Slashdot Mirror
Obsolete Technical Skills
Ponca City, We Love You writes "Robert Scoble had an interesting post on his blog a few days ago on obsolete technical skills — 'things we used to know that no longer are very useful to us.' Scoble's initial list included dialing a rotary phone, using carbon paper to make copies, and changing the gas mixture on your car's carburetor. The list has now been expanded into a wiki with a much larger list of these obsolete skills that includes resolving IRQ conflicts on a mother board, assembly language programming, and stacking a quarter on an arcade game to indicate you have next. We're invited to contribute more."
Systems programmers worth their salt can at least read assembler output. It's a valuable skill when debugging kernel errors.
My other half still uses shorthand at work.
My Dad started out working on valve amplifiers in the 1950's. Now that he has retired I want to start a business with him fixing valve amplifiers.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
If you have to write bootloaders and a very small number of other programs or routines. For most purposes, yes, it's rather counterproductive.
"Your mouse has been moved. Windows 95 must be restarted for the change to take effect."
Fortran isn't obsolete. It's still popular in particle physics. Also, "buying an HD-DVD" is on the list. Not that that was ever a "skill." This list is just begging to be filled with joke entries like that.
I suppose it depends on your definition of skill, but I think only 4 of the 11 qualify, since although the technology might be obsolete, the "skill" would still be intuitively obvious.
This is a list that states what the author doesn't do any more, but it's quite arrogant to assume he speaks for everyone.
I've been waiting for this all the time... The knowledge of assembly language should have been obsoleted a long time ago, since, naturally, all the compiler programmers today just...wait...there's something fishy here...
Ezekiel 23:20
Navigating by compass is obsolete? That's like saying that keeping candles in your house in case of extended blackouts is obsolete.
Some things on that list are either silly or shortsighted.
I'm neither a console programmer nor a demoscener, but isn't assembly very much alive and kicking in these two fields?
If you haven't made a developer cry, you've wasted a day.
Assembly programming is still a very much needed skill for embedded systems developers that need to run highly-optimized code with very limited memory and processor resources. Your cellphone doesn't have a Core 2 Duo in it, retard.
Here's mine: writing decent stories for slashdot.
At the bottom of the
Next he'll be saying we've lost the technical skill of picking up the phone handset because of speaker phones and mobile phones.
Anyway , here in the UK new and refurbished rotary phones are a niche fashion item. You can pick them up in a number of places for a reasonable amount.
Without assembly knowledge we'd have uncrackable IP "protection" schemes.
Churn butter is on the list. I guess it just comes that way out of the cow now. Science is amazing.
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
As a middle manager with programming and design experience and CS degree in my 30s I'd much rather know what *is going to become obsolete* in the next 10 years, and have that list updated each .. say.. month.
:-) ?
Why? because then I'll be able to make educated guesses about where I'm going next. Hell, for a western culture manager the answer may be "you are going to be out of work next" because managerial skills are going to be very inexpensive (I don't know , but that may be the case).
So - predicting the future is not that hard for the most part - for example, C - will it survive or not? I'd say that seeing linux popularity and the things people do with C today its going to stick around for at least the time it takes to build a new open source OS - something like 4 years at least. C++ - some people like it, others hate it, if Java will continue getting better, who knows?. PCs - will probably get easier to use, less technical to operate and more friendly. Managers - who needs them anyway
Now if it was a Dagenham dustbin...
One swallow does not a fellatrix make
I'm looking forward to the day when blogging becomes obsolete.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Voting for a democratically elected official?
Yeah yeah, Troll.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
I design embedded systems for a living, and this obsolete assembly language skill is what distinguishes my designs from those other companies. True, it takes me a little longer to get the code done, but it runs faster, has more features, and fits into a much smaller memory space than what I could do with C, or anything else. (Not to mention the fact that all the bugs in my code are all mine and none were introduced by a compiler.) I feel like it's to my advantage that assembly has faded from most designer's skill set. I won't deny that this skill is on the endangered species list, but to group it with the skill needed to dial a rotary phone made me speak up. It may be rare but it certainly isn't useless.
If I didn't have absolutely NOTHING to do, I wouldn't be here.
I have been reading Alan Greenspan's autobiography and he consistently mentions the concept of "creative destruction," which perfectly describes the duality of the capitalist society we live in (even all of you supposed socialists in Europe). It describes both the benefit and burden of the market economy. The benefit of having (generally) free markets allocate resources in society is the innovation they brings (i.e., progress), but a cost of that progress is the obsolescence of things which are now, for lack of a better phrase, useless because of it.
I've noticed that we on Slashdot seem to struggle with this concept daily, be it the loss of jobs to outsourcing, development and adoption of new technology, reform of IP laws, the slow death of the MPAA/RIAA, and even the subject of this article (which is the perfect example). It is probably a little off-topic, but I think this common thread should in these subjects should be pointed out, because all of our discussions seem to hinge on this critical question: Is the creation worth the destruction?
The sun beams down on a brand new day, No more welfare tax to pay, Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light...
they still teach asm at uni.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Writing a interrupt driving task switcher for uCos-II, completely impossible in even C.
Bart.
P.S. developing on Rabbit microcontrollers sucks for large applications. Dynamic-C is a toy, and the Softools compiler is buggy as hell.
Sometimes when my students suffer an arm/wrist injury and can't write, I give carbon paper to someone else in the class with good handwriting to make an instant copy of the notes. This also works well for students with visual impairments (it's not the only thing I do in those cases) or absentees when I know someone is going to be absent for an extended period.
I wouldn't call writing on carbons a technical skill. Not to mention that we use NCR paper, not actual carbons.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
the internet has made direct human interaction obsolete.
why would i want to waste a whole day hanging out with anyone, when I can just wait for you to add the highlights to facebook, where i can skim over your day in 30 seconds or less.
Unlike relationships, internet porn does not come with a mother-in-law.
And in the real world, no one comes by to mod up every every insightful comment you might come across, the internet does this! So critical thinking is another skill to add to that list.
-I only code in BASIC.-
Just added this to the wiki. Has anybody used it recently? I was very surprised to find that it is still there, in fact.
Any skill that an engineer who can't pay the mortgage has is obviously an obsolete technical skill. It couldn't be that the economy is run by a bunch of imbeciles.
Seastead this.
Using PEEK and POKE to 'unerase' that Apple II basic program someone erased when they accidentally typed 'NEW'. /S /AH /ON" without having to DIR /? first.
The skill to determine a modem's connect speed from hearing the negotiation sounds.
'Notching' an old single-sided floppy to be able to make it a double-sided disc.
Cleaning and/or aligning the heads on your cassette player.
Terminating or crimping coax.
Knowing you need to type "DIR
Was 'winding your watch' in the list?
I'd love to see some speculation on what skills you'd expect to be obsoleted by 2029.
I could boot an AN/UYK-7 without using a reference.
These days, I just play highland bagpipe.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
There are probably many times more people capable of programming in assembly language today than in the 70s. Kernel developpers, compiler developers (obviously!), CPU designers, embedded systems developpers and so on.
On the other hand, there are many times less people capable of making horse buggies than in the XIXth century; that's obsolete.
Hm.. I'm a DJ. This is sort of daily business for me. Granted, nowadays we have a lot of other options, but its still alive and kicking. Vinyl just feels great, as you have the music sort of "in your hands". (and yes, I'm using Vinyl Tracks, CD Tracks over CD Players, Mp3 over Vinyl with Traktor Scratch, Mp3 over CD with Traktor Scratch, Traktor over Midi using a Faderfox DJ2, etc.. and all combinations of it...). Actually, I'd love to have vinyl control for much more work than just for DJ'ing. Imagine a Turntable between the video editing PC. Using the turntable, you could very rapid move trough the whole video, search a certain place, scratch trough to watch animations, find specific frames, etc. Would be quite usable (and sort of gets used in VJing.. but I'd love to use it for generic video cutting).
