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Mostly done with video cards these days.
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Sep 1, 2012 22:48
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Ensign Expendable posted:There will still be vital systems controlled by a dusty old box with leaking capacitors and COBOL. Fixed that for you. poo poo, my college taught COBOL, now I feel super old.
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Sep 21, 2012 04:04
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Super Waffle posted:While we're on the subject, checks belong in this thread. I am 25 years old, I have never written a check, needed to write a check, or in fact ever had checks. The entire concept of them baffles me to be honest. I can see why they were once needed, but in this day and age they seem pointless. Old people. If you ever want to know why something still exists, the answer is usually old people being unwilling to change.
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Sep 30, 2012 18:35
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BoutrosBoutros posted:I was watching "A Time to Kill" on DVD and had to flip it over halfway through. Was there a time when DVD's couldn't hold a whole movie per side? I don't think there was, but for some reason, that DVD only has half the movie on each side. Encoding issues and fact that some early DVDs did not use multiple layers.
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Oct 1, 2012 03:30
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TUBALLINATOR posted:What about these anti-radiation screen things for monitors? Those are seeing a resurgence in doctor's offices, because some models can make it impossible for people to read the screen unless you're sitting right in front of it.
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Oct 24, 2012 02:08
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TShields posted:Ugh, yeah, gently caress using a trackball in AutoCAD. I can see how it would work if you got REALLY good with it, but I'll take a nice high DPI mouse any day. Yeah since trackballs are basically similar designs to the old ball mouse (which has been completely supplanted by the optical except in places where people haven't bought a computer mouse in ten years) except a little more accurate, I can see trackballs used to be popular for stuff like AutoCAD. But now there's no reason not to use a high DPI optical.
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Nov 18, 2012 17:34
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wipeout posted:One obselete thing I just remembered about PC's was turbo buttons, and displays on the case showing the clockspeed. Remember those? poo poo I finally remember what those were actually for. It's like the opposite of what you'd expect. A lot of old programs weren't speed limited if you had a higher clock speed than was originally intended for the program, so turbo buttons could step down or up your clock speed on your processor (usually between two speeds) so your programs wouldn't gently caress up.
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Dec 15, 2012 03:25
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Groke posted:This also requires us to mention one of the worst nuclear-age ideas ever, and here I'm talking about one of the very worst ideas from an age full of very bad ideas: Well, it wasn't a total wash, since the guidance systems from Pluto were eventually refined into modern cruise missile tech.
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May 6, 2013 14:23
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poo poo, I haven't seen a coupon dispenser in years, it's all download off the internet and print out stuff or loyalty card deals now.
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Aug 11, 2013 17:48
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einTier posted:Usually, when people talk about "chiclet" keyboards, they're talking about the original IBM PCjr. Yes but you can only get assorted fruit, I don't think anybody makes the original peppermint flavor anymore.
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Aug 13, 2013 01:56
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Jerry Cotton posted:
Tell that to a real rocket scientist and you'll get a lot of  out of them. You're trying to hit a moving target from a moving target without going so fast you kill all the astronauts on board and also without going so slow you don't get there, or kill all the astronauts on board. You can do the equations with a slide rule (or as some of the Apollo astronauts could do it, in their heads) but a computer tends to be faster.For a more practical approach to this problem, watch somebody play Kerbal Space Program and laugh or look on in horror or boredom as rockets slam into things as they repeatedly gently caress up having no idea what they're doing.
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Oct 7, 2013 18:32
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the directions are pretty simple: just go up.
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Croccers posted:Didn't one of the Final Fantasy MMOs have a special clock you could get that told you the time/day/moon cycles on the clock along with the normal time? You mean this thing? I almost bought one of those back when they first came out.
