Post the very best in obsolete and failed technology

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Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

Lowen SoDium posted:

That reminds me. Does anyone else remember old CRT page monitors? The were monitors that were a very tall aspect ratio meant to be able to display a whole page in a word processor at one time. I can't find any information on what the actual aspect ratio of these monitors were, but it seems like there were pretty close to what a common wide screen monitor is today, but turn vertical. I had seem some that had a rotatable base and special video card that would automatically change the picture to match the screens orientation. It seems that this is a technology that the internet has completely forgot... or rather might have never known about since they died out before the internet came in to wide use.

The old Mac SE had a vertical monitor you could hook up as an external and if I recall correctly we had some Quadras at the college newspaper hooked to vertical CRT's. Obviously these had very limited uses outside of publishing.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2013 02:20

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# ¿ Jan 20, 2021 02:03

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

Phanatic posted:

The reason it wasn't built wasn't because people realized it was a dumb idea, it was because ICBMs turned out to be a lot easier to develop than expected. So stuff like this, and the nuclear-powered B-36 bomber (yes, that's right, a big fuckoff airplane with a nuclear reactor in it, it was actually built and actually flown with an operating nuclear reactor on board, although at that point in the R&D the reactor was just along for the ride, not actually keeping the plane in the air), ended up being canceled because if you did want to salt the earth there were easier ways that also couldn't be defended against.

In Richard Feyman's autobiography he mentioned getting a patent on a nuke powered plane. Apparently Los Alamos was gung-ho to get as many nuke patents as possible and his was a plane.

Sure enough after the war some company came along and tried to get him to build it. Even though it was at best a theory and at worst several square miles of irradiated wasteland.

I'm really not sure how a nuke would power a plane. Would it boil water to create steam to push the turbines like a nuclear power plant?

# ¿ May 6, 2013 18:29

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

Getting in on scantron-chat, all the big standardized tests use them. Our neighboring school district got in big trouble for erasing incorrect marks and replacing them with correct answers. Like get fired and go to jail kind of trouble.

# ¿ May 9, 2013 12:44

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

Code Jockey posted:

Slight derail but is this part of the massive investigation going on with this in Atlanta? I heard on NPR the other day that a bunch of schools got nailed for changing test scores, erasing bad ones and entering good ones.

If I recall, erasing a scantron answer bubble still left quite a mark on it, dark enough that I used to worry that it'd still get picked up as my answer instead of the one I changed it to.

I also always wondered about those mystery bubbles that weren't part of the main answer grid. Never did fill any in, but I always wondered what they controlled.

Yep, it's the Atlanta mess. You expect a certain number of erasers, but several Atlanta schools were off the chart, which started the investigation. The superintendent and a bunch of principals, teachers, and proctors were arrested. Not so much for cheating but because they received cash bonuses for those good grades (hello racketeering).

So yeah, you can't totally erase a Scan-Tron answer, but the grading computer is smart enough to tell the difference.

# ¿ May 9, 2013 16:44

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

Buggerlugs posted:

Our college just bought 30 of these to support students with learning difficulties, so they still have some use!

I had a middle schooler in one of my sub classes with one. He had some kind of disability that make writing difficult so he typed on his Alphasmart.

Considering how much money is wasted in special ed its cool to find cheap older technology repurposed like that.

# ¿ May 12, 2013 21:48

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

nature6pk posted:

I managed to drop my old Siemens C65 phone off a lift 26 feet down to a concrete floor, and it only had a minor scratch on the corner it landed upon.

My rear end in a top hat puckers at the thought of doing that now with my smartphone.

My old Sony-Erricson candy bar had a busted antenna which oddly wasn't covered under its damage protection. So I threw that thing 30+ feet in the air onto concrete 4 times before the tiny 2 line LCD screen finally cracked.

It still worked, but now at least I could get it replaced.

# ¿ May 19, 2013 18:07

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

Speaking of RAM, remember sim expanders? Since Pentium computers needed ram in equal pairs upgrading could be a real hassle if you wanted to keep any of your old sticks. Enter sim expanders. Put your new 32mb stick in one slot and 2 16mb sticks in the other.

