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I picked up this a little while ago and got it working in about two hours. This is not a ham radio or other specialist set. This was a standard (albeit high-end) communications receiver in its day. I also have a bunch of old computer stuff. Most of it is stored such that it'd be a pain to get pictures of. At one point a friend and I were going to open a computer museum, but drama happened. I still have some of what would have been exhibits. I have a couple examples of the PDP-11 and a PDP-10. Here's a "new" paper tape reader/punch. It was meant to use either paper or mylar tapes. I have a PDP-11 software development kit in paper-tape form. It's 4 boxes of tapes. The tapes are still readable. The reader uses a serial interface, so with a USB-to-serial converter you can read them. Here's one of them copied to my desktop PC. I'll have to dig around and see what else I have pictures of.
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# ? Dec 21, 2012 15:24 |
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# ? May 30, 2024 13:46 |
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WebDog posted:Way off I dunno, I think this is pretty true now. I mean, WebTV died but look at the features on set-top boxes now. Sure, I can't browse the forums on my TV, but why would I?
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# ? Dec 21, 2012 17:04 |
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Inspector_71 posted:I dunno, I think this is pretty true now. I mean, WebTV died but look at the features on set-top boxes now. Sure, I can't browse the forums on my TV, but why would I? mystes has a new favorite as of 17:20 on Dec 21, 2012 |
# ? Dec 21, 2012 17:18 |
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Inspector_71 posted:I dunno, I think this is pretty true now. I mean, WebTV died but look at the features on set-top boxes now. Sure, I can't browse the forums on my TV, but why would I? Smart TVs are becoming more and more the standard, many of them even having decent HTML 5 web browsers. Consider that most HDTV's already have some sort of embedded CPU and firmware for image processing, TV manufacturer are more and more likely to include Apps as a "me too" feature since it most of the hardware needed to do it is already there.
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# ? Dec 21, 2012 17:18 |
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Suzuran posted:
That is so cool. I love that you can get that working on a modern PC.
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# ? Dec 21, 2012 17:26 |
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Inspector_71 posted:I dunno, I think this is pretty true now. I mean, WebTV died but look at the features on set-top boxes now. Sure, I can't browse the forums on my TV, but why would I? This makes me think of the time a couple of years ago where manufacturers were making a big hoopla about apps for your TV for Twitter and Facebook and poo poo. You don't really see that as an advertised feature any more, probably because it's kind of dumb.
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# ? Dec 21, 2012 20:33 |
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Jibo posted:This makes me think of the time a couple of years ago where manufacturers were making a big hoopla about apps for your TV for Twitter and Facebook and poo poo. You don't really see that as an advertised feature any more, probably because it's kind of dumb.
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# ? Dec 21, 2012 20:45 |
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I can never take Wired seriously because my first introduction to them was a bunch of decade-old copies that my library was giving away. It's really easy to see through their starry-eyed futurism when you've seen how totally off-base they were about how today would be.
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# ? Dec 21, 2012 21:12 |
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Farbtoner posted:I can never take Wired seriously because my first introduction to them was a bunch of decade-old copies that my library was giving away. It's really easy to see through their starry-eyed futurism when you've seen how totally off-base they were about how today would be. Wired is really hit or miss even today. Some times they get interesting stuff but it seems like most the time they get really sloppy and sensationalist. Anyway, this reminded me of when we mentioned the Wired article about passwords becoming "obsolete" and that a couple weeks ago the article was the topic of an episode of the Diane Rehm show, which was pretty good and it was kind of cool for them to have Kevin Mitnick as one of the contributors. You can check it out here.
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# ? Dec 21, 2012 21:21 |
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Jibo posted:This makes me think of the time a couple of years ago where manufacturers were making a big hoopla about apps for your TV for Twitter and Facebook and poo poo. You don't really see that as an advertised feature any more, probably because it's kind of dumb.
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# ? Dec 21, 2012 22:13 |
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SLOSifl posted:I load up Pandora on my TV all the time, and quick Youtube/Netflix access is handy too. Pandora and Netflix are pretty different from Twitter and Facebook. My post was about how companies were using Facebook access as a selling point for televisions.
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# ? Dec 21, 2012 22:17 |
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Obsolete magazines? How about OMNI?
