Yes, it's like the Powers That Be on Slashdot aren't even trying anymore.
Many of you on Slashdot have been around long enough to remember the "OMG Ponies!" joke site that was foisted on us one year. Seemed like everyone at the time complained about how stupid that joke was. Of course, the joke ended up being on Slashdot (albeit several years delayed), since *now* cute cartoon ponies are considered "20% cooler" than ever before, thanks to the inexplicable cult-following of My Little Pony - Friendship is Magic.
May I suggest for a future Slashdot April Fool's joke, the admins try a reprise of "OMG Ponies" of sorts. Disguise Slashdot by making it appear to be a MLP fan forum site. Of course, approximately zero Slashdot members would fall for the joke, but if some Slashdot denizens were to, say, get their "brony" friends to visit this new, wonderful MLP fan site on April 1, at least the joke would be on them when they re-visit their new favorite MLP forum on April 2.
There's nothing new about 3D cameras. Back in the 1980's I used to shoot Kodachrome in an old 50's-era Kodak Stereo camera. Lots of fun, and it taught me new ways of looking at photographic subjects and composition. I've got some shots from that camera that would make little sense in 2D but are intriguing when viewed in 3D. I've owned a Fuji 3D digital camera for perhaps 6 years now, and Fuji has yet to come up with a successor model, since apparently it sold so poorly (mine was a store demo unit that kept getting further and further discounted because nobody even wanted it then!) When I use that camera in public, people sometimes get curious and ask me about it. When I show them images from it on the camera's display (it's got a lenticular 'lens' on it so it provides 3D viewing without glasses), everyone I've encountered has been impressed (if not amazed). I think I could have sold a dozen of those cameras on the spot if I had them to sell. It's better than the old film stereo cameras in that not only can you see the results instantaneously, but it even has a sort of variable parallax, which gives it a much wider range of "usable" focus (film stereo cameras will give you a "headache 3D" effect if you include visual elements that are too close to the camera.) You can even shoot HD 3D video on it, which is pretty nifty when viewed on a 3D monitor or TV. Anyway, don't knock it 'till you've tried it!
Step 1: Record a song. Step 2: Ask Apple to load your song onto every iOS device in existence regardless of whether they want it or not! Step 3: Laugh heartily!
Regarding #6, um, Apple ][ computers did not require a boot disk. Just as with your TRS-80, if you didn't have a diskette drive, you could still use the BASIC interpreter in ROM and save/retrieve data on cassette tapes. Later Apple//e ("Enhanced") machines dropped the cassette interface, but you could still run BASIC in ROM without a diskette. Heck, even the original IBM PC could be used with cassettes without a diskette drive or a boot disk!
I believe a "luch" is a giant balding North American ape; essentially an embiggened quijibo. You might know of it as the "Luch Ness Monster," though the original spelling got lost in the mists of time.
VM was a US company that was a major manufacturer of record changers, especially in the 1960's and early 70's. While VM did not sell a lot of phonographs under its own name, and thus may not be well-known to most Americans, it sold millions and millions of changers on an OEM basis to a lot of US manufacturers. Often these had customized elements such as tone arms and trim, and badged with the purchasing company's brand name, so as to appear distinctive to the end user.
VM also produced tape recorders and tape mechanisms to be OEM'ed to other companies, but these never attained anywhere near the sales success of their record changers.
What this has to do with Slashdot, I'm not sure. Oh, wait-- you meant another meaning of "VM". Sorry!
Just think of the dismay little girls around the country will feel when they can't get replacement 60W light bulbs for their Easy-Bake Oven! It's not like CF and LED lamps are gonna work for that purpose.
For that, get an LCD monitor that uses an IPS panel. The vast majority of LCD monitors and TVs have TN panels. IPS screens are vastly superior to TN panels in terms of viewing angles and color gamut. They're also more expensive, but the cost difference has really declined in recent years, and they've become more common. My 27" Dell Ultrasharp monitor (with an IPS+ panel) retailed for about $1000 when I bought it about 4 years ago (I got mine as a refurb for "only" $599 or so), but it was money well spent. Once you see a *good* IPS monitor (some seem to be a bit better than others), you won't go back to a regular TN panel monitor.
