Anything that makes the concrete sidewalk light up under my feet like I'm in Saturday Night Fever is a pretty strange material indeed. Oh, the pretty colors. Fsck the aerogel, it can't do that.
People talk about it like it's addictive. It's addictive like chocolate, not like nicotine or heroin: the only thing I miss is beautiful colors, more saturated and gorgeous than your eyes are capable of seeing, sort of like how chocolate is more rich and beautiful than your tastebuds can taste. (Nor was I an acid-head, but I did it a few times because I'm a fan of psychedelic music and I wanted to understand what the hell Yellow Submarine ("Oh my God! They're blue meanies!") was all about. I learned, I loved, I rejoice in understanding a time and place I was born too late to experience firsthand.)
Note to anyone wanting to try it: Research reputable scientific sites (ie. FDA's advice on treating patients presenting with acid intoxication), chemistry sites (it would take a lot more rat poison than would fit in a couple of squares of blotter to hurt you let alone kill you), addiction sites (gets you as speedy high as, and is as additively dangerous as, drinking a medium double-double coffee), have a protective (and clean/sober) friend with you as a chaperon during the trip (and offer to do the same for him if he wants to try it), and find an old hippy who can get you good stuff. No, you won't stare at the sun - that would be at least as painful as if you did it clean. No, you won't suddenly believe you can fly, nor will you gouge your eyeballs out. No, you won't get acid flashbacks, unless your trip shows you something extremely traumatic (which is one of your brain's own fabrications anyway). No, acid is not stored in your fat - hell, it's one of the most water-soluble chemicals known and it will be completely out of your body in 24 hours. You are more lucid than you would be if you were stoned or drunk. If you see something unpleasant, remind yourself that it isn't real, and tell it to go away - it will. Most of what you hear about it is FUD based on anti-hippy propaganda. Acid screws with your visual cortex, nothing else.
As a recovering alcoholic, caffeine fiend and smoker, I can assure you that if drug laws were based on actual damage done - or even damage-causing potential based on *scientific* criteria - all three of these things should have been outlawed far before acid.
Ponies? No. Actual hallucinations will be more along the lines of colors which change with the sounds that you hear, and they'll follow outlines of things your eyes are seeing. (ie. sidewalk squares, each lighting up a different color; swirls and "lightning bolts" coming out of small objects in dark-colored contrasting fields, etc.)
Look up the LD50 of LSD and compare it with ethanol (ie. drinking alcohol). Do the same with nicotine. Tell me which are the bigger toxins.
Yeah, and it self-dissociates in its liquid state - hence pH, easy ionization required for cell behavior, etc. As I stated in an earlier post, it's weird stuff, common and "familiar" or not.
Which makes you wonder why water isn't on the list. It may be ubiquitous, but it's weird. Think about it - how many other materials become less dense (ie. expand) when they freeze? I think there are about two or three known. How many others dissociate on their own in their liquid state? How many others have as big a specific heat? Think about the myriad things which are a result of those properties, some of which are a pain in the ass (cracked engine blocks if no antifreeze); some of which are boons (life in general - dissociation, frog hibernation - whole lakes don't freeze solid because ice is weird enough to float, water is one of the best coolants there is - specific heat).
Water is truly a strange chemical. Think about that next time you blithely pour it down your throat.
From all the accounts I've read, Leonardo DiCaprio is actually an intelligent person.
Bah. He's no Jeremy Miller, though his attention span might be incrementally greater. I'd bet any amount of money that I could spend an hour alone with Dicaprio and get him all charged up about how an industrial solvent, dihydrogen monoxide, is polluting our lakes and oceans. I'd also bet money that after an hour, Miller would have figured out what substance I was complaining about.
Get me an audience with Dicaprio and I'll try it. (Though I'd prefer an audience with Miller to discuss his suggestions on my pasta sauces. Cooking is far closer to pure chemistry and therefore far more conducive to rational scientific method. Which leads to more experimentation and evidence-based learning than acting, and therefore more scientific understanding if not awareness. And with a few years of culinary school under his belt, he'd better be as good at it as I am at vector calculus.)
I mean seriously, the discussion shouldn't be about "proper erasure techniques that 99.999% of the public couldn't understand if they tried",
99.999% of the public probably can't imagine that I can still get it back after they've emptied the Recycle Bin on Windows 95-Vista.
it should be about not being such a tight-ass cheap fuck that you have to sell your old drives (flash / hard / whatever) on E-Bay. I mean, seriously, do you need to spend that much effort to net yourself an extra $5 or $10?
I sell or give away my old media, because I like to help out people with no money (students, single moms, etc.) and because I know there are some cases where older hardware, still in use, probably won't accept newer higher-capacity media.
I erase my old media with a sledgehammer. Try to recover that, bitch.
I've used a http://www.wendtcorp.com/shredder.asp Wendt car shredder at a local scrap metal yard... though the most incriminating thing on the drives was a backup of everything I wrote during the late-80s-early-90s in high school. Ooh - lusty e-mails by UUCP.
Yes, I'd love to see thermite destroy a hard drive.
Bah. Overkill. There's already a great video somewhere of thermite melting through a car. Likewise, one of the best things you can do is get rid of that Honda Civic in your driveway by stuffing it full of old hard drives and taking it to a serious (no car crushers, just a shredder) scrap metal place in your town and watching it go down the throat. Anyone who wants my old credit card numbers (which, BTW, are exclusively *expired*, no live ones get to any of my own computers, networked or not) is welcome to dig the smashed platters out of the piles of shredded aluminum and glass.
THANK YOU. (Yelling deliberate, mods +1 parent)
on
Memories of a Media Card
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· Score: 2, Insightful
From the paper: (blah blah blah)
I don't normally waste bandwidth or other resources commenting this way ("Me too! Me too!"), but I have to tell you that was the most kick-ass summary and explanation of the problem. Thank you for knowing an intelligent and concise technical reason for seemingly (and massively) redundant re-writing, thank you for having it handy, thank you for citing the most useful passage, and thank you for posting.
Damn, I never have mod points when I need them. I'd have dumped all of them on that posting if Slashcode would let me. +5: "The Poster Credibly Could Have Written A PhD Dissertation On What S/He's Talking About".
Realistically, when a new 1gb card is under $50 in the stores (and a quick froogle search showed some generics around $20), just how much is my 64mb Smartmedia card worth? How about my 16mb Compact Flash?... For that price, it isn't worth the effort to try selling these antiquated cards.
Well, there is something else, too: what about users of devices which don't support larger cards? I don't know - I've never encountered a problem with SD (which is all I've used in portable devices - choose a platform and stick with it), but isn't it possible that some devices won't read or write to larger cards than were available when they were made?
Example: I had a cheap piece of junk digital camera (Mercury Deluxe Classic Cam) which came with 8 megs of RAM built in, and would accept SD cards. Now note that the issue with this camera was that the firmware refused to support FAT32, so I was limited to 128 megs (or whatever, I can't remember) even on larger SD media. Vexing, but not enough to make me seek out smaller cards than are currently available - I just formatted to FAT, and shrugged my shoulders at the wasted space. Now, are there any hard limits to what size SD or CF or other media that some older hardware might come up against?
Is there therefore any reason why some people with poorly supported (firmware) or pooly designed (hardware) products might need to seek out the older cards for backward compatibility? In another example (part of a $75,000 radar display and course plotting system), I needed to find small SDRAM (32 meg) modules for a specialized computer which wouldn't even POST when it was fitted with 64 meg or 128 meg modules. Can such things happen with the removable Flash devices we take for granted today?