I, for one, welkcome automatic resource allocation.
No longer disabling your printer port in order to get that second soundcard working.
"I was in love with a beautiful blonde once, dear. She drove me to drink. It's the one thing I am indebted to her for."
Assembly language is FAR from obsolete. Embedded hardware outships PCs by probably 100 to 1, and much of that is programmed using assembly language (especially if you want to get the most out of the tiny hardware). I have modern microcontrollers in my parts box with 64 *bytes* of RAM and 1kbyte of flash (Atmel ATtiny13) - while you can write a C program for this device, you can get much more out of it with asm, and it doesn't really take any longer to write (AVR asm is one of the nicer 8 bit ISAs). Portability is rarely an issue for devices like this, since even the C code won't be portable to other microcontroller architectures.
...oh, and I have a rotary phone, too. It was first installed in my grandparents home in 1969 when the house was built. It's just the plain GPO phone of the time, but it's a little reminder of them each time I phone someone.
Every serious programmer should have some experience of assembly language so they can grok what's really going on. Nothing tells you why buffer overruns are so bad than watching a program written in asm run over its own stack obliterating the return address. It doesn't need to be a fancy 32 bit or 64 bit desktop chip, an 8 bit ISA or one of the classics such as the Motorola 68K is enough to understand the principles of what happens at the chip level. If you want to see what happens when programmers simply don't grok the hardware, just check out The Daily WTF.
By the way, get off my lawn!
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
If you're using any device that communicates over a serial port (Telit GT864-PY for example), you're going to use parts of the Hayes Command Set. Not necessarily all of it, but it's certainly not obsolete.
And as for 'Changing the battery of a Sega Dreamcast VMU'... isn't that just a case of unscrewing the cover, removing the battery, and popping in a replacement? The Dreamcast VMU might itself be obsolete, but I just went through that exact procedure yesterday while changing the battery in my car's central locking remote.
I'm not taking the list too seriously though, seeing as 'sex' is on it...
The almost ubiquitous turbo button on your computer is completely obsolete. I can't remember the last time I had to worry about the yellow light because my computer was slow.
It is my opinion that this article may now be tagged "troll", or "flamebait". I can't keep up with the intertwining meanings of these words.
Particles, stuff that matters.
Now that's an obsolete skill!
I'll bet half the readers of Slashdot have never even seen a punch card in real life.
Now get off my lawn!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
it was because assembly language programming was considered obsolete that my dad could make a living at it.
there was still lots of code out there and someone had to maintain it.
but I wanted to add BASIC programming to the list of obsolete tech skills. for a long time it was the only way to even operate your computer. If I could only get $100,000 for being a BASIC programmer nowadays, that'd be freakin awesome. screw these object oriented languages! just kidding, they're just too hard for me..
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
I spent years on MFC. I was really good at MFC. I even *liked* MFC, not because it's elegant or effective, which it isn't, but because it has many clever solutions to the *particular* problems that the designers originally faced when building a library for creating GUI apps on puny machines without even knowing whether the OS would support true multitasking or not. Custom message maps, dynamic resource handles, ATL integration, I did it all. I knew which specific message ID is handled differently in a Windows message queue than any other. I knew how to have a form containing windows with their message pumps in different threads. This was back before we had that fancy 'Java' and 'Flash' and 'C#', you know -- back when writing really powerful GUI apps involved a bit more than dragging your chart control onto your docking window control. And we lived in a cardboard box in the middle of a motorway.
Now all my MFC skillz are obsolete. Years of study and experience that I wouldn't even dare mention on my resume. Deader than cursive handwriting. Half my working life down the drain.
Good. That's progress.
The practise of stacking coins on an arcade machine to indicate that you are next, on the other hand, is much missed. Man, those were the days. When you went *out* to play instead of cowering in your house... what the hell happened?
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Come to the bars at Purdue, stacking quarters on a machine is still the preferred method to indicate you've got the next round on a pool table or dart board. If my friends and I feel like playing pool for awhile, usually we just keep our own stack on the table and dump quarters directly into the machine while rotating players every game. Usually people are too drunk to notice.
Name...That...Autocomplete!
I once saw a topic on Gaia Online where a suggestion on the cause of BSODs while playing some PC games was an IRQ conflict between the video card and something else. What... the... fuck? On a modern PC? Using an AGP video card? With Windows XP? I suddenly felt like I'd stumbled into some technological version of House where the likelihood of a given problem being true is based on how astronomically unlikely it is to actually happen.
I haven't had to even think about IRQs for the last decade or so, and I can't really say I miss the days when they were still a problem.
...memory management.
True, and as we get away from von neumann architectures assembly will certainly change. Remember the SUN Java chip, and the Harris Forth chip?
In the 1970s I worked with a programmer (I was a hardware tech). We were working on desktop computers the best known of which would have been the PDP-8. I met him a couple of years ago. He had become a college teacher. He complained that his students called him things like fossil. The solution was easy. All he had to do was preface everything he said with the word 'embedded'. A couple of the boxes we used to work had instruction sets that exactly match those of modern chips.
A lot of skills aren't as dead as we think they are, we just call them different things.
Assembly skills aren't as obsolete as one might think.
The same skills one needs to programm Assembler are needed if one programms virtual machines directly.
Especially Java Bytecode is a good example of this. The Java VM runs Bytecode that is extremely similar to SPARK assembly.
And what about Parrot? It is also programmed with an assembly language.
UnNetHack: NetHack Improved!
The level of abstraction of many programming languages is now so far detached from the hardware that this ascertion is pure nonsense.
Some programmers may benefit from it, but for many others it would be an unnecessary hindrance.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Why did you use XIXth for 19th and 70s for LXXs?
Humor is an obsolete skill :-|
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
I'm glad some people think that Assembly programming is obsolete. That way, it's much easier for me to get one of the many jobs which requires assembly programming.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Ok, so I appreciate schadenfreude as much as the next guy (and he's an asshole), but I still fail to see how this is funny. In fact, this is a big part of the reason why most people are so bad at technical things, which is an increasingly difficult problem in Western societies. Most people have learned the hard way that technical skills are a bad investment just because they become obsolete or commoditized so quickly. We (and I speak both as a techie and an educator) need to better guiding people to durable skill paths.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers - Pablo Picasso
"On the other hand, there are many times less people capable of making horse buggies than in the XIXth century; that's obsolete."
The only thing is when the revolution comes that slashdot's always going on about. Those who know assembly will be less in demand than those with obsolete skills like churning butter and building buggies.
Emacs! No, wait, VI! Functional programming! Python! Java! Perl! Ruby! Oh man, I'm like a troll kid in a candy store!
Putting on a condom.
Face it, it's true. Either you are a geek not likely to get laid, or you are a hot trash stud that could use the kids to get a bigger welfare check. In neither of these cases you actually need to know how to operate a condom.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
it is important to remember how far we have come.
It strikes me that this would be far simpler, more reliable and maybe even cheaper than this method. Carbon paper might just have a marginal use when you have a multi-copy document and you need to get a "true" signature on each layer. Other than that I can't think of a single modern use for it.
Photocopying also gets round the obvious problem of unfamiliar students having it the "wrong way up" and copying their notes onto the backside of the same sheet of paper.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Programming in VB, PHP or Ruby does not make you stupid per se. Capable programmers that understand what goes on under the hood actually use these languages.
Programming a website in assembly, on the other hand, would be pretty thickheaded.
My point is that a knowledge of assembly is indeed very usefull for any programmer. I only disagree with your gratitious bashing of script languages and their users.
