No, browsers did not have native support for video before the <video> tag.
Late 90s:
Netscape and IE, the main browsers at that time had generic plugin support through <object> and <embed>. What this did was load a plugin if it was indeed installed in your browser.
There were various video plugins available at various moments, e.g. Quicktime (.mov), LiveVideo (.avi), some Java and ActiveX... From the IE3.0 beta press release here [0] (1996) you can see mentioned some of the support for those things.
Again, you had to have the plugin which may not have been available for specific browsers or OSs. An additional problem is you needed to have an appropriate codec.
Early 00s:
Around ~2002 Flash started supporting video with FLV files. This still meant requiring the flash plugin but by that time it was fairly common. When YouTube started in 2005 it played through Flash.
HTML5:
HTML5 was released publicly ~2008 but didn't become a W3C recommendation until ~2014. Discussion on <video> started ~2006-7 but actual support still needed a few years more.
The discs had -in the movie- the memories of another person, and you would experience that memory and sensations as if you were living it. So, e.g. someone would record themselves doing something risky and you would get the adrenaline rush from watching it.
So... Maybe in some way one could argue that social media gives some sort of connection were you get some feelings from what others are doing/showing. I mean, technologically it's quite a leap, but in a conceptual way... it's still a bit of a leap but maybe not that big.
>> some sort of connection were you get some feelings from what others are doing/showing. I mean, technologically it's quite a leap, but in a conceptual way... it's still a bit of a leap but maybe not that big.
Play that VR game set within in the shark cage. The adrenaline rush is definitely not much of a leap from the real thing.
Yes, which originally came from Cyberpunk, the first sourcebook for which was released in 1988, with Cyberpunk 2020 releasing in 1990 complete with the idea for pre-recorded replayable memories/full sensory experience, ie:Braindance.
Strange Days was released in 1995.
Maximum Mike was, and is, a prophet right alongside Gibson.
edit: Although almost certainly this wasn't the first place people imagined being able to record and playback memories.
Brainstorm (1983) did it before Neuromancer. The movie is about a device that records and replays sensory and emotional experiences, and a central plot point is that it records the dying moments of a character.
I thought the central point was the porn played on a loop. Maybe I was distracted and missed the real plot. Also maybe mixed up by the fact that one of the principle actors died in real life while the movie was being made.
The porn thing showed that the device could be harmful to the viewer. This adds another dimension of risk to the later scenes where the Walker character is experiencing the death tape.
The actor was Natalie Wood, and the event is shrouded in mystery about how she died. However, the character who dies in the movie is played by Louise Fletcher.
The military stuff is a McGuffin-type subplot. The real plot is the main character's obsession with seeing Lillian's vision of the afterlife.
The author of the screenplay, Bruce Joel Rubin, is a self-described spiritual teacher, and "transitional journeys" is kind of his thing. His three most well-known films (Brainstorm, Ghost, and Jacob's Ladder) are all about characters experiencing the afterlife in some way.
This is exactly the parasocial way my girlfriend's niece and friends experience life. No relationships of their own, it is all celebrities and their lives, ingested on their phones. I don't have the heart to tell them that 95% of it is stuff created by PR firms.
playing devils advocate for a minute... isnt that similar to what our parents said in the 80's/90's about our generation? all that "tv and phone" brain rot
1. People were clearly wrong about music. Audio only is clearly not as addictive as video + audio.
2. People did say that about TV and TV maybe had the potential to be like this. However, TV failed in many ways to be a hyper addictive device. Some of the many reasons:
i. Just less content. There wasn’t that much TV content at all. YT probably adds more content in an hour than all the TV content ever created.
ii. You couldn’t choose what you wanted to watch beyond a few dozen channels at best. So you always had opportunities where you were forced to do something different at many times.
iii. The TV wasn’t available to you at all times. You had to go to the den to watch it and you couldn’t take it to school with you.
iv. TV couldn’t specifically target you individually with content to keep you watching. The most amount of targeting TV could do was at maybe a county level.
v. You couldn’t be part of the TV. Social media and phones today make you an integral part of the “show” where a kid can end up having a video of them popping their pants on a playground shown to millions of people. Even in a more ordinary sense, a kid commenting on a video or sending a message to a friend makes them part of the device in a way TV never could outside of extraordinary situations.
> 1. People were clearly wrong about music. Audio only is clearly not as addictive as video + audio.
Or they weren't and addiction wasn't the crux of their position; and I say that as someone who loves a lot of rock derivatives.
The influence pop icons with broken lives had on teen generations was horribly deleterious (and I'm not even talking about hippies), mainly because malleable and unproperly taught minds rarely see that an artist's respectability is completely separate from his output.
The ancients had the concept of muses for a reason.
TV certainly could target their audiences. Television shows would share their viewer demographics with advertisers: age groups, income levels, race and other social indicators, related interests.
The shows had target markets often driven by the need to reach certain demographics, though actual viewer demographics sometimes were surprisingly way off the mark.
They could not do this at the individual level, nor did they have ways of reaching people to persuade them to watch (notifications from mobile apps, emails about posts).
