Kids these days - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

Kuan · #1 11-07-2002, 11:38 AM

What Are They Thinking?

Each year, Beloit College, in Beloit, Wis., creates a "mind-set" list to help professors and administrators understand the incoming freshmen. This year, most freshmen were born in 1984. For them, 24-hour weather reports have always been available on television and a Southerner has always been president. The following are a few more of Beliot's tips for understanding freshmen.

Richard Burton, Ricky Nelson and Truman Capote have always been dead.

South Africa's official policy of apartheid has not existed during their lifetime.

Cars have always had air bags, CD players, and eye-level rear brake lights.

We have always been able to choose our long-distance carriers.

The "evil empire" has moved from Moscow to a setting in some distant galaxy.

"Big Brother" is merely a television show.

George Foreman has always been a barbecue grill salesman.

They have no recollection of Connie Chung or Geraldo Rivera as serious journalists.

Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, and Tom Brokaw have always anchored the evening news.

Fox has always been a choice as a television network.

This generation has never wanted to "be a Pepper too."

A "hotline" is a consumer service rather than a phone used to avoid accidental nuclear war.

Genetic testing and DNA screening have always been available.

Electronic filing of federal income taxes has always been an option.

They grew up in minivans.

Scientists have always recognized the impact of acid rain.

TTaM · #2 11-07-2002, 12:02 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Kuan
What Are They Thinking?

Each year, Beloit College, in Beloit, Wis., creates a "mind-set" list to help professors and administrators understand the incoming freshmen. This year, most freshmen were born in 1984. For them, 24-hour weather reports have always been available on television and a Southerner has always been president. The following are a few more of Beliot's tips for understanding freshmen...

Jealous, aren't you... :p

Our generation is also the most informed. And yes, I have read "In Cold Blood"

G-Benz · #3 11-07-2002, 02:57 PM

Overheard in a music store...

rickg · #4 11-07-2002, 03:07 PM

I'm 46 and STILL don't remember Geraldo as ever being a serious news journalist:p

DALE DORIA · #5 11-07-2002, 03:18 PM

Geraldo and serious news journalist used in the same sentence, paragraph or article IS and oxymoran!

JCE · #6 11-07-2002, 11:44 PM

Tkamiya:

Likewise, but that was the modern stuff invented when I was in grad school! As an undergrad, it was a required 6:00 AM lower division slide rule class, then as an uperdivision student on to the discrete transistor or wire wrapped core memory, 1024 individual 1/4" transistors for 1 k of memory. A printer was an IBM electric typewriter (not the Selectric type ball - seperate key arms) with a solenoid over each key, and 140 wires running in a bundle from the solenoids to the ANALOG computer - about 20 words per minute data output, later replaced by the 20mA current loop interface. A binary numeric display ranging from 1 - 512 in 10 steps with a miniature light bulb next to each step: look at which bulbs are illuminated, add the numbers next to them for your total, add that total to the electromechanical display (just like a w124 trip odometer!) for the grand total? (I helped upgrade the system to a really hi tech NIXIE tube display). Or a Monroe, Marchant, or Frieden electro-mechanical calculator - enter your complex division problem, punch execute, go get coffee and by the time you are done your answer is coming up? Remember reading the binary (and only) display on an IMSAI or ALTAIR?

Of course, this was after Sputnick went up, Watson and Crick were publishing about the existence of DNA, and 'La Bamba' was a hit. My teachers, parents, and their friends lamented that we didn't appreciate the important things in life, understand history or philosophy, or know how to reason because we let machines do all our thinking, while we all thought we were the most informed generation.

As I used to tell my students, you spend your undergrad degree getting all the answers, your Master's discovering that these answers aren't always right, your PhD studying a small aspect of one of these answers trying to find out why it isn't always true, and after your post-doc, you can get out in life and START learning.

w126:

If you think the undergrads look hot with the bare midriffs now, you should have seen the bra-less, see-through blouses or wide mesh crocheted vests of the 60s. (or the angora sweaters of the 50s, for that matter!) Back when the women had the earings and the guys had the tatoos.

Kuan · #7 11-08-2002, 08:20 AM

MAN! you guys!

