Ten Technologies That Refuse to Die 1381
kudyadi writes "Technology Review has an interesting article on, as the title suggests, ten technologies that we continue using despite advances made in the same. The best example is that of analog watches, "Compared to today's digital timepieces, old-fashioned, sweep-hand watches are pathetic one-trick ponies. Digital-watch wearers can check temperature, altitude, and the time in Tokyo, play tunes and games, and send messages. Can wristwatch videoconferencing, Web surfing, and tarot readings be far off? But what digital watches can't do, according to sweep-hand proponents, is display the time and context as elegantly and intuitively as an analog model."" Interesting counterpoint to this post from a few years back about technologies that didn't manage to hang on. And Bruce Sterling has a short list of ones he'd like to see go away, too ;)
Macintosh (refuses to die) (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Macintosh (refuses to die) (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Macintosh (refuses to die) (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Macintosh (refuses to die) (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple using Wintel technology (Score:4, Informative)
I do not know Macs, so I may have missed something, but which of these started with the Wintel PC?
ROM/Open firmware - The news is that Wintels may do this soon, but I have yet to see motherboard without ROM BIOS.
OS X - Unix, not Wintel
SATA - From the harddrive manufacturers. The implementation for Wintel has the BIOS must faking one of the standard IDE positions so that MSWindows thinks it is running from "C:". This reduces the number of drives that can be used in a dual IDE/SATA PC, and encourages the consumer to find an OS that can fully use the hardware. This could not have been planned by MS.
CD/DVD-RW - Consumer technology coopted by the computer world.
USB - The Wintel answer to Firewire.
Firewire - Apple. It is so much an Apple technology that Intel refuses to incorporate it into their motherboards.
PCI, AGP - Hardware manufacturers, but they are the standards for Wintel. Be thankful that Apple has decided to follow the "standards" for commodity hardware.
RJ-45, Ethernet - Ethernet came from the mainframe/Unix world. It barely touched the Wintel world until the late 80s. The RJ45 plug was a quick prototype that accidentally made it into production. The engineers are still kicking themselves for designing a plug that is designed to catch on EVERYTHING.
DVI - I do not know who started this.
PowerPC - IBM. Was it first designed for Apple or Microsoft? Does anybody other than Apple and IBM use it?
Re:Macintosh (refuses to die) (Score:5, Insightful)
MACs have always represented a luxury/SUV computer.
In addition to the publishing/art markets, there have always been people who just aren't dealing with the BSoDomy of Microsoft, and have the budget to choose otherwise.
Balls, if I had the loot, I'd be sporting that groovy new system with a flat monitor half the size o' Monica Lewinsky, too.
Re:Macintosh (refuses to die) (Score:5, Insightful)
It's companies that consider success being number one, and anything less failure, that don't survive.
Tech #11 That Refuses To Die (Score:5, Funny)
Tech #12 That Refuses To Die (Score:5, Interesting)
With respect to dot matrix printers... (Score:5, Interesting)
One company I work with prints 4 part invoices for in-home services. We've tested alternatives, but have yet to find a non-impact printer capable of getting the job done.
I think its unfair to call the technology outdated when it still performs some tasks better than its modern counterparts.
Re:With respect to dot matrix printers... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:With respect to dot matrix printers... (Score:5, Insightful)
Case in point: New cell phones vs Old cell phones.
New cell phones have mostly all had software problems of sorts, with laggy displays, crashing software (damnit I have to reboot my phone AGAIN), etc, etc. Older cell phones weren't so reliant on the 'cruft' that makes up new cell phone software, and generally worked a LOT smoother, and FAR less buggily.
Example: I have a Motorolla T720 color screen phone, which IMHO, really bites ass. The thing drops calls, I get a black screen of death pretty much every few days (which requires me to completely remove the battery to drain the power), the display is soooo laggy its not even funny, plus many other small software bugs I am sure I can't recall of the top of my head.
I would LOVE to get my old StarTac back...man that thing was rock solid! I even accidentally ran it through a FULL wash cycle in the washer and all I had to do was replace the battery. It also has/had none of the drawbacks I listed for the T720. Operation was as smooth as it could be IMO.
