Not just offtopic, but twice offtopic with an overrated thrown in for good measure. Haters. Two hundred more of those and I won't be able to post at 2. Ruh roh.
Almost every post I've had in the past 4 months modded +3 or better has had an Overrated mod tacked on. It's almost always a funny post that some humorless prick has decided was not funny even though three other people had found it funny enough to spend a point on.
Note to every other slashdotter: If you're modding more than one post down a month, you're probably an asshole. I can't remember the last time I modded down.
In 1996 and 97, I used a Tandy 102 portable to record assignments and test dates. A room full of computer engineering students go ape-shit when you pull that out. It's not that big (the size of a thin textbook) and runs on 4 AA batteries for a month. I heard that much of the software was written by Bill Gates.
I have several pieces of old hardware. I have a KayPro that looks like the giant cousin of that 64 Executive. If you want to find old hardware, ebay (if you have the cash) and Goodwill (if you have the time) are the best places.
"Sex doesn't make you stupid, teenagers with active sex lives get lower grades for some other reason."
Are you joking? That's obvious. Once you're getting laid, your math grade gets a LOT less important to you. I got a car and lost my virginity 4 weeks apart half way through my Junior year of high school. I went from an A- student to a C+ student almost overnight and don't regret any of it.
And your typical college student surely has $1500 to toss around on a new computer.
**from the twisted dreams of MS's marketing dept** Salesguy: And it's a lot like your current computer, but it does less and costs more. College kid: And it's new and hip, right? Salesguy: Absolutely. College kid: Do you take cash? *************
If I had ever had $1500 at one time while I was at college, I would have changed it into 20's and rolled around in it naked.
I've seen on the set of plenty of local news programs. They're almost always wearing jeans and sneakers. I have seen a guy walk in front of me wearing a very nice suit jacket and little goofy tennis shorts. It's really hard not to laugh.
So in your pure free market economy, roads pave themselves and schools magically appear. That's pretty cool.
Most countries in Europe have much higher tax rates than the US. They don't seem to be collapsing.
-B
Re:Licensing: licensed VHS to pretty much anyone
on
Sony Kills Betamax
·
· Score: 2
I was just about to refute the parent poster's quote of "Almost no one was buying movies back then" but you beat me to it. Almost no one was buying Hollywood movies. Given the choice between watching Superman II or Tron on a 17" screen with crappy sound, spending a few bucks going to the movie theater is an easy choice.
But if you want to watch porno, your choices were not as appealing. You could drive to a nasty neighborhood XXX theater or try to get a hold of 16mm film and a projector. With VCRs you could mail order a tape that you could watch in your own home. That's a killer app.
Gatorade. It's the best. We all love caffine, but it's a stimulant. Stimulants are drugs that crank up our bodies systems to run faster. Think overclocking. You're not giving your body fuel, just instructions to keep going past normal tollerances. Gatorade is just glucose and electrolytes. Glucose is actual fuel for your body. It's not the best fuel, but it's simple and your body can use it right away. I can chug a 20 oz Gatorade and feel great for a long while. No ups and downs like when I drank a ton of Dew.
Not only can it wake you up and keep you awake, but it also prevents and cures hangovers. It's like a sugary liquid Swiss Army knife.
I don't even like to rent DVDs, much less buy ones that have been through a whole life cycle. I don't know about you folks up north, but down here, people think a rental contract is also a contract to beat the shit out of something until it's in a condition only slightly better than what will get us in trouble. I havn't rented more than a couple cars, but I've seen people to terrible terrible things to rental cars. Usually not malicious stuff, because that could get you in trouble. I've also watched people piss in potted plants in hotel rooms.
I'm just shitty because one of the first DVDs I rented was American History X, and it skipped some important scenes because of scratches.
Rather than paying 10+ bucks for a used DVD, I actually buy a lot of $4-$8 used VHS tapes from Blockbuster and smaller video stores. If you go to the little stores, they don't have room to display old movies that they need to get rid of. You can get an armload of good older movies for a steal.
