Probably just enough data for the app to understand that you’re “checking in” (whatever that means) and to bring up the appropriate screen. So it sounds like it saves a couple of taps on the screen, which hardly seems worth it.
No this is our covid tracking system in Australia. You scan the QR code, whih is just a URL. It opens a page and you fill in your details. You do that every time you enter a venue.
Its dumb because my phone already has my details. If they used a single app I could enter that stuff once.
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My mom was a big believer in the SelectaVision: we had many of the early 1980s releases (Tron, Dark Crystal, etc) and two different players.
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Bloated middle age beckons: Windows 1.0 turns 35 and is dealing with its mid-life crisis, just about
It doesn’t seem silly to me – I remember having to know something about Kermit (not the frog) to download some software for my Mac SE, and I could only do that because I had access to a university computer lab where having printers in the lab itself (instead of at a centralized print center) was a Really Big Deal. The first time I got software on a disc in the back of a textbook seemed like a revolution to me, even moreso when discs became CD-ROMs.
Of course, I never actually used any of those discs, and these days I actually have more VHS tapes than I have any other external storage media (whatever happened to that wall of Zip discs I used to have?). Not that I have anything to read any of it on…
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(N00b hasn’t tripped over clay tablets yet! Should get the upgrade in another 500 years or so…)
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Here’s a 6 page ad from Incider for a product called the Cauzin SoftStrip. In June 1986
Magazines around this time used to print source code listings for basic programs. Readers would type them in, and, depending on their typing skill, get a short game or utility program for their efforts.
For some reason, I recall a tips column in Boys Life magazine, wherein the reader said you could save time by omitting the REM commands, Not a great idea if you wanted to understand the source code (so that you might modify it, or gasp learn from the experience), but I suspect that most readers just wanted the game.
According to Incider’s product announcement column in December 1985. the Softstrip cost $199.
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The thing I miss the most about those days, was the naive idea that computer literacy was going to take off, and become as much a part of our daily reality as reading and math.
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Yes, but it was so slow that we had to shorten “Mary had a little lamb” to “Hello world!”
In a word or two, data retention. I can play a vinyl record with a piece of wire and a styrofoam cone and still hear the information, albeit poorly. There is no hardware needed to do this, it’s on the disc itself in the grooves of the medium. This is a data format that will long outlast any digital format. No hardware driver, operating system, cable, processor, etc. is needed. It’s on the disc itself.
There are numerous issues regarding storage limits (size being the big one, obviously) but microfilm and raw vinyl are formats for retaining binary code that will outlast any computer you’re using right now to read this sentence.
To use a rock producer’s phrase, “It’s not final 'til vinyl”
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Fun follow-up to consider: If we ever have a complete data wipeout from cosmic rays or whatever might delete all digital data on the planet, including magnetic erasure that would even make cassettes or tape unable to be used, vinyl (and books) would retain these small bits of code to start back up the planet.
We had thousands of CEDs. They skipped.
Before I attached the SSSD drives ($1200 for a 3-pack) I had to hand-enter the boot loader on my Heathkit H8’s front-panel octal keypad. Three drives gave me just enough room for the WordMaster editor, source code, COBOL-80 compiler, and linker. I still had to swap diskettes. At least I didn’t have to deal with cassette or paper-tape storage.
Remember when microcomputers had Hollerith card interfaces?
Listings were in magazines early, a way to distribute software, but also for learning about the software.
But the more consumer level magazines, they were full of programs. They were like hobby electronic magazines, except construction articles replaced by programs. A lot of it seemed like “look, I can program” and people bought the magazines because if you had no floppy drive, there wasn’t much to use the C64 or Radio Shack Color Computer for.
So you’d type in some of those programs and they’d simply play a song, or draw a picture. “File transfer” meant reading the listing and typing it in.
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Also Previously on the boings:
Back in 1983, Chris Sievey, better known to the world as Frank Sidebottom, released a single, where the B-side was a music video for the ZX-81. It was released on 7-in vinyl and cassette.
see also
and
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I can’t envisage a short term event that also wipes out optical media, and the physically stamped ones are pretty robust. I suspect we’ll be recovering from AOL cds.
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+++++out of cheese error: redo from start
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