Weirdness: Round three

Non-spam and Anime things that don't fit in C&C. Also where talk that you don't want to turn into spam goes. So No Spam allowed

Re: Weirdness: Round three

Postby Ellen Kuhfeld » Thu Jan 07, 2021 4:12 pm

A lot depends on where you are. Large upwind bodies of water can make life interesting, and I think that includes a lot of Europe. Minnesota, though, has a mid-continental climate, which can get notably enthusiastic. I personally have seen the temperature get down to 40 below zero, which is the same in Celsius or Fahrenheit. (Less than two years ago, accompanied by blowing snow. We were doing a reading and a signing up in Virginia, Minnesota, just South of International Falls, known by Rocky and Bullwinkle as Frostbite Falls.) The highest Minnesota temperature I remember was 105 Fahrenheit, which works out to a little over 40 Celsius. We won't count Death Valley.

I even remember a dust storm in the 1940s. Our lake, the so-called Crystal Lake, had obviously been dry at one time, as there were naked tree trunks sticking out of the water most everywhere. (This was in the 1950s.) Somewhere in the 2000s, friends of mine (who owned lakeshore property) went out and removed all the dead trees. Improved the view immensely.

I definitely believe in climate change. I've seen it. I'm simply not convinced it is my fault, nor that it's all bad.
Visit Big Washuu's Lab of Arcane Knowledge at http://washuu.net
Ellen Kuhfeld
User avatar
Sailor Starlight
Posts: 2228
 

Re: Weirdness: Round three

Postby Té Rowan » Fri Jan 08, 2021 10:28 am

"Good… bad… who cares. I'm the one with all the firepower." Mama Fjorgyn.

https://soranews24.com/2021/01/09/heres-why-japanese-supermarkets-play-cheap-background-music-all-day-according-to-twitter/

So if Swedish supermarkets followed this logic, they would play ABBA's "SOS" if they needed more staff on the registers, right?
I go walking. My mind goes wandering.
Té Rowan
User avatar
Prism Power Senshi
Posts: 3014
 

Re: Weirdness: Round three

Postby Spica75 » Fri Jan 08, 2021 12:27 pm

Té Rowan wrote:I think the weather is getting wilder, too. Kinda have had this feeling that the Atlantic storms slamming into Europe are getting fiercer on the average.


Definitely. I think there was ONE single really huge storm at all in my first 15 years, while in just the last 10 years, there's been what, 6 or something?

Ellen Kuhfeld wrote:A lot depends on where you are. Large upwind bodies of water can make life interesting, and I think that includes a lot of Europe. Minnesota, though, has a mid-continental climate, which can get notably enthusiastic. I personally have seen the temperature get down to 40 below zero, which is the same in Celsius or Fahrenheit. (Less than two years ago, accompanied by blowing snow. We were doing a reading and a signing up in Virginia, Minnesota, just South of International Falls, known by Rocky and Bullwinkle as Frostbite Falls.) The highest Minnesota temperature I remember was 105 Fahrenheit, which works out to a little over 40 Celsius. We won't count Death Valley.

I even remember a dust storm in the 1940s. Our lake, the so-called Crystal Lake, had obviously been dry at one time, as there were naked tree trunks sticking out of the water most everywhere. (This was in the 1950s.) Somewhere in the 2000s, friends of mine (who owned lakeshore property) went out and removed all the dead trees. Improved the view immensely.

I definitely believe in climate change. I've seen it. I'm simply not convinced it is my fault, nor that it's all bad.


Unless you're going out of your way to cause it, it's not much your fault no, consumer society as a whole is the primary fault. Capitalism really doesn't work properly if you have finite resources. And noone seems to have bothered considering that for the last few hundred years.

And of course it's not ALL bad. However, if for example one of the less pleasant predictions becomes true, that the Gulf stream could simply quit, me, here in Sweden? Oh yeah, we could end up with fun issues like having glaciers starting to grow southwards. Te Rowand up in Iceland could be even worse off. Ouchy.

And overall, in my 45 years lifetime, the weather has gone from reliably cyclical to a more constant average with random spikes in either direction, i mean, we're not supposed to have 3rd warmest day of the year in MARCH, or stuff like that.

