I frequently see threads where people reminisce about the past, discussing, for example, using what then seemed like new technology but is now horribly obsolete or inefficient by today’s standards. Or, they may recall a time when life was easier and simpler or just different, things that don’t exist today. They may recall favorite songs. Movies, TV shows, etc. of the past. If the Internet and the SDMB are still around 20, 30, 50, or even 100 years from now, what do you suppose some people’s posts may look like? Here are some that I came up with:
Remember telemarketing? When people would actually call you on the phone (during dinner, of all times) to sell you something you didn’t need or want? Yeah, like I would have actually bought something from one of them. I’m glad this practice was finally outlawed. It took them even longer to do away with spam and imprison all the offenders, but I was glad to finally see that go, too.
And phones back in my day were in mono and you had to hold one little speaker to one ear. The sound was decent, but it wasn’t nearly as good as the stereophones that we use now (both your hands are always free, too, no more holding the receiver-thingie to your mouth like I’ve seen my grandparents doing in old photos of them). Even “on hold” music sounds good now. Phone numbers were simpler then, though, just 7 digits if it was a local call, and 11 for long distance, which nowadays doesn’t apply since all phone numbers are the same, regardless of distance or what country a person lives in, just like email.
My grandpa’s computer’s processor speed wasn’t even measured in terahertz, but in gigahertz! I think it was a 500 GHz processor if I recall. And my great grandfather’s system was so slow they measured its speed in megahertz! Imagine how slow that must have been!
Remember when you had to wait for something to download? Even on what was called a T1 line or something back then, you had to wait sometimes for a web site to come up (to say nothing of DSL, cable, or worst of all, the dialup users who would have to wait minutes for a file!) Nowadays the file is right there, already on your SSD (solid state drive). Also, you couldn’t just go from one web site to another like changing channels on the TV. You had to wait a few seconds for each site to load.
Speaking of SSDs, remember the old hard drives? They used magnetic disks, if I recall. I hated how they’d sometimes crash and you’d lose all your data at once. God, what a pain in the ass that was! People had to make backups of all their files, and even then you sometimes couldn’t rely on your backups to restore the files. They could only hold a couple hundred gigabytes or so. I don’t think anyone then even knew what a petabyte was then.
My dad told me about how he could download music from the what was then called the Internet, for free, and you could copy songs off of CDs (remember those?) onto your computer. It was very controversial according to all the news stories that were written about it. Some bands tried to sue the people who downloaded their songs instead of buying their CDs. Too bad you can’t do this anymore since I hate paying $80 for an AC (audio chip) only to find out it only has a couple of good songs on it.
You can extract songs off an AC. Just Google for “MP8 extractor” and you’ll get tons of hits.
Moderator’s Note: Please do not discuss illegal activities here or encourage others to engage in them as we all know MP8 extraction is a misdemeanor in most states, if not a felony.
I found my mother’s collection of Brittany Spears CDs in the attic. I had to dust off the CD player that had been in my closet and figure out a way to connect it to my stereo so I could listen to them. The CDs were okay, but not as good as I was hoping for. When my dad saw me listening to them he found his old Metallica CDs and figured I might like listening to them. They were pretty good, actually, most of them anyway (the one called “St. Anger” didn’t sound anything like “And Justice for All” or “Master of Puppets”, though). I don’t think they released anything after “St. Anger”, according to my dad.
Okay, everybody, your turn.