Comments on: Comedy gold: 1981 news report explores magical journalistic breakthrough

By: Comedy gold: 1981 news report explores magical journalistic breakthrough « Top Daily Digest Reading

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 10:25:10 +0000

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By: Zorro

Zorro — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:43:32 +0000

A blast from the distant past. Good one Allah.

By: trigon

trigon — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:39:18 +0000

One of my good friends worked for a company called Mountain Computer. They built a bunch of specialty boards for Apple in the early 80’s like a clock board and a music synthesizer board. They also built a 20 meg external hard drive. The thing was bigger than a toaster and it cost about $2000 if I remember right. We used to laugh about that drive at the time because nobody would ever need that much hard drive space.

By: trigon

trigon — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:31:53 +0000

1982 I had an Apple II+ to run the inventory in my store. It saved me a ton of money as my partners were ripping me off. When I computerized the inventory it scared the crap out of them. Cut my losses a lot. I knew enough programming to throw an extra line into the inventory program that screwed it up so they couldn’t change anything when I wasn’t around. The fact that they couldn’t even run the computer scared them even more. Eventually, they were gone, thank god. The computer is still up in my attic, though. I’ll bet it still works, too.

By: AZfederalist

AZfederalist — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:29:42 +0000

Didn’t see the first page, but did anybody else catch that “of the 2 to 3 thousand home computer owners in the Bay Area”? What amazes me is that I lived through that era and I’m not that old.

By: ronsfi

ronsfi — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:04:57 +0000

Meh! That will never catch on.

By: gbear

gbear — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:58:25 +0000

Acoustic coupling – ahhhhhh good times.

By: ajacksonian

ajacksonian — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 23:49:48 +0000

Ah for the days of the 110baud modem, teletype and APL!! Learning on an IBM mainframe from junior high in the ’70s, using one of the last of the teletype terminals before they went to AppleII’s then an Atari 400 with 300baud modem at home in college… fun was had! I remember getting the reams of paper from my father who worked at Westinghouse where they only used one side of the paper… and employees could take home the results by the box load.

Fast forward to 1994 and NYT, WaPo and many another were telling those of us at Seybold Seminars that they would figure out this computer distribution idea RSN… got that at nearly every session of Seybold up to ‘99… then something started to happen to those promises of ‘figuring it out’.

They didn’t hear the advice of Frank Ramano, just didn’t bother to listen to the man who was the RIT industry acknowledged guru of future technology. I know. I was there. The newspapers were already going down in circulation due to cable tv in the ’80s and that was after the buying spree of the ’70s to see many cities go to ‘one newspaper towns’. Now they cry as many cities are starting to move into the ‘zero newspaper town’ category.

They couldn’t figure out BIX or CompuServe or Prodigy… or email… actually they still can’t figure that last out based on what sort of non-responses you get from newspapers these days. This broadcast was the report of the large bore rifle that fired its shot at sub-sonic speeds. The impact hit just a bit later. Now the beast is stopping realizing its brain has been shot out. Soon, very soon, it will be extinct. Just like the penny broadsheets. Just like hand illuminated manuscripts.

Mind you the forums on the ‘net are only a smidge better than they were in the ’80s.

By: darkpixel

darkpixel — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 23:30:55 +0000

CompuServe Ahh…. Before we wrote “Micro$oft”… we wrote “CI$”… usually on a 300 baud modem while logged onto a competitor, like GEnie…

By: badpenguin

badpenguin — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 23:17:33 +0000

Shall we play a game?

By: MikeRossTky

MikeRossTky — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 23:17:29 +0000

Service in Ohio is Compuserve. I still have an active mail account with them. The account is 23 years old! It was the only service you can log into from around the world. The civilized forum and life of a Sysop!

By: 5u93rm4n

5u93rm4n — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 23:02:40 +0000

What your people call magic, my people call technology.

By: Amendment X

Amendment X — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 22:52:14 +0000

Wow- a TRS 80 (aka “Trash 80″) from Radio Shack, and acoustic coupler (at maybe 1200 baud, tops).
I remember my Dad bought a TRS 80, had to “boot” from a cassette tape (15 minutes) and told me that one day, that he upped the memory to 16k of RAM. bragging rights indeed!
And in 10 years, or less, people will look at what I have as basically flint and steel.

By: jdubya

jdubya — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 22:31:27 +0000

What is actually hilarious about this is in the underlying truth to the whole news article: They basically let themselves fall behind the curve. They (print media) did nothing to shape the beast that has ate them.

It is kinda like the scourge of Islam in some dark way.

By: mikeyboss

mikeyboss — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 22:31:25 +0000

“Owns home computer”

By: Big Orange

Big Orange — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 22:30:35 +0000

I really love the end. The Drive By Media getting it wrong again.

By: Badger40

Badger40 — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 22:27:59 +0000

So are Ron Jeremy’s, and he’s a porn star too. You might want to enhance that description a little.

Oldnuke on January 29, 2009 at 3:37 PM

I don’t have to prove my sex-I have a man already!
You are just jealous! LOL!

By: BHO Jonestown

BHO Jonestown — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 22:21:26 +0000

Exxon made computers in the ’80’s.

By: Coronagold

Coronagold — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 22:05:12 +0000

That old guy in the clip said it’d be a great benefit to print out the online paper for later reference. That was all before they found out the resourcefulness of the memory hole.

By: Flint Stone

Flint Stone — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 21:16:43 +0000

The computer class at my high school consisted of one keyboard, one phone-cradle modem and a teletype machine. What code we typed in went by modem to the Denver Public schools mainframe and then the results came back to us on the teletype.

By: Beagle

Beagle — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 21:14:04 +0000

Rap was the early 1980s: Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Sugarhill Gang, Kurtis Blow… You know, before rap blew.

By: SC.Charlie

SC.Charlie — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 21:12:12 +0000

Many at the time were not into it for the money. Then the killer application came Visicalc

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiCalc

By: SC.Charlie

SC.Charlie — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 21:04:25 +0000

I had one of the first IBM personal computers. Modem….what modem? The first services that I was able to sign up for was Prodigy.

The 1980s music was before rap and was better in my opinion.

By: sabbott

sabbott — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 21:02:51 +0000

The 80’s were ok. It was the late 70’s that blew! That’s when DISCO came in. Liesure Suits! Disco! Dick heads! My favorite hang out in Iowa City went from a long-hair hippy bar to a DISCO joint over one summer in 75. When my buddy and I stumbled back into it one night we almost had a nervous breakdown…

By: mindhacker

mindhacker — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 21:01:24 +0000

Very good history lesson.