You've obviously never gotten lost on a wikipedia excursion. After a few hours not only do you find things you had no clue existed, you find things you would have never wanted to know about.
Oh shit, dude, if I'd only had 5 moderator points, I'd have thrown them down the Wikipedia Rabbit Hole you brought up.:)
Next up, Millennials will "discover" an amazing hack to reading the news -- buying a printed newspaper from a newspaper stand! More at 11!
FILM at 11!
Used to be that, before videotape camcorders appeared in the early 1980s, the local news was filmed. The news anchors of the 6:PM news would say, "Major car crash at..., film at 11." It would take until 11:PM for the film to be developed, dried, and edited.
Proudly, my first was a TI-99/4A. And did I ever get every penny out of that thing, nursing it along until 1993 or so.
Texas Instruments makes more chips (to this day?) than Frito-Lay. So of course their computer was something special.
16 bit TMS9900 CPU. Amazingly high quality parts and construction - literally cast aluminum around my 32k RAM expansion card. And they built-in owner loyalty by fostering and supporting users groups, even after they'd left the Home Computer market.
TI knew how to sell to scientists and engineers; they clearly didn't know how to sell to the general public. And they kept the software model closed (any different from Apple today?). It was the very earliest days of the digital age; they failed in the market as much for social reasons as for design reasons. So, sadly, that machine becomes an evolutionary dead end.
But what a machine. Look at TMS9900 Assembly Language.
There's a reason people that own one cat go crazy and have brain damage and end up owning more of those things.
The Toxoplasma Gondii requires cats to multiply, so it alters the behavior of its host rodents in order to steer them towards a cat's digestive system.
Now, humans and cats have lived together for millenia; it makes perfect sense that the Toxoplasma Gondii might also have steered us into giving their furry brothels a comfortable place in our homes and our beds... And for the cats, they have two species directly feeding them: Mice and Men. Perfect case of symbiotic evolution.
You'll never see Lassie do anything that smart.
Now, back to the parent post about working at PetSmart:
I've seen coworkers that were normal before become irritable and irrational after getting a cat.
Are you sure that's not just caused by working retail for long enough?
And then there was me, working at Home Depot, wearing the trademark Orange Apron. We had a cat in the store; it ate the mice that lived on the birdseed in the Seasonal Department. As I walked into the lunchroom, about 30 people eating lunch, big shift change time of day...
Being a crack dealer seems to lead to owning a pit bull, so why not?
Given the above, I'm proud to be a cat person. We must be nuts... why else would we put up with an egotistical, narcissistic, impatient, violent, snobby creature in our homes?
Better to have such a creature in my home than in the White House.
Great printer, those old Panasonics. Fast, clean, quiet, durable. Also loved the Epson MX-80 and the Okidata ML320.
I had a DEC LA-36 teletype (nb. not a TeleType) attached to my TI-99/4A back in the day... its 7 pin printhead lacked true descenders, so the print matched the text on the TI-99/4A's screen!
By the time I got to the Amiga 1000 and 500, I had a hand-me-down HP LaserJet I. What a tank. A Canon photocopier with HP's modifications, and doubled as a great ozone generator. The printer was connected to the Amiga by a 300 or 1200 baud RS-232 link. Annoyingly, I couldn't print anything from the BBSes while I was online - the Amiga's single serial port was needed for the modem.:)
Nowadays, there's a Unix mainframe in my right front pocket. And I can wirelessly print to a Samsung color laser printer that's 10x faster and 1/4 the weight. Don't even get me started on that Chromecast thing that's smaller than a videocassette and faster than a drive to Blockbuster.
But I do miss the quality of the old stuff. The old HP LaserJet just happened to be the very first (shared with the Apple LaserWriter) of its kind. Cost-reduction was not a goal; quality was. And it showed.
However I have tested myself on a computer, and find I can easily do 50-60 wpm now because I don't have to worry so much about mistakes.
OMG, yeah. I learned how to type on old manual typewriters, without a delete key like the later Selectrics had. Hit the wrong key, and you had to backspace, get out the Liquid Paper (or other correction fluid) and wait 5 minutes for the damned stuff to dry before you dared smack your ribbon against it.
