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Elsa posted:Coax LAN Blood and Hexen, [while I was supposed to be in summer school] '97 Doom on SPC (Software Publishing Corporation aka the company that made Havard Graphics) 's corporate LAN at their branch in Madison Wisconsin. The guy who worked there ended up as a producer at EA, and ran the Madden line for years.
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Mar 22, 2017 19:47
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chitoryu12 posted:The part where he was wrong was assuming that the Internet would remain in its 1990s state permanently, never getting easier to use and computers remaining slow. He didn't think it would ever be useful for research because it was too slow to pull up search results and none of them would be relevant because no company would create a way to automatically sort search results for people. He also clearly didn't see any news sites moving to the Internet for ease of access. Search engines are certainly better than they were in 1995 (Stoll was certainly aware of then-contemporary search engines like Lycos, as well as pre-web search engines like archie). But they still have a lot of the problems he mentions---the data they search is largely unfiltered, so it can be difficult to distinguish between good data and bad. Indeed, we know that this is still so much a problem we've recently seen a new term coined for this very old problem---fake news. I mean yeah he's wrong almost point for point, but it's not because all of the problems he observes have been solved. It's that leaving the problems unsolved hasn't prevented adoption. Like back in the day Mitnick and Shimomura was a big poo poo, high-profile security thing. At the time nobody would have predicted that companies would be involved in unintentional disclosure of personal data of literally hundreds of millions of customers and nothing would happen. That's not problems being solved. That's more or less exactly the same problems (the first known hack due to SQL injection was 1998, for example) that once were a big loving deal slowly fading into background noise. It's us collectively getting used to everything being broken by default.
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Mar 22, 2017 22:06
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:SPC (Software Publishing Corporation aka the company that made Havard Graphics) Our family bought pfs:First Choice [edit: made by SPC] for our XT clone. It was like a Microsoft Works for DOS, all text mode, and for us monochrome 
Buttcoin purse has a new favorite as of 03:57 on Mar 23, 2017 |
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Mar 23, 2017 03:54
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Dick Trauma posted:I have an Automatic Electric 80 that can confirm that pulse dialing is working here in Los Angeles via Frontier copper. Looks similar to this lovely beast. Pulse dial works in Burnsville, MN. However, you can't do it with just the hook. You can't trip the hook fast enough for it to translate to numbers. It just treats it as a flash.
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Mar 23, 2017 04:08
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Doom on the corpnet was a big thing at Microsoft in 1994/5. Descent and Myst as well. There was an internal server you could download those games from if you knew the right people We had a NeXT workstation in our lab but no one could figure anything cool to do with it Cat Hassler has a new favorite as of 08:17 on Mar 23, 2017 |
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Mar 23, 2017 08:11
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Display PostScript at 96dpi 
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Mar 23, 2017 14:47
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Our middle school filled up with iMacs when they came out, I was about the only kid that knew how to use them, including the school's IT guy. I found a way to make a shared folder on the network, brought Marathon from my house and put it in, and somehow figured out how to get 8 player deathmatch going. He eventually took those computer labs off the network because we were clogging all the network traffic up.
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Mar 23, 2017 23:37
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Back in high school we had 2 Mac Classics for putting out the school newspaper. These were side by side so they had whatever passed for a network back then. We used to play some simple top-down space game where one person flew a Star Destroyer and the other person piloted the Star Trek Enterprise. This was 1990 so networked gameplay was like slicing your eyeballs bleeding edge. I still miss that game. I don't know it's name, but It had to shareware with all the intellectual property it was breaking.
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Mar 24, 2017 02:30
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KozmoNaut posted:Can we post Chromebooks in this thread yet? I have one, and while it's okay-ish as a dedicated web browsing machine, it runs into serious limitations really quickly. They're a godsend in education. Cheap as chips, don't play any games worth a drat and Google Apps/Cloud storage solves so many data management problems. Because they're basic as gently caress, they're not even a theft target. Couldn't imagine living with one as a main pc, but they've brought computing into classrooms on a scale nothing else before it could even come close to.
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Mar 24, 2017 05:35
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mostlygray posted:Pulse dial works in Burnsville, MN. However, you can't do it with just the hook. You can't trip the hook fast enough for it to translate to numbers. It just treats it as a flash.