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
I still go to the arcade and we still stack quarters/change to indicate who is next on DDR and Tekken. Whatever is he talking about?
As Seen On TV's? Come back!!!
If a compiler generates machine code (i.e. it's not interpreted, but a real compiler), it's effectively generating assembly language.
Close, but not quite. If it generates machine code then it generates machine code, the end product, and to say that it does so is to specifically state that it delivers the binary form directly. If it generates assembly code then it's not generating the end product, but an intermediate product with a (more or less) 1:1 mapping with the end product. Just because there is a 1:1 mapping doesn't make them the same.
There is a significant semantic and practical difference between saying "generates machine code" and "generates assembly", stemming from the higher level of abstraction of the assembly code. The code generator doesn't need to know anything about instruction opcode assignments when spitting out assembly language, and such output may be assembled to suit a range of related CPUs when a specific machine code might work on only one. Assembly code is substantially more portable than machine code, and very commonly you name the target CPU when you run an assembler.
While the two things are very close, they're not the same, and using them interchangeably loses information.
Yes it has.
It has been superseded by this "SFW" historical article.
http://www.goatse.cz/goatse.htm
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
As I cracked something very similar recently, using known input and output and two devices called eyes.
I then wrote a decoder in C.
That's not to say knowledge of assembly isn't useful. It is, it gives you a much better insight into what's going on on the hardware level than any other language (though C isn't too bad either). This is essential to take into consideration when doing anything that is performance critical, be it a large server app or a small embedded system.
There are too many people these days that just think "The compiler/web platform/vm does that all for me, besides which, processor power and memory are cheap these days".
That's fine for consumer grade desktop apps and web "apps". It's not so good for all the stuff going on underneath that it seems most coders these days have no idea about.
My father and I worked on old Saabs, way back when they were cool. He was a self-taught engineer: he had a Civil Service equivalency, no college degree, and worked as an engineer for the FAA.
He was the master at converting 3-cylinder Saab 96 (and 95) models to the newer V4 engine. He had it down to a science, and cars we converted ran all over the country.
A few of the more mundane skills I learned back then:
--Setting the dwell angle by adjusting the ignition points, then rotating the distributor to set the ignition timing.
--Disconnecting the ringer on Western Electric rotary-dial phones, so Ma Bell couldn't detect how many extentions you had (illegally) connected to your line.
--Dialing only the last 5 digits of a 7-digit phone number: within the same exchange, the mechanical switches at the local Bell office would make the connection.
--Scraping conducting material off the rotary dial in the cable box to enable HBO and Showtime.
I've been thinking about retiring - I'm 34 years old. I think I'd be happier if I'd jump off the bandwagon and started doing something totally different. Something that would not require me to study all the time and be stressed all the time.
I grew up with home computers. I learned BASIC when I was 11. That is obsolete skill now. Then I got my first PC in 1988 and learned DOS. That's obsolete. Then I learned Borland's Turbo Pascal. That's obsolete. Then I learned Microsoft C programming and started programming Windows 3.1 applications that used Windows menus etc. That's obsolete. I learned Gopher and Telnet in the 80s. That's obsolete. I learned Pine. That's obsolete. I learned to tweak Windows 95 registry. That's obsolete. I learned BEA Tuxedo at work. That's obsolete. Looking at it now - I've wasted countless of hours to something that is totally obsolete now! Had I invested that time into improving myself - learning who I am, how I behave, how to enjoy this life - I would be much happier now I guess.
Don't F**K with Chuck!
Turning a single-sided floppy into a double-sided floppy with a hole punch.
Back in my young day the dread OC7 Abnormal ending of a cobol PROGRAM MEANT A LOT OF FERRETING AROUND hEXADECIMAL CODE
Days thankfully gone
But boy, I miss COBOL
I notice that they list "slaughtering small mammals and birds" on the list. What the hell kind of skill is that? Did such a "skill" ever have value? Are computers now slaughtering all our small mammals and birds for us? Oh, and one skill that I used to be quite good at that is now clearly obsolete: operating a mimeograph machine.
Jealously hoarding mod points since 2007.
I still do 99 percent of them listed on Scobleizer's blog. We still have a rotary phone and some of those methods are more reliable, in my humble opinion, maybe I am just old and need to reboot my humour..
"Can I borrow your Dictaphone?"
"No use your finger like everyone else!
In the wiki: Governmental Data Protection, LOL, being British knowing my data is all over the place thanks to governmental (or just mental) protection or lack of. If they had done it the old fashioned way (by hand) none of it would have gone AWOL...
I fondly remember the days of cleaning the betamax by taking a huge breath and giving it a good blow. Those cleaning tapes that used to jam up instead of cleaning it.
Hours of trying to load Jet Set Willy to my ZX Spectrum, making sure it had the right tone, the joys. I miss it actually!
I am trying two cups joined with a piece of string for my cable connection now, I just have to see if Mr Branson will let me stick one up his end
That wiki is like the Blue Peter for nerds, I like it
In the name of sticking up for someone with autism, f**k you! Prejudiced bastard.... that is unlawful and linuc for dumm
Last time I checked, people still stack quarters on arcade machines to get in line. Arcades are hardly common any more, but that's not really an obsolete skill. Look at any queue for a DDR machine and you'll see a line of quarters along the edge of the cabinet.
undoing a bra with one hand...
Changing tracks on an 8-tack tape is a skill?
Adjusting rabbit ears? Isn't that still used? Then why the subsidies for over broadcast digital converters?
Technically, isn't stenography a type of shorthand?
At the rate they are naming things, fsck, changing a tape in a Walkman counts.
I bet drinking a a 12 oz beer in three swallows is actually a skill? hmmm
Did they miss loading Windows from 21 floppy disks?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Rolling down a car window manually. Matching up IRQ settings for hardware devices. That's all I can think of for now.
You say changing vacuum tubes is an obsolete skill? I guess someone forgot to tell most of your favorite musicians; their thousand-dollar guitar amplifiers are built with the darned things, even in this day and age (yes, I know about solid-state amplifiers but a lot of guitarists seem to prefer the warmness of the older-style technology, and the manufacturers are doing a booming business still building them).
This space for rent!
Especially in this case. Assembly programming is still used on different systems. Sure on some it is not needed because of the tools provided but in every platform I have found there is always something that can be done better in assembly rather than a high level language. The key is to know when it not only is better to do so. That determination is usually based on performance versus time to develope versus ease of maintenance.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Threading a Needle ...
Using a Fountain Pen
Coins on the machine to reserve next go
Memory Management
There are many many useful and relevant skills on there.
Using A Fountain Pen. At least someone had the good sense to edit that one. I will admit that finding a fountain pen has become difficult. Other than specialty stores, the only major retailer I've found lately that routinely has them is Staples (and the nearest one of those is around an hour drive away). I use one of these (the charcoal model) pretty much exclusively at work. And I do get quite a few positive comments about it from people who try it.
The 3-finger salute, Regedit, non-standard HTML to work around IE bugs, associating filesystems with letters of the alphabet.
