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Redundant technology

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

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greencalx

I tried to explain to the child the concept of the fax machine – about the best I could come up with was the two halves of a photocopier being connected by a phone line - and struggled to remember the last time I had to use one. It fell into that space of devices that I would use sufficiently rarely that I would have forgotten how it worked in between times. Each send was accompanied by a nagging doubt that I'd put the paper in the wrong way up, and the recipient would just get a set of blank sheets. Fax machines seemed to be loved by lawyers, but almost no-one else; although I think even they are now ok with emails.

Anyway, I'm now being pestered to come up with other examples of redundant technology. I guess the classic examples are data storage formats like floppy disks, MiniDisks, arguably CDs/DVDs in the streaming era (although I maintain they have their uses), but they're kind of dull and lack the charming mystique of the fax.

Any thoughts?

willbo

I didn't even know Ipads/mp3 were "dead" until last year. I remember using a fax machine 15 years ago, and I thought it was retro/an anachronism then.

kalowski


Martin Van Buren Stan

I walked past a school that had a fax number on their sign today. Didn't look like an old sign either

JaDanketies

Picked up a ELC Rotary Phone for our little one at a charity shop. He picks it up and says, "hello?!" like he's talking on the phone, and I wonder, "where the fuck did he learn that from? A rotary phone looks about as similar to a modern phone as it does a car."


dozybugcarrot

Quote from: greencalx on May 22, 2022, 05:02:27 PMI tried to explain to the child the concept of the fax machine – about the best I could come up with was the two halves of a photocopier being connected by a phone line - and struggled to remember the last time I had to use one. It fell into that space of devices that I would use sufficiently rarely that I would have forgotten how it worked in between times. Each send was accompanied by a nagging doubt that I'd put the paper in the wrong way up, and the recipient would just get a set of blank sheets. Fax machines seemed to be loved by lawyers, but almost no-one else; although I think even they are now ok with emails.

Anyway, I'm now being pestered to come up with other examples of redundant technology. I guess the classic examples are data storage formats like floppy disks, MiniDisks, arguably CDs/DVDs in the streaming era (although I maintain they have their uses), but they're kind of dull and lack the charming mystique of the fax.

Any thoughts?
I'm amazed the child knew what a photocopier was. They're fairly redundant now. Do we even need scanners when everyone just takes a picture with their phones?
Pagers. They seemed redundant when they came out though, so maybe they don't count.

greencalx

They have photocopiers at school, although quite likely they double as network printers / scanners.

Scanners with a sheet feeder are still useful if you need to scan multiple pages of a printed document but frankly I'd prefer it if you sent me the PDF.

greencalx

Quote from: JaDanketies on May 22, 2022, 05:23:25 PMPicked up a ELC Rotary Phone for our little one at a charity shop. He picks it up and says, "hello?!" like he's talking on the phone, and I wonder, "where the fuck did he learn that from? A rotary phone looks about as similar to a modern phone as it does a car."

TV?

Ours inherited my original one of those. Or it might have been my wife's as it turns out we both had them as kids. In fact, that's why we got married.

greencalx

Quote from: dozybugcarrot on May 22, 2022, 05:31:51 PMPagers. They seemed redundant when they came out though, so maybe they don't count.

Good shout! Though maybe still used by doctors?

Sebastian Cobb

I heard somewhere a common way for pirates to digitise a non-rare book is to guillotine off the spine and sling it in a sheet-fed scanner/copier.

I picked up a Yamaha KX-250 cassette deck off ebay the other week, but alas its transport needs some tlc as it starts bright and goes muffled quick, I'm hoping new belts and pinch roller do the trick.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: greencalx on May 22, 2022, 05:43:03 PMGood shout! Though maybe still used by doctors?

I think private radio pager sites (as in not linked to a national pager network) are still used in hospitals as they're simple enough to be reliable, fairly robust and get decent battery life. They're not secure, but tend to only relay bed/ward information. It's the kind of thing I can see an expensive smartphone app making worse.

My uncle also used to have one for when he was on-call with cave rescue but I imagine they use phones/message groups these days.

Something mobile data has started to kill, that the public probably won't notice is packet/trunk radio. Data used to be sent on leased out parts of the band for all sorts of applications, bus dispatch could be an example, but nowadays I think they mostly use mobile data as the infrastructure is 'just there'. Even the emergency services seem to be trying to utilise mobile data for delivery of a tetra replacement but I think they have problems with forward truncation when using push-to-talk which could have life or death implications in things like a marksman scenario.