# ¿ May 31, 2013 14:46

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

Maybe my memory is faulty, but has anyone else ever seen a parallel port powered device? I had an old sheetfed scanner that I could swear was powered via the parallel printer port.

# ¿ Jun 4, 2013 02:29

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

Shugojin posted:

I love non malicious early viruses, they were so obviously some guy coding something silly for shits.

It may have been a urban legend, but my mom spent 30 years at IBM and said the coke virus, which thanked you for being a loyal customer and popped open the CD drive for a cup holder, caused their IT department so much trouble.

# ¿ Jun 23, 2013 14:37

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

Coffee And Pie posted:

I was there last year, it's been replaced with a big, boring, digital display.

The New Haven Union station in Connecticut still has one, but apparently it's in the process of being scrapped in favor of LED.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2013 23:07

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

Devyl posted:

I love obsolete car technology. I hope you all do too

In the fall of 1954, a new revolution in car design was revealed on The Milton Berle Show. Up until this point, car designers thought of the windshield as another piece of glass. However, the 1954 Buick Special changed all of that. The car featured the very first ever "wrap-around" windshield. At the time of the Specials' reveal, wishields were one or two straight pieces of glass with a large pillar to hold up the glass, like so:

While this design worked well to hold up the glass, anyone that has ever driven one of these older cars will tell you that this creates a big blind-spot. When stopping and checking for traffic, you often had to either lean your head over the steering wheel to see past the blind spot, or stop far enough back to watch crossing traffic. Both of these methods had their downfalls, and this blind-spot would often lead to car-related accidents. The windshield of the 1954 Buick Special was unique in the fact that it offered the driver no blind-spot in the area. Here's an example:

This new design not only increased safety, but also helped usher in the era of more fuel-efficient design due to the rounded shape versus the square-like shape of car design before. by the late 50's practically every automobile manufacturer caught on to the idea and sold cars with their versions of the windshield.

I guess that fits with other obsolete technology, because as far as I know no automakers use wrap windshields anymore. Maybe they just aren't necessary, but sometime around the mid-1990's the trend moved to flatter windshields.

I always figured it was cost related. Flatter windshields would be easier to ship. But I guess it's possible structural advances improved pillars or shifted them around so they didn't block lines of sight.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2013 00:12

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

You Are A Elf posted:

Wrap-around windshields actually died out by the mid-1960s, not the 1990s; cars were pretty aerodynamic by the 90s with flatter windshields. Example: 1963 Chevrolet truck:

Notice how the A-pillar tapers toward the door instead of the front? That's a true wrap-around windshield. Then, sometime in 1963, the all new totally redesigned for 1964 Chevrolet trucks came out that same year and looked like this:

Yep, The windshield is now flat, and the A-pillar resembles a modern truck for the first time. Other vehicles quickly followed suit, and wrap-around windshields were practically gone forever.

Wrap around windshields lingered for quiet a while.

Early to mid-90's Saturn:

Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme:

Granted, it's possible we're both right since you were probably referring to the front windshield whereas all my examples are of the rear. And the only examples I seem to be finding are all GM cars so maybe it was just a stylistic choice on their part.

Still, it seemed they really helped with rear visibility. Now we have big honking C pillars creating blind spots.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2013 18:03

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

two forty posted:

Bombardier is far too French Canadian to be able to do anything without major problems. They proudly state that they're the only manufacturer of planes and trains- maybe because everyone else was smart enough to pick one or the other?

Speaking of Quebec, how about the Big O Olympic stadium in Montreal? Built in the early seventies for the 1976 Olympics, it cost a fortune which was paid for by cigarette excise taxes, but even the heavy smoking French Canadians (c.f. Rene Levesque) didn't pay it off until about five years ago. The centerpiece is an enormous tilted tower which was supposed to be able to lift the fabric roof off the stadium. The roof was poorly made and the system as a whole didn't really work, and after 1992 they never bothered to remove it. Later it served as the home of the Expos, but was apparently not a great stadium to play baseball in.

