Ask Slashdot: What Old Technology Can't You Give Up?

An anonymous reader writes: It's the year 2014, and I still have a floppy drive installed on my computer. I don't know why; I don't own any floppy disks, and I haven't used one in probably a decade. But every time I put together a PC, it feels incomplete if I don't have one. I also have a Laserdisc player collecting dust at the bottom of my entertainment center, and I still use IRC to talk to a few friends. Software, hardware, or otherwise, what technology have you had a hard time letting go? (I don't want to put a hard limit on age, so you folks using flip-phones or playing on Dreamcasts or still inexplicably coding in Perl 4, feel free to contribute.)

Comments

Simple

[UnknowingFool]

[Puts on fire resist gear]
vi. Because emacs is for the devil.

Re:Simple

[jaymz666]

that war is over, and vi won

Now, as to interviewing people for IT, who will be working on *nix, asking "emacs or vi" used to be a teasing question, now you're lucky if they know what one or both are.

Re:Simple

[msauve]

vi is non-standard.

ed is the standard text editor.

Re:Simple

[peragrin]

I never did like vi. to damn complicated to remember all the shortcuts. Pico worked well when i needed to save or change something it was always obvious what key needed to be pressed and it allowed me to stop and think to avoid needlessly long run on sentences that users of vi tended to devote long hours to perfecting the stream of thought typing ignoring the simple fact that puncheon is important too.

Yes that was done on purpose.

Re:Simple

[OzPeter]

vi. Because emacs is for the devil.

This year I delved into a Debian system, the first time I had really used a linux system in decades. What scared me was that when I needed to edit something my muscle memory took over and before I knew it I was happily editing away in vi.

I haven't used vi since well before the turn of the century.

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. vi is in both POSIX and the Single Unix Specification.

Re:Simple

[bearded_yak]

Only amateurs use emacs, vi, or ed. Real pros use 'echo %variablename% > filename'. After all, who needs to change anything when what you type is already perfection?

Re:Simple

[Culture20]

You use an MS DOS inspired shell on a Unix box?

Re:Simple

[geekd]

Emacs user here. The only one in an office full of vi users. They and I have our config files set up so that indentation, etc all match, so when we open each other's code it's not all goofy looking.

I *can* use vi, I just prefer emacs, and I always have.

Re:Simple

[CopaceticOpus]

This reads like a letter to the editor in the Onion, if the Onion cared about vi. I honestly can't tell if you're being ironically pro-vi, or if you're just a simple Pico-loving soul.

Re:Simple

[TWX]

If it's any consolation, I didn't use vi for close to 20 years, using pico/nano instead. It wasn't until I started working with huge flatfiles that needed hundreds of lines of regular expression parsing that I learned how to use vi effectively.

I'd say that if you really need those advanced features that vi is the way to go, but admittedly pico/nano is a lot easier to use otherwise.


As for what I use that's old, I have a Dolby-AC3-capable laserdisc player and more than 500 titles and an S-VHS VCR with about 850 titles on tape, I'm hesitant to buy a laptop lacking an optical drive (though my pickings are quite slim these days), I'm still using a Gateway 2000 "Anykey" PS/2 124-key macro-programmable keyboard manufactured by Maxiswitch, the vast majority of my computer monitors are 4:3 ratio, I still have my SCSI Jaz2 drive, my SCSI Zip drive, a couple of 3.5" floppy drive, and one 5.25" floppy drive laying around, and my daily-use TV is a widescreen, high-definition tube . It works great! Cost me only $40! And at 126lb, no one is going to steal it. In fairness, it fits the built-in TV cabinet perfectly and at the time a similarly-sized LCD model was close to $600, so it made sense to go with the tube.

I don't necessarily equate old with obsolete. Obsolete is when it doesn't do the job that you need done satisfactorily. In that sense my 20 year old beater $700 pickup truck with no straight sheet metal and worn-out steering is fine, as I generally only drive it when either I need a truck specifically, or when one of the cars is out of commission and I need basic transportation in the interim. I'm typing this on a five-year-old netbook with an Atom processor, and I only recently replaced my Xeon-Gallatin-based dual processor workstation from a decade ago because the thing croaked after a power outage and doesn't want to come back up. It was a great box for a long time, even with only two cores. It's been replaced with a newer-used dual-quad Xeon workstation that I expect to use for another decade as my workstation and the whole-house server.

Re:Simple

[TWX]

Heh. I used to write MS-DOS batch and config files with copy con: if the only other choice was edlin...

Re:Simple

[Alan Shutko]

Whoosh.

Re:Simple

[asmkm22]

I'm the same way. Even in powershell, I instinctively try and open vi.

Re:Simple

[msauve]

Newbie.

From: patl@athena.mit.edu (Patrick J..LoPresti)
Subject: The True Path (long)
Date: 11 Jul 91 03:17:31 GMT
Newsgroups: alt.religion.emacs,alt.slack

When I log into my Xenix system with my 110 baud teletype, both vi *and* Emacs are just too damn slow.. They print useless messages like, 'C-h for help' and '"foo" File is read only'.. So I use the editor that doesn't waste my VALUABLE time.

Ed, man! !man ed

ED(1) UNIX Programmer's Manual ED(1)

NAME
ed - text editor

SYNOPSIS
ed [ - ] [ -x ] [ name ]
DESCRIPTION
Ed is the standard text editor.
---

Computer Scientists love ed, not just because it comes first alphabetically, but because it's the standard.. Everyone else loves ed because it's ED!

"Ed is the standard text editor."

And ed doesn't waste space on my Timex Sinclair.. Just look:

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root 24 Oct 29 1929 /bin/ed
-rwxr-xr-t 4 root 1310720 Jan 1 1970 /usr/ucb/vi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root 5.89824e37 Oct 22 1990 /usr/bin/emacs


Of course, on the system *I* administrate, vi is symlinked to ed.

Emacs has been replaced by a shell script which 1) Generates a syslog message at level LOG_EMERG; 2) reduces the user's disk quota by 100K; and 3) RUNS ED!!!!!!

"Ed is the standard text editor."

Let's look at a typical novice's session with the mighty ed:

[see the real thing here. /. lameness filter doesn't like it]

Note the consistent user interface and error reportage.. Ed is generous enough to flag errors, yet prudent enough not to overwhelm the novice with verbosity.

"Ed is the standard text editor."

Ed, the greatest WYGIWYG editor of all.

ED IS THE TRUE PATH TO NIRVANA! ED HAS BEEN THE CHOICE OF EDUCATED AND IGNORANT ALIKE FOR CENTURIES! ED WILL NOT CORRUPT YOUR PRECIOUS BODILY FLUIDS!! ED IS THE STANDARD TEXT EDITOR! ED MAKES THE SUN SHINE AND THE BIRDS SING AND THE GRASS GREEN!!

When I use an editor, I don't want eight extra KILOBYTES of worthless help screens and cursor positioning code! I just want an EDitor!!
Not a "viitor".. Not a "emacsitor".. Those aren't even WORDS!!!! ED!
ED! ED IS THE STANDARD!!!

TEXT EDITOR.

When IBM, in its ever-present omnipotence, needed to base their "edlin" on a UNIX standard, did they mimic vi? No.. Emacs? Surely you jest.. They chose the most karmic editor of all.. The standard.

Ed is for those who can *remember* what they are working on.. If you are an idiot, you should use Emacs.. If you are an Emacs, you should not be vi.. If you use ED, you are on THE PATH TO REDEMPTION.. THE SO-CALLED "VISUAL" EDITORS HAVE BEEN PLACED HERE BY ED TO TEMPT THE FAITHLESS.. DO NOT GIVE IN!!! THE MIGHTY ED HAS SPOKEN!!!

?

Re:Simple

[Culture20]

I know what ed is. I've used ed. But my point still stands. bearded_yak was dereferencing a variable with percent signs. That's DOS, 100%

Re:Simple

[WinterSolstice]

Sadly true. Most people don't even know the default port for SSH, SMTP or even freaking HTTP! How are you supposed to manage servers if you don't even know your default ports?
Or even the commands to FIND what's listening?

Re:Simple

[godel_56]

. . . and my daily-use TV is a widescreen, high-definition tube . It works great! Cost me only $40! And at 126lb, no one is going to steal it. In fairness, it fits the built-in TV cabinet perfectly and at the time a similarly-sized LCD model was close to $600, so it made sense to go with the tube.

With the massive power savings you could get by replacing this old junker, you could pay for a new flat screen in a few years. However you'd have to make sure it had the inputs to talk to your old signal sources. I've seen some new TVs with HDMI inputs only.

Re:Simple

[SunTzuWarmaster]

You owe me a keyboard. This is the funniest joke that I have seen this year.

Last years funniest series of jokes can be found here: http://www.photoshoptroll.com/... http://www.photoshoptroll.com/...

Re:Simple

[bearded_yak]

That's why real pros backpedal with
sed 's/\%variablename\%/\$variablename/' ./myperfectfile.sh

...or we just sit in a corner and write MOS-6510 assembly, muttering to ourselves and remembering the good old days.

Re:Simple

[bearded_yak]

Your notice of that was appreciated. Thank you for spotting my unexpected syntax.

Re:Simple

[nuckfuts]

Actually, real pros use
cat > filename
then type Ctrl-d when done.

Seriously.

Re:Simple

[msauve]

Welcome to 1991!

Re:Simple

[TWX]

Yeah, considering the VCR and all...

Re:Simple

[dubbayu_d_40]

So what you're saying is you can give up emacs, right?

Re:Simple

[chuckinator]

I'm a complete amateur vi user, and I've got the ham radio ticket to go with it. That's my other dead tech that's fun to play with.

Re:Simple

[Megane]

And none of that newfangled ZZ to exit crap. It's :wq for me forever, bay-bay. vi has a command line and it should be respected.

Re:Simple

[jaymz666]

manage servers, troubleshoot network connectivity issues, etc. etc.

I know some of the aspects of managing web servers with SSL can be somewhat involved, but a basic understanding of generating a csr, requesting a cert and installing that cert should be understood at a theoretical level and the practical execution should be fairly straight forward to work through.

anyway!

Re:Simple

[jaymz666]

I got that, too. The extra layer was indeed amusing

Re:Simple

[hairyfeet]

DVDs. The reasons why is they are cheap, easy to transport, and can hold a lot of data. With DVDs I can hand somebody 4GB+ of data for 15c including the sleeve, and when you can't predict how well or reliable their net is? That comes in REAL handy.

So the pundits can talk cloud this and cloud that but as long as I can get 'em I'm gonna be using DVDs. Hell if I had my way I'd still be using Lightscribe, but now that HP has pulled the plug its getting harder and harder to find new burners with LS. Sucks as it worked quite nicely.

Re:Simple

[robbiedo]

Am I only only person who swears by nano?

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why I like DVDs as well, if only Bluray where as ubiquitus on consumer comps as a DVD reader is, since I doubt that'll ever happen I'll have to hope the priecs on full 8gb DVDs srops in price to the point of 4.4Gb DVDs so that they can become as "disposable" as CDs and 4Gb DVDs have been for so long that I don't mind running off 20 copies of something and passing them out for free.

Re:Simple

[Mr_Wisenheimer]

Unless you work in an environment handling classified material or sensitive experiments that does not allow access to a smart phone or internet-connected web-browser, I don't really see any particular advantage in memorizing simple data that can be quickly Googled.

People used to memorize arcane things, like the square roots and natural logarithms of single digit numbers, but that kind of thing has been fairly obsolete since pocket calculators were invented. Likewise, the idea of memorizing arcane information that is easily discovered by a web-search is antediluvian.

Re: Simple

[macs4all]

That's why real pros backpedal with sed 's/\%variablename\%/\$variablename/' ./myperfectfile.sh ...or we just sit in a corner and write MOS-6510 assembly, muttering to ourselves and remembering the good old days.

Get off my lawn, Whipper-Snapper!

Everybody with REAL experience (and real grey hair) knows that the MOS6510 was a custom variant of the 6502 (actually, not quite; I believe it was missing a couple of upper address lines, IIRC) that was built by Commodore for the C-64 computer (and maybe the VIC-20, too). And the joke of it all was the fact that Commodore didn't even USE the mini-VIA or real-time clock that were the main features of the 6510...

No, REAL programmers (like me, of course!) sit and hand-code machine-code (assembly is for dummies!) MOS6502 programs on their Apple 1 computers...

Re:Simple

[AJWM]

Pfui, you young kids and your screen editors like 'vi'. The 'ed' editor was good enough for Ken Thompson, it should be good enough for you.

Now get off my lawn!

Re:Simple

[wa2flq]

TECO

I would not edit my paper tapes any other way.

Re:Simple

[Anubis350]

They're not (yet) at the 15c range, but if you buy in a large pack and don't want the fastest drives or USB 3 you can grab 4GB thumb drives for ~$2 each (~$1 each if you in 100+ quantities)- and these days be more assured that the person taking the data can read it easily

Re: Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're not using Vi then you haven't used Vi

Re:Simple

[SpzToid]

What Pico, are you mad? You have failed to provide even the slightest mention whatsoever to Nano; dammit all to Hell!

Re:Simple

[SpzToid]

Nothing, I say nothing can beat Reel to Reel. They don't call it reel for nothing.

(And don't use no double-negatives, never!)

Re:Simple

[ellbee]

Not only do I prefer emacs to vi (and use both quite a bit), I still read my personal e-mail in emacs using the mh-e macros Brian Reid first wrote in the mid-80s. It's not broken, why fix it?

Re:Simple

[davester666]

fuck. I was totally trying to come up with that exact command line because vi was screwing up some text I was pasting in that had tabs, and vi had auto-indent set so it would keep indenting further and further. Eventually, I figured out how to turn off the auto-indent.

Curse You, Almond+ router!

Re:Simple

[drolli]

You young fool!

if i am using vi then only becaue ex actually starts vi in ex mode instead of the real ex.

(just kidding)

Re:Simple

[drolli]

If anybody related to unix adminstration does not know vi then he should not be hired.

Not because i think that vi is great or not, but plainly for the reason that vi is installed with the bare minimum installation, which means you will be able to edei config files long before any other editor is installed.

Re: Simple

[corychristison]

I use Nano on the cli.

Admittedly I am 25 years old, and typically use Geany on the desktop.

Re:Simple

[danknight48]

Only amateurs use emacs, vi, or ed. Real pros use 'echo %variablename% > filename'. After all, who needs to change anything when what you type is already perfection?

And theres me thinking, using nano made me ultra hardcore :(

Re:Simple

[Damouze]

Hear hear.

With regards to editors. I used to -hate- vi. Passionately and with an almost religious fervor. To the extent that I renamed the vi binary to sucky-editor etc. For me, joe was the way to go. At university, on systems that were maintained by me, vi was usually a symlink to joe ;-).

All those wordstar key combo's that I was used to from those days (and nights) that I spent writing my next C program were not lost to me. I could still use them in joe while I was writing my C programs for Linux. Them good ol' times...

Nowadays, there is a dichotomy of editors in my twisted brain. If it's flat text I use vi. Mainly because of it's powerful search and replace features. If it's something else, like a UNIX shell script or a SQL file, I still use joe.

Re:Simple

[mehrotra.akash]

Whats your view on nano?

Re:Simple

[TheRaven64]

I enjoyed that article, but it's worth noting that vi actually is standard.

Re:Simple

[quenda]

Actually, real pros use

  cat > filename

then type Ctrl-d when done.

Type? Amateur hour! Real pros just whistle into the modem.

Re: Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct - editing files is for losers who can't get it right the first time.

Re:Simple

[itzly]

Can you recommend a good smartphone with a DVD player ?

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

what's wrong with BBedit?

Re:Simple

[charliemerritt]

I still use JOE (Joe's Own Editor). ^kh brings up the entire list of commands, and that sill leaves you room to edit - half screen or so. What do I write with Joe?
Scripts - that pipe to scripts.
For-Next
While-Do
If-Then
    The OP mentioned a sloppy disk - *IF* he has a 5.25 we might be able to do business - I just found an OLD copy of the original M$ Flight Simulator - it has a tiny file that loads everything else on the disk which is just a bunch of binary glop. It just struck me that this worked very well on a 80286 / 12 MHz and it would be fun to try on the 125 Watt (what other measure?) CPU I have. ...cm

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Knowing the default ports for widely used services saves the time spent googling.

Re: Simple

[UltraZelda64]

The "massive power savings" of using an LCD screen might not be worth it compared to the far superior contrast ratios that a good old-fashioned CRT TV can provide. On those, black really is black, and it really makes a difference for many of the types of games and movies I would watch. If CRT-based HDTVs were still around, that would probably be my first choice even today since SED TVs are still nowhere to be found.

Re:Simple

[freeze128]

...except for users who don't have a ctrl key. Damn you Blackberry!

Re:Simple

[thogard]

Unless you were using vi Berkley, your vi had a :x

This matters because :wq! parses as "write, then forced quit", not "force write, quit". x! does the correct thing on failures.

Re:Simple

[Reziac]

Right now Walmart has 16GB Sandisk flash drives for $9 (look in the School Supplies section, same damn thing as in Electronics but in a garish case for half the money). Last year they had 64GB Sandisk flash drives for $8. Costco has 64GB drives right now for $24. This sort of pricing is tempting me away from DVDs as my backup medium, because flash is more reliable in long-term storage and takes up a lot less space. Yeah, DVDs are cheaper and faster to make, but reliability in storage isn't the best.

If you want to buy in real quantity, go to alibaba.com and you'll see what they really cost at wholesale.

As to old tech, I still have a machine with a 5" floppy and a QIC-80 tape drive. It often goes years unused, but when I need it, I'm glad to have it.

Re:Simple

[Creepy]

Back in college (LOOOONG ago) I often used pico because of vi's arcane command set and emacs equally bad commmand set and abhorrent load time (it took 2+ minutes to start on our minicomputer, which consisted of 6 6502 processors - it was basically 6 Apple ][s and we had faster PCs and macs in other labs, but they didn't have Pascal, which was still the learning language of choice until they year after I had it). Oddly enough, I learned vi later because of some of the things it could do that pico couldn't (at least not at the time), especially searching for and removing linefeeds and other hidden characters from files. Hidden characters caused problems when I started writing my code on my home computer and transferring it to the UNIX server via network drive for testing/debugging.

Re:Simple

[rthille]

No, because that doesn't work with sudo. Real pros use:
cat | [sudo] tee [-a] filename

Re: Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Vice never gave me a bit of trouble; dvr is iffy and DVD writers are nearly useless. Wish I still had the vcr for timeshifting.

Re: Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that I live where the heat is on more than the a/c is, the savings in energy from the 100 hours a year that the tv is on and the "waste" heat needs to be removed rather than welcomed will take quite a while to make that LCD screen pay for itself.

Re: Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Love JOE... more people should use it. It can be as simple or complicated as you want. The best thing about JOE is answering... "what the heck is JOE?" everytime I use it.

Re:Simple

[Ambient Sheep]

Yup me too. Seriously.

Re: Simple

[IMightB]

YoungUn that's nothing. I used butterflies to type this post.

Re:Simple

[ebvwfbw]

that war is over, and vi won

Clearly it didn't. Bash uses emacs commands by default, of course. Mode editors are so 1960s. If you're serious about computer science, learn emacs. Then you can use both. I use both. If it is something simple, I use vi. For anything else emacs. Once you learn emacs, then you'll wonder why someone didn't let you in on the secret before. So far I have one guy that still wouldn't admit Emacs was superior, of course he wouldn't even try it. He helped write vi.

So sure, vi won in the sense that it's almost always installed by default - small, fast. When I show people Emacs and what can do, they usually learn it.

Re:Simple

[DocHoncho]

Not by a long shot! Simpering imbeciles everywhere love nano! You can frequently hear their mewling cries when confronted with a real editor: "Oh dear, how do I quit this thing?" or "Where is all the on-screen help?" or "I made a dookie!!"

Sad, really.

(mostly joking, I'm sure you don't simper! ;)

Re:Simple

[ayesnymous]

[Puts on fire resist gear] vi. Because emacs is for the devil.

I still use vi - it is the only editor guaranteed to be on all Unix/Linux systems. I remember at a previous company, I was the only guy who knew vi, and the other devs only used emacs. Well we had a customer that used a variant of Unix that did not come with emacs installed. The other devs struggled with vi as they had to request that emacs be installed, and the customer's IT department took 3 months before they finally installed it.

Re:Simple

[eriqk]

Actually, real pros use cat > filename then type Ctrl-d when done.

Seriously.

I'm no unix pro in any way shape or form, but I do make quick notes using

cat << EOF >> whatever.txt

Discovering that old trick has saved me lots of time.

Re:Simple

[josquin9]

I remember getting pages of largely unformatted text as letters when I was in college because my father used vi as his word processor of choice and then just piped the output to a dot matrix printer. He used vi for correspondence for the rest of his life into the current century. He was a Unix/Xenix guy from the word go, and thought C was for people who were too lazy to organize their thoughts well enough to code in Fortran and Cobol.

I miss him. He was a great guy.

Re: Simple

[TWX]

There are two problems with even the S-VHS VCR... First, there's no digital tuner, so I can't watch one thing while recording another thing like I used to, and second, even the S-VHS format isn't nearly as good as more modern stuff. AT BEST I'll get 480i out of it.

Re: Simple

[TWX]

Honestly, I don't think that the power consumption is a big deal compared to what the purchase price at the time would have been for that LCD I was looking at, and given the strengths tend to balance each other out (both are 1080, tube is interlaced, LCD isn't, tube has better contrast and refresh rate, LCD would have been slightly larger picture in the same space with a smaller border, tube has better sound, LCD has slightly better fine quality) so the price and long-term durability won out. Certainly over the course of many years I may spend more in electricity for the tube than for an LCD, but at the time the tube was almost free, and will outlast the LCD, so I would have to replace that LCD with another TV when it gives out.

I'm a big fan of things that were quality when they were new, as used things later. A TV that was close to $2000 might just beat the pants off of a TV that's $500 now, even after the paradigm shift.

Re: Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

For me, ED means erectile dysfunction.

Re: Simple

[Orestesx]

I looked up the power consumption of CRT vs. LCD TV's. Turns out for small screen sizes (around 30 inches), the difference isn't very big.

If your CRT TV is similar to the Toshiba 30HF83 (about the same weight as yours) it uses about 150 watts of electricity when in use, according to its manual. A new LED TV such as the Samsung UN32H5500 uses about 27 watts. Assuming 2000 hours of usage a year (about 6 hours a day) and 10 cents/kwh electricity cost, the LCD would save you only about $25/year on electricity. So that would be about 20 years for the $500 LCD to pay for itself.

Take it a step further, and say you invested that $500 at only 3% interest, and that $500 would earn about another $400 over 20 years. Not to mention that the LCD almost certainly wouldn't last 20 years, but the CRT might. I would say that if you are happy with the picture quality, then you got a pretty sweet deal. If electricity costs go up significantly, that would alter the calculus a bit. But as longs as they keep making devices with component outputs, I would say you're golden.

Re:Simple

[hairyfeet]

So let me get this straight...I can spend $200+ on thumbsticks that I will most likely never see again, or buy a 50 pack of blank DVDs off of Newegg for $6...hmmm....sorry, not really a hard choice pal. Not to mention how the hell am I gonna reproduce 20 thumbsticks when I need to hand out Windows updates to customers whose net is dodgy or who have shitty captastic cellular net? With DVD I simply push the "make another copy" button and tell it how many I want, then I can just slap in another disc when the drawer opens and not even pay attention to it...how am I supposed to do that with thumbsticks?

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Real pros on msdos/windows (if there is such thing on m$ systems) use:
copy con filename.txt
ctrl + z when done

Re:Simple

[rdnetto]

that war is over, and vi won

Vi's key feature was composability (you could use same motions with any action), and Emac's key feature was plugins.
Today, Vim has plenty of plugins (I have 48 in my vimrc as of yesterday), and Emacs ... is just as (not) composable as it was before, AFAICT.
Vim won the way, but it became the enemy in the process.

Re: Simple

[TWX]

It's Panasonic's direct competitor. CT-30W52. True it's Component only, not HDMI/DVI, but so far that hasn't been a problem. The Blu-Ray player has component (heck, it still has S-video!) and the PC has a component card in it that works fine.

If the image size were a lot larger then perhaps it'd be an issue, but we don't even have cable. We watch the news, some sitcoms including several older ones that were never high-def to start with, some sci-fi, etc. Works fine.

The old TV, a 25" Magnavox, died one day when an IC finally popped and left a greasy black stain on the circuit board where it used to be. We'd had that TV for close to 15 years at that point and were basically okay with it, TV isn't that big of a part of our lives.