Here's a vote for old technology when it works well.
Re:Multipart Impacts (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd hate to have to sign for work multiple times...
Re:Multipart Impacts (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Multipart Impacts (Score:4, Insightful)
If you have numbered multipart forms then this ensures that the sheets of paper you sign/ship/mail are part of the original multipart form and not a reprint.
Many places want original paperwork, you can't guarantee it with a laser. Dot matrix is still a darn useful technology.
ana-log (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:ana-log (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree, mod parent up! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a general trend of adding garbage to an otherwise simple device. Digitals watches, cell phones, etc.
If you're going to have a multipurpose machine, like a computer, then call it that. Otherwise you end up with a watch that takes the temperature, tells time, takes pictures, has an address book, and makes calls.
Then your cell phone makes calls, tells time, takes the temperature, takes pictures and has an address book.
Your handheld address book tells time, takes the temperature, takes pictures, makes phone calls.
Your digital camera takes pictures, tells time...
I had to laugh when I read the story on slashdot. How can OLD watches still hang around that just tell time?
BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT A WATCH IS FOR.
Re:I agree, mod parent up! (Score:5, Funny)
These days, I have usually two devices on my person, a cell phone and an MP3 player, which have built-on clocks. Even on the rare occasion when I'm in a place where there are no clocks (such as a casino or shopping mall), and have none with me by pure accident of fate, I'm surrounded by people not only carry clocks around on their wrists, but actually derive pleasure from the brief moment of human contact they experience when I say "excuse me, but do you have the time?"
Strapping something to my wrist which only tells time would be a waste of five seconds each morning. I'm happier without one more item to worry about breaking or losing.
I look forward to the day when my phone, MP3 player, watch, GPS, daily planner, and sunglasses are all one small, light, rugged device.
Besides, it's a myth that timekeeping is what analog watches are for. They are worn as jewelry for men. It's a vain, metrosexual affectation to wear a gold watch. There's your real reason.
Re:I agree, mod parent up! (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Watches for Nursing (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Yeah, analog dial watches refuse to die? (Score:5, Interesting)
Both of them work, and keep good time.
I also have a pile of dead, broken down computer hardware, and can point to any number of software projects that are unmaintained, unfinished, or otherwise at the end of their lives. All of these are, at best, half the age of the younger watch.
If nothing else, carrying an old-fashioned watch is a reminder about building things to last...
Fortran is # 10 (Score:5, Interesting)
No need to throw the Fortran libraries away, though, just wrap them [gfd-dennou.org] in a higher level language [ruby-lang.org]. Chances are it'll be fast enough, and it'll almost certainly be a lot easier to use.
there is a another good reason for Fortran though (Score:3, Informative)
So as strange as this may sound fortran can be much faster!
Re:Fortran is # 10 (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason that Fortran is still popular in the scientific community is that it's pretty well optimised for the kind of tasks that you're likely to be doing. For example, Fortran has complex numbers as a basic data type. It's also simpler than C based languages for working with multidimensional arrays - no need to futz about with arrays of pointers or whatever, just declare a (resizable, if desired) multidimensional array. In general, the builtin functions are designed to work well on parallel architectures, so writing good parallel code isn't (quite) so much hard work.
Basically, Fortran is still used because it's well adapted for the job it's doing. The fact that it isn't used in application programming is because it sucks for that purpose.
Cars... Buildings.... (Score:4, Funny)
Buildings that need ground to support them.
So, where are the flying cars and cities on clouds damnit?!
And #11 is a tie between.. (Score:5, Funny)
quote (Score:5, Funny)
"And you needn't worry about your system going obsolete if it already is."
How true...
Re:quote (Score:5, Funny)
I'm required to carry my pager for work. I get pages maybe between once and three times a year. I've offered to give up the pager and take calls on my personal cell phone because of this. The pager is freaking old so it eats one AA battery per month. Because I got sick of throwing batteries away (*), I just decided to change the message on my pager.
If you would like to page me, please call me on my cell phone and let me know so that I can install a new battery in my pager. Thank you.
