Computer Rants %#&@$...

[AmyStrange]

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Don't get me wrong, I'm 64, and I LOVE computers.*

Phones? Forget it. I hate them, but that's my problem.

I admit the following are petty, but they still rankle me, and computers really aren't at fault here. It's the idiots who decided these were good ideas.


#1) What's up with painting laptops ALL black?

I'm not talking about the color, but the fact that when you're old with failing eyesight (like me), it's hard to find the damn ports without a REALLY bright flashlight (sometimes two).


#2) Why don't they just say that?

I'm sure you've noticed this one. A 500 MB hard drive does NOT actually mean you have ALL 500 MB for your own personal use. No, no, no! You only get part of that, and that's fine, but why don't they just say that when they advertise the damn things?


#3) To b or not to B?

Most people, when they see speeds up to 100 Mbs (Mega bits per second), think that's damn fast, but what thay don't realize is that it's really only 12.5 MBs (Mega Bytes per second). You might ask, who cares, and you'd be right, but it still bothers me.

A bit (b) is only one eight of a Byte (B). In other words, you need eight bits (b) to make a Byte (B). A computer doesn't understand what one bit means (0 or 1), but it understands what a Byte means (01101001 - for example).

Most people see the "b" and don't realize that they're being hoodwinked (I always wanted to use that word), but to be honest, I'm a nut job for even giving a shit about it.

(It's kind of like buying a computer with a 100Gb hard drive, and then finding out it's only 12.5 GBs.)

[/RANT]
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ETA: *I 've been working with and fixing computers since 1973 when I joined the USAF and fixed their ECM equipment (Electronic Counter Measure - radar detection and jamming).
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[getagrip_already]

1. ahh, marketing....

Somewhere along the line, some marketing genious figured out that kilo means 1000, so they could just say that 1000 bytes was a kilobyte, when in fact 1024 bytes is a kilobyte.

That let them sell less actual capacity per kilobyte. Then, they started selling devices using raw capacity instead of useable capacity, meaning you were getting even less.

As for bits v bytes, that goes back to literally the first computer. Sorry, it has just carried forward and I actually like it myself.

And fwiw, you can buy just about any color of laptop case these days. Or you can put a little paint around the ports to make them easier to see.

Don't even get me started on little endian vs big endian. Now that was a battle for the ages!

[getagrip_already]

1. darn mouse!!!

It keeps duble posting! I click once, but it clicks twice. New one due tomorrow.....

Old one going into orbit.

[AmyStrange]

4. "little endian vs big endian"?

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Heh heh heh... just kidding. Just ignore me.
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[AmyStrange]

8. It'll be interesting to see if people can figure out...

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what I'm posting about.
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[mitch96]

3. "but why don't just say that when they advertise the damn things? " It's probably buried in

the small print somewhere.. Like "unlimited date" really isn't unlimited... It's only unlimited on the 4th full blue moon of the month and only in BF Idaho... sometimes...
m

[AmyStrange]

6. Or unlimited wifi...

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yeah right!

Bastaaaards!
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[mitch96]

14. "Bastaaaards! " OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!!!!!!! nt

[AmyStrange]

17. Sssssssssh!

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Someone might get the wrong idea.
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[mitch96]

18. It's a computer thing.. right? I.T. guys use it all the time... ;) nt

[AmyStrange]

19. Yeah, that's the ticket!

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heh heh heh
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[Ptah]

5. #1) What's up with painting laptops ALL black?

Put bright spots of paint to show where the damn ports are.

[AmyStrange]

7. Why don't they do that at the factory?

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It still bothers me.

As a matter of fact, I've put a curse on the engineers involved. When they get old, they'll curse the day they decided this was a good idea.

Bwahahahaha!
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[Ptah]

9. Yeah, complaining about something you could easily remedy seems silly.

[AmyStrange]

10. Didn't I say that in my post?

Last edited Thu Feb 4, 2021, 05:09 PM - Edit history (1)

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I'm a nut job or did you miss that part?

That's another beef I have with computers.
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[AmyStrange]

11. +100000000000000000000000000000000 x 2

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Bazinga!
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[Ferrets are Cool]

12. The same reason when you buy a 60" tv, it's measured diagonally

because it sounds bigger.

[AmyStrange]

13. +100000000000000000000000000000000 x infinity

[Midnightwalk]

15. I saw your curse on engineers below so I have to respond.

Saying you hope we have to squint to see the connectors. People assume we get an easy button, but we don’t. Im cursing engineers all the time like everyone else.

Disk space makes sense for laptops. I wouldn’t want to have to account what the os uses. Windows ate your disk drive. Installing linux doesn’t make the drive bigger (or smaller). There are other more blatant cases of lying about capacity. Using decimal gigabytes rather then hex gigabytes is not even the worst.

Even more for bit rates on serial interfaces. Bitrate is pretty unambiguous even if the real bit rate is a little different. Talk about data rate you usually want bytes/sec, but is that before or after encoding? At what distance? What you really get also depends on what other bottle necks there are.

I love binary and immediately read 01101001 as 69. Hex is basically shorthand binary. Bytes might be the smallest addressable unit, but hardware runs on bits in registers. Code often sets those bits. Code uses flag bits quite often.

Anyway I really just like this stuff and needed an excuse to chime in

[AmyStrange]

16. I love Unix/Linux...

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It's what the internet was built on (ARPANET).

It's also why http addresses use the forward slash / rather than the backward slash (this textbox won't allow me to display it), like in the Windows filing system.

Am I right or am I right?

Chime away, dude, and thanks.


ETA: 01101001 was just a random number, but it also sometimes means something else in machine language: E.
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[Midnightwalk]

21. Unix is great

Nothing like it for chaining a bunch of commands together in a shell script by trial and error to get a chore done. And it runs everywhere any more.

The syntax isn’t really harder, but there is a lot you can do and for a LONG time it seemed like there was always another “stupid linux trick” that made your month.

My favorite is still ~- (previous dir) so you can do things like

cp ~-/*.[ch] .

To copy all the .c and .h files from the previous directory to the current.

vi is a different story, but I’m editing a file right now with it. My esc key is worn down to a nub

[AmyStrange]

22. I actually understood all that...

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I need to take a nap, but thanks for sharing.
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[AmyStrange]

20. I also love Hex...

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I use it in my html coding for color.

"00000" = black

"FFFFFF" = white

Etc.
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[abqtommy]

23. Oh yeah, puter love can be extremely frustrating! But when I'm doing anything with mine

(like finding ports) the first thing I do is put on a pair of my reading glasses for that clear
close-up view!

[AmyStrange]

24. I wished that worked for me, but...

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it doesn't.
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