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Does future predictions count? I've just got this in the mail. Over ten years ago I eagerly flicked through this in the library, all giddy with what promises the future could bring as they predict what could happen each year out from 1996 to 2225. So what actually was correct and by how far? Here's a few speculative ones early on. 1996 - Genetically engineered weapons of destruction. A charming opener that generally argues towards the present of how murky the future of biological warfare is and notes Iraq's programs (as of 1995). Of course the future would see several notable attempts such as the 2001 anthrax letters (suspected to be made by a scientist working in a biological lab). A 2002 plot for ricin gas in the London subway and more letters in 2003. Has it moved into the stage of specifically engineered weapons of doom, no, and hopefully not. 1997 - Portable CD recorder + player At the then cost of $2,500 this was a luxury item. The article mentions the fact DAT tape prices were kept high to slow down accessibility and prevent bootlegging and suspects the same for CDs and DVDs to come. My first CD burnt was in 2001. A straight dub of music tracks, done in real-time and you having to manually mark each track. This was done with a professional CD-recorder used in live recordings. CDs in 2001 were roughly at a cost of 0.70c per disc. 1997 - Movies on demand Possibly one of the more accurate articles - however expecting 1997 to be the year of on demand is a decade off. However the article lists everything that had to be overcome, better video compression, higher resolution monitors and internet speeds. At the time it suggest Blockbuster could use an online VHS delivery service and the possibility of satellites providing a streaming service. Nowadays we stream HD without barely a thought. 1998 - Ecash gets real The article's not about alternate digital currencies, but developing the cryopology within creating a secure and fast way to transfer money from bank to bank. It mentions "Digicash" who once had on their website "Digital money is numbers, that are money". I suppose the novelty then was that you weren't dealing with physical banknotes and coins and easy online transactions were the way of the future. Digicash went bankrupt in 1998 and sold it's technology to Ecash which survives today under Blucora. Ecash is still used in Australian banking systems. There's tons more I'll have to sum up later.
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Dec 20, 2012 07:28
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Here's a summary of what Wired's boffins predicted each year up till 2013 and how it compares to today. Do the predictions actually match? Fantastical thinking 1996 - Genetically Engineered Weapons of War 2001 - Solar Powered automobiles 2001 - Fortune 500 Virtual Corporation (it's dot-com!) 2002 - Fat destroying pill 2004 - Commercially Viable Nanotech 2004 - Non invasive surgery (other than resonance or radiotherapy etc etc) 2005 - Universal Organ Donor Animal 2006 - One-Fourth of U.S Homes get smart. 2006 - Effective hair-loss prevention. 2009 - Orgasmatron 2010 - Smart drugs 2010 - Robot Surgeon in a pill Way off NEVER - An interactive TV in every home Despite throwing about concepts of set-top boxes in 1996 they were adamant that we'd still see the TV as our entertainment device and the computer as the information one. The article does mention at the time Apple looking into TV technology - as evidenced by the 20th Anniversary Macintosh having a TV tuner in 1997. Despite every concept thrown around actually being correct, the idea was still seen as alien. 1997 - Intelligent Agents I suppose autocomplete in browsers was one early on. But the concept of ambient AI has only begun to get going with things like Google Now. 2003 - One-Fifth of U.S Workers telecommute In 2008 only 2.5 million employees telecommuted to work in the states. A number far higher in Asian countries such as India however still a low number. The dream of complete online work-from-home is far fetched. 2005 - Computer Defeats Human Chess master. This actually happened in 1997 with Deep Blue vs Garry Kasparov. Still a long way off, but plausible within the century 1999 - Male birth control pill 2000 - Gene therapy for Cancer 2002 - AIDS Vaccine Available 2007 - Smart fabrics go mainstream. 2008 - Hemp based auto fuel. 2004 - Holographic Medical Imaging. The concept in 1996 was the body gets scanned and then projected in a 3D interactive model over the patient (sci-fi projection stuff). Advances in tomography, CT and MRI scans have generally started this off and there has been advances in gloveless ways to interact through haptic feedback. However it will still be a good while before fast, safe and reliable image generation that matches our sci-fi dreams is here. Around the corner 2009 - V.R Sunglasses While various forms of Augmented Reality exists it hasn't moved out of specialist applications. It's safe to assume that 2014 may be the year of AR eyewear. Well on it's way at the time 1997 - Affordable home CD recorders. 