I'm not a Luddite, but...

[Racket_Man]

One of my first jobs out of high school was working for a computer company. My job in that company? Every 30 minutes go into the giant air-conditioned room that contained the computer (which took up the entire room) to change the tapes. Yes, that's right, I worked on a computer that ran on tapes that held the data - think movie reel type tapes, that size. This was in 1976 and yes, every single one of the programmers was a stoner ;-)

HMMMMM I think I still have one or two of those tape reels too


Programmer ----- Stoner

[dbuzman]

Teefies2, I was in the navy stationed in Okinawa in 1988 and the computer we used had the big magnetic tapes.

My first computer was an Apple 2c I bought with my enlistment bonus.

[dalesys]

Luddite? No. Lewdite? I plead the 505th Amendment.

[mjr]

One of the things I find quite amusing about "social media" (especially FaceBook) is that many of the "friends" people have on there they've never actually met and are, therefore, not really friends. I don't think people can actually be friends until they've met in person.

It's kinda like that (paraphrased) exchange that Sheldon & Leonard have on TBBT:

Sheldon: I have 212 friends on myspace.
Leonard: Yes, and you've never met one of them.
Sheldon: That's the beauty of it.

[pudddykat]

My mom used to work in one of the room sized computers doing the punch cards.

My stepdad's first portable computer was the one below. He had a carrying case and it went on planes with him...

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=...w&mode=overlay

[Ironclad Alibi]

Okay, making this post proves that I'm older than dirt

One of my first jobs out of high school was working for a computer company. My job in that company? Every 30 minutes go into the giant air-conditioned room that contained the computer (which took up the entire room) to change the tapes. Yes, that's right, I worked on a computer that ran on tapes that held the data - think movie reel type tapes, that size. This was in 1976 and yes, every single one of the programmers was a stoner ;-)

Ohh, you had one of them new fangled computers. The ones I worked with back in the 60s used punched paper tapes. These looked like big reels of magnetic tape, but they were paper, or mylar, with holes punched in them. We used to program the Apollo moon rocket.

[Racket_Man]

My mom used to work in one of the room sized computers doing the punch cards.

My stepdad's first portable computer was the one below. He had a carrying case and it went on planes with him...

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=...w&mode=overlay

PHOOEY on that

I almost bought one of these
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_1

[Marmalady]

I'm still giggling over 'FaceMyGoogTwit'.

[earl colby pottinger]

That is why I dislike APPS

When I got on board the bus, I was no longer within range of the hostel's wifi. The app noticed this and slapped a gigantic red EXPIRED stamp across the ticket, even though it should have been valid for 80 minutes, of which only 20 had elapsed (having just missed an earlier bus than I strictly needed).

For f***'s sake.

The driver peered closely at the greyed-out numbers still visible behind the stamp, agreed with me that it should have still been valid, and let me on.

When I use any of my computers (laptops) I can use Chrome, FireFox or IE, go to a website (even multiple sites) and then when I go for a walk I can still read the page. Heck I can put the computer to sleep and still read the site hours/days later.

Using my tablet (Nook HD+) to read websites works fine, but the moment I get out of WIFI range the pages refresh and comes up blank.

Additionally, on the computers I can save the pages as HTML files and read them later, my Nook even with sites it displays fine over WIFI fails to display the HTML files.

[protege]

First PC was an Apple ][+ with 64k ram (upgraded from 48k ram) 2 5 1/4 floppy disk drives, a CP/M adapter (think early Unix type), a 300 Baud modem for connecting to BBS's (single user at a time at that) and an RF adapter so I could put the video output to a standard US TV.

None of that fancy stuff at my house The first "real" home computer we had, was an Apple III (basically a II that ran DOS). 2 5.25" disk drives, slow-as-balls modem, dot-matrix printer, green monochrome screen, etc. Why he thought that going with Apple instead of the then-new IBM PC, I have no idea. Even then, Apple's software was seriously limited.

Oh, and I remember CP/M too. Dad's firm had a Xerox computer. 8-inch dual floppy drives, no hard drive, daisywheel printer, no graphics capabilities. Cost for that lot? About $6,000--more than a midsize car at the time

Damn I thought no one remembered the TI-99-4/a. I got loaned one to write a small business system on for a guy that ran an auto repair shop. Cassette player and all for loading programs.

I still have a 99-4/A! Granted, it's very old, and hasn't been played with in probably 25 years. No idea if it still works, and I forget what happened to the cassette player. For a time, you could get games on both cartridges and cassettes. Provided, of course, that the cassette player would actually read the damn program!

Anyone remember life before stores like Best Buy and Office Depot? That is, computer stores were usually small, independent vendors that had one or two machines on display? You'd play with their "demo," but have to order what you wanted? You'd fill out the form, and then a shipping crate would arrive at your door.

[Racket_Man]

Anyone remember life before stores like Best Buy and Office Depot? That is, computer stores were usually small, independent vendors that had one or two machines on display? You'd play with their "demo," but have to order what you wanted? You'd fill out the form, and then a shipping crate would arrive at your door.

The computer store in my birthplace area (what few there were) not the hole in the wall places but much like the current Apple stores where they sold multipule brands including Apple IBM Osborne and Compaq (early 1980's)

[SimonF12009]

First computer I had was a Sinclair ZX81 with 1K of RAM (did get the 16K upgrade)

[Strathclyde]

One of the things I find quite amusing about "social media" (especially FaceBook) is that many of the "friends" people have on there they've never actually met and are, therefore, not really friends. I don't think people can actually be friends until they've met in person.

Though I don't think one can say that those hundreds of friends they have on facebook are actual friends, I have to disagree with your last point. I've never met the woman I consider my best friend (and a sister, really) face to face. But we message each other pretty much every day, voice chat at least a couple times a week on average, and are there for one another (as much as one can be long distance) through the good and the bad. And I have some pretty good friends I met through online games besides her.

[cindybubbles]

I once wanted a Game Gear for its TV tuner and games, and I once wanted a pocket computer with Windows CE, too!

Now I have an iPod, an iPad and an Android smartphone, but I still like to play with a Microsoft Surface Pro whenever I get the chance.

[Cai1987]

I hate hate hate that my computer games and gaming consoles want to be online all the time and randomly download updates without telling me. See, I live in a place commonly called "the boondocks". The best internet connection I can get is 0.75 Mbps. If I'm downloading something larger than a few megabytes, everything else crawls. If we are streaming TV, everything else online comes to a dead stop. This is fine; we just monitor our connections so nothing interferes, and do any large downloads overnight. If something tries to update on it's own accord, everything else goes to hell.

And computers and social media are definitely way too connected. I'm way young compared to most of you guys but I still don't want everything I do shared all over the Internet. No, Netflix, I do NOT want my friends on Facebook seeing what I watch. No, news sites, I don't want everything I post on political articles shared with every other site I post to. No, I do not want every file on my home computer accessible from from remote computers via the Internet - that's a scary one, my tax returns are on this computer! I don't want my laptop to talk to my phone, or my phone to talk to my car, or my TV to talk to my coffeemaker (:P). I have separate devices for a reason!