. .. Anyways. . .
I know you're bitter, and so am I - but the majority of the "IT" folks out there got their jobs because they sat closest to the printer. I don't think your view is realistic, most of the time IT staff just aren't hired to do IT, but pulled into it from other positions. On a slightly lighter note, I remember taking calls from small business who needed to fix their printer drivers but couldn't get onto their DC because they fired their IT guy (and replaced him with somebody else) the week before. Good times;)
They do make connectors color coded now. And other than a couple of stupid ideas* everything is keyed. I would think a spare cable would be kind of obvious.
* i.e. the document feeder power connector on the HP Officejet G Series will gladly accept a localtalk cable, which will let the magic smoke out of both the old mac and the printer.
I wouldn't say stupid, just ignorant and lazy. For example - I need to change the brakes on my neon. I knew nothing about cars (ok, ok, "things press against some wheel thingy and the car slows down") until I went on the net to find info about it. Looked for 10 minutes, nope, that sucked. Went to the library. Found the manual, woo hoo, pretty pictures and all. Brakes done.
Of course, this might say something about the state of technical manuals, and for certain things you _do_ need to take the car to a mechanic, but still, most problems can be solved by looking at the manual, etc.
I was thinking of a decimal-hex conversion - nothing too hard - like convert E to decimal. Or to binary. Something simple but also something that most users wouldn't know, just "geeks" - seriously, most "system admins" would fail.
hmm, personally I keep an old 7200rpm seagate 3gb baracuda (banshee would be more appropriate for this guy, but sure) hooked to a ac adapter. This thing has this blood curdling high pitched scream when it is running - I can literally hear it 2 rooms away over the noise of servers. The thing is, I don't think anyone tests the drives that come in - the tech selects "drive noise" from a list of 10 or so possibities in their logging program and the rma dept gets to deal with it.
He admitted to it in a court of law. Guilty. Over./quote Yeah, and people never "confessed" in Stalinist Russia either. Nor has any person "confessed" under pressure from overzealous cops / prosecutors in this glorious freedom loving county. Long live the Homeland and the infallibility of our leaders!/sarcasm
God, don't you read the fucking newspaper? Are you that shut off from the outside world?
This is Slashdots "News for Nerds", not "News for 14 year olds who go to LANs with the latest Alienware case daddy bought for them while on parole". Geez. What's next? Comparison of 5 different blue LEDs? "I have concluded that the Antec blue LEDs are definitely more blue then the cheaper LEDs!"
Well, at least it's not yet another fucking SCO story.
Ok, ok, it was a poor use of "or", the brackets were supposed to seperate the two. But 3xxxx = the south near florida, which, for some reason, was almost (i.e. damn near) always a source for nightmare calls.
Knowing that they are massholes, they might be able hold them off for quite a while, a legal black hole if you will. Black holes, of course contain tons of Mass. I'm not sure if there is a connection here, but . ..
No offence to the "wonderful" folks from Mass of course, its just that tech support folks cringe when they hear the accent (or a 3 as the first digit in the zip code, but that's another story)
I wouldn't put too much faith in the pricing info on that page, because HP Color LaserJet 5500n's sure aren't going for $3000, nor have they for quite some time ( a year or so)
I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned it, but the HP color laser 8500/8550 prints 11x17 (sadly not full bleed, but 1/4" margin or something close to that). The toner cartridges last forever and a day and the output is quite nice. It was also designed before Carly / the compaq merger, so it's not a piece of shite that will break in 13 months. It's not that I don't trust the 4600, but I trust it less in the long run. I've seen them for sale in stores for $1500ish - they are getting kind of old, and I think HP wants to discontinue the product, but get that and the onsite warranty (you aren't moving this in your car) in case something should happen and you'll have a workhorse machine for $2k. The printer is also huge, if you need that whole geek factor thing;)
Actually there are marbles that work quite well in paintball guns. Not that I would _EVER_ condone such an evil thing, but it is possible. I haven't checked the speed of the marbles, but they do shatter on impact and leave small dents in concrete. I believe "fast enough" is the term you are looking for. I suppose a properly sized ball bearing coming out of more or less a stock paintball marker would hurt like a bitch too. Most paintball guns can be modified to shoot faster (or slower) by replacing certain springs in the mechanism - which I would think make a pretty good "home defense" weapon.
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lol, you're not anal retentive or anything ;)
methinks your zaurus's screen res might be a little less than 4096x4096, but yeah.
Well, first off. I use my 486 as a great monitor stand, punch out the front panel and I even have a "shelf".
;)
My main "hope" was that portable pcs would actually become trully useful. I'm really dissapointed about how slow they are - I have a 300mhz pocket pc and it is painfully slow - my palm m105 is roughly as fast and has a better battery life. I know a new generation of pocket pcs is coming out, but my 486 sx33 can open big text documents faster than the 300mhz pocket pc can. Not cool. The newton kicked ass as an idea, but never picked up. Upsetting really, but hey. The tablet pc is going in the right direction I think. A bit bigger, but the screen space doesn't hurt.
