Amazingly enought, if there is enough eye candy, people will suffer with having limited hardware choices at first. Apple has taught us that! I have watched people wow'd by the Apple candy in the past. They often bought the package, and drivers were never thought of.
This weekend I showed my nephiew Mandriva 2007 with 3D, he was amazed. He is bringing over his box next weekend for a Linux install. Why? Eye candy.
Anyway, if enough people embrace Linux because of eye candy, the major manufacturers will all produce Linux drivers anyway, so we won't have to worry about writing drivers unless we want to.
(and as others have mentioned, the kernal hackers rarely do GUI stuff)
Have you noticed how everyone has jacked up the price of the 3800x2 while the other x2 processors have come down or stayed stable in the last month?? I do think AMD is short of 3800x2's.
Here are the causes 1. By hyping Core 2 so early, it eroded confidence in Netburst, now no one wants a P4. (so the choice is Core 2 or Athlon x2) 2. Intel cannot produce enough Conroe's. So those who cannot get Core 2 look at Athlons. 3. AMD had to cut prices in half to match Core 2 (because Intel actually priced Core 2 a little too cheap*) it created more demand than AMD could handle until 65nm and all the Chartered product comes into the channel. 4. Intel started kissing up to Apple instead of Dell, forcing Dell into the AMD camp.
Yes, maybe AMD should have turned Dell away, but the real truth is that there is a shortage of everything but the netburst chips! Because Intel made/makes so many P4's the market will be this way for a few more months.
* if Intel had priced Core 2 duo's 25% higher, it would have helped them clear out the netburst chips. It seems they were more interesed in stopping AMD than they were in making a profit.
The article said
"It is a well-known fact that most proprietary software companies lose a significant amount of their revenue because of illegal copying of their software."
It should say
"It is a well-known fact that most proprietary software companies GAIN a significant amount of their revenue because of illegal copying of their software."
It is much more difficult to spread your user base without piracy. Piracy sometimes hurts game makers, but it is the best way to get users to test and ultimately buy(or have employers buy) non game software.
Note: Even the games issue is fuzzy. Many years ago someone gave me a copy of Dune. I loved it, and bought at least two sequels, and several "Command and Conquer" games as well. Now tell me, did Westwood(the game company) suffer or benefit from this persons illegal actions?
Yes, the relations are friendly. They would be much better except for the few times that the US decided to invade them(I bet they won't loose next time though). And when the US takes fits because they don't see eye to eye on Iraq, and the fact that Canada has so much softwood that it is cheaper than in the US and so they tax it to death. Oh ya, and then Washington State kills all their salmon breeding rivers, and then insists on catching all the salmon before they make it back to BC and Alaska (where they actually try to preseve such things).
How could someone that is so right on Linus etc, be so far off on this one. I have previously enjoyed many of your posts.
The poster was using an analogy to show his perspective, and you went off and started talking about sexual abuse and killing? Molestation causes perminant scars, and nuclear weapons the same... so while you might not like his "stupid" analogies, at least they were in the "same book". The "same book" as in, he was likely trying to find an analogy where there was no harm done by the actions, In your analogies - well...
Thanks in advance for your Christian Charity in trying to understand my perspective, and why I find talk of molestation more serious and offensive than all the bad analogies and benevolent hacking in the world. (ok, so I have a daughter)
Ahh, remember the good old days when Intel would point to AMD and start singing COPYCAT, COPYCAT like a child on the playground?
Now, after the failure of Itanic and Netburst, it looks like they are so short of inspiration that they stole a page from the SUN Niagra processor roadmap. Kudo's to Sun, while they seemed to be really messing up on designing silicon in the last 5 years, at least they had the forsight to call this one.
What you turn into hydrogen is really not the issue.
Where you get the energy is. As long as we are still using fossil fuels, it is better to be able to put them into a fuel cell and get almost all the energy out in the form of electricity, instead of burning it in turbines and internal combustion engines where we only use around 25% of the energy converted. (the rest is mostly waste heat)
I don't know if you have put a kill-a-watt meter on these old PC's, but there is a reason they don't have cooling problems. These things often take much less power. I had a k6-2 where the CPU fan only kicked on ever once in a while. As long as the old ones were powerful enough to be useful for LTSP, the more modern ones would be a worse choice as they would cost more initially and comsume more power.
The only cost effective modern alternative is some of the thin client PC's that use the VIA low power CPU's. They start at only $150USD.
Tis true. But it all depends what the definition of powerful is.
