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Collateral Damage
Jun 13, 2009

DoctorWhat posted:

why would anyone willingly use up a data plan rather than storing their music locally? Music doesn't take up much space on a modern 32 or 64gb ipod/iphone/android device.
Soon to be obsolete and failed technology: capped data plans.

Also Spotify does store your music locally, it caches every track played so it's only streamed once (until you haven't played it in a while and it gets crowded out of the cache). Or you can set your playlists to be available offline, which means that the client will pre-cache every track in it and they won't ever get purged from it. By default it only downloads when the phone is on wifi but if you live in a country where your carriers don't all suck you can change it in settings.

Last month Spotify used about 600MB of data for me. Granted my most commonly played playlists are cached. Awful used 800MB. :v:

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Magnus Praeda
Jul 18, 2003
The largess in the land.

Collateral Damage posted:

Soon to be obsolete and failed technology: capped data plans.

:cawg:

Capped data plans aren't going anywhere anytime soon for most of the major players. Why would they? They make money hand-over-fist and the public just keeps paying.

3D Megadoodoo
Nov 25, 2010

Countries where capped data plans exist: obsolete and failed.

Mr.Radar
Nov 5, 2005

You guys aren't going to believe this, but that guy is our games teacher.

Magnus Praeda posted:

:cawg:

Capped data plans aren't going anywhere anytime soon for most of the major players. Why would they? They make money hand-over-fist and the public just keeps paying.

Not to mention that unlike landline internet service (where the service provider can always just build more lines) there is a real issue with cellular radio spectrum. It's not as bad as the phone companies want you to believe it is, and there are ways to mitigate the issue, but it's also not some totally-made-up money-grab.

Zaphod42
Sep 13, 2012

If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Zopotantor posted:

Ahem.


This is a Microdrive.

You reminded me of these guys



Probably been posted in this thread before.

Proteus Jones
Feb 28, 2013



Zaphod42 posted:

You reminded me of these guys



Probably been posted in this thread before.

*click*click*click*

KozmoNaut
Apr 23, 2008

Happiness is a warm
Turbo Plasma Rifle


That reminds me, I need to get a Zip disk (and a Jaz disk) for my collection of obsolete media.

SierraEchoBravo
Jun 23, 2010

Zaphod42 posted:

You reminded me of these guys



Probably been posted in this thread before.

Reminds me of a flash animation class I took over the summer around 2002-2003 (4th or 5th grade). These things failed constantly, and took my final assignment with it. Even 11 year old me understood that they seemed less reliable than the CDs I was using for most games/storage and definitely not as good as the floppies I grew up with.

Mr. Beefhead
May 8, 2003

I can make beans into peas.

JayKay posted:

I can't remember which Creative portable media player it was, but I had a photographer buddy in the early 2000's who was snatching them up just for the Microdrives. Apparently it was cheaper to buy the PMP and harvest the Microdrive than it was to buy a Microdrive on it's own.

There may have been more than one, but that was the case with the MuVo 2.



For a very short period of time, you could buy a MuVo2, pull the drive, and sell it on ebay for enough to cover the cost of the player as well as a 512MB CF card to replace the drive with. This was at a time when 512MB was a fairly respectable size for a shockproof, flash based mp3 player - especially for free. Goddamn that was a satisfying trick.

Mr. Beefhead has a new favorite as of 18:21 on May 13, 2015

Dick Trauma
Nov 30, 2007

God damn it, you've got to be kind.

Zaphod42 posted:

You reminded me of these guys



Probably been posted in this thread before.

I was one of those people that tried to save a few bucks by buying one of these. To its credit it never caused me any trouble.

Rap Game Goku
Apr 2, 2008

Word to your moms, I came to drop spirit bombs


Dick Trauma posted:

I was one of those people that tried to save a few bucks by buying one of these. To its credit it never caused me any trouble.



That looks exactly like my old zip drive, only it's beige and says Epson. What's the difference?

TotalLossBrain
Oct 20, 2010

Hier graben!

Athenry posted:

That looks exactly like my old zip drive, only it's beige and says Epson. What's the difference?

