Random randomness

[Kasey Chang]

Oh, come on. It's me!

[Pyperkub]

Oh, come on. It's me!

We all remember what the spambot did to our nice 2017 books read thread...

[Rip]

We had betting give him a turing test just to be sure.


So Mr. Chang, how close to wood is your wang?

[Kasey Chang]

We had betting give him a turing test just to be sure.

So Mr. Chang, how close to wood is your wang?

I wouldn't know. I'm a 47 year old virgin.

Kinda makes me wonder if that "Italian Chino" is really italian. I honestly don't see how they can sell it for $3.33 even if they bought it as surplus from Europe. I swear stuff from China sells for more.

[Punisher]

Oh, come on. It's me!

Just what a SPAMbot would say! Double reported!

[Sudy]

And the first cassette I ever bought with my own money was Van Halen’s “1984”. Mom made me return it because of the smoking baby on the cover. Lol

I think the first cassette I bought was Our Lady Piece's Clumsy. (I'm younger than most of you guys and was an alternative kid before I was a metal/industrial kid; sue me.) I remember being scandalized by the presence of an F-bomb on one of the non-single tracks. I kept that tape well hidden from my family, regardless.

I think the first music of mine that my parents found and were concerned about was an MP3 of Rammstein's Spiel mit mir off Sehnsucht, with its incest/homosexuality-themed lyrics and orgasm-sounding samples. I don't think I even knew what the lyrics translated to... I just liked the band's electronic metal sound. I think they also heard the eastern influence/spiritual lyrics of some The Tea Party tracks I had and were concerned it promoted New Age religion. Maybe there were also orgasm sounds in one of those songs, who knows. Thank goodness they didn't find White Zombie's More Human Than Human....

I remember going to extreme lengths to hide my MP3 collection (and before it, MIDIs) on the family computer. I think I renamed some of the files to the acronyms of the bands/song titles....

[Holman]

The very first album I ever bought was the sound track to the Bakshi animated Lord of the Rings movie. Probably the Star Wars soundtrack too.

I got into popular music late. My sister was a New Waver through and through, so I knew all the music she played constantly, and I also watched MTV as soon as it appeared. But I never really had "my own" music until middle high school (1985-87), when I got into retro sixties stuff for some reason: The Beatles, Dylan, etc.

Interestingly, I later learned that my sis was pretty cutting edge. She was good friends with a music importer who kept tabs on the European indie scene, so she was listening to (e.g.) U2 singles published only in Ireland even before Boy came out.

[Exodor]

I've seen Living Colour four or five times, I'd guess.

I only saw them once and that was when they opened for The Rolling Stones in a football stadium.

Probably not the ideal venue for them - I'd much rather see them in a smaller space.

[Daehawk]

Just wrote a email to my longtime friend Ive known since the 90s....this is a small excerpt.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So a T1 is only 1.5 mbps. Lol. Geez. Lets see ....

28.8 modem - 28,800 bits
33.6 modem - 33,600 bits
my half ISDN 64k- 64,000 bits
your full ISDN- 128k 128,000 bits
T1 - 1.5 mbps 1,500,000 bits
my current 100 mbps- 100,000,000 bits

Pretty nuts to see just how slow a T1 line is in today's world. Of course theres T3 and lots faster now. But back then a T1 was a dream speed and wasn't it like $500? Hell EPB has a 10 gig service for $300. Thats like 100 billion bits lol. And its only been like 24 years since that 28.8 came out. Well now that I typed 24 years out it sure seems longer than it felt before I typed it haha.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Man times do change. For some reason in my head a T1 line still seemed fast. I guess it was in 94 or 95 but not now for sure.

This is a handy webpage...

http://www.wu.ece.ufl.edu/links/dataRat ... Chart.html

[Kraken]

I just decapitated a squirrel. It was a mercy killing. #AlSquaeda

[Kasey Chang]

Way back when, I was impressed with ISDN speeds, as it was delivering 128 Kbps, way faster than the fastest modem of its day (28.8) Never did install it though. My area ain't compatible with it.

[Rip]

Just wrote a email to my longtime friend Ive known since the 90s....this is a small excerpt.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So a T1 is only 1.5 mbps. Lol. Geez. Lets see ....

28.8 modem - 28,800 bits
33.6 modem - 33,600 bits
my half ISDN 64k- 64,000 bits
your full ISDN- 128k 128,000 bits
T1 - 1.5 mbps 1,500,000 bits
my current 100 mbps- 100,000,000 bits

Pretty nuts to see just how slow a T1 line is in today's world. Of course theres T3 and lots faster now. But back then a T1 was a dream speed and wasn't it like $500? Hell EPB has a 10 gig service for $300. Thats like 100 billion bits lol. And its only been like 24 years since that 28.8 came out. Well now that I typed 24 years out it sure seems longer than it felt before I typed it haha.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Man times do change. For some reason in my head a T1 line still seemed fast. I guess it was in 94 or 95 but not now for sure.

