Modern Tech Versus the Past 219
CNETNate writes "Most of us assume modern life is the peak of human achievement, but is it really? CNET decided to take a look at the major technologies of the modern world and compare them to their closest equivalent of pre-digital mankind — Facebook vs. dinner parties, World of Warcraft vs. actual war craft, iPhones vs. hills on fire — and the results are surprising. And slightly dumb, so laugh."
not always quite so (Score:5, Funny)
As you can see, ancient life beats modern life in all respects. Modern life doesn't even come close, scoring a rather embarrassing nought out of ten.
I would have to disagree. Sure you can pick a few things which outcome is that, but you really have to look at the larger picture.
As an example, if you think about the medieval era and how you moved around, there we're basically two options:
1) by horse
2) by walking
This meant that every business had to own a horse and feed it to move around. For a real world example, it also created problems for pizzeria's home delivery, because the horse would eat the pizza.
But one must also note that some things actually were better on older times. When you ordered a pizza, you knew it would be baked for you with love and it would be delicious to eat. Now someone justs sends me a pizza gift on Facebook. Thanks for the mockery, I say.
Basically what I am saying is that technology makes things less personal. The same way that salad is shit compared to Pizza Hut's delicious pan pizza, e-card is shit compared to a real postcard because it just doesn't have the same feeling.
Re:not always quite so (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically what I am saying is that technology makes things less personal. ...it just doesn't have the same feeling.
I think you just summarized every analysis in TFA. "The old stuff is better 'cuz it has an old-timey feel to it." Personally, I appreciate being able to communicate half-way across the country w/o having to run to the telegraph station and blow a half-day's pay even if it's less personal. I like that Swine Flu is less deadly than the Plague, even if that's not as scary. I like that I can re-spawn after dying in some game rather than getting my head lopped off in battle, even if it's less manly.
But that's just me... Now, I'm off to take a leak in the street because that's more neighborly than "modern" sanitation.
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Let the older times be in the past. People don't realize how smelly and unsanitary streets were when horses and carriages were the mainstay of transportation. There was no fire, police, or EMS. If you came down with something, hopefully your immune system could take care of it, because there was no penicillin or other medicines to clear up even the basic infections. Most of America at that time was living in hovels or tenements and barely making a sustainable living. Any police protection were for the
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WTF are you talking about? The first modern, professional fire department was founded in the 1850s (well within the time of the horse and carriage), police have existed since probably the middle ages, and as for EMS, the doctor came to you instead!
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Actually there were some pretty clever medics 'way back when. When Henry V took an arrow in the cheek, one surgeon devised a tool to reach down into the wound and extract the arrow stub.
http://www.rcpsg.ac.uk/hdrg/2006Nov3.htm
Not that such treatment would be available to everyone, of course. I've always thought that pre-ant
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Even those smelly, slow diesel cars that foreign automakers want to push on the US again (anyone above 20 remembers the Mercedes turbo diesels that people ended up passing on the wrong side of the road or breakdown lanes due to their sulphur belching stench and multi minute 0-60 times.)
You do realize that 1) modern diesels are much better than they used to be on virtually all counts, and 2) the perception of diesels in U.S. was screwed in a major way when GM fucked up diesel in their cars.
Re:not always quite so (Score:4, Funny)
1) by horse
Not only that, but if you were pulling a wagon and heading toward Oregon, you were likely to be killed by a bout of dysentery.
Re:not always quite so (Score:4, Insightful)
As an example, if you think about the medieval era and how you moved around, there we're basically two options:1) by horse
2) by walking
This meant that every business had to own a horse and feed it to move around.
It meant that you had a tight little monopoly in your own neighborhood .
The handsome brick structure on on our village main street was originally a three story department store that served a population of less than 1000. The alternative, if you wanted to shop for a set of dishes, a mattress or sofa, would be to take a train into Buffalo and pay the freight back.
I have to wonder though (Score:2)
You know, while all the modern day equivalents are better at _some_ times, I think the downsides the rest of the time get overlooked.
For example, yes, moving around by foot or horse all the way to Jerusalem was a lot slower, not to mention having all those pesky Saracens in the way who felt that they should continue to keep their country ;) Nowadays you could take a plane and be there in a couple of hours.
