How things have changed

[Balladeer08]

I just watched NASA launch the BRRISON balloon.

http:/*******PisZvH0riI

I watched it live, after getting a twitter notice that it was going to launch in ten minutes.

As I watched it starting to climb toward its eventual 110,000 foot altitude, I was struck by an odd thought.

When I was a child, tv was black & white and there were three channels.

Now there are more channels than I can count, and even more sources of video on demand and live feeds like this one.

And it isn't just electronics that have changed.

I had a very fancy (used) bicycle that had THREE GEARS!!! A racing bike, everyone was amazed by it. I used to completely smoke the guys who had those huge, heavy Roadmaster bikes.

Now I have 24 gears, the lights and other equipment are unimaginable. The seat and seatpost alone were impossible back then.

Medicine, well, I'm pretty sure I'd be dead if it was the same as in the fifties.

I carry a "telephone" that fits in my pocket, has no wires, and also stores photographs, movies, books and music. I have close to 700 songs in my phone, and several hundred books. And I can carry all this around with me.

My income is around the poverty line, and I enjoy wealth of a kind the richest man in the world could not have bought back then.

It is truly astonishing.

I talk to my phone, and text comes out on the screen that I can then send anywhere in the world, instantly. This is part of the science fiction Robert A. Heinlein wrote when I was a kid. The adults all used to laugh at it and make fun of me for it.

If the current science fiction does as well converting into science fact, the future is going to get more and more amazing.

 

[Balladeer08]

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/profile.cfm?MCode=BRRISON

The link didn't come through.

 

[LiFeNdEaTh]

interesting

 

[ms_ann_thrope]

I know. My cell phone doesn't have an external antenna anymore.

 

[Sean]

My phone has over three million times the memory capacity of my first computer.

 

[Balladeer08]

My phone has over three million times the memory capacity of my first computer.

Once I heard a guy say "I'd kill my mother for 4K or ram".

My first hard drive was 100,000 MegaBytes. I couldn't imagine how I'd ever fill it.

Wow, compare tennis shoes then and now.

 

[Sean]

Once I heard a guy say "I'd kill my mother for 4K or ram".

My first hard drive was 100,000 MegaBytes. I couldn't imagine how I'd ever fill it.

Wow, compare tennis shoes then and now.

My first "hard drive", though we didn't call them that then, was 16k on the Sinclair ZX81. And that was an expansion, the basic machine came with 1k.

 

[pointless]

mine was 50mb. the hard drive. i have no idea how much ram it had. i'm guessing very little.

macintosh something.

i still miss scarab of ra.

i still do not miss system 7 even though i can't really remember why beyond i just thought it was annoying.

oh, not counting the commodore 64 that i barely got to play with because my dad was a douchebag. fucking dick.

 

[Balladeer08]

My first "hard drive", though we didn't call them that then, was 16k on the Sinclair ZX81. And that was an expansion, the basic machine came with 1k.

Sounds like my first laptop. It ran at a blazing 20Mhz. That was the upgrade model, standard was 16Mhz. And that isn't a typo. Megahertz, not Gigahertz.

If I remember right, my VIC-20 and C64 were both 1 Mhz.

Of course, the graphics were so comparatively low-res then that it didn't seem as slow as you'd think.

OH! My 300 baud modem! It was so slow, I'd go make a cup of coffee while waiting for text to download. I could read MUCH faster than it could receive.

 

[Balladeer08]

mine was 50mb.

macintosh something.

i still miss scarab of ra.

i still do not miss system 7 even though i can't really remember why beyond i just thought it was annoying.

oh, not counting the commodore 64 that i barely got to play with because my dad was a douchebag. fucking dick.

My kids were on my C64 as soon as they had an interest.

I remember visiting a computer store. I put a chair up by the C64 display and let my son have at that while I went to take care of other stuff. Came back to find him with a half-dozen adults around him, listening attentively while he explained how it worked to them. He wasn't even in school yet! Too funny.

 

[Sean]

Sounds like my first laptop. It ran at a blazing 20Mhz. That was the upgrade model, standard was 16Mhz. And that isn't a typo. Megahertz, not Gigahertz.

If I remember right, my VIC-20 and C64 were both 1 Mhz.

Of course, the graphics were so comparatively low-res then that it didn't seem as slow as you'd think.

OH! My 300 baud modem! It was so slow, I'd go make a cup of coffee while waiting for text to download. I could read MUCH faster than it could receive.

Ha! I lusted after a Vic. And loading programs through a tape deck. Twenty minutes to load then a syntax error on line 20438.

 

[Balladeer08]

Ha! I lusted after a Vic. And loading programs through a tape deck. Twenty minutes to load then a syntax error on line 20438.

I started programming on a TI96, with the little magnetic strip memories.

