Modern Tech Versus the Past

CNETNate writes "Most of us assume modern life is the peak of human achievement, but is it really? CNET decided to take a look at the major technologies of the modern world and compare them to their closest equivalent of pre-digital mankind — Facebook vs. dinner parties, World of Warcraft vs. actual war craft, iPhones vs. hills on fire — and the results are surprising. And slightly dumb, so laugh."

Comments

not always quite so

[PizzaAnalogyGuy]

As you can see, ancient life beats modern life in all respects. Modern life doesn't even come close, scoring a rather embarrassing nought out of ten.

I would have to disagree. Sure you can pick a few things which outcome is that, but you really have to look at the larger picture.

As an example, if you think about the medieval era and how you moved around, there we're basically two options:
1) by horse
2) by walking

This meant that every business had to own a horse and feed it to move around. For a real world example, it also created problems for pizzeria's home delivery, because the horse would eat the pizza.

But one must also note that some things actually were better on older times. When you ordered a pizza, you knew it would be baked for you with love and it would be delicious to eat. Now someone justs sends me a pizza gift on Facebook. Thanks for the mockery, I say.

Basically what I am saying is that technology makes things less personal. The same way that salad is shit compared to Pizza Hut's delicious pan pizza, e-card is shit compared to a real postcard because it just doesn't have the same feeling.

Re:not always quite so

[gnick]

Basically what I am saying is that technology makes things less personal. ...it just doesn't have the same feeling.

I think you just summarized every analysis in TFA. "The old stuff is better 'cuz it has an old-timey feel to it." Personally, I appreciate being able to communicate half-way across the country w/o having to run to the telegraph station and blow a half-day's pay even if it's less personal. I like that Swine Flu is less deadly than the Plague, even if that's not as scary. I like that I can re-spawn after dying in some game rather than getting my head lopped off in battle, even if it's less manly.

But that's just me... Now, I'm off to take a leak in the street because that's more neighborly than "modern" sanitation.

Re:not always quite so

[TheRealMindChild]

As an example, if you think about the medieval era and how you moved around, there we're basically two options:
1) by horse

Not only that, but if you were pulling a wagon and heading toward Oregon, you were likely to be killed by a bout of dysentery.

Re:not always quite so

[boredsenseless]

Dysentery, cholera, starvation, broken wagon wheels, or getting stuck halfway while fording a supposedly "shallow" river. Man, that game was tough.

Re:not always quite so

[Anonymous Coward]

Let the older times be in the past. People don't realize how smelly and unsanitary streets were when horses and carriages were the mainstay of transportation. There was no fire, police, or EMS. If you came down with something, hopefully your immune system could take care of it, because there was no penicillin or other medicines to clear up even the basic infections. Most of America at that time was living in hovels or tenements and barely making a sustainable living. Any police protection were for the businesses like banks. If you were an individual, you packed heat or you were dead.

Even those smelly, slow diesel cars that foreign automakers want to push on the US again (anyone above 20 remembers the Mercedes turbo diesels that people ended up passing on the wrong side of the road or breakdown lanes due to their sulphur belching stench and multi minute 0-60 times.) are far better than what horses were like in cities. Horses needed fed, they had to be rested, they were often stolen, turned streets slick with manure if the weather was wet at all.

Going further back, war in the Middle Ages sucked. There were no medics back then, so if you got a good nick, you ended up dying of blood loss right there, or an infection before a week.

As for the plague, people don't realize that it was the massive die-off due to the plague that got Europe out of the groaning slavery it was in for almost a millennium. The loose systems of dukedoms that used to have peasants to spare now actually had to seek people out, and forced warring mini-kingdoms to band together. Fields which had to be used to provide the bare necessities for an overpopulated Europe could be used for things like olives, grapes, hops, and niceties.

Yes, modern life is boring, but compared to how life was before refrigeration, basic sanitation, running water, clothes washers, literacy, fire/police/EMS presence, modern medicine, I'll take it over any time in the past.

Re:not always quite so

[Neofluffybunny]

I say we put this to the test! I will take one Captains Hat and 12 Grandfather clocks! ADVENTURE! (Neofluffybunny has caught Dysentery, and died.)

Re:not always quite so

[Anonymous Coward]

LOLOLOLOLOL Awe man - this brought back memories of when I worked in LearningSmith. I actually had to try to sell Oregon Trail to folks. Too funny - thanks for the laugh!

Re:not always quite so

[Anonymous Coward]

Or being bitten by a snake while fording the river and trying to shoot more buffalo so that you could spend all your money on wagon resupplies.

Re:not always quite so

[joeman3429]

If you were pulling a wagon to Oregon in the middle ages, I'd want to know how the hell you got to america, or alternatively, why didn't your other native american brethren have wheeled wagons?

The historical implications you just made are vast and profound.

Re:not always quite so

[Anonymous Coward]

Any police protection were for the businesses like banks. If you were an individual, you packed heat or you were dead.

Somebody thinks the police offer protection, rather than response. When you need heat, police won't be there to protect you.

Re:not always quite so

[westlake]

As an example, if you think about the medieval era and how you moved around, there we're basically two options:1) by horse
2) by walking
This meant that every business had to own a horse and feed it to move around.

It meant that you had a tight little monopoly in your own neighborhood .

The handsome brick structure on on our village main street was originally a three story department store that served a population of less than 1000. The alternative, if you wanted to shop for a set of dishes, a mattress or sofa, would be to take a train into Buffalo and pay the freight back.

Re:not always quite so

[mrchaotica]

There was no fire, police, or EMS.

WTF are you talking about? The first modern, professional fire department was founded in the 1850s (well within the time of the horse and carriage), police have existed since probably the middle ages, and as for EMS, the doctor came to you instead!

Even those smelly, slow diesel cars that foreign automakers want to push on the US again (anyone above 20 remembers the Mercedes turbo diesels that people ended up passing on the wrong side of the road or breakdown lanes due to their sulphur belching stench and multi minute 0-60 times.)

Wow, you're really an ignorant prick, aren't you? New Diesel cars are nothing whatsoever like they used to be 20 years ago. In fact, even 10-year-old diesel cars are just as powerful and clean as the average gasoline vehicle (my '98 VW TDI can easily outrun the average compact Honda and runs on either Ultra-Low-Sulfur-Diesel (15 PPM sulfur), as mandated in the US since 2007, or biodiesel which contains no sulfur whatsoever). And even the least-powerful 2009-model Diesel car sold in the US, the Jetta TDI "Clean Diesel," has 140 HP. That means it has more power than most of its competitors, let alone its massive advantage in torque!

Don't misunderstand me: I'm not arguing for a return to the Dark Ages or something like that; I'm just saying that you need to get your facts straight before mouthing off!

Re:not always quite so

[dwywit]

Going further back, war in the Middle Ages sucked. There were no medics back then, so if you got a good nick, you ended up dying of blood loss right there, or an infection before a week.

Actually there were some pretty clever medics 'way back when. When Henry V took an arrow in the cheek, one surgeon devised a tool to reach down into the wound and extract the arrow stub.

http://www.rcpsg.ac.uk/hdrg/2006Nov3.htm

Not that such treatment would be available to everyone, of course. I've always thought that pre-antibiotics, if you made it to adulthood, your immune system was tough. You'd proved yourself resistant to or at least able to deal with all those childhood diseases without modern treatments. There were *some* valuable herbal and folklore remedies, but imagine the prospect of facing smallpox, bubonic plague, cholera, typhus, even measles without antibiotics, anti-pyretics, a decent diet, and good hygiene.

Re:not always quite so

[shutdown -p now]

Even those smelly, slow diesel cars that foreign automakers want to push on the US again (anyone above 20 remembers the Mercedes turbo diesels that people ended up passing on the wrong side of the road or breakdown lanes due to their sulphur belching stench and multi minute 0-60 times.)

You do realize that 1) modern diesels are much better than they used to be on virtually all counts, and 2) the perception of diesels in U.S. was screwed in a major way when GM fucked up diesel in their cars.

Re:not always quite so

[mirix]

Bingo. European diesels from the last 20 years are in no way related to the horrible 1970's GM 350 diesel conversions. Well, apart from the fact that they run on diesel.

If you didn't notice the abundance of torque and better mileage, you'd think you were driving a gas car.

Re:not always quite so

[theshowmecanuck]

And if you were on your way to California, you might be eaten by one of your friends or family.

Re:not always quite so

[yuhong]

But one must also note that some things actually were better on older times. When you ordered a pizza, you knew it would be baked for you with love and it would be delicious to eat. Now someone justs sends me a pizza gift on Facebook. Thanks for the mockery, I say.

Yep, the rise of industrial food production and processing, which not only was less personal, it also reduced food quality. Weston A Price Foundation has a lot of article on it's problems, like this one: http://www.westonaprice.org/modernfood/dirty-secrets.html

Re:not always quite so

[Scarletdown]

We can't live in the past any more... or the present.

This is the future.

Re:not always quite so

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, my 6yo 50hp diesel citroen c2 could keep peace on a hill run with one of my friend old model Audi TT (yes, they fixed the lack of torque in the new models).

he told me afterward that he was sprinting, I was just driving a little bit faster than usual. I discovered only some days later the actual torque values for that cars, both peaking around 160Nm

Re:not always quite so

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, now just about anyone in the USA can have a car with 100+ horsepower -- which is pretty amazing, owning 100+ horses was only for the super rich in ancient times.

Re:not always quite so

[tehcyder]

Somebody thinks the police offer protection, rather than response. When you need heat, police won't be there to protect you.

Oh yeah? I suppose Minority Report was all just made up then?

They Missed One

[eldavojohn]

We Have: Putting one page of data on one page
They Had: Dividing data up into eight pages to maximize pageviews

Thanks for finally filing this CNet Crave UK stuff in Idle/Entertainment!

No... WoW vs pretend warfair with sticks for guns.

[Kenja]

Sorry. We geeks playing World of Warcraft would not be engaged in killing each other if not for the game. WoW is the low tech equivalent of jumping out from behind a rock with a stick and shouting "bang bang!". And the WoW forums are the equivalent of "I shot you your dead! Am not!" arguments.

Poisoning people with cancer...

[Anonymous Coward]

...which is what much of modern chemotherapy amounts too will be looked back on like we look on bloodletting to keep your humors in order.

I suspect one day people will wonder how we lived in the dark ages when they actually had doctors that were trained to cut you open and physically manipulate your insides.

Re:Poisoning people with cancer...

[Foobar of Borg]

...which is what much of modern chemotherapy amounts too will be looked back on like we look on bloodletting to keep your humors in order.

I imagine Dr. McCoy would agree

Re:Poisoning people with cancer...

[paiute]

...which is what much of modern chemotherapy amounts too will be looked back on like we look on bloodletting to keep your humors in order.

Except for the little fact that, as much as chemo sucks and as much as it closely resembles taking just enough arsenic mixed with mercury topped with cyanide to wish you were dead, it is backed up by clinical studies and has been found to work.

Chemo: sucks but works
Leeches: suck and don't work except in special cases as temporary therapy for reattachment of fingers and toes

Re:Poisoning people with cancer...

[pwfffff]

And the best way to get around was by putting yourself in a large metal box propelled at well over double the max speed of any land mammal by a series of small explosions created by igniting the leftovers of million-year-old dinosaur guts.

Cars are crazy shit, man.

Re:Poisoning people with cancer...

[sjames]

One day we will consider modern chemo to be just a step above savagery and will also say that unlike ancient chemo, our modern remedies work. We'll say that because there won't be questions of survival rates over 5 years or so, just which one will cause complete remission the fastest and keep it from coming back.

Notably, some of the big medications and surgical procedures out there today have an effect, but evidence is growing that the effect they have is useless. One day we'll see those as no better than bloodletting for a broken leg. It's easy to make fun of the old state of the art in hindsight, sorta like all that advice to just relax, drink milk and perhaps see a shrink to treat a simple H. Pylori infection looks kinda silly now.