But the downside is that you weren't expected to make that trip more than once in your life, and arguab
They Missed One (Score:5, Insightful)
They Had: Dividing data up into eight pages to maximize pageviews [slashdot.org]
Thanks for finally filing this CNet Crave UK stuff in Idle/Entertainment!
No... WoW vs pretend warfair with sticks for guns. (Score:5, Funny)
Age is the way to go (Score:2)
I still play Age of Empires 2, so that I know if I mystically get teleported back to medeival ages, I will be the best General the world has ever scene.
Now, how do I make real life town centers 'build' villagers?
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Alcohol.
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Needle and a condom section in store.
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Do the cheats work in real life? With my army of archers disguised as trees and a few cow launchers, I could rule the world!
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Sorry. We geeks playing World of Warcraft would not be engaged in killing each other if not for the game.
True. I wonder how many closet murderers indulge their taste for mayhem in a virtual world but avoid it IRL simply because it's permitted in one place and punished in the other. Or, to put it more plainly, how many would do it IRL if they were guaranteed they could get away with it.
"I once stabbed a man to watch him die. And also for 8 honor points."
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how many would do it IRL if they were guaranteed they could get away with it.
A lot.
A paradox? (Score:2)
"how many would do it IRL if they were guaranteed they could get away with it."
If two people each wanted to kill each other, and could do it without getting caught, how would that work? Wouldn't the first killer take out the other killer, thereby depriving the other killer of the murder that he could 'get away with?'
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We already do that. It's called "war"
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I play airsoft, which I often refer to as 'FPS', much to the annoyance of all the other geeks :)
Sorry, but it is!
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When I was growing up, we had *real* dirt clod fights!
We would mound up dirt a short distance from one another, and a combination of lobbing and more direct throws were done until you hit the *enemy*. At which point, if you hit them hard enough or partially blinded them with dirt in the eyes, you then grabbed a handful of dirt clods, rush your enemy's bunker, rapid firing to keep him pinned down, then while he was writhing on the ground, if you had any clods left that this point, you would finish him off an
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They had: war victory dance.
We have: teabagging.
Re: Bang Bang! (Score:2)
Beautiful setup.
They had jumping out from behind a rock with a stick and shouting "bang bang! I shot you dead!"
We have: Cher "Bang Bang"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLmlS66AA80 [youtube.com]
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Before WoW we got foam plastic swords and other foam weapons and wrapped them up with Duct Tape to look like metal and dressed up in suits of armor and hit each other with them at a Medieval War reenactment or LARP D&D event. Before WoW we had D&D from TSR before Hasbro or Garfield Games or whomever bought them out and made D20. The Classic D&D and LARP D&D were better in the old days.
I shot you your dead! Am not!" arguments were resolved by the Dungeon Master and dice rolling and hit points
telegraph 419.... (Score:4, Funny)
i represent the duke of america and recently a $25,000 sum of pirate spanish gold seized off the coast has been placed in our care.....
Better comparisons (Score:4, Funny)
Twitter vs. Bathroom Walls
Science vs. Mad Science
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MP3s vs. 1 Man Bands
Twitter vs. Bathroom Walls
Science vs. Alchemy
Fixed that for ya
Re:Better comparisons (Score:4, Funny)
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I wouldn't expect the Spanish Inquisition even after I saw them.
Who expects to be tortured mercilessly and pointlessly?
I sure don't.
Who expects to sit in the comfy chair?
I sure don't (not at work, anyway).
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Wikipedia vs. walking through a museum -> museum
Microwave vs. home cooked meal -> home cooking (at least in my house)
Credit vs. Cash -> depends, I vote Debit Card (best of both worlds)
e-pay vs. cash/check -> no more late bills, e-pay
Direct Deposit vs. paycheck/cash -> direct deposit
Digital camera vs. film -> except that it costs more, film, though at about 21MP i might start leaning the other way.
Computer + printer vs. typewrite -> computer, no brainer.
computer vs. inkwell -> though
Re:Better comparisons (Score:4, Informative)
Digital camera vs. film -> except that it costs more, film, though at about 21MP i might start leaning the other way.