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

DVDs. The reasons why is they are cheap, easy to transport, and can hold a lot of data. With DVDs I can hand somebody 4GB+ of data for 15c including the sleeve, and when you can't predict how well or reliable their net is? That comes in REAL handy.

So the pundits can talk cloud this and cloud that but as long as I can get 'em I'm gonna be using DVDs. Hell if I had my way I'd still be using Lightscribe, but now that HP has pulled the plug its getting harder and harder to find new burners with LS. Sucks as it worked quite nicely.

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes or DVDs.

Re:Simple

[toddestan]

A lot of those big LCDs use a surprising amount of power. The savings might be less than you think. And if he opted for a plasma the power usage would go up considerably.

Besides, another factor is how much the TV is used. I have a tube TV but I use it so little the payback would be decades, easily. Though with 1300+ movies on Laserdisc and VHS alone, I would guess the TV sees quite a bit of use.

Re:Simple

[Anubis350]

Well, first of all, in that high a quantity you can get them even cheaper than what I quoted by buying at a bulk price. As to how to replicate them... dd or more user friendly duplication program if you want and then fill every available USB port you have with thumb drives. Faster and more parallel than DV burning actually /though gotta wonder.... how often are you handing out DVDs? //and the number of people who still have an optical drive on their main computing device to read 'em is shrinking, fast

Gopher

[Anonymous Coward]

Gopher.

Re:Gopher

[TWX]

At one point I wanted to set up a gopher juarez server. I wanted it to reject web browsers emulating a gopher client too... I figured that something like three people would be left that would appreciate it though.

Re:Gopher

[Megane]

Holy crap, I didn't realize that they took gopher support out of Mozilla Seamonkey at least two years ago. Now the Gopher servers have to support HTTP over port 70 to be usable by mere mortals. But I have a 2.0.14 from 2011 running on an old PPC 10.5 system and it still supports gopher:// URLs. So all is not lost.

So is gopher.quux.org now the only gopher server left in the entire universe?

Re:Gopher

[CronoCloud]

http://gopher.floodgap.com/gop...

That has an http to gopher proxy, and is the home of OverbiteFF which is a Firefox extension that adds gopher support back to it. First "met" floodgap and OverbiteFF's owner/creator back on comp.sys.cbm.

So is gopher.quux.org now the only gopher server left in the entire universe?

No.

gopher://gopher.floodgap.com/1...

Hummm

[Anonymous Coward]

A brain. Can't seem to lry it go.

Re:Hummm

[Anonymous Coward]

It has bugs in it, I meant "let" not "lry"

Desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

I still like to use a desktop. Curse all you stupid laptop users!

Re: Desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

Long wave radio. FM as well but I don't class that as outdated compaired to digital radio

Re: Desktop

[johnsnails]

http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_str...

Re: Desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer this one between Dogbert and Dilbert.

Re:Desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, a desktop with a Model M keyboard... those new fangled excuses for keyboards barely last a fortnight! And touch screens? Apply any reasonable amount of pressure and they crack! Slippery annoying pieces of glass is all they are. Back in my day, keyboards were rigorously tested to exceed millions of keystrokes! I still have my Model M, never had to buy another since I acquired it in the late 80s.

Now get off my lawn!

Re: Desktop

[sillybilly]

All I ever catch on my LW radio is power grid hum, no stations. Shortwave does pick up some Jesus freaks though that are nice to listen to, or some Hispanic stations like Florida or Cuba halfway across the continent, which of course I don't understand, but I catch the gist of it, when they talk about Putin or Syria or Gaza, I know what they talk about, just don't know what exactly they are saying about it.
I do miss the days of BBC world news. They stopped service to the Americas on SW.
SW and BBC used to be synonyms even 10 years ago.

Also my SW radio is an LCD digital one, and sometimes I wonder if it's not hacked and it's really some bogus transmission getting fed through it, pretending to be shortwave. You cannot trust chips. A SW radio based on vacuum tubes is a lot more trustable that it's actually picking up the airwaves as directed, and then the issue comes down to actual bogus programming on those frequencies by nearby stations - they can even fake ionosphere reflection noises and fading, broadcast from nextdoor to you.

As Rene Descartes said, I think there I am, but beyond that, every fact in my mind is on shaky ground, and it takes the power of faith to believe a scientific experimental measurement as true, but I believe those a lot more than what someone picks out of thin air, without scientifically possible repetition and verification of measurements

Re: Desktop

[Applehu Akbar]

Those Dixie Christian stations may be massively powerful, but that's not all there is on shortwave. You can still pick up some useful ham consumer-products discussions: hearing aids, oxygen delivery systems, laxatives, mobility scooters, and defibrillators.

Re: Desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

Only dude I've met that uses shortwave and walkietalkies on a regular basis is an old guy that sits in his garage all day drinking cheap beer and basically trolls them, it was hilarious when he gon on the radio with some boaters out on the great lakes and started arguing with them about itterally anything.

Makes me lol to listen to people that act like trolling is a recent phenomenon when this guy is in his 80's and says he's been doing this for over 50 years.

Re:Desktop

[TeknoHog]

I've used laptops as my main/only machine for a long while, but I now use a dock with external display and keyboard, as it's more ergonomic in a standing desk. However, the general point is that I still like to use a full computer in this age of tablets. There are many cases where a tablet would be more suitable, but I hate owning too many different appliances for each job, when a single laptop can do almost everything. Of course, there's also the usual agenda of freedom to program your machine as you see fit.

Curse all you stupid laptop users!

It's not stupidity. I'm just too weak to carry a full desktop setup around to places where I need to work.

Re: Desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha ha! What you wrote is interesting but somehow I also found it hilariously funny.

Re: Desktop

[johnsnails]

Ahh yes V good!

Re: Desktop

[cwsumner]

For longwave, you need a better (longer) antenna. You can tune a short one to that band, but it doesn't pick up much when it is a small fraction of a wavelength.

Re:Desktop

[Shark]

In a similar vein... I still like to use a GUI that lets me see more than one window at a time.

Despite all the trendy claims to the contrary, I do not get confused from it, even when they overlap! I must be some sort of genius. I've also found myself able to click on icons and buttons that are smaller than 1/16th of the screen, navigate drop-down menus and even read text composed of characters less than 80 pixels high. I also possess the superhuman ability to notice interface elements that aren't surrounded by vast, empty space.

Interface designers nowadays are the large oafs stomping on my LEGO Technic to offer me a box of DUPLO.

slashdot

[stormpunk]

I still come here looking for insightful articles and thought-provoking discussions.

Re:Slashdot

[rmdingler]

It's still better for you than streaming kitten videos and/or smoking methamphetamine.

Re:slashdot

[jenningsthecat]

I still come here looking for insightful articles and thought-provoking discussions.

Funny, and at least a little bit true, yet you were modded down. That kind of makes your point for you, doesn't it?

Re: slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop saying that. Einstein never said that. And he was a physicist.

Re:slashdot

[starseeker]

Let me guess - are you a Cubs fan?

Re: slashdot

[hurfy]

But if you just keep repeating it enough.....

Re:slashdot

[Trepidity]

Sounds like weird innovation that as an old-school technologist I'm not comfortable with. I come to Slashdot for the opposite of those things.

Re:slashdot

[TWX]

When classic goes away, so do I. Copy this if you want them to get the idea.

I was thinking about that today, and yeah, I agree. When Classic is gone then I don't expect to continue using Slashdot anymore. When they just become every other discussion forum site then why would I need to limit myself to this one?

Re: slashdot

[JazzHarper]

people will believe that Einstein said it.

Re:slashdot

[issicus]

slashdot without ad block.

Re: slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

But if you just keep repeating it enough.....

You'll just end up chafed.

Re:slashdot

[Wallace487]

This. I've been reading this site for well over a decade (yes, I made a UID after several years of lurking), and I will move on when I can no longer access Classic.

Re:slashdot

[sillybilly]

That's not insanity. It's persistence.

Re:Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

It's still better for you than streaming kitten videos ...

Compared to the beta version of the site, streaming kitten videos sounds much better.

... and/or smoking methamphetamine.

I would not know from experience, but I would assume even that is better than the beta version of this site.

Re:slashdot

[Megane]

I still use non-beta Slashdot. (11 months so far since beta dropped like a stinky turd!)

Re:slashdot

[dcollins117]

That's not insanity. It's persistence.

I don't go for ancient wisdom
I don't believe just 'cause ideas are tenacious
It means that they're worthy

- Tim Minchin, "White Wine in the Sun"

Re: slashdot

[Nimey]

cue email forward:
AND SO EINSTEIN PROVED GOD EXISTS (and his atheist public school teacher was a dunce).

"it's not true, but it makes a good point!"

Re: slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Good artists copy; great artists steal

--Albert Einstein

Pen

[dolmen.fr]

I'm still using pens and Post-It to take notes, not my phone.

Re:Pen

[bearded_yak]

Ah, you new-fanlged young-un with your fancy ink-sticks and sticky-papers. I still use a retractable 1.2mm lead pencil and a pocket notepad.

Re: Pen

[Anonymous Coward]

Wooden pencil and a knife to sharpen it

Re:Pen

[TWX]

I find it rather difficult to take notes on my phone when I'm talking on my phone. I tend to switch around between sticky notes, notepads, and the blank sides of printouts, depending on what I've got handy.

Re: Pen

[CWCheese]

Flat shovel and piece of charcoal

Re:Pen

[Anonymous Coward]

I was going to say pen and paper, but more because of my architecture background. In school we were required to have a pen on us at all times, and I still use a sketchbook. That ingrained behavior is hard to kick. I haven't found a really good digital equivalent for me. It's not just a "feel" thing, i.e., the feel of friction from the pen on paper. There are too many things I can do faster and easier with pen and paper, maybe because I was trained or maybe because of the delay of powering on and launching an app. With pen and paper I can literally grab and go, I can fold paper to change something I've drawn, etc. I still prefer typing something over writing long hand though, so I guess that's a little weird.

Re:Pen

[Lexible]

bic 4-color multi-pen (preferably orange barrel, fine point), plus the lime green barrel purple/pink/cyan/lime green one.

Re:Pen

[Anonymous Coward]

Pens seem to be getting popular these days. I don't know though. I tried taking notes with one, and pretty quickly ran out of space on my phone. Now I have a hard time seeing the text message window.

Re:Pen

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't live without a pen, pencil, electric pencil sharpener and pad of paper. I can't stand writing on a tablet, there's a distracting amount of latency between my hand motions and the strokes appearing on screen.

Re:Pen

[DerekLyons]

Yup. I own a powerful desktop, an iPhone, and a low end tablet... but when I start a project of any significance, the first thing I reach for is my trusty steno pad. (A habit learned at my mother's knee forty years ago.)

Re:Pen

[jataktravel]

use phone then why late

Re: Pen

[xaxa]

I use a fountain pen (or three, with black, blue and some other colour).

I find it much more comfortable to write with, compared to a ballpoint pen.

Re:Pen

[Anonymous Coward]

I usually start the day by sticking a new Post-It onto the back of my phone to take notes with. It drives people insane but it works great for me. :P

Re:Pen

[josquin9]

Dip pens or fountain?
    I won't even discuss the expressionless abominations that are ball-point and roller-ball.

Re:Pen

[MercBoy]

My favorite way to take notes, or to design something, is using yellow pads and a stack of sharpened pencils.

My watch

[Anonymous Coward]

I still wear a wristwatch. I've worn one constantly since I was 10. I'll probably be buried with one.

Re:My watch

[Trepidity]

Interesting that wearing a wristwatch might now, again, be more eccentric than wearing a pocketwatch.

Re:My watch

[Anonymous Coward]

I wear a Casio calculator watch everyday and I almost always use it instead of pulling out my phone. It's got a cool nostalgic feel to it and considering how cheap it is I'm not worried about loosing or breaking it.

Re:My watch

[sillybilly]

I used to do that except caustic soda kept getting stuck behind it, even after I washed my hands, and left a burn spot that ached terribly when the watch was touching it. So I switched to a pocket watch like thing, that I keep either hanging in my neck straight down to my belly button(but that can swing about badly if you lean over and you don't keep it under your shirt), or hanging in my neck but the watch stucked into my shirt pocket right above my left nipple, where it is easier to get to, it does not swing around badly, but when you lean over too deep it does fall out and it's a bit annoying. But it's worth the sacrifice, as I've learned to keep my wrists completely garbage free, easy to rinse, and uninhibited in motion. Completely bare writsts just feel fresh and healthy and keep life simple when doing any manual task.

The watch I do have is this, from Walmart: http://www.walmart.com/ip/Time...
I actually had a couple of them, one I scratched up bad, another ran out on battery and considering the battery cost at Walmart, I invested into another full watch plus battery, I needed something quickly, and it's good to have these beauties for the future, in case they become unavailable. They do have a design flaw, and that is the front buttons keep getting pushed when you lean over, but nothing beats the robustness of huge LCD digits, and even a blue LED backlight when you're in a dark area. They are made in China, but don't let that fool you, as they are extremely accurate. I usually keep them 3 minutes fast, and they stay 3 minutes fast for a whole year or more without adjustment, even though I keep accidentally pushing them front buttons when leaning against my chest, and that switches the view, with one of the views having a chance to also zero out the seconds, but the chances of that is very small, as when you're pushing the front buttons you're not simultaneously pushing it from the edge too, where the seconds reset button is.

Re:My watch

[Anonymous Coward]

You aren't a true aspie unless you have no jewelry at all. I hate that constricting dangerous shit. I once almost had my finger pulled off from a ring and similarly I almost broke my wrist from a watch. Never again, never. I gave all that up in the early 90's and instead used whatever was the smalled crap pocket organizer available. Nowadays everything is on your phone, you don't need anything else.

Re:My watch

[Applehu Akbar]

I still have mine, but use it as a fashion accessory when we go out somewhere fancy. My phone keeps much better time.

Re:My watch

[Anonymous Coward]

Replace it with a smart watch.

Re:My watch

[AthanasiusKircher]

I still wear a wristwatch. I've worn one constantly since I was 10. I'll probably be buried with one.

To me, a wristwatch is an essential tool. I give talks, teach classes, run meetings -- and I find it really annoying to do these things without bringing my analog watch.

Many rooms do not have visible clocks when I'm doing these things. But if I'm trying to run a class or give a talk or run a meeting on a schedule, I need to know what time it is. On the other hand, I don't want to make it look like I'm continuously checking the time, because that tends to make audiences nervous or anxious or feel bored or think you're bored or whatever.

Say I'm teaching a class. If the room doesn't have a visible clock, what are my options?

(1) Consult a classroom computer, if there is one. Well, some classrooms might not have one, but even if they do, usually a screensaver or something will turn off the monitor. So I need to go over and hit the spacebar (or worse, login) everytime I need to check the time. Yes, I could reconfigure the computer, but I may not have an account on it, it may be shared, etc.

(2) I could use my phone. But again we have the screen off problem. If I leave my phone on the desk, I'll still need to go turn it on to check the time, and it looks like I'm "checking my phone" (for messages, whatever). Not a good message to send to the students when I tell them I don't want to see *them* doing that. If it's in my pocket, I don't need to walk to it, but it's even more noticeable when I pull it from my pocket and turn the screen on briefly. I might be able to set my phone screen to stay on, but that wastes a lot of battery.

(3) I could bring along a tiny desk clock or something, but why do that when I already can just have one available on my wrist (which is probably even smaller and less obtrusive)?

(4) I can take my analog wristwatch off and set it down in a central location to where I'm presenting from. With an analog clockface, I can easily tell the time from just about any angle (not true of computer screens or phone screens), maybe 10-15 feet away (where I wouldn't necessarily be able to read a digital watch). And it's already on my wrist, so I don't need to remember to bring extra equipment. Even if I keep it on my wrist, it's usually less obtrusive to check the time than walking to some computer or pulling out a phone.

Basically, if you want to know what time it is in a room where there's no visible clock, but you don't want to necessarily signal to everyone else that you're constantly checking the time, a watch is a pretty ideal solution.

Re:My watch

[Anonymous Coward]

Has someone already designed a round smartphone with a lid that can dangle from the headphones?

Re:My watch

[supercrisp]

I still wear an analog watch for those reasons. AND so that I can "subtly" glance at it when it's time to end a conversation.

Re:My watch

[AthanasiusKircher]

Yes, that's true too. Most people still think of watches as uniquely about checking the time (despite smartwatches, etc.). Glancing at your watch is probably the clearest signal you can give to others that you're worried about the time (e.g. may need to go, have another meeting, etc.). Checking your phone may just make you look rude or bored, since phones have so many other functions you could be monitoring.

Re: My watch

[cyber-vandal]

Loosing it is just a matter of undoing the strap.

Re:My watch

[kimhanse]

(2) I could use my phone. But again we have the screen off problem. If I leave my phone on the desk, I'll still need to go turn it on to check the time, and it looks like I'm "checking my phone" (for messages, whatever). Not a good message to send to the students when I tell them I don't want to see *them* doing that. If it's in my pocket, I don't need to walk to it, but it's even more noticeable when I pull it from my pocket and turn the screen on briefly. I might be able to set my phone screen to stay on, but that wastes a lot of battery.

I still use my N9 phone because it has an always on clock on the lock screen, is there any new phone that can do the same?

Re:My watch

[Anonymous Coward]

I was going to say the same thing. So many of my friends have given up on watches and use their phones. My watch is faster to look at and I'm used to it. I don't see myself giving it up ever.
I'm even using an analog dial one vs one with an LCD. Mine is solar powered though(citizen eco drive).

How about...

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot? *grin*

Re:How about...

[DoomSprinkles]

this is funny, because it's true.

pine

[Lexible]

(Well... alpine.)

Re:pine

[bearded_yak]

Give me pine, lynx, and ytalk and a cozy VMS shell account and I'll be fine.

Re:pine

[Anonymous Coward]

(Well... alpine.)

Mutt user here. I'd use elm if I could figure out how to make it cooperate with msmtp.exe on this Cygwin setup. Elm is picky about its choice of mailer back-ends. Buried/hardcoded deep in mailer.c. As it stands I use elm in one fragile config, and mutt when I need to switch accounts.

The VCR

[rmdingler]

I have movies in that format that still work, and I am reluctant to throw out something that's not broken.

I know, right? Treading that thin line between thrifty and hoarder...

Re:The VCR

[javajeff]

I tape shows on my VCR. It still works, and I am the master of the fast forward button to avoid commercials.

Re:The VCR

[TWX]

We're there too, with 800 titles on tape. Unfortunately the new projector doesn't display analog sources very well compared to the old one, so tapes and laserdiscs look like crap compared to DVDs and Blu-Ray players.

since both projectors can shine off-center and make the image look right I'm tempted to hang the old projector too, and to use it for LD and VHS.

Re:The VCR

[Anonymous Coward]

unfortunately, the analog vcr is obsolete. tapes will degrade. move them to another format before they're unusable.

on that same note, also obsolete are the millions of analog tivos, other dvrs, and tv tuner cards... hell, even digital clearqam tuners are all but history due to the cable industry paying-off the fcc to allow digital encryption and delivery of even broadcast and basic cable channels. obsolete here are 4 pc tuners (one was qam capable), one s2 dual tivo, and two vcrs.

one glimmer of hope for consumers, though, is there is no longer any technical reason why we do not have ala carte programming.. the main industry argument against it was that most channels were delivered as one package (i.e. the broadcast and 'expanded' basic viewable by ordinary analog catv-ready televisions, vcrs and tuners) and installing traps on lines was cost prohibitive.... so bring it on already, i for one am tired of paying nearly $70 for ''expanded basic'' cable when all we watch is a few channels (disney, nick, tnt, syfy, usa, and broadcast, since we live where there is very, very poor ota digital reception, would be enough for us.. it *shouldnt* cost us more than about $20-25 a month for that).

Re:The VCR

[sillybilly]

I don't watch DVD's on matter of principle, because they contain DRM. The only time I watched one by accident was in 2005 when one of my friends played a footage of Black Superman on a laptop under Xine in Knoppix, as far as I remember. So I'm forever stuck on VHS, and I do have a player. I keep picking up these old school CRT's that are like brand new and completely functional, that people put out into the garbage because they bought a flat screen TV. What a treasure, and what a waste it would be to send them to landfills. VHS's work great with them.

Re:The VCR

[FlyHelicopters]

Fair enough, but those tapes won't last forever and replacements will be of a similar age...

At some point, you won't have a choice, digital is the wave of the future, like it or not...

Depending on your age, you might be dead by then and not care of course. :)

Re:The VCR

[FlyHelicopters]

They have this new thing, pretty cool, called a DVR. :)

Just saying... :)

Re:The VCR

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep picking up these old school CRT's that are like brand new and completely functional, that people put out into the garbage because they bought a flat screen TV. What a treasure, and what a waste it would be to send them to landfills. VHS's work great with them.

All 19" non-flatscreen TV CRTs (normally with a 90-degree yoke) are useful to arcade restorers. The 19VLUP22 and other 19" CRTs with 100-degree yokes are really valueable, because that's the tube that was used in Tempest, Star Wars, and other Atari color vector games. I'm also told that the Sun 19" monochrome CRTs use the same tubes as the black and white Atari vectors like Asteroids, etc. The original tubes in rasters and vectors are often burned from 20-30 years of use, and old television tubes, while they sometimes require a little work to make them work with the arcade game's chassis, are in demand amongst collectors. I treat CRTs for vector monitors as a non-renewable resource. At the 19" and 25" form factors, if I don't have a use for one, there's someone hot there who does.

Re:The VCR

[Anonymous Coward]

I have movies in that format that still work, and I am reluctant to throw out something that's not broken.

You left out the most important bit: Which format?
If it's not Betamax then it doesn't really count.

Re:The VCR

[Shirley Marquez]

Some old titles haven't been released in newer formats, either because of lack of interest or because the rights have gotten hopelessly tangled. (In addition to the rights to the film itself, music rights are often an issue; licensing all the songs in an old movie or TV show can be prohibitively expensive. Ask any fan of WKRP in Cincinnati.) Even if you wanted to spend the money, you can't replace them with DVDs or digital downloads.

For some obscure movies there isn't much point to buying the DVD version. The only DVDs available come from low-budget companies that produced them by transferring a VHS tape or some equally bad source. Those DVDs look no better than the tape you already have.

Re:The VCR

[FlyHelicopters]

All true and fair points...

What would you suggest the solution be?

Re:The VCR

[sillybilly]

They could modify copyright law to speed up passage into public domain based on degree of tangledness of copyright issues in a piece of art.

Re:The VCR

[sillybilly]

A couple years ago, before they took me to the nut house, and the state approved forced injection of drugs in my best interest against paranoia through two mock-trials, I used these TV's for the leaded glass in their screen and their great ability to block x-rays coming at me from my neighbors. I stacked them in the attic space, plus I have the cast iron tub, and the combo worked great, however I can't stack them again in the wintertime, because the landlord put down thick fiberglass insulation, and even with that present, and me blasting the heat, there were still pipe breaks from freezing anyway, because they won't run the heat on the 2nd floor below me, because the gas company charges $25 connection fee on each apartment/account, so heat only comes from the first floor, rises through the 2nd, onto the 3rd floor, and if not, whatever I heat on the 3rd floor also rises up, and wont keep the floor level pipes in the attic space from freezing, especially when insulated from above with fiberglass, it all comes down to 2nd floor heat, not 3rd. (They can also manufacture a pipe freeze as needed with liquid air when I'm not home and try to blame the cracks on me.)
So now I can't really touch this attic space at all, lest I get framed for the coming pipe freeze bursts. Putting TV's there for x-ray shielding would compress the thick fiberglass to the floor, and then you can debate whether a pipe burst was caused by such a thing, or it would have happened anyway. It's best to leave it the way the landlord touched it last, and then I'm not responsible.
The reason for getting x-rayed is, that, in the opinion of many landlords, I don't pay enough for housing, and it's a way to entice me to be on the move, to higher and higher rent places. For instance they had to pay like 18,000 for gutters, plus property tax is insane, a landlord has huge expenses.
I beg to differ on that though I think a fair housing cost is not over $50/month, preferably $20. The reason why it's so high, is tulip mania, as everyone involved in the control of housing prices - banks, realtors, owners and landlords, all have a collective interest in driving the prices through the tulip sky, for such simple things, as an owner refinancing a home that went up in perceived value by $100,000, on which you can purchase 4 cars, out of thin air, it falls out of the sky into your lap, but should the value drop, you have to hunt down those responsible and make them suffer. As a housing price increase of 50% is fine, but a decrease of 30% sends shock waves through through the global economy, because everyone is spent to their limits, no buffer, no reserve for bad times, and this especially includes banks out to recklessly maximize profit without any regard for safety. The blame goes on people trying to assert some common sense, and only bidding so much on an already devastated house at a free market auction.
Housing cost by far, even under my present condition of getting tortured over why it's so "low", it's by far the greatest cost that's sucking the living life out of me and my bank account on a job loss, far surpassing food, transportation, and grass cutting. However I'd like to be commemorated for grass cutting, by everyone limiting their sensless destruction of wilderness in their own backyards, by leaving a small patch untouched.
Food should be the major expense in life, not intellectual property, not housing, etc. In absence of that we have a single criterion for population selection: the ability to breed fast, no matter how retarded or ugly or a genetic defect or failure one is, with free food and guaranteed welfare 13 year old inner city black teenage mothers turning grandmothers by age 39 simply drowning out in voting power college going white or even black women giving birth at age 39 to their first child. In this sense feminism of equality of genders also does not make too much sense, as it should be the father that matters, that regulates the population by being able to say no, even if fast breeding with 13 year olds at age 80. A 13 year old mother did not get a chance to go to college, and adequately care for the child from that education, she's busy educating the children.

