gerry wrote on 2022-09-01, 10:01:

i was thinking more of the 'big and fat' = tough in older movies

Fat guys are also not to be underestimated. Think about Butterbean 😁
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Esch

Life was simpler back then. It Maybe easier today but it was simple to understand back then. Today there is to much chaos and unpredictability. With computers and the internet everything is moving too fast. Things are changing too fast.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2022-09-03, 08:39:

Life was simpler back then. It Maybe easier today but it was simple to understand back then. Today there is to much chaos and unpredictability. With computers and the internet everything is moving too fast. Things are changing too fast.

You know what really changed between then and now . .information and ease of access, before the internet you really only had access to what information you had locally or via books and such, in a way this made things simple. Now you have information overload and every man and his dog has access to pretty much any and all information freely available world wide, it really does get to be too much.

Worse yet now days you are bombarded by it, you cannot get away from it unless you go off grid.

It one of the reasons my mobile lives in Do Not Disturb mode, if the call is important enough they will leave a message or call back .. if not I guess it wasn't important.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-09-03, 11:42:

You know what really changed between then and now . .information and ease of access, before the internet you really only had acc […]
Show full quote

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2022-09-03, 08:39:

Life was simpler back then. It Maybe easier today but it was simple to understand back then. Today there is to much chaos and unpredictability. With computers and the internet everything is moving too fast. Things are changing too fast.

You know what really changed between then and now . .information and ease of access, before the internet you really only had access to what information you had locally or via books and such, in a way this made things simple. Now you have information overload and every man and his dog has access to pretty much any and all information freely available world wide, it really does get to be too much.

Worse yet now days you are bombarded by it, you cannot get away from it unless you go off grid.

It one of the reasons my mobile lives in Do Not Disturb mode, if the call is important enough they will leave a message or call back .. if not I guess it wasn't important.

The other part is just how much misinformation is on the internet along with people just passing off their stupid opinions as facts. The internet is very much a two edged blade unfortunately.

(Edit: Fixed weird sentence structure)

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-09-03, 11:42:

You know what really changed between then and now . .information and ease of access, before the internet you really only had acc […]
Show full quote

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2022-09-03, 08:39:

Life was simpler back then. It Maybe easier today but it was simple to understand back then. Today there is to much chaos and unpredictability. With computers and the internet everything is moving too fast. Things are changing too fast.

You know what really changed between then and now . .information and ease of access, before the internet you really only had access to what information you had locally or via books and such, in a way this made things simple. Now you have information overload and every man and his dog has access to pretty much any and all information freely available world wide, it really does get to be too much.

Worse yet now days you are bombarded by it, you cannot get away from it unless you go off grid.

It one of the reasons my mobile lives in Do Not Disturb mode, if the call is important enough they will leave a message or call back .. if not I guess it wasn't important.

I agree. And it's not just the sudden flood of information that we're overwhelmed by. It's also an endless flood of low-quality social interaction.

Humanity's biggest problems have always resulted from conflict caused by bad social interactions. And here we suddenly are, in this modern world where we spend every spare second "online", socially interacting with other people's lives, addicted to a neverending stream of other people's opinions and activities and arguments.

Instead of simply living our own lives more meaningfully.

And now, coincidentally (not!), suddenly Everything Is A Problem for our species.

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-09-03, 23:13:

I agree. And it's not just the sudden flood of information that we're overwhelmed by. It's also an endless flood of low-quality […]
Show full quote

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-09-03, 11:42:

You know what really changed between then and now . .information and ease of access, before the internet you really only had acc […]
Show full quote

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2022-09-03, 08:39:

Life was simpler back then. It Maybe easier today but it was simple to understand back then. Today there is to much chaos and unpredictability. With computers and the internet everything is moving too fast. Things are changing too fast.

You know what really changed between then and now . .information and ease of access, before the internet you really only had access to what information you had locally or via books and such, in a way this made things simple. Now you have information overload and every man and his dog has access to pretty much any and all information freely available world wide, it really does get to be too much.

