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User: ralphsiegler

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  1. Re:Still Valid on Schiller Says Apple Is the Last PC Maker From the Mac Era, Forgets About HP · · Score: 1

    not valid at all, the claim was about "computer systems" not PC HP huge in mid range systems from early 70s onward

  2. Re:HP isn't a computer company. on Schiller Says Apple Is the Last PC Maker From the Mac Era, Forgets About HP · · Score: 1

    Everyone here is so desktop-computer focused. HP indeed has a long tradition as a computer company. In 1972 they introduced the HP 3000 minicomputer line, which had a 31 year run until 2003. Its MPE operating system is time sharing. These machines are still running at manufacturing plants, office management companies, and local insurance companies. In 2012 Stromas made an emulator for x86, and HP sells an "HPA/3000" license to run MPE on it.

  3. Re:Valve Radio on Ask Slashdot: Educating Kids About Older Technologies? · · Score: 1

    there's only one reason left to use those silly things, and that's just because a business is still using another unnecessary obsolete technology when superior alternative has been around for decades now.

    I haven't needed a typewriter at work since circa 1990. a friend and I came up with templates for all the needed forms on the word processor wares so the clack-clacking of the typewriter we used to use in our department was never heard from again.

    another pointless office machine that soon needs to die off is the facsimile machine

  4. Re:"Historical"? on Ask Slashdot: Educating Kids About Older Technologies? · · Score: 1

    "sane" has no meaning, that's just opinion. 1.5 million US citizens commute to work ea on a train and the fact is USA is expanding that. Ridership increasing year by year where I live, I've joined the party and been riding an electric train to work for 18 months now....

  5. Re:Not really necessary... on Ask Slashdot: Educating Kids About Older Technologies? · · Score: 1

    but welding, soldering, brazing, those are still current skills used in current technology. just as mixing and pouring concrete it's still how many things are made.

  6. Re:Valve Radio on Ask Slashdot: Educating Kids About Older Technologies? · · Score: 1

    a machine to print on paper by mechanically striking metal blocks on paper through ribbon is relevant? no, it is not. typewriter has no relevance, persistence of most its key layout (which actually has been altered on electronic keyboards) doesn't imply typewriter as device is relevant any more

  7. Re: Unnecessary on Ask Slashdot: Educating Kids About Older Technologies? · · Score: 1

    nonsense. hunting uses very little ammo, decades of supply can fit in a box in a closet. no need to smelt iron, plenty of otherwise useless iron (and many other metal) things will by lying around after infrastructure collapse. somehow humans managed the growing of food without technology more complicated than tool to dig, for millenia. I can do it, have done it.

  8. not necessary on Ask Slashdot: Educating Kids About Older Technologies? · · Score: 1

    they can see obsolete things at museums, like the cylindrical wax records I saw and and heard demonstrated. Any basic scientific principles can be taught with current technology, no need to forage for old junk or simulate such. Horse carriages and buggy whips, scanning CRT with one color of luminecent coating, telegraph key sending dots and dashes? They're not coming back, even were global economy to collapse for decades we'd not go back, we'd know better ways once recovery was possible.

  9. Re:Serious Questions about OpenBSD infrastructure on Romanian Bitcoin Entrepreneur Steps In To Pay OpenBSD Shortfall · · Score: 1

    USA would be worst place possible for hosting project with focus of openbsd, that's a country that claimed encryption was a munition in the past, and still restricts it now. Modernizing? some platforms don't have any current system to modernize to, it's a question of getting used systems. the openbsd project does have a list of desired donation equipment: http://www.openbsd.org/want.ht...

  10. Re:Serious Questions about OpenBSD infrastructure on Romanian Bitcoin Entrepreneur Steps In To Pay OpenBSD Shortfall · · Score: 1

    Two of openbsd newer supported architectures are octeon MIPS64 and beagle ARMV7.

    Don't know why you seem to imply embedded space is different than openbsd space. You do realize openbsd is used in the embedded space, even in some commercial elevator controllers (and plenty of other embedded system)? Some of their ports are for embedded devices

    Still plenty of 64 bit sparc around, used for more than Oracle if we're just talking major uses. MRP, EPR, statistics packages, project management/scheduling, engineering, insurance all still markets for that iron. note #4 supercomputer in the world is sparc based. so still around and still relevant for things other than oracle. As for what openbsd will support, all the way up to Fujitsu Sparc64-VII with the 64 bit port.

    Itanium not my favorite chip, but sales of servers based on it still over 4 billion USD a year. FreeBSD, Linux support some of those and NetBSD has port in the works. not an OpenBSD port but you seemed to think it was "dead". not yet, and intel will make new models until 2020 at least as per contract.

    sure it's the developers hobby, but their wares are everywhere, from elevator controllers to routers to printers to servers.

  11. Re:Let it die on Romanian Bitcoin Entrepreneur Steps In To Pay OpenBSD Shortfall · · Score: 1

    Are you sure it's not relevant to you? Softwares from the OpenBSD project are in commercial controllers and appliances, in Linux distributions, in Mac OSX....

  12. Re:Serious Questions about OpenBSD infrastructure on Romanian Bitcoin Entrepreneur Steps In To Pay OpenBSD Shortfall · · Score: 1

    Similarly, 1 little endian - x64 - and 1 big endian - say current SPARC - should be adequate No, there are also alignment issue variations, not just endian ones. Current Sparc is bi-endian, by the way. You aren't into OS development or systems programming, I take it.

  13. Re: Serious Questions about OpenBSD infrastructure on Romanian Bitcoin Entrepreneur Steps In To Pay OpenBSD Shortfall · · Score: 1

    They have found emulators aren't perfect. They'd be in the emulator debugging business. And the devs who do alternative architecture for openbsd are familiar with various pipular emulators as those of us who follow obsd newsgroups know. Those project machines get heavy use for test/build