The OMG It is 2017 This thread's end is Nigh Complaint Thread.

LeatherGryphon

 

Taozen said:

LeatherGryphon said:

Taozen said:

Today all that could probably be stored on a single hard disk.

1600 bytes per inch x 12 inches in a foot x 2400 feet on a reel = 48,080,000 bytes/reel

256GB on a 1/4 inch square memory mini-chip, divided by 48MB* per tape = 5,555 tapes on one chip!

*Note: actual data capacity was about 45MB because of gaps between data records.

48MB? Rotating heads (like in VCRs) weren't invented then I assume. I recall a backup utility for Commodore C64 (I think) that used a VCR to store the data on VHS tapes.

For tapes it was the best of times and the worst of times.  MId '60s to late '70s. 

But hell, in 1975 at the Kennedy Space Center we still had vacuum tubes in some equipment!   We had a 20 pound rack mounted phone modem that was needed to send digital data at 9.6Kbaud (snail's pace today, but top speed back then)  just 5 miles to the KSC weather office where they had another modem.  Both modem's electronics had to be realigned every few weeks.  Yet we did have a video recorder.  Not tape, but disk based.  It had a single platter.  One frame of video would be written on one track around the circumfrence.  It had a few hundred tracks.  It had a crank that you could use to move the read/write head forward/backward across the platter.  Animation was manually achieved.  Although I was aware that the manufacturer did have a motor for the head movement but that was an extra cost accessory as were additional platters.  And as I said before, we were underfunded.   We used it to record frames of weather maps generated by the computer.  It took a minute to calculate each frame then I'd move the head to the next track.  Great fun.   But we had animated weather maps! (actually they were maps of the distribution of the cloud generated electrical charge over the space center)

The data for the generation of the electrical field distribution maps was gathered by 25 Electric Field Meters placed in the center of 25 manicured plots around the swamps of the space center.  The analog data was fed back to my lab and recorded on huge reels of 1 inch wide analog tape data recorders at 50 samples per second.  At some later time the data was selectively replayed through analog to digital converters into the computer for conversion into contour maps.  The 25 manicured plots were 50 foot diameter circles of grass and that meant that every week someone had to go out and mow them while kicking the alligators out of the way.   No, really.  It was a problem a couple of times!

Sfariah D

What does PDA mean?

jestmart

Personal Digital Assistant or Public Display of Affection.

SimonJM

McGyver said:

Miss Bad Wolf said:

LeatherGryphon said:

Miss Bad Wolf said:

how can I find something when I forgot what I am looking for?

Statistics show that most of us stop looking for things after we find them.  So, I suggest if you stop looking for whatever it was that you were looking for you will discover that you've already found it.  Problem solved.  You're welcome.

 

It was a tutorial I was looking for and I found it but all that searching made me exhausted so I did not watch it.

I find way too many (video) tutorials to be excellent sleep aids... Or the cause of serious frustration.

I want to know how to weld a vertex in a particular program, so after watching five fifteen minute long videos that don't really show what they claim they'll show, I find one that does... Sorta... But it's twenty minutes long and by the time the guy gets to the point after having gone through the history of the tool and why he likes his tablet pen, he finally gets to the point I started watching for... For the whole video he was talking like droopy dog, but then suddenly the caffeine from what I can only guess was 12 double espressos kicks in and he starts zipping the cursor around here and there and talking a mile a minute and BAM... "So that's it... Hope you like the video!...." 

I'm already partly brainlocked and numb from the previous videos, but that just shuts my brain down completely... I keep trying to reverse to the point where he starts explaining what I need to know, but being a YouTube video it either goes way before or way after, and being near the end it keeps going to the next video if I go too far and when it does I have to start over and then I have to wait for the same damn commercial to try and sell me car or cow insurance for the mandatory first couple of seconds which is just sealing the deal that I now hate the insurance company and will never buy their cow insurance... 

Why does the simplest thing have to be a video?  

Once upon a time people wrote stuff instead of creating videos for everything.