Also, the big problem is how small the total changes needs to be to potentially end up catastrophic. That makes it a really difficult balancing issue.

Té Rowan wrote:"Good… bad… who cares. I'm the one with all the firepower." Mama Fjorgyn.

https://soranews24.com/2021/01/09/heres-why-japanese-supermarkets-play-cheap-background-music-all-day-according-to-twitter/

So if Swedish supermarkets followed this logic, they would play ABBA's "SOS" if they needed more staff on the registers, right?


Usually, they just have a single radio channel tuned in. :)
Spica75
User avatar
Prism Power Senshi
Posts: 2399
 

Re: Weirdness: Round three

Postby Té Rowan » Sun Jan 10, 2021 9:43 am

https://www.who.int/gpsc/5may/Guide_to_Local_Production.pdf — WHO's DIY hand sanitiser formulas.
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/936327 — An article on bringing the above formulas up to surgery standards.
I go walking. My mind goes wandering.
Té Rowan
User avatar
Prism Power Senshi
Posts: 3014
 

Re: Weirdness: Round three

Postby Té Rowan » Tue Jan 12, 2021 11:00 am

How truthful can anyone be in claiming they did not want a KITT bar for their car after watching Knight Rider?
I go walking. My mind goes wandering.
Té Rowan
User avatar
Prism Power Senshi
Posts: 3014
 

Re: Weirdness: Round three

Postby Té Rowan » Thu Jan 14, 2021 10:01 am

Seen on a texted image: "Due to travel restrictions, USA had to invade itself this year."
I go walking. My mind goes wandering.
Té Rowan
User avatar
Prism Power Senshi
Posts: 3014
 

Re: Weirdness: Round three

Postby Spica75 » Thu Jan 14, 2021 10:24 am

Té Rowan wrote:Seen on a texted image: "Due to travel restrictions, USA had to invade itself this year."


Don't worry, i'm sure they'll have pleeeenty of time to invade someone else, probably several, before the year is over.
Considering how much shit Biden was an integral part of starting LAST time he had any authority, i would be far more surprised if there are no wars or "encouraged regime changes" before long.

Replacing a president who starts shit by accident with one that does it intentionally? Not sure i'm seeing an improvement here...
Spica75
User avatar
Prism Power Senshi
Posts: 2399
 

Re: Weirdness: Round three

Postby Té Rowan » Thu Jan 21, 2021 9:54 pm

I found myself wondering a few days ago: What if the IBM PC had only been sold to existing and prospective IBM customers and never to the general public? What would we be doing our computing on? CP/M machines? Unix boxes? Souped-up 1980-era home computers?
I go walking. My mind goes wandering.
Té Rowan
User avatar
Prism Power Senshi
Posts: 3014
 

Re: Weirdness: Round three

Postby Neko- » Fri Jan 22, 2021 3:09 am

Microsofts DOS probably wouldn't have gotten that big. Resulting in Windows maybe never existing.
We might all be more Linux oriented then, provided Linux would even come about.
Not sure on Apple either. They got big with the MacIntosh, which was meant to offset Microsofts dominance on OS if I recall correctly.

The world would be a vastly different place I think.
Appointed Spammaster Rank D by Himitsu - June 21st 2006
Appointed Spammaster Rank C by Himitsu - September 2nd 2006
Prince of Bob (the Black Hole)
I reject your reality and substitute my own - Adam Savage
Neko-
User avatar
Crisis Power Senshi
Posts: 10095
 

Re: Weirdness: Round three

Postby Spica75 » Fri Jan 22, 2021 8:58 am

Commodore's Amiga series is one of the very likely contenders for going BIG.

Especially because of how the Amiga Workbench is practically a better Windows and MacOS as well, and released the year after MacOS and halfyear before Windows(and without Atari's attempted lawsuit, would have been released half a year earlier). Most of all, it could multitask at a time when such wasn't even really thought about by other OS creators.
Not to mention how some graphics and sound artists as well as some other media producers are STILL actually using it today, because with their less than 100Mhz turbo-addon boards and SSDs, they're still decently competitive with modern 4Ghz PCs.

