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Gordon pulled so hard his tubes exploded out through his face with a mighty bang. Peep peep! You've really done it this time, said Percy. The other engines just looked on and laughed. The Fat Controller would have to find another engine to pull the express, but that's another story...
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Jun 8, 2019 08:27
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T-man posted:you know I don't know who invented the steam engine (i don't care either) but I think it might have been a bad idea in hindsight Gabe.
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Jun 8, 2019 11:58
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spaceblancmange posted:Gordon pulled so hard his tubes exploded out through his face with a mighty bang. Peep peep! You've really done it this time, said Percy. The other engines just looked on and laughed. The Fat Controller would have to find another engine to pull the express, but that's another story... "he gave his life for the Fat Controller, all hail. we live only to serve the group, for we are steam trains and together with teamwork we'll chuga-chuga-gas the diesel engines!" None dared to question High Commissioner Thomas. Not since Harold tried to run from the island.
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Jun 8, 2019 14:11
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Remember the One Laptop Per Child program? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPP4ClRmVik God, what a technolibertarian wankfest that turned out to be. "We'll give every school child in the developing world a laptop worth a significant portion of their parent's annual income (instead of just giving them the money to spend on things like food or a bicycle or a cell phone) and that will solve global poverty!"  Don't get me wrong, the technology is cool but the politics surrounding it were pure neoliberal garbage.
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Jun 8, 2019 17:37
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I have one of those from when I was younger and stupid (stupider) and thought it sounded like a good idea so I donated to the program where you pay for two and get one. I guess I don't regret it because it's a cool artifact at least. Now that I've seen how bullshit out of control "technology will solve everything" crap is I'd rather the same money and effort be spent in traditional educational programs. I saw an even dumber attempt that was "we'll give people in slums NES clones and kids will uplift themselves by learning to program NES games in assembly" edit: I wish netbooks were still a thing though BattleMaster has a new favorite as of 18:23 on Jun 8, 2019 |
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Jun 8, 2019 18:21
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The One Laptop Per Child thing made sense if you wanted to close the internet gap for poor countries. Yeah, a bike or water pump might be more useful and practical - but they're already charities that do that. I still think the idea was alright, but it's implementation sucked. The solution just turned out to be smartphones and not laptops. Now it's coding. Everyone needs to code. gently caress coding. Krispy Wafer has a new favorite as of 18:53 on Jun 8, 2019 |
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Jun 8, 2019 18:47
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Software made by coders and/or developers is poo poo. Software made by programmers actually works. 
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Jun 8, 2019 18:50
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Krispy Wafer posted:The One Laptop Per Child thing made sense if you wanted to close the internet gap for poor countries. Yeah, a bike or water pump might be more useful and practical - but they're already charities that do that. I still think the idea was alright, but it's implementation sucked. The solution just turned out to be smartphones and not laptops. Hmm... that's a fair point. At the time this probably seemed like the best way to get Internet access to as many people as possible considering the smartphone revolution (that nobody had foreseen) wouldn't take off until right around the time the XO-1 started shipping. In hindsight though all I can see are the ways it would never work, even if smartphones had never taken off.
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Jun 8, 2019 19:02
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I remember a few articles being, essentially, "These children live in mud burrows and the fortunate construct clothes out of leaves and straw. We placed a solar-powered laptop in their town square and within a day they were using complex computer interface tricks like "creating folders", "Dragging and dropping " and "clicking". Our plan is to provide each child one laptop who knows what they'll discover and create!" It was incredibly myopic even to someone like me that was all about tech everywhere all the time.
