You are too old if you remember.......

[agentsteel53]

As the 48" x 48" shields are shown on the Route 3 Burlington to Tyngsborough project plans (Project #601167), I can only presume this was a designer error that went unnoticed during the project review stage.

"crap, they requested 48x48 shields... how do we make them stand up to wind load?"
"use the cutouts, they come in at under 20 square feet"
"can't we just use some plain old standard 36x36es?"
"nah that's too sensible"

... that said, 48x48 inches is 4x4 feet.  16 square feet at the most, even in non-cutout form.  I don't know how big the cardinal direction tab is, but "4 square feet" seems to be pushing it.  assuming a 2:1 aspect ratio, one would get approximately 34x17 inches.  that seems just a tad large.

[PHLBOS]

when no more than two minutes of a half-hour program was devoted to commericals (I believe the industry average now for commercials is ten to twelve minutes per half hour).

Add to that when all TV shows actually had minute-long intros (30 seconds is the best one can get today) and actual closing credits scenes.

And, with the exception of automobiles, not only did product placement in shows not exist, but producers went out of their way to use fake brand names for common products shown.

I remember seeing one really low-budget movie that showed an old Ford truck with the letters on the hood rearranged to read DORF.

More recently, the Nationwide commerical that shows a guy crashing his car into a restaurant/bakery due to his GPS that I posted in two other threads disguises a Lincoln LS sedan (the car used in the commercial) as a ficticious D900.

[1995hoo]

The stuff about not mentioning real brand names was true of commercials as well. My grandparents in Brooklyn always bought C&C Cola and I still remember their TV commercials that said "C&C Cola is one-half the price of" and then what sounded like a bicycle horn honked twice to block out the words "Coke and Pepsi."

I haven't had the stuff in years, certainly not since my grandmother died in 1998 and probably not since several years prior to then.

[PHLBOS]

I still remember their TV commercials that said "C&C Cola is one-half the price of" and then what sounded like a bicycle horn honked twice to block out the words "Coke and Pepsi."

That commercial originally aired sometime in the early-1980s during the height of the Pepsi Challenge commercials and shortly before Coca-Cola made the biggest product/marketing blunder in their history (New Coke anyone?). 

Assuming that we're referring to the same exact commercial, the horn honking over the female announcer's saying (or attempting to say) Coke & Pepsi was done as a joke not because of any legal issues.  The evidence of such is clearly displayed at the final line at the end of that C&C Cola commercial.  The announcer eventually gets the Coke & Pepsi words in just before the bicycle horn sounds off.

[roadman]

I'm not normally conspiracy-minded, but to this day I still maintain that New Coke was deliberately set up to fail.   The whole "fiasco" was no more than a clever ploy by the company to disguse the fact that, at roughly the same time as the "New Coke" rollout, Coke changed all their soda products from being mainly sugar based to being mainly corn syrup based in a cost-cutting move.

Plus, it got them a lot of publicity in the bargain.  As somebody once said "Any publicity is good publicity".

[1995hoo]

....  As somebody once said "Any publicity is good publicity".

Author David Eddings once commented that his editor, Lester Del Rey, said to be thankful for bad book reviews because the review represents another sale.

[thenetwork]

...When the majority of BGSs in Michigan had rounded corners!!!

Bonus points if any are still in the wild!

[amroad17]

I believe that the cut-out US 3 shields that roadman's referring are ones installed in the 1990s and obviously wouldn't be shown in a 1978 news video.

those are not "California style" either.  they, in fact, are just shields designed for BGS application but mounted on posts.  they have no outer border. 



that looks to be a 48 inch shield.  why would MassDOT install such huge shields, as opposed to just going with standard 36x36?

Because MassDOT.

[SteveG1988]

If you remember riding the bridgeport-chester ferry on us322 in NJ/PA

[PHLBOS]

If you remember riding the bridgeport-chester ferry on us322 in NJ/PA

I believe that one was already mentioned.

[vtk]

Slightly off-topic, but something in the Road-Related Illustrations board made me think of it:

...when Paint was called Paintbrush and Wordpad was called Write!

[Brandon]

Slightly off-topic, but something in the Road-Related Illustrations board made me think of it:

...when Paint was called Paintbrush and Wordpad was called Write!

Anybody remember Lotus 1..2..3 or Wordperfect?

[vtk]

Slightly off-topic, but something in the Road-Related Illustrations board made me think of it:

...when Paint was called Paintbrush and Wordpad was called Write!

Anybody remember Lotus 1..2..3 or Wordperfect?

I used to type my homework on Professional Write (a DOS-based word processor).  Then I switched to Write, using Ami Pro for spell-checking, before completely switching to Ami Pro.  Then Word 97 took over...  I seem to recall either Ami Pro or Word having a Help section consisting of tips for Lotus 123 users.