Worse yet now days you are bombarded by it, you cannot get away from it unless you go off grid.

It one of the reasons my mobile lives in Do Not Disturb mode, if the call is important enough they will leave a message or call back .. if not I guess it wasn't important.

I agree. And it's not just the sudden flood of information that we're overwhelmed by. It's also an endless flood of low-quality social interaction.

Humanity's biggest problems have always resulted from conflict caused by bad social interactions. And here we suddenly are, in this modern world where we spend every spare second "online", socially interacting with other people's lives, addicted to a neverending stream of other people's opinions and activities and arguments.

Instead of simply living our own lives more meaningfully.

And now, coincidentally (not!), suddenly Everything Is A Problem for our species.

Yeah, the huge bombardment of information has eroded most peoples ability to tell fact from fiction and degraded their ability to tell quality knowledge from trash useless fluff.

Facebook and its ilk share a ton of blame for this.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-09-04, 02:02:

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-09-03, 23:13:

I agree. And it's not just the sudden flood of information that we're overwhelmed by. It's also an endless flood of low-quality […]
Show full quote

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-09-03, 11:42:

You know what really changed between then and now . .information and ease of access, before the internet you really only had access to what information you had locally or via books and such, in a way this made things simple. Now you have information overload and every man and his dog has access to pretty much any and all information freely available world wide, it really does get to be too much.

Worse yet now days you are bombarded by it, you cannot get away from it unless you go off grid.

It one of the reasons my mobile lives in Do Not Disturb mode, if the call is important enough they will leave a message or call back .. if not I guess it wasn't important.

I agree. And it's not just the sudden flood of information that we're overwhelmed by. It's also an endless flood of low-quality social interaction.

Humanity's biggest problems have always resulted from conflict caused by bad social interactions. And here we suddenly are, in this modern world where we spend every spare second "online", socially interacting with other people's lives, addicted to a neverending stream of other people's opinions and activities and arguments.

Instead of simply living our own lives more meaningfully.

And now, coincidentally (not!), suddenly Everything Is A Problem for our species.

Yeah, the huge bombardment of information has eroded most peoples ability to tell fact from fiction and degraded their ability to tell quality knowledge from trash useless fluff.

Facebook and its ilk share a ton of blame for this.

IMHO, the rest of the blame (or at least part of the rest) should be aimed at the lack of importance given to teaching critical reasoning skills earlier during the educational process (i.e. starting in elementary school or at least junior high).

I think one of the reasons for not wanting to help youth develop such skills is the fear that it will lead to lack of "respect" for authority (parents, teachers, institutions, etc) and social norms. I think that such an approach is both unethical and subject to unintended consequences (such as the gullibility towards trash on the Internet and especially social media).

In other words, one can be told what to believe/think (without being given an explanation as to why and means to question) and it will work until something shinier comes along and beliefs will shift, sometimes towards the extremely loony. To someone with few critical thinking skills (due to upbringing), "if it feels right, it must be true" is as good a reason as any.

Just my 2 cents worth of an opinion.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-09-03, 11:42:

You know what really changed between then and now . .information and ease of access, before the internet you really only had acc […]
Show full quote

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2022-09-03, 08:39:

Life was simpler back then. It Maybe easier today but it was simple to understand back then. Today there is to much chaos and unpredictability. With computers and the internet everything is moving too fast. Things are changing too fast.

You know what really changed between then and now . .information and ease of access, before the internet you really only had access to what information you had locally or via books and such, in a way this made things simple. Now you have information overload and every man and his dog has access to pretty much any and all information freely available world wide, it really does get to be too much.

Worse yet now days you are bombarded by it, you cannot get away from it unless you go off grid.

It one of the reasons my mobile lives in Do Not Disturb mode, if the call is important enough they will leave a message or call back .. if not I guess it wasn't important.