You don't really need super high quality video to enjoy films like Big Lebowski or Half Baked.
It's like rookie hazing here on Slashdot. If you're too dumb to figure out that "goatse.cx" is probably not a family friendly site, you deserve to see it.
They spent 2.5 BILLION bucks on this fab and the only thing they could think of naming it was "Building 323". That's so weak. How about SupaFab? Fab:TNG? Absolutely Fab-ulous? MegaFab2k2? It's not like this is a super secret government base like Area 51. Come on IBM, have some flair.
We just have to be careful that the computer knows the difference between the game simulation and the real weapons. We should start it off slow with an easy game like tic-tac-toe. We should also make sure that the launch codes can be hacked one character at a time should the computer decide to take control.
"Personally, I hope that AT&T et all take them on and give them what for."
I'm guessing that AT&T and friends are going to fight this tooth and nail. It's in their financial interests to do so. Once they become responsible for blocking every single site with illegal IP content, they're screwed. They would need a whole new department just to deal with that, and they're struggling for cash as it is. I thought that "common carrier" rulings already laid this out very clearly that if you run a communications network (at the time phone companies) that you were completely not responsible for people using that network for illegal activities.
I also liked this quote: "The suit says the plaintiffs have not been able to determine who owns the Web site."
It's also important to remember that a vast majority of kidnappings and sexual abuse are committed by family members, not strangers. Those just don't make for good headlines or movies of the week.
I've seen those crawlers and they make a commercial jet look like a child's toy. The forces involved dwarf anything a plane has to deal with. I would be willing to bet that they were never designed to much outlive the Appolo program and the fact that they're still in use is a tribute to the brilliant engineers involved.
Now that I think about it, I wish I could see the look on the engineers' faces when someone told them that they had to design a vehicle to transport the Saturn V...5 degrees uphill.
I'm going to give this story a try pretty soon here:
"My mom married a rich doctor with family money right out of college and he gave her a big fat rock but he started fucking one of his nurses within a year so she dumped him and started dating my dad and they traded it in for an even bigger rock but then they got divorced after 20 years but they still talk sometimes so it's not like they hate each other and it's still a great looking diamond and I would be honored if you would take it and not make me broke."
Actually, you could tell most girls "I stole this off a dead body", then whip out a 1.3 carat brilliant cut flawless and get a "yes".
I happen to have found one of the rare awesome girls that thinks spending thousands on a ring instead of a down payment on a house is stupid.
So you're saying that a computer programmer has poor social skills and doesn't get along well with people who aren't as smart as he is? I'm shocked...SHOCKED I tell you.
He's not running for president or trying to get elected prom king. His life goal is to produce the best computer games in the world. He's been living up to that goal remarkably well for the past 12 years.
Carmack has a special place in my heart because being 24, I have quite litteraly grown up playing id games.
I didn't say that Gates or Clinton was trustworthy in the slightest. I said that Gates is way too smart to say something as stupid as "X ammount of memory is good enough forever". And the Clinton thing was an aside mentioning that he's a hell of a lot smarter than most people think. Arkansas accents can make anyone seem simple. And in a choice between an untrustworthy Rhodes Scholar born in poverty and an untrustworthy C student who learned how to milk his last name in grade school, I'll choose the former.
From urbanlegends.com attributed to NY Times Syndicate
QUESTION: I read in a newspaper that in 1981 you said, ``640K of memory should be enough for anybody.'' What did you mean when you said this?
ANSWER: I've said some stupid things and some wrong things, but not that. No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time.
The need for memory increases as computers get more potent and software gets more powerful. In fact, every couple of years the amount of memory address space needed to run whatever software is mainstream at the time just about doubles. This is well-known.
When IBM introduced its PC in 1981, many people attacked Microsoft for its role. These critics said that 8-bit computers, which had 64K of address space, would last forever. They said we were wastefully throwing out great 8-bit programming by moving the world toward 16-bit computers.
