Geek Pop Quiz, or, Wherein I Am Bored.

[theweaselking]

I sent an email this morning that started "Hey, we missed a prerequisite on [thing]. Nobody remembered this requirement because it's not 2006 and nobody has seriously used [thing] in the last decade."

This was a followup on my yesterday suggestion, which was that everyone who seriously wanted to use [thing] should be told to go to [store] and pick up [off the shelf] instead, it would be faster, easier, and cheaper.

Pop quiz: What do you think [thing] is?

A shiny precious no-prize for the correct answer. A second one for the BEST answer.

EDIT: Hints pulled up from comments.

#1: [thing] is a software feature, but it's an obsolete one, with complex prerequisites, that requires vendor-side support. Multiple different vendors, in fact. Like, ACTUAL SUPPORT, not "I have to go to multiple web pages to download packages" but "multiple different companies have to change things ON THEIR SIDE to make this work, per user."

Meanwhile, COTS consumer-grade commercial devices, available EVERYWHERE (at least three places in any given shopping mall), do the exact same thing, better, simpler, requiring very little vendor support.

#2: in 2006 I, as a person who Fixed All The Things for employees of My Beloved Corporate Masters, dealt with [thing] on nearly a daily basis.

And by 2008 it was *dead*. In part because by 2008 I no longer worked for an international megacorporation, but also in general. Employees of international megacorporations probably still encountered occasional instances of [thing] in the hands of legacy users for years afterwards.

Comments

[skiriki.livejournal.com]

Usenet newsreader?

[pappy-legba.livejournal.com]

RealPlayer. I was going to say Flash but it's not quite in the grave yet.

I was going to guess Zip Drives until I read the comments.

[andrewducker]

I'd go for PDA if you hadn't said software.

As it is, I can tell I'm just going to kick myself a lot when you tell us what it is.

[frith]

Some kind of conference call software? It sounds like this software requires permissions to establish a network.

[ashbet]

Lotus Notes? Although I think that was dead before 2006 . . .

[prince-eric.livejournal.com]

FTP.

[skington.livejournal.com]

Novell, er, whatever their networky thing was called?

[skington.livejournal.com]

PostScript print server?

[nubule.livejournal.com]

BlackBerry something something?

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

Asterisk.

[skington.livejournal.com]

Whichever post had the most comments prior to today is going to be so pissed off that it missed out at most commented-on post of the month at the death.