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BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: gnu Date: 05 May 12 - 05:23 PM Bert... my HP printer could do E size drawings (the largest used in construction contract plans) but along came a lot of printers that could do 11X17". MUCH cheaper to send out my contract plans that way. Far less time to print and to upload too. And, programming coloured ink pens was a thing of the past, thank goodness. I tossed my draughting board when I could use the 11X17s on my desk and on my PC. I actually do all my stuff on letter size now. More sheets of paper but printers are dirt cheap. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: gnu Date: 05 May 12 - 05:39 PM Jmie Lee... Sexy! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: gnu Date: 05 May 12 - 05:42 PM Noooo. I misposted. And with a typo! Getting old REALLY does suck. Sorry. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: Paul Burke Date: 05 May 12 - 06:11 PM filofax. Pagers. Tape splicers. Bus tokens Meat safes Post Office savings books Rediffusion switches |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: GUEST,roderick warner Date: 05 May 12 - 06:33 PM 'folk music' |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: Paul Burke Date: 05 May 12 - 06:54 PM blokes called Roderick |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: DMcG Date: 06 May 12 - 04:39 AM OK, I think it might be interesting to concentrate on that question mark and look for things that are not obsolete now but will be in the remaining part of our lifetime. My nominations include: iPods - there will be something like them, but I don't just mean style changes. I mean as big a difference as current iPods from cassette-based walkman. 3D films etc. Goes in and out of fashion all the time. I reckon we will have a fallow period soon for another decade or so. Touch screen phones - the compromise necessary between as small a phone as possible for convenience and the fact peoples fingers are pretty big will lead to a better solution. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: GUEST,Eliza Date: 06 May 12 - 09:26 AM I'm so blinking old that there probably isn't much of my lifetime left! If items aren't obsolete now, a few more years won't change things much. But I reckon youngsters will be permanently plugged in to mobile phone devices inserted into their heads (like heart pacemakers) so they can talk to their hearts' content. They could perhaps 'think' a friend's contact number to speak to them. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: saulgoldie Date: 06 May 12 - 01:35 PM Dot matrix printers? If'n anyone cares, I have "a few" for gives. I have several 8.5" wide, anda few 11" wide. I also have two boxes of 8.5 X 11 paper for same. And some--a LOT--of 4-wide mailing labels with the sticky still good that work on the w-i-d-e printers! If intrested, lemme know. It's the shipping that'll kill ya. BTW, Huw, "I miss the demise of the typewriter?" Methinks you "mourn the demise of the typewriter." Or that you "miss the typerwriter." But "miss the *demise of* the typewriter?" That'sa double-positive, which is not very much unlike a contra-positive. But youknowwhatImsayin... Saul |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: MGM·Lion Date: 06 May 12 - 01:57 PM I still keep my old manual typewriter. Tho nearly all I write is WP'd & printed out these days just like everybody else's, when it comes to putting it in the post the reliable old Imperial is incomparably simplest and most efficient for doing the envelope. Likewise for form-filling. ~M~ |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: saulgoldie Date: 06 May 12 - 02:15 PM And, G-d willing, my fountain pen will always survive, even if there are only eleventeen of us left on earth who still know how to write with one. Saul |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: gnu Date: 06 May 12 - 02:25 PM Fountain pens! The last time I used one was to spray a buddy with ink! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: MGM·Lion Date: 06 May 12 - 02:31 PM Hope you got the [obsolete] cane, gnu! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 06 May 12 - 02:37 PM Used drafting tables are easy to sell here and hard to find. Artists and hobbiests on the lookout for them, also want those large deep filing cabinets for drafting work (also desired by art collectors who have collections of prints and unmounted art). Gnu, you didn't look in the proper places. Destroying a drafting table is unconscionable. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: Dave MacKenzie Date: 06 May 12 - 03:33 PM I just used my fountain pen a few minutes ago! Much easier to write legibly than with a ball-point, and you don't need to support the paper on anything. As a near neighbour of Mr Happy (just over 2 miles), I hve no difficulty in getting proper mutton or loose vegetables. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: Gurney Date: 06 May 12 - 04:05 PM Yeah, a certain amount of that in the back-blocks here, Dave. They call it 'rustling.' 