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Redundant technology

Started by greencalx, May 22, 2022, 05:02:27 PM

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Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: jamiefairlie on May 23, 2022, 05:17:14 PMYeah there was a whole industry based on document scanning storage and searching wasn't there. Massive proprietary tech and database systems all obsolete now.

I feel like businesses moving away from shared drives to Sharepoint, which was much slower and has always had a woeful search was a bit of a step backwards.

It doesn't help that a lot of places/project managers insist on using a 'common structure' of numbered directories, which are almost always empty. I guess this a form of cargo cult management, assuming that if they build the right structures in the storage backend the gods will gift the documentation into existence.

Sebastian Cobb

OHP's were still common into the mid 2000's in my school, they did have departmental projectors and were fitting ones to every room when I was leaving but there were teachers who were recycling old material that couldn't be bothered to make new presentations when they had perfectly good transparencies.

My last job had an OHP-like device for sharing documents, which was essentially a flat platform with a webcam at the top, where the lens and mirror would be on an ohp so it could share the paper in things like teams. Although it was often used to quickly and dirtily demo work-in-progress smartphone apps and stuff.

seepage

I seem to remember an early 3D printer at uni circa 1980 that was attached to a Prime minicomputer and used to print out models of maths surfaces in paper mache.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: seepage on May 23, 2022, 05:30:00 PMI seem to remember an early 3D printer at uni circa 1980 that was attached to a Prime minicomputer and used to print out models of maths surfaces in paper mache.

Our DT teacher got really exicted one day as they'd just gotten some software in for the CNC machine that could take a photograph and etch it with different depths relative to light so that when you held the plastic up to the light the image could be seen due to differing levels of translucence.

Back before social media took off I used to post on a "forum" where everyone was anonymous, like they all were back then. It had a blue background and was themed around TV. I think it was called Cookie Bum or something.

beanheadmcginty

Phone cards
Letraset
Dymo embossed label printers
Runcible spoon

Norton Canes

Quote from: beanheadmcginty on May 23, 2022, 06:00:06 PMDymo embossed label printers

Still selling in Mrs Canes' analogue writing and printing instrument emporium. They've got quite a retro appeal, it would appear.

Dex Sawash


PlanktonSideburns

Cracked open Powertab the other day

Runs like a charm on windows ten

You can export to pdf, html and ascii

dontpaintyourteeth

Quote from: Norton Canes on May 23, 2022, 06:05:41 PMStill selling in Mrs Canes' analogue writing and printing instrument emporium. They've got quite a retro appeal, it would appear.

My shop sells those. (I am not Mrs Canes)

greencalx

Quote from: Voltan (Man of Steel) on May 23, 2022, 11:58:34 AMI've never used one but the place I worked at in 1981 (Christ!) had one. I can still remember the manager striding out of the office holding his earphones, calling over his shoulder as he went, "I'm off for a flying lesson and I'm expecting a message from our suppliers in France so keep an eye on the telex."

I think I remember that line from Ashes to Ashes

What do schools use these days instead of OHPs?  These felt like the future when I was at school.

greencalx


idunnosomename

can you draw cock n balls on those? I was in a building in Cambridge the other week that had a bona-fide chalk blackboard in. I almost burnt it to the ground!!!!

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: greencalx on May 23, 2022, 10:13:49 PMSmartboards.

Both school and workplaces have had these and they pretty much always end up being an expensive projection screen foremost because the ux is shite. I'm sure they've gotten better since I was in school but still basic projection onto a whiteboard seemed to work fine. I think the models our school had also used infrared sensors to work out which pen was in use by detecting the absence of the pen in its holder so if one got lost you were fucked unless you put some tape or blutack over the sensor to trick it.

