Post the very best in obsolete and failed technology

The Something Awful Forums > Main > Post Your Favorite: Carefully Curated > Post the very best in obsolete and failed technology

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Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

PremiumSupport posted:

What should actually happen in a VAT environment is that the company profit eats the minor differences in tax rates across regions to ensure consistent pricing, or the company chooses not to do business in regions with high tax rates. The price of the product is $4 period, end of story. The fact that $0.30 of that is tax in Region 1 and $0.33 of that is tax in Region 2 is irrelevant. Tax becomes a cost of doing business rather than an additional cost to the consumer.

Except the first thing that would happen is some "consumer group" in Region 1 would get their panties in a bunch about how they're technically paying 3 cents more than people in Region 2 and why shouldn't they get the benefit of a lower VAT and :rant:

# ¿ Jun 5, 2018 08:57

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# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 00:07

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

They may be obsolete, but I love the slow, lazy thunka-thunka-thunka sound of hot bulb engined boats.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2018 18:17

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Or just buy a USB stick that has more storage space than all those tapes combined.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2018 18:10

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

JazzmasterCurious posted:

Chyrosran22 has the best YouTube voice. With Techmoan as a close runner-up.

I'm a big fan of Cocktail Chemistry for pleasant youtube voices.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2018 17:57

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Powered Descent posted:

I thought it was so that when the would-be thief looked in to see if your stereo was worth stealing, they'd see that you'd taken off the face plate, and no matter how good the stereo is they'd never be able to sell it without that.

In practice they'd break in and steal it anyway because everyone who had a removable faceplate on their stereo left it in the glove compartment.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2018 19:22

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Yeah I like Techmoan partly because he actually speaks at a normal conversational pace. With a lot of other youtubers I have to turn the video speed up to 150% to avoid being lulled to sleep by their presentation.

# ¿ Nov 11, 2018 12:33

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

KozmoNaut posted:

Every time MiniDisc comes up in this thread or the Retro tech thread, it pains me a little how Sony mismanaged the format. They could have ruled the removable storage/media player segment so hard for 10-15 years, but they fumbled and I'm sure the record label arm of the company didn't help matters, with their fear of MP3.

From what I've heard, this is what kept throwing spanners in the works. Sony Corporation would make something that could have become the dominant media format, but then Sony Music and Sony Pictures would force it to be burdened with invasive DRM or limiting functionality because they're deathly afraid of anything that remotely smelled like it could enable piracy.

# ¿ Nov 14, 2018 11:35

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

mystes posted:

lol optical media.

I don't think I've owned a device capable of reading optical media in.. uhh.. 6 or 7 years.

# ¿ Nov 14, 2018 22:00

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

JacquelineDempsey posted:

That sounds like an absolute nightmare, too. When my husband, who's a total Facebook whore, forgets to silence his phone notifications before coming to bed, I loving hate being woken up at 2am just because someone said "lol" to a funny pic he posted.

On Android you can schedule Do Not Disturb mode which prevents any sounds or vibration except from explicitly whitelisted contacts. I have mine scheduled from midnight to 7am on weekdays and slightly longer on weekends.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2018 13:21

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Has Intel space rated any of their later CPUs or are you still stuck with a 386 if you want x86 in space?

# ¿ Mar 13, 2019 18:21

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

WithoutTheFezOn posted:

I remember getting “auto tuned to one channel with no knob” radio keychains at major league baseball giveaway nights. Obviously the AM station that carried the games. Always loved those.

When I went to Goodwood Revival last year we got one of those so you could listen to the race commentary no matter where in the area you were. They were a little over the ear thing and loud enough that you could hear it even if you wore earplugs underneath.

# ¿ May 14, 2019 13:45

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Vanagoon posted:

Edit: Anything that still exists on the "live internet" and doesn't have to be dug up at archive.org is always a good thing, I think.

I found yesterday that the official Space Jam web page from 1996 is still active and is a fantastic time capsule.

The front page was updated at some point to add privacy policy links and a cookie warning, but they left everything else untouched.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2019 10:03

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Disgruntled Bovine posted:

Obsolete technology eh?

How about steam locomotives?

Awesome machines.

It got me wondering, were there ever any steam-electric locomotives?