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Jun 8, 2019 19:13
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E: This turned into a bit of a ramble, eh. A local bicycle shop has a solid approach. They buy recovered stolen bikes from insurance companies very inexpensively, since the insurance companies basically just want to get rid of them, having a mess of hundreds of possibly broken bikes sitting around in a warehouse does them no good. The bike shop fixes up some of these bikes and sells them here, with full warranty. I bought my current bike from them, and I absolutely couldn't be more pleased, it's like a completely brand-new bike at half price. This helps fund the other (and more interesting) side of their business, which ships the rest of the bikes/parts to Mozambique, where they also employ and train local bicycle mechanics to repair these bikes or build new bikes from the spare parts, and go on to run their own shops. It's hard to convey just how much of a change a bicycle can make to the life of a subsistence farmer or someone in a similar situation. And getting a local network of bicycle mechanics up and running helps everyone. Thanks to human ingenuity, a bicycle can be re-purposed to power countless useful devices, which is also a huge benefit. I think eventually they're hoping to get more local production of parts and complete bikes established, but that's more of a long-term perspective. Coming back to the tech side of things, I think the OLPC project ended up being kind of patronizing. These kids (and adults) didn't want a watered down device. They wanted the same stuff we use in the first world, not a simplified version. I think it's amazing to see how African and Asian people have been able to skip a bunch of steps and leapfrog straight to a much less expensive wireless infrastructure. So on one part, you need basic stuff like transport (bicycles) and on the other end, you want to open a world of communication. The OLPC project fell sort of between those chairs, too advanced for basic needs and too basic for advanced needs. Bikes and phones are where it's at, man. KozmoNaut has a new favorite as of 19:17 on Jun 8, 2019 |
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Jun 8, 2019 19:13
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Oh yeah. It was definitely a dumb idea, but I can see the purpose. Technology in education is often stupid. My kids' district spent buckets of money on smart boards, but skimped on installation, having district IT employees do the work rather than the manufacturer's people. So half the boards didn't work right and worse yet they covered up the old blackboards so you lost a lot of the room you'd use for lessons. The projectors that were installed in conjunction with the boards were great though. They also last forever and are modular in that you can use them with lots of different inputs. They should have bought more projectors and fewer smart boards. KozmoNaut posted:Bikes and phones are where it's at, man. Child Fund let's you buy a bike for a girl in India. The idea being most students have to walk many miles to school and girls in particular have less incentive to go and more risk of being harmed on their way each day. Like you said, it's really hard to overstate how important bicycles are to poorer countries.
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Jun 8, 2019 19:29
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Mr.Radar posted:Remember the One Laptop Per Child program? I once fired up an emulator and tried out the Sugar interface that the XO-1 used. I couldn't figure out a drat thing.
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Jun 8, 2019 19:45
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FilthyImp posted:I remember a few articles being, essentially, "These children live in mud burrows and the fortunate construct clothes out of leaves and straw. What if Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs but it's upside-down?
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Jun 8, 2019 20:03
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BattleMaster posted:I wish netbooks were still a thing though They kind of are? I mean, I have a $150 Chromebook that runs Linux and Android apps
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Jun 8, 2019 21:09
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Disgruntled Bovine posted:Not really, no. There actually was a derailment of one back in the 1950's and the entire crew was killed. This kills the cab
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Jun 8, 2019 21:30
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Boy oh boy, I hated this commercial, and this device was a gigantic flop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzztZrwikJM
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Jun 17, 2019 18:31
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I had the green one. I loved it. Was so futuristic and yet firmly a device made in the year 2000. A friend of mine also had one too. Wireless chat was neat but basically pointless since you had to be in the same room.
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Jun 18, 2019 05:47
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I posted the NES Hot Seat from Gaming Historian earlier, and aparently they made a scaled down verison, called the Hot Stick. Which sounds like porn. Also it uses liquid mercury for its operation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2wKRZ02Y2I
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Jun 18, 2019 20:31
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Detective No. 27 posted:I had the green one. I loved it. Was so futuristic and yet firmly a device made in the year 2000. A friend of mine also had one too. Wireless chat was neat but basically pointless since you had to be in the same room. The predecessor to texting people in the same house instead of shouting for them or changing rooms.
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Jun 18, 2019 20:41
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Pastry of the Year posted:Boy oh boy, I hated this commercial, and this device was a gigantic flop: I wanted that thing soo badly.
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Jun 19, 2019 10:15
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twistedmentat posted:I posted the NES Hot Seat from Gaming Historian earlier, and aparently they made a scaled down verison, called the Hot Stick. Is there a reason he’s treating a couple of mercury switches as if they’re gonna blast his face off like he just opened the ark of the covenant?
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Jun 20, 2019 08:55
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Dewgy posted:Is there a reason he’s treating a couple of mercury switches as if they’re gonna blast his face off like he just opened the ark of the covenant? Clickbait.
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Jun 20, 2019 09:02
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Pastry of the Year posted:Boy oh boy, I hated this commercial, and this device was a gigantic flop: The y2k aesthetic was strong with this thing. And get a load of the add-on MP3 player. The y2k era seemed filled with devices like those that flopped hard as soon as people had smartphones figured out.
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Jun 20, 2019 23:35
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That thing managed to flop before camera phones were a thing, let alone smartphonea.
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Jun 20, 2019 23:53
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Balliver Shagnasty posted:The y2k aesthetic was strong with this thing. And get a load of the add-on MP3 player. I seem to remember the company advertising it as a way to communicate with friends at school. Right around the time that schools left and right were banning students from bringing personal electronic devices to school.
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Jun 21, 2019 01:21
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yeah I bought one in High School and it was pretty immediately obvious that I was like five or six years too old for it got way more hacky fun out of my TI calculators anyway, even tho their only comms was (and still is iirc) a 2.5mm jack- USB adapters these days, but serial back in ye day
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Jun 21, 2019 01:22
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Peanut Butler posted:yeah I bought one in High School and it was pretty immediately obvious that I was like five or six years too old for it I spent a ton of time on ticalc.org, downloading and making lovely games.
