Surprisingly fun reddit:
What is something that was used heavily in the year 2000, but it's almost never used today?
Sharing for the web 1.0 folks here (or the internet veterans here from pre-web days):
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/rik4cn/what_is_something_tha...
that made me laugh...but at the risk of cementing my image as "curmudgeon-in-residence", can we *really* say that? I'll start from the idea that, yes, in general, social media has totally made the online-masses far more susceptible to manipulation. critical thinking skills are far more important today than ever before, if only because algorithms and control-freaks can know more about us now, and take advantage of that knowledge. in sum? yeah. we are more vulnerable today to the perils of *not* thinking.
even so, can we really say people did think back then? i remember when much music came out in the mid-80s (canada's version of MTV). it took a while to grow as a channel and industry, but after it did, I remember they had this regular slot where they aired comments from pedestrians passing on the sidewalk. basically, there was a phone-booth-like recording booth, and people walking by could go in, record themself, and if they were lucky, it would be aired on the channel.
I have never forgotten one old curmudgeon in Toronto who did this. without knowing it, he left an important impression on me in my teens: he gets in the box, and says just this: "this is just another tool to express yourself for people who really have nothing to say". growing up and watching TV, that was about as honest an opinion on TV as I'd ever heard! and I never forgot it (and so prescient, in the days before the web or facebook or youtube...). so I am not convinced that the people then were "thinking": the risks today for not-thinking are greater than ever, but it seems like a perennial problem that has always been around.
besides...george w bush vs donald trump...who inspires more confidence in actual thought?
CDs/DVDs and/or CD-Rs/DVD-Rs
I went through those like crazy back in 2000!
Me, too. In fact, I kept all mine and only recently had to part ways with them when I moved. But only after migrating the useable contents to the wonderfully modern world of cloud computing. I even installed old Mac OS's, and played some of the games I used to play at that time (thanks, in no small part, to the wisdom on https://macintoshgarden.org/ ). Would you believe that I was able to pickup a golf game from 20 years ago? No joke, I literally continued playing a game from that long ago. Now that is good data management, eh!
Nice, that's great! Yeah, I still have a huge box full of mostly DVD-Rs, which back then was the only way to store computer data, aside from clunky old external hard-drives.
I have finally drawn on the courage to face the pile of VHS and DVD we have.
School plays, holidays, weird TV shows you can no longer download. I must rescue the data.
I did all our 8mm home movies and photos a while ago.
check this guy out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqpd7WcBmjM
"Lucadiv tv"
lol
Tamagotchi
So our computers would not explode!. What a mess that was...
y2k then...covid today... viruses for everyone!
Y2K wasn't about virus at all. it was to do with a date range bug
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2000_problem
It was meant as hyperbole more than anything, building on the reference to Microsoft Patches that had come before it....though it occurs to me that we have been technologically primed to fear the term "virus" since at least y2k -- such a grotesque, fear-inducing word -- y2k was not a virus, to be sure, but it marked the first big fear and panic-induced glitch, and anti-virus software certainly capitalized on that in the aftermath, not to mention many other software spinoffs.
y'all know that McAfee, star of anti-virus, is on the run for murder?
He was never charged with murder, only tax evasion. He was jailed in Spain pending extradition to the USA. A few hours after being notified of his loss of appeal of extradition, he was found hanged in his prison cell.
wow! Amidst covid and crazy 2021, I totally missed the news of his death. Thanks for updating me.
News report say he was wanted in Belize on suspicion for murder. Obviously a moot point now,...
The Belize police always maintained that they never suspected him of murder, only that they wanted to question him. McAfee himself said the police were only saying that to lure him back to Belize so they could charge him with killing his neighbour, with whom he'd had a feud with over noise complaints. The most plausible theory is that a crazy girlfriend/bodyguard of McAfee killed the neighbour for poisoning her dogs. There is a photo of her which instantly gives the impression this woman was quite capable of doing it.
In another bizarre twist, McAffee donated computers to the Belize police which he later claimed were loaded with spyware so he could monitor them!
Fascinating stuff! After my last post, I realized I should be asking if there is more to this crazy story...thanks for following up on it.
Good fodder for someone's future documentary, no? Just sayin' :)
Film cameras. In 1999 I shot 16 rolls of film on vacation. It cost me a small fortune to get them developed. The developer screwed up the negatives, colour shifting green grass into yellow. I got my money back, but the damage was permanent. I switched to digital at great cost, but it of course improved my photography greatly because I could take infinite shots. But you know all this. I'll shut up now. Your fault.
blockbusters!
speaking of which, did anyone here use Netflix in the days when they actually shipped DVDs door-to-door?
I remember hearing a lot about the DVD rentals from Netflix, but never used it. We had a lot of small businesses around doing VHS/DVD rentals, but I never recall using a Blockbuster either.
But it reminds me of the documentary about the last remaining Blockbuster. I could probably upload it here sometime...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Blockbuster
Yeah, many Mom and Pop stores had VHS video shelves which later got converted into DVDs. Having just googled this, would you believe that Netflix *still* mails DVDs to people on-demand? I had no idea:
https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/netflix/netflix-dvd-service-plan-su...
That article is very interesting for, if true, it means that once-upon-a-time Netflix likely held the most complete DVD library in the world. Sadly, when private business captures creative works, they will not get preserved (unlike Library of Congress, et al).
Did you know that Nasa recorded over its own moon landings? There is a fascinating docu-comedy about how the famous moon footage had to be salvaged from Australian news reels (since they filmed the moon broadcasts from the "other side" when occluded in the US).
This is the comedy that tells the true story:
https://slate.com/technology/2019/07/moon-landing-anniversary-dish-austr...