Slashdot Mirror
Ten Technologies That Refuse to Die
kudyadi writes "Technology Review has an interesting article on, as the title suggests, ten technologies that we continue using despite advances made in the same. The best example is that of analog watches, "Compared to today's digital timepieces, old-fashioned, sweep-hand watches are pathetic one-trick ponies. Digital-watch wearers can check temperature, altitude, and the time in Tokyo, play tunes and games, and send messages. Can wristwatch videoconferencing, Web surfing, and tarot readings be far off? But what digital watches can't do, according to sweep-hand proponents, is display the time and context as elegantly and intuitively as an analog model."" Interesting counterpoint to this post from a few years back about technologies that didn't manage to hang on. And Bruce Sterling has a short list of ones he'd like to see go away, too ;)
You have to admit, no matter what side you're on...it's amazing the Mac has lasted this long after being pronounced dead several times.
Best Buy can have you arrested
*BSD
sulli
RTFJ.
They still serve a very important purpose for many businesses: Multipart form printing.
One company I work with prints 4 part invoices for in-home services. We've tested alternatives, but have yet to find a non-impact printer capable of getting the job done.
I think its unfair to call the technology outdated when it still performs some tasks better than its modern counterparts.
How many roads must a man walk down? 42.
Guess what? I just want a watch that tells time. I don't want that's tacky, but most digital watches come with this ungainly feature.
Do you love freedom??? Do you love freedom!!! DO YOU LOVE FREEDOM!!!!!!!!
No need to throw the Fortran libraries away, though, just wrap them in a higher level language. Chances are it'll be fast enough, and it'll almost certainly be a lot easier to use.
The Army reading list
Over half of my school still uses Windows NT, even though they did het hacked a few times. They finnally got a XP site license for the student computers, but the staff ones still use NT
This signature was left intentionally blank.
Cars with wheels.
Buildings that need ground to support them.
So, where are the flying cars and cities on clouds damnit?!
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
SMTP and identd
My favorite quote from the article:
"And you needn't worry about your system going obsolete if it already is."
How true...
Sig? What sig?
floppy drive
Yes, there are some people who use them, but there are fewer and fewer forms to fill out these days that aren't automated.
John
Watches are jewelry, you techno-elitist snob. That's why people don't "upgrade".
What next. I should get my wife cubic zirconium because it looks the same as a diamond but is much cheaper because it was made with "technology". I'm just soooo old fashioned.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
the company i work for uses foxpro. might as well be writing code in sanskrit
Clippy
Hacker Media
As the owner of a Bulova timepiece, I am insulted that the other values of older technology like a watch are not considered. For example, the artistic merit and fine craftsmanship of my watch are enjoyable to me every time I use the watch. On a shallower note, it's dead sexy. The same conundrum was brought up about photos vs. oil paintings at the beginning of the 20th century -- sure, photos represent a "clear" picture of something, but they in no way diminish the quality and value of an original Rembrandt painting.
stuff |
"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches."
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
Some of us forget that "new" is not necessarily "better".
Analog watches will stay around for exactly the reason mentioned -- they are elegant and intuitive. Sure digital watches can do a lot more, but nobody cares because they look like ass. Wearing a digital watch with teleconferencing and web browsing is one of the surest ways to not get laid that I've heard of in a long time.
It is just like over complicated phones. All I need it to do is keep time. Why does every device have to do 11,274 different things?
I've had countless digital watches, most are in the garbage. I also have one or two 'analog' watches that I simply wind up and they work. No batteries, no looking for the manual to figure out how to set the time in Tokyo, no calibrating altitude and temp.
My mother's a nurse, and she told me once that she MUST have an analog watch with a second hand when counting somebody's pulse. I tried it once, and she's right - you just can't count both pulses and seconds if you're looking at a digital display.
I think what's happening here is that with the analog watch, you use the "number" part of your brain to count the pulses, while you use the visual part of your brain to see when your 60 seconds is up (by looking for the position of the second hand).
With a digital seconds readout, you end up using the "number" part of your brain for both tasks, and you get screwed up.
For ten years, now, the media have been saying that any day now chemical photography will just go away. Bloom County, back in the early nineties, had Opus and Milo flushing a 35mm SLR down the toilet lamenting, "Oh, little Nikon, we hardly knew ye." And that was back when you couldn't touch a decent digital camera for under a grand.
And yet people are still buying 35mm film, shooting pics on it, and having it processed. Those single-use cameras (manufacturers bristle at the word "disposable") are still quite popular.
I do see more and more people with digital cameras nowadays, naturally, but rumors of the death of chemical photography are greatly exaggerated. University art departments still teach the old-fashioned methods.
I could go on and on about this forever, but there are other and better posts to read below.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
And an important aspect of moving hands is that they convey information in their movement: in a cockpit the altimeter can be "read" very quickly to show whether the aircraft is ascending or descending. On a watch I can get an approximate time (it's almost 4:30pm) in a glance. Yet another example is a digital vs. analog scuba diving pressure gauge: the position of the mechanical arm can be understood very fast without worrying about the exact number of PSI left.
John.
Bidets are a 19th century innovation, and here we are (in America at least) cleaning our nether regions with paper. How barbaric!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The article makes it sound like analog watch is a bad thing. However, when I look at my watch (analog, of course) I am not really putting any effort to read time. I sort of know that its like 4:20 as I am writing this. It makes it easier too for e.g when I am driving as it doesn't really take my concentration away from the most important thing at that time which is driving.
However, I've owned a digital watch and it takes *some* effort to *read* the actual time. And even after doing that, I form a mental image of what time it is in terms of analog look.
Digital watch? No, thanks. I'ma keep my analog. IMHO
Free XBox, PS2
Two things I like about analog timepieces:
The first is that you can usually make out the time further away, and in poorer lighting conditions, from an analog clock versus a digital.
The second is that you can use your analog watch as an impromptu compass. In the northern hemisphere, hold the watch flat and point the hour hand towards the sun. Now bisect the angle between the hour hand and the figure 12 (ie. noon) on your watch to give you a North-South line. In the southern hemisphere, hold the watch dial and point the figure 12 (ie. noon) towards the sun. The line that bisects the angle between the hour hand and the figure 12 is the North-South line.
...it actually points out why these "old-fashioned" technologies continue to be popular. You wouldn't know that from the /. intro.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Point the hour hand in the direction of the sun (Keeping it horizontal of course), and the point between the hour hand and 12 will be South. For you "Below the belt" /.rs (South of the equator ;-) it'll be pointing North.
Cheers!
--RjS
Never give any object more potential energy than you want it to have.