We at Microsoft disagreed. We knew that even 16-bit computers, which had 640K of available address space, would be adequate for only four or five years. (The IBM PC had 1 megabyte of logical address space. But 384K of this was assigned to special purposes, leaving 640K of memory available. That's where the now-infamous ``640K barrier'' came from.)
A few years later, Microsoft was a big fan of Intel's 386 microprocessor chip, which gave computers a 32-bit address space.
Modern operating systems can now take advantage of that seemingly vast potential memory. But even 32 bits of address space won't prove adequate as time goes on.
Meanwhile, I keep bumping into that silly quotation attributed to me that says 640K of memory is enough. There's never a citation; the quotation just floats like a rumor, repeated again and again.
-----end paste------
People say a lot of things about Bill Gates around here, but I can't remember anyone accusing him of being stupid. Many things I have read about people meeting him mention that you get a feeling that he's the smartest person you have ever met (people said the same thing about Clinton). As he says in the quote, anyone who works with a computer would never ever say that X ammount of memory will be good enough forever. It just doesn't make sense. A much better quote that I believe is real is IBM president Thomas J. Watson's "I think there's a world market for about five computers."
BTW: I can't PROVE that Gates never said the 640k quote. Why don't you show me the original citation that Bill says doesn't exist.
I know this is a huge reply to a stupid post, but it bugs me every time someone quotes the 640k comment as gospel.
-B
Re:People need to read the FAQ...
on
Going Up?
·
· Score: 2
And the oil industry is already quite experienced at building gigantic platforms and getting them out into the middle of the ocean. If those engineers have not been involved in these discussions, they should be.
Slashdot Mirror
Not just offtopic, but twice offtopic with an overrated thrown in for good measure. Haters. Two hundred more of those and I won't be able to post at 2. Ruh roh.
-B
Almost every post I've had in the past 4 months modded +3 or better has had an Overrated mod tacked on. It's almost always a funny post that some humorless prick has decided was not funny even though three other people had found it funny enough to spend a point on.
Note to every other slashdotter: If you're modding more than one post down a month, you're probably an asshole. I can't remember the last time I modded down.
-B
In 1996 and 97, I used a Tandy 102 portable to record assignments and test dates. A room full of computer engineering students go ape-shit when you pull that out. It's not that big (the size of a thin textbook) and runs on 4 AA batteries for a month. I heard that much of the software was written by Bill Gates.
I have several pieces of old hardware. I have a KayPro that looks like the giant cousin of that 64 Executive. If you want to find old hardware, ebay (if you have the cash) and Goodwill (if you have the time) are the best places.
-B
I heard priceline.com settled out of court for a Far Side desk calender and a nice pen.
-B
"Sex doesn't make you stupid, teenagers with active sex lives get lower grades for some other reason."
Are you joking? That's obvious. Once you're getting laid, your math grade gets a LOT less important to you. I got a car and lost my virginity 4 weeks apart half way through my Junior year of high school. I went from an A- student to a C+ student almost overnight and don't regret any of it.
-B
And your typical college student surely has $1500 to toss around on a new computer.
**from the twisted dreams of MS's marketing dept**
Salesguy: And it's a lot like your current computer, but it does less and costs more.
College kid: And it's new and hip, right?
Salesguy: Absolutely.
College kid: Do you take cash?
*************
If I had ever had $1500 at one time while I was at college, I would have changed it into 20's and rolled around in it naked.
-B
I've seen on the set of plenty of local news programs. They're almost always wearing jeans and sneakers. I have seen a guy walk in front of me wearing a very nice suit jacket and little goofy tennis shorts. It's really hard not to laugh.
"So how long will it take to come up with "unordinary prodedures"."
You might have to wait all the way until tomorrow.
So in your pure free market economy, roads pave themselves and schools magically appear. That's pretty cool.