[agentsteel53]

I never quite figured out that it was called 123.  I just called it "lotus" for many years.  branding fail.

I remember BASICA and GWBASIC from when I was 3, but I do not remember what the difference was.  one ran better on my computer.

[OracleUsr]

Slightly off-topic, but something in the Road-Related Illustrations board made me think of it:

...when Paint was called Paintbrush and Wordpad was called Write!

Anybody remember Lotus 1..2..3 or Wordperfect?

Of course, and I still use Lotus Smartsuite, actually

[DaBigE]

Slightly off-topic, but something in the Road-Related Illustrations board made me think of it:

...when Paint was called Paintbrush and Wordpad was called Write!

Anybody remember Lotus 1..2..3 or Wordperfect?

I used WordPerfect through college. Still had a version installed on my computer until I got my laptop a couple years ago. I gave up the program when I started working in the real world, where the only option I had was to use Word.

[1995hoo]

Slightly off-topic, but something in the Road-Related Illustrations board made me think of it:

...when Paint was called Paintbrush and Wordpad was called Write!

Anybody remember Lotus 1..2..3 or Wordperfect?

WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS was perhaps the best word processor ever. It seldom crashed and you could manipulate it to do just about anything. Word remains immensely frustrating because it attempts to second-guess so much of what you do instead of recognizing that the user, not the software, is in charge. Many, perhaps most, US government agencies use WordPerfect, but much of the private sector uses Word. WordPerfect is much better for the legal profession (far better with things like tables of authorities) and I'd use WordPerfect now except for the nuisance of converting everything for people who use Word.

WordPerfect dropped the ball with their first Windows version back in 1991. They'd focused on OS/2 and never recovered.

[theline]

Slightly off-topic, but something in the Road-Related Illustrations board made me think of it:

...when Paint was called Paintbrush and Wordpad was called Write!

Anybody remember Lotus 1..2..3 or Wordperfect?

WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS was perhaps the best word processor ever. It seldom crashed and you could manipulate it to do just about anything. Word remains immensely frustrating because it attempts to second-guess so much of what you do instead of recognizing that the user, not the software, is in charge. Many, perhaps most, US government agencies use WordPerfect, but much of the private sector uses Word. WordPerfect is much better for the legal profession (far better with things like tables of authorities) and I'd use WordPerfect now except for the nuisance of converting everything for people who use Word.

WordPerfect dropped the ball with their first Windows version back in 1991. They'd focused on OS/2 and never recovered.

I used to teach introductory courses for both Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect 5.1. If anyone needs lessons in either of those programs, let me know. 

Both of those programs were revolutionary, but they got out-marketed by Microsoft. Then they didn't have the resources to keep developing improved products, like MS could. WordPerfect is still a great word processor, though as mentioned above it's a pain to keep MS Word converter updated to convert WP formats.

[hbelkins]

Yeah, in 1995 when I switched from a Mac environment at work (newspaper) to a Windows environment (state government), I used WordPerfect with whatever early version of Windows we had. I had to save WordPerfect documents in an 8.3 naming convention. Then when we went to Windows NT, Word replaced WordPerfect.

On the Mac we had MacPaint and MacDraw, and Aldus PageMaker until Adobe bought Aldus out. When I went back to the newspaper business in 2001, they had dropped PageMaker in favor of Quark XPress. Now the pagination program of choice is another Adobe product, InDesign.

[DeaconG]

I held out with AmiPro for years until IBM screwed it up...and I still consider Quattro Pro one of the best spreadsheets EVAR. Effing Borland...they used to be a player.

At least Corel still supports WordPerfect.

[kkt]

Slightly off-topic, but something in the Road-Related Illustrations board made me think of it:

...when Paint was called Paintbrush and Wordpad was called Write!

Anybody remember Lotus 1..2..3 or Wordperfect?

Visicalc and Wordstar

Emacs

Teco

Punch cards

300 baud teletypes

[theline]

The Source. I could dial up my 300 baud modem from home and look at live AP wire copy from anywhere. I know that doesn't seem so amazing in our modern WWW days, but it was revolutionary at the time. The Source was owned by Reader's Digest IIRC.

[vtk]

Emacs

That's still around and under continuing development.  I hear it's become the epitome of bloatware.

[OracleUsr]

Emacs

That's still around and under continuing development.  I hear it's become the epitome of bloatware.

But of course...back when memory was smaller, we used to say EMACS stood for Eight Megs And Constantly Swapping.  I guess now that would have to be EGACS (or even worse, ETACS)

[kkt]

Emacs

That's still around and under continuing development.  I hear it's become the epitome of bloatware.

I know, I still use Emacs.  Emacs is bigger than it used to be, but not by nearly as much as some other programs.