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Jan 22, 2014 20:06
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Collateral Damage posted:It didn't really. It was just a bypass directly from the AC input to output, some times via the power switch. Wait, that was what those were for? Huh, I never did that, always had enough outlets. Edit: I too built a computer a few months ago after not doing any builds for years and I was surprised at how easy everything was. The only problems I had were I didn't quite have all the right sizes of screws, the PSU cables were too short for my initial layout, and it nearly drove me mad until I got everything settled correctly. Kwyndig has a new favorite as of 16:44 on Mar 16, 2014 |
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Mar 16, 2014 16:40
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Lowen SoDium posted:Fun fact, the animators behind that music video went on to start Mainframe Entertainment and the tv show ReBoot. Where they get booed off stage if memory serves. Hell that entire show is a cavalcade of obsolete computer technology, from the various references down to the hardware they used to make it. It apparently took them years to animate enough episodes to have a single season at first while they developed the software tools. Today you could probably animate an entire season of a show like it in a month.
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Mar 22, 2014 21:27
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Cigarette lighter outlets are not going away, ever, because there are far too many devices that use it.
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Apr 5, 2014 02:56
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MondayHotDog posted:In my first year of high school we were still using floppies. Same, floppy floppies (5 and a quarter) or hard (3 and a half)?
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Nov 25, 2014 03:48
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Remulak posted:Shoot in HD with proper lighting then add the film look in post, there are a gazillion plugins for whatever finishing system you use to get this effect. Shoot some test clips and try some. IMO decent fill and key but low backlight are part of the cheesy look. Just do this please, it's relatively cheap to film normally (for today's standard) and then use After Effects to make it look like old school el cheapo film.
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Jan 13, 2015 14:56
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pookel posted:I never did have Bonzi Buddy. However ... Man that just reminds me that they made a shitload of similar programs in Japan, although most of them would just sit on top of your active window and respond to clicks. Or maybe it was one program and people put out modules for it, I'm not sure. The only thing I remember about it was that it was Japanese as hell, mostly anime characters and you had to install some extra .dlls from the Asian distro of Windows to get it to work.
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Jun 4, 2015 01:12
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Zaphod42 posted:
At one point they tell you how to make Iron compounds, telling you to break out the Lye  Later they tell you how to make chloroform  There's also a shitload of experiments that are just 'burn this thing'.
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Jun 5, 2015 10:27
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What the gently caress
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And that's why real programmers of the time numbered their punch cards.
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Sep 13, 2016 15:50
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Yeah, Turing was the first person to really sit down and think about what computation could actually do if performed by machines. It turns out being able to solve math problems very quickly has all kinds of uses. Like enabling people to shitpost on forums 
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Sep 13, 2016 23:35
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Dick Trauma posted:How could they conceive of 10000 but not 10001? If there was an army of 20000 approaching would they say "The enemy has 10000 x 2 soldiers"? Accurate counting wasn't really a thing back then, your scouts would say if they thought the army was bigger or smaller than yours on land. At sea it was boats, and nobody had even heard of ten thousand ships.
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Sep 16, 2016 23:45
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Do they make nixie tubes or is this one of those things where people are tearing apart old kit because they love the look of the things?
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Sep 19, 2016 23:27
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The main problem with brain to machine interfaces is that brains and machines don't how to work that way by default, so you have to both train the operator and the computer program to do anything. Until that process can be streamlined to the point where you can put on a helmet or whatever and just play, 'brain games' are never going to catch on. It's not really an obsolete or failed tech, just one where the technology to make it actually work doesn't really exist yet. The 'easiest' way would be to use a universal schema that you train the operator on beforehand, so you'd have the computer already set up with a database of how their brain inputs commands that you could use. Kind of like a gamepad for your mind. Of course, since there are already perfectly good interfaces out there that don't rely on direct mind connections, that sort of research is going to be restricted to the disabled for a long time.
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Sep 20, 2016 21:47
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moller posted:
This would quickly turn into a horrible feedback loop for me. No wonder they never released it outside of Japan.