Voice recognition also blows - I'd rather type. I type faster than speak to the computer and have it understand me. This tech is still a pat pat"That's nice dear" technology. I just can't take it seriously. I'm sure people who can't type find it useful, but I don't really.
Removable storage. When I got my first zip drive with my 200mb hard drive, it was very "WOW". A dvd does hold 4.7GB, but just doesn't have the same "wow, this is half my hard drive" effect. Tape drives and tapes have remained hellishly expensive for the home users. And why the hell are floppies still used, someone, please kill the floppy - the usb "keychain" is a great replacement, especially with regards to price per mb now.
Where the hell are the touchscreens? The technology is cheap, but nobody has implemented it. Another reason I think the tablet pc is a good idea.
The "quality" of lcds. I have 486 laptops with no dead pixels, my friend bought a new laptop and it came with 3 dead ones - WTF?
I have a lot of gripes, but what has surpassed my expectations:
- 3d rendering, lightwave and the like. Sure, what I can do in lightwave might look as good as something for Babylon 5 in its first couple seasons, but I do this on my own box and it doesn't take too long at all. I set up all my boxes to be render nodes for one project, but
Of course, I'm a nUb with lightwave compared to others, but just the fact this technology is available to the masses.
- photoshop - a-friggin-mazing. What it can do today was inconceivable in '93
- Games / on the fly rendering. Also really good, I'm not jumping in glee, but it definately has improved.
-Cheap old server hardware still surviving - perhaps this is a testament to how computers used to be built (at least servers, workstations began to suck for longevity after 386s came along ) Anyways, there is so much of this great equipment still around, working and available for cheap, it is really cool. Nothing is wrong with a quad xeon system with a raid array for $400 (proliant 6500s, great boxes).
As for the future? feh, work on getting my flying car goddamnit
ATI has gotten their act together - it seems the drivers for their "good" cards, i.e. 8500, 9700 actually work, however their support for their older cards is terrible and I don't see that changing in future. ATI just doesn't think supporting older cards is a priority, and it shows clearly. I think the same with their lower end consumer cards, the 7500, etc. The drivers aren't that bad, but from what I've heard the 9700, etc are solid.
;)
Of course, the all-in-wonder pro I have is old (1998?) - so I can see why they want to kill it off, but dragging your customers kicking and screaming to a new product isn't very good for customer relations - and ATI knows this now. Nvidia and other companies made them wake up.
Unfortunately they do have only 1 real competitor for the retail box market, so they aren't that concerned, but competition does help. Not that they will ever fix the drivers for the AIW Pro and their older cards, the PR damage has already been done, and the cards replaced.
Their support is, of course, useless, just because they have to deal with so many buggy - and often weekly - releases. There just isn't time for them to find the problems. No point to call / ask for support because it will not be helpful. Of course venting is fun, but hey. Besides, half the games out there don't work properly and cause issues by themselves.
Every once in a while, they get it mostly right, but it is a crapshoot. I've had drivers for my 7500 that would refuse to let me log on to 2k, but also the current version which works in both xp and 2k3 without any problems - i.e. I've had 0 bsod under 2k3 w/ my box with the 7500 in it since rc2 came out. A couple with "recording", or trying to with the AIW Pro - although that was expected. (the release for the 7500 is 6.14.1.6307 2/28/2003 if it helps anybody).
As far as I can tell, 2k3 IS stable. I've abused my system - knocking out ide cables while the system is running, "hot pulled" pci cards, etc. Basically anything that would not cause the computer to reboot due to a short would keep the system up. My processer fan came out for a couple minutes, I saw it running at 95C and dove for the power switch, but 2k3 stayed up. Granted, it isn't that hot, but still.
If I still lived in Ontario, I'd probably drive by at 120kph and throw a used tire rotor at their front door, it might cure an ulcer or two
fyi, fully patched clients crashed occasionally from msblast attacks.
.
Seriously, MS - or someone else should take control, use the exploit for "good".
Instead of spreading a destructive payload, patching the flaws. Perhaps set something in the registry / create an empty file which would act as a "do not patch" flag, but the next time a serious (you know, root and stuff) exploit is released, release a counter exploit.
(of course, have a keep alive, in order to propagate to other clients, but once it's subnet, etc, is healed, it self terminates)
Unethical? I mean, come on. It is unethical to leave these machines infected on the net - I still get code red hits. .
Anyways. . .
I know you're bitter, and so am I - but the majority of the "IT" folks out there got their jobs because they sat closest to the printer. ;)
I don't think your view is realistic, most of the time IT staff just aren't hired to do IT, but pulled into it from other positions.
