In 1993, I was but a young lad of 11. At the time, my parents purchased a PowerBook 165c, the first color Mac laptop. It had a whopping 33MHz processor, 4MB of RAM, an 80MB hard disk, and a 8.9″ 8-bit 640 x 400 color passive matrix display that could display 256 colors. It weighed about 7 pounds. According to LowEndMac, it cost about $3,400. Ouch.
Today, I was looking at a new netbook made by System76, a small, independent company that sells hardware with Ubuntu Linux pre-installed. This computer has a HyperThreaded 1.66GHz processor (50x faster than the PowerBook if you only count one thread, 100x if you count both threads), 2GB of RAM (500x as much), a 250GB hard disk (3125x as large), and a 1024 x 600 LED-backlit screen that can display millions of colors. It weighs 2 pounds, and costs $389. It’s also physically smaller, has a battery that lasts about 4x as long, and has a stupidly fast wireless card.
All that in 17 years.
Firearms, however, have been around for quite a bit longer than 17 years, yet modern firearms are essentially the same as they were fifty years ago.
Where’s my Star Wars-esque blaster gun? Get crackin’, guys…
Month: July 2010
Ow.
In the span of the last two weeks, I have walked more than I have during any two week span of time in my life other than when I was in the army. All this while wearing a pair of Doc Martens or, when wearing shorts (and Docs would look odd), running shoes.
Even with such comfy shoes, my feet hurt.
As fantastic as this honeymoon has been, it’ll be nice to get back home.
So, I go away for a few weeks…
…and big things happen. How come I always miss the big things like the McDonald ruling coming down?
Oh well. Many congratulations to Gura, NRA, the law-abiding citizenry in oppressed localities in the US, et al.