Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Pretty cool technology, but like it or not - paper books are on their way out. Sometimes, you think that an industry is in its twilight - and it's really not. A good example would be movie theatres.

Something about sitting in a big dark room with lots of strangers while munching over-priced popcorn - it's an experience we don't want to lose. Prognosticators have been trumpeting the doom of cinemas since the VCR - but it turns out, it's not going to happen.

Similarly, those same sages are now telling us that the end is nigh for bookstores. In this case, I'd agree. Bookstores and paper books don't offer enough of a distinction or an improvement over buying a Kindle copy. You're buying something to read at home anyway - not to consume in a bookstore, so so much better to just download it with a single click. Verily, I say - bookstore, the bell tones for thee.

>> ^oOPonyOo:

Fake. http://www.snopes.com/photos/humor/batteryhack.asp.
Also, don't throw out your old VCR. Check out this video for a helpful hack!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGx-3t8CJ-k&feature=player_embedd
ed#!


I'm too gullible for my own good [blush] =o/

Thank you for your investigative prowess =o)

Fake. http://www.snopes.com/photos/humor/batteryhack.asp.

Also, don't throw out your old VCR. Check out this video for a helpful hack!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGx-3t8CJ-k&feature=player_embedded#!

The new one will be, without a doubt, much better. The old version was edited together using VCRs in order to get the episodes done on a tight schedule, so the quality was pretty bad. (Worse than the quality of TOS at times.) Since they are reediting from scratch, that alone will result in much better quality than we've ever seen. Add to that the excellent color correction, cleanup, cg enhancement, etc that they did to the remastered TOS, and it will end up being quite impressive indeed.
Pay attention, George Lucas. This is how you remaster your old work the RIGHT way!

Can't stop cash, it is funny how something that is still completely as possible as it was 300 years ago is so far from peoples minds that an "E-payment" shut down means your out of business. Well, in my day.....(something about phone books and VCRS).

Where did this guy go? I like his thought process before he goes off on a multi-comment rant.>> ^Cronyx:

(I split the following up into a few posts because it was too large.)
I don't claim to be an expert, or an authority on this stuff. I will say that I've been fascinated by it on a personal level for over ten years. It started back in the ZDtv days (before TechTV), when Michio Kaku was on an episode of Big Thinkers. I read anything I can get my hands on, and watch all material that comes my way.
Take the following for what it's worth, I'm not trying to proselytize an agenda, just share some of my private thoughts.
I've got a number of analogies I could use here for describing the entire (11 dimensional) universe. Two of my favorites are a VHS tape and hologram baseball card. They both kind of work the same way in so far as how they relate to the thought experiment. I'll explain both.
In the case of the VHS tape, it has your favorite movie on it. You know it word for word, line for line. You've seen it a hundred times. But no matter how many times you watch it, the story will always end the same way. But, from the point of view of the characters (I'm talking in a 4th wall sense; the characters themselves, not the actors playing them), have no idea what will happen next. In fact, the same was true for you the first time you saw the movie. There may have been some foreshadowing, but hell, there's some of that in real life too.
The point is, with the tape, you can fast forward, rewind, pause, browse the timeline however you choose. But the characters are oblivious to this. You aren't really manipulating their timeline, you're just browsing it for your own perspective. If you eject the tape though, you're holding the entire timeline. You've collapsed their universe into a 3 dimensional object. It only has a 4th dimension when you put it in the VCR. When you watch it. But even during the novel first experience of the initial viewing, the end of the story was there. It was always there, predetermined at the end of the tape.
On to the baseball card for a moment. Now, given various factors in the developing process, that hologram card has a lot more information than what you can see at one time, flat on. You have to tilt it one way or an other to get a different view -- to access more of the data. And yet, viewing the different angels don't create that data. Knowing they're there doesn't make them exist. It only makes you aware of them. Holding the card, you still hold all the potential that image has all at once, in that one object, even if you can't be privy to it all at once.

@packo indeed, but even those "first exposure" ideas are usually predicated in some great amount of prior knowledge. A man didn't just build a VCR; all the elements of VCR's more or less existed, and were combined to do the task required/inspired. But even then, the idea of recording things existed far beyond VCR's. It is impossibly hard to assign credit for ideas, we transmit and absorb them to freely to know where all ideas we have come from, or the foundation to understand the ideas we "come up with". There is a reason that early man didn't invent cars, and it wasn't because he wasn't creative enough.