Our modern state of the art psychiatry won't likely fare much better than the mid-20th century use of insulin coma and lobotomy. We'll likely look back on ECT and wonder why the doctor didn't just break a 2x4 over the patient's head.

Re:Poisoning people with cancer...

[blackraven14250]

We'll likely look back on ECT and wonder why the doctor didn't just break a 2x4 over the patient's head.

I'm pretty sure this already happened, before they made it a very specific-case treatment, and did alot of fine-tuning to the process.

Re:Poisoning people with cancer...

[sjames]

There's a lot less tuning than you think and still not a decent theory of why or how it might work and when. There is also evidence that the only reason cognitive and memory deficits aren't reported is that nobody's looking for them anymore.

I can understand it's use as a treatment of last resort especially for suicidal patients, but there are still a few psychiatrists that seem a bit trigger happy with it. Why TMS isn't tried first every time is beyond comprehension.

Re:Poisoning people with cancer...

[Anonymous Coward]

Having, personally, at least 5 more people living with me today than dead thanks to chemotheraphy, I think I'll keep it. It may be savagery to our nano-bot self-healing future selves, but it saves lives today, just as trepanation, barbaric though it may seem, may have saved lives 2000 years ago.

Re:Poisoning people with cancer...

[sjames]

I certainly didn't say that chemo shouldn't be used. Right now it's the best we can do and it sure beats nothing. I just wanted to point out how easy it is to forget that the medicine of the past was the best that they could do and it sure beat nothing (after all, it did work sometimes). It's also easy to forget that today's medicine will look just as bad one day.

telegraph 419....

[Anonymous Coward]

i represent the duke of america and recently a $25,000 sum of pirate spanish gold seized off the coast has been placed in our care.....

Better comparisons

[SoundGuyNoise]

MP3s vs. 1 Man Bands
Twitter vs. Bathroom Walls
Science vs. Mad Science

Re:Better comparisons

[jimbobborg]

MP3s vs. 1 Man Bands

Twitter vs. Bathroom Walls

Science vs. Alchemy

Fixed that for ya

Re:Better comparisons

[petes_PoV]

We have the RIAA, they had religious persecution (I was going to say "The Spanish Inquisition", but you'd expect that)

Re:Better comparisons

[Sandbags]

Wikipedia vs. walking through a museum -> museum
Microwave vs. home cooked meal -> home cooking (at least in my house)
Credit vs. Cash -> depends, I vote Debit Card (best of both worlds)
e-pay vs. cash/check -> no more late bills, e-pay
Direct Deposit vs. paycheck/cash -> direct deposit
Digital camera vs. film -> except that it costs more, film, though at about 21MP i might start leaning the other way.
Computer + printer vs. typewrite -> computer, no brainer.
computer vs. inkwell -> though it has its aesthetics, are you kidding? computer.
amazon.com vs. medieval bazzar -> amazon, (no pick pockets!)

Re:Better comparisons

[Quiet_Desperation]

Science vs. Mad Science

Wait, which one is the "modern" side? ;-)

Re:Better comparisons

[Anonymous Coward]

Twitter vs. Bathroom Walls

Oddly, there's less crap in the bathroom.

Re:Better comparisons

[Martin Blank]

Digital camera vs. film -> except that it costs more, film, though at about 21MP i might start leaning the other way.

The professional photographers that I know have been quite happy with their digital cameras since 8MP was the level no one could afford. They're up in the 12MP and 15MP levels now, but they produce prints for their customers, and they're indistinguishable to all but the trained eye from what would have been done on film. Even an 8x12 at 8MP makes for 83,000 dots per square inch, or 1/288 of an inch (.088mm) across. Given that the same lenses are being used in many cases (Nikon lenses from a decade or more past fit on current Nikon SLRs), it comes down to the sensor, and the difference just isn't there.

Re:Better comparisons

[KC7JHO]

NO ONE expects the ... Aww never mind.

Re:Better comparisons

[mattack2]

Credit vs. Cash -> depends, I vote Debit Card (best of both worlds)

I vote credit card + autopay at the end of every month -> cheaper (because of cash back(*)), faster, more convenient than cash, plus you get the legally required protections

(*) Yes, the store has to pay the credit card fees and they end up coming back to us.. but for each individual purchase, the price is generally the same for credit vs cash. (Stores can give "cash discounts", but even with gasoline, there is almost always a gas station that's lower counting the cash back vs paying cash.)

Re:Better comparisons

[Beardo the Bearded]

Credit vs. Cash -> depends, I vote Debit Card (best of both worlds)

Be careful -- I used to put everything on debit until my parents' info was stolen from a hancked PIN pad. I switched to credit, and the advantages are:

1. Reward points (1% cash back)
2. Deferral of all expenses by one month (extra interest in bank account)
3. Buffer between "real" money and "public" money. (like a throw-away email address)
4. Recovery of assets is faster. (Bank: "Maybe you took a flight to Georgia this afternoon." CC: "Oh, sorry, we'll reverse the charge and send you a new card.")

There is no downside IF you pay off the balance every month. Okay, you do have to carry around one extra card, but that's it.

Re:Better comparisons

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Crusades" is more appropriate when talking about the RIAA

Re:Better comparisons

[teh_commodore]

Tyrannical government versus... nevermind.

Re:Better comparisons

[Anonymous Coward]

We have the RIAA, they had religious persecution (I was going to say "The Spanish Inquisition", but you'd expect that)

I actually didn't expect the Spanish Inquisi-

Re:Better comparisons

[c6gunner]

Wikipedia vs. walking through a museum -> museum

Apples and oranges. Wikipedia has more information than is typically displayed in a museum, and can be accessed more easily. Museums have better accuracy and are more enjoyable. It's as if you're comparing your car to a 747, and concluding that the 747 is superior. Sure, for some things it is, but for going grocery shopping it's pretty much useless.

Microwave vs. home cooked meal -> home cooking (at least in my house)

That's a strange sort of false-dichotomy. You can make a "home cooked meal" with a microwave, or you can throw a can of soup-mix on a stove and a pack of store-bought fries in the oven. The kind of meal you end up with depends more on your own cooking skills than which tools you decide to utilize.

Credit vs. Cash -> depends, I vote Debit Card (best of both worlds)

Credit is superior by far. If I want to use my debit card, I have to pay for the privilege. If I use my credit card, they pay me every time I swipe it. The problem which people have with credit cards (ie. using more than they can pay back) isn't inherent in the cards - it's simply a lack of personal responsibility, or poor financial planning.

Re:Better comparisons

[quercus.aeternam]

I wouldn't expect the Spanish Inquisition even after I saw them.

Who expects to be tortured mercilessly and pointlessly?
I sure don't.

Who expects to sit in the comfy chair?
I sure don't (not at work, anyway).

Re:Better comparisons

[blackraven14250]

No one expects the musical inquisition!

Re:Better comparisons

[kaizokuace]

no one has mentioned this little comparison: Toilets vs. The Street.

Re:Better comparisons

[clintonmonk]

But no one expects the RIAA

Re:Better comparisons

[electrons_are_brave]

Digital cameras versus film.

Boy, people take too many photos these days. Back then it cost too much to develop them - photos were for special occasions, when you were dressed up and looking your best. And if Cousin Tommy pulled a face or Grandma blinked then we just beat them till they behaved better next time.

Re:Better comparisons

[shentino]

Don't excuse the sharks.

Here's proof of how sleazy the credit card industry is: Universal Default.

Let us suppose that, due to some asshat in the accounting department fucking up your numbers, you are reported to a credit bureau as missing a house payment.

Naturally, you give them an earful and get them to fix it.

Meanwhile, all your other creditors jump on that foul up on your credit report and jack up your rates.

Even if you chew the mortage go back into nixing that error, nobody else has to lower their rates back down.

Using a credit card is like walking a bridge dangling over a river of lava. One slip up and you are toast as they slam you with a shitload of fees. And that universal default bit is like someone accidentally shaking the bridge. Even after it's stopped swaying you've already been tossed over.

Re:Better comparisons

[honkycat]

Yeah. Despite all the promises of fraud protection, if something goes wrong, your bank account is empty until things get sorted out. I have the discipline to pay off my card every month. I'd much rather be temporarily cut off from my credit than my cash while a dispute is resolved.

Re:Better comparisons

[c6gunner]

Don't excuse the sharks.

Here's proof of how sleazy the credit card industry is: Universal Default.

What's sleazy about it? The terms are laid out in your contract. If you don't like it, don't get a credit card, or don't carry a balance. I don't think the word "sleazy" means what you think it means.

Let us suppose that ... you are reported to a credit bureau as missing a house payment ... all your other creditors jump on that foul up on your credit report and jack up your rates.

Well if we're supposing that, then we can also suppose that your CC company accidentally credits you with 20 million dollars, and all your other creditors automatically follow suit. Both scenarios seem equally likely.

Seriously, you're making up nightmare scenarios in an effort to discredit the entire industry. In reality, most creditors will give you plenty of leeway (ie, you'll have to default on payments for months before they do anything), and many won't exercise the universal default option at all. While I cannot say that the scenario you described would never happen, it's unlikely enough that only Ron Paul disciples would worry about it. I've got better odds of being killed by lightning.

Using a credit card is like walking a bridge dangling over a river of lava. One slip up and you are toast as they slam you with a shitload of fees.

In an average month I spend maybe $2,000 on my CC. Even at a high interest rate, the most they'll get out of me is maybe $40 before I realize what's going on. Maybe $80 if I'm really not paying attention. At that point I'll either get them to correct the error - in which case I lose nothing - or they'll refuse to correct it, I'll pay the $40, cancel my credit card, and find a more reasonable company.

I actually HAVE had a CC company make such a mistake with my account. I called them up, they looked over my credit rating and purchase history, and promptly came to the conclusion that they would like to retain my business. The error was corrected immediately, I received dozens of apologies, and it never impacted my credit rating or any of my other accounts. So no, using a credit card is nothing like "walking a bridge dangling over a river of lava", unless you're the kind of fool who lives paycheque-to-paycheque while keeping his credit-card maxed out. As long as you have enough money saved at any given time to be able to pay off your CC balance immediately, your risk is negligible.

Re:Better comparisons

[HBoar]

MP3s vs. 1 Man Bands

Given the choice between a crappy mp3 player and my own personal minstrel to follow me around, I know which one I'd pick.... Minstrels are splash proof (even water proof with the optional snorkel kit), shock resistant, voice controllable, and they can even update their own collections. Plus, it's still easier to find a dead squirrel than an AA battery in many parts of the world.

Re:Better comparisons

[Philip_the_physicist]

MP3s vs. 1 Man Bands

Twitter vs. Bathroom Walls

Science vs. Natural Philosophy

Fixed that for ya

Fixed that for ya

Although "less modern science" would fit the age of the other comparisons the GP made better.

Re:Better comparisons

[tabrnaker]

The question is not whether they're happy with the cameras for business purposes, after all most consumers are happy with the quality of any point and shoot camera. The question is are they happy with the cameras for artistic purposes.

I still find it annoying as hell that you can't capture RGB at each pixel (except for foveon) and so have to choose which kind of degradation/approximation of reality to use. I keep finding myself buying cameras and then returning them because they're just never up to what i'm expecting. Beats sniffing all those chemicals though and much easier to dodge and burn, though i have really fond memories of the dark room. Still, I'm more content with pencil and paper than most digital cameras for capturing a scene. Then again, i'm just like those grammar pedants.

Re:Better comparisons

[Max Littlemore]

The question is are they happy with the cameras for artistic purposes.

I still find it annoying as hell that you can't capture RGB at each pixel (except for foveon) and so have to choose which kind of degradation/approximation of reality to use.

Even with the foveon, your looking at the difference between shitty (sigma) vs quality glass (Nikon) mean that it makes no little difference whether you use a CFA or a foveon.

Also, RAW image formats store more information than RGB at each pixel. RGB at each pixel is a concept that doesn't actually make any sense in the context of photography - especially from an artistic perspective. For example, how many bits do you expect to describe the red channel, 8 as in standard 24 bit RGB colour space? How do you reconcile that with the massive variation possible in nature?

