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I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)

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Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)

#61

Post by cheschire »

scoutt wrote: post #60

I also remember the CD-ROM era (and before that). It was also the time when software just worked. There was no other way. The content on those CDs was permanent. Software rarely needed an updated, it didn't called home with telemetry and it didn't needed a constant internet connection to work. There wasn't subscription models for most of the software. So you want to do some 3D renderings? Just install this CD with 3D…

I don't remember this time. I remember a time when we blamed the operating system constantly for what was just as often an application memory management failure and thought that rebooting 4 times a day was normal.

Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)

#62

Post by 29athrowaway »

29athrowaway wrote: post #18

"Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia" was like Encarta but it featured Sir Patrick Stewart, therefore it was a cooler experience.

Plus, you could cite your reference with style, i.e.: "I got this information straight outta Compton... you are about to witness the strength of street knowledge".

Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)

#65

Post by daniellarusso »

Aardwolf wrote: post #56
kar1181 wrote: post #30

That whole period of the PC industry where 'multimedia' became mainstream was pretty magical. I know the Amiga was well ahead of the PC ecosystem for a long time in capability but it never hit schools (at least where I grew up in South Australia) like PCs did. So with the emergence of VGA and Super VGA, widespread availability (and relative affordability) of 486 DX class PCs, Soundblasters and Optical Drives, the PC…

Hmm, to me the term "multimedia PC" already sounded outdated from the start, similar to the "a CD ROM can contain a whole library shelf worth of data" hype. I just thought like, this 386 PC could make sound and graphics and games. This Pentium can do it too, granted with more colors and a CD ROM drive and a fancy "where do you want to go today" movie, but does that warrant all this hype of being called "multimedia"?…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_PC

There was an actual group with recommended ‘standards’.

Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)

#66

Post by danielheath »

agumonkey wrote: post #53
oriesdan wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I remember from those times : even knowing there was an encyclopedia on the school library computer, I would not use it, because it just sounded impractical. I would need to ask for permission to use the computer, then wait for it to start, then figure how to do a search, while the competitive proposition was just picking the encyclopedia volume for the correct letter and finding my page! How much a few dec…

It's odd, I'd rather go to a library and read a book than dig on the web now. to be honest: I like the web for shallow access, but when I need focus and depth, a library and a book is way more fit for my brain.

Me too - since the rise of ad-funded SEO 'content farms', it's become damn hard to find information written by someone who has even a passing familiarity with the topic.

Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)

#67

Post by asah »

exDM69 wrote: post #59
patrec wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, for storage (and thus offline) purposes it is of course exactly a zero sum game. I for one would really like a say 3 GiB version of English Wikipedia without Pokemon and Porn, or a 33GiB version with useful images. However broad and non-deltionist might be best for online Wikepedia, a more curated i.e. deletionist version would certainly be very useful for offline usage and quite a few other purposes.

> I for one would really like a say 3 GiB version of English Wikipedia without Pokemon and Porn, or a 33GiB version with useful images. There are several offline snapshots of different sizes of Wikipedia that do exactly this. Some of them are more thoroughly curated, others are a snapshot of the most popular articles, etc. What I could not find easily was a full English Wikipedia with images and all available in an e…

Some relevant links:

100,000 curated pages:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vital_articles/Level...

In terms of space, the text is over 1000x smaller than the multimedia: ~20GB (uncompressed) for the text vs ~45TB (compressed) for multimedia (est accounting for growth vs 23TB@2014).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_of_Wikipedia

Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)

#68

Post by nailer »

scoutt wrote: post #60

I also remember the CD-ROM era (and before that). It was also the time when software just worked. There was no other way. The content on those CDs was permanent. Software rarely needed an updated, it didn't called home with telemetry and it didn't needed a constant internet connection to work. There wasn't subscription models for most of the software. So you want to do some 3D renderings? Just install this CD with 3D…

I don't remember that time. I remember a bunch of software that had severe errors (Office 97 parsing some emails corrupting the PST, Exchange 5.0 lacking relay control) that were only resolved by paying for a major new release. And games like 'Magic Carpet' that had game breaking bugs meaning you could never finish them, masked by making the game so difficult you would never visit the level in question.

Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)

#69

Post by monort »

exDM69 wrote: post #59
patrec wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, for storage (and thus offline) purposes it is of course exactly a zero sum game. I for one would really like a say 3 GiB version of English Wikipedia without Pokemon and Porn, or a 33GiB version with useful images. However broad and non-deltionist might be best for online Wikepedia, a more curated i.e. deletionist version would certainly be very useful for offline usage and quite a few other purposes.

> I for one would really like a say 3 GiB version of English Wikipedia without Pokemon and Porn, or a 33GiB version with useful images. There are several offline snapshots of different sizes of Wikipedia that do exactly this. Some of them are more thoroughly curated, others are a snapshot of the most popular articles, etc. What I could not find easily was a full English Wikipedia with images and all available in an e…

What's wrong with kiwix snapshot of English wikipedia? It's only 93GB.

http://download.kiwix.org/zim/wikipedia/wikipedia_en_all_max...

Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)

#70

Post by thdrdt »

scoutt wrote: post #60

I also remember the CD-ROM era (and before that). It was also the time when software just worked. There was no other way. The content on those CDs was permanent. Software rarely needed an updated, it didn't called home with telemetry and it didn't needed a constant internet connection to work. There wasn't subscription models for most of the software. So you want to do some 3D renderings? Just install this CD with 3D…

I miss the state of development from that time.

I was developing multimedia CD content with software like Director and Authorware[1]. We had a project and when it was released the project was clearly done. Today projects don't finish because continuous integration is a never ending story.

[1] I also miss this kinds of visual programming sometimes. Authorware was very underrated imho.

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