Oh this is cool! I could go on and on and on. While it's true some of these skills are still necessary for a few "elite" programmers or engineers, most of these skills are no longer used by the average user. To wit:
- what to do with a Commodore 64 when its cursor is blinking at you
-----(everyone I know in my circle of friends would go "duh")
-----(they have no clue how to navigate without icons or explorer)
- how to write a simple basic program for your C=64:
----- 10 print "hello"
----- 20 goto 10
----- RUN
- LOAD "$" to get directory off my cassette drive (yes we used cassettes)
- LOAD "*",8,1 to autoload & start most floppy disks
- how to crate 16-color pictures that look good
- how to program the SID to make music
- dir df0: to get a directory on a Commodore Amiga 500/2000
- the difference between Chip and Fast RAM
- why it's a bad idea to multitask 2 programs off the same floppy
-----(because the floppy will knock itself silly trying to read two tracks at the same time)
- ATDP 5601750 to dial on a rotary/pulse phone (ATDT for touchtone)
- +++ to get your modem's attention so you can issue commands like:
- ATH to hang up
- how to create pretty pictures using ANSI
- what is Zmodem, and why it's better to download files with Z rather than Xmodem
- how long will it take to download a 3.5 inch floppy over 2.4k modem
-----(long enough to eat supper and take a shower)
-----(or watch the latest episode of Star Trek The Next Generation)
- how many hours you can squeeze on a T-180 VHS tape (9)
- how many episodes of Quantum Leap if you remove the commercials (12)
- how to repair your copy of Star Wars after the tape tears in half (scotchtape)
Most of the things I just listed were items known by "everyone" back in the 1980s. If you wanted to use a computer, you had to know the various commands and understand how/why things work.
Today people don't need to know command-line text.
They can just point-and-click; it's become easy.
And a lot of the things we used to need to know?
It's essentially automatic now.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
CRT's are still in high demand. Some of us prefer good image quality, thank you very much.
LILO is not obsolete! They'll have to pry it out of my cold, dead hands. GRUB is the work of Satan!
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
Skinning a hide
Crushing a Mastadon with a bolder
Killing your enemies & impregnating their women
Being a Sun God
Oh wait, that has to be a skill that was once used. never mind then
Using the turntable, you could very rapid move trough the whole video, search a certain place, scratch trough to watch animations, find specific frames, etc. Would be quite usable (and sort of gets used in VJing.. but I'd love to use it for generic video cutting).
Yeah I have seen edit machines with that type of interface. They do exist
Still have my Hermes portable from the 60s that I went through school with. That was an easy carriage return to make.
But if you like excersize. The old 50 lb cast iron Royal I learned to type on had a literal carriage whose weight exceeded the weght of my Hermes.
I use a 40-year-old pinkish rotary phone all the time. The sound quality on those things is way better than on most modern phones, and the handset has a nice hefty feeling.
I'll have to say I wish I didn't have to deal with IRQ settings anymore, but it comes up everyday using embedded motherboards since we end up using all 4 serial ports for communications.
I disagree, and I know of someone else much more prominent than me who would disagree also: Steve Gibson of Gibson Research Corporation. Steve has written some amazing little applications in assembler, and "little" is a good adjective for them. Try using Visual C++ to write a comprehensive disk recovery application that fits in 170K. And within that 170K is the capability to work under any operating system (Windoze, Linux, ...) using any file format (FAT, NTFS, ...) on any type of drive (SATA, SCSI, ...) connected to the PC in any way (USB, 1394/Firewire, ...)
Writing application software in assembler is not easy, therefore very few people undertake to do it, but the results can be well worth the effort. Tiny executables that run with blinding speed are the most obvious advantage.
HD-DVD is obsolete. I feel sorry for those poor bastards that bought the new Beta. I never had a Beta Player myself, my mom opted for the VHS based on my uncles' advice. Any comments from anyone with prior experience in owning and operating an obsolete device that feels as though it just wont let go? In this day and age with HD-DVD I wonder how long it will take to completely disappear? We're either going to have bargain basement prices on HD hard and soft ware or they'll skyrocket in hopes of being a collectors item.
This signature has The Force
So all future operating systems will work worse than Vista. We are DOOMED.
Storage management, i.e. any skill specific to disk array management/maintenance.
Cabling, period.
Typing, for most users.
Reading, for a significant fraction of users.
God - I hated those days. And then the asshole would show up for his separations and be slapped with some huge ass bill and whine and whine and whine. "buh buh buh if it didn't print why did it finally print?" and we had to tell the stupid little fuck that he should have copied out the three layers he wanted into a single document, and saved it to a damn floppy instead of hauling in a Syquest drive full of bullshit.
Grrr. I still get steamed thinking about all those two bit losers calling themselves "Designers".
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I used to buy carbon paper when I was younger and copy art from magazines and video game strategy guides. That was so much fun. My Chrono Trigger strategy guide is basically destroyed because of that.
Then I moved up to *ahem* copying "other" magazines.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
...to component level with an oscilloscope and DVM. ...calibrating instruments using a precision voltage source, resistance decade box, or signal generator. ...using a frequency counter. ...hand winding precision wire resistors. ...reading resistor color codes. ...writing test algorithms in machine code (usually hex or octal, the language level between binary and assembly) ...making your own application-specific test instruments.
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
>>and stacking a quarter on an arcade game to indicate you have next
I've often seen people of my age range (18-25) stack a coin on the side of a pool table to indicate they have next play.
Others make no sense. A 2" floppy disk? There never was such a thing. Adjusting the gas mixture on a carburator? I adjust the carburator jets on my gasoline tractors from time to time, but they have nothing I would call a gas mixture adjustment.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
FI is even trickling down into motocross. If you ride an older one though, get used to carbs and jets, my 75 Kawi still uses carbs, with three jets per carb.
It makes for an awesome way to transfer a printed document or photo on to a canvas for an artist to paint on. You don't even need to buy the carbon paper... just some notebook paper and a good ol number 2 pencil can be used. Scribble all over the back of the paper til it's coated with the lead, then you have instant carbon paper. A similar method of transfer involves poking holes in the source paper and pouncing that with some chalk dust, pastel dust, or charcoal dust in a little cloth bag. That pounce method has been used since the renaissance era.
There are hundreds of obsolete skills. But there is one that NEVER goes out of fashion, never gets obsoleted, never stops coming in handy... the ability to learn quickly, and to remember what you learn. Seriously. I make a point of putting it on my CV (resume for you Americans). Learning quickly means you can adapt to ANY environment quickly. Remembering what you've learned means you can draw parallels and keep "generic" knowledge going. Bung me in front of a particular UNIX server and I might not have any idea how to do much but login. Give me ten minutes to acclimatise and I can be doing ANYTHING on it. TCP/IP is TCP/IP... the places where you change the settings may differ but knowledge of protocols, routing, etc. is the same whether it's a Commodore 64 on the web or a network of virtualised Vista PC's.
:-) The next was a full Windows 98 network with custom management software and an NT server. The next was a 2000 Server and XP network with custom management software. The next was plain 2000 + XP with Active Directory. The next was similar but with some other custom management software bodged to perform some of the more tedious tasks. The next was Server 2003 + XP + Vista. And so on. The last one I had was another "design me a network from scratch" for a school, and so they got Server 2003, XP and Linux for some tasks (it was just easier, made more sense and cheaper).
I don't have MCSE, CCNA or anything else because the sheer fact is that by the time you've passed the course and been using it for a year, its content is out of date. Not all of it, but quite a bit of it. Especially on those courses designed for particular bits of software. And they are nothing but memory tests. That's not learning.
I've done assembly, I've done BASIC and everything in between. My University tried to teach me Java until I stopped attending the lectures for that part and was instead "hired out" to other students as the person to ask about the Java coursework. I'd only ever dabbled in it but having programmed in a lot of other languages it was no more than a curiousity to flick through a Java book and pick up the syntax. I did the coursework myself at home, taught many others to pass the course, and passed myself (good grades for that course) with barely a sweat. I'd dabbled in Java before but it was merely a matter of flicking through a half-decent book on the subject, applying everything else you already know and making sure you have a list of function-method-procedure (call them whatever you like, OO is just a shortcut that saves you typing so much functional-programming code) name changes handy. KMP search algorithms are the same in any language, it's just a matter of learning or merely memorising (which is NOT learning) the differences between languages.
Similarly, my primary job is being hired by schools to manage their networks. First one was 98-standalones with Ethernet cables basically used for display.