I know of one classroom running fine off a 2.0Ghz P4 with 1.5 Gigs of RAM(18 client PC's). Of course the lab running off a 3800 x2 with dual Gigabit ethernet just screams. Considering that even the 3800 x2 is now a lower end machine (other than the 4 gigs of ram which is getting pricier these days) this is amazing. BTW, we figure two labs could run off this, but we have no present need.
The thread was started by someone who was claiming that a linux install was long and difficult for the average Joe (keeping it from dominance). And then you prove the point that a "incompetent" person takes hours to set up a windows box, and only 20 minutes on Linux.
If you are so smart, how do YOU set up a secure windows box without "Adding all this stuff"? Hmmm, I bet 50 to one you will not reply with the info, because it can't be done.
Responding to the previous well thought out post, with this venomous garbage is just unacceptable! This is the type of person who should have no karma.
I have to agree with the previous to last post that the modern Linux Distros are a wonderful install. With windows I do the base install, spend another half an hour or more on getting drivers onboard. Then the next hour is spent putting on zone alarm, avg, spybot, opera and on and on... Then I am still not ready. I spend the next few hours doing updates. I support WAY to many friends and relatives, and this is getting OLD.
With a Mandriva, Suse, Kubuntu, Freespire or whatever. I spend anywhere from 18 - 40 minutes, and it just works! No driver mess, no service packs, and I already have OpenOffice.org and much more ready to go. Did I mention that most of the distros are much more polished and fun to watch during the install as well?
Ya, I think the Niagra is a good idea. I have felt that the sun equipment that I have worked on was SOLID, so I wish them well. At the same time I believe SUN's Opteron Servers are selling very well.
To answer the question "If x86 is so grand why is niagra doing so well?". I believe they can both do well. At this point they have totally differnt strengths/markets. In my mind here we are talking about the difference in architectural philosiphy instead of instruction set. The modern x86 processors are big, complex "out of order" pipelined designs. These are good for high performance applications. The niagra excells at applications that are highly parrallel, but where no thread is really worked to hard. (web servers etc.)
As for the Power chips. I think we will see IBM start to pull back to fewer stages in the pipeline. I think they got caught up with Intel's ideas, and went with too many stages on some of the newer designs. (That is OK if ALL you are doing is streaming or encoding)
And I believe you don't know what you are talking about.;) lol BTW, what a nice tone to start off a msg with, that may not be the best way to convince me. Anyway, I was not claiming to be an expert, so I may be wrong. But maybe you just misunderstood me.
You are saying I was implying that the Cell was designed for games. WRONG! In fact for games I think we will find the PPE has too deep of a pipeline. It should be a wider design, and not as deep. I think the PPE will have a hard time doing all the AI work and such, in relation to the amount of work the SPE (SPU) section can chug out! I really think that two PPE's might have been in order, even if they were more simple in design (like a niagra).
You say the Opterons are for Double precision????? I thought I remembered Sony or IBM saying the the SPE's were 128 bit SIMD double precision.
OK, I don't think the Assembly stuff has much relevance here, but I will indulge you. Ask a real developer? Nice tone, you are arrogant aren't you... I started coding assembly on Z-80 and 6809(yes I had to hand assemble, and type in the hex digits) and have done some x86 from the 8088 on, so here I am qualified to talk. First, you don't want to be doing much assembly on the Cell. Even IBM claimed that this would be a pain as simplicity of programming was traded off for overall speed. In my mind, the x86 mess(thanks intel) is only equaled by the complexity of the cell. (By the way, if you want to start comparing processor designs, the most powerful and yet still clean assembly I've seen was the Alpha.)
btw "It took the market a while to figure that out" -- WHAT??? The x86 is more dominant across the board than ever before, from embeded to the Data Center. The market never considers what processor has the best architecture. All they care about is "Does my favorite application run on this processor"
You know where I could really use a Cell or two. I dabble in live sound reinforcement and video. With the power of the cell, I figure you could manipulate a heck of a lot of channels, and compress a lot of video. You could have the equvilent of 48 channels each with its own effects unit. (this would be very pricey today) And maybe have enough extra CPU to do video switching and overlaying.
I think this is an admission from IBM that the Cell processor has some good ideas, but is not an ideal implementation. I bet that is why they need many other general purpose CPU's in the computer.
The one main "CPU"(PPE) in the cell processor is far too weak, I believe we will find game developers harping on that for the next few years.
Maybe the next version of the cell will have a main processor that is much wider and more robust. Maybe even two of them?