If it's possible that a poor implementation might screw someone, as a service to geekdom, I'll go to the trouble to save them, wipe(1) them, and then *give* them to someone who is in need. I collect and restore 1950s TV sets and other antiquated and difficult-to-support electronics, and I've worked on more than my fair share of specialized equipment which forces you to seek out antiquated commodity parts, so I understand going to this trouble for little to no payout (except to know you saved something from the landfill and got someone out of a bind).
Otherwise I would have to wonder why the locomotives are hybrid but this here monster is pure diesel.
Also, locomotives have to stop and start trains a lot more than a container ship or oil tanker. The train has to stop for signals, switches, etc. I don't know how often, but I would imagine several times in a day. Diesel-Electrics would be a hell of a lot more efficient for this than a straight diesel, to say nothing of the previously raised clutch issues.
In contrast, the ship will be running under continuous power for much of her voyage across an ocean, at least a few days continuously. The water at her prop will also behave much more like a transmission on its own, with the power required to spin the prop increasing as (I believe) a square of the prop speed. Never mind, of course, variable pitch propellers.
If ships run aground, they'll lose their valuable cargo's, which will cost their owners money.
To say nothing of getting Lloyd's involved. The insurance on these things is already expensive enough; if double propulsion reduced the insurance appreciably, I'm sure it would be more popular.
It's reminiscent of the whole double-hulled oil tanker stupidity - if you run aground, both hulls are going to rupture and the oil will leak. Period. The double hull adds weight and reduces capacity (therefore reducing fuel economy and increasing shipping costs). Furthermore, it adds explosion risk, since any seeped oil is trapped in the air gap between hulls, and its vapors could ignite. (Why not fill the hull space with water? Weight.)
It's interesting that these big engines are directly connected
to the propeller. To stop, you turn the engine off. To reverse,
you turn off the engine and restart it in the other direction.
I used to work for a marine electronics company, which frequently had me on board ships of all sorts. I've stood inside the crankcase of a running marine diesel (idling at 7RPM), swapping out an oil pressure sensor for the engine management computer. The access to the oil pressure sensor had me working less than two feet from where the crank throw passed every nine seconds or so - just keep your body clear of it!
I don't think I've ever seen a direct-coupled engine (there's almost always at least very rudimentary gearing), but it certainly wouldn't be impossible - all you'd need would be a variable pitch propeller, which is commonplace anyway.
I can agree that there is something to detest in Gates' penchant for stepping all over people to acheive his goals, but to compare his actions with any seriousness to Hitler's actions is insane.
Well, I am insane (Clinical diagnosis include ADD, OCD, PTSD, depression, alcoholism, SAD (and I'm stuck in a shitty northern climate in which no human being should ever be forced to live). And a pair of melanomas, for good measure, to add to the depression.). So that's not such a great leap, is it? OTOH, I passed the Mensa entrance test but found the meetings were boring.
I don't think Gates has ever been responsible for liquidating people. It's hard to defend someone you don't like, but saying he'd be a Hitler if elected is quite an unwarranted insult.
Actually, I didn't. I merely compared his personality traits with someone who, if not for the whole Holocaust and WWII thing, would have been an exceptionally gifted chancellor of Germany - and at Germany's worst time. Hopefully, with President Gates, modern safeguards and sensitivities would prevent the formation of such future artifacts of horror as New York's Open Source Ghetto.
Usual declaration of principles in such discussions, with a rare frankness: I love the Jewish people. In fact, I hope to marry a Jew and would happily convert to share in the cultural and ethnic traditions of the people whom I feel are the greatest people to ever walk the planet. I don't make light of the Holocaust, but do make a point about the "achievements" of an individual with the same mindset (according to common knowledge) as Gates.
And as much as I despise is company's tactics, he is quite intelligent and has real management skills.
The very same things which make us hate M$......would probably make him an exceptional President. All except enforcing the use of Microsoft software in government.
He's brilliantly intelligent, with an amazing ability to run a company. His ruthless determination to implement his ideas would be a terrific asset. His management and business experience is likely to make him a Republican, though at least socially he seems to be quite liberal.
My only fear with President Gates is that he has the same ruthless determination and utter self-assurance that he's doing a good thing for the world with only one other person: Adolf Hitler.
Ditto. People drive twenty miles to save five dollars on a $500 TV. As such, too many companies compete on price, and buy the cheapest possible components to do so.
Oh, completely.
And consider the things we've lost as a result of that or "environmentalist" pressures to reduce consumption (which somehow completely ignores the consumption required by more frequent replacement thanks to shorter product lifespans):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slant-6The Chrysler Slant-6 (RIP 1986, emissions concerns), world renowned for its ability to average over 300,000 MILES between rebuilds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MaytagThe Maytag top-load washing machine (RIP 1997, died during redesign), a washing machine drivetrain which lasted over ten years on average in laundromat service was sold in every Maytag top-loader from 1954 (or so) to 1997. Consumer lifespan was 30+ years. Check out the relics in the basement on That 70's Show - lots and lots are still in service. Modern stuff fries its transmission when you get a sock stuck under the agitator. Spent $200 in parts to rebuild my 1954 Maytag's transmission (oil, gaskets, belts), and I feel confident it will get skidmarks out of my boxers for at least another thirty years.
Good capacitors (RIP 1990 in consumer stuff). Used to be Sprague (USA) and Nichicon (Japan) were the brands. Nowadays, it's all no-name-brand Chinese stuff which dries out and makes equipment fail prematurely. The first thing I do with a new computer PSU is void the warranty by ripping it apart and replacing all the capacitors with decent ones (Sprague or Nichicon) - since I started doing this, I've never had a single computer power supply fail.
Sony (RIP 1996). I still have my original KV-1710 and KV-1926 Trinitron TVs (1975 and 1988). They both still work great, though the 1710 needed me to replace its focus rectifier about two years ago. At the same time, I added line input jacks. Service cost? Would have been over $150 (never mind my line input modification), but the new TV I'd have gotten ($99) wouldn't have lasted the two years since.
They don't build 'em like they used to. And they can't: MTBF isn't a concept, printed in big pretty letters, that Joe Moron will understand.
From the article: "Of course, this upgrade would have to allow critical systems to opt out. Nobody wants air traffic control computers to suddenly go into deep hibernation."
Air traffic control computers running Windows? I don't think so. BSOD = planes colliding in midair over major cities. Virus/Trojan/script_kiddie = planes colliding in midair over major cities. Fortunately, when I worked at Pearson, it was a big Vax, isolated from the network, that everyone was afraid to look at.
The mere suggestion is almost as stupid as voting machines running Windows. Oh wait...
Sometimes they were all behind me in the sofa waiting to see the news. I was sitting in front of the television busy writing some dumb programs like drawing a polygon or something.
Heheh... and then when they were watching the news, they were watching an Amiga again. I can't tell you how many TV stations used them as character generators for local newscasts until well into the late 1990s. The swooping opening graphics? Amiga with Video Toaster. The name superimposed over the videotape of the local politician? Amiga running Broadcast Titler.
I think it was about 1997 that I last saw one crash on the air. Local news in Toronto, Amiga crashed on the air: "Guru Meditation Error" and a core dump superimposed over a weatherman (who was, in turn, superimposed by chroma key over a map). It was only on the screen for about two seconds before the switcher realized the CG (character generator, aka. Amiga 2000 with Broadcast Titler and a genlock) had crashed and hit the fader to pull what was supposed to be the weatherman's name off the screen, but it gave me such a warm fuzzy.