My boss also had a MS surface and I thought that was pretty rubs too it just looked like a child had scribbled all over OneNote (which is another ux nightmare and basically a piece of shit). Perhaps my favourite thing about the surface was that he used it for meetings only rather than undocking his laptop, which meant all his sessions were stale and the first 5 minutes of every meeting involved watching him plug everything in and then login and input a load of 2fa codes. It felt like that scene in Extras where Merchant keeps missing his phonecalls because he's frantically trying to put his hands free kit on.

jamiefairlie

In my experience, one of the key lessons of remote working is to bin all the shared workspace shit and just try to use language better to express concepts.

greencalx

My main issue with Smartboards is the delay between writing and the text appearing. I have to go to a huge amount of effort to ensure that the rooms I work in have vertical, real-time, low-energy writing surfaces. (Or whiteboards as they are sometimes called).

buttgammon

We've been installing touchscreen displays in some of the seminar rooms I teach in. Unfortunately, I'm generally crap with touchscreens, so the first few times I used one it resembled Sidekick Simon on Mid Morning Matters.

Incidentally, we also have overhead projectors and although I've never used one, other people still do apparently.

gilbertharding

Quote from: Voltan (Man of Steel) on May 23, 2022, 08:24:48 AMI bet not many of you remember the telex. They became redundant when these newfangled fax machines came along in the early 80s.


My standard response whenever these threads come up relates to my first job in the late 80s where the fax machine had supplanted the telex - and a woman who worked on the reception desk (where both machines lived) would regularly voice the opinion that the telex was vastly superior to the fax, for reasons which no-one could quite understand. This was in a company where, while there were a few computers on various desks, no-one (except the typists, and this receptionist) could actually type sufficiently quickly or accurately to make the telex an efficient means of communication.

In my five years at that company, I never, EVER, saw anyone except her use the telex machine  - and I only saw her use it once.

Meanwhile, other old sweats on the payroll bemoaned the fax machine because it meant that people could send queries and expect a response almost instantaneously (meaning: later that day).

mippy

Quote from: Blumf on May 23, 2022, 01:11:18 PMPrestel, which was like a beefed up two-way teletext over your phone line. I remember there was a TV variety show in the 80s that used it for live audience voting on the performers. If they got too many down votes they'd get pulled off the stage.


Just Belgium


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6USa0zUMmqI

Love the Olympus XA cameo at the end.

Des Wigwam

Quote from: buttgammon on May 24, 2022, 08:40:29 AMWe've been installing touchscreen displays in some of the seminar rooms I teach in. Unfortunately, I'm generally crap with touchscreens, so the first few times I used one it resembled Sidekick Simon on Mid Morning Matters.


Very much enjoy the idea of you saying "Bird it, bird it ... no. Nothing" then staring expectantly at the class for help.

Endicott

The printed out MEMO.

Superior to email in that the office wanker could backdate one and send it out after the event to cover their arse.

dissolute ocelot

I use printable OHP transparency sheets for photo-silkscreening and other forms of analog photography where you need a large positive or negative that's as big as the final print, like cyanotypes. There are still quite a few companies selling them, so I'm sure they have various uses.

Overhead projectors died because they're not as simple as a whiteboard (which doesn't catch fire, need electricity or bulbs, take time to warm up, etc), but not as useful as a projector connected to an actual computer. Whiteboards are still the thing if you're in a meeting and need to sketch a quick diagram. Most job interviews I've been to have involved sketching stuff on a whiteboard. I think one company had a flip chart, but they're lame. 15 years ago I worked for a company that had a whiteboard which incorporated a scanner that could print out the whiteboard on nasty thermal paper. I seem to remember someone sold one that could digitise and email, but generally we take a photo on our phones.

I'd like an old-school large-format pen plotter (XY plotter) with felt tip pens that you can use to draw massive diagrams (the paper moves back and forth, the pens move up and down and from side to side, second cousin to a seismograph). You can still get small ones for artistic purposes (or forging signatures). In technical areas like electronics and computing they seem to have been replaced by large format inkjet printers, which can do shading, variable line thickness, and other things but are considerably more boring.

Has anyone mentioned back-up tapes for computers? Of course the old-school reel-to-reel are only known from 60s and 70s movies. As recently as 15 years ago, we had people taking back-ups home weekly. I think more recent systems would use video cassettes, so you can see why they went out of fashion. File alongside zip drives, which were like better floppy disks, but not as good as USB drives, and writable CDs and DVDs.