Re:The VCR

[sillybilly]

If biotech allowed the return for external eggs for mammals, as in external artificial wombs, a 39 year old college educated woman could pop 360 kids all at once, able to compete with 13 year olds under the same terms, as the prolonged baking time of 9 months per mammalian offspring would no longer be a hindrance, and the 13 year old would not be that far ahead in the game as to make it impossible to catch up in voting power(or any kind of power) under an easy, good life scenario with a low death rate. Of course the eggs would all have to be harvested for each female at age 13, at puberty, and adequately preserved, else you waste 1 egg at each period, adding up to something like 360 for 12 month each between age 15 first menstrual period to age 45 last period. This would be absolute family planning, as you'd make a rational decision on when to have a baby and how many you can afford given the environmental resource constraints in the world around you. It would also allow uninhibited sexual pleasure of never being in danger of getting pregnant even from a gang bang of hundreds, or wondering who the father is (, or just getting pregnant by accident from men who have big dicks and are fun to fuck but are too stupid to want them to be the father of your children,) as that choice would be done in less under the influence of raging hormones, but rational thought.
I don't think bio tech has the time or chance for such a thing, under the looming global overpopulation and resource crash crisis apocalypse, so in all circumstances, the ability to breed naturally, even without egg harvesting at puberty, never becoming non-mammalian, should be sustained.

Re:The VCR

[sillybilly]

Laying technological external eggs for human mammals would also allow for full modern technological age gender equality, only falling back to the paternalistic and always kept pregnant teenage mothers under a collapse of technology or good life
Even with 13 year old mothers, of course you can have mothers with grown kids going back to college at age 40, having their full attention to focus on education, and getting better resources that way, but that's not during the upbringing of their own children. Of course, as grandmothers, they can still help more by going to college at age 40 than not.
And of course some mothers can get pregnant at age 13, and through superhuman effort, besides giving a quality upbringing to their children, also go to high school and college at the same time. Especially if they have a grandmother + a dedicated husband available, then it's really easy. But in the present age we have serial baby daddy's, broken families, grandmothers more broke than their teenage mother daughters, and welfare sustaining everything, to the point of having to raise income taxes, and even that's not enough so you have to institute things like mandatory Obamacare that rakes in even more money to send and feed the welfare recipient teenage mothers, only postponing the problem leading to an even greater crash later when the matter of population explosion vs. available resources comes due. You have to stay within your means.

Re:The VCR

[sillybilly]

Yeah, I'm not gonna live that long to really care about all information going digital. Not in my lifetime, if I can do anything about it. Even today some collectors have gramophones, for instance, and they are not banned as illegal, because you can't put DRM on them, but these intellectual owners might just find a way to fuck with you and put DRM on gramophones too.

Re:The VCR

[josquin9]

Develop an eidetic memory.

Good Analog Oscilloscopes

[SiriusStarr]

'Nuff said.

Re:Good Analog Oscilloscopes

[msauve]

Tek 485, FTW!

Re:Good Analog Oscilloscopes

[Anonymous Coward]

There was never a better one than the 547. It's only problem was that the time/division knob never went low enough. Hard to see things less than 100 millimicroseconds. ;-)

Re:Good Analog Oscilloscopes

[Anonymous Coward]

Piffle.
I like my Tek 2465b. The 465 is foot for fixing B&W TVs.
I do have a 465, work was throwing it out so I grabbed it. If it doesn't do at least a couple of GHz it pretty useless here now.

Re:Good Analog Oscilloscopes

[Anonymous Coward]

And VOM's with needles!

Re: Good Analog Oscilloscopes

[macs4all]

I have TWO 547s. And the best thing is, if your furnace ever goes out, you can heat a four-bedroom home with them!

Re: Good Analog Oscilloscopes

[macs4all]

Yeah! Try to demonstrate a capacitor-charge curve on a digital meter...

Re:Good Analog Oscilloscopes

[serviscope_minor]

I love analog scopes, especially the controls. Often much more intuitive than digital ones.

A while back I used an early digital scope which had the digital bit grafted into the middle of an analog Hameg or something. Was analog except for a couple of buttons. It didn't even zero the memory on power on, so if you switched to view the trace you got a random signal.

That said I just got a modern Hameg. 4 analog channel, 8 digital channels, colour screen and so on. If only I could get that combo with the old school analog feel.

Re:Good Analog Oscilloscopes

[BlueStrat]

My Tektronix 453 is still going strong after being retired from use in avionics testing/troubleshooting/repair. As is the old black-Bakelite Simpson analog-meter VOM.

Another "old" technology I use regularly are vacuum-tube guitar amplifiers like the ones I play through, repair, and design & build. Nearly all the major guitar amplifier makers' current lines of flagship pro- and semi-pro-level guitar amps are tube-based designs.

Many of the most sought-after and expensive studio microphones are also vacuum-tube based (integral pre/buffer amp).

There are actually more vacuum tubes being produced currently than were being produced 30 years ago.

Audiophiles also tend to prefer tube-based amplifiers.

I hope relations between the US and Russia don't deteriorate too badly. Russia is a major manufacturer and exporter of vacuum tubes, as is China. Chinese tubes in general are not as high a quality generally speaking though, in my personal experience.

Oh, and the PC I posted this with is circa 2000 with a CRT monitor.

Do I win an internets?

Strat

A basic land line

[mark-t]

[nt]

Re:A basic land line

[dpilot]

Seconded. When the power and everything else is out, I call to report it on my land line.

Re:A basic land line

[Misagon]

Here here!

My landline phone:
* Has a more ergonomic handset than a cell phone,
* Can be used with phone menu systems without having to move the handset from/to the ear - I don't miss the response of my key press because it was not at my ear at the time
* Has better sound than many cell phones
* I don't have to be worried about microwave radiation (that may or may not be harmful).
* Will work if the power is out
* Does not suffer from a degraded or lost signal because there is a hill or too many walls in-between me and the base station.
* Can be exchanged for a xDSL modem that would provides Internet connection to any device I may have (through a router), where as tethering may not always be supported by the cell phone or allowed by the carrier and the tethered device has to be connected through USB or Wifi, not cable, etc. etc.

Re:A basic land line

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty sure the people that matter already know. You can stop trying to be a hero now.

Re:A basic land line

[TheRaven64]

There are several nice features of a landline, but they can't (in the UK, at least) compete on price. The line rental alone for a landline costs more than I spend on calls on my mobile (pre-pay, no contract, no monthly fees). Calls from my mobile are 3p/minute, a landline is £16/month. I'd need to spend almost 9 hours on the phone each month before I spent as much on my mobile as a landline would cost me before I even made any calls. And then, for the kicker, the calls from the landline cost 9p/min (+15p setup) for calls to other landlines or 12p/min (+15p setup) for calls to mobiles. There's no possible justification for calls from the landline costing 3-4 times as much as calls from the mobile on top of the extortionate line rental. If I wanted to pay BT even more, for another £3 I could get free evening and weekend calls to landlines, but calls to mobiles would still be the same price. For £7.50 on top of the line rental, I'd get free calls to landlines, and calls to mobiles would only be twice the cost of my mobile. Almost everyone I call has a mobile though, so in exchange for paying BT an amount equivalent to about 12 hours of calls on my mobile per month, I could then pay double per minute what I pay for calls on my mobile with no line rental.

Re:A basic land line

[jhecht]

The best feature of a landline is being able to understand the people you're speaking to. At least here in the US, mobile voice quality tends to be poor, thanks largely to speech compression, background noise, and the lousy acoustics of many models (smartphones have to do a lot of processing to make up for their tiny mikes and speakers). In the US, the basic landline rate usually covers unlimited calls within the US may be lower than the basic individual mobile rate (without a maximum number of minutes a month). If you talk a lot, landline to landline calls are a clear win in both call quality and price.

blackberry

[zlives]

yup still got my torch and its magnificent 3g speeds (in cell phone terms... its old i think)

Re:blackberry

[TWX]

I still have Western Electric trimlines, Model 2500s, and Model 2554 phones in-service on our landline. Never had caller ID, call waiting, or voicemail, still have an answering machine. Never saw a reason to pay monthly for services that I could supply for myself.

Re:blackberry

[peragrin]

I never got a landline because I always needed a cell anyways. That and with my cell came free long distance. At the time (late 90's) Long distance was expensive. It still is.

Re:blackberry

[Anonymous Coward]

yup still got my torch and its magnificent 3g speeds (in cell phone terms... its old i think)

Torch makes a 4G version. I am on my 3rd one. I have one backup left before I go android.

IBM Model M

[Anonymous Coward]

When the heat death of the universe comes, that thing will still be tanking along.

Re:IBM Model M

[Lacrocivious Acropho]

Mine certainly will. I have thirteen of them, and ten still work.

That said, and as a former typesetter (you may know what that is, but most here won't) who cruised at 120 wpm on a 16-character LED 'display' on typesetting machines, and who loved the Model M as the most perfect approximation of industry-level typesetting keyboard feel and responsiveness... ... try a Logitech K800.

It's a completely different kettle of fish. But I haven't been this pleased with a single component since ... well, I don't remember. The Fractal Design cases are a recent competitor in this category, but before that I can't remember a component that elicited 'pry it loose from my cold dead fingers' lust like the K800 keyboard.

Re: IBM Model M

[macs4all]

When the heat death of the universe comes, that thing will still be tanking along.

Yep. Just like my HP Laserjet 4.

Bought it at a thrift store about 5 years ago for $10. The copy count was 8,000. The engine is conservatively rated at 1,000,000 copies.

So, unless I start printing out and distributing copies of my Manifesto to the entire planet, it will likely outlive me.

Rock.

[Anonymous Coward]

Without a rock, I couldn't deal with so many of the problems I have. It even cures stupidity.

Oh all right, it just treats stupidity in others.

Re:Rock.

[BronsCon]

Well, it's not so much treating it as increasing it to levels that prevent the sufferer from spreading it to others.

Re:Rock.

[Gonoff]

My sheet of paper beats your rock.

Re:Rock.

[Quirkz]

Yes, rock is handy, but keep in mind it's useless against paper.

Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

I still find myself coming to the site many years after it was started.

Old towers

[joneswes2010]

I pick up old desktop towers and then put Linux on them. They run like crap, they serve no use, but I like to have them. Something about watching a Gateway 2000 boot up and be "usable" makes me happy.

Re:Old towers

[Lacrocivious Acropho]

I do this too.

Some of them actually do have use, for example, if I add a NIC or three and put ClearOS on them to make an actual gateway/firewall/etc so I can put the client's compromised, obsolete, data-theft-oriented, crippled, piece of crap, 'free' end user 'router' (i.e., router-like device in the same sense as a Chicken McNugget bears relation to an actual Chicken) in Bridged Ethernet mode and protect them from an incredible percentage of malware.

It doesn't matter that they 'run like crap'. It isn't possible for the overwhelming majority of end users to ever make those old PCs even break a sweat when the PCs are replacing their 'routers'.

This solution becomes problematic basically in three cases: (1) physical space is at a premium; (2) noise is a problem in living space; and/or (3) power consumption is a huge issue.

Re:Old towers

[sillybilly]

I do this too. I think we're getting mind controlled by the same parasites that mind control other creatures, like cats and ants. In essence, only through God are you able to accomplish anything great, and it's the same God living in the cat and in the ant as in you, and these creatures with God in them are a lot more sentient than you or I without God in us. It's weird when a stupid cat looks at you like you're an idiot, and you can tell he's smarter than you. Creepy. God knows what you're thinking, and say when you catch a fly, and keep it uncrushed in your palm, it knows the fear the fly feels, and when it gets released free outside, it knows the joy of the fly, while reading your thoughts at the same time.

Telnet-based BBS.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been on it since '93, and it's still going okay: telnet://bbs.iscabbs.com. (Formerly of UIowa, but split off some six or seven years ago.)

Re:Telnet-based BBS.

[AJWM]

Your comment prompted me to try nlzero.com again. My account is still there!

Noise Level Zero (nlzero) is the heir to Byte Magazine's BIX (Byte Information Exchange) system from pre-web days. No official connection, but it uses the same CoSy software and many of the BIX regulars moved over to nlzero when Byte shut down the BIX system.

Still going, with recent messages, though of course nowhere near as active as BIX was in its heyday.

Re:Telnet-based BBS.

[FrankHS]

I telneted in to your bbs. Wow that brings back memories! The all text interface. How amazing BBSes were in their day!

Re:Telnet-based BBS.

[sremick]

Holy shit, ISCABBS is still around? I spent a ton of time on that back in the early 90s and made a lot of friends there (none of whom I have heard from in eons of course).

A few small but significant ones ...

[timothy]

- Model M keyboard (I bought several when they were $5 at the Goodwill, including some with US Government stickers or NASA badges; if I knew then what I know now, I'd have loaded up a storage unit with them ...)

- Nano (sure, it's not as old or as rabidly backed as Certain Other Text Editors, but it's so very nice to use ...)

- Logitech Trackball. Unfortunately, the new ones are junk -- they seem to die in a few months. The old ones lasted me several years apiece.

Re:A few small but significant ones ...

[TWX]

I'm using a Gateway 2000 124-key "Anykey" macro-programmable PS/2 keyboard still, and a Kensington ExpertMouse Pro trackball.

If I could find a cheap ADB-to-something adapter I'd use the old beige Kensington ADB trackball that I've got.

Re:A few small but significant ones ...

[Lacrocivious Acropho]

See my reply to 'IBM Model M'. You might be interested. ... and nano rules

Re: A few small but significant ones ...

[Anonymous Coward]

14 years. Died a few months ago, but feels like a clean and recap might bring it back...

Re:A few small but significant ones ...

[Megane]

It is still a long-term goal of mine to use a microcontroller to make a USB Model M.

Yes, I know you can buy new keyboards with USB interfaces, made by the same people. Or that you can get a PS2/USB converter. It's not the same as having a genuine surplus Model M with a native USB interface.

Re:A few small but significant ones ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not going back quite so far, but I do cherish my IBM desktop Trackpoint keyboard even though it does have that new-fangled USB connector instead of the tried/true pre-PS2 "big" DIN connector. I do have a more modern Thinkpad Tablet 2 bluetooth keyboard with an optical Trackpoint - no twitchy track pad, so it has more room for ... KEYS (even Home/End/PgUp/PgDn AND the right Ctrl key - woot!).

Re: A few small but significant ones ...

[macs4all]

If you're handy, here's a DIY ADB to USB adapter:

http://hackaday.io/project/907...

If not, there are a few of the Griffin ones on eBay for $20-30.

Re:A few small but significant ones ...

[tsa]

I've been using a Logitech trackball for more than ten years and it's still not broken. I dread the day it breaks because they don't make that model anymore and I love it.

Re:A few small but significant ones ...

[Anonymous Coward]

- Model M keyboard (I bought several when they were $5 at the Goodwill, including some with US Government stickers or NASA badges; if I knew then what I know now, I'd have loaded up a storage unit with them ...)

Why? They don't break ever. I still haven't touched my spares.

Re:A few small but significant ones ...

[msobkow]

Yeah, my original trackball lasted me a decade, too.

The new one I bought last year made it a whopping 7 months.

Re:A few small but significant ones ...

[rpstrong]

I have three Model Ms to my name, and they'll have Charlton Heston's guns before they'll have my Model Ms. And I've been using the Kensington Expert Mouse (a cue ball sized trackball) for decades - have three now, wouldn't give them up.

Wheel

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't stop using wheel. I did not buy an overboard yet :/

Eudora

[saccade.com]

Yes, Eudora hasn't updated since '06, but it's still by far my favorite email client.

Re:Eudora

[justthinkit]

I've used Eudora for 15 or 20 years (lost track). And CuteFTP, v2.8 for about as long. And Word for DOS since v2. And then there is LViewPro v1b.

Re:Eudora

[sillybilly]

I used to use Netscape from v.2 for popmail email, then mozilla when that went to crap after v.4, then seamonkey when mozilla development stopped with v.1.8b1. Recently Seamonkey started getting bloated and crappy, and I discovered Opera 12.10, which is decently compatible with web standards, decently crash free, and quite impressive on speed, and decently off the beaten track, as in security through obscurity, so that when you get push like files, you can say no to them. Also your favorites are not stored in the same location IE looks for them, but that's the same with Seamonkey. So I use both Seamonkey and Opera, and try to stay away from mainstream Firefox, Chrome or IE on Windows.\
Instead of the netscape-mozilla-seamonkey triad I tried opera mail, but that's so stupid, it creates a separate folder for each date and a separate file for each email. What a waste of time that is when backing up to a portable disk, as the netscape-like single file inbox or archive box (that you should compact before backup) is a single say 200 MB file that copies fast instead of like 3000 different folders. What overhead!
So now I used Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.2. Popmail does not change over time, and I love that fact, unlike the http web technologies always on the fly. So you can use old clients like you do, or like I do. I especially like the load images button in Thunderbird, so email senders don't automatically get notified that I read their email by loading their picture as it would happen by yahoo webmail, it's optional for me.
For a while I was on webmail only with Yahoo email, when on library wifi, but with broadband cable I use popmail. I do pay Yahoo a yearly fee so they don't accidentally cancel my account if I don't get to it in 3 months, so I guess $19/yr buys 1 yr time + maybe 3 months, or that's up in the air, plus this way they can stay in business, sort of. They do make idiotic purchases of other companies blowing billions, so sometimes you may not be able to help them, but Yahoo was the very first website, before webcrawler, before altavista, that would let you get around the internet from a central location, kinda like google search is today. Back then you had categories, not search engines, and yahoo was the best category site on the internet, then webcrawler came around, and yahoo started mimicking the search engine functions too, then altavista and the like. This was back in like 1995, days of Netscape 1.0. The http was so much more amazing than ftp, pop, telnet, gopher, nntp news, etc. all because of Mosaic/Netscape, though nntp news was pretty decent, Slashdot-like. But I think nntp is dead, as if I tried to run an news client on this machine, I'd have to find TWC's servers for it, then download miles and piles of headers, which is a waste. With popmail it's different because every single one of those headers relate personally to you and you should download them and store them locally. If you just leave them on the net without an offline copy, people can modify your old emails, to where you think you have proof of something, all you have to do is pull and old email, with date stamps and server handover ip address logs, but you're kidding yourself if you think those cannot be modified. Of course your offline copies on portable drives are not safe either if they are constantly getting inspected, dug through, and modified by people entering your house when you're not home. Or even when you're just asleep, at home, but under gas anesthesia. Sometimes it's too obvious.

Re:Eudora

[justthinkit]

I use Opera 12 also. I like it for its incompatibility -- it basically warns me when sites are up to something, Agreed about the crazy email folders -- this also impacts RSS feeds, so I have thousands of folders with one small file in each. Maddening. I use Yahoo email but don't pay them the $19. After a rocky bit these past few years, Yahoo email seems to have settled down and...touch wood...I actually like it.

Re:Eudora

[Anonymous Coward]

I use alpine regularly.

Re:Eudora

[Anonymous Coward]

THIS!!!

Re:Eudora

[sillybilly]

Y dont u use Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.2 like I do?

Re:Eudora

[Anonymous Coward]

Hear hear! I have stuck with OS X 10.6.8 because it's the last Mac OS that will run Eudora, the greatest email client ever written.

Re:Eudora

[Mex5150]

When I first moved to Linux, the one app I was loathed to leave behind was Eudora, fortunately it ran without hitch under WINE. I think it may even be still installed on one of the machines here, but I've not looked since I moved to gmail LOL

Good Ol' Books

[sunxiemei]

Do paper books count as old technology? I don't think I'll ever like e-books as much as an actual tree-killing book.

Re:Good Ol' Books

[Drakker]

Actually, to be politically correct, books are not "tree killers" or "dead tree" editions anymore, they are now referred to as "carbon sequestration editions."

Pretty old?

[newcastlejon]

The wheel is pretty old; I don't think I'd want to give up that.

Re:Pretty old?

[FlyHelicopters]

Fire, that is kinda nice, don't want to give that one up either...

How about a toilet? Not nearly as old, but I kinda like that one too... and it sure is technology...

How about electricity?

And I kinda like my truck, wouldn't want to go back to walking... and I'm still waiting for my flying car... (and I'm a helicopter pilot so I know we won't be getting flying cars any time soon)

The list is long and has little to do with floppy drives :)

Re:Pretty old?

[sillybilly]

I bought a couple 5 1/4 floppy drives this year, and MS DOS 4.0 on ebay, I have some 3.5" drives too, but those are ubiquitos. When you try to buy old software from the 80's or early 90's, on ebay a lot only come on 5 1/4 disks, at very low price because not too many people sport a 5 1/4 floppy. In the days of total ip lockdown and drm, it will be nice to use the grandfathered rights provided to you by MS DOS, as they can attack even other DOS's like FreeDOS saying they are violating patents - when obviously all patents are expired-, or copyright of various pie in the sky, or even trademark of various pie in the sky, but you should be absolutely safe using a purchased copy of MS DOS with a 5 1/4" floppy disk drive, that absolutely has no room for any kind of DRM overhead in it's 360K or 1.2M storage space, and still gives you a somewhat usable computer, like you can monitor PIC temperature sensors with it through a parallel or serial port, which is hard core computing.
Also, living without a toilet - I did not have a toilet at home til I was like 5 when I moved into the city, from the village. All we had was these pots with a lid to poop into at night or during a storm, and an outhouse for the rest of the time. When temperatures drop below 0 it's good to have a small dick, as protection against frost bites, if you have to take a shit in an outhouse that has cracks in the wall that let the light in, but also the cold wind.
What else? Electric? I used to have to do homework by candle light a lot when they had intentional brownouts, when I was like 7.
Cars - I walked to everywhere til I was 18, except distant cities that were a train ride or bus ride away. Even in the US I had no car for 3 years, and rode public transport or hitched rides, but then I got a job far away, away from public transport, and there was no other option, but the ones that controlled my life to allow me to have a car. Thank you dear distant job for that. That job got leveled, erased to the ground, except the office building I used to type data up on a Win31/Lotus 1-2-3 version 2, 4 or 5 I forget, computer, and a DOS SQC package. That's where I learned that the military of what not must have a beam-like weapon where the whole world goes blank before you, like you space out staring at the spreadsheet as if you just suddenly stood up, and lost blood pressure from your brain. It's weird, but that data entry job was a constant struggle not to space out, by taking a walk to the vending machine, recouperating, going at it 15 minutes, another spaceout, here we go dam, I'm almost falling over asleep, even though I slept 14 friggin hours because I came in on a Saturday, to knock out the quarterly reports all customers get. They hired me to do it every day, instead I flipped the lab data books open only at quarter end, page to page, instead of opening them every single day, and knocked the whole shit out in like 6 hrs on a Saturday every 3 months instead of making a full time job out of it. This way they could use me for other stuff, the downside was that when you looked at the time series in the statistical chart, and one of the values stuck out, you went back to look for a typo, and if it was not a typo, then you told the boss, and she was pissed that it's been 2 months and they had this measurement on record, and possibly never shipped the product, or shipped it with an incorrect certificate of quality. But it only happened like 2 times in 3 years. They say hindsight is 20/20, and maybe because of those 2 incidents it might have been worth to keep it a full time job, and gather every single record bible for all the 50 some products every single day and flip the books open to the latest page, then pull up the computer file at the same spot, and see if anything has been added since last time you looked at it. But that seems like too much overhead. I wasn't smart enough back then to program a VB/SQL database, but 5 years later I was, at a different job, with much smaller or serious data, and I was surprise I was even able to do it at all, let alone i

Re:Pretty old?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention fire. Microwave barbecues just aren't the same.

