Hacker News Reader

Comment by erkmene | Hacker News Reader

I haven’t seen this before. There’s also a bit (relatively) updated version which I prefer: https://youtu.be/8d4RtvMQp10

View on HN

Gateway AnyKey keyboard with diagonal arrow keys.

I worked tech support for gateway way back in the day.

The reset programming for the AnyKey was a very common call, many people didn’t even know they had an AnyKey keyboard and would accidentally remap keys.

My first PC was a Gateway 2000 (in 1991). The provided Anykey keyboard was awesome. I loved its ability to record and playback macros.

I had it for a while and mapped Ctrl+Alt+P to my password + Enter. This made the Unix guy at work groan audibly when I told him. :D

Ha yes it is. And the two sets of function keys. I loved the Anykey keyboard.

I remember the old one but I've never seen that one. That's great.

What is the appeal of either of these?

For young children, what's the developmental impact?

It's a recurring vignette where two Martians go around-- often carrying their own guidebook-- and mis-categorize Earth things:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTc3PsW5ghQ

The one with Bob's computer is a bit less clear. It seems the orange Martian falls in love with an Apple II(e?) and beams back in to bring it a rose.

> For young children, what's the developmental impact?

Kids get to practice talking about and describing what's silly about the behavior they see in the vignette. In the process, children usually end up properly categorizing various Earth objects, gaining valuable experience points which they will later exchange for increased attack and magic-conjuring abilities.

Additionally, the kids learn coping strategies to deal with the idea that creatures can teleport without warning to any location in the show and are never, ever noticed by any of the characters on the show. IIRC these characters scared the ever-living bejeezus out of a lot of kids.

Most important HN edit I've ever made: correct "everlasting bejeezus" to "ever-living bejeezus"

My little sister was TERRIFIED of them. Thanks for sharing this, she will be interested to know that she was not alone!

It's a harmless bit. The joke (if I remember correctly) is that these two creatures are aliens that pop up and don't know what the thing in front of them is. For children (and adults) it is silly because, of course, we know what a computer is – we've seen one dozens of hundreds of times! Compound that confusion with a silly way of speaking to reaffirm that they're not from earth and it makes you giggle.

As for the developmental impact, I think it's quite positive. Sesame Street has been and continues to be a great source of knowledge and useful lessons & morals for children. Adding in some silly situations like this helps keep them engaged and develop their sense of humor.

It doesn't show the year; but assuming this was about 1980, home computers were only just starting to appear - many kids wouldn't have seen them; and you've just told taught them computers do what you tell them to do, and not by themselves and also told them what the flashing thing is. For Sesame street that's more than enough for a little sketch. (And that the computer guy fixes everything....)

The machine depicted in the clip is an Apple IIe, which first came out in 1983. But this might not be a 1983 model, because the monitor depicted with the machine is the ColorMonitor IIe, which came out in 1985. Because it's a computer used on a set for a TV show, it's possibly a loan machine, perhaps from Apple themselves, so it was likely supplied as a new computer + new monitor combination. So I'd hazard a guess and say this setup is from 1985 or later.

If we take my previous assumption further, the Platinum IIe was released in 1987, which came with a numerical keypad built in, and looks distinctly different from the IIe. Even though this Youtube clip is 240p, you can distinctly see that there is no "divide" in the keyboard, so this is definitely not a Platinum IIe.

I would say this machine was manufactured between 1985 and 1987.

Introducing children to the concept of computers.

Keep in mind that Sesame Street basically pioneered children's educational programming.

watched these as a kid, and was highly impacted for some reason by the "yep" aliens over much other sesame street content I believe because they were sort of dropped into a random situation and had to suss out how everything worked.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com