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Sep 21, 2016 09:25
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My Lovely Horse posted:Coming in to work is obsolete tech. I could do 90% of my job from home, while doing other stuff even, but IT won't play ball. It shouldn't be a vector because nothing executes on your end unless you have an odd setup. Remote access is usually basically a glorified web browser.
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Sep 23, 2016 02:03
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Lowen SoDium posted:Many companies still use VPN for remote access and a lot of them don't have proper access list to limit connectivity to jump servers, web apps, or what ever. Jesus christ why??? I can't imagine any scenario where you'd want to do that, it completely destroys any semblance of security because all it takes is one idiot leaving their laptop somewhere with an active VPN key on it to give unauthorized persons access to your inner goddamn secrets.
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Sep 23, 2016 15:48
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CubanMissile posted:I tried! But bars and restaurants are constantly replacing general managers and the new ones always bring in their own people. Sounds like your job is to become the boss then.
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Sep 26, 2016 17:27
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Suzuran posted:What about actual punch clocks, are those obsolete yet? At a prior employer we had one of the old mechanical clocks until 2003-ish, when he "upgraded" to a computerized punch clock that used your fingerprint to clock you in and out so people couldn't punch for their friends. The clock fed its data into a web-based status board that the boss would watch like a hawk, because if you were not there and visibly busy working on something you were literally stealing time from the company and he expected to be compensated. We had to punch out for any breaks, including smoke breaks, and if the boss found you being insufficiently busy he would punch you out with his administrative access code and you would not be paid from then until you were allowed to clock in again. One of my projects was supposed to be a program that monitored web usage via the proxy server logs and automatically punched someone out if they visited websites on the blacklist (myspace, etc) but that never happened. If you were expected to continue working after being punched out that's illegal, by the way.
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Sep 27, 2016 16:31
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Geoj posted:Not sure what your nationality is but US labor laws are maybe three steps ahead of allowing indentured servitude, if not outright slavery. Well yeah, there's that. But even if they fire you you can land them in poo poo if they're forcing unpaid work. Fines and penalties for violating minimum wage laws are no joke for a small business. Unless you're in jail or work in an exempt industry for some reason, then tough poo poo.
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Sep 28, 2016 17:17
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Buttcoin purse posted:Should I have been using those for my PC drives? Haha, no, he's talking about these  (not my picture) One thing I never got about those was the locking lever, was sudden, violent, disk ejection a concern back then? My drive pushed the disk into reading position with the lever so I never found out.
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Oct 3, 2016 17:07
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chitoryu12 posted:Why does it have so many duplicate numbers? Is each tied to a specific place in the number? It's a Burroughs adding machine. The way the mechanical action worked required that many keys. Past that, somebody more knowledgeable in the operation of one would have to explain. edit: It's too bad the BUNCH got beaten so heavily by IBM. Burroughs, at least, was always trying new things in the computer field to stay competitive, including inventing most of the precursors to modern banking equipment and software. Kwyndig has a new favorite as of 21:14 on Oct 13, 2016 |
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Oct 13, 2016 21:09
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Powered Descent posted:
Yeah, not being able to encode a letter to itself is a huge flaw in cryptography, and that and a few mechanical flaws in the way the wheels worked were the only reason we were able to break the Enigma with the technology of the time in a usable fashion. Don't get me wrong, the boffins at Bletchley Park were brilliant and Alan Turing was definitely a man ahead of his time, but if the Nazis had actually understood the flaws in the machine they'd built and corrected them, there's a good chance we wouldn't have had actionable intelligence off of the Enigma (we would have still obtained intelligence off of Enigma coded transmissions, but it probably would have been decoded too late to be useful for planning purposes until sometime after D-Day). Honestly, I'm more impressed that BP managed to break the Lorenz machines, as they didn't have a working German model of one until after they'd already broken it and unlike Enigma they had very little coded transmissions to go by, since it was reserved for telex instead of the more frequent morse radio transmissions.