I have had no problems with the stability of Linux at all. BUT, if I were a Linux beginner, and just considered X as part of Linux, I would think there were stability problems, as X has locked up a couple of times.(my distros may also be a bit too leading edge)
Now if we talk servers... At work here, we "recycle" the Windows servers once a week to keep them up and stable. It just works MUCH better that way. I really do not know if it is the fault of Windows, or the drivers or whatever. On the other hand, our Linux and AIX servers go much longer. The crown goes to our DEC/HP VMS boxes. We have left some of them up for years (a decade or more for some I bet) without rebooting.
I love the comments about other OS's made by the typical Apple fanboi. Leave the evaluations and commentaries to those of us that DO use Windows and Linux as well.
While Apple hardware is my number three platform (in time used) after Linux and Windows, I can assure you that 1) The MS OS's (Win 95/98) never crashed more than the contemporary Apple OS's (Pre OS-X). 2) Windows has not crashed much since Windows 2000.
Almost EVERY blue screen of death I have had has been tied back to bad hardware since Windows 2000. I reglarly leave my Work PC up for two months at a time, and while I do eventually reboot to apply patches and free up leaked resources, it NEVER crashes.
P.S. I have NO love for MS - but the truth is the truth! Honesty is just as important in the rest of our lives (OS's) as it is in Science. (you listening HP?)
I have Mod points but I just have to skip it for this story.
Is it just me that finds this whole thing strange??????? Here are these store employees so excited about this new apple product, that they download and install it to see what it is like, so they can rave about the "Superiority" of Apple. And they are doing this "product research" in thier own time. They stole NOTHING from apple. They already paid for the computers, they could not buy the OS... Apple lost nothing.
If anything apple should have said, "a one week suspension for breaking the law, now here is the official copy that you SHOULD HAVE ASKED FOR, now go and do some beta testing for us".
My vote would say not the 6502, not the 68000 (which was powerful and nicely done), but the 6800(6809 maybe) was "The most beginner friendly assembly language." lol
What lead you to believe that? I know they are trying to shut down General Aviation, but that would be a big change. (Site sources if you have some)
I had to go back through the FAA documentation, and it still says the same thing.
Title 14: Aeronautics and Space PART 61--CERTIFICATION: PILOTS, FLIGHT INSTRUCTORS, AND GROUND INSTRUCTORS Subpart E--Private Pilots
Browse Previous | Browse Next
61.113 Private pilot privileges and limitations: Pilot in command. . . . (c) A private pilot may not pay less than the pro rata share of the operating expenses of a flight with passengers, provided the expenses involve only fuel, oil, airport expenditures, or rental fees.
This still says that you can split the costs with your passengers. In this case, you are NOT for hire, as you are still paying your share as the pilot.
Flights were already cheap long before the last few years.
Airplane food was never good??? You must be young or didn't fly much in the old days, I will let you in on something. Some airlines had EXCELLENT meals, not just in first class. One airline I used served ALL passangers on China, with real silverware. And the Flight attendants were NICE (I mean personality).
Seating density? We now cram people in like little fishies. Luggage? We now watch luggage weight more closely, and made smaller carry on sizes. Air quality? That is a toss up, in the old days there was all fresh air being blown in your face, but there was also smoking. So I guess it was only better if you were a long way from the smoking section.
And I never ever stood in a LONG line to buy a ticket(maybe they did somewhere). They had a lot more staff, so they usually had SHORT lines back then, in fact they took your cash very quickly. (Yes, we often paid with a wad of bills, something that now brings you extra attention as a possible terrorist).
And those nice tickets, they could be used by anyone. They didn't care that your daughter caught a ride back to school with the boyfriend, so her other friend is now using the ticket. Oh ya, if your flight was canceled, that REAL ticked would be accepted by other airlines.
And if you or your kid was interested in aviation, they could go see the captain during the flight and watch how the controls operated. Maybe they would even be invited to sit in the jump seat for the remainder of the flight. (What a rush that was for kids who love aviation)
No, I am not asking to return to the old days, I am glad air travel is available to so many people, but for the most part flying is HARDER and less pleasant today than before.
Slashdot Mirror
Amazingly enought, if there is enough eye candy, people will suffer with having limited hardware choices at first. Apple has taught us that! I have watched people wow'd by the Apple candy in the past. They often bought the package, and drivers were never thought of.
This weekend I showed my nephiew Mandriva 2007 with 3D, he was amazed. He is bringing over his box next weekend for a Linux install. Why? Eye candy.