(*) I tried to create a battery recycling deal at work but people kept taking the box, thinking that these were good batteries (apparently, people don't know what "recycling" means). I'll probably try again with a better, more idiot-proof wording.
Some are, some aren't (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, there are some people who use them, but there are fewer and fewer forms to fill out these days that aren't automated.
Re:Some are, some aren't (Score:3, Informative)
And I find that feeding an envelope or a label into the typewriter is much easier than setting up the printer to print one address. It may not be elegant, but it's simple
Of course, I can't surf slashdot from a typewriter.
Old tech chains you to more old tech.... (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is, your workplace is still using the "old tech" of carbon paper based forms.
The last company I worked for that made us fill out multipart purchase order forms finally phased them out completely. They installed new computer software that let employees complete the whole purchase order online. Sure, a few people complained and moaned about how much harder it made things - but over time, even they started getting used to it. (How often do you re-order something from the same supplier? I bet it happens fairly often. Sure is nice to have the PC fill in the whole address for you when you key in the name of the vendor, because it remembers them all in an address book.)
It's also nice when someone needs to locate an old purchase order to figure out when a warranty expires or what was paid for a product the last time it was purchased. Just do a quick search in the computer, instead of digging through thousands of papers in a filing cabinet!
Re:Some are, some aren't (Score:5, Funny)
Anyway, the computer-created labels look dreadfully sterile compared to Pam's output, and I found creating them to be a pretty joyless task - tap tap, click, print, as opposed to the handle-cranking, knob-turning, bell-ringing joy of using Pam. Good lord, that's almost obscene, isn't it? I think I might have a problem here.
Snob (Score:5, Insightful)
What next. I should get my wife cubic zirconium because it looks the same as a diamond but is much cheaper because it was made with "technology". I'm just soooo old fashioned.
Re:Snob (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you should get your wife another kind of gem, one whose price and supply aren't controlled by the same international monopoly that has brainwashed her into desiring a diamond an order of magnitude over other stones that you can buy without being gouged as much.
Kind of -1, Redundant (Score:5, Interesting)
No need to get into this argument, just see Slashdot's tenth most active story ever [slashdot.org] (at least at the moment). It's all been said I suppose.
Re:Snob (Score:5, Insightful)
Really - people buy things like watches because they're nice to have. Practicality doesn't have to be the most important factor in a purchase decision, and for the most expensive items people buy (house, car, jewellery) it rarely is.
foxpro (Score:3, Funny)
One word (Score:3, Funny)
What about the other values of a tech? (Score:5, Interesting)
Obligatory Adams (Score:5, Funny)
"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches."
B-Ark (Score:5, Funny)
Kind of obvious but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Analog Watches (Score:3, Funny)
KISS - keep it simple stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
I've had countless digital watches, most are in the garbage. I also have one or two 'analog' watches that I simply wind up and they work. No batteries, no looking for the manual to figure out how to set the time in Tokyo, no calibrating altitude and temp.
Re:KISS - keep it simple stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
A few months back, I read an article about the recent slow decline in the sale of wrist watches in the US and Europe. It seems that people are one by one realizing that it's now nearly impossible to be out of sight of a clock of some sort, so why wear one?
Myself, I realized this 5 or 6 years ago. Then a slight rash appeared on my wrist under my current watch, and went away when I didn't wear the watch for a few days. So I simply laid it aside, and I haven't really missed it.
My computer screens all have the time in a corner. My car has the time display on the radio. In the kitchen, both the microwave and regular stove display the time. Nearly every room in the house has a clock in some gadget. Walking down the street, clocks are everywhere. My cell phone shows the time when it's not being used as a phone, so in the rare instances I can't see a clock, I can reach into my pocket and get one.
Watches really are pointless now for many of us, except as jewelry.
Analog watches are better when you're counting... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think what's happening here is that with the analog watch, you use the "number" part of your brain to count the pulses, while you use the visual part of your brain to see when your 60 seconds is up (by looking for the position of the second hand).
With a digital seconds readout, you end up using the "number" part of your brain for both tasks, and you get screwed up.
Re:Analog watches are better when you're counting. (Score:5, Interesting)
My TAG Heuer Formula 1 has taken one shit kicking after another; stills ticks away like a champ at work.