I remember one director, 'round about 1992, who had a rule that the CG operator was always to have a diskette in the Amiga's drive no matter what. The Amiga was mounted in a small rack beside the switcher, and the director used to sit behind the switcher, almost in a direct line-of-site with the Amiga's drive. And as anyone who knows directors will attest, they're prone to peculiar obsessions. And as anyone who knows Amigas will attest, they tic when there's no diskette in the drive. The director couldn't tolerate this tic-tic-tic - how he was aware of it over the clicks and clacks of VTRs and the sounds of the audio guy recueing carts is beyond me. In a really cruel twist of fate, the station got some promotional pens, and there were thousands of them around the offices... and these particular retractable ballpoints made exactly the same noise. The director would go absolutely apeshit anytime someone opened or closed one of these pens in the control room.
I'm an Amiga fan, but gotta disagree. Lisa, 1983. Macintosh, 1984.
2. with stereo sound.
Yup.
3. that supported sampled sound.
1979 TI-99/4 with optional Speech Synthesizer (1981)... though TI didn't release codec information until sometime about 1985, so it was only in-house samples.
4. hardware accelerated video you could argue that the Atari 400/800 was first thanks to it's missile player graphics but Jay Miner was involved in the both.
1981 TI-99/4A with fully autonomous sprite graphics implemented in the TMS9918A VDP, same as Coleco Adam (1982) and MSX (1982) machines using the same Texas Instruments VDP chip. Advanced TI programmers even sometimes offloaded 2D vector calculations to the VDP chip using tricks like invisible sprites and the VDP's built-in hardware collision detection.
5. The ability to sync the computers video with an external video source
1982 or so MSX computers using the TMS9918A VDP; TI-99/4 (1979) and Coleco Adam could have, had either bothered to spring for an extra connector and about three more parts on the board.
Amiga was notable for taking all of these ideas, running with them, and packaging them into a single machine. The custom chipset worked together to massively offload CPU responsibilities. The graphics were astounding and unrivaled until Super VGA, although early SVGA could have never had the CPU-VDP bandwidth. The genlocking, implemented through a simple peripheral, allowed incredible versatility in media production. Every feature of the machine is now considered essential to even the cheapest stripped-out office PC.
And some which are just wacky (two resolutions on screen at the same time) would be very handy. A paw print on the inside of the case. The heartbeat tic-tic-tic of the diskette drive as Workbench checks to see if it needs to automount a diskette. A keyboard garage. Tying with the TI-99/4A as having the biggest damned DIP integrated circuit known to mankind sitting on the motherboard.
Just about every innovation in personal computers was first seen on the Mac or the Amiga.
Or, first seen in a practical and useful form on the Mac or Amiga.
The PC didn't catch up the to the 1985 Commodore Amiga until around 1995 with the release of Windows 95.
Amen. Windows 95 caught up with the Amiga, Windows NT4 was the first with meaningful improvements (system stability) over everything Amiga owners had a decade to enjoy. Well, except NT4 lacked plug-and-play hardware detection (TI-99/4, 1979; Macintosh, 1984; Amiga, 1985).
You really can't market the Amiga 500, with a picture on the box of a kid in open mouth glee playing games, along with the Amiga 2000, with business/multimedia production, at the same time successfully.
Was that the issue, though? I don't think so; it makes perfect sense to view one has a compatible "home" version of your office computer.
I worked in television broadcasting, and as late as the mid 1990s, it was Amiga 2000 in the office and Amiga 500 at home. That was me, that was co-workers, etc. A few were lucky and had the A4000 on their desk at work and the A3000 at home, you know. But bread and butter machines were the 500/2000 combination. I started out with an A1000 at home and an A2000 at work, eventually made the lateral move to the easier to expand A500. I still have every Amiga (and everything from its predecessor in my life, the TI-99/4A).
Now, TV was unique. We used them as character generators, using Broadcast Titler and other programs, along with a cheap genlock board: there's the little graphic on the corner of the screen beside the news anchor; there's the sports reporter's name at the bottom of the screen. The Video Toaster hardware/software for the Amiga was a boon, because when you connected it to a good VTR (a serious timecoded Betacam or 3/4" machine which could record one frame after a 7 second pre-roll), the Toaster Amiga would output this amazing frame of a 3D graphic, rewind the VTR, sync, record one frame in succession, and work on rendering the next one.
For people who grew up in the digital age, you just don't get how amazing it was that a small local station could make their own bumpers and 3D graphics. Just a few years before this, I was lugging a 3/4" portable VTR and a separate camera (before the Betacam camcorder!), bag of batteries, bag of BIG 3/4" cassettes, a Sun Gun, a mixer, and a mic boom. A one-person shoot was basically impossible, you needed a camera man and an audio/VTR operator, and you'd be running through a scrum with a bunch of cables attaching the cameraman to the VTR guy and then to the reporter. No wireless microphone, no VTR conveniently built into the back of the camera, no cute and tiny little Beta cassettes.
Fast forward to a camcorder: That's what the Amiga was like to broadcasters.
But that was for one little niche market. Offices in general? The Amiga lacked the software library, but it was pretty competent - I remember file compatibility with PC users wasn't an issue, as we had WordPerfect and Microsoft Multiplan and all that other stuff - hell, by virtue of the graphics capability, WYSIWYG word processing was restricted to Mac and Amiga until about 1990. I could read/write PC 3.5" diskettes, and I think I could read/write Mac disks. Never mind that with 1985 software and hardware, I could have WordPerfect and Multiplan open side by side, a huge 500k file being downloaded from a BBS at a whopping 1200 baud in the background, and cut and paste between them. Workbench 1.x was all point-and-click (in many respects blowing Windows out of the water for a full decade until Windows 95 came out), though there was powerful scripting provided. Workbench 2.x and 3.x were cleaner, slicker, more powerful. Reliability was still more than I've ever experienced on any DOS 6.22/Windows 3.1 combination, about the same as Windows 95A, but not quite as crash-proof as Windows 95B.
I think that by 1985, the PC was pretty well entrenched, clones were already out, and "no one ever got fired for buying IBM". Besides, "who needs graphics for an office computer anyway?". Amiga offered far more bang for the buck, but I think purchasers were also skittish about the recent end of the Beta-vs-VHS wars, and IBM was already a known quantity.
But it was when Commodore got distracted by PC clones - I remember their very unremarkable offerings - that things really went downhill.
OMG, those things were mundane. They made Packard Bells look exciting.
If Commodore owned KFC they would have marketed it as "a greasy warm dead bird in a cardboard bucket". At the time take a look at the Amiga vs the IBM PC AT and the Mac as far a cost vs features. The Amiga was so far ahead it makes your head hurt.
That is the proof that marketing is the most important thing in computers. If having the best product wins then the PC would have died the death that DOS deserved back then.
There's a great irony here, too. Consider VIC-20's amazing marketing, all the way down to the packaging: "VIC-20! The FRIENDLY computer! With COLOR and MUSIC!" Worked amazingly.
Now, consider that Texas Instruments, a company which had two years earlier in 1979 released a 16-bit computer with sprite graphics, twice the color palette, 1/3rd more resolution in each dimension, three voice one noise sound, and more than twice the RAM of the VIC-20.
And when the VIC-20 was released, the TI-99/4 and TI-99/4A were going head to head in a price war against the VIC-20, less than half the machine that the TI-99/4A was. Commodore had a chip fab (MOS Techologies) to make custom ICs to cut costs. TI... well, TI literally invented the integrated circuit, arguably invented the microprocessor and microcomputer (though this is generally credited to Intel's 4004, TI had a calculator chip which predated it), and made more chips than Frito-Lay. Custom ICs weren't a problem for TI.
