Yes (to all the other posters, not just you), I realize the technical deficiencies and maintenance problems of the 8-track. In fact, toying with those is part of the appeal of the hobby. Some people buy and rebuild old cars. I buy and fix 8-tracks, since my budget is less spectacular.
Even recognizing that 8-tracks never benefited from the technical improvements that the cassette received, I must correct you on a couple of technical details. First, 8-tracks used 1/4" tape, and 4-track cassettes use 1/8" tape. The track widths are just the same. As for slow tape speeds, that would be a cassette "problem," as they run at 1 7/8" per second as opposed to the 8-track's 3 3/4" per second. (Unless you're comparing the 8-track to 7 1/2" or 15" per second reel-to-reel, in which case there really is no comparison. Still, 8-tracks vary a *lot* in production/audio quality, from nearly unlistenable to nearly indistinguishable from my CD collection.)
Also, one big advantage that 8-tracks had, which other consumer formats did not have until the past several years, was discrete surround-sound. There were various matrixed solutions on vinyl, but quadraphonic 8-tracks had two programs of four discrete channels each. It was only fairly popular due to the cost of the extra two speakers and quad 8-tracks, but are DVD-Audio and SACD surround sound solutions popular today? The Fidelipak infinite-loop tape cartridges still used somewhat in broadcasting are a close relative of the 8-track, and further add to its historical importance in music. It's not as good as the CD on any level except surround-sound, but it's definitely still relevant.
Finally, on the issue of eight programs: The 4-tracks that Earl Muntz made profitable had only two stereo programs. It was Bill Lear (of Lear Jet fame) who decided to take Muntz's idea and split it in half again, then marketed the format to Ford for use in their autos. And quad, in a way, rectified the problem of having to rearrange or chop up tracks.
Forget not the humble 8-track tape! I have a few hundred of them (before you call me old, examine my UID...I'm 17). For tapes that were made in the age of "disposable music" up to 40 years ago, and as early as 20 years ago, they've really held up to the test of time. And unlike digital, a scratch can't ruin the entire product; at 3 and 3/4 inches of tape per second, minor blemishes don't matter and you can even cut out and resplice segments of tape as needed when a tape does get "eaten" by its player.
That being said, my music collection is a healthy mix of 8-tracks, cassettes, vinyl, CDs, and of course several thousand MP3s.
I'd like to think that MP3s are not so much competition as existing on a different level. CDs are physically tangible high-quality audio, and they do a good job of that. MP3s are *medium-transparent* audio that uses human audio perception to deliver high quality in a small file size. The thing is that these days, consumers want audio in a format that will work across many mediums, instead of being limited to CDs.
They've never seen the roundness of the earth externally. Many people don't accept the existence of a higher power because they can't observe that power, even though there are millions of pages of literature describing all the human deities. Same would probably go for most flat-earthists -- if they could be convinced they really were high above the planet, in space, and seeing with their own eyes that it was round, they would probably accept that it is. Unless they're of the type who will always say you can never be sure.
If only, if only.
My problems are along the lines of having perfectly usable, strong servers, but not being able to afford the bandwidth to get them actually serving something up. The best use I can think for it is distributed computing like BOINC.
Certainly an inflammatory statement, but if you want to look at it practically, it is true...Africa needs to develop so it can take care of itself. By letting people die now, by withholding aid to encourage that process, you may very well save millions later on.
Mind letting me know what some of those constructive ideas are, so I can steal a few?:) I have, for example, a dual Pentium II workstation still in excellent operating shape, but I don't have any good projects to put it to use on. And I do feel so guilty letting my boxen collect dust.
Actually, our local college rock station refuses to play "Crazy Bitch" (their manager, no coincidence, is a woman:P but she's a really nice radio personality). But they do play "Everything," which is to me a rather touching song.
It has more features, but the Zune software is perfectly horrible to try to use. My friend bought a Zune and after it stopped syncing on his computer, we tried it on mine...it worked *once*, after a lot of tweaking, and thenceforth never worked again.
Are they going to keep trying to plug memory leaks? At first I noticed some optimization of memory use, but now I have the same problem as FF2; give it an hour and even though I only have a couple tabs open, RAM usage is at 300MB. My only addons are Foxmarks, DownThemAll, and Skype.
And those hardware encoders are still godsends. I picked up a 500MHz Pentium III ThinkPad and a Margi PCMCIA decoder card for about $100, which gives me two hours' battery life and a 13.3" screen -- which respectively equal and thrash your average portable DVD player. When I'm not playing movies I can use the same device to check my e-mail, and when I am watching movies, I can even use a dongle to hook it up to a bigger screen and use it as my only DVD player. The downside is that I have to dual-boot because you can't find Linux Margi drivers anymore. (Can anyone hook me up?)
Maybe not a direct leader, but certainly one who influences in some way how we act (whether we then act in the same direction as he, or in the opposite, is another matter).