Local storage

[jenningsthecat]

They'll pry that from my cold dead fingers.

I use POP3, so I can have local copies of all emails. I keep messages on the server too, so it's easy to sync up several machines - that way I can have them on both my notebook and my desktop. All my music is local, and I keep local copies of any videos, documents, etc. that I care about. Occasionally I even save Web pages as HTML so I can have access to the content even after it changes in or disappears from the wild.

As far as I'm concerned The Cloud is a sometimes-convenient augmentation to local storage, not a replacement for it.

Re:Local storage

[BronsCon]

As far as I'm concerned The Cloud is a sometimes-convenient augmentation to local storage, not a replacement for it.

So many times THIS!

People! Keep your files locally! And keep a backup of those files in a remote (non-cloud) location! If you need to access them from literally anywhere, keep them in the cloud, as well; the worst case, then, should the cloud fail you and your home burn down at the same time, is that you have to restore from your remote backup. Better than losing your work altogether just because your cloud provider went belly up or had a RAID card got nuts and eat your data.

Re:Local storage

[Anonymous Coward]

+1, same here.

Everybody at work treats me as a grandpa for that, even my boss. I'll be a laughing grandpa the first time google docs, the net or the cloud breaks and only I can access those pesky odf documents.

Just a note: I'm no grandpa. I'm just the only one from my age here at the office actually using local storage and desktop software in preference and sometimes in exclusion to everything else.

Re:Local storage

[kwalker]

If you're going to do that, at least use IMAP (Unless you're a Comcast customer, in which case, you have my condolences). IMAP lets you keep mail on the server and even organize it, rather than just having one huge Inbox. I use it on two desktops, a laptop, a smartphone, two Android tablets, and a webmail client (RoundCube).

Re:Local storage

[Lacrocivious Acropho]

The Cloud! Vaporize *your* data *today*!!!

Re:Local storage

[F34nor]

I wish I could buy a Google Disk NAS that had a Cloud Sync but I still have a mirrored local copy with an external sata backup slot. Disk be cheap.

Re:Local storage

[jenningsthecat]

I'm in Canada and have a choice among several ISP's on the same wires - so you have MY condolences...

The last time I tried IMAP was about 8 years ago. I was told it wasn't possible to keep messages on both the server and my computer at the same time. If that's not true, then thanks - I'll definitely look into IMAP.

Re:Local storage

[TWX]

Yep. I've had too many providers go away on me with little or no notice that I don't consider storage on someone else's equipment viable. I see it as a great way to end up screwed, and with a "free" service, absolutely no recourse.

Re:Local storage

[plover]

All you have to do is sign up and they'll migrate your email account to their IMAP servers. https://xcsignup.comcast.net/o...

IIRC they hurriedly provided this back about the time Windows 8 came out, because Windows 8 has no POP3 client.

Re:Local storage

[dgatwood]

Definitely not true. Backwards, in fact. POP defaults to removing messages from the server and must be explicitly configured to leave the messages on the server. IMAP leaves them on the server by default, and IIRC, most IMAP clients don't even provide the option of removing messages from the server until you delete them.

Re:Local storage

[Anonymous Coward]

The cloud is a fleeting trend that will pass, like a.......cloud.

Re:Local storage

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

You might not have much recourse even if it's a commercial service you're using. Ironically, on-line back-up services are among the worst offenders. If you use one, go ahead and check its terms, and see whether any of those lovely restoration options they offer will still be there if they decide to close down on a whim. (Hint: Probably they won't, and all you'll get is maybe 48 or 72 hours to download as much as you can at the same time as every other customer they have is trying to do the same.)

If it matters, back it up on systems you control yourself. If it's private, don't upload it to anything, and encrypt the back-ups. It's really that simple. Then again, so is "make sure you back up your important files", and how many people don't do that because it's mildly inconvenient? Maybe those on-line back-up services aren't quite so bad after all...

Re:Local storage

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I use POP3, so I can have local copies of all emails.

What I'd really like with modern trends is more emphasis on "private clouds". I want to put my data on my own server on my own network, so it can be accessed from any of my devices around the house and over VPN if I'm out, but with the data always securely under my control and backed up according to my wishes.

This is easy for some formats, including plain files obviously. However, it's surprisingly awkward for stuff like e-mail, where there are plenty of relevant concepts like IMAP and mail stores and smart hosts and web mail systems, but actually setting them up in a useful combination if you're not an experienced sysadmin is quite a challenge.

Sadly, it seems even the best FOSS client software is dying out these days, often because "everyone has Google Whatever". As far as I know there hasn't yet been a lot of movement in the FOSS world towards having easily-deployable private clouds for e-mail, shared documents, and so on, which always surprises me given the implicit freedom, independence, privacy and security.

Re:Local storage

[Anonymous Coward]

The last time I tried IMAP was about 8 years ago. I was told it wasn't possible to keep messages on both the server and my computer at the same time. If that's not true, then thanks - I'll definitely look into IMAP.

Completely untrue. It's called different things in different email clients, but most should have a way to download and store full messages locally when using IMAP. Kmail, for example, calls it "disconnected mode", which you can find in the advanced tab of the IMAP server configuration.

IMAP is so far ahead of POP3 for your use case that it isn't even funny. You should definitely look into switching and using disconnected mode.

Re:Local storage

[Megane]

...and if your server goes away and you get another server, you can move the offline copy of your old mail to your new server. Some of my oldest e-mails are from when I was using Outlook on Mac OS 8 or so. I was able to use IMAP to move them to newer servers.

I also have a bunch of old AOL messages, but I had to go to great lengths to decode their "cabinet" format (which was a total WTF) to extract them.

Re:Local storage

[Applehu Akbar]

And you can still save messages into local folders if you wish. Only the inbox has to be on the server.

Re:Local storage

[sillybilly]

Yahoo only provides popmail access. In fact, it used to be premium, but lately they realized it's lower cost for them if people use popmail, plus it's a cover your ass in a lawsuit of you lost your customer's email data that was vital proof in something like a criminal conviction case, so via pop you respect the customer's right to their data off line from the cloud, plus you cover your own ass from a lawsuit, saying they had the option. Paying them $19/year for email handling is a great bargain, because there is consideration exchange beyond simply your time of watching their ads, and it keeps them responsible, unlike with a total free account. It depends on how important email is to you. Also having a universal email, like somebody@yahoo.com makes it simpler to give it out over the phone or when filling out job applications, as opposed to the variety of ISP's you go through in life, as in various cheap dialups, then cable, then who knows, att, satellite, what else is coming, each time technology advances your isp changes and so does your email address, unless you are using Yahoo, which, so far, since the very beginning of mass- http- internet, is forever the same. However if they started acting up and become annoying, there are other options beyond Yahoo, like fastmail.fm, which is an awesome and decent email service, for about the same price, and you can tell they take their job seriously, the only issue being that they are located in Australia, and if you live in the US you may or may not prefer all your dirty laundry and emails crossing national boundaries, and inspected more in detail both by your own country and the other country, and then the foreign ISP. Sometimes you want that attention, but usually it's best to stay off the radar and be anonymous as much as possible, in a basic common sense, hide in plain sight way.

Re:Local storage

[CronoCloud]

Yahoo provides IMAP as well. It's free.

https://help.yahoo.com/kb/mobi...

Depends on how broadly we're talking

[DoofusOfDeath]

Cards, vibrators, air conditioners, vibrators, antibiotics, vibrators, dishwashers, vibrators, ...

Re:Depends on how broadly we're talking

[Tablizer]

What, you don't have the new iBrator?

Your post reminds me of this scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Depends on how broadly we're talking

[Anonymous Coward]

...vibrators... ...they're part of all phones y'know.

Re:Depends on how broadly we're talking

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes but candybar phones are harder to come by these days and smartphones don't fit so well.

Paperback books and bookcase

[Anonymous Coward]

Why spend £50+ on an ebook reader and then buy all my books again? Also I can buy them secondhand for £1 each

Re:Paperback books and bookcase

[BronsCon]

Why buy them all again? Just buy new books for your reader. It's not like the jump from VHS to DVD, where you had to keep with your VCR *and* the VHS tapes in order for them to be useful; keep the books unless you actually want to get rid of them, in which case you'd either have to buy them again or go without them, anyway.

I have several bookcases (and several more boxes) full of paperbacks and hardcovers, comprised of fiction, nonfiction, and reference, many old, many new, and even a few magazine subscriptions that have found a home on my shelves. I also have a Nook and my wife has a Kindle. Since owning the readers, we've begun buying ebooks for actual reading and dead tree purely for novelty; though, I do still prefer technical manuals in dead tree format, purely for the ability to stick my fingers between the pages of multiple sections and effortlessly flip between them, should I ever find myself needing the information on multiple pages handy all at once. I haven't found a reader that can do that quite as effectively as I can with a physical book quite yet; something like pinning specific pages to tabs would work, but nobody is doing it yet.

Re:Paperback books and bookcase

[Anonymous Coward]

Like you, I think reading fiction is OK on an e-book, but I find reading non-fiction is difficult. I almost never read a history book without going back and forth between sections at least a few times.

The highlighter feature of e-books is kind of nice for teaching, though. I can mark up the book, write notes, annotate text for test questions, and even hide them when showing it to a student. I thought that I'd never be able to separate myself from the sticky tab habit, but when I was forced into it for teaching a class where the book was only available as an e-book, it worked OK. I found I could leave the navigation pane in sight, and flit from highlighted section to highlighted section during lectures. Marking it up was no more difficult than placing tabs and swinging a highlighter, and all my notes fit without cramping them into a margin or slipping in a notecard. They're certainly not exciting; I'm never going to cheer "Yay! I get to read from an E-BOOK!!!" but they are functional enough.

Laserdisc, Pocket PC, Nokia phone, Thinkpad T42P.

[Anonymous Coward]

I still use my Laserdisc player for watching Star Wars on occasion. It's the best way to watch the original theatrical versions before Lucas started tinkering with them likewise the DVD re-releases with the theatrical versions were supposedly ripped off the LD version anyways.

I have a HP HX4705 Pocket PC. It does everything I need it to. The GUI isn't bad and unlike modern day devices it was designed to let you do stuff, not to do stuff for you. I got tired of trying to trust my iPhone not to change every year and their cloud crap not to do something stupid with my data.

I have a Nokia 8801 cell phone. It makes calls exceptionally well, has BT file transfer capability that works with any major OS (for ringtones and moving recorded calls), and swappable batteries. I know I can rely on it to continue working as a solid phone for the foreseeable future.

Last but not least, I have a T42p Thinkpas, which exclusively runs OS/2 Warp. Why? I dunno. It works, and again I can count on it to continue working the way it does in the future.

I own a ton of modern day crap, but I don't rely on it all the way others do. For shit that matters, I trust devices that were designed to last (no planned obsolescence). IMHO; this modern day pansy ass society of "You don't want to understand how folders work? Fine, we'll hide them all from you" is the worst thing to happen to technology. It all started to go downhill when people decided to make everything accessible to everyone, instead of building tools for people who were actually interested in using them properly.

HP-11C

[pipingguy]

Great keypress.

Re:HP-11C

[Ikester8]

Yep, still have mine next to my office computer at all times. Muscle memory and all that.

Oh, too much to mention here...but

[MindPrison]

here goes:

My good old trusty Data I/O 29A with UniPak (it's an Eprom programming station from the 80's) that I just love too much as I can edit Eproms-on-the-fly and enter manual data on it, copy eproms, and it's compatible with the weirdest stuff on the planet.

Commodore SX-64, it's sort of a portable commodore 64 with built in 5.5 inch color screen & floppy disk...all in one practical unit, I have an assembler cartridge for it, and it's actually quite practical for coding 65xx series code on, and quick & dirty electronics projects I just connect to the I/O port (User Port), even in Basic.

My extreme stash of millions and millions of NOS Discrete components from the 50s to the 90s, I can literally built a spaceship with those things, doc Emmet Browns time machine is next. Transistors, Linear Circuits, Cmos, Timers, PCBs, MCUs, Static ram, roms, pal & gals (pain in the *** to program), resistors, solar panels, mics, crystals, coil formers, oscillators, capacitors, reed relays, diode galore, tubes tubes and even more tubes.

All my PCs I've built over some time, gets hard to part with them because 1) I can't get any money form them. 2) I always bought the best stuff. 3) It's not worth the agony of erasing all the pr0n...err...strike that last thing. And they're terribly practical for running old test gear, burners, peripherals etc. that doesn't work with todays computers.

My lovely old test instrument park, oscilloscopes (got at least 5 of them), spectrum analyzer, multimeters galore, function generators, frequency counters, PSUs and whatnots.

I don't even do this stuff enough justice, but you know what a MAN CAVE is? I just love to go into my MAN CAVE and sit there for serenity for hours and hours, even if it's just to write some pointless post here on Slashdot, and surrounded by all this cool stuff make me feel so 1337 H4xx0r and all that (no seriously...) it's like I'm a prop taken out of the old wargames movie (acoustic modems anyone?)

It feels so lovely sitting there with those things, knowing that any second I could build any project I'd ever want. (And I do from time to time), but just because they're THERE...I don't know if anyone of you know this feeling, but it's very energizing. Whenever I feel completely depleted (either me or my batteries) I go there and start at endless wastelands of components. Luuuuuv it!

Re:Oh, too much to mention here...but

[ShaunC]

I don't even do this stuff enough justice, but you know what a MAN CAVE is?

You mean my mom's basement??

Re:Oh, too much to mention here...but

[Lacrocivious Acropho]

Kindred soul.

I have an Osbourne, the 801st IBM PC ever built, a Compaq III lunchbox... you get the idea. Clones I built around XT-grade and AT-grade components. Old oscilloscopes used to see if we could detect emissions from nuclear weapons carried on USSR navy ships docked in ports, later adapted for saner uses.

Sitting amongst those piles of what to anyone else would be junk, knowing you built all of it and set it to useful purpose during its time, is ... well. The feeling you describe.

Re:Oh, too much to mention here...but

[Anonymous Coward]

It feels so lovely sitting there with those things, knowing that any second I could build any project I'd ever want. (And I do from time to time), but just because they're THERE...I don't know if anyone of you know this feeling, but it's very energizing. Whenever I feel completely depleted (either me or my batteries) I go there and start at endless wastelands of components. Luuuuuv it!

I know that feel, bro. (And I envy your Data I/O unit. Everything from EPROMs to the most obscure bipolar PROMs, w00t!) I also do laserdisc players, 80s arcade games, and CRTs. If I could afford a spare bedroom, I'd have a place for the finished projects and I could use the rest of my place to finish the unfinished projects. My biggest (and most-easily-solved) problem is figuring out ways to make my new monitors display the signals from the old hardware, all the way down to 15.75KHz RGB.

Re:Oh, too much to mention here...but

[serviscope_minor]

I know what you mean and am building a cave.

I have a big board of realys 2 way, 4 pole, so 12 signal pins from I believe an old telephone exchange I picked up for something like one pound way back. I had no idea what to to with them but that many quality realys for a pound was just too much of a bargain. I still have it. One day I shall do something with it.

I also have a BBC master there too.

Re:Oh, too much to mention here...but

[Anonymous Coward]

imagine how the mythbusters feel working at m5 with their 'wall of things'. look up 'tour of m5' on the 'tested' youtube channel. its awesome, jamie shows you all the cool stuff.

Re:Oh, too much to mention here...but

[Anonymous Coward]

Connect to the I/O port? Just get a $3 Arduino off eBay man. What the hell. I'm probably from before you time but I know what works as far as modern technology. You don't need all that clunky shit.

Re:Oh, too much to mention here...but

[Nethead]

User port on the SX-64, eh? Be careful not to short the 9VAC pins and blow the fuse INSIDE the transformer that has a lower rating than the one on the case. If you do, you can unwrap the tape around the xformer and solder a wire across the diode sized fuse in there.

I had an EPROM burner for the 64 and edited the font 2716 so that I could actually tell the difference between 6,8,and 0. That JVC screen was nice but the default Commodore font sucked.

My other mod was to replace the keyboard cable with a six foot flat ribbon cable. My eyes were so much better back in the 80s.

Re:Oh, too much to mention here...but

[MercBoy]

You just caused a serious flashback by mentioning the Data I/O 29A (with UniPak) ! I programmed many chips with that workhorse.

CDs

[roc97007]

...because there's something tactile and convenient and immediately gratifying about flipping through a box of CDs, selecting one and slotting it in the player. With most audio gear supporting thumb drives, this doesn't make a lick 'o' sense, I suppose, but there it is.

I could justify this, maybe as it being faster to find a physical CD than it is to navigate the rather clumsy interfaces in some gear, but it's really that it's nice to have something I can physically handle.

I also make it a point to go through supermarket lines with a real cashier rather than a do-it-yourself scanner. Not because I am a technophobe (quite the opposite) but because I like dealing with a real human.

Re:CDs

[plover]

I also make it a point to go through supermarket lines with a real cashier rather than a do-it-yourself scanner. Not because I am a technophobe (quite the opposite) but because I like dealing with a real human.

I generally avoid the self checkout, but I might use it if there are no other customers in front of me and there's a line at the cashier. Have you ever waited for a self checkout behind a typical person? I want to claw my brain out as I watch them stupidly wave a package over the scanner again and again, all the while covering the barcode with their hand. Or they bounce everything off the glass, as if they're buying basketballs. Or they have to sift through their entire basket, to find that one bottle of Axlotl juice that they want to put in the bag next.

Re:CDs

[Anonymous Coward]

I also make it a point to go through supermarket lines with a real cashier rather than a do-it-yourself scanner. Not because I am a technophobe (quite the opposite) but because I like dealing with a real human.

Funny I find myself avoiding the cashiers these days. They can't seem to bag appropriately, they take forever, and also seem to want to comment on every slightly different item I buy. That is one class of people I'd happily see out of work.

Re:CDs

[Nemyst]

My dad used to say the same of CDs, but then I set him up so that his computer would run foobar2000 with a remote control on his smartphone... Suddenly, he could browse through his entire collection (well, what's ripped anyway) with the flick of a finger, queue a bunch of tracks from any CD he wanted, pause, resume, change the EQ and much more without moving from his seat. I fully understand the appeal of a certain amount of physicality, but you can do so much more with computers and a well designed system.

Shoes

[darkwing_bmf]

Shoes are old tech, but I can't walk on the hot pavement with bare feet without feeling pain.

Re:Shoes

[Anonymous Coward]

Practice. You can do it. Search term: "seri boot".

Email

[Kris_J]

I would have thought plain old email is the number one pick in this list. We're all stuck on it even though it's been around for, what, 30 years?

Re:Email

[Anonymous Coward]

What about text e-mail? HTML e-mail is a perversion that really needs to die this moment.

vi/vim

[msobkow]

Muscle memory is ingrained after 30 years of using it...

My right hand

[warewolfsmith]

In an age of sex bots and realistic toys I just can't see to relax my grip.

Re:My right hand

[camperdave]

In an age of sex bots and realistic toys I just can't see to relax my grip.

Well, they did warn you that if you keep doing that, you'd go blind.

Just about everything I own

[smellsofbikes]

Pushbutton hard-wired phones, world war two vintage drillpress, metal lathe, wood lathe, tablesaw, 1970 Triumph as my not-snowing car, 1990 bicycle for my non-race bike, MOO/MUD's that I've been hanging out on since 1992, Commordore Amiga 2000 (okay, I only fire that up about once every two months.) A lot of my wood chisels are from the 1890's. They all work just fine. My race bike is a brand-new marvel of carbon fiber and magnesium, but I bet it won't last another two seasons, whereas the old bike has over 150,000 kilometers on it. I do now design using switching power supplies, rather than LDO's, and I've moved from PIC to AVR, (and I've always programmed in C rather than assembly) but generally, there has to be a really clear advantage for me to change piles of experience and knowledge for something new.

Holy crap .. let it go man ...

[UnknownSoldier]

Fuck man, I _still_ have my Apple //e and Apple //c but seriously I don't see the purpose of cluttering up new computers with stuff you never use.

When I upgraded from my old Phenom II X4 955BE to my i7 4770K @ 4.1 GHz I didn't bother with a DVD Burner / Blu-Ray drive. I would rather have something with minimal parts, and is ultra quiet that isn't wasting power.

When I upgraded the MacBook Pro not have a DVD burner or hard-wired ethernet port feels a little weird too, but I realized ... there is a time to hold onto old tech, but most of the time I have to ask:

Why?

Re:Holy crap .. let it go man ...

[Nemyst]

DVD drive, sure, but no ethernet port? WTF is wrong with you? Wifi isn't so great as to be able to replace wired connections. For games, it's a disaster. For more civilized parts of the world, your internet access can be faster than N routers can sustain (and let's be frank few people have ac routers). Plus, there's the whole security aspect and how much easier it is to manage the router without having to deal with wireless codes and settings. I'll ditch a lot of stuff, but a good old ethernet wire isn't one of them.

Re:Holy crap .. let it go man ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Seconded. I can easily live without an optical drive, but the first accessory I got for my MacBook Pro was a Thunderbolt-Ethernet converter (which, naturally, cost an arm and a leg). Thunderbolt is awesome, and I'm sure one day I'll use it to its full potential, but for now it's just an extra hoop I need to jump through to get a wired connection.

Re:Holy crap .. let it go man ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why?

Because un-writeable boot media to use on your rig for a 10-20 minute delousing run on someones virus ridden computer, and because I can use that to get into a router which has it's radio off.
Oh, and I have two disc drives, both of which are burners, so while I run in delousing mode, I can burn discs of their data off. (the loudest thing in my rig is the CPU cooler, which lets me keep my 4770k at 3.9 on air(pretty close to silent))
The answer to why is usually, if you have to ask you will never understand the whole of the why. It's like "Why do I need anti virus software on my mac, it's not a PC" if you ask that question someone will give you a short answer and do it for you.

Re:Holy crap .. let it go man ...

[UnknownSoldier]

> I got for my MacBook Pro was a Thunderbolt-Ethernet converter

I have one too but I'm trying to cut down on cords since I occasionally need to use the ThunderBird-to-FireWire adaptor to access older external drives with 10.7 and 10.8.

Not quite old but...

[nmb3000]

Firefox 28 (with tabs-on-bottom if you please), Windows 7, and Linux with Gnome 2 (aka MATE).

I'm basically just holding out with old (or "old") software to avoid the current plague of horrible user interface design. The entire "UX designer" movement we're seeing right now is nothing more than a user-hostile circle jerk, doing the perpetuating the same ideas because everyone else is doing it. It's frankly a cancer upon computing, and my only hope is that we eventually see enough pushback from users that the morons at Mozilla, Microsoft, Google and elsewhere realize their mistake, fire all the useless UX blowhards, go back to real usability studies, and let us all get on with a life where we won't always worry that clicking "update" will almost certainly royally fuck everything up.

Re:Not quite old but...

[Dutch Gun]

Yeah, completely with you there. I'm fine with the anti-skeumorphic trend - it's silly to continue to make things look like now decidedly old-school real-life countparts for it's own sake. But why did color, gradients, gloss, and borders have to go as well?

Now we have flat, borderless, and ugly designs all over the place, and what's worse, I've found these UIs more difficult to use, not less, because you're often left guessing as to where buttons begin or end, or what even is clickable/pushable. A lot of the visual elements removed were important visual cues that simply got tossed out the window.

Re:Not quite old but...

[narcc]

I dunna like it 'cause it's different.

An' I dunna like things that 'er different.

Re:Not quite old but...

[Anonymous Coward]

heh, that last line really made me laugh out loud... thanks :D

Re:Not quite old but...

[nmb3000]

You should be careful -- you're well on your way (if not there already) of becoming infamous around here. We've already got APK, "Guardian of the Hosts File". We certainly don't need narcc, "Defender of Chromifox".

Re:Not quite old but...

[Wolfrider]

--You should try switching to the palemoon browser. Nice replacement for firefox, based on the same code base, and WITHOUT all the stupid new UX crappiness (i.e. Australis.) Mostly trivial to copy your settings over but you have to know where the cache dir/files live, they don't have an Import coded yet(?) for FF.

Fire

[Anonymous Coward]

and the wheel.

IRC

[starseeker]

IRC is still used as a major form of (semi) real time collaborative tool in free software development. Freenode remains hard to beat for this purpose, and I don't really see it changing anytime soon. It's not so much a question of not giving it up as seeing no compelling reason to replace a (very nicely) working solution to the problem.

Re:IRC

[Lacrocivious Acropho]

It is stark evidence of regression mentality that IRC got included in this 'list' in the first place.

Those who use it, in channels that are useful to them, know and understand that IRC remains wheel-like in terms of usefulness that need not be reinvented.

