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  1. #1
    Thailand Expat

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    Things That Are Becoming Obsolete

    A fond farewell to once-common things that are either obsolete or well on the way


    Left Behind - washingtonpost.com


    As the cassette tape goes obsolete, so too does the heartfelt mix tape.



    Googling your fix-up before the big event takes the "blind" out of "blind date."



    Phone sex: Old-fashioned?



    Still carrying cash? One word for you: Plastics.



    Twenty St. Mary's College students attempt to set a record for phone booth cramming -- an art as ancient as the land line.



    Tobacco's cultural imprint is disappearing



    Idle time at the office is now spent surfing the Web.



    Short shorts: a thing of the past?



    In the age of GPS, does anyone really get lost anymore?


    Land lines, rotary phones, pay phones, answering machines (gotta go back to work!)

    Last edited by Hootad Binky; 04-04-2008 at 05:40 AM.
    Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone elses opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. -Oscar Wilde

  2. #2
    Member
    zipcode's Avatar
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    Have to disagree with the Washington Post about phone sex. Cellphones have made it more convenient to have phone sex; in the car, lying in bed, in the department store restroom. All the places where a landline is just not available or convenient.

    And let's not forget the vibrate option on most cellphones!

  3. #3
    Thailand Expat

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    ^ not to mention their shape!

    QUOTABLE

    "Real people going on game shows. When we were kids, we'd watch 'The Price is Right,' and the contestant would have curlers in her hair -- she'd look like your neighbor next door. Real people got a chance to shine. Now, everyone comes out of some stupid mold from a moronic casting director's idea of what is exciting to watch. All the reality is removed."
    -- Rosie O'Donnell

    "I see people who are constantly text-messaging. I still like to pick up the phone and talk to someone, and that's how I continue to conduct business. I'm on the phone a lot, and I see a lot of people in my office every day."
    -- Donald Trump

    "Stove-top percolators are collector's items."
    -- Robert F. Nelson, president and CEO of the National Coffee Association

    "Focus groups. They're toast. They never worked, really. Only the top pros understood them. Mostly, they were used to persuade the boss to do what you wanted to do anyway."
    -- Seth Godin, marketing expert

    "I miss competence. There's a lot of incompetence in this industry. Knowing how to write, how to play, sing, perform. Just knowing how to do the gig. Instead, they have all kinds of tools to make people sound better and keep them in key. But I probably sound like an old grouch. Maybe I'm the thing that's obsolete."
    -- Billy Joel

    "Handwritten 'dupes' -- the checks that the server writes customers' orders on, and then a carbon copy would be handed to the kitchen. All that is done by computers now. I have a bit of nostalgia for the sense of detail it allowed, because computers can't be so detailed as a handwritten request. The written reservation book is also gone for good. I still look over ours from the beginning and laugh at how difficult it must have been. But it was free."
    -- Ellen Kassoff Gray, co-owner of Equinox restaurant

    "Fifteen years ago, if you didn't have a baked Alaska or cherry jubilee on the menu, you couldn't consider yourself a French restaurant. Today, you can't find hardly any of these things. I miss flambe. And lobster thermidor! And anything that involves innards is hard to come by now."
    -- Tim Zagat, co-founder of Zagat Survey

    "Network nightly news broadcasts as a source of common information and national unity. Opinions differed, but Americans began thinking with the same images and facts in mind, brought to them by experienced journalists. If you cared about national or world affairs, you scheduled dinner before or after the nightly serving of Cronkite, Rather, Brokaw or Jennings."
    -- Madeleine K. Albright, former secretary of state

    "Computerized design has become a really great, really user-friendly resource, but the drawings often have more of the personality of the program than of the programmer. I still love hand-drawn floor plans."
    -- Thom Filicia, interior designer

    "Smoking allowed in restaurants, and the small portions and odd plating of nouvelle cuisine -- just a little bit of food on a big white plate. Portion sizes have definitely gotten larger and plating more natural."
    -- Laurent Tourondel, executive chef of BLT Steak Bistro

    WORKPLACE
    Carbon paper
    Wite-Out
    "While you were out" pads
    Word processors
    Electric typewriters
    Press type
    Wax paste-up
    Address books
    Yellow Pages
    Floppy disks
    Secretaries
    Shorthand
    Rolodexes
    Lickable stamps
    Filofaxes
    Bike messengers
    White type on black screens
    PalmPilot Graffiti alphabet
    Phone trees
    CRT monitors
    Typing pools
    Dot-matrix printers
    Fax paper on rolls
    Printer paper with holes on the sides


    MUSIC
    Tape decks
    Walkmans
    Portable CD players
    Eight-tracks
    MiniDiscs
    Record stores
    Boomboxes
    Napster
    Flicking lighters at a concert's end
    Standing in line for tickets

