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I Miss Microsoft Encarta

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Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#241

Post by worik »

avip wrote: post #216
echelon wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a door to door encyclopedia salesmen came to our house That's an alien relic of an anecdote as there ever was. The world has profoundly changed in the last twenty five years. Cheap, ubiquitous, networked computing has almost completely rewired society and changed business, jobs, dating, friendship, travel. I really wonder what the next big changes will be. Cheap satellites in orbit and dramatically reduced LEO cost…

>I really wonder what the next big changes will be Temps up 2°C, marine ecosystems collapse, and hundreds of millions of refugees?

Optimist

Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#242

Post by kragen »

Daishiman wrote: post #238
kragen wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing you were only able to access Encarta because copyright enforcement wasn't strong here in Argentina? (Or was US$5 the Microsoft official price?) What do you think about my comment on Kiwix and Wikipedia at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20741101 ?

Software piracy wasn't on anyone's radar at the time.

Bill Gates wrote the "open letter to hobbyists" in 1976, when software "piracy" wasn't even clearly illegal, because it wasn't clear that software was copyrightable. We're talking about 1998, 22 years later. It had been on Microsoft's radar since 1976. 1998 was in the heyday of the SPA and "Don't copy that floppy!", as if sharing information were a morally suspect thing to do.

The USTR Special 301 Report already existed in 1998 and already singled out countries for possible trade sanctions for doing the kinds of things that permitted the US to develop economically in the 19th and early 20th centuries. I don't know if Argentina was already specifically targeted, though it was in later years, especially due to La Salada (Q.E.P.D.).

Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#243

Post by pushpop »

hk__2 wrote: post #227
pushpop wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again you’re only discussing things at a textual level. Encarta wasn’t like other encyclopaedias - Encarta was a fully interactive multimedia experience. The issue yourself and others who haven’t used Encarta is that you’re thinking about it as purely a text document store, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Encarta is more like a museum than it is like Wikipedia. It has a smaller curated set of write ups but…

> The issue yourself and others who haven’t used Encarta is that you’re thinking about it as purely a text document store, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Encarta is more like a museum than it is like Wikipedia. It has a smaller curated set of write ups but has all the interactive exhibits, games, and multimedia content that a good museum has. Wikipedia is about breadth of content where as Encarta was about…

> I felt like you were talking about pure content quality

You probably just skimmed my post then because I’m really don’t know terms like “multimedia”, “games”, and phrases like “It wasn’t just a mass of text” could be confused with “pure content quality”.

> If one had the time and tools to make games and interactive interfaces from Wikipedia’s content, do you think it could eventually match the Encarta experience?

Absolutely. Encarta isn’t something that is unapproachable. In fact I literally said “This is something you’d expect the web to excel at” in my last comment :)

> Some WP articles have videos/sounds/gifs but I find them too rare.

Not only rare, poorly presented as well. Encarta has an engaging UI/UX, Wikipedia isn’t designed that way. So even the few articles with multimedia content are still less engaging than the average Encarta article.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing though. Sometimes people want their information presented in a bland broadsheet format, other times they want a pretty infograph. Each has their place.

Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#244

Post by mopsi »

Causality1 wrote: post #69

There was a certain method of presenting information that just doesn't seem to exist anymore in the modern world. The by-design weaving together of text, images, video, and audio when giving information about a certain topic. Sure, wikipedia articles have one or two images, maybe an audio clip, and plenty of links to other text articles, but nothing like an encyclopedia or other informational software of the 90s. You…

Video of the dino browsing experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgOZUPUGuwY

Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#245

Post by turc1656 »

smacktoward wrote: post #60

I would also add that I miss Microsoft Cinemania ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Cinemania ), which was to IMDB what Encarta was to Wikipedia. The sad bit is that in some ways Cinemania in 1997 was superior to IMDB as it is today . IMDB is more comprehensive, but Cinemania was better designed and more fun to just browse through.

I thought I was going to be the first to mention Cinemania but it seems you beat me to it! It was a major influence on how I found great/classic movies to watch. It was really informative and just overall a pretty great piece of software for the time. I distinctly remember discovering Silence of the Lambs on Cinemania and they had a clip of the famous "...ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti" scene and one or two other clips from that film and I knew I had to watch the movie. Really interesting product, for sure.

Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#246

Post by jenscow »

akgoel wrote: post #235
joblessjunkie wrote: post #205

Encarta was part of my first job out of university. I worked in Microsoft's Multimedia Division, tasked with creating the first video and audio drivers for Windows. IIRC the BMP, WAV, and AVI file formats all came from this team at about this time. In the summer of '91, I was tasked with assembling a 386 PC with an early CD-ROM drive to demo an early build of Encarta at a trade show. It was a lot of effort to find a…

This basically sounds like WinHelp, which was a compiled format of RTF, prior to the availability of HTML.

Exactly what I was thinking.

That was a pain - I think I ended up writing RTF by hand.

Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#247

Post by brainpool »

worik wrote: post #241
avip wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I really wonder what the next big changes will be Temps up 2°C, marine ecosystems collapse, and hundreds of millions of refugees?

Optimist

Yah. People will just die. Refugee sort of implies a refuge. There’s not going to be such thing’s around if things go south as we fear they are likely to. It’s gonna play out far more like the Old Testament.

Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#249

Post by 5555624 »

ghaff wrote: post #158
pkaye wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My parents got us a full blown Encyclopedia Britannica book set in the 80s. Probably cost $1000 which was difficult by how much they made. But they paid it down monthly. I used to have loads of fun thumbing through those books. There were a few index books where you looked up a topic and it would refer you to a page in one of the other books. Closest thing to the internet back then.

I had a World Book and then an Encyclopedia Britannica growing up. They gave me many many hours of pleasure. (I still have the Britannica in my garage. I've cleaned out a lot of things over the years but I can't bring myself to toss that.) And, yes, I seem to recall the price was something in the $500-$1000 ballpark. Which was definitely a lot of money in the early 70s(?) when I got it--and, yes, the salesman came to…

>I still have the Britannica in my garage. I've cleaned out a lot of things over the years but I can't bring myself to toss that.

A few years ago, during a move,I finally parted with the set my parents had gotten in the late 60s or early 70s. It was painful, but I had to really downsize at the time.

I still have my 1911 edition, which I can't get rid of, even if I haven't cracked a volume in a couple of years.

Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#250

Post by nly »

echelon wrote: post #133
nickthegreek wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember getting Encarta 95 back when it first came out (I was 14 at the time) and the interactive elements and audio clips blew my mind. It changed how I thought about information and got me that much more invested in learning technology. Literally a week after getting Encarta a door to door encyclopedia salesmen came to our house and I showed him why I did not need his books. You could see the look of terror in h…

> a door to door encyclopedia salesmen came to our house That's an alien relic of an anecdote as there ever was. The world has profoundly changed in the last twenty five years. Cheap, ubiquitous, networked computing has almost completely rewired society and changed business, jobs, dating, friendship, travel. I really wonder what the next big changes will be. Cheap satellites in orbit and dramatically reduced LEO cost…

Cashless and bankless society.

I moved to London last year and have used cash roughly zero times since. Visiting my parents (outside London) is like jumping in to treacle. Finding coins for the bus? Paper tickets on the train? Give me a god damn break. Even using chip and pin is weird now since almost all my purchases, except for dining out, are either touchless, online, or via mobile app.

In 20 years i think cash (banknotes, coinage), and maybe even bank accounts as we know them today, will be an almost alien concept to kids. Brick and mortar banks will be gone entirely. I certainly haven't set foot in one over a decade.

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