Well, it’s related to “things made intentionally shoddy so you have to buy a new one.” But I don’t know if there’s a buzzword for that. People use “planned obsolescence” (imprecisely) to refer to the Apple iPhone’s non-replaceable battery so that you have to buy a new phone when the battery stops working.
I don’t see any words used incorrectly here. Please elucidate.
The gentleman in the comic doesn’t know it yet but his department will be declared redundant and will be shut down.
Also, I have a doorknob just like that. Luckily I can just slide it back in and it still works…until it comes off again.
Obsolescence: “the state of being which occurs when an object, service, or practice is no longer wanted even though it may still be in good working order.”
In other words, you don’t NEED to replace your iPhone because it no longer works as well as it did when it was new, but you WANT to replace it because the new one takes better photos and lets you tweet and play Hungry Hungry Hippos at the same time.
. . . and obviously, that doorknob was no longer ‘in good working order’.
“Obsolescence: ‘the state of being which occurs when an object, service, or practice is no longer wanted even though it may still be in good working order.'”
Seems like that word is being used correctly (referring to the employee).
dictionary.com has “noun – the state, process, or condition of being or becoming obsolete.”
and for obsolete “adjective – (1) no longer in general use; fallen into disuse: an obsolete expression.
(2) of a discarded or outmoded type; out of date:
So, according to that reference, at least, it’s used correctly here (referring to the doorknob).
Thus, depending on the dictionary reference you select, you get two perfectly functional jokes..
From Wikipedia, that font of never-wrong information: “Planned obsolescence, or built-in obsolescence, in industrial design and economics is a policy of planning or designing a product with an artificially limited useful life, so it will become obsolete (that is, unfashionable or no longer functional) after a certain period of time.”
Given that they made their own doorknob shoddy, and it now needs to be replaced, I think the word *does* mean what they think it means.
And that definition includes Apple’s non-replaceable battery.
Do they actually say “no longer functional”? Because that’s the key phrase.
What was within quotes was a direct copy-and-paste. Here’s another from dictionary.com: “a method of stimulating consumer demand by designing products that wear out or become outmoded after limited use.”
(BTW, have I been mistyping my edress a lot, or am I just the current poster that the moderation software doesn’t like?)
I’m moderately of the party that thinks it isn’t perfectly aligned with the definition. But try to think of how to illustrate the more narrow meaning. Would you show people happily entering a neighboring department whose door sports a fancy new model of doorknob or latch?
That doorknob is not “obsolete”. It’s just broken. Anything else is just looking for a way to excuse this poorly executed joke.
“That doorknob is not ‘obsolete’. It’s just broken.”
It’s both.
My much older toaster worked great for years. Needed an new one because of 4 slots and a bagel sized slot. Lasted 1 year and now only toasts on one side and the lifting bars that make it pop up are cheap, thin and come out of their guide slots. Chinese, major name brand, Crap. Now I have to buy another, Planned obsolescence, Cheap to build, low bidder thinking, shareholder profits maximized. Junk pile/dump overflowing.
I like toasters – old chrome heavy toasters. The decades take their tolls, now have an Avante’ T-FAL, pretty good toaster, $6 from the thrift store. My only quibble is it launches lighter toasts into the air & usually to the floor. I pull open the silver-ware drawer as safeguard.
Yup appliances (and doorknobs as well perhaps) are seemingly designed to eventually fail, and be impossible (or nearly so) to fix.
So we have to run out and buy another one.
Remember when things used to last for decades? Well to sell more so they make them so they don’t last as long.
As for me, I’m looking or a decent reliable electric alarm clock after my two-decade-old one had its power cord ripped, I haven’t found a replacement I’ve liked. How hard can it be???
James, it all comes back to words meaning what they mean, regardless of how some people might incorrectly use them. So less≠fewer, they’re≠there, and a Hobson’s Choice isn’t the choice between two options you dislike.
Grawlix, I can’t imagine there’s any great incentive to produce alarm clocks these days, since so many people just use their phones.