EDIT: Old school CRC oscilloscopes with proper dots that move across the screen. Now it's all digital electronics.

Sonny_Jim

Quote from: dissolute ocelot on May 24, 2022, 10:22:56 AMOf course the old-school reel-to-reel are only known from 60s and 70s movies.
Not if you did BTEC Sound & Broadcasting engineering at a rural college around the turn of the millenium, where we were taught how to manually edit audio by using a razor blade, a wax pencil, sticky tape and a special chopping block.  We were envious of the Theatre and Drama students as they got to play with the fancy pants minidisc recorders, whereas we were still pissing around with bits of tape.

You whippersnappers with yer Audacities and DAW's grumble grumble.

gilbertharding

Microfilm. When I worked for the Council architect's department, occasionally we would have a project at a school which, if it had been built in the previous 40 years, might have record drawings available on microfilm, which, if you could find them, you might be able to get a full-size print of, which you would then have to reproduce on CAD.

Inevitably the original drawing would have been done in feet and inches, and the scale would be in fractions of an inch to the foot - so you would have to borrow a jealously guarded old imperial scale rule from a time-served old sweat (although it's literally just occurred to me that you could draw it in CAD at any convenient scale, and then just blow it up to be correct once it was all done... duh).

oggyraiding

UMDs, the proprietry format used for the Sony PSP. Even back in the day, they were shit. Disc rattled about inside the casing, the whole thing was fragile and flimsy, and they were several times bigger than a Nintendo DS cartridge so you could carry less with you. Felt like they were trying to make them a new standard for portable media as you could get music and films on them.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: gilbertharding on May 24, 2022, 11:39:39 AMMicrofilm. When I worked for the Council architect's department, occasionally we would have a project at a school which, if it had been built in the previous 40 years, might have record drawings available on microfilm, which, if you could find them, you might be able to get a full-size print of, which you would then have to reproduce on CAD.

Inevitably the original drawing would have been done in feet and inches, and the scale would be in fractions of an inch to the foot - so you would have to borrow a jealously guarded old imperial scale rule from a time-served old sweat (although it's literally just occurred to me that you could draw it in CAD at any convenient scale, and then just blow it up to be correct once it was all done... duh).

I think I saw a microfiche reader in a museum a while back, for reading historical documents, not as an exhibit itself. It was a fairly modern model though as used a camera to scan the film and output to a monitor rather than rear projection.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: oggyraiding on May 24, 2022, 12:04:58 PMUMDs, the proprietry format used for the Sony PSP. Even back in the day, they were shit. Disc rattled about inside the casing, the whole thing was fragile and flimsy, and they were several times bigger than a Nintendo DS cartridge so you could carry less with you. Felt like they were trying to make them a new standard for portable media as you could get music and films on them.

Ahh yes, and also the more esoteric failed floppy replacements like Clik made by the people that also made Zip disks.


When I started at the council in the mid-nineties, all the officers were given film cameras to take out on site. We'd have to take the film to Boot's to be developed and would collect the pics the next day.

However, if we wanted evidence straight away we had a high-tech instant camera. It was white, the size of a shoe box, had moulded handles on each side and looked like something Jacques Cousteau would use to tow himself through the ocean. It shone two red lights on the target and when the dots merged it was in focus, i.e. it produced damp, muddy photos with a green tinge, for about a quid a pop.

Blumf

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/23/new-york-city-removes-the-last-payphone-from-service.html
QuoteNew York City removes the last payphone from service

It's the end of an era: New York City removed its last public payphone on Monday.

The boxy enclosures were once an iconic symbol across the city. But the rise of cellphones made the booths obsolete.

The effort to replace public pay telephones across the city kicked off in 2014 when the de Blasio administration solicited proposals to reimagine the offering, the city's Office of Technology and Innovation said in a news release.

Officials selected CityBridge to develop and operate LinkNYC kiosks, which offer services such as free phone calls, Wi-Fi and device charging. The city began removing street payphones in 2015 to replace them with the LinkNYC kiosks.

Well that's Superman fucked then.

(actually, not really)