elesjuan

iTrader: (11)

I've never heard of him until happened to catch a biography on bioHD..

pusha

iTrader: (5)

I bet you his ***** smells great.

ThatGuy85

iTrader: (4)

Look up the Motorola Atrix and Bionic. The laptop docking feature is basically where computing is going to go. Cellphone = replacement for desktop computers.

shuiend

iTrader: (24)

rmcelwee

iTrader: (1)

I paid $320 for four 1MB sticks (1992?). Was supposed to be some fire at the main memory plant that supplied the world and prices went insane. I put it in a HD cache card for my 386. 5 meg ram and 4 meg on the cache. I could play Links 386 like a ****!





Read the fine print, that is a refurb'd drive. A new one is $4500!
FWIW, the most I ever paid for drives is $1800 each for two 2GB drives (full height) for a newsgroup server. Geek...

fooger03

iTrader: (2)

This dude has ridden in the back seat of my Montero.

He is a liar, a thief, and a worthless piece of ****, and if I were given the chance today, he would be under the back wheel of my Montero. Over and over and over and over again. Both him and his crack *****.

NA6C-Guy

iTrader: (1)

By 2026 (as far forward as 1996 is backwards to us, if anyone failed to see where I got 2026 from) I'm pretty sure even cell phones as we know them will be gone, so that is only the obvious near future. I'm thinking grander than that.

shuiend

iTrader: (24)

Details?

NA6C-Guy

iTrader: (1)

I must be dreaming, I hope I don't wake up. 10MB!!! I could fit a single high resolution **** image on that bad boy!

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

****, I remember when a 40 meg drive sounded huge.

Honestly, I couldn't even really comprehend it in terms of pure storage. I conceptualized it as being equal to nearly 60 floppy disks (at the time, I'd already upgraded to 3.5" floppies.)

First hard drive I ever used was a Lt. Kernal on a friend's C128. Came in its own case that looked a bit like a PCjr.





It won't be all that radically different.

Personal computers, in their present form, have been virtually unchanged since 1976, when the SOL-20 was released. Or if you're more of a mass-market guy, call it 1977, which is when the Commodore PET, Apple II and TRS-80 all started shipping. They all consisted of a case containing a fiberglass board with some copper traces on it, holding a microprocessor and a bunch of ICs made out of silicon and produced by photolithography, held down with solder. Interfacing was by keyboard and video display, data storage consisted of different patterns encoded magnetically on a rotating device.

That was 35 years ago, before half the folks on this forum were born. The only things that have changed since then is that the keyboards are now detachable and the video display is thinner.

Magnetic storage is probably in its final decade (for home users), but aside from that, I don't see computers being all that much different in the year 2046 (which is as far forward as 1976 is backward.) Touch-based interfaces will supplement, not replace, keyboards and mice, particularly for office and "power" users. Google "gorilla arm" if you don't believe it. (Cue the Hybrid telling Starbuck that "all this has happened before...")


That's probably about as radical a change as we're likely to see. The "stationary" (desktop) computer has been slowly losing ground to the laptop for about a decade, so it seems a natural evolution that it will eventually be replaced altogether by something more portable. It's likely that a "docking station" won't even be required, given the rapid and accelerating use of wireless technology for increasingly high-bandwidth, short-haul functions. Something similar to bluetooth will simply link the "phone" to your keyboard, mouse and monitor without even needing to remove it from your pocket.

But it'll still be made out of silicon chips soldered to a copper-clad board, with keys to press and a screen to look at.


These machines are as old today as my current PC will be in 2045:












1996? Hell, that's practically yesterday. Things are more the same now than ever.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Hell, I nearly forgot the Xerox Alto. It had a mouse and a GUI operating-system. Not exactly a "personal" computer (it was expensive and did not use a monolithic CPU in the sense we know them today) but it's definitely the direct forebearer of all modern PCs.



Wanna know when that photo was taken?

1973.

The Vietnam War was still going on when folks in Palo Alto were pointing and clicking. (And connected to the internet.)

Nothing of great significance has changed in 38 years.

Sam TII

Word, we pretty much owe modern computing to the PARC labs that Xerox funded. Funny they didn't stay in it. Too far ahead of the curve I guess?