1998 - Flat-Rate phone service. 1998 - Ecash (online banking) 2002 - Computer Handwriting Recognition 2004 - GM produced crops. 2006 - Self-Cleaning toilets. 2007 - Fiber to the home The concept's correct, but not how they'd thought it happen. 1998 - First Virtual High School Graduating Class. In 1996 it was suggested that whole grades become a virtual class. There were even early online services around. Despite such courses today being well and viable, it's also opened up a shady market of fraudulent qualifications. 1999 - Overnight custom clothing. While online clothing has boomed the concept of getting an overnight tailored garment hasn't quite arrived. However 1999 was the year Nike launched "NikeID" offering a limited assortment. 2001 - Global Wireless Telephone Number In 1996 this was a dream of a satellite phone that answered anywhere. Nowadays your mobile phone can do so and it goes one step further with VOIP devices. 2004 - Solar Power to the People The concept of every house being a self sufficient solar operated dwelling is still a fair way off. Generating and selling electricity is still a viable way to gain income for states. 2004 - Operational Space Station The ISS launched in 1998 and was completed in 2010. Surprisingly on the mark 1997 - Movies - on demand. Netflix launched in 1997 providing a postal service for physical media before moving into digital. 2002 - Remote Controlled surgery In 1996 very early procedures had been performed over closed circuit cameras and the book suggest an insane hypothesis of "doc in a box" where a soldier could be airdropped a remotely operated theater to crawl into. In 2001 the Lindbergh Operation was performed over dedicated fiberoptics from New York to France. 2003 - Universal Picture Phones Long associated with "Horrifically expensive" video conferencing didn't really pick up until the rise of the internet and the development of video compression technology. Once the domain of sign language users it's becoming everyday. 2005 - Housecleaning robot. In 2002 the Roomba was introduced and by 2006 it was estimated 3,540,000 domestic robots of some sort were in use. 2005 - Software Superdistrubution. In 2003 Apple introduced the iTunes store and to a degree Steam started off the future of video game distribution. In 1996 it was predicted a subscription based service could be the norm, something that's beginning to start up with Adobe Cloud. It also suggests a hardware based DRM installed on all PC's could be the norm. "...the development of common software such as word processors will be so easy by the turn of the century that a great software price collapse will cause people to pay you to use their software" 2007 - Online mass retailer as big as Sears 2008 - 20% of U.S Consumers telegrocery shop In 1996 Amazon had just appeared along with Ebay. With Ebay turning into the world's biggest private reseller and Amazon gradually acquiring books, clothing, and audio retailers Wired was pretty much on the mark. 2010 -The audio CD becomes a format of second choice. In 1996 Winplay3 allowed for the playback of the relatively new MP3 format around the same time the warez music scene started up. Metallica's "Until it Sleeps" reportedly being one of the first rips. In 1997 early players only had 32mb of memory and most collections were primitive at best. It wasn't until 2001 when the iPod set the world on fire. In 1996 Wired suggests the DVD would follow the CD, but DVD-A became a niche for audiophiles and MP3 players now rule the waves. However it does suggest flash memory might be an alternative method. 2013 - The Book goes digital. In 1998 the SoftBook appeared and for it's time was surprisingly ahead of it offering an online store and subscriptions to periodicals. It wasn't until 2007 when faster internet speeds and dedicated readers like the Kindle began to dramatically change everything.
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Dec 20, 2012 11:23
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mystes posted:I think "never" may have been the year that Wired predicted. They basically stated that the "interactive TV" wasn't going to really happen while listing off all of the things that were to come. They were adamant we'd still have the TV as our entertainment device while on the other hand speculating that if we could overcome technological hurdles we could have on-demand content over the internet as all of the groundwork existed in 1996.
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Dec 22, 2012 01:34
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mrkillboy posted:Motorola phone that could sync up with iTunes. leidend posted:My phone GPS accounts for traffic too. Shows red/yellow/green depending on severity and avoids red areas if possible (not possible here).
