TechStuff Classic: Old Tech Never Dies

These would be old computer systems that are no longer supported necessarily but still need to stick around for one reason or another. So we have our conversation here about what legacy tech is and why it still exists. It's in an episode that was titled Old Tech Never Dies. I hope you enjoy are episode today comes courtesy of a listener, and this one is a message from Twitter. So let's hear that tweeting sound effect. I think I actually heard our producers say, do do out there? Tweet

tweet tweet lovely. I hope that. I hope that's what we use. Anyway, I won't know until I get to listen to this later. But this comes to us from Wayne P. Seventy two, who says I would love to hear a show on old tech that won't go away. I E The Facts. Well, we are going to do an episode about that, but not one on just the Facts. I wanted to do that. You know, we might get sued. I was wondering. I was looking at him like, is

he gonna do it? He's none our guy Friday. So anyway, we are going to talk about technology that a lot of people feel, or at least some people feel, or at least we at tex stuff feel has run its course and yet it's still around. Yes, and The Facts is one of those. So we actually had a couple that we thought about that we ended up deciding not to include in this list, but we should go ahead and mention them because a couple of years ago they

may have made the list. Yeah, that's true. And it's funny because right before we were we were going to record, we were talking about how we had done an episode on abandoned ware, which is stuff that, uh, people just give up on. Yeah, usually it's a company that gives up on it, but yeah, it's the stuff that people no longer even bother using, and it's just sort of part of history. This is the opposite people will not

let go of. And the two that we were thinking of that we did not include because we just feel that they've both kind of faded away enough so that it's a very small percentage of people that still hold onto These are pages, which you know, sometimes some people are a few people, especially folks in like the medical field or whatever, we'll still use them, but pages are pretty much been replaced by cell phones and smartphones, and p d as also replaced primarily by smartphones personal digital

assistance not a public displaces of affection. Those will never go out of style smoogy smodgy. So those are the two that we almost included but didn't because we feel that there's just not enough of a population supporting them to merit being on this list. So since Wayne brought this up, we probably should go ahead and start with fax machines. Yes, and yeah, I mean the fax machine still used in many many offices. You still see people's

facts numbers. You know, there's one out there in the office. I've actually used it quite a few times. Yep, yep. But the thing is, I mean, well, it uses you know, of course, it uses a similar imaging technology to a scanner or a copier machine. Um, there's nothing really wrong with it. It Uh, you know, it has a modem. That's the that's part of the problem. I think it has a mote a minute. And uh you know when you when you scan some stuff in it saves it

in memory. These days it does anyway. You don't have to put it in one page at a time, although you used to, um where you put it on there and it would it dials the number. It makes a connection with the fax machine on the other side, just like you would uh with a dial up internet connection. Um. You know, there's a handshake between the two devices. They agree on the protocol and it says, okay, go ahead and send your whatever message this is going to be.

And uh, you know, the facts either takes the information from memory or it scans each page individually and sends it along down the line really slowly. Receiving machine receives that information, decodes, it changes it into the type of information it needs in order to print prints to some paper. And then you have the facts on the other end, which somebody puts in a tray and it never gets to the person that's supposed to Could you ever have to use a fax machine that had a roll of

paper as a wasted individual sheets. Yeah, they had the thermal printers and of course that that just curls up. Also, it's yes, I do not miss those days. So today we write. What we could do is, let's say we have a scanner and we just scan a document in and send it via change it over to say a PDF format, which is readily available. It's easy to find

a reader for PDF. A lot of free reader a free reader, and a lot of word processing programs and things are capable of reading a PDF file and uh, you just send that via email and you don't have to worry about wasting paper or any of that mess Or if say a fact machine is busy with a with a call, then you won't get a rejection and have to try it again. That's another thing that can

be kind of irritating with sending a fact. Let's say you've got like a twenty page facts and you start going through and you don't know until it's gone through all twenty pages stored in a memory, and tried to send it that it didn't go through successfully. Maybe you didn't put in the numb correctly, Maybe the machine on the other end, is not turned on properly, or it's or it's busy, and then you have to try and