I mourn that today's children and young adults will never know the tactile pleasures of playing music or videos on equipment which makes pleasant snapping and whirring sounds at every command - or potentially losing a fingertip when the reel-to-reel is fast-forwarding through a 20 minute tape - but I sure do envy the word processor as a first typing experience.
OTOH, there is no computer keyboard ever made which feels as satisfying as a well-maintained IBM Selectric. My IBM Type M keyboards are the best I've ever felt (this is being typed on a 1984 Type M) but still don't feel as nice as Selectric III.
Among my obsolete skills, I can also use a sliderule, edit videotape with a razorblade, test a vacuum tube circuit for proper bias, and do a mean A-B roll edit on non-timecoded U-matic VTRs. And I was born in the 1970s! LOL
I found a chainsaw in the garbage on the way to school. Being the collector/fixer that I am, I grabbed the chainsaw and took it to school with me.
My friends made jokes. None of the staff even batted an eye as a 14-year-old nonchalantly carried a chainsaw to his locker.
I fixed the saw the next day in auto shop. And for the next 7 months, a fueled up and ready-to-go chainsaw sat in my locker because my mom would freak out if I brought home more "junk".
A friend got on to a school bus with a rifle. It was seized solid, and wouldn't have fired at all. He walked right into the school with it. AFAIK, nobody freaked on him. It was to be used as a prop for the school play. Dave now has a PhD.
Columbine really changed things.
Wasn't the TI-99/4 the first 16 bit home computer?
While it wasn't until 1981's TI-99/4A that you could play Parsec, there were many classic games you could play on either: Munchman. Car Wars. Hunt The Wumpus.
And it's "multicultural", which makes the CBC-types feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Now if only you could find some way of making Albertans look like assholes, you could slot it between Little Mosque on the Prairie and Wild Roses and we'll have another show that nobody watches but gets government funding.
The guy from Little Mosque on the Prairie could meet up with some chick from Wild Roses and then he could cut off her head as a pay-per-view event, but still no one would watch. As with all CBC programming, it would be culturally realistic enough, but as with all CanCon, it's all bad lighting, all bad acting, all bad concept, all horribly written, and all horrific direction. Welcome to Canadian television. No wonder I have an illegal satellite dish.
The people petitioning the CRTC to expand CanCon are just bitter that they weren't talented enough to get a Green Card.
Rem,ember this is one country without a domestic car concern...the only such country in the entire so called G8! Canada? Give me a break!
No, Canada has the Bricklin, and we all know how well that turned out.
You are right, you speak hard truths, but you're right. The Canadian market isn't big enough to support a car industry, except through reciprocal agreements with our best friends, the USA. As for the Japanese stuff, it's ASSEMBLED in Canada, much like Ikea furniture is ASSEMBLED in your living room - it's not a product of your innovation, testing, or manufacture: its factory is a slightly larger Allen key, that's all.
Detroit/Windsor builds some of the most innovative and technologically amazing cars of the day, and had historically done so. The Model T. The Cord. The Hemi cars. The Omni/Horizon. The Chrysler minivan. US leadership and design for a US market, but MANY American cars were built in Canada.
US/CDN cars are well-designed and very innovative. The killer for The Big Three is that when you have a poor quality intake manifold casting built by someone with a 9th grade education making $40+ an hour, you can't afford to scrap it. (Case in point: intake manifold on my Dodge Ram was full of bubbles; it looked and sealed like Swiss cheese. No wonder the truck never had any power and had burned out three sets of exhaust valves.) You have to deal with it - put it on the car and pray it doesn't come back under warranty. The unions have driven the Big Three into their current state. A sock filled with mashed potatoes could make a better brake piston than some of the work I've seen the UAW's people turn out.
You need to kill the unions to save the Big Three.
Pull a Reagan. Fire them all, replace them with a bunch of pimply high school kids who like to ask questions, and I promise you the cars will be better.
As for me, I continue to drive domestics. It's easier to fix bad manufacturing than it is to fix bad engineering.
The police using an IP Number to locate my address is no different than if they did a Reverse Phone Number lookup. If the latter does not violate my rights, then the former does not violate my rights either.
I disagree. If your IP address is by DHCP, it may change even more often than a teenager's cellphone number. How good is the ISP's record keeping?