Oh man, those are still in fashion! Just look, you can be a full-fledged MUSICIAN with these things!
symphony for dot matrix printers
Those big old machines keep the world running (I mean, if we agree that money moves this fscking world... :P)... I cannot imagine a bank trusting all its data to a cheap PC running XP or whatever... not even a Sun SPARC could handle that volume of data processing....
I'm actually somewhat surprised to see VHS not being listed. Despite large chains like Circuit City and Best Buy having gotten out of VHS sales, people still refuse to upgrade even to a $40 WalMart DVD player. These same people will complain to any employee at a store that sells or rents DVDs about how they don't have enough VHS tapes, but won't even consider the idea that times have moved on from the format.
I have a technology they missed (granted, it is somewhat specialized), and one I feel they incorrectly marked.
The one they missed is IEEE-488 (a.k.a. GPIB) - a control bus used in instrument control. 1 Mbyte/sec (unless you used a bastardized protocol), 30 units maximum, length limits, interface cards that cost US$500 or more, yet customers are STILL asking for GPIB over USB or Ethernet.
The one they wiffed on is vacuum tubes. Sorry, but when it comes to making high power RF amplifiers tubes are hard to beat - it is a great deal easier to use a vacuum tube running at 3000V to make a kilowatt of RF than a transistor at 30V - and when you get up to microwaves (2GHz and up) tubes are kings. True, when a (sic)audiophile(cough) claims tubes are better for low power audio.... Well, as a coworker of mine says, "I don't argue with wheelbarrows - I push them."
www.eFax.com are spammers
Dot matrix printers can print half a page, stop and print the second half the next day. And you can read the result between the 2 jobs.
You can use it as an ouput terminal.
Try to do that with a laser printer. Won't die anytime soon.
Iraq: war to save the U
NO KIDDING!!!
This is a general trend of adding garbage to an otherwise simple device. Digitals watches, cell phones, etc.
If you're going to have a multipurpose machine, like a computer, then call it that. Otherwise you end up with a watch that takes the temperature, tells time, takes pictures, has an address book, and makes calls.
Then your cell phone makes calls, tells time, takes the temperature, takes pictures and has an address book.
Your handheld address book tells time, takes the temperature, takes pictures, makes phone calls.
Your digital camera takes pictures, tells time...
I had to laugh when I read the story on slashdot. How can OLD watches still hang around that just tell time?
BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT A WATCH IS FOR.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
So as strange as this may sound fortran can be much faster!
The Raven
He most certainly should have included old floppy drives. I no longer order a floppy drive when buying new PCs or Laptops for my company, but you can still get them if you want. USB keys are just too dang handy and hold alot more data. I'm amazed that the ole 3.5 disk is still around. At least that is better than the super old 8 inch disks I used so long ago.
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
Intuitive, eh? I guess nobody remembers that segment in second grade where you had to learn to read an analog display. The mental map between "Big hand on 2 and little hand on 6" to 2:30 is non-trivial... I mean, did you catch that that time is actually ten minutes after six? It's the reason why kids start out with digital watches.
What analog watches do display intuitively is the amount of time between two events, at least for differences less than an hour (or half hour). It would be interesting to make a linear clock, where you could see tiny slivers of five minutes versus chunks of half hours, and ask kids how easy it is to use versus standard round analog or digital displays.
from the eyes of a non-techie:
Could you please explain counter-clockwise to me again?
BSD is designed. Linux is grown. C++ libs
The QWERTY keyboard, which was actually designed to slow folks down (and to make typing "typewriter" fast!) is long overdue for death. If you want a speed boost or to give your wrists a break, try Dvorak. Check out Jared Diamond's "The Curse of QWERTY" on the matter.
Of course, I just started, which is why the above is written in zealot mode, and though I can attest to the comfort I haven't seen a speed boost yet. But I'll give it time...
Annoying, wasn't it? Here is the link to the full article that I saw in that Google search though.
Please subscribe to see the more insightful version of th
Actually, you could even argue that purely mechanical watches, like your wind-up or my Seiko kinetic watch, is environmentally friendly since there is no need for a battery, and therefore no disposal concerns.
Of course, I'm not an environmental nut, so I won't argue that -- just making a point.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
Well, on the multi-part forms I've used, there's usually spaces for a customer to sign (think - car repair forms at most major dealerships.) Using the same impact during signing (pressure), you get multiple copies, one for the dealership, one for records, and one for the customer, all with the same signature.
I'd hate to have to sign for work multiple times...
Karnal
Here's a real link to the article instead of having to look through Google:
Ten technologies that deserve to die
Gone are the times when the floppy is the only rescue tool for a b0rked computer. Bootable CDs and USB drives have fixed that. So why are they still around? For all intents and purposes, USB drives beat floppies in every respect: physical size, storage size, access time, mtbf.... the list goes on.
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
How about light bulbs? We have LEDs, fluorescent varieties, energy efficient high lumen low wattage bulbs out the wazoo, and we insist on using expensive, high heat output incandescents. An Edison bulb, for crying out loud, would work in a modern lamp, more or less.
How about pulse-dial telephones? The phone company still has to send 90 watts down the line whenever the phone rings so that on the off chance some bulky receiver with an honest-to-god bell will get enough power to vibrate?
Give me a break. Analog watches? At least they have style.
This list is of devices that work perfectly. They do what they need to without any obnoxious interference. My analog watch tells me the time when I look at it. I never see the latest sports scores or the temperature. I get what I want. The author seems to have left off the broom. Why didn't the broom die when the vacuum was invented? Because the broom served its purpose quickly and efficiently. The broom has been used for at least 5,000 years and will probably continue to be used until humanity is destroyed. Thank goodness for places like OldVersion.com . Newer isn't always better.
For many processes, the multipart form is preferred because at certain steps along the way, one sheet is ripped off while the rest proceed along. If you printed multiple copies on a laserjet instead, you'd have to collate and staple (or do something else) to keep the appropriate copies together - hardly an efficient alternative...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
The article does not mention that the real reason impact printers are still used so much by banks and other businesses is to produce multi-copy forms. Yes, you can print several copies of a page on a laser or inkjet, but there is no way to get them to feed tractor multi-parts forms!
Analog guages in a car, as well.. There was a big trend in the late 80s to go with all digital dashes, then all of a sudden the analog guages came back - or LCD reproductions of analog..
Same reasons you cite. With a quick glance you can tell that you're pushing your engine into the red, or that your temperature getting too high, or you're going wayy fast.. You just see speed, rpm, temperature without having to read it.. Reading engages wholly different parts of your brain and complicates the activity.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
If you have numbered multipart forms then this ensures that the sheets of paper you sign/ship/mail are part of the original multipart form and not a reprint.