My family was literally the first in town to own a VCR. This was in 1979, well before video rental stores started to appear in our area....And indeed, a blank tape cost about $20 and a prerecorded tape of a reasonably major motion picture cost about $80. We had a Toshiba Betamax-format VCR, BTW. "Everyone" always said Beta was superior, but the only "first-hand" source I ever saw was a Sony advertising poster, though it mostly tried to demonstrate how U-load systems (such as Sony's Betamax and U-Matic) were better than M-load systems (such as VHS). Apparently this advertisement or one like it was the germ of this "Beta is better than VHS" trope. I have a few early VCRs in my collection, and I can vouch that early VHS machines tend to have "clunkier" load mechanisms than early Betamax VCRs, and this would be much to do with the M-versus-U loading mechanism. I would also not be surprised if a first-generation Betamax VCR using the original Beta I speed (which was quickly discontinued in favor of the slower Beta II speed) offered slightly more resolution than a first-gen VHS machine on SP. However, VHS-format VCRs got better rather quickly, and I doubt that Betamax had any visual advantages over VHS once you got to the early/mid 1980's. Besides, back in the late 70's when these new-fangled home VCRs appeared, people didn't have TV sets with composite inputs and comb filters, since there was no real prior need for the former and I don't think the latter existed yet. They had sets like our then-new 25" Zenith System 3 console with only an RF input and no special video enhancements. Even if there was a difference of 10 or so line-pairs of horizontal resolution, it'd be negated by the consumer TV technology of the day.
By the way, while maximum runtime was indeed a big part of the picture, it's interesting that VHS originally got longer recording times not because JVC was particularly interested, but because RCA (which was in the process of getting VCRs OEM'ed from Matsushita (Panasonic)) insisted on having a longer running time than 2 hours on a T-120 tape for the American market, so they and Matsushita came up with the "LP" speed. JVC never really endorsed the LP speed, but they then started adding the even slower SLP (later known as EP) speed to the format.
...Except that EA bought Pinball Construction Set from Bill Budge. I had (still have) the original BudgeCo version of that game for my Apple//e. Great times.
Y'know, it used to be that disasters in SimCity were things like fires, floods, and Godzilla attacks. What now? "Emergency! Market share of Crest(tm) toothpaste among Sims has fallen below 50%!" To respond to this disaster, you have to deploy advertising defenses and retailer goodwill to increase brand awareness and Sim purchasing levels. Next thing you know, in addition to such city services as police, fire, water, and sanitation, Sims will start demanding such things as Coca-Cola(tm) bottling facilities and McDonald's(tm) restaurants.
Pennies..? I didn't know Canada was still using British monetary units. I suppose the sixpence and shilling will be next to go..?
I thought Canada's primary monetary unit was called "dollars" and the secondary unit was "cents"....Either that, or it's Canadian Tire Money, I forget which.
Note: The U.S. and Canada do not produce pennies at all(unless their mints are producing coins under contract for other countries that use such units). They produce one-cent coins called "cents". The Whitman "Red Book" wouldn't lie to me, would it? A "penny" is a British coin, originally worth 1/12 of a shilling, or 1/240th of a pound sterling. Since Great Britain changed over to a decimal currency, the "new" penny is a much smaller coin and worth 1/100th pound. The use of "penny" in the U.S. and Canada to refer to a one cent coin is technically just a common slang term.
OK, that all seemed a bit picky. But, hey, someone had to point it out...
Y'know, I wondered if anyone was going to point out something along those lines. Actually, IIRC, the original maximum "official" memory capacity of the early 64K PC1 was in fact 256K if you only used official IBM memory expansion cards, but the memory map officially allowed up to 512K of RAM (and was supported by some 3rd party expansion cards). A few years later, IBM apparently realized that there wasn't really a need to reserve the entire remaining 512K of addressing space for ROM and device-specific RAM (such as video RAM), so they "unreserved" a block of 128K, thus bringing the official maximum to 640K. Even then, it was still possible to get beyond 640K of base ram by adding RAM in the "holes" unused by ROM on your particular PC, and using an appropriate driver in MS-DOS so that DOS would know about it. Examples of such "holes" in the memory map would be the space reserved for PCjr cartridge ROM, or the MDA video RAM space if you didn't have an MDA (or the CGA space if you had an MDA instead of a CGA). When VGA became commonplace, there was a shareware driver out there that would map the 64K VGA "window" to MS-DOS use, and switch the card to CGA compatibility mode. This gave you 704K of usable base RAM in DOS without any additional hardware, and was great for text-mode or CGA-mode only software where the VGA modes wouldn't be needed anyway.
