Technology that refuses to die

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Arran
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13 Mar 2013, 2:11 pm

What technology do you think should be extinct but it stubbornly refuses to die?

Some examples I can think of are RS-232; Internet Explorer 6; and training wheels for bikes.

Ichinin
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13 Mar 2013, 2:58 pm

TV, non-mobile phones (land lines), printed magazines... come on, its 2013 already!

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Fnord
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13 Mar 2013, 3:05 pm

Arran wrote:

What technology do you think should be extinct but it stubbornly refuses to die?

Pagers

BlueMax
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13 Mar 2013, 3:39 pm

Magnetic storage.

Battery technology.

Fnord
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13 Mar 2013, 3:49 pm

Disco floor lighting

Karaoke

eric76
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13 Mar 2013, 4:07 pm

Arran wrote:

What technology do you think should be extinct but it stubbornly refuses to die?

Some examples I can think of are RS-232; Internet Explorer 6; and training wheels for bikes.

Microsoft, for sure.

As for RS-232, I still use dumb VT-100 terminals. I can get far more work done on them because I'm not so tempted to waste my time on the web.

IdahoRose
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13 Mar 2013, 4:38 pm

CDs

Tollorin
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13 Mar 2013, 4:41 pm

Ichinin wrote:

), printed magazines...

Not everyone got a tablet.

BlueMax wrote:

Magnetic storage.

Battery technology.

Capacitors don't hold enough charge and are not adapted to replace all instance of battery use (They can be dangerous.), and flash drive is not cheap enough to replace hard drives.

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CornerPuzzlePieces
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13 Mar 2013, 4:42 pm

The QWERTY Keyboard

CharlieSheen
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13 Mar 2013, 4:54 pm

Political Sciences

If i have to pick material tech, then synthpop

Arran
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13 Mar 2013, 4:56 pm

Cigarette lighters in car dashboards. How many people actually use them to light cigarettes with nowadays?

More than one person has mentioned shoelaces.

Mechanical timers have disappeared from washing machines only in the last few years. They could have all been replaced with microcontrollers by 1990.

Terrestrial television is a debatable one. Some critics say that digital terrestrial television was developed primarily to appease older people who preferred the look of a yagi to a satellite dish.

Ichinin
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13 Mar 2013, 5:00 pm

Tollorin wrote:

Ichinin wrote:

), printed magazines...

Not everyone got a tablet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Www

Can be read when you need info.

(And solid state drives at around 60GB are pretty cheap now)

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Ichinin
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13 Mar 2013, 5:03 pm

Arran wrote:

Terrestrial television is a debatable one. Some critics say that digital terrestrial television was developed primarily to appease older people who preferred the look of a yagi to a satellite dish.

Television has no right to exist! The internet can deliver pretty much any show you wanna watch, without some moron TV planner deciding for you what to watch. The concept of force fed entertainment has to DIE.

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eric76
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13 Mar 2013, 5:04 pm

Arran wrote:

Cigarette lighters in car dashboards. How many people actually use them to light cigarettes with nowadays?

They have other uses.

I use mine along with a special adapter cable to charge my cell phone while driving.

eric76
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13 Mar 2013, 5:10 pm

Ichinin wrote:

Arran wrote:

Terrestrial television is a debatable one. Some critics say that digital terrestrial television was developed primarily to appease older people who preferred the look of a yagi to a satellite dish.

So your answer is to deny TV to people who live in remote areas? Make everyone move to a big city with cheap Internet?

There are many places without much in the way of Internet at all or with limitations on bandwidth.

Around here, most people have two choices for Internet -- satellite Internet that with severe limitations on your bandwidth and poor service or fixed wireless Internet with much better performance and fewer limitations. However, with the high cost of the multiple T-1 lines (ours has three T-1 lines) to service the customers it would be impossible for many to watch TV at the same time. Even with just three T-1 lines, the company just barely breaks even in spite of paying considerably less than competitive wages.

So if you want tv, you either get it over the air or you pay for it from Dish Network or Direct TV.

Last edited by eric76 on 13 Mar 2013, 5:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Arran
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13 Mar 2013, 5:10 pm

COBOL and FORTRAN live on because of the large installed base of software dating back to the 1960s in use in financial services and scientific research respectively.

Switch and case from C finds its way into newer languages but it is of an ancient design with break statements from when assembly language was the norm. The C preprocessor is also dubious from today's perspective.

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