^^This!
The wife always asks "how did you fix that?!" my response is always "I just know stuff."
Neighbor Bill fixed his slab foundation via youtube education. He's 62% thriftier, braver and handier than I am.
It's Official: The Internet is The Worst Thing Ever
- Thread starter The Atheist
- Start date
^^This!
The wife always asks "how did you fix that?!" my response is always "I just know stuff."
Neighbor Bill fixed his slab foundation via youtube education. He's 62% thriftier, braver and handier than I am.
My wife typically is the one making sure the volume is up on the iPad. She likes to add some helpful commentary like "I'm pretty sure he said DON'T adjust that part."
luchog
Neo-Post-Retro-Revivalist
Nothing that didn't happen elsewhere on an equivalent scale.
Want to know where ISIS, neo-Nazis, and other terrorist organizations get the majority of their recruits? Prisons. That's the primary pipeline for radicalization in much of the developed and developing world.
As for Incels, they have a new name, but I knew plenty of that sort growing up before the Internet, and few had any problems making their misogynistic self-importance known in person.
p0lka
Illuminator
The internet makes it easier for lonely people to get together and feel like a community, but there's a bad and a good side to that.
It does save on postage though.
It does save on postage though.
The Internet has a ways to go to rival the destructive track record of cars.
Sprawl, smog, greenhouse gases, depletion of fossil fuels, poor health from lack of exercise, landscapes paved over, town centers abandoned or turned inhospitable with incessant traffic, and outright deaths by the hundreds of thousands.
But while we're taking one-sided views of inventions, let's not forget television...
Sprawl, smog, greenhouse gases, depletion of fossil fuels, poor health from lack of exercise, landscapes paved over, town centers abandoned or turned inhospitable with incessant traffic, and outright deaths by the hundreds of thousands.
But while we're taking one-sided views of inventions, let's not forget television...
lobosrul5
Philosopher
I've made several repairs on my vehicle that I would have had no clue how to do without YT. Easily saved over 2 grand in total I'd estimate.
lobosrul5
Philosopher
Humbug I say. People were more intolerant, ignorant, bigoted, small-minded, a-holes before the internet came about.
Dave Rogers
Bandaged ice that stampedes inexpensively through
applecorped
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It has an off button
That's true now, since all sets have become identical boring flat rectangles. But back when you could watch the tubes glowing in the back, that was often better entertainment than the programs.
The Atheist
The Grammar Tyrant
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I'll wait until I see some evidence to the contrary that it's both easier and more successful to spread radical views on the internet.
The sheer bandwidth available to fringe groups is far greater than ever before.
Known to how many people? You'd have to acknowledge they have far more reach on the internet than talking to people face to face.
Skeptic Ginger
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Ahhhhhhh! It's closing in on me.
First I innocently signed up for FaceBook and the next thing I know anytime I post a comment on a blog or news article, my full name goes on the comment, without ever asking me if I want to be connected to my FB account.
It's everywhere.
I paid my malpractice insurance online today. It was ridiculous logging in, I had to change my 'expired password' and then log in again and then wait for a second sign-in code to be sent to my email (I refused to give them my cell number). It's a malpractice site, who the hell is breaking into Mercer Insurance web sites?
Anyway, so after gawd knows how long I fussed with that (should have just written a damn check) they asked for feedback.
So, I diligently type in all the ridiculous steps it took to sign into my account thinking I was communicating with the insurance company.
Next thing I know they've simply put it on one of those, rate this business sites, with my full name, and thanking me for 'rating this business'. ******* bastards, they didn't say one thing about the feedback going on their for-profit-at-some-point-I'm-sure business rating web site.
******* ********. Get out of my face. I don't want to join the party.
Sorry, carry on. It seemed to go under the thread title.
First I innocently signed up for FaceBook and the next thing I know anytime I post a comment on a blog or news article, my full name goes on the comment, without ever asking me if I want to be connected to my FB account.
It's everywhere.
