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Cojawfee posted:Sorry, but it will never be the year of the desktop. You will never attain the 24th level of awareness.
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Sep 24, 2016 23:49
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Found an old folder of pictures of tech stuff. Remember the Intel Bunny-Men?   700MB full-height, 5.25" SCSI hard drive. Was loud as balls, but worked flawlessly until I retired it. Picture on the right is the same drive dwarfing the HEUG XBOX.
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Sep 25, 2016 00:22
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Haha that's awesome. I had a 10 or 20 MB drive in my 8086 that was only slightly taller. 
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Sep 25, 2016 01:01
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I'm 90% positive I still have several of those Intel bunny men plushes somewhere in a bin in the garage. A yellow and a blue one. I haven't seen them in almost 20 years.
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Sep 25, 2016 01:04
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Oh god. And remember when the Blue Man Group were the "spokes"men for the P3? I kept running into people who thought Intel had created them. "Wow, in Vegas there's a whole show of those Intel Blue Men"
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Sep 25, 2016 02:09
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Reemmber when IBM was called 'Big Blue' due to the blue suits their sales force used to wear? This book from 1994 was a great read on the rise and fall of IBM:  https://www.amazon.com/Big-Blues-Unmaking-Paul-Carroll/dp/0517882213
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Sep 25, 2016 03:32
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I recently saw a job posting that had "Experience with IBM PCs" in the list of qualifications. It was an entomologist position with the Government of Canada.
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Sep 25, 2016 04:36
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Mak0rz posted:I recently saw a job posting that had "Experience with IBM PCs" in the list of qualifications. Sounds like they need someone to help with... Debugging.
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Sep 25, 2016 04:42
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Rashomon posted:Sounds like they need someone to help with... Holy poo poo
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Sep 25, 2016 04:44
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Mak0rz posted:I recently saw a job posting that had "Experience with IBM PCs" in the list of qualifications. Jokes on you, don't you know that all government forces use antiquated crap for years after the general public? Or that's just here in the US.
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Sep 25, 2016 04:54
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Rashomon posted:Sounds like they need someone to help with... Perfect.
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Sep 25, 2016 06:14
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Rashomon posted:Sounds like they need someone to help with... Beautiful.
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Sep 25, 2016 07:03
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Humphreys posted:Reemmber when IBM was called 'Big Blue' due to the blue suits their sales force used to wear? The history of IBM is sort of impressive. From the early days of tabulating machinery and pre-computer punchcards they have, over the years, kickstarted the mainframe and then PC markets, propelled Microsoft to success (and regretted it), set things up so Oracle could succeed (and probably regretted that too), left the consumer market entirely (selling the PC business to Lenovo, who have done well with it), and after that dip in the '90s they refocused on consulting and development projects that I believe make them quite a lot of money again. I think of them as the Britain of computing history.
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Sep 25, 2016 08:57
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I'm still kinda unclear as to what exact mistake IBM made that made it legal for other manufacturers to clone their PCs.
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Sep 25, 2016 09:30
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CubanMissile posted:I'm still kinda unclear as to what exact mistake IBM made that made it legal for other manufacturers to clone their PCs. As I understand it, they used off the shelf parts that anyone could buy, but their BIOS was proprietary. Someone reverse engineered their BIOS and made their own that was compatible, while managing to skirt around the technicalities of copyright, and that way you had a clone without infringing anything.
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Sep 25, 2016 12:19
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evobatman posted:As I understand it, they used off the shelf parts that anyone could buy, but their BIOS was proprietary. What I saw in the "period drama" Halt and Catch Fire, which depicts a company making an IBM PC clone in the 80s (and which I think fits in with what I read previously) was that the theoretical plan was one person reverse engineers the BIOS into some sort of source code and documents what it does, and another person uses the documentation (but never looks at the original BIOS source, I swear!) to write a new BIOS. I think that generally it's legitimate to reverse engineer the interfaces of a piece of software (let's call BIOS software here, rather than worrying about whether it's firmware, or whatever) in order to make some other software that is compatible with it, so maybe the documentation wasn't so much "this is what the BIOS does" as "this is the interface that the BIOS needs to present to DOS in order for DOS to work".
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Sep 25, 2016 13:14
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Yes, IBM due to time pressure used off the shelf components. They even published schematics and source code. They bet on the copyright to prevent cloning. A company called Compaq, you might have heard of them, managed to clone the BIOS and quite quickly release better computers than IBM (as they went on with the PS/2 and supporting OS/2 + MCA dead-end).