The TI-99/4A's box, sitting on the shelf at K-Mart beside the VIC-20, simply said "Texas Instruments Home Computer". No flashy claims. Hell, nowhere on the package does it even indicate that it's got a 16 bit processor! (I have a TI-99/4A box in front of me right now.) TI is/was used to marketing to engineers and other knowledgeable people who will research a purchase, rather than simply walking into K-Mart and impulse buying. And TI never bothered to integrate all the glue logic on the board with a custom IC the way Commodore did. TI never stooped to using cardboard RF shields to save a few cents, as was done with some VIC-20s and C-64s. Hell, TI never even bothered to stop using raised foil PC board interconnects and other expensive stuff that raised reliability. They sold a better designed, better built, and higher technology product... and expected consumers would be smart enough to spend the extra $20 (which was the difference when I got my first computer in 1983).
The VIC-20 outsold it 2:1.
Extremely ironic that between the VIC-20 and the Amiga (which I loved, by the way), Commodore forgot how to market their stuff to the unwashed masses.
Probably had something to do with Tramiel's departure (NB, haven't read the book yet).
"Kentucky Fried Chicken" was changed to KFC back in 1991! You may or may not have heard the rumor that they were forced to change the name to KFC because the FDA said their chicken was not longer chicken... but apparently that is not true.
Yeah, that's absolute idiocy. I was working for McDonalds at the time, back in high school, and we had the same bullshit: "The patties are 100% pure beef" implied that we'd created/purchased a company called "100% Pure Beef".
We didn't; the supplier (name a Canadian or American national meat packaging company) and the ingredients were marked clearly on the box: beef. Some even stated province: Pure Alberta Beef. 100% Ontario Beef. New York's finest Dead Cow. (OK, the last one was a joke... d'Uh))
The fact is (and as a former manager, a position to which I was promoted quickly because I actually showed up on time and *most* days liked my co-workers, customers and my job) McDonald's hamburgers are a higher grade of beef (Cdn AAA) than you can usually buy in the supermarket. That's lower fat than is commonly available to consumers. And it's very important to McDonalds - higher fat would be bad for the cooking process (admittedly not an open flame, unfortunately) and for the dietary disclosures now required. Throw a 1/4 pound of top-end premium ground into a frying pan, and I guarantee you'll get more fat than if you threw a *half* pound of uncooked McDonalds quarter-patties in the pan. (Try a few McDonalds, tell them you're on some sort of my-parents-were-idiot-hippies raw beef diet, sooner or later one of them will let you have uncooked patties. American or Canadian, I'll bet money than 1/2 pound of McDonalds patties gives less fat than 1/4 of extra-lean grocery store beef.)
As for KFC, all you need to do is bite into it to know it's chicken. I don't know what sort of scientifically (and culinarily) inept uncircumcised inbred NDP-voter started the rumor that "KFC can't call themselves KFC because they don't serve chicken", but it's really sufficiently asinine that the offender shouldn't be allowed to vote or procreate. If you disagree, there's a great B-Movie (sparsely available by Torrents, etc.) called "The Willies" - you'll enjoy the Tennessee Fricassee Chicken scene for sure.
I can't speak for the PETA comments against KFC, which I hope are the usual PETA bullshit. I am a carnivore but I feel for anything with a nervous system - but I will remind you that PETA has been right on occasion. OTOH, if there were anything more stupid than chicken, it would be called a "plant", it would breathe carbon dioxide, and it would think George Bush was a terrific President.
Yes, KFC is chicken. Yes, it's fried. Yes, the founder was from Kentucky. If you're too stupid to understand that the K and the F became liabilities with the diet craze(s) (whatever happened to *moderation*, you know, like us adults do), you don't deserve to breathe or breed.
But so long as you money is still real, "Can I take your order?" (We don't even want to get into my experiences with fat people: "Double Big Mac combo, large sized, large soft drink... better make it a Diet Coke, I'm trying to lose weight..." Me, screaming in my mind at the top of my lungs: "THEN MAKE THIS YOUR WEEKLY NOT DAILY TREAT TO YOURSELF, GET AN ACTIVE HOBBY, AND CUT OFF THE BON-BONS, YOU FUCKING HIDEOUS AND STINKY BEACHED WHALE." Spoken: "Oh yes, a Diet Coke will do *wonders* for your physique." - if they were any dumber, or if I were a commissioned salesperson, I'd tell them I was gay and sell them a *simply fabulous* pair of culottes and a front-load washer - they're dumb enough to trust "diet" over common sense, so they must be dumb enough to trust a cute little rubber door seal over gravity.)
Finally, say what you want about KFC, but sometimes I just get a craving for it - it's damned good (except when you go to a sucky franchise whose left it under the heat lamps too long, in which case it's only slightly better than cafeteria food). KFC, aside from their proprietary seasonings,
Far more likely, it looks to me, is that continually decreasing confidence in the electoral system will lead to progressive alienation between the sitting government and other institutions, in turn leading to a military coup d'etat sometime in the next few decades...
No way. Americans are the epitome of the Do-It-Yourselfer. Home Depots here in Canada? A few wrenches, one stick welder... oh, and towels in the kitchens and bathrooms department. Home Depots anywhere I've been in the USA? Ten different kinds of MIG welder, flare nut wrenches both Metric and SAE... and I didn't see any towels.
Wal*Mart Canada: oil change tools and supplies for cars, maybe a few car covers. Wal*Mart in Niagara Falls NY: air conditioning manifold and vacuum pump with little cylinders of R-134a so you can repair your own air conditioning system.
Sears Canada: small assortment of Craftsman tools. Sears USA: Sears Craftsman NASCAR team.
My experience was that European hardware stores are even more pathetic than Canadian stores. As a European-born Canadian do-it-yourselfer, I relate very well to Americans because I understand them on an individual level.
American citizens are self-reliant, individualistic do-it-yourselfers; they'll take care of the problems with the government when they're sufficiently convinced there actually *is* a problem.
And I pity any government in the peoples' way, what with all the power tools they have.
All I see around here is dumbasses with too much money buying front-load LG and Samsung washing machines. There's your disaster.
The dryer *has* to be horizontal, but the washer doesn't. I choose a washer with a horizontal drum because I like to stoop uncomfortably. It reminds me of the suffering of the Korean sweatshop slaves who built it.
I don't understand freshman chemistry, where even the D- students can prove that it's the water, not the detergent or agitation, which dissolves the dirt. Hence, I'm stupid enough to believe that a "water efficient" washing machine will actually get my clothes cleaner than a real washing machine.
Being a graduate of an arts program, I believe the engineers are lying when they tell me that reliability is inversely proportional to the complexity of a mechanism. After all, I skipped my degree-mandated Logical Reasoning 101 classes to go to "Save The Earwig" rallies. Of course, the greater water and energy efficiencies of a front-loader will be especially useful when the machine is in a landfill in six years - my neighbor will still be irresponsibly wasting water in his top-loader for over a decade!
And finally, I believe that cute little rubber seals are more reliable than gravity. The toxins we're spewing into the environment have to be messing up Nature's gravity somehow.
Oh yeah, but we have to remember to blame the Europeans for the original idiocy behind the concept.
I believe in the genocide of front-load washing machine believers.
And Montreal's Olympic Stadium by at least 5 more years. But the important point (as a former SkyDome employee) is that SkyDome was the first retractable roof stadium *which actually worked*.