I worked an entire Traffic Accident Investigation program into it. Speed from skids, combined speed, speed from jump...

When I got to a computer where you could comment your code, I thought I'd gone to heaven. 8)

 

[Sean]

I wonder if there's an emulator for Elite out there somewhere...

 

[Sean]

I started programming on a TI96, with the little magnetic strip memories.

I worked an entire Traffic Accident Investigation program into it. Speed from skids, combined speed, speed from jump...

When I got to a computer where you could comment your code, I thought I'd gone to heaven. 8)

REM this sucks.

 

[Balladeer08]

I wonder if there's an emulator for Elite out their somewhere...

I don't know.

There was someone selling C64's and Amiga's with modern computers inside of them, that was kind of odd yet interesting.

I'd like to get COMAL for my computer. Absolutely my favorite language to program in. Structured, recursive, extensible.

 

[Balladeer08]

REM this sucks.

Yeah, there were a few comments that crept in here and there. You could get drunk on the power, ya know? 8)

 

[Sean]

I don't know.

There was someone selling C64's and Amiga's with modern computers inside of them, that was kind of odd yet interesting.

I'd like to get COMAL for my computer. Absolutely my favorite language to program in. Structured, recursive, extensible.

Basic was my first language, then COBOL, then Pascal. But I remember having to prog the original Commodore PET in machine code. I learned to think in hex. It's akin to brain damage.

 

[pointless]

My kids were on my C64 as soon as they had an interest.

I remember visiting a computer store. I put a chair up by the C64 display and let my son have at that while I went to take care of other stuff. Came back to find him with a half-dozen adults around him, listening attentively while he explained how it worked to them. He wasn't even in school yet! Too funny.

i would've been as well, but it didn't happen. he says i fucked up some program and he got mad at me about. i have no idea what he's talking about. i just wanted to shoot aliens. i was like 5 or 6. again, fucking dick.

 

[Balladeer08]

Basic was my first language, then COBOL, then Pascal. But I remember having to prog the original Commodore PET in machine code. I learned to think in hex. It's akin to brain damage.

You got THAT right!

I don't even consider machine code a programming language. Language has words.

My progression was BASIC(K), PASCAL, COMAL. High-level languages are so much easier to understand. You can go back to old programs and easily see what each line is doing, and make changes.

If I was asked to do that in machine code, I'd run away. It would be easier to start over than to make a change. (okay, very minor exaggeration there)

I actually got to meet Borg Christensen, the founder of COMAL. Amazing man, you got smarter just from being around him. I'd have loved to have had him as an instructor. He brought out the best in everyone around him. He had no ego problems at all. Just down to earth easy to talk to. Like you'd known him all your life.

 

[Balladeer08]

i would've been as well, but it didn't happen. he says i fucked up some program and he got mad at me about. i have no idea what he's talking about. i just wanted to shoot aliens. i was like 5 or 6. again, fucking dick.

I took my first computer class at UNM. Day one, the instructor issued us account numbers and passwords for the terminals. He taught us a few basic commands, like GOTO and PRINT. Then he sent us off to the terminals, told us to have fun, we couldn't hurt anything from the terminals.

So I sat down, with no idea what to do. Then I decided on this:

10 PRINT: "This is a computer. Nothing can possibly go wrong."
20 PRINT: "go wrong."
30 GOTO 20


And it worked! It printed

This is a computer. Nothing can possibly go wrong.
go wrong.
go wrong.
go wrong.
go wrong.
go wrong.
go wrong.


And kept on printing "go wrong." I couldn't figure out how to get it to stop, finally just turned off the power on the terminal.

Came to class the next time to some very upset people. The way it works, you got so many "cycles" on the main frame depending on your status at the University and your position in the queue. As work ahead of you got finished, you moved up the queue and got more cycles.

Overnight, my endless program had gotten to the very top of the queue, and pretty much ground the whole thing to a halt.

I crashed UNM.

And they were mad at me.

But the instructor had told us we couldn't hurt anything from the terminals. And he hadn't told us that loops need a terminating condition. I thought it was done when I shut the terminal off.

The other funny thing about it was I was a Deputy Sheriff at the time, and had a court appearance and then go on duty right after class, so I showed up in uniform.

It is so much easier to win an argument when you are the only person in the room with a gun. 8)

I guess I wasn't what they were expecting.

 

[neci]

i heard the russians have been smuggling vodka into the space station. the USA is very particular about that kind of thing. putin must be a niecefuckingdrunk.

 

[Balladeer08]

i heard the russians have been smuggling vodka into the space station. the USA is very particular about that kind of thing. putin must be a niecefuckingdrunk.

The very idea of drunks vomiting in microgravity.... oh man. Short circuits, amongst other problems.

Yeah, I'd be opposed to it myself.

But it would be interesting to see someone give a field sobriety test in microgravity.