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Dec 23, 2012 02:10
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HardCoil posted:He probably has the screen on permanently as you do with at dedicated GPS. That drains the battery faster than it charges on mine too The only real way to keep any smartphone alive through the day is to turn off or limit 3G networks as I understand when in an area of low reception some phones will boost power trying to cling into a 3G signal. It's one thing I do miss, the days of week long gaps between charges thanks to the phone having very little for the battery to chew thorough..
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Dec 23, 2012 15:25
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I once had a dedicated SCSI A3 scanner and A1 printer on some ancient IBM tower thing that I had scored from an architectural firm. I think even the CD burner was also fed into the SCSI card. The problem was the SCSI card was ISA so I was unable to rat it and use it in another system so the payoff was a painfully slow system that I was unable to buy anything to upgrade it with. I remember the scanner being a sheer nightmare to install where upon going to their website they only offered the drivers on CD for $20. Yet if you typed in their European address you were able to download it for free off their FTP. Do obsolete 90's computer jokes count? 
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Jan 2, 2013 05:10
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I recall playing Prince of Persia at school on one of the old Macs and upon drinking the potion that inverted the screen, our solution was to turn the monitor upside down which resulted in the image melting into a sickly purple tone.
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Jan 3, 2013 02:40
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Killer robot posted:Not zero, sure, but fewer. There's a shade of bitter irony as GEM was developed from ideas at PARC, much like Mac Os had been. They went as far as to try and put a patent out on "Trash" but lost all court cases save the one defining the appearance and name of the icon. Thus everything else nowadays is called something like "recycle bin".
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Jan 11, 2013 08:12
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I was messing around the other day with putting Blood Dragon through an old mac Monitor. Windows 8 is surprisingly scalable.
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May 6, 2013 05:21
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Groda posted:That's not an Apple IIc? Nope just the monitor hooked up via graphics card and a S-Video to composite cable.
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May 6, 2013 16:56
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charliemaul posted:And no picture of playing Blood Dragon? WHYYYY? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zzy8vi__m0
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May 9, 2013 03:04
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Pham Nuwen posted:Next up, my friend in New York is figuring out how to send me my old desk, which was actually a gutted HP-3000 Series 58 computer. Where do you put your legs?
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May 15, 2013 05:03
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I think posted about the Quantel Paintbox, but I've dug up the photos I had off an old memory card. This Quantel DPB 7001 Digital Paint Box seems to hail from around 1981. At the time of these pictures (2007) it was still working and had amazingly been discovered to communicate with After Effects by way of capture card. You were able to transfer rendered footage across both devices. But because these were video feeds and not files you suffered generation loss each trip. But it was still being used for title overlays and graphics well into the 90's as Australia was pretty slow in adopting HD. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2iBdc-Btsw  It used a giant tablet and stylus as it's main form of operation. The main purpose of the program was image manipulation and it's signature airbrush / pastel look that defined most screen graphics of the 80's. That monitor was apparently notable for being "one of the first digital monitors in Australia". The whole unit was stored in a special closet in the back of the room that was air conditioned and padded to reduce noise bleed.  ]10 inch platter hard drive. I suspect they're Fujitsu M2294 that stored around 300mb. I understand this were pretty much your swap disk. The noise was like starting a small biplane.  These were your main storage and where your project files and masters ended up. 650mb CD-RW's built into caddies.  This was how you imported images into the thing. A camera setup above a lightbox that would capture a burst of something.  Print Screen. Literally. It would print off a photograph of whatever was being displayed. It was rather cool how it processed as it would do R.G.B in separate passes, sucking the image back in to do the next color over the top. Full gallery here
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May 15, 2013 10:37
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I recall the P5 Glove appearing around the early 00's. I have no idea what the VR headset is but it's a fantastic image regardless. There were a chance few games that supported this, such as Black & White and Hitman 2, and it eventually fizzled out as a novelty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoKD-R1zlpw The video kind of shows how sluggish the thing was to use.
