"If you have a problem with a neighber being loud, do you call some big guy with a bat ?"
Unfortunately, the answer is usually "yes".
Usually, you don't know anything about the neighbor, their name, where they work, nothing. And it's not a bat, it's a gun. And they arrive in groups of two or four.
That is how "neighbors" generally handle it when the people next door get too loud.
"...real, professional businesspeople don't have a violent (and childish) aversion to lawyers..."
They also don't fold their hands and stop doing business just because they got a letter from a lawyer! When you get a letter from a court saying there is a hearing scheduled for a restraining order, you should be adjusting your schedule in order to be there with or without your own lawyer, but definitely with your paperwork in order, and hopefully with a good understanding of the law in question -- it's not THAT HARD!
The idea that this part of the process will bankrupt you is pretty pervasive, but it does not cost that much to defend yourself in court; especially in these civil cases where the plaintiff really doesn't have a solid case.
If a judge didn't sign the C&D letter, you don't have to do a damn thing yet. You *should* contact a lawyer, preferably one you already have a relationship with. You should also make certain that you can put your hand on every document that might be pertinent to the case, and can load them in a file box for your day in court. Which won't ever come, or might be 9 months in the future.
You show up to every hearing. You make sure there is a hearing on EVERY question, no summary judgements!
In Texas, you can have a hearing on ANYTHING, and for any hearing you can have a JURY. Always take advantage of that. The plaintiff will back off when they realize that every order is going to involve a full day with a jury...
"Yeah, and it's the reliance on the calculator that has caused many of our teachers to be unable to do multi-digit addition in their heads."
And physics majors can't do math involving exponents or logarithms in their heads, or visualize a curve numerically (today, they tend to think in terms of a graph).
Back in the "slide rule days" which I remember clearly, it was much more common to think in terms of log, because that's what the slide rule represents. When you do a slide rule operation, you see the transition of intermediate values, and this is something that you miss with a calculator. Not that I'm saying a slide rule is better, just that it's representation educates you differently. I would not be surprised to learn that there are some calculations that can be performed faster on a slide rule than on a calculator, because of the time spent pressing the keys.
>Too bad that TRS-80 dungeon game that tried to >be realtime but couldn't keep up with my typing >as a 10 year old isn't on the list.
That game was awesome. I think you didn't realize that it was MEANT not to "keep up with your typing" in order to simulate your character's ability, speed, endurance, etc.
OTOH, I do think the choice of keystrokes was in part due to the rollover characteristics of the coco keyboard.
"There is no reason why 2600 Space Invaders couldn't have been more accurate..."
There was a reason, and I knew it at the time: Arcades were making more money than home games. Even though "they" could have made the home games as good as the arcade version, they weren't inclined to do so. They were making large fortunes, a quarter (or two) at a time.
So today every mall has an arcade and every pizza shop has a few games, but in the early 80's the arcades were like pubs during prohibition, or dance halls in the first days of disco, something like that. They were a big deal, but the phenomenon just kind-of ended.
"What in the hell are you talking about, exactly?"
Console mode. Linux allows you to put consoles on the SVGA framebuffer device. I think these consoles are nice. The best possible interface for me. The hardware can do it. Windows, apparently, cannot.
This is among the very few things that I can do in Linux that I cannot do in Windows. I would LIKE to have it in Windows. But I can't. So I run linux.
They make horrible coasters. Condensation collects on the bottom of a CD, liquid goes right through the hole, and you end up with a worse situation than you would just with the cup on the bare wood.
They make very dangerous Frisbees (TM). They have a bad uncontrollable flight, and they tend to shatter.
I'm a user of many systems, and I refuse to get into the holy war territory.
However, there is one thing that bugs me, that I can do with Linux, but not with Windows.
I would like the Framebuffer console; let's say, the 160x64 console, and let's say, maybe 5 or 8 virtual consoles, maybe running screen with cygwin bash. This is my standard terminal, it is my *favorite* video mode among all the options available to me, and it appears to be altogether IMPOSSIBLE in windows.