This is a handy webpage...

http://www.wu.ece.ufl.edu/links/dataRat ... Chart.html

The cost of a T1 was more about the loop charges(read paying for the wires back to the telco) than the bandwidth. Just the loop charge is over $200/month. Thank AT&T, well the Baby Bells at the time.

[Kasey Chang]

The Intel P6 was coming out..the Pentium Pro. It had 5.5 million transistors. A i7 from 2012 has about 3 billion.

According to Wikipedia's Transistor Count article

* Intel 4004 -- 2300 (1971)
* Intel 8086 -- 29000 (1978)
* Motorola/WDC 65C02 (11500!) (1981, revised CMOS version)
* Intel 80386 -- 275000 (1985)
* Pentium Pro -- 5.5 mil (1995)
* ARM Cortex-A9 -- 26 mil (2007)
* AMD Bulldozer -- 1.2 billion (2012)
* Intel Core i7 Broadwell-E -- 3.2 billion
* Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 Octacore -- 3 billion (2016)
* Apple A11 -- 4.3 billion (2017)
* Xbox One X SoC -- 7 billion (2017)
* AMD Epyc 32-core -- 19.2 billion (2017)

Dang, I didn't realize there are these many transistors in our phones nowadays.

Intel did not disclose how many transistors are in the current 8th gen Core i-series CPUs. It's believed to be in the 3-4 billion range.

[Kraken]

In my day I had one transistor and I was grateful for it. Kids nowadays feel the same way about their trans sisters. Nothing ever really changes.

[disarm]

I got an email from Comcast earlier this week that they were increasing my internet speed. I've already been getting 110Mbps for a while, so I was curious how much higher it would go...rebooted my modem and I'm up to 180Mbps now. Of course my upload speed is still limited to 6Mbps.

Considering that they increased speed across most tiers and noone really needs that kind of speed at home, maybe I should downgrade my service to a lower tier now and save a few bucks...

[Blackhawk]

From what I've heard, their latest round of free speed increases are only being offered to those who also have a cable TV subscription.

[dbt1949]

I don't know why I thought about it but here in a couple of months I would be celebrating my 50th year in the army if I had stayed in.
That's 350 dog years.

[coopasonic]

noone really needs that kind of speed at home

Wait, what?

[Smoove_B]

I'd like a little more speed, please.

[KDH]

.
... .... Firefox is adding ads, because only insults are free
.
. .. Seems to only affect the "Read Later Pocket" feature added a couple updates back
.

Spoiler:

Mozilla’s motto is “internet for people, not profit,” however the realities of having to fund all of its ventures are forcing the company into adopting one of the web’s less human-friendly aspects: sponsored content. Having acquired read-it-later service Pocket last year, Mozilla has been populating new tabs in Firefox with Pocket reading suggestions — and those are now going to include links that an advertiser has paid for.

If you’re using Firefox’s nightly and beta builds, you might have already seen sponsored links appearing among the Pocket suggestions, and the feature will be making its way into the proper Firefox browser with the release of version 60 this month, as noted by The Register.

In a blog post last week, Pocket founder Nate Weiner explained that the online “advertising model is broken,” citing the loss of privacy, transparency, and control for the user. What he and Mozilla propose as an alternative is to restore all three of those facets to Firefox users while still generating some income by placing paid-for links in front of those users. Mozilla’s promise is to only promote “valuable content, worthy of your time,” while giving you the option to hide stuff you don’t like or to disable sponsored suggestions altogether.

Without the fine-grained targeting that Facebook and Google are able to offer advertisers, Mozilla will surely be making a lot less through its ads, but it seems like the company thinks it will be enough to make the irritation for its users worthwhile.

With this new change in approach from Mozilla, the top alternatives to Google’s Chrome browser are either limited in availability — Safari, which doesn’t run on Windows or Android — or ad-supported, as in the case of Firefox and Opera. So you’re either sacrificing privacy, device compatibility, or your own attention, depending on which trade-off you choose to make. It may be an annoyance to be confronted with such a choice, but it just goes to show that nothing useful on the internet is ever free.

embedded links left unlinked

[Daehawk]

I started on Netscape then IE and have used FireFox maybe for 10 years.

Is there some reason IE is not used much?

[Daehawk]

Using a 56k modem for a week....or die trying

[disarm]

noone really needs that kind of speed at home

Wait, what?

According to Netflix, you need 25Mbps for a single 4K stream. Unless I'm going to stream seven 4K videos simultaneously, it's not much use. Even if you're trying to download something, most sources don't allow you to make use of that kind of bandwidth. I'll definitely take quick downloads over my first modem though...whopping 9600 baud...

[Isgrimnur]

Simultaneous downloads, sir. Simultaneous while streaming.

[Daehawk]

My 100 mbps cable is just grabbing 14 MBps. Still takes a long ass time to download a 80 gig game.