Bingo. Also, while NTSC has 525 scan lines, some of them are "invisible" since they're part of the vertical refresh interval. That leaves, oh, just over 480 scan lines for the actual picture. Since it's an analog signal, horizontal resolution is not measured in pixels, but in line pairs-- essentially the densest arrangement of pairs of black and white vertical lines you can have across the frame before they are no longer distinguishable as individual black and white vertical lines (and look like a solid gray area instead). Normal NTSC TV receivers top out at about 270 line pairs unless they are equipped with a comb filter circuit, but the NTSC broadcast signal itself is good for somewhere around 320 or 340 line pairs. Double the line pair number to get an approximate "pixel" count for a digital equivalent, and you get about 640 pixels. Hmm. 640x480 pixels. Where have we seen that before..?
BTW, in the days before color, the video amplifiers in some early 525-line B&W TV receivers had bandwidths that covered the full 4 MHz video channel, giving them even better horizontal resolution than NTSC color would allow. This results in the odd experience of being able to "see" the colorburst signal (3.579545 MHz) when viewing a color NTSC program on such sets, which appears as a fine grid-like pattern of shimmering dots on the screen.
As others have mentioned, the "Usa, Japan" story is an urban legend. That doesn't mean that you've entirely misremembered your own "little transistor radio," however. Many of the early small transistor radios were in fact made in the USA. It wasn't until the early 1960's that the American radio manufacturers pretty much gave up that market, and contented themselves with selling re-badged Japanese-made transistor radios. [Some high-end Zenith and (perhaps) GE transistor radios were made in the USA for a while longer, though]
Actually, the new Metro interface reminds me a lot of the old Program Manager from Windows 3.x. Apparently Microsoft has forgotten why they replaced it with the Windows 95 "Start Menu" style of program selection. The problem with Program Manager was that it started to become unwieldy after you installed about a half-dozen major applications, each having multiple shortcut icons....And unlike the formerly-known-as-Metro interface in Windows 8, Program Manager at least let you organize the icons (shortcuts) into folders and minimize or overlap groups of shortcuts on the desktop so they wouldn't have to all be visible together.
What's next? A comeback for the Windows 1.x and 2.x "MS-DOS Executive" as the default Windows shell? [I guess you could do essentially the same thing by putting explorer.exe on the desktop...]
Ask Jimmy Kennedy and Nat Simon. They're the ones who actually wrote that song....back in 1953. I've got at least two different versions of it on old shellac 78's. The Joe "Fingers" Carr version is probably the most common, and there was a reissue of that one on LP. The Four Lads version is earlier, but seems to be more difficult to find.
It is rather amusing to play one of those 78's on a wind-up Victrola and watch the reaction of fellow TMBG fans...
You're correct-- Polaroid SX-70 and other integral films have turned out to be quite stable indeed. Polaroid B&W peel-apart prints are also incredibly stable-- as stable as conventional B&W prints on silver halide paper.
The only Polaroid prints that tended to fade were the (mostly older) "coater-required" B&W peel-apart films-- if you didn't bother to use the print coater! Also the Kodak Instant films (at least in the early days) faded pretty badly when exposed to UV (i.e. sunlight), but those weren't Polaroid products.
I don't know about a Kodak instant transparency film, but Polaroid had a product exactly like what you're thinking-- namely Polachrome 35mm film. It was fairly successful for the reasons you just mentioned. I was a pretty dense film and was slow, but it was pretty neat to be able to develop a 36-exposure roll of color slides in about 5 minutes!...and without a darkroom at that. All you needed was the Polaroid 35mm Autoprocessor box (not very expensive for the manual-crank model)-- and the processing cartridge that was provided with the film.
Oh, and there was also a B&W version that was faster and had more normal density (the color film used additive color filter stripes to produce color).
Also, oddly enough, Polachrome wasn't much more expensive than Ektachrome + processing. [It also has turned out to be much more stable-- my Ektachrome slides from the 1980's look pretty bad now, but the Polachrome ones still seem to look like they did the day they were processed.]
Um, your Super Ikonta is a nice camera, but it is not an SLR.
The more modern Fuji folding cameras are not SLRs either. Folding cameras were once very popular indeed, but none of those were SLRs.
The magic of the SX-70 design was not that it folds up (heck, even the original Polaroid 95 was a folding camera), but that it was the first folding single-lens reflex camera.