Most countries in Europe have much higher tax rates than the US. They don't seem to be collapsing.
-B
I was just about to refute the parent poster's quote of "Almost no one was buying movies back then" but you beat me to it. Almost no one was buying Hollywood movies. Given the choice between watching Superman II or Tron on a 17" screen with crappy sound, spending a few bucks going to the movie theater is an easy choice.
But if you want to watch porno, your choices were not as appealing. You could drive to a nasty neighborhood XXX theater or try to get a hold of 16mm film and a projector. With VCRs you could mail order a tape that you could watch in your own home. That's a killer app.
Gatorade. It's the best. We all love caffine, but it's a stimulant. Stimulants are drugs that crank up our bodies systems to run faster. Think overclocking. You're not giving your body fuel, just instructions to keep going past normal tollerances. Gatorade is just glucose and electrolytes. Glucose is actual fuel for your body. It's not the best fuel, but it's simple and your body can use it right away. I can chug a 20 oz Gatorade and feel great for a long while. No ups and downs like when I drank a ton of Dew.
Not only can it wake you up and keep you awake, but it also prevents and cures hangovers. It's like a sugary liquid Swiss Army knife.
I don't even like to rent DVDs, much less buy ones that have been through a whole life cycle. I don't know about you folks up north, but down here, people think a rental contract is also a contract to beat the shit out of something until it's in a condition only slightly better than what will get us in trouble. I havn't rented more than a couple cars, but I've seen people to terrible terrible things to rental cars. Usually not malicious stuff, because that could get you in trouble. I've also watched people piss in potted plants in hotel rooms.
I'm just shitty because one of the first DVDs I rented was American History X, and it skipped some important scenes because of scratches.
Rather than paying 10+ bucks for a used DVD, I actually buy a lot of $4-$8 used VHS tapes from Blockbuster and smaller video stores. If you go to the little stores, they don't have room to display old movies that they need to get rid of. You can get an armload of good older movies for a steal.
You don't really need super high quality video to enjoy films like Big Lebowski or Half Baked.
It's like rookie hazing here on Slashdot. If you're too dumb to figure out that "goatse.cx" is probably not a family friendly site, you deserve to see it.
On topic AND funny. Someone didn't see the movie that should be required viewing for all Slashdotters.
-B
They spent 2.5 BILLION bucks on this fab and the only thing they could think of naming it was "Building 323". That's so weak. How about SupaFab? Fab:TNG? Absolutely Fab-ulous? MegaFab2k2? It's not like this is a super secret government base like Area 51. Come on IBM, have some flair.
-B
We just have to be careful that the computer knows the difference between the game simulation and the real weapons. We should start it off slow with an easy game like tic-tac-toe. We should also make sure that the launch codes can be hacked one character at a time should the computer decide to take control.
-B
"Personally, I hope that AT&T et all take them on and give them what for."
I'm guessing that AT&T and friends are going to fight this tooth and nail. It's in their financial interests to do so. Once they become responsible for blocking every single site with illegal IP content, they're screwed. They would need a whole new department just to deal with that, and they're struggling for cash as it is. I thought that "common carrier" rulings already laid this out very clearly that if you run a communications network (at the time phone companies) that you were completely not responsible for people using that network for illegal activities.
I also liked this quote: "The suit says the plaintiffs have not been able to determine who owns the Web site."
Sue first, ask questions later.
-B
It's also important to remember that a vast majority of kidnappings and sexual abuse are committed by family members, not strangers. Those just don't make for good headlines or movies of the week.
-B
I've seen those crawlers and they make a commercial jet look like a child's toy. The forces involved dwarf anything a plane has to deal with. I would be willing to bet that they were never designed to much outlive the Appolo program and the fact that they're still in use is a tribute to the brilliant engineers involved.
Now that I think about it, I wish I could see the look on the engineers' faces when someone told them that they had to design a vehicle to transport the Saturn V...5 degrees uphill.