It makes no sense unless you can define the range that the red channel describes, for example a 0 red value means that the sensor picked up 0.003% of the light as it would looking at a (slightly off) white sheet of paper at mid day at a latitude of 25 degrees south. RAW image formats used in professional photography actually capture information about the way the camera was calibrated a generally much higher than the 8 bits per pixel you are used to looking at on screen.

In understanding this stuff it does help to appreciate that EVERY way of capturing images, including chemically, is an approximation, it helps to understand colour spaces and it helps to understand that the quality of glass is most often far more important than megapixels or whether the red green and blue sensors physically separated by a distance which is more than covered by errors in most glass.

Pro photographers I know love their digital stuff for the equivalent of 35mm work - those that are not afraid of or superstitious about computers anyway. I know a couple of photographers who have put digital backs in their old hasselblads.

Then again, I am one of those imaging technology pedants. :-P

Re:Better comparisons

[dario_moreno]

Precisely ! Glass makes the difference..and so, due to the preeminence of digital these days, quality optics incompatible with digital are dime a dozen on ebay. I now use a cheap bridge digital for random shooting, but for quality stuff I have bought dirt cheap professional gear in 35mm and 6x6 and make incredibly good pictures, (at least technically...); as good as a pro level DSLR at least. The prices of processing and digitizing film, and film in bulk, are also way down compared to the past, with archiving guaranteed to last a hundred years . So, thanks a lot, digital cameras !

Re:Better comparisons

[Anonymous Coward]

Although, the issue is not the resolution (and has not been for a long time) but the available dynamic range and level of noise at high signal amplification (simulated ISO). Note Canon's resolution reduction between the G10 and G11. I would rather the manufacturers concentrated on improving the dynamic range and reducing the noise of their sensors, unless you plan to print the size of a bus then super high resolution sensors like the one in the new Leica DSLR are unnecessary.

Re:Better comparisons

[Sandbags]

Pro camera, $2,000 price tag, sure... 8MP is fine for basic shots, 12MP is fine for high qaulity and close ups, things you might blow up bigger... The issue is the that only high SPEED low noise sensors are all in cameras I can't come close to affording.

8MP sensors compared, including the CPU doing image capture and recod behind it, there's no comparrison to film yet unless you can afford true pro qaulity stuff, or don;t do any high speed or low light motion shots.

Re:Better comparisons

[Sandbags]

cheaper only if it's interest free and no yearly fees...

Re:Better comparisons

[Sandbags]

1) i get reward points. About $100 return for every 40K run through the card, but since I run virtually every payemnt I make through it (including 2 mortgages), that adds up quick.

2) 1 month savings interest on the $2-3K you might roll through in routine spending defered 25 days is not enough to bother with.

3) can't argue that one

4) I've disputed numerous debit card charges (mostly double charging, but someone did get my card number at one point and make a few internet purchases). Money was back in my account in hours. Since the card has a max purchase per 24 hours with the exception of pre-approval for purchases rung up by my mortgage company (or my own call-in authorizations) it's pretty hard to cause my bank account damage, and any damage would be reversed same day anyway.

Re:Better comparisons

[Sandbags]

Max withdrawl from my account via debit transactions is $1,000. Only my mortgage company and car loan have exemptions to that, or anytime i call in and personally authorize excess charges.

I keep several grand in checking, and a few more in savings, so a 2-3 day issue if I didn't catch it myself in time (especially easier since I've actually had my bank call me to question transactions on the fly), is not a big deal. I have once had an issue where multiple holds against my account caused an issue, but a call to the 24/7 bank line solved it and they unlocked purchasing power based on my account history and a sim-ple explanation.

Re:Better comparisons

[Sandbags]

1: all the comparrisons in the article were apples/oranges...

2: depejnds on your definition of cooking. Lets defin this more as "classic home cooking" aka, from scratch... Again, fine print assumes a good cook!

3: WHAT!?! Debit card is FREE. Credit card incurs at leats a yearly fee, plus interest if you don'y pay during grace period in full. Also, my debit card pays me about $100 every 6-9 months since I get $100 in gift cards for every 40K in transactions i run through it (and since I include 2 mortgages, 3 car payments, my insurance deductible, and every bill i have, and all the purchases we make, that goes quick).

I have 4 credit cards, the only time i use them is for truly interest free, and as a backup in emergencies (extended unemployment, major repair, etc) The rewards points are insufficint to make the trouble of manual payment tracking worth it (since the grace period if 25 days, but only a fraction of transdactions show up on the bill during that period, so sending 2-3 checks to them each month is required to avoid finance charges completely).

Re:Better comparisons

[Sandbags]

1) universal default applies not to only if you're late on a payement to them, but if you're late on a payment to ANYONE ELSE, including completely unrelated companies, even including if that late payment showed up on your credit report in error due to a processing delay or computer glitch.

2) Credit us? unlikely. Errors on your credit report? 80% of americans will have at least 1 falsely reported itewms on their credit report in roughly a 3 year rolling term. Also, universal default can trigger simply for APPLYING for more credit from someone else... (like tryinfg to buy a new car).

3) credit card company have a misbilling, incorrectly calculate interest based on grace periods, add "protection services" to your account, change your interest rate, add an annual fee, yea, they do that... Ive had a few make the corrections. Others I have to cancel and leave, but that means getting another card to replace it. Do that just 2-3 times a year and you're knocking 60-100 points of your mean beacon score. That's gonna cost you hundreds on a car loan or thousands on a house next time you go to finance something. It is NOT worth the risk.

Besides, debit is free, and, for every $40K i run through the card (every 7 mopnths on my current pace), I get a $100 gift card to a store of my choice.

Walkig the bridge? you get a 25 day grace poriod on purchases. You buy something, 2 days later a bill posts and they conveniently leave that off. Post office send the bill low class mail so it takes a good week to get to you, you open it, pay it immediately, but you missed a few transactions that were not posted on that bill. Next month, bam, finance charges... They'll watch your bill schedule of automatic payments against the card, and rest you billing cycle so the largest single 2 business day loop lands on the cycle closing dates, and they'll get tyhat interest every month unless you manually go online and make multiple payements every month (if they offer such a system, only 2 of my 4 cards do).

Re:Better comparisons

[c6gunner]

1) universal default applies not to only if you're late on a payement to them, but if you're late on a payment to ANYONE ELSE, including completely unrelated companies, even including if that late payment showed up on your credit report in error due to a processing delay or computer glitch.

Yes, I know, I'm just not sure what your point is.

2) Credit us? unlikely. Errors on your credit report? 80% of americans will have at least 1 falsely reported itewms on their credit report

Yet 80% of Americans don't get hit with the universal default clause so, once again, what's your point?

3) credit card company have a misbilling, incorrectly calculate interest based on grace periods, add "protection services" to your account, change your interest rate, add an annual fee, yea, they do that... Ive had a few make the corrections. Others I have to cancel and leave, but that means getting another card to replace it. Do that just 2-3 times a year and you're knocking 60-100 points of your mean beacon score. That's gonna cost you hundreds on a car loan or thousands on a house next time you go to finance something. It is NOT worth the risk.

So what you're saying is ... never use credit ... because it might impact your credit rating?

Huh???

Besides, debit is free, and, for every $40K i run through the card (every 7 mopnths on my current pace), I get a $100 gift card to a store of my choice.

For me debit isn't free, but credit is, and every time I use $10,000 I get $100 cash, so I think I have you beat by about 400%.

Now, are you going to present an actual argument to show why credit is bad, or are you just going to continue spraying out FUD in every direction?

Re:Better comparisons

[dario_moreno]

Well, for noise, you need to nitrogen cool your sensor...or use a DSLR, because the sensor is not heated and permanently subjected to photons like in a point & shoot or bridge. I am however quite satisfied by digital cameras for night shooting or high ISO pictures, with film grain or lack of reciprocity can make those situations tricky. However the main selling point of film for me is dynamic range as you point out : the nonlinearity of the response makes it possible to better resolve high contrast situations than digital ; for instance, a bright face in a dark room with natural lighting seems to always give me "hot" pixels and pizza effects on the cheeks in digital, as shown on the histogram with some bunching at 255, requiring manual adjustment, bracketing, ugly HDR postprocessing, whatever, when film adapts to this situation automatically. The wedding picture with black and white clothes side to side still necessitates some manual adjustment in postprocessing, but still...

Re:Better comparisons

[jp10558]

Most credit card offers I've seen (in the USA) don't have yearly fees. Yes, if you don't pay your bill every month, you do pay interest, but if you overdraft your checking account (debit card), you often pay a big fee ($30-$40 dollars at the few banks I've checked out) vs some interest on a credit card...

Re:Better comparisons

[Sandbags]

1) anytime someone else's billing issues can effect my payents to a completely different company, we have a problem, espeically when there's not an agency to complain to and with it being a god awful nightmare to get adjusted and back credited later when the mistake is admitted by the other firm, and 2 months later the correction FINALLY shows on your credit report.

2) tens of thousands of americans are getting hit with this. It;s not 80% yet, but it's a new phenomenon in credit companies. it's effecting some 20% now and 2 years ago it was about 1%. If it;s not regulated, it will get out of hand, especially with automatic bill payments that don't automatically adjust to interest changes (or worse, auto-CANCEL the payment if there's a mismatch), leading to yet more interest and late fees that are legitimate and not mistakes, and they the trigger other creditors. i had a friend who lost 200 beacon points in 3 monhts time because he applied for a first home. The application hit his score to offset 2 cards into default status, and the late (underpayment) on those triggered 3 others. He'd not missed a payment in 9 years since he had an automatic payment set up from his bank to the credit card co, but an APPLICATION for a loan prevented him for closing on the house due to default credit status and underpayments and late fees hitting his credit report. He got it worked out, but he missed his closing date by 2 months, and it cost him about $3000 in penalties to do so.

3) using credit doesn't impact your rating, not wathcin git 24x7 with their current policies very well might. It should not be this hard to avoid overages and increased interest when you actually do pay on time every month. And yes, APPLYING for credit cards DOES hurt your credit. BAD if its for revolving accounts. frequently leaving a bad bank to join another one is BAD FOR YOUR CREDIT. Not leaving is BAD FOR YOUR WALLET.

4) And what do you pay for your debit card??? Every one I've ever had has been free. Also, since your credit card likely has a few thousand dollar cap, I doubt you're getting your $100 as often as me, and bet if you reconciled your accoutn back 12 months, i can almost guarantee youi paid finance charges on at least some transactions. Also, my debit card doubles all waranties for free (up to an additional year), and gives me a ton of services and credit protections in addition to the $150-200 I get anually by using it.

Credit isn't BAD, it's just not as good as debit. It takes careful monitoring, and can bite you HARD for not using it properly.

My mother, in contrast, is a credit card master. They have about 14 credit cards, none with any annual fees. They use 1 to buy everything, then use the other 13 to pay each other one off. Each weeknight she has a routine of running through each card and pays another one. They earn a few grand a year in bonuses, and have more free hotel nights and air mileage than they could use in several years. Of course, we argue this consumes about 4 hours a week of her time, and if she just worked that extra 4 hours at her job (which pays overtime without limits), the benefits doing that would be much higher...

Age is the way to go

[Monkeedude1212]

I still play Age of Empires 2, so that I know if I mystically get teleported back to medeival ages, I will be the best General the world has ever scene.

Now, how do I make real life town centers 'build' villagers?

Re:Age is the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

Alcohol.

Re:Age is the way to go

[sopssa]

Needle and a condom section in store.

Re:Age is the way to go

[rainmaestro]

Do the cheats work in real life? With my army of archers disguised as trees and a few cow launchers, I could rule the world!

Re:No... WoW vs pretend warfair with sticks for gu

[idontgno]

Sorry. We geeks playing World of Warcraft would not be engaged in killing each other if not for the game.