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Sep 25, 2016 14:59
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Plus there was that whole "We'll licenses MS-DOS" instead of outright owning it thing. VvV He said it better FilthyImp has a new favorite as of 15:24 on Sep 25, 2016 |
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Sep 25, 2016 15:09
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It was the combination of the functionality of the BIOS being easily duplicated AND the fact that IBM allowed Microsoft to license DOS to them instead of selling them the rights to DOS. In allowing Microsoft to retain the rights to DOS this created the perfect storm in which manufacturers were able to build machines that were hardware AND software compatible. If DOS had been proprietary to IBM machines it would have been much harder to have the hardware clones be able to run the same software. Clone manufacturers would have had to reverse engineer DOS as well. If DOS had not been available for those clones the computing landscape may be very different and we might all be using Amiga or Apple derivative computers instead of (likely) something derived from that Compaq clone. Edit: God dammit filthyimp.
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Sep 25, 2016 15:12
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FilthyImp posted:Plus there was that whole "We'll licenses MS-DOS" instead of outright owning it thing. It didn't have an alternate operating system. It had two. Kind of. It had the promise of CP/M 86 to be delivered "real soon now." It was delayed, and later became DR DOS and then Novell DOS. It also had an interactive Pascal system (IIRC), which might have been used in research or something? The big thing, though, was that MS-DOS was way cheaper, as Microsoft got a deal with no individual licensing fee, but the right to sell it themselves to third parties.
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Sep 25, 2016 15:16
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I stuck every video I downloaded off of kazaa / old game sites in the early 2000s into a youtube channel a few years ago
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Sep 25, 2016 15:42
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^^^ A lot of the videos I got from Kazaa were very, very nsfw, either intentionally or not GutBomb posted:It was the combination of the functionality of the BIOS being easily duplicated AND the fact that IBM allowed Microsoft to license DOS to them instead of selling them the rights to DOS. In allowing Microsoft to retain the rights to DOS this created the perfect storm in which manufacturers were able to build machines that were hardware AND software compatible. If DOS had been proprietary to IBM machines it would have been much harder to have the hardware clones be able to run the same software. Clone manufacturers would have had to reverse engineer DOS as well. If DOS had not been available for those clones the computing landscape may be very different and we might all be using Amiga or Apple derivative computers instead of (likely) something derived from that Compaq clone.
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Sep 25, 2016 15:54
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klafbang posted:It didn't have an alternate operating system. It had two. Kind of. The story, at least the way I heard it, was that when IBM was developing their PC, their people went to see the CP/M people about licensing it... and got treated like poo poo. In a huff, IBM went over to Microsoft (at that time mostly known for writing programming languages, not operating systems) and asked for an OS. Microsoft had a half-complete knockoff of CP/M called QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System), which they hastily polished up and renamed MS-DOS, and the rest is history. I'm sure I have some details wrong in there, but that was the general gist.
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Sep 25, 2016 17:05
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I thought they bought Q-DOS from some backyard programmer and flipped it to IBM?
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Sep 25, 2016 17:08
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JnnyThndrs posted:I thought they bought Q-DOS from some backyard programmer and flipped it to IBM? CP/M guy, I believe, took one look at the non-disclosure agreement and told them to  so it was a huge waste of time for Big Blue.
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Sep 25, 2016 17:32
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mobby_6kl posted:^^^
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Sep 25, 2016 17:47
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Casimir Radon posted:Before I ever got a chance to watch hardcore porn by myself a friend showed me something I "just had to see" from Kazaa. A bald guy attrmpting to insert his head in a lady's vag. Link/pic? e: asking for a friend
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Sep 25, 2016 18:32
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FilthyImp posted:Bought or paid to use, basically. There's a few Docs (like Triumph of the Nerds, which really needs an update for this era) which shows that some really basic commands were the same except for how one called the operation. Someone mentioned a book called big blue so I grabbed it and have only read the first couple of chapters today. But so far, IBM just suck at micro computers and software, they acknowledge that fact apparently and decide to outsource almost everything. (E: One idea some management had was to get atari to knock something up and slap an IBM badge on it). They decided to try microsoft for an OS, Gates told them to go to CP/M. CP/M fobbed them off. Gates licenced qdos for $75k for them (told them up front they could do it themselves because Gates didn't really want too - probably knowing it ripped off CP/M, but IBM exec definitely didn't want to do an in house OS that would take 3 years). They outsourced hardware as well. They really were self admittedly very bad at small systems and software from what the author is writing, so they just didn't want to do it. They were such a behemoth at the time that there was no way they could reach a lowish price point and develop fast enough to make a micro pc viable if it was developed in house the way they ran their business. That's as far as I have got in the book, but from personal memory it wasn't any of that that killed them. The PC would just be another closed off system if IBM didn't outsource, no universal software or OS, just another computer out of reach from the masses, another weird british, japanese or commodore etc, ie they all died in the end. Don't forget this was around the time that apple was going down hill because the apple 2 wasn't cutting it any more and lisa flopped. What IBM brought together set a standard that everyone else could build and that's the success of the "PC" even if it didn't line the pockets of IBM in the end. It was the ripping off the BIOS that did IBM in like someone mentioned. Once it got outside of IBM then it was a free for all with phoenix ami award etc Then you could run any hardware or OS anyway. Fo3 has a new favorite as of 19:33 on Sep 25, 2016 |
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Sep 25, 2016 19:15
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What I love is how in hindsight all the histories make it sounds like the licensing agreement was some amazingly shrewd coup by Gates, like as though he could envision it being the cornerstone of the future Microsoft juggernaut, when in reality it was just this reluctant and awkward and embarrassed-on-both-sides deal of necessity that neither party saw as being particularly worthwhile.