How to weld a vertex in Slappy3D:  Select vertices to weld... In the menu bar at top of screen, go to- OPTIONS... In drop down menu go to- GLUE... In that drop down click - JOIN... In that drop down- JOIN VERTICES... 

Slappy3D is not real but a metaphor for most software (especially paid) that comes sans instructions, or long ago let their tutorial links expire and now rely on YouTube to solve their instructional needs

One does not need a fifteen minute long video that covers turning on the computer (seriously, one guy actually starts the video without having the program open... And then it won't open right away and he is puzzled by that), to do one simple thing that is less then a paragraph of info.

Why is it that as technology becomes more powerful and holds the potential to improve our lives and make information, and learning, better and smoother, humans take those gains and potential and muck it up so as its either hardly better then before or just plain complicated and terrible... ?

We are going to be so screwed eventually... Sometimes I see the laziness of people manifest in certain ways and it's not so hard to envision the evolution and consequences of certain behaviors... The Twittery textspeak and YouTubish desire to forego written explanations, makes me wonder what language will be like in a hundred years... Will at some not too distant point everything become abbreviations, icons and videos? Will only handfuls of "traditionalists" even bother to know how to write, and aside from them, just scholars, scientists and tech-elite will be the only ones to hold these skills... And the "common man" will just go the path of least resistance, letting technology hold his hand for everything... It's gonna really suck should a solar EMP or some disaster take away that technology... It'll be a new Dark Ages, while society reorganizes.

Ooooh... I found pound cake! Gotta go!

TL;DR - could you upload a 20 minute tutorial to YouTube explaining how a tutorial should be done, but spend the first 18 minutes pontificating over the relative merits of three different cardigans you'd wear whilst doing the video despite the fat that we'd not see them, then rush through the next 10 seconds with the 'explanation' before heading into an outro involving selling insurance to cows that drive cars?

SimonJM

kyoto kid said:

Chohole said:

Computer room ?      Computer room ?    hmm.   We didn't even have calculators    Books and brains was all we used.

...I had a slide rule and even knew how to use it.

Many years ago (um, summat like 40 ... egad, that's scarey!) our math teacher had us construct a slide rule (my dad had access to logarthmic graph paper, happily) and the next week taught us how they were used, and was proud as punch to give us a poem as an aide memoire:

"To divide,

move the slide

To multiply,

move the cursor"

then got a bit peeved when someone pointed out it didn't actually rhyme 

 

On the upside - I DO remember!!!

Mistara

does it stay where it is?

TJohn

MistyMist said:

does it stay where it is?

Does what stay where it is?

Mistara

Tjohn said:

MistyMist said:

does it stay where it is?

Does what stay where it is?

 

the hole in the ozone.  is it where it was?  

Mistara

HAPPY CANADIAN THANKSGIVING DAY!!

 

to help our northern neigbors celebrate, i am peeling taters for mashing.

was never a fan of potato skin in my mashed potatoes.  potato skins have their own place on the menu.

kyoto kid

LeatherGryphon said:

 

Taozen said:

LeatherGryphon said:

Taozen said:

Today all that could probably be stored on a single hard disk.

1600 bytes per inch x 12 inches in a foot x 2400 feet on a reel = 48,080,000 bytes/reel

256GB on a 1/4 inch square memory mini-chip, divided by 48MB* per tape = 5,555 tapes on one chip!

*Note: actual data capacity was about 45MB because of gaps between data records.

48MB? Rotating heads (like in VCRs) weren't invented then I assume. I recall a backup utility for Commodore C64 (I think) that used a VCR to store the data on VHS tapes.

For tapes it was the best of times and the worst of times.  MId '60s to late '70s. 