The most sensitive nerve cluster in the male body is at the base of the foreskin - and you don't have it.
Really? Ever had it? Ever had sex with it?
How about the frenum. All you guys jump up and down about that being the most sensitive part of my penis.
Neither one is sensitive. They're just *there*, in the way of the head and the shaft.
Well, I had 'em both cut off - the frenum, the mucosal end - and the only thing I regret about the whole thing is that it wasn't done at birth.
Your crappy sex life has to do with whatever whacked-out psychology you have. Blaming circumcision for your erectile dysfunction or your premature ejaculation is pure idiocy.
I wish I'd been circumcised at birth in your place, so I could have enjoyed its benefits all my life, and you could come to terms with whatever your failing is.
Oh, I'm so glad you cited the works of a recipient of a Bachelor of Arts degree as scientific evidence! That just clears everything up. Her background in poetry or some other basket-weaving crap makes her well-suited to statistical analysis.
She can't even differentiate a fucking polynomial and you're citing her as a reference in a scientific discussion?
Once again, the anti-circ whackos lose credibility.
It is a mutilation to reduce sexual pleasure and has no other purpose.
Really? My penis has had oral, vaginal and anal sex both before and after circumcision, and I think my penis would disagree with you.
And I know there are glans sensitivity studies which prove the (albeit counterintuitive) fact that a circumcised man's glans is no less sensitive than an uncircumcised man's glans. But you're apparently as oblivious to this as you are to the medical evidence. Another poster cited studies. I shan't bother, you're another one of those anti-circ wackos who blames everything from his baldness to his latent homosexuality on the fact that his glans is bare.
I did a shitpile of research because I was dissatisfied with having to go to the hospital every three months with my foreskin ballooned out to the size of a beach ball. I wanted to know what I was gaining and losing before I elected to the surgery.
The only thing I lost was my first 22 years enjoying the benefits of being a circumcised man. And that I resent.
The foreskin became a liability when man decided to wear clothing. You want me to stop being a proponent of circumcision, either you make mankind give up pants, or you make my circumcised penis more unreliable than the Chevy Vega it previously was.
If I'd known you in 1996 and you'd wanted my foreskin, I would have cheerfully given it to you.
Sit down, shut up, and enjoy the fact that your parents allowed the medical profession to give you an advantage in the world.
yay crusader for humankind. and you practice regular life with such rigorous ideology, but probably not. it would take only a shallow reading of your character to reveal an absurd contradiction. in conclusion you're a liar and a hypocrite and knowingly do more to support inequality than you will admit, even to yourself. but that is why i am here. self righteous in my complete and utter lack of moral virtue i can identify you, fraud. go back to your rotation cog, i think the machine skipped a cycle during your amusing little declaration
yay crusader for humankind. and you practice regular life with such rigorous ideology, but probably not. it would take only a shallow reading of your character to reveal an absurd contradiction. in conclusion you're a liar and a hypocrite and knowingly do more to support inequality than you will admit, even to yourself. but that is why i am here. self righteous in my complete and utter lack of moral virtue i can identify you, fraud. go back to your rotation cog, i think the machine skipped a cycle during your amusing little declaration
If you are actually in any manner related to the developement of devices for genital mutilation, I would gladly break your neck.
And speaking as a man who was circumcised at the age of 22 - as payment for setting up those computers, no less - I can offer a far worse curse. You can have your coveted foreskin back. Of course, it won't help your non-existent love life.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow. I've been running Linux for 20 years now, first as servers and number-crunchers, and in the past ten years or so as my desktop.
OpenSUSE is one of a few distros that has been with me a long time, and it's not virtualized, it's the foundation on my bare metal.
Thank you to everyone who brings it to me.
You've obviously never gotten lost on a wikipedia excursion. After a few hours not only do you find things you had no clue existed, you find things you would have never wanted to know about.
Oh shit, dude, if I'd only had 5 moderator points, I'd have thrown them down the Wikipedia Rabbit Hole you brought up. :)
Next up, Millennials will "discover" an amazing hack to reading the news -- buying a printed newspaper from a newspaper stand! More at 11!
