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Shitty Technology That's Still Around
Professor Snugglesworth
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
As new technology is created, older technology becomes obsolete and eventually fazes out. DVDs replaced VHS, cellphones replaced pagers, and the Internet replaced face-to-face interactions.
But even though the human race keeps making more awesome stuff, there's still obsolete technology that's still festering around. In this thread, we discuss the technology that's outlived its usefulness, and should make its way to the retirement home.
Here's my number one pick: Fax Machines. Boy, do I fucking hate fax machines. In this age where we can send e-mails at the speed of a mouse click, why do so many companies and offices insist on using this method to send letters and documents over a 56k line?
I can't count how many times I try to send my documents (namely my resume) to an office, spending a good five minutes scanning and copying my files, then waiting another two minutes after dialing the number, only to be greeted with either A) no response, or
"we're sorry, you must add a 1 or 0 to call this number", and then having to SCAN MY FUCKING DOCUMENTS ALL OVER AGAIN.
Seriously, faxing needs to go.
But even though the human race keeps making more awesome stuff, there's still obsolete technology that's still festering around. In this thread, we discuss the technology that's outlived its usefulness, and should make its way to the retirement home.
Here's my number one pick: Fax Machines. Boy, do I fucking hate fax machines. In this age where we can send e-mails at the speed of a mouse click, why do so many companies and offices insist on using this method to send letters and documents over a 56k line?
I can't count how many times I try to send my documents (namely my resume) to an office, spending a good five minutes scanning and copying my files, then waiting another two minutes after dialing the number, only to be greeted with either A) no response, or
"we're sorry, you must add a 1 or 0 to call this number", and then having to SCAN MY FUCKING DOCUMENTS ALL OVER AGAIN.Seriously, faxing needs to go.
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The PDF format and especially Adobe Acrobat were supposed to supplant that process (and, for some of the clients where I work, it has) but it will be awhile before an all-digital workflow is natural to everyone.
As for other stuff that should have gone a long time ago... desktop phones that you have to dial. I mean, come on, I have an address book on my computer. It can use BlueTooth to do all sorts of fun things with mobile phones. Why can't I dial my desktop phone with my computer, or at least sync directories with it?
I'm sure there are some phones on the market that do that... that cost more than my iMac.
PSN:RevDrGalactus/NN:RevDrGalactus/Steam
Desktop phone?
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
it's slower than that. V.34bis faxes run at 33.6K, while "normal" V.34 runs at 28.8K.
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Why do cops still ride these?
What I want to know is why cop cars are still obsolete pieces of crap. Do they have GPS? Do they even have air conditioning?
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Why do still have printers, especially ones that don't like to work well. With all the devices we have now that can display a document, we should be able to just email it, look at it on our phone and send it back, or instead of printing your 150 page paper and running out of paper, just zip it, throw it on a flash disc, and take it to your teacher who can look at it on their computer.
On this note, why do we still have CD-R's and CD-RW's? DVD's or flash drives can hold so much more, and flash drives are reusable
Because American car companies are willing to sell their cars in bulk (which is why every single Enterprise car rental office has nothing but American cars), and due to the standardization of the Crown Victoria across the board, any cop can get his vehicle serviced immediately anywhere.
There are still computers out there that don't have DVD drives, as obscene as that seems. Also, music.
Why does anyone still ride horses? They aren't needed for anything anymore, just put some in a zoo for posterity, throw some back into the wild, then kill the rest and package them for meat.
Having a live animal as a mode of transportation has its distinct advantages. Tourists can't ride ATVs and bikes (unless they're hardcore motherfuckers) down the grand canyon, but they can ride burros.
Fun fact: America has never lost a war in which horses and donkeys were used on or around the battlefield.
edit: also, for cowboys, lugging fuel around while herding cattle across long distances isn't feasible, as horses can graze off the land and drink river and lake water. Self-sustaining and all that. Of course, nowadays we mostly ship cattle via train, but tracks don't go everywhere.
And printers. If I ever meet the guy behind the HP All-in-One Photosmart, I will punch him in the goddamn liver until he shits blood. Being an IT guy, I often get roped into something like "While you're here working on useful equipment that conforms to industry standards, why don't you look into this piece of crap that is entirely proprietary parts and no quality to speak of since it essentially functions to entrap people into buying toner?"
Next: Blu-ray is going nowhere. Physical media is dead. In ten years most everything will be some combination of streaming and SSDs. Sony won the format war, but I haven't bought an actual disc in years and Blu-ray offers little over DVD to users that aren't home theater buffs.