True. I wonder how many closet murderers indulge their taste for mayhem in a virtual world but avoid it IRL simply because it's permitted in one place and punished in the other. Or, to put it more plainly, how many would do it IRL if they were guaranteed they could get away with it.

"I once stabbed a man to watch him die. And also for 8 honor points."

You don't have to go that far back...

[webmistressrachel]

Here are some more recent tech most of you have spurned for all the wrong reasons but which I'll never give up and you can pry from my cold dead hands (but you won't want to!!)

We have: Washed out LCD monitors, rubbish refresh rates, pale colours, all reds are orange.
I Have: My 21" newsroom Trinitrons, three of, for a combined resolution of 4800x1200 at 85Hz. Perfect colours, wide viewing angles, annoying bezels. Windows 7 really likes them...

We have: Computer speakers, tiny badly-designed amplifiers, built-in speakers on TV's, plastic "hifi" speakers with metal cones, etc. Plenty of bass, fair enough, but just whisper "dynamic range" and "signal-to-noise ratio" to these people and you might just cause a flamewar.
I Have: Wharfedale Modus Twos and a Rotel RSX-03 amplifier with 6 discrete channels (RSX-03), FLAC, Cds. And yes, decent speaker wire (4mm) I found! I'm not a hifi snob, but I know mine sounds better and with wise buying cost less!

Not all progress is good, only good progress :-)

Re:You don't have to go that far back...

[mikael_j]

Washed out LCD monitors, rubbish refresh rates, pale colours, all reds are orange.

Solution: stop buying "XTRA SPECIAL SALE NOW ONLY $50" monitors and get good ones instead.

Computer speakers, tiny badly-designed amplifiers, built-in speakers on TV's, plastic "hifi" speakers with metal cones, etc. Plenty of bass, fair enough, but just whisper "dynamic range" and "signal-to-noise ratio" to these people and you might just cause a flamewar.

Solution: buy a decent amp and speakers, can be had for a couple of hundred bucks.

Both your examples are examples of people buying crap because they either fell for the advertising or just don't know there is anything better out there.

/Mikael

Re:You don't have to go that far back...

[webmistressrachel]

Actually, they're not. In the case of the monitors, it's an established fact that CRT viewing angles, especially Trinitrons, are better than any flat tech we have today. Also, the orange pigment issue is also a real one, solved only by OLEDs, and you know have much they cost. As for the second example, any hifi snob from the 90s is going to agree all day that the posh rig posted will sound better than a "couple of hundred bucks" setup. I've listened to, set up, and performed through lots of different equipment using different recording formats all my life. You can't buy a hifi anymore that sounds as rich and perfect as those speakers - that was the whole point of the post, and comparing them to modern crap without even doing some research on the subject shows your ignorance. Modern speakers, even from Wharfedale (now a "big box" co, as you call it over the pond), suck, as you say in the Good ol' US of A!

Re:You don't have to go that far back...

[webmistressrachel]

This is both a correction to the above and a reply to Mikael (a troll if ever I saw one!)

You do know those Wharfedales are frigging OLD, right? Your false and misleading comparison, modded up with karma bonus you don't deserve is still nagging at me! Coupla hundred bucks indeed! You're the first person to go on my Foes list, right now! Check if you don't believe me! I wasted a whole post telling you that and preventing other readers of my original post from taking your advice.

In fact, do please take his advice and send all your Trinitrons, old Wharfedale / Tannoy / etc. speakers to me. Then I'll open a hifi shop with a listening room and blackjack and hookers... oh dear now I'm -1 Offtopic ;-P

Re:You don't have to go that far back...

[Xiterion]

Actually, they're not. In the case of the monitors, it's an established fact that CRT viewing angles, especially Trinitrons, are better than any flat tech we have today.

Despite their disadvantages, plasma displays are current flat tech, and they match flat screen CRTs, but without the phenomenal pain in the ass that is adjusting a flat screen CRT well.

Re:You don't have to go that far back...

[webmistressrachel]

Yes, but will they last decades? One of the reasons CRTs are so difficult to set up is that, like any other electronics, their internals can "drift" over extended periods of time.

Manufacturers, thinking of the long term back when they designed these things, implemented those various "pains in the arse" so people like me who know a good thing when we see it can re-adjust the drifting resisters and capacitors over time and keep our equipment in good condition, showing quality images to clients and guests on the same screen for a decade. It's called "maintaining" something, and it used to be cheaper than throwing everything away every couple of years.

Now it's cheaper to do that, resources are dwindling away faster than ever, and it's all the fault of those who can't maintain anything, calling it "a pain in the arse". Comparisons - repairing decent old clothes made from cotton or buying from Asda. Cooking fresh. Farmhouse techniques like making shoepolish from mutton. Maintaining your own vehicle. And on. And on.

Flamey - Yes. Correct - Yes. Insightful - maybe not so. This should be obvious ;-P

Re:You don't have to go that far back...

[Beardo the Bearded]

I fully agree with you. I've had real problems with LCD TVs -- the ghosting drives me up the wall.

"So this is the most advanced LCD TV you have in the store?"

"Yes."

"You can't see that flickering?"

"Well, let's watch an HD feed... how's that?"

"You can't see that either?"

"It's refreshing at 600Hz; you can't possibly see it."

"Well, I know what I'm seeing. You can't see this, here (pointing) flickering and ghosting?"

"It's very subtle."

Needless to say, I have a tube TV and a CRT at home. Work has supplied 2 LCD monitors, so I'm stuck with those. I'm the kind of guy who can see the flickering on Plasma TVs (it looks like stop-motion) or line voltage LEDs.

For audio, you can try a nifty trick:

***WARNING: DO NOT DO THIS.***
Take your cheapo amp apart and replace a few critical components. Those critical components are the capacitor on the power supply, the various solid-state amplifiers, and the potentiometer for the volume control.

Usually they'll use a handful of LM741 amps, which are cheap and ubiquituous. If you instead use a series of pin-compatible 5534s, you get way better sound out of the system. (A 5534 has 4nV / (Hz)^(1/2) ). A quick poke with a soldering station and you've got better performance. (You're not actually doing this, are you?)

You can just open up the case, replace parts of the guts, and you get better stuff. Amplifier design is established; the difference in quality is part selection. (And trace position, but that's a different story.)

You can get $1500 performance out of a $20 amp if you use the good components. The good components are more expensive, so they don't put them in. If you've got the skills and tools, it's a trivial afternoon project. (You can do this with just about any cheap electronics device.)

I use 14 AWG shielded flexible wire for speaker wire. It's cheaper than "speaker wire" and works much better. If you do get into shielding, remember that ***you must only shield one end***.

Re:You don't have to go that far back...

[Xiterion]

The newer ones should. It seems manufacturers responded favorably to some of the initial pains of burnt in plasma displays. Current displays should have a time to half brightness of approximately 100,000 hours. Granted, that number is taken from a guide to buying plasma TVs, so a bit of bias in the long lived direction is to be expected. Even so, the lifespan is such that the display element will likely not be the limiting factor.

As for flat screen CRT adjustment taking some time, I think it has less to do with manufacturers allowing end users to maintain their product than it does with the complexity of translating from polar coordinates to Cartesian. Getting a square image out of a beam that is modulated by angle is a bit tricky. A plasma display would not suffer from this, since like LCDs they control each display element separately.

In any event - my purpose was not to flame you, but to scratch one of my pet peeves, which is people making statements of fact that aren't. For use as a computer monitor - I think you're right. LCDs for computers don't improve in every way over state of the art CRT. However, LCD tech brings with it its own advantages, not the least of which is decreased desktop footprint, long life (60,000 hours+), ease of use, and lower power consumption.

Okay, I'm done. I'll get off your lawn now.

Re:You don't have to go that far back...

[c6gunner]

Actually, they're not. In the case of the monitors, it's an established fact that CRT viewing angles, especially Trinitrons, are better than any flat tech we have today.

Sure. And? You're using 3 CRT's as your computer desktop, ergo you're wasting the viewing-angle advantage anyway. For your chosen usage, they make no difference whatsoever. For all other purposes, just position your damn TV so that you're not trying to watch it from the side. The viewing-angle complaint just sounds like pointless whining.

Also, the orange pigment issue is also a real one, solved only by OLEDs, and you know have much they cost.

Most (99%+) people simply don't care. When the Spartans in my livingroom start decapitating their enemies in 1080p, the blood sure looks red to me, and I don't give a damn if your specialized pigment tester says that my reds are actually orange. If I have to squint to tell the difference, then it's not worth worrying about. Meanwhile my LCD uses less power, takes up less space, and I can take it with me if I need a portable display. Last week I walked out of the house carrying 2 x 28" monitors, one under each arm. Try that with a CRT! That portability means a hell of a lot more to me than some imperceptible difference in pixel colours.

As for the second example, any hifi snob from the 90s is going to agree ...

Yeah, snobs are always a pain, no matter what they're talking about. You should watch the Penn and Teller episode on bottled water.

Re:You don't have to go that far back...

[webmistressrachel]

1st point: You dont know where my displays are, or who watches them, either. FYI they are on a bench along the side of a workshop and studio, and on many occasions staff will watch from the entrance, because they're welcome to watch from there but entering whilst I'm busy without a good reason or something to contribute will earn them a yelling at. So 1st point invalidated - wide viewing angle is great for my purposes. As for the second point about colours in Sparta, your lack of taste should not prevent those who do have a discerning eye objectively recommending x screen for y feature. And about snobs, agreed, except that we all know I meant blind listening test, hi-fi magazine type snobs, not rich ones. So there you have it, I'm de-trolled again! Next!

Re:You don't have to go that far back...

[c6gunner]

Ah. So you're a stuck-up snob who gets a joy out of abusing her staff. Nice. Sorry for disturbing ya, ma'am, I didn't mean to interrupt your masturbatory orgy of self-congratulation.

Re:You don't have to go that far back...

[webmistressrachel]

Why is it that you are choosing to misinterpret my figures of speech in order to entice me to flame you? Any right-minded creative professional doesn't want everybody leaning over their shoulder commenting whilst they're concentrating, and I made it quite clear that contributions and ideas are welcome in order to head off comments like yours before thay're posted.

My entire business and even the workbench you see described above exists because I have planned it from the GROUND UP to participation and creativity and retain staff and volunteers (yes, volunteers!) at a much better rate than other businesses.

Also, how is the phrase "yelling at", not meant literally, any different from the American equivalent "chewing out"? In fact, it's more grotesque and implies more abuse than a "yelling at". Get a job.

I know, I know, flamebait. But he deserves a retort for framing me as the "evil boss".

Re:You don't have to go that far back...

[ShooterNeo]

I've used high end trinitrons. The flicker is awful, ESPECIALLY at 85 hertz. I can see it clear as day, especially if I had 3 space hogging power vampires on my desk like you do. Furthermore, the pixels are smudged on a CRT, especially at high resolutions.

I've got dual Dell 2707 WFPs. That's a high end LCD with an expanded color gamut. They are 27", with 1920x1080 resolution each, which means the individual pixels are pretty large, so text is readable at all font sizes. They are overwhelmingly superior to any CRT I've ever used. Absolutely no flicker. (yes, yes, the best of the best displays are 30" and 2560x1600 resolution, but mine cost half as much)

As for "orange pigment issues"...I used a color calibrator to fine tune my displays to eliminate any issues like that. The viewing angle is wide enough that I've never even noticed the limitations. (granted, at extreme angles its a little bit dimmer but still perfectly readable)

Yes, I agree, OLEDs are the next step up from this, and I'll be upgrading just as soon as they become reasonably priced. (probably 3-5 years from now)

My biggest criticism of your setup, besides the heat emanating off your displays has got to be the flicker. Especially if you've got 3 of them : your eye is much more sensitive to flicker out of the corner of your eye, because the rods in your retina are more sensitive to fast motion. I would often get headaches if I used a flickery display for too long.

Re:You don't have to go that far back...