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Jun 4, 2013 06:35
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Oh more Microsoft's Sidewinder product line was great for it's promotional videos for it's convoluted solutions to game controlers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JjCbx2Yo8Y I think with the Game Voice everyone had to have one for it to actually work. Also it was kind of redundant as at the time everyone was using Roger Wilco, which did roughly the same thing but didn't require hardware. As for voice commands, here's Bridge Commander being commanded by a robot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edKqfrvtIqI Or try the Strategic Commander, a macro controller that was supposed to work alongside your mouse. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooB7K6HThlc
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Jun 5, 2013 03:34
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Dragon's Lair is pretty much seen as a quantum leap in video game history. Despite being little more than a well animated quick time event it pretty much set the tone for the FMV genre that in 1983 was still a decade away. So RDI Video Systems decided to work out how to bring this thrilling form to the home console. The result was the Halcyon. Starting out as a prototype of a cassette player that synched pictures to audio it's concept was driven forward by the developments (and earnings) from Dragon's Lair and Space Ace. For a time in development it featured an older form of videodisc, the Capacitance Electronic Disc. This was basically a vinyl record that played back video and stored in a caddy. But like vinyl it degraded from physical wear. It switched over to using a laserdisc after the CED proved to be a dismal failure. It also boasted speech recognition and a computer voice that spoke back. The issue was the hardware at the time struggled to keep up when processing commands in games, the video would have to pause to keep up. But a $2500 price tag and the expenses of developing a system in the dark days of the console bubble doomed RDI. Following behind was HASBRO's never released Control-Vision a.k.a Nemo. Created in 1985 it used VHS in an attempt to create a video playback game - pre-empting the multimedia boom of the 90's. It's flagship projects were Night Trap and Sewer Shark. After being scrapped the developer held onto the rights and eventually released them for the Sega CD. Fright Night almost did debut in 1987 on VHS on another console called the Action Max that relied on you to have a VHS player. Of course the limitation of VHS was pretty dire and the games were little more than a linear light gun shooter that kept in synch with the receiver suctioned onto your screen. You either fired at the right time or "missed".
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Jun 7, 2013 16:50
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My first burn-stuff-off-Napster-to-CD was done via an actual physical CD recorder receiving the output from my PC. Meaning I had to play everything realtime and manually cue the separations between the tracks. I wouldn't quite call it obsolete as you can still use this for live band recordings (which is what it was meant for).
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Jun 27, 2013 08:50
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Meet the Schienenzeppelin! (Rail Zeppelin) It's the answer to "What if you get a zeppelin builder to make a train?". And in the drive to keep up with the Jones (the Russian's Аэроваго́н) you throw massive amounts of money and resources resulting in it being built within a year. You end up with a train that's made of aluminum, fitted out in Bauhaus and pushed forwards by a wooden propeller.   Despite the sheer lunacy of this experiment, such as having a massive propeller whirl around a station, it appears to have had worked as it's lightweight construction (20 tons) and a conjoined BMW VI aircraft engine shoved it down the rails at a still set record (for petrol fueled) of 230km/h The biggest problem was that it was a single purpose vehicle. There was no way to link it up to anything. It also lacked the momentum to move up steep gradients as any change in angle would drop the power from the prop. Also it has no reverse. It served a short life as safety concerns kept it out of action and despite a few retrofits it eventually was scrapped to provide materials for war. Many of the concepts (such as streamlining) ended up being used in other trains - such as the Fliegender Hamburger. The concept of combining aircraft and train design had a resurgence in the jet age with turbojet trains.  
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Jul 1, 2013 10:23
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 The Sir Vival car. In the 40's and 50's car safety was still a founding art. Car design back then often focused more on form over function and that dashing pointed rear view mirror could often impale you in a crash as cars didn't have seatbelts. Walter C. Jerome's mission was to make the world safer and he focused on preventing death by head on collisions. His solution was to create a split car that had the engine on a swiveling mount. He also focused on other safety features like padded interiors and belts.   While admittedly forward thinking for it's time it no doubt suffered from a case of function over form and in the days of streamlining and sleekness it's clear it didn't get much of a market. The Aurora   Before becoming ordained, Father Alfred A. Juliano, claimed he had been accepted a scholarship to study with GM's Harley Earl. Despite this he still kept an interest in car design and decided that one day he would achieve this dream. Starting with a 1953 buick he set about applying a wooden chassis on which a meticulously crafted fiberglass body clung to. Like the Sir Vival he focused on safety and for it's time featured novel things like seatbelts, roll cage, side impact bars and collapsible steering column. Other odder features were the plastic windshield - claimed to aerodynamically keep off rain and to not impact with the driver's head in a crash. There were also seats that swiveled and a foam filled rubber bumper that was intended to gather air and cushion pedestrian impacts. It also featured things like hydraulic jacks to raise the car in the event of repairs. The spare tyre sat under the front to act as a cushion in an impact. It also was on a platform that would lower for access. Sadly the designer neglected to keep the '53 Buick's engine in check and when presenting it for public display was hours late on having to constantly clear the fuel lines. The lack of interest and cost ($13,000) sealed the car's fate and Juliano was subsequently investigated by the IRS for misappropriating parish donations and subsequently kicked out of his church.