Many places want original paperwork, you can't guarantee it with a laser. Dot matrix is still a darn useful technology.
Trolling is a art,
ok, i thought analog watches was a bad inclusion, but vacuum tubes?! Why not throw this round thing called "The Wheel" in there, too? It's old and freaking won't die!
I love my Crate tube amp. It's so nice sounding.
This article... it's credibility is wavering at the moment. The author must have spent a whole 5 minutes looking for inspiration before giving up and writting this lousy article.
You can use an analog watch, if it's correctly set, to find your direction in the wilderness. Point the hour hand at the sun, and halfway between the hour hand and 12 o'clock will be either North or South, depending on your lattitude and time of year.
Yeah, that's not much, but it's cool. It also means you can set your analog watches with a compass, and, with a little math and a sure reckoning of where north is, estimate your lattitude by finding how close the sun is to vertical, and in which direction it deviates.
Thinking about this problem has brought to my attention that I've been a Boy Scout for far too long...
Despite my usual love for evereything new and advanced, I have a strong love for mechanical watches. I wear an IWC Portofino right now. It doesn't even glow in the dark and I need a separate alarm to wake me up. All it does is tell me the time and date. But I'm fairly sure I would be wearing the same watch for the forseeable future and I have a greater love for it than any of my previous watches.
Why? Because ironically good timepieces should be timeless. Even a good mechanical watch from the 50's or earlier would still work and look nice if it has been taken care of. On the other hand, anything that's technologically advanced is the opposite. They're very vulnerable to the passage of time. The own selling point of technology is that they're somehow futuristic or advanced but once that future has arrived, they lost their charm. A well made time-piece or anything that is "timeless" has other qualities that age better.
I think a good part of it has to do with the person's personality as much as anything else. Having taken the technology route so many times, I'm happy to know that I have something, however small, that will last and do one thing really well day after day.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Good lord, fax needs to go away. I've bitched and moaned about this at my office for FIVE YEARS.
... what are you thinking?
In addition to that, there needs to be some way of physically inflicting pain upon people who print documents and don't pick them up from the printer. It's a waste to print at all, but if you then don't even get your wasted print out
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
I can't see radio ever dying until our cars drive themselves. You can't (well shouldn't) watch television while driving, so radio is really your only alternative.
If you can find a better way to distribute information for low cost, reasonably long range, low power, flexibility, small size and relatively simple design, I'd like to see it.
Streaming content on the web? Not without a computer and high speed connection.
XM radio? Big cost rampup to get a satellite constellation up and high cost of the receiver.
Blaze a trail to the New World
The reason watches with moving hands are so successful is that [...] they are extremely fast and easy to read. [...] On a watch I can get an approximate time (it's almost 4:30pm) in a glance.
I think we agree, but I would put it this way: the act of reading an analog display degrades gracefully. If you want accuracy, you can take your time and examine the tick marks closely. If you glance at it, you get a general idea.
With a digital watch, if you glance at it and you only manage to catch the last two digits, you're not much the wiser.
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
Most digital watches have a "chronograph" or "countdown" feature that would allow her to select 60 seconds, press start and then take her finger off the button, grab the wrist....oh...
with the advant of cheap CD-rw burners and dirt cheap flash media its amazing the floppy disk is still around
CLI
The ______ Agenda
IMHO, there's really no good reason anyone should need a typewriter for the purpose of filling out purchase orders!
The problem is, your workplace is still using the "old tech" of carbon paper based forms.
The last company I worked for that made us fill out multipart purchase order forms finally phased them out completely. They installed new computer software that let employees complete the whole purchase order online. Sure, a few people complained and moaned about how much harder it made things - but over time, even they started getting used to it. (How often do you re-order something from the same supplier? I bet it happens fairly often. Sure is nice to have the PC fill in the whole address for you when you key in the name of the vendor, because it remembers them all in an address book.)
It's also nice when someone needs to locate an old purchase order to figure out when a warranty expires or what was paid for a product the last time it was purchased. Just do a quick search in the computer, instead of digging through thousands of papers in a filing cabinet!
Never bought a house, have you?
But what digital watches can't do, according to sweep-hand proponents, is display the time and context as elegantly and intuitively as an analog model
How on earth can you describe an analog watch as more intuitive than a digital watch? More elegant, certainly. But intuitive? A digital watch shows the numbers. If you can read them, you can tell the time. An analog watch uses one set of numbers (or positions, as many don't even have actual numerals on the face) for two different things. You have to learn what each hand means, and what each position means in the context of each hand. Once you learn it, it becomes straightforward and easy, but it's definitely the opposite of intuitive.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
Not really. They're two-trick ponies; they tell me the time and the date. Last time I checked, "timepiece" meant "something that tells time".
Digital-watch wearers can check temperature, altitude, and the time in Tokyo, play tunes and games, and send messages.
None of which matters. I don't give a crap about the temperature, because it's moot; if I'm too cold or too hot, my body will tell me, and I'm usually smart enough to, based on time of day, season, location etc...figure out what I'm gonna need to wear(I may even, gasp, open the door and stick my head outside to see for myself). I don't give a crap about altitude, because honestly, that doesn't really mean anything to me, unless it comes on the news that anything under 1000 ft ASL is going to flood within the hour because the whole antarctic shelf just collapsed. I certainly don't give a crap about the time in Tokyo, because if I needed to know that sort of thing on a regular basis, I'd know what the differential is, and be able to do the rather easy math(anyone that can't do addition/subtraction for number under 30 needs serious help). In the meantime, I'll guess that they're approximately 12 hours behind EST since they're on the opposite side of the world.
In fact, the only reason I need a timepiece- since I(and most other people) can tell roughly what time of day it is...is because we need to be at certainly places at certain very specific times, where guessing isn't appropriate. The date function is small because we only need to look at it once a day, maybe twice, to remind ourselves. Form, meet function. So pardon me while I buy the nice, simple analog timepiece that looks nice(and will look nice for at least another 100 years) while you buy your stupid little toy that will break in 5 years(it'll be out of style in 6 months, if you're lucky). Were electric analog timepieces an improvement? Not really. Manual wind, I can sync to my computer, or even a radio program. But my electric analog watch needs battery replacement every year or so, and since it only comes out on special occasions, it's nearly always dead.
I have the same objection to cameraphones. I want my phone to do 3 things. a)let me find a number for someone I know b)let me know when someone is calling c)let me make calls.
Notice nowhere in there was "annoy coworkers with polyphonic ringtones." Or "take pictures"(I use my camera to take pictures, and they look 1000x better than anything any cameraphone will ever produce). Or "tell me the weather". I haven't even bothered to use the AIM functions, or SMS. I use my phone for one thing- telephone calls.