Only decent competition was the Atari ST family, also, incidentally using the same Motorola 68000 CPU as basis(also used by the Apple, but less efficiently), but with an OS based on a ported and upgraded CP/M.
Though while the Atari ST series started out with a major advantage for music/sound artists by having MIDI-ports as part of the standard equipment, as well as some other good sides like 1MB of RAM, the Amiga was the better overall package with better gfx and sound chips and the new Kickstart/Workbench combo being better than the "GEM" OS on the Atari.

Still, without PCs? Those two are the ones most likely to compete for making it big, and the Amiga definitely had superior longterm prospects.

Amstrad and Schneider's PCW (Personal Computer Word-processor) might also have taken up quite a bit of the market and developed further, if nothing else due to their extremely low price, released at a pricetag around 1/3 that of the Amiga 1000, despite including a printer in the price. But with the clear downside of being based on the inferior Z80 CPU and drastically less useful hardware overall.

.

Anyway, the first IBM PC was launched in 1981, so the gap until 1985 would also have to be covered with -something-...

The Apple II would probably have taken some of it, especially the highend business market, the TRS-80 and Atari 800 picking up some of the slack as well, however, the much cheaper but still similar performance Commodore 64 being released in 1982 is very likely to take a big chunk of the interest.
Originally, the only reason it failed as a work-machine was because the IBM PC covered one part of the users and the Apple II much of the rest, but without the PC around, the C64 would likely get a major increase in sales, as even with the historical issues, a surprising amount of professional software still happened. And they were liked enough that there are companies that have used them up until less than 5 years ago, even completely without upgrades or anything.

So, without PC? Commodore would likely have taken up most of the market, with Apple covering a much larger part as well, while there's decent chance Amstrad and maybe Atari would still be delivering home computers, the former sticking with their cheapskate wordprocessors with extras and Atari either picking up the slack in gaming that a more professionally aimed CBM would likely cause, or if they managed to upgrade their series better than historically, as a main competitor.

Still, given average luck, CBM definitely looks like it would have been the primary winners if IBM never came up with the PC, as they would have been almost right on timing with very good hardware AND software.

Apple could maybe have done it given enough time to shift their focus to a wider audience, but by the time they did that, Amiga 2000 would have been a massive hit and competing with it would have been extremely hard, and the C64 would have made the road getting there one of losing cash as well, so more likely they would have stuck to their niche and just tried to expand just enough to cater to more users without causing too much extra expenses.

Tandy(TRS-80 etc) might also have had a good chance, but at the time they were far too much into being smug about their successes and were continually falling behind, much due to trying to enforce complete monopoly on their systems, keeping 3rd party developers completely out, maintaining locked down hardware and software, also keeping it away from home programmers, the very opposite of what allowed the C64 to stick around for over 3 decades. Without the PC, their decline would have been slower, MAYBE giving them a chance to change, but i doubt it, as the same slower decline would mean less incentive for them to realise the problems, which historically they didn't really until the late 80s when it was far too late.

Atari would likely be the joker in the pack, almost good enough historically to become a bigger player, good enough R&D and company structure and leadership to handle it, but slightly stuck with some less than great choices and ironically, failing somewhat to fully attract the gamers, which in the 80s home computer business were ignored only at your peril.
They MIGHT be able to become the primary suppliers of home computers, but more likely, they become the Apple to CBMs IBM, the smaller but persistent competitor. Some risk that they end up with their computer side entirely trashed due to CBM having bigger sales and being able to do a better job with their own lineup and bouncing them out of even their main niche markets.
Spica75
User avatar
Prism Power Senshi
Posts: 2399
 

Re: Weirdness: Round three

Postby Té Rowan » Fri Jan 22, 2021 9:52 am

It is very possible that Digital Research would be where Microsoft is now. Perhaps DR's GEM running on a 68K-based machine would have become the Big Thing. Xwindows on top of a BSD Unix could have won the Unix Wars. 86-DOS would likely still exist on Intel i86/88-based machines.

Intel itself would probably be a smaller company, and Motorola and Zilog bigger ones. I guess we'd still see the 80286, but this time running proper multi-tasking operating systems.

