asciilifeform: chording keyboard would've worked great on phones
asciilifeform: an empty '2u' rack case is 300 usd or so
asciilifeform: you can still get steel if you buy 'rack' enclosures
asciilifeform: which plays havoc with real-time anything. and with any attempt at hand optimization
asciilifeform: much of the supposed speed gains of recent decade were achieved using 'instruction re-ordering'
asciilifeform: worse, unpredictably laggy. elaborate cache pyramid, easy to throw off
asciilifeform: (incidentally, you can get usb fixtures that will talk to an isa card. unsuitable for the piano - no 'hard real time' guarantee on usb!)
asciilifeform: recently toured university's music lab. they have a player piano, similar to the well-known mechanical kind, but electronic - pressure sensors, a disk full of recordings of famous pianists playing. disk on ms-dos box. 386.
asciilifeform: the things that never upgrade - run on boxes that have never crashed.
asciilifeform: these will get upgraded. because they're already running on crashy turd, no big change
asciilifeform: $800K mass spectrometer connected to pc at.
asciilifeform: there are countless other examples. visit a university laboratory.
asciilifeform: the 'heirloom computer' is old, old hat.
asciilifeform: i know quite a few people who use hardware built before or shortly after they were born, for which no 'modern' adequate replacement exists
asciilifeform: and people would sorta get used to it
asciilifeform: or programmers would be shot every day, like nork army colonels
asciilifeform: everybody can get behind the impalement of author of 'heartbleed' but problem goes deeper.
asciilifeform: von neumann cpu, 'c' ~= chinese backyard steel
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: if you buy this or similar unit, make sure it eats 220v. these, unlike pc power supply, aren't omnivorous.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: if you only have surges, never dips, ferroresonant gizmo would also work. but they're loud.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: 'gxt3' is still sold. and of course there's a dozen or so other vendors who sell similar units.
asciilifeform: this kind of gizmo works by running rectifier (mains to 48v dc) at all times, connected to cell bank, and on the exit, inverter (48v dc to local mains voltage ac) likewise at all times
asciilifeform started crackpot career by reading at&t unix as described in 'lions book' and setting out to 'take out mistakes' - then noticed that result is... empty space
asciilifeform doesn't hate alts but it bored of folks who s/bitcoin/foocoin
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: re: 'haxxing' article - if you want something other than lamers for the butterfly collection, cut apart those dead mobos & disks, rather than read server logs
asciilifeform: kakobrekla: they have these in usa. with the added twist that the 'official' rules change regularly, requiring purchase of 'fresh' decks
asciilifeform: playing cards. you can play traditional games with them.
asciilifeform: kakobrekla: they're perfectly normal playing cards
asciilifeform: people are obsessed with technical 'solutions' because they cannot afford the actual working solution (suitcase, airplane, new passport)
asciilifeform: the proposed legal defense, though, will work about as well here as it would've in ussr.
asciilifeform: inquisitor: 'libelling a faithful servant of the king, that'll be an extra two years on the stake'
asciilifeform: inquisitor: 'ok, find me the fellow who bought. he'll sit on this here stake, next you yours, and will tell the truth'
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: i'd guess: much of the panic re: btc 'taint' etc. comes from u.s. folks, who can be sent to the gasenwagen on very loose - rather than hard, 'scientific' - evidence.
asciilifeform: incidentally, mr stack was a firmware builder.
asciilifeform: (it is not necessarily clear, to a man innocent of the concept of specially made feed for cats, why he should not dine on a can of tuna with a cat printed on the label)
asciilifeform recalls many stories of soviet emigres dining on delicious cat food upon arrival
asciilifeform: e.g. lawyers, accountants, builders - people who wouldn't have had any dealings with programming otherwise, and - by many accounts - haven't since.
asciilifeform: somehow, 'hypertalk' was well-liked by serious users. why? theory: it lured a bunch of folks who were 'on the right side of the camel's hump' to begin with - into learning elementary programming
asciilifeform: it was made to torture sinners in an apple-themed hell