Yes, I think that might be true for the masses. It's what our collective memory will remember as history. 😀
However, it's not like the internet was the very beginning of the online era. Just like the IBM PC 5150 wasn't the first Personal Computer.
There were Packet Radio networks (AX.25) around the globe since the early 80s, for example, which allowed file sharing over the air for free.
Or the the mighty X.25 networks of the olden days (late 60s and the 70s), which had interconnect points and PADs all over the world, as well.
- That's what the original TRON movie was all about, I believe, not the TCP/IP internet we know of today. TRON 2 totally messed things up here, imho.

And the early commercial online services of the day. Here in Europe, Minitel and BTX, for example. Both part of the Videotex family (no t). Beta testing started in the late 70s.
Then came CompuServe, popular for its RLE and GIF formats. Then the likes of Genie, AOL etc. All of them had chat rooms and e-mail servies. And allowed for downloading telesoftware, too.
In the early 90s, we had pagers, which we received personal messages and news broadcasts with. ISDN allowed for video telephony, too.
Or we had data services which did send gigabytes of data over satellite or terrestial TV channels (Channel Videodat or SatellaView (SNES/Japan), for example) - no log-in; all it needed was a decoder.
There was so much stuff available, if you just really cared about it - it wasn't forced onto you. The TCP/IP internet as such was just a loose mess of boring Unix machines early on.
The majority of networks ran on X.25, various niche protocols (Little Big LAN, locally) or IPX/SPX (locally) still (early-mid 90s).
IPX/SPX LAN even ran in parallel to TCP/IP on same physical networks for a while. I heard that games like DOOM (IPX) jammed TCP/IP LANs on military bases, even. 😉

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.25
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AX.25
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_radio

Sources, pictures : https://www.pestingers.net/pages-images/heath … 4040/hd4040.htm

It was the ease of access to the masses of the TCPIP internet that did the damage, the other networks were there but you required some level of intelligence and understanding to access and use them, you also required the hardware and knowhow to actually hook into those networks, such things are beyond the masses who require far easier access.

The modern internet is akin to Facebook with how accessible and easy it is to use.

Knowledge is fine, until you have to argue with a random stranger on the other side of the world about it. All day every day.

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-09-04, 20:13:

Knowledge is fine, until you have to argue with a random stranger on the other side of the world about it. All day every day.

That's what a block list is for, I refuse to get drawn into arguments.

No you don't.

Lol, you guys are awesome! 😁 👍

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-09-05, 06:14:

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-09-04, 20:13:

Knowledge is fine, until you have to argue with a random stranger on the other side of the world about it. All day every day.

That's what a block list is for, I refuse to get drawn into arguments.

Agreeing to disagree is a beautiful thing. After opinions and relevant arguments have been exchanged, if the other party isn't mature enough to let go of trying to convince you that you are wrong, then you know that their place on your block list is well deserved.

In real life(TM), I have friends with a variety of opinions on different subjects. Debating respectfully can be enlightening and fun, even if no consensus is ever reached. You just need to know when to stop and take a step back. That requires the humility to realize that, in the greater scheme of things, either party can be "wrong" (including oneself) while still being convinced of being right. Unfortunately, some people cannot accept that.

The 1970s will have a special place in my heart. 😀

Yes, I was born in 1975, so it means I was still four years old during the last of the 1970s era (1979, right?), but pop culture seems to move slower in Third-World countries including mine, so bell bottoms and disco music were things you still encountered in, say, 1981.

I was in junior kindergarten during that era. We lived in Dago Pakar, City of Bandung. Our house was in the countryside. Dad's hobbies include mountain climbing and jungle exploration. While he never actually took us to a real climbing nor exploration, he often took us exploring the surrounding countryside. At that time, Dago Pakar was still a quiet and peaceful rural neighborhood, and one of my favorite pastimes is looking at the moon through the window before going asleep. "Goodbye, moon..."

