Betamax was introduced as a (expensive) consumer format in 1975 or so. Did BetaCam exist before this? (U-Matic did, I know, but I always thought Beta was consumer first, pro later.)
Yeah. But "consumer" wasn't in the sense that you're meaning.
The very first Beta VCRs were not high-end consumer things at all; they were full-blown industrial. They were meant for TV stations initially as a portable version of 3/4".
At the time, you must remember, you had your 6:PM newscast, and then you could see the "film at Eleven". The 11:PM newscast gave the camera crews time to get back to the studio and develop the film for the air.
The 3/4" VTR enjoyed some use as a portable format. But, speaking as someone who used to lug one on his shoulder from time to time, it wasn't very practical. The machine I used to use - a VO-1800, I think - was over 50lbs, plus batteries, plus cassettes, in a shoulder bag. The camera was usually handled by a separate person!
So, the Betamax was designed to be a portable version of 3/4" that could be used as an ENG camera; better quality than film, but still not quite as good as 3/4". The format was also marketed towards schools and institutions initially, but by this point, Sony was also realizing that there was a burgeoning consumer market. Betamax went that way.
Since most ENG videotape ends up being edited, archived, etc, Sony had overestimated the market for Betamax as a professional format, since the picture quality was less than 3/4" and the generational losses between copies became more on an issue, especially in ENG conditions where you may have less than perfect lighting and other factors. Professionals basically stuck with their existing film systems and the lighter weight 3/4" decks that were coming out, while Sony refocussed the market first on high end consumers. This whole thing only took a year or so to play out; I've only ever seen one professional Betamax camcorder.
This whole scenario was repeated with SVHS, of course, which was introduced as a professional format, and touted as The Next Big Thing. Yeah, right. Because it's an M-Loader, the basic VHS mechanism isn't robust enough for the real professional world, and so SVHS has been similarily demoted to the world of broadcasting schools and consumers who want something that's just a little bit better.
I think it was about '82 or '83 that the first Betacam ENG camcorders started to come out, that was the point at which 3/4" portables and film started to die off.
This will probably get me nicked as a troll, but... http://www.urbanlegends.com/products/beta_vs_vhs.h tml
Actually, that website has covered the subject very well, but there are a few things I take issue with:
True, except for the recording length, Sony pioneered most of the improvements over the years, but the VHS manufacturers caught up to each improvement, usually in less than a year.
Not true. VHS is technically inferior due to such things as chroma subcarrier, M-load versus U-load, etc. M-loading is the most damning, since it requires a Rube Goldberg mechanism to thread the tape out of the cassette. Like Beta's predecessor, U-Matic (so named because it was a U-Loading Automatic Threader), Beta's U-loading is a reliable and efficient picture of simplicity, simply spinning the tape around the heads on a "donut".
Early VCRs all ate videotape more than today's VCRs do. But VHS VCRs were very prone to tape-eating because the M-load mechanism (the posts and bicycle chain) often didn't return to its proper unloaded position. As the cassette was removed, the tape would snag on the tops of the guideposts as it went past them.
U-Loads seldom didn't return to the right unload position because the mechanism had a lot less moving parts and therefore a lot less free play. And even when they did, the guideposts in U-load are fixed; since they're not mounted to the loading ring, they don't sit under the cassette as it's being unloaded. And because the guideposts don't move, they don't come unaligned the way VHS guideposts do.
So, for instance, within a month of Sony's announcement of Beta Hi-Fi, JVC and Panasonsic announced VHS Hi-Fi formats. Interestingly, the two VHS formats were incompatible with each other. [7]
It's worth noting that the Beta format was designed with space between the luminance subcarrier and the chrominance subcarrier to allow the insertion of a stereo audio subcarrier. Mono sound, of course, goes on the edge of the tape.
VHS Hi-Fi is a kludge: because it wasn't designed into the format from its inception, it's done with a thing called "Depth Multiplex Recording". It's based on the theory that a lower-frequency signal will pass further into the strata of the oxide coating on the tape than a high frequency signal will.
In this way, VHS manages to first record the Hi-Fi audio on a relatively low-frequency carrier, then record right over that with brightness and color subcarriers at higher frequencies.
The competing "Hi Fi" VHS standard took the linear audio track and split it in two. As anyone with tape experience knows, the slower the tape, the lower the sound quality. Also, the thinner the recording area, the lower the quality. Linear VHS Stereo simply sucked. Yet it was marketed as an alternative to the high-quality sound offered by *all* Beta Hi-Fi machines and *some* of the VHS Hi-Fi machines.
Comparisons between VCRs with similar features showed no significant differences in performance. In fact, most of the differences could only be seen with sensitive instruments, and likely would never show up on most consumer grade television sets.
*Not True*. VHS doesn't have the same dynamic range for the color information because of the standards set for chrominance recording. Colors appear muddy, with measurable compression and expansion of the chrominance signal. It's *highly* visible with a SMPTE test pattern on a vectorscope. These are standard TV station instruments.
This poor dynamic range was addressed slightly but on *playback only* when VHS-HQ came out. All VCRs are now VHS HQ, which is basically the equivalent to Dolby Noise Reduction for videotape. Because the noise floor is now less, the chrominance can be given a bit less compression. S-VHS is the only popular VHS format that doesn't suffer from this at all, because it's spectra was designed a lot better than VHS. (This different spectra is also why you can't play an SVHS recording on a VHS machine.)
I think the fact that *all* VHS VCRs now include this VHS HQ extension is a suggestion that perhaps the format was flawed from the drawing board onwards. VHS HQ is about as much of an admission of guilt as HIMEM.SYS was to the 640k barrier.
While Sony was decidedly behind in the licensing of its technology, it tried from the very beginning to sign on other manufacturers to the Beta standard.
For sure. Sanyo and Zenith were early Beta supporters, despite the high costs to license the technology.
2) Betamax was not too expensive.
Yes, it was. There was less competition between manufacturers because less of them were willing to cope with the low margins that Beta afforded, as a result of the ongoing battle with the MPAA. By the end, however, Betas *were* cheaper than VHS; Sony had basically abandoned the licensing restrictions in a futile attempt to stop the inexorable march toward VHS.
Even Sony today agrees that the difference in recording length was the difference that layed Beta low.
[sigh] True. But Sony didn't want to sleaze out and reduce the picture quality to the unacceptable levels of VHS's EP (once called "SLP", for Super Long Play). Beta III, the slowest consumer Beta speed, still pulls a good 260 lines or so of resolution, similar to VHS SP (Standard Play).
Sony didn't want to compromise on quality, but that's essentially what the market wanted.
Here's the thing that kills me, too. My cousin, who is otherwise a perfectly bright guy, has his TV hooked up to cable. It's an older TV, but good quality and still works well. It has the 300 ohm twin-lead screw terminals on the back. The cable enters from coax through a matching transformer, and then the two spade leads are screwed to the back of the TV set.
Well, one of those leads was connected to the UHF terminals, and the other one the the VHF terminals. The snow on the screen from the resulting poor reception never bothered him; never gave it a second thought. Until one day I fixed it for him.
People can't handle technology. It's too much for them. And people like my cousin - who apparently represents most consumers - would never see the difference between VHS and Beta.
Funny thing. Whenever you see "VCR/Videotape/VHS" and "history" used in the same sentence, you just KNOW it's going to be a diatribe on the superiority of Beta.:-)
Just a light-hearted observation.
Absolutely true. Like Windows, about the only good thing that you can say about VHS is that it's a defacto standard and has therefore brought unity to an otherwise fragmented market.
