Post the very best in obsolete and failed technology

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Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

Jerry Cotton posted:

You can use some electric typewriters as printers (TAKATAKATAKATAKATAKATAKA). My dad used one back in the early nineties, I think it was a Triumph-Adler (or at least the interface box had TA on it).

Heyyy, you just reminded me of the company that produced my first laptop, Triumph-Adler! I got it from my mom's friend, and I was excited to have my own computer for the first time.

If you ever complain about a modern laptop's touchpad, you got first world problems. This thing's touchpad required you to FIRMLY press down with your finger on that area to the top right of the keyboard, and then the mouse buttons were awkwardly placed to the left of it, which sometimes resulted in requiring both hands to operate the whole thing. I sometimes used a coin to add pressure to the pad, because my fingers hurt from using it.

I fiddled so much with it it eventually broke I think, but I did have a lot of fun tweaking config.sys and autoexec.bat to run games with its 2MB memory, and learned a lot of DOS console stuff in the process. I also used DoubleDisk (or was it DoubleDrive?) to get "more" space on the 40MB harddrive.

It had a 640x480 grey-scale DSTN screen... it ghosted with a delay of almost a second, and playing Civilization, I was oblivious to the fact that those blotches on the mountain tiles were yellow-colored gold (due to the grey-scale), didn't realize it until a friend told me.

Another peculiar thing about it was that its surface and bezel had this really rough, almost fuzzy feel to it, almost like a Kiwi fruit. It was overall solidly built.

# ¿ Sep 5, 2012 23:58

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 16:11

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

Perry Normal posted:

Re: Gumpei Yokoi, it always seemed like a shame to me that the disgrace of the Virtual Boy was caused by his going against his own basic design philosophy. He was all about using dependable, simple and cheap technology to it's fullest purpose (i.e. using calculator style LCD displays for the Game and Watch series, using very simple graphics tech for the Gameboy to keep battery life long and costs low, etc). Virtual Boy was new, untested technology and it blew up in his face.

For content, The Fisher-Price Movie Viewer

No audio, it worked via hand crank. It played these -

There was a handheld version as well.

The bigger version could also be used as a projector. Pretty simple stuff, but I had hours of fun moving cartoons forwards and backwards.

That reminds me of this thing my mother had lying around from when she was young. It was this brown, handheld "binocular" of sorts, about the size of a small virtual boy you could say. You put these white paper discs (very thin, about 10cm in diameter) in a slot on top, and they had a series of themed, tiny, transparent photos around the edge. For example, one would be themed Caribbean, and there were pictures of landmarks, local people, beaches, ports, etc. You pushed down on a lever to advance to the next picture. The slide pictures embedded in the disc were maybe 1x1cm, but when you viewed them through the two eye-holes (like a binocular), they of course appeared as big as your vision. Kinda neat in the old days. I think it was called something with "scope" or "vision" in the name, but I can't remember now.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2012 12:36

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

Elim Garak posted:

Are you talking about Viewmasters?

You talking about them being a toy from your mother's childhood has made me feel depressingly old.

Yes, that was the one!

How crazy they're still in production today. I wonder if my mom took it home with her from the USA or something.

# ¿ Sep 15, 2012 14:45

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

WebDog posted:

Nokia 3310 "The Brick"

You mean 3110. That's nothing, remember stuff like the 2110?

Huge (dimensions 148 x 56 x 25 mm), and with a telescopic antenna.

Speaking of mobiles, I also remember the costs and plans you got early on. I forgot how much the monthly subscription was, but I clearly remember that it cost around 70 cents per minute around 1996-1997. Also, SMS wasn't even included in the first plan my mother's phone had.

Flipperwaldt posted:

C45? There were others with an orange screen, but the C45 was quite a common model, from what I remember.

