Poll
Tech that I'm nostalgic for:
16 bit computing
3 votes (4%)
8 bit computing
7 votes (10%)
PDAs (Palm, Handspring, etc.)
3 votes (4%)
Macs pre-OSX
3 votes (4%)
Dial-Up Networking
5 votes (7%)
Shell accounts
11 votes (16%)
BBS (bulletin board systems)
13 votes (19%)
The Minicomputer era
4 votes (6%)
Batch computing (punch cards, etc.)
0 votes (0%)
When FTP and Telnet were all you needed
14 votes (21%)
Other (explain in comments)
5 votes (7%)
13 comments
68 votes
Reply 13 comments

and... (Score: 3, Insightful)

by dnied@pipedot.org on 2014-06-23 11:46 (#282)

Gopher: content without the web's B.S.
Hi-Fi sets: you actually sat down in front of one and just listened to music

Reading my own post, I realize there is a common theme in the 2 technologies. Back in the day, content was king. Nowadays, content is just background noise. The mindless and fragmentary way we consume it reveals that it's completely devalued.

Re: and... (Score: 1)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-06-23 11:54 (#284)

Wow, great comment. Yeah, I remember drooling over the catalogs of those companies that produced component audio systems. You'd spend $400 just for a turntable alone, then listen to it with over-the-ear headphones with an emphasis on high quality audio reproduction, not the number of MP3s you can fit on the device. I don't undervalue portability and love my ipod, but yeah, those were fun times.

Thumbs up for Gopher, too, and Usenet. No flash ads, etc. Try taking an article from huffingtonpost.com and extracting just the article text (ie, removing all the scripts, ads, etc.). The ratio is like 8% information.

Re: and... (Score: 1)

by fatphil@pipedot.org on 2014-06-23 22:47 (#28J)

Yay for gopher!

As of a few weeks ago, I now run a minimal gopher server. All it serves is some limited information on the state of a customised IdleRPG
gopher://fatphil.org:7071/
I notice that there are very few compliant gopher clients. I'm writing some patches for w3m presently to fix the bugs in its implementation (it directly disobeys some "the client must" and "must not"s).

While sniffing around that machine, I notice that my fucking apache server has been rooted, so I'll be decomissioning it, and rebuilding as soon as I can. However, I plan to have the gopher service running again ASAP afterwards.

Yahoo (Score: 1)

by marqueeblink@pipedot.org on 2014-06-23 13:06 (#285)

I kind of miss the original Yahoo, with its curated treeview guide to all things.

Maybe that doesn't even count as technology since it was labor intensive. Same with daily newspapers with the staff sizes that were common 20-40 years ago.

Missing option: none (Score: 2, Insightful)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-06-23 13:08 (#286)

Because honestly, either those options are still readily available or I'm glad to see their backside. I mean, MacOS Classic? Sure, I can't stand the OS X dock, but do you remember how often it crashed, INITs, the awful multitasking? Or 8-bit/16-bit computing? Okay, there were some nice apps, but would I really want to go back to an era when memory was counted in kilobytes (or even single bytes)? And dial-up networking shouldn't even get the slightest of considerations. I've embraced the changes of the ever-improving technology world because they have been, for the most part, actually improvements. I got more computing power in my cellphone (which do everything a PDA did, and more) these days than a Cray had when I was growing up. If I really want to re-live the glory days of past computing, there are always emulators to remind me of how far we've come, and how limited those old machines really were.

Nostalgia for old tech? I don't think so.

Re: Missing option: none (Score: 3, Insightful)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-06-23 14:21 (#287)

I suppose it's fair to say there are different types of nostalgia: there's a variant where you yearn for old days you truly believe were better somehow, and another where you simply have fond memories of a period that's now past.

I have a strange fascination with dial-up, but if you offered to take away my broadband and hook me up with a modem, I'd refuse. But I do have fond memories of that dial-up sound, and the amazement of being on line from a personal computer. Was just thinking of buying this poster, actually: http://www.windytan.com/2012/11/the-sound-of-dialup-pictured.html

Re: Missing option: none (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-07-04 18:34 (#2BD)

Very cool, thank you!

OSX Pre-Mac (Score: 1)

by kwerle@pipedot.org on 2014-06-23 14:47 (#288)

NeXTSTEP

The Niche (Score: 1, Interesting)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-06-23 15:49 (#289)

I miss the days when anyone into tech was a rarity. Once you found someone else who was, it was a really special thing.

I long for the times... (Score: 3, Insightful)

by fadrian@pipedot.org on 2014-06-23 16:06 (#28A)

... when actual language professionals designed the computer languages we used.
... when the use of dynamic binding for any computer language was discouraged.
... when languages were available with restartable exceptions.
... when one only needed to know four languages to write a program (the command line language, the editor's command language, the language that one was programming in and (optionally) a bit of assembler for performance-critical code.
... when UI considerations did not outweigh the algorithmic.
... when an application without a "social" aspect could be released.

As a lover of computation, information, and their manipulation, I could go on, but I'll just fade away by saying "Get the fuck off my lawn!".

Classic Gaming (Score: 3, Interesting)

by venkman@pipedot.org on 2014-06-23 18:17 (#28B)

I miss the games from the '90s; 16-bit consoles and PC games. Simtower, Myst, Pilotwings, pretty much all the SNES Star Wars games. I am tired of Internet-connection-required, DLC, premium-service-required multiplayer. I just want simple games for my simple mind.

Re: Classic Gaming (Score: 3, Informative)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-06-23 22:52 (#28K)

HumbleBundle is your friend

8-bit Computing Alive and Well (Score: 1)

by caseih@pipedot.org on 2014-06-27 02:35 (#29K)

I'm having a blast programming Arduino in C. That's 8-bit programming, and you have to be careful with cycles and resource usage. Arduino code ports quite easily to larger platforms too. It's cool to be able to load small programs on an AtTiny chip and have it be completely functional with no support circuitry.