I don't think the digital plastic equivalent would hold up.
--
What about chemical photography? (Score:3, Interesting)
And yet people are still buying 35mm film, shooting pics on it, and having it processed. Those single-use cameras (manufacturers bristle at the word "disposable") are still quite popular.
I do see more and more people with digital cameras nowadays, naturally, but rumors of the death of chemical photography are greatly exaggerated. University art departments still teach the old-fashioned methods.
I could go on and on about this forever, but there are other and better posts to read below.
"Sweep Hand" Watches Rule (Score:5, Insightful)
And an important aspect of moving hands is that they convey information in their movement: in a cockpit the altimeter can be "read" very quickly to show whether the aircraft is ascending or descending. On a watch I can get an approximate time (it's almost 4:30pm) in a glance. Yet another example is a digital vs. analog scuba diving pressure gauge: the position of the mechanical arm can be understood very fast without worrying about the exact number of PSI left.
John.
Re:"Sweep Hand" Watches Rule (Score:4, Informative)
Re:"Sweep Hand" Watches Rule (Score:5, Insightful)
a few years ago a well know car maker brought out a digital only speedo in some of their models, the following year they went back to a pointer indication or a combination moving scale with digital display, why? because people didn't like the digital only display, when people look at a number, it takes a moment for that number to register in the brain and figure out what it means, with hands it takes less effort to work out the time
an analogue display is always faster in a glance in this respect
Toilet Paper (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Toilet Paper (Score:5, Funny)
Bidets? How old school is that? A real technophile uses the three seashells! [amazon.com]
Re:Toilet Paper (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe one square for a spot check, that's about it. Decreases you chances of diverticular disease too.
A smooth poop is a good poop.
--
Re:Toilet Paper (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Toilet Paper (Score:5, Funny)
I always wondered why the fuck there are pictures of babies on toilet paper. Or names likeAngel Soft [nobodys-perfect.com].
"Hi! Our toilet paper is soft! In fact, it's so soft that we've named it Angel Soft! Because every time you take a dump, we want you feel like you've just ripped a wing off the back of one of God's celestial servants, so that you could smear your shit all over it!"
If we ever need more evidence that marketing executives deserve to go to Hell, that seals it.
Digital Watch (Score:3, Insightful)
However, I've owned a digital watch and it takes *some* effort to *read* the actual time. And even after doing that, I form a mental image of what time it is in terms of analog look.
Digital watch? No, thanks. I'ma keep my analog. IMHO
Small benefits (Score:3, Informative)
The first is that you can usually make out the time further away, and in poorer lighting conditions, from an analog clock versus a digital.
The second is that you can use your analog watch as an impromptu compass. In the northern hemisphere, hold the watch flat and point the hour hand towards the sun. Now bisect the angle between the hour hand and the figure 12 (ie. noon) on your watch to give you a North-South line. In the southern hemisphere, hold the watch dial and point the figure 12 (ie. noon) towards the sun. The line that bisects the angle between the hour hand and the figure 12 is the North-South line.
For Those Who Won't Read The Article... (Score:3, Informative)
VHS (Score:4, Interesting)
One they missed, one they wiffed (Score:3, Interesting)
The one they missed is IEEE-488 (a.k.a. GPIB) - a control bus used in instrument control. 1 Mbyte/sec (unless you used a bastardized protocol), 30 units maximum, length limits, interface cards that cost US$500 or more, yet customers are STILL asking for GPIB over USB or Ethernet.
The one they wiffed on is vacuum tubes. Sorry, but when it comes to making high power RF amplifiers tubes are hard to beat - it is a great deal easier to use a vacuum tube running at 3000V to make a kilowatt of RF than a transistor at 30V - and when you get up to microwaves (2GHz and up) tubes are kings. True, when a (sic)audiophile(cough) claims tubes are better for low power audio.... Well, as a coworker of mine says, "I don't argue with wheelbarrows - I push them."
Dot matrix printers (Score:4, Insightful)
You can use it as an ouput terminal.
Try to do that with a laser printer. Won't die anytime soon.
