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Get it out with Optrex!
Disclaimer: As I typed the above, I found myself thinking "Is this spam". I hereby refute any suggestion that I have any vested interest in the promotion of Optrex for eye irrigation or any other purpose. All enquiries should be directed to my solicitors, Sue, Grabbitt & Runne
Life is like a s**t sandwich; the more bread you have, the less s**t you eat.
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Why would a company make all their staff sit at ridiculously cramped desks then get rid of people so they end up with pods of empty desks then setup unused computers on the empty desks so it doesn't look like they're empty?
Purely hypothetical question, of course.
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
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It's because:
1. There are so many billionaires (real billionaires, not penny-pinching milliardaires who call themselves billionaires, like in the US) in China who don't have a clue what to do with all their money, so they build stuff.
2. Local governments have even vaster funds to spend on trying to relieve the population expansion of existing cities (I live mainly in NL, which population is lower than that of each of the bigger Chinese cities).
The problem with both groups is that they have, so far, shown a remarkable level of inability in figuring out what people want.
I'm seriously considering visiting Thames Town on one of my next jaunts over there. It looks well cool.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Mostly to funnel and generate corruption money thrue illegal funding and underpaid workers and crappy construction quality.
I'd rather be phishing!
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Comitstrip: First Computer[^]
My first was an Amstrad 1640: EGA graphics, 640K RAM, 8MHz processor, no math coprocessor (but a socket so you could add one), no HDD, but twin 5 1/2" floppies (360Kb per disk).
And that was second hand...
What was your first "real" computer? (I'm not counting Spectrums and their ilk here: if it had a cassette tape it doesn't count )
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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My first[^] and I still have it /somewhere/
veni bibi saltavi
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Um..."and was meant to work with a basic audio tape recorder to save and load data"
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Bluddy right!
If you couldn't find it on tape, you had to type the damned program in!
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Several times, if I recall correctly...
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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I had the Speccy itself; you just had the cheap knock-off.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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And the first PC I bought was one of these[^] babies
veni bibi saltavi
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Hey, I bought the same model, as an upgrade from the Amstrad PPC640[^]!
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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OriginalGriff wrote: if it had a cassette tape it doesn't count
Ah, so the +3 still counts[^] then?
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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Barely. But yes. Damnit!
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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I was expected some older module from you...
Mine was a (also used) C64 with tape and joystick (and floppy later). I got it from my father at age 12...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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I got myself a 32MB hard drive for mine.
Cost the same as I paid for the computer (£400 then, equivalent to around £1000/$1500 in todays money)
400ms access time - so every time I read something from the disk, it would take at least half a second.
I tried backing it up, but I ran out of floppies...
And I thought it was so quick!
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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I wrote FastBack! (really)
Yeah... it was a major pain, hdd to floppy!
Lloyd
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I should be clear that FASTBACK was one of those tools MS 'borrowed' from the CP/M arena (without any compensation back then. ) In its original incarnation, it was called "FastCOPY", and had most - but not all - of the features that showed in the FASTBACK version. I think I sold all of about 500 copies...
In all, it was a fairly trivial utility to write, and having it 'promoted' to officialdom was sort of an honor, back then.
Lloyd
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IBM AT: EGA "Graphics", 512kB RAM on the MB and a 6MHz processor, but 2 20MB Harddrives (5¼" Double height, could be used as anchors) and one 5¼" floppy (1.2 MB)
The 512MB RAM was a very frustrating limitation. So when I upgraded it I had enough money for a DX50 + 16MB RAM or a DX2/66 + 8MB RAM. Being as frustrated as I was with the RAM limits of the old MB I chose more RAM. Just to find out that there were no programs that could use more than 8MB at the time.
At the same time I also upgraded to an 800MB 3½" HDD supposedly state of the art at the time, just to find out that the old battleships were faster.
<edit>And the old IBM keyboards were so sturdy you could go to battle with them as a Claymore substitute</edit>
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My first "real" computer was the True-Blue PC AT 8mhz with 640K and the 384K add-on board for TSR programs, 32 MB HDD and 2 1.2MB HD floppies and EGA video. Second hand at a "must-sell all" sale for only $1,100.
Although if moving up from cassette is the only criteria, then it's an Atari 800XL. (Great programming system)
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The DX50 was the better choice, then - it was a true 50 MHz bus machine, whereas the DX2/66 had a 33 MHz bus, clock-doubled in the CPU. So, the CPU was faster, but getting data in and out of it to memory was slower. All for an extra 16 MHz (33%) speed increase. Unless the data you were process could all mostly fit into the CPU's cache (even in the 486 days, not likely), the 50 MHz bus speed was the better deal.
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My first was the IBM System/360-65[^]. I then went to the oldest, which was the IBM 1620 Model I[^]. No cassette tapes on those babies.
I'm retired. There's a nap for that...
- Harvey
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