Re: Very nice.
"If you grew up with 6502 assembler and punched tape / cards, chances are you are still filled with a bit of wonder and appreciation when things ... just work."
I am not quite old enough for punch cards, but old enough for my first job in IT was in a tape room. we got a message on a display to load a particular tape in a particular machine....
but as for the wonders of modern technology, the yoof have no idea what it was like before you could google something....
a couple of weeks back, my daughter came back from her holidays, flew into Manchester airport to find the battery in the car flat. It was so flat there was not even enough power to open the door with the central locking and with the immobiliser, push starting the car was just not an option. back in 1979 the procedure would have been after failing to push start it, walk to the nearest un-vandilised phone box and call dad (Saturday, would be lucky to be at home), who would then have to drive half way across the north west of England with a replacement battery, for her to finally get home sometime after midnight.....
with today's modern technology, she has a button in the car connected to a system with its own battery backup (Vauxhall on star), she presses it, tells the nice lady who answers the call, the car will not start,. The system provides the exact GPS location to the RAC, 30 min later, a bloke from the RAC arrives and replaces the battery. away she goes. A system that just works.....
the OnStar service is excellent and although it was free for the first year, its well work the anual subscription for peace of mind. if she is eve in an accident, not only does it automatically contact the emergency services, but we also get a call, the system also sent her an text message one Sunday morning to tell her the pressure in one of the tyres was a little low, followed by another to say it was flat and most likely has a puncture.
it has quite a few functions that the paranoid will be indeed paranoid about, it has a GPS tracking so somewhere there is a hard drive with all the telemetry of every journey she has made (probably) so her car could potentially be used as evidence against her if she was to be caught speeding !! but you have to weigh the good up with the potentially bad...