Floppy Drives (Score:5, Interesting)
Bruce Sterling's article (Score:4, Informative)
Ten technologies that deserve to die [msn.com]
Uh, the floppy disk? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why get rid of something that work? (Score:4, Insightful)
vacuum tubes?! (Score:4, Insightful)
I love my Crate tube amp. It's so nice sounding.
This article... it's credibility is wavering at the moment. The author must have spent a whole 5 minutes looking for inspiration before giving up and writting this lousy article.
Re:vacuum tubes?! (Score:4, Informative)
PSA: Why vacuum tubes sound better (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you ever ask yourself -why- vacuum tubes sound better? There's a specific reason.
See, in a guitar amp, what you really want to do is overdrive the sound, creating distortion. That's the nice fuzz sound. When the signal is overdriven, the semiconductor clips off the top of the sound wave.
Vacuum tubes and transistors clip sound waves differently. In a transistor, the clip stays high until the signal drops, causing a square-shaped clip. In a vacuum tube, the signal drops after the clip, creating a sawtooth-shaped clip.
Brass and strings have sawtooth-shaped waveforms. Computers make square-shaped waveforms. So most people "like" the sound of a sawtooth better. So people like the vacuum tube sound better.
MOSFET transistors are now being used in solid-state audio equipment because they, too, have a sawtooth clip when they distort. Now note that this only matters if you actually overdrive the sound; folks who think a tube amp that isn't distorting sounds better than a solid-state amp are probably imagining things. But your Crate sounds better than my solid-state pedal because of the way the semiconductors in 'em clip.
FAX! (Score:4, Interesting)
In addition to that, there needs to be some way of physically inflicting pain upon people who print documents and don't pick them up from the printer. It's a waste to print at all, but if you then don't even get your wasted print out
Re:FAX! (Score:4, Insightful)
With a fax:
* I can send in my reciepts for health care reimbursement instantly AND keep the receipts.
* I can sign legally binding medical release forms and get medical documents on their way rather than stopping by the physical office (which may be in another state) or waiting for the mail to deliver forms.
* Faxing is cheaper than a 32 cent stamp in many cases.
* I don't have to worry about our inconsistent mail carrier who decided he didn't have to deliver to us more than once a week as well as kept mail at the office undelivered. He also has continuously misdelivered mail, both for us (my SO and me) and not for us.
"Timepieces" means what it says (Score:4, Insightful)
Not really. They're two-trick ponies; they tell me the time and the date. Last time I checked, "timepiece" meant "something that tells time".
Digital-watch wearers can check temperature, altitude, and the time in Tokyo, play tunes and games, and send messages.
None of which matters. I don't give a crap about the temperature, because it's moot; if I'm too cold or too hot, my body will tell me, and I'm usually smart enough to, based on time of day, season, location etc...figure out what I'm gonna need to wear(I may even, gasp, open the door and stick my head outside to see for myself). I don't give a crap about altitude, because honestly, that doesn't really mean anything to me, unless it comes on the news that anything under 1000 ft ASL is going to flood within the hour because the whole antarctic shelf just collapsed. I certainly don't give a crap about the time in Tokyo, because if I needed to know that sort of thing on a regular basis, I'd know what the differential is, and be able to do the rather easy math(anyone that can't do addition/subtraction for number under 30 needs serious help). In the meantime, I'll guess that they're approximately 12 hours behind EST since they're on the opposite side of the world.
In fact, the only reason I need a timepiece- since I(and most other people) can tell roughly what time of day it is...is because we need to be at certainly places at certain very specific times, where guessing isn't appropriate. The date function is small because we only need to look at it once a day, maybe twice, to remind ourselves. Form, meet function. So pardon me while I buy the nice, simple analog timepiece that looks nice(and will look nice for at least another 100 years) while you buy your stupid little toy that will break in 5 years(it'll be out of style in 6 months, if you're lucky). Were electric analog timepieces an improvement? Not really. Manual wind, I can sync to my computer, or even a radio program. But my electric analog watch needs battery replacement every year or so, and since it only comes out on special occasions, it's nearly always dead.
I have the same objection to cameraphones. I want my phone to do 3 things. a)let me find a number for someone I know b)let me know when someone is calling c)let me make calls.
