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DONT TOUCH THE PC
Jul 15, 2001

You should try it, it's a real buzz.

Wanamingo posted:

I still torrent all my shows, is that an obsolete technology yet?

Judging by the students at the university i used to work at, most of them switched to popcorn hour (which is technically torrenting) + netflix account sharing.

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Arsenic Lupin
Apr 12, 2012

This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.


Wanamingo posted:

I still torrent all my shows, is that an obsolete technology yet?
More and more so; one of my favorite membership-only magnet sites is having to cope with not only DDOS attacks but with having to change ISPs because of threats of copyright enforcement. I said for years that when seeing shows legally became easier than torrenting, I'd ante up with joy. For instance, the BBC is moving toward producing a for-pay streaming site that will include much of the programming they never sell abroad; I'm psyched.

GOTTA STAY FAI
Mar 24, 2005

~no glitter in the gutter~
~no twilight galaxy~
College Slice

Arsenic Lupin posted:

when seeing shows legally became easier than torrenting, I'd ante up with joy

I wish this thought would manifest physically so I could beat Harvey Weinstein et al. over the head with it

Samuel L. ACKSYN
Feb 29, 2008


I still just use the firewire output on my STB to watch and record stuff on my computer.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Bulgaroctonus posted:

gently caress, really?!? I know they're rare as poo poo, but even $50 is pretty crazy, even for a cartridge collector (not that I am one, just for instance). I could almost justify that once, like on New Years' Eve or something, but they don't actually explode or anything cool, just a bullet with a tiny rocket behind it, right? Sorry for being lazy about looking this up, I'm on my phone and on school wifi, their filters gets weird about poo poo like this. Also, there's a rifle and a carbine? I've only ever seen pics of the pistol and carbine, but maybe I just wasn't paying close attention.

When you fire them, they sound and look like any normal bullet. Fiction likes to portray them as movie-style slow rocket bullets with a trail of smoke and fire, but the rocket burns extremely quickly and runs out of fuel at 60 feet so it's just like shooting a normal gun to an observer.

Here's the carbine and rifle. You can clearly see that they're just the pistol with longer barrels and new furniture.



Phanatic posted:

Metal Storm also failed.

So you take a barrel, and instead of a conventional magazine you just stack the bullets in the barrel, with propellant in between each bullet, and the firing system is a set of electrical contacts that run up the interior of the barrel. Firing the gun sends an electrical impulse to the appropriate electrically-fired primer, that bullet fires, the bullet behind it expands to obturate the barrel and prevent discharge of the remaining rounds. Repeat as necessary.

Pros: Ridiculously high rates of fire, they had a 36-barrel system firing at rates of up to 1.6 million rounds per minute. No moving parts, no ports for crud to get in, reliable operation.

Cons: Turns out nobody needs ridiculously high rates of fire, especially when you can't reload the weapon in the field.

Metal Storm did manage to sign a contract with Papua New Guinea for 500 MAUL shotguns and 10,000 less-lethal barrels for their prison officers back in 2010, but I'm not sure if the deal actually went through before they went into administration. The US Navy also bought some grenade launchers in 2007, presumably to test and then shelve.

Trabant
Nov 26, 2011

All systems nominal.
Unrelated to the most recent chat, but I came across these pics of Braun products and thought I'd share.















Fifty years later and it still looks like some kind of retrofuture that never arrived:

Lowen SoDium
Jun 5, 2003

Highen Fiber
Clapping Larry

Phanatic posted:

Metal Storm also failed.

So you take a barrel, and instead of a conventional magazine you just stack the bullets in the barrel, with propellant in between each bullet, and the firing system is a set of electrical contacts that run up the interior of the barrel. Firing the gun sends an electrical impulse to the appropriate electrically-fired primer, that bullet fires, the bullet behind it expands to obturate the barrel and prevent discharge of the remaining rounds. Repeat as necessary.

Pros: Ridiculously high rates of fire, they had a 36-barrel system firing at rates of up to 1.6 million rounds per minute. No moving parts, no ports for crud to get in, reliable operation.

Cons: Turns out nobody needs ridiculously high rates of fire, especially when you can't reload the weapon in the field.

