And highly appropriate too! 1 cool pt to our Seattle fan!
It's Amino world without Chemists

Catri - cute - Have a tuppence pt.
It's Amino world without Chemists

and I do have a lot of the skills to run the old systems, painfully gained during the 80s when I was our office's tech support department. I remember having to mess with the config.sys file, and writing batch files to start programs without having to type in a lot of cd\autocad\autocad.exe type of gibberish. I remember too well hunting down driver disks for monitors, printers, plotters and other devices and having to install them and modify the config.sys file again.

For that matter, I've had to deal with a mainframe running a variant on FORTH (The University of Rochester had, in the 70s, a CRAY-1 which supplied the needs of the whole campus, including the laser fusion lab, and used URTH). I also remember too well using cards to program a minicomputer which was the size of my bookcase.

If I had to, I could do all of these things still, I'm sure- in fact, a year or two ago I had to dust off my old DOS skills to ressurect an old 8088 which was hooked up to a piece of lab equipment, because no one else in the whole plant had any idea of what to do with it- including the engineers who were my age or older. But ya know? I really don't miss that shit at all.

See, there's a reason that technology progresses. People are inherently lazy. They see something and try to come up with an easier way of doing it. This is why we have such things as electric drills and mixers, because people in our grandparents' generation hated doing things by muscle. We have Bisquick because they hated having to mix things from scratch every time. We have loaves of bread in the supermarket wrapped in plastic bags because they hated having to constantly bake.

I would be willing to bet that if you had taken your furniture-making grandfather to Sears and showed him a table and chairs there, he would have been more than happy to buy it rather than have to make it himself- that is, unless furniture was his hobby, in which case all bets are off. I too like to do a lot of stuff by hand even now, such as bake bread from scratch, but to have to always do it? NO.

Technology is here to stay, for a very good reason. And it will continue to improve- for the very same reason. And as it does, I will ride along with it and do my best to forget the old stuff- for the very same reason.

It's well we cannot hear the screams
we make in other peoples' dreams.
--Edward Gorey

I guess what I was saying was that I see your point, Paul, and was teasing ParU about his retro skills attitude. I'm not a brilliant communicator, but that was what I was driving at.

My grandfather made furniture for a living for a while, and I think he would have welcomed new and better tools (as I said). But I also think he would still rather have made furniture himself than bought things from a furniture chain store, because his stuff was beautiful and so well made it's like new today, decades later.

And that's where my analogy breaks down. There'll always be a market for hand-crafted stuff as well as for the knock-offs. But new technology that makes computing easier is bound to replace old technology, and that's how it should be.

You're right marinerd. If it's quality, there will be a market for it. I used to work at a 'major technology company' and one of the guys there used to make hand crafted, Japanese style furniture. He sold some of it, for mucho, mucho dinero, to Larry Ellison (Oracle honcho). Yet this guy was also a software genius and started his own company (I don't know what happened to it).
I wasn't bemoaning (too much) the changing technology, just noting that the changes are significant in just a very few years. And there's been no time in human history where it's changed soooo much, so fast (save perhaps for WWII and military hardware - the difference between a 'Brewster Buffalo' and a P-51 not to say Me-262 (jet) is amazing).
It's Amino world without Chemists

technology has been changing at a blinding rate, and it's been steadily accelerating. I don't see any signs of it slowing down, either- the changes in five years have been drastic indeed.

Unfortunately there are only two ways of dealing with this: to try to cling to the safety and comfort of what we already know and get bitter and upset when it keeps changing anyway, or to try to ride it and accept it- and be continually learning new ways. Neither one is comfortable, but how the hell do you slow it down? We're talking about trying to hold back the tide here. So we either ride with it and try to survive that way, or we become Amish.

Surf's up, dudes.

It's well we cannot hear the screams
we make in other peoples' dreams.
--Edward Gorey

Well technology (and science which is different) changes so fast lately (last 60 yrs or so) cause, IMHO, we ain't all scratching around trying to grow food or hunt buffalo. So if you don't have to do that, then those few (0.01%) of the population that can make changes in technology (and science) are able to do so. So someone who makes, say, semiconductor chips, can concentrate on doing just that one part of their job better or having 'a better idea'. Just in case you know anyone who does that, I mean.
It's Amino world without Chemists

It's all good. I kinda figured that that was the case. I just hope that ParU knows that I was not attacking him (you do know that, don't you, ParU?...). But at the same time, I gotta tell ya, I'm mightily sick and tired of the hold-onto-the-past attitude. I got it all through engineering school from the profs, and have run into it plenty of other places as well. I mean, look at the British currency system. What the hell is a shilling or a farthing worth? Or Roman numerals, for that matter- why are they used for dates at the end of the movie, or on buildings? What purpose does it serve? Dump it, I say. Wipe and flush.

