Gizmodo
In 2005, a control room for the A and C subway lines in NYC caught fire. "No larger than a kitchen," the room held 600 relays, switches and circuits that keep track of trains and keep everything running. Officials originally thought it would take three to five years to get the lines back to normal capacity. (Thankfully it didn't.) The epic repair time was because the fixed-block signaling system dates back to 1904 and only two companies in the world were able to repair it, one in Pittsburgh and the other in Paris. This is technology's trailing edge, according to Peter Sandborn in IEEE Spectrum: the huge, crippling problem of obsolescence.
Three percent of all the electronic components in the world become obsolete every month. When you imagine all the shit coming out of China, it's pretty staggering. The problem is actually worse for the military, which spends about $10 billion a year on keeping up obsolete electronics parts. Ironically it's because they've switched to using off-the-shelf consumer electronics for 90 percent of their components—with a much shorter service life, four years at best—rather than "military-spec" gear, which was designed to hang around for a decade or more.
IEEE Spectrum lists a couple of egregious examples: The B-2 Spirit, one of Jesus' favorite planes, started flying in 1989, and by 1996, lots of its electronic components were obsolete. And in the Navy's new sonar system, 70 percent of the parts were obsolete when they started installing it.
Finding the parts isn't just difficult, it's expensive as hell, so the cost of maintaining obsolete but very necessary wares basically keeps you from upgrading. In the NYC subway case, instead of moving to a new, modern computerized system that would probably be cheaper in the long run, the Metropolitan Transit Authority has had to focus its limited budget on maintaining the frail, antediluvian network, trapping New Yorkers into an transit system light years behind, say, Japan's. (There have been stories in the recent past about the subway's upgrades, but they have mainly been superficial.)
Not all of you depend on the subway, or fly B-2 bombers, so here's a closer to home example: Windows vs. OS X. The latter is lighter, faster and springier, because it dumped all of the Classic OS's code. A fresh start, with a transition eased by the Classic emulation scheme. Windows Vista, on the other hand, is burdened by 20 years of legacy code, code that it could be argued is essentially obsolete. So we pay the price with a bloated operating system that struggles under its own massive girth. Dumping all that dead weight for Windows 7 and starting fresh—while painful—would be the best thing Microsoft could do. But it's not that easy, or they'd have done it, obviously. Maybe. You got any better examples of painful obsolescence? [IEEE Spectrum, NYT]
Comments
Good. Screw New York. I hope that island get's cloverfielded.
Amazing caption...needs to be tagged accordingly!
Ever see the movie Brazil? Steampunk my ass...
@Darrone: Hey... :(
Anyone think this thread is going to quickly devolve into a PC vs. Mac bash? Nah, me neither.
"You got any better exampled (sic) of painful obsolescence?"
Strom Thurmond, and half of Congress by extension.
;)
Last point of Windows vs OSX - Linux is even lighter, faster, and don't cost a dime Matt.
Painful obsolescence = Government of Canada
Um, I just RTFA...that last paragraph made me sneer.
You see, OS X is based on Unix. And Unix is over 25 years old. Far older than OS 9 was. (ok, not exactly 64-bit territory but humor me a second.)
And OS X has over 80000 files associated with it. Sure, its more robust than OS 9, but author should be comparing something other than OS of age.
If anything should be made an example of with software, it should be Adobe's Photoshop and how bloated it has become... IMHO.
frucci...frowny face emoticons?
The constitution & all the irreparable harm it's caused us. Revolution time.
@Adam Frucci: (don't tell anyone I work there, but am a vicious boston-bred fan. Sooo, let's hope it gets cloverfielded at saaaay, 8pm?)
Painful obsolescence =
The Electoral College
The Freedom to Bear Arms
The Two Party System
Organized Religion
The Home Flush Toilet (seriously.. has that tech changed in 100 years?)
aaaaaaaaand puppies... who needs a puppy when I can hace a Pleo?
Let the bashing begin...
Don't forget the stealth fighter, too.
@SigmundTheSeaMonster:
100%! I'd even say Adobe Reader is a bloated monstrosity. Thank God for Foxit.
I can't afford a new car, so I've put more than it's value into repairs over the past two years... and odds are I'll double that in the near future..
ha! cloverfielded....new verb perhaps? methinks frucci doesn't want NY getting pwned.
"You got any better examples of painful obsolescence?"
Sure do. Japanese automakers vs. Detroit's Motor City. This has been an issue for say at least 20 years now? Maybe 30? Our far Eastern counterparts have raised the bar on automobiles by making them more fuel efficient and more practical to drive at a less expensive cost. They learned to build a smarter and better car and in some cases faster. This concept hurt the Big 3 so bad that jobs were being lost in Detroit's manufacturing plants and as we know, Chrysler almost went belly up before Lee Iococca took the helm. Even to this day some auto production has been hired out to cheap, Eastern labor to cut costs. They are still trying to catch up to the Hondas, Nissans and Toyotas.
@N@tedog: Daylight Savings Time
Any Lotus software. You have absolutely no idea how much of the legal industry still uses Lotus for word processing and such, just because the legal industry is always several steps behind the times. God help you if you're a litigation support vendor and an attorney gives you a disc full of Lotus crap to print or process.
@Darrone: 'cloverfielded' good one!
Nah, there too busy getting Astley'd to have that happen...