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Jul 2, 2013 12:15
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Or this Toyota concept with front lights that look like pop-out machine guns. Car bumpers were one of the few things to first be examined in the early years of pedestrian safety. Someone posted the O'Leary fender earlier on.  This would have made some sense back in 1910 when the top speed was something like 12km/h. Early bumpers had the right idea by crumpling when hit - allowing for the energy to be absorbed and do less damage. Rubber bumpers had a small boom mid 70's to 80's when it was mandated that bumper impacts should be survivable up to 8km/h - hence why cars then generally had a chunky rubber bumpers stuck out on shock absorbing pillars. Also speaking of rubber...  These apparently were popular enough till the 1920's. I suspect faster car speeds meant sucking was reduced.
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Jul 2, 2013 15:14
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ol qwerty bastard posted:The reversed tricycle design and rear-wheel steering made it unstable and nearly impossible to control. quote:BogDew has a new favorite as of 17:44 on Jul 2, 2013 |
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Jul 2, 2013 17:38
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Zeether posted:Jeff Minter's Tempest 3000. That game is designed off the back of the in-built music visualizer. The Wondermega.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkpI-9uioGI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enC87nqL91c Released in 1992 this was a SEGA knockoff created by JVC/Victor. It was released with stripped down features in the US as the X'Eye. It's notable for playing both Mega CDs and cartridges with options for infra red controllers. It also doubled as a karaoke machine, as well as containing a midi port so you could plug in a piano keyboard. Despite having a rather solid design it didn't fare well as poor sales with Mega-CD games and the pricetag did little to push sales.
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Jul 4, 2013 17:05
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Someone in the 90's thread posted this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t_jNV-K5zw In Australia we had the same, but with credit cards. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlHsh2L8jKU They were phased out recently when 7-11 brought out Mobil's outlets. There was a host of other issues like low sales at stores or the fact there wasn't any sign system on credit cards so people could rock up with stolen cards and go wild.
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Jul 9, 2013 04:17
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The beasties of Formula 1 F1 in the 70's was a melting pot of ideas as all sorts of exciting technological advances, such as downforce, no longer did cars require bigger engines to go faster, they just used wings to keep the car pressed down onto the road. More with less. Unsurprisingly this resulted in a cut-throat arms race between manufacturers and the ruling bodies of F1 in the two decades to come. The downforce phase generally started in 1969, with delicate fins that made cars resemble creations from the Wright Brothers.  Consequently the idea era took off and so did the tech war between manufacturers as other teams added onto concepts, such as Matra featuring electronically tilting wings that were in tandem with the brake pedal. But these novel devices came at a great risk and the materials of the time just couldn't hold up to the stresses and wings were ordered to be kept low on the body. So a solution was needed to keep the edge. Tyrell P34 Six legs goooood, four legs baaaaad.  The concept wasn't as insane as the shocked gasps from the initial unveiling might have made you think. The idea was that the smaller wheels would reduce weight on the front and allow for more downforce. The car was a surprisingly strong performer, yet only winning once. However issues arose with difficulties in creating the ten-inch tires and subsequent alterations impacted it's performance and so the car was retired. In 1978 something came along that utterly changed everything. The Lotus 78 introduced the concept of ground effect - that is cars were aerodynamically shaped so that the oncoming air pressure would help keep them down, allowing for faster speeds in the corners. Brabham BT46 Something that sucks too well.  