Don't talk to me about fonts and terminal windows in win2k; it is not the same. You can get some nice things there, but, I cannot get the equivalent of the linux console. And I really want this.
It doesn't have to be the framebuffer device, per se, but it definitely needs the same font options, and absolutely needs to equal or exceed the speed of the native console. NO WIN2K TERMINAL COMES CLOSE to the speed of the linux console.
This is the first item on the list of things that keeps me running linux on my main computer, as a matter of fact. It's my first requirement!
The big difference to me appears to be the fact that any business venture has "failure" explicitly available as an option. (If the head of a business says "Failure is not an option", it's just words; it's still an option).
"A government" might also have this luxury, but if it's stated so, it's not the US government.
Run the government like a business, indeed. We can all see where that leads.
>There is no law that states: "You must treat >customer data with appropriate care." Punishment >is the result of a specific law being broken, >not some romantic H4X0R ideal.
Medical records, in particular, DO have laws respecting their confidentiality.
What's more, there is hopefully, specific language in the contract (this is a defense contractor we're talking about here!) that would be intended to ensure security.
The result of this will probably be to make it even harder for a regular geek to get work in healthcare companies which deal with military accounts... which were most of my lukewarm prospects.
It's so hard to communicate to people what's good about Nethack's gameplay. Even if they don't just sneer at the first impression, it's really, really hard to explain to someone who isn't interested. Sometimes you can whip out the FAQ's (I have notes filling a 3" binder and of course lots online), and they see the complexity belies the interface, and they're hooked. But there are damned few games that will hit this sweet spot for me; even other roguelikes fail to do it.
I'm no EQ player, but I could possibly get into something in that vein where the interface didn't get in the way of the game.
It's the simplicity of the interface that gives a game like nethack it's immersion -- your imagination is not told how to render what you're seeing. If left to my own imagination, my combat scenes are far more disturbing than any game publisher is going to ever put into pixels.
Off topic of games, but on imagination: I worry about Return of the King: do you think it will open with Mordor Orcs lobbing severed heads over the walls at Lord Denethor? I'm fairly certain that the way I imagine those scenes, and the way The Author describes them, are far too bloody even for Hollywood, or Kiwiwood, or whatever.
"I've seen many of my otherwise perfectly healthy and competent fellow classmates spend hours and hours gunning each other down in Counterstrike, and putting off important essays until 5am, when they're due in a few hours. "
That phenomenon predates video games; there's nothing really new here.
"I don't know how many times I use root privs during the day."
On a workstation, that doesn't really matter.
On a production system facing customers, that number should be Zero. Or at least, this something you SHOULD know.
If you worked for me, and you said "I don't know how many times I used root", I would tell you, remind you about the policy, and re-educate you on the use of sudo.
Well, you can't do it from thousands of miles away with a pocket knife. But, what the OP meant by "computer crime" was probably more along the lines of "listening to music."
"Is an $80,000 Mercedes 4 times better than $20,000 KIA. "
Actually, it is that much better.
Yes, it is.
Ever drive a Ferrari? It does not take long behind the wheel of a car like that to realize there *is* a lot of quality in the design and construction.
Now, the people who buy these things obviously buy them *BECAUSE* they are expensive status symbols. BUT, in the case of your high-end Mercedes, it's also true that they became expensive status symbols because of the quality. And quality, they do got. You can do things in your Mercedes that'll make that Kia flip right over. And, there's a real good chance that Mercedes will still be on the road in 20 years, with just minimal care and maintenance. The KIA will be a cube of scrap; God help the 3rd owner of one of those things.
There have always been stupid people though. And there *is* a market for high-end audio today, perhaps even more so than in "the 70's", which I remember very clearly; I was a record collector in those days!
The thing is, the consumer does make a fairly safe bet -- at a certain price level, the difference usually IS features. We have all these little cheesy digital playback devices, nothing in the consumer arena that records worth a damn (maybe some of the video stuff can record decent audio? nah.) We reached an equilibrium for the consumer's ear as 16 bit audio became the norm. Hell, remember when talking toys had little phonographs in them? Now those things have a 16 bit DAC.