Nuclear Energy Plants in the US. We need to go to the third/fourth gen plants if we ever expect to do anything about the environment. Hell, the GD French use nuclear energy, and they've surrendered to a snowstorm b/c it was white. Why can't we be as advanced as the French think they are?
I would say they didn't learn anything, they are just newer to the market.
Old companies have their old ways, then comes a new company that uses new technology to make things more cheap, durable etc, and cost less to them.
there's a good webster's reason why "New" and "Old" have their meanings.
@N@tedog: Organized Religion. The winner.
Stupid desert prejudices and feuds overseen by some "omnipotent" sociopath.
Now back to technology... I will go with the combustion engine.
@riqgeez: the thing is, GM and others have had plenty of chances to advance the state of the art and build smarter, cheaper cars. but instead, they figure with their entrenched position as "industry leaders" they could defer those advances as long as possible. now, japan has the technological and economical upper hand, and detroit is being slowly overtaken all the while wondering why their market share is shrinking
Just remember though, the NYC subway control system is not going to shut down from an EMP attack! Those Nuclear bombs may be dropping but the subway, with its relays and switches will keep ticking until the electricity shuts off.
Commodore VS Vaio
@ComicDork: Hey wow! As a religious person I'd like to sao that tou did that whole thing without being a complete and total asscockass about your trite, mundane, tiresome opinions. Oh no wait. Sorry. The opposite of that.
How about this:
OBSOLETE = Opinions about things that are actually a thinly disguided veneer of insulting superiority to mask your insecurities.
The Electoral College
The Freedom to Bear Arms
The Two Party System
Organized Religion
By N@tedog
BlacK or white/list your race on (blank) application.
Saving yourself for marriage.
Marriage.
To this day, I have a secure job coding...
In Cobol85.
On a proprietary mainframe.
Add to the lis will ya!
@thejackamo: True indeed!
@heroineworshipper: I disagree
the Bay Area Rapid Transit system trains are still using the 60's era computer control system, because the millions they spent in the 90's on a new system went to a vendor who couldn't build a system that would work with the existing lines, much less the livermore, SFO, and Hercules line extensions. So yeah, the 60's monstrosity is still in use - BUT IT WORKS. same could be said for NYC's control system.
Why would you want to replace a 100 year old proven, reliable control system for some fancy-schmancy crap that doesn't work, or worse, comes with a license agreement that causes all the trains to stop if they don't keep paying support fees ala that parking garage shenanigans a while back.
truly reliable electronic systems don't use the latest .45nm process. they use the huge 10nm or bigger processes on IC's - and LEAD solder, not the new "enviro" crap that forms tin whiskers thus shorting out your fancy circuits. okay they use gold or something on satellites instead of lead maybe, but you get the point. tin solder is planned accelerated electronic decrepitude masquerading as "enviro concious".
/rant
@DaOtter: Actually, the Strom thing has already worked itself out. The rest of COngress needs to be "Cloverfielded" I guess.
UK Air Traffic control. Still using a number of PDP11s in operational service on fairly key systems. 2 are about to be replaced in the next month but 2 more are not due for replacement until maybe 2017.
"Antediluvian network?"
Antediluvian means "relating to an era before the flood".
Are you saying the New York subway network predates Noah?
Of course, if global warming goes ahead as anticipated, the New York subway may currently be in its antediluvian era.
@ doofusgumby
Hah solder. That's positively modern. It's wire wrap terminals and core storage round these parts and we're grateful.
You tell kids nowadays and they won't believe you.
@N@tedog: You haven't shopped for a toilet in a while, have you?
@Pope John Peeps II: All Respect for you - Lost.
@potohead1:
The Electoral College
The Freedom to Bear Arms
The Two Party System
Organized Religion
DST
BlacK or white/list your race on (blank) application.
Saving yourself for marriage.
Marriage.
The Fax Machine
repost and add...
If anyone reads this, I would love to see the 1901 tech that had to be replaced.
@doofusgumby:
Back when I worked at a small theatre, we used an old vacuum-tube powered amp which my boss swore produced a much richer (mono) sound than the most modern digital equipment.
Of course he also spent his weekends scrounging junk shops and garage sales for old vacuum tubes to keep as spare parts.
It's not that the old systems aren't better. It's just that when things inevitably go wrong, it can be difficult or even impossible to get the spare parts to keep them working.
There are two problems with the New York City Subway switching to a system with even 1/2 the capabilities of a system like Washington, DC or BART. First is the sheer size of the New York system, compared to the others, and that it runs 24/7/365. The other is the outright resistance of your average New Yorker to the possibility of 'conductorless' trains and the transit union's objections to the job loss from the reduced crews. They have tried semi-automating ONE line, and it has been fraught with problems, complaints from the labor, and the customers fear of danger.
matt buchanan... did you just "Rickroll" IT history? LOL.
@howismydriving:
So... where will that electricity be coming from?
this is actually partly why we're getting our asses handed to us by other countries. we developed a bunch of this stuff first so we started using it first. only problem was the tech got old quickly, and is not the kind of stuff that you can just rip out and replace with the newer stuff all that easily. it would be terrific if they could figure out a safe, easy way to pull out virtually every piece of tech we use in the general public, that way we could easily keep up to date with all the latest equipment. sadely, i dont think that you could do something like that without facing potential risks and problems as a result of using such easily removed gizmos.