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How did dial-up internet work?


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14 hours ago, Keatah said:

So much ingrained resistance to discussing the topic. Get looked upon as some backward tech-averse weirdo, sometimes. In one ear, out the other.

I was always the type to be enthusiastic about the latest tech.   Got a computer, learned to code, took it up as a career.   I remember how most people were technophobes afraid to touch the stuff lest they might break it.

 

But now I look around at the world we created in horror.

14 hours ago, Keatah said:

Parents have to go down a list of items and interpret grunts as yes or no. Do you want this, this, or this. All the while interpreting inflections in noise.

To be fair, I'm pretty sure we did this as kids too ?

 

2 hours ago, wierd_w said:

Last I checked, my old landline phone did not try to "reward" me for using it.  It did not try to "Encourage" me to use it either. If I wanted to call grandma, all I had to do was pick it up, dial her number, and hope she was home (or inside, since you know-- people used to do that kind of thing.)

Yeah.  It also didn't suspend or ban you for getting into drama with the person you were talking to for some vague TOS violation.

 

3 hours ago, wierd_w said:

I am a cynical pessimist, and see it as just a naked data vaccuum, designed to hoover up everything about your life, and the lives of everyone you know, while at the same time blasting you with advertisements, generated explicitly from the user-data they vaccuumed up from you. I look at that and get a sour stomach.  No thank you. Do not want. They use psychologically abusive tactics to trap you, similar to a goddamn cult's.  Double do not want.

Yup, I make a concerted effort to avoid the big tech platforms now.

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I agree overall with these sentiments, but you do realize we'd all be doing the same, if this tech was availble during our time? (thank god it wasn't and that I grew up on the awesome borderline)

 

Just saying, in case anybody entertains a notion that past generations were somehow better or wiser.

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11 minutes ago, Keatah said:

Other issue with social media is that it makes incorrect and un-official information look genuine. As it festers and brews, this misinformation can become harmful to society and the individual alike.

Social media amplifies things that shouldn't be amplified!

This was a pre-internet problem too.  People would write books making dubious health claims or sell supplements that have questionable value.

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5 hours ago, zzip said:

I was always the type to be enthusiastic about the latest tech.   Got a computer, learned to code, took it up as a career.   I remember how most people were technophobes afraid to touch the stuff lest they might break it.

 

But now I look around at the world we created in horror.

Yep.  Same here.

 

I'm a firm believer that technologies should help us to improve our quality of life, and I also firmly believe that a large chunk of the technologies we use today contribute significantly to turning us, over time, into emotional and mental children who are increasingly unable to cope with normal human interaction.

 

It's incredibly unfortunate that those who saw this as a possibility and raised caution over its mis- and over-use were essentially ignored.

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2 minutes ago, Keatah said:

Well yeh. Sure. But not to this degree we see today.

We also couldn't as easily find counter information.   Like say you read a book that said the cause of most of your health problems is X, and you can fight it by following a certain diet.   There might not be a book that says that diet is a load of bunk.   Maybe there might be something published in a health journal studying it, but most people didn't have easy access to that data.

 

I had family members fall for diets like this.   To me it sounded like BS, but I had no facts to counter it, or even any idea of where to find it.

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13 minutes ago, x=usr(1536) said:

It's incredibly unfortunate that those who saw this as a possibility and raised caution over its mis- and over-use were essentially ignored.

We are a reactive species.   Anyone who warns of impending disaster from the present course gets dismissed as a crank, tin-foil hat wearer, chicken little or similar.

 

But then when things go wrong, the people who laughed and wrote off such people start demanding accountability..   "we had a report that warned this was a possibility, how come nobody took action?".

 

I've seen this happen so many times, I shake my head

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28 minutes ago, zzip said:

We are a reactive species.   Anyone who warns of impending disaster from the present course gets dismissed as a crank, tin-foil hat wearer, chicken little or similar.

 

But then when things go wrong, the people who laughed and wrote off such people start demanding accountability..   "we had a report that warned this was a possibility, how come nobody took action?".

 

I've seen this happen so many times, I shake my head

This is but one example of why I left the tech industry.  I'd seen (and dealt with) enough stupidity for one career lifetime.

 

By no means am I saying this doesn't happen in other industries.  It does.  I'd just had enough of seeing it happen in the one I'd given over 29 years of my life to.

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Wow, I missed a lot. I thought we were talking about how it sounded, lol.

 

So the elephant in the room...

 

In the future, when you can just hook the internet directly into your brain... that's some scary shit.

Oh, you could refuse to use it, but you would be a moron compared to everyone else jacked into the hive mind.

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25 minutes ago, OLD CS1 said:

I saw an episode of "Stargate: SG1" about this.  It was not a Good ThingTM.

