Tech stuff you thought was magic

jimgoose

syklops wrote: »

You miss the whirr though. I love the Pi but it'd be more impressive if it whirred.

Anyone remember the old Sun E15K? All you had to do was drop the console to send the fans "high" and the thing would roar like a dragster and frighten the bejaybers out of anyone near it. :pac::pac::pac:

rob316

Playstation One was a giant leap from Sega Mega Drive and Super Nintendo. Really thought that was great at the time.

nelly17

These guys talking spec back in 2000 & 2001 seems rediculous now

libelula

Deleting info off phones and computers. Where does it go
And how come someone could still find it if they really want to. Cos it's only kinda deleted. So it's not really gona anywhere.
(Not that it's a problem, just makes my brain hurt!)

syklops

libelula wrote: »

Deleting info off phones and computers. Where does it go
And how come someone could still find it if they really want to. Cos it's only kinda deleted. So it's not really gona anywhere.
(Not that it's a problem, just makes my brain hurt!)

Theres an index of files, kind of like a phonebook. When you delete a file, the computer removes the file from the index. If you scan the hard drive for files you might be able to find the file again.

Imagine you tip ex out your name in the phonebook. Does that disconnect your phone? No. Someone dialling sequential phone numbers in your area will eventually find you. Same thing.

diomed

When I first saw a spreadsheet on a PC in 1983.

Son Of A Vidic

rob316 wrote: »

Playstation One was a giant leap from Sega Mega Drive and Super Nintendo. Really thought that was great at the time.

No console, PC or game ever had the same impact for me, as playing Tomb Raider 1 on the PS1.

libelula

syklops wrote: »

Theres an index of files, kind of like a phonebook. When you delete a file, the computer removes the file from the index. If you scan the hard drive for files you might be able to find the file again.

Imagine you tip ex out your name in the phonebook. Does that disconnect your phone? No. Someone dialling sequential phone numbers in your area will eventually find you. Same thing.

That's the best way anyone's ever explained that to me. You've made a non-techhy woman very happy this morning

syklops

libelula wrote: »

That's the best way anyone's ever explained that to me. You've made a non-techhy woman very happy this morning

You're welcome. What else you got?

jimgoose

OSI wrote: »

Awwhh man, you mean the guy paid minimum wage with no training doesn't have the same level of knowledge as an experienced engineer in the field?

Um, no - that's the whole point. They're there to sell and generate revenue, regardless of people's needs or requirements. This is, as far as I'm concerned, an act of war!

L1m1tless

I always thought these were magic

eamonnq

OSI wrote: »

Awwhh man, you mean the guy paid minimum wage with no training doesn't have the same level of knowledge as an experienced engineer in the field?

Imagine if they employed "experienced engineers in the field" to sell phones!!

Senna

My first usb drive in college was 16mb, which was amazing compared to floppy disks, wishing I would afford the 128mb when it came out. I figured I could never fill 128mb it was SO BIG.

Internet speed took huge jumps too, 30 minutes to down load a 4mb song from Napster on dial-up and you could see people with T3 lines that would had the song down in seconds, I assumed they worked for NASA or something at the time.

useless

I remember someone giving me a 16MB USB memory stick in early 2003 & thinking this thing was magic. Up to then I'd been using 3.5" floppies. I know, I'm easily impressed:-)

syklops

useless wrote: »

I remember someone giving me a 16MB USB memory stick in early 2003 & thinking this thing was magic. Up to then I'd been using 3.5" floppies. I know, I'm easily impressed:-)

And then you plugged it in and Windows crashed and you were like "Its too much for my system to handle!"

AndyBoBandy

I bought in America in 2005 16MB & 32MB flash drives, they were the bees knees at the time (I thought), I actually still have them (I'm a hoarder), as I know i'll find a use for them some day.

Same with SD cards, had a 128MB card for my digital camera back in 2003, and felt like a rock star!! last week I bought a 64GB microSD card!!

oh the times, they have a changed.

sheesh

Magic? I'll give you magic email is pure witchcraft you can send a message to a person at the other side of the world and it will arrive that day and you don't have to pay. My mother's first cousin was living in Hong kong in the late ninties she was facinated by the fact that you could communicate with them so quickly before this it was actual letters phone calls were too expensive.

syklops

sheesh wrote: »

Magic? I'll give you magic email is pure witchcraft you can send a message to a person at the other side of the world and it will arrive that day and you don't have to pay. My mother's first cousin was living in Hong kong in the late ninties she was facinated by the fact that you could communicate with them so quickly before this it was actual letters phone calls were too expensive.

And its free! Its amazing Microsoft or someone didnt come up with a penny per kilobyte billing scheme.

