More on centerpull balls

LOL! I can honestly say, no, to both. My first computer was a Texas Instrument, the first one that had colour capability. It had the old printer where the paper had holes in it. I loved that computer. I still have it.

Murielle

I first used a computer in 1967. I needed it to do actuarial calculations, and I had to learn to program it in FORTRAN. It took up a whole room and needed two people to operate it, and it had a lot less memory than my little Palm computer does now.

No, but I remember our children making 'computers' from cereal boxes and knitting needles back in the 60s :-)

Mary

Ah - the 'bag of nails' - very interesting if you tried to print graphics! In my early days the only graphics printers used styli. We never had one but Spouse did a course and proudly presented me with a COLOUR! print-out saying, "Sorry I'm late but it was FUN!"

It was too. Nobody would persevere with such technology now but what of the future? They'll think we and our machines frightfully primitive. It's all going too fast :-(

Mary

Yes, I remember using punched cards and FORTRAN. We had to go to the administration building after hours to use their machines for our programming classes when I was in college.

Think of all of the trees lost to programming back then.

BB

Oh, you are way ahead of me! ;-)

Murielle

What amazes me is how quickly technology is changing these days. I've been told that as soon as you take your computer from the store it's obsolete. That's scary.

Murielle

No point in being scared of it! It's always been like that with maps - and even people - as soon as they're born they begin to die :-)

Mary

Our very first computer (the one before this) was bought 11 years ago. My son had used computers all through school, since kindergarten, but I had never touched one before. When we got it all set up by our Internet Provider here in town, I asked my (then almost 15 year old) son to show me what to do so that I could type up some of my poems. Instead of actually showing me, he just opened a page and said "There, just sit and type." Easy enough... I sat and typed... for about a half hour, then the screen went totally blue and I freaked out thinking I had broken the computer. My son came out, shook his head in disbelief and tapped a couple of keys and the screen was back to normal. LOL

I went on to have my own chat channel and my own website that a friend created for me.. I did the upkeep and changed/added new pages and pictures myself, and a lot of people thought I knew so much about computers. NOT... I just cover well. ;o) I do know my way around a computer a *bit* more now of course, but there are some things that still send me into a tailspin. I still swear these things have minds of their own sometimes and just toy with us humans to see what reactions they will get. hehehe

The only acronyms that I use are LOL, ROTFL, etc Any other abbreviations like AFK and BRB, I never use and always type the words out in full. The kids who used to chat on my chat channel, used to giggle about me typing out entire words and sentences all the time instead of abbreviating them. ;o)

Well, you're providing fun. What's bett in life?

Mary

"Murielle" wrote What amazes me is how quickly technology is changing these days. I've been

That's an extreme point of view held by those who have to be on the "bleeding edge" of technology. Personally, I prefer to wait until the initial bugs are cleaned up.

A lot of the stuff they're adding now doesn't interest me. I don't play games or watch films on my computer. I wouldn't upgrade at all, except that after a while it becomes difficult to get software for an old operating system.

I don't even use those, nor emoticons either.

I'm with you Jan. I run Windows XP, and have no interest in Vista. When I bought my new computer 3 years ago, XP had already been on the market for a while. However, I've never d/l Service pack 2 and don't intend to. My ISP provides Zone Alarm Security Suite free with their service, and it works great. I haven't run out of memory and don't play many games. I mainly use my computer for e-mail, photography and discussing yarn (laugh). My old computer ran Windows 95 and I finally gave up on it when it took so long to boot up, I'd go have tea while waiting for it. Plus, I blew 2 hard drives and my monitor, so decided to treat myself to a new one.

Shelagh

Oh I definitely use emoticons! I learned a long time ago that something can be said (typed) online with one meaning or feeling in mind, and taken a completely different way because the person reading it doesn't see your face and notice the smile, grin, or glint in your eye to know that you are just goofing around. Too many people get upset or angry because they have no idea how the other person really means what they just typed. So a friendly smilie :o) or wink ;o) lets them know that whatever was said, was done so in a nice way, not sarcastically or nastily. *shrug* It especially helps to save feelings from being hurt on chat channels where the chatting goes a lot faster than here on a newsgroup.

My Win/XP computer is 4 years old already. I held off on SP2 until last fall when I decided to do it because they dropped support for SP1. I had a devil of a time installing SP2 because it would run almost to completion and then stop with an error in the cleanup phase. I backed it out and reran the install 4 times and got the same error every time. Since it did get past the install phase and seemed to be running fine, I decided to not back it out again and there has never been a sign of anything wrong with it.

But isn't that their problem? Surely they shouldn't make assumptions - probably based on what they'd mean if they used the same words!

When I talk to a blind person I don't feel the need to tell him/her what I really mean in case s/he misunderstands ... the same happens if I talk to someone on the phone. I've written long letters for decades and never felt the need to put in little drawings to explain my real meaning, I expect the reader to have some kind of understanding.

It seems to me that emoticons and available on Usenet because the CAN be. Much as when colour became available in television all clothing and sets were saturated with unnecessary (and often ugly and distracting) colour.

I could go on and on about this but I think I've made my point.

:-)

Mary

True! However, if you're speaking with someone (either blind or on the phone) they can usually hear the tone of your voice to figure out if you are being friendly or not.. unless you speak monitone, which I doubt. ;o) As for actual hand-written letters... no, I don't put little drawings in either. I don't know... it just became something (misunderstanding and getting their feelings hurt, etc) that happened more frequently while chatting online, so the emoticons just seemed to be easier to type in along with the message, rather than hurt someone's feelings and have to explain later. I do realize that it is the other person's problem if they misunderstood, but I'm the type of person who doesn't like to hurt people's feelings to begin with, so I try to avoid doing so whenever I can... or aplogize for accidentally doing so afterward. *shrug*

I don't mind the colour on coloured TV, but when they colourize the old black and white movies it just looks SO fake, not to mention taking away from the appeal of the original movie. Matthew (who, of course, grew up with coloured TV and movies) also hates when the movie makers feel the need to mess with the originals and colourize them.

Yes you have, and a very valid point. :o) Everyone has their own opinion on things, so to each his/her own.

By the way... nice smilie! ;o) See you do use them sometimes too. hehehe