do it again. Yes, it's so irritating, but then you know, yeah, scanning it and sending it by via PDF much much more paper friendly anyway, you don't have to worry about wasting so much paper, and also it's not so time consuming. That being said, I still facts things because often some of the conferences I go to request that they send credentials and I have to send them via fax. Uh, not all of them except email. Plus, depending upon your access to a scanner or a copier that can have

scanning functionality, you may not have that luxury. So I think fax machine is kind of borderline on this. Because there is technology out there that can do stuff that would replace the fax machine. I don't know that it's propagated widely enough yet for it to really happen, especially for small businesses. For large businesses, almost all of them have some sort of scanner or copier that can can

replace a fax machine. I think we're on the verge really of this this being a technology that's like that, but it's it's far enough along the way that you could, you could make the argument. I think it's a value, a valid argument to include it on this list. But there's some other stuff I think that that merits that hit me with one. Well, this one is also on

the verge. Landlines. Yeah, landlines. Again, more and more people are abandoning a landline in favor of just having a cell phone because you know, for one thing, a lot of people don't want to have to deal with two different phone bills or have like something packaged up where they have fewer choices. You know, there are a lot of services out there that will package a cell phone and landline, uh, offering right where you can get a bundle. Yeah, you can get a bundle, but then you are limited

to whatever options they have. You don't. You can't just go out and say, oh, I happen to really love this one particular phone, I want that to go with this plan. That's not the way that works. Yeah. As a matter of fact, I think you see that primarily from companies that offer both land lines, and you know that you don't see a lot of cellphone providers going, hey,

you know what we're gonna get into the landline business. Yeah, it's not well, it's kind of hard to edge into that, but yeah, landlines are starting to kind of disappear now. There are some legitimate reasons why keeping a landline around.

It's not a bad idea, like emergency calls. Emergency calls is a big one because your call can be traced to your location very easily over a landline, so that let's say there's an emergency where you can't even vocalize maybe, which can happen sometimes dialing an emergency number that's all you might be able to do. Well with a landline, they are going to be able to find you. With a cell phone or smartphone, they may not be able to get your location as accurately as they could with

over a landline or even a voipe line. You'll find out that a lot of voice services have issues with calling emergency services. That being said that you can usually get a landline phone and plug it into any outlet and it will still allow you to make emergency calls even if you don't have a landline account, so you can still make a call to it well. In the United States, a call to nine one one, for example, UM and the UK, that number is really really long one.

According to the I T. Crowd and you have to sing it to a song anyway. Uh, yeah, I know. It's it's an episode that anyone who's watched The I T Crowd will get that. Anyone who hasn't, you should go watch the I T Crowd because it's awesome or the Crowd if you prefer anyway. The The other reason besides for emergencies is uh is that it's something that if there's a power outage on cell service, you haven't you have an alternate means of communication. So not just

personal emergencies, but regional emerg agencies. It's a good thing to have. That being said, I think there it is more common to run into people who have just adopted the cell phone only approach. I mean my household is that way, so yeah, I can take it with you. And you know, you you have your phone no matter where you are, so when you're at home, you have

your phone. Well, then then the phone itself is really for a lot of people, and myself included, it's it's transitioning into a device that I used to access the Internet more than I used to for voice communication. Because almost all my communication now or a lot of my communication now is through text messages, email and social networking services.

It's it's you know, I usually make two or three calls a day, but they're very short, and they're usually between me and my wife, Um, mostly me apologizing for something stupid I've done. I'm sorry, baby, that's all every single conversation starts. It's a main thing. I've actually heard one side of that conversation before. Yeah, yeah, it's not a rare thing. So so do you have a list? How about this calculators and adding machines, because computers do it,

smartphones do it. I mean you've got the birds and bees do it. You got a lot of calculators built into other devices, So to see a standalone calculator is kind of interesting in the sense, you know, we have that, we have the technology at our fingertips almost all the time, So why do we need stand alone calculators apart from scientific calculators, which I mean calculator A lot of a lot. Again, a lot of computers and smartphones can do that. You

just have to get the apps for it. But I can understand someone wanting one of those as opposed to a phone. And there's certain applications where I can I can be a little more lenient. For example, let's say that you are in a university class and you have a final, and you're allowed to have a calculator next to your your work on your final, you might not be allowed to have a smartphone because you might use the smartphone to cheat. Right, So in that case, I can.