Other than that, the name says it all. "Beta" was to be the *compact* 3/4" (hence the name Beta). It was designed from the ground up as a professional format; only after video head and other technology improved did it become viable for home users.
VHS, on the other hand, stands for Video Home System. It was designed by JVC (Japanese Victor Company) from the ground up as a consumer-grade format.
The reason the format war still hurts a lot of Beta fans is the same reason that it would really hurt if Windows just suddenly anihilated Linux. The technical superiority of Beta is that order of magnitude greater.
Care to tell us the model and how much you paid for this privilege? I bet it was a wee bit expensive.
Pick up an old Sony VPH-1030 or similar, maybe a Zenith Aquastar. If you have a budget to blow and need VGA resolution, look into a Sony VPH-1270 or similiar.
All of these are three-tube machines, so they're not very portable. But the picture quality of them exceeds a lot of LCD projectors, assuming that your tubes are still good and you know how to set the convergence properly.
Don't look at one that used to be in a bar or was owned by an audio-visual rental company. Both are likely to have a lot of hours and probably even some mechanical damage. Look around for one that is being displaced by a boardroom renovation.
I once found a VPH-1041 that had come out of a boardroom. When it was installed in 1991, it was top of the line. Eventually, it was replaced with a later model that could handle SVGA. The story behind it was that one of the managers of the company wanted to take it home, so he fired it up with it pointing at a wall, and assumed it was broken. (It wasn't aligned; these need to be aligned every time they're moved.)
Since I used to work for an audio-visual company and was even trained on these things by Sony of Canada, I knew it was a good deal and was able to pick up the "broken" video projector for $100. I set it up in my living room, aligned and re-shimmed the lenses for the wall, reversed the deflection (it had been set up for rear-projection), and then did the convergence. It was low hours and would light up my wall from floor to ceiling almost as bright as a movie theater. Eventually, I sold it to a friend of mine for $1200, including installation at his house.
Quick trick: If you're pointing a video projector at your wall and are looking for a little bit more brightness, get some brush-on clearcoat paint. Go to an abrasives supply company and get some fine (about 0.050") glass bead sandblasting media. Mix that with the clearcoat, and roller it onto your wall. It gives the wall almost the same texture as a proper reflective projection screen.
If you know where to look, you don't really need to spend much.
As for the conversation about resolution, yeah, NTSC's 525 scanning lines really start to look far apart when they're spread out across the 10' height of your living room wall.
And S-VHS came out waaaay before DVDs. Better resolution does not automatically gurantee a take over ov the market.
SVHS is just an incremental improvement over VHS, with almost a doubling of cost of both media and machines. It didn't look new and fancy or high-tech when it came out, so the "first-one-on-the-block" syndrome didn't sell them. Aside from the little "S" silkscreened to the front of the tape door, you'd never know it was a $600 VCR, not a $300 VCR.
Let's face it, VHS is only popular because the proles are cheap.
SVHS doubles the price of the VCR for a machine that still doesn't have the picture quality of a Beta VCR, which was only marginally more expensive for the same features at the time of the VHS/Beta wars.
So, I propose that if Beta was doomed to failure, SVHS doubly so. The only reason it's still around at all is because of a few purists who resent VHS but still need compatibility with it. (Much like I resent Windows, but I still need to know and use it.)
Look at Beta, CED Laserdiscs (aka needlevision),
CED video discs were a joke...:) Imagine a record player that plays back video. The discs only lasted about 20 plays! LaserDisc was so much ahead of that, with better picture quality and (aside from handling) no media wear.
After CED died, someone gave me a Toshiba CED machine to play with. I never had any discs for it, but I'll tell you, the stylus was scary.
The Neo-Geo, The Commodore Plus4, The Atari Lynx, etc.
Yeah, but you could go even further back than that. How about the 16-bit TI-99/4A computer - with the same TMS9900 CPU as a Patriot guided missile - losing the home computer war to the lowly VIC-20 with its nasty optional serial disk drive interface? (Although TI's marketing department never talked about what was under the hood and therefore made a mistake themselves, consumers should research before buying!)
So you mean that in 6 years everyone will only be able to buy DVD recorders? 2007 is, afterall, the last year that TV manufacturers can make non-HDTVs.
Sure, why not?
As evidence to that position, I submit that the CD-R was a very exotic technology in January 1995.
Since a DVD recorder is basically a CD recorder (CD-R/RW) drive with a pickup laser that runs at a shorter wavelength, which allows finer pitch between tracks and therefore more data, I suggest that the limiting factor in mass-acceptance of DVD-RAM is simply an incremental improvement in the technology that rides on the pickup sled.
From there, a full-fledged DVD recorder would need that DVD-RAM drive and a fast enough computer to compress on the fly. With no operating system to burden it down, it could be done quite easily now: look at all the non-linear video editors already on the market. Moore's Law dictates that this processing power will only become cheaper and more managable.
It's highly possible.
The fact that the DVD already has significant market share, doesn't need to be rewound, and the media is cheaper to make than a VHS videocassette (although marked up more) suggests that it will win.
D-VHS is a contender, but I'd submit that it's not a serious one. It reeks of "last gasp".
Well, until someone rips the content with an efficient codec and ups it as SuperVCD or similar. Nice try, 10 years too late.
It's amazing and dangerous how often the computer community is underestimated, isn't it? You'd think that the big media producers would have learned after the MP3.
Ten years from now when gigabit ethernet represents a *slow* home Internet connection and fiber is the norm, and we're all sitting around with (...calculating based on Moore's Law...urk!) 96GHz AMD ThunderChickens, and this silly D-VHS is embraced by the consumer, it'll be interesting to see just how easily the uncompressed video *is* traded on the Internet.
Then again, you can't up video standards the way you can up processing power... Let's see, if it takes my PII-266 ten minutes to compress all of the 17-minute-long Donna Summers Macarthur Park Suite into a 256kbps MP3, how long will it take for the 96GHz ThunderChicken, even burdened down with Windows 2010 Amateur, to make a DivX?
As things are, making a DivX of a 320x240x15fps AVI file only takes about 2x the AVI's playing time.
Hollywood is naive. Or they've hopelessly forgotten the computers of 10 years ago. Or those of 10 years before that.
For instance, I helped to develop the CueCat, the Sony Betamax, the Yugo, MS Bob and numerous other blue ribbon products.
All kidding aside, you can't scorn the Betamax. It was, and arguably still is, leaps and bounds ahead of VHS.
Remember, Sony failed only because their license fees for the technology were so expensive. The reason? The MPAA sued Sony over the VCR and how it would cut into movie royalties. Sony was therefore at a disadvantage, trying to finance both their lawsuit and a possible verdict against them with the royalties on Beta VCRs.
JVC came in with VHS in 1977, which was a cheapo rip-off of Beta that was just different enough to not infringe on any of Sony's patents. The MPAA lawsuit was won by Sony, but the battle for the shelf under peoples' TV sets was won by VHS.
Betamax is simply a 1/2" version of Sony's legendary 3/4" U-Matic format. U-Matic was designed as an industrial format for TV stations and the like. To this day, if you have a 3/4" U-Matic videocassette, I'd be surprised if there are many TV stations in the world that couldn't play it.
Factoid: "Beta" means "closer" in Japanese; Beta VCRs were so-named because the video tracks laid down by the rotating head assembly were closer than those of the bigger and older U-Matic predecessor.
