Going through a load of business files/records before I throw them, I found myself wondering just how different aspects of life then would seem to children today.
For instance you could get access to the internet, not the web, if you sign up to something called compuserve and I think you were charged by the minute. There was also a similar UK services I appeared to have signed up to, called infotrade, I think this was like and email/isp which possibly included web access, not sure, but appears to be pay by the minute.
Software still often game on floppy disks, it appears you could sell the software on once you stop
Quote from: mongers on October 21, 2014, 05:16:34 PM
Software still often game on floppy disks, it appears you could sell the software on once you stop
mid-sentence.
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on October 21, 2014, 05:29:05 PM
Quote from: mongers on October 21, 2014, 05:16:34 PM
Software still often game on floppy disks, it appears you could sell the software on once you stop
mid-sentence.
That's what comes from typing something very similar to Vogon poetry. :bowler:
I was very young then and a year was forever and a day.
I don't think I really discovered the internet yet. I do remember a "guy I knew" who used to download games with his telephone from something he called "message board", but I had no real idea what he was doing, other than he was amassing really expensive phone bills.
Yeah, I was going to say, before my keyboard committed suicide, that you used to buy shareware from adverts in magazines, entailing sending off a check/cheque and they'd then send you the software/demos on floppy disks.
Quote from: mongers on October 21, 2014, 05:44:46 PM
Yeah, I was going to say, before my keyboard committed suicide, that you used to buy shareware from adverts in magazines, entailing sending off a check/cheque and they'd then send you the software/demos on floppy disks.
A bit before 1994, say 1990, I remember buying text-based computer games that way. You know the ones
"You look inside the mailbox. You see a letter"
"Take letter"
"you take the letter"
"Open letter"
C:// error
Anyways you actually didn't have to pay, but there was always a proviso that said "If you like this game send us $5 for us to continue developing such great games."
Cell phones existed, I'd used them at work nearly 10 years earlier than the mid-90s, but still most people didn't have them, maybe one in 10, perhaps.
I know only one of my friends had one at the time and it was some shitty little black orange thing that charged about 10c ever 5 seconds.
Quote from: Josephus on October 21, 2014, 05:47:47 PM
Quote from: mongers on October 21, 2014, 05:44:46 PM
Yeah, I was going to say, before my keyboard committed suicide, that you used to buy shareware from adverts in magazines, entailing sending off a check/cheque and they'd then send you the software/demos on floppy disks.
A bit before 1994, say 1990, I remember buying text-based computer games that way. You know the ones
"You look inside the mailbox. You see a letter"
"Take letter"
"you take the letter"
"Open letter"
C:// error
Anyways you actually didn't have to pay, but there was always a proviso that said "If you like this game send us $5 for us to continue developing such great games."
:cool:
Weird times, as compared to the days of 'Steam'.
In the late 90s we called them "Car phones"...cause most people used them in their cars...which is kind of ironic to think about it.
20 years ago... I think I used the internet at the library to get into arguments on alt.skinheads on usenet.
Quote from: Josephus on October 21, 2014, 05:40:41 PM
I don't think I really discovered the internet yet. I do remember a "guy I knew" who used to download games with his telephone from something he called "message board", but I had no real idea what he was doing, other than he was amassing really expensive phone bills.
I played trade wars on a message board - but that was longer than 20 years ago. More like 30 years ago. I had a 300 baud modem. The download speed was so slow I could read the text as it loaded onto the screen. The message board only had two lines in and so a lot of time was spent dialing in to try to get an open line to connect to the board. Then I found a message board called Mindlink. It was amazing. It had something like 30 lines in and so you hardly ever experienced a busy signal. It also gave access to something called the internet. But that cost extra and by the minute. It also required knowledge of specific code commands so I didnt it.
Mindlink sold its operation a few months before Netscape became widely available. Now that was some good timing for the vendor. Not so good for the guys who bought it.
All things considered, I'd rather be in 1994 right now.
Quote from: Jacob on October 21, 2014, 05:50:46 PM
20 years ago... I think I used the internet at the library to get into arguments on alt.skinheads on usenet.
Ahh, Usenet. So much time wasted there better spent playing computer games. My brother actually met Kibo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Parry).
Quote from: mongers on October 21, 2014, 05:44:46 PM
Yeah, I was going to say, before my keyboard committed suicide, that you used to buy shareware from adverts in magazines, entailing sending off a check/cheque and they'd then send you the software/demos on floppy disks.