That's that's a specific case where I'm like, all right, I understand that. But for a lot of the things that we use calculators for, either a calculator program on a computer or smartphone or spreadsheet can do all of that work. Sometimes in a way that's much easier because you can do things like in a spreadsheet, you can copy and paste formulas so that you don't have to keep entering in the same thing over and over for different calculations. You just you just cutting paste or copy

and paste rather not cutting paste. Um. So to me though, that's another old technology that I'm surprised is still around, at least in the at the level that it's still around. How about you gut another one? Well, um, to stick with our earlier topic, the phone book. Ah, yes, the yellow pages. Why why does that exist? Why are we

killing trees? Well, because not everyone has access to the uh, you know, the Internet, although you could argue that they would also have access to it, um, you know, by calling and you know, checking in with that directory assistance. I think though that, you know, I think that's a safe argument for printing the phone book. Now the question is do they need to here in the United States. I don't know how they do it everywhere else in

the world. Here in the United States, at least where we are, they deliver a phone book to everybody's house. There should be an opt out, yes, what it would be nice to have people, uh opt in, So yes, I do want the phone book, or really an opt out would probably be better. But that way you can start with, Yeah, that way you could say, you know, I've got the Internet, I can look up stuff on their uh, I've got all the numbers I need of

the friends I have. UM, A lot of my friends aren't listed in the phone book, you know, they don't want to be listed there. So the businesses almost all have some sort of web presence and need that they don't. There are a lot of online directories that take the place of Yellow Pages. So yeah, that's one of those things where I think I would love to not receive that. Now, it does raise the question that if we were to enact that we being christened myself, you know, because we

have that kind of power. So tech stuff enacts this thing where we were able to opt out of the Yellow Pages delivery. If enough people opted out, then would that change the economy of scale of producing the Yellow Pages so that producing a fewer amount for for the people who stay in is actually more expensive per book. And therefore it becomes a problem, uh to fund the printing of the Yellow Pages. Yeah, yeah, well, of course part of the we make it up in volume is

what I'm saying. Part of the part of the problem there is that the Yellow Pages makes its money from advertising. Um, those those big ads that did you see on different places for you know, when you go look up the plumber or or somebody else moving company and you see the full page ads they paid, you know, to reach a certain number of people. All we're going to print two million copies of this Okay, maybe that that's kind

of large. There, We're gonna print five thousand copies of this, UM and so your your ad is going to be there in everyone's home that we deliver this to UM. If they said Okay, well, we're only going to print ten thousand of these books for people who really need them. Then the advertise they can't command that kind of price. Yeah, that's true. So you know, I don't think we're going to be able to talk him out of dropping them off on our door because I promptly put them in

the recycle bin. But yeah, so here's here's a similar thing to that, you know, in the sense that you know, I know the reason why they're still around. But it's kind of again a dying thing. CDs that you need to install programs. Yes, and they're they're really similar when you get right down to it. Um. In both cases, not everyone has the technology they need to get the

information an alternative, alternate way. But but yeah, for a lot of people, they're buying computers now that may not even have an optical drive, so there's no use for that CD. It's just it's or DVD or DVD. Yeah, it's just taking up space because there's no way to put that in your machine you want. You would needs some sort of USB drive, or you would have to connect to the internet and download whatever drivers you might

need for something. As opposed to having a CD for it, and um, I would love to see thumb drives take the place of those just for saving space. Plus the fact that if you can wipe whatever is on that thumb drive off if you don't need it, then you've got some extra storage space. I'm not saying that I do that frequently. I'm just saying I've got a lot of thumb drives. Yeah, yeah, with a lot of logos on them. Well that we're getting towards the end of my list, to the point where, um, I've got it.