I had forgotten all about these guys. I think they were trying to market it as an anti-missile system, right?

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

Lowen SoDium posted:

I had forgotten all about these guys. I think they were trying to market it as an anti-missile system, right?

Yeah, during the period when gun-based antimissile systems were becoming increasingly obsolete. Phalanx is so obsolete they don't even install it on new ship.

And it's not because of rate-of-fire issues. Phalanx is an closed-loop fire control system. Fire a burst, radar tracks the outgoing burst and the incoming target, computer notes the difference, adjusts the gun, fires, repeat until target is dead. Modern ASMs come in so fast that they're going to pass through its engagement envelope before it has time to fire more than one burst, so it likely won't hit, and even if it does the missile's already so close and going so fast that you're going to have a bunch of wrecked missile body and unburned rocket fuel flying into your ship at supersonic speeds. You need to engage modern threats much further out, which means missiles of your own, not little guns.

Trabant posted:

Fifty years later and it still looks like some kind of retrofuture that never arrived:

All of that stuff belongs in MOMA, and I'm pretty sure some of it is. I'm also watching Deutschland 83 currently and those are trigging my cold war nostalgia something fierce.

Phanatic has a new favorite as of 21:06 on Mar 17, 2016

Flipperwaldt
Nov 11, 2011

Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?



"Who turned the thermostat up to 90? Why does this thing go up to 150 anyway?"

Instant Sunrise
Apr 12, 2007


The manger babies don't have feelings. You said it yourself.

Efexeye posted:

I have a little coax to USB Hauppage dongle that gets basic cable to my PC but it seems difficult to get a card nowadays that has the full tuner functionality of a cable box. I guess they don't want you filling cheap terabytes up with shows?

The US uses a system called "CableCARD" where you have to buy a CableCARD tuner, and rent a special PCMCIA card from your cable company that contains the decryption keys. Of course, the only tuning software on PC that will work with CableCARD is Windows Media Center, which was axed from Windows 10.

Of course, while CableCARD has been around for a while, for the longest time, you couldn't buy a standalone CableCARD tuner. Legally, CableCARD tuners could only be sold as a part of a pre-built PC. And then in 2009 CableLabs, the company that sets the Cable TV standards, relaxed the requirements, and you could buy standalone CableCARD tuners. But by then the writing was on the wall for Cable TV and more and more people were using streaming services instead.

So there were only a handful of CableCARD tuners made. But with Microsoft dropping Windows Media Center from Windows 10, the people who bought CableCARD tuners are poo poo out of luck.

Also I should mention that CableCARD was a finicky pain in the rear end to set up on a PC. Cable companies only supported it because they were legally required to by the FCC, and it showed.

Instant Sunrise has a new favorite as of 21:30 on Mar 17, 2016

Jmcrofts
Jan 7, 2008

just chillin' in the club
Lipstick Apathy
Good loving riddance to Cable

gross
Jan 7, 2006

Well, here's your problem!
I found out that we still have a couple of electric adding machines in the basement at work.

Just in case.

atomicthumbs
Dec 26, 2010


We're in the business of extending man's senses.

KozmoNaut posted:

Uh, you may be forgetting one of Sony's biggest successes (another collaboration with Philips). It's the compact disc

And Bluray seems to be doing OK, as well.

betacam and digital betacam are still in use in some places

Plinkey
Aug 4, 2004

by Fluffdaddy

robodex posted:

or you could just install plex and download the show like a sane human being

I work 2nd shift so I use it to record random poo poo that no one would ever rip, like NBC Nightly news, Dateline, the Sunday morning political shows, 60 Minutes, local 6 pm news, random poo poo. Yeah, I could probably get it from hulu or whatever but gently caress it, it's easier in my mind this way.

Pingiivi
Mar 26, 2010

Straight into the iris!

atomicthumbs posted:

betacam and digital betacam are still in use in some places

And XDCAM, HDCAM, HDCAM SR etc. To be fair these are professional formats that tend to develop in a slower pace to keep compatibility. Also XDCAM is more commonly used in the file format than the disc format.

LethalGeek
Nov 4, 2009

Instant Sunrise posted:

The US uses a system called "CableCARD" where you have to buy a CableCARD tuner, and rent a special PCMCIA card from your cable company that contains the decryption keys. Of course, the only tuning software on PC that will work with CableCARD is Windows Media Center, which was axed from Windows 10.