If that's why they're used, then I have to highly disagree with it. The possibility of a stopped heart from being Tasered is a lot worse than picking up a few bruises...and the resulting lawsuit is going to be a lot worse, too.
No kidding about no bloat...the GUI looks like a Windows 3.1 throwback, right down to the fonts. But then again, I kind of like the stripped-down look compared to the glitzy bloat that afflicts most "modern" applications. As long as I can do things quickly and easily it's all good. I think I just found my new AV program.
Sorry, no, I'm a Firefox user since v1. (And while I do use IEs4Linux for website testing purposes, it's downright inconvenient for one to use IE on openSUSE.;) ) I run Adblock Plus and Filterset.G and honestly I'm so used to them that I'm surprised when I have to use another browser on another computer and find out that the web still has ads. But it takes ages to convince a lot of people (example, my parents and younger siblings) who just use "the Internet" shortcut that came with their computer that they need to switch to another browser, and longer still to convince them that there's even anything dangerous they should watch out for online, until they ask me to find out why the computer is running so slowly. Most people just think they click the button and start browsing; they aren't even aware of these extensions nor of the dangers they protect you from.
This is a minimal effort for you, but a lot of people aren't very well-informed. They might not know how to find out how to block such things; they might not know that blocking them is even possible; and hell, they might not even know that they should care. Even if they do care somewhat, it may not seem worth their time to go to the trouble to set up blacklists when they can just tune out all but the worst intrusions upon their browsing experience.
And that, my friends, is why adblocking and flash-disabling and noscripting are still just niches and why companies feel they can get away with it -- the amount of resistance is so minimal as to not even be irritating.
The only problem with that is that while all the materials are there, they're locked up in various parts of the landfills, in various parts of components. I'd like to see you try to get the silicon out of the middle of a microchip. (Theoretical example, there's plenty of silicon...but still, it's a pain even to extract copper from a circuit board, isn't it?)
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Petty cash? That's more than half the US GDP for a single year...and it's not like all of that is just spending money, most of it has to go somewhere.
I'm all for solar and wind power on the national scale, but we can't throw money at it nearly as quickly and painlessly as you seem to imply.
Back in my grandparents' day, he had to toggle DIP switches to enter text into memory!
Yes (to all the other posters, not just you), I realize the technical deficiencies and maintenance problems of the 8-track. In fact, toying with those is part of the appeal of the hobby. Some people buy and rebuild old cars. I buy and fix 8-tracks, since my budget is less spectacular. Even recognizing that 8-tracks never benefited from the technical improvements that the cassette received, I must correct you on a couple of technical details. First, 8-tracks used 1/4" tape, and 4-track cassettes use 1/8" tape. The track widths are just the same. As for slow tape speeds, that would be a cassette "problem," as they run at 1 7/8" per second as opposed to the 8-track's 3 3/4" per second. (Unless you're comparing the 8-track to 7 1/2" or 15" per second reel-to-reel, in which case there really is no comparison. Still, 8-tracks vary a *lot* in production/audio quality, from nearly unlistenable to nearly indistinguishable from my CD collection.) Also, one big advantage that 8-tracks had, which other consumer formats did not have until the past several years, was discrete surround-sound. There were various matrixed solutions on vinyl, but quadraphonic 8-tracks had two programs of four discrete channels each. It was only fairly popular due to the cost of the extra two speakers and quad 8-tracks, but are DVD-Audio and SACD surround sound solutions popular today? The Fidelipak infinite-loop tape cartridges still used somewhat in broadcasting are a close relative of the 8-track, and further add to its historical importance in music. It's not as good as the CD on any level except surround-sound, but it's definitely still relevant. Finally, on the issue of eight programs: The 4-tracks that Earl Muntz made profitable had only two stereo programs. It was Bill Lear (of Lear Jet fame) who decided to take Muntz's idea and split it in half again, then marketed the format to Ford for use in their autos. And quad, in a way, rectified the problem of having to rearrange or chop up tracks.
Forget not the humble 8-track tape! I have a few hundred of them (before you call me old, examine my UID...I'm 17). For tapes that were made in the age of "disposable music" up to 40 years ago, and as early as 20 years ago, they've really held up to the test of time. And unlike digital, a scratch can't ruin the entire product; at 3 and 3/4 inches of tape per second, minor blemishes don't matter and you can even cut out and resplice segments of tape as needed when a tape does get "eaten" by its player. That being said, my music collection is a healthy mix of 8-tracks, cassettes, vinyl, CDs, and of course several thousand MP3s.
I'd like to think that MP3s are not so much competition as existing on a different level. CDs are physically tangible high-quality audio, and they do a good job of that. MP3s are *medium-transparent* audio that uses human audio perception to deliver high quality in a small file size. The thing is that these days, consumers want audio in a format that will work across many mediums, instead of being limited to CDs.
