Farewell to the ’00s
Posted on December 28th, 2009 in Uncategorized | 10 Comments »
The Huffington Post has an amusing/interesting piece about 12 things that became obsolete over the past decade.
The list includes landlines, newspaper classifieds, dial-up Internet access, film, the yellow pages, fax machines (not quite, I think), and handwritten letters.
(I beg to differ, especially at this time of year. E-mailed thank you notes? No thank you.)
This is kind of an interesting question though, so I’m going to give it some thought. But my initial nomination for obsolescence would be blaring car alarms, which might have been the worst invention of the past quarter century.
What’s become obsolete in your world?
10 Responses
12/28/2009 8:53 pm
I’ve been looking forward to 2010. From a very practical standpoint, its marks that I’ve finally set myself up with a scalable, rational url structuring. It will be so nice to heavily cache all the web pages I’ve published that have URLs that start with /something/200*/!
Besides that iota of randomness, 2010, in my humble opinion, will be a turning point when working with the internet will become less about hype and more about true benevolence (i.e. massive communication) and FUN making it happen (i.e. Debian/Ubuntu, Ruby, and Git, yet Git).
Happy New Year!
12/29/2009 11:35 am
Hmmm.. oil refineries in the US are becoming obsolete, live people speaking on the other end of customer support telephone calls, one could argue that customer support in general is becoming obsolete (through neglect), analog tv’s are definitely done, VCRs are gone (maybe that was last decade), privacy is becoming more and more obsolete (both by voluntary and involuntary means)
12/30/2009 9:51 am
Just looked at a quick vote of whether people would consider a full body scan in airports. 71% would. Duh. Sure beats a strip search. I’m all for privacy for for heaven’s sake, but let’s get over ourselves, always thought it was a good idea. Like an MRI…simple. Keep the lines moving…in, through, done. Keeps passengers from throwing things and yelling at people. Prevents loonies from hiding bombs in their underwear while getting people going where they need to go. Common sense seems to be obsolete, as is civility and honesty and humor. Happy New Year !
12/30/2009 10:19 am
I agree with lmpaulsen. Still, we need to bear in mind that it’s fine for those of us in good health not to object to full body scans. Others may be a little embarrassed: people with prostheses, those who depend on ostomy equipment, those who wear Depends, and any number of things I probably don’t even know about. Come to think of it, the recent would-be bomber could perhaps just have claimed that he needed special underwear. When I had a broken elbow, I took a doctor’s letter with me to the airport, and that sufficed entirely. The security officer with the metal-detecting wand didn’t even ask me to unwind the elastic bandages that kept the removable cast on my arm, though I did offer to do so. It must be fairly easy to forge a medical letter.
12/30/2009 10:58 am
Good morning Judith. I see your point but one would hopefully assume that your full body scans would not be shown on overhead TV screens on the concourse or posted on the internet (seemingly an unfortunate possibility these days) and treated with full confidentiality and respect by bonded, trained staff with integrity. We should be able to be totally confident that this is not going to happen. So, it comes down to, do you want to be embarrassed, or do you want to take a chance on being blown out of the air. Yes, you could have had a bomb under that bandage. None of this still covers the risk of checked luggage or air cargo, unless they use the same method. That’s pretty much where we’re at. When we do find a weakness in our security, CNN tells the whole world what it is which is really helpful, and that we haven’t got it fixed yet.
12/30/2009 12:13 pm
You’re quite right about this, lmpaulsen. My mother (no longer alive) simply gave up air travel when she began to have continence problems, and this was long before air terrorism.
I don’t really know how full body scanners work, so I have no idea if the would-be bomber’s underwear would have been transparent to the machine or whether the scanner can pick up a whole layer of dangerous powder inserted in the crotch.
12/30/2009 12:27 pm
Yes, the scanner would pick it up. I watched a program on it the other night. Even clear liquid in a baggie, carried on the body, can be detected by an experienced scanner. It’s tough but it can be picked up. However, it requires an experienced, well trained scanner, not a part time luggage handler/scanner/”do you want fries with that” trained scanner.
A lot of people will probably give up air travel until this is fixed, unfortunately and I am one of them, in fact pretty much had before this even happened because I had no patience for it before, let alone now. Just watching the local news over Christmas and the bedlam there for days, there is just no way I would consider it when I have a choice. I sympathize with those who don’t have a choice, and for the airline people.
12/30/2009 2:14 pm
I’ve been blogging this over at my own site. Both of the top two posts (yesterday’s has some commentary).
12/30/2009 5:14 pm
Of course, there would be no record kept of such a scan…and no need or use for one…missed that, sorry. I saw some real scans…they are not likely to “titillate” anybody. And you’re right Harry, there are problems that need to be fixed way before anybody boards a plane.
Funny you should mention about Christ’s followers having a Facebook page and it being stamped out. You’re probably right…what Christ said has been in print for centuries, the biggest “best seller” ever, but too many didn’t pay attention to the few simple things he said. If we had, we probably wouldn’t have to be talking about security scanners now. Who knows.
12/31/2009 9:39 am
I went through a “full body scan” at RIC. It was kinda fascinating with the huge antennas swooping around, I doubt I gave anybody running the machine a thrill but they did find a forgotten wet-nap in my hip pocket.