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What did people do in 1985?

Started by Sheilbh, August 30, 2021, 03:46:22 PM

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The Brain

Women want me. Men want to be with me.

crazy canuck

Quote from: Jacob on September 02, 2021, 01:47:45 AM
I believe it's a fair representation of the average office smoke break.


Going commando was generally frowned upon back in the day - and wearing jeans.

Razgovory

#47
Quote from: 11B4V on September 01, 2021, 10:24:37 PM
Does anyone remember the card catalogs at the libraries?


I do.  When I was middle school they taught how to use the card catalogues and the periodicals and all that stuff.  When I went to college the school used an entirely different system and I couldn't find anything.  I ended just picking up books at random.

"It's not a bad paper, but it's about French fables.  This is a biology class and you were suppose to write about watersheds."
I've given it serious thought. I must scorn the ways of my family, and seek a Japanese woman to yield me my progeny. He shall live in the lands of the east, and be well tutored in his sacred trust to weave the best traditions of Japan and the Sacred South together, until such time as he (or, indeed his house, which will periodically require infusion of both Southern and Japanese bloodlines of note) can deliver to the South it's independence, either in this world or in space.  -Lettow April of 2011

Raz is right. -MadImmortalMan March of 2017


PDH

I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.
-Umberto Eco

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"I'm pretty sure my level of depression has nothing to do with how much of a fucking asshole you are."

-CdM


Jacob

Quote from: Josephus on September 02, 2021, 10:08:22 AM
Really don't think famous popstars where at average smoke breaks in 1985

You'd be surprised!

Tonitrus

#52
I was 9 years old, playing pirated Apple II games like Kareteka, the original Castle Wolfenstein, Taipan!, The Ancient Art of War, the early games in the Ultima series, and that Apple II 4X classic, Lordlings of Yore.

Josephus

Quote from: jimmy olsen on September 02, 2021, 10:09:59 AM
Quote from: 11B4V on September 01, 2021, 10:24:37 PM
Does anyone remember the card catalogs at the libraries?
Yes!

I havent' been to a library since my university days in the late 80s. If I were to go to one now to do research I'd be lost. No card catalogues? No microfiche?
Civis Romanus Sum<br /><br />"My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we'll change the world." Jack Layton 1950-2011

Grey Fox

Quote from: Josephus on September 02, 2021, 03:06:23 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on September 02, 2021, 10:09:59 AM
Quote from: 11B4V on September 01, 2021, 10:24:37 PM
Does anyone remember the card catalogs at the libraries?
Yes!

I havent' been to a library since my university days in the late 80s. If I were to go to one now to do research I'd be lost. No card catalogues? No microfiche?

You can probably already look up the book on your local library website and reserve it right now.
Colonel Caliga is Awesome.

Savonarola

Getting precise coordinates is an important part of the job as a radio engineer.  We use this information to model our radio coverage.  When I started working as an engineer (1994) our office had a series of cabinets which held USGS 7.5 minute maps.  You'd have to find the correct map, put a dot on the map at the location you were trying to get coordinates of, get the nearest 30 second markings, draw a trapezoid from them and decline your location.  Then you'd have to count contour lines to get your height (that task would have been much easier in Florida than it was in Michigan.)  Today you can do all that in about 5 seconds on Google Earth.

(GIS and ARC did exist at the time, but it was expensive and you almost needed a college degree in GIS to use it.)

At the time radio propagation software (which predicts radio coverage) was in its infancy, but it existed.  About ten years before that you would have had to draw your coverage contours by hand using some crude formulas.

When I first started our network was in Detroit, but the central switch was located in Chicago.  Each cell site has its own database of parameters in the switch which impact how the site behaves and they can be adjusted to improve performance.  At the time the switch manager in Chicago didn't trust us with even reader-only access to the switch; so, every day, his team would print out all the data from every site (about 100 sites, 3 pages of data) and FedEx them to us.
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock

KRonn

1985 - I was working in IT, still new and learning, programming and operations. Few personal computers as I recall. My cousins had a computer store back then, before computers were sold by the big box stores. I remember the internet was a new and strange thing, dial-up modems, very archaic compared to today. Now I can't imagine a world without the convenience of the internet. Newspapers and news magazines of all kinds were commonplace. I was hunting with friends and family in those years, in Canada and all over New England.