The idea of using a fan wasn't entirely new, in 1970 it had been used in the States with the Chaparral 2J "sucker car" - and was banned. In Lotus's interpretation the car's fan was driven by the engine, meaning the faster the car the more it stuck to the track. Despite movable aerodynamic devices being illegal, they snuck around this by claiming the fan cooled the engine (Something the 78 was prone to). They also hid the fan with a dusbin lid. Once the speed kicked in the car would drive as if it was on rails. Niki Lauda discovered that to corner you actually had to go faster as low revs dropped the grip. It also seemed immune to oil slicks. A side effect was the driver would be subjected to high lateral g's leaving them exhausted. While the car won the Swedish GP in 1978, resulting in the only car with a 100% win rate, the outcry from the others teams led to it being banned. Lotus 88 Skirting around the rules. It's 1981. Ground effect was producing immense cornering speeds at the cost of the poor drivers who were suffering from trying to haul cars around tracks while having their bodies melted with G-forces. Teams with less funding were also struggling to cope as being unable to hire wind tunnels their knock off attempts resulted in cars rocking on their suspensions and unpleasant to drive. While regulations were coming in to limit or stop such designs, the pinnacle of this era has to be the Lotus 88.  Sideskirts had been banned in order to keep competitiveness up as cornering speeds were now creating records up to six seconds faster than before. And skirts made of rubber meant in the event of a breech the car would hurtle off the track at enormous speeds. There was also an enforced ground clearance of 6cm so that the vacuum wasn't as intense. Yet the rules only stated the ride hight was only allowed in the pits Gordon Murray from Brabham to develop the BT49C that featured a hydropneumatic suspension that lowered the car at speed. Other teams copied by using a switch. Lotus's solution was to turn the entire car into a ground effect system. To mitigate the driver being crushed to death it featured a twin chassis with the inner holding the cockpit in suspension. It was arguably the most comfortable of all the ground effect era cars to drive. However the 88 never ran as the FIA judged the twin chassis as a movable aerodynamic system and banned it. Williams FW08B Anything you can ban, I can ban better... The late 80's in F1 was marked by shocking crashes that proved cars were becoming too fast for the sake of driver control and crowd safety. However some old ideas came back. Such as Williams revising six wheels.  Flipping the concept tried by Tyrrell and using regular tires, this was the last hurrah in the tech race insanity that drove the ground effect era. Initially created to make the most of ground effect the longer chassis improved the grip to insane levels, the lift to drag ratio was 13:4. The other unintended advantage was that with four wheels at the back, the rearmost tires could be used as slicks when it rained, as the tires in front kept the water off. Despite being immensely heavy it steered rather well and was reported to have incredible traction out of slow corners. The FIA caught wind of this and banned the car outright so it never got beyond the testing stage.
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Jul 10, 2013 06:48
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Imaginative bendings of regulations have lead to some interesting workarounds - for instance, rocket fuel for Formula 1 cars in the 80's. The ban on skirts and other ground effect devices meant manufactures had to go back to concentrating on making engines that went fast. One emerging technology at the time was the introduction of the turbo. The Renault RS01. I'm a little teapot...  This was the first turbocharged car to appear in 1977, and it didn't impress, other teams called it "The Yellow Teapot". The car's function was to be a working prototype and was extensively worked on over the seasons. Turbo suffered from lag when you accelerated making for unwholesome surges forwards. It also placed immense stress on the motor, the RS01 had cast-iron internals to try and cope. Renault persevered until finally scooping pole in 1979. Then people took notice. By then Renault had the advantage from years of development. The turbo era was characterized by flame spitting monsters that released tremendous horsepower. Despite the removal of skirts it was discovered the greater speed allowed for steeper wings so you now had increasingly fast and grippy cars on the tracks. So how do you go faster? BMW-Brabham had an answer. The rules stated that the cars must run on petrol similar to road cars - notably it must be at 102 octanes. BMW discovered adding toluene into the fuel kept to the octane limit, and delivered quite a kick - around 1300hp out of a 1.5L turbo engine. The downside is this stuff was expensive, $300 a liter as well as being poisonous. Of course BMW + rockets = rather nasty rumors that the fuel they had used was derived in part with BASF, a company that was part of IG Farben back in WWII and who had developed the fuel for the Nazi's. It wasn't actually true, but it made for a nice tale to spread around the pits. The FIA naturally responded by enforcing low engine pressures and banning turbos. However coming in 2014 is the return of turbocharged engines, in part from the efforts of creating a greener F1.