I once mentored for the middle school science olympiad. Mind you, these kids are supposed to be the brightest of the bunch- the kids who enjoy science and thinking on their feet. "Okay, you guys have until 3pm to finish this practice". (loooong pause) "Um, we don't have any watches on." "There's a clock right there on the wall." (blank stares.) "Um...we don't know how to read those kinds of clocks". How pathetic is that?
Please help metamoderate.
We can only hope that it's impossible to get the original tracks from a linkin park session in 50 or 60 years. Hell, I'm hoping they're gone already.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
I am a die-hard analog watch fan. Digital watch faces just look cheap to me, no matter how expensive they are.
Analog doesn't also mean not digital either. My Seiko has an analog face, but with digital internals. It has an alarm, chronometer, stop watch, and timer. It uses stepping motors to control the hands.
So, is this a digalog watch?? Or is it anagital?
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Actually hooked one of these up to my Trash-80.
Yup, he's right. It's on our New York State checkout list, right next ot NYS State cert. card, penlight and trauma shears. Analog watches for EMT's and Paramedics are mandatory.
My TAG Heuer Formula 1 has taken one shit kicking after another; stills ticks away like a champ at work.
I don't think the digital plastic equivalent would hold up.
--
1. Hard to quickly read while driving at night even with backlighting, give me glowing analog hands!
2. Display fades & hard to read when very cold
3. batteries are not standardized, store might not even have your size!
4. batteries are required; if your watch dies while you're traveling in third world country you're likely S.O.L.
5. using digital watch as stopwatch/timing requires pushing buttons, with analog can easily do just by looking
From the article: "Vacuum tubes Audiophiles have sustained another technology that's even older than magnetic tape. In the 1970s, compact, energy-efficient transistors boded to replace vacuum tubes entirely. But transistors couldn't satisfy some guitar players and hi-fi cognoscenti."
As a guitar player, I'm insulted that this article lumps me in with the conspicuously-consuming audiophiles that drop hundreds of dollars on cleverly marketed cables. Tubes aren't an imaginary sound modifier in guitar amps, they are universally agreed to distort (clip) in much nicer ways when sent an overpowered signal compared to transistors. Only now in the 21st century are we beginning to see digital amps that can compete with this "ancient" technology. The article is correct that the consumer-level tube market is helped along by musicians, but the reasons have nothing to do with Audiophile-type superstition that seems to be implied. The tube vs. solid state harmonic patterns are quantitively different, and empirically better. I would no go so far as to label us as the cognoscenti, but rather people who aren't obviously deaf (and anyone here who has heard a clipping solid state amp will agree).
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." -Voltaire
If you're wearing an analog watch and someone asks you what time it is, you say: a quarter to 10.
If you're wearing a digital watch: it's 9:43 and 17 seconds!!! Urk!!!
Geez... ya sound like a total dweeb!
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
So, don't count. Pick a start time and an end time, neither of which have happened yet (which could be one minute apart as the example goes). Start couting when the start time appears on the digital watch face and count every beat until the end time appears on the watch face. Multiply by an appropriate amount as needed. When I'm taking my own pulse (either using analog or digital devices), I end up doing the exact same thing. I always find the digital method easier to do as many less-expensive analog watches/clocks have a jittery second hand (which second is that pointing at now?).
Besides, I've never met a nurse that takes 60-second pulse readings anymore, it seems the ones I run into always take 10 or 15 second readings and multiply by 6 or 4 respectively.
I think handwriting technology (pens, inks, paper) will be another one. I admit that I have never hidden my love of fountain pens, but even the average Bic has a role. Jotting down a small bit of information while on the phone or standing somewhere is just simpler and quicker with pen and paper.
PDAs have their role, but they can be slow. Plus, I can't jot something down and tape it do a doorway or under a windshield wiper with an LCD screen.
because you cannot read a digital watch without your glasses on. I can also just elliptically glance at an analog clock, and I know what time it is. With digital, I have to focus on it to read it.
An analogue watch shows the time graphically, a digital watch shows six digits. This is why an analogue watch is considered by many, myself included, to be more intuitive.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Friends in the nursing professions all use analog watches. It's apparently difficult to take a pulse with a digital. Counting while watching a number changing is hard on the ol' brain.
I'm wearing, as we speak, a watch my Grandfather wore 57 years ago that was given to him when he retired from the railroad. It's engraved on the back with the year 1947.
It's and Elgin and it keeps great time. All I have to do is wind it every morning.
No batteries, no weird functions and it's VERY easy to set. It just tells me the time, which is all I need on my wrist.
It will probably be handed down to my son, along with my Martin guitar...another analog thing in this world of Les Paul guitars with ethernet ports.
57 years from now, if my son takes care of them, they'll still be good. I treasure things that I can just pick up and go with. I just pick up my watch, wind it and bam...I'm off. Same with my Martin. I pick up my guitar and play...just like yesterday...then I get on my knees and....whoa, sorry, was channeling Pete there.
But you get my point. Perhaps some of these technologies refuse to die because they just plain work.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
If you want a watch to tell time, buy any $2 or $30 job and when it needs a new battery just buy a new watch.
But, you probably don't need a watch. Your cel phone, car, coffee pot, desk phone, computer(s), microwave, car and God knows what else all tell time for you.
So why do people still buy watches? Status and adornment. Plus there's that collecting thing. Essentially they're either bought for the jewellry value (hey, is jewellry obsolete?) or for the complicated mechanics inside them - the "movement" as the guts are called.
If you look at the numbers from the Swiss luxury good sector they're staggering in both volume of units shipped and price and the average price is increasing. A "decent" watch can barely be had for under a grand. A "good" watch starts at five grand and it just goes up: 10K, 30K, 80K, 250K... whatever you want to spend. Wanna spend millions? No problem, how bout a vintage Patek repating moohphase chrono pocketwatch. One of three made went for something like $13 million at auction setting a new records. Obsolete? You bet. That's sorta the point. But, we're dealing with extrinsic worth here, not intrinsic value or marginal utility.
The watch thing isn't about telling time for the most part. The in-joke in the watch crowd ia a "watch idiot savant" or "WIS": a guy that stares at his watch for an hour but deosn't know what time it is. He's staring at the dial, the applied markers, the hands, what have you. The watch as art might be a good way of thinking about this.
The attraction is a tiny case with up to hundreds of parts in it that all do something and are probably very highly finished, shiney and damn near pefect. And like Lays chips... you probbaly can't stop at one. So, if this bug bites you (phear this!) you'll probbaly up with, uh, quite a few. It is a sickness, no cure is desired.