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# ? Dec 21, 2012 22:20 |
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Jibo posted:Pandora and Netflix are pretty different from Twitter and Facebook. My post was about how companies were using Facebook access as a selling point for televisions. SLOSifl has a new favorite as of 23:13 on Dec 21, 2012 |
# ? Dec 21, 2012 23:09 |
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WebDog posted:Access Software's RealSound? Which basically used highly compressed 6-bit audio squeezed through a PCM speaker. Yes Realsound was the company. I thought they were the first but apparently I am wrong. I didn't know the aaaauuuaauaugh from beach Head II was sampled, I thought it was synthesis.
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# ? Dec 22, 2012 00:59 |
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Jibo posted:This makes me think of the time a couple of years ago where manufacturers were making a big hoopla about apps for your TV for Twitter and Facebook and poo poo. You don't really see that as an advertised feature any more, probably because it's kind of dumb. Pretty much every TBV I see at Costco ro Best Buy has built in apps. And i think they are pretty cool. My next TV will have built in WiFi, Pandora, Netflix and whatever. Beats having to connect poo poo to your TV. My friend uses Pandora on his TV all the time, they just leave the TV on at night and listen to it.
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# ? Dec 22, 2012 01:01 |
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Aren't dedicated GPS units pretty much dead now if you own any kind of smartphone? I remember when they were expensive, now if you have one and it breaks it costs as much to fix it as it costs to buy a new one. I use Google Maps, Waze, and for when I don't have a data connection and CoPilot Live for its offline maps. Only people I really see using them are long haul truckers and soon they will be replaced. Eve Garmin isn't doing so good now I hear.
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# ? Dec 22, 2012 01:05 |
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b0nes posted:Aren't dedicated GPS units pretty much dead now if you own any kind of smartphone? Not completely, as they come with maps stored. You can get a TomTom XL with maps for all of Europe for 47. Copilot for the British Isles alone is 15, so if you're going abroad often it's still worth having the dedicated unit.
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# ? Dec 22, 2012 01:22 |
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There are plenty of people who still don't own smartphones too.
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# ? Dec 22, 2012 01:23 |
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mystes posted:I think "never" may have been the year that Wired predicted. They basically stated that the "interactive TV" wasn't going to really happen while listing off all of the things that were to come. They were adamant we'd still have the TV as our entertainment device while on the other hand speculating that if we could overcome technological hurdles we could have on-demand content over the internet as all of the groundwork existed in 1996.
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# ? Dec 22, 2012 01:34 |
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BoutrosBoutros posted:There are plenty of people who still don't own smartphones too. Also, most phones use "Assisted" GPS which means that they have weaker GPS receiver chips/antennas but make up for that with extra data from the cell network (like the atomic-clock-accurate current time and the nearest tower's precise location). This doesn't matter if you're in an area with a cellular signal, but if you go outside that area the "assisted" part of the GPS reception stops working and it will take your phone much longer to figure out where it is than a dedicated unit would require (up to 13 minutes).
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# ? Dec 22, 2012 02:31 |
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Mr.Radar posted:Also, most phones use "Assisted" GPS which means that they have weaker GPS receiver chips/antennas but make up for that with extra data from the cell network (like the atomic-clock-accurate current time and the nearest tower's precise location). This doesn't matter if you're in an area with a cellular signal, but if you go outside that area the "assisted" part of the GPS reception stops working and it will take your phone much longer to figure out where it is than a dedicated unit would require (up to 13 minutes). I don't know if it's from a lack of a signal or what but when I'm in Chicago my phone's GPS takes a poo poo any time I'm driving around under or around the L. I do a lot of traveling and I have definitely had more luck using a dedicated GPS but you can get by well enough with a smart phone so I don't even bother any more.
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# ? Dec 22, 2012 02:39 |
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Jibo posted:I don't know if it's from a lack of a signal or what but when I'm in Chicago my phone's GPS takes a poo poo any time I'm driving around under or around the L. I do a lot of traveling and I have definitely had more luck using a dedicated GPS but you can get by well enough with a smart phone so I don't even bother any more. I was in Chicago last month and my phone was constantly trying to tell me I was a block or two away from my actual location. It is the only city in the USi have ever noticed that happening in.
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# ? Dec 22, 2012 02:49 |
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I just got a TomTom GPS a few months ago for work because I don't have/can't afford a smartphone and an unlimited data plan, and it's fantastic compared to how my friend's smartphone GPS is: it takes me a few seconds tops for the satellite to sync up while he has to spend minutes, my unit lasts a lot longer on one charge than a smartphone, I'm not dependent on cell signal or anything. I just type in an address (or search for one), it pops up, and I'm on my way. If I already had a smartphone I don't think that I would buy a GPS seperate, but for someone without a smartphone it's pretty useful.