The key is limits. In the past, even if celebrites were idolized, we had a limited amont of information compared to now. The fluid variable is the increase in information, which makes the situation different.
You might need to recall just how crazy it was e.g. literal shrines to boy bands were just normal. To cover every inch of your bedroom walls and ceiling with photos of a celebrity crush was not unheard of. At school, every conversation could be about these obsessions. Folders/files would be covered with pledges of devotion.
No comment on how it is today, but looking back it was terrifyingly nuts - full on religious fervour to the point of mental disorder. When bands broke or people married/died, there would be full on breakdowns and sympathy suicides.
The lack of information might have helped exacerbate the religious mystery and make more space for imagination, fantasy and faith.
Effectively unlimited content is huge, though. IMHO that pretty much overshadows everything. There were only so much records, magazines and other content you could consume before the internet.
And they were right. But we would watch TV usually together and only for around 4-5 hours a day. Do you know how much screen time are people having ? 8 to 10 hours are not uncommon. And alone.
And our kids will warn their kids about how the ‘direct to brain’ type interface they will use is rotting their brains. Each generation will have been a little correct along the way; the harm at each step was just always gentle enough to not scold the frogs too quickly.
> Maybe in some way one could argue that social media gives some sort of connection were you get some feelings from what others are doing/showing. I mean, technologically it's quite a leap
That technology exists; it's called empathy, and the extremely powerful form of it innate to humans is arguably our singularly defining characteristic. It's our tech moat, so to speak.
Dear ImGui defaults to "ProggyClean rendered at size 13" for everything. It is somewhat crunchy indeed, but a lot of people don't mind and don't bother changing.
Still, you can look through the gallery of software using ImGui [0] or in the "screenshot threads" [1] for many examples which do have nicer fonts and text rendering.
So, I just click the example pic with a guy and two kids, one on his shoulders, and it describes saying it "shows a detailed close-up view of a textured surface, possibly a fabric or wallpaper". And then it goes on to say that the "photograph itself seems to be devoid of any human presence, focusing entirely on the abstract design."
I click another one with a family on a field. It says mostly the same as before.
EDIT: Oh, wait a minute! I had Resist Fingerprinting activated. So they're probably just reading the image through a <canvas> and getting shit from that.
In any case it's interesting to know that it works as a way to block some of it. But Google & co. just run it on their servers so...
Disclaimer: I don't know shit about this guy. I can't speak about his particular case or personal motivations and circumstances. With this in mind, let me instead answer the more generic aspect of your question.
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Some illnesses are hard. But even so, they are temporarily bad. You suffer some time, get some treatment or procedure and then it's -mostly- over. You may lose something in the process, but generally you can go on with your life after it.
Sometimes there are permanent effects. Like maybe you lose an eye, or maybe you have to be medicated for the rest of your life, or have to keep a special diet or something. Or you may get some permanent discomfort. But again, even with this, you can generally continue otherwise "well enough".
Some other illnesses are hard, and lethal. You may suffer, go through some process -or not- and then die. These are hard to endure because, well, you know you're dying. But then again, it happens fairly quickly.
Some other illnesses can be hard and recurring. Like a cancer or lymphoma. The treatment is hard and exhausting. But you go through it and it either works and you get some additional years to live fairly ok, or it doesn't work and you rapidly go away. Then they return and you repeat the loop. But again, you mostly live mostly ok some years and then get hit again, go through treatment and then the fork of either having some years more or dying "quickly".
Some are constantly hard. In the sense that they don't kill you but make you live with constant and relentless suffering. The psychological impact this has is hard to overestimate and while you don't die, it can be said that they take you life because they change it so completely that you have almost nothing else but fighting constantly against the pain and suffering.
When you are the subject yourself of such a situation, the effect can be devastating. Different people react differently, of course, but there's always some psychological damage. This can sometimes produce its own neurological illnesses that pile on top of it all.
But you may not be the subject of such an illness and still suffer the psychological impact. If you're a person that cares and someone close to you falls into that situation it's very easy to be affected. You won't experience it first-hand but you will see a person you love suffering every single day. It's worse when it also happens at night. Because then they will suffer and they will be significantly impacting their own health through sleeping badly or not sleeping at all. And if you're close enough to be there, chances are you will also sleep badly and affect your own health too.
Sometimes the situation means that you really can't do shit about it. Sure, you can be there, give them support, your love, your care, etc. And that is indeed a lot. But it has no particular effect on the illness itself so it can easily feel worthless, pointless, useless. The psychological effect of all this is both subtle, in the sense that you may not even be aware of it, and fairly impactful, producing changes in your personality and mental health.
Sometimes, other circumstances work together with the illness for the caring person to have to make big sacrifices. Like maybe quitting their job or career, or their own family or friends, or whatever. Sometimes they end up developing their own maladies because of this situation -or sometimes apparently because of it-.
And so, a person who is generally healthy gets to see someone they care for suffer continuously every moment of their life, and they are forced to renounce big parts of their own life to care for them, and then they are impacted with subtle but deep psychological problems. The description of "it breaks your heart" is quite appropriate because you may be giving all your love and effort while simultaneously feeling completely useless, and end up inflicting hard damage on yourself.