I am guessing the computing scene would be rather more diverse than it is here. 32-bitters might still be the high end of things.

The Internet would still be around in some form, and people would still be trying to sell you penny stocks, miracle drugs — and penis enlargemens.
I go walking. My mind goes wandering.
Té Rowan
User avatar
Prism Power Senshi
Posts: 3014
 

Re: Weirdness: Round three

Postby Ellen Kuhfeld » Fri Jan 22, 2021 4:19 pm

I'm of two minds about Commodore. I've used computers since about 1960 (IBM 704), so I was rather set in my ways. We (being a family of writers) wanted a word processor. We looked at the Apple II, and were told if we wanted to use both capital and small letters, we'd have to buy an extra board to make it possible. We couldn't afford IBM. And for both of those, we'd have to buy lots of auxiliary units - monitor, printer, stuff like that. I looked at Commodore, and none of their ports worked with standard add-ons without adapters. We went to Radio Shack, and ended up with a TRS-80 Model III. It had everything but the printer built right in, and worked with ordinary printers. Oh, storing data on an audio cassette was a pain, but I still think that at the time, it was the best of the choices. It did, we learned, have some kinks in the programming - it had a munificent 48K of memory, but we could only save the first 32K. Nonetheless, after a couple years we upgraded to a Model IV and found it superior in every way.

Two writers, one computer. This was a problem. I had to clear up the workspace before I could work properly. Mary had to cover it with notes and files and sheets of paper. We were spending more time setting up the workspace than actually using it. Something had to be done!

In those days, computers were much more expensive compared to our income. I got a Commodore 64 (we won't mention the VIC-20), and that was what I used for the first half of a novel.

There were PROBLEMS here. The files of the Trash-3 were saved on a cassette tape. The Trash-4 had floppy drives, and could read the Trash-3 cassettes - if we had saved them at the proper speed, which we hadn't. So we had to resave them all, to get them to the 360K floppy. At this point MS-DOS and IBM began to conquer the world. It could read neither the TRSDOS floppies, nor the C64 data files. But the newly-arrived Commodore 128 could read both, with the help of a couple of enthusiast programs, and get everything onto CP/M format floppies. Somewhere around then we had a CP/M luggable for use when traveling. (It was in a grey metal housing. May have been a KayPro, certainly wasn't an Osborne. Got almost no use.)

Eventually everything was shoehorned into MS-DOS format, Word Perfect 4. I was quite happy - Mary had an IBM clone and I had a laptop. Oh, it was a rather fat laptop, but we'd gotten everything we had into a format it could read.

Then we upgraded to WordPerfect 5. It wasn't happy with WordPerfect 4 file formats. Then we got Wordperfect 5.1, which wasn't backward compatible either. Rinse and repeat.

I've learned a number of lessons from this long trail:
1) Keep things in a portable format -- RTF, JPEG, PDF. It's no guarantee, but it improves the odds.
2) Use generic programs like LibreOffice and GIMP. The coders know the more types of file they can read, the more likely they are to be taken up.
3) Computers and software change. Sometimes the only reason is that a new engineer wants to pee in the soup. If it does your job, keep it. (The bios in my computer is dated 2014. I'm running Windows 7. I use LibreOffice, while Mary is still using Windows Office 2003.) You can do more with the time you don't waste learning the ins and outs of a new OS or word processor. I've learned at least four assembly languages. None of those computers still exist.
4) Some computers are better than others. If it does your job and doesn't give trouble, you don't need the latest *OOOHH! Shiny!* upgrade.
5) If it's not compatible, don't buy it it. Finding adapters is a pain.

Which brings me back to the original question: Apple? IBM? Commodore? I'll add Tandy to that. Tandy didn't make it for some reason. Perhaps the Radio Shack ethos didn't give them enough drive. I've had early Commodore computers, and they could have gone big IF they'd gone for standardization. When the plugs for computer and printer don't match, the sale doesn't go through.