Edit: Yet.

redfacedbear

I stuck with Nokia waaaay too long. I even bought an N97!
It was a dog of a phone - the Symbian OS wasn't up to the job and it had already been left behind by Apple & Android before it was sold.

I didn't realise this though until I bought my first Android a couple of years later. Simple things like being able to continue browsing web pages as the phone moved from Wifi to data and back (on the N97 the phone would have a mickey fit and you'd have to relaunch the browser if it couldn't find the same wifi connection that it had last time) were a joy and so easy. It was some revelation.

muppetkiller

Playing DOOM for the first time and thinking how realistic the graphics were and that amazing 3D effect. :eek:

syklops

redfacedbear wrote: »

I stuck with Nokia waaaay too long. I even bought an N97!
It was a dog of a phone - the Symbian OS wasn't up to the job and it had already been left behind by Apple & Android before it was sold.

I didn't realise this though until I bought my first Android a couple of years later. Simple things like being able to continue browsing web pages as the phone moved from Wifi to data and back (on the N97 the phone would have a mickey fit and you'd have to relaunch the browser if it couldn't find the same wifi connection that it had last time) were a joy and so easy. It was some revelation.

The wifi hotspot on my first android blew my mind. Now I can have wifi everyday!

nelly17

Unreal tournament - lan games while on the phone in Tech Supportt

Aongus Von Bismarck

I'll admit to being impressed the first time I used Skype. I was in South America and could call home for a very low rate compared to using my mobile.
Technology rarely impresses me. Indeed, in the context of my job it is often a source of frustration and lost productivity. I don't want to have to restart Citrix, or power cycle the machine. I don't want to know about a network glitch or an emergency outage. IT should just work. The same way other utilities work. When it doesn't it's the failure of IT staff and management.
It's preposterous that they suggest I get in under my desk in my suit to check a cable or connection. We're the profit making part of the firm. I don't have the time or desire to do the work of others.

NachoBusiness

Nothing has impressed me more the ability to place index marks on cassette and VHS tapes and then be able to tell the Walkman or VCR to find those points. You used to have C90 tapes with 15 songs on each side and no way of skipping to a particular track. Or an LP VHS tape with 80 music videos that you'd recorded off the Beat Box. This new technological breakthrough changed all that, with it's magical and somewhat spooky ability to scan tapes and find any song or video that you wanted and it only took twenty minutes or so. Amazing stuff.

circadian

Aongus Von Bismarck wrote: »

I'll admit to being impressed the first time I used Skype. I was in South America and could call home for a very low rate compared to using my mobile.
Technology rarely impresses me. Indeed, in the context of my job it is often a source of frustration and lost productivity. I don't want to have to restart Citrix, or power cycle the machine. I don't want to know about a network glitch or an emergency outage. IT should just work. The same way other utilities work. When it doesn't it's the failure of IT staff and management.
It's preposterous that they suggest I get in under my desk in my suit to check a cable or connection. We're the profit making part of the firm. I don't have the time or desire to do the work of others.

I can see why they come running to your desk when you have a problem.

syklops

sugarman wrote: »

The original Nokia ngage, playing Fifa 2003 with ps1 style graphics on a phone with Bluetooth multi player. You could play matches in school of up to 50m away. You go into an arena and scan for a game and find a load of players waiting.

I saw the N-Gage listed as one of the 50 worst tech fails in an article recently. I remember playing Tony Hawk on a friends and it was fabulous. Crappy phone perhaps, but decent gaming on a phone didnt next appear until Angry Birds. Snake doesnt count.

circadian

Why anyone pays for Lotus Notes or whatever it's sold as these days, is beyond me.

Your Superior

Aongus Von Bismarck wrote: »

I'll admit to being impressed the first time I used Skype. I was in South America and could call home for a very low rate compared to using my mobile.
Technology rarely impresses me. Indeed, in the context of my job it is often a source of frustration and lost productivity. I don't want to have to restart Citrix, or power cycle the machine. I don't want to know about a network glitch or an emergency outage. IT should just work. The same way other utilities work. When it doesn't it's the failure of IT staff and management.
It's preposterous that they suggest I get in under my desk in my suit to check a cable or connection. We're the profit making part of the firm. I don't have the time or desire to do the work of others.

Ah, so you're a worker drone who makes other people rich. Well done, and keep being a good boy.

fizzypish

Aongus, I'm aware that this thread is of the more techy variety but I'm an none the less impressed that you managed to drop your view on support departments in the company you work unprompted.

paulbok

syklops wrote: »

And then you plugged it in and Windows crashed and you were like "Its too much for my system to handle!"

Like the instore photo printing machines. never seem to be able to take any usb's over 2Gb