I've got more on here. But those are the things that we've talked about so far. Um, are things that we sort of think about that um, you know why and why do people have that? Then you realize that, well, really there are quite quite a number of people that still depend on those, you know, more of those real sure, because I have CDs and DVDs in general, Yeah, I

think fall into that category. Uh, and even blue rays at some to some extent, Um, I think these are not as far along say the Yellow Pages, but uh, yeah, I mean, and a lot of companies are very concerned about the fact that these are technologies that are slowly becoming obsolete and uh, digital distribution is becoming the the like buzz phrase for entertainment. Uh, and that causes concern

for multiple industries. Right. Well, Netflix think it's awesome. Well, the thing is, though, they tripped on it because on this very thing, because they were ready to move to US digital distribution to people are not ready yet. Yeah, there is a balance you have to strike between pushing people toward a new technology and writing out the waves so that you don't alienate your customer base. Right. But the people I think, or the organizations I think, are

really concerned with this. You have the m p a A the r i a A. So that's the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association America. So you've got these two different major organizations that have lots and lots of really big companies in them, and they're very much concerned about this because they make a lot of money selling physical media, actual physical products that have content on them, whether the movies, television shows, music, whatever, books, books.

So moving from that to a digital one scares a lot of companies for legitimate reason, legitimate reasons. We're not saying that there. They shouldn't be scared. Um, And then you've got retail organizations. So we've already seen in the United States several retail organizations in the last few years go belly up because they cannot compete with the digital distribution method. You know, it's hard to find a record

store anymore. Right, Well, you walk into a Best Buy and suddenly all the music and movies aren't front and center like they used to be. You know, it used to be that as soon as you walked into the store, all of that was front loaded right there at the very beginning of the store, so you had to walk through it. Well, as digital distribution gets more and more popular, that section moves further and further back in the store.

And there's a reason for that. It's because you can't have that be the focus of your store when that whole business model is starting to deteriorate. So I put that along the same lines as the installation CDs and the Yellow Pages. It's just it's not quite far as

far along. I mean, again, if you don't have a broadband connection, then physical media is the way to go, because you just you cannot physically get the information you need to be able to watch the content or listen to the content you want and a a good enough quality. Otherwise you're gonna be buffering every thirty seconds. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about. Until recently that was me. Yeah. Um. Then there are other technologies that I think kind of

died out and then came back. Well, there's one that needs to go, especially here in the United States. Hit me incandescent lightbulbs. It's a good one. I didn't have that on my list. Yeah, the good old light bulb that has its roots and um Edison's and other people's work. A lot of people say that Edison didn't actually invent

a lightbulb. Um he improved upon a design. Yeah, well he was instrumental though and getting it into our homes without Without him, whenever we had a bright idea, we'd have no way of putting, uh, some sort of indicator around our heads to let people know we had a bright eye down. Yeah, you know, you don't he didn't hear that little ping noises sort of. Yeah, and the little light bulb be like it would be like something

like you know, a tweet anyhow. Um. Yeah, they I mean they use a lot more electricity, they give off a lot more heat, um with you know, wasted energy. Um and and other products have come along that are superior toward it to it, like fluorescence and L E. D s. Yeah, of course fluorescence. Now they have their own problems. Of course there is mercury in them. Uh, you don't want to just go around smashing fluorescence on

the stuff. And LED expensive. Yes, so LEDs are very expensive, but they last a whole lot longer and use a lot less electricity. Um, so you know, they're still we're still in that transition phase, but we don't have to use incandescence in Some societies have already outlawed them. The United States is moving away from them, and of course it's a big country. They're lots of people. Unfortunately, they're

dirt cheap. Yes, yes, that's that's the you know, when you get the economics involved, people might say, I understand why you want us to move away from these, but these are affordable to us. Even if you present the argument of well, a fluorescent light bulb is going to last longer, therefore you're going to have to buy fewer of them, and then the economy ends up paying out in the long run. Some people are living in a short term kind of lifestyle through no fault of their

own they are. They cannot look that far ahead because that's not the way the economy works out for them. I've been there too. I've been in that situation where it's paycheck to paycheck, and you do you think, Well, I would love to be more environmentally friendly, and I would love to have something that's going to last longer, but I honestly cannot put that in my budget. Right. It's tough. It's not going to be much longer though, Nope. Before there's no choice in the matter. So yeah, that's