Freenode is an excellent example.

I suspect that those who disparage IRC haven't even the wherewithal to buy clues to understand how so much of the infrastructure and applications built using it, and upon which they depend in the same way that we depend upon breathable air, rely upon IRC channels to develop and maintain those underpinnings.

Re:IRC

[Anonymous Coward]

Totally agreed. IRC is still my favorite application/protocol for anything involving real time chat. I don't like using a camera and I don't like having to make an account. IRC is great.

Re:IRC

[Anonymous Coward]

What blows my mind is how poorly implemented some of the Windows IRC clients remain, even after all this time. I guess there is little to no motivation to make another IRC client, but I've hated mIRC consistently for years and don't think I'll ever get to use something better.

Remember these?

[Anonymous Coward]

Zip drives. Still used for confidential stuff.

Re:Remember these?

[Storebj0rn]

Zip drives. Still used for confidential stuff.

That's genius. because... nobody else will be able to read them for lack of equipment

Re:Remember these?

[freeze128]

I hate the fact that so many members of the older generation call USB "thumb" drives, "ZIP drives". They don't seem to understand that a ZIP drive is a completely different thing, and is pretty much obsolete because of its relatively low capacity. I think they just like the "zip" buzzword. It's makes them feel cool.

The bicycle

[simplypeachy]

I know, actually moving my body using my own effort. Absurd. I just can't help but keep pedalling away.

Re:The bicycle

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely, I mean how can a billion Chinese be wrong?
For interest, 2 bikes are made for every car btw.

Re:The bicycle

[narcc]

Why does every car need two bikes?

Re:The bicycle

[Applehu Akbar]

As "lifeboats" in case of a breakdown, I suppose.

Where do you plug the floppy drive in?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been a while since there was a connector for a floppy drive on a motherboard. It kind of disappeared with the PC speaker and on-board 15-pin VGA.

Re:Where do you plug the floppy drive in?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Where do you plug the floppy drive in?
It's been a while since there was a connector for a floppy drive on a motherboard. It kind of disappeared with the PC speaker and on-board 15-pin VGA."

That's why he installs also his old motherboard when he builds a 'new' computer.

Re:Where do you plug the floppy drive in?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's tough to modify a new liquid cooling block to fit a Celeron 300A. But if you can, I bet you can overclock that thing beyond 450Mhz.

Home/office phones

[Mr_Wisenheimer]

Even though I haven't had POTS since I moved out of my parents' house at 18, I still don't find mobile phones great for working from home or the office and I use a combination of Skype cordless handsets and a VOIP company that charges about 0.1 cents a minute with no monthly fee.
.

Obitalk is a great little box I picked up. It allows you to wire your house for POTS for only a few dollars a year and it even lets you dock your cordless phone over blutooth.

I kind of consider my home phone system like my bound books, old-fashioned perhaps but something I will probably never get rid of even though I've moved to newer tech solutions long ago.

Rotary Phone

[sk999]

Mine is from back when you didn't own it - the phone company leased it to you. Built like a brick. Would get rid of it, but it is still the only thing that can test if the phone line is working when the power goes out.

Re:Rotary Phone

[spywhere]

I bought a brand-new-in-box Western Electric 500 a few years back from oldphones dot com (great site)... it still works on Comcast, and it has the best sound of any landline phone ever made.

Re:Rotary Phone

[TWX]

You know, you an upgrade from that Western Electric model 500 (the ubiquitous rotary) to a Model 1500, or if you want * and # the Model 2500, for basically free...

All but two landline phones in the house are from Western Electric. The 900MHz cordless Uniden with the overized buttons and red LED blinking call indicator and the alarmclock phone in the bedroom are the only outliers.

Back when they expected to lease the phone to you for 50 years, they built a phone that would last for 50 years.

Re:Rotary Phone

[justthinkit]

There are all kinds of phones that work when the power is out. We have ATT & Uniden models here at present. The Telcos feed power with their signal -- if your phone doesn't need a power cord, it will work. I think I just saved your house foundation about 10 pounds. YW.

Re:Rotary Phone

[Megane]

I've got a red WE2500 phone, because cold war hotline, fuck yeah. Somewhere I also have one I found that had an arabic keypad. But alas, my hard voice line is gone, replaced by UVerse VoIP. On the other hand, at least now I get CNID for free. I refused to pay 2 bucks a month extra for that all these years.

Re:Rotary Phone

[Applehu Akbar]

And those old desk phones are so reliable that if you throw one away, it will crawl out of the dumpster and come back to your front door.

Re:Rotary Phone

[TWX]

I've got a butter-yellow WE2554, a couple of those ubiquitous beige WE2500 models, and a black WE2500-variant with a redial button.

I'd really like a red 2554. It would look cool out in the workshop where the butter-yellow one currently hangs.

Re:Rotary Phone

[captbob2002]

Have two rotary wall phones. With Uverse they are only good for incoming or established calls - but Uverse does put enough current on the line to ring the bells for incoming calls. I keep them because any phone made in the last 25 years is absolute crap. Been though I don't know how many cordless phones made by AT&T (in China, not Western Electric) Panasonic and Uniden...nothing but crap with awful sound quality and they never last very long. Yet the Western Electric phones just keep on working.

Remember those phones were built in the day when Ma Bell owned them and was responsible to fix them if they broke - and they'd have someone out to your house to fix the things quick - not this "sometime in two weeks" crap we see today. So Western Electric built the phones to WORK and LAST, just the way damn near nothing is built today.

Morse code straight key

[CQDX]

I have a terrible fist but IMHO no station is complete without a straight key on the desk. I have a J-38 and J-37 on a Mae West board.

Re:Morse code straight key

[Nethead]

Not near as old but my packet station running on a Leading Edge XT and a Motorola Syntor still works.

73 de w7com

Re:Morse code straight key

[tigersha]

My mom has one of those. She hates cellphones, she hates computers do not use tech but she can Morse at 15 WPM. Even has her Ham license.

Computer and data security

[simplypeachy]

It's all been about the Cloud for some time now but I'm still old fashioned and prefer to keep my data on my computers and hold myself responsible for ensuring my stuff is actually looked after.

Re:Computer and data security

[Lacrocivious Acropho]

The Cloud!

Vaporize *your* data *today*!!!

Re:Computer and data security

[captbob2002]

Amen!

flip-phone?

[hammarlund]

I still have a working and connected Western Electric Trimline rotary phone in the kitchen. Wall mount. Anytime the kids or grandkids want to use the phone, I tell them to use that. Watching the facial expression is priceless.

Usenet

[roc97007]

Yes, I still actually participate in discussions on Usenet. I still maintain an nntp server at home, 32 years after my first stint as a news administrator for my first tech job.

Re:Usenet

[DF5JT]

Still my thing for focused discussions in German. Been there for the past 20 years, met my current spouse 12 years ago there and still believe it's the most efficient and effective tool of multiple person discussions.

Yeah, still use tin as my newsreader.

Re:Usenet

[roc97007]

I was using RN for years, switched to Forte Agent in the late nineties, have been using it ever since for mail and news.

Re:Usenet

[Anonymous Coward]

You n00bs all just forgot the first rule of usenet...

Re:Usenet

[water-and-sewer]

Ha! Come join some other Slashcott refugees at comp.misc then. It's a pretty cool group. I also run a news server (with difficulty; INND is a royal pain in the arse): it runs the dictator.* hierarchy from http://dictatorshandbook.net/ (on Usenet you can connect to dictatorshandbook.net for Usenet access to that hierarchy).

No regrets - I love that tech!

A clock with hands

[gelfling]

Because however you learn to tell time that's it. Much like you can tell what a person's native language is by asking them what they count in.

Re:A clock with hands

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the first word out of your mouth after you hit your thumb with a hammer defined your native language.

Books.

[Harry_Bawls]

Books.

Please help...

[pbjones]

Using mechanical pencils because they always work, still have a compact Mac with SCSI CDROM to replay old games, married for 36 years, can't give up on that either.

Re:Please help...

[justthinkit]

I've had one of these for decades. Engineers don't make mistrakes.

Hard to say...

[frank_adrian314159]

Shoes, I guess - my feet get too cold and drop off in the winter, otherwise.

Cable Lacing

[bearded_yak]

I love cable lacing with waxed linen string. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... I've never seen a more elegant way to bundle cables. Velcro is close, but maybe I'm just old-fashioned.

Re:Cable Lacing

[grub]

Wow... I've seen lacing over the years but never gave it a second thought until reading your link. Interesting, thanks!

Re:Cable Lacing

[bearded_yak]

If you have an opportunity to try it, it can be actually relaxing, almost meditative. Granted, it is rough on the hands on a large job, but for me, it is worth the pain.

Check out section 9 of this NASA manual: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/...

Re:Cable Lacing

[grub]

I can see how that would be relaxing, and I have an application at work where I may try this: cleaning up a mess of a telecom closet when I have some spare cycles to burn.

Re:Cable Lacing

[slinches]

If you like cable lacing, you'd probably love lock wiring.

Even if it's horribly labor intensive, the end result sure looks nice.

Re:Cable Lacing

[serviscope_minor]

Never really impinged on me before, but that is remarkably elegant and pretty.

VB6

[Anonymous Coward]

The best RAD ever made and because there are so many others like me who will not be forced into a rewrite that we would rather see Microsoft die than accept that they have the right to kill off the best thing they ever made.

Re:VB6

[Docasman]

I've tried a few, but always go back to good ol' VB6. I already know its quirks and always manage to get around its limitations.

Model M Keyboard

[starseeker]

Perfection in engineering... it not only solves the problem of creating the perfect typing experience, it's also tough enough to use as your own personal Hammer of Thor when your office mates storm your cubicle trying to stop the noise.

Re:Model M Keyboard

[Anonymous Coward]

meh. Give me a keyboard with Cherry reds + o-rings and I'm a happy camper.

I thought I liked tacticle feedback and clickiness, but I really just hated rubber domes.

Re:Model M Keyboard

[slinches]

In my limited experience, MX Browns are a good compromise. Still some tactile feedback without being obnoxiously loud.

Buckling springs and blues are enough to make neighbors in a cube farm go postal and aren't that much better.

Re:Model M Keyboard

[Isaac-1]

Ah, youngsters who have yet to discover the perfection of the Northgate OmniKey, while the model M may be the industrial jackhammer of keyboard design, the OmniKey is a pure tactile delight that will not wake the dead when you use it to log in to check your email first thing in the morning.

Flip-phone and damned proud of it, TYVM

[kheldan]

Moto Razr V9. Before anyone calls me a Luddite: I don't have sufficient use for the features of a smartphone to justify the cost of purchasing a smartphone in the first place. I barely use a phone as a phone for that matter, it's only even turned on a few minutes a day unless I'm actually using it to make a call. Seriously, I don't understand how it is so many people treat a cellphone like it's a lifestyle, especially with what a dataplan costs from wireless companies. Yes, I understand you can use wifi instead, but still: why the obsession? I've got any number of other things to do than sit there an obsess over a telephone, regardless of how much processing power it has, etc.

Windows XP

[Anonymous Coward]

7 is great, but XP just feels snappier, especially in "Windows Classic" style. When I click on that + in the explorer window (not the Internet Explorer), all folder contents instantly open up. Everything just works -- I don't have to "fight" the OS to get it to do what I want.

Re:Windows XP

[methano]

I kinda feel the same way. I can't tell that 7 has solved any problems and has created a few. I now run 7 on VM fusion at work and parallels at home. Had to buy the one for home. And I had to upgrade quickbooks 2004 to 2014 ($$). I didn't do 8 cause the whole idea of putting fingers on my monitor screen freaks me out big time.

Re:Windows XP

[Quirkz]

I still miss the speed with which Mac OS 9 opened windows. (I don't still use it, mind you, I just miss it.) When they came out with OS X there was a tremendous, noticeable drag on the window-opening animation/process. I think they did slowly improve things over subsequent versions and with improving hardware, but I'm pretty sure I could still drill down through 8 folders faster on OS 9 using 90's-era hardware than I could through the same folders on a modern Mac.

I know, I'm probably not supposed to keep things in folders and drill down like that anymore, but instead throw it all in one big pot and search or something, but that's not how I learned to think about my computer files, and I still haven't really adjusted to it.

Clothes

[aNonnyMouseCowered]

Ancient technology I know, but I feel really naked when I try to leave home without them.

Re:Clothes

[rvw]

Ancient technology I know, but I feel really naked when I try to leave home without them.

As kids we used to have (actually fantasize about) glasses that could make you see through clothes. You only need a pair of those and all is fine!

bulletin board system BBS

[Anonymous Coward]

The internet has nothing on a good BBS.

Re:bulletin board system BBS

[Lacrocivious Acropho]

RBBS!
PCBoard!
Wildcat!!

PC Pursuit!

*Three* entire .GIF pr0n images in a *single night* of 2400 baud wondrousness!

Apple Newton 2100

[aussersterne]

Also, Olympus E-1 pro digital camera (just 5 megapixels, but weather sealed and with 160,000 shutter actuations and counting).

Oh, and printing stuff.

Re:Apple Newton 2100

[Joe_Dragon]

eat up martin

Flip phone

[Arethereanyleft]

I do still have a flip phone - an old LG 600G. I also have a smartphone, but when I go out on kayaking trips, I take the flip phone because if it gets lost/stolen/broken I won't miss it that much.

Mechanical Label Punch

[starseeker]

Weird as it sounds with all the electronic label printers you can get today, there's just something about the old style "punch the label as a 3D letter into tape" approach that I prefer. Especially when the tape punch is a serious tool, not those cheap plastic versions:

http://makezine.com/review/too...

Twit

[Peter (Professor) Fo]

Oh gosh horror! 30 years. Then why are we still using those out of date days of the week Monday, Tuesday and so on. It's a disgrace at least 30 times 30 years and were still going strong.

Re:Twit

[Megane]

And feet, why do we still bother to walk now that we invented the wheel! I mean, look at the Daleks, they went with wheels millennia ago!

Your ways frighten and confuse me

[DavidCBillen]

I am typing this very post on my TRS-80 Color Computer (CoCo). Nothing else will ever come close...

Re:Your ways frighten and confuse me

[storkus]

Ah, my mod points for you. My 2nd computer was a CoCo2 and my parents threw it away in the 90's along with a bunch of other stuff. I miss it even though the 32 columns were a bitch. (FYI, my first computer was an MC-10, if you remember that--I even had the 20k expansion pack! The CC2 was an upgrade!)

30 years since those days...sigh...

BTW, are any of the Coco clubs and what-not still around?

Re:Your ways frighten and confuse me

[Isaac-1]

Original silver with square chiclet key keyboard, or one of those new fangled curved key white jobs?

Re:Your ways frighten and confuse me

[skeptikos]

BTW, are any of the Coco clubs and what-not still around?

Here you have one.

http://www.glensideccc.com/coc...

Hollerith Cards

[notthepainter]

I have a box in the attic. I occasionally use them as postcards.

BB

[Anonymous Coward]

I still own a blackberry, and not one of those new ones with smart phone capabilities

Punch paper

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't touch the cloud, and you can't smell it. But with punch paper aww its a rather fine taste.

Re:Punch paper

[Lacrocivious Acropho]

I used to be able to read Just-O-Writer paper tape and make corrections for lines in a news story, bypassing regular procedure and cutting in common words with scissors and tape from other stories. This was yellow paper tape about an inch wide with holes punched in each line for one character.

Paper tape would be very difficult for NSA et al to infiltrate ;-)

Re:Laserdisc, Pocket PC, Nokia phone, Thinkpad T42

[grub]

I believe they recently announced Star Wars theatrical releases for BluRay.

The PC

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't dead, and never will be.

V-6 engines in affordable sedans

[bjdevil66]

We've already mostly lost V-8s to tech advances, but no "turbo"-powered four banger is in the same league in smoothness and power that a solid V-6 gives you without having to floor it. Why is the V-6 becoming a luxury item not available to the middle class guy??

Others people have listed good ones further down my list:

Flip phone (privacy and cost issues with smart phones).
Corded telephone at home (for power outages)
CDs (damn carmakers have ditched CD changers)
pico in the CLI (so much quicker for some tasks)
Windows 7 (though working on a Mac at work almost has me out the door)
A handgun firearm (sorry DC and Chicago - I'll never live there because of this).

Re:V-6 engines in affordable sedans

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh, the V6 engine is OK, an inline 6 is much smoother. I'll also take a V12.

Re:V-6 engines in affordable sedans

[Anonymous Coward]

Biological dog and cat. Sure, the electronic ones leave fewer messes, but they're insufficiently affectionate.

I never even made it to a flip phone - still using a Sanyo 4930 brick. Wife has an older smart phone, though, S3 IIRC. The Sanyo will be replaced with a Torque as soon as Ting supports them, which by then will still be an "old" phone.

I'm still clinging to a V8 and a V10, and as long as I keep up with oil changes, and barring bad collisions or a Mad Max apocalypse, we'll still be driving them a decade from now.

Non-metric wrenches and sockets. One of the vehicles still needs these, and English nuts and bolts sometimes still appear on small appliances.

Still using XP, but I'm ready to kill it when the first unpatched remote exploit shows up. And it's on a desktop PC, though that will be replaced with a laptop, which I suppose is now considered "old", too. I have a client who still has active MS-DOS systems, so I still have to use MSVC++ 1.52d to modify his software, though that's a rare occurrence. I still burn data onto DVD-RAM disks for a client now and then.

I have LCD monitors, but I'm still using CRTs because one of the cats will knock over the LCDs by pawing at them as though sharpening her claws. She cannot knock over the IBM flat CRTs, which are ridiculously heavy.

Cash, including coins for correct change on occasion.

Still using CDs. Still using DVDs. Not a Blu-ray in the house, excluding BDRs for long-term data storage.

We still use a home stereo system (some Fisher components, some Technics) with actual floor-standing speakers and a turntable (the playing kind, not the DJ-ing kind). I still have some music on vinyl, mostly stuff that is unavailable on CD. The DVDs get played on an old JVC 7-disc changer, and all the TVs are still tubes, though most are flat Trinitron tubes. I still occasionally use a portable CD player w/ headphones.

We have a couple of simple analog wall clocks that run on AA batteries. We use shaped metal keys to unlock the front door instead of some electronic combination lock (or thumbprint - saw one of those at the hardware store a while back). There is no home automation system, nor any plans for one, so we're still relying on outdated fingers to actuate light switches. The thermostat is programmable, though (individual 7-day, four definable periods per day).

Ordinary drip coffee maker, but with electronic timer. Wife had a Keurig single-cup brewer, but got rid of it - too expensive to brew, even with one of the fill-your-own inserts, and she's too impatient in the morning to wait for it.

I still have a complete set of 1st Ed. AD&D manuals, plus most of the original Traveller books. Polyhedral dice, too, of course. Sadly, these have not been used in many years.

The handgun (and even the shotgun) is an interesting mix of old (and very old) technology with new-ish materials.

Actual books made from dead trees - if you fan the pages on a quiet night, you can almost hear the echoes of arboreal screams and lumberjack farts...

- T

Microsoft Exchange

[Anonymous Coward]

definately. ...if only I can convince my employer to let it go.

35mm film

[RDW]

Yes, I use digital too like everyone else, but somehow I keep going back to the Leica.

Re:35mm film

[wispoftow]

beat me to it. I love my Leica M3.

Re:35mm film

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes! I have digital cameras, I use them professionally, and I teach Photoshop. But there's no camera like my battered, heavy, motorized Nikon F3HP. It's had hundreds of rolls of film through it in ~25 years. Last year I spent $50 to have the NiCad pack rebuilt. Using it is kind of like driving a stick shift.

Re:35mm film

[jpellino]

Yup. Ain't no purple fringing on Velvia.

Re:35mm film

[dccase]

Film is nice. It doesn't have enough resolution to show up moderate lens chromatic aberrations or poor focusing.
Digital is merciless.

Re:35mm film

[cyberpunkrocker]

...and 120 film, too :). I have a bunch of old cameras, both for 35mm film and 6x6. I regularly use them, and develop my own B&W films, and make prints, too. Its much, much, much, MUCH more fun than using digital cameras, although I admittedly take more photos with my digital.

Re:35mm film

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm... depends..

I still have an batch of Agfa 8E75 holographic film (yes I still make holograms with an old-fasioned 5mW He-Ne laser on a damped table).
That film has an resolution of 5000 l/mm and an grain size of 35nm (by an emulsion thickness of 7uM).
It's relatively low sensible (10uJ/cm2) and mostly sensible in the red area (633nM), but it is capable of extreme high resolution pictures.

Re:35mm film

[flightmaker]

I've got some Fuji Provia 400 and Velvia 50 in the the back of the fridge, in 120 roll format. I keep promising myself that I'll get it out one day and run it through my Bronica. Load the finished film into slide carriers and project it for the ultimate image quality. So long as you can tolerate some inevitable dust contamination nothing else comes close.

Unless anybody here uses large format?

Re:35mm film

[sbjornda]

A couple of years ago I picked up a Pentax 67 with the personal commitment to put a few rolls of 120 through it every year. You can get great lenses for stupidly cheap prices if you keep an eye on that auction site. Provia for landscape/nature work - there's nothing like a big, brilliant transparency.

--
.nosig

Whatever I can avoid

[Peter (Professor) Fo]

Tech has to deliver a bonus. So a USB stick beats 8",5",3" floppies (It's scary) I have a mobile (not smart) phone but I write numbers I need on the cardboard case (a bog-roll inner tube) because that's quicker than farting about with a 0-9 keyboard. My best desktop utils (calendar, menu, password cache, documentation finder) were written 15 -- 20 years ago. There *IS*progress but mostly it isn't something to invest in until it becomes mature.

1926 model news printer

[Animats]

This is my news printer. Each morning I turn it on, and it prints a paper tape with the Reuters news summaries.

This is 1926 technology. The machine talks to a standard serial port at 45 baud, 5 bits, no parity, 1.5 stop bits.

Re:1926 model news printer

[Anonymous Coward]

This is totally bad ass. Especially the 1.5 stop bits.

Re:1926 model news printer

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha.. how about your TCP small-packet algorithm? Do you still use it?

Batch files

[spywhere]

I work in support, and I still find the CMD environment and batch file language to be incredibly powerful tools. I've written everything from simple one- or two-command files to long, interactive programs that interact with other batch files and, by writing to the Registry, resume after reboots.
Sometimes, in a crisis, I'm the only one who can produce a reliable solution the same morning that the crisis starts...

Re:Batch files

[simplypeachy]

Program Files (x86)

Bane of my life. But still, at least batch isn't 95% "Sniplets". Sniplets - Why Bother Understanding When You Can Copy and Paste?

tech I can't give up....

[confused one]

Hmmm. Electricity. That's pretty high up on the "tech I can't give up" list. Fire trumps that though. Clean water... That's important. I've gotten by with just water purifier tablets but it would suck to have to live that way all the time. That'll do for the start of a list.

Re:tech I can't give up....

[Megane]

Air conditioning. And now I've got to blow out the stupid condensation drain; I just heard the dripping and yep it was stopped up.

Re:tech I can't give up....

[confused one]

It would be damned inconvenient to not have A/C; but, I grew up without it. I know I could get by with no A/C or forced air heating.

BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. BSD.

How about your employer?

[CopaceticOpus]

Tangential question: What old technologies can't your employer give up?

I work for a large technology company which is currently undergoing a heroic effort to erase tech debt. Despite this, there are certain technologies that have a tenacious grip. The two that bug me the most are some of the most well known, IRC and email. Email especially is a giant time sink, with 5% of the messages essential and the other 95% filling up a time-sucking slop bucket. Email becomes the go-to solution for every sort of discussion and notification, blasted out to wide audiences.

Only one thing is more infuriating than that: New technologies that throw out everything we've learned and take giant steps backwards in terms of usability. Who the heck builds a web based application in the 2010's which doesn't use bookmark-able URLs?

Re:How about your employer?

[Mspangler]

A PRISM database on an AS-400. It's officially been "on it's way out' for over a decade now. The rest of the companies operations switched to SAP, but every time management gets a quote for migrating the PRISM functions to SAP, they gulp and keep the AS-400.

Re:How about your employer?

[Dartz-IRL]

The old business I interned with used a Windows 2000 server until December 2013 - when the business finally folded. The server outlasted the business that owned it - having been bought second hand sometime in 2006/07, already near 8 years old.

That server was a Pentium II machine, with a whopping 128Mb of RAM, a pair of 9GB disks in RAID 1 for the OS, and a pair of 32GB in RAID 1 for the data. It also came with a pair of lockable Zip-disk drives for which we'd long since lost the keys, an unmatched DvD-rom drive that was added sometime in the last decade.