Tangent: Can we do something about camera phones? Either up the resolution to something worth looking at, or get rid of them. Christ.
Also, until the day you can easily mark up a pdf universally on any computer with handwriting recognition, then the fax machine will never go away.
Fuck FDA regulations.
as far as printers and shit goes it bugs me to no end that none of my professors at school accept e-mailed assignments
i understand why, because they always have to print them out and correct them by hand, but it's still irritating because printing can be very expensive
i feel like someone needs to make some kind of tablet-pc like deal where you can just write on text documents by hand
or just put Track Changes into microsoft word and have them suck it up and fucking type it already
GT: Tanky the Tank
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What?
What would be faster?
Yeah, HIPAA is a pain in the balls for sure.
Have you ever seen the keyboard layout where everything is in alphabetical order? It looks like a pain in the ass to type with.
True fact. Typewriters are designed with the most used keys in outside positions so that the physical keys wouldn't bind up on people who type really really fast. There has been a few replacement lay outs suggest, DORVAK (spelling?) being one. I think I remember a year or two ago someone actually did research and said speed gains on truly excellent typist was minimal however.
VGA is dead, DVI isn't, and I don't really find it much of a problem until you run into a cheap monitor that only supports DVI-A and you have 20 DVI-I cables. You can always go HDMI with modern monitors and graphic cards
Yea, they've tested this, and I'm fairly sure that most of the reasons for layout X being better are bunk and false at this point. QWERTY keyboards may have been designed to slow people down, but now changing it would slow people down
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboard
Now, personally, I'm not a fan of Dvorak, but I'm a programmer, Dvorak de-emphasized the sort of obscure punctuation marks I need to frequently use (because you don't use e.g. curly braces much when writing in English). Also sometimes it helps to allow other people to type at your computer.
I understand that there are parts of the country out in Bumfuck, Nowhere that don't have the high-speed fiberoptic data lines (or even the almost-as-high-speed coaxial cable lines) that I've got plugged into my house. Indeed, I used to live in one of those places. But for us civilized folks, why are our landline phones so shitty? Why can't we have a landline phone with at least half the features of a ten-year-old cell phone? One that operates over IP, while we're at it. I know such products exist, but having to support the old crappy analog phones sucks. My FIOS termination point has four analog phone jacks for fuck's sake.
A lot of people quote that QWERTY was designed to slow you down. That isn't true, and it has never really been proven that Dvorak is any faster. That's not to say I didn't learn it for a little while (protip: ABANDON ALL QWERTY YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO SWITCH BETWEEN THEM), but it's not really true that Dvorak is significantly faster.
Dvorak is a good deal more comfortable, though.
Knives are worthless. They can cut your food or other things, but big deal. Swords can do the same thing but are much longer, with often more convenient and easier-to-hold grips. They're also better (swords) at stabbing or cutting dudes than stupid knives. Knives, pft. Ever heard of a gun, asshole? Knives can't even shoot people at all. Not even just ten feet away. What kind of backward fuck would ever need one?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_knife
What's that about knives not being able to shoot people?
Because the analog phone system is amazingly robust. Lose power with a corded phone? Still works. Lose power with an IP based phone and you're done. Plus the average person finds it amazingly hard to fuck up an analog phone line. IP based phones...not so much.
Pagers.
Funnily enough, I and my doctor both had the exact same model at my last checkup.
We both hate it equally.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
Those are fairly useless now, what with text messaging being pretty much a pager, built into your phone and easier to use
You ruined my joke, asshole!
Many phones come with worthwhile cameras. These are from the iPhone 3GS because it's what I have, but I've seen better. Samsung's Omnia phones come to mind.
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/107712/iphone1.jpg
I mean, I wouldn't take it sightseeing, but for incidental pictures, it's more than adequate. Enough that I removed the old Canon from my car that was there in case of an accident.
Bitch about fax machines and non-digital documents all you want, but nothing is as universal or easy to use as a piece of paper with shit printed/written on it.
No power needed! No special software, or hardware! Amazing!
With the exception of the pager, just about everything mentioned in this thread is perfectly viable. It isn't just the fact that people are retarded and lazy that's keeping this shit around.
it's called the fax machine
people aren't bitching about the piece of paper they're bitching about the outdated technologies we cling to because of it
it's not like people are going to stop writing on paper if fax machines go by the wayside
Also dictaphones.