Technology

viv0147

Technology
The mind boggles at the advancements that are being made daily, at my age which is 62 and after having first of all a PC that was about 10 years ago, I now have a Mac. I would consider myself computer literate to a degree and yet each day there are so many things to learn I fear time will be against me. Even so the challenge that each day brings I find really stimulating, as an example I am not typing this I am using Mac speech! This application listens to my voice and then types it out which I find absolutely amazing.

Another application I've recently found is Teamviewer, now with this application I can providing a family member or friend have the application, takeover their computer and help them with any problems they may be having if I possibly can, and that applies whether it's a PC or a Mac of course only with their permission.

I also have an iPhone and once again what a wonder it is there are so many applications that can help us in our daily lives again I find this really fascinating I have 106 applications on my iPhone I would say on a regular basis I use about 20 of them and some of them I would say are awesome.

I know most young people reading this will think to themselves what's the big deal? But for people of my age and quite sure they will be able to relate to my comments, because I remember when I was 14 years of age we had a TV and we were the only ones in our street to have one, so our neighbours would visit us to watch our TV. I remember when colour TV started it was an amazing! It was a miracle! Considering what we have now. Although I have had a good life I sort of wish my life started about 10 years ago.

Just a footnote this has all been written by my voice again absolutely amazing.

pcombo

"I know most young people reading this will think to themselves what's the big deal?" Is abit discriminating tbh.

I dont see the point in the full post tbh. Its not really contributing towards anything. Accept teamviewer is good because it uses UDP and doesn't require any users to have ports open for a connection to be made.

Hammyman

I started with computers in 1982 with the ZX81 and have been doing it for a living on and off for a couple of decades. Unlike you though, I long for the days before they became so widespread. The paperless office was a lie and they only serve to create more work for people, not less. They cause more problems than they cure - "computer says no" - partly due to being applied where they really shouldn't have been. I can recall many times loading reels of paper on the docks where the computer said a particular reel didn't exist when it was on the back of the lorry and whereas the tallyman would just scribble the serial number down on paper previously, sorting it usually resulted in 15 minutes of fannying around sorting out the database then updating the handheld scanners.

Avoriaz

viv0147 wrote: »

Technology
The mind boggles at the advancements that are being made daily, at my age which is 62 and after having first of all a PC that was about 10 years ago, I now have a Mac. ………. Although I have had a good life I sort of wish my life started about 10 years ago.

Just a footnote this has all been written by my voice again absolutely amazing.

I did wonder why I was reading it all in a Welsh accent.

:A

SocrateS_2

viv0147 wrote: »

Technology
Just a footnote this has all been written by my voice again absolutely amazing.

I hear what you're saying, though I'm not quite as mature as yourself, but fast approaching 40 which is no run once you realise it I remember watching some 'Tomorrows World' presentation that said 'In the 1980's we would be doing the following...' it had such things as wearing Radios as earrings so we could listen to music or radio on the move Men and Women would be wearing these things, we would have Petrol less cars instead running on Hydrogen which would be better for the environment, another presentation I watched at school promised that by the time I reached 25 (I was 16 at the time) we would be travelling around in Flying Saucer shaped transport devices they would also run on hydrogen and replace planes like Concorde as it was seen as extremely wasteful in terms of fuel. I also have an iphone, there wasn't any mention of mobile communications unless they formed part of those 'radio earrings' mentioned earlier. Like yourself I've got a few apps on the screen and only use a few of them on a daily basis I recently culled a fair few of those not used apps to increase speed and space which seemed to work, things are much quicker now.

I cam into computers whilst walking through my local Tandy, they had a computer which was a desktop, it had some office package and a 'games disk' which I complained to my parents endlessly that they should purchase, they didn't and I was grateful in the end as they eventually purchased me a Commodore 64 a year or so later which lasted me a good 4 years. Oh the time spent programming:

10 PRINT "Hello World!"
20 GOTO 10
RUN

Just to see it stream down the screen over and over again. All that programming saving to tapes, spending days literally only to press Record, Play on the Tape Recorder and cross your fingers that all that code would end up on that C60 only to come back to it some hours later and find that the damn thing didn't save as it promised and you had to keep the unit plugged back into the TV for the next 2 days making up for the time spent typing endless lines of text into the computer in the hope that the 'game' you were promised in some magazine would materialise onscreen. Oh the frustration, thank heavens for Floppy Disks and eventually those 1.44MB jobbies that lasted almost 10 years before being phased out.

To the poster that said the Paperless Office was a lie, that's true to a point but not if you had the budget. It did exist, but only for that office and was usually the preserve of the super rich like banks and accountants that had massive budgets. Fortunately, it's almost here now however, some 30 years later than they promised it would arrive. If you doubt me then you need to go here for an idea of how its progressing in terms of education: http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=x99xeRJdSJU you may not consider it so impressive until you hear that the US Military has adopted this device for their soldiers\engineers. The Ipad will undoubtedly get similar functionality in a few revisions time, yes you read it here first!

