[ale] OT: ESP8266

[Phil Turmel]

Yeah, I much prefer today to ten or more years ago, and not just in 
regards to technology.  Even with the pandemic, humanity's lot across 
the globe is improving. Life has never been better fed, safer, longer, 
and filled with more leisure and luxury.

Broadband is the icing on the cake.  A perpetual beer supply would be an 
extra layer of icing.

On 4/30/20 11:04 PM, Jim Kinney via Ale wrote:
> Wife used to lift the phone to see if I was online or not. Took an extra 
> week to download the 7 floppies of Slackware, my first Linux install. 
> Eventually did a batch script to dial out at 1 am and download then 
> after all in bed. It was still a while before my Walnut Creek CD 
> subscription.
> 
> I miss exactly none of it. The terror of accidentally toasting a monitor 
> by typing a wrong modeline. Monochrome monitors! ASCII art was the best 
> we could do. 10 MB hard drives. Had to compile every kernel release 
> hoping to get a part to finally work. Then having to rip out that 
> version and forward port it three versions later when it broke.
> 
> I have no misty eyed memory of the past. I'm waiting for my direct 
> connect cranial implant running at 10000000 Yotobits per second 
> accessing all knowledge of all life forms for the past 5 billion years. 
> And a perpetual beer supply.
> 
> On April 30, 2020 9:13:21 AM EDT, Scott Plante via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
> 
>     Also the anticipation of a 640x480 photo to download! Remember the
>     progressive JPEGs that would load at low res and then fill in as
>     more data came down the line?