Fun & Frivolity: Tech, Stench, And Stupidity

All you other techie types out there will appreciate this stroll down technology memory lane. PC World looks at the last 20 years of tech progress and shows just how far we've come. Some of my favorites:

Home Desktop PCs
1988: Tandy 1000 TL
* Price: $1400 ($2454 adjusted for inflation)
* CPU: Intel 80286
* RAM: 640KB
* Storage: 3.5-inch floppy
* Monitor: 14-inch, 640-by-200 RGB CRT, 16 colors

2008: HP Pavilion Elite m9100z series
* Price: about $1000
* CPU: 2.8-GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ dual-core
* RAM: 2GB
* Storage: 750GB HD, CD/DVD recorder
* Monitor: 17-inch, 1440-by-900 LCD, 16.7 million colors

Laptop PCs
1988: Toshiba T1200H
* Price: $4098 ($7182 adjusted for inflation)
* CPU: 4.77-/9.54-MHz Intel 80C86
* RAM: 1MB
* Storage: 20MB hard drive, 720KB floppy drive
* Display: 9.4-inch supertwist LCD
* Weight: 14 pounds (including modem, charger, and case)
* Battery life: 2 hours

2008: Lenovo ThinkPad X61
* Price: $1724
* CPU: 2-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300
* RAM: 2GB
* Storage: 160GB HD, PC Card slot, SD Card slot, external CD/DVD recorder
* Display: 12.1-inch 1024-by-768 LCD, 16.7 million colors
* Weight: 3.6 pounds (6.1 pounds including adapter, ultrabase, and DVD burner)
* Battery life: 6 hours

Cell Phones
1988: Motorola DynaTAC 8500XL
* Price: $2500 ($4382 adjusted for inflation)
* Technology: analog
* Weight: 28 ounces
* Talk time: 1 hour Apple iPhone; click for enlarged image.

2008: Apple iPhone
* Price: $399 (with two-year service agreement)
* Technology: EDGE/GSM quad-band
* Weight: 5 ounces
* Talk time: 8 hours

We've come a long way, baby!

On the one hand, I can hardly believe this next story...but on the other hand, it's completely in character for lawmakers. The Florida legislature is looking at a proposed law that would require restaurants to have enough toilet paper in their restrooms as part of a health inspection. Of course, in true legislative style, they don't define just how much 'enough' is, so it's essentially a useless law. What a bunch of crap.

If you think you've got a bad job, get a load of this one. The city of Northampton, Massachusetts has hired a 'sniff squad' to test the odor of landfills to determine if it would bother neighboring homeowners:

Rating on a 1 to 8 scale — roughly, from bearable to foul beyond belief — the sniffers also judge the smells against a kit they carry of ready-to-sniff odors of various intensities.

Suddenly corporate America isn't sounding so bad...

Finally, winning this week's Are-You-Kidding-Me award is this fun little story out of London:

According to a recent report, human beings are becoming so incredibly stupid that they require cushioned lamppost bases so that when they run into them they don't mess up their idiotic faces. Apparently, a study in the UK found that one in ten people actually managed to hurt themselves by walking into a post while peering down at their mobile phone screen.

Have a great weekend!