The professional photographers that I know have been quite happy with their digital cameras since 8MP was the level no one could afford. They're up in the 12MP and 15MP levels now, but they produce prints for their customers, and they're indistinguishable to all but the trained eye from what would have been done on film. Even an 8x12 at 8MP makes for 83,000 dots per square inch, or 1/288 of an inch (.088mm) across. Given that the same lenses are being used in many cases (Nikon lenses from a decade or more past fit on current Nikon SLRs), it comes down to the sensor, and the difference just isn't there.
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I vote credit card + autopay at the end of every month -> cheaper (because of cash back(*)), faster, more convenient than cash, plus you get the legally required protections
(*) Yes, the store has to pay the credit card fees and they end up coming back to us.. but for each individual purchase, the price is generally the same for credit vs cash. (Stores can give "cash discounts", but even with gasoline, there is almost always a gas stat
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Credit vs. Cash -> depends, I vote Debit Card (best of both worlds)
Be careful -- I used to put everything on debit until my parents' info was stolen from a hancked PIN pad. I switched to credit, and the advantages are:
1. Reward points (1% cash back)
2. Deferral of all expenses by one month (extra interest in bank account)
3. Buffer between "real" money and "public" money. (like a throw-away email address)
4. Recovery of assets is faster. (Bank: "Maybe you took a flight to Georgia this afternoon." CC: "Oh, sorry, we'll reverse the charge and send you a new card.")
There is no d
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Wikipedia vs. walking through a museum -> museum
Apples and oranges. Wikipedia has more information than is typically displayed in a museum, and can be accessed more easily. Museums have better accuracy and are more enjoyable. It's as if you're comparing your car to a 747, and concluding that the 747 is superior. Sure, for some things it is, but for going grocery shopping it's pretty much useless.
Microwave vs. home cooked meal -> home cooking (at least in my house)
That's a strange sort of false-dichotomy. You can make a "home cooked meal" with a microwave, or you can throw a can of soup-mix on a stove and a pack of st
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Don't excuse the sharks.
Here's proof of how sleazy the credit card industry is: Universal Default.
Let us suppose that, due to some asshat in the accounting department fucking up your numbers, you are reported to a credit bureau as missing a house payment.
Naturally, you give them an earful and get them to fix it.
Meanwhile, all your other creditors jump on that foul up on your credit report and jack up your rates.
Even if you chew the mortage go back into nixing that error, nobody else has to lower their rate
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Boy, people take too many photos these days. Back then it cost too much to develop them - photos were for special occasions, when you were dressed up and looking your best. And if Cousin Tommy pulled a face or Grandma blinked then we just beat them till they behaved better next time.
Re:Better comparisons (Score:4, Insightful)
Science vs. Mad Science
Wait, which one is the "modern" side? ;-)
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You don't have to go that far back... (Score:4, Insightful)
Here are some more recent tech most of you have spurned for all the wrong reasons but which I'll never give up and you can pry from my cold dead hands (but you won't want to!!)
We have: Washed out LCD monitors, rubbish refresh rates, pale colours, all reds are orange.
I Have: My 21" newsroom Trinitrons, three of, for a combined resolution of 4800x1200 at 85Hz. Perfect colours, wide viewing angles, annoying bezels. Windows 7 really likes them...
We have: Computer speakers, tiny badly-designed amplifiers, built-in speakers on TV's, plastic "hifi" speakers with metal cones, etc. Plenty of bass, fair enough, but just whisper "dynamic range" and "signal-to-noise ratio" to these people and you might just cause a flamewar.
I Have: Wharfedale Modus Twos and a Rotel RSX-03 amplifier with 6 discrete channels (RSX-03), FLAC, Cds. And yes, decent speaker wire (4mm) I found! I'm not a hifi snob, but I know mine sounds better and with wise buying cost less!
Not all progress is good, only good progress :-)
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Washed out LCD monitors, rubbish refresh rates, pale colours, all reds are orange.
Solution: stop buying "XTRA SPECIAL SALE NOW ONLY $50" monitors and get good ones instead.