Really, that leaves it between IBM and Apple, of the computers I've known. Apple charges twice as much for the same calculating power, and you have to buy everything from Apple if you standardize on them. Their machines are quite well behaved, and specialized for artistic endeavors. But what you bought is what you have - only the bravest pop them open - the bravest, with the (uncommon) right screwdriver - and I hear that upgrades are a nightmare. IBM, you can have what you want. Buy a good computer, and if you need more, open it up and put in more memory, a better hard drive, and maybe that graphics card you heard of.

CP/M vs MS/DOS? I've used them both. From what I hear, Gary Kildahl wanted to go fishing the day IBM knocked on the door, but Bill Gates was open for business. A butterfly in South America farted, and that's what we got. (A whole flock of butterflies farted for Windows 10. Gotta watch them chaos butterflies. Entropy never sleeps. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!)
Visit Big Washuu's Lab of Arcane Knowledge at http://washuu.net
Ellen Kuhfeld
User avatar
Sailor Starlight
Posts: 2228
 

Re: Weirdness: Round three

Postby Spica75 » Sat Jan 23, 2021 9:59 am

Which brings me back to the original question: Apple? IBM? Commodore? I'll add Tandy to that. Tandy didn't make it for some reason. Perhaps the Radio Shack ethos didn't give them enough drive.


Like i wrote above, Tandy were so determined to keep ALL THE CASH, that they enforced some very harsh "no third party ANYTHING" rules, which severely limited their ability to compete and made pricetags become a bigger and bigger problem over time, because they basically remained the same, while competitors 3rd party additions kept popping up at lower and lower prices as more and more people/companies came up with good hardware or software for them.

Essentially, Tandy very determinedly dug their own grave, lay down in it then pulled the dirt down on them very thoroughly.
They could absolutely have been a primary contender in every way, but they shot themselves in the foot, and then kept doing it on a regular basis. It wasn't until just a few years before they failed that they even at all realised that "hmm, we MIGHT have a problem?".

I've had early Commodore computers, and they could have gone big IF they'd gone for standardization. When the plugs for

Like i wrote, they all had their ups and downs. CBMs downsides were mostly less bad though, or could be overcome. Like said connection standards, that COULD be fixed rather easily with an adapter without becoming horribly expensive.


CP/M vs MS/DOS? I've used them both. From what I hear, Gary Kildahl wanted to go fishing the day IBM knocked on the door, but Bill Gates was open for business. A butterfly in South America farted, and that's what we got. (A whole flock of butterflies farted for Windows 10. Gotta watch them chaos butterflies. Entropy never sleeps. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!)


:mrgreen:
*lol*

CP/M was also getting aged, it was still viable and useful(i used it on my first own computer, C128, but only rarely), but it wasn't "hot stuff" any more.

More importantly however, Atari's GEM GUI alone was drastically better, and the Amiga Workbench was markedly better than even THAT. With both of those coming out before Windows, it's really sad that we ended up with the clearly inferior Windows as the norm.

We couldn't afford IBM. And for both of those, we'd have to buy lots of auxiliary units - monitor, printer, stuff like that. I looked at Commodore, and none of their ports worked with standard add-ons without adapters. We went to Radio Shack, and ended up with a TRS-80 Model III.


A clear case for choosing Amstrad. :wink: :P
1/2 the price or less, with printer included and with the absolute best wordprocessing software.
But Amstrad wasn't common across the pond due to being a British company and their only big collaboration was with Schneider, a German company, so unless you KNEW about it beforehand, you probably couldn't even find out about it in the vast majority of stores.

which wasn't backward compatible either.


The truly sad and pathetic thing about this is how Microsoft is doing that INTENTIONALLY nowadays. It's just despicable.
Especially when opensource options is capable of handling all their fileformats.

I got a Commodore 64 (we won't mention the VIC-20)


If it was only a matter of writing on it, the Vic-20 wasn't actually a bad choice, though you might have wanted to get the RAM expansion.