U-Matic was eventually replaced by Betacam, which is a Betamax VCR mechanism that runs the tape a lot faster for better picture quality. Betacam and Betacam SP have been *the format* for TV stations, ENG cameras, editing, etc. Finally, the torch has now mostly been passed to the D-Betacam, a digital version of the venerable Betacam which shares its heritage with the home Betamax and the U-Matic before.
And, of course, before those, was the Sony AV-3600 and other open-reel 1/2" VTRs. (I'm the proud owner of a 1975 AV-3600. Razor-sharp picture, though the AV-3600 was a low-end black-and-white model.)
Most importantly, though, if you're upset by the impotent plastic noises that your $200-at-Fry's VCR makes, you can take a look at how Ed Cushman watches TV. Sadly, I don't think you can rent a Quadruplex videotape at Blockbuster. (As recently as 1988, when I was in high school and volunteering at a low-budget community TV station, we had a Quad. It was loads of fun.)
because DVDs scan like CDs and let you jump to any point of the movie in an instant. D-VHS would be good for recording TV shows and alike, but not produced DVDs you can buy in a store.
Yup. Because of the simplicity of mass-producing a disc media versus a tape-in-cassette media, it's unlikely that the big duplicators and movie houses are going to embrace this.
And Blockbuster probably likes the fact that they never need to worry about rewinding DVDs.
For home recording, I see this as possible; but mass acceptance of HDTV is as far off as mass acceptance of DVD recorders.
I expect that we'll see this format eventually fail. It probably just JVC hoping to continue VHS so that they continue to get the royalties on it.
That's really stupid and not at all funny. The post you responded to was clever, but the same joke told again in slower, less elegant language just doesn't seem to tickle the funnybone the same way.
<sigh> You're probably just the same A.C. as who was jealous of my circumcision.
Moderators: Go for it, I still have more karma than you.
Ohh! That's what I'll do to a user who gets fired for using their Internet access for off-topic purposes. Good idea, I hadn't thought of it.
Oh, cjones...
Man, I'd occasionally take a glance into/var/spool/mail/cjones because the boss had some suspicions and asked me to keep an eye on her. She was scary. Ugh.
Normally, you see the occasional personal e-mail go through on someone's account. Cool, no big deal. My boss would care, but I'm not willing to start a federal case if someone's daily tradition includes a one-line e-mail to his wife asking what she's gonna serve for dinner.
cjones' daily tradition included a very in-depth conversation on the sexiest Backstreet Boy, or why some people cringe when she breast-feeds her son in public (she was over 300lbs, fat and doughy).
Ugh... thinking about that literally makes my scrotum crawl.
<sigh> I guess the old IT guy who was finally fired just had a different way of handling incoming mail than I have. You know, when you inherit a system from someone else...
Starbucks lattes are ass-nasty. Thank goodness there is no Starbucks in my town. I don't want one even near me.
They're coming to get you.
Soon, they'll be in the next town.
Then, they'll be in the shopping mall near your friend's house.
And before you know it, you'll be next door and downwind of one.
Get used to the burning plastic and hair smell, a Starbucks is coming to your area!
LIBERTYBOARD.ORG - News for Libertarians. Stuff that's about freedom.
Cool site! Loved the link to the politics test.
NDP/Socialist: We don't like Starbucks, so we'll tax the people until they can't afford to buy coffee anymore. And we'll get all their not-even-worth-minimum-wage counter-schleps unionized, because it's not fair that the guy who took all the risk to buy the store and open it should be paid more than his staff of arts school flunkies.
Liberal/Democrat: We don't like Starbucks, so we'll subsidize their competition.
Conservative/Republican: We don't like Starbucks, so we'll get the religious right to picket their stores.
Libertarian: We don't like Starbucks, so one of our entrepreneurs will just open a better coffee shop beside them which will force them to either change or go under.
If I hadn't already given up on Canada (you know, like your wonderful but tired old car, there's a time when it's just too broken to even bother trying to fix), I had been considering running as the Libertarian candidate for the Beaches-East York riding in the recent Canadian federal election.
That's great! Thanks for the link. Surprise, surprise, I came out left-liberal. I think I had one answer in the whole thing that was not the typical pinko answer.
I'm sorry.
Your father is probably a unionized coal miner or something, right?
Regarding customs, perhaps you get a different lot in airports (I don't think I've ever done customs in a car).
Nah, they're all trained in the same places (At least they are in Canada, Revenue Canada's Training College in Rigaud, Quebec; admittedly, I don't know where American customs are trained).
I've flown in and out of the US several times, though exclusively from Canada. And, as part of my job, I work at Pearson International Airport, so I get to see and talk with the customs guys one-on-one, though I've never yet been customs-cleared by an agent whom I know personally - they're reassigned way too often. <grin> And I'm on American soil almost daily! (US Customs-cleared areas; my security clearance gives me apron, rooftop, terminal, computer rooms, customs, air traffic control, HVAC - everything except runway.)
They say that working in airports sucks. They usually hate when they're assigned to airports, because it's where the most arrogant and aggressive people are crossing the border (businessmen), and it's where people are most often coming back from vacations with weird foreign fruits with weird foreign flies, and there's a constant crush of people there, and there's no privacy to talking to people. Etc.
Having said that, American *and* Canadian Customs agents have exactly the same frustrations when they're stationed at an airport. I repeat: in my experience, both driving and flying - and even trying to share a chocolate bar vending machine with them - American Customs guys are friendlier.
I was circumcised on May 18th 1996, but the doctor didn't use a grinder; it was under local anaesthetic (see my rants on the Canadian health care system) and I watched it being done.
Actually, it followed a very unpleasant and very drunken zipper accident the night before. Fortunately, the cloud had a silver lining, I love being circumcised.
(Nothing like a little off-topic advocacy, right?)
By and large, heroin addicts are suffering less from the effect of heroin than from the effect of prohibition. It has been shown that when heroin is legal, and a reliable source of heroin of known purity is available, addicts are able to resume a fairly normal life.
Oh, completely, yes. But it doesn't change the fact that they were stupid enough to try it in the first place.
You know, there's a test you really should take. Here's the link, it's billed as the world's smallest political quiz.
My results show me to be a staunch Libertarian.
friendly, chipper, informative, helpful and welcoming American Customs staff
I *always* have more trouble going back into Canada. On the whole, and in my experience, American Customs agents are much friendlier. I'm dating a Buffalonian, so I cross the border once every week in each direction. Recent entry into the US at Lewiston NY, almost verbatim, transcribed:
"Citizen of what country?"
"Canada."
"Purpose of your trip?"
"Visiting friends in Buffalo."
"How long you staying?"
"Three days."
"Zat an old Dodge? What year's that truck?"
"Yes sir, Dodge D-140 Ram, and 1976."
"What's the motor?"
"400 CID (6.6L) V8."
"Rev it for me."
I comply... Customs guy smiles warmly.
"Love that sound. Thank you. Have a great trip, and take good care of that truck."
"Thank you sir."
Customs trick to being treated better: Smile. Tell them only what they ask of you. Hold a piece of ID (like a passport, even though they're not required between Canada and the US, they help) in your hand on the steering wheel, but only give it to the agent if he/she asks. And, most importantly, take off your sunglasses and turn off the radio before you pull up to the hut.
Like most socialists, you're so ill-informed that you can't even spell the party's nickname right. No wonder you need the government to protect you from success through work - you're illiterate! Okay, Lesson One: T-O-R-Y. Tory. Got it? Good.
And no, I'm not. While I did help to relect Mike Harris in Ontario because he was doing such a great job, that's not my political stripe: I'm a Libertarian more than anything else.
