Old people using computers

Caprisun69
The last topic about age variation in sexual partner surprised me. No, not the difference in age but how many of u old geezers actually use computers! Haha good for u all not fighting change but embracing it
#OldGeezersDoUseComputers

27 comments

Latest

mikeya02
10 years ago
#InternetSpeedIsAllWeNeed
mikeya02
10 years ago
#PinochleAndVideoGamesForever
ATACdawg
10 years ago
Caprisun, I was using computers before you were out of diapers! My first was a GE computer via telex programming FORTRAN and my next was an HP 9830A basic machine with a whole 8 KB of memory, a digital cassette drive and a single line display. And then there was a TRS 80 Model 1 with 48 K memory and TWO 80 K floppy drives. My smartphone has about 100 times the power of that machine. There's a lot more of us old geezers than you might think.
Caprisun69
10 years ago
^^^interesting perspective...the elder population I come across dont use and don't want too use computers and stuff (well majority of them)...but I guess in an Internet bored the statistics mite bee a little skewed
sailmd
10 years ago
#youngpeopleareclueless
Caprisun69
10 years ago
^^^#Thanks4YourContribusions
shadowcat
10 years ago
If you can't run with the old dogs, stay on the porch!
BlueLion
10 years ago
Lol
steve229
10 years ago
"...the elder population I come across dont use and don't want too use computers and stuff (well majority of them)"

Sex (with young women) is a powerful motivator, my young friend...
ATACdawg
10 years ago
Funny story about the old GE computer. All of the commands worked off the first three characters and ignored the rest of the command, but a lot of people used the full command because it was easier to remember. A lot of guys used to swear at the computer by typing in "Fuck you" or other epithets, to which the machine would typically reply "illegal command". One of the seniors was having a particularly hard time finding a syntax error and finally typed "screw you!", not realizing that there was a SCRATCH command in the system. The system dutifully read the first three characters and proceeded to delete his entire thesis program from the system!

Did I mention that the teletype was connected by a 150 baud (about 19 characters per second) acoustic phone modem?
jerikson40
10 years ago
Some of us were building our own computers back in the 80's when Heathkit was big. And we bought the very first Apple Macintosh when it was a "holy shit, can you believe that???"

And some of us were doing assembly programming back then too. And C++. And Fortran. And Basic.

Honestly, in spite of all the press that the "internet generation" gets about being so freaking tech savvy, I've found just the opposite. Yeah, a 2 year old can pick up an incredibly simple to use tablet or iMac and press the icons to play games, but when you ask a "tech savvy" college person how it all works, or about IP addresses or anything REALLY technical, they're totally clueless. Building websites is so freaking easy and mindless nowadays, at least compared to what it was, that any moron can do it. Same goes with much of the software programming.

So yeah, people can use technology nowadays, and post on FB and do IM and watch videos while you're trying to have a freaking conversation with them, but don't expect them to really understand any of it.
Dougster
10 years ago
jerkoffson: "IP addresses or anything REALLY technical"

Lol! Yep, IP addresses really technical.

jerikson40
10 years ago
Hey I just looked up the old H89 Heathkit computer I built in the 80's...it had 48kB of RAM. That's back when men were men and you had to learn all about code efficiency...every bit and byte counted. :)
Dougster
10 years ago
Yep, another example of you being a "real man", jerkoffson. Conserved all those bits and bytes.
georgmicrodong
10 years ago
Yeah, start talking about NAND gates, bitwise math, and CPU registers, and all those "tech savvy" types' eyes start to glaze over.

Wasn't it IBM 370 assembler where BR,-4 was *really* bad? :)
ime
10 years ago
back in my day we assembled our computers while walking up hill in the snow with no shoes on
jerikson40
10 years ago
"back in my day we assembled our computers while walking up hill in the snow with no shoes on"

HA !!! what a pussy !!! We did it with hurricane force winds and hailstones the size of baseballs !!!!
ATACdawg
10 years ago
Those kinds of conditions probably explain why your computers never worked;)

About 50 of us who worked for various Westinghouse divisions in Pittsburgh assembled what we called XPCs - IBM PC compatibles with slightly faster processors. A couple years later I put in a 30 MB hard drive. I thought, "I'll never be able to fill all that space!" Lol.
Dougster
10 years ago
I remember when Google had its TeraByte server with satellite pictures of the entire world. Thought that was something I could never fill in a lifetime. Now I have a 3TB drive in a computer with a cable card that I need to clear out every few weeks so it doesn't get too full of HDTV I've recorded.
sharkhunter
10 years ago
I remember my brother paid two or three thousand for a state of the art 486 pc that all his friends were ewwwing and ahhhing about the impressive speed. Then he put a pc game called Wing Commander on it and called technical support asking how to slow it down. Tech support was confused. "We never got that question before."

After I stopped laughing I found some code and wrote a batch program after a few weeks that slowed it down. For some odd reason, he didn't care for the game sounding like Mickey Mouse. One of his friends said he'll never need all that speed. :)

sharkhunter
10 years ago
I discovered long ago that everyone posting online seems to be at least somewhat knowledgeable about pc's or smart phones.
jerikson40
10 years ago
Never forget receiving the Heathkit box in the afternoon, spending the entire night nonstop putting the computer kit together, soldering, inserting chips, whatever...

And it was maybe 8am when I finally turned it on and guess what I saw:

C:>

Holy crap I was in heaven.
sharkhunter
10 years ago
The younger generation doesn't seem that interested in building computers as a hobby. They want to build web sites that make them millionaires overnight or was that my generation too?

If I learned code instead of other stuff, I'd be doing my own graphics art programming to create images of models you could spin around on your screen and maybe even zoom in as well as if she was in the room. Then if I was a really advanced programmer, I'd have programs to turn her into a stripper, dance on stage, take tips, go into drama mode if you tip well or not at all. , aka a super sexy strip club customer game. Free download, you pay extra for the extra hot sexy girls you can add to your dance club.
SippyCup69
10 years ago
lol
Clubber
10 years ago
As one of the aged, I have been working with computers for over 44 years. Of course before the early 80's I am talking about mainframes. Nothing new to me. What I do find astounding is the advancement in those years. Would be difficult to come up with a technology that has advance to such a degree so quickly.

I recall a statement made that early "smart" phones and such, had more computing power than did the original space shuttle of the late 70's early 80's.
ATACdawg
10 years ago
Very true, clubber. In fact the computer that the Apollo program depended on for navigation and other apps had the stunning memory capacity of 8 (count 'em) kilobytes.

I talked to the guy who wrote the original stability evaluation program (9000 lines of code) for the Navy. He said that when he started working with computers you could watch the computer do a multiplication in the lights!
Clubber
10 years ago
ATAC,

One thing the upgrade of resources (storage and speed) has done is make programmers sloppy. Those 9,000 lines you mentioned back then would be 90,000 or more today. :)
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