[webmistressrachel]

I am tired of this being an argument - I like them, my clients and coworkers like them, and with natural lighting can't see, and am not bothered by, flickering (or blurred pixels, either, since 1600 x 1200 is the grille resolution on all three). It's apples and oranges, I wish people could just accept that. I am only responding so flamily (sic) because of the idiot who misinterpreted my entire post and accused me of not bothering to look at the range of modern flat panels available. The one with the BARGAIN BASEMENT caps. Mikael, I believe his name was. He's now my only foe (and probably my only freak, but ./ still says nobody dares :-P)

Re:You don't have to go that far back...

[ShooterNeo]

Lol, pot calling kettle. You're telling us we're too blind to notice the orange pigments and poor black levels of our LCDs...we're telling you that we can't stand the strobe light flashing of your old school CRTs...

To each his own, I guess. Hard to imagine how you fit 3 CRTs on your desk though. And that square aspect ratio must be really annoying if you want to watch any videos.

Re:You don't have to go that far back...

[webmistressrachel]

LOL after all that, you are right, and that's what my GGGP post said, I prefer these, I doubt you'll want them. I've bitten allsorts of random trolls and so on defending my setup today, which I enjoy doing, but very true, each his own. If you are curious and follow the thread, you'll find I use them on a bench, which in this case is constructed from 6"x2" pine and 8"x2" for the benchtop, made in-house from recycled wood. It is not a desk, it is the side bench of a studio and workshop. We have several similar rooms, this one is mine :) If you read some of the replies, you'll find someone accusing me of using them to inflict evil on my somewhat loyal and devoted staff and volunteers and my ranting rebuttal which may provide you with some amusement. Thanks for the only sensible replies. Ps, as one last trolly point, I don't mention black levels, you do though. :P

Re:You don't have to go that far back...

[Al Dimond]

CRT monitors beat the crap out of LCDs in similar price ranges in just about every aspect of picture and video quality, it's true. But LCDs are light and small; that's a lot more important to me. I used to have a 19" CRT. It was a beast. Took up way too much desk space, and space in the car every time I had to move it. I finally decided to get rid of it when moving away from California and none of my friends would take it for free. My current (rather old, obtained for free) 19" LCD has a tiny footprint.

The one thing I can't stand is widescreen monitors. Less visible area for bigger desk footprint. Stupid dimensions for doing anything but watching movies (but why would you watch movies on a crappy LCD computer monitor?).

Re:You don't have to go that far back...

[ShooterNeo]

Here's something I bet we can both agree on. Don't you hate the takeover of cellphones for everything, even calls made from locations where a landline would work? I hate the static, the poor frequency response, and the frequent malfunctions with cell phones with a passion. Whenever I possibly can, I make a call with a landline. On that note, I recall how a Nokia phone I had in 2002 on a CDMA network was vastly superior in any respect to my current 3G AT&T phone. I picked the very phone I'm using because online reviews concurred that it had good voice quality, and it was cheap.

My other pet peeve is how people love laptops to the point that most people my age don't even have a desktop! How can they not notice the slow CPUs and hard disks and flakey wireless internet compared to a desktop for the same price or less? My 3 year old desktop which had a mere $1300 in parts is still much faster than people's $2000 laptops!

Re:You don't have to go that far back...

[webmistressrachel]

OMG half of those rants above are fuelled by the anger caused by my 3G phone auto-disconnecting whether I SET IT TO OR NOT! I agree... and Facebook etc is SO much better than email, except when it doesn't work and then all the questions come to me...

I'm posting on a laptop but I once said I'd never get one for the reasons you gave (price,chipset, CPU, graphics)!

However, we can agree that this machine IS an exception to the rule ... it's a HP TX2530ea tablet which puts my old Nvidia GeForce 7600GT to shame in Fallout 3 and Oblivion with it's "boo..." integrated Radeon 3200 HD... but in general I hate laptop chipsets for the reasons you gave and their unmaintainability.

Also, what gives with new graphics cards without VGA connectors? I'll be damned if I'll throw out dozens of monitors and half a dozen DECENT projectors just to satisfy the RIAA wanting everything digital (read locked!). Have to re-connect to post now, and no I won't waste bandwidth on an auto-refreshing page in the background!

Re:You don't have to go that far back...

[tabrnaker]

cause we all use our lcd's at an angle... Anyways, while i love the colour rendition of crt's (and the ability to use dreamcast lightguns...) i rather use an lcd than expose myself to the seizure producing refresh rates of a crt. ymmv.

Re:You don't have to go that far back...

[tabrnaker]

random ghosting and backlight flicker bothers you but not the persistant, umm, what's that word that means opposite of random, refresh rate of crt's doesn't? Funny, i'm the exact opposite.

Re:You don't have to go that far back...

[ShooterNeo]

Well, what I mean is that for any given price point, a desktop is going to offer you a lot more power for your money. Laptops with a real graphics chip in them CAN play games...but those two games you mentioned are not particularly demanding, and run fine maxxed out on my old gfx card (8800GT) at 1920x1200.

Yes, there's portability : you need both. I have a low specced laptop (1.3 ghz DC, 2 gigs ram) that I have for situations where I need it, and I use my full desktop with it's dual 27" screens for everything else. You likely make more money than me, and can afford to have high specs in both, it seems.

DVI doesn't necessarily mean content protection, you know, and there actually are encoder cards that can compress a full digital stream from an HDMI port or DVI port back into compressed video again. (though such cards are several thousand dollars). Anyways, nearly everyone is using DVI for it all : you realize that most projectors are actually digital inside, even the old ones with only VGA inputs. DVI is far superior to VGA in every respect because there's no noise or sync issues. Every last pixel on the display is going to know what color it needs to be at a reliable 60 or 120fps. You just like VGA because you have good quality equipment you don't want to replace that needs it.

Truth be told, I suspect that those 30" LCD displays with the best available panel technology and the 32 bit color are probably superior to your CRTs in all respects. Those puppies are several grand each, however. And as you've said yourself, OLED will be the best of all worlds, with no drawbacks except for the problems they have having with the blue pixels dying. (OLED will have high contrast, high refresh rate, low power usage, cheap, thin, pretty much everything you'd want in a display)

Re:You don't have to go that far back...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh god another tube amp fetishist... I bet you can hear the frequency components of music that human ears cannot, the difference between a 120 and 125 Hz refresh rate, use speaker cables shielded with more metal than the armoured belt of a battleship...

Re:You don't have to go that far back...

[webmistressrachel]

Actually, if you do some research (for which I provided a manufacturer and model number) you'll find it's not a tube amp. It's a Class A MOSFET amp with 6 discrete channels (which means each channel gets its own transistor and heatsinkage), with digital and analogue inputs.

The discrete channels are the alternative to your crappy single-transistor, multiplexed amp. Please look up these terms and try to go in a real hifi shop for a listen (it's free) before you dismiss me as a fetishist. Although I must admit, now it's been brought to my attention, that there's a hint of eros in your description of my speaker cables ... thanks! ;-P

Re:You don't have to go that far back...

[Beardo the Bearded]

At 60Hz, yes, it's an eyesore. If the refresh rate is high enough, then no. I suspect it's to do with the residual glow of the screen after the electron gun has passed.

2fer - Zombies that run vs zombies that shuffle

[KharmaWidow]

Endless useless meetings and reports vs forging and basic survival

One Thing I Miss

[BJ_Covert_Action]

I miss the days before cell phones. Don't get me wrong, cell phones are convenient and allow me to stalk any number of girls that I like, but still..

I remember before cell phones became mainstream, if you wanted to spend time with your friends, you had to tell them where to meet you and when and they had to be there or else you just wouldn't catch up. It didn't matter if you had anything planned or not. There was much less of the, "Well, I might come out, what did you have in mind?" cruft. During lunch at school you would say, "Meet at the pool around 4:00 and we'll figure something out." Then, the evening was yours for adventure or mischief or what have you. Not always having a plan was half the fun. It meant you would all get together and just start talking or walking or going somewhere seeking something to do until someone had a brilliant...or at least intriguing...idea.

I remember how, for the weekend, you and all your friends would be sure to meet Friday night somewhere then spend the whole weekend sleeping on each others' floors and couches because if anyone skipped out you wouldn't be able to find them for the rest of the weekend. I remember girls writing their numbers on my hand in pink gel ink and walking around, intentionally holding my hand turned just out slightly so as to subversively brag about my score. I remember setting up dates and saying, "I'll pick you up at..." and not having the crutch of cell phones to be able to work out the details when the time came.

Yep part of me misses those days. I am only 23 and I feel old writing about that kind of thing....the worst part is I don't even have a lawn yet....

Re:One Thing I Miss

[Anonymous Coward]

When you do get a lawn, I for one will be proud to get off it. /salute

Re:One Thing I Miss

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I had modpoints, because this is, by far, the most deserving post of a +5 I have ever read.

Re:One Thing I Miss

[Neil Hodges]

I always feel more assured when things are set up in advance, or at least some sort of planning met-up is set up beforehand. Waiting 'til the last minute seems like asking for trouble, especially if the others don't pick up their cell phones.

Re:One Thing I Miss

[jez9999]

You, sir, have had a VERY different childhood to me. :-)

Re:One Thing I Miss

[Bazer]

Yep part of me misses those days. I am only 23 and I feel old writing about that kind of thing....the worst part is I don't even have a lawn yet....

No worries, you can get off mine.

Re:One Thing I Miss

[onepoint]

I'm about twice your age, and we had a hang-out spots for night time, one for day time ( arcade ), and out favorite fishing holes for Saturday morning. if you got lost from one spot to another, call your night quits or try to find us.

you could get blasted drunk ( 18 was the drinking age back then ) and get home safely in a cab and still make it to go fishing at 6am.

when you made plans, you stuck to them, "pick you up at 8" meant you are ready at 8pm. however when you are picking up a girl, 8pm is when you got there, she made you wait.

got a girls number from your going out the night before, answer the phone or hope that the answer machine is working, otherwise you missed the call ( or worst your mom got the phone )

some funny moments.

Re:One Thing I Miss

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait wait wait...you're 23?

You must be well behind the cell phone curve if you were hitting on girls and getting phone numbers without a cell phone. Most people I knew got a cell phone around 1999 or so, when you were 12. Let's say you start majorly hitting on girls when you're 14/15, which would be like 2002. And even then you didn't have a cell phone.

When did you actually get one?

Re:One Thing I Miss

[IrquiM]

Dude - did you live under a rock or something?

We chatted up girls on the internet and texted friends before you had a double digit age! Scoring a phone number when you're 9 might be cool, but you don't know what to do with it.

Re:One Thing I Miss

[Anonymous Coward]

I chatted up girls on the internet in... 1983. Before he was born.

Re:One Thing I Miss

[hey!]

During lunch at school you would say "Meet at the pool around 4:00 and we'll figure something out."

OK, speaking as an old-timer of 48, I have to second this. That was how we did did "meet-ups" back in the day. Of course, it was "the cracker barrel at the general store", not "the pool". And what we usually settled on doing was some variation of rolling the an old barrel hoop down the dirt road with a stick. But that was mainly to take our minds of the folksy banjo music that accompanied us wherever we went.

Still, we were happy although we didn't have much. Folks weren't so jaded back then. People had solid *values*, like patriotism, racism and exflunctication.

Re:One Thing I Miss

[BJ_Covert_Action]

I got my first cell phone when I was 17 so, 6ish years ago. So, I got my first cell phone around 2003. That wasn't even 'my' cell phone. It was technically just a crappy Nokia phone my Sis and I shared so we could check in with our parents when we out...if we felt so inclined. I din't really get my own phone and address book and such until my first year of college during the summer of '04. Incidentally that was also when I got my first major girlfriend....go figure.