I still love Quebec, anyway.

I caught a game there maybe 4 or 5 years before they left. There was a long crease in the outfield turf like a poorly laid carpet. Must have made chasing pop-ups more interesting.

It wasn't a bad stadium by any means, but by that time they has pretty much given up.

# ¿ Jul 6, 2013 16:08

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

So the Bone Phone was bone conductive sound? Like the new Google Glass?

It wasn't obsolete, it was ahead of its time.

# ¿ Jul 7, 2013 17:27

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

einTier posted:

Usually, when people talk about "chiclet" keyboards, they're talking about the original IBM PCjr.

Those keys sucked something terrible and were a nightmare to try to type on, especially for touch typists. Memories of them kept me from buying a newer MacBook for a long time.

Incidentally, do they even sell Chiclet gum anymore?

I had a PCjr and I do not remember that keyboard. My mom worked for IBM so maybe she got an upgraded keyboard. Even with that it was still a piece of poo poo. The processor was only powerful enough to play Bill Gates' racing game or Infocom text adventures. Which is why I know we didn't have a lovely keyboard cause all I did on that was type.

I remember desperately wanting a Nintendo and my mom saying we had to wait for this great new IBM computer that was coming out. To this day I've never played a Zelda game.

Krispy Wafer has a new favorite as of 01:47 on Aug 13, 2013

# ¿ Aug 13, 2013 01:45

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

Taeke posted:

Wouldn't surprise me in the least. Why don't we have a moonbase by now?

Because while it doesn't take a whole lot of computing power to go into space or build a moon base it does require a lot of money.

I'm trying to think what computers would do more efficiently than slide rules and the only thing I can think of is design. Without computers there's a lot more trial and error and probably a few more dead astronauts.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2013 14:50

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

Hypnolobster posted:

I'm pretty sure only the non-arthritic elderly that got WAY INTO COMPUTERS sometime in the mid 90's still use trackballs.

Meh, those are scrubs. I was using trackballs in the 80's on my PCjr.

Speaking of failed technology:

I've had this thing for 6 or 7 years, it's currently glowing bluely on my desk. I've never found a use for it. I've only seen one in the wild and that's for kids to sign in for appointments at my daughter's orthodontist.

So cool, so pointless. I guess it's not a total failure since you can still buy them, but I have no idea what they're being used for.

# ¿ Oct 9, 2013 01:36

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

Sorry, it's essentially a stereo dial for your PC. You can set it up to control your volume or perform app specific commands by a combination or dial turns or pushes.

It sounds great in theory, until you realize you can do almost all of that stuff from your mouse and keyboard without having to reach for a separate input device. It was originally made for Apple computers and as such fits the design over functionality mold perfectly.

EDIT: maybe it's not a failed technology, I just really wanted to contribute with all the cool kids.

# ¿ Oct 9, 2013 01:54

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

KozmoNaut posted:

I had one, and while the scroll ring was absolutely terrible, the ball and buttons worked well. The size and weight of the ball lent itself well to precision movement.

They make an even more updated version now, instead of the stupid scroll ring, you spin the ball itself to scroll. Pretty nifty and it looks so cool.

The scroll ring had a lengthy break-in period for some stupid reason. After using it for a couple of days it'd suddenly go from crappy to pretty decent. Why they didn't just develop an extra step in the manufacturing process to spin the ring around a couple of hundred times I have no idea.

I loved my expert trackball. Eventually the buttons started screwing up and I haven't been willing to spend another $100 on a new one.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2013 02:12

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

JediTalentAgent posted:

IBM ThinkPad Butterfly keyboard was an idea that I'm sort of surprised never caught on when netbooks became popular, as it would be a way to keep the relatively small size but increase the size of the keyboard, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTlQxHFCaDo

Apparently, it ceased being practical when screen sizes increased, meaning a normal keyboard size could also increase, too, without the need of a folding mechanism.

I had an used one that I picked up for $100 off eBay (retailed for $4000 originally). Really cool hardware, but it always felt more like a proof of concept than an evolutionary design. And a bitch to install anything on as it had no floppy and no CD-ROM. I can't remember if it had ethernet. I think I may have had to use a PCMCIA card for that.

