I'm so old I remember when the internet didn't have commercials.

@harrymuzz At my first job, the computer room temperature was controlled with double door air lock to enter. The computer was huge with punch card operators typing and huge floor to ceiling reel to reel tapes. The print outs were on large sheets of paper and took several runs for all the errors to be corrected. With programmers, inputters and clerks, there were about 8 staff. Nowadays a kid of 8 or 9 could do it all and more on a smartphone and 30 times quicker! Hard to believe but true.

@kibcol1049 I remeber the double doors, and the tape decks, first hardware I operated had 1 inch tape, and we had to skew the head with a large screwdriver , watching an oscilloscope to get lined up......The air con noise, that endless stationary ...........64k, K!! filled a small room.

@kibcol1049 I remeber the double doors, and the tape decks, first hardware I operated had 1 inch tape, and we had to skew the head with a large screwdriver , watching an oscilloscope to get lined up......The air con noise, that endless stationary ...........64k, K!! filled a small room.

@harrymuzz @kibcol1049 my first job in the industry was realigning the heads on 8" drives with a screwdriver you'd consider too big for working on your car these days

They were pretty much obsolete by this time but it just shows how quickly things change. These days there will be people starting their first jobs surprised that physical media is still used in their new workplace.

I'm so old I remember when the internet didn't have commercials.

@kibcol1049
Can I be the 94th person to say I remember the Internet without the World Wide Web

I'm so old I remember when the internet didn't have commercials.

@kibcol1049 Me too! I go back to the days of Usenet.

Sometimes I wonder if we could somehow use Usenet to organize against the oligarchy. It was designed to resist atomic attack, after all...

@Quasit @kibcol1049 just because something can survive nuclear war doesn't mean it can survive unmoderated spam, porn and nazis.

@bencurthoys @kibcol1049

True, but that might actually help. Protective camouflage. With all that crap out there, how will they find cunningly-disguised encrypted communications?

@tantramar @NormanDunbar @kibcol1049

I'll just leave this here ...
https://sattlers.org/mickey/culture/humor/items/Geekish/montyPythonDeadServers.html

@kelvin0mql @kibcol1049 @harrymuzz

I wouldn't be surprised if banks still used punchcards for their COBOL

I'm so old I remember when the internet didn't have commercials.

I'm so old I remember when the internet didn't have commercials.

@kibcol1049

I remember when #NHL #Hockey didn't have ads on the side boards! 🧓

@kibcol1049 I remember accessing the Internet (it was capitalized, like the name of a place) using Netscape and Altavista search.

Sigh! Good times!

@nlarson830 @kibcol1049 @harrymuzz
I signed up for a community college sort of computer programming class, 'cuz I was certain computers would be a huge part of my career (correct).

Looked at the shopping list for the syllabus of the COBOL class, & saw I needed to buy a box of punch cards.

Immediately dropped the class. I would've been cool with learning COBOL, but if they were still doing punchcards when I already had an XT with dual floppy drives, they were too backward.

@kibcol1049 I remember accessing the Internet (it was capitalized, like the name of a place) using Netscape and Altavista search.

Sigh! Good times!

@TheLancashireman @tantramar @NormanDunbar @kibcol1049

Ooh, yeah. I remember typing nntp kick over and over again until Demon's news server delivered messages. For a long time, it didn't keep up with the huge influx of new customers. (They eventually fixed it.)

@kelvin0mql @nlarson830 @kibcol1049 @harrymuzz I know what you mean! As a kid in school though, punch cards helped me understand how data is stored on other media. I think they could still be a good teaching resource.