Of course, while CableCARD has been around for a while, for the longest time, you couldn't buy a standalone CableCARD tuner. Legally, CableCARD tuners could only be sold as a part of a pre-built PC. And then in 2009 CableLabs, the company that sets the Cable TV standards, relaxed the requirements, and you could buy standalone CableCARD tuners. But by then the writing was on the wall for Cable TV and more and more people were using streaming services instead.

So there were only a handful of CableCARD tuners made. But with Microsoft dropping Windows Media Center from Windows 10, the people who bought CableCARD tuners are poo poo out of luck.

Also I should mention that CableCARD was a finicky pain in the rear end to set up on a PC. Cable companies only supported it because they were legally required to by the FCC, and it showed.
Im still happily running one of said CableCARD devices. http://cetoncorp.com/products/infinitv/ has been happily humming along for shoot 5 years now I think. Though you are absolutely right that every 6 months or so I have to kick something on the machine to get it going again. Recently we nearly lost all program guide updates as DST breaks something at MS end that they had to fix and they did it the day before we finally ran out of guide.

Thankfully there's no good reason to update a HTPC to Windows 10, or 8 for that matter. It's going to happily run 7 until 2022 or whenever the last security updates go out then I'll see what I'll have to do. I love my little computer box though.

Rexim
Jun 2, 2006

I wants flies in on a dragons, okay?

KozmoNaut posted:

Win95-o-matic.



Look at this guy, he's so happy to finally get his hands on two copies of Windows 95 :unsmith:

Just gonna put on my burgundy bathrobe and head down to the 'pusa.

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

chitoryu12 posted:

I thought that was just a myth and you'd end up with a pretty pained finger? But it is true that at extremely close range, the bullet has little to no penetrating power and is liable to barely lodge in the victim's flesh or even bounce off altogether.

In terms of power, it is a bit more powerful than a .45 ACP pistol. The biggest problem the Gyrojet suffered from is that it needed carefully angled ports in the rear of the rocket to give it the gyroscopic spin. When a lot of ammo got accidentally made with one port partially blocked, the bullets spun wildly and landed nowhere near the point of aim. This could also happen if the ports got dirty, and the open ports let moisture in that made the propellant unreliable.

It was also very difficult to load: you loaded single rounds through the top into the magazine like an old bolt-action battle rifle, then quickly slid a cover closed over the top because there was nothing blocking the top rocket from simply springing out of the gun under the spring pressure.

TFR Goon Life Sized Potato did a great video about his.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e23o0NIHtFw

Antifreeze Head
Jun 6, 2005

It begins
Pillbug

gross posted:

I found out that we still have a couple of electric adding machines in the basement at work.

Just in case.

Some 15 years or so ago I was working at a Staples, right around this time of year (and it gets worse in the next two weeks).

We had a lot of people coming in and buying up tons of adding machines and supplies for same because it was the end of their budget year and thanks to the backwards thinking that goes into many companies/government agencies, they didn't want to "lose" that allocation. I like to imagine somewhere in some storage facility dozens if not hundreds of adding machines stacked up, new in box, never ever to be used, because managers didn't want the unneeded cash to go to waste.

Instant Sunrise
Apr 12, 2007


The manger babies don't have feelings. You said it yourself.

LethalGeek posted:

Im still happily running one of said CableCARD devices. http://cetoncorp.com/products/infinitv/ has been happily humming along for shoot 5 years now I think. Though you are absolutely right that every 6 months or so I have to kick something on the machine to get it going again. Recently we nearly lost all program guide updates as DST breaks something at MS end that they had to fix and they did it the day before we finally ran out of guide.

Thankfully there's no good reason to update a HTPC to Windows 10, or 8 for that matter. It's going to happily run 7 until 2022 or whenever the last security updates go out then I'll see what I'll have to do. I love my little computer box though.

Yeah my HTPC has an InfiniTV4 PCIe, and it's great when it works. I only stopped using it because when I moved, I never bother getting Cable TV again and just streamed everything.