a good one. Uh, well, there's the technology I was talking about that that essentially died out and has been never really died out, but it definitely faded away and then has come back. Do you know what I'm talking about? Do you mean the operating system that just won't die? No, I'm not, But we can talk about that. Okay. Hey, it's Jonathan from two thousand nineteen busting in here to this two thousand and twelve episode to say we got more to say about legacy tech. But first let's take

a quick break to thank our sponsor. So you're talking about XP, Windows XP, Windows XP. Alright, So Windows XP was one of those things that got widespread adoption, particularly in the business world. Well, it was such an improvement on his predecessor, you know Windows two and uh yeah, I mean it's it's a it's a functional system. Let's you know, let's face it, you know, taking everything aside. If you you put all the operating systems together on

a table, XP is a great operating system. It's it's in general, it's pretty stable. There's a work course, it's a workhorse. So many companies have standard on XP, standardized on XP that they're they're comfortable with it, and that I think is the reason it's stuck around is really the corporate world. Um, you know, I used to work for a company that would stay one generation of Windows back from what the cutting edge was because everything was stable.

They got it where it was working. They had thousands of people to support, and they wanted to make sure all the service packs were out before they would update to the next operating Yeah, if you had if you have thousands of employees for your company, then you want you want something that's going to be stable because if you start having failure, is you're going to spend more time responding to two problems than you can't doing business, and that's just not a very smart way of doing things.

So staying with a tried and true system makes sense. This is somewhat complicated by the fact that even though we're at Windows seven, so we're two generations beyond Windows XP. Now Windows Vista has us stigma on it about being an undependable, over inflated, difficult to use operating system. Now, some of the problems that Vista had early on were addressed by Microsoft, you know, so it's it's a different

system than it was when it debuted. But that being said, that first impression was so negative that a lot of companies just that was that's where they drew the line is that we are not going to Windows Vista because it's just too many there are too many problems. Beyond that, though, a related related term to this outdated technology idea is

the legacy system. So a legacy system is a is any kind of system, doesn't have to be technology, But in technology, what we're talking about is some sort of system that is a core component of the way a business does business, and you want to keep that core component going, and replacing it would mean having to to too well, reinvent a an enormous amount of your business. So let's say you've got some sort of computer program that is instrumental to what you do, and it runs

perfectly on Windows XP. That's the that's the foundation that it was built for. So then when the new operating systems come out, they may not support that legacy system, so you are forced to stay with an older operating system or else you can't do business. So that's one reason why a lot of the companies are still on

Windows XP. They have some sort of program, software application that runs on XP and will not run on anything else, And in order for them to be able to run on something else, they'd have to pour so many resources into building a new tool that does the same thing that they're old tool, which is still working perfectly fine for what they need. It just doesn't make sense. You know,

that much time, money, and effort. You can say, well, we could put that towards this and then update all our systems and then hope everything works, or we could stick with what we have and just conctentrate doing business. Yeah, and you know, if you if you have Windows seven at home and XP at work, you may be frustrated by this, but that you're not really the person that

is the most frustrated. The people who are most frustrated by this are the ones working in Redmond, Washington at Microsoft who have been trying to convince both uh, you know, the the casual user and the corporate user to switch over to Windows seven. And the thing is Windows XP just works. Yeah, they know. Microsoft has stopped supporting it and then and they're they've they've basically said, look, we're not going to do anything for you. They don't distribute

it anymore. Really, it's an eleven year old operating system. That said. In researching this yesterday, Jonathan and I ran across some very interesting news. Good grief. There's an article in zd net Australia that quoted statistics from net applications in December and Windows XP is the dominant operating system out there. It had forty six point five of market share and in January it had forty seven point one nine market share. Windows XP is growing, is continuing to

increase an adoption rate. Excuse me for a second while I banged my head against the microphone. Now carry on, um So anyhow, Vista is in third place among the Windows operating systems and Windows seven is increasing as well. Um, but imagining that an operating system has been discontinued is technically no longer supported, you know, and it's increasing in market share. That's kind of impressive. Ya, That's not the worst of it, though. That's the XP story is is