And it kept plodding along right up until November 2013 when one of the Data disks failed and decided it wasn't going to drop out of the array - completely nuking the company's accounts folder on the mirror.

There were other reasons why the company failed - but I suppose having the accounts for the last 7 years smeared across the platter in a headcrash was just another nail in the coffin.

The Machine itself was still running when the business was shut down for good. It's probably still working now too, doing God Knows What for God Knows Who? It's built like a bloody tank and did exactly what was asked of it for 14 years.

Re:How about your employer?

[Cassini2]

A paper tape reader / punnch. It is used to program an ancient CNC machine with SmartCAM running on Windows 95.

Re:How about your employer?

[Anonymous Coward]

A paper tape reader / punnch. It is used to program an ancient CNC machine with SmartCAM running on Windows 95.

you know you can buy a network interface that replaces that punch tape reader directly without modification to the interface to the machine, not the fastest thing, but sure easier...

Re:How about your employer?

[Paleolibertarian]

I still have a copy of SmartCam 3D. It's fun to program a 5 Axis machine.

The START Button

[ohieaux]

I know, I know it's not really needed in a modern OS, but I don't want to give it up.

Citadel

[jtownatpunk.net]

A few old BBS friend still have a Citadel/UX system running. Currently on a 1990s Pentium Pro that sits in a car hole. I replaced the hard drive when I had it a few years ago. Other than that, it's just been chugging along and moving from one house to another as someone moves or a wife wants that stupid box out of her house. I tried to virtualize it while it was in my house but I squirreled and didn't get around to it in time. The version of Linux it's running is too old for todays automagic virtualization tools. I got as far as installing Slackware 7.0 on a virtual machine.

Very simple

[BlindRobin]

My pocket knife.

Re:Very simple

[Paleolibertarian]

My KA-BAR

Motorola Industrial Barcode Scanners

[PedroTheElder]

Here's one I would love to give up but can't. The world is stuck on Motorola ruggedized scanners and handheld computers for warehouse use. There is nothing else close out there. Development is with Windows CE and the last supported version of Visual Studio is 2008. Installation of software is a nightmare, involving creating system image differences to be stored into ROM. In addition these babies cost about $2,500 each for a device which has the pitiful screen resolution of 400x280 pixels. Please, where is the ruggedized Android (or Windows 8) scanner/handheld for $500? Can nobody crowd source something modern and cheap and put these guys out of business?

My wife makes fun of me...

[kamapuaa]

My wife makes fun of me, but

1) Film cameras...I have a bunch but mostly use the Olympus Stylus Epic. Get them developed & scanned at Costco for a few dollars. I also have (and use) a phone camera and a DSLR, but film cameras are pocket-able and pictures look great.

2) Records - Mostly it's just for fun, but fuck the haters - my 180 gram jazz LPs sound WAY better than any CD or MP3 and NO it's not psychosomatic.

3) Dreamcast - shit is fun, although the HD re-make of "Jet Set Radio" makes my Dreamcast far less essential.

4) 1950s Yamaha Guitar - not a classic, but the age helps, mostly it's sentimental (my grandmother gave it to me).

Re:My wife makes fun of me...

[Anonymous Coward]

::pssst:: It's psychosomatic. Well, also, records have a volume ceiling set by the density of the recording material, so they aren't subject to as aggressive hot-mixing. But I'm not thinking that's a huge thing for jazz.

NES

[buckfeta2014]

I'll never give up my love for that 8-bit goodness. That evil bitch-goddess.

Re:NES

[codefungus]

I second this. Sometimes when I fire up paperboy or zelda, I find it hard to believe it still works.

Me too

[hurfy]

Average age of stuff in my house must be a good 25 years old.

Or the equivalent in the case of my flip-phone from 2007 which several people have said sounds better than their smartphone :) Even my TV is almost 20 years old (ok, I don't want to replace the 30 year-old entertainment center actually) My home phone has Bell Systems stamped on it and the other is Conair Trimline that has survived 100+ falls by now. My stereo is over 30 years-old now and does a great job of recording 8-tracks but it weighs about 1000 lbs. Just got rid of my 23 year-old car for one that's only 9 ( i was aiming for pre-2007 on purpose). Finally got my 1974 Opel on the road again. The Atari 2600 isn't tooo dusty. None of my music is on a HD, nor video for that matter. ...insert other 2 pages...

Even the 386 gets a little use as my music database doesn't sort on a HD larger than 250MB due to the 25 year-old shareware program from my 286.
I DO have an i7 gaming computer......attached to a CRT :)
Hell, my toaster is from the 70's because all the prettier replacements died in a year or two. After the 1st couple I gave up. (ISO: 70's proctor-silex toaster that is NOT green)

To make matters worse I collect old toys and computers. I have a working 1960's slot car setup in the basement and my original 1st year Hot Wheels in a wall display.

Re:Me too

[smellsofbikes]

Out of curiosity, what model of Opel? I always wanted an Opel GT...

I've gone through three of those plastic box fans over the last ten years, and whenever one dies I drag out the big heavy steel box fan my parents had in the 1950's. Man does that thing move air, all day long, fairly quietly. It's just terrifying because if it fell out of the window it could kill someone, but whereas the plastic ones jump to their doom every couple of months I think it would take a volcanic eruption to shift the old fan.

Slide Rule and Sheet Film

[Anonymous Coward]

Have a number of decent calculators, math tools on the computers. But sometimes for a quick calculation, nothing beats a slide rule.

Similarly, while I take pictures with my digital PEN and smartphone, putting the Technika on a tripod and exposing some 4x5 film is a whole different experience. To say nothing of much more exercise...

phone line, instead of voip

[Anonymous Coward]

The basic touch tone phone line is simple (compared to voip), and consequently, reliable. I want my phone line to be very reliable, and avoid using voip of cable, at a cost.

I wish for a dedicated fiber optic standard, for transmitting solely voice was developed. It could be an LED based system at some wavelength that optical fiber is not good at transmitting on.

Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Internal combustion engine and fire

Two things...

[Anonymous Coward]

I should really get rid of these, but can't.

IPv4

SMTP

Re: Rosetta

[Anonymous Coward]

Stone and a clay tablet

Because shaving sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Gillette 5 bladed vibrating razor.

Apple //e

[dmearns]

I have an old Apple //e sitting in a corner. Amdek green screen monitor and 2 Quentin 5.25" floppy drives. Haven't tried to boot it in years, but the last time I did it still worked.

Inventory...

[bswarm]

Atari 2600
Sega Genesis
Playstation 2
1950's Tube Radio
VCR Camcorder
Model T Points/Coil Box
Misc Parts
All working.

Re:Inventory...

[murderdeathkill]

1935 Gillette safety razor, shave brash, shave soap, sometimes a straight razor. (all out of fashion before I needed them.) Various film cameras Vinyl records / Technics SL1200MKII Manual transmission/clutch Quad roller skates. Automatics, and inline skate are just vile. I do use Serato, and DSLRs.

I can't live without my. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Original IBM PS/2 keyboard.

Stick Shift transmissions.

[brad3378]

Manual transmissions are generally inferior to the new breed of efficient automatic transmissions, but there's an inexplicable thrill to having that extra control.

Re:Stick Shift transmissions.

[Dartz-IRL]

Cheaper to fix, a lot more reliable, cheaper to make, cheaper to buy for the new owner..... and really not that odious to use.

If anything, I find torque converter auto's tricky and unintuitive - and I spend the entire time driving second-guessing what the car's gearbox is going to do. Especially badly-programmed autos

Re:Stick Shift transmissions.

[oobayly]

I was talking to a friend about this - my current car is a manual, but all of the Dual Clutch automatic transmissions I've driven are amazing (Audi DSG, BMW DCT). There's no comparison to my Dad's automatic Discovery (which takes an age to change gear). Put a set of flappy paddles on the steering wheel and you've got the gear control you're used to with much faster shift times (DSG is apparently 8ms - you've changed gear before the your foot would have touched the clutch). I'm also actively trying to get my mum to get a manual - it's scary when she flails around with gears after pulling out on a roundabout - at some stage she'll get hit by a lorry.

For the people that claim to be driving purists, maybe they should go back to manual chokes and non-synchronous transmissions.

Re:Stick Shift transmissions.

[Geeky]

My old 1971 Beetle didn't have a manual choke, instead relying on a bi-metal strip to control the fuel mix. Didn't work. Spent winters braking with my heel on the throttle to stop it cutting out until it had fully warmed up. I don't think I'd go back to that, but I'd never have an automatic. They're not that common in the UK, and I wouldn't want to pay the premium and get out of the habit of driving a manual.

Re:Stick Shift transmissions.

[oobayly]

I drive in the UK too, and that was my feeling not too long ago. Sure, driving a manual is a good skill to know, and one the can deteriorate rapidly (after driving my dad's Disco for a week or two, getting back into my car takes a few miles to get comfortable again), but my point is that the DSG and DCT gearboxes *can* really improve your driving experience. However saying "I'd never have an automatic" is [imo] saying that just because the original tech was inferior, any subsequent devices will remain being inferior. That said, there are still automatic boxes out there nicknamed "suicide boxes" because they were so laggy that the delay could kill you when pulling out in traffic - but [like most things in life] don't tar subsequent generations with the same brush.

The only analogy I can think of at the moment is this - I refuse to use modern calculators because the original electronic calculators were more cumbersome and slower to use than a slide rule - "I'd never have a electronic calculator".

Technology progresses [generally for the better] and I personally feel it's daft to ignore improvements because of previous failures.

Keyboards.

[WinterSolstice]

I have played with touchscreens, but give me a solid feeling keyboard with LOTS of space any day. I'm still using my Model M from 1995, and got 2 spares for it now, in case it ever wears out.

Re:Keyboards.

[RockDoctor]

There's a good chance that your fingers (or more likely, your carpal tunnels in your wrists) will wear out before the first spare model-M keyboard.

OTOH, finding a computer you can use the model-M on in another decade may be harder.

Usenet

[Anonymous Coward]

Usenet is dieing, replaced by completely dysfunctional forums, but it is so much easier to use.
And Emacs, fvwm desktop

The Pencil

[Anonymous Coward]

While a pen is much newer I find that doodling is something that I don't enjoy doing electronically.

Mod parent down!

[Anonymous Coward]

You antiprogress zealot! Also your stupid because the above softwares dont even use "push to update" anymore. Its automatically installed to make it transparent

Super-8 home movies

[TapeCutter]

My family treasure is box full of super-8 home movies from the early 80's and a projector that still works. There's about 3hrs worth of 3min films spliced together on 20min reels, the grandkids get a buzz seeing their parents as toddlers. The other bit of tech memorabilia I won't part with is my dad's 1976 HP21C calculator, still in it's original leather case, perfect working order but no manual, can't even find a copy on the internet. Most people I've shown it to have never heard of reverse polish notation, grandkids are unimpressed by it. :)

Re:Super-8 home movies

[ColdWetDog]

I gave my dad's K&E slide rule, used on Apollo 10 and 11 launches, to my nephew who is an engineering major in college. His friends think it's the coolest retro thing they've even seen. I'm pretty sure it's the only real professional grade aluminum slide rule they've ever seen.

I remember when I used that thing in high school and college.

I'll just water the lawn now.

Re:Super-8 home movies

[rmdingler]

The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering".

So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.

Re:Super-8 home movies

[Applehu Akbar]

I've been around long enough to have had my own Pickett, the yellow anodized model with so many scales that I think it could ruin a very early version of Debian.

Re: Super-8 home movies

[macs4all]

HP-21C Manuals? Here's the result of 2 seconds on Google:

http://www.appraisalinstitute....

http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/...

http://www.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c...

Re:Super-8 home movies

[timeslayer]

When showing those movies to the generation that is in them, record their reactions and comments. The new recording of the old with the commentary is priceless: "I remember that day uncle Mark climbed on the ladder with that big movie camera while we all crowded onto the porch." circa 1964 Record the watchers of the recordings, especially if they were younger then. Use new media each time.

Re:Super-8 home movies

[josquin9]

The HP12C was still being recommended in 2008 to MBA students. I've got a "Platinum Edition" from earller this century. So, if they are defunct, it hasn't been long.

True "E-Waste" Story

[retroworks]

About 9-10 years ago I was trying to decide whether to accept 4X the price offered for dismantled Floppy Disk Drives as I could get from a USA recycler. I'd heard that the Asians probably burned the FDDs in a fire for crude metal recovery, but it didn't add up. Why weren't they paying 4x the price for other dismantled components? How could they convert MY avoided pollution cost into that much value?

Turns out there was a factory in Kunming (South China) which purchased used floppy disk drives. They used to make new FDDs. I got photos of the factory, fairly modern. When new FDD orders "scaled down" they could no longer afford to manufacture new ones at scale... but they could buy used ones for 4X scrap value, about 1/10 new production value. And the factory in Kunming supplied just about every Floppy Disk Drive people purchased from 2002 on... when FDDs were still offered on units but NO ONE WAS MAKING THEM ... except for the "primitive e-waste Chinese factory" in Kunming.

For me...

[antdude]

I still have and use a Sharp 19.5" CRT TV from January 1996, analog Oticon 380p hearing aid (don't want implants from digital ones; model was from 1994, Casio Data Bank 150 calculator watch (don't want a smartphone), KVM (PS2 and VGA) from Y2K, a serial external USR Sportster 33.6k dial-up modem as for rare backup Internet and faxing, etc.

Re:For me...

[Megane]

I've got about half a dozen USR Courier modems stashed away, probably the best analog modem ever made. At least one I got new (it has the sysop price deal nameplate riveted on it), and a few I found cheap at thrift stores back in the late '90s. I wonder how well they would work with my UVerse VoIP setup. If the VoIP tries to use a full 56K/64K ISDN-B bandwidth, it might even work very well. Maybe if I ever find a phone number of something to dial I'll try it someday.

Re:For me...

[antdude]

Isn't Uverse fiber? I know dial-up modems don't work over coax cables.

Re:For me...

[thejynxed]

It's a mixture of FTTN, coax, and regular "DSL type" POTS copper lines. The dirty secret of Uverse, is that it is really just a mish-mash of what was already present, with them "maybe" upgrading a few things here and there. This allows them to get away with charging people more than what they would for normal DSL, and also get away with the "up to" disclaimer nonsense for their speeds.

It's part of the reasons results for Uverse can vary even more widely within a same-service area than cell phone coverage.

Re:For me...

[antdude]

Interesting. So, not like Verizon's pure fiber for its FIOS.

fvwm

[Anonymous Coward]

21 years old and still works fine.

Procedural programming

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, that's not quite true, I have finally caught up to the rest of society and done a lot of OOP (and also now functional programming), but it took me a ridiculously long time to stop doing programs in 1 file with tens of thousands of lines of procedural code.

Re: Rosetta

[dgatwood]

Dead animals and a cave wall.

I've always thought

[Anonymous Coward]

a sony mini disc player wired to a pc would make a nice backup tape drive. I miss tape.
Even 10 years ago I missed it. I often thought of fun ways to use tapes to ordinary cassette tapes to store digital information or any information. I miss those.
Also watches. I currently own a 1960's USSR Poljot windup - beautiful piece of mechanisms.

...wwindows?....

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows - it's freaking everywhere! Ahhh

ROT13

[Unxmaal]

Jr'er ab fgenatref gb ybir Lbh xabj gur ehyrf naq fb qb V N shyy pbzzvgzrag'f jung V'z guvaxvat bs Lbh jbhyqa'g trg guvf sebz nal bgure thl V whfg jnaan gryy lbh ubj V'z srryvat Tbggn znxr lbh haqrefgnaq Arire tbaan tvir lbh hc Arire tbaan yrg lbh qbja Arire tbaan eha nebhaq naq qrfreg lbh Arire tbaan znxr lbh pel Arire tbaan fnl tbbqolr Arire tbaan gryy n yvr naq uheg lbh.

Re:ROT13

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh. I know this. It's "one ring to rule them all..." right?

Re:ROT13

[Anonymous Coward]

RICKROLLED!

Re:ROT13

[Anonymous Coward]

Evpx vf gung ernyyl lbh? Ubj ner lbh xrrcvat? V thrff gunaxf gb zbbg lbhe abj xrrcvat n ybj cebsvyr ba guvf bofbyrgr qvfphffvba sbehz fvapr abg znal crbcyr pbzr urer nalzber. V thrff va gung frafr fynfuqbg vf yvxr lbhe pnerre fghpx va gur cnfg....

Re:ROT13

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't say that out loud lest the great nameless one will arise from the ocean and devour our souls. Yours first of course.

Re:ROT13

[Anonymous Coward]

http://decode.org/?q=Jr'er+ab+....

To save people the trouble of searching.

To answer the question, I have a 3.5" floppy and a VCR. I think my car has a cassette player. To lazy to check. The last stereo that I bought had cassette, but I never used it.

Re:ROT13

[serviscope_minor]

That is the first time that's happened to me in text only form!

Well played sir. +1 internets for you.

Re:ROT13

[CronoCloud]

Damn it! Rickrolled with ROT13. I salute you.

Re:ROT13

[CronoCloud]

try adding this to .bashrc

alias rot13='tr "a-zA-Z" "n-za-mN-ZA-M"'

No

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you just don't know how to throw out junk.

A few small but significant ones ...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny; several people have mentioned the IBM Model M. I have fond memories of clickity clacking away on them back in day, but let my last one fade into oblivion once the cable/circuit board started to fail many years ago.

I have since become a fan of Cherry products, in particular the 1800 and G80: http://www.cherrycorp.com/english/keyboards/Industrial/index.htm

Yes, they cost more than $5, but they are actually designed to last decades (instead of being what IMO seems like a happy design accident).

Accessing email on the server

[chaoskitty]

I don't cling to the old because I'm unafraid of change - I keep using it because nothing better has come along.

Shell-based email is still the quickest and easiest way to keep email in one place and have it be accessible even if I'm on a connection the speed of dialup. No matter how many times I try email clients, nothing works as quickly and as seamlessly. The same goes for ytalk instead of IM programs (luckily, many of the people with whom I want to chat have shell accounts, too).

Until someone comes up with something better, like a protocol which allows for downloading just the text of what I want to see, I'll happily ssh and do email on the server, like I've been doing for twenty years.

Re:Accessing email on the server

[Anonymous Coward]

..I'll happily ssh and do email on the server, like I've been doing for twenty years.

Hear hear,
I just wish to hell I could get my current employer to agree (Exchange server...no IMAP service enabled..SEP, not mine)
I'm in the UK, when the exchange server fails in such a manner that the half of the organisation which is located X miles from my location can't send us email, or when I can't access it via the web interface just to rub it in I'm still quite happily checking my email on servers in New York and Germany (or even on my own server at home) via alpine (It's frankly quite embarrassing having to tell customers to cc email to both work and personal accounts just to make sure I'll get them).

The river crab wears three watches

[tepples]

I wear a Casio calculator watch. I guess that makes me one third of a river crab.

Re:The river crab wears three watches

[cwsumner]

I wear a Casio calculator watch. I guess that makes me one third of a river crab.

Don't feel lonely, so do I.
But the battery went out a while back, so I have been wearing my old 1969 Bulova windup watch for the last two months. Still works fine.
I did get some batteries, though, I just need to put one in.
I wonder if the Casio will still remember the phone number list?

Ashamed to say...

[cl3v3r]

...but I still have a USB 3.5 floppy drive.

Nary a 3.5 floppy disk in the house, but I just can't bring myself to throw it in the trash :)

Re:Ashamed to say...

[hambone142]

I was forced to use one of these when reloading WinXP on to a laptop. There wasn't a SATA driver for the SATA HDD in the laptop and I had to load it so XP could talk to the friggin' HDD in the laptop.

Re:Ashamed to say...

[LinuxIsGarbage]

You can slipstream SATA / SCSI drivers onto the install CD using Nlite.

Re:Ashamed to say...

[LinuxIsGarbage]

Of all technologies I have ever used across all time, floppies are one of the few that I've been thankful to say good riddance to, and hope it stays in the dustbin of history. CLI, modems, dot matrix printers, CRT's, they all have something charming about them, but not floppies.

About a year ago was the first time I had to use a floppy in years. It supposedly had the backup copy of an important program for work (and as far as I knew, the only copy that ever existed). Someone had overwritten the disk with something else, but eventually I did find a copy of the software on another floppy. The time before that I was trying to write a boot floppy to bootstrap an install off a CD-ROM (BIOS couldn't boot from CD). It took 5 disks to get a working one.

Since I first used floppies 25 years ago they sucked, and they still suck. The number of people I saw that kept the only copy of all their schoolwork on a floppy, only to have it rendered unreadable is heart breaking. They were always slow, small, and unreliable, but for some reason people were told they were more reliable than HDD (which may have been true for early HDD, but not in the 90's). How many times have you copied something, with a nice consistent *tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-whir-whir-tick-tick-tick-tick*, only to get to 97 Percent and *whir-whir, whir-whir, whir-whir, whir-whir* "NOT READY READING DRIVE A:"

Even dealing with retro-computing there's better options. I use Sewell's FastLynx. It's like an updated version of Interlink (and you can buy it with the Serial and Parallel cables). You can connect to DOS machines, and a Windows NT4/9X/XP/7/8 machine with null modem serial or parallel cable (your modern machine must have a real LPT port, you can't use a serial converter) to transfer files. It can write the software on the remote PC over a serial link so you don't even need a floppy for the original install. The speed over Parallel is surprisingly fast.

Books

[4pins]

I keep buying books made from paper. I really enjoy not turning them off for landing (although that seems to be getting better).

Re:Books

[daive]

+1 for the parent.

FX-100

[jmccue]

my only printer is a FX-100 and I use NetBSD on an AMD-K6 333 mhz as a backup system

Nintendo Entertainment System

[tepples]

I still play the NES. Heck I still program for the NES. And I have my name in the credits of an NES game that has been sold on cartridge.

UNIX!

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, who thought we'd still be using UNIX after all these years? Where's my LISP machine?

The dinosaurs still live...

[Dartz-IRL]

I made a USENET post to an active discussion an hour ago.

I also still use a film camera to take photographs from time to time. Especially ones I'd like to last. It's 40 years old and generates lovely looking pictures, and only cost $20 on a trip to D.C. Bought from the now sadly departed City Electronics in the old Post Office.

if it ain't broke...

[jdanilso]

pencil
paper
notebook
email
fork, knife, & spoon.

Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do I keep coming back?

Oh walking, bicycles, carburators, and points. I'll be the only one still able to get around after the EMP takes all of teh compzors out.

calculator

[Anonymous Coward]

My Ti-82 graphing calculator.

Rotary Phone

[Anonymous Coward]

My backup phone is a black Western Electric model 500 rotary dial phone. There's a yellow BELL SYSTEM sticker on the bottom that says "Repaired by:__Sal__ Date:_11/63__". I'm not sure how old it is, but it's old enough that it needed repair in 1963.

Lack of Emulation

[pubwvj]

Apple and other makers are screwing themselves up by obsolescing older software. I need access to my data. The applications that access my data won't run on the newer hardware on the newer operating systems. The result is I don't upgrade my hardware - I just keep making do with old hardware. I buy used computers for our businesses and family needs. I know of other people in the same boat. If the new hardware and OS can't let us use our older applications then we don't buy new. Apple and other vendors of hardware and OSs loses a lot of sales that way. They make nothing when we buy used.

Emulation is not that hard.

Keeping operating systems compatible so old software runs to give us access to our data isn't that hard.

We need backwards compatibility to move into the future.

Re:Laserdisc, Pocket PC, Nokia phone, Thinkpad T42

[hypertex]

I like showing off Star Trek TOS without all the fancy CG...

Windowshade

[oDDmON oUT]

Both Apple and Microsoft abandoned what was to me one of the most simple and elegant ways to deal with multiple programs and their windows.

I wish there was an easy way to enjoy that again on both platforms, rather than being subjected to the whims of designers and autocratic company executives.

Video games

[HalAtWork]

All my old game consoles. They're still fun, and nostalgic too.

Re: Rosetta

[rasmusbr]

Reciting around the camp fire.

Maybe I'm old now....

[Anonymous Coward]

My Atari 800XL, 1050 Happy Drive and Atari 850?

Sorry, Star Raiders f**king rules.

The hammer.

[Patent Lover]

The hammer. Nothing more. That's it.

Re:The hammer.

[murderdeathkill]

I still use hammers. I drive far more nails with nailguns. Usually compressed air powered. A friend swears by his internal combustion nailguns.

Hammers are for setting nails, demolition, or when I have fewer than a dozen nails to drive.