FILM at 11! Used to be that, before videotape camcorders appeared in the early 1980s, the local news was filmed. The news anchors of the 6:PM news would say, "Major car crash at..., film at 11." It would take until 11:PM for the film to be developed, dried, and edited.
Proudly, my first was a TI-99/4A. And did I ever get every penny out of that thing, nursing it along until 1993 or so. Texas Instruments makes more chips (to this day?) than Frito-Lay. So of course their computer was something special. 16 bit TMS9900 CPU. Amazingly high quality parts and construction - literally cast aluminum around my 32k RAM expansion card. And they built-in owner loyalty by fostering and supporting users groups, even after they'd left the Home Computer market. TI knew how to sell to scientists and engineers; they clearly didn't know how to sell to the general public. And they kept the software model closed (any different from Apple today?). It was the very earliest days of the digital age; they failed in the market as much for social reasons as for design reasons. So, sadly, that machine becomes an evolutionary dead end. But what a machine. Look at TMS9900 Assembly Language.
There's a reason people that own one cat go crazy and have brain damage and end up owning more of those things.
The Toxoplasma Gondii requires cats to multiply, so it alters the behavior of its host rodents in order to steer them towards a cat's digestive system.
Now, humans and cats have lived together for millenia; it makes perfect sense that the Toxoplasma Gondii might also have steered us into giving their furry brothels a comfortable place in our homes and our beds... And for the cats, they have two species directly feeding them: Mice and Men. Perfect case of symbiotic evolution.
You'll never see Lassie do anything that smart.
Now, back to the parent post about working at PetSmart:
I've seen coworkers that were normal before become irritable and irrational after getting a cat.
Are you sure that's not just caused by working retail for long enough?
And then there was me, working at Home Depot, wearing the trademark Orange Apron. We had a cat in the store; it ate the mice that lived on the birdseed in the Seasonal Department. As I walked into the lunchroom, about 30 people eating lunch, big shift change time of day...
"Hey Lawrence! I hear you found the store cat!"
"Well, I found part of the store cat..."
Does mental illness lead to owning a cat, though?
Being a crack dealer seems to lead to owning a pit bull, so why not?
Given the above, I'm proud to be a cat person. We must be nuts... why else would we put up with an egotistical, narcissistic, impatient, violent, snobby creature in our homes?
Better to have such a creature in my home than in the White House.
Great printer, those old Panasonics. Fast, clean, quiet, durable. Also loved the Epson MX-80 and the Okidata ML320.
I had a DEC LA-36 teletype (nb. not a TeleType) attached to my TI-99/4A back in the day... its 7 pin printhead lacked true descenders, so the print matched the text on the TI-99/4A's screen!
By the time I got to the Amiga 1000 and 500, I had a hand-me-down HP LaserJet I. What a tank. A Canon photocopier with HP's modifications, and doubled as a great ozone generator. The printer was connected to the Amiga by a 300 or 1200 baud RS-232 link. Annoyingly, I couldn't print anything from the BBSes while I was online - the Amiga's single serial port was needed for the modem. :)
Nowadays, there's a Unix mainframe in my right front pocket. And I can wirelessly print to a Samsung color laser printer that's 10x faster and 1/4 the weight. Don't even get me started on that Chromecast thing that's smaller than a videocassette and faster than a drive to Blockbuster.
But I do miss the quality of the old stuff. The old HP LaserJet just happened to be the very first (shared with the Apple LaserWriter) of its kind. Cost-reduction was not a goal; quality was. And it showed.
I miss HP.
Nice to meet another Slashdot old-timer...
Is either main version of the Galaxy SIII vulnerable? I'm still running one of the old girls...
However I have tested myself on a computer, and find I can easily do 50-60 wpm now because I don't have to worry so much about mistakes.
OMG, yeah. I learned how to type on old manual typewriters, without a delete key like the later Selectrics had. Hit the wrong key, and you had to backspace, get out the Liquid Paper (or other correction fluid) and wait 5 minutes for the damned stuff to dry before you dared smack your ribbon against it.
I mourn that today's children and young adults will never know the tactile pleasures of playing music or videos on equipment which makes pleasant snapping and whirring sounds at every command - or potentially losing a fingertip when the reel-to-reel is fast-forwarding through a 20 minute tape - but I sure do envy the word processor as a first typing experience.
