[–] anthonypasq 3 days ago
[–] ggreer 3 days ago
The main causes of incompatibility were the transition from ball-and-powder to rimfire cartridges, then the transition from rimfire to centerfire. It's surprising how little firearms have changed in the past century. 9mm Parabellum is 125 years old. The Browning short recoil action (used by most handguns today) is over a century old.
[–] toyg 3 days ago
Isn't that a function of constraints in the deployment model, which are fundamentally unchanged? A soldier needs <something> with him to hit enemies and <something else> to reload it - and the simpler the better, to facilitate difficult deployments and keep costs down. I mean, the venerable Kalashnikov is still around, despite its well-known shortcomings...
I guess we would see major developments only if we discovered/engineered materials that can perform the function in a significantly better way.
[–] ggreer 2 days ago
Most improvements have been in things like modularity, sighting systems, and standardization for mounting accessories such as lights and laser aiming modules. Better metallurgy does mean that modern firearms tend to last longer than older ones, but even a firearm from WWI can fire thousands of rounds before the bore erodes enough to hurt accuracy. I doubt we'll see any significant change in small arms unless something revolutionary comes along, such as portable energy weapons or mass drivers.
[–] jeroenhd 3 days ago
[–] fredoralive 3 days ago
[–] jeroenhd 3 days ago
[–] Barrin92 3 days ago
you can do that, in fact I know that Austria still has a mid 19th century train in regular operation (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/SB_alt_23)
if you're looking for commuter trains a lot of early 20th century ones still operate around the world.
[–] delta_p_delta_x 3 days ago
This quite literally happens all the time in the UK. There are heritage railways, and steam rolling stock regularly shows up on various routes as part of heritage rides.
On the other hand, I ride almost daily on a track bed that was laid almost 180 years ago, and through tunnels and on viaducts that are equally as old. The rails, sleepers, signals, and rolling stock have all changed, no doubt, but the base infrastructure is old hat.
The oldest bits of the London Underground are from 1863. The tunnels are exactly the same, the stations and stairways, and even some of the sign boards completely unchanged from then.
Railways are the epitome of forever infrastructure.
[–] wildzzz 3 days ago
[–] ssenssei 3 days ago
[–] Cthulhu_ 3 days ago
[–] eahhn 3 days ago
[–] stkdump 3 days ago
[–] tgv 2 days ago
[–] andai 3 days ago
It is amazing, though. Wintel is basically a Matryoshka doll (Russian nesting dolls), where each version contains all the previous versions. (Just look at how a PC boots up!)
The dedication to compatibility is commendable, and you don't really see it on the other OS's. On that note, this is one of my favorite articles:
Win32 is the only stable ABI on Linux
https://blog.hiler.eu/win32-the-only-stable-abi/
I think that's very funny. Speaking of which, EasyToon also runs in WINE, of course :)
[–] Clamchop 2 days ago
[–] toast0 2 days ago
It kind of depends on the document format. PDF tends to display well over time (but there can be issues with complex documents and/or missing fonts), spreadsheets and word processor files are likely to be openable, but they may not display as they originally did. HTML is likely to look rather different than it did when written, but it'll probably be legible.