Me, I've had -40 weather, and you don't see me trying to leave the country for someplace warmer.
I grew up in Ottawa. I lived for 5 years in Montreal. I spent a good portion of the winter of 1992 on Baffin Island with the National Film Board. I spent weeks at a time 4 hours northwest of Ottawa in Chalk River. And now, I live in the humid, cold, windswept Toronto.
I know the cold. I've seen -40C. I've seen -51C without counting the windchill. I've even managed to get good at making my car start after two weeks of being parked outside my office in insanely cold temperatures, without a block heater or battery blanket.
Secret? *Good* tune-up, avoid EFI because electronics don't work reliably when it's that cold, set your carburetor metering a little rich, base timing 1 degree forward of factory specs, put synthetic 0W30 (not 10W30) into your engine, 70% antifreeze 30% water coolant, avoid automatic transmissions. And, most importantly, mount four new batteries - which you replace every season - in parallel in your trunk, connected to the BAT terminal on your starter motor with no less than 0 (zero) gauge oxygen-free copper arc-welding cable. Mine was the only car that winter in Pond Inlet that didn't have to be left either plugged in or idling all night.
I know the cold. I could teach you things about arctic survival.
And that doesn't mean that I like the cold one little bit. Much like my familiarity with Windows doesn't mean I think it's good software.
Or that I shouldn't consider the insane cold to be a deterrent to living in Canada.
Then watch American TV channels or don't watch TV at all!
But if I do that, then it's unfair to the Canadian broadcasters who must compete with the American broadcasters!
I thought you socialists didn't like *anything* to be unfair?
Obviously, you're going to have to write to your MP and demand that he raise the issue in parliament. After all, we're socialists, and we can impose rules and regulations to make the world fair to everyone!
You have said quite a bit that is untrue about Canada.
<sigh> If only that were true.
[shakes head and reaffirms need to get out of Canada, the land of government-enforced mediocrity]
and poorly lit Canadian TV shows over and over again. OK, now that you mention it, what *is* up with that? Are courses in lighting design just not offered north of the border (or in many European countries)? Does this have something insidious to do with the metric system? (Nope; Japanese TV lighting is superb.)
I don't understand it myself. I used to work in TV/Film/Music/Arena Technical Staging, and I used to end up doing freelance lighting for a lot of Canadian TV shows. My name is in the credits for early versions of the CTV hit "Traders", several episodes of the "Red-Green Show", "You Can't Do That on Television" and "the Kids in the Hall", among others.
I know that the producers and the directors like lots of back lighting, little flood, little key lighting. The net effect is that the actors look *very* three dimensional, since the shine of their hair and shoulders really kicks them out of the screen.
On one drama that I worked on for the CBC, the lighting director told me to make all the back lights over the marks to be the same intensity as the key, and then to scoop the fill only to 40 foot-candles. Evidently, it looked like absolute shit - everything looked like a scene out of an especially bad soap opera - but when I protested to the lighting director, he shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, and told me that he didn't understand it either but that it was the command from Above.
Note the CBC techie term for stupid instructions is that it's a "command from Above". Note the capital "A", like the way people from Maine often capitalize Winter, as a combination of contempt and sullen respect.
CBC Producers have their own lingo: they describe money in a currency that they know as "leather sofas". As in, "It cost me 30 leather sofas to make that episode of Anne of Green Gables." Near as I could tell, in 1993, the foreign exchange rate between the CBC's currency and the Canadian currency was that one CBC Leather Sofa was worth about $6,000 Canadian Dollars.
Many Canadians, myself included, do not approve of all the social programs that we foot the bill for. The typical response is "Well, if you don't like it, leave!" That's not good enough, ye who blather on about multiculturism and tolerance.
Beautiful. Thank you, I was seriously wondering if I was the only one who was told to leave the country by my peers when I asked if all these silly crappy socialist programs were really so good after all.
Of course, I was told stuff like, "Well, if you feel that way, Canada is better off without you", etc. In fact, there have already been several instances of that from my fellow Canadians in this thread.
Now, Canadian socialists are, by definition, multiculturalists. They believe in respecting and loving every culture, every religion, everybody, even if the values of the minority culture clash violently with those of the majority (European/Western) Canadian culture.
For example, they're offended when a Sikh member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is told that he can't wear a turban and carry the ceremonial dagger of *his* culture while also wearing the uniform of an icon of the culture of Canada, his adopted homeland.
And despite this tolerance, they're also *completely* intolerant to other political viewpoints, even when presented with valid, rational and logical questions which undermine the propaganda that the NDP, the Socialist Worker's Party of Canada - hell, even the Liberal Party - has imparted on them.
If they weren't so dangerous to economic growth (and therefore the prosperity of all the citizens of the country!), swatting down socialist propaganda would be a lot of fun.
Now, here's another neat trick: despite the fact that I haven't said anything here that's not absolutely true, and my viewpoint is intelligent and well presented, I'll be moderated down by someone who disagrees with the content simply because it's anti-socialist. Just watch, remembering that moderator guidelines tell you to moderate based on fact and quality of the opinion, not based on whether or not you personally agree with it. My original post is probably the only one in the history of Slashdot that I've ever seen to carry a "+4, Troll" moderation. [grin]
By the way, I don't know which health care clinics that you're going to, but I've never been to one where a heroin addict with a syringe hanging out of his arm starts showing me his pus.
No, there was no syringe hanging out of his arm - just the needle, which he said had been embedded in his skin for two days.
After he sat beside me (in an otherwise mostly empty waiting room) and - as if his body odor wasn't enough - when he proceeded to play Show and Tell with me, I got up and moved to another seat. Oddly enough, he was insulted, apparently unable to comprehend why I was disgusted and felt a need to move elsewhere. At this point, he followed me, sat down beside me, and started yelling at me and berating me. When I moved again and he followed me, I had to finally threaten him with an ass-kicking before he left me alone, glaring at me from across the waiting room.
I pay taxes. They support my healthcare. I expect that I shouldn't have to deal with shit like that anytime, let alone when I'm sick. And *neither would you*, no matter how much of a bleeding heart authoritarian socialist idiot you may be. Wanna give a socialist an embolism? Okay: picture this: what if the homeless heroin-addict had been harassing a 4'1" Native-Canadian French-speaking lesbian in a wheelchair? Would *she* be in the wrong for demanding that unpredictable homeless drug addicts be kept away from her so that she's not similarily intimidated when *she's* getting medical treatment?
Put that one in your social welfare crack-pipe and smoke it.
Sadly, because there are no private hospitals to go to, I was forced to deal with this shit, and I resent it.
Now, there are private doctor's offices and health care centers here, and they bill the provincial health insurance (in my case, OHIP). And I certainly would have gone to them first. In fact, I tried several. But this was Labor Day Weekend in 1997, and they were all closed: I was forced to go to a hospital waiting room. And it was the Wellesley Central Hospital in downtown Toronto.
Keep in mind that professional and other employed people don't really care too much about the social programs that the NDP and others keep on bandying about as great reasons to love living in Canada. Those of us who are most likely to be lured to the US by that excellent job offer are also the least likely to ever need the social programs that we're being told are so great.
Slashdot Mirror
Betamax was introduced as a (expensive) consumer format in 1975 or so. Did BetaCam exist before this? (U-Matic did, I know, but I always thought Beta was consumer first, pro later.)
Yeah. But "consumer" wasn't in the sense that you're meaning.