Anyway, I was schooled in TK Bukit Dago (Dago's Hill Kindergarten), and yes, the kindergarten still exists. I still remember my beloved mom preparing lunch box, drawing book, Staedtler Luna colour pencils (12 shades), kids canteen, and, ah, the most memorable object, a Japan imported pencil case which shows a famous Japanese train (different train for different color). Mine is dark blue showing Asakaze train. The beloved pencil case is still here with me, and now it belongs to my youngest daughter Siti Trianovi Salsabila.

The most memorable pencil case.

At that time, my most favorite song is Hai Pahlawan, which is a local rip-off of Dschinghis Khan. But of course, I didn't know at that time.

Another memorable song is ABBA's Fernando, whose chorus was used in the TV commercial for ABC Battery Company on Televisi Republic Indonesia (TVRI); a state-owned TV station which was also the only TV station at that time. Batteries were very prominent during that time, since they were used by everything from toys to transistor radio to appliances. Unlike today, where everything is powered by USB charger, yuck!

Now, my parents were never a big fan of disco. My late mom loved classical, opera, and mainstream (1950s) jazz, while my late dad preferred folk songs, fusion jazz, and adult contemporary. I remember my first jazz; dad played it on a pair of JBL 4311s driven by the Sansui AU-7900 I'm using now. I was four years old, while dad repeatedly told me, "listen son, this is jazz, this is jazz," perhaps to make me accustomed to the genre.

Perhaps the reason I love fusion jazz because dad already drilled it into my head since I was four! 😁

However, my nanny, Runda (he actually started as gardener, but he soon became our male nanny because he was very good with kids!), was a disco fanatic! It was him who exposed me to never ending stream of disco tunes, using a cheap, 1970s transistor radio my parents gave him to entertain me and my little brother. Dad was rather unhappy with that, perhaps because he believed disco is noisy, and he never let disco music being played on his Sansui AU-7900 / JBL 4311 combo no matter how much I begged him. To calm me down, he tried to introduce me to adult contemporaries like this and this.

Ah, the memory.

In any case, dad's career as civil servant soared at that time, so we gradually moved to Jakarta. It was the time when dad frequently took us to Jakarta for vacation, as well as preparing for our relocation (looking for new house, new school, etc) , but we were so distracted by the vacation part while forgetting about the preparation part. We were moving from one hotel to another, that my dad's right-hand man, "Uncle" Punjul, call dad "Iranian Shah in exile". In any case, me and my little brother were hoarding toys and comic books!

A Spider-Man coloring book mom bought us, and I still keep it!

This is the car dad drove to bring us to Jakarta, and I still keep it too!

It was around the year 1980, I believe. However, the hotels we stayed have memorable, distinctive 1970s interior, from wooden panels, to silver faced bedside radio, to psychedelic curtains, to circle-shaped neon lamps! And disco, disco music everywhere! We went to electronic stores (dad was always cray about electronics) and some of them sold disco balls! Perhaps that's another reason why the 1970s gave a very lasting impression to me, despite the year was actually 1980!

Of course, my kindergarten education was practically abandoned at that time. But mom, always being a resourceful mother, never stopped teaching us (me and my little brother) during our way-too-frequent vacations. For example, she used the comics to hone my reading skills. She also taught us simple mathematics using the objects we encountered during our vacation, like toll road tickets we collected during our trip ("if we get two tickets during our trip to Jakarta, then another two during our way back home, how many tickets do we have?" you know, such thing).

However, it doesn't matter how many toys and comic books we bought, it doesn't matter how many hotels we stayed, it doesn't matter how much excitement we experienced. At the end of the day, we always came back to our beloved Dago Pakar house. We may bought those toys and comic books in Jakarta, but we always play and read them in our beloved Dago Pakar house.

And of course, we still love the moon.

Until the time for us to permanently move to Jakarta.