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Mar 24, 2017 07:19
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The End posted:Couldn't imagine living with one as a main pc, but they've brought computing into classrooms on a scale nothing else before it could even come close to. They instead finally piloted a Chromebook program and the two teachers that have them love them. Don't have to deal with documents getting lost or students forgetting work on a Flash Drive anymore. The admins love that they're dirt cheap so if they gently caress up it's hardly a problem to just get a new one. They've had some worry about Video Editing / Audio Editing / InDesign-like page layout stuff, but nothing terribly lacking yet. I'm loving sure that in 3 years they'll all be hated because the chips will be woefully bad, but again the cost makes replacement a joke.
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Mar 24, 2017 08:05
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Krispy Kareem posted:We used to play some simple top-down space game where one person flew a Star Destroyer and the other person piloted the Star Trek Enterprise. A raster arcade game from the late 70s was Space Wars and was top-down where you fought a triangular ship against an Enterprise-looking ship. Must have been based on that.
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Mar 24, 2017 08:10
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The End posted:They're a godsend in education. Cheap as chips, don't play any games worth a drat and Google Apps/Cloud storage solves so many data management problems. Because they're basic as gently caress, they're not even a theft target. I may be a little harsh on Chromebooks, the simple fact that you can get a 1080p IPS screen, 10 hour battery life, aluminum body laptop, with a good browser and access to Android apps, for the same price as a 5 year old Thinkpad is pretty impressive. Still, I'm looking forward to owning a full fat laptop again.
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Mar 24, 2017 09:21
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The End posted:They're a godsend in education. Cheap as chips, don't play any games worth a drat and Google Apps/Cloud storage solves so many data management problems. Because they're basic as gently caress, they're not even a theft target. Heheheh... you'd be surprised. Though I suppose driving kids to playing interactive fiction isn't the worst result?
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Mar 24, 2017 14:41
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Pokey Araya posted:Our middle school filled up with iMacs when they came out, I was about the only kid that knew how to use them, including the school's IT guy. I found a way to make a shared folder on the network, brought Marathon from my house and put it in, and somehow figured out how to get 8 player deathmatch going. He eventually took those computer labs off the network because we were clogging all the network traffic up. Same except high school. My school used Fool Proof for security, which anyone who had a mac at home knew how to disable extensions could get around.
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Mar 24, 2017 14:44
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Gromit posted:A raster arcade game from the late 70s was Space Wars and was top-down where you fought a triangular ship against an Enterprise-looking ship. Must have been based on that. I'm suddenly reminded that for as old as it is, Netrek was still being played by a handful of people last time I checked.
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Mar 24, 2017 14:57
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I went to a nerd high school so the teacher in charge of the Intro C++/Java/etc. classes quickly realized that everybody in there already knew all the material, so those classes became havens for 8-way local LAN Starcraft matches and poo poo. Nobody wanted to actually pirate software on school computers though, so a lot of us became absolute masters at things like the single level in the Tony Hawk 2 demo and such.
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Mar 24, 2017 15:14
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I went to a nerd high school in 1986 that had amiga 1000s. e for content, what was that old networking PC protocol for C&C/red alert called? It still used network cards. Fo3 has a new favorite as of 15:25 on Mar 24, 2017 |
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Mar 24, 2017 15:22
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Fo3 posted:e for content, what was that old networking PC protocol for C&C/red alert called? It still used network cards. It was probably IPX/SPX.
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Mar 24, 2017 16:02
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Kelp Me! posted:a lot of us became absolute masters at things like the single level in the Tony Hawk 2 demo and such. I used to have that on a ps1 demo disc, and I must have played it so many times, without even being good at it. Mine must have been the only unchipped ps1 in the neighbourhood, too, now that I recall.
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Mar 24, 2017 17:43
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Gromit posted:A raster arcade game from the late 70s was Space Wars and was top-down where you fought a triangular ship against an Enterprise-looking ship. Must have been based on that. Holy poo poo that's it. Or a version of it at least. Thanks.
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Mar 24, 2017 18:25
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Powered Descent posted:It was probably IPX/SPX. The $20 one-time registration fee for Kali was a good bet at the time, when every month a new subscription-based gaming service would either rise up or collapse when the investors checked-out. TEN (Total Entertainment Network) was one that charged $10/month for incredibly-unreliable game matching and died quickly once better alternatives came out like Battle.net, GameSpy, and Mplayer. Now that games all include their own matchmaking most of those old services are dead, however it was nice at the time being able to use multiplayer games well after the developer closed the doors or shut down their own networks. Having Steam is a good enough trade-off though.