But that pales in comparison to the Canon NoteJet:

A laptop with a printer under the keyboard!

# ¿ Jan 23, 2014 22:40

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

Johnny Aztec posted:

I don't know if it is true today, as it was 5, to 10 years ago, but I recall someone doing the math over at [H]ardforums and that is costs MORE to turn a PC/monitor on from a dead state, than it does to wake one up from hibernation. Plus, (again at the time) it was like 12 dollars a year in electrical costs to keep them all on standby. Hardly planet raping.

We have a ton more devices, yet electricity usage has declined for 3 straight years.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/u-...-year-1.2479249

The amount of energy an iPad uses is ridiculously small. My old Mattel handheld football game probably used more juice.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2014 19:11

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

Iron Crowned posted:

Felt like answering this one. I wouldn't say that these things were pointless, it was a few more years before the iPod was invented. Questioning an old MP3 Player's usefulness ~13 years later is like questioning the usefullness of Smart Phones 13 years from now when we're all using Google Implants.

But it goes to show just how mind boggling those next generation MP3 players were. You went from flash based space measured in mb to gigs of room on a hard drive.

But my goodness we wasted our money back then.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2014 13:43

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

JediTalentAgent posted:

I've been thinking of color e-ink for a while and I'm not sure if it's been posted or not or if it qualifies.

It's really interesting, but I also I guess it's sort of a niche product that is sort of becoming irrelevant with the price of tablets dropping and the battery life and screen clarity becoming better and better. You could spend the same amount of money on one of the color e-ink devices as you could on a full-fledged premium tablet with greater features and function.

E-ink is an odd technology in that it really doesn't get utilized anywhere near as much as it should. Kohl's department stores recently went to digital price tags on their display racks and used terrible looking washed out LCD screens, when for that purpose, E-ink would have been perfect and probably cost less.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2014 13:58

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

AFewBricksShy posted:

Not to go all , but wouldn't the absurd amount of money made by textbook publishers be a hell of an incentive to try keep this out of schools? It would be awesome for everyone with the exception of the people in the textbook publishing industry, but I'm pretty sure they have some serious clout.
edit: Never mind, they are already trying to roll out ebooks:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013...E96M04520130723

Yeah, textbooks are an obsolete technology. My kids rarely bring books home. Typically there is a class copy and digital versions if you need to read something at home. When I used to substitute we almost never used textbooks, instead relying on handouts or using the overhead to read along in class. Compare that to my childhood when every kid had 20 pounds of literature to haul to and from school.

Here is an interesting article about textbook publishing. Essentially they priced themselves out of the market and now that market is rapidly contracting.

http://www.project-disco.org/compet...tbook-industry/

Digital subscriptions make money too. But it's a piece of an ever smaller pie.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2014 18:15

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

Humphreys posted:

I never got the Blackberry hype. People said it was great for business and what not, but I just don't know why any other established manufacturers weren't good enough. Was it just BBM?

The keyboard was a huge part of it. Also after using it for awhile you get really quick with the various shortcuts. I personally can't stand them, but my wife has both a work Blackberry and a personal Blackberry. Business in the front, business in the back.

The problem is they never adapted to the iPhone paradigm shift. The Blackberry engineers reportedly said the iPhone was impossible, even after it was announced, because they couldn't imagine a battery big enough to power that huge screen. They just didn't see the need for a form factor past their own until it was obsolete.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2014 14:02

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

MA-Horus posted:

Oh God don't say that, it just makes Apple more smug.

"We make the impossible, possible."

Well Apple got around it by making a huge chunk of the device the battery. They also lowered expected battery life, which to give credit where it's due, was awesome on older Blackberries.

And on topic with the first iPhone, 2g is pretty drat obsolete. I remember AT&T trying to get permission to pull the plug, but does that mean that areas that only get EDGE just won't have service or are they replacing it with something else?