Re:One Thing I Miss

[BJ_Covert_Action]

I grew up in a California foothill town with a total population of 5,000. There was one high school for the whole county and even today most of the county doesn't have access to anything better than dial up. I know for a fact we were behind the times, but I kinda enjoyed that. Sure, I wasn't texting when I was 9 years old, but I was wandering through the Cedar forests with a knife in my boot and rifle in my hand shooting at birds just for the shits of it. By 14 my friends and I had built ourselves a halfpipe for skateboarding and biking on. By 16 we had all been driving our dad's 4 WD pickups for 2 - 3 years. We paintballed in the woods every weekend. We went fishing every couple weeks or so. We went swimming when it was warm. We started snowboarding at 8 years old and were doing 360's and 720's before we got out of our parent's houses. That's why the meeting up thing was so important. If you missed catching up with your friends on the weekend, you would be shit out of luck on stuff to do for a few days.

So yeah, sure, I guess I grew up under a rock, but there were some really cool things to do under that rock...far cooler than texting each other back and forth for hours saying, "I don't know what to do," "Me neither," "LOL this sucks," "LOL yeah," "=P," "fag lol." ..... and so on ad infinitum.

Re:One Thing I Miss

[sjames]

Not to mention the days when being face to face with people meant talking to them rather than watching them take an endless series of phone calls for "just a second" each.

The people who do that are inevitably befuddled as to why I walked away to do something more useful/interesting (once they notice that is).

Re:One Thing I Miss

[maxwell demon]

Well, there's a hint: All cell phones I know have in common a very useful functionality: You can turn them off.

Re:One Thing I Miss

[Island Admin]

I agree ... I am a complete dinosaur(31). I sometimes feel that tech has distanced us from our communities(not the online version). When last did you take the time to go round to your neighbour and have a drink, or invite them round. And being contactable always ... well that just sucks. My cellphone, only gets charged now, when I really need it ... Now if I could only break my /. and stumble addictions, I might actually get a life :)

Re:One Thing I Miss

[treeves]

When a comment that ends with the word 'exflunctication' gets modded insightful, you know you are on /.

Re:One Thing I Miss

[DrCode]

Hey, I'm an old fart (in my 50s!), and I get together with friends all the time using Facebook and text-messaging. Before these were available, I didn't have any friends.:-)

Re:One Thing I Miss

[couchslug]

I'm fifty and, with all due respect, fuck nostalgia for landline phones (although their handpiece ergonomics and audio are excellent).

They were an information bottleneck, source of intel for some parents (not mine, fortunately for me), and didn't facilitate rapid communication within groups. I would have been delighted to have a cell phone (and computer of course) back in the ancient days of the 1970s.

Modern communication tech works fine for getting together. Now all the old fuckers I hang with email each other to plan biker runs, then have our cellphones with us for convenient commo. If you aren't having big fun with modern technology, you're doing it wrong.

Re:One Thing I Miss

[VisceralLogic]

... And what we usually settled on doing was some variation of rolling the an old barrel hoop down the dirt road with a stick...

You guys had sticks?! Why, when I was a lad, we had to roll barrel hoops down dirt roads with our hands!

Re:One Thing I Miss

[electrons_are_brave]

We had Walkmans rather than ipods. My clique didn't refer to them as Walkmans because that was sexist language. No I am not joking. The music was all pirated, though, so that hasn't changed at least.

Re:One Thing I Miss

[Follis]

I've not encountered that word before, and searches at m-w.com and dictionary.com are coming up dry. Hence, what's it mean?

Re:One Thing I Miss

[an unsound mind]

I got my first cell five years before you got yours - and it was my own cell, I had a shared phone with my siblings way before.

And I'm your age.

You really lived in the sticks didn't you?

Re:One Thing I Miss

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep part of me misses those days. I am only 23 and I feel old writing about that kind of thing....the worst part is I don't even have a lawn yet....

You bring up a lot of good points! Thanks for the memory of me reflecting on my own youth, experiencing much of what you described.

I'm 41, also feel old at times, and I do have a lawn (which is a pain to keep up with sometimes).

Re:One Thing I Miss

[BJ_Covert_Action]

/shrug

There really wasn't a need for us all to have cell phones so we could be connected all the time. My parents trusted mys Sister and I. All of us friends knew we would see each other at school every day. So, who needed to text and call all the time? Really there was no need for it...It was just another thing to spend money on.

Re:One Thing I Miss

[rockiams]

You searched somewhere other than Google?

Re:One Thing I Miss

[tehcyder]

cell phones are convenient and allow me to stalk any number of girls that I like

mod parent +5 "I really hope he's being funny".

Re:One Thing I Miss

[jp10558]

+1. Seriously, just because you have a cell phone doesn't mean you have to answer it... Some people I really feel like asking them if they've ever heard of vibrate/silent setting on their phone. Hell, some people the only way to actually talk to them is to call them.

Re:One Thing I Miss

[hey!]

19th century America was extremely active at coining latin-y neologisms like "absquatulate".

Exfluncticate means (if I recall correctly) to destroy something by taking it apart into little pieces. Quite a useful word, it's a wonder it didn't catch on.

Re:One Thing I Miss

[Anonymous Coward]

For the record, I don't own a cell phone. That said... It's not always so bad to be distanced from your local community. I, for one, live next to 3 neighbors that still live in the 50s, one household of highly urban quasi-teens (The sort that comes home around midnight in a large, yellow SUV with rotating hubcaps, blaring rap music as loud as a rock concert, and shouting profanities all the way inside the door), and one neighbor who fervently believes that open source software is illegal. /sarcasm In all seriousness, at least where I'm at (A small suburb of Seattle), there's not much of a community to be connected with to begin with. Lots of people, sure, but not many that I'd want to spend an afternoon with. In that environment, ubiquitous, global communication is certainly more interesting than walking next door for a cup of sugar. I'm hopeful that the situation is better elsewhe(re|n).

Probably 1940s peak of USA

[tjstork]

You could make the argument that for many people the 1940s-1950s was the present local peak of the USA. Since that time, due to resource exhaustion, increasing population and foolish trade deals, the standard of living has dropped in relative terms, the opportunities are not what they were, there's more aggravation, less optimism. The writing is worse, reporting is worse, the arts are terrible and people actually build less and make less. We're just shoved into boxes with sex and drugs but can't really ever get out of it, lest we bump into someone else's box. Yeah, if you weren't white, it sucked, but I'd bet we'd reach a point where due to declining wealth, where even the disenfranchised black guy in the 1940s had more real wealth than a near future free black guy of today. Certainly this is true in Detroit...

Re:Probably 1940s peak of USA

[Sponge Bath]

We're just shoved into boxes with sex and drugs...

Wait... what? I was with you until this part.

Re:Probably 1940s peak of USA

[N!k0N]

Pullman Porters -- granted this was probably more the 20s-40s (due to the decline of passenger rail service). but these guys had better pay than any other African American job available at the time -- also a lot of white* menial jobs

*note that _every_ Pullman Porter was African American.

Re:Probably 1940s peak of USA

[maxume]

When men were men and women cooked dinner!

Re:Probably 1940s peak of USA

[Jason1729]

Weren't they also all named George?

Re:Probably 1940s peak of USA

[Anonymous Coward]

I severely disagree. My grandfather tells stories about him and my grandmother when they were younger in the late 50's early 60's and things seem way easier now. They had one car, it broke down all the time, and the payments nearly killed them. If you want a TV these days, you go out and buy one, which is just going to be an upgrade over the three others in your house- they saved for months to get one and paid for it mostly with side work my grandfather did repairing electronics (you repaired tvs, radios and appliances back then). Dishwashers? washer/dryers? They didn't get those until the 70's. Every purchase was a big deal, they struggled.

Compare that to these days where every family has TV, cellphones, and every middle class family has a computer and internet access, and enough crap from Walmart to fill a dumpster. Electronics are practically free. We live in a world of cheap crap, and cheap food. I have seen some mexican day laborers that are poor, living in cramped living quarters with few possessions other than the clothes they use for work, but I believe that the poor from the 40's and 50's would find the poor among us today living luxurious lives by their standards.

And keep in mind, my grandfather was an electrical technician/repairman that later developed into a radar engineer, and was fairly high up in the hierarchy at Grumman when he retired in the late 80's- he wasn't an unskilled laborer. If things seemed so peachy back then, it probably had a lot more to do with the fact that there was less crap needed to keep up with the joneses and people were happier since they had lower expectations- those 800 sq ft Levittown houses on 6000 sq ft plots were palatial to them, today they are considered "starter" houses- in 2007 the average newly built house was 2500 sq ft.

The only thing that seems much more expensive today in relative terms is housing- and that appears to be mostly due to the latest bubble and the gov'ts current continued efforts to support it. It was an extraordinarily good policy to make the maximum amount you could borrow 3x your salary.

Re:Probably 1940s peak of USA

[hey!]

I think you are partly right, but for the wrong reasons. If you talk to people who lived through the Great Depression and WW2, it was sacrifice and suffering, but people felt like they had a purpose. In the 1950s, things got economically better, but there was a sense that we'd been put on the Earth to face down communism.

As far as writing and the arts are concerned, you're way off base. People are *still* doing the kind of art they did back then. It's just not avante garde. If don't like the art at the snobby local gallery, head down to the flea market.

As far as drugs are concerned, they had most of the biggies like heroin, cocaine, weed, tobacco and of course alcohol. And speaking of sex, the baby boom came from *somewhere*. As far as people out of wedlock are concerned, the teen pregnancy rate in the 1950s was *higher* than today.

Re:Probably 1940s peak of USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you were a black person. 40's and 50's in America sucked for us.

Re:Probably 1940s peak of USA

[jpcarter]

Seriously? I wasn't around in the 1940-50's, but this always seems like historical revisionism to me. How has the standard of living dropped in relative terms if "In 1950 some 35 percent of dwellings lacked full indoor plumbing"? Not to mention all the junk I can purchase for Black Friday coming up.

Or what about McCarthyism in Washington? I'll agree we seem to lack an Edward R. Murrow reporter, but I think current politics are still better than the panic & blacklists that existed then.

But, like I said, I wasn't around & IANAH, so I'd be interested to hear how I'm wrong.

Re:Probably 1940s peak of USA

[couchslug]

"The writing is worse, reporting is worse, the arts are terrible and people actually build less and make less."

Cry me a fucking river. Being "poor" in the 1940s meant being a fucking sharecropper (there where plenty of White ones) not getting obese on food stamps.

The standard of living sucked by comparison with the present. The arts only matter to the wealthy or to snobs, now as then. Writing and reporting were frequently dishonest, although more dignified. Corruption was rife, racism was normal, medical care was wretched, life expectancy was lower. Now it is common for people to have multiple cars, many appliances, and far more useful stuff in general than in the '40s/'50s. Failure to enjoy that is a personal problem easily solved by removing head from arse.

"We're just shoved into boxes with sex and drugs but can't really ever get out of it, lest we bump into someone else's box."

Nobody is "shoved" into sex and drugs. They are a choice, and enjoyed properly they are Great Fun.
As for not bumping into someone else's box, what does that mean? If where you live is crowded, take advantage of our very mobile society and GTFO as I did. The US is vast and choiceful.

"Certainly this is true in Detroit..."

Detroit is a city we don't need any more. It was built on an industrial model that was going obsolete in the 1950s.
The smart people bailed early for the comfortable suburbs where they could have personal space.

Americans were socially conditioned to believe that cities should be clung to and preserved, but reality is that cities exist for a set of reasons and when those go away the city is pointless. Some obsolete cities are attempting controlled shrinkage, such as Youngstown, Ohio, but that doesn't work everywhere. Detroit has people clinging to the wreckage, but because it is better to build new factories than attempt to re-use ancient infrastructure business won't come back. There is no great consequence to abandoning obsolete Rust Belt cities. In a few years the memories they evoke will die with the people who hold them.

Re:No... WoW vs pretend warfair with sticks for gu

[WinterSolstice]

I play airsoft, which I often refer to as 'FPS', much to the annoyance of all the other geeks :)

Sorry, but it is!

Re:No... WoW vs pretend warfair with sticks for gu

[CannonballHead]

how many would do it IRL if they were guaranteed they could get away with it.

A lot.

Re:Bad article is....