There is some stuff that is definitely worth holding onto still, like the old ways of preparing food or woodworking or masonry, but there is much that should be put to rest- and much that should be embraced. The Fundamentals of Engineering exam has a rule that you can't use a programmable calculator on any of it- only one that will do basic math and trig. Now what in the hell is the point of that?!? It's only because the guys in charge of it are old men in their 60s and 70s who used slide rules to do it and consider it cheating to use current technology. WFT?!?

Feh. I've been putting up with this shit for more years than I like to think about. I actually had one guy tell me that we would not be using AutoCAD to draw maps because they had been drawing them by hand for 30 years, and he saw no reason to change. Now, ten years later, I think you'd be hard pressed to find any large firms using Leroy templates and radial arm drafting machines.

It's well we cannot hear the screams
we make in other peoples' dreams.
--Edward Gorey

Isn't it awful to think that Mark Twain's book could not be rewritten in the same vain today? We have how many computer scientists and engineers in this group? I'll venture to wager that not a single one could build a simple working comuter from scratch. Not from scratch parts, from scratch. I'll extend that wager to all of us working together couldn't do it.

Oh, and I work with an IBM Mainframe with TSO and CICS every day. If the Unix and Windows boxes were as reliable as the Raptor, they probably wouldn't need me.

The passerby formerly known as brian28306.

Timid?

Moi?

(Now, a librarian-turned-lead vocalist for a goth band, that would be fun...)

The Undying Ducks, perhaps?...

It's well we cannot hear the screams
we make in other peoples' dreams.
--Edward Gorey

That's as good as the "end of the internet" page. The link to which is here: http://www.1112.net/lastpage.html

Although, since I couldn't find it in my list, I had to google it and there are, apparently, quite a few of these pages out there. Some more amusing than others.

The Eileen

The back woods of northern California. Maybe out around Whitethorn or so. I actually know of a man in that area who's on permanent disability because his personality is too abrasive for him to hold down a job. Seriously. The guy draws a lifetime pension for being an asshole.

It's well we cannot hear the screams
we make in other peoples' dreams.
--Edward Gorey

annoys the hell out of me. Cause that 'disability pension' is being paid out of my (and your!) SS funds. Maybe euthanasia instead?
It's Amino world without Chemists

If I had known that that was all it took, I would have been far more of an asshole years ago and gotten my free ride.

Either that or I'd be a Senator...

It's well we cannot hear the screams
we make in other peoples' dreams.
--Edward Gorey

did she ever invite the neighbours over? Why is it their job to reach out first?

Maybe they just figured that she was a "good fences make good neighbors" type-- Or a serial killer-- and gave her the space they figured she wanted.

Screaming your way up the street makes you more popular? Who knew?

was?
It's Amino world without Chemists

Well, her father went to prison and I developed the Career Dogma for Dummies. Normally it sells for three installments of $18.95...but just between you and me...

I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that.

Close html tags. The Force will be with you.

why? i wanted to italicize the entire quote. so what if the hyperlink is also in italics?

seriously....it's one word that we've now spent more time on to discuss than is worth.

of course, if someone turned bold on and then just kept right on yapping away like some elderly citizen with the left blinker still on from 1988 - then i'd absolutely agree with you.

to me? You young whippersnapper... why I oughta flog you with my computer cards. I don't 'yap' away, I just converse at great length. You folks are too spoiled. Try dialing up something at 10 baud (1 Loonie pt if you know what 'baud' is from) or who-hoo 300 baud using an acoustic coupler (now why do I know that Monk'll make something out of that?). Hell you guys don't even know how to set the parity on a system...
It's Amino world without Chemists

But by the same token, I don't know how to use a drawshave to make staves for a barrel, or how to smelt iron ore to make my own tools, or any of a number of bits of ancient lore. I imagine that I could learn to do all of these things if I needed to, but why? What would be the point? We have much better technology these days to take care of that sort of stuff for us so that we don't have to be bothered. Even though I know more about MS DOS than the average engineer, such arcane knowledge is very seldom useful and rarely brings me any benefit to speak of.

I prefer to keep up with technology and let the old stuff slide into obscurity, overall. I spent far too much time in the '80s struggling to configure computers to accept monitors and printers and such- I by far prefer to let Windows do all that crap for me. So while I remember much about the old ways of computers, I'm just as happy to forget about it. I have enough other things to keep me occupied in my life.

Touche, Monsieur Le Pussycat! And no matter what, I'll always be six years younger than you are! Tttthhhpppbbtt!

It's well we cannot hear the screams
we make in other peoples' dreams.
--Edward Gorey

Why would I want to? And yeah, at one time, I probably knew why the term "baud" was equal to one bit per second, but frankly, I couldn't care less.