Consumers didn't care back then either. They wanted whatever was cheaper. Remeber credenza stereos? People selected those for their wood grains, not their quality. (Some of those things were kickass though).
My own music, that I write and record, so, going down to the store to replace it isn't exactly an option. It's also on DAT, and on CD audio, so you could say I have a backup, but that's not really true -- the DAT is the source material, and a CD would represents one view of some of the data.
Am I going to buy a $65,000 SAN tape library machine, just because I'm getting into volume? (No.) Would I like an inexpensive solution that is less cumbersome than CDR? (Yes.)
"I could never understand why zip drives became so popular when the disks cost a small fortune"
At first, we thought we finally were seeing a replacement for the floppy; something fast enough, with a decent amount of storage. It would have been great, provided that the media had also replaced the floppy disk in terms of price. I still think a fast, cheap, 10meg floppy would have been nice. Most of the reasons I wanted that are taken care of nowadays by the fact that "everybody" has the ability to get whatever file via http, so, the pattern of handing a floppy to someone is a bit antiquated. Still, I'd never have given a $15.00 zip disk to someone with the abandon that I would a CDR. And now I can get CDR's that will fit in my shirt pocket, I can make them bootable, so the floppy is just about obsolete:-)
After a year or two, we needed to start seeing ZIP drives from all the drive vendors, and, we needed to be able to buy the media for, say, $1.00 a piece in bulk. Neither of these happened; Iomega's drives were often defective, and the price, convenience, and performance did not add up. We're still using floppies. Some people use CDRW. Most "consumers" don't "backup" their systems. When they have a crash, that's when they get their new systems. Clean slate; usually some tears shed and bitching and moaning about "important" data, but, it's really the exception when a home computer user has data on their disk that, if they lost it, they go bankrupt or go to jail. At worst, it's inconvenient. And the ones who DO have important data tend to be aware of the risks, and tend to have a hardcopy backup.
I find the more important a document or record is, the more likely it will fit on a floppy disk and on paper in a legal-size file folder.
As for tapes, they still fill a need in the office/datacenter.
This sort of thing: http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/storage works/es l9595sl/description.html#qs
I can think of several reasons why an accountant would want to calculate payroll based on prior-year tax tables! I would go as far as to say it should be a REQUIRED capability!
I certainly want the ability to recalculate my personal tax returns for prior years. If a business can't use the software to validate past data, that's a bug, plain and simple.
You don't understand. You have what you perceive to be a nice living.
You seem not to comprehend just how much BETTER it is for the 12 guys who own everything. Compared to THEM, we're goats.
You have some material possessions, and a rough idea where your next meal is coming from. I'm 24 paychecks away from homelessness, myself.
The point is that you, with your income and posessions, are much, much closer to the guy on the corner with liver cancer begging for pennies to buy malt liquor, than you are to the 10%'er.
I see you have no problem with that, but, you missed my point.
>What does "can be hosted (...) without our >authorization" mean? Is it restricted, or is it >not?
I'm guessing it means they can put you on "server69" without asking you.
They'll have a net segment and a server rack for all the high bandwidth crap, and make you compete with all the other warez/pron sites for bandwidth, processor, ram, and disk, instead of impacting the rest of the world.
Texas had more than 100 earthquakes since 1847. The Alpine quake of '95 (a 5.8!) did some real damage. A 4.2 in '93 could have been deadly, had it been just a few miles closer to San Antonio.
"The Big One" for Texas would have to be a 9 on the New Madrid fault, but that could level Dallas.
So Quakes aren't at anything like the same level of risk as, say, the Bay Area or Pasadena or Tokyo.
The thing to be afraid of in Texas is a Tornado.
Among all the natural forces available, I'd have to say there's NOTHING scarier than ground zero of a tornado. If you haven't experienced this, believe me, you don't want to.