I'm currently wearing a 60's Rodania Valjoux Caliber 72 chrono [1] and have no use for quartz gizmotronic fluff. I use the chronograph at least once a day and bottom line: mechanical ones are still more reliable and servicable than quartz ones and are cheaper to fix. In 50 years I'll still be able to get parts for this watch. In 10 years getting a quartz module for a Movado will almost certainly be impossible - it's merely "extremely difficult" at the moment.
I suspect the author of the referenced article doesn't know much about watches.
[1] You'll need to go to http://support.open-rsc.org/ to be able to see this.
Need Mercedes parts ?
I can glance at my analogue watch and know 'the time'. I need to STUDY a digital watch to work out what it's telling me. Generally, people do not need to know to the second what the time is. ANY watch is always inacurate in any case, so it's kidding yourself to think that knowing it's 10:24:52 of 14:45:12 is any more accurate than "twenty five past 10" or "a quarter to 11".
Looking at space, radio, science and computing from a 'down-under' amateur enthusiast perspective.
With C99, the most recent revision of the C standard, they added a new keyword restrict, to make "restricted" pointers. Basically, by using this new feature, it is possible to write code in C that is as easy to vectorize as Fortran.
Of course, its available only in recent compilers (gcc 3 for example) that may or may not be as good at this type of optimizing as Fortran compilers, but hopefully this argument for starting new development in Fortran can finally be put to rest.
But what digital watches can't do, according to sweep-hand proponents, is display the time and context as elegantly and intuitively as an analog model.
I don't know about anybody else but I grew up telling the time with digital displays. It takes me a fair bit longer working out the time on old clocks and if there's light on the clock it can be hard to distingush between the hour and minute hand. As a result I will often look at an old clock and then take out my phone in stupidity (which usefully has the time in large characters as a 'screensaver').
Wit someone down with an analog clock who has never seen one before, and tell me how intuitive it is. How did you learn which hand was the hours? Did you know that the first time you saw one? How did you know how the hands moved? How did you know that they moved at all?
Your logic that it's graphical, therefor intuitive is flawed. I can make lots of graphic representations of time... but I doubt you'll understand them without me explaining them.
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
An analogue watch not only displays the current time - but has the reference points for a whole 12 hours. It is vastly more suitable to plan future events/refer to past events. The brain nearly subconciously reads the distances - and the 12 hour clock-face is so ingrained that we can work out relative times instantly. A digital watch involves adding and working out what area of the day the time is.
One could argue that it would work better using a 24 hour circle - but we would have to have been brought up with that as kids. Old habits die hard. I admit that the analogue clock-face has to be explained to kids in school - but it's sure worth the effort.
The only difficulty with analogue clock faces is the problem of translating to 24 hour for checking against time listings (train, bus, TV, etc.). But dealing with the add/subtract 12 hours thing is a minor issue really. On that subject - one doesn't even always have this benefit with digital clocks - my alarm clock, most annoyingly, doesn't have 24 hour display.
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
I find that LED clocks are more intuitive. People who say they can't read them must just be stupid and unable to read the most intuitive clock in existence.
... is confidentiality laws. Regulations in my field prohibit emailing certain information (yes, even though we COULD use PGP etc., the legislators havent' caught on). Faxing is OK.
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
This is one I like. IMO, broadcast radio has survived because it works. You can have a cheap $2 walkman to listen to the radio, or something more fancy. With analogue radio, there are no technology licenses, no patents and no trying to find the specs to some properiety file format or codec.
Now digital radio involves a bunch of semi open technologies, patents and licensing. Sometimes it just seems like technology for technologies sake, and maybe locking people into the royalty cycle?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
In 1933 James Thurber drew a brilliant cartoon "Her own mother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house". And a drawing of an elderly woman staring up at a chandelier that's missing a light bulb -- and little lightning bolts are falling from it like snow.
Ive searched for it, cant find it, one of the funniest things I can remember.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
Well, technically, a vacuum tube does the same thing as a transistor, so the smaller, lighter, cheaper, cooler, and usually more reliable transistor should have replaced the vacuum tube, right?
Do you ever ask yourself -why- vacuum tubes sound better? There's a specific reason.
See, in a guitar amp, what you really want to do is overdrive the sound, creating distortion. That's the nice fuzz sound. When the signal is overdriven, the semiconductor clips off the top of the sound wave.
Vacuum tubes and transistors clip sound waves differently. In a transistor, the clip stays high until the signal drops, causing a square-shaped clip. In a vacuum tube, the signal drops after the clip, creating a sawtooth-shaped clip.
Brass and strings have sawtooth-shaped waveforms. Computers make square-shaped waveforms. So most people "like" the sound of a sawtooth better. So people like the vacuum tube sound better.
MOSFET transistors are now being used in solid-state audio equipment because they, too, have a sawtooth clip when they distort. Now note that this only matters if you actually overdrive the sound; folks who think a tube amp that isn't distorting sounds better than a solid-state amp are probably imagining things. But your Crate sounds better than my solid-state pedal because of the way the semiconductors in 'em clip.
I totally disagree. It takes me milliseconds to see and understand the numbers (the four first are usually bigger on digital wristwatches), i.e. instant snapshot of time. With analogue watches I have to scrutinize the display to figure out what time it is, it takes several seconds. And I may still get it wrong, it's happened that I've shown up an hour early because I mis-read that damn (borrowed) analogue watch.
Digital forever.
I'm not sure whether the learning process is more intuitive or not, since you have to know how to read in order to tell time on digital watches and can do without that on an analog watch.
However it may be, I think that analog watches are definitely easier to read, you can tell time with just a glance, there are 2 distinct hands on a big round dial. With a digital watch the space is cluttered by the numbers and you have to be sure that you read each number right. Ease of reading is also the reason why many gauges and meters in cars, planes etc are still analog. (even though digital gauges which are a lot cheaper are used increasingly) Have you ever wondered why those crt's in planes display *analog* gauges rather than just some numbers?
I love technology as much as the next person, but I have yet to see a woman in a bar compliment a guy on his Casio calculator watch whereas my Movado has never failed to draw a compliment be it from a woman in a bar, a date at a restaurant, or in a meeting with a prospective client.
Technology has it's place and I am an unconditional supporter and user of it, but if I want bells and whistles I have my cell phone... if I want to make a lasting first impression of style, nothing makes the statement like a finely crafted timepiece...
Since analog is the original form, and has the most sophsticated interface...it kind of follows that the digital watch is really just a technical triviality, doesn't it?
No need to get into this argument, just see Slashdot's tenth most active story ever (at least at the moment). It's all been said I suppose.