But hell, in 1975 at the Kennedy Space Center we still had vacuum tubes in some equipment!   We had a 20 pound rack mounted phone modem that was needed to send digital data at 9.6Kbaud (snail's pace today, but top speed back then)  just 5 miles to the KSC weather office where they had another modem.  Both modem's electronics had to be realigned every few weeks.  Yet we did have a video recorder.  Not tape, but disk based.  It had a single platter.  One frame of video would be written on one track around the circumfrence.  It had a few hundred tracks.  It had a crank that you could use to move the read/write head forward/backward across the platter.  Animation was manually achieved.  Although I was aware that the manufacturer did have a motor for the head movement but that was an extra cost accessory as were additional platters.  And as I said before, we were underfunded.   We used it to record frames of weather maps generated by the computer.  It took a minute to calculate each frame then I'd move the head to the next track.  Great fun.   But we had animated weather maps! (actually they were maps of the distribution of the cloud generated electrical charge over the space center)

The data for the generation of the electrical field distribution maps was gathered by 25 Electric Field Meters placed in the center of 25 manicured plots around the swamps of the space center.  The analog data was fed back to my lab and recorded on huge reels of 1 inch wide analog tape data recorders at 50 samples per second.  At some later time the data was selectively replayed through analog to digital converters into the computer for conversion into contour maps.  The 25 manicured plots were 50 foot diameter circles of grass and that meant that every week someone had to go out and mow them while kicking the alligators out of the way.   No, really.  It was a problem a couple of times!

...reading things like this I find it amazing what NASA accomplished.  A lot of people then thought they had a huge budget and the latest technology but they didn't.  To think that a Raspberry PI which you can hold in your hand is more powerful than the computer aboard the Apollo spacecraft which guided it a quarter million miles to a pinpoint landing and back home again makes that feat all that more incredible.

kyoto kid

...much much water from the sky today.  Huge "blob" of rain on the radar map just North of the Columbia River heading towards the city. Good day to stay in and stay dry. 

Mistara

is been raining since yesterday.  cosmic sprinkler sending rain from the ozone hole?

 

phew finished pa sale shopping.  that was a good one eh?
no punch gimmicks, easy straightforward sale.

got the clothes clones to use g3 outfits on g2 and gn1 

Mistara

pa festival after party?

Mistara

is it almost time for GOT season7?

setting up my snack tray with snacks
about to start a smallville marathon, starting with the episode of Lois on the train

ps1borg

Morning. Sun rising on storm trashed city, can't believe the piles of smashed wind-drift stuff laying around everywhere. Looks like we 're down one tomato plant, got off lightly I think yay 

ps1borg

Jan19 said:

Haz many complaints but chiefly a fatal rigging error Whisky Tango Foxtrot must have been asleep at the KB

 

Looks like bad hierarchy and no symmetry. 

Right to left symmetry oughta do it.  Damned if I'd put that chest bone out there though.

Rig from scratch.  Not me.

 

Always put hold bones in big spaces that don't move much, what got left out was a well rested shoulder joint  :0

ps1borg

MistyMist said:

ps1borg said:

Haz many complaints but chiefly a fatal rigging error Whisky Tango Foxtrot must have been asleep at the KB

 

 

Triangles!

Subdivisions !

Sfariah D

I stole a nap today, I am so bad, I am such a bad wolf

LeatherGryphon

kyoto kid said:

LeatherGryphon said:

 

Taozen said:

LeatherGryphon said:

Taozen said:

Today all that could probably be stored on a single hard disk.

1600 bytes per inch x 12 inches in a foot x 2400 feet on a reel = 48,080,000 bytes/reel

256GB on a 1/4 inch square memory mini-chip, divided by 48MB* per tape = 5,555 tapes on one chip!

*Note: actual data capacity was about 45MB because of gaps between data records.

48MB? Rotating heads (like in VCRs) weren't invented then I assume. I recall a backup utility for Commodore C64 (I think) that used a VCR to store the data on VHS tapes.

For tapes it was the best of times and the worst of times.  MId '60s to late '70s. 