There was also a book called 1984 that everyone agreed was not a Good Thing.  But then you see Big-Brother-like tech show up with names like Alexa or Siri, and it turns out people enthusiastically welcome it into their homes

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18 minutes ago, zzip said:

There was also a book called 1984 that everyone agreed was not a Good Thing.  But then you see Big-Brother-like tech show up with names like Alexa or Siri, and it turns out people enthusiastically welcome it into their homes

Hey, look on the bright side - at least now we can get nice "parlor wall" smart TVs like they had in Fahrenheit 451!

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53 minutes ago, zzip said:

There was also a book called 1984 that everyone agreed was not a Good Thing.  But then you see Big-Brother-like tech show up with names like Alexa or Siri, and it turns out people enthusiastically welcome it into their homes

so that's the thing, it will come step by step, and when we do have that tech, people won't be freaked out and will be lined up for blocks for it. 

 

About "Alexa" and "Siri"... if it was called "Amazon Wiretap" I don't think as many people would get one.
 

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8 minutes ago, Draxxon said:

About "Alexa" and "Siri"... if it was called "Amazon Wiretap" I don't think as many people would get one.

Meanwhile, mainstream tech voices, and some non-tech legal eagles, have talked about the numerous lawsuits and disclosures of the various voice assistants having recorded full conversations, as well as cases where company employees listened to those recordings.  Hell, even Samsung warned customers of some of its TVs do not hold personal conversations around it.  Myriad YouTube videos demonstrate how speaking about certain topics around your smart phone result in changes to your targeted advertisements.

 

No habits have changed.  Far too many are willing to make personal concessions for convenience.

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1 minute ago, Draxxon said:

 

nowadays, I get bored with it easily. I was more excited when it took 30 mins to load an image.

This.   I blame the search engines and social media.   Nowadays seach for any topic and it favors a handful of sites in the results.   You don't find all the cool websites that you used to so easily.   There are probably fewer of them out there too as people put stuff on social media rather than setting up a web page or blog now.

 

Also video content.   It's easier to make a video on a topic than a web page about it,  I find myself watching more videos on topics that interest me than surfing the traditional web.

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2 hours ago, zzip said:

It's easier to make a video on a topic than a web page about it,  I find myself watching more videos on topics that interest me than surfing the traditional web.

I. Hate. Videos. Mostly because of crappy creators. I passionately abhor spending the first six minutes of a video discussion nothing related to the topic, about how this new cam and these settings make the scene better, blah blah blah and the tangents, just to get a minute or two of information.  The best videos I see are those by Practical Engineering -- nothing but meat.  I would much rather a web page that I can scroll through and quickly find the information I need.

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9 minutes ago, OLD CS1 said:

I. Hate. Videos. Mostly because of crappy creators. I passionately abhor spending the first six minutes of a video discussion nothing related to the topic, about how this new cam and these settings make the scene better, blah blah blah and the tangents, just to get a minute or two of information.  The best videos I see are those by Practical Engineering -- nothing but meat.  I would much rather a web page that I can scroll through and quickly find the information I need.

Yeah it depends on the creator and topic.   Some creators do pad out the video, and some information is better presented in written form.

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Now,   unless I am misremembering ...Wasn't it the days of dial up where it took like 30 seconds to load one web page or get one porn pic to load,...I can't wait 30 seconds for..I mean video game stuff!   I can't wait 30 seconds to see one pic of video game stuff!

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11 minutes ago, OLD CS1 said:

I. Hate. Videos. Mostly because of crappy creators. I passionately abhor spending the first six minutes of a video discussion nothing related to the topic, about how this new cam and these settings make the scene better, blah blah blah and the tangents, just to get a minute or two of information.  The best videos I see are those by Practical Engineering -- nothing but meat.  I would much rather a web page that I can scroll through and quickly find the information I need.

Plus,   I just hate it when they beg you to Like and Subscribe!  As if we don't realize that's how it works.  These days I almost never Like a video if they've wasted valuable time asking me to Like and Subscribe.

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@GoldLeader @zzip From what I understand, videos 10 minutes or more are favored by the YouTube algorithm, which is what puts videos in the recommended and helps them trend.  Another part of the algorithm is interaction with both the video and the creator -- likes, subscriptions, dislikes, comments, &c.  This incentivizes creators to do more annoying things.

 

@GoldLeader Web devs used to be concerned about page loading times.  I used to have an add-on for Firefox which would show a page's load time for various speeds from broadband down to 33.6.

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1 minute ago, OLD CS1 said:

@GoldLeader @zzip From what I understand, videos 10 minutes or more are favored by the YouTube algorithm, which is what puts videos in the recommended and helps them trend.  Another part of the algorithm is interaction with both the video and the creator -- likes, subscriptions, dislikes, comments, &c.  This incentivizes creators to do more annoying things.

Yeah, that's what the creators say.   But YT also changes that algorithm from time to time and the creators will change their videos accordingly.

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