Seems people see Moore's law, etc., and expect continued development. I see a plateau, where human proportions have brought us to a point where a bit of stagnation will be ok.
For faster stuff and bigger storage, we are getting into the next level of application, mostly Entertainment.
But even the typical consumer pc has gotten to the point where, the human's attention span exceeds the wait for any operation they use the machine for, where the storage is enough for anything they're likely to create (again, let's don't worry about the next level -- video -- because that falls into Entertainment).
For all the stuff that we really *need* computers for (replace the typewriter, the check register, and the cookbook), the 1990 PC fell short of the needed capacity to meet the human proportions: It lacked the storage capacity to comfortably store everything a user would write, or a really huge cookbook; operations would take seconds or minutes to complete, etc.)
Today we've converged at a point where human proportions allow a plateau. Now, we begin a new cycle where the application is Entertainment. So we need A/V. Faster computers, bigger storage. But no matter how much faster and bigger they get, we already reached a point where the old-skool apps WORK in a sense that they did NOT work (but almost did) 10 years ago.
Always keep in mind that we're talking about PERSONAL computers here. Not Business or Technical computers. Entertainment/Multimedia falls into this category. All the stuff we wanted the PC for in 1990, we can actually do now. Without waiting 5 minutes for the wordprocesor to load. Without worrying about storage space for reasonable stuff.
In short, we have the PC today that IBM said the 286 was. It's just now starting to be practical!
We NEEDED gigabyte drives, Tens of Megs of RAM, back then. But that does not necessarily mean we need more now. We're just now to the point where the application requirements of 1990 are met, and we're indifferent, because we've thought of a whole new set of requirements... Entertainment.
Slashdot Mirror
"If you have a problem with a neighber being loud, do you call some big guy with a bat ?"
Unfortunately, the answer is usually "yes".
Usually, you don't know anything about the neighbor, their name, where they work, nothing.
And it's not a bat, it's a gun. And they arrive in groups of two or four.
That is how "neighbors" generally handle it when the people next door get too loud.
"...real, professional businesspeople don't have a violent (and childish) aversion to lawyers..."
They also don't fold their hands and stop doing business just because they got a letter from a lawyer! When you get a letter from a court saying there is a hearing scheduled for a restraining order, you should be adjusting your schedule in order to be there with or without your own lawyer, but definitely with your paperwork in order, and hopefully with a good understanding of the law in question -- it's not THAT HARD!
The idea that this part of the process will bankrupt you is pretty pervasive, but it does not cost that much to defend yourself in court; especially in these civil cases where the plaintiff really doesn't have a solid case.
If a judge didn't sign the C&D letter, you don't have to do a damn thing yet. You *should* contact a lawyer, preferably one you already have a relationship with. You should also make certain that you can put your hand on every document that might be pertinent to the case, and can load them in a file box for your day in court. Which won't ever come, or might be 9 months in the future.
You show up to every hearing. You make sure there is a hearing on EVERY question, no summary judgements!
In Texas, you can have a hearing on ANYTHING, and for any hearing you can have a JURY. Always take advantage of that. The plaintiff will back off when they realize that every order is going to involve a full day with a jury...
"Yeah, and it's the reliance on the calculator
that has caused many of our teachers to be unable to do multi-digit addition in their heads."
And physics majors can't do math involving exponents or logarithms in their heads, or visualize a curve numerically (today, they tend to think in terms of a graph).
Back in the "slide rule days" which I remember clearly, it was much more common to think in terms of log, because that's what the slide rule represents. When you do a slide rule operation, you see the transition of intermediate values, and this is something that you miss with a calculator. Not that I'm saying a slide rule is better, just that it's representation educates you differently. I would not be surprised to learn that there are some calculations that can be performed faster on a slide rule than on a calculator, because of the time spent pressing the keys.
>Too bad that TRS-80 dungeon game that tried to
>be realtime but couldn't keep up with my typing
>as a 10 year old isn't on the list.
That game was awesome. I think you didn't realize that it was MEANT not to "keep up with your typing" in order to simulate your character's ability, speed, endurance, etc.