The very first Beta VCRs were not high-end consumer things at all; they were full-blown industrial. They were meant for TV stations initially as a portable version of 3/4".
At the time, you must remember, you had your 6:PM newscast, and then you could see the "film at Eleven". The 11:PM newscast gave the camera crews time to get back to the studio and develop the film for the air.
The 3/4" VTR enjoyed some use as a portable format. But, speaking as someone who used to lug one on his shoulder from time to time, it wasn't very practical. The machine I used to use - a VO-1800, I think - was over 50lbs, plus batteries, plus cassettes, in a shoulder bag. The camera was usually handled by a separate person!
So, the Betamax was designed to be a portable version of 3/4" that could be used as an ENG camera; better quality than film, but still not quite as good as 3/4". The format was also marketed towards schools and institutions initially, but by this point, Sony was also realizing that there was a burgeoning consumer market. Betamax went that way.
Since most ENG videotape ends up being edited, archived, etc, Sony had overestimated the market for Betamax as a professional format, since the picture quality was less than 3/4" and the generational losses between copies became more on an issue, especially in ENG conditions where you may have less than perfect lighting and other factors. Professionals basically stuck with their existing film systems and the lighter weight 3/4" decks that were coming out, while Sony refocussed the market first on high end consumers. This whole thing only took a year or so to play out; I've only ever seen one professional Betamax camcorder.
This whole scenario was repeated with SVHS, of course, which was introduced as a professional format, and touted as The Next Big Thing. Yeah, right. Because it's an M-Loader, the basic VHS mechanism isn't robust enough for the real professional world, and so SVHS has been similarily demoted to the world of broadcasting schools and consumers who want something that's just a little bit better.
I think it was about '82 or '83 that the first Betacam ENG camcorders started to come out, that was the point at which 3/4" portables and film started to die off.
This will probably get me nicked as a troll, but... http://www.urbanlegends.com/products/beta_vs_vhs.
Actually, that website has covered the subject very well, but there are a few things I take issue with:
True, except for the recording length, Sony pioneered most of the improvements over the years, but the VHS manufacturers caught up to each improvement, usually in less than a year.Not true. VHS is technically inferior due to such things as chroma subcarrier, M-load versus U-load, etc. M-loading is the most damning, since it requires a Rube Goldberg mechanism to thread the tape out of the cassette. Like Beta's predecessor, U-Matic (so named because it was a U-Loading Automatic Threader), Beta's U-loading is a reliable and efficient picture of simplicity, simply spinning the tape around the heads on a "donut".
Early VCRs all ate videotape more than today's VCRs do. But VHS VCRs were very prone to tape-eating because the M-load mechanism (the posts and bicycle chain) often didn't return to its proper unloaded position. As the cassette was removed, the tape would snag on the tops of the guideposts as it went past them.
U-Loads seldom didn't return to the right unload position because the mechanism had a lot less moving parts and therefore a lot less free play. And even when they did, the guideposts in U-load are fixed; since they're not mounted to the loading ring, they don't sit under the cassette as it's being unloaded. And because the guideposts don't move, they don't come unaligned the way VHS guideposts do.
So, for instance, within a month of Sony's announcement of Beta Hi-Fi, JVC and Panasonsic announced VHS Hi-Fi formats. Interestingly, the two VHS formats were incompatible with each other. [7]It's worth noting that the Beta format was designed with space between the luminance subcarrier and the chrominance subcarrier to allow the insertion of a stereo audio subcarrier. Mono sound, of course, goes on the edge of the tape.
VHS Hi-Fi is a kludge: because it wasn't designed into the format from its inception, it's done with a thing called "Depth Multiplex Recording". It's based on the theory that a lower-frequency signal will pass further into the strata of the oxide coating on the tape than a high frequency signal will.
In this way, VHS manages to first record the Hi-Fi audio on a relatively low-frequency carrier, then record right over that with brightness and color subcarriers at higher frequencies.
The competing "Hi Fi" VHS standard took the linear audio track and split it in two. As anyone with tape experience knows, the slower the tape, the lower the sound quality. Also, the thinner the recording area, the lower the quality. Linear VHS Stereo simply sucked. Yet it was marketed as an alternative to the high-quality sound offered by *all* Beta Hi-Fi machines and *some* of the VHS Hi-Fi machines.
Comparisons between VCRs with similar features showed no significant differences in performance. In fact, most of the differences could only be seen with sensitive instruments, and likely would never show up on most consumer grade television sets.*Not True*. VHS doesn't have the same dynamic range for the color information because of the standards set for chrominance recording. Colors appear muddy, with measurable compression and expansion of the chrominance signal. It's *highly* visible with a SMPTE test pattern on a vectorscope. These are standard TV station instruments.
This poor dynamic range was addressed slightly but on *playback only* when VHS-HQ came out. All VCRs are now VHS HQ, which is basically the equivalent to Dolby Noise Reduction for videotape. Because the noise floor is now less, the chrominance can be given a bit less compression. S-VHS is the only popular VHS format that doesn't suffer from this at all, because it's spectra was designed a lot better than VHS. (This different spectra is also why you can't play an SVHS recording on a VHS machine.)
I think the fact that *all* VHS VCRs now include this VHS HQ extension is a suggestion that perhaps the format was flawed from the drawing board onwards. VHS HQ is about as much of an admission of guilt as HIMEM.SYS was to the 640k barrier.
While Sony was decidedly behind in the licensing of its technology, it tried from the very beginning to sign on other manufacturers to the Beta standard.For sure. Sanyo and Zenith were early Beta supporters, despite the high costs to license the technology.
2) Betamax was not too expensive.Yes, it was. There was less competition between manufacturers because less of them were willing to cope with the low margins that Beta afforded, as a result of the ongoing battle with the MPAA. By the end, however, Betas *were* cheaper than VHS; Sony had basically abandoned the licensing restrictions in a futile attempt to stop the inexorable march toward VHS.
Even Sony today agrees that the difference in recording length was the difference that layed Beta low.[sigh] True. But Sony didn't want to sleaze out and reduce the picture quality to the unacceptable levels of VHS's EP (once called "SLP", for Super Long Play). Beta III, the slowest consumer Beta speed, still pulls a good 260 lines or so of resolution, similar to VHS SP (Standard Play).
Sony didn't want to compromise on quality, but that's essentially what the market wanted.
Here's the thing that kills me, too. My cousin, who is otherwise a perfectly bright guy, has his TV hooked up to cable. It's an older TV, but good quality and still works well. It has the 300 ohm twin-lead screw terminals on the back. The cable enters from coax through a matching transformer, and then the two spade leads are screwed to the back of the TV set.
Well, one of those leads was connected to the UHF terminals, and the other one the the VHF terminals. The snow on the screen from the resulting poor reception never bothered him; never gave it a second thought. Until one day I fixed it for him.
People can't handle technology. It's too much for them. And people like my cousin - who apparently represents most consumers - would never see the difference between VHS and Beta.
Funny thing. Whenever you see "VCR/Videotape/VHS" and "history" used in the same sentence, you just KNOW it's going to be a diatribe on the superiority of Beta.
Absolutely true. Like Windows, about the only good thing that you can say about VHS is that it's a defacto standard and has therefore brought unity to an otherwise fragmented market.
Other than that, the name says it all. "Beta" was to be the *compact* 3/4" (hence the name Beta). It was designed from the ground up as a professional format; only after video head and other technology improved did it become viable for home users.
VHS, on the other hand, stands for Video Home System. It was designed by JVC (Japanese Victor Company) from the ground up as a consumer-grade format.
