Talk:2324: Old Days 2

I've gotta try that, see how the ice cream truck guy reacts. Wonder where I can find an ice cream truck though? 172.69.71.16 23:42, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

The above is me, wasn't logged in, would I get in trouble for fixing the signature? Mikemk (talk) 23:44, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

(@Mikemk, I recon you sorted it by adding what you did. If you'd have just changed things, probably no crime if you explained it in the edit Summary. But I'm just an IP Address, so no authority.) Anyway. The bit about a phone-call stopping all electronic business is obviously rooted in dial-up needing exclusive use of a POTS line, something that only went out with broadband piggy-backing alongside voice-calls, the respective carrier-signals now microfiltered at each end of the house-to-exchange copper cabling to let them coexist over the same circuit without blocking/overwhelming each other. Though, in this comic, it's hyperbole, overly fuzzy memory, leg-pulling and/or an alternate-history being described. 141.101.98.130 02:06, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

I would just have deleted the auto signature and put in the correct after login in. Great you signed it correctly. As there is already a discussion opn this I will not correct it. Had no one answered you I would have just put your signature where the special contribution signature is and deleted your second line... ;-) --Kynde (talk) 17:24, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

In the early days (of the ARPAnet) there was actually something that today would be classed as a "cloud service" (before the term was invented) although limited. It was a computer (in Cambridge, MA) funded by ARPA with massive amounts of storage and anybody on the ARPAnet could use it for storage (primary access was through FTP). So, cloud storage but not cloud computing. If you wanted to do something with the data you had to copy the whole file to your local disk, edit it there, and then send it back. The actual bits were stored on magnetic tape and there was an elaborate X/Y mechanism to select a tape and mount it on a tape drive, and later return it to its cubby. MAP (talk) 02:38, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

"State landline" is reminiscent of the old sailing joke where you'd ask a n00b to bring you 100 feet of shoreline. -- brad

Hm, I'd think that "state landline" is a pun on "state line". Gvanrossum (talk) 04:19, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Also, while mainframes didn't exactly knit sweaters when they ran your code, they *did* produce physical artifacts -- reams of line printer paper. Gvanrossum (talk) 04:21, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

"It's not even likely that any punch patterns used in computer coding would be interpretable as valid sweater-creating instructions." Is anyone up to the challenge? Barmar (talk) 05:04, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Wouldn't a loom produce woven textiles rather than knit garments like sweaters? Seems like an additional layer of tall tales. 172.68.189.179 06:46, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

It seems to me that the comic is having fun with false etymologies. There is especially one article that 'explains' a lot of idiom (in the sense of making up a fanciful story), which has been debunked by Snopes https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/life-in-the-1500s/ and the comics seems to allude to a similar situation in computer science, which is now old enough that early days are shrouded in a bit of mist out of which selective trivia is remembered (punch cards had something to do with looms) and then put together into a semi-coherent story that no longer reflects reality. (With part of the joke being that many people here will actually still know or even remember what it was really like in the 'early years', but the fewer those become, the more likely it will be that made-up 'origin stories' become accepted as true.

141.101.69.33 06:54, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Is there a pun in the title text, regarding double meaning of driver? 172.68.226.26 07:59, 25 June 2020 (UTC) Eddy

The explanation about landlines needs to be reviewed. Landlines are still a thing, people are still using them, they're not a "stone age" technology.141.101.98.130 14:35, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

This comic is why we have children and encourage them to go into the same line of work as us: so we can tell them stories of the "good old days." My wife wants nothing to do with my stories of computers in the 70s and 80s, but my son - now also a developer like me - actually listens. Gbisaga (talk) 16:13, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

"Also it is unknown how it should know in which repo to create a pull request and whom to contact about it." I assumed it was akin to those USB dead drops. You give the disk to an ice cream man and hope that there is something interesting in the repo. Also the thrill is more in being one of the few insiders who know how to access it, not necessarily the value of the contents themselves.173.245.54.131 19:25, 25 June 2020 (UTC)