Over ten years ago now my father and I and a small group of programmers developed a software suite called SciFAX which did fax automation using stand-alone Canon fax machines. While it was very cool and revolutionary software, it was almost immediately made obsolete by the rapid and unexpected proliferation of fax-capable modem cards.
The thing that creates the entry title of “odd” is that if I enter it into a search engine, I find tons and tons of current applications which are designed to interface with it. I wonder… do they also read ENIAC punchcards?
I mean, it's cool, and maybe flattering that the product hasn't left the computer world's strange pseudoconsciousness, but it's really rather strange as well. I wonder how much obsolete code is still being kept alive? When it comes to applications that handle multiple formats, I'm sure that the developers have no idea — they just buy a conversion library from someone in order to be backwards compatible (ever notice most graphics tools can still read a PCX?)… The question is, will SciFAX still be supported in three hundred years?
Part of me thinks “yes”.
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