The reason the format war still hurts a lot of Beta fans is the same reason that it would really hurt if Windows just suddenly anihilated Linux. The technical superiority of Beta is that order of magnitude greater.
Care to tell us the model and how much you paid for this privilege? I bet it was a wee bit expensive.
Pick up an old Sony VPH-1030 or similar, maybe a Zenith Aquastar. If you have a budget to blow and need VGA resolution, look into a Sony VPH-1270 or similiar.
All of these are three-tube machines, so they're not very portable. But the picture quality of them exceeds a lot of LCD projectors, assuming that your tubes are still good and you know how to set the convergence properly.
Don't look at one that used to be in a bar or was owned by an audio-visual rental company. Both are likely to have a lot of hours and probably even some mechanical damage. Look around for one that is being displaced by a boardroom renovation.
I once found a VPH-1041 that had come out of a boardroom. When it was installed in 1991, it was top of the line. Eventually, it was replaced with a later model that could handle SVGA. The story behind it was that one of the managers of the company wanted to take it home, so he fired it up with it pointing at a wall, and assumed it was broken. (It wasn't aligned; these need to be aligned every time they're moved.)
Since I used to work for an audio-visual company and was even trained on these things by Sony of Canada, I knew it was a good deal and was able to pick up the "broken" video projector for $100. I set it up in my living room, aligned and re-shimmed the lenses for the wall, reversed the deflection (it had been set up for rear-projection), and then did the convergence. It was low hours and would light up my wall from floor to ceiling almost as bright as a movie theater. Eventually, I sold it to a friend of mine for $1200, including installation at his house.
Quick trick: If you're pointing a video projector at your wall and are looking for a little bit more brightness, get some brush-on clearcoat paint. Go to an abrasives supply company and get some fine (about 0.050") glass bead sandblasting media. Mix that with the clearcoat, and roller it onto your wall. It gives the wall almost the same texture as a proper reflective projection screen.
If you know where to look, you don't really need to spend much.
As for the conversation about resolution, yeah, NTSC's 525 scanning lines really start to look far apart when they're spread out across the 10' height of your living room wall.
And S-VHS came out waaaay before DVDs. Better resolution does not automatically gurantee a take over ov the market.
SVHS is just an incremental improvement over VHS, with almost a doubling of cost of both media and machines. It didn't look new and fancy or high-tech when it came out, so the "first-one-on-the-block" syndrome didn't sell them. Aside from the little "S" silkscreened to the front of the tape door, you'd never know it was a $600 VCR, not a $300 VCR.
Let's face it, VHS is only popular because the proles are cheap.
SVHS doubles the price of the VCR for a machine that still doesn't have the picture quality of a Beta VCR, which was only marginally more expensive for the same features at the time of the VHS/Beta wars.
So, I propose that if Beta was doomed to failure, SVHS doubly so. The only reason it's still around at all is because of a few purists who resent VHS but still need compatibility with it. (Much like I resent Windows, but I still need to know and use it.)
Look at Beta, CED Laserdiscs (aka needlevision),CED video discs were a joke... :) Imagine a record player that plays back video. The discs only lasted about 20 plays! LaserDisc was so much ahead of that, with better picture quality and (aside from handling) no media wear.
After CED died, someone gave me a Toshiba CED machine to play with. I never had any discs for it, but I'll tell you, the stylus was scary.
The Neo-Geo, The Commodore Plus4, The Atari Lynx, etc.Yeah, but you could go even further back than that. How about the 16-bit TI-99/4A computer - with the same TMS9900 CPU as a Patriot guided missile - losing the home computer war to the lowly VIC-20 with its nasty optional serial disk drive interface? (Although TI's marketing department never talked about what was under the hood and therefore made a mistake themselves, consumers should research before buying!)
Consumers are stupid.
So you mean that in 6 years everyone will only be able to buy DVD recorders? 2007 is, afterall, the last year that TV manufacturers can make non-HDTVs.
Sure, why not?
As evidence to that position, I submit that the CD-R was a very exotic technology in January 1995.
Since a DVD recorder is basically a CD recorder (CD-R/RW) drive with a pickup laser that runs at a shorter wavelength, which allows finer pitch between tracks and therefore more data, I suggest that the limiting factor in mass-acceptance of DVD-RAM is simply an incremental improvement in the technology that rides on the pickup sled.
From there, a full-fledged DVD recorder would need that DVD-RAM drive and a fast enough computer to compress on the fly. With no operating system to burden it down, it could be done quite easily now: look at all the non-linear video editors already on the market. Moore's Law dictates that this processing power will only become cheaper and more managable.
It's highly possible.
The fact that the DVD already has significant market share, doesn't need to be rewound, and the media is cheaper to make than a VHS videocassette (although marked up more) suggests that it will win.
D-VHS is a contender, but I'd submit that it's not a serious one. It reeks of "last gasp".
Well, until someone rips the content with an efficient codec and ups it as SuperVCD or similar. Nice try, 10 years too late.
It's amazing and dangerous how often the computer community is underestimated, isn't it? You'd think that the big media producers would have learned after the MP3.
Ten years from now when gigabit ethernet represents a *slow* home Internet connection and fiber is the norm, and we're all sitting around with (...calculating based on Moore's Law...urk!) 96GHz AMD ThunderChickens, and this silly D-VHS is embraced by the consumer, it'll be interesting to see just how easily the uncompressed video *is* traded on the Internet.
Then again, you can't up video standards the way you can up processing power... Let's see, if it takes my PII-266 ten minutes to compress all of the 17-minute-long Donna Summers Macarthur Park Suite into a 256kbps MP3, how long will it take for the 96GHz ThunderChicken, even burdened down with Windows 2010 Amateur, to make a DivX?
As things are, making a DivX of a 320x240x15fps AVI file only takes about 2x the AVI's playing time.
Hollywood is naive. Or they've hopelessly forgotten the computers of 10 years ago. Or those of 10 years before that.
For instance, I helped to develop the CueCat, the Sony Betamax, the Yugo, MS Bob and numerous other blue ribbon products.
All kidding aside, you can't scorn the Betamax. It was, and arguably still is, leaps and bounds ahead of VHS.
Remember, Sony failed only because their license fees for the technology were so expensive. The reason? The MPAA sued Sony over the VCR and how it would cut into movie royalties. Sony was therefore at a disadvantage, trying to finance both their lawsuit and a possible verdict against them with the royalties on Beta VCRs.
JVC came in with VHS in 1977, which was a cheapo rip-off of Beta that was just different enough to not infringe on any of Sony's patents. The MPAA lawsuit was won by Sony, but the battle for the shelf under peoples' TV sets was won by VHS.
Betamax is simply a 1/2" version of Sony's legendary 3/4" U-Matic format. U-Matic was designed as an industrial format for TV stations and the like. To this day, if you have a 3/4" U-Matic videocassette, I'd be surprised if there are many TV stations in the world that couldn't play it.
Factoid: "Beta" means "closer" in Japanese; Beta VCRs were so-named because the video tracks laid down by the rotating head assembly were closer than those of the bigger and older U-Matic predecessor.
U-Matic was eventually replaced by Betacam, which is a Betamax VCR mechanism that runs the tape a lot faster for better picture quality. Betacam and Betacam SP have been *the format* for TV stations, ENG cameras, editing, etc. Finally, the torch has now mostly been passed to the D-Betacam, a digital version of the venerable Betacam which shares its heritage with the home Betamax and the U-Matic before.
