computer stuff you never figured would happen ?

[JimJoe]

Some of us on Bitnet, about 1991, decided 2 things we would never see in our lifetimes.

1) home computer CPUs running in the GHz range.

2) home computers using liquid cooling.

3) Home computers with a terabyte of storage on one hard drive.

What computer and technology ideas have you felt would never happen, and they did ?

 

[Everlong]

I was thinking about something similar with your 1st choice before, about how the first GPU is at 1GHz now, and remembered when I got my first 1GHz CPU as well.


I suppose the speed of the Internet connections we have now are something I didn't think we'd get to, or couldn't imagine having at any time.

 

[bray:way]

i never thought we would actually have robots, but it seems that will change soon, i was watching something on discovery channel about them and they seem to be approaching too lol

 

[Everlong]

I was thinking about something similar with your 1st choice before, about how the first GPU is at 1GHz now, and remembered when I got my first 1GHz CPU as well.


I suppose the speed of the Internet connections we have now are something I didn't think we'd get to, or couldn't imagine having at any time.

Just to add on to this: was reading a magazine today that was talking Internet connections and it has a graph of how long it potentially took to download a 1MB file over the years. In 1990 it took 40 minutes to download a 1MB file, 1995 it took 20mins, 2000 1min, 2005 5 seconds and 1 second on todays connection

 

[lordbob75]

Some of us on Bitnet, about 1991, decided 2 things we would never see in our lifetimes.

Wow. 1991. I wasn't alive then...:huh:

Anyways, I grew up with things like this. I was born in 1992, so I grew up with a computer, and I don't even remember having processors slower than 500 MHz. Now, what I have seems normal, even a little slow. The curse of my generation. Nothing will ever be fast enough...

As too something that HAS happened... I'm a little young for that, but I will give it a shot:
Holograms. At this point, its more 3D, but they are getting there. Thats all I can think of though....

Also, I will throw my younger perspective in and tell you what I can't imagine ever happening:

1: Time travel. Yes, it is computer related.... I was discussing the physics of this with my friend a month or so ago, and we just don't see any viable way to do it that would work FOR SURE. Too many variables, and no one wants to throw themselves through a black hole to find out.

2: COMPLETE AI. There are too many problems with this, and even if it were possible, (which it might be) it would be MUCH better to avoid it. There are too many movies out there that depict what might happen, though the reality would be far more brutal. Matrix and Terminator anyone?

~Lordbob

 

[Everlong]

Some of us on Bitnet, about 1991, decided 2 things we would never see in our lifetimes.

2: COMPLETE AI. There are too many problems with this, and even if it were possible, (which it might be) it would be MUCH better to avoid it. There are too many movies out there that depict what might happen, though the reality would be far more brutal. Matrix and Terminator anyone?

~Lordbob

There was that story last week about that robot. Dunno what exactly it was for, but a tech guy switched it off, but the robot just suddenly woke back up, picked the guy up and threw him against the wall fracturing two of his ribs.

 

[lordbob75]

Some of us on Bitnet, about 1991, decided 2 things we would never see in our lifetimes.

2: COMPLETE AI. There are too many problems with this, and even if it were possible, (which it might be) it would be MUCH better to avoid it. There are too many movies out there that depict what might happen, though the reality would be far more brutal. Matrix and Terminator anyone?

~Lordbob

There was that story last week about that robot. Dunno what exactly it was for, but a tech guy switched it off, but the robot just suddenly woke back up, picked the guy up and threw him against the wall fracturing two of his ribs.

WHAT!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

~Lordbob

 

[H2SO4]

2: COMPLETE AI. There are too many problems with this, and even if it were possible, (which it might be) it would be MUCH better to avoid it. There are too many movies out there that depict what might happen, though the reality would be far more brutal. Matrix and Terminator anyone?

Except for the fact that you named a decent movie (the original "Terminator") in the same sentence as a crap one ("The Matrix" - why didn't they just use cows to power everything instead of inconvenient humans?), I quite enjoyed reading your post and I think you're clever to invoke AI in this context

Out of curiosity, do you see any other reasons for avoiding AI other than the when-good-robots-go-bad cliche?

 

[Tstright]

Some of us on Bitnet, about 1991, decided 2 things we would never see in our lifetimes.

1) home computer CPUs running in the GHz range.

2) home computers using liquid cooling.

3) Home computers with a terabyte of storage on one hard drive.

