Obscure software requirements

[syberghost.livejournal.com]

Once upon a time I was the senior (and in the beginning of the company, only) administrator for a small town's first ISP. Until we hired more staff, I had to do a little bit of every job, including sales.

I got a call once from an older gentleman, wanting me to explain what he could do with the Internet. I gave him our usual sales pitch about email and the then-new World Wide Web, and about five minutes into it I got the following question:

"Oh, so I'd need to get a computer then?"

Comments

[turningallblue.livejournal.com]

Well, what with WebTV and all, there was that period where some people (notably housewives and retirement-age folk) never connected the concepts of "internet" and "computer".
Heh. WebTV.

[hangar.livejournal.com]

I was thinking about WebTV the other day - that + the "minidisc" thing. Remember those? They were post-CD but pre-iPod and never quite caught on even though there was that commercial of the girl on the bus with the minidisc player..

[turningallblue.livejournal.com]

Yep, I remember those well. I was living in Japan not long after they came out and there were all kinds of new trinkets on the market featuring them. I remember there being a pitifully small selection albums available; you were for the most part limited to whatever albums you copied from full-size CD to minidisc. Great idea but total failure.

[attackgypsy.livejournal.com]

We still occasionally get some calls on it.

And to this day, we still refuse to support it. Just like we won't support your cell phone, blackberry, or iphone.

[syberghost.livejournal.com]

If you really wanna mess with WebTV people, take advantage of a silliness of their email client:

send-hook . my_hdr 'X-WebTV-Stationery: Standard\; BGColor=black\; TextColor=black '

That's in my .muttrc, for those using something else, what it does it add this header:

X-WebTV-Stationery: Standard; BGColor=black; TextColor=black

Does nothing to anybody not using WebTV, most people won't even see it. But if they're using WebTV to view your email, it'll be black text on a black background. Replacing these colors with combinations of Pink and Green are left as an exercise for the reader.

[mariasama16.livejournal.com]

My grandmother has it, which she uses it primarily to view webcams, specifically there's one set up in Africa overlooking a watering hole. She loves to see what creatures appear (hey, its a new way to do bird-watching, bring the bird to you instead of hunting it down).

[dreamatdrew]

OK, that seriously overloaded my kyoot buffer...


Though, good idea, actually, for those not-so-technologically inclined