OTOH, there is no computer keyboard ever made which feels as satisfying as a well-maintained IBM Selectric. My IBM Type M keyboards are the best I've ever felt (this is being typed on a 1984 Type M) but still don't feel as nice as Selectric III.
Among my obsolete skills, I can also use a sliderule, edit videotape with a razorblade, test a vacuum tube circuit for proper bias, and do a mean A-B roll edit on non-timecoded U-matic VTRs. And I was born in the 1970s! LOL
I found a chainsaw in the garbage on the way to school. Being the collector/fixer that I am, I grabbed the chainsaw and took it to school with me. My friends made jokes. None of the staff even batted an eye as a 14-year-old nonchalantly carried a chainsaw to his locker. I fixed the saw the next day in auto shop. And for the next 7 months, a fueled up and ready-to-go chainsaw sat in my locker because my mom would freak out if I brought home more "junk". A friend got on to a school bus with a rifle. It was seized solid, and wouldn't have fired at all. He walked right into the school with it. AFAIK, nobody freaked on him. It was to be used as a prop for the school play. Dave now has a PhD. Columbine really changed things.
What the hell did you do?
Wasn't the TI-99/4 the first 16 bit home computer? While it wasn't until 1981's TI-99/4A that you could play Parsec, there were many classic games you could play on either: Munchman. Car Wars. Hunt The Wumpus.
And it's "multicultural", which makes the CBC-types feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Now if only you could find some way of making Albertans look like assholes, you could slot it between Little Mosque on the Prairie and Wild Roses and we'll have another show that nobody watches but gets government funding.
The guy from Little Mosque on the Prairie could meet up with some chick from Wild Roses and then he could cut off her head as a pay-per-view event, but still no one would watch. As with all CBC programming, it would be culturally realistic enough, but as with all CanCon, it's all bad lighting, all bad acting, all bad concept, all horribly written, and all horrific direction. Welcome to Canadian television. No wonder I have an illegal satellite dish.
The people petitioning the CRTC to expand CanCon are just bitter that they weren't talented enough to get a Green Card.
Rem,ember this is one country without a domestic car concern...the only such country in the entire so called G8! Canada? Give me a break!
No, Canada has the Bricklin, and we all know how well that turned out.
You are right, you speak hard truths, but you're right. The Canadian market isn't big enough to support a car industry, except through reciprocal agreements with our best friends, the USA. As for the Japanese stuff, it's ASSEMBLED in Canada, much like Ikea furniture is ASSEMBLED in your living room - it's not a product of your innovation, testing, or manufacture: its factory is a slightly larger Allen key, that's all.
Detroit/Windsor builds some of the most innovative and technologically amazing cars of the day, and had historically done so. The Model T. The Cord. The Hemi cars. The Omni/Horizon. The Chrysler minivan. US leadership and design for a US market, but MANY American cars were built in Canada.
US/CDN cars are well-designed and very innovative. The killer for The Big Three is that when you have a poor quality intake manifold casting built by someone with a 9th grade education making $40+ an hour, you can't afford to scrap it. (Case in point: intake manifold on my Dodge Ram was full of bubbles; it looked and sealed like Swiss cheese. No wonder the truck never had any power and had burned out three sets of exhaust valves.) You have to deal with it - put it on the car and pray it doesn't come back under warranty. The unions have driven the Big Three into their current state. A sock filled with mashed potatoes could make a better brake piston than some of the work I've seen the UAW's people turn out.
You need to kill the unions to save the Big Three.
Pull a Reagan. Fire them all, replace them with a bunch of pimply high school kids who like to ask questions, and I promise you the cars will be better.
As for me, I continue to drive domestics. It's easier to fix bad manufacturing than it is to fix bad engineering.
The police using an IP Number to locate my address is no different than if they did a Reverse Phone Number lookup. If the latter does not violate my rights, then the former does not violate my rights either.
I disagree. If your IP address is by DHCP, it may change even more often than a teenager's cellphone number. How good is the ISP's record keeping?
db32: I need your e-mail address. I'm slant6mopar@yahoo.com.
The most sensitive nerve cluster in the male body is at the base of the foreskin - and you don't have it.