# ¿ Jun 6, 2019 09:09

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Krispy Wafer posted:

I worked at NationsBank during the '96 Olympic games and they tried so hard to make cash cards a thing. These were colorful cards with a chip that you would load with money and use at certain retailers. It was pointless. Anyone who needed one of those would almost certainly have a credit card that worked better in every conceivable way than a money card with no loss protection and whose balance slowly drained with monthly fees. Plus only certain retailers could take them and it was iffy whether the system would work with those.

We had a similar system in Sweden. It was introduced in 1997 with a grand marketing campaign, especially aimed at younger people. They had a campaign in schools where everyone got a card loaded with $5. I remember I used mine to buy a magazine and some chocolate and then stuffed the card in a drawer never to be used again.

It was a completely stupid system.
While there was no monthly fee, there was a fee every time you put money on the card, and there was a transaction fee for the merchant. This was at a time when credit/debit card fees were still pretty high and a lot of merchants didn't accept credit cards for lower sum purchases. CashCard was touted as an alternative more suitable for those small purchases, but the merchant fee was almost as bad as for credit cards, so apart from a few convenience store chains and gas station chains very few merchants adopted it.
There was no security on the card. If you lost the card you lost the money.
You could only put money on the card by using a special ATM-like terminal which when the system was launched were still few and far between.

Apparently the system was still around until 2004, but the whole thing was effectively stillborn. I recall going into a store some time in the early 2000s and being surprised that they had a CashCard reader on the counter. When I pointed out to the cashier that I was surprised they had one she replied she could count on one hand how many times it had been used.

# ¿ Jun 28, 2019 17:30

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Kamrat posted:

Speaking of connecting computers.

I remember my first LAN-Party, we used the coaxial inputs because we thought it was better because you didn't need a stinking hub since you could just daisy chain the computers. I was so pissed when they removed those from network cards. I can understand the reasoning now but back then I didn't really understand it.

One of the first LAN parties I was at had 50 something computers all connected on a single 10base2 network, without grounding. :science:

# ¿ Jun 28, 2020 08:59

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Rectus posted:

50 computers on a single collision domain all trying to send game updates every frame must have been hell on the network, I wonder what percentage of the packets could have gotten through.

I honestly don't remember how well it worked. I may also be overestimating how many computers there were, this was ~25 years ago.

I do remember getting a good shock from touching the metal shield on the cable though.

# ¿ Jun 29, 2020 01:05

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

This is some Nintendo vs Sega schoolyard level arguing.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2020 16:40

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Speaking of remotes and programming, Panasonic released a series of VCRs in the late 80s where the remote had a barcode reader. For programming scheduled recordings you'd just take out your handy sheet of barcodes and swipe the reader over them.

I'll just let the hands do the talking:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qqs3kMW1caA

# ¿ Aug 13, 2020 11:41

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

evobatman posted:

Wasn't that ShowView codes in Europe?

Yep. A very short lived thing.

# ¿ Aug 14, 2020 05:02

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

I had a Konix Speedking for my C64, which was a weird rear end joystick that you held in your hand. I recall it wasn't too bad, though you did get tired of holding it after a while.

There was also a version that had two buttons and an autofire switch, which I believe was made for consoles (NES maybe?) rather than the C64

# ¿ Aug 18, 2020 22:29

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

monolithburger posted:

I have one of those alarm apps that makes you do mental mini-games in order to turn off the alarm.

Turns out doing mazes, memory, and sums don't make me any more awake.

I tried one of those for about a week. It didn't make it easier to wake up, it just made me wake up crankier. And I also discovered I could force quit the app to make it go away so I would just do that anyway.

I am my own worst enemy.

Putting a coffee maker on a timer sounds like a good idea though. Carrot, not stick.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2020 16:08

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

I have a small analog alarm clock that I set five minutes later in addition to my phone alarm if there's something really important I need to get up for. I use it seldom enough that I'm not conditioned to sleep through the signal.

# ¿ Oct 8, 2020 10:55

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Newgrounds is distributing their own Flash player so people can still watch their older content. Iirc you haven't been able to upload new flash content for a long time though.

# ¿ Oct 29, 2020 09:57

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Depends on the size obviously, but if it's 30 inch or more bring a friend to help you lift.