Anyway, if enough people embrace Linux because of eye candy, the major manufacturers will all produce Linux drivers anyway, so we won't have to worry about writing drivers unless we want to.
(and as others have mentioned, the kernal hackers rarely do GUI stuff)
Have you noticed how everyone has jacked up the price of the 3800x2 while the other x2 processors have come down or stayed stable in the last month?? I do think AMD is short of 3800x2's.
Indirectly Intel helped create this AMD shortage.
Here are the causes
1. By hyping Core 2 so early, it eroded confidence in Netburst, now no one wants a P4. (so the choice is Core 2 or Athlon x2)
2. Intel cannot produce enough Conroe's. So those who cannot get Core 2 look at Athlons.
3. AMD had to cut prices in half to match Core 2 (because Intel actually priced Core 2 a little too cheap*) it created more demand than AMD could handle until 65nm and all the Chartered product comes into the channel.
4. Intel started kissing up to Apple instead of Dell, forcing Dell into the AMD camp.
Yes, maybe AMD should have turned Dell away, but the real truth is that there is a shortage of everything but the netburst chips! Because Intel made/makes so many P4's the market will be this way for a few more months.
* if Intel had priced Core 2 duo's 25% higher, it would have helped them clear out the netburst chips. It seems they were more interesed in stopping AMD than they were in making a profit.
The article said
"It is a well-known fact that most proprietary software companies lose a significant amount of their revenue because of illegal copying of their software."
It should say
"It is a well-known fact that most proprietary software companies GAIN a significant amount of their revenue because of illegal copying of their software."
It is much more difficult to spread your user base without piracy. Piracy sometimes hurts game makers, but it is the best way to get users to test and ultimately buy(or have employers buy) non game software.
Note: Even the games issue is fuzzy. Many years ago someone gave me a copy of Dune. I loved it, and bought at least two sequels, and several "Command and Conquer" games as well. Now tell me, did Westwood(the game company) suffer or benefit from this persons illegal actions?
Yes, the relations are friendly. They would be much better except for the few times that the US decided to invade them(I bet they won't loose next time though). And when the US takes fits because they don't see eye to eye on Iraq, and the fact that Canada has so much softwood that it is cheaper than in the US and so they tax it to death. Oh ya, and then Washington State kills all their salmon breeding rivers, and then insists on catching all the salmon before they make it back to BC and Alaska (where they actually try to preseve such things).
Hmmm, good thing those Canadians are so nice.
I think idiot is a better description.
How could someone that is so right on Linus etc, be so far off on this one. I have previously enjoyed many of your posts.
The poster was using an analogy to show his perspective, and you went off and started talking about sexual abuse and killing? Molestation causes perminant scars, and nuclear weapons the same... so while you might not like his "stupid" analogies, at least they were in the "same book". The "same book" as in, he was likely trying to find an analogy where there was no harm done by the actions, In your analogies - well...
Thanks in advance for your Christian Charity in trying to understand my perspective, and why I find talk of molestation more serious and offensive than all the bad analogies and benevolent hacking in the world. (ok, so I have a daughter)
These days the UK and the US seem to be the same country. And to think some in the US used to call Canada the 51st state.
Yes, remember the days when Intel used to accuse AMD of copying everything?
Now it looks that Intel has to take a page from the SUN Niagra roadmap for inspiration.
Ahh, the good old days.
Ahh, remember the good old days when Intel would point to AMD and start singing COPYCAT, COPYCAT like a child on the playground?
Now, after the failure of Itanic and Netburst, it looks like they are so short of inspiration that they stole a page from the SUN Niagra processor roadmap. Kudo's to Sun, while they seemed to be really messing up on designing silicon in the last 5 years, at least they had the forsight to call this one.
What you turn into hydrogen is really not the issue.
Where you get the energy is. As long as we are still using fossil fuels, it is better to be able to put them into a fuel cell and get almost all the energy out in the form of electricity, instead of burning it in turbines and internal combustion engines where we only use around 25% of the energy converted. (the rest is mostly waste heat)
Sorry about previous post! I did not read your post properly.
I don't know if you have put a kill-a-watt meter on these old PC's, but there is a reason they don't have cooling problems.
These things often take much less power. I had a k6-2 where the CPU fan only kicked on ever once in a while.
As long as the old ones were powerful enough to be useful for LTSP, the more modern ones would be a worse choice as they would cost more initially and comsume more power.