Humphreys
Jan 26, 2013

We conceived a way to use my mother as a porn mule


Pingiivi posted:

And XDCAM, HDCAM, HDCAM SR etc. To be fair these are professional formats that tend to develop in a slower pace to keep compatibility. Also XDCAM is more commonly used in the file format than the disc format.

And new 'Decks' cost money - so management and production are always in an endless battle over new equipment.

Buttcoin purse
Apr 24, 2014

Collateral Damage posted:

I'll withhold judgement on Windows 10 for now since I haven't tried it yet, but I've heard some pretty mixed reviews. From what I've heard it's at least not as terrible as Windows 8.

AlphaKretin posted:

Isn't W10 just "8 but we're sorry about that Metro poo poo"? It's comparatively not terrible.

These guys get it, the selling point of Windows 10 is "it's slightly better than Windows 8" in some ways.

I actually got used to the Windows 8.1 shell - I hated the start screen, it was useless for finding anything by scrolling through programs, but at least you could type to search, and sometimes it'd even find results in a reasonable amount of time. Other times it would have to seemingly read a few gigabytes of data from the hard disk before doing anything.

I'm not sure I like Windows 10's UI better. It was annoying 8 to occasionally have to move your mouse to that corner of the screen to get to those new settings, but most of the time I just used the control panel, and if I used the start screen to search for a setting it'd take me to the control panel. In Windows 10, I get taken to some cut-down settings windows which then have "if you want to see ALL the options, click here" links which take you to the control panel. At least you know if you're in settings or control panel because they look completely different.

GWBBQ posted:

This may be skewed since I work in an IT field, but the vast majority of criticism of Windows 8 I've heard boils down to whining that there isn't a "Make it look like Windows 98" button. That and it's terrible at managing multiple monitors.

I don't even remember having trouble with multiple monitors.

JnnyThndrs
May 29, 2001

HERE ARE THE FUCKING TOWELS
I installed startisback on Win 10 and it gives you the option of the full Control Panel right there in the start menu like 7 did. Really made it easier for me to get everything set up.

Toast Museum
Dec 3, 2005

30% Iron Chef
You can also right-click the start button or hit ctrl-x win-x to bring up a menu with, among other things, the control panel and task manager.

Toast Museum has a new favorite as of 07:21 on Mar 20, 2016

Buttcoin purse
Apr 24, 2014

Toast Museum posted:

You can also right-click the start button or hit ctrl-x to bring up a menu with, among other things, the control panel and task manager.

Win-X, right?

Yeah, I need to learn to go to the Control Panel and then search, not search from the Start Menu and expect it to point me to the right part of the Control Panel, because it'll point me at the Settings instead.

Deedle
Oct 17, 2011
before you ask, yes I did inform the DMV of my condition and medication, and I passed the medical and psychological evaluation when I got my license. I've passed them every time I have gone to renew my license.

Buttcoin purse posted:

I don't even remember having trouble with multiple monitors.
The hotspots in the corner of the screen can trap your cursor on the way to the next screen.

Not that this is a real problem that you can't work around by moving the cursor down and over or something.

Toast Museum
Dec 3, 2005

30% Iron Chef

Buttcoin purse posted:

Win-X, right?

:doh: Yeah, win-x. I've corrected my post.

Geoj
May 28, 2008

BITTER POOR PERSON
Type "control" in a run dialogue.

There's a shitload of stuff you can type into a run prompt to open individual menus within control panel, which usually is far faster than clicking on control panel and dialing down to the individual icon for it. Obviously some of the stuff in that table is no longer applicable relevant (SCSI options and anything to deal with modems/dialers to name a few) but most of that is still relevant in 7/8/10.

e: meant that in more of a "you'll never use it" way but point taken.
VV

Geoj has a new favorite as of 09:02 on Mar 20, 2016

Karasu Tengu
Feb 16, 2011

Humble Tengu Newspaper Reporter
It might not be relevant but if you think that Microsoft ever removes things then I have some news for you.

Jehde
Apr 21, 2010

They can take away our start menu, but they can never take away our run prompt! :bahgawd:

vvv Start menu searching worked way better in Win7, actually.

