The Internet is spoiling us.

bnt

I just had the following experience:
- heard a ship siren from the general direction of Dublin harbour. Usually means a ship is casting off, and this was a very loud horn, so it had to be a big ship.
- in a minute I had a picture from a webcam on top of the IFSC building, showing that there is indeed a flipping huge passenger ship in the harbour.
- in another minute I had MarineTraffic open, and sure enough, a huge passenger ship called the MSC Magnifica was just setting off. Its next stop is Cork, for some reason.
- the ship has its own page on the MSC company website, of course. There's a map of its current position, and even a webcam feed almost live from the ship. It carries over a thousand crew and two-and-a-half thousand passengers.

All that and more without moving my bum an inch. Makes me appreciate the Internet a bit more than usual today. Oh, and here's a YouTube video of the same ship doing something rather unusual with that horn I mentioned. Yes, it's loud.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8K1yPECJeQ

Ted_YNWA

I'm sure that was the only horn you were looking up on the internet.

Jonny Blaze

The internet is pretty amazing alright.

After learning about all the many, many layers of technology and years of ingenuity that have gone into building it, im still a little bit surprised that it works all well as it does!

larrymiller

Do you want to see my webcam?

Frosty McSnowballs

Hmm, no Fererro Rocher?

Cock tease OP!

Archeron

Meh. It's no pyramid of Fererro Rocher served by an ambassador.

Jonny Blaze

Archeron wrote: »

Meh. It's no pyramid of Fererro Rocher served by an ambassador.

Oooh Ambassador!

whiskeyman

I preferred simpler times before the Internet when we had to phone up Google and ask them to search for various facts and info and being kept on hold.
It added to the suspense and awe more...

Banjo String

Yeah my line of work has me in the docks every day/other day more or less, but that big lady stood out a mile this morning when I was coming out the port tunnel towards the Topaz.

Hard to believe something that big can be maneuvered by man.

Duckworth_Luas

whiskeyman wrote: »

I preferred simpler times before the Internet when we had to phone up Google and ask them to search for various facts and info and being kept on hold.
It added to the suspense and awe more...

You technology whizzes, I remember when we sent our queries by postcard.

bnt

Ted_YNWA wrote: »

I'm sure that was the only horn you were looking up on the internet.

If your definition of "horn" includes "hooters", well ...

whiskeyman

Banjo String wrote: »

Hard to believe something that big can be maneuvered by man.

Yeah, I get that a lot...

Capt'n Midnight

Jonny Blaze wrote: »

The internet is pretty amazing alright.

After learning about all the many, many layers of technology and years of ingenuity that have gone into building it, im still a little bit surprised that it works all well as it does!

Not surprising really since Arpanet was designed to keep working through a nuclear war, if you believe the myth's.

rotun

You were within earshot of a boat you were very, very, very interested in, and instead of heading down for a goo, you looked at info on the net..

Each to their own I suppose..

Capt'n Midnight

whiskeyman wrote: »

I preferred simpler times before the Internet when we had to phone up Google and ask them to search for various facts and info and being kept on hold.
It added to the suspense and awe more...

google is only a blow in :rolleyes:

For those of us on the net before the hamster wheels remember when it was gopher powered.

keith16

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

google is only a blow in :rolleyes:

For those of us on the net before the hamster wheels remember when it was gopher powered.

I remember when you were Colonel 10 past 4.

MagicMarker

I can see these ships from my apartment, tis nice standing on the balcony on a calm night admiring a cruise liner all lit up.

Screw your internet.

Legs.Eleven

"Ooh ambassador with this internet you're really spoiling us!"

cml387

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Not surprising really since Arpanet was designed to keep working through a nuclear war, if you believe the myth's.

Not a myth at all. The internet is derived from a system designed to allow communcations through numerous links, thereby standing a greater chance of withstanding a nuclear attack.

The microchip was designed to reduce the weight of guidance systems in ballistic missiles.

The OP's (brilliant) example of the information available to us all is founded on the USA's Dept. Of Defence.

Aquagakka

I like watching the night sky. Given a relatively clear night and a bit of luck I can see satellites, "meteor showers" and planets.

Watching the International Space Station (ISS) passing is a real enjoyment for me, when unexpected.

I heard of an App that predicts when there will be an ISS passover; I installed it and luckily enough it was a clear night.

Bang on time there it was whizzing across the southern sky!

I went back into the house and found myself slightly cheated. Cheated myself with technology observing technology.

pandaboy

Did you hear that a felly was kicking a 99 ice cream around the place today in Dublin? If it wasn't for the internet, I wouldn't have known. Amazing thing...

Mickey H

Aquagakka wrote: »

I like watching the night sky. Given a relatively clear night and a bit of luck I can see satellites, "meteor showers" and planets.

Watching the International Space Station (ISS) passing is a real enjoyment for me, when unexpected.

I heard of an App that predicts when there will be an ISS passover; I installed it and luckily enough it was a clear night.

Bang on time there it was whizzing across the southern sky!

I went back into the house and found myself slightly cheated. Cheated myself with technology observing technology.

Saw that last night at around half 1. Didn't know what it was for a minute.

tedobrien98

I used to text questions to AQA that I already knew the answer to, and I was amazed at how often they got the answers right.
In hindsight, I realise that they were probably just the privileged ones who had Google before the rest of us.

Tokarev

The Internet RULES.

Fcuk real life.

Aquagakka

Mickey H wrote: »

Saw that last night at around half 1. Didn't know what it was for a minute.

And that's the enjoyment. It's good sight.

Wishiwasa Littlebitaller

..and yet we still haven't got a nail clipper that catches nail clippings.

Sauve

Wishiwasa Littlebitaller wrote: »

..and yet we still haven't got a nail clipper that catches nail clippings.

Yeah there is, I've seen them
Has a sort of guard over the top of it that gathers all the stuff. Kinda like a hole punch.

Aquagakka

Sauve wrote: »

Yeah there is, I've seen them
Has a sort of guard over the top of it that gathers all the stuff. Kinda like a hole punch.

Does it look like a salmon? If not, no deal.

Turtwig

But still not more important or useful than the towel. Can you sleep on the internet? Will it help you get someone to lend their toothbrush or space suit?

Capt'n Midnight

Turtwig wrote: »

But still not more important or useful than the towel. Can you sleep on the internet? Will it help you get someone to lend their toothbrush or space suit?

Well yes towels are very useful. Especially those bath towels from Marks and Spencer.

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost." What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

- Douglas Adams




Of course nowadays you can get towels online

osarusan

The internet as a source of information is astonishing.

I wonder what effect it will have on the relationship between teacher and student, given that one of the traditional attributes (and roles) of a teacher is the hoarder (and imparter) of knowledge, and their status as a possessor and hoarder of information that is otherwise not easily accessible, is becoming consistently less critical.

Turtwig

Hopefully it'll move away from information retention and towards information analysis and criticism. People are far too fecking gullible at the moment and misinformation spreads like wildfire!

bnt

rotun wrote: »

You were within earshot of a boat you were very, very, very interested in, and instead of heading down for a goo, you looked at info on the net..

Each to their own I suppose..

"Earshot" in this case is about 4km away, and could easily have been further. We're talking about one fscking loud horn here, in case that video didn't make that clear. :cool:

Karl Stein

A couple of months ago during the storms it was brilliant to have the all that information at your fingertips. You could listen to the Pilots diverting to less stormy airports, track boats dashing for shelter and get first hand reports of lightning, squalls, flooding etc.

It's great for us information junkies. It's good for real life too though. We're running three nights of soccer a week out of the Cork City forum.