Palum
what Suineg set it to
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Obscure / Rare Technology you used.
- Thread starter Siliconemelons
- Start date
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
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My first job in the Air Force in 1997 was programming in assembly for the IBM Series/1. 60's-70's era mainframes. They were finally starting to work on modernization efforts while I was there but while looking for an appropriate picture, I found out they were still using them in 2016. Fuckin' crazy
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rhinohelix
Dental Dammer
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Its easier to talk about which ones of these I didn't own than ones I did; I never owned a Palm/organizer of any sort; I never had an MP3 player until I got an iRiver-chewing gum pack style ram player in 2002? I thought the post-Jobs return Apple stuff was culty and didn't buy in until iPhone in 2007?. What a truly revolutionary device the Iphone was.
I owned ZIPs and Jaz drives, 3dfx cards (an Original and Voodoo 3) 3d acclerated quake was as revolutionary as the iphone; an Original Nvidia card, a 16mb Riva 128/TNT card? ;
My first PC was a Zeos 386sx16; ($3K in 1990) before that it was an Apple II/IIe (two different systems) with floppy disk drives and a modem with the inevitable 400 phone bill in 1986 for calling a local city with that was considered long distance to get on Compuserve to play proto-Ultima Style RPGs. Before that a TI/99-4A but what the hell.
I spent tons of money on CDRs in the later 90s when they were still expensive AF and I was the only one who knew how to configure SCSI controllers for my LAN group to burn CDs for LAN Parties as we may or may not have sailed the high seas. I bought tons of games so we would have legit versions. I was a total asshole at times when we would spend whole LAN parties trying scrub viruses off the network because folks were idiots (and some were teenagers), bless their hearts. I spent a lot of time teaching but it probably seemed more like Whiplash than Dead Poet's Society to those folks getting the free cleaning and security course.
The ZIP and Jaz drive thing hurt, I won't lie because they were priced relatively high and then CDR just killed them dead. No one cared about a single 1GB disk for 20 bucks when you could get a stack of 20 CDRs for 10/5/whatever. Think I paid 299/350 for it; that burn lasted a while. Amazing how fast (and never fast enough) tech seemed to advance then.
What other obsolete tech did I waste money on? I saw tiny laptops up there but I had a dear friend who has since passed away who was big into small laptops and digital recording/TIVO things.
He would hack/expand TIVOs and I tried to explore that with him but it never really caught my interest enough; he had all kinds of digital libraries on hard disk, though.
The whole tiny laptop thing he loved as well but I have super broad hands; it never was meant to be for me in that regard.
I owned ZIPs and Jaz drives, 3dfx cards (an Original and Voodoo 3) 3d acclerated quake was as revolutionary as the iphone; an Original Nvidia card, a 16mb Riva 128/TNT card? ;
My first PC was a Zeos 386sx16; ($3K in 1990) before that it was an Apple II/IIe (two different systems) with floppy disk drives and a modem with the inevitable 400 phone bill in 1986 for calling a local city with that was considered long distance to get on Compuserve to play proto-Ultima Style RPGs. Before that a TI/99-4A but what the hell.
I spent tons of money on CDRs in the later 90s when they were still expensive AF and I was the only one who knew how to configure SCSI controllers for my LAN group to burn CDs for LAN Parties as we may or may not have sailed the high seas. I bought tons of games so we would have legit versions. I was a total asshole at times when we would spend whole LAN parties trying scrub viruses off the network because folks were idiots (and some were teenagers), bless their hearts. I spent a lot of time teaching but it probably seemed more like Whiplash than Dead Poet's Society to those folks getting the free cleaning and security course.
The ZIP and Jaz drive thing hurt, I won't lie because they were priced relatively high and then CDR just killed them dead. No one cared about a single 1GB disk for 20 bucks when you could get a stack of 20 CDRs for 10/5/whatever. Think I paid 299/350 for it; that burn lasted a while. Amazing how fast (and never fast enough) tech seemed to advance then.
What other obsolete tech did I waste money on? I saw tiny laptops up there but I had a dear friend who has since passed away who was big into small laptops and digital recording/TIVO things.
He would hack/expand TIVOs and I tried to explore that with him but it never really caught my interest enough; he had all kinds of digital libraries on hard disk, though.
The whole tiny laptop thing he loved as well but I have super broad hands; it never was meant to be for me in that regard.
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Burns
Avatar of War Slayer
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The official term is called "dowsing" for water. The professional scammers also don't use coat hanger and instead mock up something that looks more believable.
The professional magician James Randi tested a great many of these people. In one of the tests, for an Italian TV show, he had 30-40 people show up (and paid their own way to the test) who claimed they could dowse for water, with a $10,000+ prize, and exactly 0 of them were able to.
He is trained in looking for slight of hand, making illusions, and general tom-foolery, so he made debunking these types of people his past time. He later upped the prize to $1 million for anyone that could show a supernatural ability that he could not replicate using his training as a magician, and often was able to just catch the people trying to do slight of hand right in front of him.
Here is the write up of the 1978 test: https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/1979/10/22165448/p18.pdf
Here he is later responding to a guy that wanted to be tested because he thought he could claim the $1 mil prize:
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Big Phoenix
Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
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Fucking dowsing rods. I swear to god that is the dumbest fucking shit ever and have zero idea how people fall for that retarded shit. Shit is absolutely no different than "psychic mediums" who read rooms and heavily bait responses from people.