Jehde has a new favorite as of 17:19 on Mar 20, 2016

Astrobastard
Dec 31, 2008



Winky Face
Win 10 is the best OS M$ have released, imo. I couldnt wait to get away from 8.1, but 10 is the tits. Just press windows key, type "co" (or whatever thing you're unable to locate for whatever reason) and control panel is the first option for me. Just by typing "c" in fact. Basically, press Windows Key and type the first few characters of what you're looking for. Our company upgraded around 1000 computers to Win 10 a month or 2 back and the amount of times Ive heard people complaining "cant find something" out loud then being flabbergasted when I recommend the Win Key search. Most of the people loved Win10 after taking some time to get used to using that feature, because unlike ALL previous versions of Windows, the WinKey search ACTUALLY works now.

Also you can now Ctrl+V in the command prompt. That alone makes it superior to every previous version :smug:

The only thing I didnt like was accidentally creating 5 extra desktops and not being able to figure out how to delete them. But then, google fixed that in seconds. Oh, and NumLock not being enabled by default for people that use the PINcode login.

Astrobastard has a new favorite as of 15:42 on Mar 20, 2016

Humphreys
Jan 26, 2013

We conceived a way to use my mother as a porn mule


Elliotw2 posted:

It might not be relevant but if you think that Microsoft ever removes things then I have some news for you.

Is it windows Media Center or Player that is removed in 10?

McGlockenshire
Dec 16, 2005

GOLLOCKS!

Humphreys posted:

Is it windows Media Center or Player that is removed in 10?

Media Center, the best drat DVR I've ever used.

Karasu Tengu
Feb 16, 2011

Humble Tengu Newspaper Reporter

Humphreys posted:

Is it windows Media Center or Player that is removed in 10?

I think they were phasing that out after the dedicated Windows XP version for it though, because it was a rights nightmare for MS to navigate.

I had the Media Center expansion thing in Windows 8 but I can't tell you what exactly it added over the regular version.

Humphreys
Jan 26, 2013

We conceived a way to use my mother as a porn mule


McGlockenshire posted:

Media Center, the best drat DVR I've ever used.

I remember working in a computer shop when this came out:



quote:

Viiv /ˈvaɪv/ was a platform initiative from Intel similar to Intel's Centrino and vPro. Initially (through release 1.7), it was a collection of computer technologies with a particular combination of Intel ingredients to support a "media PC" concept. Intel also provided the Media Server as the core software stack on the PC to support "media" distribution through the home.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Viiv

From what I remember it was supposed to be a series of products/components that you could buy that were designed for Media Center PCs.

I do remember setting a pre-built Media PC for a customer that turned into a complete nightmare (mainly because I was dumb and offered my 'computer wizardry' skills to the customer and he knew I lived a block from him and loved free beer).

Collateral Damage
Jun 13, 2009

Technical issues aside, whoever came up with that VIIV logo should not be allowed to touch a pen for the rest of their life.

e: Seriously, the more I look at it the more angry I get at how absolutely terrible that logo is.

Collateral Damage has a new favorite as of 11:13 on Mar 21, 2016

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


McGlockenshire posted:

Media Center, the best drat DVR I've ever used.

The lowest of bars

Pilsner
Nov 23, 2002

Astrobastard posted:

Also you can now Ctrl+V in the command prompt. That alone makes it superior to every previous version :smug:
Pfft, as if pressing Alt+Space, E, P to paste in a command prompt was a problem :colbert:

Buttcoin purse
Apr 24, 2014

Pilsner posted:

Pfft, as if pressing Alt+Space, E, P to paste in a command prompt was a problem :colbert:

:agreed:

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Humphreys
Jan 26, 2013

We conceived a way to use my mother as a porn mule


Pilsner posted:

Pfft, as if pressing Alt+Space, E, P to paste in a command prompt was a problem :colbert:

Pffft, copy and pasting commands and not just blindly typing and hitting 'Enter' and hoping for no typso.

^ I do that ALL the time.

Collateral Damage posted:

Technical issues aside, whoever came up with that VIIV logo should not be allowed to touch a pen for the rest of their life.

e: Seriously, the more I look at it the more angry I get at how absolutely terrible that logo is.


Just look at how they 'improved' it!



It's even worse.

Humphreys has a new favorite as of 12:44 on Mar 21, 2016

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