The only cost effective modern alternative is some of the thin client PC's that use the VIA low power CPU's. They start at only $150USD.
Tis true. But it all depends what the definition of powerful is.
I know of one classroom running fine off a 2.0Ghz P4 with 1.5 Gigs of RAM(18 client PC's). Of course the lab running off a 3800 x2 with dual Gigabit ethernet just screams. Considering that even the 3800 x2 is now a lower end machine (other than the 4 gigs of ram which is getting pricier these days) this is amazing. BTW, we figure two labs could run off this, but we have no present need.
Who is incompetent?
The thread was started by someone who was claiming that a linux install was long and difficult for the average Joe (keeping it from dominance).
And then you prove the point that a "incompetent" person takes hours to set up a windows box, and only 20 minutes on Linux.
If you are so smart, how do YOU set up a secure windows box without "Adding all this stuff"? Hmmm, I bet 50 to one you will not reply with the info, because it can't be done.
Responding to the previous well thought out post, with this venomous garbage is just unacceptable! This is the type of person who should have no karma.
I have to agree with the previous to last post that the modern Linux Distros are a wonderful install. With windows I do the base install, spend another half an hour or more on getting drivers onboard. Then the next hour is spent putting on zone alarm, avg, spybot, opera and on and on...
Then I am still not ready. I spend the next few hours doing updates. I support WAY to many friends and relatives, and this is getting OLD.
With a Mandriva, Suse, Kubuntu, Freespire or whatever. I spend anywhere from 18 - 40 minutes, and it just works! No driver mess, no service packs, and I already have OpenOffice.org and much more ready to go.
Did I mention that most of the distros are much more polished and fun to watch during the install as well?
Thanks for the reply.
Ya, I think the Niagra is a good idea. I have felt that the sun equipment that I have worked on was SOLID, so I wish them well. At the same time I believe SUN's Opteron Servers are selling very well.
To answer the question "If x86 is so grand why is niagra doing so well?". I believe they can both do well. At this point they have totally differnt strengths/markets.
In my mind here we are talking about the difference in architectural philosiphy instead of instruction set. The modern x86 processors are big, complex "out of order" pipelined designs. These are good for high performance applications.
The niagra excells at applications that are highly parrallel, but where no thread is really worked to hard. (web servers etc.)
As for the Power chips. I think we will see IBM start to pull back to fewer stages in the pipeline. I think they got caught up with Intel's ideas, and went with too many stages on some of the newer designs. (That is OK if ALL you are doing is streaming or encoding)
And I believe you don't know what you are talking about. ;) lol BTW, what a nice tone to start off a msg with, that may not be the best way to convince me. Anyway, I was not claiming to be an expert, so I may be wrong. But maybe you just misunderstood me.
You are saying I was implying that the Cell was designed for games. WRONG! In fact for games I think we will find the PPE has too deep of a pipeline. It should be a wider design, and not as deep. I think the PPE will have a hard time doing all the AI work and such, in relation to the amount of work the SPE (SPU) section can chug out! I really think that two PPE's might have been in order, even if they were more simple in design (like a niagra).
You say the Opterons are for Double precision????? I thought I remembered Sony or IBM saying the the SPE's were 128 bit SIMD double precision.
OK, I don't think the Assembly stuff has much relevance here, but I will indulge you.
Ask a real developer? Nice tone, you are arrogant aren't you... I started coding assembly on Z-80 and 6809(yes I had to hand assemble, and type in the hex digits) and have done some x86 from the 8088 on, so here I am qualified to talk.
First, you don't want to be doing much assembly on the Cell. Even IBM claimed that this would be a pain as simplicity of programming was traded off for overall speed.
In my mind, the x86 mess(thanks intel) is only equaled by the complexity of the cell. (By the way, if you want to start comparing processor designs, the most powerful and yet still clean assembly I've seen was the Alpha.)
btw "It took the market a while to figure that out" -- WHAT??? The x86 is more dominant across the board than ever before, from embeded to the Data Center. The market never considers what processor has the best architecture. All they care about is "Does my favorite application run on this processor"
You know where I could really use a Cell or two. I dabble in live sound reinforcement and video. With the power of the cell, I figure you could manipulate a heck of a lot of channels, and compress a lot of video. You could have the equvilent of 48 channels each with its own effects unit. (this would be very pricey today) And maybe have enough extra CPU to do video switching and overlaying.
I think this is an admission from IBM that the Cell processor has some good ideas, but is not an ideal implementation. I bet that is why they need many other general purpose CPU's in the computer.