Really? Ever had it? Ever had sex with it?
How about the frenum. All you guys jump up and down about that being the most sensitive part of my penis.
Neither one is sensitive. They're just *there*, in the way of the head and the shaft.
Well, I had 'em both cut off - the frenum, the mucosal end - and the only thing I regret about the whole thing is that it wasn't done at birth.
Your crappy sex life has to do with whatever whacked-out psychology you have. Blaming circumcision for your erectile dysfunction or your premature ejaculation is pure idiocy.
I wish I'd been circumcised at birth in your place, so I could have enjoyed its benefits all my life, and you could come to terms with whatever your failing is.
Incorrect.
Oh, I'm so glad you cited the works of a recipient of a Bachelor of Arts degree as scientific evidence! That just clears everything up. Her background in poetry or some other basket-weaving crap makes her well-suited to statistical analysis.
She can't even differentiate a fucking polynomial and you're citing her as a reference in a scientific discussion?
Once again, the anti-circ whackos lose credibility.
It is a mutilation to reduce sexual pleasure and has no other purpose.
Really? My penis has had oral, vaginal and anal sex both before and after circumcision, and I think my penis would disagree with you.
And I know there are glans sensitivity studies which prove the (albeit counterintuitive) fact that a circumcised man's glans is no less sensitive than an uncircumcised man's glans. But you're apparently as oblivious to this as you are to the medical evidence. Another poster cited studies. I shan't bother, you're another one of those anti-circ wackos who blames everything from his baldness to his latent homosexuality on the fact that his glans is bare.
I did a shitpile of research because I was dissatisfied with having to go to the hospital every three months with my foreskin ballooned out to the size of a beach ball. I wanted to know what I was gaining and losing before I elected to the surgery.
The only thing I lost was my first 22 years enjoying the benefits of being a circumcised man. And that I resent.
The foreskin became a liability when man decided to wear clothing. You want me to stop being a proponent of circumcision, either you make mankind give up pants, or you make my circumcised penis more unreliable than the Chevy Vega it previously was.
If I'd known you in 1996 and you'd wanted my foreskin, I would have cheerfully given it to you.
Sit down, shut up, and enjoy the fact that your parents allowed the medical profession to give you an advantage in the world.
I wish I'd been circumcised at birth.
Gomco, Mogen, Plastibell...
Guess where I consulted once.
The Venetian boy's choir?
Good one! Agree or not, that was intelligent.
yay crusader for humankind. and you practice regular life with such rigorous ideology, but probably not. it would take only a shallow reading of your character to reveal an absurd contradiction. in conclusion you're a liar and a hypocrite and knowingly do more to support inequality than you will admit, even to yourself. but that is why i am here. self righteous in my complete and utter lack of moral virtue i can identify you, fraud. go back to your rotation cog, i think the machine skipped a cycle during your amusing little declaration
yay crusader for humankind. and you practice regular life with such rigorous ideology, but probably not. it would take only a shallow reading of your character to reveal an absurd contradiction. in conclusion you're a liar and a hypocrite and knowingly do more to support inequality than you will admit, even to yourself. but that is why i am here. self righteous in my complete and utter lack of moral virtue i can identify you, fraud. go back to your rotation cog, i think the machine skipped a cycle during your amusing little declaration
And why your illiteracy is so amusing.
My parents loved me enough to allow me to make the choice whether to keep my foreskin. Yeah, I'm not getting rid of it anytime soon.
So tape it back. You've got nothing to lose, you can try it out risk-free. I'll even send you your first pair of silk boxer shorts.
If you are actually in any manner related to the developement of devices for genital mutilation, I would gladly break your neck.
And speaking as a man who was circumcised at the age of 22 - as payment for setting up those computers, no less - I can offer a far worse curse. You can have your coveted foreskin back. Of course, it won't help your non-existent love life.
Gomco, Mogen, Plastibell...
Guess where I consulted once.
some cases, ethnicity -- and can change the ads accordingly. That could mean razor ads for men, cosmetics ads for women and video-game ads for teens."
Isn't ethnicity probably the easiest thing on that list for a computer to determine?
Whatever the case, I love fried chicken and grape soda. Anyone got a can of shoe polish?