Computer speakers, tiny badly-designed amplifiers, built-in speakers on TV's, plastic "hifi" speakers with metal cones, etc. Plenty of bass, fair enough, but just whisper "dynamic range" and "signal-to-noise ratio" to these people and you might just cause a flamewar.
Solution: buy a decent amp and speakers, can be had for a couple of hundred bucks.
Both your examples are examples of people buying crap because they either fell for the advertising or just don't know there is anything better out there.
/Mikael
Re:You don't have to go that far back... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Actually, they're not. In the case of the monitors, it's an established fact that CRT viewing angles, especially Trinitrons, are better than any flat tech we have today.
Sure. And? You're using 3 CRT's as your computer desktop, ergo you're wasting the viewing-angle advantage anyway. For your chosen usage, they make no difference whatsoever. For all other purposes, just position your damn TV so that you're not trying to watch it from the side. The viewing-angle complaint just sounds like pointless whining.
Also, the orange pigment issue is also a real one, solved only by OLEDs, and you know have much they cost.
Most (99%+) people simply don't care. When the Spartans in my livingroom start decapitating their enemies in 1080p, the blood sure looks red to me, and I don't give a
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Ah. So you're a stuck-up snob who gets a joy out of abusing her staff. Nice. Sorry for disturbing ya, ma'am, I didn't mean to interrupt your masturbatory orgy of self-congratulation.
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I've used high end trinitrons. The flicker is awful, ESPECIALLY at 85 hertz. I can see it clear as day, especially if I had 3 space hogging power vampires on my desk like you do. Furthermore, the pixels are smudged on a CRT, especially at high resolutions.
I've got dual Dell 2707 WFPs. That's a high end LCD with an expanded color gamut. They are 27", with 1920x1080 resolution each, which means the individual pixels are pretty large, so text is readable at all font sizes. They are overwhelmingly superio
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Lol, pot calling kettle. You're telling us we're too blind to notice the orange pigments and poor black levels of our LCDs...we're telling you that we can't stand the strobe light flashing of your old school CRTs...
To each his own, I guess. Hard to imagine how you fit 3 CRTs on your desk though. And that square aspect ratio must be really annoying if you want to watch any videos.
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Yes, but will they last decades? One of the reasons CRTs are so difficult to set up is that, like any other electronics, their internals can "drift" over extended periods of time.
Manufacturers, thinking of the long term back when they designed these things, implemented those various "pains in the arse" so people like me who know a good thing when we see it can re-adjust the drifting resisters and capacitors over time and keep our equipment in good condition, showing quality images to clients and guests on t
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I fully agree with you. I've had real problems with LCD TVs -- the ghosting drives me up the wall.
"So this is the most advanced LCD TV you have in the store?"
"Yes."
"You can't see that flickering?"
"Well, let's watch an HD feed... how's that?"
"You can't see that either?"
"It's refreshing at 600Hz; you can't possibly see it."
"Well, I know what I'm seeing. You can't see this, here (pointing) flickering and ghosting?"
"It's very subtle."
Needless to say, I have a tube TV and a CRT at home. Work has supplied 2 LCD m
2fer - Zombies that run vs zombies that shuffle (Score:4, Funny)
Endless useless meetings and reports vs forging and basic survival
One Thing I Miss (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember before cell phones became mainstream, if you wanted to spend time with your friends, you had to tell them where to meet you and when and they had to be there or else you just wouldn't catch up. It didn't matter if you had anything planned or not. There was much less of the, "Well, I might come out, what did you have in mind?" cruft. During lunch at school you would say, "Meet at the pool around 4:00 and we'll figure something out." Then, the evening was yours for adventure or mischief or what have you. Not always having a plan was half the fun. It meant you would all get together and just start talking or walking or going somewhere seeking something to do until someone had a brilliant...or at least intriguing...idea.
I remember how, for the weekend, you and all your friends would be sure to meet Friday night somewhere then spend the whole weekend sleeping on each others' floors and couches because if anyone skipped out you wouldn't be able to find them for the rest of the weekend. I remember girls writing their numbers on my hand in pink gel ink and walking around, intentionally holding my hand turned just out slightly so as to subversively brag about my score. I remember setting up dates and saying, "I'll pick you up at..." and not having the crutch of cell phones to be able to work out the details when the time came.