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Mar 24, 2017 18:56
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future ghost posted:I still have fond memories of using Kali95 for IPX network emulation to play MW2: Mercenaries and Duke3D. Kali itself belongs in this thread what with IPX being long dead, although apparently the Kali network is still technically functioning somehow. I remember Quake 3 having a built in server browser being a big deal at the time. Especially given what a pain in the rear end GameSpy was.
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Mar 24, 2017 19:37
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I suppose my new old tv qualifies as long gone tech: a 1981 Zenith Console TV with Space Phone! My tv has a fuckin' telephone built into it! There is a telephone cable coming out of the back and plugs into the phone jack and you can call and receive calls through the tv! You press the phone button on the remote and start dialing and the tv will ring and show the number on the screen when a call is coming in. I need to find a new head for the cable as it got lopped off, but it should work great as the rest of the tv is flawless. Also I think you can listen in to other peoples calls pretty easily... http://imgur.com/a/RnwcB and the remote in question http://imgur.com/a/NvMh3
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Mar 24, 2017 19:56
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Wacky Delly posted:I remember Quake 3 having a built in server browser being a big deal at the time. Especially given what a pain in the rear end GameSpy was. Pfft, Tribes had a built in server browser and IRC client
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Mar 24, 2017 20:08
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GotLag posted:Pfft, Tribes had a built in server browser and IRC client I had a Mac, so Quake 3 was as good as I got.
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Mar 24, 2017 21:03
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Lazlo Nibble posted:Tapping the hook switch quickly is electrically identical to dialing on a rotary phone, so if it doesn't work but rotary dialing does, it's because the hook switch on that specific phone is too slow for it to work. lol how do you know this
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Mar 24, 2017 21:33
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Elsa posted:lol how do you know this The Wikipedia posted:As pulse dialing is achieved by interruption of the local loop, it was in principle possible to dial a telephone number by rapidly tapping, i.e. depressing, the switch hook the corresponding number of times for each digit at approximately ten taps per second. However, many telephone makers implemented a slow switch hook release to prevent rapid switching.
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Mar 24, 2017 21:40
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I was more curious about the poster's professional or personal experience that gave them that insight to just whip out.
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Mar 24, 2017 22:50
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Maybe he just works at a telco and/or as an installer. That's how I know, even though pulse dialing was way before my time, and I'm in IT anyway.
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Mar 24, 2017 22:54
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Well I was impressed.
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Mar 24, 2017 22:55
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Fo3 posted:I went to a nerd high school in 1986 that had amiga 1000s. Ya damned spoiled brats! When I was in high school, they only had ONE computer. A TRS-80 kept in the library. I got to play with it during study hall. 
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Mar 25, 2017 00:07
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Elsa posted:I was more curious about the poster's professional or personal experience that gave them that insight to just whip out. Did you know that this guy:  + This children's breakfast cereal free gift:  Could get free calls from the US phone network? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Draper
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Mar 25, 2017 00:38
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Are there still little plastic toys in breakfast cereal?
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Mar 25, 2017 00:40
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spog posted:Did you know that this guy: Kevin Mitnick's "Ghost in the Wires" talks about Draper and it's never good. He always describes him as awkward and completely unable to work with people. Pretty rough to have other nerds call you anti-social.
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Mar 25, 2017 01:29
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TotalLossBrain posted:Kevin Mitnick's "Ghost in the Wires" talks about Draper and it's never good. He always describes him as awkward and completely unable to work with people. Pretty rough to have other nerds call you anti-social. quote:Background Not just smelly, but renowned for being smelly!
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Mar 25, 2017 01:39
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Dick Trauma posted:Are there still little plastic toys in breakfast cereal? No, the DMCA put a stop to that! (Also they found they get just as much sales by just printing an offer on the box and most people never redeem it)
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Mar 25, 2017 01:41
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KozmoNaut posted:Maybe he just works at a telco and/or as an installer. enough to remember when they'd "secure" rotary phones in public places (like school classrooms) by sticking a lock on the dial.
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Mar 25, 2017 05:37
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Joke's on them, I'm going to call 111-1111 all day.
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Mar 25, 2017 15:23
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Elsa posted:I was more curious about the poster's professional or personal experience that gave them that insight to just whip out.
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