NA6C-Guy

iTrader: (1)

Yes, but computer growth has been very much exponential. 1977 to 1990 was pretty slow, starting at such a rudimentary point in computing. Then 1990-2000 was a pretty big leap. 2000 to 2010 was an even larger leap forward, multiple times more so than the previous decade. Imagine 15 years from now. Sure there will still be computers, but I imagine there will be far more integration with everything in our daily lives. One tablet PC of some kind, controlling everything electronic in our lives, and still a separate device like a cell phone, but probably much much more than a cell phone is today. There is only so far we can go with yesterdays computer technology before something fundamental has to change. You can only go so micro, before a big leap is made, and a whole new method to micro computer happens. Not that I think anything will come of it (for now I think), but look at the quantum computer. We will have to start thinking, literally "outside of the box" before too long, the way our society is growing and our thirst for technology. But yes, for a while, computers will still be computers, but if not within 15 years, at least by then the "future" of computing will be visible.

I also don't see the binary system being around for THAT much longer. Only so much you can do, or so fast you can tell something to turn on and off. Something infinitely variable will have to be implemented, but I'm sure that's at least 40-50 years away. I agree with you though, keyboards and something like a mouse will be around for a long time to come, but touchscreen and voice will be the primary input pretty much from now on, as things become more mobile. I see something like a fold up ipad with a flexible screen being the near futures portable computer. Folded up, not much larger than a smart phone, maybe with a screen on the back for folded up use, then folded out, a larger screen for more practical computer use. Everything in one. I can also see motion input being more practical in the future, devices that can detect subtle motions, and sort them out from other background movements. Lots of interesting technologies on the scene today, many of them have an opportunity to really force themselves on the market, depending on what the masses demand.

And lastly, while on the subject, I'm ready for my borg implants. I want my mp3 player implanted in my body, sending electrical signals directly to my auditory nerve so I can hear music, without it actually making a sound. I also want my HUD displaying web pages, video conference calls and **** directly onto my optical nerve signals, so I can see that stuff in my minds eye so to speak. We could already do those things in a rudimentary way today, but I can see that being technology of the mid to late 21st century. Sure a lot of test subjects will suffer when they are forced to listen to Kenny G for 60 hours straight when their unit malfunctions, or someone is forced to watch Desperate Housewives for days, not being able to sleep... but those bugs will be worked out. And I'm sure plenty of people will be against it. Too much technology in gods creations... blah blah blah.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

PARC is a sad story. They were founded as a "pure research" lab tasked with inventing the future. And it was quite the utopia for a number of years.

In the end, it wasn't being "ahead of their time" that killed them- quite to the contrary, the Star was right on the cusp of actually becoming a marketable machine. Unfortunately, managements change, and by the early 1980s, Xerox's corporate management decided that PARC was diverting resources away from their core business, which was to develop more advanced light sources and optics for large-format photocopiers.

Remember that, at the time, photocopiers were leased, not owned. And they had a built-in page counter which clicked over with every copy. That was the only way the company knew how to operate. When Xerox's sales force were introduced to the idea of the computer, they asked "where's the click?"

They just didn't get it. And since there was no "click", Xerox shut 'em down.

Ironically, of course, Xerox's primary business would collapse soon thereafter, as Japanese competitors introduced the US market to small-format copiers which they could actually purchase outright, and not have to pay a commission for every page that they copied.

Xerox could have owned the computing industry in the 1980s. Not just PCs, but ethernet, laser printers, the whole concept of graphical applications and preemptive multitasking. Every single one of them came out of PARC.

There's a great book called "Dealers of Lightning" which looks at PARC through the eyes of those who were there, from the beginning, through the heyday of inventing the modern computer, all the way to the bitter end. I highly suggest it.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

I disagree.

For one, the concept of the "personal" computer (one which you interact with one-on-one using a keyboard and video display) goes all the way back to 1960, with the DEC PDP-1.



Since then, there has been exponential growth insomuch as that they have gotten smaller, faster, cheaper, and more numerous. But the fundamental paradigm of how people interact with computers hasn't changed. Even my fancy Android-powered smartphone isn't really all that different from the machine that Slug Russell (pictured above) wrote Spacewar on.


Honestly, this talk about how computers are going to radically alter our daily lives reminds me of reading an article in any PopSci magazine of the 1970s, or OMNI magazine of the 1980s.