Notice nowhere in there was "annoy coworkers with polyphonic ringtones." Or "take pictures"(I use my camera to take pictures, and they look 1000x better than anything any cameraphone will ever produce). Or "tell me the weather". I haven't even bothered to use the AIM functions, or SMS. I use my phone for one thing- telephone calls.
I once mentored for the middle school science olympiad. Mind you, these kids are supposed to be the brightest of the bunch- the kids who enjoy science and thinking on their feet. "Okay, you guys have until 3pm to finish this practice". (loooong pause) "Um, we don't have any watches on." "There's a clock right there on the wall." (blank stares.) "Um...we don't know how to read those kinds of clocks". How pathetic is that?
Invalid Association (Score:5, Insightful)
As a guitar player, I'm insulted that this article lumps me in with the conspicuously-consuming audiophiles that drop hundreds of dollars on cleverly marketed cables. Tubes aren't an imaginary sound modifier in guitar amps, they are universally agreed to distort (clip) in much nicer ways when sent an overpowered signal compared to transistors. Only now in the 21st century are we beginning to see digital amps that can compete with this "ancient" technology. The article is correct that the consumer-level tube market is helped along by musicians, but the reasons have nothing to do with Audiophile-type superstition that seems to be implied. The tube vs. solid state harmonic patterns are quantitively different, and empirically better. I would no go so far as to label us as the cognoscenti, but rather people who aren't obviously deaf (and anyone here who has heard a clipping solid state amp will agree).
Pen/Ink/Paper (Score:5, Insightful)
PDAs have their role, but they can be slow. Plus, I can't jot something down and tape it do a doorway or under a windshield wiper with an LCD screen.
Broadcast radio (Score:4, Insightful)
Now digital radio involves a bunch of semi open technologies, patents and licensing. Sometimes it just seems like technology for technologies sake, and maybe locking people into the royalty cycle?
Fscking Google Spammers (Score:5, Interesting)
Presenting different content to Google than to random visitors is deceitful. They want the Google goodness of appearing to offer publically available content, but don't actually want to offer it. They're effectively lying to Google. If you don't want to offer content to non-subscriber's, that's fine. (I pay for two subscriber only online magazines that I respect. They play fair and their content either isn't indexed, or only the table of contents and summary pages are indexed.) But don't lie about the availability of content to Google. (I'm complaining now because this article features just such an example regarding Tech Review's use of this sleazy trick [google.com]. My other pet peeve is IGN [google.com].)
Anyway, if you encounter this crap, step one is to report the site to Google [google.com]. This is a case of "Page does not match Google's description" and "Cloaked page" and is clearly web spam.
Step two is to read the page anyway. Set your web browser's user agent "Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)" and you're good to go. You may also need to disable JavaScript so you don't get redirected. Personally I just suck down the page with "wget --user-agent="Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html) http://www.example.com/".
Watches and dot-matrix printers (Score:4, Insightful)
Dot-matrix printers: This is probably lost on folks who came of age after inkjet and laser took over, but I find it a lot easier to read code when it's not interrupted by arbitrary page breaks. I long ago got in the habit of printing out code modules on greenbar paper, marking them up with highlighters and ballpoint notations, and tacking them to the wall. The later 24-pin models are reasonably quiet, perfectly legible, fast, and cheap as hell to operate. Moreover, they last forever, too. I still have and use an Epson dot matrix from 1984, and it works as well as when it was new. And if you want to do multipart forms, you can't use anything else.
And while this wasn't on the list, I have to mention...
Analog film cameras: There are still a lot of things you can't do as well digitally, but even if that were not the case, that's missing the point. Photography is an activity, just like snowboarding or building hotrods. Even if digital was better across the board, a lot of people would still use film cameras, just as a lot of people kept painting after film arrived.
Why an analog watche is MY choice of time piece. (Score:4, Interesting)
To date, I have several American pocket watches, the oldest made in 1886 and the newest made in 1912. I even managed to find a 17 jewel Waltam Appleton Tracy Railroad pocket watch at an auction for $58 back in 1992. It needed some work, so I took it to a certified master watchmaker to replace the main spring, cleaned it using ultrasonic waves, and lubricated everything again. THIS WATCH KEEPS PERFECT TIME, and it's almost 100 years old!