I had the S35i. The best and most beautiful phone I ever had, relative to the standards on the day of purchase. I paid near to 500� for it, which, looking back, is insane. But I loved it and I still do. So many tiny details in the operating system that made this phone superior. Pressing backspace for a few seconds while typing a text deleted the words one by one, instead of wiping the whole text. It recognised text delivery reports as different from other texts and only silently beeped once for them. Even though it had a non-learning T9, it's the only T9 I never switched off in irritation. The calendar made a decent calendar a necessity in my subsequent phones. The scroll buttons did scroll, instead of setting keypad volume or something equally senseless. Beautiful interface. Wish phones today were made with such love and attention.

EDIT: pic

Haha, how does that "Internet" work?

# ¿ Sep 17, 2012 11:47

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

Croccers posted:

Does that poo poo work? A good 3/4's of the sim cards I sell at work are people cutting their old sim and loving it up, or just getting the microSIM cause they to avoid spending another $2 loving up cutting another one.

Yup, I did it when I got my iPhone. You just have to cut carefully, and preferably match a template of sorts. It has worked without a problem for over two years now.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2012 22:12

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

DNova posted:

People complaining about US banks are baffling me. If your bank doesn't have free online bill payment, including the ability to print and mail a check to smaller companies, get a better bank.

Direct person to person electronic transfers are becoming fairly common as well (ING has this, for example), even if you are for some reason ignoring the existence of paypal, amazon, google, and others.

Bank accounts, checking accounts, everything is free in the US. In many other parts of the world, they charge you all kinds of fees, including monthly fees just for having an account.

Furthermore, paying with plastic is much less common in Europe at least compared to the US. Many people in Europe are still primarily using cash, and many establishments simply don't take any forms of plastic payments. And RFID/NFC payment? Forget it.

The US is way ahead (of Europe, at least) in all of this.

Not against where I live (Denmark).

All online bill payment is free.

Everyone uses free online bank-to-bank transfer for stuff like buying via our Craigslist equivalent (when stuff has to be sent via the mail), or when friends or relatives owe eachother.

Almost all bank accounts are free (all banks are required by law to provide a free account) with no monthly fee unless you get some pointless "exclusive" account.

A lot of people pay with plastic in Europe? Even obscure little shops in Southern Europe will accept a VISA. Where did you read that people pay with cash? Maybe you're thinking of Asia (or more specifically China).

I would also say that the US sounds like it's in the stone age, charging people extra for paying online (here companies charge you extra for NOT paying online) and still using cheques everywhere. Where I live, virtually all recurring bills are paid via something called Betalingsservice (lit. Payment Service), a national register where you "sign up" a bill payment, and the money (whatever amount, even with irregular bills like electricity) is automatically drawn from your account on the day of each invoice. So, I almost never have to pay any bills manually other than the first time I sign up with some company.

We also have state-controlled register of each person's bank account, meaning that all public money returned to you (tax returns, health insurance, etc.) is paid directly to your account, instead of them sending you a cheque.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2012 14:28

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

wipeout posted:

Do you guys think we can get another 10 pages out of bank chat? That would be so awesome.

I present the Sinclair C5:

Early electric vehicle, I saw one once - I think it had broken down.

Ooh yeah, that reminds me of the Ellert, an early Danish-invented electric vehicle. Slow, poor build quality (at least that was my impression upon seeing it in person), low range, looked comical, and on three wheels like a Reliant Robin. It was the butt of many jokes for a while. Sometimes you'd see them parked in the city, with a long extension cord going from it, across the pavement and up to an apartment window on the 3rd floor.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2012 01:04

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

A few weeks ago, I found a Dell Inspiron 4000 laptop in my apartment building's trash. I actually had an Inspiron 4100 that I was trying to sell, but its keyboard was a bit wonky and it was noisy, so I patched up the 4000 with a hard drive and battery from the 4100, with intent of selling the 4000 model instead. I turned it on, installed Windows, and wanted to toss on some drivers and Windows Updates. Oh, it doesn't have wireless, fair enough, it's old. I'll just plug in an ethernet cable... uh, no? No ethernet? No wireless? Nothing??