Besides, if I have any trouble with my system, I just type in (** being the hard drive number and partition letter) and check for mounting errors.

Heh. Mounting errors. I don't have many of those, thankfully.


And hey, anyone who's seen Tron knows what a bit is. And a mainframe, for that matter.

Doesn't mean 'baudy' nor is it 'bit per second' - it's from Baudot a Frenchman who... (the rest is left as an exercise for the reader).
And not to shock you Matt, but the world still uses lots and lots of mainframes. Banks, HMOs, Governments, etc. all use mainframes for lots of current things and IBM still sells a whole bunch of them. There's a whole 'nother world out there that only uses PCs to write letters and play Free Cell and uses 'computers' to do 'real work'.
It's Amino world without Chemists

I know people still use mainframes.

People still use bits, too. Both were featured in "Tron." Read my post again.

people still hand-make barrel staves and hand tools out of raw materials. It's just that those of us in mainstream life generally don't need to know how to do that sort of thing. Same thing applies to mainframes and such- yes, I could learn to use 1980s technology, but why? It's sufficient to me tha the people who are truly interested in such things study them and are proficient in them. Then when I need one of them, I pay them what they're worth to come in and apply that specialized knowledge.

I used to have this argument with my engineering profs all the time regarding calculators that could do calculus. My point was (and still is) that when you get into the real world, nobody does integration or statistics or any of that stuff by hand, they use a computer. And generally speaking, they get the guy next to them to check their work so they don't make mistakes. So this bit about making engineering students take Differential Equations and such, and be able to calculate these horribly complex things by hand? Absolutely needless. Even Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein used to complain loudly about having to slog through equations manually and run the risk of a missed decimal or some such, and bemoaned the fact that they didn't have machines to do it for them. Hello?!? These guys were mathematicians! Why would an engineer need to be able to manually do all this shit when even the pros say they shouldn't?

The argument that I always got back? "Well, what if your computer is down? What if the power goes off? What if your calculator breaks? What if there isn't already a program out there to do what you need?"

My answer: "If the computer is down and the power is off, the office is going to be closed. If my calculator breaks I can borrow one or buy a new one. If the program doesn't exist I'll hire a mathematician and a programmer to make one."

Yes, I should be able to come up with a first-order approximation so I can roughly check their answers myself, but beyond that? No. I trust them to know this shit so I don't have to.

And that applies to old computer systems as well.

It's well we cannot hear the screams
we make in other peoples' dreams.
--Edward Gorey

Amen.

-There's someone in my head, but it's not me.-

All I remember of Baudot is the so-called Baudot code a 5-bit character encoding scheme with, I think, a set of 32 character alphabets, some of the letters reserved for alphabet switching. AFAIK those were used for text transmission or compression back in the wee old days when bits were hard to come by. The infamous Infocom (machine independent) z-code format used Baudot code to encode/compress text.

2 Loonie pts and a Beer Pt. to the Dane Abroad! (The Beer pt cause he's in Germany).
What's so funny/interesting/sad is that y'all think it's 'ancient' history, something that happened 25 years ago. That is, not really relevant. Yet throughout human history, people things that happened 'only' 25 years ago usually were 'new'. (Yes I know I use too many quotation marks). So think about that and apply it to your current state. What'll your kids think about what you do/like/think?
It's Amino world without Chemists

The Beatles will always rule, and they broke up years before I was born. I'll do my best not to cut off a big slap of Bealtemania and shove it down their throats, but you can be sure I'll be playing it when my (if I have any) kids are in utero.

After a little investigation, it turns out I can totally blame my mom for my nagging, slightly pernicious affinity for Neil Diamond and John Denver.

Babies can hear outside sounds during the third trimester.

And yet, and yet...
I have a whole bunch of Neil Diamond albums (and some John Denver too!) and my kids do not like them. What do they know?
It's Amino world without Chemists

Neil is the best. Sigh - I can't believe your beautiful, intelligent children just don't get that. Mind you, the Violent Femmes are pretty dang great also.

The Eileen
Take the road not taken - the leaves crunch that much louder!

My kids are yet to show such affinity for the Violent Femmes ... but I am sure its on the way. They'll be really confused though when they discover their love for Rolf Harris

"Million to one chances happen nine times out of ten"

Ummm, Jon, as far as I know, we plebes can't edit our comments once someone has replied to it.

He scored with Ione Skye. Didn't you ever go to the movies during the eighties? Or even watch I Love the 80's on VH1?

I didn't go to the movies during the 80's. Mostly because I had little kids and parents don't get to go to the movies with little kids (especially their daughters who don't sit still! - I'd get smacked down for that, but Eve's busy right now).
It's Amino world without Chemists