One of my customers uses good old PSTN (or circuit-switched GSM data) to contact their automation devices around the world. They dial in once a day and report status (or in emergencies), and software updates and such are pushed by dialing out towards them. And yes, that platform is *still* being actively developed...(The installed base is huge).

Xbox should have been a hard lesson that MS management did not know anything about shipping physical units instead of software.

They shipped Sidewinder game controllers before XBox. And they are *still* one of the best available. I still have my Sidewinder Precision Pro, and it's over 10 years old, and still works like a charm.

So they definitely knew their hardware, however, apparently it only applied to the controllers...

They contain error correction, they are scalable, and have quite a nice information density. And you can generate them with tons of free tools and several APIs are available as well.

Personally, I just keep backups and don't bother with hard copies.

No it wasn't, 9/11 held that title for about two months:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_587

265 dead (all onboard + 5 on ground), so if anything, this one was even larger.

I ran into the same problem. Web development is not exactly my typical line of work, but a customer asked for a small project. I couldn't get it (basically a simple webpage that fetches stuff from a database with AJAX) to work with IE no matter what - until I added the meta tags into the HTML:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=9">
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">

After these, things started to work with same code that worked with Firefox and Chrome. I haven't bothered since, but most of the issues apparently stemmed from IE wrongly deciding when to go into compatibility mode.

Done bunch of stuff that's mostly used internally and our customers and now maintained by someone else. Some of this stuff includes things like stored procedures in databases. Are such things "code"? Are they "released" when they are only released internally or directly to customers?

I also have some stuff from the 80's written in Basic for an 8-bit computer. Some of these were published in magazines, as program listings. Were they "released" software?

Kinda leads to this: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MoneyDearBoy

Like someone else commented, the poster uses terms "Copper" and "ISDN" interchangeably. However, with the inclusion of terms like T1/T3, it's clearly about "what can an old telco-guy do in this newfangled IP-based world with 15 years before retirement". Copper here is a misnomer, a lot of stuff can happen over copper (DSLs being the most obvious example).

I have some familiarity in just how dead the technology is. We have a big customer who just placed a big order for Cisco's PVDM digital modems. Why "big", if the tech is dying? Well, that stuff is going to end-of-sale after this summer and they have lot of legacy systems around the globe that dial in (machine-to-machine stuff, and not easily upgradeable everywhere at once). They are moving to IP-based systems but cannot really do that fast enough. Anyway, one of the biggest vendors of network equipment just decided that they aren't going to sell modems that can talk directly to E1/T1 line (analog 2-port models are still in the selection though). I don't know that anyone else is selling such stuff either (Alcatel maybe?). That technology had it's day, but it's long gone.

There might of course be places where, due to signaling constraints, you need to run a E1/T1, but it doesn't really use any of the features. You just run PPP over that link and be done with it - no one cares about the intricasies of Q.931 framing or setting up calls for such links. Even in telephony, it will continue to have some uses, for example many PBX systems still only provide E1/T1 uplink - even if it's going to be used just to connect couple of feet to the SIP gateway right at the next rack.

Frankly, your father has two choices: Either
  a) Get entrenched into some niche that really can keep on going with ISDN-based technologies for the next 15 years - you know, maintain job security by being the "only one left who understands this piece of legacy junk that we cannot migrate away from fast". Frankly, I find such positions hard to imagine - sure, maybe if he was retiring in this decade, it could work, but hardly in the 2020's.
  or
  b) Join the IP world. Frankly, I would think that with a reasonable effort he could still become an expert in VoIP - you still need skills like provisioning (for QoS), codecs (even the G.711a/mu-law is relevant), and so on. Lot of the concepts in SIP are still based on the good old stuff from telco days. You just need to wrap your head around the concept that instead of TDM sending each frame at exactly right intervals, you get packets that might occasionally get lost or routed wrongly or arrive out-of-order...And frankly, you also don't need to care anymore about stuff like SPID's or TEIs. Which I would think of a relief.

On a decent machine Win8 is faster than Win7 for startup/shutdown/restart and basically everything else. On the three machines i've used with SSD, a full restart from desktop to login screen (and desktop again if I factor out time to type in the password) was faster than getting through the bios bootup screen. I don't know what you did to your machine, but you did something...