[FlyingBishop]

There are perfectly valid reasons to hate modern society. But this article doesn't seem to have even a superficial understanding of society, modern or otherwise. If he did he wouldn't be comparing older analogues to new tech in a favorable light.

It seems like Slashdot has decided that The Discovery Channel knows what nerds really want or something.

Not an ad

[flabordec]

CNETNate would like to remind you that this CNET article is not an advertisement, it really is news for nerds and stuff that matters.

Re:No... WoW vs pretend warfair with sticks for gu

[dwiget001]

When I was growing up, we had *real* dirt clod fights!

We would mound up dirt a short distance from one another, and a combination of lobbing and more direct throws were done until you hit the *enemy*. At which point, if you hit them hard enough or partially blinded them with dirt in the eyes, you then grabbed a handful of dirt clods, rush your enemy's bunker, rapid firing to keep him pinned down, then while he was writhing on the ground, if you had any clods left that this point, you would finish him off and dance some horrid resemblance to a "war victory dance".

Yeah, those were good times.

agree 100%

[Anonymous Coward]

And I'm 26.

WoW does not equal War

[Nidi62]

I'm sorry, but just because WoW has "war" in the title does not mean it can be equated to actual war. In real war, you dont run around fighting monsters with other people, buying and selling stuff so you can make that shiny new armor or buy the coolest new mount. If it were like real Middle Aged warfare, you would be running around with a small axe and whatever implement you had on your farm that could do the most damage. You're also probably wearing whatever rags you happened to be wearing at the time, much less plate or mail armor. You have people sitting at home yelling at each other over vent, as compared to people who have either trained for it their wholes lives, or were forced into battle by a lord who just wants more land, so he can get more tax money, so he can live even nicer. Not to mention the fact that the only thing close to someone spewing fireballs is an archer with an arrow covered with pitch and ignited.

Re:WoW does not equal War

[osu-neko]

I'm sorry, but just because WoW has "war" in the title does not mean it can be equated to actual war.

...

LOL! *Whoosh*

In the context of the story, it was a very appropriate comparison. You just missed the point. The rest of your post is a bunch of examples of why it was a very good comparison, assuming you understood the article to begin with.

Re:WoW does not equal War

[Neofluffybunny]

I play a Preist, you insensitive Clod! All my armor is rags!

Re:WoW does not equal War

[tabrnaker]

Sure you start off with rags, but that's what leveling up is for. Duh! We don't run around killing monsters nowadays because all the high level hero's in the past exterminated them!

Re:WoW does not equal War

[steelfood]

There were a million bad ways to die back then. Now there's only 999,999.

So what was the Slashdot of the past . . . ?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Craftsmen's Guilds come to mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild. "They were organized in a manner something between a trade union, a cartel and a secret society . . . tended to form associations based on their trades . . . each of whom controlled secrets of traditionally imparted technology, the "arts" or "mysteries" of their crafts."

They had bizarre initiation rituals, We have goatse.

They had secret phrases. We have, "in Soviet . . . X, Y's you!"

They had a monopoly on their trade. We get outsourced.

Oh, I guess they won.

Re:So what was the Slashdot of the past . . . ?

[Scaba]

They had bizarre initiation rituals, We have goatse.

We didn't have the rituals. Instead we had weird Uncle Eddie. The kids all loved his little "magic trick."

Re:So what was the Slashdot of the past . . . ?

[mirix]

"in Soviet . . . X, Y's you!"

Shouldn't that be:
"in Soviet . . . Y, X's you" ?

I say late 1960's - early 1970's was the peak.

[Nick Driver]

The Apollo program and moon landings were surely the peak of the USA.

Re:I say late 1960's - early 1970's was the peak.

[Anonymous Coward]

1968 was one of the worst years of the last century for this nation, despite the Apollo mission at xmas time.
The Vietnam War kept raging well until 1975, with some of the worst death tolls in the late 1960s to early 1970s. There were reasons reason we left after that.

Just because we tend to gloss over the dark days, doesn't mean they didn't happen. And a music festival for a bunch of hippies in upstate NY doesn't make it all better either.

Re:I say late 1960's - early 1970's was the peak.

[Anonymous Coward]

The special effects used in the "space program" sucked. Imagine how much better it could look using today's technology.

Re:I say late 1960's - early 1970's was the peak.

[Anonymous Coward]

War is constant, bitch more.

Re:I say late 1960's - early 1970's was the peak.

[Anonymous Coward]

...bitch more.

Good point! The bitches didn't have it so good back then. 'coursen they are called "ho's" now so maybe 1969 wins....

Twitter v Gossip

[rapturizer]

Growing up, the local paper had the social page. This had who visited who and all other pertinent gossip. At least this was edited, used correct grammer, and weeded out all the garbage, thus, was much more interesting.

Other topics

[vlm]

Wimmen vs internet pr0n websites...

Remember the old geocities type web pages with absolutely everything on one staggeringly long page vs "clickthru articles" with about one paragraph per page of ads...

Re:Jesus Christ! My router or ATT

[Anonymous Coward]

Nickelback sucks

Seriously...

[destroyer661]

I want to know who in their right mind would pay someone to write this? I could make a small shell script to write an article exactly like that. Type in your two topics, multiplied by however many 'battles' you want, and voila, pick the second topic every time as the winner and rejoice.

Re:Seriously...

[osu-neko]

destroyer661 vs. small shell script

destroyer661: Ability to manipulate text, but lack of understanding of the deeper meaning.

small shell script: Same, but operates 24/7 and does not require salary or benefits.

Winner: small shell script

Re:Seriously...

[destroyer661]

Very good example haha

Printer vs Scribes

[Dalzhim]

How many scribes is one printer worth? I don't have any idea what the exact number could be, but I'm pretty sure this comparison wasn't included in CNet's article because there's no way you can get the scribes to win.

Re:Printer vs Scribes

[CannonballHead]

Sure you can. 100,000,000 bonus points to scribes because handwritten letters are much nicer. ;)

Re:Printer vs Scribes

[Dalzhim]

Considering you can print with any font you like, I say the scribes fail again as the printer will print these fancy letters much faster! :)

Re:Printer vs Scribes

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Scribes weren't just copy machines; they were artists.

I recently saw a documentary on how ancient Egyptians would commission a copy of "The Book of the Dead," to be placed in their funeral grave. They did this in the temple, where, for a small fee, the temple scribes would create a personalized version. A work of art.

This book was important, because it contained instructions to allow the deceased to pass through obstacles in the afterlife. So folks didn't skimp on the cost.

I don't think that the Ibis-headed and Jackal-headed Gods in the afterlife would be impressed with anything that you can crank out on your HP printer.

Oh, and I bet that a scribe costs less than a printer cartridge for your printer.

Re:Printer vs Scribes

[jeffmeden]

Somehow I doubt "yes but MY letter was printed with the utmost of speed" will impress any ladies... And that was what letter writing was all about. I suppose that you could argue the advantages of being able to court 1,500 girls at once...

Re:Printer vs Scribes

[osu-neko]

The printer will indeed print them much faster, way faster than you can read them. You're making arguments as to why the scribes win, not the printer. (If you think otherwise, reread the article -- you're missing something...)

Re:Printer vs Scribes

[westlake]

How many scribes is one printer worth?

How many printers can output an illuminated Book Of Hours which will retain its rich colors and gold decoration for over 600 years?

man'kind's gadgets vs. creators' newclear power

[Anonymous Coward]

no contest. the lights are coming up all over now. talk about history? it was ALWAYS supposed to be how it is about to be. it's all in the manuals.

The problem with cell phones

[sgt_doom]

But cell phones causes one to reevaluate their fellow man (or Ameritard). Pre-cells, one hoped all those surveys demonstrating how totally ignorant your fellow citizens were was just so much balderdash --- now we know they were all too true.

At least we Americans have the bullet train. Oops! Nope, that's the Japanese and French. Well, at least we Americans have really cool seaport architecture. Nope, that's the Danish. Damn! We're backwards here in Amerika!

World

[gmuslera]

Thats the keyword that matters more there. Global communications (in particular with cellphones), and internet (with all the tools described in the article) have global and instant access from all the world. If you want to put in a word the difference between past and present, "World" will be what we have now, in this instant, all of it (including the bad parts, as globalization and properly named pandemic diseases)

your local computer tabloid vs. town crier

[FrankDerKte]

Nowadays we rely on computer tabloids to deliver utterly useless articles on slow news days.

In the olden days we got a town crier for this purpose. Every day he delivered the news of the day in a mild and melodic voice, clearly superior to an eye-abusing web page or an unmanageable and oversized paper. Also if they delivered completely bogus and boring news, there was a very direct way to communicate your annoyance. And if the other options fail, you could easily initiate one the very thrilling and entertaining whichhunts, a joy for the whole family.

So clearly, even the media delivering this unbelievable interesting story had a superior alternative.

Re:your local computer tabloid vs. town crier

[i.r.id10t]

Oh, sorta like fark.com you mean... minus the gorgor links...

More comps

[Quiet_Desperation]

Wooden clubs VS. dating sites

Temple prostitutes VS. cathouses

Naked neanderthals VS. endless online porn catering to every whim

Mammoth hunts across the savannah VS. six pizza places within two miles

Wooden wagons VS. Audi TT RS

Fall Of Rome VS. Fall Of USA

nostalgia

[wizardforce]

Telegraph vs internet: If you wanted to, you could use VOIP to send the right audio dots and dashes in morse code only this time there's nothing stopping you. The major draw for the author seems to be the scarcity of such communication back in the time period when telegraphs were the big thing.
  Twitter vs gossip: gossip isn't dead. There's no evidence that Twitter destroyed gossip, it just went online. A far more efficient means of spreading rumors.
  Facebook vs Dinner party: Same as above. The author seems to pine for a time when the world was very disconnected.
  World of Warcraft vs Actual war craft: Iraq? War isn't anything to be pinning for.
Swine flu mass-panic vs The plague: not a very good comparison. Try AIDS and the plague.
  Iphone vs fire on a hill: Same scarcity makes it cool argument.
  Viruses vs the Trojan horse: not really a fair comparison. There's tons of military strategies that put that horse to shame.
  MP3s vs Tribal chants: We still have those. Heck, my friends and I went to Denver just to see a few.
  Post-Enlightenment scientific rigour vs Superstition and quack doctors: Yeah that living to the old age of 30 sounds great. Get me a piece of that action... We've still got voodoo nonsense and you're free to go get "treated" by one if you wish.

Re:nostalgia

[Anonymous Coward]

"Swine flu mass-panic vs The plague: not a very good comparison. Try AIDS and the plague."

Good call, if I recall correctly medical scientists have said that AIDS is going to surpass Black Death as the deadliest virus in recorded history in a few years. Hell they knew this a few years ago : http://www.scienceblog.com/community/older/2002/G/20021131.html

Re:nostalgia

[DerKlempner]

Post-Enlightenment scientific rigour vs Superstition and quack doctors: Yeah that living to the old age of 30 sounds great. Get me a piece of that action... We've still got voodoo nonsense and you're free to go get "treated" by one if you wish.

How about the simple fact the "article" was written and published for the internet?

Re:No... WoW vs pretend warfair with sticks for gu

[Anonymous Coward]

We call Airsoft RLS. Real life shooter. My Cod4 clan plays regularly. It's amusing to me that some people are really good in game, and simply incapable of translating that to the real world, while others are terrible in game and unstoppable on the field.

this is a joke?

[Anonymous Coward]

so this is actually supposed to be funny?

miss.

Re:this is a joke?

[rudy_wayne]

Can I use all of my moderator points to rate this article as -10 extremely stupid.

Re:this is a joke?

[selven]

We have: use your wimpy moderation points to bury it.
They had: kill it with fire.

Re:this is a joke?

[pipedwho]

Looks like they won.

Re:this is a joke?

[cortesoft]

Nowadays things still die when you kill them with fire

As of today, CNET == cracked.com, Slashdot == Digg

[SUB7IME]

This just felt like one of those cracked.com articles all over digg, instead of a slashdot-worthy article. Sorry.

Re: Bang Bang!