I also wouldn’t want to be in the pager or typewriter ribbon businesses.
Apparently the latter, Arthur.
Think of it as taking one for the team.
“James, it all comes back to words meaning what they mean, regardless of how some people might incorrectly use them.”
That’s another round of the descriptivist/prescriptivist eternal struggle. But I haven’t suggested that the words aren’t incorrect because somebody, somewhere uses them that way. I suggested that the words aren’t incorrect because they aren’t incorrect.
” So less≠fewer, they’re≠there, and a Hobson’s Choice isn’t the choice between two options you dislike.”
Fewer CAN BE less. Fewer implies discrete units, while less does not. But where there are discrete units, “fewer than” and “less than” are the same thing. 3 < 5, whether you choose to say it out loud as "3 is less than 5" or "3 is fewer than 5". There, their, and they're are different words with different meanings. A Hobson's choice is a choice between the offered option, or nothing. If nothing is not desired, and the offered option is not desired, then in that case, a Hobson's choice does turn out to be a choice between two undesired options.
And round doorknobs are obsolete. The preferred choice is door handles, because some individuals have trouble grasping and manipulating doorknobs.
Is there a difference between obsolete and obsolescent?
Bob, ba-ba, B.A.: The fewer/less thing is actually an example of regardless of how some people might “correctly” use them, because here is a distinction that has more or less been invented with usage, where a tipping has been reached, and there is suddenly a correct and an incorrect. Which is how language works, and you have to learn to take the “good” with the “bad”: less and fewer now have more precise, distinguishing definitions, literally and ironic have broader, less exacting definitions now.
Portuguese has two words for the verb “to be”: estar and ser, each with their own conjugations. When learning Portuguese, they try and convince you that there is a rhyme and reason to which version you use where, but there are very obvious exceptions which prove that the “rules” are just wishful thinking. What happened is that two variations of Latin went their own ways for a while, and then came back together. And an important verb like “to be” is the most likely verb to be irregular, because it is very resistant to change, being so highly used. And when two otherwise mostly compatible dialects meld together, the verb will be very resistant to change. And so it survived in both forms, probably due to what usage which speakers more often put it to (for example, if a fishing and a farming group both came together, and the fishermen used “estar” and the farmers used “ser”, then actions and words associated with fishing would probably keep “estar”, and farming terms and ideas would use “ser” — not that this is what happened in Portuguese, it is just a sort of thought example).
So, now you have a newly united language with two forms of a verb that means the same thing. What happens next? Speakers, according to their innate sense of language, try and regularize the usage. Different users have a different innate sense of the language, so this process take a while. In Portuguese, they are settling on a difference of “ser” being for permanent things, and “estar” being for impermanent things. That’s the “rule” they teach you. But it isn’t there yet, and some of the more important usages are resistant to change, and they are the glaring exceptions. So death is described in terms or “estar”, even though it is a pretty permanent state (the more religious try and convince you it is on purpose for doctrinal reasons, but they are really reaching…); whereas telling time is associated with the verb “ser”, even though there is hardly anything more ephemeral than the current time. But give it few more generations.
There is an odd sentence that was passed around students in my Spanish classes in high school. Mi tío está enfermo pero el camino es verde. My uncle is sick but the road is green. It was an object of puzzlement both because of the somewhat surreal image of the green road, but even more the use of “but” without a clear sense of relatedness plus contrast.
Eventually we were given an explanation, that this was (not precisely a mnemonic but more) an illustration of when you use those two different verbs of BE in Spanish. It matches the pattern given to larK for Portuguese – The clause about my uncle’s sickness uses ESTAR and the one about the road uses SER.
The way the phrase “planned obsolescence” is used in this cartoon jibes with the way I’ve always heard that phrase used. Now, if the set phrase “planned obsolescence” misuses the word “obsolescence”, that’s not the cartoonist’s fault…
Funnier if the door said “Quality Control Department”.
@Singapore Bill: Or if the door said “Quailty Contrel Departmont.”
@ Shrug: Or it had “Department” misspelled and crossed out multiple times until they finally got it right.
