What's in / What's out

New I-Net vocabulary. What’s in/What’s out
(From World and Press – Aug 1, 2008)

Wimax
Powerful wireless internet which can cover whole cities. The lucky people at Milton Keynes already have it.

Egosurfers
Those people who spend all day looking themselves up on the internet.

HDMI
The new generation Scart lead that allows you to connect high-definition devices together, which is also much smaller than the clumpy scart leads most people have to use.

Rick-Roll
To deliberately divert someone to a video of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” while they’re web browsing.

HSDA
High-Speed Downlink Packet Access to the techies, but to us it’s the new 3G software which supposedly makes the internet on your phone as quick as broadband.

UGC
User Generated Content – whether it’s Facebook, Myspace, Flickr or YouTube, if your website doesn’t let your audience contribute then you’re way behind the times.

Android
Phones featuring Google’s Android software which allows anyone to write their own software. Many say it will knock the iPhone off its perch.

Fuel Cells
New types of environmentally friendly batteries which use methanol and could replace lithium-ion cells.

Twitter
To drone on endlessly (usually on Facebook) about what you are currently doing, regardless of how inconsequential your actions are.

Mash-Up
When two elements from different websites are combined – think Google Maps listing where local restaurants are, for instance.

RFID
Radio Frequency identification: tool that allows you to track packages in real time.

DVB-H
Newly announced Mobile TV standard for Europe that allows you to watch TV on your mobile on the go.

OLED
Organic LEDs that use up less electricity because they don’t have to be backlit. A few mobiles and MP3 players have just begun using them.

HD-DVD
Toshiba’s DVD format has gone the way of Betamax, now Blu-ray has won the battle of the optical disc storage format.

Dial-Up
It won’t be long before kids ask what surfing the net was like before broadband took over the world.

CRT
Cathode ray tube, the technical term for old TVs.

Kilobyte
The days when computers came with 64kb of memory are long gone. Nowadays, even the cheapest computer boasts a 120gb hard drive.

My word, Abe I am still in cave man land, I think. Most of those things make me go 'HUH?" I do recognize 'dial up', though.

I can remember when a 10 gigabyte hard drive was considered huge and when 64 megabytes of RAM was considered a lot of memory and those days were only 8-10 years ago! I can remember working on computers with only 500 megabyte hard drives and 8 megabytes of RAM, and that was only back in the mid to late 1990's! Computers sure have come a long ways in the past few decades. I wonder how much further they'll go.

I'm there with you, Zada.

I am waiting until it is perfect and in my language.
Love,
Betty

Quote :

I can remember working on computers with only
500 megabyte hard drives and 8 megabytes of RAM, and that was only back
in the mid to late 1990's!

Gordon, my first computer was a Commodore VIC-20. Its "hard drive" was
a cassette tape recorder. I later upgraded to a Commodore 64, which
came with a dual floppy drive! I was walkin' in high cotton, and
the internet was still to come...

Phil, about the time of your Commodore, my computer was a Kaypro that required two 8-1/4-inch floppy discs--one that held the operating program and the other to record the data being processed. It was strictly a word processor for me--no such thing as e-mail or Internet, but I drummed up a lot of articles for my magazine. I did spring for a letter quality printer though, a very slow one of perhaps a page a minute, because the magazines would not accept dot matrix. I had to produce hard copy because transmission of e-files was far on the horizon.

Jim Woods
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But we did learn some basic programming just to run those things, Jim.
I almost bought a Radio Shack TRS 80 (Trash 80), but decided against
it. Within a few months of buying the first Commodore at nearly
$1500.00, they could be found on the toy aisle at K-Mart! LOL

Yes, and we thought we were on the cutting edge, and I suppose that we were. The early computers, hardly worthy of the name, did beat a typewriter with a back-up white-out key for error correction.

Jim Woods
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Back in the 70's, I worked for Valley National Bank in Arizona. The installment loan department went to computers. Those computers were housed in a building bigger than a city block. All keypunch stuff for input. It was my little job to teach the branch loan officers how convert to computerized print outs and input. No one was happy about it but it went on never the less.

It was another 20 years before I got an old computer that used 5inch plus flappy discs. All DOS. The wonder of it was that I could put in a disc and play Jepordy. hahaha. Alex looked the same then as he does now.

Love,
Betty

That VIC-20 was a great game-playing thing. It came with a plug-in game
called AdventureLand. It was a module about the same size as an 8-track
tape. The game was a storyline that you had to respond to by giving it
directions... Go East, Get Sword, Go North, etc.

I never did completely solve the treasure hunt.

Betty, your keypunch experience reminded me of my early years in Civil
Service where I worked on the old crypto equipment. It used "ticker
tape" for in and output. It was actually a paper tape with holes
punched for the necessary "ones and zeroes" that still run computers to
this day!