I discovered it actually had an ethernet plug, but it was hidden behind a plastic dummy cover, and there was no power (and no NIC) behind the plug. It only had a modem. It actually had wireless antenna wires, but then I would have had to buy a small adapter cable to connect the intermediate wireless antenna board to an actual MiniPCI wireless card. I ended up dumping it, just salvaging a few parts I had use of from it.

It just reminded me of how useless a computer without a network connection is these days is.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2012 13:57

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

blugu64 posted:

If you order new, make sure you get one with control in the right place too.

To get picky about that, it's generally always better to have stuff by the edges of a screen or device (Fitt's Law), as it's easier to reach them blindfolded. With Ctrl there, it's in the middle of tab and shift. Thus, the conclusion would be that the modern placement of Ctrl is actually better, since it's by two outer edges of the keyboard. I don't see how having it on the home row benefits anything.

# ¿ Oct 30, 2012 15:27

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

A sysadmin found this at work. The Quadram MicroFazer Data Buffer. It's an external printer buffer that adds 64k memory, so that when printing, it can hopefully cache the entire document before printing. It probably worked fine, but it's so utterly obsolete. The intro in the manual is also pretty funny. On the last page I scanned, there are instructions on how you need to remove the case and fiddle with jumpers to configure it.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2012 18:56

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

Flipperwaldt posted:

There was a time when you needed to do that with some soundcards in the ISA era, to set IRQ and DMA. Which was inconvenient.

What baffled me most was just that you needed to actually remove the case to set jumpers, as it was an external device. These days you void warranties by doing that.

# ¿ Dec 15, 2012 00:07

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

b0nes posted:

Aren't dedicated GPS units pretty much dead now if you own any kind of smartphone? I remember when they were expensive, now if you have one and it breaks it costs as much to fix it as it costs to buy a new one. I use Google Maps, Waze, and for when I don't have a data connection and CoPilot Live for its offline maps. Only people I really see using them are long haul truckers and soon they will be replaced. Eve Garmin isn't doing so good now I hear.

It might work fine in the US, but imagine travelling around Europe, from country to country... the bill for the data transfer would be insane. You get totally raped on data in foreign countries even if they're in the EU.

I also believe dedicated units are much faster to start up, find the path and better to operate in general.

# ¿ Dec 22, 2012 03:14

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

Get it?

(obsolete, not failed)

# ¿ Jan 1, 2013 00:09

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

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.

I've never seen one in real life, only the Xerox Alto in pictures. I guess there's a reason it didn't stick.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2013 19:39

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

It's such a weird thing about modern phones (smartphones): Terrible battery life, extremely fragile, horrible to hold, takes ages to make a simple call thanks to touch interface and poor sound. So many step backwards; if I used my iPhone for more actual phoning than "smart" stuff I'd go insane.

# ¿ May 13, 2013 23:57

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

mactheknife posted:

I still make phone calls home and stuff on my smartphone all the time, and don't really have any issues whatsoever.

It works, but everything related to phoning was just easier, faster and more comfortable on my old regular Sony Ericsson phone, so to speak. Maybe it's just the iPhone that's poo poo.

Specifically, just making a call was a matter of pressing a few buttons which could be done blindfolded. On an iPhone, you have to tap tap drag drag tap tap just to make a call. The iPhone 4 also sucks to hold against your ear, fits poorly in the hand and has crap sound quality.

# ¿ May 14, 2013 09:47

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

Mr. Beefhead posted:

For a second I thought you were kidding when I read your post, specifically the "fragile" bit. Do people really think this, or is it just you? I'm flabbergasted. I thought the general consensus about modern phones was that they are far more durable than they have ever been before? I mean,there was a time when I would have never even wanted to touch a new phone without putting some sort of protective cover on it first, but now the idea of a protective cover just seems silly. I've had my current phone for nearly two years now (a Galaxy Nexus) and I throw it daily into pockets full of keys and change, I've sent it flying onto asphalt, concrete, and tile, spilled drinks on it, I don't even know what else. By now an old fashioned plastic Nokia would have looked like it had been through two wars, but this drat thing still looks like brand new. This Gorilla Glass (or whatever variant on it this phone uses) is a wonderful thing.