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Jul 11, 2013 05:44
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Jul 18, 2013 09:41
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twosideddice posted:"I think there is a market for maybe five computers" By a former chairman of IBM The same with the Gates quote, he's always denied he said that. It's been a much cited urban legend for years that works as it encapsulated the massive surge of personal computers during the 90's. It crops up in an article in Wired back in 1997 where they had a competition for software and received dozens of self-assured variations of the quote. The Ken Olsen quote, while correct is removed from context. At the time, 1977, he was a big proponent of the home PC, which was still in it's infancy. In that instance he was actually talking about having computers that run the entire household automatically and the complexities that would place on daily life.
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Jul 20, 2013 13:49
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I know someone who has a make of 80's era Mercedes that has little seat belt dispensers, where an arm will slide out from over your shoulder and offer you the buckle, then slide back when you buckle in.
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Aug 16, 2013 17:46
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It's the Internet fridge for the 1910's
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Oct 7, 2013 14:24
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Nothing screams 80's like being an unfortunate pack-mule for your rich friend's luggable cell phone.
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Dec 2, 2013 09:51
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Manky posted:"Commonly available, inexpensive camcorder batteries."
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Jan 4, 2014 16:12
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Are we doing "MIDI? Oh you shouldn't have". Creative Prodikey  It won CES's "best gadget" in 2003. And managed to get reasonable reviews for an entry level keyboard in the market. But it was dogged by the fact it was marketed as a learning tool for budding musicians not professionals. The included software was mostly there to load up samples and allow you to play along to MIDI tunes. The keyboard was pretty cramped as the software seemed to want you to play a one man band and crammed in effects by the octave. An octave shift button was introduced in later models.  There wasn't much support beyond Windows Vista so it died out quietly, despite seeming to have a small cult following - helped immensely by Paul Seow's enthusiastic promo video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lr-Cr999fy0
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Jan 5, 2014 05:28
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Digging through trade show reviews brings up some interesting gizmos that either died an early death or never really made it. PC Expo 99 had a few interesting things. STAR WARS Episode 1 Digital transfer. Paul Thurrott posted:"The digital format means no scratches, skips, or dirty film, but it really goes beyond that with a visual quality that is hard to describe. Projected digitally off a massive hard drive with Texas Instruments' DLP Cinema technology, STAR WARS took on whole new levels of sharpness, depth, and image quality. Digital sequences such as the pod race and droid/Gungan battle scenes were even more realistic. And digital characters such as Watoo and Jar Jar Binks were virtually perfect. Bit more info here. Sceptre BT15+ LCD privacy screen  An LCD screen that displayed all white, until you used the special sunglasses that allowed you to view. I'm sure LCD refresh rates of 1999 combined with whatever was used to white out the screen made for some pretty painful viewing. Electrofuel PowerPad  A gigantic battery that sat under your laptop and promised (and seemed to hold up) to 15 hours of conservative battery use. However it cost $500, which was around half the price of an average laptop at the time. The search for portable storage. The time before cheaply available CD Rom's and USB thumb drives spawned a host of intermediaries. Iomega's zip drives were the top contender, but other companies like SyQuest and it's spin off Castlewood tried their best to create competing media that all ended up bankrupt as reliability was spotty. The biggest flaw came about from Iomega's cost cutting action of removing a bit of foam to soften the impact of a sudden read arm stop. In severe cases this would rip off the disk heads and cause a chain reaction where subsequent disks inserted would be torn up. The bit of foam was returned, but Iomega's reputation wasn't and the class action lawsuits against "lifetime warranties" mounted. Iomega Jaz drive. (1995) It had a penchant for getting a bit warm and causing it's disks to jam. The other issue was the metal drive door that would shave bits off your disk and jam the mechanisms with debris. Should you forcibly eject it you would damage both the cartridge and the drive. PocketZip (1999)  These were meant to be little luggable disks that were only 40mb in size with a 100mb version in the works before it vanished. During development and early demonstrations it went by the name "Clik!". Which was somewhat unfortunate given the "click of death" lawsuits that were soon to follow. Also they were flimsy and bent easily. ZipCD  The writing was on the wall for Zip disks as cheaper and rewritable CD's came into play. This attempt to survive at all costs resulted in a 1.2kg re-badged Philips CD-RW burner that was hampered by USB 1.1 speeds, at times having severely reduced read speeds (4x at an advertised 8x). The reliability was so bad that further lawsuits emerged in 2000 as burn failures mounted.