I paid my malpractice insurance online today. It was ridiculous logging in, I had to change my 'expired password' and then log in again and then wait for a second sign-in code to be sent to my email (I refused to give them my cell number). It's a malpractice site, who the hell is breaking into Mercer Insurance web sites?
Anyway, so after gawd knows how long I fussed with that (should have just written a damn check) they asked for feedback.
So, I diligently type in all the ridiculous steps it took to sign into my account thinking I was communicating with the insurance company.
Next thing I know they've simply put it on one of those, rate this business sites, with my full name, and thanking me for 'rating this business'. ******* bastards, they didn't say one thing about the feedback going on their for-profit-at-some-point-I'm-sure business rating web site.
******* ********. Get out of my face. I don't want to join the party.
Sorry, carry on. It seemed to go under the thread title.
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The Atheist
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Fits fine - sounds like a fun day!
It also raises the point that so many systems rely on the internet and have no alternative when their system crashes, as happened in UK recently with one of the credit cards being unable to be used for most of a day.
20 years ago, you just get out the zip-zap machine and away you go. No power needed, even. Even if your machine broke, you could write the details in by hand.
It seems logical to me to keep a backup in case this exact thing happens.
Dave Rogers
Bandaged ice that stampedes inexpensively through
They haven't vanished completely. A few weeks ago I had cause to buy a train ticket from the guard on the Welsh Highland Railway, which travels through areas where the Internet has yet to penetrate, and he had a zip-zap machine at the ready. Unfortunately, his enthusiasm wasn't matched by his experience in using it, and I noticed him and an older guard at the end of the line trying to figure out how you got the two parts of it to go back together after he'd zipped with so much force that it wasn't able to zap any more. But they managed to take my money successfully, even though there wasn't a sniff of online connectivity.
Dave
The Atheist
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That's cool - I haven't heard of a shop that has one for years.
One of my jobs in a past life was delivering the machines to businesses who signed up to accept Visa.
Training was pretty simple.
One of my jobs in a past life was delivering the machines to businesses who signed up to accept Visa.
Training was pretty simple.
My local Chinese take out restaurant used one a couple of years ago when their internet was down. I had to show the delivery driver how it worked.
Now they use an online system for taking orders and payment. The last time they had a technical problem is was the kitchen losing power ofter I had made an order. The online system was not impacted since the owner can see everything from his phone.
luchog
Neo-Post-Retro-Revivalist
That's not a failure of technology, that's a failure of management and IT staff competence.
It's not even remotely difficult to maintain disaster recovery backup systems and automatic failovers. But redundancy costs money, and few businesses, even megacorps, seem to want to pay the money to ensure that they are able to continue functioning in the case of a crash or other problem with the primary system.
I see that a lot in the medical industry where I work. Almost no one wants to spend the time and money to ensure that there is sufficient redundancy and disaster recovery in place for their patient-care-critical systems; and the few who do rarely maintain it properly. And then they get all flamingly angry at us when their system goes down and they lose patient and inventory data. Not our fault you're too cheap to invest in a proper backup system and process.
The internet has overcome the barrier of 'herd immunity' to nonsense and weirdness:
Before the internet, the most extreme weirdoes were so few and far between that they'd probably never meet and establish their congregations. Nowadays, this barrier doesn't exist anymore.
Before the internet, these guys would never have met and hooked up.
The Atheist
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I was discussing that very point only a couple of hours ago, using flat earthers as the example. Pre-internet, flat earthers existed, but they existed in a sole bubble, never daring to air their views in public.
Now, it's almost a badge of honour to be "brave" enough to share your thoughts on it.
Before the internet, guys like Armin Meiwes and Bernd Jürgen Armando Brandes didn't even exist, as such. Guys with those fantasies, yes, probably, but they would never have been consummated. (pun not intended!)
The internet was also a recruitment tool for the Heaven's Gate cult: Heaven's Gate 20 years later: 10 things you didn't know (Rolling Stone)
The internet was also a recruitment tool for the Heaven's Gate cult: Heaven's Gate 20 years later: 10 things you didn't know (Rolling Stone)