Just for fun, here's a video of a guy driving a nail into a board with the screen of his smartphone. And it's a Nokia! A modern one, though.

Maybe I'm wrong, I just see cracked smartphones way more often than I remember seeing cracked regular old phones. I'd be terrified if I dropped my iPhone on asphalt - has anyone tried?

# ¿ May 14, 2013 23:03

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

Mr. Mallory posted:

What the hell are you talking about? If you want to make a call an an iPhone you click the phone button and type the number or click the contact and that's it. Sound quality is better than any dumbphone I've used.

Old phone: Press down (button or joystick), press first letter of contact's name - or keep pressing down until reaching the contact. Press call button.
IPhone: Tap Contacts. Oops, it's showing some contact I don't want to call. Click Back button. Drag until I find the contact I want to cal, tap contact. Tap the number of his I want to actually call.

Old phone: Press 8 digits, press call button.
IPhone: Tap Phone. Ah nuts, it's on the "Recents" screen. Tap "Keypad". Enter number, tap Call button.

Touch interface has its benefits, but there's no way you can call it easier than a "dumbphone" (never heard that expression before) for straight phoning.

And what can I say, I think the sound quality is poor on the iPhone 4 compared to my old one.

# ¿ May 15, 2013 07:46

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

Speakning of burned CDs...

I once got contact with a guy on IRC, him in Holland and I in Denmark. He was apparently a bit of a big time warez and media hustler, and we struck a deal where I sent him a shoebox full of common Magic the Gathering cards in exchange for a ton of stuff on burned CD-ROMs: Applications, games, movies, porn and music albums. We both got our stuff via mail and were happy. So utterly primitive today, though.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2013 21:35

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

Goldskull posted:

Obselete Train/Plane chat has been amazing in this thread, but I'm going to take it to a Bus tip: The Saverstrip.

Saverstrips were purchased from Newsagents by Mums in West Yorkshire for schoolkids. I've tried Googling it but basically they were limited run cardboard strips you bought for coming/going to school in the late 80s/early 90s. Kept in a vinyl holder, you slotted them into the slot by the driver and got on, with a satisfying 'KER-CHING' noise, that stamped the bus number on it (see above) and clipped a square off the side. The saver bit came from it was always 12 for the price of 10, depending on how far you were going, ranging from 5p a trip upto the high end �1.50 a go (possibly more, mine was always 15p a go)

Kind of a proto Oystercard really. I think they became obsolete by 92/93? The buses removed the mechanical payslots and it was all cash from then on, which was obviously a good idea increasing the time for 50-60 kids to get on a bus by x3. An idea ahead of its time but also open to abuse by the fact of Bus Drivers not caring about the kerching ching ching when 30 odd all get at once in the school bus park.

Much like Oyster on certain buses in London in fact.

Link to the machines that did them:
http://www.ticketmachinewebsite.com/apps/photos/photo?photoid=41334404

Only this very year, those "cut cards" (directly translated) were phased out in Denmark. I liked them, since I use public transport only a few times a year. Now I have to buy a lovely electronic card for it that the incompetent government (with regards to IT) spent billions and decades on making.

PS: Sorry to be a party pooper, but this train, plane, car and bus chat really belongs in AI.

# ¿ Jul 11, 2013 14:40

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

Croccers posted:

That Mx Cherry button (I think, I forget what colour my mate actually has) mechanical keyboards are annoying as hell. "Let's replicate the sound of typing on an old-fashioned typewriter "
Typewriters are cool, keyboards being as loud as one because mechanical keyboards are not.

They're not made to make the sound, but that's a side-effect of having real metal springs underneath. You just can't replicate the feel with rubber or other.

The_Franz posted:

Membrane keyboards suck and feel horrible when you are used to proper key switches. The current trend towards those awful full-size laptop style keyboards is even worse. Technology now is better overall than what we had before, but the quality of your average keyboard actually regressed.