Now I wear an Orient (subsidiary of Seiko) that has an automatic winding mechanism, has a second hand sweep, tells the day and the date, has a 21-jewel movement, is water resistant to 50 meters, is made of all stainless steel construction, and it only cost me $40 (you have to know where to get them at low cost). I wear THIS watch because I work around NMR instruments ALL DAY and it is unaffected by the superconducting magnets and the 10 Gauss magnetic field. The only thing "wrong" with the watch is that it gains 5 minutes every two weeks, otherwise, I'm VERY happy with THIS cheapo analog watch.
ALL YOUR TIME ARE BELONG TO THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM.
Musical Instruments (Score:5, Informative)
And speaking of tubes - the rich nonlinear sound of a tube amplifier hasn't yet been replaced by a more modern equivalent, especially for electric guitar. I think one of the articles mentioned vacuum tubes.
Piano, horns, guitar - most all acoustic instruments have nice sounding synthesized sampled versions that can be had at a fraction of the cost. These can be played from your computer or a keyboard. Yet the physical instruments, as expensive and potentially out of tune as they are, will probably always be preferred because of their human interface. Similarly, drum machines, which do not show up late or steal your girlfriend, are not replacing human drummers playing acoustic drums, except in 80's music and certain "techo" genres.
Analog vs. Digital Watches (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a west coast guy, it's late in the day, so nobody will read this anyway, but...
I've read all of the analog vs. digital debate. It's great to see such spirited debate over these simple devices.
This is the way I see it:
So here is my takeaway:
For what it's worth...
Re:Old-fashioned watches (Score:5, Informative)
Cheers!
--RjS
Re:Windows NT (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Bruce Sterling link (Score:5, Informative)
Re:#1 : Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
How on earth can you describe an analog watch as more intuitive than a digital watch? More elegant, certainly. But intuitive? A digital watch shows the numbers. If you can read them, you can tell the time. An analog watch uses one set of numbers (or positions, as many don't even have actual numerals on the face) for two different things. You have to learn what each hand means, and what each position means in the context of each hand. Once you learn it, it becomes straightforward and easy, but it's definitely the opposite of intuitive.
The REAL reason I wear an analog watch (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're wearing a digital watch: it's 9:43 and 17 seconds!!! Urk!!!
Geez... ya sound like a total dweeb!
Digital Speedometers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The REAL reason I wear an analog watch (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The REAL reason I wear an analog watch (Score:4, Interesting)
"Geek and proud!" As proof, I offer not merely the fact that I prefer digital watches, but that I set them to 24-hour time.
Actually, that's an interesting point. If it's a foot race of 10 seconds, 500ms accuracy probably isn't enough. If it's a road trip of 2 hours, being accurate to the nearest minute is probably sufficient.
Maybe I'm a left-brained geek, but I always found it easier to parse 02:44 instead of having to eyeball my way from 12-to-almost-3 and again from 12-to-almost-9.
02:44 is unambiguous on a digital watch, even by the light of the CRT. On an analog watch, it's sometimes hard to tell which hand is the bigger one. At 14:44 it's a little easier, at 02:44 it's a little more difficult.
I was going to make a snarky wisecrack about how if you can't tell the difference between 0244 and 1444, you've got bigger problems than any watch can solve.
Then I realized that the same argument applies to 0455 and 1655. If you're at certain latitudes, for several months of the year, those two times can be hard to tell apart on anything but a digital watch. And hey, this is Slashdot, where not knowing which half of the day we're talking about is part of the game.
Re:The REAL reason I wear an analog watch (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The REAL reason I wear an analog watch (Score:4, Interesting)
Even if your country uses the metric system, you weren't raised in a base-10 world. Yes, it is true that almost all integral arithmetic is represented in base 10. But dominant does not mean exclusive.
Of course, that's entirely beside the point. This is why you really have no clue:
The distinction between decimal and sexagesimal representation has no connection whatsoever with the difference between an analog visual representation and a digital numeric display.