that's that's kind of mind blowing. But that's not the most mind blowing story you sent me. No, no, no, And and this is the thing is these these two are tied together. And those of you in the know are gonna go, oh, um, but but no. The reason I mentioned XP first is because Windows XP works. It does what it's supposed to. It's stable, it's pretty secure. But in contrast, contrast, there's another technology that Microsoft would really really really really like to see end of life

by everyone, and for very good reasons. And yet it also increased in market share. Please please go ahead and reveal what it was. Internet Explorer six. Uh. Internet Explorer six also increase in adoption rate. Um so Internet Explores six Now that words fail me really, um, they've they've Microsoft tried its best to kill Internet. It's not it's

it's not a safe system to use. It's not. And websites will warn you when you go on there are websites that you can't see if you have Internet Explorer six, you try and go to that website and you won't be able to view it. Please, if you're using i E six, update, please please try anything, try the newest version of Internet Explorer. We're not even telling you to switch brands. You can. You can update to the latest version of the Internet Explorer and it is going to

be a world of difference. The only reason I could see anyone using i E six is that they have a machine too old to run anything better. Yeah, yeah, well there are some The reasons to use legacy systems in a lot of cases have to do with a specific tool. Yes, if you are so. Let's say that you've got a corporation and that corporation has an internal network.

An intranet is not an Internet, and at in order to access this Internet, you need to use a specific kind of browser because it was built to support a specific type of browser. Then I could understand as well having Internet Explorer six. I would pity that person because that is a miserable experience, but that could be the case.

You could have a corporate system where let's say you need to go in and manage things like a digital timesheet, or you have to request some vacation time or sick time, or you're doing something like you're changing your You might even be putting in things like an employee record into an company's Internet system, and the only way you can access it is through an outdated browser. Um. There are

plenty of systems that are like that. I've seen lots of them where they will tell you don't use any other version of any other browser because some of the functionality will not work. If you use it. You might be able to see some stuff and access some of the stuff that's on the the corporate Internet, but you're not gonna be able to get the full run of it unless you use this particular browser. Yeah, yeah, see yeah.

An article in Ours Technica UM published on February first, twelve said that in January, uh Internet Explorer grew more, its market share grew more than any other browser. In fact, Chrome went down a little bit, but the biggest share of that growth for I E was in i E six. So so, um, people are going to write in to tell you that that was really loud, um, But anyway, uh yeah, it felt kind of and I understand to see.

The thing is that one of the things that's common about most of these technologies is that UM there there's some good reason why some people are gonna want to use it. You know, perhaps you have a machine that just won't go any it won't run Vista or or Windows seven or Windows eight. Uh, you have a machine that that where are you have an internet where you I need to use I E six to run it otherwise it won't work A O L is the Internet? Yes,

that's possible. I mean for the lightbulb thing. The socket fits the same size. I really don't have it. They're cheap. There is a reason to use that. The thing is that the majority of people still using UM I E six and Windows XP. The majority of those people probably are not doing it because their computers are slower, because they are reliant on a legacy system. It's probably more because their corporation, their corporation won't let them right, or

they just don't know. Yeah, there are a lot of people who just have don't have They just don't know that there there's a better way out there to them. They've associated specific kind of browser with that's the Internet. It's not a browser you use to access the Internet. To note that is the to them, that is the Internet. It's or a little box of a little blinking line

on the top. It doesn't weigh anything. It's kept up top of big ben Yeah, this is this is definitely the type of water cooler thing where you stand around and go, yeah, why do people still use that? I mean there in general, there's a reason why people still use some of these things, but why why some of them are so widespread is another question. I still have a few more. Yes, there's the one that I had said had died out but came back. This No, this is one thing. This is a different one, and this

is one that didn't really die out either. It's one of those where it's more for nostalgias sake, I think than anything else. The Dreamcast Vinyl Oh yeah, so vinyl records is what we're talking about, not not the material vinyl, but vinyl vinyl record albums. So yeah, something you would