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# ? Dec 22, 2012 02:59 |
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b0nes posted:Aren't dedicated GPS units pretty much dead now if you own any kind of smartphone? I remember when they were expensive, now if you have one and it breaks it costs as much to fix it as it costs to buy a new one. I use Google Maps, Waze, and for when I don't have a data connection and CoPilot Live for its offline maps. Only people I really see using them are long haul truckers and soon they will be replaced. Eve Garmin isn't doing so good now I hear. I also believe dedicated units are much faster to start up, find the path and better to operate in general.
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# ? Dec 22, 2012 03:14 |
bunnielab posted:I was in Chicago last month and my phone was constantly trying to tell me I was a block or two away from my actual location. It is the only city in the USi have ever noticed that happening in. This happened to me in downtown Seattle. I just figured it had something to do with buildings blocking out the sky.
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# ? Dec 22, 2012 03:18 |
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Someone post the fridge with the touchscreen that can get on Facebook and twitter.
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# ? Dec 22, 2012 03:23 |
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Here's an entire TV series made in the 1980's about life after the year 2000, it was called "Beyond 2000". This episode covers(now outdated) Mototrcyles and the birth of what would be called the Veggieburger. Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBLdiF1zZnE Part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCGmxk3H44g Part3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ic0JAH8rco
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# ? Dec 22, 2012 03:47 |
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Mr.Radar posted:Also, most phones use "Assisted" GPS which means that they have weaker GPS receiver chips/antennas but make up for that with extra data from the cell network (like the atomic-clock-accurate current time and the nearest tower's precise location). This doesn't matter if you're in an area with a cellular signal, but if you go outside that area the "assisted" part of the GPS reception stops working and it will take your phone much longer to figure out where it is than a dedicated unit would require (up to 13 minutes). This isn't quite right. Cell phone GPS chips aren't any "weaker" than those in other receivers. There isn't even a "weaker" or "stronger" that makes sense, really -- it's a digital signal. Either you receive enough data that it works perfectly, or you get nothing usable. Without getting into too much detail, the first time you try to get a GPS fix your receiver (or phone) needs to know where the satellites currently are, so that it can triangulate your location. It does this by downloading orbital data directly from the satellites it can see. This data is coming from outer space over a narrow channel, so it takes a very long time to receive -- 12.5 minutes for the full message. All receivers without A-GPS take the same amount of time to get a fix because they need to download the almanac (as it's called) from the same source. Basically, all that A-GPS does is send this data to you over your data connection instead of the GPS stream. The almanac is quite small, and can arrive in seconds over a 3G/4G data link -- and once your phone has it, it can compute a fix in seconds. A-GPS also allows your phone to receive corrections for things like ionospheric conditions (space weather), which might otherwise distort the signal and decrease accuracy; and it can allow your phone to combine data from multiple sources, such as known wi-fi networks and their relative signal strength at different positions, to increase accuracy even more. Don't confuse this with the fake "GPS" that the wifi iPads and early iPhones have -- they don't actually have a GPS chip at all, and instead try to triangulate your location from the nearest wifi networks in Apple's database. The only reason this works is because all iPhones will occasionally send Apple their geographic location and a list of all the network SSIDs they can see (starbucks, AT&T, your personal network, etc), and their relative signal strengths. Wifi iPads then access this database, compare it to the networks they can see at that time, and try to estimate roughly where they are. Fascinating, huh?
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# ? Dec 22, 2012 03:50 |
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SimplyCosmic posted:Obsolete magazines? How about OMNI? Funny that OMNI came up. I was acquainted with one of the former writers of that magazine until she died tragically. My girlfriends mother was related to Kathleen Stein somehow, and being the closest family to her she was around quite a bit during the holidays and on weekends. I don't know much about what she wrote in OMNI but I did read her book Genius Engine and understood that she was deeply invested in neuroscience research for most of her adult career. She was a odd duck though, one time I spoke (and drank) with her before she died she was really excited to be writing a book about how storage units encourage the hoarding behavior. Kind of off topic but I was excited to see OMNI pop up.
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# ? Dec 22, 2012 05:52 |
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I used to stay up on Saturday night just to watch Beyond 2000. I also had a subscription to Omni magazine.
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# ? Dec 22, 2012 07:13 |
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Farbtoner posted:my unit lasts a lot longer on one charge than a smartphone You mean there's someone who uses their phone for GPS without having it drawing power from the lighter socket?