Wringers on washing mashines

[PopeRatzo]

The old technology I am giving up are the wringers on top of washing machines.

They're dangerous (you can get your fingers caught) and they mess up more delicate fabrics. Also, the newer washing machines with the agitators that churn the wash around do just as good a job.

Also, zippers. Velcro is much easier to work with and it never gets stuck and it doesn't hurt as much to snag your dick on velcro.

Re:Wringers on washing mashines

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, zippers. Velcro is much easier to work with and it never gets stuck and it doesn't hurt as much to snag your dick on velcro.

Either you are using zippers wrong, or not being creative enough with the velcro, depending if snagging or avoiding snagging was the goal...

You mean besides my sliderule collection?

[Anonymous Coward]

For a typically geekly answer: I still regularly use one or the other of my two HP-41C/CV calculators. They're still going strong after 30 years, and I'm still so used to thinking in RPN that other calculators kinda drive me nuts. Heck, I can't even tell you which decade it was when I replaced the batteries last. I used to have a digital cassette drive and thermal printer, but I gave them away to a friend. The HP-IL device protocol rocked!

Boy I feel old but...

[cwest]

Straight razors 'cos they're simply a better shave.
Fountain pens because they force me to slow down.
My turntable; there's a whole different sound from vinyl (including the clicks, pops and scratches).
My Contax II, Leica IIIc and Rolleiflex cameras. Elegant, manual and the best recording resolution.

Now I look forward to the last half of the 20th century

Mostly tubes

[felix rayman]

Vinyl records, vacuum tube guitar amps, vacuum tube pre-amps for the vinyl record turntables, manual transmissions, felines for pest control.

Quality stuff.

duh

[Anonymous Coward]

The SNES maaannn.

Unix

[manu0601]

Unix (40 years old!) like systems, TCP/IP, von Neuman architecture... and as said by others: paper and pen.

Seriously speaking, I tend to stick with decade-years old software that have a decent user interface. That gets quite rare these days

old tech that I can't give up

[Anonymous Coward]

Keyboard and mouse !!

those screen touch stuff is for the bird !!

Re:old tech that I can't give up

[ArcadeMan]

Those screen touch stuff is for the flappy/angry bird !!

Television

[Anonymous Coward]

Because holodecks haven't been invented yet.

FTP

[daive]

The first contact with the Internet that I ever had was command line FTP, and not a month goes by without having to resort to it again, usually because of firewall/browser incompatibility at a client's office (a lot of HP driver downloads are still over FTP)...

Adobe Coldfusion

[Anonymous Coward]

If you aren't familiar with coldfusion, it is to java what jquery is to javascript. I've tried switching to PHP, JSP, etc. but coldfusion is so much more stable and productive in my experience.

What old technology can't I give up?

[Hartree]

Cooked food.

That's a very old technology that I just can't seem to give up.

Steak tartare just doesn't sit well with my tummy, and a glass full of raw eggs for breakfast is right out, regardless of what Rocky thought.

And don't even get me started about raw potatos.

(Clue: Technology is not just electronics.)

A few small but significant ones ...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can still get Model M keyboards from Unicomp. They bought IBM's manufacturing line.

Visual Studio 6.0

[Liket]

..because it works. There are pitfalls but I know where they are. Unlike every newer version I've ever tried, it gets out of the way and lets me work.

Pfah!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hah! We used to dream about using dead animals and cave walls

Soft mud and flint tools was all we had.

fax machines

[steak]

150+ years is a good run, just let them die!

Re:fax machines

[freeze128]

The lawyers say no. They use FAX machines every day.

Amiga Video Toaster 2000, Panasonic AG-1970 S-VHS

[DontScotty]

Amiga Video Toaster 2000, Panasonic AG-1970 S-VHS Editing decks.

Can't let go of the classics....

My 20 year old pickup truck

[YrWrstNtmr]

Only using it, because my 13 year old pickup truck got totaled last year. By some idiot on one o' them newfangled phone-text thingies.
Seriously.

Here's how to add native USB to Model M

[Anonymous Coward]

It is still a long-term goal of mine to use a microcontroller to make a USB Model M.

Yes, I know you can buy new keyboards with USB interfaces, made by the same people. Or that you can get a PS2/USB converter. It's not the same as having a genuine surplus Model M with a native USB interface.

Your micro controller has already been designed and programmed:
http://mg8.org/rump/

Now use the long weekend to go forth and build!

pencil sharpener

[Anonymous Coward]

The kind with the handle / crank you used to find in public middle and high schools.

Re:Pen - Hollerith cards

[Anonymous Coward]

I just "recently" had to give up the last of my IBM 80-column Hollerith cards as dual-purpose pocket protector and note paper. The card was filled up with notes from 1982 when I last worked on an IBM mainframe using card input, then it wore out in my pocket, and started letting the ink from the pens stain my shirt...

clicky keyboard

[fyoder]

Still using an IBM Model M space saver keyboard.

XP

[Anonymous Coward]

Because there are so many things I can do with XP 64 running Virtual PC2007, that I can't do with any version of Hyper-V. (forget VMware, Citrix, and the rest)

Old Technology thats is Hard to Give Up

[Anonymous Coward]

(1) Running Water
(2) Sewers
(3) Indoor Plumbing
(5) Artificial Light

Re:Old Technology thats is Hard to Give Up

[ArcadeMan]

I think you one.

Re: Rosetta

[chuckinator]

Grunt and point.

BUTTONS DAMMIT!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Swipe swipe tap tap....I hate tapping on glass. give me frigging buttons. i want that reassuring click, that tactile movement as it goes down then up.

Pencil Re:Pen

[mrmeval]

I'm partial to my drawing pencils. Simple tech that simply works. ;) I do like that they are now lead paint free.

Try Fun With A Pencil by Andrew Loomis
https://archive.org/details/an...

A few for the list.

[Chrontius]

Fountain pens. Desktop computers. Zip drives are on their way out, but Incandescent flashlights.

Hell, I have a Pentium 4 and a couple pre-Intel macs I can't bring myself to get rid of.

Firewire. Alt-preset extreme. 8-bit consoles and actual physical cartridges.

And the daddy of them all? My original Apple Extended 2, with its ungodly USB adapter. Most days I use the USB based reproduction, but Sometimes the temptation overcomes me.

Shoes...

[eyepeepackets]

...clothing in general. Spoons are good too. Is this not Fark?

Roof over my head

[PuddleBoy]

I've lived in the same house for almost 30 years and it was over 90 years old when we bought it.

You learn to do almost everything: electrical, plumbing, carpentry, paint, roofing (ugh!). You learn on a basic, visceral level how things work, fit together, fall apart. You 'feel' aging. You learn to predict.

In that time I've probably been through 25+ computers (many were servers), who knows how many peripherals, software, etc. Many are just a blur now.

And in the basement is a darkroom for, wait for it,.... film development and printing.

So, I can wake up in the morning, walk across 120 year old floors, and partake of a hobby that goes back over 150 years, essentially unchanged.

Ah, you young whipper-snappers...

Re:Roof over my head

[Anonymous Coward]

My house isn't quite as old, but I have to fully agree.

Saws without laser guides, utility knife, bubble levels, tape measures of various lengths are all among my most favorite of toys.

Oh, and no computer at all in the house. :) Everything regarding computing I do is at the library and such.

old tech

[Anonymous Coward]

I drive one of those cars that still uses wheels. I eat food that is just energy converted from a star. I still use a dick to fuck. I just can't live without my oxygen (yeah, still on lungs).

I guess I'm a luddite. Please, stop laughing at me, and my feetclothes. (We called them socks, back then. It was how we kept our feet warm before the nuclear toe-rings. Or at least it was the ironic hipster style, at the time.)

Ugh, a rickroll!

[Anonymous Coward]

Decoded for the lazy:

We're no strangers to love You know the rules and so do I A full commitment's what I'm thinking of You wouldn't get this from any other guy I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling Gotta make you understand Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you.

A list

[Anonymous Coward]

-I've still got my Vic20 kicking around... for those times when I want to tweet something!
-My Commodore 64 (I adore my '64)
-Sony Minidisc player/recorder (what could be more advanced then a minidisc?)
-Cassette player - after all, I've got my project of transferring all my audio cassettes on to minidisc!
-8 track player (see cassette entry)
-Turntable and LP's (see 8 track player entry)
-Reel to reel player/recorder (see entry for Turntable, 8 track and Cassette for explanation)
-OS/2 Warp (The IBM Nuns commercial sold me on it)
-Windows 3.1 (well, its really WinOS/2, so better Windows then Windows)
-VCR (yup -both Betamax and VHS)
-And just for good measures I've still got some punch-cards (although sadly I don't own a punch-card reader)

Hammer

[Anonymous Coward]

A hammer solves many problems.

Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

vi works

Traditional wet shaving

[der_joachim]

Modern wet shaving is rubbish. Overpriced cartridge systems, harsh chemicals to soften up the beard and mediocre results. I prefer a good DE razor with a traditional soap. Easier on the skin and I get better shaves.

Re:Traditional wet shaving

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

Ever since I watched Predator, I just dry shaved. Then razors got kerazy expensive. Then I discovered the Norelco Saturday Night Special electric razor. For 20$, you get many years worth of shaves if you only use it once every month or so. I probably save 1.2 billion dollars a year using this and not minding a trim beard.

Re:Traditional wet shaving

[Anonymous Coward]

You own a razor? On the one occasion I needed one, I had to borrow my wife's.

Re:Traditional wet shaving

[Anonymous Coward]

Second.

I switched to a DE about three years ago and haven't looked back. Saves money. Less waste. Great shave.

Usenet

[Anonymous Coward]

Salutes to you sir. I also have a fascination towards nntp. I used to tell my friends M$ killed it for MS Exch., google killed it for advertisement.

Old analog receiver

[hambone142]

I use my Marantz 2285B daily. I have a Logitec Bluetooth receiver on it's front end and listen to internet radio with it from a signal supplied by a tablet. I also use it on some JBLs connected to my Samsung LCD TV. That's a mixin' of eras. I love that thing (the Marantz).

Keyboard

[Anonymous Coward]

I still need the standard 101 keys keyboard with no windows key. Which is why I resisted buying a laptop for so long (ended up getting a Surface pro with no keyboard, because why even bother at all with one?). Every few years a batch weird "old" keyboards (usually IBM) show on ebay or similar, and I renew my stock.

Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

vi for me, too.

Not that I have anything against emacs. But I bought my first unix computer in the 80s, and it only had two megabytes of RAM and used an early member of the 68xxx series that couldn't do demand paging to act like it had more. This was too little to compile and run emacs.

After about three years of heavy bulletin-board participation I had the vi commands "wired into my brainstem". I tried emacs several times over the years and each time discovered that certain common things I did (and still do) with vi took about twice as many keystrokes.

Once I tried using its vi emulation mode - only to discover that it (the version at the time) had TWO of them, in true emacs kitchen sink style, and each had different deltas from getting the vi commands right. With only one I might have gone on to use it, and learn the deltas, while edging into native commands. But with two, and no obvious selection, I didn't bother.

Nowadays I use vim, which is close enough. (Especially if you tell it to act like vi in a couple important places.)

Re:Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping.

[mean pun]

Once I tried using its vi emulation mode - only to discover that it (the version at the time) had TWO of them, in true emacs kitchen sink style, and each had different deltas from getting the vi commands right. With only one I might have gone on to use it, and learn the deltas, while edging into native commands. But with two, and no obvious selection, I didn't bother.

That's why wise people have said that emacs is a nice operating system, but they should write a decent editor for it.

UUCP Mailnet

[Ungrounded Lightning]

I still have several machines that interchange mail with each other and the Internet via uucp mailnet. I poll an ISP twice an hour (or use an alias to force a poll if i don't want the mail to wait.)

I even check my personal mailbox on that domain every couple months. (Every three weeks or so I get another offer to buy my domain name, which has been around since the list of machines that exchanged email fit on three typeset pages.) But you wouldn't BELIEVE the amount of spam that accumulates on an account that has been around since before the first mass mail-merge spam scripts were offerd for sale. (I think I still have a saved copy of that original piece of spam - advertising spam software.) The spammers STILL include that address in their mailing lists.

If the NSA or ISIS ever kills the connected Internet, UUCP mailnet will still work, merrily bucket-brigading email among the hadnful of machines whose mail transfer agents still interconnect by routes that don't just hand the mail off to an Internet hop.

Also: Back when we ran mailing lists over UUCP, the polling delay limited the deluge of mail when someone on the list accidentally forwarded his mail to the list. This gave us time to catch it manually and suspend the account before everybody was buried in repeated messages. B-)

Game Boy Color here

[welshsocialist]

I don't know if this counts as technology, but I have a turquoise Game Boy Color. I've had it since 1999 or 2000 (Can't remember). It replaced my original Game Boy. I play Super Mario Bros., Pac-Man, Tetris and a pinball game on it. I have Wisdom Tree's Bible search as well (I got this at a Christian bookstore in the early 90s). Besides reading the text, I enjoy getting the sheep back in the pen (this is one of two games on the cartridge). I was going to get the Game Boy Advance, but never did. Why tamper with something that works?

next time

[jjohn_h]

>>> It's the year 2014, and I still have a floppy drive installed on my computer. >>>

Never mind, next time you willl be unable to find a motherboard with a floppy interface.

Re:next time

[Misagon]

USB floppy on internal USB header ... USB isn't going away soon.

Original!

[Anonymous Coward]

Boobs, Butts, Beers. yeah that's all it really takes.

oh yeah, antibiotics and other modern medicine.

Serialport

[Anonymous Coward]

Serial port, real hardware level serial ports.. USB serial port adapters has all sort of weird issues....

Re:Serialport

[ArcadeMan]

I never had any issue with adapters equipped with an FTDI chip.

Old tech I still use

[jandersen]

I can think of three technologies I still can't let go of:

1. Fire. It's easy and convenient, it warms me and it helps me cook food etc. Cooking helps us dramatically increase the amount of things we can actually eat, which would otherwise be inedible to us.

2. The hammer. Not just the stick with a lump of iron on; in the form of a stone to open nuts with, it works like a replaceable, external 'tooth' that can be applied with great force, and which allows you to look at the object you work on, unlike the teeth in your jaw. When your hammer stone breaks, it may become a knife, which gives you a whole new class of powers.

3. Writing. Leaving marks on a surface was probably the first, external storage technology. Some of those early communications are still available some 3030 - 40 kyears later.

Northgate Omnikey/102

[The Cisco Kid]

I just recently bought one that had been sitting nearly unused for a long time, as the one I was using previously was starting to develop a number of annoying problems.

MS-DOS

[Anonymous Coward]

I am still heavy user of MS-DOS 6.22 and MSVC 1.52. Pretty useful when building legacy, 16-bit option roms. BTW, using old BIOS interfaces like INT 10h, INT 13h, INT 16h, INT 18h, INT19h probably qualifies as well...

Add Windows XP to the mix (as it still has 16-bit capable command line, including old .COM files). But that sounds so FRESH compared to the above...

Short list

[Krakadoom]

Mostly I just can't throw tech that works perfectly well away. So I end up with X graphics cards, processors, etc in closets everywhere and a ton of old IDE drives with "backups" on them.

Plus I actually own a stereo that doesn't stream from the network, isn't surround, doesn't have have any USB ports or anything else digital, simply because the amplifier is the first major purchase I ever made in my life and it (still after 20+ years) has completely unrivaled sound.

I guess printers should be on that list, too, since they see use like twice a year maybe and I could just print at work.

Sysvinit

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll have to pry it out of my cold, dead hands.

Surround sound speakers and sub

[xushi]

My ancient sub and 5.1 point surround sound speakers.. ~20+ years old and still beats any crap they make lately. They just don't make things as good as they used to.

Pen and Paper

[Anonymous Coward]

Still a basic competence. I'd say our civilization ends when nobody can't use this technique any more.

Preferably I use a decent fountain pen and a nice notebook like Moleskine, but everything is good and useful, pencils, post-its, tear-off notebooks, whatever. If you have taken a look at the handwriting of people nowadays you see that this is not very common anymore, even if you look at people in their forties who should have learned it properly once. We're about to lose some very important part of our literacy, I fear.

Re:Pen and Paper

[ArcadeMan]

Eye dont now wat ur talkin a bout.

IRC isn't obsolete

[loufoque]

Unlike the other technologies the OP talks about, IRC isn't obsolete technology.

Microsoft Natural Keyboard, before they fschked it

[twms2h]

I recently bought (used) a few of the old Microsoft Natural Keyboard Pro from before the 4000 series. Those that still included a USB hub and the lettering on the keys did not disappear after only a few months of normal usage.
Before that I had several of the 4000 Keyboards and all of them started to lose their lettering within a few months. They are just really bad quality.

I will probably be using them until they fall apart.

199x bicyle

[twms2h]

Or at least I wish I could still use it.

It had a steel frame, simple 21 gears derailleur gearshift, none of this fancy suspension fork crap and over all it simply was robust. I could repair and replace everything on it myself (but seldom needed to). The only parts I replaced with something more modern was the brakes and lighting.
I used to cycle to work on it until It was stolen out of my backyard half a year ago and I still miss it.

Re:199x bicyle

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha!
I still ride my KHS CompFZ from 1996. Brakes squeal, but I just can't get a replacements now, so I'am still using the last pairs from 1998.

Re:199x bicyle

[Anonymous Coward]

Reminds me of a Mongoose mountatin bike I had back in 1992, I'd ride 30-40 miles just for fun, rode it to work, rode it to school, everything was easily repaired or replaced at the local bike shop. Nothing fancy on it, just good reliable Shimano gears and brakes, no suspension, no fancy seat. Got stolen from school and I've never been able to find another bike to replace it that even comes close to how well it handled.

Fountain Pens

[Anonymous Coward]

When I need to scribble on paper, I still favour a fountain pen, and have done for decades..to the point where if I have to use anything else my writing immediately becomes an illegible scrawl.
The strange thing about this, is that I only started using one in my late teens, a chance encounter with a calligraphy set touched it all off.

I currently have three fountain pens, a couple of Parkers and a custom turned wooden one (I really need to replace the nib on it), I do also own a ballpoint pen, you might call it a concession to the 20th century, but the only reason I keep it is that it's made from nice piece of English yew, I turned it myself, and decided it was too good to sell.

My current Parker pens date from the '80s and '90s, but I still really miss my old 1920's Duofold and my 1970's Parker 25, sadly, both were stolen, the 25 back in 1983 from beside the GIGI terminal connected to the DEC-20 I'd been using - I'd only been gone for about 3 minutes to collect a printout, the Duofold was taken sometime in 2001 from an allegedly secure server room.

And yes, I *do* also have a quill pen somewhere, bought as a joke by a colleague who thought it rather anachronistic of me to be sitting in front of (a the time) 'cutting edge' computer technology whilst still scribbling notes with a 1920's fountain pen, needless to say, I used it almost exclusively for the next couple of weeks, c/w blotting paper and sand, did I mention the mid 1800s wood and brass ink stand? whilst I'm at it did I also mention I do a fair amount of writing on stone tablets on a daily basis now (well, slate actually...and as for writing, I suppose a 40W laser engraver and associated software could be pushing the definition just a wee bit..).

Double-edged razor

[reboot246]

I shaved with every new razor ever invented, starting years ago with a Gillette double-edged razor. A couple of years ago I was at Sam's Club looking to buy some replacement carts for my super-duper high tech razor, but the price was what we used to pay for a small car. I thought that there must be a better way.

So, I came home, got online and bought an old-fashioned double edge razor (actually two of them). They're both Merkur slants, a long handled one for home and a short handled one for traveling. Along with the razors I bought 100 Feather blades. The razors were reasonable and the blades were ten bucks. Blades of any brand are ridiculously cheap.

I've also started making lather the old fashioned way, using a brush and shaving soap, 1000 times better than anything out of a can.

All you need is a good lather and ONE sharp blade. I'll never go back to multiple disposable blades no matter what. I get baby-butt smooth shaves nearly every time with no nicks or razor burns. Try it.

Re:Double-edged razor

[sudon't]

I still shave with my sword. I keep a clean chin so that my enemy has nothing to grasp. And, if it's not sharp enough to give me a close shave, then I know it's not ready for battle. It's the manly way to shave, (and my wife never tries to borrow it). I'm sorry but, safety razors are for girls.

Windows XP

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I'm still using Windows XP, if that counts...

My body

[Anonymous Coward]

Because even at 60 years of abuse it still functions.

All sorts of things

[CrimsonAvenger]

Old technology I'm still using?

I'm pretty much still dependent on electric lighting, indoor plumbing, refrigeration & air conditioning, internal combustion engines, plastics, etc.

Or does it only count as "technology" if it requires a computer to use?

Slide Rules

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want my slide rules you'll have to pry them from my cold dead fingers.

4 by 3 computer monitors & TVs

[bjs555]

I still can't get used to the 16 by 9 format. For a computer monitor, it's much easier to scroll vertically than horizontally. For a TV, I get the feeling that I'm looking through a slot rather than through a window.

Re:4 by 3 computer monitors & TVs

[Dadoo]

I still can't get used to the 16 by 9 format.

I'm with you, there. Sadly, it looks like no one agrees with us.

Re:4 by 3 computer monitors & TVs

[ArcadeMan]

So, do you prefer to watch your movies with a smaller picture with horizontal black bars at the top and bottom, zoomed in with the side effect of losing both sides of the movie or just stretched vertically to fill your 4:3 display?

There's a reason for 16:9 TVs.

For computer monitors, though, I can't say a word as I'm writing this comment on a computer equipped with a 17" LCD monitor.

Nokia 3310

[rHBa]

I'm still using a Nokia 3310. 'What? Call yourself a geek and you don't have a smart phone?' I hear you ask...

Well I quite like the idea that when I leave the office I'm NOT AT WORK any more. I'm still contactable if anyone wants to TXT/call me and I'm rarely more than 10mins away from a WiFi connection if I really need one (I have a Nexus 7 which is on me most of the time).

I also take perverse pleasure when I try calling someone on their iPhone and they hang up on me only to TXT me back to say their mic has been playing up and they can't currently receive calls.

I also ski and paraglide quite a lot and need a phone that's going to work in an emergency, potentially after a big fall...

I know I'll have to replace it eventually but it's doing fine for what I need right now.

Re:Nokia 3310

[vidnet]

You're talking about how you come off as less geeky because don't have a smart phone, all while carrying a tablet around everywhere?

I don't think you have to worry...

xmms

[Anonymous Coward]

For me, it's XMMS. Yes. The X multimedia system. It's the only software I actually feel attached to. I go to great lengths to compile it on whatever new linux distro I happen to use throughout the years. Sometimes I even find packages for my distro. The people who make those are my friends just because of that. Specifically, xmms with the debian skin. When looking past all the noise and trivialities of the day to day reality, I know I can always come back to xmms and the life it gives to my music collection.

Re:xmms

[CronoCloud]

I still use XMMS, there's just something about its minimalism. Fedora has packages for it.

Re:xmms

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad I'm not the only one then..
it's an old old friend since the days when it was x11amp and I had it running on both my Indy and SS2, times move on, yet I still have it on all my Debian and Slackware boxes, both at home and at work.

Gigabit ethernet

[fa2k]

Only because there's nothing faster easily available. (and I use Scientific LInux 6, the current version, but maybe that counts as old still)

Gnome2 and Win7

[walterbyrd]

New interfaces suck.

1992 Ford Festiva

[walterbyrd]

Ridiculously inexpensive to run and maintain. Does everything I need. Don't have to worry about scratches and dings.

Lots of stuff

[water-and-sewer]

Let's see. And by preface, I'll say I'm in my 40s, so I'm not quite yet a dinosaur. Still:

Old fashioned "safety razor" with double edged blades, fountain pen, pocket watch.

I converted all my cassettes and DVDs and stuff, so I'm modern in that aspect. But on the protocol side: I still use FTP, telnet, IRC, and Usenet pretty extensively. I'm happiest at a text console, and not just because most Linux desktops piss me off something fierce.

Other old tech: eye glasses? A sailboat? Camping gear?

Video DVDs

[Anonymous Coward]

Video DVDs and players. No matter how the idiots try to push the blu-ray crap on us, DVD is still the standard. DVD quality video is good enought for most of us, and we don't like that most blu-ray disks and players are more expensive, and almost all of the blu-ray disks have previews that can't be skipped, which sucks. I always hated the few DVDs that have previews that can't be skipped. When I put a disk in the player, I want to watch the movie/TV show, not a bunch of crap about shitty movies/TV shows that I will never buy or watch!

And it also sucks that the only way blu-ray disks sell is that they are bundled with the DVD. So when people want the movie/TV show on disk, they have to buy the blu-ray to get the DVD.