Formal training in any of the above OS, network management, network management software or application software? Zilch. Number of networks exploded? Zilch. Number of networks more productive once I had finished with them? 100%. Number of schools chasing me for further employment to work on their next big network, next OS, next suite of applications? I lose count. And these are critical networks - they run everything from the canteen to the staff wages to the legally required paperwork to the student desktops to the fire and security systems. You have no idea how crippled a school is nowadays if its servers go down... lessons stop, systems go haywire and the students get sent home. And they literally fight over getting an imbecile like me in to manage their systems, or even just clean them up so that they can employ a "normal" technician next year.
If you can learn, you can run any OS, of any age, at any time, in any combination without a problem. If you can't then you're stuck memorising "Windows Vista for Dummies" until the next OS comes out a
I remember that! Hahah, that's a valuable skill...I can be used on all those NES emulators out there. ... a hard blow from left to right, then blowing air from your nose going right to left, then a final soft blow from your mouth (like saying "ha") from left to right again. --It was 100% effective, 60% of the time.
My technique
Any other children of the 80's have a whacky way to get their Nintendo to start working?
Shameless plug alert: Game server control panel
Our NES and SEGA still work so blowing out cartridges is still useful occasionally. We just played Mortal Combat and Sonic the Hedgehog a couple nights ago.
Getting off the couch to change channels on your TV set Yeah, we had a manual TV. I think that is why parents got children - to get some little bugger to change the channels for them.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Let's see - not long ago I had to deal with IRQ sharing issues in hardware and had to know how to resolve IRQ conflicts.
Then there's the fact that I program in assembly language on a daily basis for my job - many low-end micro's still don't have C compilers and the scripting languages they do have are abysmal, buggy and bloated.
Because non-programmers don't program in ANYTHING? Duh?
Horse buggy makers are obsolete, their number has dwindled, both in percentage of anything and in percentage of vehicle makers.
ASM programmers are not obsolete, their number is probably higher today than it was in the 70s.
That's my point.
I'd hardly consider it an "obsolete" skill, as probably every mechanic school still teaches carburation to its students simply due to the fact that so many carburated motors are still out there in common use. I do this on a regular basis for my motorcycles, both of which are 2006 models. Nearly all off-road motorcycles today still use carbs.
The rabbit died? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_Test
Building a computer from individual components: Only the mentally deranged don't go out and buy a Mac.
Also if you purchase a Dell for less than $2,000 it is proof that you are a sub inbred hillbilly.
Car repair: The dealership, please.
Hayes Commands: Those who use dialup must DIE!
In practice, only because it's hard to find a computer with a RS232 COM port, or because it's old, doesn't mean it is obsolete...
My last two jobs, at some point, I used this port.
If you work with "data terminals/pic programing/automotive industry/uncommon devices" it is certain you will work with one of these.
Math is beautiful... e^(pi*i)+1=0
Guys print this out and hand it to your HR person. Here are things every new hire should know.
Balancing a checkbook
Clicking on the up and down arrows of a vertical scrollbar
Commuting
Extracting square roots
Handwriting (How to fill out forms and sign stuff and write notes.)
Having Cash (and how to properly make change)
Long division?
Look for a job in the classifieds?
Looking up a business on the yellow pages
Local Grocery Store?
Paying for something with a check
Playing solitaire with playing cards
Reading a paper map
Searching a card catalog
Using a cell phone to make a call
Untangling the cord of a telephone
Using a card catalog
Using a fax machine
Using the Dewey Decimal System
Zipping your pants
If your new hire can't do any of those, you do you really want them?
I used to program IRQ interrupts in 8 bit assembler. When I was 13 I thought those skills would take me round the world! 40 next week, bah!
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
I have to use carbon paper forms every day.
They may be obsolete, but they are still very much in use..
And I admit that I am the only person I know that writes with a fountain pen.
Things that are not broadly necessary are not the same as obsolete though. Intimate knowledge of kernel programming is quite esoteric, but one could hardly call it obsolete.
My first computer justified text into full-width columns using 6-level paper punch tape for input and output - it had a plexiglass front and blinking neon lamps on the cards for problem diagnosis. It was the size of a home refrigerator! The generated tapes were used to control Mergenthaler Linotypes casting type using molten lead.
I was able to operate all the machinery used in hot-type newspaper publishing by the end of that job, as well as most used in offset printing. This was true industrial-revolution age machinery, lots of cast iron and steel, vats of molten lead, huge presses spinning cylindrical lead plates with paper running by so fast the words and pictures were a gray blur.
I also learned most of how to operate a photo-engraving shop using line screened negatives to etch photos into zinc plates using nitric acid baths for printing photos in hot-type publishing. How to spool film onto reels for processing in the dark! By feel!
Later on I learned to milk cows, producing milk with nothing but my hands and a bucket! I still have a strong grip, 25 years later, and forearms like Popeye! Not quite, but sill...
I know how to butcher meats in the back yard, and how to can food in the harvest season so as to be able to eat in the winter.
I also know how to debug a hex dump, the worst bug I ever found was an unprintable character that occurred right where a decimal point belonged....whooo!
I know Calculus, is that obsolete now?
I have several slide-rules, but haven't used them in a long time, so I would have to review that technology to be proficient.
There are others...using non-synchronized transmissions, some skills I won't fess up to...
Think of the Irony!
I've used carbon paper several times today ... for simple receipt counterfoils. We're too small a business to afford the cost / time-cost of implementing a fully computerised system - also the method we use the counterfoils for (tracking with pottery items) would need large hardware expenditure. I can currently just put the counterfoil in a mug ... how do I replicate that with computers, perhaps an item recognition system create closest matches based on colours, or an RFID system. I could just print lots of receipts ... but the benefit isn't great enough to implement.
Like I said not obsolete. The right tools for the job.
Also, we use carbon paper for transferring images onto once-fired pottery (bisque) to aid painting.
We're a pottery painting studio - Barefoot Ceramics pottery painting studio, Newport, UK.
Unless you still have one that (sorta) works like me. Plus you are all welcome to blow my Wii :-)
First post! (just in case I am...)
So many people love 68k that there really ought to be a love site for the architecture.
With the demise of the Amiga, the processor family got "demoted" to the esoteric haunts of embedded systems programmers, which is a great pity. I bet that a 68k fansite would draw a lot of support. That architecture was so beautiful, a joy to use.
Looks like about 10% are valid. Many of these skills are absolute baseline requirements when working with high reliability legacy interfaces. You have to know how assembly code works, or the "older" character codes. Even the ones like BW darkroom photography are still coveted skills. Try again an about 10 years.
The real estate industry lives by the fax machine. You gotta have the client's signature on the document before presenting it to the other party. You can't do that with an email fax.
Negotiation counter offers are all done by fax.
Positioning the folded matchbook cover between the cartridge and the player to optimize the tracking is a skill. And disassembling the deck to remove an accumulation of roaches is a skill with a reward.
no, you cad, I mean working with film, not the opposite half. spooling development tanks, or pushing a tape measure through the tanks of a continuous processor to rethread it when a stapled splice breaks. dodging an image to lighten an area when making prints. it's all going fast... totally gone in production, going fast in art photography.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
A lot of mathematical application in research are in Fortran. They use known library, debugged for the last 40 years, giving known results, with a known precision. Most people which I know do some research using a lot of math (physic, etc...) don#t use c or java or whatever on their irix-origin, they use Fortran, most probably HPF. Heck i know of some airline IT provider using fortran...
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
In our house, we still have a black, rotary-dial phone that we continue to use. Obviously we have to use one of our (many) "touch tone" phones for things like working through telephone menu systems.
We also have two VCR's and sometimes have to adjust tracking.
Many of the skills listed are obsolete only for people who don't keep older products around or who are too young to ever have used them.