# ¿ Mar 12, 2014 17:08

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

Pilsner posted:

Steve Ballmer also laughed at how the iPhone wasn't suitable for businesses because it didn't have a keyboard. I think a lot of people were skeptical of the on-screen keyboard.

The first thing I tried on an iPhone 2G was the keyboard. It really was a novel thing to type on the screen with your thumbs. All of the on-screen keyboards I had used previously were made for styluses.

And the pinch to zoom was the poo poo.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2014 15:31

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

peter gabriel posted:

My first smartphone was a blackberry with a slide out keyboard (I liked that idea because it had touchscreen as well and I wasn't sure if I'd like touchscreens) and I got it because it was 'the business phone' - I went to install Skype and it didn't exist for it.

Sold it.

I don't think Blackberries even had forward facing cameras until last year. My wife had one of those sliders and honestly it wasn't a bad phone, but holy hell did they skimp on just about every feature. Cheap camera, outdated internals, obsolete operating system, BUT WITH A KEYBOARD - $500.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2014 17:34

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

JediTalentAgent posted:

I'm trying to find evidence of this, and I can't, but I'm sure I tried it at least once.

I could have sworn in the late 90s Yahoo had some short-lived automated telephone e-mail checking thing that you were assigned a numeric ID code and a pass code and you could dial an 800 number and I think it would 'read' new e-mails to you over the phone or tell you if you had new emails waiting.

I don't know about Yahoo, but in 1996 I would call my local newspaper's automated line and pay like 2 bucks to get the closing stock price on my options while I was trying to sell them. Which I then used to buy a computer so I could stop calling automated phone lines to get simple stuff like stock prices.

I found the computer in the newspaper classifieds though. Now that's a whole bucket of obsolete.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2014 14:48

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

leidend posted:

My family for some reason bought two of these (1991 and 92 Dodge Spirits), and handed them down to me well after their prime. Pieces of poo poo, but I still miss the V6 power now that I'm driving a 100hp Mazda.

It must have been their awesome advertising campaigns.

Because

# ¿ Apr 2, 2014 15:18

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

GWBBQ posted:

I know at least Mercedes and BMW offer leatherette interiors, so there must have been some improvements along the way.

Whenever I rent a F-250 from the Home Depot they have pleather seats, so it must be an option somewhere.

Interior plastics from before the 90's are certainly obsolete. Nothing better than your dashboard cracking. Oh, let's put a carpet cover over it to make it look BETTER!

# ¿ Apr 2, 2014 18:58

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

Our old Aries K had separate keys for the driver and passenger side door. Which is what happens after the repo man breaks the lock.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2014 02:36

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

DrBouvenstein posted:

Too bad touchscreens for a car stereo/information center are a terrible idea.

Yes, what we need is MORE things to encourage people to take their eyes off the road. At least with your "standard" car stereo, after your initial learning curve, you can operate it by touch alone. In theory, you can with a touchscreen, but in my experience (and every thing I've seen/read,) it's never as good as a real. tactile interface and will always encourage more "eyes off the road" scenarios.

Ford is having this problem. They had to admit their interface sucked and they're bringing buttons back.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...-into-ford-sync

I've never driven one, but the BMW control knob looks pretty cool.

An obsolete and failed car technology are exterior plastic panels. Saturns had their issues, but at least your car doors didn't look like Edward James Olmos' face after a dozen dumbasses dinged you in the parking lot.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2014 17:38

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

GE is a really lovely company. Back in 2007 they were financing their day-to-day expenses with corporate paper (short term loans) instead of keeping a reasonable amount of cash in the bank. Then the corporate paper market disappeared overnight due to the Lehmann Brothers collapse. Suddenly GE didn't even have enough money for it's own payroll. If not for the Fed agreeing to buy all of it's corporate paper they would have gone bankrupt.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2014 15:15

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

I've got a 32 inch Sharp upstairs that I have no idea what we're going to do with. Moving it from the downstairs 7 years ago contributed to later back surgery.

I guess I could take it apart, discharge the capacitors, and throw it away in pieces like I did our old upright piano.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2014 17:50

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

axeil posted:

Okay as someone who actually works with this stuff I'm gonna stop you right there and say you're wrong.