It would be surrounded by 48 granite or concrete markers, 32 outside the berm and 16 inside, each 25 feet high and weighing 105 tons,
Or here's another thought: just bury it.
Bury it in a pluton of ancient rock, several hundred meters down, as most current proposals suggest. When the site is filled, backfill it with concrete from the top to the bottom of the shaft.
Any society with sufficient resources (technology, tools, time) to cut through that to see what we buried will also undoubtedly have an archaeological record of us, and will probably also have at least a very rudimentary understanding of nuclear physics. (Remember we might regress - think HG Wells.)
In short, they're going to see that we went to a hell of a lot of trouble to dispose of something. That should be enough warning.
Of course, you could also arrange dots into the periodic table. Again, any society capable of getting there will also have discovered the periodicity of chemistry, even if they don't understand our numbers or element names. A few arrows pointing at the swarm of dots representing the constituents of the waste ought to be enough. Pour slabs of something with a table of dots into the concrete at ten foot increments.
All the stuff about communicating with them further than that is B.S. - never ask a humanities major a question when the audience is the scientists of the future - all you need to use is simple science. That's like asking a roofer to perform a heart transplant.
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LSD is a pretty strange material.
Anything that makes the concrete sidewalk light up under my feet like I'm in Saturday Night Fever is a pretty strange material indeed. Oh, the pretty colors. Fsck the aerogel, it can't do that.
People talk about it like it's addictive. It's addictive like chocolate, not like nicotine or heroin: the only thing I miss is beautiful colors, more saturated and gorgeous than your eyes are capable of seeing, sort of like how chocolate is more rich and beautiful than your tastebuds can taste. (Nor was I an acid-head, but I did it a few times because I'm a fan of psychedelic music and I wanted to understand what the hell Yellow Submarine ("Oh my God! They're blue meanies!") was all about. I learned, I loved, I rejoice in understanding a time and place I was born too late to experience firsthand.)
Note to anyone wanting to try it: Research reputable scientific sites (ie. FDA's advice on treating patients presenting with acid intoxication), chemistry sites (it would take a lot more rat poison than would fit in a couple of squares of blotter to hurt you let alone kill you), addiction sites (gets you as speedy high as, and is as additively dangerous as, drinking a medium double-double coffee), have a protective (and clean/sober) friend with you as a chaperon during the trip (and offer to do the same for him if he wants to try it), and find an old hippy who can get you good stuff. No, you won't stare at the sun - that would be at least as painful as if you did it clean. No, you won't suddenly believe you can fly, nor will you gouge your eyeballs out. No, you won't get acid flashbacks, unless your trip shows you something extremely traumatic (which is one of your brain's own fabrications anyway). No, acid is not stored in your fat - hell, it's one of the most water-soluble chemicals known and it will be completely out of your body in 24 hours. You are more lucid than you would be if you were stoned or drunk. If you see something unpleasant, remind yourself that it isn't real, and tell it to go away - it will. Most of what you hear about it is FUD based on anti-hippy propaganda. Acid screws with your visual cortex, nothing else.
As a recovering alcoholic, caffeine fiend and smoker, I can assure you that if drug laws were based on actual damage done - or even damage-causing potential based on *scientific* criteria - all three of these things should have been outlawed far before acid.
Ponies? No. Actual hallucinations will be more along the lines of colors which change with the sounds that you hear, and they'll follow outlines of things your eyes are seeing. (ie. sidewalk squares, each lighting up a different color; swirls and "lightning bolts" coming out of small objects in dark-colored contrasting fields, etc.)
Look up the LD50 of LSD and compare it with ethanol (ie. drinking alcohol). Do the same with nicotine. Tell me which are the bigger toxins.
Yeah, and it self-dissociates in its liquid state - hence pH, easy ionization required for cell behavior, etc. As I stated in an earlier post, it's weird stuff, common and "familiar" or not.
I wonder which are safe to drink?
Which makes you wonder why water isn't on the list. It may be ubiquitous, but it's weird. Think about it - how many other materials become less dense (ie. expand) when they freeze? I think there are about two or three known. How many others dissociate on their own in their liquid state? How many others have as big a specific heat? Think about the myriad things which are a result of those properties, some of which are a pain in the ass (cracked engine blocks if no antifreeze); some of which are boons (life in general - dissociation, frog hibernation - whole lakes don't freeze solid because ice is weird enough to float, water is one of the best coolants there is - specific heat).
Water is truly a strange chemical. Think about that next time you blithely pour it down your throat.
From all the accounts I've read, Leonardo DiCaprio is actually an intelligent person.
Bah. He's no Jeremy Miller, though his attention span might be incrementally greater. I'd bet any amount of money that I could spend an hour alone with Dicaprio and get him all charged up about how an industrial solvent, dihydrogen monoxide, is polluting our lakes and oceans. I'd also bet money that after an hour, Miller would have figured out what substance I was complaining about.
Get me an audience with Dicaprio and I'll try it. (Though I'd prefer an audience with Miller to discuss his suggestions on my pasta sauces. Cooking is far closer to pure chemistry and therefore far more conducive to rational scientific method. Which leads to more experimentation and evidence-based learning than acting, and therefore more scientific understanding if not awareness. And with a few years of culinary school under his belt, he'd better be as good at it as I am at vector calculus.)
I mean seriously, the discussion shouldn't be about "proper erasure techniques that 99.999% of the public couldn't understand if they tried",
99.999% of the public probably can't imagine that I can still get it back after they've emptied the Recycle Bin on Windows 95-Vista.
it should be about not being such a tight-ass cheap fuck that you have to sell your old drives (flash / hard / whatever) on E-Bay. I mean, seriously, do you need to spend that much effort to net yourself an extra $5 or $10?
I sell or give away my old media, because I like to help out people with no money (students, single moms, etc.) and because I know there are some cases where older hardware, still in use, probably won't accept newer higher-capacity media.
I erase my old media with a sledgehammer. Try to recover that, bitch.
I've used a http://www.wendtcorp.com/shredder.asp Wendt car shredder at a local scrap metal yard... though the most incriminating thing on the drives was a backup of everything I wrote during the late-80s-early-90s in high school. Ooh - lusty e-mails by UUCP.
Yes, I'd love to see thermite destroy a hard drive.
Bah. Overkill. There's already a great video somewhere of thermite melting through a car. Likewise, one of the best things you can do is get rid of that Honda Civic in your driveway by stuffing it full of old hard drives and taking it to a serious (no car crushers, just a shredder) scrap metal place in your town and watching it go down the throat. Anyone who wants my old credit card numbers (which, BTW, are exclusively *expired*, no live ones get to any of my own computers, networked or not) is welcome to dig the smashed platters out of the piles of shredded aluminum and glass.
From the paper: (blah blah blah)
I don't normally waste bandwidth or other resources commenting this way ("Me too! Me too!"), but I have to tell you that was the most kick-ass summary and explanation of the problem. Thank you for knowing an intelligent and concise technical reason for seemingly (and massively) redundant re-writing, thank you for having it handy, thank you for citing the most useful passage, and thank you for posting.
Damn, I never have mod points when I need them. I'd have dumped all of them on that posting if Slashcode would let me. +5: "The Poster Credibly Could Have Written A PhD Dissertation On What S/He's Talking About".
Realistically, when a new 1gb card is under $50 in the stores (and a quick froogle search showed some generics around $20), just how much is my 64mb Smartmedia card worth? How about my 16mb Compact Flash? ... For that price, it isn't worth the effort to try selling these antiquated cards.