Yep part of me misses those days. I am only 23 and I feel old writing about that kind of thing....the worst part is I don't even have a lawn yet....
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When you do get a lawn, I for one will be proud to get off it. /salute
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I always feel more assured when things are set up in advance, or at least some sort of planning met-up is set up beforehand. Waiting 'til the last minute seems like asking for trouble, especially if the others don't pick up their cell phones.
Re:One Thing I Miss (Score:5, Informative)
You, sir, have had a VERY different childhood to me. :-)
Re:One Thing I Miss (Score:5, Funny)
Yep part of me misses those days. I am only 23 and I feel old writing about that kind of thing....the worst part is I don't even have a lawn yet....
No worries, you can get off mine.
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I'm about twice your age, and we had a hang-out spots for night time, one for day time ( arcade ), and out favorite fishing holes for Saturday morning. if you got lost from one spot to another, call your night quits or try to find us.
you could get blasted drunk ( 18 was the drinking age back then ) and get home safely in a cab and still make it to go fishing at 6am.
when you made plans, you stuck to them, "pick you up at 8" meant you are ready at 8pm. however when you are picking up a girl, 8pm is when you g
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Dude - did you live under a rock or something?
We chatted up girls on the internet and texted friends before you had a double digit age! Scoring a phone number when you're 9 might be cool, but you don't know what to do with it.
Re:One Thing I Miss (Score:5, Insightful)
So yeah, sure, I guess I grew up under a rock, but there were some really cool things to do under that rock...far cooler than texting each other back and forth for hours saying, "I don't know what to do," "Me neither," "LOL this sucks," "LOL yeah," "=P," "fag lol."
Re:One Thing I Miss (Score:5, Funny)
During lunch at school you would say "Meet at the pool around 4:00 and we'll figure something out."
OK, speaking as an old-timer of 48, I have to second this. That was how we did did "meet-ups" back in the day. Of course, it was "the cracker barrel at the general store", not "the pool". And what we usually settled on doing was some variation of rolling the an old barrel hoop down the dirt road with a stick. But that was mainly to take our minds of the folksy banjo music that accompanied us wherever we went.
Still, we were happy although we didn't have much. Folks weren't so jaded back then. People had solid *values*, like patriotism, racism and exflunctication.
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Re:One Thing I Miss (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to mention the days when being face to face with people meant talking to them rather than watching them take an endless series of phone calls for "just a second" each.
The people who do that are inevitably befuddled as to why I walked away to do something more useful/interesting (once they notice that is).
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Well, there's a hint: All cell phones I know have in common a very useful functionality: You can turn them off.
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Hey, I'm an old fart (in my 50s!), and I get together with friends all the time using Facebook and text-messaging. Before these were available, I didn't have any friends.:-)
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I'm fifty and, with all due respect, fuck nostalgia for landline phones (although their handpiece ergonomics and audio are excellent).
They were an information bottleneck, source of intel for some parents (not mine, fortunately for me), and didn't facilitate rapid communication within groups. I would have been delighted to have a cell phone (and computer of course) back in the ancient days of the 1970s.
Modern communication tech works fine for getting together. Now all the old fuckers I hang with email each o
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Probably 1940s peak of USA (Score:2, Interesting)
You could make the argument that for many people the 1940s-1950s was the present local peak of the USA. Since that time, due to resource exhaustion, increasing population and foolish trade deals, the standard of living has dropped in relative terms, the opportunities are not what they were, there's more aggravation, less optimism. The writing is worse, reporting is worse, the arts are terrible and people actually build less and make less. We're just shoved into boxes with sex and drugs but can't really ev
I say late 1960's - early 1970's was the peak. (Score:5, Interesting)
The Apollo program and moon landings were surely the peak of the USA.
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We're just shoved into boxes with sex and drugs...
Wait... what? I was with you until this part.
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When men were men and women cooked dinner!
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I think you are partly right, but for the wrong reasons. If you talk to people who lived through the Great Depression and WW2, it was sacrifice and suffering, but people felt like they had a purpose. In the 1950s, things got economically better, but there was a sense that we'd been put on the Earth to face down communism.
