Aww .... how quaint

[Output]

We certainly have come a long way.

I agree that at times it can easily be taken for granted, but at the same time these progressions have of course been made based on growing needs and refinements.

Not everyone will need to take advantage of these progressions, but there are enough people/businesses/governments/universities etc. that do or that can benefit from it, and so they still benefit everyone as a whole.

It wouldn't surprise me if there are still plenty of places stuck with dialup in the US though, as their ISP situation seems to be a mess that keeps having money thrown at it but without much change actually taking place.

[Smudger]

I wonder what would have happened if you had requested it on CD. Is their customer service that good, that they would actually send you one, all these years later?

Wait a week to get it in the post, realise your laptop doesn't have a CD drive any more...

[g8ina]

and dont start me on valves .....

I have five of these in production

[Saracen999]

Wait a week to get it in the post, realise your laptop doesn't have a CD drive any more...

Well, given that my laptop is a bit "dark ages" too, it .... erm .... does, actually. Well, DVD/CD so I suppose more Renaissance than Dark Ages.

The Surface Pro, on the other hand ..... has an LG USB external DVD/CD plugged into the docking station thingy. I really am a relic. I like me physical disks. Now, where'd I put my slippers? Oh yeah .... on my feet. No wonder I couldn't find them.

[Saracen999]

and dont start me on valves .....

I have five of these in production

Remind me next time I'm coming your way if those valves I have might be any use. They were, I think, out of a TV from the really old CRT days.

[g8ina]

Thanks but highly unlikely if out of a TV, I use 12AX7 or ECC83 in these Pop in any time, you know that mate

[badass]

I thought this whole thing about quantum tunneling had proven that it was, if only theoretically, possible to break lightspeed... or at least shortcut it?
I don't understand most of this, but... https://www.quantamagazine.org/quant...ight-20201020/

So even if it's not actual lightspeed or greater, it can still be Lightspeed™ for marketing purposes, in the same way "Gigabit" internet is only 900Mbps.
But then, if I'm flying my spaceship out somewhere near Jupiter and flapping over comms with Earth, it either means my dream future has arrived, or that Star Citizen/Sqn42 has finally been released!!

Think of that one as a caveat to the lightspeed statement. Quantum mechanics is weird but the weirdness doesn't (entirely) scale up to human perceivable scales. But of course the Lightspeed™ service will offer speeds of "up to" lightspeed. Until the ASA rules their adverts as illegal.
The only stuff I have seen about faster than light travel over larger scales are improved versions of the Alcubierre drive that requires an entirely made up sci fi form of exotic matter. All prior "wierd" stuff in science has been predicted by maths long before being confirmed. The Exotic matter required breaks maths.

[ik9000]

The Exotic matter required breaks maths.

But people have had enough of experts... it's about time physics listened to the will of the masses. Now where's my perpetual motion hoverboard and teleportation device FFS?

[Ttaskmaster]

Think of that one as a caveat to the lightspeed statement. Quantum mechanics is weird but the weirdness doesn't (entirely) scale up to human perceivable scales. But of course the Lightspeed™ service will offer speeds of "up to" lightspeed. Until the ASA rules their adverts as illegal.

It has only to be good enough to pass as Apparent FTL to qualify, though... and if we can QT or use some other space-foldey method to get data signals from A to B (or J to E and back) faster than lightspeed in normal space, then we have our product and your ping will pwn the noobs on Io.

[Xlucine]

I got a casio calulcator about 10 years ago that had the manual in the wrong language. I contacted support, and they mailed me an english copy - printed out on a4. I thought I'd just get a pdf, but what I got wasn't far off the blue telephone book

[raygdunn]

Winchester hard drives! They were huge!

I think those were the exchangeable disks that went in the "desk" drawer of a PDP 11?

Before disc platters we used the outside of spinning drums.
I remember a student visit to a London airport around 1970, where storage was on a six foot wide drum. Capacity possibly only in the megabytes....

A lecture talked of previously working on a machine consisting just nine registers and a drum. (RAM what's that?)

(On the corner of my home desk I have an Altos 486 with the Xenix operating system (Unix variant). It came out about the same time as the PC and was incompatible, Transfers required byte flipping. Not sure I can still emulate the old terminals we used now to run it.)

"Those were the days my friend" (Mary Hopkins 1968)

Disclaimer: All personal memories subject to storage corruption

[OwP]

About 30 years ago I went up to Greenwich Uni to see there satellite imaging department. When they ordered imaging for new areas it was delivered on scsi hard drives by motorbike courier.

[cheesemp]

I remember ordering a 28kbps dial up modem with my Christmas money as 16 year old I think? I was very lucky as between ordering and the device being sent, US Robotics bumped the device to 33.6kbps so I was the coolest tech kid in school (or at least until the next speed bump came out, Was it 48 or 64 I can't remember?). Speaking of which do you remember soft modems where they offloaded the audio processing to the CPU. They where never as good as a hardware modem!

[Jonj1611]

Think it was 56k next

[Kovoet]

I remember arriving from Zimbabwe in the UK where my parents were from 21 years ago to live. I used to go to currys now and then to get the freeserve disks the used to give away at the front of the store. How those day's taught me patience. Now on 1GB internet and could not be happier.

[[GSV]Trig]

Who remembers being shouted at when they were on the internet and someone picked the land line up, OMFG!!!