But hell, in 1975 at the Kennedy Space Center we still had vacuum tubes in some equipment!   We had a 20 pound rack mounted phone modem that was needed to send digital data at 9.6Kbaud (snail's pace today, but top speed back then)  just 5 miles to the KSC weather office where they had another modem.  Both modem's electronics had to be realigned every few weeks.  Yet we did have a video recorder.  Not tape, but disk based.  It had a single platter.  One frame of video would be written on one track around the circumfrence.  It had a few hundred tracks.  It had a crank that you could use to move the read/write head forward/backward across the platter.  Animation was manually achieved.  Although I was aware that the manufacturer did have a motor for the head movement but that was an extra cost accessory as were additional platters.  And as I said before, we were underfunded.   We used it to record frames of weather maps generated by the computer.  It took a minute to calculate each frame then I'd move the head to the next track.  Great fun.   But we had animated weather maps! (actually they were maps of the distribution of the cloud generated electrical charge over the space center)

The data for the generation of the electrical field distribution maps was gathered by 25 Electric Field Meters placed in the center of 25 manicured plots around the swamps of the space center.  The analog data was fed back to my lab and recorded on huge reels of 1 inch wide analog tape data recorders at 50 samples per second.  At some later time the data was selectively replayed through analog to digital converters into the computer for conversion into contour maps.  The 25 manicured plots were 50 foot diameter circles of grass and that meant that every week someone had to go out and mow them while kicking the alligators out of the way.   No, really.  It was a problem a couple of times!

...reading things like this I find it amazing what NASA accomplished.  A lot of people then thought they had a huge budget and the latest technology but they didn't.  To think that a Raspberry PI which you can hold in your hand is more powerful than the computer aboard the Apollo spacecraft which guided it a quarter million miles to a pinpoint landing and back home again makes that feat all that more incredible.

Well, to be fair to NASA they did have some incredible toys for the time. But by today's standards the toys were pretty primitive yet NASA (and its contractors) did accomplish amazing feats with stone knives and bearskins.

In the mid to late '70s the Launch Control Rooms on the 3rd floor of the Launch Control Center (LCC) had been refitted with all brand new Aydin color graphic computer consoles.  State of the art stuff at the time.  Whereas I was in a different department doing non-launch related stuff in a computer lab in one corner of the 2nd floor and had teletypes for my two minicomputers.  I did however also have a Gould dot matrix thermal printer and Tektronix vector storage display for monochrome line-graphic output.  Expensive stuff at the time.  But any lab always claims that they are underfunded.  My salary at the time was about $8,000 a year.  NASA owned the lab, it was staffed with people from Federal Electric (later replaced by Computer Sciences Corp.) Three people manned the analog recorders in the next room but I was the only computer savy person in those lab and wrote all the software (except the OS) myself.  And that included custom device drivers, floating point arithmetic, graphic software and analysis and output applications.  My computer lab was about 25x60 foot and included two Raytheon 3-rack mini-computers, two tape drives, two floor model card readers & printers, two teletypes, a couple racks of A/D conversion equipment, racks of video equipment, a spectrum analyzer, a couple oscilloscopes, several document storage cabinets, several cabinets for parts & small equipment, tape cabinets, a conference table, my office and the coffee maker.  It was a fun time but the pay was squat. 

Best fun was that it had a hard floor and my chair had good wheels.  I could push away from my desk and glide down the length of the lab to the computer console.

kyoto kid

..ahh, one of the most important pices of equipment: the coffee maker.

Mistara

can remember my 1st mr coffee, was 19th birthday 

Mistara

so funny i forgot to laugh  haaaaa

LeatherGryphon

I kept wondering why Mrs Coffee never appeared.

Etrigan

LeatherGryphon said:

I kept wondering why Mrs Coffee never appeared.

Mr. Coffee was first introduced in 1972. Mrs Coffee became Ms Coffee and refused to make the coffee.

Mistara

Etrigan said:

LeatherGryphon said:

I kept wondering why Mrs Coffee never appeared.

Mr. Coffee was first introduced in 1972. Mrs Coffee became Ms Coffee and refused to make the coffee.

 

coffee suffragette

Mistara

complaint - the lean cuisines tray cant go on a cookie sheet anymoars, is microwave only

Sfariah D

I have a headache but just took a painkiller.  At least I am home so I can rest.

Mistara

prescription strength painkiller?

Sfariah D

MistyMist said:

prescription strength painkiller?

It was a prescription for pain killers but I think they are just regular pain killers.

kyoto kid

...sunny day after a dismal and quite rainy one, so about to head out for a little liquid painkiller. Need to grab the sweatshirt as only in the mid 50s