So agreed. gently caress modern laptop keyboards in particular, because you can't just swap them out as with a stationary. There's plenty of room, yet they continue to make them worse. I read an article about Lenovo's new keyboard layout recently, and their argument was basically that they wanted the keyboard to look more "modern". Nothing about usability. Fuckers.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2013 23:02

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

gleep gloop posted:

Are really bad content filters for public computers still a thing? I remember the one in my old high-school pissing off the girls in home ec because if a page said breast it was blocked and you got an automatic detention for trying to access a blocked page. Looking up a chicken breast recipe for class? lol sorry bitch see you from three to five on friday!

I think my college just doesn't have any sort of filter at all because I've seen kids looking at literal porn a few times on school computers.

My high school (1997-2000) library had two regular computers with internet access. On them was a custom program installed that wiped all sorts of installed and personal files upon the computer booting, meaning you couldn't save settings or bookmarks from visit to visit. It kinda "reset" Windows on each boot.

I figured out how to beat it - upon Windows starting up, I opened the task manager with Ctrl+Alt+Del, and found it that it was a simple executable being run at startup. I killed the process and renamed the executable - woot, free use of the computer!

There was no such thing as filtering or anything back then though.

Also, in related context: When the librarian of said high school library retired in the year 2000, someone had composed a song for her that we sang in the atrium to say goodbye. It contained a line going something like "such and such, and search on Google...". My friend and I were like "haha, WTF is 'google'?" to eachother. I believe I used https://www.hotbot.com/text back then.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2013 10:38

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

cowtown posted:

(you could use the built-in debugger to quit to the Finder).

Holy hell, instructions on how to modify the contents of memory straight from the manufacturer. Now that's obsolete, or at least old school.

Reminds me a bit of the "exit to DOS" from old versions of Windows. It was actually nice when the registry became corrupt on my Win98 install. I had a .bat script that made a backup of the entire registry onto my storage HDD, so I could restore them (via DOS bootup) when it got screwed up.

DrBouvenstein posted:

The flicker reminded me that no one ever had the refresh rate of their CRTs set properly!

Oh, the default 45 Hz Windows 98 sets it to? Yeah, I'm sure that's fine. Even a poo poo graphics card and monitor combo could do at least 60! The worst was when I'd point it out to someone, up it to 75 HZ or more if I could, and they 'd respond with,
"I don't notice a difference."

WHAT?! Are you blind!?

I used 60Hz on a 17" CRT for 5+ years until a friend of mine said how he went crazy over it. Then I noticed it too, and I think I either went to a lower resolution (and high refresh rate) or bought a better monitor soon after that could do 100Hz.

So glad CRTs are dead and gone.

Pilsner has a new favorite as of 14:15 on Aug 13, 2013

# ¿ Aug 13, 2013 14:12

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

Well, can't help post some more of those 80's digital dashes then. They're classics in AI.

Subaru XT

Subaru Leone

# ¿ Aug 13, 2013 20:43

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

Chunk5 posted:

I met someone who worked at BMW who told me that HUDs never materialised because if you lose your electronics, you're hosed.

That doesn't quite make sense, because in any modern car, the instruments are electronic, so no instrument display without power. In older cars the speedo was driven by cable.

I believe the argument for HUDs is that you can see how fast you're going without having to "peek" down at the speedo, but eh, it's not really a problem when it comes down to it.

# ¿ Aug 14, 2013 07:26

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

I'm installing this specialized car dealership software via a VM, originally written to run on a customized UNIX installation... by Germans. Looks like something from a B-movie:

# ¿ Oct 8, 2013 19:35

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

Silmarildur posted:

Along similar lines, I've always wondered what exactly BMW was trying to convey with this goofy name:

Clearly Audi and Mercedes need to up their game if they want in on the business music market. In the theme of the thread I'd bring up trunk mounted 6 disc changers, quite common in 90s German cars. Granted you have 6 CDs to choose from, but with buffering being virtually non-existent they tended to skip like crazy and the concept of pulling over and opening the trunk to access new music is pretty hilarious.

