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The Sausages posted:Good ol' dumb terminals. This was pretty much ubiquitous in any library I visited (school, public, university) well into the 2000's. We'd make them do weird poo poo but I forget what or how, sorry. But I did guess my high school library's admin password - DEWEY. Those things worked great. Way better than the monstrosities they were replaced with, and man it was nice to get a list of the actual books that were actually present rather than having to check 20 boxes for "no, I don't want to see online-only abstracts, videocassettes available with interlibrary loan, or loving web searches." Just hit a number, type what you want, and bam you're there. For that matter I do miss card catalogs, if you want to see what the library has on a topic you can look at all the adjacent call numbers without having to hit the stacks.
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# ? Sep 13, 2015 15:08 |
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# ? Mar 29, 2024 02:13 |
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Uncle Enzo posted:Those things worked great. Way better than the monstrosities they were replaced with, and man it was nice to get a list of the actual books that were actually present rather than having to check 20 boxes for "no, I don't want to see online-only abstracts, videocassettes available with interlibrary loan, or loving web searches." Just hit a number, type what you want, and bam you're there. Yeah my library replaced these with a clunky web based system that takes FOREVER to load if you're actually in the library. I can look up books faster at home and just take a list with me.
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# ? Sep 13, 2015 15:10 |
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Here is a new topic: imagery satellites. Back when only a few countries had them, they needed to recover the actual film. The satellite would jettison the film canister and it would deorbit and reenter the atmosphere. Prior to landing on the surface, it would be decending via parachute, where it would get grabbed out of the air by a waiting aircraft, then whisked away to wherever for processing. In one case in 1972, it went wrong and the film fell into the pacific. Check out the link for the full story, but it is quite facinating. http://m.space.com/17055-classified-hexagon-satellite-capsule-ocean-recovery.html
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# ? Sep 13, 2015 20:08 |
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Mercury Ballistic posted:Here is a new topic: imagery satellites. Back when only a few countries had them, they needed to recover the actual film. The satellite would jettison the film canister and it would deorbit and reenter the atmosphere. Prior to landing on the surface, it would be decending via parachute, where it would get grabbed out of the air by a waiting aircraft, then whisked away to wherever for processing. My grandfather used to work for Eastman Kodak and was involved in the development of the film for these things. He has some interesting (now unclassified) stories from those days.
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# ? Sep 13, 2015 20:51 |
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Mercury Ballistic posted:Here is a new topic: imagery satellites. Back when only a few countries had them, they needed to recover the actual film. The satellite would jettison the film canister and it would deorbit and reenter the atmosphere. Prior to landing on the surface, it would be decending via parachute, where it would get grabbed out of the air by a waiting aircraft, then whisked away to wherever for processing. I remember these! As a last resort, if they couldn't be recovered while airborne, they were designed to float. They had a salt plug that would slowly dissolve in water, ensuring that the canister would eventually fill with water and sink, to prevent enemy capture
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# ? Sep 13, 2015 22:20 |
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Mercury Ballistic posted:Here is a new topic: imagery satellites. Back when only a few countries had them, they needed to recover the actual film. The satellite would jettison the film canister and it would deorbit and reenter the atmosphere. Prior to landing on the surface, it would be decending via parachute, where it would get grabbed out of the air by a waiting aircraft, then whisked away to wherever for processing. The remains were shipped back to the US and used to make improvements for future craft to hopefully survive a worst-case reentry. One of the changes made was the removal of the attention-grabbing TOP SECRET markings, which were replaced by a multilingual offer of a reward for returning the capsule to the US government. http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1063/1
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 00:49 |
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The Sausages posted:Good ol' dumb terminals. This was pretty much ubiquitous in any library I visited (school, public, university) well into the 2000's. We'd make them do weird poo poo but I forget what or how, sorry. But I did guess my high school library's admin password - DEWEY. I don't think it was exactly this, but my first experience with the Internet was through a university terminal like this that allowed access to usenet.
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 00:56 |
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Humphreys posted:Nice project on dumb terminals: Core memory is pretty wild in that it's not really random-access, you have a bunch of cores arranged together, and one way to read them is to basically cycle through them. Also, reading bits can cause the bit to change state.
