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Radiohead album hides an app that only runs on an '80s computer

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Re: Radiohead album hides an app that only runs on an '80s computer

#11

Post by jxramos »

pasta wrote: post #8
jxramos wrote: post #2

I remember listening to OK Computer some years ago and I must have been studying or something or other and the track "Fitter Happier" came on. Those familiar know how it goes, the Stephen Hawking voice droning on about all these ideals worth pursuing ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HimvFbossU8 ). I sat back half listening that evening and this funny response came out in my head, where I responded to the monotone na…

As I remember this was done on an Apple computer. In the command line you could do this with they 'say' command. The parameter -v is used for the voice. And I think "Fitter Happier" is 'Fred'. say -v Fred "fitter.happier.more productive" Edit: other sources say it was 'Bruce'. But I don't have an Apple, so I can't check.

that's cool background. I didn't mean to suggest it was actually the same voice Stephen Hawking utilizes, but just to put forth a popular and familiar sound to imagine with. Though Apple's Fred and Bruce may be the original characters, I'm not sure they'd be as well known as Stephen Hawking but I could be very wrong on that point. I'll try to dig up some Fred and Bruce tracks on YouTube.

Re: Radiohead album hides an app that only runs on an '80s computer

#12

Post by jxramos »

pasta wrote: post #8
jxramos wrote: post #2

I remember listening to OK Computer some years ago and I must have been studying or something or other and the track "Fitter Happier" came on. Those familiar know how it goes, the Stephen Hawking voice droning on about all these ideals worth pursuing ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HimvFbossU8 ). I sat back half listening that evening and this funny response came out in my head, where I responded to the monotone na…

As I remember this was done on an Apple computer. In the command line you could do this with they 'say' command. The parameter -v is used for the voice. And I think "Fitter Happier" is 'Fred'. say -v Fred "fitter.happier.more productive" Edit: other sources say it was 'Bruce'. But I don't have an Apple, so I can't check.

I'm going to lean towards Fred

Bruce https://youtu.be/Z4hqUxb9MmY?t=42

Fred https://youtu.be/Z4hqUxb9MmY?t=49

Re: Radiohead album hides an app that only runs on an '80s computer

#13

Post by Symbiote »

_lbaq wrote: post #9
concede_pluto wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MIME was using "application" in media type names in 1996. I think macOS may have started it because they needed to distinguish them from desk accessories.

That was in a different world, this is the home computer sphere, its a program.

RISC OS, the OS from the company that later became ARM, used "application" from at least 1987, and by 1991 that had been abbreviated to "Apps" in some of the UI, although I think we still said "application."

These were school or home computers.

Picture under RISC OS 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_RISC_OS

Re: Radiohead album hides an app that only runs on an '80s computer

#14

Post by Someone »

hkmurakami wrote: post #3

Pretty sad they're calling this an "app". If it's dated to 1996, clearly it's a "program"!

"Application" was around way earlier, as shorthand for "application program" (to be distinguished from "utility program", and, possibly, "game")

For examples look at the search hits in https://archive.org/stream/1981-03-compute-magazine/Compute_....

I wouldn't call this an application, though.

"App" is completely wrong, as it was introduced by Apple for user-facing programs running on a mobile phone (if Android had been the OS popularizing this, Google would have picked the first three letters of its company name as the new name for these things, and every web site would have a banner "install our goo" :-))

Re: Radiohead album hides an app that only runs on an '80s computer

#15

Post by cyberferret »

pasta wrote: post #8
jxramos wrote: post #2

I remember listening to OK Computer some years ago and I must have been studying or something or other and the track "Fitter Happier" came on. Those familiar know how it goes, the Stephen Hawking voice droning on about all these ideals worth pursuing ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HimvFbossU8 ). I sat back half listening that evening and this funny response came out in my head, where I responded to the monotone na…

As I remember this was done on an Apple computer. In the command line you could do this with they 'say' command. The parameter -v is used for the voice. And I think "Fitter Happier" is 'Fred'. say -v Fred "fitter.happier.more productive" Edit: other sources say it was 'Bruce'. But I don't have an Apple, so I can't check.

My go to favourite is 'Karen' for the Australian accent. Her voice is far more natural sounding that most of the others I've auditioned, and I use her as the default and pepper all my deployment scripts with 'say' commands now.

Re: Radiohead album hides an app that only runs on an '80s computer

#17

Post by acangiano »

pasta wrote: post #8
jxramos wrote: post #2

I remember listening to OK Computer some years ago and I must have been studying or something or other and the track "Fitter Happier" came on. Those familiar know how it goes, the Stephen Hawking voice droning on about all these ideals worth pursuing ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HimvFbossU8 ). I sat back half listening that evening and this funny response came out in my head, where I responded to the monotone na…

As I remember this was done on an Apple computer. In the command line you could do this with they 'say' command. The parameter -v is used for the voice. And I think "Fitter Happier" is 'Fred'. say -v Fred "fitter.happier.more productive" Edit: other sources say it was 'Bruce'. But I don't have an Apple, so I can't check.

It's definitely Fred.

Re: Radiohead album hides an app that only runs on an '80s computer

#18

Post by NamTaf »

axaxs wrote: post #16

Reminds me of the original Quake game on CD, which, if put into a normal CD player, would play through the NiN soundtrack.

Total Annihiliation also did this. It wasn't that uncommon in that era since audio compression was difficult and so a common process was to install off the CD to HDD, run completely off HDD, and then play audio off a series of audio tracks on the CD if it was present in the drive (plus maybe some oldschool DRM by checking for the CD).

Re: Radiohead album hides an app that only runs on an '80s computer

#19

Post by laumars »

axaxs wrote: post #16

Reminds me of the original Quake game on CD, which, if put into a normal CD player, would play through the NiN soundtrack.

That's not an easter egg. That's just a dual format CD - you can burn them yourself really easily (I used to write these as MP3 CDs so systems that didn't support MP3 could still play a subset of the tracks).

It was a really common practice to put in game music as audio tracks on game CDs. Dreamcast GDs also work a similar way where you can play the game audio in a regular CD player despite the data track being formatted differently to the ISO standard.

Re: Radiohead album hides an app that only runs on an '80s computer

#20

Post by dEnigma »

axaxs wrote: post #16

Reminds me of the original Quake game on CD, which, if put into a normal CD player, would play through the NiN soundtrack.

I remember putting the CD for some Windows program into a CD player and being rewarded with horrible screeching sounds. A couple of weeks ago I tried it again, but only got an error message. Seems like "modern" CD players aren't as permissive.
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