My new (used) BMW from '97 actually has a 6-CD changer in the back, and it functions flawlessly without skipping. It just plays all CDs from start to end and you never notice the pauses.

(box at the bottom left)

However, I've just bought a device that can play MP3s from an SD card and replaces the CD changer, so yeah, obsolete. gently caress optical discs.

It also has a 7" (ish) 16:9 monitor for navigation, driving computer, settings, music control, etc. There's something cool about old integrated screens in cars - how many cars from '97 do you know has that? I find it fascinating how the software is all completely custom written, solely made for a very narrow generation of models for a single brand. It's also out-of-this-world stable when you compare it to a typical modern computer program that can crash left and right. That's a no-go in a car.

What's most absurd is that you can press a button to make it flip down the whole ordeal, revealing a tape deck (crappy image):

Or how about the original 5-slot tape storage for the centre console?

It's even powered, so it shows a light if there's something in a separate slot.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2013 07:38

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

KozmoNaut posted:

Which one did you get? If I could get a SD card MP3 player instead of my AUX in, that would be awesome.

http://www.maintronic.de/en/products/cp600bmw-mp3-player.html

It's �230 (on ebay.de), so pretty expensive, but from what I've read, it's also by far the best MP3 solution. It emulates the CD changer, and allows 6 main folders with endless subfolders. You can navigate the music as you please, play random, configure it to show track titles on the navi screen, your MID/radio, even in the instrument cluster. It's configurable to all hell, but in its default state it's just plug and play.

I just received mine yesterday, and I'm still in the process of re-organizing and tagging a lot of the music I'll be putting on it, so I can't give a real review yet, but I can't wait.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2013 20:53

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

Retarded Pimp posted:

When I was a kid in the early 70's, we had cable tv and it was just channels 2-12 on VHF, nothing on UHF, one of the channels had a scrolling text time/news/weather/local ads station.

In Denmark, there was one national channel up until 1988 when the state monopoly was lifted. Then there were two, plus a few tiny niche amateur channels came along.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2013 21:18

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

Computer viking posted:

Talking about more classical instruments, the harpsichord family is a small niche these days, after a long dominance, and the hurdy-gurdies have gone from a common instrument to a historical curiosity.
The former is best described as a piano that plucks the strings instead of hammering them, and the latter is, uhm. A keyed violin with a rotating wheel instead of a bow?

I do like the sound of harpsichords, but they have some fundamental issues compared to the pianoes; mostly that there's no way to control the volume or duration of each note (it's either plucked or not). Larger models had two keyboards with different amounts of force, but that's still a rather rough solution. Bonus modern (well, in this context) harpsichord use: Golden Brown, by the Stranglers.

As for the hurdy gurdy, it's more of an ... acquired taste, kind of like the bagpipes. There's an explanation of the thing here.

I took a liking to the harpsichord last year and bought a triple CD with Bach's entire harpsichord works. I recommend it. Here's a youtube video with some notable works:

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

Oh, and regarding that hurdy-gurdy, I had never heard of that before. When the wikipedia article was loading, I was like "haha, what kind of American redneck thingie is this?", and was then put to shame when I was it was over 1000 years old. The name though...

# ¿ Jan 5, 2014 02:41

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

Ultimate Mango posted:

Stuff like this is awesome and deserves more chat here or in a new thread.

Not really, since it's neither obsolete nor failed.

It does seem archaic, though, and interesting.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2014 13:38

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

OttoVonBismarck posted:

A film shot in 1919 can still be played back with modern equipment, while you might struggle to get digital software from just a few decades back to work at all.

Thanks for the informative post, but I can assure you that data, which video and audio is, can always be parsed and read, even 1000 years from now, given that it's not corrupted of course. In this age of information spreading across the world like wildfire and being stored on thousands of servers, it's extremely unlikely that all knowledge about a video and audio encoding format will be lost forever, rendering the data unusable. Even if it did, people can work hard to code a program that can decipher an encoding format.