Rizla

It's funny some of the old stuff that's still hanging in there doing a job, like at my mrs's work there's specialised science equipment that needs Apple II's to make it go.

Quote from: kalowski on May 22, 2022, 05:16:09 PMBanda machines.
Hell yes. There was one of those in use at my primary school, great big black 1950's monster, used to fascinate me. I have a vague memory of it being used to give everyone in our class a copy of a printout of the BBC micro owl logo to take home, on the day the school got its Model B, complete with laser disc drive to be used in the Domesday Project.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Rizla on May 22, 2022, 05:56:21 PMIt's funny some of the old stuff that's still hanging in there doing a job, like at my mrs's work there's specialised science equipment that needs Apple II's to make it go.


Yeah my housemate at uni had to use a scanning electron microscope that I think output to 5.25" floppies, so it had to be ran through a dedicated old pc to convert it to 3.5" floppy, another more-or-less dead format, before being read by some more modern on-network machines.

Dot Matrix printers still live on in limited capacities as they work well with carbon paper. Good if you want two signed copies of a receipt or something.

Lemming

Fax machines are still big in Japan!

Not quite a redundant technology in itself, but I was enthusing about the Y2k aesthetic to my niece the other day and she was distinctly unimpressed at how naff it all looked, especially the old RealPlayer and Windows Media Player skins:



She pointed out - correctly - that all these stupid stylised interfaces just make it harder to actually use the program and take up unnecessarily large amounts of space on the screen. Best counterargument I could come up with was "yeah but it looks fucking sick".

Quote from: JaDanketies on May 22, 2022, 05:23:25 PMPicked up a ELC Rotary Phone for our little one at a charity shop. He picks it up and says, "hello?!" like he's talking on the phone, and I wonder, "where the fuck did he learn that from? A rotary phone looks about as similar to a modern phone as it does a car."
Rotary phones are still sometimes used as icons in phone apps and the like, I think. Same for how floppy disks are still occasionally used as the Save Game icon in modern videogames, despite the game itself obviously not coming on a floppy (or even a CD nowadays).

Sebastian Cobb

Last time I went near a fax machine was at an old job, I noticed that the thing had run out of paper (it was a laser printer rather than thermal) so topped it up and it emptied itself immediately as it still been receiving spam faxes and keeping them in memory. Apparently that's why nobody ever bothered filling it up.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Lemming on May 22, 2022, 06:01:46 PMNot quite a redundant technology in itself, but I was enthusing about the Y2k aesthetic to my niece the other day and she was distinctly unimpressed at how naff it all looked, especially the old RealPlayer and Windows Media Player skins:



I used to have a sick hand-drawn winamp skin, before I migrated to the far superior Foobar2000.


Pink Gregory

Quote from: JaDanketies on May 22, 2022, 05:23:25 PMPicked up a ELC Rotary Phone for our little one at a charity shop. He picks it up and says, "hello?!" like he's talking on the phone, and I wonder, "where the fuck did he learn that from? A rotary phone looks about as similar to a modern phone as it does a car."



I think they're just a generally aethestically pleasing items and as such they haven't necessarily been booted out of the collective imagination.  Typewriters are similar I would think.  Clacky clacky clack.

Dex Sawash

We have a fax that gets used daily, our only parts department employee ("manager") can't open email attachments or navigate multiple browser tabs without help. He was able to use tabs at some point but he learned a new thing and I think tabs got bumped.

JesusAndYourBush

Quote from: Lemming on May 22, 2022, 06:01:46 PMShe pointed out - correctly - that all these stupid stylised interfaces just make it harder to actually use the program and take up unnecessarily large amounts of space on the screen. Best counterargument I could come up with was "yeah but it looks fucking sick".

I hated that sort of crap even when it was new.  Take something like Windows Media Player when they upgraded it to the monstrosity you see on the left, but luckily you could click the icon at the bottom right of the player to revert it to the one on the right which is what it'd looked like before they meddled.


Video Game Fan 2000

do people still use trackballs

Sebastian Cobb

You weren't alone, windows media player classic was good before vlc removed the need for confusing (and conflicting) codec packs and also provided a good alternative to RealPlayer after they fucked it by adding a load of bloat and functionality nobody asked for.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Video Game Fan 2000 on May 22, 2022, 06:39:49 PMdo people still use trackballs

Yeah I've seen a few people use them. Much like vertical mice they seem to be the the preserve of people who want to front they work so hard they have given themselves rsi, in my experience these people are generally a bit useless and create more work for everyone around them.

I'm sure rsi is real, it's just people who actually have it just quietly get on with it.