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Sep 25, 2016 21:16
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A Yolo Wizard posted:I stuck every video I downloaded off of kazaa / old game sites in the early 2000s into a youtube channel a few years ago Where's all the porn?
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Sep 25, 2016 22:29
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Anony Mouse posted:Where's all the porn?
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Sep 25, 2016 22:35
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Casimir Radon posted:In the military copying the contents of other people's external drives wholesale is pretty common. There is of course a lot of porn. I suspect this is not really a hreat idea because if you're just ripping off everyone's uncurated porn folder eventually you're going to end up with really dubious stuff if not outright child porn. I've heard of people finding it but by that point finding the origin is really hard. Having done this and witnessed it a lot, looking back yeah that was idiotic as gently caress considering how often you see dudes go down (rightfully so of course) for CP
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Sep 25, 2016 22:38
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Hillary Clintons Thong posted:Having done this and witnessed it a lot, looking back yeah that was idiotic as gently caress considering how often you see dudes go down (rightfully so of course) for CP I was looking through Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals decisions one time and saw a SrA Michael Jackson getting thrown out for child porn. Somebody in GIP actually knew him and had to bring him some paperwork while he was on house arrest.
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Sep 25, 2016 22:54
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Casimir Radon posted:In the military copying the contents of other people's external drives wholesale is pretty common. There is of course a lot of porn. I suspect this is not really a hreat idea because if you're just ripping off everyone's uncurated porn folder eventually you're going to end up with really dubious stuff if not outright child porn. I've heard of people finding it but by that point finding the origin is really hard. I was wiping a computer for a friend to do a complete reinstall of everything for him that he got from some dubious source and found CP on it. This was around 2006-7 so being an idiot teen I really didn't know what else to do besides recoil in disgust and just go ahead with the DBAN wipe.
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Sep 25, 2016 23:05
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Casimir Radon posted:In the military copying the contents of other people's external drives wholesale is pretty common. There is of course a lot of porn. I suspect this is not really a hreat idea because if you're just ripping off everyone's uncurated porn folder eventually you're going to end up with really dubious stuff if not outright child porn. I've heard of people finding it but by that point finding the origin is really hard.
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Sep 26, 2016 01:05
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Anony Mouse posted:Tell me about it. I was in the USAF for a stretch. There was a healthy PSP .iso trading ring at Al Udeid. A homebrewed PSP was hands down the best portable entertainment system you could have from 2005 to 2010. I was too early for the PSP. I always had my GBA with Rainbow 6 in my map pocket.
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Sep 26, 2016 09:42
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Humphreys posted:I was too early for the PSP. I always had my GBA with Rainbow 6 in my map pocket. Those loving stealth missions, man.
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Sep 26, 2016 09:54
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Geirskogul posted:Those loving stealth missions, man. Yeah I spent way too long on the shitter playing those. It would be morning inspection time and I was no where to be seen. Poopin and playin. When I got the injury that hosed my legs I was initially more pissed off that my GBA got smashed. "WTF am I supposed to do now in hospital!?"
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Sep 26, 2016 10:30
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Skoll posted:I was wiping a computer for a friend to do a complete reinstall of everything for him that he got from some dubious source and found CP on it. This was around 2006-7 so being an idiot teen I really didn't know what else to do besides recoil in disgust and just go ahead with the DBAN wipe. That was probably the best course of action anyway, unless you could prove chain of custody back to someone with a couple of teenage kids messing with it in the meantime.
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Sep 26, 2016 11:20
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Rashomon posted:Sounds like they need someone to help with... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YMPAH67f4o
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Sep 26, 2016 12:24
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