The one main "CPU"(PPE) in the cell processor is far too weak, I believe we will find game developers harping on that for the next few years.
Maybe the next version of the cell will have a main processor that is much wider and more robust. Maybe even two of them?
You are right.
I have had no problems with the stability of Linux at all. BUT, if I were a Linux beginner, and just considered X as part of Linux, I would think there were stability problems, as X has locked up a couple of times.(my distros may also be a bit too leading edge)
Now if we talk servers... At work here, we "recycle" the Windows servers once a week to keep them up and stable. It just works MUCH better that way. I really do not know if it is the fault of Windows, or the drivers or whatever.
On the other hand, our Linux and AIX servers go much longer.
The crown goes to our DEC/HP VMS boxes. We have left some of them up for years (a decade or more for some I bet) without rebooting.
I love the comments about other OS's made by the typical Apple fanboi. Leave the evaluations and commentaries to those of us that DO use Windows and Linux as well.
While Apple hardware is my number three platform (in time used) after Linux and Windows, I can assure you that
1) The MS OS's (Win 95/98) never crashed more than the contemporary Apple OS's (Pre OS-X).
2) Windows has not crashed much since Windows 2000.
Almost EVERY blue screen of death I have had has been tied back to bad hardware since Windows 2000. I reglarly leave my Work PC up for two months at a time, and while I do eventually reboot to apply patches and free up leaked resources, it NEVER crashes.
P.S. I have NO love for MS - but the truth is the truth! Honesty is just as important in the rest of our lives (OS's) as it is in Science. (you listening HP?)
I have Mod points but I just have to skip it for this story.
Is it just me that finds this whole thing strange???????
Here are these store employees so excited about this new apple product, that they download and install it to see what it is like, so they can rave about the "Superiority" of Apple. And they are doing this "product research" in thier own time. They stole NOTHING from apple. They already paid for the computers, they could not buy the OS... Apple lost nothing.
If anything apple should have said, "a one week suspension for breaking the law, now here is the official copy that you SHOULD HAVE ASKED FOR, now go and do some beta testing for us".
Crazieness I say.
My vote would say not the 6502, not the 68000 (which was powerful and nicely done), but the 6800(6809 maybe) was "The most beginner friendly assembly language." lol
I'm sure we all have our favorites.
What lead you to believe that? I know they are trying to shut down General Aviation, but that would be a big change. (Site sources if you have some)
I had to go back through the FAA documentation, and it still says the same thing.
Title 14: Aeronautics and Space
PART 61--CERTIFICATION: PILOTS, FLIGHT INSTRUCTORS, AND GROUND INSTRUCTORS
Subpart E--Private Pilots
Browse Previous | Browse Next
61.113 Private pilot privileges and limitations: Pilot in command.
.
.
.
(c) A private pilot may not pay less than the pro rata share of the operating expenses of a flight with passengers, provided the expenses involve only fuel, oil, airport expenditures, or rental fees.
This still says that you can split the costs with your passengers. In this case, you are NOT for hire, as you are still paying your share as the pilot.
Hmmm, where to start
Flights were already cheap long before the last few years.
Airplane food was never good??? You must be young or didn't fly much in the old days, I will let you in on something. Some airlines had EXCELLENT meals, not just in first class. One airline I used served ALL passangers on China, with real silverware. And the Flight attendants were NICE (I mean personality).
Seating density? We now cram people in like little fishies.
Luggage? We now watch luggage weight more closely, and made smaller carry on sizes.
Air quality? That is a toss up, in the old days there was all fresh air being blown in your face, but there was also smoking. So I guess it was only better if you were a long way from the smoking section.
And I never ever stood in a LONG line to buy a ticket(maybe they did somewhere). They had a lot more staff, so they usually had SHORT lines back then, in fact they took your cash very quickly. (Yes, we often paid with a wad of bills, something that now brings you extra attention as a possible terrorist).
And those nice tickets, they could be used by anyone. They didn't care that your daughter caught a ride back to school with the boyfriend, so her other friend is now using the ticket. Oh ya, if your flight was canceled, that REAL ticked would be accepted by other airlines.
And if you or your kid was interested in aviation, they could go see the captain during the flight and watch how the controls operated. Maybe they would even be invited to sit in the jump seat for the remainder of the flight. (What a rush that was for kids who love aviation)
No, I am not asking to return to the old days, I am glad air travel is available to so many people, but for the most part flying is HARDER and less pleasant today than before.