And finally yes Speech Recognition, its great and can be found in Win 7 if you go looking for it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3VZnyKViC4 it's also available with the Mac OS too I might add.

I remember a friend whose got no arms trying extremely hard to find a 'joystick' that would allow him to play PC games in the end he had one built for him. He was able to type with the various 'Accessibility Features' found in Win 3.1 we always said disabled access to computing would come soon, didn't expect it to take almost 20 years however. Even I admit that.

Oh yes and before I forget, if you're running TeamViewer you might like to be aware that if left running on an unattended machine it used to have a bug that if you port scanned it. It would announce 'This machine is running TeamViewer' which is like an open invitation to anyone watching that the machine would make an idea 'zombie' or open to attack, providing you have a suitably exploited copy of Remote Desktop application.

viv0147

In response to comments by the pcombo, firstly I was not having a dig at young people! I was stating how much I envy and admire their knowledge. Secondly the question was why do the post at all? Well I can assure you I didn't do it to annoy anyone! its just that I find technology is so exciting and I just wanted to express that excitement into words.

I think that maybe I posted my observations in the wrong forum, I'm not quite sure to be honest which would be the right forum possibly the over 50s?

So please accept my apologies to anyone who may have been offended by my post.

PS This post has once again been written by my rich Welsh accent using mac speech. Lol

SocrateS, Thank you for your observations and your warning about Teamviewer, it just goes to show how sharing our knowledge can help each other.

[Deleted User]

Bryn, is that you?

You got to witness the moon-landings and were able to buy houses at reasonable prices. I'd take that over mobile phones and speech recognition.

Personally, i'm waiting to see the use of personalised genomic medicines (known as pharmaco-genetics) and the discovery of the Higgs boson particle

renegade

viv0147 wrote: »

Technology
The mind boggles at the advancements that are being made daily, at my age which is 62 and after having first of all a PC that was about 10 years ago, I now have a Mac. I would consider myself computer literate to a degree and yet each day there are so many things to learn I fear time will be against me. Even so the challenge that each day brings I find really stimulating, as an example I am not typing this I am using Mac speech! This application listens to my voice and then types it out which I find absolutely amazing.

Another application I've recently found is Teamviewer, now with this application I can providing a family member or friend have the application, takeover their computer and help them with any problems they may be having if I possibly can, and that applies whether it's a PC or a Mac of course only with their permission.

I also have an iPhone and once again what a wonder it is there are so many applications that can help us in our daily lives again I find this really fascinating I have 106 applications on my iPhone I would say on a regular basis I use about 20 of them and some of them I would say are awesome.

I know most young people reading this will think to themselves what's the big deal? But for people of my age and quite sure they will be able to relate to my comments, because I remember when I was 14 years of age we had a TV and we were the only ones in our street to have one, so our neighbours would visit us to watch our TV. I remember when colour TV started it was an amazing! It was a miracle! Considering what we have now. Although I have had a good life I sort of wish my life started about 10 years ago.

Just a footnote this has all been written by my voice again absolutely amazing.

I also share your interest in the modern technology- it is amazing, I love learning new techno stuff. I am 70 yrs old and I too wish I had been able to use this techno throughout my earlier years, but hey ho on to the next decade!

aloise

pcombo wrote: »

"I know most young people reading this will think to themselves what's the big deal?" Is abit discriminating tbh.

I don't see the point in the full post tbh. Its not really contributing towards anything. Accept teamviewer is good because it uses UDP and doesn't require any users to have ports open for a connection to be made.

Surely you can post just something that is interesting. It doesn't have to be informative all the time. I too am amazed when i think of technology now. I'm 73 and am delighted that i can use a computer and even help friends when something (simple )goes wrong. Was terrified of the thing when i started 6 years ago.:eek: We older ones, Combo, are like kids in Disneyland,we are awed by what can be done with computers. I have to say i have had a lot of help on here which has been invaluable.

xbrenx

SocrateS wrote: »

10 PRINT "Hello World!"
20 GOTO 10
RUN

And there I was thinking I'd forgotten everything to do with programming. That little quote brought it all back! lol

rizla01

Good post VIV. Ignore the knockers.

I started out with a ZX80 (Ner) and I also remember 'Gosub' which fascinated me. Very powerful addition to the commands.

I used to be at the front end of technology but these days (Nearly 60) I lag dismally behind, and the main reason is not wishing to make changes to my happy, ignorant, old fashioned ways.

I have a Mobile powered by Windows (Cost £20.00) - A 'Lobster' for those that know it, and refuse to carry it around with me. It is used virtually only ever, for sending these stupid texts to my kids!!!! I was a Salesman for 25 years during which time they emerged and I must have been the only Rep without one.

There ya go, more boring stuff.

Oooh. And I am now (Today) going out to buy my first ever LCD/Plasma/Whatever as my trusty old 32" Sony CRT has finally bitten the dust (If it had outlasted me I would have been very happy to NOT buy a flatscreen - EVER!!)