Commander Keen. :cool:
20 years ago Pink Floyd released The Division Bell. In one month they're about to release stuff they recorded for it but didn't put on it.
So really, not much has changed.
Quote from: Jacob on October 21, 2014, 05:50:46 PM
20 years ago... I think I used the internet at the library to get into arguments on alt.skinheads on usenet.
Wouldn't it be cool if that stuff were still out there in the ether? :)
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 21, 2014, 05:54:59 PM
Quote from: Josephus on October 21, 2014, 05:40:41 PM
I don't think I really discovered the internet yet. I do remember a "guy I knew" who used to download games with his telephone from something he called "message board", but I had no real idea what he was doing, other than he was amassing really expensive phone bills.
I played trade wars on a message board - but that was longer than 20 years ago. More like 30 years ago. I had a 300 baud modem. The download speed was so slow I could read the text as it loaded onto the screen. The message board only had two lines in and so a lot of time was spent dialing in to try to get an open line to connect to the board. Then I found a message board called Mindlink. It was amazing. It had something like 30 lines in and so you hardly ever experienced a busy signal. It also gave access to something called the internet. But that cost extra and by the minute. It also required knowledge of specific code commands so I didnt it.
Mindlink sold its operation a few months before Netscape became widely available. Now that was some good timing for the vendor. Not so good for the guys who bought it.
I just missed out on that era, had a friend that had dabbled a bit with bulletin boards, but compuserve seemed to us non-techies the modern thing that blow them away/made internet access easy.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on October 21, 2014, 05:58:45 PM
All things considered, I'd rather be in 1994 right now.
I wouldn't. I didn't really even know what sexuality was back then. Hell, I think I had just learned about sex.
Quote from: garbon on October 21, 2014, 06:20:09 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on October 21, 2014, 05:58:45 PM
All things considered, I'd rather be in 1994 right now.
I wouldn't. I didn't really even know what sexuality was back then. Hell, I think I had just learned about sex.
Back the We didn't know what your sexuality was. :P
I should add, it was pretty common if you wanted to sell something, you'd but an advert in a newspaper or magazine with you home telephone number. ......
Some weeks later someone might phone you up and arrange to come and have a look at it, or they'd then send you a cheque and you'd post the book/game/boardgame/camera thingy etc off to them. :cool:
Quote from: mongers on October 21, 2014, 06:23:17 PM
Quote from: garbon on October 21, 2014, 06:20:09 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on October 21, 2014, 05:58:45 PM
All things considered, I'd rather be in 1994 right now.
I wouldn't. I didn't really even know what sexuality was back then. Hell, I think I had just learned about sex.
Back the We didn't know what your sexuality was. :P
Who are the We? :unsure:
Quote from: mongers on October 21, 2014, 06:25:56 PM
I should add, it was pretty common if you wanted to sell something, you'd but an advert in a newspaper or magazine with you home telephone number. ......
Some weeks later someone might phone you up and arrange to come and have a look at it, or they'd then send you a cheque and you'd post the book/game/boardgame/camera thingy etc off to them. :cool:
That was pretty common up through the craiglist era in the past decade. Wasn't necessarily physical newspaper put still not too strange.
Quote from: mongers on October 21, 2014, 06:23:17 PM
Back the We didn't know what your sexuality was. :P
Or his race, or his name, or whether he enjoyed drinking chocolate milk out of water fountains.
Quote from: garbon on October 21, 2014, 06:29:41 PM
Quote from: mongers on October 21, 2014, 06:25:56 PM
I should add, it was pretty common if you wanted to sell something, you'd but an advert in a newspaper or magazine with you home telephone number. ......
Some weeks later someone might phone you up and arrange to come and have a look at it, or they'd then send you a cheque and you'd post the book/game/boardgame/camera thingy etc off to them. :cool:
That was pretty common up through the craiglist era in the past decade. Wasn't necessarily physical newspaper put still not too strange.
I think the newspaper/magazine was the crucial thing in my tale, the idea that you'd have to post off an advert, on a little form, and it would be put in next month's issue, so it might not be up to 7 weeks before anyone had a chance of contacting you.
Fair enough. I had embarrassingly forgot at one point how people applied for jobs before the internet. -_-
Internetz killed newspaperz :(
Quote from: CountDeMoney on October 21, 2014, 05:58:45 PM
All things considered, I'd rather be in 1994 right now.