'Near' neighbour? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: Dave MacKenzie Date: 06 May 12 - 04:31 PM We have a very healthy farmers' market scene around here, not to mention quite a few farm shops. I try not to buy supermarket meat, as you never know where it's come from. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: Joe_F Date: 06 May 12 - 06:31 PM Steam locomotives Galvanized-iron garbage cans (good riddance!) Bookstores (sigh -- Amazon is *so* convenient!) Record stores |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: gnu Date: 06 May 12 - 06:50 PM Q... Alberta is a long way to transport a draughting table. >;-) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: Joe_F Date: 06 May 12 - 08:27 PM And, oh, yes, let us hope: The publishing industry The entertainment industry Fashion Drug laws |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: gnu Date: 06 May 12 - 08:46 PM Joe... good luck with that. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: GUEST,Stim Date: 06 May 12 - 09:32 PM MtheGM made me remember that educated and literate young people were once expected to be able to read Latin (and even Greek) and to read and speak French. Not sure to this day quite why we needed it, but that is true of most of what we were taught. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: Mr Happy Date: 07 May 12 - 08:10 AM 'young people were once expected to be able to read Latin (and even Greek...' A bit've thread drift [apols] but another maybe linked topic of what we all were given to learn at school & how relevant or not it's been in our lives. Ohms Law: never used it Algebra, no French, no - German &/or Spanish would've been more useful plus piles of other stuff completely irrelevant or well outmoded |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: MGM·Lion Date: 07 May 12 - 01:12 PM Most regrettably ~~ any sort of seemly respect for traditionally and properly cherished institutions. 30 years ago, when I was only late-middle-aged, I would not have believed that the time would ever come, as occurred early in the second half of the West Ham v Cardiff City play-off match just coming to an end, when a football crowd, in the midst of its usual diet of facetious doggerel set to the tunes of standard pop-songs, casting doubt on the ancestry and legitimacy of the opposition team and its supporters, would have raucously roared and squealed out the whole of our National Anthem, as part of that folklorically interesting but generally somewhat pathetic repertoire. I consider this shameful. Don't you? ~M~ |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: Bert Date: 07 May 12 - 01:19 PM Flavor. Everything nowadays seems to have been yuppified or consumerized to a uniform bland. From molasses and Marmite, which have been wimped down; and fruit and vegetables that have been picked before they are ripe so that they can be shipped halfway 'round the world. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: DMcG Date: 07 May 12 - 02:38 PM MtheGM made me remember that educated and literate young people were once expected to be able to read Latin (and even Greek) and to read and speak French. Not sure to this day quite why we needed it I was in Italy at the end of December last year. I speak no Italian but was able to get the gist of the written explanations of an exhibition based on half remembered Latin from school. Having my Italian daughter-in-law to hand to confirm my guesses helped, of course. And I've done the same - usually without the assurance of a native speaker, to be honest - in many other countries. My son speaks fluent Spanish as well as English, but he found the same explanations at the exhibition impenitratible |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: CupOfTea Date: 07 May 12 - 05:28 PM Green Stamps! (few folks "get" the parody of Greensleeves about Green Stamps anymore) In Cleveland, you got Green Stamps at May Company store and some gas stations. We saved 'em up till we had enough to fill several "stamp books" - and spent a marathon session with an ice cube set on a papertowel in a saucer. You'd slide the stamps over the ice cube to lick them. One book = a $3 coupon for merchandise at May Company. Seriously obsolete is the entire concept of gas station give-aways. Maps, posters, & I fondly remember a set of glasses from Shell that had a football logo on them that were smoky glass that were very comfortable in the hand. I still miss 'em. In this area the mom-and-pop independent pharmacy/drug store has vanished, made obsolete by CVS on every corner that doesn't have a Rite Aid or Walgreen's. Joanne in Cleveland |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: GUEST,PeterC Date: 07 May 12 - 06:14 PM Petrol (gas) station give-aways! I had forgotten them. At one time most of our coffee mugs and tumblers had been acquired that way. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: Skivee Date: 08 May 12 - 12:51 AM I have a collection of several vintage cameras going back to around 1903, but the ones that kinda hurt are the ones that I actually used. My Nikon Ftn/F-36 motor drive both backed it in just after the film world started to implode. It would cost more to repair than the system is worth. My whole field of photographic processes, process quality control and copying systems are now historic footnotes. I was at a professional expert level in all these technical areas. I still keep the obsolete manuals next to the 1955 Collier's Encyclopedia. The encyclopedia is an amazing repository of countries that are gone, scientifically incorrect "facts", next to the four page dense article about the mathematics and dynamics of seaplane hull design. Really. I'll probably remove or scan the interesting pages and dispose of the rest. The seaplane hull article will certainly be rescued in some form. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: GUEST Date: 08 May 12 - 03:11 AM "The encyclopedia is an amazing repository of countries that are gone, scientifically incorrect "facts", next to the four page dense article about the mathematics and dynamics of seaplane hull design. Really." A good and useful thought--it makes one wonder about whole concept of "The Information Age" |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: GUEST,Eliza Date: 08 May 12 - 06:49 AM HAving studied Latin myself, I'm wondering just how many students at secondary school today tackle it. Not many, I'd guess. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: CupOfTea Date: 08 May 12 - 05:47 PM Another thread brought to mind the loathsome concept of appliances with "planned obsolescence" This irks me highly - paying a couple hundred dollars for a device that breaks and cannot be repaired. Replacement parts are not made for it, or it's structured in such a way that a competent technician can't get at the broken parts - just not made to be fixed. I fear for the future of "appliance repair person" as a job category. Much as I hate it, I can see that the obsolescence of this and similar job categories is coming in my lifetime I fault the Big-Box-Store-Think for this set of dismal prospects. Joanne in Cleveland (who has a half dozen broken devices I can't bear to toss out because they ought to be repairable) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: Ross Campbell Date: 08 May 12 - 10:36 PM MtheGM:- dial telephones still work - I plugged one in last week to check if there was a dialling-tone on my failing line - they just don't produce the tones necessary to respond to automatic payment processes. Still using cassettes in my ten-year-old car - and re-discovering lots of music I haven't been able to play since the player in the previous car died five years ago (I still have cassette players and recorders in the house, but mostly inaccessible). And I'm wondering where my cassette splicer is, and will the splicing tape still work so I can fix the Ran-Tan Band cassette I bought from Dave Mallinson at Whitby last year? I was happy to find that my ten-year-old laser printer could be reloaded with toner from a bottle for a couple of pounds, when I used to shell out about £60 for a toner cartridge. I am about to part with a Bang & Olufsen CRT TV which I haven't been able to get to work (no remote, no switches I can find on the set) if anyone wants to take it on. Things aren't necessarily obsolete because other people have no use for them - cf traditional music for a start! Ross |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: Big Al Whittle Date: 08 May 12 - 11:19 PM yes teachers in those days were on more solid ground with Latin and Greek - after all there were no ancient Greeks or Romans at hand to tell them they were talking bollocks. When our twin town in France came to visit us, I remember our French teacher had considerable problems making himself intelligible to actual French people - this despite a firm grasp on irregular verbs, pluperfects etc. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: MGM·Lion Date: 08 May 12 - 11:24 PM Oh yes indeed,Ross ~ lots of things are still around somewhere: but do you actually know anybody at all whose landline phones still have dials on them? By same token, I can still play my cassettes on my player, & in my old car; & my vinyls, as they not too long ago produced a new generation of 33/45 decks, one of which I snapped up while available. Anyone still making them? But vain to deny that these things are, to all intents & purposes, obsolete, in the sense that they are not being made any more, & means to use them are becoming harder & harder to find. ~M~ |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: Gurney Date: 09 May 12 - 02:44 AM Michael, yes, they are still available. Here, anyway. Try googling for a Optimus LAB 1100, which has a preamp and connects directly to a computer to burn LPs to CDs. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: MGM·Lion Date: 09 May 12 - 03:37 AM Many thanks, Gurney. Now that I have the player for them, I prefer to keep my LPs as they are: I really have a nostalgic soft spot for so many of them. & at my time of life, for the amount of play I'd get out of them in my few remaining years, it's probably not worth the investment. But I appreciate the helpful suggestion, which I am sure will be of much help to others reading this thread. ~M~ |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: Dave MacKenzie Date: 09 May 12 - 03:54 AM There'a good reason why you don't use dial-up handsets nowadays - after a few weeks all the other phones on your number will be buggered, if not the whole street. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: Jim Dixon Date: 09 May 12 - 08:59 AM The semicolon: hardly anyone uses it nowadays. I use semicolons a lot, although I find it hard to explain why. It's a way of showing the connectedness of two clauses that would be lost if you used a period (full stop), where a word like "therefore" or "however" seems superfluous. I think a semicolon captures a certain subtle inflection that we use when speaking. I don't know any hard and fast rules for using semicolons; I just put them in where I hear that inflection in my "mind's ear." |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: MGM·Lion Date: 09 May 12 - 10:26 AM You haven't been reading my posts, Jim; have you now?! Someone in one of David Lodge's novels says that nobody ever used a semicolon in a suicide note; I was able to point out to him that my late first wife Valerie did. ~M~ |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: Joe_F Date: 09 May 12 - 09:31 PM Vacuum tubes, including even cathode-ray tubes. Incandescent lamps. Magnetic core storage. If we live long enough: Lead-acid batteries. Reciprocating engines. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: Mo the caller Date: 10 May 12 - 06:49 AM Horsehair mattresses, feather beds, turning the mattress. "What care I for your goose feather bed with the sheets turned down so bravely oh I've got a nice new spring interior, along with a 14 tog duvet-o." The childrens action rhyme "make the bed, shake the bed, turn the mattress over" is obsolete, but a revival is planned at the Chester Festival family ceilidh. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: GUEST Date: 10 May 12 - 08:32 PM Carburetors. Movie serials. Movie sing-alongs. Free dinnerware at the movies. Ash cans milk and bleach deliveries. inner tubes. msgnetic memory BASIC programming mimeographs. hectographs. Presstype carbon paper. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: GUEST Date: 11 May 12 - 12:19 AM wire recorders, disc recorders (both wax and magnetic), tape recorders, mono recordings |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: Uncle_DaveO Date: 13 May 12 - 11:38 AM Bert commented, From molasses and Marmite, which have been wimped down; and fruit and vegetables that have been picked before they are ripe so that they can be shipped halfway 'round the world. Flavor is gone from And even if you should want to raise tomatoes in your own garden, you'll have almost no chance of getting seeds for the good old-time-flavor tomatoes (what are referred to as "legacy tomatoes"). The great, great, great majority of tomatoes are bred and produced for ketchup, and tomato soup, and pasta sauce and the like. The seed companies produce seeds industrially for varietals intended for those industries, or for mass-raised beautiful-but-tasteless TSOs(*), sort of round objects which can be shipped and merchandised cheaply; flavor is not a desideratum. (*)TSOs = Tomato shaped objects. End of rant. Dave Oesterreich |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: GUEST,Eliza Date: 13 May 12 - 11:52 AM MtheGM I am very sorry to learn that your late first wife wrote a suicide note. I am not asking about the circumstances, but only wish to express my sympathy. Eliza |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: dick greenhaus Date: 13 May 12 - 11:56 PM Dave- Territorial sells a variety of heirloom tomato (seeds and plants) that are very good. They're only a bit pricier than the more-common hybrids. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: MGM·Lion Date: 14 May 12 - 10:57 AM Eliza ~~ Thank you for your kind words. If you would like to know anything about it, google -Grosvenor Myer suicide-. It became a bit of a cause celebre a few years ago when I went public about it as part of assisted suicide campaign: I had major press interviews, was on Newsnight on same report as Debby Purdy [tho we have not met] &c. All this is online. But if you would rather not know, that is OK too. Best ~Michael~ |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: Jim Dixon Date: 14 May 12 - 04:14 PM Bleach delivery? Are you kidding? Why bleach? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime? From: Jim Dixon Date: 14 May 12 - 04:19 PM Inner tubes are still used as a way to repair tubeless tires that have developed a leak that can't be repaired any other way. And don't bicycle tires still have inner tubes? |