English has a similar situation to Portuguese in that we have different words for animals on a farm (pig, sheep, cow) from animals you eat (pork, mutton, beef) because of that Norman French vs. Saxon thing.
Hence why it is getting harder and harder for me to use my Win XP computer and the software does not work with later Windows version – solution Robert found for my Win 7 desktop and both our Win 10 laptops – Windows XP virtual machine – the best of both Windows.
Mark in Boston – due to the same topic I have limited use of my Palm Centro (early smart phone) and after the Blackberry I had after it died – at first when it was only the phone feature which was not working, we were arguing about my keeping and making the rare calls I did with using the Internet, but a week later the Internet connection went also. However while I have an Android phone (Robert said that I could not get a simple flip phone and carry the Centro for calendar, etc as I wanted to) and not an Iphone, I was under the impression that the Iphone battery could be replaced by certain companies – such as the ones in the mall that same “Iphone batteries replaced” as well as by Apple itself.
When we got married a friend gave us a GE toaster oven, something we had not thought to get. That toaster oven lasted for decades – despite at least 2 fires happening in it over the years. When we went to replace it there was a problem. Their newer ones (10 or so years ago) had a design flaw – it had holes in the bottom of the oven area. Crumbs and burned bits fell out the bottom. If one tried to resolve this by lining the bottom with aluminum foil – it overheated and stopped working. My solution had been to place it on top of one of the cooking trays from the original oven to catch what fell out the bottom. We had 2, maybe even 3 of them in the last 10 years and they no longer exist. I have a fancy “counter oven” now that involved learning a new way of using it (it has preheat – the old one did not and this has thrown my timing for cooking things off), is huge, and I seem to always push a button or turn a dial that results in having to start setting it all up again from the start – I hate it. The new one is bigger and takes up most of the 1/3 of counter space in our kitchen that the counter it is on makes up. This further complicates it all as nothing fits in front of it or next to while I am cooking with it and thing barely fit ditto when it is not being used and pushed against the wall at the back of the counter.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Well, it’s related to “things made intentionally shoddy so you have to buy a new one.” But I don’t know if there’s a buzzword for that. People use “planned obsolescence” (imprecisely) to refer to the Apple iPhone’s non-replaceable battery so that you have to buy a new phone when the battery stops working.
I don’t see any words used incorrectly here. Please elucidate.
The gentleman in the comic doesn’t know it yet but his department will be declared redundant and will be shut down.
Also, I have a doorknob just like that. Luckily I can just slide it back in and it still works…until it comes off again.
Obsolescence: “the state of being which occurs when an object, service, or practice is no longer wanted even though it may still be in good working order.”
In other words, you don’t NEED to replace your iPhone because it no longer works as well as it did when it was new, but you WANT to replace it because the new one takes better photos and lets you tweet and play Hungry Hungry Hippos at the same time.
. . . and obviously, that doorknob was no longer ‘in good working order’.
“Obsolescence: ‘the state of being which occurs when an object, service, or practice is no longer wanted even though it may still be in good working order.'”
Seems like that word is being used correctly (referring to the employee).
dictionary.com has “noun – the state, process, or condition of being or becoming obsolete.”
and for obsolete “adjective – (1) no longer in general use; fallen into disuse: an obsolete expression.
(2) of a discarded or outmoded type; out of date:
So, according to that reference, at least, it’s used correctly here (referring to the doorknob).
Thus, depending on the dictionary reference you select, you get two perfectly functional jokes..
From Wikipedia, that font of never-wrong information: “Planned obsolescence, or built-in obsolescence, in industrial design and economics is a policy of planning or designing a product with an artificially limited useful life, so it will become obsolete (that is, unfashionable or no longer functional) after a certain period of time.”
Given that they made their own doorknob shoddy, and it now needs to be replaced, I think the word *does* mean what they think it means.
And that definition includes Apple’s non-replaceable battery.
Do they actually say “no longer functional”? Because that’s the key phrase.