What computer and technology ideas have you felt would never happen, and they did ?

Our Unix group can up with the same back in 1980.

 

[JimJoe]

If you can watch Discovery Science, and sometimes programs on History channel talk about this, mention that time travel is theoretically possible. At one time it was deemed impossible.

But the Grandfather paradox has a problem. ( Grandfather Paradox: go back in time and kill your grandfater before your father was born. What happens to you ?)

Instead of altering everyone's history by going back in time, the theory is you alter your own past, and time branches off at that point. Everyone else goes along in the time stream you were in, and you are in a different time stream.

As for download speeds... in 1988 you didn't download as such.

You sent an email to a ftpmail server.

That email would have commands in it.

I'll try and remember:

OPEN sitename
CD public
CD Amiga
list
CLOSE

You got an email back of the files and directories in Amiga sub-directory/folder.

Then if you saw a file you mgiht be able to use.

OPEN sitename
BINARY
GET filename
CLOSE

It was uuencoded, binary changed to text, and broken up into 16 kilobyte chunks.

It arrived at your email account, hopefully all parts.

Uudecoded them, changed them back to binary. Email could only sent text back then. No attachments.

You then joined the parts. And hope it worked. Anywhere along thel ine a part might go missing, or become corrupted.

Most frpmail servers had a waiting period, never published. Typically, you had to wait 1-2 months between requests. Violate that, get banned for 6 months.

Lists of server names, files there, were passed around like they were super secrets.

ftp these days is much easier.

 

[Tstright]

Lists of server names, files there, were passed around like they were super secrets.

This is the truth!

 

[pacinitaly]

just think what's comming next

 

[JimJoe]

Direct ftp from source site to human brain with a digital component.

The problem will be the sneaker net from there to the desktop.

 

[JimJoe]

I suppose the speed of the Internet connections we have now are something I didn't think we'd get to, or couldn't imagine having at any time.

My first internet connection was 2400 bps dial-up. The only thing available in my area. That was in 1998.

If I knew someone on say Compuserve, and I wanted to email them, here is what we had to do.

1. find out the relay server between bitnet and Compuserve. I got a list of these from another person at the university.

2. get the other person's email address. Usually a phone call or sending a letter through the post office.

send an email like this:

To:[email protected]%relay server's address
From:myemailaddress@bitnet

The relay server would get it, and you had to send it to the correct relay server or nothing happened, not even an error message back, strip off its own address and then send the email to Compuserve.

He did the reverse to send an email back.

While it typically took just a few hours, it could take days for the email to go in one direction. The relay servers would be backed up with queued emails.

 

[Tstright]

My first internet connection was 2400 bps dial-up. The only thing available in my area. That was in 1998.

Beats the 300bps I had in the early 80's......And now I complain about a 18Mbit connection...lol

 

[JimJoe]

oops. 1989, not 1998, for the dial-up. Good Grief.

I have a 3 megabits cable modem since 1999.

 

[inc2000]

when the FAIL-WHALE is caught by Capn Ahab. LOL served up and p-ownedx3

 

[merkat106]

I'm a little late in the computer world.

I remembered enjoying using win 3.11 at mom's work in the early nineties.

My first computer: IBM Aptiva, Pentium 120Mhz, 1.2Ghz hard drive, Windows 95a with internet dial-up at maybe 16kps. Computer was very unstable, but I still loved it

 

[stoneys-nutz]

My first computer spec's.

Cpu-300mhz.
Ram-128Mb.
Hdd-2.5Gb.
Gpu-8Mb.
Psu-300W.
56K Dialup.
OS-Widows 95
Not quite a super computer, although, at the time i thought it does'nt get any better than this, i can remember thinking it will be years before they can improve on this, lol, how things have changed, look at my specs today.

 

[JimJoe]

My very first home computer was a Sinclair ZX-81. The CPU was a Z80A running at 8 MHz. it had a tokenized Basic built-in. One or two keystrokes per BASIC command. I/O was via a cassette tape interface. It took 7 minutes to load or save a computer program.

It had Slow mode and Fast video modes. Slow video mode was, you typed it showed on the screen right then. Fast mode, you type, pressed enter, the screen blanked, and displayed what you typed. Graphics, 32-columns wide. Large clunky graphics. Cost, $100.00 US.

I later bought the 16 kilobye ram pack add-on. Cost was $49.95 US.

This would have been about 1984-1985.

My fun with that is why I got into computers.