It's already happened, actually. You just didn't notice it. When I want to know some obscure fact about the Dutch royal family in the 1600s, or the GDP of Bolivia, or the diameter of a standard civil-war era naval cannon, I don't have to drive down to the library and then wait three weeks for a book to be shipped in from the next state over. Why, just today I was at Lowe's to buy a clamp, and I and couldn't remember the diameter of a standard mountain-bike handlebar. Within 60 seconds I had not only the answer (25.4mm) but a fairy complete history on why that standard exists. A half hour later, while at In-n-Out, I remembered that I'd forgotten to pick up a zener diode, I picked up the phone again, perused the NTE semiconductors catalog, found the one I wanted, and then verified that it was in stock at the Fry's a mile away. And that was without even wiping all of the french-fry grease off my hands.

Back in the late 80s, I couldn't have even imagined such a thing (much less that it would be completely commonplace and accessible not just to geeks like me but to every 14 year old bubble-gum chewing airhead) and I was already an active BBS user at that time. But nothing all that radical, from a technological standpoint, has actually changed between then and now. It's the same stuff, just smaller, faster, cheaper, and with more people using it.


That's all just applications stuff. The fact is that nothing I did today on my phone-of-many-wonders was actually all that different from what the grey-haired fellow above was doing back in the 60's. The only difference is that mine is small enough to fit into my pocket, and it has access to a somewhat larger database.


40 years from now, it doesn't matter whether we have quantum-computers or some processor technology we haven't even dreamed up yet. Quantum computers aren't magic, they're just faster. The fundamental, underlying realities of what a computer is and how a computer works haven't changed since JFK was in office, and they won't have changed so much that we can't recognize them in another 50 years.

gearhead_318

iTrader: (1)

Don't argue with Joe when it comes old *** computers.

NA6C-Guy

iTrader: (1)

Not saying we won't recognize them in 50 years, just they will not be the same box under the table kind of devices we have become use to. There won't be a box with cables running to external devices like we have now. I also don't think there will be a main board with piggy back boards, just one board made "all the way", for size reasons. Maybe my fundamental and your fundamental definitions aren't the same. Smaller, faster, and with evolved UI is what I envision, with a little hope for something more.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

You're describing the past, not the future.

Apple got rid of the "box under the desk with expansion slots" in 1984. To be fair, they started the "problem" in the first place, however. Prior to the Apple II, PC's were "all-in-one" boxes with no expansion slots. (Obviously, I'm discounting the entire S-100 class of machines such as the Altair, Imsai, etc., as they weren't really mass-market devices.) These days, every major manufacturer has dozens of computers that only require one cable for power. The ones without batteries are called "all-in-ones." The ones with batteries go by the terms laptop, netbook, tablet, etc.

One board "all the way? I carry that in a pouch on my belt. Some folks keep theirs in a magazine-sized sleeve. Actually, I'm typing this on one right now. It's balanced on my left knee as I sit on the couch drinking rum & coke with "Mad Men" paused on the TV (which is being fed from a game console that is connected without wires to the computer that the actual video file is stored on.)

Cables running to external devices? Already history. The only cable running to the machine I'm typing this on is carrying power, and I can unplug that for 5-6 hours at a time. On the floor next to me is a keyboard about 5" wide, and a tiny mouse as well. Neither of them have cables. There's no cable connecting me to the internet. Heck, even my printer only has one cable, and again, that's carrying power. The only thing I still "need" a cable for on my "big" computer is the video display, and I expect Apple will invent a proprietary reason for that to go away within the next few years.


I'm not trying to be a dick here. I'm just saying that if you actually step back and look at the history of computing over the past 30-40 years, it's really kind of amazing how little has changed in light of how much has changed.

The way we use computers today just absolutely blows my mind, and I'm sure that part of the equation is going to continue to evolve in ways I can't even imagine. But the way computers actually work hasn't changed one bit since the Beatles played on the Ed Sullivan Show.

pusha

iTrader: (5)

dude, you gotta give us the deets on this one

elesjuan

iTrader: (11)

Technology is kind of sad when you think about it. My 500GB external drive petered out on me the other day. Man I'm really ******* tired of hard drives. Have a STACK of failed drives that just quit working. Popped into microcenter and bought a 2tb USB3.0 external for $79.99..