# ¿ Nov 17, 2020 12:57

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

I've seen some people turn them remote controlled with an Xbee or similar and an RC servo.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2020 12:56

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

I say we should make youtube speedrunning a thing. The challenge being to present a topic in a video that's as short and concise as possible.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2021 14:23

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Brian Bagnall's trilogy on Commodore is an excellent read if you want some insight into what an insanely dysfunctional company Commodore was.

Commodore: A company on the edge
Commodore: The Amiga years
Commodore: The final years

# ¿ Mar 24, 2021 15:30

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

I'm painfully reminded that Shrek is old enough that CRTs were still a thing when it was made.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2021 11:46

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

One Nut Wonder posted:

I remember my grade school teachers constantly trying to get me to use those little grippy things at the end of a pencil. Dammit, I know how to hold a loving pencil.

I loved those when I was younger, made it much more comfortable to hold the pen when you had to sit and write large chunks of text. But I haven't used one since I left school, we invented computers and word processors for a reason and I don't think I've used a pen to write anything longer than a postcard since then.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2021 12:29

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

We had typing classes in I think 12th grade, but we used word processors and it wasn't so much about typing as it was formatting, knowing where to put the address on a formal letter and so on.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2021 13:22

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

The US never abolish slavery, they just expanded it to cover everyone and renamed it "right to work".

# ¿ Apr 7, 2021 12:15

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Perhaps I confused it with At Will law.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2021 15:50

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

I think generally a feature phone is one that has one or more built in features other than calling and texting, like mp3 playback, camera, etc, but doesn't have the ability to install third party applications.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2021 12:02

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Iron Crowned posted:

"Right to work" means that if you work somewhere that has a union, you are not required to join the union. It essentially is a method of union busting because it's an attempt to starve the unions of their funding.
"At Will Employment" is practically universal in the US, it means they can terminate your employment for any reason at all, or no reason at all.

Oh right, so they're not mutually exclusive either? Thanks for the explanation!

# ¿ Apr 8, 2021 17:26

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Capt.Whorebags posted:

The blackberry was amazingly popular in corporate Australia. Actual portable email with a useable keyboard was such a novel concept.

It was *the* corporate phone for a long time because it was the first phone that did corporate email including calendar sync. And it didn't even need a data plan, although it needed carrier support. It was based on Mobitex. But RIM rested on those laurels for way too long without really innovating and then ActiveSync for Exchange came and drove a stake right through the heart of Blackberry's one competitive advantage. In their struggle to catch up their build quality went way down which only accelerated their downfall.

This is a good book on the topic: https://www.amazon.com/Losing-Signal-Extraordinary-Spectacular-BlackBerry/dp/1250060176

# ¿ Apr 13, 2021 13:13

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Trabant posted:

Hell, I wish a PC manufacturer would buy them out and bring their tech to the broader market because it could make a difference in the amount of e-trash we generate. But I legit doubt there's enough of an audience of turbonerds like myself to make this a successful product

If a major manufacturer bought them out it would be to bury them, unfortunately.

# ¿ May 16, 2021 14:34

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Cyril Sneer posted:

I don't buy for a second any of you were actually solving problems with the symbolic functions or graphing functions of those calculators. I used both TI and HP in my undergrad days and they were a total PITA for anything other than standard calculations.

I had a Casio graphing calculator and it was pretty convenient to graph a function and then be able to read out the Y value for a given X just by moving the cursor.

# ¿ May 26, 2021 12:23

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

F4rt5 posted:

Omg that's awesome. I grew up with this, from age 8 or so:
It actually had a 3.5" floppy drive too, but extremely unreliable and half our disks were unreadable whenever...

Spectravideo buddies. :hfive:

I had a 328 that my father bought at a discount after attending a "computer training" organized by his job. He never used it himself so after a few weeks I took possession of it. I still have it, packed up in its original box.

# ¿ Jul 11, 2021 13:59

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Nocheez posted:

I can still hear the midi music in my head.

Was it the game that basically created the genre as we know it?

Pretty much yeah. This is a pretty good history of the game and the companies surrounding it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOemQuy2JUc

# ¿ Sep 20, 2021 19:03

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# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 00:07

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Gromit posted:

Ouch, right in my nostalgia.

# ¿ Sep 21, 2021 11:57

The Something Awful Forums > Main > Post Your Favorite: Carefully Curated > Post the very best in obsolete and failed technology

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