And, of course, before those, was the Sony AV-3600 and other open-reel 1/2" VTRs. (I'm the proud owner of a 1975 AV-3600. Razor-sharp picture, though the AV-3600 was a low-end black-and-white model.)
Most importantly, though, if you're upset by the impotent plastic noises that your $200-at-Fry's VCR makes, you can take a look at how Ed Cushman watches TV. Sadly, I don't think you can rent a Quadruplex videotape at Blockbuster. (As recently as 1988, when I was in high school and volunteering at a low-budget community TV station, we had a Quad. It was loads of fun.)
because DVDs scan like CDs and let you jump to any point of the movie in an instant. D-VHS would be good for recording TV shows and alike, but not produced DVDs you can buy in a store.
Yup. Because of the simplicity of mass-producing a disc media versus a tape-in-cassette media, it's unlikely that the big duplicators and movie houses are going to embrace this.
And Blockbuster probably likes the fact that they never need to worry about rewinding DVDs.
For home recording, I see this as possible; but mass acceptance of HDTV is as far off as mass acceptance of DVD recorders.
I expect that we'll see this format eventually fail. It probably just JVC hoping to continue VHS so that they continue to get the royalties on it.
That's really stupid and not at all funny. The post you responded to was clever, but the same joke told again in slower, less elegant language just doesn't seem to tickle the funnybone the same way.
<sigh> You're probably just the same A.C. as who was jealous of my circumcision.
Moderators: Go for it, I still have more karma than you.
your emailbox posted to alt.sex.hamsters,
Ohh! That's what I'll do to a user who gets fired for using their Internet access for off-topic purposes. Good idea, I hadn't thought of it.
Oh, cjones...
Man, I'd occasionally take a glance into /var/spool/mail/cjones because the boss had some suspicions and asked me to keep an eye on her. She was scary. Ugh.
Normally, you see the occasional personal e-mail go through on someone's account. Cool, no big deal. My boss would care, but I'm not willing to start a federal case if someone's daily tradition includes a one-line e-mail to his wife asking what she's gonna serve for dinner.
cjones' daily tradition included a very in-depth conversation on the sexiest Backstreet Boy, or why some people cringe when she breast-feeds her son in public (she was over 300lbs, fat and doughy).
Ugh... thinking about that literally makes my scrotum crawl.
i don't remember hiring anybody named 'ph33r' or 'eleet'.... i'll have to remind them that they shouldn't have blank passwords. darn users.
I don't understand why, in my mail handling /etc/aliases file, all the research, engineering and top management e-mail addresses are listed as follows:
username: username,covert_operations@bigcompetitor.ru<sigh> I guess the old IT guy who was finally fired just had a different way of handling incoming mail than I have. You know, when you inherit a system from someone else...
<grin>
until they see their name in
Speaking of updating computers around the office, I think they forgot their webserver: http://www.networkcommerce.com/careers.asp.
Heheheh...
Starbucks lattes are ass-nasty. Thank goodness there is no Starbucks in my town. I don't want one even near me.
They're coming to get you.
Soon, they'll be in the next town.
Then, they'll be in the shopping mall near your friend's house.
And before you know it, you'll be next door and downwind of one.
Get used to the burning plastic and hair smell, a Starbucks is coming to your area!
LIBERTYBOARD.ORG - News for Libertarians. Stuff that's about freedom.Cool site! Loved the link to the politics test.
If I hadn't already given up on Canada (you know, like your wonderful but tired old car, there's a time when it's just too broken to even bother trying to fix), I had been considering running as the Libertarian candidate for the Beaches-East York riding in the recent Canadian federal election.
Small. . . portable. .
Ahem... Yes, I suppose. Sort of the way that a VAX looks small and portable when you park it next to ENIAC.
That's great! Thanks for the link. Surprise, surprise, I came out left-liberal. I think I had one answer in the whole thing that was not the typical pinko answer.
I'm sorry.
Your father is probably a unionized coal miner or something, right?
Regarding customs, perhaps you get a different lot in airports (I don't think I've ever done customs in a car).Nah, they're all trained in the same places (At least they are in Canada, Revenue Canada's Training College in Rigaud, Quebec; admittedly, I don't know where American customs are trained).
I've flown in and out of the US several times, though exclusively from Canada. And, as part of my job, I work at Pearson International Airport, so I get to see and talk with the customs guys one-on-one, though I've never yet been customs-cleared by an agent whom I know personally - they're reassigned way too often. <grin> And I'm on American soil almost daily! (US Customs-cleared areas; my security clearance gives me apron, rooftop, terminal, computer rooms, customs, air traffic control, HVAC - everything except runway.)
They say that working in airports sucks. They usually hate when they're assigned to airports, because it's where the most arrogant and aggressive people are crossing the border (businessmen), and it's where people are most often coming back from vacations with weird foreign fruits with weird foreign flies, and there's a constant crush of people there, and there's no privacy to talking to people. Etc.
Having said that, American *and* Canadian Customs agents have exactly the same frustrations when they're stationed at an airport. I repeat: in my experience, both driving and flying - and even trying to share a chocolate bar vending machine with them - American Customs guys are friendlier.
(you've had you dick caught in a grinder)
Ouch! No, I think I'd remember that.
I was circumcised on May 18th 1996, but the doctor didn't use a grinder; it was under local anaesthetic (see my rants on the Canadian health care system) and I watched it being done.
Actually, it followed a very unpleasant and very drunken zipper accident the night before. Fortunately, the cloud had a silver lining, I love being circumcised.
(Nothing like a little off-topic advocacy, right?)
By and large, heroin addicts are suffering less from the effect of heroin than from the effect of prohibition. It has been shown that when heroin is legal, and a reliable source of heroin of known purity is available, addicts are able to resume a fairly normal life.
Oh, completely, yes. But it doesn't change the fact that they were stupid enough to try it in the first place.
You know, there's a test you really should take. Here's the link, it's billed as the world's smallest political quiz.
My results show me to be a staunch Libertarian.
friendly, chipper, informative, helpful and welcoming American Customs staff
Bwaaa Haw Haw Haw hahahaha Wooooooo! HeeeHeee heee heee heee! hmmmmmahahaha
I *always* have more trouble going back into Canada. On the whole, and in my experience, American Customs agents are much friendlier. I'm dating a Buffalonian, so I cross the border once every week in each direction. Recent entry into the US at Lewiston NY, almost verbatim, transcribed:
"Citizen of what country?"
"Canada."
"Purpose of your trip?"
"Visiting friends in Buffalo."
"How long you staying?"
"Three days."
"Zat an old Dodge? What year's that truck?"
"Yes sir, Dodge D-140 Ram, and 1976."
"What's the motor?"
"400 CID (6.6L) V8."
"Rev it for me."
I comply... Customs guy smiles warmly.
"Love that sound. Thank you. Have a great trip, and take good care of that truck."
"Thank you sir."
Customs trick to being treated better: Smile. Tell them only what they ask of you. Hold a piece of ID (like a passport, even though they're not required between Canada and the US, they help) in your hand on the steering wheel, but only give it to the agent if he/she asks. And, most importantly, take off your sunglasses and turn off the radio before you pull up to the hut.
Fucking Torrie..
Like most socialists, you're so ill-informed that you can't even spell the party's nickname right. No wonder you need the government to protect you from success through work - you're illiterate! Okay, Lesson One: T-O-R-Y. Tory. Got it? Good.
And no, I'm not. While I did help to relect Mike Harris in Ontario because he was doing such a great job, that's not my political stripe: I'm a Libertarian more than anything else.
