Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ceefax Simulator

nathanmediaservices.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–106 of 106 posts

Re: Ceefax Simulator

#101

Post by miki123211 »

dilawar wrote: post #56
jonplackett wrote: post #44

I have a 6yo daughter and it’s always funny trying to explain old technology to her. Yesterday I was trying to just explain TV shows starting at specific times the of the day and even that seemed insane to her. Equally having to go to a shop to get a song was mind blowing. I haven’t had to explain ceefax yet so this will help.

My coworker 4y old son have never seen money exchanged at shops since UPI has become so prevalent in India. He would just pick things at shop and walk. He didn't relate scanning QR codes with exchange. I should ask my coworker if he tried explaining physical money to him and how he reacted to the idea.

My friend was privy to a situation where a mother tried to explain to her child that they couldn't afford a toy that the child wanted. The child's reaction? "look mom, there's an ATM over there, if you don't have enough money, just go and get some from there!"

Re: Ceefax Simulator

#102

Post by ta1243 »

astrosi wrote: post #75
ta1243 wrote: post #48

For those living in London, one of the Mayoral Candidates is promising to bring back ceefax. Not sure how he'll do it, technically I believe DTT can carry teletext data, although I'm not sure if modern TVs will process it. Back in the day I believe ceefax used to be generated out of a couple of beige tower PCs in a BBC office somewhere.

The candidate in question is Count Binface - who is part of a long British political tradition of joke candidates. Safe to say I think the implementation details of this policy probably aren't needed. https://www.countbinface.com/2024-manifesto

Sometimes joke candidates get elected. 2008 for example.

> Safe to say I think the implementation details of this policy probably aren't needed.

UKIP never got into government, but their policy did get enacted.

Re: Ceefax Simulator

#103

Post by ivorbuk »

My Grandma was already blind by the time the internet became a "thing" and, knowing I worked "on the internet", she would ask me what it was all about when she heard it in the news. After a few struggles we settled on "it's like ceefax, but much much bigger". She knew about ceefax, she was happy she understood what I did. It was a good analogy in the early days (mostly WWW work).

I did get the reputation with her friends that I was a "ceefax expert" and would always be drafted in whenever her friends were struggling. I was "Mr Teletext" for a couple of years. (the other ceefax like service available in the UK)

Another memory was watching the live football scores on a Saturday afternoon. Waiting patiently to get to the right page and the agony when the page you wanted was skipped... having to wait another 8 pages before you were back to the right division (only to find out you'd gone a goal down). Happy days.

Re: Ceefax Simulator

#104

Post by amiga386 »

crtasm wrote: post #80
hi_hi wrote: post #30

Noooo, there's no page 370. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digitiser This takes me right back to grabbing my morning cup of tea and sitting bleary eye'd while waking up and reading the latest computer news before school. Hmm, not much has changed to be honest!

This is a great read: http://www.digitiser2000.com/main-page/games-of-my-years-dig...

It is! I thought they were brilliant (even if they whinged about Amiga owners). There's also this fansite:

https://www.superpage58.com/what-is-digitiser-guide-to-telet...

Re: Ceefax Simulator

#106

Post by dahauns »

seabass-labrax wrote: post #74
dahauns wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the Austrian: https://teletext.orf.at/ And it might be tempting to brush this off as just an anachronism to amuse ourselves with, but IMO this undervalues it quite a bit. For example, the Austrian teletext still has almost a million daily users (in a country of 9 million) - let that sink in. And there's a good reason: Conceptually, Teletext (at least when it's well maintained) is the antithesis to modern infor…

I wouldn't be so quick to crown teletext as the king of succinct media. Just on the first page of the ORF teletext channel you refer to, there are lines flashing between advertisements for online gambling, tattoos and vegan (?) products with which to protect one's bladder and prostate. In order to navigate between news stories you have to memorize series of three-digit numbers or scroll through long indexes. After th…

>I wouldn't be so quick to crown teletext as the king of succinct media.

Show me a current example that comes even remotely close (especially one not skimping on the "curated" aspect).

>[..]mostly because you have so much choice in how the page is displayed. Typefaces, colours, whether or not to display pictures - it's all up to you, the reader.

See, that's the crux here - it's not just up to me. It's up to the media producer what kind of content they offer for me to be able choose from.

Post reply on HN