Well, there is something else, too: what about users of devices which don't support larger cards? I don't know - I've never encountered a problem with SD (which is all I've used in portable devices - choose a platform and stick with it), but isn't it possible that some devices won't read or write to larger cards than were available when they were made?
Example: I had a cheap piece of junk digital camera (Mercury Deluxe Classic Cam) which came with 8 megs of RAM built in, and would accept SD cards. Now note that the issue with this camera was that the firmware refused to support FAT32, so I was limited to 128 megs (or whatever, I can't remember) even on larger SD media. Vexing, but not enough to make me seek out smaller cards than are currently available - I just formatted to FAT, and shrugged my shoulders at the wasted space. Now, are there any hard limits to what size SD or CF or other media that some older hardware might come up against?
Is there therefore any reason why some people with poorly supported (firmware) or pooly designed (hardware) products might need to seek out the older cards for backward compatibility? In another example (part of a $75,000 radar display and course plotting system), I needed to find small SDRAM (32 meg) modules for a specialized computer which wouldn't even POST when it was fitted with 64 meg or 128 meg modules. Can such things happen with the removable Flash devices we take for granted today?
If it's possible that a poor implementation might screw someone, as a service to geekdom, I'll go to the trouble to save them, wipe(1) them, and then *give* them to someone who is in need. I collect and restore 1950s TV sets and other antiquated and difficult-to-support electronics, and I've worked on more than my fair share of specialized equipment which forces you to seek out antiquated commodity parts, so I understand going to this trouble for little to no payout (except to know you saved something from the landfill and got someone out of a bind).
Otherwise I would have to wonder why the locomotives are hybrid but this here monster is pure diesel.
Also, locomotives have to stop and start trains a lot more than a container ship or oil tanker. The train has to stop for signals, switches, etc. I don't know how often, but I would imagine several times in a day. Diesel-Electrics would be a hell of a lot more efficient for this than a straight diesel, to say nothing of the previously raised clutch issues.
In contrast, the ship will be running under continuous power for much of her voyage across an ocean, at least a few days continuously. The water at her prop will also behave much more like a transmission on its own, with the power required to spin the prop increasing as (I believe) a square of the prop speed. Never mind, of course, variable pitch propellers.
If ships run aground, they'll lose their valuable cargo's, which will cost their owners money.
To say nothing of getting Lloyd's involved. The insurance on these things is already expensive enough; if double propulsion reduced the insurance appreciably, I'm sure it would be more popular.
It's reminiscent of the whole double-hulled oil tanker stupidity - if you run aground, both hulls are going to rupture and the oil will leak. Period. The double hull adds weight and reduces capacity (therefore reducing fuel economy and increasing shipping costs). Furthermore, it adds explosion risk, since any seeped oil is trapped in the air gap between hulls, and its vapors could ignite. (Why not fill the hull space with water? Weight.)
It's interesting that these big engines are directly connected to the propeller. To stop, you turn the engine off. To reverse, you turn off the engine and restart it in the other direction.
I used to work for a marine electronics company, which frequently had me on board ships of all sorts. I've stood inside the crankcase of a running marine diesel (idling at 7RPM), swapping out an oil pressure sensor for the engine management computer. The access to the oil pressure sensor had me working less than two feet from where the crank throw passed every nine seconds or so - just keep your body clear of it!
I don't think I've ever seen a direct-coupled engine (there's almost always at least very rudimentary gearing), but it certainly wouldn't be impossible - all you'd need would be a variable pitch propeller, which is commonplace anyway.
What is he going to do, round up all the Mac users?
Yes.
I can agree that there is something to detest in Gates' penchant for stepping all over people to acheive his goals, but to compare his actions with any seriousness to Hitler's actions is insane.
Well, I am insane (Clinical diagnosis include ADD, OCD, PTSD, depression, alcoholism, SAD (and I'm stuck in a shitty northern climate in which no human being should ever be forced to live). And a pair of melanomas, for good measure, to add to the depression.). So that's not such a great leap, is it? OTOH, I passed the Mensa entrance test but found the meetings were boring.
I don't think Gates has ever been responsible for liquidating people. It's hard to defend someone you don't like, but saying he'd be a Hitler if elected is quite an unwarranted insult.
Actually, I didn't. I merely compared his personality traits with someone who, if not for the whole Holocaust and WWII thing, would have been an exceptionally gifted chancellor of Germany - and at Germany's worst time. Hopefully, with President Gates, modern safeguards and sensitivities would prevent the formation of such future artifacts of horror as New York's Open Source Ghetto.
Usual declaration of principles in such discussions, with a rare frankness: I love the Jewish people. In fact, I hope to marry a Jew and would happily convert to share in the cultural and ethnic traditions of the people whom I feel are the greatest people to ever walk the planet. I don't make light of the Holocaust, but do make a point about the "achievements" of an individual with the same mindset (according to common knowledge) as Gates.
And as much as I despise is company's tactics, he is quite intelligent and has real management skills.
The very same things which make us hate M$... ...would probably make him an exceptional President. All except enforcing the use of Microsoft software in government.
He's brilliantly intelligent, with an amazing ability to run a company. His ruthless determination to implement his ideas would be a terrific asset. His management and business experience is likely to make him a Republican, though at least socially he seems to be quite liberal.
My only fear with President Gates is that he has the same ruthless determination and utter self-assurance that he's doing a good thing for the world with only one other person: Adolf Hitler.
Ditto. People drive twenty miles to save five dollars on a $500 TV. As such, too many companies compete on price, and buy the cheapest possible components to do so.
Oh, completely.
And consider the things we've lost as a result of that or "environmentalist" pressures to reduce consumption (which somehow completely ignores the consumption required by more frequent replacement thanks to shorter product lifespans):
They don't build 'em like they used to. And they can't: MTBF isn't a concept, printed in big pretty letters, that Joe Moron will understand.
From the article: "Of course, this upgrade would have to allow critical systems to opt out. Nobody wants air traffic control computers to suddenly go into deep hibernation."
Air traffic control computers running Windows? I don't think so. BSOD = planes colliding in midair over major cities. Virus/Trojan/script_kiddie = planes colliding in midair over major cities. Fortunately, when I worked at Pearson, it was a big Vax, isolated from the network, that everyone was afraid to look at.
The mere suggestion is almost as stupid as voting machines running Windows. Oh wait...
Sometimes they were all behind me in the sofa waiting to see the news. I was sitting in front of the television busy writing some dumb programs like drawing a polygon or something.
Heheh... and then when they were watching the news, they were watching an Amiga again. I can't tell you how many TV stations used them as character generators for local newscasts until well into the late 1990s. The swooping opening graphics? Amiga with Video Toaster. The name superimposed over the videotape of the local politician? Amiga running Broadcast Titler.
I think it was about 1997 that I last saw one crash on the air. Local news in Toronto, Amiga crashed on the air: "Guru Meditation Error" and a core dump superimposed over a weatherman (who was, in turn, superimposed by chroma key over a map). It was only on the screen for about two seconds before the switcher realized the CG (character generator, aka. Amiga 2000 with Broadcast Titler and a genlock) had crashed and hit the fader to pull what was supposed to be the weatherman's name off the screen, but it gave me such a warm fuzzy.