OTOH, I do think the choice of keystrokes was in part due to the rollover characteristics of the coco keyboard.
"There is no reason why 2600 Space Invaders couldn't have been more accurate..."
There was a reason, and I knew it at the time:
Arcades were making more money than home games. Even though "they" could have made the home games as good as the arcade version, they weren't inclined to do so. They were making large fortunes, a quarter (or two) at a time.
So today every mall has an arcade and every pizza shop has a few games, but in the early 80's the arcades were like pubs during prohibition, or dance halls in the first days of disco, something like that. They were a big deal, but the phenomenon just kind-of ended.
"What in the hell are you talking about, exactly?"
Console mode. Linux allows you to put consoles on the SVGA framebuffer device. I think these consoles are nice. The best possible interface for me. The hardware can do it. Windows, apparently, cannot.
This is among the very few things that I can do in Linux that I cannot do in Windows. I would LIKE to have it in Windows. But I can't. So I run linux.
"They make great coasters and frisbees"
They make horrible coasters. Condensation collects on the bottom of a CD, liquid goes right through the hole, and you end up with a worse situation than you would just with the cup on the bare wood.
They make very dangerous Frisbees (TM). They have a bad uncontrollable flight, and they tend to shatter.
I'm a user of many systems, and I refuse to get into the holy war territory.
However, there is one thing that bugs me, that I can do with Linux, but not with Windows.
I would like the Framebuffer console; let's say, the 160x64 console, and let's say, maybe 5 or 8 virtual consoles, maybe running screen with cygwin bash. This is my standard terminal, it is my *favorite* video mode among all the options available to me, and it appears to be altogether IMPOSSIBLE in windows.
Don't talk to me about fonts and terminal windows in win2k; it is not the same. You can get some nice things there, but, I cannot get the equivalent of the linux console. And I really want this.
It doesn't have to be the framebuffer device, per se, but it definitely needs the same font options, and absolutely needs to equal or exceed the speed of the native console. NO WIN2K TERMINAL COMES CLOSE to the speed of the linux console.
This is the first item on the list of things that keeps me running linux on my main computer, as a matter of fact. It's my first requirement!
"run government like a business"
The big difference to me appears to be the fact that any business venture has "failure" explicitly available as an option. (If the head of a business says "Failure is not an option", it's just words; it's still an option).
"A government" might also have this luxury, but if it's stated so, it's not the US government.
Run the government like a business, indeed. We can all see where that leads.
>There is no law that states: "You must treat
>customer data with appropriate care." Punishment
>is the result of a specific law being broken,
>not some romantic H4X0R ideal.
Medical records, in particular, DO have laws respecting their confidentiality.
What's more, there is hopefully, specific language in the contract (this is a defense contractor we're talking about here!) that would be intended to ensure security.
The result of this will probably be to make it even harder for a regular geek to get work in healthcare companies which deal with military accounts... which were most of my lukewarm prospects.
It's so hard to communicate to people what's good about Nethack's gameplay. Even if they don't just sneer at the first impression, it's really, really hard to explain to someone who isn't interested. Sometimes you can whip out the FAQ's (I have notes filling a 3" binder and of course lots online), and they see the complexity belies the interface, and they're hooked. But there are damned few games that will hit this sweet spot for me; even other roguelikes fail to do it.
I'm no EQ player, but I could possibly get into something in that vein where the interface didn't get in the way of the game.
It's the simplicity of the interface that gives a game like nethack it's immersion -- your imagination is not told how to render what you're seeing. If left to my own imagination, my combat scenes are far more disturbing than any game publisher is going to ever put into pixels.
Off topic of games, but on imagination:
I worry about Return of the King: do you think it will open with Mordor Orcs lobbing severed heads over the walls at Lord Denethor? I'm fairly certain that the way I imagine those scenes, and the way The Author describes them, are far too bloody even for Hollywood, or Kiwiwood, or whatever.