You know your a 'dirty old man' the first time that you make love to a woman who doesn't know what a typewriter is.
C My baby made the list .lt. 1440)
C It's so nice
implicit none
integer nodes
parameter(nodes=1440)
C
C Talk about the language that won't die!
C
nodes = 0
do while(nodes
write(*,*) 'Hi! I'm FORTRAN, the undead of programming languages!'
C
write(*,*) 'I have no idea what a pointer is!'
C
write(*,*) 'Or a class, for that matter!'
C
nodes = nodes + 1
C
end do
C
write(*,*) 'And it's impossible to tell when one line ends and the next begins!'
C
write(*,*) 'And I put a LF at the end of every write statement. How convenient!'
C
write(*,*) 'Well that's all for now. I guess I'll return to the operating system without a return code!'
C
end
And I suppose you'd also claim a sundial is not intuitive? The sundial is graphical, and most homo sapiens spending their days in the presence of one would figure out the correlation. Same with an analog wristwatch. Strap one on the wrist of some lost-society tribal person, and he'll eventually figure it out.
It's intuitive because the hour hand is not far removed from the natural phenomenon of a cast shadow. The main difference is that the function extends beyond daylight hours. Minute and second hands quickly reveal their function as being subsets of the hour hand.
So yes, it is intuitive. It is an instrument whose human interface is modelled on a universally-shared human experience. How more intuitive could you possibly make it?
Bullshit. I'm a medical assistant and I use my digital watch to measure pulses and respiration all the time.
Traditionally, the cognitive mapping necessary to tell analog time is an important developmental milestone. It is commonly the first bit of abstract reasoning that a child does.
Archaic as it is, the 5-level Baudot code is still very much in use by Amateur Radio operators worldwide. Now we use computers and sound cards instead of klanky old TTYs and TD units with the crossed-pulse oscilloscopes.
Exactly. I typically do not want to know the exact time time, but want to know how far away I am from some past or future time.
Grand Central Terminal used to have analog clocks, and if I was running for a train it was easy to see if I had time to make it, but when they changed to digital I had to stop and do time math to figure things out. Sounds trivial, but looking at the distance between the minute hand and some numeral was easier to parse than a string of digits.
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
How many people here have ever been subjected to a digital speedometer? They've only been put on a few cars in the past, and it seems that they're always eventually replaced with an analog dial. The reason of course, is that you can tell at a glance how fast you're going. With a digital readout, you have to actually read it.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
I ask because any time format is arbitrary until you learn it. The digital format in particular makes no sense without initial reference to the standard 12 hour analog clock face. The first two digits represent hours, an arbitrarily defined one-twenty-fourth of the day. The next represents minutes, an arbitrarily defined one-sixtieth of an hour. Without reference to the 12 or 24 and the 60, you have no idea what 09:30 is. It might be just under a tenth of a day, it might be that the day is nearly over. It might be that within whatever section of day the first two digits represent we're nearly one third of the way through, or it might be that we're half way through.
The analogue clock is very clear at first glance, and you only have to look at it a couple of times to know what every aspect of it represents. There's a large hand that goes around quickly, and a small hand that doesn't. At a glance you can see that the small hand is a little over three quarters of the way around, and about the only unintuitive bit is that it's not refering to three quarters of the day, but three quarters of half a day.
That's why it's more intuitive than a series of six digits. Oh sure, it could be more intuitive, but unless we move to a decimal time system, I don't think a digital format is going to be as close to "intuitive" as a clock face for a very long time.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I thought mankind was descended from the B-Ark colonists -- you know, the hair dressers and telephone sanitizer salesmen. Where do apes come in to the picture?
Rather than add even more new keywords to the language, C++98 put the can-optimize-for-various-parallelisms numerical arrays in the library. The std::valarray template is defined to be free of aliasing, so implementations are allowed to chew hell out of the numbers. (Many don't, yet.)
FORTRAN 200[03] then went and added even more weird and wonderful features. :-)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
I bet I know why women prefer analog watches... because thier fathers wore them. This is another area where girls and guys are fundamentally different. Girls like guys who smell like barbecue, where the same cologne their dad did, an anonlog watch, have grey acents in thier hair, etc... But if a girl reminds a guy of his mother, the relationship'll never get really serious.
Presenting different content to Google than to random visitors is deceitful. They want the Google goodness of appearing to offer publically available content, but don't actually want to offer it. They're effectively lying to Google. If you don't want to offer content to non-subscriber's, that's fine. (I pay for two subscriber only online magazines that I respect. They play fair and their content either isn't indexed, or only the table of contents and summary pages are indexed.) But don't lie about the availability of content to Google. (I'm complaining now because this article features just such an example regarding Tech Review's use of this sleazy trick. My other pet peeve is IGN.)
Anyway, if you encounter this crap, step one is to report the site to Google. This is a case of "Page does not match Google's description" and "Cloaked page" and is clearly web spam.
Step two is to read the page anyway. Set your web browser's user agent "Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)" and you're good to go. You may also need to disable JavaScript so you don't get redirected. Personally I just suck down the page with "wget --user-agent="Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html) http://www.example.com/".
Search 2010 Gen Con events
The more poignant question is: will the huge mass of discarded rechargable battery packs in the landfill have a bigger impact on the environment than the old carbon copy forms (and that strip-off tractor ribbon on the edge) had?
There are, and there always will be, issues with 'digital authentication' that make it not practical for everything. The degree of additional intrusion into our privacy by 'the system' needed is one example.
---
I have been working in the broadcasting field for many years. As part of that is the need to be able to 'talk up to', or time out what you're saying to end exactly when a network feed begins. In our studios we have had analog and digital clocks for years. By far, analog is easier to 'hit the post,' as we say. Something about analog. Lets you know how much time you have left easier than digital. FWIW.
"I find that LED [binary] clocks are more intuitive. People who say they can't read them must just be stupid and unable to read the most intuitive clock in existence."
Well if binary is such a good concept (least number of LEDs per required time resolution etc.) then why have ThinkGeek gone for binary coded decimal? They're throwing away all the advantages, by using 6 LEDs for something which only needs to count to 12 (24?).
Could we modify it to display seconds since the epoch?
Analog watches: I use analog watches exclusively, and it's not because they're easier to read, even though I grew up before digital watches were available. Analog watches are essentially fashion accessories, distinguished from other jewelry only in that they happen to tell time. (This is especially true if you're part of the crowd that buys expensive Rolexes and the like.) For myself, I just prefer a simple, inexpensive, and tasteful analog watch over an ugly black piece of plastic with a primitive multi-segment LCD display that looks like a refugee from the late 70's.