I also think that digitalization will on average improve any film's lifespan thanks to video websites and file sharing. There'll always be a copy around. Famous last words perhaps, but more likely than having one copy rotting in some archive.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2014 02:08

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

OttoVonBismarck posted:

An example of digital obsolescence and the work needed to save the material:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Domesday_Project

Hah, that's rather tragicomical. You know what they should do? Release all software, hardware specs and data to the internet. Nerds and enthusiasts will keep it updated and going forever, compatible with modern hardware, I bet. Keep things simple, use open standards and keep it compatible with end-user hardware and software.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2014 14:58

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

Krispy Kareem posted:

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.

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.

KozmoNaut posted:

I work for a telco, and by far the largest income source aside from wholesale traffic from other operators, is text messaging. Think of it, it costs literally nothing to send 128 bytes. Even unlimited messaging plans have an absolutely ridiculous profit margin.

Really. I wonder if/when more people will begin using internet-based chat programs like WhatsApp, where you can spam messages for free (okay, $1 per year). I'd use it more with friends, but I'm too cheap to pay for mobile data, and so are some of the people I talk to. The only good thing about SMS is that it works without an internet connection.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2014 15:15

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

CitizenKain posted:

I had an assload of MIDIs around that time, since my Pentium 100 struggled with decoding MP3s and doing anything like web browsing at the same time. Plus midis were like 30kb each, while a MP3 was 4meg. It helped having a AWE64 though, they had pretty good soundfont libraries.

Hah, that reminds me of when I wanted to show off an MP3 to a friend in high school. The crappy 486 computers in the PC lab would play 5 seconds of music, then buffer for 5 seconds, because the processor just couldn't decode it in real time.

My first stationary computer was a P2 266 MHz with 64 MB RAM, and it couldn't play The Matrix that I bought on DVD without chopping. I researched buying those dedicated DVD playback PCI cards (hello obsolete!), but just let it be until I bought a new computer some years later.

Media playback can still be a bit of a bitch even today. Around 4-5 years ago I downloaded some giga-sized HD porn movie (HD porn wow!!) in 1080p, and my Core2Duo 3 GHz really struggled to show that in full screen fluently.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2014 00:09

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

Oh Lord, CDE. My university's UNIX-based data labs used that at least up until 2006; maybe it's still there. It worked, but it was quite laggy since all the processing took place on a central server; we just worked on a thin client.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2014 08:49

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

vxskud posted:

I inherited one of these from my grandmother years ago, it is a tiny black and white projection TV, the image quality was not great but definitely watchable.

When I used to do security I'd bring it with me every night with a set of rechargeable batteries. I used it right up until all the channels went digital and rendered it completely obsolete.

No analog in the air is a bummer. My car (BMW from 1997) has a built-in TV tuner, but there's nothing to receive unless I splurge for a DVB-T tuner. :/

# ¿ Mar 26, 2014 00:16

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

In ran 60 Hz in order to use 1280x1024 (ugh) for years on my 17" CRT. It wasn't until I upgraded to a 85/100 Hz capable screen later, and a friend mentioned it to me, that I realized how terrible 60 Hz was to look at. It's like a strobe light.

Oh, and remember Voodoo 1 card capping out at 640x480, Voodoo 2 at 800x600, and Voodoo 2 in SLI at 1024x768? Well nevermind, you couldn't see the pixels!! (due to mip-mapping woot)

# ¿ Mar 27, 2014 11:05

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

I'm pretty sure vinyl seats are used where durability is an issue. Almost every taxi in my country has it; leather and cloth gets too worn by passengers.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2014 08:49

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 16:11

Pilsner: Nov 23, 2002

Speleothing posted:

The reason for a separate key* is so that if you give your key to the valet (or some other service person), they can't get into the trunk or glovebox.

(*as I was told when I asked about it when I was young)

You were told right, I've read car manuals where it says that the service key is specifically for that. No valets in Europe though, but the mechanic for example.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2014 11:06

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