The Computer Chronicles - Best of Comdex 1999 (1999)

Special thanks to archive.org for hosting these episodes. Downloads of all these episodes and more can be found at: archive.org/details/computerch...

[@schizogony]

The late '90s loved its rounded silver plastic.

[@mikeall7012]

Eff yea Stewart!!!!! I love how he used to keep them jokers in line when they would get super sales pitchy.

[@infinitecanadian]

He's just doing his job.

[@dr.celsius886]

22:10 you can hear the interference of the message picked up in the audio. Kind of cool to hear that from 1999

[@57Rye]

People forget that shooting broadcast quality video in the 80s and 90s wasn't cheap at all. That's why he has to keep moving things along, trying to extract only the most crucial information given by guests.

[@Nunavuter1]

Unlike a KZbin video, each show has a fixed time limit. Stewart sometimes has to do the "shut up, move to the next part" thing with guests. It was good that he explained this in the episode.

[@goransvraka3171]

Aww Napster i miss you! Brings back lots of memories!

[@JaredConnell]

What an episode. The beginning of the mp3, mainstream adoption of Linux, Bluetooth and filesharing a la Napster. Amazing how things have changed in 20 years but a lot of stuff still remains the same in many ways.

[@pdl849]

not to mention y2k LOL

[@CityLifeinAmerica]

“OMG cars will have Bluetooth in the future” Glad that did happen. I wouldn’t drive a car without Bluetooth.

[@hansc8433]

13:28 The shirt that guy was wearing.. And the khaki trousers. Where is the fashion police when you need them? :-)

[@justandhans]

I wondered if he’d ever address how he ran the show like how he did at the end of this episode. He was more aggressive with courting guests during the late 90’s. They definitely would ramble and be salesman

[@MattExzy]

My GOD.. talking about Napster and downloading music like it ain't no thang.

[@HikikomoriDev]

9:53 lol I think he was about to say junk lol

[@EnronnSierra]

My Information Technology teacher had that Macy Gray CD and used every opportunity to talk about how she loved it. Hello Ms. Hewling #saveandexit 🙃

[@therackstar]

18:25 Bluetooth! “Someday this may be in everything”

[@WigWagWorkshop]

Comdex Chicago was awesome!

[@ikramramli6410]

imagine someone from 1970 watching all those technology in the year..

[@scottschoppert9149]

My dad and his friend prophesied the mp3 player back in the early 70s via solid state memory. People had the ideas just the technology wasn’t there at the time of course.

[@MajorstiQ]

Cheifet gets excited everytime he speaks about Napster

[@knoxduder]

What an awesome closing , addressing the email and letters.

[@billgates3699]

“People should just explore Linux to see if it works for them” *Fifteen seconds later* “Ok, so you want to open the console and type sudo, that’s S-U-D-O, then space, then type A-P-T, dash, and then the word “get”” 🙄

[@Maskddingo]

Only having 5 hours of playback on that small mp3 player isn't that much of a problem when you realize there is only 64 megs or storage with no way to add more. Unless you want to repeat to those 15-20 songs you can fit on it more than 5 times through before you are able to recharge,,,

[@Finallybianca]

Lars Ulrich disliked this episode

[@HikikomoriDev]

wow the end lol

[@wallacelang1374]

I have mixed emotions concerning how the Music Publishers Association of America managed to put Napster out of business, especially because the majority of the music that I was searching Napster for was music that had become Public Domain. If something is no longer copyrighted than shouldn't it be allowed to be distributed free of charge? I still use my compact disc player and my vinyl record turntable for all of my music. I just want to use my own CD/DVD reader writer ROM drive on my computer to make my own music discs from Public Domain recordings.

[@bsiccs]

He didn’t need to explain that… but it is very kind. Very fair.

[@TheJonathanc82]

The “internet PCs” were crap then and never got any better

[@oldtwinsna8347]

Fun times when they liquidated off for a fraction of their original price though. I remember a lot of them had decent hardware under the hood that could be hacked to run your own stuff.

[@gregorymalchuk272]

@@oldtwinsna8347 Which type? The first type was just a minimalist windows/Celeron pc with no expansion ports. The web terminal running Windows CE with no local storage, probably running on an arm chip, I would think would be harder to repurpose.

[@vurpo7080]

It's because the easy internet technology got merged into regular computers, so we stopped seeing separate computers designed specifically for easy internet access.

[@Abr3200]

Remember guys: Don't copy that floppy

[@deltakid0]

This was in 1999, the first bluetooth device I got was until 2005 with Motorola E398; that was a long wait. By the way, that phone was so unreliable that I had to heat it up using a hairdryer or something to make it work and I saw lots of people with the same problem. Bad phone.

[@chloedevereaux1801]

23yrs later linux is still shyte..

[@mankind8088]

And used by Microsoft to program and code more than Windows

[@qtube2007]

wow, linux! still the same. amazing that in 2018 you still have the same videos on you Tube that have the same talk about linux. ' we are almost there but not there yet' dual boot for now and we will grow on you.

