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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."

29 of 603 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Shorthand is not redundant yet by Zugok · · Score: 4, Funny

    I actually WANT to learn short hand. Then people don't bother asking me for lecture notes.

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    "I just can't sit while people are saying nonsense in a meeting without saying it's nonsense" J Watson, Sci Am 288:(4)51
  2. I'll add one by edittard · · Score: 5, Funny

    Here's mine: writing decent stories for slashdot.

    --
    At the bottom of the /. main page it says 'Yesterday's News'. Well they got that right.
    1. Re:I'll add one by edwardpickman · · Score: 4, Funny

      Decent stories are more like Bigfoot. Lots of people claim to have seen them but there's no physical evidence.

  3. Re:Navigating by compass is obsolete? by jez9999 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Of course it's obsolete.

    Another thing that's obsolete is like maths, because we always have calculators now.

  4. Re:Shorthand is not redundant yet by Wowsers · · Score: 4, Funny

    [quote]My other half still uses shorthand at work.[/quote]

    Kinky!

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    Take Nobody's Word For It.
  5. Another one by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Voting for a democratically elected official?

    Yeah yeah, Troll.

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    Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
  6. Re:Assembly isn't obsolete! by MichaelSmith · · Score: 4, Funny

    You never see it in web programming.

    Well not reputable web programming anyway.

  7. Re:Assembly isn't obsolete! by bentcd · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well not reputable web programming anyway. "Reputable Web Programming and One Hundred Other Mythical Beasts": a fantastic compendium of modern urban legends :-)
    --
    sigs are hazardous to your health
  8. Re:Navigating by compass is obsolete? by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yes. Every day.

    You know, there is this one leg of my table that's a little short, so the log table comes in handy.

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    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  9. Re:Churn butter? by Farmer+Tim · · Score: 5, Funny

    I guess it just comes that way out of the cow now.

    The surprising part is how butter comes out in those brick shapes. Surprising for the cow, that is...

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    Blank until /. makes another boneheaded UI decision.
  10. Re:Navigating by compass is obsolete? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    My solar-powered calculator doesn't work by candle-light, you insensitive clod!

  11. Re:Assembly isn't obsolete! by kvezach · · Score: 2, Funny

    Not to mention black-box reverse engineering, be it for purposes reputable (figuring out what malware does and how to clear the infection from the entire bot network by saying the right thing on the right IRC channel, or getting the program to stop nagging you for the CD you own), to less so (getting the program to stop nagging you for the CD you don't own).

  12. Re:Navigating by compass is obsolete? by groovelator · · Score: 5, Funny

    You ever tried to write 5318008 or 71077345 on a computer and then turn the monitor upside-down? Calculators are not - and will never be - obsolete and there, gentlemen, I rest my case.

  13. That's just great by rbarreira · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

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    The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
  14. Whoo, trollbait! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Emacs! No, wait, VI! Functional programming! Python! Java! Perl! Ruby! Oh man, I'm like a troll kid in a candy store!

  15. Re:Assembly in VM by Laughing+Pigeon · · Score: 2, Funny

    And what about Parrot? It is also programmed with an assembly language.

    I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad. 'E's dead, that's what's wrong with it!

  16. Re:Assembly isn't obsolete! by Lussarn · · Score: 4, Funny

    then just tell you to buy a faster machine.

    Well, you just told me to get a floppy drive.

  17. Re:One more for the list: by blindd0t · · Score: 5, Funny

    I was gonna simply say sex, which became an obsolete skill once I got married.

  18. Population: Growing! by tepples · · Score: 3, Funny

    On the other hand, there are many times less people capable of making horse buggies than in the XIXth century Citation needed that the population has not grown since then, even among the plain people.
  19. LILO?!!! by Eudial · · Score: 2, Funny

    LILO is not obsolete! They'll have to pry it out of my cold, dead hands. GRUB is the work of Satan!

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    GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
  20. Starting a fire with sticks by gelfling · · Score: 4, Funny

    Skinning a hide
    Crushing a Mastadon with a bolder
    Killing your enemies & impregnating their women
    Being a Sun God

  21. Syquest drives. by Ralph+Spoilsport · · Score: 2, Funny
    remember those pieces of shite? Remember when you put one in and it would go tickety tickety tickety and freeze up and you couldn't eject it? fuck I hated those things. The technique I found was to unplug it, eject it, then start it up, put in a black drive to see if it's the disk (which it usually was) or the drive that had died.

    RS

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    Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
  22. Re:Punch Cards by Lawrence_Bird · · Score: 2, Funny

    And many of them deserve to get an EOF card right up the ....

  23. Re:Jumping off the bandwagon? by Guerilla*+Napalm · · Score: 2, Funny

    Are you learning any specific skills at the moment, so that we can avoid it?

  24. This is the list for morons. by kabocox · · Score: 4, Funny

    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?

  25. Re:One more for the list: by Machtyn · · Score: 3, Funny

    Very interesting. For me, sex was a non-skill until I got married.

  26. Re:One more for the list: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Bad career move, huh?

  27. Re:Assembly isn't obsolete! by Monsuco · · Score: 4, Funny

    When you can write a bootloader that fits in the unused sectors on a floppy disc
    If you can find a modern computer that still comes with a floppy drive I will be impressed.
  28. Re:All skills are of value by Fallingcow · · Score: 2, Funny

    What's wrong with gardening? Maintaining a varied garden with multiple bloom times is a tough thing to learn and takes quite a lot of skill and effort.

    Yes... the skill and effort to find a compilation of garden plant data and feed it into a MySQL database, then create a website that generates a list of appropriate plants for a given span of bloom-time, with automatic adjustments for latitude and user-selected variance allowance, and then to build a wiki-ish element where users can submit layouts for whole gardens and for individual beds with their dimensions, so you can just find the ones with the highest user ratings, arrange them in your yard, print the website-generated list of required materials/plants, and plant a garden that has been democratically-selected as the optimal arrangement in whichever style you've chosen.

    You are correct. Truly, gardening is a geek's art.

    What? Why are you looking at me like that?