livebriand

June 19, 2011 at 6:43pm

Actually, with some arcade machines, there's a suprise waiting. With one of them, I managed to exit the game interface and guess what? I was staring at the Windows XP desktop. I looked at the system properties and found it was actually a Dell. I opened Notepad and found the game control keys actually responded to certain keyboard keys. The PC may have killed it, but it IS a pc sometimes. Wait, a PC killing a PC? What?

tonymus

June 19, 2011 at 6:09pm

1) My office is not quite a "paperless office", but it is a "less paper" office, thanks to the inventions of PDF files and document management systems.  Major portions of my job, which filled up whole file cabinets, are now completely paperless.

2) We still have a fax machine and use it regularly, although we don't use it as much as in the past.

3) Typewriters are still a necessary evil for certain statistical typing jobs.

 

 

MeanSquare

June 18, 2011 at 3:06pm

Agreed on all of these, but the one I really hate is "The Paperless Office."  No matter how many times I point out how much easier it is to keep electronic copies, we still have people who get a document in e-mail and immediately print it out(!!) and file it (as a backup (!!!)).  I, on the other hand, have most of my important stuff backed up via Cobonite and sitting on the cloud as well.  I'd like to see paper die a quick death, but I suspect it'll be around for another generation.

RUSENSITIVESWEETNESS

June 18, 2011 at 4:50am

I still buy CDs. I can play them in my car without the need for extra hardware. MP3s are nice enough, but just do not take the place of CDs in terms of quality and overall value. To me, MP3s are just advertising: They introduce me to music I'd never know otherwise, so I can make informed decisions about the CDs I buy.

ShyLinuxGuy

June 16, 2011 at 1:49pm

How was a fax machine a mainstay *for several decades?* I may be wrong, but I don't think the fax machine as we know it was around for more than two decades (since the 80s)...It must be me, but I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that fax machines were around since the 1970s or even the 60s or 50s. "Several", as I perceive it, means "more than four or five".

I don't know why fax is around anymore, there's a thing called creating your document as a PDF and sending it as an attachment, or scanning and attaching the hard copy. I wonder why businesses still use fax when they can send and receive by email...much easier, less hassle, and everyone's happy, and you don't have to have clients/suppliers/whatever who are in the New Age struggle to find the nearest Kinko's to send or receive what could have been sent in an effortless two seconds. 

T0mmy1977

June 16, 2011 at 12:15pm

We still use fax machines in our office.

neros1x

June 16, 2011 at 11:48am

I still buy CDs, because I like having archival quality music and ripping it to different codecs. Plus, there are a few bands out there with excellent album design. The difference is now I can easily find out if a CD is worth a buy or if I should just pick up a few songs off of it.

Amon Amarth's Versus the World is far more compelling taken as a whole than in bits and pieces. Same thing with pretty much anything Coheed & Cambria have put out. Many of Coheed's songs especially would make no sense taken out of the album context. I can think of others; David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust comes to mind. If anything, I think the availability of downloadable music has made album writing better, because its just not cost effective anymore to fill an album with crap. Those bands and producers that put effort and creativity into album construction really stand out.

suzybel

June 16, 2011 at 11:02am

I still have my Funk and Wagnalls on my bookshelf.  Sometimes it is still nice to look at a book.

Marthian

June 16, 2011 at 12:14am

I miss CD's, its better than owning it online, for which you can't EVER get deals on usually. I got Mesmerize (System of a Down) for $3, thats about 10 tracks for the price of 3.

pearson101

June 15, 2011 at 8:48pm

The IPad or something like it could bring us closer to a paperless office.  Most of my printing is because I need or want information somewhere that a desktop or laptop is inconvenient.

tom_stone

June 15, 2011 at 8:30pm

Here's a scenario that still uses fax machines. Client has papers that need to be signed,  the paperwork is emailed to them or downloaded online, the other entity needs the docs right away, so the client faxs the signed docs over. I know you scan the documents and email them but not everyone is handy with a scanner and many people still find a fax easier to use to send signed docs to others quickly.

-=GNO=-

June 15, 2011 at 6:41pm

I like how you tried to pass off miniature arcade games on a bookshelf as a video arcade.  I thought that was pretty funny.

kiddcreole99

June 15, 2011 at 5:13pm

With the surfacing of ISP-imposed bandwidth caps, it could be quite some time before the movie rental brick-and-mortars (or little red boxes) are gone. My moving watching preference leans towards streaming, but not if the cost of my monthly internet service exceeds my movie rental costs from having to pay bandwidth overages! 

DAMN YOU ISPs!!!

matthewrhoden1

June 15, 2011 at 5:03pm

I feel like streaming blueray movies is going to kill any chance of a decently fast internet. The video quality is also only going to go up. So no matter how fast the internet becomes, streaming video is going to saturate that new bandwidth. :( Fast internet was a nice thought though. 

iceman08

June 15, 2011 at 4:56pm

I still prefer film cameras, personally

kixofmyg0t

June 15, 2011 at 3:31pm

I think Redbox was another good reason behind the death of Blockbuster. Redbox is SOOOO much better when it comes to getting new movies.

someuid

June 15, 2011 at 3:29pm

I stopped using phone books when I moved to Phoenix and had to call places to ask what cross roads they were at so I knew if driving and finding them was even feasible.  It was just easier to drive around the local area one day, making note of every store I saw or asking the neighbor.

Mapquest and Google Maps put the final nail in the coffin.  Now when someone brings the new phone book to my desk at work, I chase them off with a used tissue.

Now that I live in a smaller town (10,000 people) the phone book is still relevent, but only used once or twice a year.

I do keep one in the car, but it is just for numbers for police and highway patrol, and maps of the major towns I might be visiting.

Would someone please outlaw fax machines already?

Neufeldt2002

June 15, 2011 at 3:15pm

Still use phone books where I live, and I think auto-tune needs to die a really horrible death.