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# ? Dec 22, 2012 13:05 |
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Jedit posted:You mean there's someone who uses their phone for GPS without having it drawing power from the lighter socket? Yes, about half the bloody customer base of my employer's mobile tracking and lone worker protection product (we started out doing vehicle tracking with dedicated units and offered mobile as a sideline). We have this weird thing where some of the older platforms like Symbian and BlackBerry will outperform the newer ones in terms of battery life. Android was painful to develop and we have to do lots of clever things like switching off GPS when the local wifi ids aren't changing just to get the battery life to something acceptable. On BlackBerry or old Nokia smartphones, you could bang away with GPS all the time and still get eight hours out of the battery, easy. Just as well; like I said, customers seem to have religious objections to lighter socket chargers and cradles.
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# ? Dec 22, 2012 13:44 |
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Sargs posted:Yes, about half the bloody customer base of my employer's mobile tracking and lone worker protection product (we started out doing vehicle tracking with dedicated units and offered mobile as a sideline). We have this weird thing where some of the older platforms like Symbian and BlackBerry will outperform the newer ones in terms of battery life. Android was painful to develop and we have to do lots of clever things like switching off GPS when the local wifi ids aren't changing just to get the battery life to something acceptable. On BlackBerry or old Nokia smartphones, you could bang away with GPS all the time and still get eight hours out of the battery, easy. Thinking about it, I expect a lot of them will be using the lighter socket for the lighter. Not something I think of, as nobody in my family smokes and nicotine gives me violent migraines so when I drive with a smoker they usually forbear for my sake.
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# ? Dec 22, 2012 13:47 |
Jedit posted:Thinking about it, I expect a lot of them will be using the lighter socket for the lighter. Not something I think of, as nobody in my family smokes and nicotine gives me violent migraines so when I drive with a smoker they usually forbear for my sake.
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# ? Dec 22, 2012 13:49 |
Zereth posted:The latest car I've used doesn't even have the lighter part, and labels the socket as being for power. Same with my 2011 Mazda 2. Complete with an aux port right beside it for audio. GPS technology still amazes me. I drove to a part of town that I get lost in every time with my Samsung GS3 navigation yesterday and it was pinpoint accurate the entire trip. Even helped me cross a bridge I didn't even know existed to save five minutes. Just wish I could use my data plan in the US without racking up four figure bills. I don't usually need it anywhere I can drive in Canada.
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# ? Dec 22, 2012 14:51 |
b0nes posted:I used to stay up on Saturday night just to watch Beyond 2000. I also had a subscription to Omni magazine. I had a big crush on Solodad O'Brian at the time.
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# ? Dec 22, 2012 16:41 |
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I have an iPhone 4 and a new garmin with traffic, the garmin blows phone GPS out of the water, and the traffic thing is easily the coolest part. Oh, hey, looks like there's an accident 5 minutes up the road, lets swing around this way and save you 10 minutes. Thanks, computer bro! Plus it will actually last a whole trip on battery if you want it to for whatever reason. Only thing that works better on the phones occasionally is finding addresses in a few awkward rural areas. That depends on what app you're using of course. I do use the phone one still when on foot and looking for something, but that's mostly because I have it already.
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# ? Dec 22, 2012 17:16 |
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Here's an oldie, but a not-goodie: Polaroid's Polavision instant movie system. It created instant movies. Great, huh? Oh, wait. The movies only lasted 2.5 minutes. And were silent. And required a special player. Here's a commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLXfhMI7B5Q And a sample movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2pclBwpeBs This came out at about the same time as VHS/Beta video cameras. While those cameras were bulky and expensive, they did offer sound and a substantially longer recording time. Not to mention the tapes could be re-used. Nice try Polaroid.
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# ? Dec 22, 2012 19:34 |
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Sagebrush posted:This isn't quite right. Yes. Thank you for taking the time to explain this.
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# ? Dec 22, 2012 22:16 |
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# ? May 30, 2024 13:46 |
Ninja Toast! posted:I have an iPhone 4 and a new garmin with traffic, the garmin blows phone GPS out of the water, and the traffic thing is easily the coolest part. Oh, hey, looks like there's an accident 5 minutes up the road, lets swing around this way and save you 10 minutes. Thanks, computer bro! Plus it will actually last a whole trip on battery if you want it to for whatever reason. My phone GPS accounts for traffic too. Shows red/yellow/green depending on severity and avoids red areas if possible (not possible here).
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# ? Dec 22, 2012 23:53 |