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Jan 5, 2014 16:53
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Celluoid and film has always been a really explosive combination. So many old theaters were burnt down due to the lamp setting fire to the film. Some of the early theaters eventually built doors that would close off the projection booth in the hopes of starving the area of oxygen and saving the whole theater - on occasion trapping the poor projectionist to roast alive. I've always been staggered by hearing stories of old old editors smoking in the editing room during the days of celluloid film, or learning how to properly hold a bit of film in your mouth facing the right way so it wouldn't get moist and rip bits off your lip. Before Bakelite, Celluloid was the plastic of it's day often being used as an ivory replacement. For instance one use was billiard balls where they would routinely explode from impacts.
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Jan 8, 2014 06:40
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Thirding Ignition! as a fascinating horrific read. Half the stuff in there tends to stem from Nazi rocket scientists trying out all manner of combining stuff in the hopes to find a better way to lob rockets across the channel. Which is then continued on during the Cold War as the jet age came into play. "Things I won't work with" provides a spiritual a modern day continuation with vivid descriptions of chemicals that will bond to the calcium in your bones and eat them away.
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Jan 10, 2014 08:46
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My phone even has an IR transmitter so I can be an utter cock and sneakily switch off mates TVs during the middle of the cricket. And come to think of it, I can even plug in a mouse.
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Jan 18, 2014 00:29
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Lowen SoDium posted:In the end, I don't think handheld gaming cell phones are an obsolete technology as much as I think they are a missed opportunity. That and it clearly was a rushed idea, complete with bad design and an even worse ad campaign that seemed to presume anyone who had one was a psychopath. The NGage QD was even worse. Despite fixing design flaws it took out MP3 playback, FM radio and USB connectivity to try and push down the price. The other problem is you're trying to have one device do two things equally well at once. And there has to be a trade off somewhere either in user design or features. Sony's Xperia Play is the closest way you could come to getting a modern day phone/handheld working as the touch screen and slide out game pad separates the controls. The use of Android provides enough of a universal base that swapping between phone and game isn't that cumbersome. And the issue of limited games at launch is solved from having the Google Store - plus you had some games from Sony that were cheaper than what you got on a PSP. However, as pointed out, mobile phones live through planned obsolescence and it seems to have lost support pretty rapidly, I suspect to not undercut into the (then) soon to be released PSP Vita. Speaking of Sony... The Mylo  This really wins the "fill a niche that doesn't need to be" catergory. It's a dedicated chat device that was preloaded with the IM programs of the day. It relied completely on having a Wi-fi connection nearby to leech off. There's no bluetooth support. It was basically a phone without the ability to make texts or calls. The idea was that you'd save on bills by not signing up to any plans.
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Jan 19, 2014 14:08
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dissss posted:The thing is it was true when the iPhone first came out. People tend to forget just how limited a device the iPhone was at launch. My aging P1 still held up fairly well feature wise. But dragging that out in an emergency did remind me how painfully clunky the UIQ3 interface was despite the phone managing to do everything I needed it to do.
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Jan 20, 2014 02:30
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Yad Rock posted:What was that flip-phone thing James Bond had in one of the late 90s movies that also drove his car? I remember it being really futuristic at the time but I'm assuming it would no longer be so unbelievable in 2014. The rapid pace of phones even make things in Casino Royale appear quaint (Sony/Ericsson are the main mobile sponsors).
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Jan 20, 2014 03:21
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tacodaemon posted:Billy Idol's 1993 album Cyberpunk actually came with a floppy disk multimedia presentation that won it a fair bit of hype at the time: And yeah old old laptops with a refresh rate so slow that if you turned on mouse trails you could draw with the mouse.
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Jan 22, 2014 02:53
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