Don't believe me? IRQ conflicts make Ghost run slow on computers (2004), and believe you me that this is still a problem on Dell Optiplex 745s in 2007 and 2008!
Emacs is not obsolete. It's widely used. The author obviously is showing bias, which brings into question other items the author has claimed obsolete. The author has lost credibility with such derogatory flames.
I haven't read the article or the Wiki (I'm not new to Slashdot, after all) but I figured this is as good a place as any to post this insane dribbel from my head.
Back when I was a kid, I grew up in a modest town of about 50,000 people. Too big to be a small town, not big enough to get on most maps. Our phone book was about one inch thick. Small towns had phone books that were essentially glorified pamphlets, about 1/4" thick, and even then they shared it with all the neighboring towns. I knew people from small towns who thought phone numbers were four digits long, since the first three digits were always the same (and the then-optional area code was the same for probably a hundred miles).
When my family would go on trips we would visit "big cities" like Dallas, Houston, Orlando, Memphis, etc. (yes, I'm from the South) and in the hotel rooms I would notice that the phone books were always really thick. Like 4-5" thick. And sometimes, that was just the yellow pages, the white pages were an entirely different book, itself 3" at least. And they always had these awesome pictures on the front of the local skyline instead of the giant public domain "fingers do the walking" logo that would grace the phone book back home.
So consequently I made the connection early on in my mind that living in a huge city meant you were a success. And living in a huge city meant a huge phone book. Therefore, having a huge phone book in your home meant you were a success. A tenuous connection, but even then I had big dreams of moving to a "big city" later in life and one of these days I would have a big phone book in my house because hey, that's what big successful people living in big successful cities do.
Years and years pass. I grow up, go through High School, go to College, graduate, get married, and eventually my Wife and I move to the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. We get good paying jobs and rent then eventually buy a house. Initially the phone books that would appear on our porch would be the same standard one-inch affairs I grew up with because we live in the suburbs and they only cover the suburbs, but then one day a bag with two phone books, a 3-inch white pages and a 5-inch yellow pages, shows up on our front porch. These phone books cover the entire Metroplex. They have amazing photos of the Dallas skyline, with Reunion Tower (the one with the ball on the end) on them (under a stuck-on ad for some ambulance chaser, but that peels off easily enough).
I'm elated. After all these years, I've finally made it! I'm finally in a good job making good money and living in a big city and hey, like all big successful people living in big cities, I have a pair of bigass phone books. I've arrived! Every time I look at these phone books I'll remember how I'm in a big city.
So I put these phone books next to the phone and the first thing my Wife says was "Just throw those things away. We have the Internet now."
I ignore the order and I keep the phone books under the phone cradle for a few years, exchanging them out when a new one comes in. I never tell my Wife the insanely silly "but I've always wanted a big phone book" fantasy because I'm not in the mood to get laughed at (though, apparently, I don't mind that people on Slashdot will laugh at me). I get to keep them in place with the razor thin "well what if we want to look up a phone number when the power's off or our Internet is down?" excuse.
But then one day I'm cleaning the house and I'm trying to reduce some clutter and it occurs to me that in two years I've never opened these things, ever, and they're just collecting dust and the odds of the power going out or the Internet going down at the same time as my cell phone battery dying and me having to have some obscure phone number are vanishingly small. Oh, and in the years since we moved out here we've switched to Vonage so we couldn't even use the phone in a power outage anyway. And I now have Internet access on my phone (hell my wife has a Treo) so if we needed to
Schnapple
I worry that we (collective we) are losing touch with the "entry level" technology which got us to the 20th century and that if we faced a significant enough "situation" we would have to go through a very long time re-learning how to do things that were considered basic mass production skills in the 1800s or basic farmstead skills.
Hell, it may actually be worse -- we may not know how to do things in ways that were considered technologically trivial in the 1930s -- the example that comes to mind is making metal parts without a 6-axis CNC machine fed with a design from a 3D CAD program.
If we get too "advanced" and lose touch with more simple technologies, we may find our society struggling through a long dark ages simply because nobody knows how to do anything anymore.
Blow in it. Push it as far back as you can or let it teeter where the connectors are barely touching. Shift it from side to side when it's pushed in and down before turning the system on. Stick another cartridge in the space once the cartridge is pushed down to keep it a little further down than it sits naturally. Swab the connectors with a q-tip. Swab the connectors with an alcohol soaked q-tip. Last resort: buff the connectors with your mom's fingernail file (not because you'll damage the cartridge, but because you'll have to explain to your mom why her file has green dust on it). HTH.
Very computer-centric, and more particularly, very 1970-1985-computer-centric.
How about: making wooden wheels, for cars or carts?
Drilling holes in stone with a hammer and a stardrill?
Repacking plumbing/steam gasket seals?
Installing/maintaining lead/oakum plumbing?
Relashing valve pushrods or regrinding valve seats with a file?
Filing threads?
Making nails with a hammer and a header?
Making wrought iron?
Making aluminum without electricity?
Forming lumber with a froe, an adze, and a two-man saw?
Tanning leather?
And some of the items, I just flat-out disagree with: making a fire by striking two pieces of flint together? That *doesn't work*. You strike a piece of steel against flint, which throws sparks because the steel is cut by the flint and showers off bits of hot steel. Flint doesn't burn.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
As for the first link, I can do - and did - all 11 bullet points.
And I'm only 33.
It brings a tear to my eye thinking about all those old skills I've got but are useless. Here's a few: Knowing the pinouts of a 25D to 9D sub serial connector Been able to solder the above from a bag of connecters and a spool of cable. HP3000 system admin commands Been able to use Highmem and devicehigh etc to optimise MS-DOS workstations Knowing your ISA from your PCI from EISA from MCA Knowing how to configure BIOS on an IBM PS/2 using a floppy Building a TCP/IP stack in MSDOS using NDIS drivers How to apply a bee-sting to the RG coax etc etc It's all too easy now-a-days which is why I'm now into Linux. At least I can retain _some_ mystique on how to get hardware working and pretend it's all black magic.
Properly configuring SMD interface disk drives. First, properly configure your SMD A-cables (daisly chain) and B-cables (radial). Don't forget to ground properly, or you'll never reliably support the blistering 3Mbit/sec. transfer rates. Then set the DIP switches for the proper sector size, and insert (or remove) a jumper shunt to supress the "runt" sector. Ahhh, glory days.
For those a little bit younger, configuring and terminating parallel SCSI interfaces is also a lost art, or at least on the way out.
Then you've got your ESDI and IPI stuff. All gone.
As the linked to wiki indicates on the home page, they took a chunk of content from the more complete Wiki Spot Wiki of the same title. In fact, the owner of this wiki wanted to take the Wiki Spot Wiki's logo and everything. It would be nice if the Slashdot editors could give obsoleteskills.wikispot.org a little linkage love too, since I and several other wiki editors spent time writing the entries there, setting up photo shoots (note my 8 track of Monty Python) and basically creating content which was basically lifted for this wiki. Ah, well.
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
churn butter, rebuild a Bendix kickback hub.
photosMy Photostream
I've still got one of those on my bench along with a Triplett 630, that was similar and, IMO, a little better meter. Of course, too, I'm a ham and still home-brew some tube type rigs and maintain some older radios like my Hammarlund HQ-129X and Collins 75A-2 receivers from the late 40's and early 50's.
I've still got and use two rotary dial phones, a 500 series 2 line and a 302 from 1947 with the two line feature, too. One thing about the rotary dial phones is that they work during the occasional power outages when the powered cordless phones don't.
In my day job, I still write and maintain a lot of assembly code that runs dedicated industrial controllers.