NIXIE tubes eh? You guys are great! Now tell us, what in the world is a NIXIE tube?!?! I know I started this thread, but people, I am NOT as old as these guys!

I heard the same thing as a young lad. Back in the old days... we used to walk to school two miles uphill in the snow, both ways!

Kuan

240 Ed · #8 11-08-2002, 09:02 AM

When I went to school at Michigan State in Lansing Mi., the local station ran a "Capital Beat". It was simply a reporter watching what was happening in the state legislature.

Yup. Geraldo Rivera. Is this proof of some kind?

I am so glad that young women are dressing like the 70's!

It is a bit confusing though,

JCE · #9 11-08-2002, 09:07 AM

Kuan:

Imagine forming wires into the shape of numbers, 0-9, and stacking them on top of each other a couple of mm apart. Put the stack in a vacuum tube, run current JUST through the wire in the number shape you want, and set as many of these side by side as you need to display your number series (The number 1,867,413.768 would require 11 nixie tubes, for example - 13 if you wanted to display the commas). Because the numbers were in stacks in each tube, your depth of focus changed a bit when looking at a display. On older tubes each number might be as much as 3/4" closer or further away from your eyes as the number next to it. probably contributed to some of the spaciness of the 60s!

Here are some sites that display them in action, including someone who built a nixie tube wrist watch just because it had never been done!

http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~wwl/nixclock.html

http://www.sphere.bc.ca/test/nixies.html

http://www.amug.org/~jthomas/clockpage.html

Tkamiya:

Progress is wonderful - as an undergrad I would spend days or weeks at a time flipping through the multivolume Citation Index (Imagine every phone book in California merged alpabetically

) and looking up references, then driving to the various libraries from Santa Barbara to San Diego if I was in too much of a hurry to wait a week for inter-library loan to cough up the 1922 copy of 'Journal of Archane Alchemy' or some such title.

Now you do a weeks work in 10 minutes with Google or on line citation searches, do your own Boolean screening, and often download the abstract or paper. Just amazing! And when you consider the rate of increase in new technology, what will the world be like for our grandkids? Diamond technology nano devices, smart dust, implantable nano factories to overcome diabetes, smart clothing to match moods or blend with surroundings and provide wireless internet connection to your sunglasses/display/cell phone/PDA.

G-Benz · #10 11-08-2002, 09:48 AM

We got some really old folks on this forum!!!

I remember working on machines with those puppies in them! I also remember coding Basic on one of those paper tape typewriters in high school!

We had "pocket" calculators back then, albeit, the size of a brake caliper! And I wore an LED watch to school. Those $30K and up "classic" muscle cars that are so rare today were dotted all over the high school parking lot...you could get them cheaply then, as the looming gas crisis made it unbearable to drive anything with a V8 on a high school kid's budget.

And I took "slide rule" in Geometry class...never could figure that thing out, so I failed the slide rule exam!

I also remember when I took Fortran in college, having to turn my stack of program cards at the window and wait several hours for my compiled output (IF it even compiled). During finals week, the turnaround was more like three days!

Imagine my gidiness when the first dumb terminals appeared on the larger campuses. (Wow! I can sit down and run several sessions within the hour! Amazing!)

JCE · #11 11-08-2002, 10:21 AM

Quote:

It was something like few hundred dollars that time

My first HP scientific calculator was $235. But, it also had injection molded keys so the numbers wouldn't wear off, a Teflon sheet isolating the keys from the electronics inside in case you spilled your coffee, and silver battery contacts set in silicone grommets to isolate the battery compartment from the electronics in case of a leak. Boy, were those LEDs easy to read compared to some of the LCD displays on the current throw away calculators!

Jim Anderson · #12 11-08-2002, 11:14 AM

Thats what I remember about core memory.

Heard a story of someone writing a big cute screen message on a page pefore it was taken out of a computer. Many months later it was plugged back in and the first thing that came up was that message

Bellbottoms came back in style cause my wife had just thrown all mine out

dieseldaddy · #13 11-08-2002, 11:47 AM

Just kidding guys, (I am a self-professed computer geek)
But COME ON!

Someone starts talking about tight pants, girls midriffs and see-thru shirts and the next 5 posts are right back to archaic computers...

Man, are your priorities mixed up!