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Oct 15, 2016 19:06
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I love the Enigma!
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Lizard Combatant posted:How long would it take modern software to crack an enigma message out of curiosity. Keep in mind that I have no idea how such software works. Would it need a crib even? Modern cryptoanalysis software could probably break an Enigma message in a few seconds, especially if they knew it was coming from an Enigma. With an electronic model of an Enigma machine as a base, your average desktop PC could break an Enigma code pretty much instantly, it already handles much more complex ciphers on a day to day basis.
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Oct 15, 2016 21:37
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The Enigma was a deeply flawed machine in operation, the number of possible code combinations on it was actually around half or less of what it was mathematically capable of, not even considering the actual flaws in the design, simply due to the instructions operators had to work with. It was merely around 16x1019 possible combinations, and considering a modern desktop computer can manage multiple TFLOPS on its GPU alone, brute forcing any short Enigma message without any decrypted data wouldn't take more than a few days (and Enigma messages were always short). If you throw in a real workhorse beast like the ones the NSA uses, I wouldn't put near instantaneous brute force decryption out of the realm of possibility. None of that matters though, because we have all the breaks for the Enigma already, so decrypting messages sent using one is child's play. Brute force isn't possible with modern encryption schemes because they are orders of magnitude more complex as well as incorporating new math we've discovered since then. 128 bit encryption has 2128 possible combinations or somewhere around 3x1038, which would require over 1018 years to brute force with a desktop computer (that's where the whole 'longer than the age of the universe' sound bite comes from). Even a computer capable of yottaFLOPs (an insane beast of a machine exponentially faster than anything ever built) would take millions of years to brute force it. Which is why modern cryptoanalysis is based on finding or making breaks and side channel attacks instead of brute force.
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Oct 16, 2016 00:22
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The End posted:8-Bit Guy went and did a bunch of testing and confirmed that yes, VHS really was dogshit. VHS was such a dogshit format, yeah. There were several points of mechanical failure that could actually destroy either your storage medium, your playback device, or both. Imagine if a DVD had a chance of spontaneously bricking your player or just plain disintegrating in the player tray.
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Oct 16, 2016 04:43
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Grassy Knowles posted:There was betamax porn but there weren't that many porn companies before home video got big, for obvious reasons. If anything the old myth has it backwards. VHS helped the porn industry immensely by creating a new untapped market that was actually fairly easy for an established company to get into. Now the reverse is happening with internet streaming and camera technology, by lowering the barrier for entry too far it's over saturated the market, killing off profits and forcing companies and performers to adapt or get jobs not centered around people jacking it.
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Oct 17, 2016 15:14
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Pham Nuwen posted:My laserdisc player can flip the read head automatically Doesn't help when you have a two disc movie.
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Oct 17, 2016 15:44
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Geoj posted:No, there wasn't because it was much more gradual. USB started appearing on computers in the mid 90s well before USB peripherals were common or really even available. It's not like one day in 1996 laptops ditched the then common PS/2, serial, parallel and gaming ports in favor of USB A ports that pretty much nothing used. This, I don't think this is like when Apple ditched the floppy dive, which was on the way out already (I personally hadn't used a floppy in about a year when the first iMac started out).
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Nov 1, 2016 00:57
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flosofl posted:That looks more like a wire wrap board where the intersecting current will "activate" a specific pin. Kind of like the original IMPs (aka RFC 1) BBN created when arpanet was being built. Read Where Wizards Stay Up Late if you can find it. Yeah, core memory always has beads or rings at each intersection because that's where the memory happens. At first I thought that might be plated-wire memory instead, but it doesn't look like the examples I've seen of that either. We don't use core memory tech anymore, because it was destructive readout, if you accessed the data the act of accessing the data erased it, so any instructions had better write the data back in (usually from a different, nondestructive source) if you still needed it. It was pretty fast for the time though.
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Nov 1, 2016 03:35
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