Dot-matrix printers: This is probably lost on folks who came of age after inkjet and laser took over, but I find it a lot easier to read code when it's not interrupted by arbitrary page breaks. I long ago got in the habit of printing out code modules on greenbar paper, marking them up with highlighters and ballpoint notations, and tacking them to the wall. The later 24-pin models are reasonably quiet, perfectly legible, fast, and cheap as hell to operate. Moreover, they last forever, too. I still have and use an Epson dot matrix from 1984, and it works as well as when it was new. And if you want to do multipart forms, you can't use anything else.
And while this wasn't on the list, I have to mention...
Analog film cameras: There are still a lot of things you can't do as well digitally, but even if that were not the case, that's missing the point. Photography is an activity, just like snowboarding or building hotrods. Even if digital was better across the board, a lot of people would still use film cameras, just as a lot of people kept painting after film arrived.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
I first got hooked on analog watches when I took a vacation to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. I visited the National Watch and Clock Museum in Columbia Pennsylvania. Looking at the detailed construction of American pocket watches from the late 1800's and early 1900's facinated me. THESE are real time pieces, with hard steel gears meshing with softer brass gears, mounted on pinions that are encased by jewels. The balance has tiny screw weights to make the balance "balanced". Most of the gold-plated cases were warrented for 20 or 25 years! These devices were designed to last your lifetime, not designed with built-in obsolescence like today's products. More importantly, they were built by real people with TALANT in engineering, metallurgy, and art. Many of the the movements had very decorative Damaskeening engraved on the plate nickel and stainless steel bridges. Waltam competed fiercely with Damaskeening.
To date, I have several American pocket watches, the oldest made in 1886 and the newest made in 1912. I even managed to find a 17 jewel Waltam Appleton Tracy Railroad pocket watch at an auction for $58 back in 1992. It needed some work, so I took it to a certified master watchmaker to replace the main spring, cleaned it using ultrasonic waves, and lubricated everything again. THIS WATCH KEEPS PERFECT TIME, and it's almost 100 years old!
Now I wear an Orient (subsidiary of Seiko) that has an automatic winding mechanism, has a second hand sweep, tells the day and the date, has a 21-jewel movement, is water resistant to 50 meters, is made of all stainless steel construction, and it only cost me $40 (you have to know where to get them at low cost). I wear THIS watch because I work around NMR instruments ALL DAY and it is unaffected by the superconducting magnets and the 10 Gauss magnetic field. The only thing "wrong" with the watch is that it gains 5 minutes every two weeks, otherwise, I'm VERY happy with THIS cheapo analog watch.
ALL YOUR TIME ARE BELONG TO THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM.
Yes but its easier to face the hour hand at the direction of your shadow then the sun since it's on the same plane as you. But this also reverses the directions.
That said there's no reason you can't figure out direction with digital watches, if you already understand how that works. (also many digital watches have compasses in them)
Why in the world would you ever want to date a woman who chooses people based on the fucking watch they wear?
Because I'm choosing her on the basis the size of her tits.
Of course, no technology can ever truly die -- we still use fire and plows, after all. Still, I think if you compare the sales of manual typewriters (~500k/year, according to the article) with the sales of computers, I think you can pretty much pronounce them "mostly dead".
>|<*:=
With a digital clock you have to read the number do the math and then figure out what the resulting number means. That's too much work if your real attention is on something else.
With an analog clock you just note the distance. As that distance gets smaller, so does your time left.. simple as that.
If I have to wake up at a specific time without (or ahead of) an alarm clock, I'll look at the time, convert to analog if necessary (I have a digital watch) and imagine the movement that has to occur between now and when I have to wake up... then I'll go to sleep and wake up at the apointed time.
Dunno why it works. I read it in a (fiction) book once, and tried it. It worked, so I kept it in my bag of tricks.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Edison's incandescent light bulb has changed little if any since it's invention in 1879 (Yes, Sir Joseph Swan beat Edison to the punch in 1878). In fact, a light bulb from the 1880's would glow if screwed into one of our "modern" sockets, which also haven't changed. Now, that's a technology that refuses to die.
According to this article, the first practical teleprinter was patented in 1910.
Talk to me again in 20-30 years when your C program are as optimised and proved bug free ...
This does remind me of a study some people did quite a few years ago when I was a grad student at a big university (whose identity isn't important here). They instrumented the Fortran compiler on the big central mainframe in the CS dept so that it silently checked for a number of common problems such as integer overflows, and recorded the results. They then used this for all submitted Fortran jobs (which was more than half the machine's load), and studied the results.
The main result was summarized as: More than half of the Fortran runs had at least one output value that was incorrect because of integer overflow. This actually resulted in several retractions of published papers.
One of the problems in the number crunching biz is that on most hardware, detecting integer overflow takes an extra instruction. Part of this study was a survey of users. One of the questions asked whether they would use overflow checking if it slowed the program down. Around 90% of the Fortran users answered "No." So they didn't care about correct results; they only wanted fast code.
One wag summarized this with a pair of definitions: A "good" compiler generates the fastest code that correctly implements the meaning of the source code. An "optimizing" compiler produces even faster code than that.
Anyway, it's a good idea to be very wary of anyone who puts "optimized" before "bug free". This implies that they consider speed more important than correct results. This attitude is rampant in the Fortran user community.
Not that they're the only ones.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
How about the bicycle? Sure, they get lighter and are equipped with fancier doo-dads all the time, but the basic has remained the same for a century. No other human powered vehicle has come along to challenge it (skateboards and scooters sell but nothing like bicycle numbers)
A human on a bicycle is at least 100 times more efficient than a human walking or running. There are more efficient animals than humans, but few if the human is on a bicycle going about 8mph.
I think it's possible that a human on a good longboard skateboard with large, soft wheels may be even more efficient assuming smooth pavement (though he's not seated so maybe not) but a bicycle is obviously able to handle a wider variety of terrain.
How the hell do you compare a digital watch to an analoug watch. 1. an analoug watch is over a 100's of years old and has stood the test of time. the digital watch is only say 20 years old. 2. a cell ph has the same if not more functions and you dont need that much shit doing the same stuff 3. a anagloug watch has a much more elegant look to it.
Modern Mac has the old ROM stored on disk, Openfirmware, OS X, (S)ATA, CD/DVD-RW, USB, Firewire, PCI, AGP, RJ-45, Ethernet, DVI, PowerPC... note that the Mac has grown more in the direction of the PC than vice versa
I do not know Macs, so I may have missed something, but which of these started with the Wintel PC?
ROM/Open firmware - The news is that Wintels may do this soon, but I have yet to see motherboard without ROM BIOS.