You're doing the sexagesimal math in your head every time you look at your digital watch, or you wouldn't have any clue how much time had elapsed between 2:35 and 3:10. However, on an analog display, it's easy to see that there are seven groups of five marks between the two points, or 35 minutes. In fact, unless your digital watch is using 24 hour time, you have to use duodecimal (base 12) arithmetic to find the difference between 9:00 and 2:00. On most analog displays, there are five clearly delineated hour segments between the numbers in question.
If I neaded to measure times below 500ms, I'd invest in a quality stopwatch. But I wouldn't want to wear it on my wrist.
Don't mistake your lamentable inability to read an analog display as a weakness of the concept. You're just to lazy to learn something that takes all of a few day's casual practice (i.e., wearing an analog watch and looking at it when you want to know the time) to become second nature.
Think about it: Which is a better representation, a diagram of a right angle, or the numeral 90? That numeral being associated with the right angle is just another example of the many facets of this 'base-10' world you were raised in that is not, in fact, decimal. Trecentesexagesimal, perhaps, in this instance.
Also, a classy analog watch has approximately thirteen thousand times the sex appeal of wearing uglyfont numbers on your arm.
The REAL reason I wear an analog watch: Cultural (Score:5, Insightful)
Digital watches always scream the same time: It's always NOW. NOW, NOW, NOW. There is no sense of future or past inherent in the digital watch. For people who grew up in a time when past events and future possibilities were important enough to receive attention whenever consulting the current time, the digital watch is lacking.
Finally, as an oceangoing navigator, there is something very basic about the analog chronometer that is completely lacking with those little LCD's. 12 Goes into 360 just fine, which can be handy when thinking in terms of time being relative to a circle on the globe. It just isn't as apparent on the digital watch. There are a bunch of short-cuts when figuring out position that just isn't suited for digital. Also, a wind-up chronometer is somewhat less likely to suffer EMP from close lightning.
Re:The REAL reason I wear an analog watch: Cultura (Score:5, Insightful)
I also race cars sometimes... there's a reason analog instruments are preferred. A *very* quick glance down instantly tells you what you need to know, almost without taking your eyes off the track. A pressure driven analog oil gauge can tell you information about the condition of your engine from the motion of the needle, something you wouldn't get from a digital instrument.
There are lots of times that analog is superior.
Larry
Re:#1 : Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
Analog Forever (roughly) (Score:5, Insightful)
With a digital clock you have to read the number do the math and then figure out what the resulting number means. That's too much work if your real attention is on something else.
With an analog clock you just note the distance. As that distance gets smaller, so does your time left.. simple as that.
If I have to wake up at a specific time without (or ahead of) an alarm clock, I'll look at the time, convert to analog if necessary (I have a digital watch) and imagine the movement that has to occur between now and when I have to wake up... then I'll go to sleep and wake up at the apointed time.
Dunno why it works. I read it in a (fiction) book once, and tried it. It worked, so I kept it in my bag of tricks.
Re:#1 : Slashdot (Score:4, Insightful)
Wit someone down with an analog clock who has never seen one before, and tell me how intuitive it is. How did you learn which hand was the hours? Did you know that the first time you saw one? How did you know how the hands moved? How did you know that they moved at all?
Your logic that it's graphical, therefor intuitive is flawed. I can make lots of graphic representations of time... but I doubt you'll understand them without me explaining them.
Re:#1 : Slashdot (Score:4, Interesting)
It's intuitive because the hour hand is not far removed from the natural phenomenon of a cast shadow. The main difference is that the function extends beyond daylight hours. Minute and second hands quickly reveal their function as being subsets of the hour hand.
So yes, it is intuitive. It is an instrument whose human interface is modelled on a universally-shared human experience. How more intuitive could you possibly make it?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:#1 : Slashdot (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. I typically do not want to know the exact time time, but want to know how far away I am from some past or future time.
Grand Central Terminal used to have analog clocks, and if I was running for a train it was easy to see if I had time to make it, but when they changed to digital I had to stop and do time math to figure things out. Sounds trivial, but looking at the distance between the minute hand and some numeral was easier to parse than a string of digits.