Nice people thread 2 - now even nicer

John_Pierpoint

I found it a bit difficult on Sunday at Stowe, to think my way back into the age of Jane Austin & beyond.

The soundtrack supplied all the way from Silverstone was somewhat distracting.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/sep/12/silverstone-le-mans-motor-racing

tomterm8

vivatifosi wrote: »

, this 1TB external hard drive by Seagate is £59.99 from Maplin and would back up 24,000 hours of music in MP3 format..

I remember the days where you could run the entire Nato army on 1 TB, and still have room for the Soviets, and the world banking system.

AND we walked miles to school through the SNOW, on at least three occasions.

Davesnave

tomterm8 wrote: »

I remember the days where you could run the entire Nato army on 1 TB, and still have room for the Soviets, and the world banking system.

AND we walked miles to school through the SNOW, on at least three occasions.

Did they really have that much music in those days?

Generali

In 1960 in the US according to these guys:

http://www.jcmit.com/memoryprice.htm

a terrabyte of memory bought as a million-odd megabytes would cost almost $5,500,000,000,000. 5 and a half trillion dollars! And that is without adjusting for inflation.

tomterm8

Davesnave wrote: »

Did they really have that much music in those days?

I'm still trying to work out how people get hold of 24,000 hours of music, and their ISP doesn't cut off their broadband.

Davesnave

tomterm8 wrote: »

I'm still trying to work out how people get hold of 24,000 hours of music, and their ISP doesn't cut off their broadband.

As a younger teenager, my entire collection fitted on about five 5.75" reel to reel tapes. I didn't graduate to LPs until I was earning, though I copied bits of other people's.

Most of what I had came from the TV, direct from the speaker wires, 'cos my Dad would never shut up!:rotfl:

vivatifosi

tomterm8 wrote: »

I remember the days where you could run the entire Nato army on 1 TB, and still have room for the Soviets, and the world banking system.

AND we walked miles to school through the SNOW, on at least three occasions.

Ah yes, I remember those days. We should also recall the amazing feat that was sending man to the Moon on the power of a pocket calculator.

Generali wrote: »

In 1960 in the US according to these guys:

http://www.jcmit.com/memoryprice.htm

a terrabyte of memory bought as a million-odd megabytes would cost almost $5,500,000,000,000. 5 and a half trillion dollars! And that is without adjusting for inflation.

One issue with being so memory rich is that no thought is given to saving space any more. Whatever happened to the elegant programming of old (ie the type I could do )? It takes two years now to write a decent gaming program.

LydiaJ

LydiaJ wrote: »

Perhaps I shall finally join in the "what I am reading" part of this thread.

I am reading Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, and finding it very interesting.

lemonjelly wrote: »

Is it any good? What is it about?

I'm sure you'll have picked up that Viva & I are constantly uodating our reading lists (or to be more accurate, our "what I'd like to read if I had any time" lists:o), and others have joined in with their current/fave reads.

It's about what causes epidemics, in the very loosest sense of the word.

At what point does a virus, fashion trend, area crime increase/decrease, popular restaurant, etc, catch on and "tip" from being something that affects only a few, to something epidemic that affects loads of people? And why? And how can you manipulate this sort of thing - for example how did the makers of Sesame Street influence children to remember letters of the alphabet, and how can their methods be improved upon in the light of more recent research about what preschoolers pay most attention to? How many of your friends did you make independently, and how many did you make because you were friends with someone else who was friends with them? What are the characteristics of people who keep connecting their friends with each other like this? And what are the characteristics of people who influence other people's decision making? And a host of other questions of the same sort.

I'd previously read Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, and enjoyed that. It's about how people with a lot of experience of something can make surprisingly accurate assessments very quickly in their field of expertise, without being consciously aware of how they're doing it.

I think they're both good, but I think I'd probably recommend reading Tipping Point first and Blink afterwards. That's the order in which he wrote them, and I think it would make more sense that way.

I've had them as birthday presents from the same friend who previously gave me Freakonomics and Superfreakonomics (by Levitt & Dubner). I think they'd be likely to appeal to the same kind of reader.

vivatifosi

LydiaJ wrote: »

I've had them as birthday presents from the same friend who previously gave me Freakonomics and Superfreakonomics. I think they'd be likely to appeal to the same kind of reader.

I'd agree with that. I enjoyed the Tipping Point many years ago and liked what I've read of Freakonomics (not finished yet). I actually quite fancy Outliers as my next Gladwell outing.

misskool

Well, that's my next author sorted.

A word of sage advice, when in doubt, bake cookies.