OS X - Unix, not Wintel
SATA - From the harddrive manufacturers. The implementation for Wintel has the BIOS must faking one of the standard IDE positions so that MSWindows thinks it is running from "C:". This reduces the number of drives that can be used in a dual IDE/SATA PC, and encourages the consumer to find an OS that can fully use the hardware. This could not have been planned by MS.
CD/DVD-RW - Consumer technology coopted by the computer world.
USB - The Wintel answer to Firewire.
Firewire - Apple. It is so much an Apple technology that Intel refuses to incorporate it into their motherboards.
PCI, AGP - Hardware manufacturers, but they are the standards for Wintel. Be thankful that Apple has decided to follow the "standards" for commodity hardware.
RJ-45, Ethernet - Ethernet came from the mainframe/Unix world. It barely touched the Wintel world until the late 80s. The RJ45 plug was a quick prototype that accidentally made it into production. The engineers are still kicking themselves for designing a plug that is designed to catch on EVERYTHING.
DVI - I do not know who started this.
PowerPC - IBM. Was it first designed for Apple or Microsoft? Does anybody other than Apple and IBM use it?
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
Despite all the advances in in technology and manufacturing, old musical gear still reigns supreme in many areas. A vintage Neumann U47 mic (like the Beatles used) fetches a tidy sum and sounds better than most anything made these days. They don't make the exact replacement vacuum tube for it anymore, but there are close substitutes.
And speaking of tubes - the rich nonlinear sound of a tube amplifier hasn't yet been replaced by a more modern equivalent, especially for electric guitar. I think one of the articles mentioned vacuum tubes.
Piano, horns, guitar - most all acoustic instruments have nice sounding synthesized sampled versions that can be had at a fraction of the cost. These can be played from your computer or a keyboard. Yet the physical instruments, as expensive and potentially out of tune as they are, will probably always be preferred because of their human interface. Similarly, drum machines, which do not show up late or steal your girlfriend, are not replacing human drummers playing acoustic drums, except in 80's music and certain "techo" genres.
"In the early 1980s, at the dawn of the PC age, high-volume electronic storage and transmission--360-kilobyte floppy disks! 14-kilobit-per-second modems!"
I've been robbed.. Why is it I stumbled through the 80's with 300bps, 1200bps, and 2400bps(end of the decade) modems when they had 14Kbps modems available in the early 80's.. My 1200 baud modem was a $700 modem in 1988!!
I'm a west coast guy, it's late in the day, so nobody will read this anyway, but...
I've read all of the analog vs. digital debate. It's great to see such spirited debate over these simple devices.
This is the way I see it:
So here is my takeaway:
For what it's worth...
Sorry, but analog watches are not the greatest. I have a beloved Seiko digital watch that needs to be replaced, but I can't find a suitable replacement. Have you even looked for a decent digital watch? I can't find one! Most watches now are analog dial retro crapola. I used the watch's digital storage capability to store my many different passwords for mainframe systems and program access.
I don't wear jewelry, contrary to clueless claims of previous posters that that is why men wear watches. And I don't have and don't want a cell phone (so no clock function). (I have an amateur radio license so can use a REAL radio to communicate with no per minute charges.) And, yes, I can make phone calls (autopatch) with the radio.
I bet you think calculators are the pinnicle of computational excellence (excluding full blown computers). Actually, slide rules are far easier to use when evalulating ratios and proportions. Quick and easy to read a fraction from the slide rule compared to reading a decimal calculator result.
And for the truely clueless...this is not a troll!
Heisenberg may have been here.
I worked as a paramedic (sort of) for one year and never got problems using a digital watch when counting someone's pulse. When you start counting at second 33 you simply stop at second 33, there is no need to count the seconds. The same it goes with fractals of a minute, before you start to count you wait for the next even number, say second 40, and measure when to stop, as for 40 it would be 55 when counting the quarter of a minute. Since when is arithmetics such a big deal?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
i got an ImageWriter II in...1987? with an apple IIGS, that printer is still alive and kicking. it's built like a tank (fell off a 6' cabinet more times than i can count) and will print on ANYTHING. like..i cut up a BROWN PAPER BAG from the store once, because I only had enough fanfold holey-edge paper for my final draft. Is there an OS X driver for this sucker? my i560 is a great laserjet, but sometimes...
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
It really all depends on what you grew up with, and where. Analog more closely represents the "real world". The earth spins, and the shadow of your sundial spins around with it. It's cyclic as well, showing the whole period of sweep for 12 hours.
Digital watches always scream the same time: It's always NOW. NOW, NOW, NOW. There is no sense of future or past inherent in the digital watch. For people who grew up in a time when past events and future possibilities were important enough to receive attention whenever consulting the current time, the digital watch is lacking.
Finally, as an oceangoing navigator, there is something very basic about the analog chronometer that is completely lacking with those little LCD's. 12 Goes into 360 just fine, which can be handy when thinking in terms of time being relative to a circle on the globe. It just isn't as apparent on the digital watch. There are a bunch of short-cuts when figuring out position that just isn't suited for digital. Also, a wind-up chronometer is somewhat less likely to suffer EMP from close lightning.
Exactly. I race... I just cannot get into the Tack Tick. There's something about the fluid compass, the motion corresponding with the boat, and the quick and easy ability to figure out tacks and course changes.
I also race cars sometimes... there's a reason analog instruments are preferred. A *very* quick glance down instantly tells you what you need to know, almost without taking your eyes off the track. A pressure driven analog oil gauge can tell you information about the condition of your engine from the motion of the needle, something you wouldn't get from a digital instrument.
There are lots of times that analog is superior.
Larry
An analog speedometer works like this:
On the tailshaft in your transmission there is a gear. There is a meshing gear in the speedo sending unit. This gear is turned by the tailshaft on the transmission, obviously, and causes the cable to turn. The cable, inside your speedo gauge, is headed by another gear, which goes through a series of gears that results in placing the needle on the gauge (and advancing the odometer).
The "series of gears" might apply for the odometer, but I don't think they are necessary for the actual speedometer.
The last time I checked, the cable drives a small rotating magnet which is in close proximity to a metal disk that is attached to the needle's axle. The rotating magnet thus induces currents in the disk which in turn eventually results in a torque being applied to the axle. A spring resists the free rotation of the needle giving a reading which is proportional to the speed.
It's not real-time at all, and is usually 1-2 seconds off. So it's not "instant information" as you put it, it's actually old information by the time you see it.
There may be a lag of a second but that'll surely be just for filtering purposes so that the displayed reading is steady. In a sense, the same thing MUST happen with the analog speedo. There needs to be some damping in that too or else it'd oscillate up and down - in fact you can see it occur with old speedos which, presumably, are worn out.