God damn archos, thats a name that takes me back. Back in 2007 i bought a Archos 605 media player to take to Iraq. Primative to say the least compared to moderm smartphones.As far as MP3 players go, this was my first. An Archos Jukebox, 20gb hard drive run off 4 AA Batteries. This thing was a tank, it lasted forever.
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Gamma Rays
Large sized member
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At the Uni I went to, there was a audio room and a mixing studio. I helped run the mixing desk a few times for basic dialogue recording.
But in the room was one of these. ARP 2600
Early 70's tech, awesome.
I know fuck all about playing keyboard, but I heard ( and I think it's true ) that they used one to create R2-D2's sounds.
I used to love fucking about with it, you would run patch cables between different waveform generators and others that would affect the waveforms on top of that again. And just get pure analogue sounds emitting from this thing.
I checked about them a few years ago, a working one today is worth a lot of money.
But in the room was one of these. ARP 2600
Early 70's tech, awesome.
I know fuck all about playing keyboard, but I heard ( and I think it's true ) that they used one to create R2-D2's sounds.
I used to love fucking about with it, you would run patch cables between different waveform generators and others that would affect the waveforms on top of that again. And just get pure analogue sounds emitting from this thing.
I checked about them a few years ago, a working one today is worth a lot of money.
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Edaw
Parody
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Aamry
Blackwing Lair Raider
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My mind is blown, that after like 30 years of hearing this song it just clicked it's in German.
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Hoss
Make America's Team Great Again
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Yes we still see Windows CE all the time in the industrial world as OSs for HMI panels in the field and in rugged solid state computers.
For me, it would be a commodore 64 and apple IIe. The C64 was my first computer, and the aiie was what I learned to program on in high school. The apple was a huge step up because it had disks so I didn't have to write the program every time I powered up the computer. I still have an atari that I intend to hook up and play again some day.
Hoss
Make America's Team Great Again
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Randi was a fraud himself. He used this foundation as an excuse to travel the world and fuck underaged boys. In the beginning I'm sure it was somewhat legit, but by the end he was in full on 'keep the gravy train moving' mode and was only half assing the debunking. He would send representatives to the people and if they couldn't debunk it, claim the representative was in on it and not grant claimant status. He was really proud that no one had ever made it to claimant status. I can't remember the process for sure, but it went something like this, you make your claim and show a video, then they'll either send someone to you or have you travel to a location with their representatives and show it again on video. If you pass that, then you become an official claimant and randi will watch you in person. I think when you got to that stage you'd have to do it 3 more times. Once exactly how you want, and twice more with modifications agreed upon by you and randi. He did watch and debunk a lot of them in person, but that was because he wanted an excuse to vacation in the phillipines. Those people were still not official claimants. I bet the lack of official claimants meant his insurance costs stayed low.
Evernothing
Bronze Baronet of the Realm
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We had one of these really chunky Kodak digital cameras. It would take like 30seconds to capture the image.
We had Zip Drives as well.
My dad had one of these for his business. We had a babysitter once who thought it was a regular cordless phone and racked up hours of billing talking to her boyfriend. It was like a $1000 bill.
We had Zip Drives as well.
My dad had one of these for his business. We had a babysitter once who thought it was a regular cordless phone and racked up hours of billing talking to her boyfriend. It was like a $1000 bill.
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Hoss
Make America's Team Great Again
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My dad had one of these for his business. We had a babysitter once who thought it was a regular cordless phone and racked up hours of billing talking to her boyfriend. It was like a $1000 bill.
Well that reminds me of this.
those 100 free hours wound up costing us close to a grand. There were 2 reasons. First off, the 100 hours only applied to their local intranet. If you went out on the internet, that was an additional charge. There was nothing interesting on their local networks. They didn't even have a usenet feed. Secondly, they had no local numbers for us and we had to connect through an 800 number. They never told us that there was a per minute fee for connecting to the 800 numbers.
I was young but I'm 99% sure my folks did not pay that bill. We were poor.
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Burns
Avatar of War Slayer
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According to whom? He cost a lot of scammers and fraudsters a lot of money and generally embarrassed them. So he made a lot of enemies that would love to slander him.
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Runnen
Vyemm Raider
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When I was a little kid I asked my parents for a Barcode Battler for Christmas because the advertising made it look incredibly epic with robots exploding, shooting lasers, etc.. but really it was just barcode cards you swipe in front of it and it shows stats and numbers..
To this day I still remember immediately realizing it was not at all as advertised and overall terrible (to my taste anyway), probably the first thing I immediately regretted asking for.
I've since learned there's been quite a community for it, conventions and all..
To this day I still remember immediately realizing it was not at all as advertised and overall terrible (to my taste anyway), probably the first thing I immediately regretted asking for.
I've since learned there's been quite a community for it, conventions and all..
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Evernothing
Bronze Baronet of the Realm
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When I was 5, the commercials for this made it seem like you would actually get to talk to Dick Tracy. Major disappointment when it was just a cheesy pre-recorded sound file and a shitty FM radio.
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Hoss
Make America's Team Great Again
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he didn't cost anyone any money beyond what they spent to get to him. You really think a con artist would have trouble coming back from being debunked in a foreign country? The was in the infancy of the internet, it's not like he had a utube channel where all the followers of the conmen could watch their leader fail on livestream. I can't cite any sources specifically. It all came from the fact that I used to follow the jref like 20-30 years ago. I used to be entertained by it but I saw his underhanded dealings too often. I believe the child fucking came from a police report where he ordered a boy up to his room in the phillipines or something. I'm not going to go looking for it again. In fairness, IIRC there was only one report that came out and it could have been a setup. But also in fairness, he had enough stroke that he could have covered up other incidents.