I remember one director, 'round about 1992, who had a rule that the CG operator was always to have a diskette in the Amiga's drive no matter what. The Amiga was mounted in a small rack beside the switcher, and the director used to sit behind the switcher, almost in a direct line-of-site with the Amiga's drive. And as anyone who knows directors will attest, they're prone to peculiar obsessions. And as anyone who knows Amigas will attest, they tic when there's no diskette in the drive. The director couldn't tolerate this tic-tic-tic - how he was aware of it over the clicks and clacks of VTRs and the sounds of the audio guy recueing carts is beyond me. In a really cruel twist of fate, the station got some promotional pens, and there were thousands of them around the offices... and these particular retractable ballpoints made exactly the same noise. The director would go absolutely apeshit anytime someone opened or closed one of these pens in the control room.
The Amiga first mass market computer
1. with multi-tasking.
I'm an Amiga fan, but gotta disagree. Lisa, 1983. Macintosh, 1984.
2. with stereo sound.
Yup.
3. that supported sampled sound.
1979 TI-99/4 with optional Speech Synthesizer (1981)... though TI didn't release codec information until sometime about 1985, so it was only in-house samples.
4. hardware accelerated video you could argue that the Atari 400/800 was first thanks to it's missile player graphics but Jay Miner was involved in the both.
1981 TI-99/4A with fully autonomous sprite graphics implemented in the TMS9918A VDP, same as Coleco Adam (1982) and MSX (1982) machines using the same Texas Instruments VDP chip. Advanced TI programmers even sometimes offloaded 2D vector calculations to the VDP chip using tricks like invisible sprites and the VDP's built-in hardware collision detection.
5. The ability to sync the computers video with an external video source
1982 or so MSX computers using the TMS9918A VDP; TI-99/4 (1979) and Coleco Adam could have, had either bothered to spring for an extra connector and about three more parts on the board.
Amiga was notable for taking all of these ideas, running with them, and packaging them into a single machine. The custom chipset worked together to massively offload CPU responsibilities. The graphics were astounding and unrivaled until Super VGA, although early SVGA could have never had the CPU-VDP bandwidth. The genlocking, implemented through a simple peripheral, allowed incredible versatility in media production. Every feature of the machine is now considered essential to even the cheapest stripped-out office PC.
And some which are just wacky (two resolutions on screen at the same time) would be very handy. A paw print on the inside of the case. The heartbeat tic-tic-tic of the diskette drive as Workbench checks to see if it needs to automount a diskette. A keyboard garage. Tying with the TI-99/4A as having the biggest damned DIP integrated circuit known to mankind sitting on the motherboard.
Just about every innovation in personal computers was first seen on the Mac or the Amiga.
Or, first seen in a practical and useful form on the Mac or Amiga.
The PC didn't catch up the to the 1985 Commodore Amiga until around 1995 with the release of Windows 95.
Amen. Windows 95 caught up with the Amiga, Windows NT4 was the first with meaningful improvements (system stability) over everything Amiga owners had a decade to enjoy. Well, except NT4 lacked plug-and-play hardware detection (TI-99/4, 1979; Macintosh, 1984; Amiga, 1985).
You really can't market the Amiga 500, with a picture on the box of a kid in open mouth glee playing games, along with the Amiga 2000, with business/multimedia production, at the same time successfully.
Was that the issue, though? I don't think so; it makes perfect sense to view one has a compatible "home" version of your office computer.
I worked in television broadcasting, and as late as the mid 1990s, it was Amiga 2000 in the office and Amiga 500 at home. That was me, that was co-workers, etc. A few were lucky and had the A4000 on their desk at work and the A3000 at home, you know. But bread and butter machines were the 500/2000 combination. I started out with an A1000 at home and an A2000 at work, eventually made the lateral move to the easier to expand A500. I still have every Amiga (and everything from its predecessor in my life, the TI-99/4A).
Now, TV was unique. We used them as character generators, using Broadcast Titler and other programs, along with a cheap genlock board: there's the little graphic on the corner of the screen beside the news anchor; there's the sports reporter's name at the bottom of the screen. The Video Toaster hardware/software for the Amiga was a boon, because when you connected it to a good VTR (a serious timecoded Betacam or 3/4" machine which could record one frame after a 7 second pre-roll), the Toaster Amiga would output this amazing frame of a 3D graphic, rewind the VTR, sync, record one frame in succession, and work on rendering the next one.
For people who grew up in the digital age, you just don't get how amazing it was that a small local station could make their own bumpers and 3D graphics. Just a few years before this, I was lugging a 3/4" portable VTR and a separate camera (before the Betacam camcorder!), bag of batteries, bag of BIG 3/4" cassettes, a Sun Gun, a mixer, and a mic boom. A one-person shoot was basically impossible, you needed a camera man and an audio/VTR operator, and you'd be running through a scrum with a bunch of cables attaching the cameraman to the VTR guy and then to the reporter. No wireless microphone, no VTR conveniently built into the back of the camera, no cute and tiny little Beta cassettes.
Fast forward to a camcorder: That's what the Amiga was like to broadcasters.
But that was for one little niche market. Offices in general? The Amiga lacked the software library, but it was pretty competent - I remember file compatibility with PC users wasn't an issue, as we had WordPerfect and Microsoft Multiplan and all that other stuff - hell, by virtue of the graphics capability, WYSIWYG word processing was restricted to Mac and Amiga until about 1990. I could read/write PC 3.5" diskettes, and I think I could read/write Mac disks. Never mind that with 1985 software and hardware, I could have WordPerfect and Multiplan open side by side, a huge 500k file being downloaded from a BBS at a whopping 1200 baud in the background, and cut and paste between them. Workbench 1.x was all point-and-click (in many respects blowing Windows out of the water for a full decade until Windows 95 came out), though there was powerful scripting provided. Workbench 2.x and 3.x were cleaner, slicker, more powerful. Reliability was still more than I've ever experienced on any DOS 6.22/Windows 3.1 combination, about the same as Windows 95A, but not quite as crash-proof as Windows 95B.
I think that by 1985, the PC was pretty well entrenched, clones were already out, and "no one ever got fired for buying IBM". Besides, "who needs graphics for an office computer anyway?". Amiga offered far more bang for the buck, but I think purchasers were also skittish about the recent end of the Beta-vs-VHS wars, and IBM was already a known quantity.
But it was when Commodore got distracted by PC clones - I remember their very unremarkable offerings - that things really went downhill.
OMG, those things were mundane. They made Packard Bells look exciting.
If Commodore owned KFC they would have marketed it as "a greasy warm dead bird in a cardboard bucket".
At the time take a look at the Amiga vs the IBM PC AT and the Mac as far a cost vs features. The Amiga was so far ahead it makes your head hurt. That is the proof that marketing is the most important thing in computers. If having the best product wins then the PC would have died the death that DOS deserved back then.
There's a great irony here, too. Consider VIC-20's amazing marketing, all the way down to the packaging: "VIC-20! The FRIENDLY computer! With COLOR and MUSIC!" Worked amazingly.
Now, consider that Texas Instruments, a company which had two years earlier in 1979 released a 16-bit computer with sprite graphics, twice the color palette, 1/3rd more resolution in each dimension, three voice one noise sound, and more than twice the RAM of the VIC-20.
And when the VIC-20 was released, the TI-99/4 and TI-99/4A were going head to head in a price war against the VIC-20, less than half the machine that the TI-99/4A was. Commodore had a chip fab (MOS Techologies) to make custom ICs to cut costs. TI... well, TI literally invented the integrated circuit, arguably invented the microprocessor and microcomputer (though this is generally credited to Intel's 4004, TI had a calculator chip which predated it), and made more chips than Frito-Lay. Custom ICs weren't a problem for TI.