I'm down with it. You figure out a way to reset the clock I'm on board.
Quote from: Josephus on October 21, 2014, 07:02:12 PM
Internetz killed newspaperz :(
you had a good 500 year run.
20 years ago I was 10, so I don't have a good grasp of how much life really changed.
Quote from: Razgovory on October 21, 2014, 07:06:40 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on October 21, 2014, 05:58:45 PM
All things considered, I'd rather be in 1994 right now.
I'm down with it. You figure out a way to reset the clock I'm on board.
I'm in too; three dis-functional time travellers with issues. :cool:
Quote from: Josephus on October 21, 2014, 07:02:12 PM
Internetz killed newspaperz :(
I saw an article that claimed hand held devices will save newspapers because things like blogs are too difficult to read whereas newspapers are already formatted properly easly use.
Quote from: Josephus on October 21, 2014, 05:49:19 PM
In the late 90s we called them "Car phones"...cause most people used them in their cars...which is kind of ironic to think about it.
Even more ironically, one of the UK's most successful cross-brand mobile phone retail businesses is still called Carphone Warehouse.
Much like Doctor Who, I have a fixed point in time around which to judge my tech. I graduated with an IT degree in 1989, the year Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, thus rendering everything I'd learned obsolete. We did have access to the Internet at University, mainly via JANET, the joint academic network, but it was awfully clumsy to communicate. We used to have to send the results of programming assignments to the the computer block across the river to be printed and collect them a day or two later. We started off with DOS computers (IBM AT and XT) and keyboards, but Windows and mice were widespread by the time we left.
Computer games were pretty much a free for all - you could copy the disks for friends and install them to as many computers as you wanted. The original Leisure Suit Larry was doing the rounds at Uni. We also went from 5.25 inch floppies to 3.5 inch. Progess!
I started working for a mobile phone company in around 1998 (a lot of my job was testing fixes to the "Millennium bug") and was still considered an early adopter then. Phones had progressed from the "Rabbit" phones where you had to be within a couple of feet of what would now be called a micro cell to a proper cell network, but reception was still patchy outside London. The standard price plan offered unlimited free calls within London, so people ended up using their phones as baby monitors!
Also around the time of Live Aid (1985) I was part of a charity endurance AD&D-athon called Dragon Aid. In one of the warm-up games I remember one of the team members playing a pre-email turn-based computer game where he'd meticulously type out then send over dial-up (phone handset in modem cradle) his next move.
20 years ago I was 18. I was slowly gearing up for my final exams at school about half a year later. I think I was interviewing for public administration apprenticeships/college at the time as well (which was delayed until after my military service after school). I missed quite a few classes that year because I could finally sign my own absentee notes (Sorry, was sick!). Still passed with an A, despite no effort whatsoever.
Tech wise I was enjoying my SNES and C64, and I think we had finally gotten a new VCR. I spent a lot of time with friends playing PC games on their machines (486/66 FTW!) and we got pretty good in creating boot disk menus to optimize drivers/memory usage for games. Phones were land line only, and our small town was still using four digit phone numbers after the area prefix.
It was the days when X-Files was the hottest thing on TV. MTV would still show mostly music videos, though non-music shows were creeping in - Beavis & Butthead, The Real World ... and I loved MTV's Most Wanted with Ray Cokes which was anarchic silly fun. It was also one of the few possibilities to watch any kind of program in English. TV showed everything dubbed (with the exception of subtitled British shows like Monty Python or Yes, Minister on the back channels).
Commercial TV in Germany was probably in its prime, bringing over hot shows from the U.S., while also developing their own formats with duds and triumphs - a rather creative period with new freedoms - that flow of creativity stopped some time in the early 2000s, I think, when the channels became more concerned with retaining viewers instead of gaining them.
As to music it was a dark age. Electronic beats heavy dance pop reigned on TV and radio. The Love Parade was main stream. If you didn't like the music, and preferred grunge, alternative, or metal you were a weirdo and had to pick the days of the week that you would go out, to avoid the Oomph-Oomph-Oomph music. I'm glad that the tables have turned when it comes to remembering the 90s; people forgot about the dance stuff and Nirvana, Pearl Jam, or old GnR are now "classic rock" (thanks for making me feel old).
The Star Wars expanded universe was still nascent. I still loved the Lone Wolf game books. And I wanted to be a fantasy writer when I grew up.