The workstations in question are actually running on a centralized HyperV server (accessed with thin clients or via RDP). So the hardware is actually *identical* to the previous Win 7 deployment.

We've just been handed out workstations with Windows 8 in them. My productivity has plummeted. Lots of really small things.

Start menu isn't one of them, not really. Classic Shell is available and works most of the time. However, there are lots of small snags, that individually wouldn't matter, but since they are *all* present I'm really avoiding the use of the new WS at all costs.

1) The desktop interface doesn't allow for proper, colored themes. I've been able to patch things somewhat with UXPatcher from http://www.syssel.net/hoefs/software_uxtheme.php?lang=en and an appropriate theme from Deviantart, but I still think it's ugly. I cannot customize colors anymore, the title bar text is ALWAYS black.
2) Title bar text is centered. I know that it's centered on e.g. Mac OSX, but it's not been centered in Windows since Win 3.1. I have lost lots of working hours simply because I've alt-tabbed, and my typical quick glance at the top left of window doesn't give me confirmation that I'm at the correct window causes problems. At least, it takes time for me to move my face to center of each title bar. At worst, it leads to lost work - I've already once started to configure wrong server.
3) Application associations are to Metro apps by default.When clicking a file on the desktop, why the hell does Windows think I want to launch a Metro app?
4) At some point I somehow managed to launch the Finances application. Suddendly my screen is full of stock tickers. I don't know how to close it. Alt+f4 doesn't work. Esc doesn't work. Finally, Win+D seemed to work. I still don't know why that app started.
5) Most of the desktop effects that seemed to work fine in Win7 doesn't work with my RDP client from Linux machine (krdc). Sometimes I can't even see the pointer (taking cursor shadows off seem to help)
6) It's slow. Reboot seems to take like 5 minutes.

I'm not particularly worried though. On the desktop, Windows 7 will stay prevalent for ages.

However, on the server side, Windows Server 2012 has similar problems in it's UI (well, no Metro, but...)

I run whatever OS I want, I can "migrate" from one to another with moment's notice by starting up the OS in Virtualbox or VMWare (If I don't have the OS installed, I can usually get a working VM image from somewhere without ever having to "install" the OS). The guest tools provided by different virtualization platforms usually give me easy way to transfer files, clipboard, and devices. I especially like Virtualbox in it's "seamless" mode - windows of the guest OS just appear like regular windows of the host.

I've mostly given up dual-booting.

Just create an ad-hoc guest account with limited rights. That way they can't really screw up things. Once the guest has left the premises, remove the account. You don't even have to log out yourself if someone just needs the access for five minutes, just switch users.

A step further: Build a virtual machine with a e.g. your basic Linux distro or Windows XP, create a snapshot of it in it's "fresh" state, and set it up to talk only directly to the Internet without any access to your local network. You can achieve this with Virtualbox at least. Let your guest access the virtual machine. When the guest leaves, just revert it to the snapshot state.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not paying the $40-$50 they want for some of the current games that are seriously outdated graphics and the PC versions are ports that don't get any love at all.

I agree. I just shelled out $65 for Tides of Numenera on Kickstarter, and I earlier put in $30 for Star Citizen. And they are not even going to be ready for quite some time! I didn't put any money, but I think I'll probably end up buying Hero-U (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1878147873/hero-u-rogue-to-redemption) once it's completed. Also interested in Richard Garriot's new project (Shroud of Avatar), not sure if I'm going to participate in the crowdfunding or not.

"Indie" does not necessarily mean "cheap" (see Tides and Star Citizen), of course they have smaller budgets than the triple-As even though Star Citizen is approaching $10M, but for me the recent ones have been about a certain renaissance. It's kinda has same overtures as Baldur's Gate series did 13 years ago - renewing the entire RPG genre, but on a industry-wide scale instead.

And gotta say, I love it. For last 5-7 years I've basically played just WoW and very few other games, until things started gaining more momentum about a year ago. The new indies, combined with Steam holiday discounts (where you can pay $5-$10 for a bit older games) has basically given me gaming back as a hobby.

Not based in North Korea, but a fake. Basically they have hijacked couple of IP addresses and set up fake BGP advertisement, and probably generated an artificial delay with some Linux box to emulate a satellite link. Most likely the 'bay is now hosted from Cambodia.

In-depth analysis here:https://rdns.im/the-pirate-bay-north-korean-hosting-no-its-fake