As far as writing and the arts are concerned, you're way off base. People are *still* doing the kind of art they did back then. It's just not avante garde. If don't like the art at the s
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"The writing is worse, reporting is worse, the arts are terrible and people actually build less and make less."
Cry me a fucking river. Being "poor" in the 1940s meant being a fucking sharecropper (there where plenty of White ones) not getting obese on food stamps.
The standard of living sucked by comparison with the present. The arts only matter to the wealthy or to snobs, now as then. Writing and reporting were frequently dishonest, although more dignified. Corruption was rife, racism was normal, medical ca
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WoW does not equal War (Score:3, Insightful)
So what was the Slashdot of the past . . . ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Craftsmen's Guilds come to mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild [wikipedia.org]. "They were organized in a manner something between a trade union, a cartel and a secret society . . . tended to form associations based on their trades . . . each of whom controlled secrets of traditionally imparted technology, the "arts" or "mysteries" of their crafts."
They had bizarre initiation rituals, We have goatse.
They had secret phrases. We have, "in Soviet . . . X, Y's you!"
They had a monopoly on their trade. We get outsourced.
Oh, I guess they won.
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We didn't have the rituals. Instead we had weird Uncle Eddie. The kids all loved his little "magic trick."
Other topics (Score:2)
Wimmen vs internet pr0n websites...
Remember the old geocities type web pages with absolutely everything on one staggeringly long page vs "clickthru articles" with about one paragraph per page of ads...
World (Score:3, Insightful)
More comps (Score:2)
Wooden clubs VS. dating sites
Temple prostitutes VS. cathouses
Naked neanderthals VS. endless online porn catering to every whim
Mammoth hunts across the savannah VS. six pizza places within two miles
Wooden wagons VS. Audi TT RS
Fall Of Rome VS. Fall Of USA
nostalgia (Score:5, Interesting)
Telegraph vs internet: If you wanted to, you could use VOIP to send the right audio dots and dashes in morse code only this time there's nothing stopping you. The major draw for the author seems to be the scarcity of such communication back in the time period when telegraphs were the big thing.
Twitter vs gossip: gossip isn't dead. There's no evidence that Twitter destroyed gossip, it just went online. A far more efficient means of spreading rumors.
Facebook vs Dinner party: Same as above. The author seems to pine for a time when the world was very disconnected.
World of Warcraft vs Actual war craft: Iraq? War isn't anything to be pinning for.
Swine flu mass-panic vs The plague: not a very good comparison. Try AIDS and the plague.
Iphone vs fire on a hill: Same scarcity makes it cool argument.
Viruses vs the Trojan horse: not really a fair comparison. There's tons of military strategies that put that horse to shame.
MP3s vs Tribal chants: We still have those. Heck, my friends and I went to Denver just to see a few.
Post-Enlightenment scientific rigour vs Superstition and quack doctors: Yeah that living to the old age of 30 sounds great. Get me a piece of that action... We've still got voodoo nonsense and you're free to go get "treated" by one if you wish.
Re:nostalgia - Dinner parties (Score:2)
I think they suck. For the hosts, they're expensive and messy. If you're a guest, you're stuck in a long drawn-out dinner where the only conversation is with your immediate neighbors.
Facebook wins.
As of today, CNET == cracked.com, Slashdot == Digg (Score:2, Informative)
This just felt like one of those cracked.com articles all over digg, instead of a slashdot-worthy article. Sorry.
Trebuchet vs. Howitzer (Score:2, Funny)
The trebuchet has the advantage in that it can fire anything...
Which is scarier?
"SCREEEEEEEECHMM"...BOOM!"
or...
"MOOOOOOOOOOOOO... SPLAT!"
or... (for dramatic effect)...
"Are those HEADS they're throwing at us?"
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Way before Microsoft Powerpoint (Score:2)
and other presentation software we had H. Ross Perot and his charts and graphs. Oh how people laughed at his charts and graphs, and today they have their own charts and graphs in Powerpoint and other presentation software.