Quote from: garbon on October 21, 2014, 06:20:09 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on October 21, 2014, 05:58:45 PM
All things considered, I'd rather be in 1994 right now.
I wouldn't. I didn't really even know what sexuality was back then. Hell, I think I had just learned about sex.
It was a hell of a lot easier banging bisexual strippers two at a time back then. :(
Syt, thanks for that, a nice evocative read. :)
Hey, you could still be pro-writer.
Quote from: mongers on October 22, 2014, 07:02:48 AM
Hey, you could still be pro-writer.
What about me, could I? :(
Quote from: mongers on October 22, 2014, 07:02:48 AM
Hey, you could still be pro-writer.
Haven't completely given up on it, still poke it occasionally with a long stick. ;)
In 1994, I was 10 years old. I enjoyed playing with my Gi Joes and NHL 93/94 on the SNES.
Oldmen. :rolleyes:
Quote from: Grey Fox on October 22, 2014, 07:54:47 AM
In 1994, I was 10 years old. I enjoyed playing with my Gi Joes and NHL 93/94 on the SNES.
Oldmen. :rolleyes:
I forgot about nhl 94. That was a great game. God bless you wrap around exploit.
Quote from: Grey Fox on October 22, 2014, 07:54:47 AM
In 1994, I was 10 years old. I enjoyed playing with my Gi Joes and NHL 93/94 on the SNES.
Oldmen. :rolleyes:
In 1994 I was 28 and playing NHL 93/94 on the SNES. No Gi Joes, though. My wife got those in the divorce.
Quote from: Josephus on October 22, 2014, 08:04:47 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on October 22, 2014, 07:54:47 AM
In 1994, I was 10 years old. I enjoyed playing with my Gi Joes and NHL 93/94 on the SNES.
Oldmen. :rolleyes:
In 1994 I was 28 and playing NHL 93/94 on the SNES. No Gi Joes, though. My wife got those in the divorce.
I lost mine too :hug:
I still got my thousands of matchbox cars tho, my kids play with them regularly.
I think I still have a few of my action figures. They might even be in my current apt!
I was in grad school 89 to 91. I remember a classmate telling me she was working on a project with another classmate who was in Russia via email and having virtually no idea what she was talking about.
I was 24, and my oldest daughter was just a couple of months old. I was working 2 jobs: cooking at a sports bar and tending bar at a small Mexican restaurant.
Me and the wife and kid where living in a 2 bedroom apartment with the wife's identical twin sister, her husband (who was a friend of mine growing up and how I met my ex-wife) and their 10 month old daughter.
I did not own a computer, game console, or mobile phone and I had never heard of the internet or any of the related things.
I was also happily married and had no cats.
20 years ago:
I was a in college wasting my time, I worked full time to pay my rent and gas money and any left overs were spent in alcohol, had already been in the Navy Reserves a year, the club scene in San Juan was awesome for a bachelor.
20 years ago almost to the day I went to see Live in concert as well as some little-known band called Weezer. I had just transferred to Delaware. Good times.
Oh also I had just turned 21, which really just meant I could start using my own ID instead of my brother's :pirate
20 years ago would make me a socially awkward 15 yo playing computer games most of the time. I don't necessarily need to go back there. I'll take 17 years ago, but 20? Pass.
If you lived in a town without a dedicated record shop and wanted to find out about new albums or gig, you had to either subscribe to a band specific newsletter/fanzine* or buy one of the weekly music papers** like NME or Sounds. :cool:
* usually you sent the nice person one or several SAEs and these would be returned to you containing the monthly/quaterly fanzine.
** These papers sometimes came with a floppy coloured plastic single from a band being promoted by their label.
LOL, 'zines. Now those were the days.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on October 25, 2014, 03:10:34 PM
LOL, 'zines. Now those were the days.
I must have a few lying around somewhere? :hmm:
Yeah the people who did them seemed to be genuine peps. I wonder what the internet equivalent of a fanzine is, band specific blog?
I started with Nextel in 1994. Back in those days Nextel's primary product was the large 1 Watt phones (the Lingo). They were so sturdy that one of our sales people, as part of a customer demonstration, took his phone and threw it over a four lane road onto concrete then picked it up and demonstrated that it still worked. (He got the sale.) I think of that whenever anyone tells me of how they dropped their iPhone two or three feet and it shattered.