Different people will react differently to all this. But it's hard to predict how any of us would react until you've actually gone through it. Sure, you can say "I'd seek help" or "I'd try to stay positive" or even "I'd certainly go crazy", but the truth is you don't actually know.
For some people it's not uncommon to react by looking for an "ultimate cause", something they can attribute all the problems to. It can be a generic cause like "life sucks" and they may end up bitter against life in general. Some turn religious. Some do the opposite. Or it may be that they find fault on something they did or didn't and so they end up blaming themselves, with various outcomes. It may also be that they blame another close person, a parent, a sibling, and it's not uncommon to see families split over such illnesses. Sometimes they may find a cause in "the system", in a negligent doctor, in an "uncaring" administration, in causes with different degrees of distance and specificity.
The problem has many aspects contributing to it and each person, again, will react differently. But sometimes it just happens that this one person under the accumulated effects of suffering, of seeing someone not die but live in agony every moment, finds this "ultimate cause" personified on some organization or some one specific person who can maybe -in reality or in their reality- have caused that pain or have profited from it or whatever, through their actions or inactions. With enough persistence, it's not hard for all of that to transform into rage or hate and, sometimes, produce the effect you see here.
I'm not saying this reaction is inevitable, or logical, or forgivable, or anything. That's up to you to think. Just that it's not impossible to understand and that there may be circumstances that push people... that crush people and them push them into tragic actions.
Finally, yes, I agree with the conclusion that it's terribly sad. In a lot of ways.
This is an insightful take on the impact. I will say, having been a caregiver multiple times around serious medical situations, that looking back, that care I gave had great meaning in my life, despite the pain for all concerned.
I'm glad you found that positive side in your experiences. I know it can be very hard on some people, but it's important to keep up the spirits and think that, while you may not be able to do anything about the illness itself, your help does make a difference in their quality of life while going through the whole ordeal.
All these are good questions, and you're already doing well by asking yourself these things.
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The first one is easier to answer. If <some option fails>, what you do is move on. You re-evaluate your circumstances, and go try something else. I mean, there's no other way. The alternative is planning something like "If this fails, I'll just become stuck and wither away", which you don't even need anyone to tell you it's obviously absurd.
Many things can -and probably will- fail. We can't know the future and you cannot do much about it anyway.
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Now, the second question is harder to answer. Personally, I would say that education is always worth it, in itself. But then again one particular form of it -i.e. going to this school or choosing those studies- may or may not be so.
But consider that you'll also play a significant role in "making it worth it". The same school, courses, the same class, can be different for different people. I can only say this: If you choose something that needs a substantial investment in money and time, make sure you also invest your best effort on it. Don't do it half-arsed. If you're not convinced and you won't work hard to get the best you can from that education, then don't do it.
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Finally, how to decide. Who knows?
A guy I know can spend even a month or two researching on which trousers to buy. Another one I know just goes in the shop, looks at a couple or three of them, and just picks up whatever he decides in a few minutes. And, being honest, I can't say either of them ends up making a better decision.
Probably it's a balance. It seems like a good idea to think about important decisions that can -to some extent- shape your future, of course. But it also seems like a good idea not to overthink it.
If you want to, you could apply a somewhat organized system. Like making a list of the various options you consider, and writing down pros and cons for each of them, and scoring them with various criteria -objective and subjective-. Note though that this will not guarantee making a good decision, because nothing does. But it can help.
Also consider, when making a decision, that it may not mean choosing only one option and discarding the rest. Sometimes you can choose more than one. Other times you can choose one and later in life turn to a different one.
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More in general, I'll add that you're still young and you have time to try things. Don't worry so much about having all your life outlined now. Try some stuff, re-evaluate, correct and you will slowly figure it out.
Unfortunately, it feels like you're not yet ready to share.
You submitted twice with different domains. None of them work. One goes to GoDaddy's parking the other says the domain is available for sale.
Finally, there's a third domain which is the one in your comment here. This one does work. But only to offer the waitlist.
I mean, I don't work in marketing or anything, but I don't think this is a good way to promote your thing.
You do you, of course, and I say this without any hard feelings, but for something selling "customer success" this feels disappointing even without having seen it.
Late 90s:
Netscape and IE, the main browsers at that time had generic plugin support through <object> and <embed>. What this did was load a plugin if it was indeed installed in your browser.
There were various video plugins available at various moments, e.g. Quicktime (.mov), LiveVideo (.avi), some Java and ActiveX... From the IE3.0 beta press release here [0] (1996) you can see mentioned some of the support for those things.
Again, you had to have the plugin which may not have been available for specific browsers or OSs. An additional problem is you needed to have an appropriate codec.
Early 00s:
Around ~2002 Flash started supporting video with FLV files. This still meant requiring the flash plugin but by that time it was fairly common. When YouTube started in 2005 it played through Flash.
HTML5:
HTML5 was released publicly ~2008 but didn't become a W3C recommendation until ~2014. Discussion on <video> started ~2006-7 but actual support still needed a few years more.
[0] https://news.microsoft.com/1996/05/29/microsoft-internet-exp... (search for "video")
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