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 01:14 |
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I think the U.S. moved to digital transmission as quickly as possible, but Russia was still using the old film canisters for a lot longer than most people would expect. And of course the U.S. had U-2 planes and the SR-71 for quick spy runs. Speaking of satellites, did anyone here have a subscription to Smithsonian Air & Space in the 80's when they published their satellite maps? My kindly old grandfather who worked for Lockheed would get me a subscription every year and they had a map that you could add and remove satellites as they were added to orbit. So March's issue would come in and "oh...RU-471a fell out of the sky, but let's stick Hughes-47b in low geosynchronous orbit." Being an aerospace nerd I put that poster on my wall and I kept up with those satellites for the better part of a year. The idea you could have an ever changing map on your wall of satellites is probably as quaint in 2015 as those yellow page books they'd publish of all the WWW addresses.
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 01:22 |
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Krispy Kareem posted:The idea you could have an ever changing map on your wall of satellites is probably as quaint in 2015 as those yellow page books they'd publish of all the WWW addresses.
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 01:57 |
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There is also http://stuffin.space, which has clickable objects.
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 02:06 |
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Three-Phase posted:Core memory is pretty wild in that it's not really random-access, you have a bunch of cores arranged together, and one way to read them is to basically cycle through them. Actually, core memory works almost exactly like dynamic RAM. It's organized into individually accessible words; reading is destructive and the controller automatically writes back the word's value after reading. The main difference is that core memory is non-volatile, while DRAM is volatile even when powered. I actually had to study this stuff as part of a course in memory technology (~30 years ago, when it was already long obsolete).
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 07:23 |
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My Lovely Horse posted:Just noticed the date. My county courthouse's public-use terminal for accessing court records, trial schedules, etc. looks just like this. They have a DOS machine right next to it that can query the same data, but nobody knows how to use it, so they usually leave it turned off. We're truly living in the future
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 15:58 |
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How often do people try to touch the screen to select their option?
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 16:33 |
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Krispy Kareem posted:I think the U.S. moved to digital transmission as quickly as possible, but Russia was still using the old film canisters for a lot longer than most people would expect. And of course the U.S. had U-2 planes and the SR-71 for quick spy runs. Krispy Kareem posted:low geosynchronous orbit low geosynchronous orbit?
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 21:11 |
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T-man posted:How often do people try to touch the screen to select their option? I remember as a kid the main branch of the public library had that kind of terminal set up with access to Usenet and Gopher. It also featured a light pen for users to help speed up the selection process.
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 21:17 |
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UCLA's libraries were all on the ORION system for at least 30 years, a mainframe-based database search engine. It was probably very quick when it was new but by the 1980s it was getting overwhelmed by simultaneous requests and had the bad habit of timing-out. I think it wasn't until years after I graduated that they finally got around to planning a replacement, but since that would've been the mid to late 1990s they probably fell headfirst into the Lure of the Web, never to be seen again.
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 22:09 |
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cyberbug posted:low geosynchronous orbit? I figured I butchered the term. I remembered the poster was staggered at different levels and couldn't remember the closest one (where there was a lot of satellite turnover).
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 23:11 |
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GOTTA STAY FAI posted:My county courthouse's public-use terminal for accessing court records, trial schedules, etc. looks just like this. They have a DOS machine right next to it that can query the same data, but nobody knows how to use it, so they usually leave it turned off. We're truly living in the future Eh, I've always figured, if it works, it works. Look at the several comments people have made in this thread about how the replacement to these system was so lovely.
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# ? Sep 15, 2015 01:03 |
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A library system on a text-only system seems both sensible and economical.
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# ? Sep 15, 2015 06:38 |
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Johnny Aztec posted:Eh, I've always figured, if it works, it works. Look at the several comments people have made in this thread about how the replacement to these system was so lovely. Absolutely. Why would you need something fancier than that to search a library database? When my library had something like that, it worked great. Now we've got something with a web browser interface that is lovely and slow.
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# ? Sep 15, 2015 06:44 |
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Mescal posted:Absolutely. Why would you need something fancier than that to search a library database? When my library had something like that, it worked great. Now we've got something with a web browser interface that is lovely and slow. Because people these days have an aversion for reading onscreen instructions and are expected to be presented with a wizard or have their hands held through a GUI akin to a mobile app. It better have images, animations and videos. Dumb people DO judge a book by its cover.jpg. On Military tech failures I feel cheated that the RAH-66 never made it into production. quote:Originally conceived in the 1980s, the RAH-66 Comanche was designed to be a stealth helicopter nearly undetectable by radar. Two prototypes were constructed and many hours of flight completed during the 1990s, but by the 2000s, with the helicopter still not ready, warfare was changing. In 2004, it was determined that the copter would need upgrades to survive modern anti-aircraft threats. Moreover, there were concerns that when loaded with equipment for actual missions, the engines would not be powerful enough to even lift the craft. Taking so long in testing and design killed it off. Whenever I see one I think of the really interesting movie 'Pentagon Wars' which detailed the mess of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA Humphreys has a new favorite as of 09:21 on Sep 15, 2015 |
# ? Sep 15, 2015 09:18 |
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Just scanned this in from a pristine original . And managed to skew it somehow what the gently caress?