Strangely, I didn't really feel sad at that time. Perhaps because dad decided to take us to a long trip to Cirebon first, visiting the graves of our ancestors (from my paternal grandmother's side --the Prawirasoemantri family), before we permanently moved to Jakarta, so we were too excited to get sad. Perhaps because I also was too excited with new friends and new places in Jakarta. We didn't sell the Dago Pakar house though; it was rented to a white foreigner and his local girlfriend, whose payments are always late. They even still live in the house --with the usual late payments-- when we moved back to Bandung in 1991. My parents eventually sold the house when I was in high school, because it has become too much of a burden to maintain. Strangely I didn't really miss the house either at that time. The last time my mother and I passed near the house was in 2013, and it has already been heavily renovated by the new owner, that it's barely recognizable.

But last week, my youngest daughter slept between me and my wife, and we spotted a beautiful moon through the window of our room. My daughter was so excited, that she waved at the moon and say, "goodbye, moon...." with her cute, toddler voice, before falling asleep.

And suddenly I miss our Dago Pakar house.

For those of us who had good parents, being a child was wonderful. The world is just as its supposed to be and your parents are infallible. Once you lose that innocence and security you can never really get that feeling back. I think that's why nostalgia is so powerful.

Shagittarius wrote on 2022-09-05, 16:58:

For those of us who had good parents, being a child was wonderful. The world is just as its supposed to be and your parents are infallible. Once you lose that innocence and security you can never really get that feeling back. I think that's why nostalgia is so powerful.

Agreed

I don't live in Silicon Valley-Check!

Ignored the MS Microsoft Windows 95 h"Start ME Up! oo haa- Check!

Ignored the W2k hysteria- Check!

Ignored any MS Windows version from Vista Up-Check!

Ignored the whole GPU bull shit-Check!

I'm 63 years old and still/fixing any computer systems given to me- Check!

Honestly, having thought about it, I don't think that I miss the 70s, 80s, 90s, etc that much because the modern world allows me to live in the past .

- I have access to music from decades past in high quality on physical media, online stores and/or streaming services (I prefer CDs, but that's me)
- I have access to indie music in different retro from the likes of Bandcamp
- I have access to high quality retro movies on Blu-Ray (boutique releases of old classics are still a thing, and most of what I want, I already have anyway) and streaming service like Shudder allow me to discover new old stuff
- I have close to a lifetime supply of old hardware (I'm a hoarder, I know) from the era I am most nostalgic for (especially lucky to have lots of the stuff that is rare and/or expensive)
- There have likely never been as many interesting retro oriented open source/homebrew/DIY/small scale commercial projects to supplement the above
- If there's something I need but don't have, practically the entire planet's an accessible marketplace thank to the Internet, online translation and re-shipping services
- gog.com exists 😀
- And then there's emulation and FPGA re-implementation to fill most gaps in old hardware .

Granted, many things in life are not great and there are certainly caveats to the above points (and things can and do change for the worse), but I really like they way I'm living the retro experience .

Think I'm having my mid life crisis, but I'm cool with it. (for reference I was born in 1980 making me 42)
All started maybe 12 months ago watching Nirvana's Smells like team spirit video clip of all things.
The fashion is quite dated, then I thought damn I remember when that WAS the fashion and started noticing other things that I grew up with now look very dated.

Sometimes I miss 80's when everything was a lot more physical or what people now call analogue.
Sometimes I miss the 90's. The music, Turn of the century era of computing.
Funny thing is I rarely think of the 2000's which technically was when I was most free? In my 20's, single, full time job which I enjoyed, all add up to a disposable income and only myself to consider.
where as 80's and 90's school took up a big part of my life which I never really enjoyed and no income meaning I missed out on a lot of things I really wanted at the time.
Now I'm in my 40's, wife, 2 boys under 6, job that I no longer love (but at least don't hate) It no longer feels like the world is my oyster, more I'm just along for the ride!

But that's fine, they were all stages in my life, Working simply for the pay check takes a lot of the overthinking and stress out of it in a way and I'm enjoying this whole parent thing (perfect excuse to play with toys again 😉
No doubt in another 20 years I'll miss my 40's