I've given up on my buggy whip making, though.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
When I was a MIT student I took courses in LISP, Pl/I, using APL, OS-360. All these are obsolete. The mainstays like calculas, physics, analog and digital circuits, are still relevant.
Not to quibble about semantics but most of the skills listed are obsolescent not obsolete.
I realize a lot of people look down their nose at Java, but give it up! It's not a scripting language - it's a full fledged computer language and most people recognize that. The differences from C are minimal in terms of structure of the language - and if you're calling C a scripting language, well, then, there is nothing that can be done for you.
Javascript is a scripting language, but it's relation to Java is superficial. JSP, ASP, CSS; all of these are scripting languages - but they are actually quite distinct from compiled programmed languages.
[Ego]out
"Scoble's initial list included dialing a rotary phone, using carbon paper to make copies, and changing the gas mixture on your car's carburetor"
Those aren't really 'skills' though. Well, maybe changing the gas mixture on your car's carburetor is.
Memory location for setting screen color for commodore 64: 53280. For changing the border, 53281. For some reason those numbers are burned in my brain from 25 years ago.
What strikes me as astonishing about this topic, other than the fact that the majority of the discussion seems to revolve around the utility of assembly programming, is that the list itself displays a marked lack of understanding of the ongoing utility of low technology devices. For instance, one of the items listed is "Buttoning one's trouser fly". Perhaps the author of that idea has never heard of Levi's 501 Jeans? I submit that the 501's are some of the most popular trousers in the world, and the skill of buttoning them could hardly be considered obsolete. The rest of the list is rife with items that only the most technologically-blinded among us could possibly think of as obsolete.
Even the summary contains a dubious suggestion, "Changing the gas mixture on your car's carburetor". Perhaps the author is unaware of the vast numbers of motorcycles and small engines sold each year that incorporate carburetors?
"Cast lead bullets"? Thousands, if not millions, of ammunition reloaders would disagree.
"Changing vacuum tubes"? Millions of musicians would disagree.
"Darkroom photography skills"? "Developing photographic film"? Obviously, this person is not a photographer!
That's as far as I can get without becoming even more disgusted with the state of humanity, or at least the supposedly tech-savvy people who probably are contributing to this list.
My first job, 42 years ago, was testing vacuum tubes scavenged from TV's. We sold the new ones and hauled away the old as a favor. Any good tubes got saved and used in other sets that needed them (with a discount for being used). Now days you can hardly find a tube tester, though they used to be in drug stores, supermarkets, etc.
Do I win the "old fart" award for this thread?
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
give me a break.
Think of the quality of programs written in ONLY 1s and 0s. Every single bit would have to be accounted for!
I mean, the barrier of entry would make it so that practically only ROBOTS could would be able to write code.
Oh wait, thats right, we have compilers for higher level languages.
"how can they call it a MINE if everything here is THEIRS?!?!" -Straight Jacket
here's my top 5 obsolete skills.
All taken from my father's job at Data General, which he retired from around 10 years ago.(Just after EMC raped DG)
5. setting the Host ID on a SCSI controller.
4. making custom serial terminal cables.
3. aligning a r/w head on a magnetic tape drive with an oscilloscope.
2. running hardware diagnostics.
1. troublshooting a tokenring network.
The only skill he now uses at his retirement job (walmart, which is required by law) is customer service.
Granted, things were easier then when you had a terminal which just couldn't catch a virus.
They're using their grammar skills there.
CPU magazine will be surprised.
Knowing that a Radio Shack nibbling tool is perfect for cutting another slot in your 5-1/4" DS disks so you can use both sides in your Commodore. _That's_ obsolete.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/01/22.html Our link to Peer1 NY went down
* Why? - Our switch appears to have put the port in a failed state
* Why? - After some discussion with the Peer1 NOC, we speculate that it was quite possibly caused by an Ethernet speed / duplex mismatch
* Why? - The switch interface was set to auto-negotiate instead of being manually configured
* Why? - We were fully aware of problems like this, and have been for many years. But - we do not have a written standard and verification process for production switch configurations.
* Why? - Documentation is often thought of as an aid for when the sysadmin isn't around or for other members of the operations team, whereas, it should really be thought of as a checklist. Apparently, *manually overriding* all this automatic shit (that makes our manual skills obsolete) hasn't died yet.
Skill not destined to die any time soon: credit repair.
Useful when: your crap-ass Wifi is breached
Reason: the skill of hardening wireless consumer convenience-toys is receiving a long course of immunotherapy at a clinic in Cuba, after years of dissolute, party-hard lifestyle
I looked at the fine list before I read the comments. As soon I saw assembly programming, I knew there were going to be a GigaSlashbots opining indignantly and at length and with links and citations that the list is clearly wrong---my god. The question remains: how does such an awful cross-section of humanity come to congregate together? The only comparable scenario that comes to mind is the brotherhood of Islamic suicide bombers. Slashboters hate anything that calls into question their technical machismo; suicide bombers, the Jews.
A. I'm still using rotary phone.
B. In my previous job, I wrote in assembly.
C. I'm still missing the BASIC of my good old BBC...
Ok, I'll crawl back into my cave.
Double de-clutching, or just double-clutching or rev-matching, is no longer necessary but is still a useful skill when driving at a track or autocross. The point of double-clutching is to make the transition from gear-to-gear smooth so as not to upset the suspension during a downshift. If the suspension is fully loaded then the abrupt weight transfer forward if double-clutching is not used can cause the car to slide or otherwise take a corner incorrectly. This is not something most people worry about, granted, but it is by no means obsolete. Some automated manual gearboxes (Ferrari, Mitsubishi Evo X, etc.) do this rev-matching so well and so quickly the driver almost doesn't notice.
Assembly is what the computer runs. If you don't know the fundamentals of how a machine works, how can you claim to be a developer?
I'm troubled by the tendency of most computer science programs in the US moving away from assembly as a requirement. I'm also troubled by the awful job most universities do teaching object-oriented programming and design, and the complete and total lack of architecture and tools skills required at the college level. When I graduated, it was a rude shock to discover on my first job as a software developer that very little of what we do is write code—it's nearly the shortest part of the development process. I was also not happy to find out that, at the higher levels, very little attention is paid to languages and most successful projects focus on good design that can be implemented in any language.
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
In a static linked program, I've seen the linker add as little as 8k of library code to a C++ program. So from there, it's up to the programmer to write efficient C++ code instead of watching the linker adding 500k of unused crap onto your program.
Definitely 2 parallel universes here: the assembly language culture of making things talk to hardware & the Web 2.0 culture of slapping together Java.
Have found assembly language more useful than it was 7 years ago because of the rising usefulness of robotics & the need to interface the physical world. Most of the jobs of course, don't deal with the physical world & aren't that useful either.
Very true, I'll concede that. One can always have gcc output the assembler code also (-S) and the assembler can then be played with and further shrunk. No matter the tool used, if someone is well aware of how their use of the development environment impacts the actual code produced, then huge bloated aplications can be avoided. I guess part of my comment stems from frustration with so-called "developers" who practically cannot write a single line of code. Without their IDE they are helpless. It is the ubiquity of this type of Microsoft certified bloat builder that might very well lead someone to conclude that assembler is dead or dying.
Not to mention knapping flint, building fires with friction or flint and steel, or casting lead bullets. :)
Morse code
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
This entire list is bunk. Look at some of the skills that are not obsolete (like the assembly discussion above, using a compass, map reading, writing a check, spelling, etc). The editorial action on that list is apparently MIA. They do list some of the skills as "not completely obsolete", but a huge number of skill don't belong on that list at all. Just because the authors don't possess that skill (or the basic ability to understand when it would be used) doesn't mean it's not very relevant to society today. The skills just may not be practiced as broadly as they once were.