[@yellowblanka6058]

Obviously you haven't been paying attention or have never used Linux. I've only used a few Live distros over the years, am a total Linux newbie and not terribly interested in Linux and even I can see how far most distros have come when it comes to capability/user experience etc. Obviously if you are completely adverse to learning anything outside of what you're used to, you won't like Linux.

[@chubbycatfish4573]

I've been using linux as my main OS since 2004. I'm not sure what you're talking about.

[@m8tycash]

at that time, there was many ways to optimize the amount of songs you could add on a 64 MB MP3 player. at 5MB per MP3 that would be 12 MP3, but suppose you wanted to stuff 24 MP3's in there, all what you would do is convert the STEREO 128 mbps MP3 files into MONO 128 mbps file ,that would halve each file's size down to 2.5MB and you can further cram it to 48 MP3 files by converting to MONO 64mbps MP3 which would give you 1.25MB per each file and its quality would be the same as FM radio station

[@eila2088]

Hella old comment but, while I know some people did that....I never understood it. Might as well use a fm radio if going to listen to terrible sounding music (and have more then 48 songs on radio). Expandable storage for mp3 players were god send though I used MP3 burned to CD (yeah skipping and size isn't as good but you could fit a ton on 650mb).

[@yellowblanka6058]

@@eila2088 When you consider that people pay out the nose for things like "Beats" headphones and earbuds that just amp up the bass at the expense of everything else, how many popular songs are repetitive, auto-tuned crap etc. - it doesn't surprise me that people would sacrifice sound quality/depth to cram more on their MP3 player - quantity over quality.

[@velocityjockey1272]

Stewart's (overdue) explanation about interrupting at the end was epic. Stew had a bad habit of interrupting guests, only to repeat what they are trying to say, which is rude any way you spin it. Perhaps fewer topics per episode would've allowed the guests to complete half their sentences. Lol.

[@stephenharris5532]

It might seem rude if it were in a normal conversation, but he had a show to prioritize and an audience he cared more about than the presenters.

[@gregorymalchuk272]

This show was on a budget, and they had to shoot the whole thing in a single go. He had to rush them, and head off their rambling.

[@gregorymalchuk272]

@Shanae It was shot IN ONE GO. They had to stop these marketing people sent from big companies from using more than their allotted time.

[@oldtwinsna8347]

The show degenerated somewhat over the years in the sense that companies gradually sent lower level employees for the presentations. In the 80s it was all corporate executives pitching their products, then shifting to senior division managers, then onto marketing managers. Eventually companies just sent regular sales reps as if they were doing a presentation to the local business several blocks away. That had to piss Stewart off to some degree. Looking at the episodes, I can see Stewart tends to be particularly snappy about some no-name junior sales rep being sent over and trying to set the stage for them to use it to their advantage to which he promptly put an end to. The later episodes still sometimes have a big-wig appear every so often and you can easily see his tone is very different where he doesn't bark down at those folks as a sign of respect.

[@micmac99]

@@oldtwinsna8347 That might be one of the reasons behind Stewart deciding to pull the plug on the show, which could easily still be on, even to this day.

[@johnnylongfeather3086]

Stewart isn’t putting up you your BS 😆😁😄

[@Ebotoman79]

A computer that just goes to msn.com....? That seems totally useless even by standards of the day.

[@michaels8878]

Keep them corporate assholes in line. Rofl. This old shit is so fun. I had never heard of this show ever. It's like CERN fucked shit up and we are on another timeline.

[@KabelkowyJoe]

20:00 Bluetooth - instead of being simple (protocol) serial port only or imitating wireless USB (keyboards, mouse, common usage with existing serial port related software) using as low power as possible this thing was useless for almost 20 years, Partially OS fault of implementing it because it was complicated, but not only. Version after version becoming what it should be since day one. It has no props over WiFi at day release (power hungry as well). It became standard for audio, input devices thanks to NFC, moore's law and futher changes. Bluetooth enabled mouse or keyboard get WiFi interfearence never liked to use it. Since WiFi was everywhere it was only battery waster. I used it for GPS so basically serial port. And pairing between many different devices, exchange photos was pain in ass because it was deam slow. This at beginning should be using "USB" protocol or just be serial port since it's two sidea on top of that envolve to have more protocols if negotiated.

[@RUFU58]

The more I watch these videos - the more I realise how terrible at hosting Steven is. He’s almost rude with his interruptions! In this one he goes “so basically mp3 for idiots!” And the guys just shocked. Irritating man.

[@yellowblanka6058]

Apparently you haven't been watching very closely as his name is *Stewart* not "Steven". Also he explains why he is brief with guests in this very episode - otherwise they would just go off on their marketing spiel and waste finite air-time.

[@johnnylongfeather3086]

Did you watch the last 4 minutes ?!?!