Likely no difference at all. Lots of big names like to just buy already existing product and license/rebrand it.

Fo3
Feb 14, 2004

RAAAAARGH!!!! GIFT CARDS ARE FUCKING RETARDED!!!!

(I need a hug)

KozmoNaut posted:

That reminds me, I need to get a Zip disk (and a Jaz disk) for my collection of obsolete media.

I think I have some. Probably not worth postage even if I can find them, but when I was in Uni we were forced to used 100mb zip disks. The fact they spent so much on zip drives and LS120mb super floppies was the real reason I think that they shunned cd burners or cd/rw.
I may have a 250mb drive, a single 250mb disk and a couple of 100mb disks.

Fo3 has a new favorite as of 19:45 on May 13, 2015

Dick Trauma
Nov 30, 2007

God damn it, you've got to be kind.

Athenry posted:

That looks exactly like my old zip drive, only it's beige and says Epson. What's the difference?

Mine was better.

KozmoNaut
Apr 23, 2008

Happiness is a warm
Turbo Plasma Rifle


Fo3 posted:

I think I have some. Probably not worth postage even if I can find them, but when I was in Uni we were forced to used 100mb zip disks. The fact they spent so much on zip drives and LS120mb super floppies was the real reason I think that they shunned cd burners or cd/rw.
I may have a 250mb drive, a single 250mb disk and a couple of 100mb disks.

I think my dad still has a couple hidden in a drawer somewhere, but thanks for the offer :)

Pham Nuwen
Oct 30, 2010



Dick Trauma posted:

I was one of those people that tried to save a few bucks by buying one of these. To its credit it never caused me any trouble.



I had one that looked just like this but was blue.

Spent days trying to get it working with my 486 running Linux, back when I didn't know anything about Linux and getting internet access meant driving down to my parents' office.

Zip disks and drives looked cool as gently caress, though.

90s Solo Cup
Feb 22, 2011

To understand the cup
He must become the cup



Pham Nuwen posted:

Zip disks and drives looked cool as gently caress, though.

I have a couple of old Dell Dimensions in storage with built-in Zip drives. Never bothered to test them, since I never bothered to find any Zip disks for them.

People stopped giving a gently caress about Zip disks no sooner than burnable CDs came into the picture.

Geoj
May 28, 2008

BITTER POOR PERSON

Tubesock Holocaust posted:

People stopped giving a gently caress about Zip disks no sooner than burnable CDs came into the picture.

This was actually more of a case of "once CD-R technology became affordable and reliable." ZIP disks and early CD-R coexisted for several years.

When writable optical media was cutting-edge tech (at least at the consumer level) the drives were absurdly expensive, media was in the several dollar per disc range and you had about a 50/50 chance of making a coaster every time you tried to burn a disc, so the only time you'd try to burn a CD is if you had no other option.

Actually I'd contend that it was flash-based memory that brought about the demise of the ZIP disk - until flash drives dropped in price and increased in capacity there wasn't a highly portable/high capacity storage medium that allowed for read and write on the fly.

Geoj has a new favorite as of 20:58 on May 13, 2015

The_Franz
Aug 8, 2003

Fo3 posted:

I think I have some. Probably not worth postage even if I can find them, but when I was in Uni we were forced to used 100mb zip disks. The fact they spent so much on zip drives and LS120mb super floppies was the real reason I think that they shunned cd burners or cd/rw.

CD burners were probably the slowest, least convenient method of moving files around. Files that took a few seconds to copy to a Zip disk took minutes to write to a CD-RW by the time you went through the whole process.

Zip drives were almost everywhere from the mid-90s to the early-00s just because they were generally the fastest and easiest way to move around larger files until thumb drives became ubiquitous.

mostlygray
Nov 1, 2012

BURY ME AS I LIVED, A FREE MAN ON THE CLUTCH

Dick Trauma posted:

I was one of those people that tried to save a few bucks by buying one of these. To its credit it never caused me any trouble.



I had the launcher version of the external zip. It would throw the disk a good 3 feet if you didn't catch it with your hand. The eject springs were very inconsistent from drive to drive. With some devices, you had to pick the disk out with your nails.