[TaoPhoenix]

Beautiful setup.

They had jumping out from behind a rock with a stick and shouting "bang bang! I shot you dead!"

We have: Cher "Bang Bang"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLmlS66AA80

Re:No... WoW vs pretend warfair with sticks for gu

[Anonymous Coward]

WoW is the low tech equivalent of jumping out from behind a rock with a stick and shouting "bang bang!".

WoW is low tech... what are you playing?

Re:Bad article is....

[Anonymous Coward]

can someone with points mod this troll? we need to start moding to promote valid discussion rather than TLDR style responses.

I don't disagree that the article wasn't very good, but this response offers nothing to the conversation.

Expected?

[Anonymous Coward]

Non-sense, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

A paradox?

[MarkvW]

"how many would do it IRL if they were guaranteed they could get away with it."

If two people each wanted to kill each other, and could do it without getting caught, how would that work? Wouldn't the first killer take out the other killer, thereby depriving the other killer of the murder that he could 'get away with?'

Re:A paradox?

[shentino]

We already do that. It's called "war"

Trebuchet vs. Howitzer

[Theodore]

The trebuchet has the advantage in that it can fire anything...
Which is scarier?
"SCREEEEEEEECHMM"...BOOM!"
or...
"MOOOOOOOOOOOOO... SPLAT!"
or... (for dramatic effect)...
"Are those HEADS they're throwing at us?"

Re:Trebuchet vs. Howitzer

[El_Oscuro]

While howitzers are great for taking out recyclers and factories from a great distance, I still prefer the trebuchet for the shorter range engagements that office warfare requires. There are few weapons better at delivering indirect fire into the PHB's office. However for a proper combined arms approach, you might also need something like helicopters and tanks.

Apollo Space Program was post-digital age.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Apollo space program was "post digital". Actually in the infancy of the digital age, but without the mainframe computers of the 1960's, which were indeed technology growing at a "rocket's pace" given their lineage from primitive computers born of the immediately preceding post-WW2 era, the Apollo space missions would never have been possible.

Also, some of the first really compact minicomputers were aboard the Apollo spacecraft themselves too, though they were not general-purpose computers, they were purpose-specific computers for navigation, guidance and systems controls.

what about hygiene and sanitation........

[Anonymous Coward]

Both keep you clean and sexy which is a big plus for the modern world!

Re:No... WoW vs pretend warfair with sticks for gu

[cp.tar]

They had: war victory dance.
We have: teabagging.

Re:No... WoW vs pretend warfair with sticks for gu

[Orion Blastar]

Before WoW we got foam plastic swords and other foam weapons and wrapped them up with Duct Tape to look like metal and dressed up in suits of armor and hit each other with them at a Medieval War reenactment or LARP D&D event. Before WoW we had D&D from TSR before Hasbro or Garfield Games or whomever bought them out and made D20. The Classic D&D and LARP D&D were better in the old days.
I shot you your dead! Am not!" arguments were resolved by the Dungeon Master and dice rolling and hit points.

Before we had the first person shooters we had today we had Wolfenstein 3D for MS-DOS, and the original Castle Wolfenstein for Apple II, C64, and other 8 bit systems.

Before we had Need for Speed we had "Night Driver" with the driving controller for the Atari 2600.

Before Facebook we had dial-up BBSes and FidoNet, WWIVNet, and other dial-up networks for single line BBS boards to network with each other before the Internet became popular and it was just the Arpanet back then. Thanks to the Waffle software BBSes could interface with Arpanet Newsgroups and Email. FidoBBS, WWIVBBS, and other BBSes were our social networking sites, but local so people could meet the faces behind the BBS screen names and handles. Now it isn't local it is International, and people don't meet in person anymore except in rare cases, but prefer to chat via the Internet and text messaging.

Before the iPod, we had the Sony Walkman and portable AM/FM radios, Boom Boxes, portable 8-Track players, and the knockoff Walkman type devices made by Sears, K-mart, Wallgreens, etc that had a cassette player and AM and FM radio. But now some cell phones have FM radio built in and can play media files and the iPod became the iPhone, and the Smart Phone and Blackberries do the same things as well.

The best we had was those 8 Bit systems like the Atari 2600, ColecoVision, Matell Intellivision, Atari 5200, Atari 7800, and then the Nintendo NES and SNES, Sega Master System and Sega Genesis and we started to get into 16 bit systems. The Sega CD32, Dreamcast, Saturn, were CD based systems but the Sony Playstation out marketed and out licensed them by licensing as many games for the PS1 as possible. It drove Sega out of the game console market but they made video games for other systems. he Atari Jaguar was a good system but it lack popularity and the games and Atari had poor marketing like Commodore and the C64GS game console. But now those retro games are available for the XBox 360, Nintendo Wii, and Playstation 3 via paying a small fee via the Gaming Networks and downloading the emulators with the retro game ROMs in them to play the classics in modern times.

Way before Microsoft Powerpoint

[Orion Blastar]

and other presentation software we had H. Ross Perot and his charts and graphs. Oh how people laughed at his charts and graphs, and today they have their own charts and graphs in Powerpoint and other presentation software.

"That giant sucking sound you are going to hear is jobs going out of this nation due to the foreign trade bills passing." -H. Ross Perot

"This is the real reason why nothing ever gets done and the economy never gets fixed. Gridlock in Congress and the White House. Gridlock, gridlock, period period exclamation point!" -Vice Admiral James Stockdale

Ironically people dismissed them as wrong, but they turned out to be right in the future.

Re:Way before Microsoft Powerpoint

[DragonWriter]

Way before Microsoft Powerpoint and other presentation software we had H. Ross Perot and his charts and graphs.

Business presentation software existed before H. Ross Perot's 1992 campaign. Harvard Presentation Graphics, from the mid-1980s, is one of the better known earlier examples, if not necessarily the first dedicated business presentation software.

Actually, checking Wikipedia, PowerPoint was around before H. Ross Perot's 1992 campaign, as well, being first released for the Mac in 1987 and for Windows 3.0 in 1990.

Re:Way before Microsoft Powerpoint

[Orion Blastar]

Well before it became popular and widely used anyway.

Do you think if Perot used Powerpoint or Harvard Graphics with a projection system it would have been more effective than giant cardboard signs and won him the 1992 election?

Re:nostalgia - Dinner parties

[DrCode]

I think they suck. For the hosts, they're expensive and messy. If you're a guest, you're stuck in a long drawn-out dinner where the only conversation is with your immediate neighbors.
Facebook wins.

I have to wonder though

[Moraelin]

You know, while all the modern day equivalents are better at _some_ times, I think the downsides the rest of the time get overlooked.

For example, yes, moving around by foot or horse all the way to Jerusalem was a lot slower, not to mention having all those pesky Saracens in the way who felt that they should continue to keep their country ;) Nowadays you could take a plane and be there in a couple of hours.

But the downside is that you weren't expected to make that trip more than once in your life, and arguably most people got away with never doing it at all. Nowadays just because it's possible to travel faster, for a lot of people it means they're _expected_ to do it all the time. So when (other) people go, basically, "bah, quit complaining about leg space, be glad you can fly at all nowadays", my answer would be: yeah, but in ye olde days I wouldn't be expected to go over there in the first place.

To go back to the examples you actually used:

E.g., sure, pizza delivery is faster by moped than by foot or horse, but in ye olde days actually you wouldn't have to do it. People would have to come to your pizzeria, if they wanted a pizza. Effectively nowadays someone has to be out on their bike, no matter if it's scalding hot or massive rain, to deliver pizzas.

E.g., sure, it's easier to send an e-card or email nowadays, but it also created a culture where you're expected to spend more time with email and e-cards, than they spent writing an old fashioned letter in any other age. Communication at a distance was something for _very_ close friends, and for when you actually have something to say. You might write to someone once a month or a week and include just the more important thoughts or events of that interval. There is plenty of old correspondence which was actually good enough to be sold as a book. And at any rate, you had time to actually think an answer worth writing down.

The wake up call about modern day communication was when I first had a consulting job at a company where they gave me a computer with Outlook configured to act like a retarded kid trolling for attention. It wasn't even content to signal that a new email had come, but it then resorted to try to draw my attention with a big tooltip in the lower right corner. God damn it, it has an email and it wants attention RIGHT NOW! At the time it was a shock that someone would expect that I immmediately abort any other activity, right in the middle of a line of code even, and give email its attention the very second it arrived. And there are people who'll call if you didn't answer their email in 5 minutes. WTF?

The new uber-convenient form of communication didn't just become a more convenient replacement for the old, but an unholy pact with the devil. It eats up more time than the old one ever did, and created some expectations and a sense of urgency that just didn't use to be there.

Or, to go back in the land of my own examples, I was surprised to read in a study waay back, that with all the modern conveniences and time-saving devices, a modern woman actually spends more times on house chores than her ancestors ever did. The idea that this is easy, and that is easy, and that other thing is easy too, and so on, has created a sense of expectation to do them all to an extent where they all combined actually take up more time and energy than ever.

Re:I have to wonder though

[Anonymous Coward]

Soooo, that entire tirade was about... Outlook email notification? It really bothered you that much? You were a consultant. Paid to do their bidding. Reading their email was their bidding. Do it. Get paid. Shut the fuck up.

subby skillz

[Eil]

And slightly dumb, so laugh.

I would rather laugh at the submitter's rather superb talent for understatement.

Re:No... WoW vs pretend warfair with sticks for gu

[Anonymous Coward]

8? I'd do it for 4.

Iphone

[mdwh2]

I'm curious why they chose the Iphone? I mean, spot the odd one out - for every other technology, they list either the dominant leader, or if there isn't one, they put the generic name. But for some reason, the Iphone gets chosen, at only a few per cent market share. Why? Or is this just yet another case of jumping on the Apple product placement bandwagon?

If anything, they should list Nokia, but as no one's dominant in the mobile market (Nokia have "only" 40%), it's probably better to stick with the perfectly good word we already have for the device they are referring to: a phone (or mobile phone, smartphone, etc, if you prefer).

To answer the article, no I don't think my Iphone is cool, because I don't have one.

Although on second thoughts, it's true that only a minority of the population had access to torches on hills, so I guess the comparison is fair.

Before Apple fans respond saying I'm wrong, please avoid:
* Redefining the mobile market to some subset category that includes Iphones but excludes most other phones.
* Relying on anecdotes, what your friends have, what gets publicity, instead of hard market data.
* Redefining market share to mean something other than market share (e.g., dubious subjective terms like "mind share").
Thank you.

It's true

[mosb1000]

I recently gave up driving my car (even though I live in Southern California) because I realized I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to meet everyone's expectations. Now, if it's under 3 miles, or if I have extra time, I walk, otherwise I ride the bus. Not only is it much cheaper than driving, but I have a lot more free time. The reason is simple, I plan my day so that I only have one or two events to attend to during the day. If someone wants me to do something else, sorry I don't have time because every additional event costs me 2 hours in travel time. That gives me time to really focus on the task at hand and I'm a lot better off for it. Come to think of it, I really shouldn't be reading Slashdot right now.

Worst ... article ... ever

[slackarse]

Reminds me why I only read the summaries.

The biggest difference - inequality

[acheron12]

Who could afford to send a telegram, or visit a doctor? Not the lower classes, except in absolute emergencies. And there was almost no middle class to speak of back then.

Being a lord in a giant castle may not seem so bad, but the life of the peasant majority doing the actual work was far less rosy. Of course, it's not entertaining to hear about somebody's life of toil, so any movie or book about 'the past' focuses on the idle upper crust - apparently leading some people to think everyone lived like that.

Re:No... WoW vs pretend warfair with sticks for gu

[Anonymous Coward]

Good for you.

Re:No... WoW vs pretend warfair with sticks for gu

[tehcyder]

Or, to put it more plainly, how many would do it IRL if they were guaranteed they could get away with it.

All those who are psychopaths/sociopaths who will probably do it anyway as they are generally too narcissisti to believe they could ever make a mistake and be caught.