Good Stuff about Technology and the Internet

[mjr]

a not inconsiderate amount of money

I love eggcorns

a Kindle Fire in my pocket

My grandma, what big pockets you have

I transferred the money using the garage Wi-Fi

I hope you've got Virtual Private Networking setup correctly and keep a close eye on your bank account.

I miss technology you could fix with a hammer.

Percussive maintenance!

It's when I end up taking a hacksaw to bike parts that I wish for more technology

 

[I like Skol]

I transferred the money using the garage Wi-Fi,....

I hope you've got Virtual Private Networking setup correctly and keep a close eye on your bank account.

No need. Like I said, I transferred the money and now I am back to the usual situation of being penniless. Watching an empty bank account is no fun at all!

 

[ColinJ]

GPS is a pretty amazing technology, especially when linked to digital OS maps! On that other bit of amazing tech, my mobile phone, I have the OS maps for the whole UK (minus NI) at 1:250,000, 1:100,000, 1:50,000, 1:25,000, and 1:10,000 scale and can use the phone's GPS to navigate using them. And by careful buying, I got the whole lot for only about £225.

I am older than many of you so I can actually remember the first live TV broadcast from the USA to the UK, which gobsmacked us all at the time. I can remember my family being the only one in the street to own a TV (small, unreliable, 405 lines, B&W, and 2 channels (BBC/ITV) which were only broadcast a few hours a day!). No mobiles, no home computers, no this/that/the other ... I used a slide rule and/or log tables at school and though digital calculators were just becoming available, they were incredibly expensive (many hundreds of pounds for one that only did addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) so we were not allowed to use them in exams because it would have given an unfair advantage to the rich kids!

It is pretty scary to think how much things have changed in just over half a century. The world is going to be a very different place in another 50 years time, though I won't be around to see it ...

 

[NorthernDave]

My nephew thinks it's amusing that I've got hundreds of CDs in the house - when he's got access to 40 million+ songs via a Spotify account.

And I love the fact that I can set my Sky+ box to record a program from virtually anywhere in the world using an app on my phone.

Tis witchcraft I tells thee...

Does anyone mourn the death of the fax? I remember when faxes were cool(ish) and new and cutting edge - "hey, I'll fax that over to you". Now they're all in the bin.

 

[midlife]

My nephew thinks it's amusing that I've got hundreds of CDs in the house - when he's got access to 40 million+ songs via a Spotify account.

And I love the fact that I can set my Sky+ box to record a program from virtually anywhere in the world using an app on my phone.

Tis witchcraft I tells thee...

Does anyone mourn the death of the fax? I remember when faxes were cool(ish) and new and cutting edge - "hey, I'll fax that over to you". Now they're all in the bin.

Death of the fax? I work for an organisation that must have hundreds of thousands of the damn things.......

 

[pplpilot]

I've worked with computers since the late 80's. Can't say I'm that taken aback by being able to book a cab/find an atm/shop online etc. It's just usig information and pulling it together.
There are 2 things that stop me in my tracks.
1 - memory and storage. I remember placing an order for a Silicon Graphics workstation with an extra 64mb of ram at the thick end of 5 grand on top of the 20+ grand for the hardware. When I try to explain and put this in context to my 20 year old niece she's totally unimpressed. File size means zero to most born in the late 80's/90's
2- the mind boggling amout of information at your fingertips..staggering.

 

[TVC]

The internet is a wonderful gift to me. Apologies for mentioning it again, but I couldn't have taken Lu go the remotest part of Fiji to marry her. Only the internet gave me access to the hotel, flight planning, Aussie house rentals and all the legal stuff required to make the plan come together. No travel agent would have been willing to put the whole thing together, but with a few hours in front of my computer it was all sorted with no hiccips.

 

[slowmotion]

Online shopping. No more High Street misery. I live a mile from the West London Westfield. I've visited twice in the last nine years and came away with a box of porridge, a Lee Child novel and some M&S boxer shorts. Both trips were utterly hateful.

 

[Drago]

My nephew thinks it's amusing that I've got hundreds of CDs in the house - when he's got access to 40 million+ songs via a Spotify account.

And I love the fact that I can set my Sky+ box to record a program from virtually anywhere in the world using an app on my phone.

Being able to switch my heating on and off, or monitor my solar panels from afar is pretty amazing. I'm trying to persuade Mrs D to get me a kettle that Alexa can control, but she thinks £200 is a bit OTT for a kettle.

 

[Shut Up Legs]

Alexa. That's like something out of science fiction.

Speaking of which, the SF author Isaac Asimov was particularly good at predicting future technology: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27069716

 

[swee'pea99]

Does anyone mourn the death of the fax? I remember when faxes were cool(ish) and new and cutting edge - "hey, I'll fax that over to you". Now they're all in the bin.

One of our main purchases when we set up in business in 1987 was a Canon fax machine. It used thermal rolls rather than A4 sheets. It cost £1600.

 

[midlife]

I've worked with computers since the late 80's. Can't say I'm that taken aback by being able to book a cab/find an atm/shop online etc. It's just usig information and pulling it together.
There are 2 things that stop me in my tracks.
1 - memory and storage. I remember placing an order for a Silicon Graphics workstation with an extra 64mb of ram at the thick end of 5 grand on top of the 20+ grand for the hardware. When I try to explain and put this in context to my 20 year old niece she's totally unimpressed. File size means zero to most born in the late 80's/90's
2- the mind boggling amout of information at your fingertips..staggering.

The 10 MB hard card for my Amstrad PC twin floppy cost me a months disposable income !

 

[classic33]

Being able to switch my heating on and off, or monitor my solar panels from afar is pretty amazing. I'm trying to persuade Mrs D to get me a kettle that Alexa can control, but she thinks £200 is a bit OTT for a kettle.

You'd still have to go and make the cuppa though!

 

[Shut Up Legs]

My nephew thinks it's amusing that I've got hundreds of CDs in the house - when he's got access to 40 million+ songs via a Spotify account.

CDs are underrated. They give you a reasonably good quality backup of the music tracks, and can be played even when your internet access isn't working. This is why I still buy any new music on CDs, rather than paying for a Spotify account or something similar. I'm a software engineer, so am familiar with a lot of new technologies, so nothing surprises me there. But CDs are still sold in stores because people still think they're worth buying.

 

[screenman]

The internet is making my business larger and more profitable.

Same here.