-B
I'm going to give this story a try pretty soon here:
"My mom married a rich doctor with family money right out of college and he gave her a big fat rock but he started fucking one of his nurses within a year so she dumped him and started dating my dad and they traded it in for an even bigger rock but then they got divorced after 20 years but they still talk sometimes so it's not like they hate each other and it's still a great looking diamond and I would be honored if you would take it and not make me broke."
Actually, you could tell most girls "I stole this off a dead body", then whip out a 1.3 carat brilliant cut flawless and get a "yes".
I happen to have found one of the rare awesome girls that thinks spending thousands on a ring instead of a down payment on a house is stupid.
-B
So you're saying that a computer programmer has poor social skills and doesn't get along well with people who aren't as smart as he is? I'm shocked...SHOCKED I tell you.
He's not running for president or trying to get elected prom king. His life goal is to produce the best computer games in the world. He's been living up to that goal remarkably well for the past 12 years.
Carmack has a special place in my heart because being 24, I have quite litteraly grown up playing id games.
-B
I didn't say that Gates or Clinton was trustworthy in the slightest. I said that Gates is way too smart to say something as stupid as "X ammount of memory is good enough forever". And the Clinton thing was an aside mentioning that he's a hell of a lot smarter than most people think. Arkansas accents can make anyone seem simple. And in a choice between an untrustworthy Rhodes Scholar born in poverty and an untrustworthy C student who learned how to milk his last name in grade school, I'll choose the former.
-B
OS/2 WAS the operating system of the future. It was killed by marketing and Windows lock-in, not because it was inferior technology.
If the 640k quote is real then why isn't video or the original article "all over the internet"?
-B
From urbanlegends.com
attributed to NY Times Syndicate
QUESTION: I read in a newspaper that in 1981 you said, ``640K of memory should be enough for anybody.'' What did you mean when you said this?
ANSWER: I've said some stupid things and some wrong things, but not that. No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time.
The need for memory increases as computers get more potent and software gets more powerful. In fact, every couple of years the amount of memory address space needed to run whatever software is mainstream at the time just about doubles. This is well-known.
When IBM introduced its PC in 1981, many people attacked Microsoft for its role. These critics said that 8-bit computers, which had 64K of address space, would last forever. They said we were wastefully throwing out great 8-bit programming by moving the world toward 16-bit computers.
We at Microsoft disagreed. We knew that even 16-bit computers, which had 640K of available address space, would be adequate for only four or five years. (The IBM PC had 1 megabyte of logical address space. But 384K of this was assigned to special purposes, leaving 640K of memory available. That's where the now-infamous ``640K barrier'' came from.)
A few years later, Microsoft was a big fan of Intel's 386 microprocessor chip, which gave computers a 32-bit address space.
Modern operating systems can now take advantage of that seemingly vast potential memory. But even 32 bits of address space won't prove adequate as time goes on.
Meanwhile, I keep bumping into that silly quotation attributed to me that says 640K of memory is enough. There's never a citation; the quotation just floats like a rumor, repeated again and again.
-----end paste------
People say a lot of things about Bill Gates around here, but I can't remember anyone accusing him of being stupid. Many things I have read about people meeting him mention that you get a feeling that he's the smartest person you have ever met (people said the same thing about Clinton). As he says in the quote, anyone who works with a computer would never ever say that X ammount of memory will be good enough forever. It just doesn't make sense. A much better quote that I believe is real is IBM president Thomas J. Watson's "I think there's a world market for about five computers."
BTW: I can't PROVE that Gates never said the 640k quote. Why don't you show me the original citation that Bill says doesn't exist.
I know this is a huge reply to a stupid post, but it bugs me every time someone quotes the 640k comment as gospel.
-B
And the oil industry is already quite experienced at building gigantic platforms and getting them out into the middle of the ocean. If those engineers have not been involved in these discussions, they should be.
-B