I don't care what Iomega says, the click of death was real. I've taken a bad one apart and the failure is obvious. The drive would attempt to find the zero block. If it was missing, it would home the head (click) and try again. By doing so, the poorly attached head would detach after 20 or 30 attempts in a row and scrape the disk. Thus a hardware virus was created. There was no code to stop the re-attempt sequence so it would destroy the drive and replicate. The head was held to the arm by glue, copper, and hope.

AlternateAccount
Apr 25, 2005
FYGM

Geoj posted:

you had about a 50/50 chance of making a coaster every time you tried to burn a disc, so the only time you'd try to burn a CD is if you had no other option.

If you were one of those scrubs with an IDE based drive. People with SCSI drives very rarely had to deal with the dreaded BUFFER UNDERRUN.

blugu64
Jul 17, 2006

Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face?

Pham Nuwen posted:

Spent days trying to get it working with my 486 running Linux, back when I didn't know anything about Linux and getting internet access meant driving down to my parents' office.

Ahh the good old days. Back then the first things you learned to configure was networking and x, so you could hop online and figure everything else out.

Light Gun Man
Oct 17, 2009

toEjaM iS oN
vaCatioN




Lipstick Apathy
My USB zip 250 drive served me incredibly well and without issue, I still have it and pull it out to use on occasion, and have yet to have a single bad disc. It was really loving handy in a world before usb flash memory.

peter gabriel
Nov 8, 2011

Hello Commandos
I has a SCSI Zip Drive :smug:

Rap Game Goku
Apr 2, 2008

Word to your moms, I came to drop spirit bombs


peter gabriel posted:

I has a SCSI Zip Drive :smug:

Yeah me too. Technically it was a Zip Plus Drive, so you could connect it via parallel or scsi on Mac.

I guess the Mac OS pre-X belongs in here as well (I don't remember it being issued)


The DOS to Mac OS X's WinNT.

PhotoKirk
Jul 2, 2007

insert witty text here

mostlygray posted:

I had the launcher version of the external zip. It would throw the disk a good 3 feet if you didn't catch it with your hand. The eject springs were very inconsistent from drive to drive. With some devices, you had to pick the disk out with your nails.

I don't care what Iomega says, the click of death was real. I've taken a bad one apart and the failure is obvious. The drive would attempt to find the zero block. If it was missing, it would home the head (click) and try again. By doing so, the poorly attached head would detach after 20 or 30 attempts in a row and scrape the disk. Thus a hardware virus was created. There was no code to stop the re-attempt sequence so it would destroy the drive and replicate. The head was held to the arm by glue, copper, and hope.

I have a couple boxes of Zip and Jazz cartridges and no working drive to read them. The click of death was very real, and even more common on those damned Jazz drives.

empty baggie
Oct 22, 2003

peter gabriel posted:

I has a SCSI Zip Drive :smug:

I have one too, and a USB model. I also still have an Iomega Predator CD writer that took around 5 hours to make coasters (seriously, one out of 5 discs might successfully burn, maybe).

The_Raven
Jul 2, 2004

Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved?

bigtom posted:

Radio station equipment loves RS-232: most satellite relay closures come over RS-232, older RDS units use it to be pushed updated text from the encoder, and even for updating firmware in some cases on older audio processors. I keep one of those USB to serial adapters on hand at all times just in case - saved my rear end a few times trying to interface with an older RDS encoder that lacked Ethernet. It works great so long as all the settings are correct.

Still prefer Ethernet or USB, but it's not going away for a long time in my line of work either.

I'm also in radio, and our newest air studio refurbs all use serial control from the console to the automation system, the old consoles used dedicated parallel I/O cards. I've still got studios running on Windows XP, fercrissakes.

I'm having problems with the new studio builds because the audio cards our playout systems use are big PCI suckers, and machines that will take multiple full-height PCI cards are getting rare as rocking-horse poo poo. I'm having them custom built with special Supermicro cases and motherboards.

But go figure, I just picked up a new machine for my office to replace my old laptop, our IT guys ordered HP desktops that have not only a serial port, but PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports. Didn't expect that.