I've learned a number of lessons from this long trail:


Agree with all except the last, as that applies when finding adapters actually IS a problem. But sure, direct compatibility is always better.
Spica75
User avatar
Prism Power Senshi
Posts: 2399
 

Re: Weirdness: Round three

Postby Spica75 » Sat Jan 23, 2021 10:34 am

It is very possible that Digital Research would be where Microsoft is now. Perhaps DR's GEM running on a 68K-based machine would have become the Big Thing. Xwindows on top of a BSD Unix could have won the Unix Wars. 86-DOS would likely still exist on Intel i86/88-based machines.


Not impossible, though i really think it unlikely for GEM to become the same massive standard when the CBM Amiga Workbench would be competing directly with it and being clearly better.
But, almost anything is plausible to some degree.

Intel itself would probably be a smaller company, and Motorola and Zilog bigger ones. I guess we'd still see the 80286, but this time running proper multi-tasking operating systems.


Zilog might have managed to take the place of the ARM cpus of today, they were better at "cheap&simple" than "best performance", so not impossible.
Motorola would very likely have become the primary CPU maker. They were simply put GOOD. Copies and variations of their 68000 series are still used and manufactured TODAY. Absolutely noone would, in comparison, bother making a direct 80286 derivative cpu today, just not worth the effort.
But there are dozens of 68000-series derivatives still made.

I am guessing the computing scene would be rather more diverse than it is here. 32-bitters might still be the high end of things.


Really hard to say. I wouldn't count on either though.

64-bit took a much longer time than needed mostly because Intel had such a dominant position and simply didn't want anything to compete with its Itanium failure, which spent an insane amount of time in development only to end up being mostly worthless in the end.
Epic fail to the degree that it is often called the Itanic(epic fail also because the name of the architechture was EPIC). It was supposed to be Intels next huge flagship and bring us 64-bit in 1998(though original launchdate was supposedly 1995), having started official development in 1989.

Intel still forced it into production and sales in 2001, but while it did fine in a few very niche markets(FP math focused), for general purpose computing it was a laughable piece of shit. And that's the big issue here, it started development to take over after Pentium, then when troubles came, it was moved to replace Pentium 2, then Pentium 3 then finally being launched long after the Pentium 4 and with absolutely zero chance of competing in the desktop market.

So, if Intel was not the only big boss on the market? That just had to focus their 64-bitness 100% on an epic stupid idea and doing their absolute best to keep anyone else from even considering 64-bits. Totally plausible that someone else could have released something in the 90s.

As for diverseness, maybe.
However, as Ellen mention, the thing that the PC brought was that of easier tinkering and upgrades. Something that was much less prominent on home computers, even if not absent. They were also generally closed systems, ie, connecting an Atari ST with an Amiga was a DIFFICULT thing, transferring files between them, similar.

So, there's a definite possibility that we could have seen a greater diversity in computers, but less so in how much "home fixer" options there would be. OTOH, the vast majority of users are NOT doing much of that anyway, so it might actually not make a huge difference.

The Internet would still be around in some form, and people would still be trying to sell you penny stocks, miracle drugs — and penis enlargemens.


:mrgreen:

Yup, guaranteed.

It's kinda funny though that there are thousands of people that today use the Amiga to use the Internet, using the 40-100Mhz turbo upgrade cpu addons, and performance is generally comparable to using a 3-4Ghz x86 system.
Really makes you appreciate how good the 68000 series CPUs were. Since at the time in the mid 80s, they were competing evenly on Mhz, yet being so superior in efficiency that when their development slowed down due to x86 taking over the mass market for nontechnical reasons they eventually end up being competitive at a clockrate 1/10th of the x86, or better.
Spica75
User avatar
Prism Power Senshi
Posts: 2399
 

Re: Weirdness: Round three

Postby Té Rowan » Sun Jan 31, 2021 9:06 am

Finally got around to convert the string data from my versions of the Church Doctrine Generator and the Excuse Generator into Javascript string arrays so I can use the stuff in a web browser. Now, gems like this one are only a point and a click away:

The Nissan Lodge professes that a runic stone brought back from the Moon explains the holy writings of Crazy Eddie, and explains that after the third coming only the chosen people will experience the face of Jesus in a bowl of spaghetti.
I go walking. My mind goes wandering.
Té Rowan
User avatar
Prism Power Senshi
Posts: 3014
 

PreviousNext

Return to Other Talk

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users