Me, I've had -40 weather, and you don't see me trying to leave the country for someplace warmer.
I grew up in Ottawa. I lived for 5 years in Montreal. I spent a good portion of the winter of 1992 on Baffin Island with the National Film Board. I spent weeks at a time 4 hours northwest of Ottawa in Chalk River. And now, I live in the humid, cold, windswept Toronto.
I know the cold. I've seen -40C. I've seen -51C without counting the windchill. I've even managed to get good at making my car start after two weeks of being parked outside my office in insanely cold temperatures, without a block heater or battery blanket.
Secret? *Good* tune-up, avoid EFI because electronics don't work reliably when it's that cold, set your carburetor metering a little rich, base timing 1 degree forward of factory specs, put synthetic 0W30 (not 10W30) into your engine, 70% antifreeze 30% water coolant, avoid automatic transmissions. And, most importantly, mount four new batteries - which you replace every season - in parallel in your trunk, connected to the BAT terminal on your starter motor with no less than 0 (zero) gauge oxygen-free copper arc-welding cable. Mine was the only car that winter in Pond Inlet that didn't have to be left either plugged in or idling all night.
I know the cold. I could teach you things about arctic survival.
And that doesn't mean that I like the cold one little bit. Much like my familiarity with Windows doesn't mean I think it's good software.
Or that I shouldn't consider the insane cold to be a deterrent to living in Canada.
Then watch American TV channels or don't watch TV at all!
But if I do that, then it's unfair to the Canadian broadcasters who must compete with the American broadcasters!
I thought you socialists didn't like *anything* to be unfair?
Obviously, you're going to have to write to your MP and demand that he raise the issue in parliament. After all, we're socialists, and we can impose rules and regulations to make the world fair to everyone!
You have said quite a bit that is untrue about Canada.<sigh> If only that were true.
[shakes head and reaffirms need to get out of Canada, the land of government-enforced mediocrity]
and poorly lit Canadian TV shows over and over again.
OK, now that you mention it, what *is* up with that? Are courses in lighting design just not offered north of the border (or in many European countries)? Does this have something insidious to do with the metric system? (Nope; Japanese TV lighting is superb.)
I don't understand it myself. I used to work in TV/Film/Music/Arena Technical Staging, and I used to end up doing freelance lighting for a lot of Canadian TV shows. My name is in the credits for early versions of the CTV hit "Traders", several episodes of the "Red-Green Show", "You Can't Do That on Television" and "the Kids in the Hall", among others.
I know that the producers and the directors like lots of back lighting, little flood, little key lighting. The net effect is that the actors look *very* three dimensional, since the shine of their hair and shoulders really kicks them out of the screen.
On one drama that I worked on for the CBC, the lighting director told me to make all the back lights over the marks to be the same intensity as the key, and then to scoop the fill only to 40 foot-candles. Evidently, it looked like absolute shit - everything looked like a scene out of an especially bad soap opera - but when I protested to the lighting director, he shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, and told me that he didn't understand it either but that it was the command from Above.
Note the CBC techie term for stupid instructions is that it's a "command from Above". Note the capital "A", like the way people from Maine often capitalize Winter, as a combination of contempt and sullen respect.
CBC Producers have their own lingo: they describe money in a currency that they know as "leather sofas". As in, "It cost me 30 leather sofas to make that episode of Anne of Green Gables." Near as I could tell, in 1993, the foreign exchange rate between the CBC's currency and the Canadian currency was that one CBC Leather Sofa was worth about $6,000 Canadian Dollars.
Many Canadians, myself included, do not approve of all the social programs that we foot the bill for. The typical response is "Well, if you don't like it, leave!" That's not good enough, ye who blather on about multiculturism and tolerance.
Beautiful. Thank you, I was seriously wondering if I was the only one who was told to leave the country by my peers when I asked if all these silly crappy socialist programs were really so good after all.
Of course, I was told stuff like, "Well, if you feel that way, Canada is better off without you", etc. In fact, there have already been several instances of that from my fellow Canadians in this thread.
Now, Canadian socialists are, by definition, multiculturalists. They believe in respecting and loving every culture, every religion, everybody, even if the values of the minority culture clash violently with those of the majority (European/Western) Canadian culture.
For example, they're offended when a Sikh member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is told that he can't wear a turban and carry the ceremonial dagger of *his* culture while also wearing the uniform of an icon of the culture of Canada, his adopted homeland.
And despite this tolerance, they're also *completely* intolerant to other political viewpoints, even when presented with valid, rational and logical questions which undermine the propaganda that the NDP, the Socialist Worker's Party of Canada - hell, even the Liberal Party - has imparted on them.
If they weren't so dangerous to economic growth (and therefore the prosperity of all the citizens of the country!), swatting down socialist propaganda would be a lot of fun.
Now, here's another neat trick: despite the fact that I haven't said anything here that's not absolutely true, and my viewpoint is intelligent and well presented, I'll be moderated down by someone who disagrees with the content simply because it's anti-socialist. Just watch, remembering that moderator guidelines tell you to moderate based on fact and quality of the opinion, not based on whether or not you personally agree with it. My original post is probably the only one in the history of Slashdot that I've ever seen to carry a "+4, Troll" moderation. [grin]
By the way, I don't know which health care clinics that you're going to, but I've never been to one where a heroin addict with a syringe hanging out of his arm starts showing me his pus.
No, there was no syringe hanging out of his arm - just the needle, which he said had been embedded in his skin for two days.
After he sat beside me (in an otherwise mostly empty waiting room) and - as if his body odor wasn't enough - when he proceeded to play Show and Tell with me, I got up and moved to another seat. Oddly enough, he was insulted, apparently unable to comprehend why I was disgusted and felt a need to move elsewhere. At this point, he followed me, sat down beside me, and started yelling at me and berating me. When I moved again and he followed me, I had to finally threaten him with an ass-kicking before he left me alone, glaring at me from across the waiting room.
I pay taxes. They support my healthcare. I expect that I shouldn't have to deal with shit like that anytime, let alone when I'm sick. And *neither would you*, no matter how much of a bleeding heart authoritarian socialist idiot you may be. Wanna give a socialist an embolism? Okay: picture this: what if the homeless heroin-addict had been harassing a 4'1" Native-Canadian French-speaking lesbian in a wheelchair? Would *she* be in the wrong for demanding that unpredictable homeless drug addicts be kept away from her so that she's not similarily intimidated when *she's* getting medical treatment?
Put that one in your social welfare crack-pipe and smoke it.
Sadly, because there are no private hospitals to go to, I was forced to deal with this shit, and I resent it.
Now, there are private doctor's offices and health care centers here, and they bill the provincial health insurance (in my case, OHIP). And I certainly would have gone to them first. In fact, I tried several. But this was Labor Day Weekend in 1997, and they were all closed: I was forced to go to a hospital waiting room. And it was the Wellesley Central Hospital in downtown Toronto.
Keep in mind that professional and other employed people don't really care too much about the social programs that the NDP and others keep on bandying about as great reasons to love living in Canada. Those of us who are most likely to be lured to the US by that excellent job offer are also the least likely to ever need the social programs that we're being told are so great.
I just can't figure out why I'm still here.
The only thing they missed, is that Gates isn't Bald, doesn't wear Grey Nehru jackets, and doesn't, to my knowledge, have a minature clone. .
I guess the trapdoor/disposal system malfunction in the first movie was just an "undocumented feature" in the Windows NT drivers?