Narrow-Bandwidth Television Association

This kind of copiers are again in use in German schools to save money, the budget for photocopies is limited and will be prefered for copies from books.

When I was I child, these kind of copy was very common, but in the early 1980s it was replaced almost completely with photocopies. I'm not sure if it is a good or a bad thing to see this kind of copy back again.

I find doing proper technical drawing rather fun, I hope they still have a module on it in the design/technology curriculum, I'd be sad to think of all my school's convertible drawing desks in a skip.
(I'm sure the teacher in the next classroom wouldn't miss them though. BANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANG )

Computers are obviously so much more convenient and efficient but sometimes I will still get a board, compasses, dividers, set squares etc and do it the slow way. It's relaxing - no fan noise or screen glare

For me there were a quite number of years of training and experience building up the skill of manual drawing, most of which flew out the window when CAD came along. In particular, I felt so sorry for those who had 20 years or more in the profession and were true artists. They saw their skills advantage vanish within a few short years.

I have a long history of watching my accumulated skills become obsolete as technology changed over the years. It seems that only the primary skills of a politician, to dissemble and to obfuscate, are timeless.

gary wrote:I have a long history of watching my accumulated skills become obsolete as technology changed over the years. It seems that only the primary skills of a politician, to dissemble and to obfuscate, are timeless.

I think it's always been this way, at least since the industrial revolution kicked off, each new invention making people's skills obsolete.

My skills are mostly all computer related and I find it hard to keep up with the unstoppable "progress" which makes everything you've learnt about fixing computers irrelevant every 5 years or so when everything changes again.

I think we're edging ever closer to the peak of computer technology, at least in the form that we understand it today, as our boxes full of transistors are now pushing up against fundemental physical limits.

I doubt that will slow the churn of change for the sake of change in the software world of course as companies will always have to find a way to convince you that the software you already have that works fine is no good any more, and you need to buy something new which is completely different but does exactly the same thing

We do seem to be entering a era of "form over function", a paradigm promoted in no small terms by the great icon Steve Jobs. Slowly but surely our computing and communication devices are merging and, at the same time, evolving into fashion accessories.

I still hold out hope for things like quantum computing (although that appears to have headed down the same cul de sac as nuclear fusion) and, of course, we have barely touched the surface of AI - which is a great surprise to me when I consider where I thought it would be when I started down the slippery slope of software development 30 odd years ago.

Gosh I am glad there are very loose rules on this site about going off-topic... OTOH one topic does seem to lead to another.

gary wrote:Gosh I am glad there are very loose rules on this site about going off-topic... OTOH one topic does seem to lead to another.

Yes, a meandering thread is common here and I accept a lot of the blame(?) for that. However it can lead to interesting outcomes and sow the seeds of an idea in some readers mind. Lo and behold a new thread pops up as a result.

If you recorded a conversation of a few gathered together for a social chat and then noted the topics covered, sometimes it seems hard to understand how one subject was a result of the previous one.

Some forums are very strict r.e. being OT, but I find that to 'stuffy', this is not a formal AGM or a minuted business meeting.

Now, I will concede that for the original poster it can feel like the thread had been 'hijacked' but it's quite easy to pull it back on track by simply returning to the matter in hand.

Steve A.

Yes Steve, this forum is so much more interesting in that you and the other Mods allow us to meander through the trees of knowledge where it takes us.
The 'other' forum' is so strict that the mods, on many occasions , lock a topic, before others have had their say.
Also here, an old unlocked topic is sometimes given new life, when someone fresh, 'has a go at it, just like a dog with an old bone.
Long may freedom live here.

Thanks Mods, and have a free (and happy ! ) Xmas.

Ditto Albert.

Steve not blame - credit.

Merry Christmas everyone and a very NBTV new year.