play on a record player. Uh. There are people who argue audiophiles who will argue that the vinyl gives the best, truest sound to whatever the original recording is, and there are others who say that that's a bunch of bologny that if you are using the proper digital equipment, there

is no humanly detectable way of differentiating the two. I'm not going to go into that too much because it's it's frankly, it's something that I would need to see a lot more studies on because there are lots of different arguments to either side, and there are certain people out there who have very very finely attuned senses of hearing that might be able to detect those differences. I'm not one of them. I do not have a great sense of hearing, so perhaps the fault is on my

me and not on the technology. But still, it's interesting to me that vinyl has never really gone away, considering that a lot of the the trend has been to favor convenience over perceived quality, right, because when MP three has got really popular, a lot of them were recorded at terrible bit rates and you were losing a lot of information, and in some cases that was detectable, and you could tell that you were losing some of the

highs and lows. There wasn't a whole lot of variation between the lowest of the lows and the highest of the highest, so you weren't getting a really dynamic sound like you could with a better recording. But today that's not as big an issue, right, Well, with people having higher bandwidth connections, Uh, they're more willing to do that because you're you're able to include some of the frequencies that, um,

you know make this sound richer. Yeah. Um, but yeah, that's that's one of those where I'm just surprised now. That being said, I own a lot of vinyl folks, well a vinyl fan, and there's a um, there's a better resurgence and manufacturing vinyl, yeah, which is funny because the equipment almost completely died out. Yeah, there was a there's a time in the late eighties and into the nineties where finding a turntable was if you weren't if

you weren't buying DJ equipment, it was pretty much. Yeah, it was you had to go to like some sort of hobby store or like an audio file. Yeah, And now now you can find them all over the place. In fact, I see them like I've seen plenty of ones that you plug in via USB to a computer where you can rip things to MP three or you can actually just listen to it over a computer. Or plug it into another sound system. Yeah, it's so it's started to it's been enjoying a resurgence nowhere near what

it was when that was the way to listen to music. Yeah, you know, I don't want to give the wrong impression, but it has come back from what look like it was. It looked like it was going to go extinct. Yeah, and a lot of a lot of independent bands have been recording and releasing their records on vinyl pressing because, uh, truth be told, it's not as as expensive as you might think. Um, so, you know, it's it's enjoyed a resurgence in in popularity for bands as a you know, hey,

look how cool we are we have a vinyl record. Yeah. It's kind of a gimmick almost, by the way, Yeah for some folks. Yeah, Jonathan two thousand nineteen. Again, I'm busy making my own legacy. So while I do, why don't we take a quick break to thank our sponsor. I also wrote down typewriters because they still have not died away. I haven't seen a typewriter in public in a long time. No, but I used to work in an office that still used typewriters to fill out forms

instead of trying to create digital forms. They still had physical forms and physical typewriters that you had to use to fill out the forms. It was not that long ago, so I have them down here. I mean, maybe they've died out in the five years since I joined how stuff works. It's possible. That's that's long enough. But I have a feeling that if I went back to this office, I'd still find that typewriter and it would be mocking me as it always did. Um. And then let's see,

do have anything else? Like, yes, there is something else I have? Uh scheduled television? Yeah, because now we've reached a point where with the uh the invention of DVRs and with streaming services like Hulu and Netflix, the the importance of a TV schedule has decreased dramatically. Right like back in back in the day, you would have to plan your night around around your stories if you wanted

to watch television. So if you wanted to watch, you know, a particular sitcom, you had to be there in front your TV at eight pm on a Thursday night, or else you weren't going to see it, or you had to set a VCR to tape it. Later on you could do that. But before that, even you know, before VCRs became household items, you know. Yeah, and that's another one, TOCR. But VCRs are pretty much on them, they're pretty much dead. VCRs are almost dead. So but yeah, the scheduled television stuff.

Before there were VCRs, the only other option you had was to set your kid down and tell have the kid just act out the entire episode when you got home, so you could find out what ha and on MASH I know, I know season seasons two through four like the back of my hand. Anyway, Uh yeah, the but yeah, that Now we have DVRs and we have streaming services.