I was reading some site with speed listing for a MAC in 1999 and this stood out.

For instance, it’s interesting to ponder the fact that Gigabit Ethernet can move data twice as fast between computers as a Mac II can move bytes on the motherboard.

so even in 1999 you could move data faster over ethernet than a MAC II could do it on it's on mobo to itself. For reference a MAC II came out 1987 so 12 years earlier.

[Pyperkub]

I've seen Living Colour four or five times, I'd guess.

I only saw them once and that was when they opened for The Rolling Stones in a football stadium.

Probably not the ideal venue for them - I'd much rather see them in a smaller space.

Ditto - Living Colour, Guns & Roses, Rolling Stones @ the LA Coliseum.

I remember that morning (it was the 2nd day of the shows), the news was all over that G'n'R had stormed off the stage, saying they were never playing together again, so when we got to the show, we had no idea if they'd be playing... well, after the Living Colour set, G'nR came on and said - "some of you may have heard a few things about last night, and we'd just like to offer this song as an explanation..."

They opened with Mr. Brownstone...

[Pyperkub]

I don't know why I thought about it but here in a couple of months I would be celebrating my 50th year in the army if I had stayed in.
That's 350 dog years.

I'm assuming you still have your Dog Tags in case you get lost?

[Holman]

I'd like a little more speed, please.

Anyone got all of Smoove's post yet?

I'm only up to "I'd like a little m--"

[Holman]

I don't know why I thought about it but here in a couple of months I would be celebrating my 50th year in the army if I had stayed in.
That's 350 dog years.

I'm assuming you still have your Dog Tags in case you get lost?

Crazy to realize that Vietnam is now as old as WW1 was during Vietnam.

[LordMortis]

Crazy to realize that Vietnam is now as old as WW1 was during Vietnam.

Crazy to think it's nigh 51 years since it's been 20 years ago today.

[Smoove_B]

Just found out my cousin's wife died in FL last week - thrown off her Harley while leaving a parking lot. She wasn't wearing a helmet (because, freedom) so that ended that. For those keeping track, that's 5 deaths in my extended family since January. It's been one hell of a year. I miss the days of weddings and baptisms, but I suppose this was inevitable.

[Skinypupy]

Damn, sorry Smoove.

[Zarathud]

Sorry to hear Smoove. We have to get to my family reunion this year because dad's 10 living brothers and sisters are all over 65 and statistics are going to catch up with us.

[Smoove_B]

I think that's part of it. My mom is one of eight, so I have quite a few aunts, uncles and cousins. Well..fewer than I did in January, but my extended family is rather large (still). I'm in the younger cohort (my Mom was #6 out of out of 8) so I'm sure that's part of the puzzle. In the words of the great Warren Zevon, enjoy every sandwich.

[Default]

My condolences, Smoove.


In less dire news, I purchased my house in May of 2014. As of now, I have paid off the first 20 years of my mortgage. My retirement plan is to hang it up in six years, Gotta finish the mortgage first though...

[Isgrimnur]

I hate you.

[Kraken]

We're coming up on the 30th year in our house. Thanks to refinancing we still have 5 years to go on the mortgage (which is really a equity line-of-credit, so give or take a year).

I ought to convert the variable LOC into a fixed-rate loan, but banks aren't clamoring for small short-term mortgages with no costs.

[Default]

I hate you.

You have a life, though.

[LordMortis]

I ought to convert the variable LOC into a fixed-rate loan, but banks aren't clamoring for small short-term mortgages with no costs.

I know it's good to be liquid and get tax breaks and have good debt tied in to good investments but it feels really good to have no mortgage. The amount of stress it reduces in my tiny brain is amazing, even if I live in hovel, which if I could do it again, and I get similar hovel, only smaller in a nicer neighborhood. Only I think such a beast is unicorn by today's world. Though I think Millennials and whatever we call post millenials that opt out of child rearing will force small low maintenance homes in "nice" areas to become a thing (and/or catch(all)phrase gentrification will take a turn for the small) in the next decade or so. It's not that I'm outcast, refusing to buy in to the dominant paradigm. It's that I'm two to three generations ahead of my time. Yeah, thati's the ticket. I'm visionary!

[Smoove_B]

I just went through a re-finance and it was like buying a new home. The amount of paper work and authorizations that were required were insane. No equity loans, no crazy balloon or ARM nonsense, just a straight refinance. All we did was get a lower interest rate and shorten the term. No money out of pocket, but it was about $10K in various fees (for all the above related administrative nonsense). My original plan was to be paid off in another 6 years, but I've changed things a bit after aggressively paying down mortgage for last 8 years. Now I'm no longer worried we're underwater or unable to recover the outstanding debt if we were forced to move so I guess I need to reinvest (more) money into maintenance and improvements. Because that's what home ownership is - a constant battle against entropy.