I remember watching some History Channel thing on the history of Coco-Cola. When they got to the part about the "new improved" Coke 2 recipe and how sales dove as a result, the CEO was explaining that a woman called in and her simple complaint was: "Why... are you taking away my Coco-Cola?" and after some explanation he asked "Well when's the last time you had a coke?" Her reply? "40 years."

He went on to explain that it was at that moment he understood what they were doing wrong. Their brand and that same formula had been a part of people's lives for so long that to change it was to take away those happy moments with their product.

So George, why are you taking away my Star Wars? The one I sat around and watched when I was five, the one my mom recorded off of Cinemax with our VCR is being destroyed because you're being a revisionist asshole.

>> ^direpickle:

>> ^ant:
>> ^direpickle:
I like video games and all, but I think we need more people, today, that are willing to say, "No. The thing I have is good enough."

Yep, I am one of them. I still have my 20" Sharp CRT TV from 1996, VCR, Casio Databank 150 calculator watch, etc

I'm not one. It's something I have to fight. I either get overly sentimentally attached to old things, or way too green with envy over new things.


I keep using old stuff because they work fine. I don't need the latest stuff if they work. It save me money, time, etc. I do upgrade/replace them if they don't work anymore or really can't be used.

>> ^ant:

>> ^direpickle:
I like video games and all, but I think we need more people, today, that are willing to say, "No. The thing I have is good enough."

Yep, I am one of them. I still have my 20" Sharp CRT TV from 1996, VCR, Casio Databank 150 calculator watch, etc


I'm not one. It's something I have to fight. I either get overly sentimentally attached to old things, or way too green with envy over new things.

>> ^direpickle:

I like video games and all, but I think we need more people, today, that are willing to say, "No. The thing I have is good enough."


Yep, I am one of them. I still have my 20" Sharp CRT TV from 1996, VCR, Casio Databank 150 calculator watch, etc

>> ^kymbos:

Yeah, I think he's talking about people like you, Spoco.
I'm with him all the way.
He had me at the remote with hundreds of buttons. God I hate those things. Give me channels, volume and mute, and I'm happy.


Uh, but wait, he says that he wishes VHS was back. Are you trying to tell me that a VCR was easier to operate than a Tivo? How many people did you know that had no friggen clue how to set up a recording to happen in the future? Yeah, they were stupidly difficult to use.

Tivo... looking through program guide, ooh, I like that, button pressed, job done.

Other PVRs same thing really... I don't actually have a Tivo (wish I did), but my PVR is almost as easy... go through guide, see show, press record, press it again if you want it to record it weekly.

Seriously, he's clutching at straws for things to whinge about now, and has some serious rose tinted glasses on about how good VHS was to use, it was shit. Analogue is shit.

I have a lot of DVDs, and 4 kids under 8 years old.... ALL of my DVDs still work, no scratches.

He's making shit up.

It's a pity, because I love most of his stuff, but I think he's finding himself backed into a corner of having to live up to an image of him being about to rant about things really well, but having run out of things to rant about.

Well he's talking about VCRs, and your dream remote won't PLAY anything.

I watched a movie a year ago on VHS after watching it on Netflix streaming. 4:3 picture, poor audio quality, "tracking", whatever the hell that was. Let's be honest, VHS was serious crap.

DVDs were better, hands down.

You know what's even better? Movies on my hard drive.

Arguing against DVDs is like arguing against CDs or laserdiscs. Nobody cares anymore.>> ^kymbos:

Yeah, I think he's talking about people like you, Spoco.
I'm with him all the way.
He had me at the remote with hundreds of buttons. God I hate those things. Give me channels, volume and mute, and I'm happy.

HBO has done such a good job with this series, I've started reading the books.

On it's face, that doesn't sound like a big deal but you've got to understand, I loathe fantasy. As in: I never read it, ever. I'd sooner read a Scientology brochure. I'd sooner read an instruction manual. For a VCR. I'd sooner read the Patriot Act.

*dead

I watched this over and over again as a kid, back before VCR and 18,000 channels. It was on TV constantly. Great movie.