    BEAUTY & FASHION

    Shoehorns
    Catalogue shopping
    Stonewashed jeans
    Sun-in
    Men with one earring
    Crow's-feet or laugh lines
    Press-on nails
    Bolo ties
    Hair crimpers
    Fashion models weighing more than 110 pounds
    Vanities
    Suspenders
    Full slips
    Polyester
    Flattop haircuts (except in military)
    Fur
    Girdles
    Wristwatches
    Dingy teeth
    Earmuffs
    Pompomed socks

    COMPUTERS & THE INTERNET
    Friendster
    MySpace
    Metacrawler
    E-mails written with the formality of letters
    Dial-up
    Sound of the modem starting up
    Non-wireless Internet
    AOL CDs in the mail
    Kozmo delivery
    Prodigy
    Video games without avatars

    BABIES
    Doctor-administered pregnancy tests
    Diaper pins
    Diaper delivery services
    Hard plastic shoes
    Johnny-Jump-Ups
    Cesareans only for emergencies
    Rocking chairs
    Smoking while pregnant
    Unflattering maternity clothes
    Glass baby bottles

    KIDS & SCHOOL
    Paper routes
    Wall-mounted pencil sharpeners
    Calculator watches
    Having to learn to touch-type
    College acceptance letters via mail
    Slide rules
    Film projectors in classrooms
    Good penmanship
    Pocket protectors
    Learning BASIC
    Silver dollars given for special occasions
    UNICEF boxes for Halloween
    Home economics class

    CARS
    Manual windows
    Getting out to open the garage door
    Full-service gas stations
    Cigarette lighters
    Non-jumbo cup holders
    Kicking the tires of a new car
    Old-school Volkswagen Bugs
    Optional seat belts
    Optional child car seats
    Optional car insurance
    Nonstandard air bags
    Gas less than $3 a gallon

    FOOD & DINING
    Stovetop popcorn poppers
    TV dinners
    Cyclamate sweetener
    Electric frying pans
    Everyone at the table ordering dessert
    Thinking of sushi as exotic
    New Coke
    Tab in soda machines

    TRAVEL
    Film
    Flash cubes
    Getting dressed up for the airplane
    Travel agents
    Plane tickets sent in the mail
    Hotel room keys
    Smoking on planes
    Stewardesses in wigs
    Affordable train travel
    Polaroids
    Hitchhiking
    Postcards
    In-flight meals
    Traveler's checks
    Money belts
    Elevator operators
    Saying goodbye at the airport gate
    Being out of touch

    HEALTH & SANITATION
    Doctors making house calls
    Oat bran as a cholesterol reducer
    Toxic shock syndrome
    Orthodontic headgear
    Plaster casts
    Appendicitis scars
    Tonsillectomies
    Routine overnight hospital stays
    Sanitary napkin belts
    Having to ask a store clerk for condoms

    HOME
    Water beds
    Dustbusters
    Non-digital TV
    Photo albums
    Handwritten letters
    Fuzzy TV reception
    Toilets with pulls
    Stereo systems
    Analog clocks

    SPORTS & RECREATION
    Wooden tennis rackets
    Ignoring the World Cup
    Thinking Europeans can't play basketball
    High diving boards
    Biking without helmets

    GOING OUT
    Walk/Don't Walk text signs
    Cigarette machines
    Affordable theater tickets
    Finding dates in bars
    Last edited by Hootad Binky; 04-04-2008 at 05:51 AM.

  4. #4
    Thailand Expat
    panama hat's Avatar
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    Manners. Plain good manners, and I'm not old by any stretch of the imagination.

  5. #5
    Thailand Expat
    Marmite the Dog's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Hootad Binky
    In the age of GPS, does anyone really get lost anymore?
    Probably more so. GPS is crap. Give me a proper map any day.

  6. #6
    Excommunicated baldrick's Avatar
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    GPS does not help if you still can't tell which way to go when shown your position on the map.

    reading map to ground is still required especially with topographical maps / nautical charts and just being able to tell north ,south ,east and west by the sun/shadows is a basic skill becoming unknown.

    I remember being woken up one night to check our position on the chart from the gps co-ordinates as the previous person had come up with a position that was much closer to an Island ( and accompanying reefs/rocks ) than dead reckoning had calculated. I made the same mistake the original person had done, so the decision was made to pull up to the wind and wait 2 hours for the moon to illuminate the issue. I sat down and redid the numbers and worked out exactly where we both had gone wrong but it still was considered correct to wait as there had been doubts - better to wait 2 hours than to risk an incident at sea.

    an old saying is " a good sailor could sail an eggshell around the world "
    If you torture data for enough time , you can get it to say what you want.

  7. #7
    たのむよ。
    The Gentleman Scamp's Avatar
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    Ant Robertson.

  8. #8
    Thailand Expat
    JoGeAr's Avatar
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    Bottle openers (with screw tops)

    Can openers (with lift-and-pull tabs)

  9. #9
    Days Work Done! Norton's Avatar
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    100 baht bar fines.

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