Perhaps the site author thinks the skill to look up the meaning of the word obsolete is obsolete?
Using a chip puller.
Cutting write enable notches in 5.25" floppies.
Drilling write enable holes in read only 3.5" floppies.
Replacing worn out switches in Amiga mice.
Building custom serial cables.
Re-ordering items in config.sys to optimize the amount of RAM free.
Monochrome VGA, with 704k free.
Watching terminal output to figure out serial speed, bits, parity, and stop bits.
Disabling screen I/O while using punter, to get that extra 5% of throughput.
Avoiding the zero subnet.
Working with non-CIDR subnet masks, or masks with zeros in them.
PC-NFS.
Deleting enough files on RSX, so that there was contiguous space to put system files on.
PIP on CP/M. Hiding files using a programmer number.
Generating Novell remote program loader files using diskettes.
EMS vs XMS debates. The Intel Above Board.
Locking up Hayes 1200B modems by hitting backspace.
Ripterm. Ymodem-G. QWK mailers. Whistling the modem tone to see if a modem was calling you.
Intentionally misspelling things on a BBS to avoid the profanity filter. (Warez, pron, fcuk, leet, a$$, sh1t, etc.)
Using high speed cassette copiers. Using Chrome tape.
Connecting daisychained peripherals. Connecting separate analog and control busses on hard drives.
Figuring out which drives were RLL capable.
GCM vs GCR.
Backing up data to VHS. Cofiguring multiport serial boards.
Fossil drivers.
The 5.25" hard disk.
This may seem strange to you...but... ...I live in the land of the obsolete. My entire personal workshop is filled with 80's electronics, heh..I didn't even "save" the stuff from wayback then...I just love it for the coolness factor it has to ME - not to others. It may be obsolete...heck ...I know that my commodore-64 Assembly programming skills (ha! Skills!) are obsolete by now...but I WAS the first to get rid of the Commodore-64 BORDER - entirely, so what? No one knows my name - nobody cares and nobody ever gives a sh*t about it, what they do care about though...is what they have experienced in their own life. Good times man, enjoy it if you can and want to!
....to the actual finish PCB! There is NO fun like it in the entire world - it may not get me laid - but it sure as h... entertain my sorry 80's carcass throughout my life,
My lab? My heaps and boundless amount of 80's electronic components? It's my life man - calling that obsolete would be to dig me 10 feet under and say goodbye. To me these things still matter, I still play with my radio-amateur stuff, I still build radios from scratch in my spare time - and build COMPUTERS from scratch...nooooo I don't refer to putting a bunch of cards inside a cabinet with a motherboard..I am refering to actually CONSTRUCTING a computer FROM SCRATCH....yes...schematics
Whats obsolete about knowledge? Did you catch my drift? A old Hippie, am I? Well... I can tell you that I work in one of this countrys most successful businesses, why? Because I survive on my basic understanding of how it all started - the now "perhaps to you" obsolete knowledge is what FOUNDS all BASICS of EVERYTHING that is CREATED TODAY.
Did you catch that?
Well...I did! And there's no regrets about it.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
I, for one, can still tune a carburetor. Working on cars keeps me sane and calms my desire to kill users.
It took me a while to find keypunch machines, as they were alphabetized under "Operating". When I was in high school, girls were strongly encouraged to take a course in operating keypunch machines. The idea was even if your academic gifts let you aspire to be more than a keypunch operator, you would never, ever, EVER have to worry about being unemployed if you could operate a keypunch machine.
And speaking of obsolete skills, how many remember what POKE 59468,14 does? Hint, it's NOT for the Commodore 64.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Sorry it took so long to reply, I was coding my reply on punchcards... But when I went to back it up I had to change out the Winchester Drive.. At least the core memory is still ok.
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
What shows us how fast the world is changing are the skills that, within living memory, lots of people had (e.g., 1 person/ several households or so) but that will have disappeared within our lifetimes. Sorted by device (as much as possible) these include:
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
I guess you either don't count the absence of giardia cysts as a feature or I really don't want to drink the water at your house.
Installing IRIX, that's my obsolete technical skill.
Slashdot = -1 Redundant, Asperger, kdawson FUD, Libertarian, and Linux
Remember unlocking CPU multipliers by connecting the dots with graphite?
If your TV remote dies then you will need to get up off the couch to change channels or adjust the volume on the TV.
I don't know about not booting to floppy to update some BIOS on some new systems.
Using a rotary phone will stop any cracker/hacker from logging your keys.
I think for most people Calligraphy is art rather than mean of communications.
Well for Double De-clutching I still have to do that with my 1981 Honda Accord with an 5 speed manual but the syncro between the 1 & 2 gears are worn out so occasionally I have to double de-clutching to get into and out of 1 & 2 gear. I use this lovely car to commuting to the train station and leave there and no one touches it. Even they did (they should be in a insane asylum) they would discover the 1 & 2 gear problem. Eventually I'm going to get rid of this car soon and I'll forget this.
That must be an obsolete skill because the spellchecker doesn't even know about papertape or a bootloader.
I can't believe this hasn't been mentioned yet.
95% of it was written in assembly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RollerCoaster_Tycoon_(game)
I don't know if English is your first language, but whether you like it or not people will judge your writing by its spelling and grammar. When you use them properly it shows that you've read your post before hitting submit and that you pay attention to details. One typo is generally excusable; everyone makes mistakes. On the other hand, multiple errors in capitalization, punctuation, and spelling make you look ignorant, regardless of the content of your post. Syntax mistakes also make your post confusing and difficult to read. At the worst it can change the meaning of your post. "Threw out" and "throughout" mean two completely different things.
You might make good points, but if you don't show enough respect to proofread your own posts then many people will simply not take the time to decipher them. If you don't take your own writing seriously, why should I read what you wrote? This is the Internet, and the only thing we have to judge you by are your words. Make them good.
Even the summary contains a dubious suggestion, "Changing the gas mixture on your car's carburetor". Perhaps the author is unaware of the vast numbers of motorcycles and small engines sold each year that incorporate carburetors?
My guess: he hires other people to do his real work for him, and dismisses the value of their labor to make himself feel superior.
No joke - I spent over $300 at various small engine repair shops trying to get a lawn tractor working right, and finally gave up, went to Google, got out the toolset, and finessed the carb screws until the engine purred. Here's a skill that should be obsolete: hiring out jobs you should know how to do yourself in the first place!
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
running a mimeograph machine- when I was in elementary school in the pre-everyone has a copier days we had to run all of our school flyers and handouts on a giant mimeograph machine- I helped out because it was really fun to run the big noisy monster when you are a 7 year old kid- plus that is how I put out my 7 year old kid's 'zine when people weren't looking- mostly poorly written movie reviews and little comics I made of animals in tanks fighting robots all of the time.
Yes, my newer car not only has a big knob for volume too, and better yet it has controls on the steering wheel as well.
Those new cars with the voice activated stuff wouldn't work for me, because unless I've got passengers I have the stereo turned up way to loud for voice activation to work. Plus, my last cell phone had voice dial, but in the car doing over 50 mph (when it would do the most good) it wouldn't work even with the stereo shut off. In fact any extraneous noise or sound got in its way.
Also I can see driving along:
Stereo: "But in the darkest depths of Mordor I met a girl so fair. But Gollum and the..."
Me (almost getting run off the road by an idiot in a SUV): SHIT!!!!
(Stereo switches to Britney Spears song)
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Balancing pennies on a phonograph needle so the vinyl record doesn't skip. Keeping track of the song list as the 8-track changes tracks. Getting to the unemployment office early enough to not be there all day. Navigating library cards to find the information one needs to write one's paper.
Cranky educator.
Anything computer-related more than five years old, half the stuff your parents learned that your grandparents didn't, and anything they teach in the SCA.