"That giant sucking sound you are going to hear is jobs going out of this nation due to the foreign trade bills passing." -H. Ross Perot
"This is the real reason why nothing ever gets done and the economy never gets fixed. Gridlock in Congress and the White House. Gridlock, gridlock, period
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Business presentation software existed before H. Ross Perot's 1992 campaign. Harvard Presentation Graphics, from the mid-1980s, is one of the better known earlier examples, if not necessarily the first dedicated business presentation software.
Actually, checking Wikipedia, PowerPoint was around before H. Ross Perot's 1992 campaign, as well, being first released for the Mac in 1987 and for Windows 3
subby skillz (Score:2)
I would rather laugh at the submitter's rather superb talent for understatement.
Iphone (Score:2)
I'm curious why they chose the Iphone? I mean, spot the odd one out - for every other technology, they list either the dominant leader, or if there isn't one, they put the generic name. But for some reason, the Iphone gets chosen, at only a few per cent market share. Why? Or is this just yet another case of jumping on the Apple product placement bandwagon?
If anything, they should list Nokia, but as no one's dominant in the mobile market (Nokia have "only" 40%), it's probably better to stick with the perfect
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I imagine Dr. McCoy would agree [youtube.com]
Re:Poisoning people with cancer... (Score:5, Informative)
...which is what much of modern chemotherapy amounts too will be looked back on like we look on bloodletting to keep your humors in order.
Except for the little fact that, as much as chemo sucks and as much as it closely resembles taking just enough arsenic mixed with mercury topped with cyanide to wish you were dead, it is backed up by clinical studies and has been found to work.
Chemo: sucks but works
Leeches: suck and don't work except in special cases as temporary therapy for reattachment of fingers and toes
Re:Poisoning people with cancer... (Score:5, Insightful)
One day we will consider modern chemo to be just a step above savagery and will also say that unlike ancient chemo, our modern remedies work. We'll say that because there won't be questions of survival rates over 5 years or so, just which one will cause complete remission the fastest and keep it from coming back.
Notably, some of the big medications and surgical procedures out there today have an effect, but evidence is growing that the effect they have is useless. One day we'll see those as no better than bloodletting for a broken leg. It's easy to make fun of the old state of the art in hindsight, sorta like all that advice to just relax, drink milk and perhaps see a shrink to treat a simple H. Pylori [wikipedia.org] infection looks kinda silly now.
Our modern state of the art psychiatry won't likely fare much better than the mid-20th century use of insulin coma and lobotomy. We'll likely look back on ECT and wonder why the doctor didn't just break a 2x4 over the patient's head.
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We'll likely look back on ECT and wonder why the doctor didn't just break a 2x4 over the patient's head.
I'm pretty sure this already happened, before they made it a very specific-case treatment, and did alot of fine-tuning to the process.
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There's a lot less tuning than you think and still not a decent theory of why or how it might work and when. There is also evidence that the only reason cognitive and memory deficits aren't reported is that nobody's looking for them anymore.
I can understand it's use as a treatment of last resort especially for suicidal patients, but there are still a few psychiatrists that seem a bit trigger happy with it. Why TMS isn't tried first every time is beyond comprehension.
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Somehow I doubt "yes but MY letter was printed with the utmost of speed" will impress any ladies... And that was what letter writing was all about. I suppose that you could argue the advantages of being able to court 1,500 girls at once...
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Scribes weren't just copy machines; they were artists.
I recently saw a documentary on how ancient Egyptians would commission a copy of "The Book of the Dead," to be placed in their funeral grave. They did this in the temple, where, for a small fee, the temple scribes would create a personalized version. A work of art.
This book was important, because it contained instructions to allow the deceased to pass through obstacles in the afterlife. So folks didn't skimp on the cost.
I don't think that the Ibis-
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How many scribes is one printer worth?
How many printers can output an illuminated Book Of Hours which will retain its rich colors and gold decoration for over 600 years?
Re:this is a joke? (Score:5, Insightful)
Can I use all of my moderator points to rate this article as -10 extremely stupid.
Re:this is a joke? (Score:4, Interesting)
We have: use your wimpy moderation points to bury it.
They had: kill it with fire.
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Oh, sorta like fark.com you mean... minus the gorgor links...