The TI-99/4A's box, sitting on the shelf at K-Mart beside the VIC-20, simply said "Texas Instruments Home Computer". No flashy claims. Hell, nowhere on the package does it even indicate that it's got a 16 bit processor! (I have a TI-99/4A box in front of me right now.) TI is/was used to marketing to engineers and other knowledgeable people who will research a purchase, rather than simply walking into K-Mart and impulse buying. And TI never bothered to integrate all the glue logic on the board with a custom IC the way Commodore did. TI never stooped to using cardboard RF shields to save a few cents, as was done with some VIC-20s and C-64s. Hell, TI never even bothered to stop using raised foil PC board interconnects and other expensive stuff that raised reliability. They sold a better designed, better built, and higher technology product... and expected consumers would be smart enough to spend the extra $20 (which was the difference when I got my first computer in 1983).
The VIC-20 outsold it 2:1.
Extremely ironic that between the VIC-20 and the Amiga (which I loved, by the way), Commodore forgot how to market their stuff to the unwashed masses.
Probably had something to do with Tramiel's departure (NB, haven't read the book yet).
"Kentucky Fried Chicken" was changed to KFC back in 1991! You may or may not have heard the rumor that they were forced to change the name to KFC because the FDA said their chicken was not longer chicken... but apparently that is not true.
Yeah, that's absolute idiocy. I was working for McDonalds at the time, back in high school, and we had the same bullshit: "The patties are 100% pure beef" implied that we'd created/purchased a company called "100% Pure Beef". We didn't; the supplier (name a Canadian or American national meat packaging company) and the ingredients were marked clearly on the box: beef. Some even stated province: Pure Alberta Beef. 100% Ontario Beef. New York's finest Dead Cow. (OK, the last one was a joke... d'Uh)) The fact is (and as a former manager, a position to which I was promoted quickly because I actually showed up on time and *most* days liked my co-workers, customers and my job) McDonald's hamburgers are a higher grade of beef (Cdn AAA) than you can usually buy in the supermarket. That's lower fat than is commonly available to consumers. And it's very important to McDonalds - higher fat would be bad for the cooking process (admittedly not an open flame, unfortunately) and for the dietary disclosures now required. Throw a 1/4 pound of top-end premium ground into a frying pan, and I guarantee you'll get more fat than if you threw a *half* pound of uncooked McDonalds quarter-patties in the pan. (Try a few McDonalds, tell them you're on some sort of my-parents-were-idiot-hippies raw beef diet, sooner or later one of them will let you have uncooked patties. American or Canadian, I'll bet money than 1/2 pound of McDonalds patties gives less fat than 1/4 of extra-lean grocery store beef.)
As for KFC, all you need to do is bite into it to know it's chicken. I don't know what sort of scientifically (and culinarily) inept uncircumcised inbred NDP-voter started the rumor that "KFC can't call themselves KFC because they don't serve chicken", but it's really sufficiently asinine that the offender shouldn't be allowed to vote or procreate. If you disagree, there's a great B-Movie (sparsely available by Torrents, etc.) called "The Willies" - you'll enjoy the Tennessee Fricassee Chicken scene for sure.
I can't speak for the PETA comments against KFC, which I hope are the usual PETA bullshit. I am a carnivore but I feel for anything with a nervous system - but I will remind you that PETA has been right on occasion. OTOH, if there were anything more stupid than chicken, it would be called a "plant", it would breathe carbon dioxide, and it would think George Bush was a terrific President.
Yes, KFC is chicken. Yes, it's fried. Yes, the founder was from Kentucky. If you're too stupid to understand that the K and the F became liabilities with the diet craze(s) (whatever happened to *moderation*, you know, like us adults do), you don't deserve to breathe or breed.
But so long as you money is still real, "Can I take your order?" (We don't even want to get into my experiences with fat people: "Double Big Mac combo, large sized, large soft drink... better make it a Diet Coke, I'm trying to lose weight..." Me, screaming in my mind at the top of my lungs: "THEN MAKE THIS YOUR WEEKLY NOT DAILY TREAT TO YOURSELF, GET AN ACTIVE HOBBY, AND CUT OFF THE BON-BONS, YOU FUCKING HIDEOUS AND STINKY BEACHED WHALE." Spoken: "Oh yes, a Diet Coke will do *wonders* for your physique." - if they were any dumber, or if I were a commissioned salesperson, I'd tell them I was gay and sell them a *simply fabulous* pair of culottes and a front-load washer - they're dumb enough to trust "diet" over common sense, so they must be dumb enough to trust a cute little rubber door seal over gravity.)
Finally, say what you want about KFC, but sometimes I just get a craving for it - it's damned good (except when you go to a sucky franchise whose left it under the heat lamps too long, in which case it's only slightly better than cafeteria food). KFC, aside from their proprietary seasonings,
Far more likely, it looks to me, is that continually decreasing confidence in the electoral system will lead to progressive alienation between the sitting government and other institutions, in turn leading to a military coup d'etat sometime in the next few decades...
No way. Americans are the epitome of the Do-It-Yourselfer. Home Depots here in Canada? A few wrenches, one stick welder... oh, and towels in the kitchens and bathrooms department. Home Depots anywhere I've been in the USA? Ten different kinds of MIG welder, flare nut wrenches both Metric and SAE... and I didn't see any towels.
Wal*Mart Canada: oil change tools and supplies for cars, maybe a few car covers. Wal*Mart in Niagara Falls NY: air conditioning manifold and vacuum pump with little cylinders of R-134a so you can repair your own air conditioning system.
Sears Canada: small assortment of Craftsman tools. Sears USA: Sears Craftsman NASCAR team.
My experience was that European hardware stores are even more pathetic than Canadian stores. As a European-born Canadian do-it-yourselfer, I relate very well to Americans because I understand them on an individual level.
American citizens are self-reliant, individualistic do-it-yourselfers; they'll take care of the problems with the government when they're sufficiently convinced there actually *is* a problem.
And I pity any government in the peoples' way, what with all the power tools they have.
No Asian disasters?
All I see around here is dumbasses with too much money buying front-load LG and Samsung washing machines. There's your disaster.
Oh yeah, but we have to remember to blame the Europeans for the original idiocy behind the concept.
I believe in the genocide of front-load washing machine believers.
The Toronto Skydome beat them by 8 years.
And Montreal's Olympic Stadium by at least 5 more years. But the important point (as a former SkyDome employee) is that SkyDome was the first retractable roof stadium *which actually worked*.
It would be surrounded by 48 granite or concrete markers, 32 outside the berm and 16 inside, each 25 feet high and weighing 105 tons,
Or here's another thought: just bury it.
Bury it in a pluton of ancient rock, several hundred meters down, as most current proposals suggest. When the site is filled, backfill it with concrete from the top to the bottom of the shaft.
Any society with sufficient resources (technology, tools, time) to cut through that to see what we buried will also undoubtedly have an archaeological record of us, and will probably also have at least a very rudimentary understanding of nuclear physics. (Remember we might regress - think HG Wells.)
In short, they're going to see that we went to a hell of a lot of trouble to dispose of something. That should be enough warning.
Of course, you could also arrange dots into the periodic table. Again, any society capable of getting there will also have discovered the periodicity of chemistry, even if they don't understand our numbers or element names. A few arrows pointing at the swarm of dots representing the constituents of the waste ought to be enough. Pour slabs of something with a table of dots into the concrete at ten foot increments.
All the stuff about communicating with them further than that is B.S. - never ask a humanities major a question when the audience is the scientists of the future - all you need to use is simple science. That's like asking a roofer to perform a heart transplant.