New tech is not always better!

Incandescent light bulbs

[RJFerret]

Incandescent light bulbs that generate decent heat, so the plumbing lines running through the back stairwell don't freeze in winter.

Snaps. (I wish there were snaps on my cellphone case, since the velcro has worn out after 13 years.)

Hook and eye closures, because, bras.

Birth control, although newer forms that eliminate monthly periods are pure win.

PS: Anything that can be used one-handed where newer replacements require two, the aforementioned snaps instead of buttons, flip cellphone with keys that can even be used without viewing, etc.

IBM 5100

[Anonymous Coward]

I need it for the coming apocalypse in a few years.

The Time Travelers can peel it from my cold dead hands!

Lots of old tech

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking around I see a lot of old tech in my house--forks, knives, spoons, a stand mixer, my 1950 Sunbeam W-2 waffle maker (the best damn waffle maker ever made), pots, pans, a gas range (mechanical controls), a coffee grinder, a clarinet, a theremin, the Nakamichi receiver this iMac is plugged into, a dozen mechanical cameras and complete darkroom setup. I know I have not used the stapler or the pencil sharpener in a long time. I do have a small paper notebooks I use to actually keep notes in. Incandescent and fluorescent light bulbs, thought I suppose those will eventually get replaced by some sort of led as the price comes down. Magnesium flash bulbs. Ceiling fans.

A slide rule

[PPH]

Oh yeah, my car has a carburetor. None of that sludge that ethanol pulls in bothers it like injected cars.

Re:My watch - be sneaky with it

[charliemerritt]

Turning your wrist to see the hands is a very notable action. I've been in your situation and I find that putting the wach face INSIDE the wrist allows me to consult the time with nothing more than a flick of an eyeball. ...cm

Unix / Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I used Unix for the first time 25 years ago, and Linux 20 years ago.

Now this stone age crap is on my phone. Yay.

the automobile (as urban mass transit) is obsolete

[pereric]

Actually, I think (as en European living in a city) that the automobile is an old-fashioned piece of technology that most urban dwellers would do better without.

FAX MACHINE !!!! first sign of a "real office"

[speedlaw]

When I opened an office years back, the sign you were serious was a dedicated fax machine and line. Now, those weren't cheap when they came out.....like many other things, today the line is cheap, and you can fax for free in places.... I still have a dedicated fax machine, even though most docs sent me are by email, crappy iPhotos, jpeg attached. Some folks still dump things in the fax-it's still easier than scan, attach and send....put in machine, press numbers, walk away....wait for BEEEEP. done. I'll take faxes any day over folks sending me docs via horrible iPhotos.

shortwave

[cascadingstylesheet]

Well ... I finally donated my AM/FM/shortwave radio last year. My wife didn't want a permanent antenna wire strung across any room, so I couldn't get much reception.

My Mothers paring knife

[Whorhay]

I'm still using a wood handled paring knife my Mother was using before I was born. It went through a rough patch when one of my brothers used it to cut a live power cord. But my Father ground the notch out of the blade and put a new edge on it, good as new.

Wheels

[Anonymous Coward]

I still use the wheel.
I know it's been around for a while but it still works for me.
And analogue watches of course.

Re:Wheels

[ArcadeMan]

I still use the wheel.
I know it's been a round for a while but it still works for me.

I see what you did there.

Graph Paper

[Phrogman]

I cannot live without pads of graph paper. Anything written on regular blank paper or lined paper is just wrong. It must have the pale blue lines of a proper pad of graph paper or anything I write on it, is rubbish.

I periodically find myself writing something on the latest graph paper pad, only to realize that its not interactive and I cannot edit, so with a sigh I go rewrite the entire thing in a text editor.

Then I go back to the graph paper pad :P

Software

[Anonymous Coward]

Eudora

Quicktime

Wordstar, except I forgot all the codes now so might as well use Word or BB Edit.

Usenet

[Anonymous Coward]

What is needed is a Newswatcher app for current web based bulletin boards. Usenet was (is) wild west, but in many ways was better.

Quicken/Winamp/D2

[SweetDrake]

I admit I've never got over Quicken 98 for my personal finance management--still up and running, whether I boot Win7 or Mint. If Win7 is booted when it happens, I'll probably be found dead with Winamp playing in the background; never found a satisfying equivalent, now hardly bothering looking for any replacement. I've long clung to UltraEdit 9, but ultimately let it go for npp once it got the column mode all right. Oh, and I try to stay vi-trained, just in case... As for hardware, I still go running with my tiny Cowon D2, that easily outperforms my Android phone on sound quality, and doesn't take so much pocket place.

Coo-coo clock

[Anonymous Coward]

I love my coo-coo clock.

Finally gave up my pager...

[MaestroRC]

... but only because I changed jobs. As part of the radiological emergency response team at a nuclear power plant (Watts Bar), I was required to have a pager on during my duty weeks. They were in transition to an email and SMS-based system (which they were using for non-REP response primarily and in addition to the pager system for REP) but that required regulatory approval from what I understand for it to become primary. It was an old-school, 10-digit motorola pager and the utility (TVA) owned and operated their own network towers.

Hand drill,eggbeater style

[Anonymous Coward]

Mostly for my kids, because can't give a power drill to a 2year old.

Useful old tools I'll keep until...

[An dochasac]

Tools don't obey the laws of fashion and planned-obsolecense. A tool remains useful until it wears out or is replaced with something that replaces a tool in all of its use-cases without adding additional practical or economic downsides. So we use manual screwdrivers for some jobs where electric screwdrivers would either break things or wouldn't fit into a tight space. Artists still use paint and pencil where these allow more efficient expression than digital photographs and photoshop. Here are some technologies I'd love to replace if a replacement were available:

• "Dumb" old cell phone. I have an indestructible Nokia "phone only" phone. I recently charged it because I like to put it in a zip-lock and take it windsurfing or kayaking-- but after nearly a year off the charger, it was still fully charged. It's water resistant, lasts for days on a battery, has good signal range and sound quality. My slightly newer QWERTY Nokia is useful when I'm writing. I've heard other writers use Psion or other old QWERTY PDAs but 2006 was a sweet spot for these "slightly smart" phones.
• Musical instruments. Forget the fact that you'd spend $3000 on an electric piano with the sound and key-action of a $500 used upright and forget that guitars and most other stringed and woodwind instruments have no digital equivalent, even older electronic instruments are difficult to find modern equivalents. I'd love to replace my late 1980s consumer level samping keyboards with a modern sampler with high sampling rate, thousands of sample storage, effects... but no such consumer device exists. So I'm stuck with something with about the same S/N ration and frequency range as a mellotron.
• Solar powered scientific calculator. You call that a smart phone? The pocket calculator's built into the iPhone and most androids is a joke. Many of these can't even count up to the US national debt-- which might explain a few things.
• Solar and wind-powered clothes dryer. I don't get the US. Land of the free and yet there are multiple levels of regulations for everything. Uzis and AK-47s seem to be legal anywhere beyond a stone's throw from a school, but try to use a clothespin to hang your clothes from a line and you're likely to get in trouble with some authority. Yeah it's old technology, but it works and is used in almost every other country. Update it with supermagnet clothespins and you could probably make it convenient. But I don't mind the inconvenience. I meet my neighbors, spend some time in the sun and save an average of about $2 per load in electricity.
• Transistor radio. Given the poor quality and high cost of US oligopoly cell phone service, you shouldn't stray far from Wifi if you want to stream music. But some of us have a life, sailing, hiking, camping... outside of Wifi's range. Yeah podcasts and downloaded music are fun but they lack the regional immediacy of radio. Compared to most bland streaming stations, clear-channel is that stoner running a pirate station from his dorm. Seriously, when they ask what the $*&# happened to good music, point to your iPod and sing, "The day the music died."

you kids get off my lawn

[Anonymous Coward]

Old analog landLine phone. Because when everything else is down it's still up. Particularly better than having everything through single provider. Even have rotary dial phone lying around in junk room, just in case.

Old Shite

[fyngyrz]

I really, *really* liked my late 1970's-era 6809 system. 64k of RAM, custom graphics and sound cards of my design, timers, serial port, multiple floppies. I thought it was getting old in the tooth (it wasn't, it still works, should have had more faith I suppose), so I wrote an emulator for it -- the entire system, hardware, software, a front panel (which the original didn't even have) everything. Still works great, but due to the increase in CPU power over the years, the emulator is one heck of a lot faster than the original hardware. You can use it too, if you're so inclined and you're running some version of Windows, XP or later (might still work under Windows 95 and/or 98 for that matter.) Includes various compilers (Dugger's c compiler, for instance), forth, assembler, cross-assemblers, linkers, basics, some arcade video games that used the graphics hardware, and probably the vast majority of the commands that were available for the DOS, which was FLEX09. Percom PSYMON monitor. If you ever wanted to play in a nice, safe assembler sandbox, it doesn't get any better than the 6809. It just gets faster and wider.

For linux, the answer is Midnight Commander. Between the very nice editor and the dual-pane do-lots-of-things text mode interface, it's still my go-to under linux, I even use it on the Mac. Thankfully, they've kept it reasonably up to date, although making a native mac version without inflicting a much broader *nix ports package on the system is a real pain in the butt.

For the Mac, I use both of the above, MC natively and my emulator under a VM running a network-isolated XP, and I still run a PPC version of my HP-48G, which, I'm afraid, has made any other calculator use not only pointless, but nearly impossible. I also have two of these calculators in hardware, both of which still work fine. Because Apple dropped PPC support at OSX 10.7, my daily driver machine still runs OSX 10.6 and is likely to continue to do so unless I can find a native version of the HP emulator for Mavericks. When I decided to move past OSX 10.6 (Mavericks is actually quite nice, finally), I bought a new machine and plopped it down in my ham shack.

Ham radio: Easy. My Palomar loop antenna. This tiny (about a cubic foot) antenna system has pluggable loops for 150-500 khz, 500-1700 khz, 1700-4000 khz, and 4000-15000 khz. I like to drag it out into the unimproved areas a few tens of miles from here where there are zero power lines, telephone cables carrying data, neon and other signage, plasma TVs, buildings and so on, and enjoy amazingly good, noise-free SW and amateur radio reception on the radio in my truck without having to set up a physically large and cumbersome antenna. I also have a Panasonic RF-2200 portable analog radio that I take on trips. Both of these are pretty old, tech-wise, but both remain in regular use and have stood the test of time very well indeed.

Music: A Marantz 2325 stereo receiver and a pair of Marantz HD-880 speakers. Not only does this setup sound nothing less than awesome, it eliminates the tedious menu surfing that more modern gear forces upon us. Everything's on a front panel knob. Everything. I have (very) modern gear in the home theater, but in my office, the old Marantz blue face remains king.

Lastly, I still have, and continue to play, a 1950's Fender Stratocaster guitar. I have a fair collection of more modern guitars, but the strat's neck is still the best of all of them. Luckily, for most of my life I've been a casual enough musician, and have spent enough time on other guitars, that I've not had to have the thing re-fretted. I don't look forward to that. I can't imagine it'll be the same. Of all the old stuff I have, this is the thing that has not only kept its value, but appreciated far beyond any dollar figure I could ever have anticipated. Not selling it, though. Ever. :)

Creative MuVo

[Anonymous Coward]

My Creative MuVo MP3 player is still going strong. Used daily. If I had known they would disappear, I would have bought a drawer full of them.

Re:Creative MuVo

[ArcadeMan]

What about eBay? You could probably even find new old stock.

6x6 Film

[tigersha]

Still have a Minolta Autocord with Agfa Scala (you can still develop it in Germany) Medium format Roll Film.

I shoot Digital too, but occasionally break out one of the old commiecameras.

Hmmm, lemme see...

[knarf]

I live on a 17th century farm which is heated using a wood-burning stove and a wood-burning cooker. I go out into the forest every year to cut wood, with an axe - and a motorsaw. The axe sees use on difficult trees, for limbing (removing branches) and to set wedges. Once home, the wood is cut to size and split using a splitting maul (a big axe). All the cookware is cast iron. I bake bread in a wood-fired oven. Need I go on? Old technology survived for a reason: it fits its purpose. It isn't broken, it does not need fixing. It might not fit that well in a use-once-and-throw-away consumer society but that is my gain, their loss.

Mechanical watch, ham radio transceiver an more...

[DF5JT]

I am surprised that no one has mentioned a mechanical wrist watch so far.

What an amazing piece of technology a mechanical watch is!

It actually changed the world, respectively the way we look at it. A mechanical watch of high precision and extreme reliability was the only way to determine your position on the globe back in the 18th century, solving one of the biggest problems in understanding the globe and its geography.

I gives me immense pleasure to wear a really nice mechanical time piece, a birthday gift. It's got the most user friendly interface that is, in that it gives you precisely the kind of information you need at a glance.

I can't imagine to replace it with anything of today's visions of wearable computing. Apart from its questionable usefulness in currently discussed models, I know that no one will wear anything like that for longer than the lifetime of the particular product, which you can estimate at 2-3 years, maybe.

I know I will still wear this particular watch in 20-30 years, so this is definitely a technology that I will never give up.

Just like my Kenwood TS930 ham radio transceiver from 1983. It does what it is supposed to do and no other product on the market gives me same features and quality in my particular requirements[1]. So this will be my last transceiver and I won't ever give it up. Got a spare one to make sure I will always be able to maintain this beautiful piece of technology.

Another thing: I bet that in a 100 years from now there will still be completely mechanical grand pianos out there. Despite all modern means of imitating sound, creating effects, simulating and powering concert halls with nifty digital sound processing, there will still be the need of an unamplified instrument that people will enjoy listening to. A piano from good makers such as Steinway, BÃsendorfer, Yamaha, Fazioli etc. is a mechanical marvel. Mostly hand crafted, it achieves a level of perfection, both in mechanical engineering and from an aesthetic point of view, that is a pleasure to play and to listen to.

Oh, and the cassette tape. Still got hundreds of them and a variety of playback devices. Used to tape concerts with one of the professional walkmen from Sony and still listen to these. Won't give up cassettes either.

[1] Full break-in capabilities at high speed morse without any clipping, analogue receiver throughout, i.e. no digital signal processing for maximum signal discernability in pile-ups, fully documented technology with standard components, more or less open source.

here's my list

[Anonymous Coward]

BIOS, Windows 7, phones with MicroSD card slots

LS-120

[Archfeld]

I've got 2 LS-120 USB attached floppy drives that I keep moving to new platforms. They are reliable, still using the same box of 10 disks I bought eons ago, mainly because I don't think you can get anymore, but also because they still work.

Re:LS-120

[ArcadeMan]

You know about USB flash drives, right?

Re:LS-120

[Archfeld]

yes of course, but the drives also function as boot devices and allow me to flash firmware and such in certain environments, also old but still functioning (functional) such as my DEC alpha server. Besides the original question was what outdated tech do you still keep around.
The problem with USB memory sticks is my retarded corporate bosses FORBID using USB sticks on their enterprise machines, while for some reason a USB attached floppy drive is acceptable. Management logic is beyond my ken...

Glasses

[bobmon]

Without my glasses, I'd be dead in the water... actually, I'd probably be dead. Contact lenses are fine, but now that I'm old I need bifocals.

Toaster

[Anonymous Coward]

old style 2 slice pop up model

All of it!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just old enough now to require new technology to actually assist me in some way that the old technology cannot. I actually dislike having to learn something new and shiny, because all to often the old and rusty was doing just fine for me and I wish it was still produced.

Good Ol' Books

[Anonymous Coward]

And pencil. And paper. And pens. 3 x 5 spiral notebook. slide rul^H^H^H^H^H^H^H no, no, no, I use a cheap junk scientific calculator, standard thing with all the trig functions that costs me about $2.25 used, and back in the day cost $1000 for one with less power (but a neat magnetic card reader built in, and programmable).

The Wheel

[Anonymous Coward]

although I am also fond of ramps and levers.

Oh, too much to mention here...but

[MickLinux]

One thing I wish I *HADN'T* given up? The old Apple ][. Automating the controls through the I/O port and Applesoft was a breeze. Nowadays, I don't know how I'd do it.

Give some love man!

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows XP is the new obsolete tech that lot of us don't want to let it go. Why nobody loves it? XD (Written in Windows XP 64 bits SP2)

Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

vi ... the new thing. I'm still using ed

9 Track Tape

[tmjva]

I have two reel to reel tape drives at 6250bpi. One with an HP-IB and the other with a SCSI-SE interface.

I used to have a 5 level baudot paper tape teletype model 28, ran at 67 WPM.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

Re: Rosetta

[Anonymous Coward]

I just scream wordlessly into the primeval night, myself.

Studio Gear

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a recording studio that thinks it's 2000. Digidesign 888/24's, a dual 1.8 GHz G4 running OS9 and OS X 10.3, Pro Tools 6.4.1, Logic 7. Tons of outboard gear and old synthesizers. This stuff worked then and it works now. About the only thing newer gear can do that my rig can't is run autotune and sample at a rate that only bats can hear a difference.

Beer

[Sir Realist]

Man, no matter how many times they try to upgrade it with fruit "beers" and wine coolers and Ruddy Steer mocktails and all the rest, I've got to say that good ole-fashioned malted barley with a smidge of hops is still the best.

What i use everyday

[danknight48]

Mouse and keyboard.

Does any technology ever become obsolete?

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep a few telegraph keys (one is dated 1874) around my work area. Whenever someone raves over the latest communication concept I glance at them.

Re: Rosetta

[eriqk]

I just grunt it. Grunt enough times and it'll be memorized.

Cameras built to last

[eriqk]

My Nikon FM, and my Mamiya C33 on a Gitzo tripod strong enough to build a house on.

Also, vinyl records. Not because they sound better but because I like to hold something that has music on it. The CD is dying and if I buy digital, might as well buy the flac.

Fidonet Technology

[gregsapphyre]

Many moons ago, I found that our Compaq Portable had a 2400 baud modem in the back of it. I didn't have a phone cord long enough to reach the nearest outlet, so I took a shorter one, cut it in half, and extended it using a spool of 22awg wire from the model train workbench. Dialed a number I got from a friend at school - The Gas Passer BBS in Pittsburgh, PA. Not long after that, my parents gave approval to ringing up the local BBSs within our calling area, and I was hooked. It took less than a year for me to follow more Fidonet echoes than I could read within my 60 minute time limit. The one and only Bob Hoffman, great soul that he was, set me up as a private node on FamilyNet 8:7200/something and soon I was pulling FamilyNet and FidoNet echoes through the gateway at 1:129/34. After Bob moved away, he put in a good word for me with the local Fido NC, Paul Kelly, and soon I was a private node 1:129/146@fidonet. 5 lovely years of too many echoes and staying up to ZMH to watch netmail get sent across the country. Politics and finances drove me out of Fido when I started college in 1993. I tried being a point in net 2613 for a while, but doing mail runs on a dorm phone line wasn't the best way to keep the roommates happy. 20 years later I'm still hooked on the shit like it's crack or something. I have gigabytes of BBS software in a folder on my Mac. Emulated DOS 6.22 + rlfossil works well enough to pass netmail around a simulated FTN in VMware fusion. I put binkd on a VPS, and got crashmail working well enough to use it as a hub for a local net consisting of all my home machines + a bunch of machines at work. No more emailing things home, or using a USB key, just file attach it to one of the home nodes and it'll be there waiting for me when I get home! squish in out squash qm TOSS SCAN PACK fdnc bnu /L1:57600 /S opus -k I can still write a working nodelist from scratch. Zone,156,Sapphyre,Planet_Earth,Greg_Nesbitt,1-412-279-4822,9600,CM,XA Any of you geekheads want to build a FTN from scratch? I'll hub it on the VPS.

Automated retail checkouts

[Anonymous Coward]

There are real problems with automated checkouts: Ordinary humans seem to have trouble understanding that the system doesn't magically know what each item is; you have to actually run the barcode over the reader. Yes, there's a sign, and no, a disturbingly large portion of the public fails to follow the signs and (sometimes) audio instructions. Oh, and those systems with the audio instructions, repeated before every scanned item, make we want to pierce my eardrums. Also, good luck if you're behind somebody with a lot of bulk produce trying to use the scale and figuring out what kind of peppers to code in at the same time. And ordinary people apparently don't organize their carts as they shop. That means you end up waiting for the guy in front of you at the automated checkout to search for the next item in the cart using what is best described as a live demo of an n-squared algorithm so that he has sorted bags from an unsorted cart.

But the biggest reason I avoid the automated checkouts is the presumption of innocence. If a mistake is made in a cashier line, the presumption is that the cashier made the error. However, in an automated line, it's me getting the stink-eye if there's a mistake, and it's up to the discretion of the employee monitoring the automated checkouts whether to call security to deal with me as though I were a shoplifter. No, thanks.

OTOH, since putting in the automated systems, I've noticed the stores staffing the slowest cashiers possible in the "20 or less" lanes, presumably to encourage use of the automated system by way of frustration. Jerks.

- T

Re:Simple Emacs vs. Vi?

[bbsalem]

Actually, I have evidence that not only is emacs and vi are very much alive, but that lisp, which is what emacs is written in, is not only very much alive, but very possibly moved to the top of the list of "new" solutions to programming problems. Go follow the developments with Clojure and Clojurescript. Clojure is lisp with a few enhancements that might solve some nasty problems in newer languages with persistence and concurrency. It runs on top of the Java Virtual Machine and its scripted version translates to Javascript. It can use libraries available to Java and Javascript and yet it addresses the need of functional programs to use immutable objects and not complex locking mechanisms. It uses namespaces but allows for separate copies of objects between them in a memory efficient way. The only worry I have about Clojure's immutabiliuity is wheather its garbage collection scheme can destroy data prematurely while it is being handled between namespaces. The more common problem of threads treading on each other's data needing locks may return.

I haven't addressed the Vi vs. Emacs issue except to say that it is the learning curve and muscle memory that determines which one a person adopts, not that one is basically superior. I learned emacs first and use it to this day, but if you have ever been a system administrator in single user or recovery mode on a *NIX box you had better know at least some minimal Vi and even Ex, the line editor form that underlies the screen editor. (I had one case where I couldn't boot a workstation in screen mode and had to edit a critical system file with Ex, or what used to be called Ed, )

Something to note is that Emacs was an integrated environment long before there were GUIs. You can still run a shell, a REPL, a file manager (dired), and numerous other applications for mail and IRC and netnews, all within a single emacs instance using multiple windows. I have tried this recently and am amazed at how useful it still is, and you can have as many buffers open as you want.

The only issue I have is that I need to upgrade my OS to get Emacs 24 running on it so that I can dive into lisp and Clojure, as Emacs 23 is not fully ready for Clojure. But I know some common lisp and have delved into a little e-lisp, and am obviously interested in Clojure now, is reason enough for Emacs.

CDs

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll have to pry my music CDs from my cold, dead hands!! I just can't get on the digital music bandwagon. I still rip my CDs to MP3 format for listening, but there's something about having that physical media that I can rip to whatever format I want that I can't give up.

Old Test Equipment

[Agripa]

Analog oscilloscopes would be at the top of my list but some other old test equipment could qualify as well.

Re:Simple Emacs vs. Vi?

[jaymz666]

Yep, good luck managing dozens or hundreds of servers that only have vi on it.
Granted, it does matter what your use case is, but most boxes do not have emacs on it so the need to know that is a heck of a lot smaller in many cases.

Anything...

[cwsumner]

I keep using anything that is better than the flashy new "replacement", or is just more reliable.

Did you know that "style" was invented by the French clothing manufacturers to get consumers to buy more stuff? It works, too.
The next time you hear about what is "new", be aware that it is probably originating with Marketing and not Engineering.

For reference

[phorm]

: set noautoindent

That lamp

[phorm]

Where do you get that lamp. I see it everywhere on various TV shows, but I've never seen where to buy one...

Gamecube

[Anonymous Coward]

VCR, there are some movies that have never been released in a digital format, so, to complete my collection I buy them on VHS and back them up manually with a Pinnacle video-to-USB device (forgot the name of it). I've given everything else up and either sold it on ebay or in a garage sale, Timex Sinclair 1000 (w/ memory module), Mac Classic w/ external hard drive, CRT TV, floppy drives, and so on.

Re: Rosetta

[Jhon]

A shoebox in the middle of the road!

Re:Microsoft Natural Keyboard, before they fschked

[sremick]

My old Northgate Omnikey keyboard had the keycap letterings not printed in paint, but as plastic molded throughout the entire thickness of the key. There was no possible way to wear it off. It was also full-mechanical with a metal base. Could be switched to Dvorak layout in 2 presses.

I miss that keyboard.