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Jun 21, 2019 01:32
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My friends taught me basic TI coding and I just loaded that poo poo full of equation solver programs I would write for AP Chem. Kind of helped me because I had to make sure my terrible math skills were applied correctly for all those formulas that have like 3 possible variables to plug in. I've mentioned it before but my buddy coded a very very basic fighting game that let you input SF style commands. The animation was frames of images he made. It was insane.
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Jun 21, 2019 01:45
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dont forget the program that showed that you had wiped your TIs memory that you had to show the teacher before a test but it really didn't wipe it so you still had all your notes and equations
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Jun 21, 2019 01:59
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I remember the nerds taking "long math" at gymnasium playing some sort of adventure game on their calculators where they talked about having completed "their turn" so I'm assuming it was multi-player?
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Jun 21, 2019 02:30
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Jabor posted:Clickbait. Well, its not in the title, but more he's not aware of mercury's being contained. Just aware that its bad so therefor any usage of it is bad. As long as the switches don't start leaking, it's safe. I just found it telling about the time because you'd never use mercury switches in something like that these days.
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Jun 21, 2019 04:33
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I mean sure you don't want it getting into your bloodstream or water supply, but our old mercury switch thermostat worked way better than our new bimetallic one.
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Jun 21, 2019 04:40
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Grand Prize Winner posted:I mean sure you don't want it getting into your bloodstream or water supply, but our old mercury switch thermostat worked way better than our new bimetallic one. Kind of makes me nostalgic for the 80s design HiFi systems with mechanical insides. OBSOLETE TECH TRIP REPORT: I'm salvaging my 2004-era computer case and stuffing new poo poo in there... and it's interesting to see how even the boring fan and USB connectors on the inside of desktops have changed slightly. My old case fan is a 3-pin connector (new mobo has 4 pins, apparently) and the USB connectors now have a clip and a slightly offset tab to help align it. The new fan clips to a plate on the underside of the board to help squish it against the processor, etc. I was also looking through my 2000s desktop and was surprised at how well-equipped it was for the time. Soundblaster sound card, Nvidia GFX card with composite and Svideo out, 4 USB ports that I honestly never used. Thing was a lot more useful than I realized at the time.
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Jun 21, 2019 05:32
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Grand Prize Winner posted:I mean sure you don't want it getting into your bloodstream or water supply, but our old mercury switch thermostat worked way better than our new bimetallic one.
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Jun 21, 2019 16:09
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If you can’t do something, you can’t do it with a computer.
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Jun 21, 2019 16:29
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Grand Prize Winner posted:I mean sure you don't want it getting into your bloodstream or water supply, but our old mercury switch thermostat worked way better than our new bimetallic one. Uhhhh....but don't mercury switches use bimetal? Like...that's how the switch "switches," one piece deforms more than the other as it cools, so the tube changes angle and mercury flows into the exposed contacts and turns on the furnace. Moot point anyway, just get an electronic one with a thermistor, they're pretty dang accurate,
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Jun 21, 2019 16:54
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Its part confirmation bias (the mercury stats still in operation are the ones that didn't have the bimetallic fail) and part that mercury contacts don't oxidize, erode, or "wear out", which is a common failure mode of the thermostats that replaced them. Bimetallics have terrible accuracy, but in most applications no one will actually notice.
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Jun 21, 2019 22:04
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I just pulled the cover off my current thermostat and yeah, it's got a bimetallic strip in it, it's just attached to some kind of magnet thing instead of a mercury switch. Whoops!
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Jun 21, 2019 22:13
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Did somebody say thermostats? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZC0SP02PqY
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Jun 21, 2019 22:15
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FilthyImp posted:I'm salvaging my 2004-era computer case and stuffing new poo poo in there... and it's interesting to see how even the boring fan and USB connectors on the inside of desktops have changed slightly. My old case fan is a 3-pin connector (new mobo has 4 pins, apparently) Can you still connect them together? At least in cases where I've had a newer (4 pin) plug from a new case and an older 3 pin socket on the motherboard, the plug has grooves so that it lines up with the 3 pins. I think the 4th pin is for sensing the fan speed, so with only the 3 pins being used you still get the fan powered, and speed-controlled, but the motherboard can't tell if the fan has died (so you might need to turn off the alarm for that in the BIOS settings, if it has one). quote:and the USB connectors now have a clip and a slightly offset tab to help align it. Is this USB 2 vs. USB 3 or some variants of USB 2?? quote:4 USB ports that I honestly never used.  USB flash too expensive, and my parallel port printer and SCSI scanner still worked. In fact the scanner still works and the problem with the printer is that ink won't come out, but it still moves the head. Might fix it one day..
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Jun 22, 2019 01:52
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