They've never seen the roundness of the earth externally. Many people don't accept the existence of a higher power because they can't observe that power, even though there are millions of pages of literature describing all the human deities. Same would probably go for most flat-earthists -- if they could be convinced they really were high above the planet, in space, and seeing with their own eyes that it was round, they would probably accept that it is. Unless they're of the type who will always say you can never be sure.
If only, if only. My problems are along the lines of having perfectly usable, strong servers, but not being able to afford the bandwidth to get them actually serving something up. The best use I can think for it is distributed computing like BOINC.
Certainly an inflammatory statement, but if you want to look at it practically, it is true...Africa needs to develop so it can take care of itself. By letting people die now, by withholding aid to encourage that process, you may very well save millions later on.
Mind letting me know what some of those constructive ideas are, so I can steal a few? :) I have, for example, a dual Pentium II workstation still in excellent operating shape, but I don't have any good projects to put it to use on. And I do feel so guilty letting my boxen collect dust.
Actually, our local college rock station refuses to play "Crazy Bitch" (their manager, no coincidence, is a woman :P but she's a really nice radio personality). But they do play "Everything," which is to me a rather touching song.
It has more features, but the Zune software is perfectly horrible to try to use. My friend bought a Zune and after it stopped syncing on his computer, we tried it on mine...it worked *once*, after a lot of tweaking, and thenceforth never worked again.
Are they going to keep trying to plug memory leaks? At first I noticed some optimization of memory use, but now I have the same problem as FF2; give it an hour and even though I only have a couple tabs open, RAM usage is at 300MB. My only addons are Foxmarks, DownThemAll, and Skype.
Yes, but how many Libraries of Congress can you fit in there?
Talking to yourself isn't a sign of insanity, thinking that a second person answers you is a sign of insanity.
And those hardware encoders are still godsends. I picked up a 500MHz Pentium III ThinkPad and a Margi PCMCIA decoder card for about $100, which gives me two hours' battery life and a 13.3" screen -- which respectively equal and thrash your average portable DVD player. When I'm not playing movies I can use the same device to check my e-mail, and when I am watching movies, I can even use a dongle to hook it up to a bigger screen and use it as my only DVD player. The downside is that I have to dual-boot because you can't find Linux Margi drivers anymore. (Can anyone hook me up?)
Maybe not a direct leader, but certainly one who influences in some way how we act (whether we then act in the same direction as he, or in the opposite, is another matter).
If that's why they're used, then I have to highly disagree with it. The possibility of a stopped heart from being Tasered is a lot worse than picking up a few bruises...and the resulting lawsuit is going to be a lot worse, too.
OMG, a haxor??? We need shock bracelets to keep us safe !!
I love your idea. I'm looking forward to using that program to watch the 2028 Olympics.
Unfortunately, it seems that if you stick to that, eventually you won't be able to touch a Mac at all.
Although my old Mac SE (Motorola 68000) is still running as well as it ever could, so you've probably got even longer to go on the PowerPC front. :P
No kidding about no bloat...the GUI looks like a Windows 3.1 throwback, right down to the fonts. But then again, I kind of like the stripped-down look compared to the glitzy bloat that afflicts most "modern" applications. As long as I can do things quickly and easily it's all good. I think I just found my new AV program.
Sorry, no, I'm a Firefox user since v1. (And while I do use IEs4Linux for website testing purposes, it's downright inconvenient for one to use IE on openSUSE. ;) ) I run Adblock Plus and Filterset.G and honestly I'm so used to them that I'm surprised when I have to use another browser on another computer and find out that the web still has ads. But it takes ages to convince a lot of people (example, my parents and younger siblings) who just use "the Internet" shortcut that came with their computer that they need to switch to another browser, and longer still to convince them that there's even anything dangerous they should watch out for online, until they ask me to find out why the computer is running so slowly. Most people just think they click the button and start browsing; they aren't even aware of these extensions nor of the dangers they protect you from.
This is a minimal effort for you, but a lot of people aren't very well-informed. They might not know how to find out how to block such things; they might not know that blocking them is even possible; and hell, they might not even know that they should care. Even if they do care somewhat, it may not seem worth their time to go to the trouble to set up blacklists when they can just tune out all but the worst intrusions upon their browsing experience.
And that, my friends, is why adblocking and flash-disabling and noscripting are still just niches and why companies feel they can get away with it -- the amount of resistance is so minimal as to not even be irritating.
The only problem with that is that while all the materials are there, they're locked up in various parts of the landfills, in various parts of components. I'd like to see you try to get the silicon out of the middle of a microchip. (Theoretical example, there's plenty of silicon...but still, it's a pain even to extract copper from a circuit board, isn't it?)
When it does, we people who maintain old hardware for a hobby are going to be on top of the food chain. :D