August 17, 1995.

February 22, 2001 9:19 AM

August 17, 1995. / Today
posted by tiaka (19 comments total)

"New discovery pushes back human history" (1995) vs. "Handheld devices give sailors high-tech lifeline" (2001).

Am I missing something? ;-)
posted by tsitzlar at 9:24 AM on February 22, 2001

I think the point is that radical changes in the presentation of the stories. It is amazing. I'm surprised though that CNN didn't store the archived stories independently of their '95 HTML.
posted by rschram at 9:28 AM on February 22, 2001

If it's any consolation, tsitzlar, I'm missing it too.
posted by Popstar at 9:28 AM on February 22, 2001

Many older sites do that. They didn't learn to template or to publish from a database for a few years.
posted by captaincursor at 9:44 AM on February 22, 2001

The point I took away is that the 2nd story is an advertisement for Palm rather than a serious exploration of a scientific issue. I don't know if this is typical of CNN's science/technology reporting though.
posted by muta at 9:48 AM on February 22, 2001

Clearly, the point of the post is how far design has come.

"Daddy, what was it like before Cascading Style Sheets?"
posted by jpoulos at 9:56 AM on February 22, 2001

Muta, I took away the same thought, though I did notice how hard the earlier link was to read.
posted by trox at 9:58 AM on February 22, 2001

I like this one. Not a Gates fan, but just to see the transcript of the interview prior to the Windows 95 release, without much else on the sides. What a difference compared to the current clutter. I know the Amazon tabs changing was pretty funny, but how much change will come in another 5 years?
posted by brent at 9:59 AM on February 22, 2001

I think the comments change the point of the post from "Golly, look how silly CNN's pages used to look" to "Golly, people really don't pay attention to presentation, do they?"

50% of respondents saw no difference between one page and the other except for the stories contained on them, or the ads, rather than the background images, the narrow columns, etc.
posted by honkzilla at 9:59 AM on February 22, 2001

I was thinking in terms of design, too, but muta makes a great point. It really is a big contrast between an in-depth science piece and fluff promoting the Palm.
posted by gimli at 10:22 AM on February 22, 2001

What's interesting to me is that browser compatibility (as reported by Web Site Garage) goes down to poor in the newer version, which is also significantly slower to load (especially on older computers... not everyone has Pentium IIIs!).

I guess as we grow older, we still don't learn anything.

posted by yarf at 10:32 AM on February 22, 2001

CNN should go back to using background images, imagine how much it could have spiced up the election coverage? Flags and eagles everywhere! Everyone knows separating presentation from content is so '00.
posted by megnut at 10:42 AM on February 22, 2001

I think it's also important to point out that the current article had no sexy images of bare breasted Australophitheceans. Back then they used to give it away. These days you'd have to go to CNN's Pay-Per-View ProtoSapiens Fetish site.
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 10:50 AM on February 22, 2001

As to the content of the stories -- apples and oranges. The Palm-in-the-Navy story is an Associated Press story ... a typical human interest / contemporary cultural / effect of technology story which they've been writing tons of since the USA Today revolution in journalism in the early 1980's.

The old CNN story is an in-house by-lined "think piece" feature ... a whole different breed of story. CNN still does plenty of those pieces, as they have consistently before 1995 and since, and do today.

I also disagree about the newsworthiness of the Palm-in-the-Navy story.

Anyone who is familiar with how the military operates should be VERY impressed with some of the things that this story is talking about. The mass of paperwork and bureacracy has been one of the most debilitating and disheartening aspect of serving as an officer, and one of the things which most propels the most valuable line officers (like infantry commanders and fighter pilots) out of the military and into the private sector.

To the extent that technology has been embraced in the past few years, it has been in exactly the kind of corporate / bureaucratic BS that these same officers despise, e.g. the ubiquity of PowerPoint presentations and briefings in the life of field-grade staff officers.

If (as this story claims) line officers on combat-ready missions are literally shrinking their paperwork burdens in half, this is truly a great and possibly even revolutionary change in the management of the military. We as taxpayers should be very happy -- every pilot we keep flying off carriers a few more years rather than taxiing to Terminal C at O'Hare saves us millions of dollars!

posted by MattD at 11:30 AM on February 22, 2001

I agree, though this sounded a bit like a Palm fluff piece, essentially the Navy is coming to these a few years after the rest of the world! Really, my little brother had a custom wireless dispatch system in his truck over a year ago.

There was a recent Slate/Salon piece on morale in the military that was a little pointy-headed (e.g. blaming Navy makework like painting the whole ship, then when the sailors are done, starting over again on "modern" organizational problems, when that's the way it's been on ships for centuries). If you discount the writer's ignorance there were some useful things about how bureaucratic the military is (has always been) and how they're having trouble retaining officers (which is always a problem in peacetime, always always always). If bringing technology to the men on deck helps then by all means.
posted by dhartung at 11:52 AM on February 22, 2001

MattD, good catch on the AP source for the story. I should have caught that. Also, you've made me reassess my original view.
posted by trox at 12:23 PM on February 22, 2001

And the point is?????
posted by johnnydark at 1:09 PM on February 22, 2001

I didn't notice naked monkeys until it was mentioned and it was the first time a MeFi post made me laugh.
posted by redleaf at 11:51 PM on February 25, 2001

KING: And your comments on the federal judge today, who agreed to your signed anti-trust settlement, which previously federal Judge Sporkin had thrown out, is now back in. Any comments?

GATES: Well, that whole thing really has no effect on on Microsoft or how we work. For us, charging ahead with innovative products is the key to whether we will continue to be successful in this high tech world. It's great to see it finally come to a close. Because there were a lot of years there where, you know, we were producing a lot of documents and what it comes down to is that there is nothing significant that we needed to change, and that just confirms the way we've viewed it all along.

I just saw that in the Gates interview. It's probably full of other ironic quotes. But I don't feel like reading the whole thing. And any old newspaper has ironic quotes in it. Still interesting though.
posted by redleaf at 11:55 PM on February 25, 2001