Added in edit: Seems I remember these machines called "Teletype"

I think we all have stories about computers. Here’s mine:
My early career was with IBM.(1962-1968). My wife became a programmer*and I became a computer operator and production coordinator, later an operations analyst. The computer machines were housed in a huge air-conditioned room in New York City. The procedure for processing was to keypunch data into an IBM card that was read as “0” and “1” in the binary code, and then those cards were sorted and collated and loaded from card-to-tape. The large reel of tape was on a large tape drive where a number of drives went into action, spinning, sorting and writing data according to the programmed instructions. Later, a printout was done on a 1401 machine. The large computer processing machines were the 7090 and then upgraded to the 7094. Programmers would “debug” their programs by scanning the printouts that comprised the “0” and “1” binary digits – a very tough job.

Having left the data processing scene, I returned to it in 1989. I was living in State College, PA., and my first use of a desktop was a Macintosh that I rented from the University library. I used it to convert my typewritten
manuscript onto a floppy disk Desktop PCs were still in their infancy, and I saw a future. I downplayed my background in order to get a job as a sales-trainee with Swan Technologies Computer (originally called Tussey Computer). We sold PC’s over the phone and it was called direct marketing. Dell computer was also young and our major competition.
Microsoft was developing software to make the processing simpler. We sold the 286-12 – the 12 represented the Megahertz speed and it had about 4 MB of RAM. Later came the 360 series followed by the 460 series – the fastest thing in existence with hard drives holding 40 and 50 Megabytes.

Having excelled in my job, I was chosen to open a European branch for our company, and I established our manufacturing/assembly operations in Hauenstein, Germany. (1992) Dell computer had already hit the
European market ahead of us and had a presence in the UK. I didn’t manufacture any parts. I simply purchased the component parts and did assembly work. The data analysts at our headquarters in State College provided the latest technology to use and put us on the cutting-edge of that technology. Then came the price war within the PC industry. In Germany, Siemens along with Dell and a few others producing desktop PC’s, decided to squeeze out the smaller PC firms that were popping up. They began selling their PC’s at a retail price equivalent to what it cost me to produce. Without the chance to make a profit nor the financial strength to weather the storm, we made the decision to close the business.

Needing a job, I left the PC industry and took a job within the aircraft industry. The PC industry continued to accelerate beyond anyone’s imagination. Today, I struggle to figure out how to operate my own PC with all the latest software and perpetual updates. Keeping pace is a full time job. My knowledge was in hardware – not software. Software was developed to make the operating of the PC easier. The PC’s became faster and the software kept pace. Bill Gates played a major role in all of this and continues to do so.

*Her experience was exceptional and she was part of a scientific programming group at MIT working on the development of new computer systems.

My first computer was an Amiga 1200 it was ten years ahead of it's time pity Commodore went bust or It might have been the Amiga in one form or the other we all might be using today. I had a twenty megabyte hard drive in mine and I thought that was big, now in my PC I've two hundred fifty gigabytes and I'm starting to think I need more space but just have to make do just now.

A credit card sized pocket calculator has more memory than that old
VIC-20, but I sure had fun! Memory space ws no hindrance - how many
cassette tapes do you have?

The A1200 used floppies 3 1/2" got loads up in the loft(attic) somewhere, but I do remember the days of the old tape recorder a friend had a C64 and thats what it used at first. I remember the wait for the game to load it put me off computers at the time. The of course I discovered the Amiga still hold fond memories of playing the original Settlers on it, I must have lost months on it; not al at once luckily though.

I discontinued major use of audio cassettes in 2002, but I still have the decks to play them. CDs are much better than cassettes and MP3s are much better than CDs, especially because with MP3s you can easily chose exactly the songs you want to listen to.

Even thought CDs and MP3s are handy, there's nothing like the old-fashioned analog sound of LPs. It's closer to what we hear in "real life."

Malcolm

Even LPs and 45s are better than cassette tapes in that they don't break and get all tangled up in the machine.

But LP's do get scartched as does CD while MP3s are less susceptible to damage as with all digital recording.

Many eons ago I ran an advertising team for a year book producing company. They were considering computerising the company and we visited the Snap-On-Tool Company. The main thing I got from it was a motto plastered all over ashtrays, posters and the like, it was...

'If you can't Blind them with Brilliance, Baffle them with BullSh*t!

Like I said before, the one thing I really like about MP3s it the ability to chose the music I listen to and not have to pay for stuff I'm not interested in. MP3s I think are one of the only types of music that won't wear out (unless the media they're stored on is dammaged) and that's the reason for backup copies.

Those MP3s fall into one rationale folks had for buying 45 rpm records. They got the song they wanted rather than an album with tons of what often seemed like filler music.

Malcolm

Well, that's one of the major points in getting MP3s instead of CDs, you don't have to pay for all that filler music.