I also keep a Toshiba Libretto handy (Win95 FTW) for my serial debugging needs, it's adorable...

Mister Kingdom
Dec 14, 2005

And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

peter gabriel posted:

I has a SCSI Zip Drive :smug:

I got one from an office I used to work at. They were cleaning out some old junk and they didn't know what it was. It came with a Zip disc, too. I have no way to test it, though.

Vanagoon
Jan 20, 2008


Best Dead Gay Forums
on the whole Internet!

Athenry posted:

Yeah me too. Technically it was a Zip Plus Drive, so you could connect it via parallel or scsi on Mac.

I guess the Mac OS pre-X belongs in here as well (I don't remember it being issued)


The DOS to Mac OS X's WinNT.

Having to manually assign how much RAM your apps were allowed to use was the most asinine thing. I get that it made sense on the original 128k mac, but come on, that garbage persisted until TYOOL 2000?

If you wanted to let your software use more RAM, you had to exit it, open the little get into dialog on it and up the little number there.

What a crack brained way to manage memory. Made Win3.x even look sleek and sophisticated.

Code Jockey
Jan 24, 2006

69420 basic bytes free

Athenry posted:

Yeah me too. Technically it was a Zip Plus Drive, so you could connect it via parallel or scsi on Mac.

I guess the Mac OS pre-X belongs in here as well (I don't remember it being issued)


The DOS to Mac OS X's WinNT.

I miss old MacOS. :smith: I love it. Totally nostalgia for school probably, but I miss playing that world map jigsaw puzzle thing.

Vanagoon
Jan 20, 2008


Best Dead Gay Forums
on the whole Internet!

Code Jockey posted:

I miss old MacOS. :smith: I love it.

You do what now?

Exit Strategy
Dec 10, 2010

by sebmojo

Code Jockey posted:

I miss old MacOS. :smith: I love it. Totally nostalgia for school probably, but I miss playing that world map jigsaw puzzle thing.

I still run my Power Mac 6100 sometimes to play old games.

Vanagoon
Jan 20, 2008


Best Dead Gay Forums
on the whole Internet!
Then there's this. The fact that large parts of classic Mac OS were running under emulation to not break 68k backwards compatibility.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_68k_emulator

Code Jockey
Jan 24, 2006

69420 basic bytes free

Vanagoon posted:

You do what now?



... I also never had to do anything important with it, and if my machine hung up, I'd hop to the next one. :v:

El Estrago Bonito
Dec 17, 2010

Scout Finch Bitch
Stand alone GPS will always be around as long as people need them for outdoor activities. For navigating in cities phones are better than most GPS these days but trying to do Geocaching or hiking using a cellphone can be a nightmare if you can't get good 4G reception.

blugu64
Jul 17, 2006

Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face?

Vanagoon posted:

Then there's this. The fact that large parts of classic Mac OS were running under emulation to not break 68k backwards compatibility.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_68k_emulator

That came out in 7.1.2, and was mostly fixed with fat binaries by 7.6, and totally fixed by 8.5. When I was a Mac user, Apple was doomed.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Exit Strategy posted:

I still run my Power Mac 6100 sometimes to play old games.

I have a pair of 500mhz G4s next to my desk. One has 2GB of RAM, twin 8MB Voodoo2s and a Formac 7 card driving a SGI 1600W Flatscreen, and a built in Jazz2 Drive. Living the 2001 dream baby! :radcat:

dissss
Nov 10, 2007

I'm a terrible forums poster with terrible opinions.

Here's a cat fucking a squid.

AlternateAccount posted:

If you were one of those scrubs with an IDE based drive. People with SCSI drives very rarely had to deal with the dreaded BUFFER UNDERRUN.

At an old job I had a parallel port CD writer.

This was a while ago, but not as long as you'd hope (I got a new PC with a proper internal drive in 2005)

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Geoj
May 28, 2008

BITTER POOR PERSON

AlternateAccount posted:

If you were one of those scrubs with an IDE based drive. People with SCSI drives very rarely had to deal with the dreaded BUFFER UNDERRUN.

Look at moneybags here. FYGM indeed.

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