What was within quotes was a direct copy-and-paste. Here’s another from dictionary.com: “a method of stimulating consumer demand by designing products that wear out or become outmoded after limited use.”
(BTW, have I been mistyping my edress a lot, or am I just the current poster that the moderation software doesn’t like?)
I’m moderately of the party that thinks it isn’t perfectly aligned with the definition. But try to think of how to illustrate the more narrow meaning. Would you show people happily entering a neighboring department whose door sports a fancy new model of doorknob or latch?
That doorknob is not “obsolete”. It’s just broken. Anything else is just looking for a way to excuse this poorly executed joke.
“That doorknob is not ‘obsolete’. It’s just broken.”
It’s both.
My much older toaster worked great for years. Needed an new one because of 4 slots and a bagel sized slot. Lasted 1 year and now only toasts on one side and the lifting bars that make it pop up are cheap, thin and come out of their guide slots. Chinese, major name brand, Crap. Now I have to buy another, Planned obsolescence, Cheap to build, low bidder thinking, shareholder profits maximized. Junk pile/dump overflowing.
I like toasters – old chrome heavy toasters. The decades take their tolls, now have an Avante’ T-FAL, pretty good toaster, $6 from the thrift store. My only quibble is it launches lighter toasts into the air & usually to the floor. I pull open the silver-ware drawer as safeguard.
Yup appliances (and doorknobs as well perhaps) are seemingly designed to eventually fail, and be impossible (or nearly so) to fix.
So we have to run out and buy another one.
Remember when things used to last for decades? Well to sell more so they make them so they don’t last as long.
As for me, I’m looking or a decent reliable electric alarm clock after my two-decade-old one had its power cord ripped, I haven’t found a replacement I’ve liked. How hard can it be???
James, it all comes back to words meaning what they mean, regardless of how some people might incorrectly use them. So less≠fewer, they’re≠there, and a Hobson’s Choice isn’t the choice between two options you dislike.
Grawlix, I can’t imagine there’s any great incentive to produce alarm clocks these days, since so many people just use their phones.
I also wouldn’t want to be in the pager or typewriter ribbon businesses.
Apparently the latter, Arthur.
Think of it as taking one for the team.
“James, it all comes back to words meaning what they mean, regardless of how some people might incorrectly use them.”
That’s another round of the descriptivist/prescriptivist eternal struggle. But I haven’t suggested that the words aren’t incorrect because somebody, somewhere uses them that way. I suggested that the words aren’t incorrect because they aren’t incorrect.
” So less≠fewer, they’re≠there, and a Hobson’s Choice isn’t the choice between two options you dislike.”
Fewer CAN BE less. Fewer implies discrete units, while less does not. But where there are discrete units, “fewer than” and “less than” are the same thing. 3 < 5, whether you choose to say it out loud as "3 is less than 5" or "3 is fewer than 5". There, their, and they're are different words with different meanings. A Hobson's choice is a choice between the offered option, or nothing. If nothing is not desired, and the offered option is not desired, then in that case, a Hobson's choice does turn out to be a choice between two undesired options.
And round doorknobs are obsolete. The preferred choice is door handles, because some individuals have trouble grasping and manipulating doorknobs.
Is there a difference between obsolete and obsolescent?
Bob, ba-ba, B.A.: The fewer/less thing is actually an example of regardless of how some people might “correctly” use them, because here is a distinction that has more or less been invented with usage, where a tipping has been reached, and there is suddenly a correct and an incorrect. Which is how language works, and you have to learn to take the “good” with the “bad”: less and fewer now have more precise, distinguishing definitions, literally and ironic have broader, less exacting definitions now.
Portuguese has two words for the verb “to be”: estar and ser, each with their own conjugations. When learning Portuguese, they try and convince you that there is a rhyme and reason to which version you use where, but there are very obvious exceptions which prove that the “rules” are just wishful thinking. What happened is that two variations of Latin went their own ways for a while, and then came back together. And an important verb like “to be” is the most likely verb to be irregular, because it is very resistant to change, being so highly used. And when two otherwise mostly compatible dialects meld together, the verb will be very resistant to change. And so it survived in both forms, probably due to what usage which speakers more often put it to (for example, if a fishing and a farming group both came together, and the fishermen used “estar” and the farmers used “ser”, then actions and words associated with fishing would probably keep “estar”, and farming terms and ideas would use “ser” — not that this is what happened in Portuguese, it is just a sort of thought example).