"I've seen many of my otherwise perfectly healthy and competent fellow classmates spend hours and hours gunning each other down in Counterstrike, and putting off important essays until 5am, when they're due in a few hours. "
That phenomenon predates video games; there's nothing really new here.
"I don't know how many times I use root privs during the day."
On a workstation, that doesn't really matter.
On a production system facing customers, that number should be Zero. Or at least, this something you SHOULD know.
If you worked for me, and you said "I don't know how many times I used root", I would tell you, remind you about the policy, and re-educate you on the use of sudo.
" I essentially said that if it wasn't addressed, I might consider moving to BeOS (which was looking very good to me at the time). "
So did the BeOS folks trip over themselves to address your individual wants and needs? Maybe Microsoft will do that?
Linux developers do not respond well to threats.
Well, you can't do it from thousands of miles away with a pocket knife. But, what the OP meant by "computer crime" was probably more along the lines of "listening to music."
Stop preaching to the choir. I also have a 1959 Chevy.
German cars go around corners better than American cars go in a straight line. We weren't comparing your Z28 to a Mercedes.
The argument was whether an E-class Mercedes is worth more (to the owner) than 4 Kia's.
"Is an $80,000 Mercedes 4 times better than $20,000 KIA. "
Actually, it is that much better.
Yes, it is.
Ever drive a Ferrari? It does not take long behind the wheel of a car like that to realize there *is* a lot of quality in the design and construction.
Now, the people who buy these things obviously buy them *BECAUSE* they are expensive status symbols. BUT, in the case of your high-end Mercedes, it's also true that they became expensive status symbols because of the quality. And quality, they do got. You can do things in your Mercedes that'll make that Kia flip right over. And, there's a real good chance that Mercedes will still be on the road in 20 years, with just minimal care and maintenance. The KIA will be a cube of scrap; God help the 3rd owner of one of those things.
Well, people are stupid, sure.
There have always been stupid people though. And there *is* a market for high-end audio today, perhaps even more so than in "the 70's", which I remember very clearly; I was a record collector in those days!
The thing is, the consumer does make a fairly safe bet -- at a certain price level, the difference usually IS features. We have all these little cheesy digital playback devices, nothing in the consumer arena that records worth a damn (maybe some of the video stuff can record decent audio? nah.) We reached an equilibrium for the consumer's ear as 16 bit audio became the norm. Hell, remember when talking toys had little phonographs in them? Now those things have a 16 bit DAC.
Consumers didn't care back then either. They wanted whatever was cheaper. Remeber credenza stereos? People selected those for their wood grains, not their quality. (Some of those things were kickass though).
"Who the fuck has 220GB of personal data? "
I'm getting there, in audio data.
My own music, that I write and record, so, going down to the store to replace it isn't exactly an option.
It's also on DAT, and on CD audio, so you could say
I have a backup, but that's not really true -- the DAT is the source material, and a CD would represents one view of some of the data.
Am I going to buy a $65,000 SAN tape library machine, just because I'm getting into volume? (No.) Would I like an inexpensive solution that is less cumbersome than CDR? (Yes.)
"I could never understand why zip drives became so popular when the disks cost a small fortune"
:-)
e works/es l9595sl/description.html#qs
At first, we thought we finally were seeing a replacement for the floppy; something fast enough, with a decent amount of storage. It would have been great, provided that the media had also replaced the floppy disk in terms of price. I still think a fast, cheap, 10meg floppy would have been nice. Most of the reasons I wanted that are taken care of nowadays by the fact that "everybody" has the ability to get whatever file via http, so, the pattern of handing a floppy to someone is a bit antiquated. Still, I'd never have given a $15.00 zip disk to someone with the abandon that I would a CDR. And now I can get CDR's that will fit in my shirt pocket, I can make them bootable, so the floppy is just about obsolete
After a year or two, we needed to start seeing ZIP drives from all the drive vendors, and, we needed to be able to buy the media for, say, $1.00 a piece in bulk. Neither of these happened; Iomega's drives were often defective, and the price, convenience, and performance did not add up. We're still using floppies. Some people use CDRW. Most "consumers" don't "backup" their systems. When they have a crash, that's when they get their new systems. Clean slate; usually some tears shed and bitching and moaning about "important" data, but, it's really the exception when a home computer user has data on their disk that, if they lost it, they go bankrupt or go to jail.