Quote from: Savonarola on October 25, 2014, 05:30:25 PM
I started with Nextel in 1994. Back in those days Nextel's primary product was the large 1 Watt phones (the Lingo). They were so sturdy that one of our sales people, as part of a customer demonstration, took his phone and threw it over a four lane road onto concrete then picked it up and demonstrated that it still worked. (He got the sale.) I think of that whenever anyone tells me of how they dropped their iPhone two or three feet and it shattered.
Those car kits installations were awesome, though; jacked you up to 3 watts.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on October 21, 2014, 05:58:45 PM
All things considered, I'd rather be in 1994 right now.
at least we'd have Clinton. More productive than Obama.
1994
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fthumb%2F2%2F24%2FFairchildB52Crash.jpg%2F260px-FairchildB52Crash.jpg&hash=54322482a2ca5d0618156969a2e1b167aedf644d)
"I said left at the bank, not bank left!"
Landlines and not knowing who was calling before you answered the phone would be bizzare to many.
I remember when I was teaching a class of 7 year olds last year and to show something I drew a phone...a old fashioned rotary phone, since that seems the most obviously a phone to me. Cue "That's not a phone!" and a kid drawing an iphone instead.
Young people.
I'd like to choke them with a landline. NO LANDLINE = TRANSIENT
Quote from: CountDeMoney on October 26, 2014, 07:47:44 PM
I'd like to choke them with a landline. NO LANDLINE = TRANSIENT
Okay, gramps.
Bet you don't have a mailbox, either.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on October 26, 2014, 08:38:20 PM
Bet you don't have a mailbox, either.
I've an apartment mailbox.
I still have a land line - best way not to be disturbed.
-----
As for 1994... Well I was 27, still hadn't met my last bf - was still fucking around...
I still believed the future held things in store for me.
Now I know better of course. *wry grin*
Best of all I hadn't met any of you people!
G.
Rather disturbingly it would not be too long before I met a lot of you. Well ok it would be about six years.
Quote from: Valmy on October 26, 2014, 09:57:25 PM
Rather disturbingly it would not be too long before I met a lot of you. Well ok it would be about six years.
IIRC, at that point it would be about three years before I would first encounter Tamas, in the old PBEM
The Great War and then the infinitely superior
Thunder at Twilight. In 1994 I was playing Pacific War with the mod to convert battles to Carrier Strike to resolve. Fun times, but it took forever!
Not 20, but 22 years ago I worked at our small town book & stationery shop for two weeks.
The book selection was mainly geared towards bestsellers, and items the shop owner thought would have an audience in town. Ordering books at the time was tedious. The catalog was on microfilm where you had to search for author and title. If a customer came in and was generally looking for something in a genre, or something like [insert author], then you were helpless, unless you had a good knowledge of the market. Otherwise you'd point them to the small catalogs of the publishers that were available for free at the shop.
Once a day, around 5, the shop had a 30 minute time window to order their books from the central depot in Hamburg. There was a data entry pad hooked up to a phone line. You would give your identifier code, then the ISBNs of any books that had been ordered by customers during the day. Deliveries were always in the mornings around 9. Ordering back issues of magazines? Writing a postcard.
They received a computer with CD-ROM catalog shortly after my brief stint there.
Quote from: Syt on October 27, 2014, 08:38:26 AM
Not 20, but 22 years ago I worked at our small town book & stationery shop for two weeks.
The book selection was mainly geared towards bestsellers, and items the shop owner thought would have an audience in town. Ordering books at the time was tedious. The catalog was on microfilm where you had to search for author and title. If a customer came in and was generally looking for something in a genre, or something like [insert author], then you were helpless, unless you had a good knowledge of the market. Otherwise you'd point them to the small catalogs of the publishers that were available for free at the shop.
Once a day, around 5, the shop had a 30 minute time window to order their books from the central depot in Hamburg. There was a data entry pad hooked up to a phone line. You would give your identifier code, then the ISBNs of any books that had been ordered by customers during the day. Deliveries were always in the mornings around 9. Ordering back issues of magazines? Writing a postcard.
They received a computer with CD-ROM catalog shortly after my brief stint there.
:)
Thanks Syt, I'd totally forgot about that. Having been someone who ordered books from an early age, I now recall the bookseller browsing the reader looking for the book and showing me his pick, was this the one I was after?
Wow, different times, pre-interwebs.