[phreakmonkey] got his hands on a great piece of old tech. It's a 1964 Livermore Data Systems Model A Acoustic Coupler Modem. He recieved it in 1989 and recently decided to see if it would actually work. It took some digging to find a proper D25 adapter and even then the original serial adapter wasn't working because the oscillator depends on the serial voltage. He dials in and connects at 300baud. Then logs into a remote system and fires up lynx to load Wikipedia. Lucky for [phreakmonkey] they managed to decide on a modulation standard in 1962. It's still amazing to see this machine working 45 years later.
Although impractical for surfing the Internet today, there is something truly cool about getting a 45-year old modem to work with modern technology. The question I have, is what is the oldest working piece of equipment fellow Slashdotters have out there? I'm afraid as far back as I can go is a Number Nine Imagine 128 Series 2 Graphics card on a server still in use at my house which only puts me at about 14 years.
We will apply the most innovative technologies to our most important challenges — bending the health care cost curve, optimizing the energy grid to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, delivering an educational system focused on student excellence with special emphasis on science, technology, engineering and mathematics, protecting our nation's critical infrastructure, and building the high-wage, high-growth jobs in all corners of our country
Some information on what the CTO didn't say during his confirmation hearing can found at Read Write Web. Summary: He didn't speak about his plans for openness in government because no one asked him about it."
Fox is not really associated with Fox News network besides being owned by the same parent company; both networks operate autonomously.
This story is actually a couple of days old and was previously covered by Slashdot.
Also, Slashdot is usually a bit behind on the breaking news, such was the case with the Sun/Oracle story and several others.
The hard drive is the computer and the application is the database. This craziness has gone so far that in documents that go outside of development, some writers swap the word application or program with database just so that the end user gets it.
I think this behavior stems from when a user overhears a "cool" new word somewhere in a context that makes sense; such as:
There's a problem with the database, that's why you can't log in.
Thus, database becomes the application and everything that's associated with it.
If Machiavelli were a hacker, he'd have worked for the CSSG. -- Phil Lapsley