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# ? Sep 15, 2015 09:19 |
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Johnny Aztec posted:Eh, I've always figured, if it works, it works. Look at the several comments people have made in this thread about how the replacement to these system was so lovely. Yeah, I was only poking fun at its age. It is perfectly-suited for its intended purpose, and is very reliable. Most of the other equipment the county uses is way newer than it is, and I hear "Just hang out until this thing restarts and then I can print your marriage license/building permit/whatever" every other time I go in there.
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# ? Sep 15, 2015 15:23 |
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Humphreys posted:Because people these days have an aversion for reading onscreen instructions and are expected to be presented with a wizard or have their hands held through a GUI akin to a mobile app. It better have images, animations and videos. Dumb people DO judge a book by its cover.jpg. Didn't they crash that thing into Bin Laden's house?
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# ? Sep 15, 2015 15:26 |
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32MB OF ESRAM posted:Didn't they crash that thing into Bin Laden's house? How did they get the Bradley flying?
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# ? Sep 15, 2015 15:47 |
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spog posted:How did they get the Bradley flying? You have to watch Pentagon Wars 2. Frasier screws more things up in wacky hijinx when he brings his thin brother and dad +dog into his office.
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# ? Sep 15, 2015 16:27 |
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Humphreys posted:You have to watch Pentagon Wars 2. Frasier screws more things up in wacky hijinx when he brings his thin brother and dad +dog into his office. Thats the one where they give him a sub isnt it?
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# ? Sep 15, 2015 16:34 |
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KoRMaK posted:Thats the one where they give him a sub isnt it? Yes, and who woulda thought that bastard could force a Zeppelin underwater!
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# ? Sep 15, 2015 17:22 |
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Humphreys posted:Because people these days have an aversion for reading onscreen instructions and are expected to be presented with a wizard or have their hands held through a GUI akin to a mobile app. It better have images, animations and videos. Dumb people DO judge a book by its cover.jpg. I was always personal to this version of the Bradley
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# ? Sep 16, 2015 02:24 |
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Humphreys posted:Because people these days have an aversion for reading onscreen instructions and are expected to be presented with a wizard or have their hands held through a GUI akin to a mobile app. It better have images, animations and videos. Dumb people DO judge a book by its cover.jpg.
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# ? Sep 16, 2015 02:30 |
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Keiya posted:If you're not able to read, then you probably aren't doing much at a library anyway... certainly not if you're not willing to learn. From my reading of SA, I understand that libraries in the US are used for a) reading and b) porn-viewing by the homeless.
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# ? Sep 16, 2015 09:05 |
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32MB OF ESRAM posted:Didn't they crash that thing into Bin Laden's house? Nah that was some kind of UH-60 stealth conversion.
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# ? Sep 16, 2015 09:23 |
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The RAH-66's legacy lives on through giving us one of the best helicopter combat sims though.
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# ? Sep 16, 2015 09:40 |
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KozmoNaut posted:Bloomberg did a short video on the last remaining cassette tape manufacturer: That company is well and truly hosed once the bald guy wants to retire/is hit by a truck.
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# ? Sep 16, 2015 10:21 |
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spog posted:From my reading of SA, I understand that libraries in the US are used for a) reading and b) porn-viewing by the homeless. It's more online gambling than anything else. Oh, and it's a place sad people go when they're drunk.
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# ? Sep 16, 2015 15:07 |
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Coffee And Pie posted:It's more online gambling than anything else. Oh, and it's a place sad people go when they're drunk.
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# ? Sep 16, 2015 16:45 |
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spog posted:From my reading of SA, I understand that libraries in the US are used for a) reading and b) porn-viewing by the homeless. Berkeley Public Library is used by pretty much everybody. Sure there's homeless, but the place is always busy even without counting them.
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# ? Sep 16, 2015 23:23 |
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Humphreys posted:On Military tech failures I feel cheated that the RAH-66 never made it into production. Now I have this in my tune head: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDsv-sZbulw
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# ? Sep 18, 2015 15:02 |
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# ? Mar 29, 2024 02:13 |
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Wasn't Airwolf just a common civilian heli with some farkles glued on?
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# ? Sep 18, 2015 15:16 |