Blue Jam

Quote from: Lemming on May 22, 2022, 06:01:46 PMFax machines are still big in Japan!

The last time I used a fax machine was in Japan! They were still being used quite heavily in 2014 at least.

I was also surprised when I noticed several of the local convenience stores stocked blank VHS tapes. And that when I was on the Tokyo Metro I never saw anyone else with an e-reader. And I remember reading that the Xbox 360 and PS3 were still popular in Japan long after Xbone and PS4 came out, which was the main reason why Microsoft and Sony were still making games for them. I think that may be more down to mobile gaming being more popular than console gaming in Japan though.

Blue Jam

Quote from: Rizla on May 22, 2022, 05:56:21 PMIt's funny some of the old stuff that's still hanging in there doing a job, like at my mrs's work there's specialised science equipment that needs Apple II's to make it go.

My workplace isn't quite that bad but we do have a surprising amount of equipment that won't run on anything later than Windows XP, and I think we still have some Windows 2000 PCs knocking around. Of course Microsoft are no longer putting out security updates for these operating systems so we can't risk connecting them to a network, which means using any form of cloud computing or even emailing data files to someone is right out. If you forget to bring a USB stick to work you just have to come back and collect the data files later.

Sebastian Cobb

I think I read about this, the Japanese fetishise handwriting still so fax has clung on, if I recall it's common for people to fax orders to takeaways and stuff.

I think they still like analogue stuff in general though I think vinyl and tape is still semi-popular although I think CD also still does well but Japan always did get special releases for to stop cheaper grey imports or something.

I had to buy a vcr a while back as I wanted to see a film I rented from blockbuster as a teenager and the only thing I could get it on was a promo VHS sent to rental stores, the box has 'SAMPLE' printed diagonally across the barcode. Bbfc ratings suggest it was submitted for approval on dvd as well but I had no luck finding any hint copies exist on that medium.

JesusAndYourBush

And greencalx, if your youngun is too young to have experienced slow internet via a modem that's always a good one to explain that it took about 20 minutes to download an mp3, and that most isp's routinely disconnected you after 2 hours so if you were close to the cutoff time you'd pray that your mp3 would download before the cutoff (especially as originally there was no resume so on reconnect you had to start again.)

JaDanketies

My house has loads of expensive obsolete technology in it, actually. There's this big electric unit in a cupboard and all these speakers in the ceilings, and this meant that you could play an mp3 on a device downstairs, and it would travel through this system and eventually come out of your speakers upstairs. Or you could plug your modem in one end of the house and then connect to it on the other end of the house, or put your DVD in a DVD player in this cupboard and watch it in anywhere in the house. 

There's a thick layer of wires behind the walls and you can see this unit has a bunch of cables coming out of it and going all over the show. It would've been amazing back in the day!

Wifi and Bluetooth have made it totally obsolete and it was cutting-edge Bill Gates' House-style stuff 15 or 20 years ago.

greencalx

Quote from: JesusAndYourBush on May 22, 2022, 07:21:31 PMAnd greencalx, if your youngun is too young to have experienced slow internet via a modem that's always a good one to explain that it took about 20 minutes to download an mp3, and that most isp's routinely disconnected you after 2 hours so if you were close to the cutoff time you'd pray that your mp3 would download before the cutoff (especially as originally there was no resume so on reconnect you had to start again.)

There are still plenty of ways to simulate slow internet connections. And he's heard me talk plenty about loading games from tape.

I love the sound of @JaDanketies house! People look at me strangely when I talk about running Ethernet cables under the floor, but as mentioned in another thread we have thick walls.

Sebastian Cobb

I bought a dreamcast from CEX the other day with a view to putting a gdemu unit in it (replace the CD drive with an sd card reader) but then found the cost of the unit was rising rapidly thanks to the chip shortage so that's on hold. The drive in the machine is goosed as well and I can't get it working by adjusting the pot on the drive. I just about got it to play an audio CD without glitching but it still couldn't do data.

JamesTC

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on May 22, 2022, 06:43:29 PMI'm sure rsi is real, it's just people who actually have it just quietly get on with it

This lazy guy who didn't last long in my office came in after a week absent with casts on both hands, claiming he had "keyboard and mouse syndrome". Still remember a co-worker looking at him come in with  mouth agape and then turning to me and saying "he looks like a fucking eagle is going to fly down and land on his arm".

This was after the same guy had claimed he got heatstroke from the bus. And that he claimed he couldn't come in because his house had no electricity. And he claimed, whilst on a train to London, that he thought he booked the day off.