Almost every large business finances itself with paper because keeping mountains of cash around is pointless when you can get a basis point or two making a short loan. You set up a 24 hour (or week or other extremely short time frame) loan, use the interest to fund your operating expenses and roll the loan over again.

In a financial free-fall when people were wondering whether or not people would open for business the next morning the rates on paper climbed to the point that companies weren't able to roll the loan over. You also had some people not paying back these short term loans because their assets all went to poo poo. This is a problem.

Additionally, the Fed buying paper did nothing, it was really the Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program the FDIC ran that insured commercial paper that saved the market. And the FDIC made a pretty penny on that deal for the taxpayer. All the data is on their website if you ever want to see how the financial system got saved and how much money the US government made doing it.

edit: links: http://www.fdic.gov/regulations/res...TLGP/index.html

Only 6 default events and a total return of $9.3B to the FDIC's funds. Not a bad return for saving the economy. The was then used to help replenish the Deposit Insurance Fund, which is what the FDIC uses instead of tax money to resolve failed banks.

Mountains of cash isn't pointless when you wake up one morning and no one wants to loan you any money. GE had a large exposure to the financial crisis due to their consumer lending arm and were horribly unprepared for what happened. They were doing stock buybacks at $60 a share in 2006 when their stock price plummeted to $5 a share in 2008.

As for obsolete tech, any charger that's not USB. drat it's a hassle trying to figure out which random AC adapter goes to what device.

# ¿ Apr 21, 2014 13:48

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

axolotl farmer posted:

No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

My personal favorite:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ap...g-on-the-iphone

# ¿ May 6, 2014 03:00

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

Lowen SoDium posted:

Combine that with Apple's clean and modern looking physical designs, and it's little wonder that the iPod sold like it did in spite of other players have more features and fewer restrictions.

What really catapulted the iPod was iTunes, which was the most unrestrictive digital music store. Music stores before iTunes had all kinds of weird rules like you could burn this track, but not this track, and only X number of times. Apple managed to cut through all that and put together an usable storefront. Sure there was still DRM, but you could burn an iTunes playlist 10 times and individual tracks until the laser on your Superdrive fell off.

I'm still not entirely sure why the record labels agreed on iTunes. Maybe because it was Mac only and easier as a proof of concept test. After iTunes got popular they did everything they could to change those terms, but by that time it was too late.

GWBBQ posted:

That reminds me of my first smartphone, the Samsung SCH-i760

My friends called it the "Guam Phone" and refused to believe it was sold in first-world countries (yes, I know Guam is a US territory.)

They never completely went away. It's a niche market, but they're a nice easy way to make small production runs of albums. One of my brother's friends runs a record label that does exclusively tape releases for metal bands.

I remember looking at that phone and this one:

I ended up getting some forgettable HTC Windows 6 phone that needed an adapter to plug in standard headphones. Back then it really was like selecting the lesser of two evils. Nothing worked like it was supposed to.

Krispy Wafer has a new favorite as of 18:05 on May 6, 2014

# ¿ May 6, 2014 17:56

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

blugu64 posted:

edit: Also had one of these, a Qualcomm from '99.

I had the next generation of the Palm phone thingy. I loved that drat phone. I worked in an ISP's NOC at the time and we'd often have to test dial our 56k modems. My Palm phone had a working 14.4 modem so I just connected from my desk rather than use the test modems in our lab.

Palm was the poo poo back then.

# ¿ May 7, 2014 02:40

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# ¿ Jan 20, 2021 02:03

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

Phanatic posted:

It's because the labels were wedded to their own obsolete technology: the album. A friend of mine who's a real music writer had a blog entry on this several years ago on Livejournal (another obsolete technology!):

I have never dirtier than selling Lou Bega's A Little Bit of Mambo for $19 to a teenage girl at Wherehouse Music. $20 for one song. And not even a good song.

# ¿ May 7, 2014 18:41

The Something Awful Forums > Main > Post Your Favorite (or Request): I'm existing just for listing!!! > Post the very best in obsolete and failed technology

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