On a slightly lighter note, I remember taking calls from small business who needed to fix their printer drivers but couldn't get onto their DC because they fired their IT guy (and replaced him with somebody else) the week before. Good times
it could of have been worse, formatted drives, the such. rebooting may be annoying, but by no means is it the most destructive thing that can be done.
They do make connectors color coded now.
And other than a couple of stupid ideas* everything is keyed. I would think a spare cable would be kind of obvious.
* i.e. the document feeder power connector on the HP Officejet G Series will gladly accept a localtalk cable, which will let the magic smoke out of both the old mac and the printer.
I wouldn't say stupid, just ignorant and lazy. For example - I need to change the brakes on my neon. I knew nothing about cars (ok, ok, "things press against some wheel thingy
and the car slows down") until I went on the net to find info about it. Looked for 10 minutes, nope, that sucked. Went to the library. Found the manual, woo hoo, pretty pictures and all. Brakes done.
Of course, this might say something about the state of technical manuals, and for certain things you _do_ need to take the car to a mechanic, but still, most problems can be solved by looking at the manual, etc.
I was thinking of a decimal-hex conversion - nothing too hard - like convert E to decimal. Or to binary. Something simple but also something that most users wouldn't know, just "geeks" - seriously, most "system admins" would fail.
hmm, personally I keep an old 7200rpm seagate 3gb baracuda (banshee would be more appropriate for this guy, but sure) hooked to a ac adapter. This thing has this blood curdling high pitched scream when it is running - I can literally hear it 2 rooms away over the noise of servers. The thing is, I don't think anyone tests the drives that come in - the tech selects "drive noise" from a list of 10 or so possibities in their logging program and the rma dept gets to deal with it.
lol, so true. Others reading have no idea how right you are.
nope, www.tigerdirect.com already could claim prior art.
dude, I have a mouse with this "new feature" that connected through a SERIAL PORT. That alone should tell you how old this idea is.
and he's even planning some competition in the form of a top-secret follow-up to the Sinclair C5."
.
hell of a secret . .
'nuff said.
He admitted to it in a court of law. Guilty. Over. /quote /sarcasm
Yeah, and people never "confessed" in Stalinist Russia either. Nor has any person "confessed" under pressure from overzealous cops / prosecutors in this glorious freedom loving county.
Long live the Homeland and the infallibility of our leaders!
God, don't you read the fucking newspaper? Are you that shut off from the outside world?
This is Slashdots "News for Nerds", not "News for 14 year olds who go to LANs with the latest Alienware case daddy bought for them while on parole". Geez. What's next? Comparison of 5 different blue LEDs? "I have concluded that the Antec blue LEDs are definitely more blue then the cheaper LEDs!"
Well, at least it's not yet another fucking SCO story.
Ok, ok, it was a poor use of "or", the brackets were supposed to seperate the two.
But 3xxxx = the south near florida, which, for some reason, was almost (i.e. damn near) always a source for nightmare calls.
of coure, the adobe case w/ rot-13 and the dmca . . .
lol, so true, so true. Worse is calling Newfoundland in Canada (i.e. HP printer mac support). Think Maine, added to a Canadian accent. . .
Knowing that they are massholes, they might be able hold them off for quite a while, a legal black hole if you will. Black holes, of course contain tons of Mass. I'm not sure if there is a connection here, but . . .
No offence to the "wonderful" folks from Mass of course, its just that tech support folks cringe when they hear the accent (or a 3 as the first digit in the zip code, but that's another story)
I wouldn't put too much faith in the pricing info on that page, because HP Color LaserJet 5500n's sure aren't going for $3000, nor have they for quite some time ( a year or so)
I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned it, but the HP color laser 8500/8550 prints 11x17 (sadly not full bleed, but 1/4" margin or something close to that). The toner cartridges last forever and a day and the output is quite nice. It was also designed before Carly / the compaq merger, so it's not a piece of shite that will break in 13 months. It's not that I don't trust the 4600, but I trust it less in the long run. ;)
I've seen them for sale in stores for $1500ish - they are getting kind of old, and I think HP wants to discontinue the product, but get that and the onsite warranty (you aren't moving this in your car) in case something should happen and you'll have a workhorse machine for $2k.
The printer is also huge, if you need that whole geek factor thing
Actually there are marbles that work quite well in paintball guns. Not that I would _EVER_ condone such an evil thing, but it is possible. I haven't checked the speed of the marbles, but they do shatter on impact and leave small dents in concrete. I believe "fast enough" is the term you are looking for.
I suppose a properly sized ball bearing coming out of more or less a stock paintball marker would hurt like a bitch too.
Most paintball guns can be modified to shoot faster (or slower) by replacing certain springs in the mechanism - which I would think make a pretty good "home defense" weapon.
Of course we have useful ways to spend money, take, for example, setting brown people on fire from the air*!
*Not serious. Quoting Carlin, sort of. Almost.