So, now you have a newly united language with two forms of a verb that means the same thing. What happens next? Speakers, according to their innate sense of language, try and regularize the usage. Different users have a different innate sense of the language, so this process take a while. In Portuguese, they are settling on a difference of “ser” being for permanent things, and “estar” being for impermanent things. That’s the “rule” they teach you. But it isn’t there yet, and some of the more important usages are resistant to change, and they are the glaring exceptions. So death is described in terms or “estar”, even though it is a pretty permanent state (the more religious try and convince you it is on purpose for doctrinal reasons, but they are really reaching…); whereas telling time is associated with the verb “ser”, even though there is hardly anything more ephemeral than the current time. But give it few more generations.
There is an odd sentence that was passed around students in my Spanish classes in high school. Mi tío está enfermo pero el camino es verde. My uncle is sick but the road is green. It was an object of puzzlement both because of the somewhat surreal image of the green road, but even more the use of “but” without a clear sense of relatedness plus contrast.
Eventually we were given an explanation, that this was (not precisely a mnemonic but more) an illustration of when you use those two different verbs of BE in Spanish. It matches the pattern given to larK for Portuguese – The clause about my uncle’s sickness uses ESTAR and the one about the road uses SER.
The way the phrase “planned obsolescence” is used in this cartoon jibes with the way I’ve always heard that phrase used. Now, if the set phrase “planned obsolescence” misuses the word “obsolescence”, that’s not the cartoonist’s fault…
Funnier if the door said “Quality Control Department”.
@Singapore Bill: Or if the door said “Quailty Contrel Departmont.”
@ Shrug: Or it had “Department” misspelled and crossed out multiple times until they finally got it right.
English has a similar situation to Portuguese in that we have different words for animals on a farm (pig, sheep, cow) from animals you eat (pork, mutton, beef) because of that Norman French vs. Saxon thing.
Hence why it is getting harder and harder for me to use my Win XP computer and the software does not work with later Windows version – solution Robert found for my Win 7 desktop and both our Win 10 laptops – Windows XP virtual machine – the best of both Windows.
Mark in Boston – due to the same topic I have limited use of my Palm Centro (early smart phone) and after the Blackberry I had after it died – at first when it was only the phone feature which was not working, we were arguing about my keeping and making the rare calls I did with using the Internet, but a week later the Internet connection went also. However while I have an Android phone (Robert said that I could not get a simple flip phone and carry the Centro for calendar, etc as I wanted to) and not an Iphone, I was under the impression that the Iphone battery could be replaced by certain companies – such as the ones in the mall that same “Iphone batteries replaced” as well as by Apple itself.
When we got married a friend gave us a GE toaster oven, something we had not thought to get. That toaster oven lasted for decades – despite at least 2 fires happening in it over the years. When we went to replace it there was a problem. Their newer ones (10 or so years ago) had a design flaw – it had holes in the bottom of the oven area. Crumbs and burned bits fell out the bottom. If one tried to resolve this by lining the bottom with aluminum foil – it overheated and stopped working. My solution had been to place it on top of one of the cooking trays from the original oven to catch what fell out the bottom. We had 2, maybe even 3 of them in the last 10 years and they no longer exist. I have a fancy “counter oven” now that involved learning a new way of using it (it has preheat – the old one did not and this has thrown my timing for cooking things off), is huge, and I seem to always push a button or turn a dial that results in having to start setting it all up again from the start – I hate it. The new one is bigger and takes up most of the 1/3 of counter space in our kitchen that the counter it is on makes up. This further complicates it all as nothing fits in front of it or next to while I am cooking with it and thing barely fit ditto when it is not being used and pushed against the wall at the back of the counter.