At worst, it's inconvenient. And the ones who DO have important data tend to be aware of the risks, and tend to have a hardcopy backup.
I find the more important a document or record is, the more likely it will fit on a floppy disk and on paper in a legal-size file folder.
As for tapes, they still fill a need in the office/datacenter.
This sort of thing:
http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/storag
I can think of several reasons why an accountant would want to
calculate payroll based on prior-year tax tables! I would go as far as to say it should be a REQUIRED capability!
I certainly want the ability to recalculate my personal tax returns for prior years. If a business can't use the software to validate past data, that's a bug, plain and simple.
You don't understand. You have what you perceive to be a nice living.
You seem not to comprehend just how much BETTER it is for the 12 guys who own everything. Compared to THEM, we're goats.
You have some material possessions, and a rough idea where your next meal is coming from. I'm 24 paychecks away from homelessness, myself.
The point is that you, with your income and posessions, are much, much closer to the guy on the corner with liver cancer begging for pennies to buy malt liquor, than you are to the 10%'er.
I see you have no problem with that, but, you missed my point.
>What does "can be hosted (...) without our
>authorization" mean? Is it restricted, or is it
>not?
I'm guessing it means they can put you on "server69" without asking you.
They'll have a net segment and a server rack for all the high bandwidth crap, and make you compete with all the other warez/pron sites for bandwidth, processor, ram, and disk, instead of impacting the rest of the world.
Texas had more than 100 earthquakes since 1847.
The Alpine quake of '95 (a 5.8!) did some real damage. A 4.2 in '93 could have been deadly, had it been just a few miles closer to San Antonio.
"The Big One" for Texas would have to be a 9 on the New Madrid fault, but that could level Dallas.
So Quakes aren't at anything like the same level of risk as, say, the Bay Area or Pasadena or Tokyo.
The thing to be afraid of in Texas is a Tornado.
Among all the natural forces available, I'd have to say there's NOTHING scarier than ground zero of a tornado. If you haven't experienced this, believe me, you don't want to.
Seems people see Moore's law, etc., and expect continued development. I see a plateau, where human proportions have brought us to a point where a bit of stagnation will be ok.
For faster stuff and bigger storage, we are getting into the next level of application, mostly Entertainment.
But even the typical consumer pc has gotten to the point where, the human's attention span exceeds the wait for any operation they use the machine for, where the storage is enough for anything they're likely to create (again, let's don't worry about the next level -- video -- because that falls into Entertainment).
For all the stuff that we really *need* computers for (replace the typewriter, the check register, and the cookbook), the 1990 PC fell short of the needed capacity to meet the human proportions: It lacked the storage capacity to comfortably store everything a user would write, or a really huge cookbook; operations would take seconds or minutes to complete, etc.)
Today we've converged at a point where human proportions allow a plateau. Now, we begin a new cycle where the application is Entertainment. So we need A/V. Faster computers, bigger storage. But no matter how much faster and bigger they get, we already reached a point where the old-skool apps WORK in a sense that they did NOT work (but almost did) 10 years ago.
Always keep in mind that we're talking about PERSONAL computers here. Not Business or Technical computers. Entertainment/Multimedia falls into this category. All the stuff we wanted the PC for in 1990, we can actually do now. Without waiting 5 minutes for the wordprocesor to load. Without worrying about storage space for reasonable stuff.
In short, we have the PC today that IBM said the 286 was. It's just now starting to be practical!
We NEEDED gigabyte drives, Tens of Megs of RAM, back then. But that does not necessarily mean we need more now. We're just now to the point where the application requirements of 1990 are met, and we're indifferent, because we've thought of a whole new set of requirements... Entertainment.