Even DVRs now are starting to kind of reach a point where I think a lot of people are are moving away entirely from worrying about recording stuff that's on the air right now. One thing so many of them come out on DVD later or or in some of their form is a collection to catch up on an entire series now all at once, if you wanted to. Yeah, so I think, uh, I think that's one of those

dying technologies. And you know, that's a tough one because again that's that's another one that's industry that that will completely change industries, And anything that's going to completely change an industry, it's going to be a tumultuous and and and drawn out of fair It's not so thing that happens very quickly, usually unless it's catastrophic, but normally it's gonna take a while. There's gonna be a lot of resistance. We're seeing that there's a lot of resistance to it

for a good reason. Again, because the economies that are involved are huge, and the considerations you have to make are enormous, and you know the fact that there's just not as much there's not as much money streaming to the to the internet as there would be going through a cable or broadcast approach. Right, It's just it's that's

the truth. There's not as much money there. And if you've got a big corporation that requires a lot of money to generate the content that it makes, that raises some very tough questions where do you start making cuts? Do you do make huge cuts? And the corporate personnel do you also have to make huge cuts? And the

production costs for your shows or your movies. There's been a lot of discussion about that recently, with with movie blockbusters about whether or not the blockbuster itself is perhaps an outdated concept, and perhaps it's we've we've really pushed the concept of blockbusters so far that they are having these massive, overinflated budgets, and maybe it's time to stop that and really focus on making movies a different way where it's more efficient and economical, and maybe the focus

isn't so much unspectacle. That's a totally separate argument, but it does at least tangentially tie into this idea of the scheduled TV event where we don't have to be in front of our sets at a set time in place anymore, you know, we can we have a lot more flexibility to get entertainment on demand, with the exception

of things like live events like sports like that. So I think that that is definitely on the bubble, you know, in a in another maybe five or ten years, uh, scheduled TV is going to be kind of a thing of the past. Um with the exception of live events. Well, I think too that that's gonna require um more people to have availability of the technology, you know, because not everyone can afford a DVR or even more broadband internet. But we're starting to see that stuff being built into

the television sets themselves. So again, in five or ten years, you're going to have the average TV set sold at whatever store you go to is going to have a lot of Internet connectivity stuff built into it. Now, that doesn't solve the problem of broadband penetration. If you don't have broadband penetration, it doesn't matter how advance your TV is,

you're not gonna be able to get that content. But assuming that the broadband penetration problem has been addressed enough so that there is this transition, then I think we do see uh an end to the scheduled TV approach. And you just want your Louis, you turn your television on, you say, I want to watch this one particular program. I want to watch this one particular episode, and it pulls it up and it may be that it's a subscription based thing, and maybe it's a per episode payment thing.

I'm not saying that it's gonna be free all the time, but it's definitely going to be a different model than what we're used to right now, will you know? It will no longer be like, you know, oh, it's Thursday night. This is when these my my favorite three shows. Come on, it'll be Hey, I got home, it's time to watch my favorite show. Okay, So and I think that's Let me look and did I miss anything on my list? No,

that's all the things I have on my list. Not that not to suggest that that's the only outdated technology we have that we rely on on a day to day basis. Well, if people have their you know, a favorite outdated technology that they didn't think made our lists for good reason, then they should write us and let

us know. I mean, there's plenty of other stuff we can talk about, like like cold powered power plants, that kind of stuff, right where we could say, look, there are alternatives that we could look into that maybe more environmentally friendly. But even so, these have their own sets of restrictions and problems. Um, but yeah, you could argue that saying like, hey, look at the state of the world. Isn't isn't like anything that burns fossil fuels isn't that outdated?

And I would agree with you in the sense that I think we really need to move to things that aren't going to be as as dangerous to the environment. But the reality of the situation is a bit more complex than just saying, hey, this is an old way of doing things. And that wraps up that classic episode of tech Stuff. I hope you guys enjoyed it. If you have any suggestions for current or even future episodes of tech stuff, why not get in touch with me. Send me an email. That's tech stuff at how stuff

works dot com. Dropped by the website that's tech stuff podcast dot com. Make sure you go to the merchandise store that's t public dot com slash tech stuff, and I will talk to you again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff dot com