The closest thing to a folding production SLR before that was the Graflex family, but those aren't really folding cameras, since the mirror box doesn't collapse. The only "folding" aspect to those is the bellows and focusing track similar to a folding camera, but the lens can only retract a bit past infinity. Also, the big folding "chimney" viewing shield on most models gives it a "folding camera" look, but that's just a sun shield over the waist-level finder. Anyway, as far as I know, the only folding SLR ever made that was not an SX-70 or one of its decendants was also a Polaroid product-- the Polaroid Craptiva....I mean Captiva. I never did understand the logic behind going through the trouble to create a whole new folding SLR design around that model, given that it had a rather slow lens and had only a very limited two-zone AF system (and no manual overrride), and no close-focus capability aside from a rarely-seen closeup accessory.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, it's like the Powers That Be on Slashdot aren't even trying anymore.
Many of you on Slashdot have been around long enough to remember the "OMG Ponies!" joke site that was foisted on us one year. Seemed like everyone at the time complained about how stupid that joke was. Of course, the joke ended up being on Slashdot (albeit several years delayed), since *now* cute cartoon ponies are considered "20% cooler" than ever before, thanks to the inexplicable cult-following of My Little Pony - Friendship is Magic.
May I suggest for a future Slashdot April Fool's joke, the admins try a reprise of "OMG Ponies" of sorts. Disguise Slashdot by making it appear to be a MLP fan forum site. Of course, approximately zero Slashdot members would fall for the joke, but if some Slashdot denizens were to, say, get their "brony" friends to visit this new, wonderful MLP fan site on April 1, at least the joke would be on them when they re-visit their new favorite MLP forum on April 2.
In Soviet Germany, car drives *you*!
There's nothing new about 3D cameras. Back in the 1980's I used to shoot Kodachrome in an old 50's-era Kodak Stereo camera. Lots of fun, and it taught me new ways of looking at photographic subjects and composition. I've got some shots from that camera that would make little sense in 2D but are intriguing when viewed in 3D.
I've owned a Fuji 3D digital camera for perhaps 6 years now, and Fuji has yet to come up with a successor model, since apparently it sold so poorly (mine was a store demo unit that kept getting further and further discounted because nobody even wanted it then!) When I use that camera in public, people sometimes get curious and ask me about it. When I show them images from it on the camera's display (it's got a lenticular 'lens' on it so it provides 3D viewing without glasses), everyone I've encountered has been impressed (if not amazed). I think I could have sold a dozen of those cameras on the spot if I had them to sell.
It's better than the old film stereo cameras in that not only can you see the results instantaneously, but it even has a sort of variable parallax, which gives it a much wider range of "usable" focus (film stereo cameras will give you a "headache 3D" effect if you include visual elements that are too close to the camera.) You can even shoot HD 3D video on it, which is pretty nifty when viewed on a 3D monitor or TV.
Anyway, don't knock it 'till you've tried it!
I've got a great idea for an iOS app!
Step 1: Record a song.
Step 2: Ask Apple to load your song onto every iOS device in existence regardless of whether they want it or not!
Step 3: Laugh heartily!
Regarding #6, um, Apple ][ computers did not require a boot disk. Just as with your TRS-80, if you didn't have a diskette drive, you could still use the BASIC interpreter in ROM and save/retrieve data on cassette tapes. Later Apple //e ("Enhanced") machines dropped the cassette interface, but you could still run BASIC in ROM without a diskette.
Heck, even the original IBM PC could be used with cassettes without a diskette drive or a boot disk!
I believe a "luch" is a giant balding North American ape; essentially an embiggened quijibo.
You might know of it as the "Luch Ness Monster," though the original spelling got lost in the mists of time.
VM means Voice of Music (http://www.thevoiceofmusic.com/).
VM was a US company that was a major manufacturer of record changers, especially in the 1960's and early 70's. While VM did not sell a lot of phonographs under its own name, and thus may not be well-known to most Americans, it sold millions and millions of changers on an OEM basis to a lot of US manufacturers. Often these had customized elements such as tone arms and trim, and badged with the purchasing company's brand name, so as to appear distinctive to the end user.
VM also produced tape recorders and tape mechanisms to be OEM'ed to other companies, but these never attained anywhere near the sales success of their record changers.
What this has to do with Slashdot, I'm not sure. Oh, wait-- you meant another meaning of "VM". Sorry!
Just think of the dismay little girls around the country will feel when they can't get replacement 60W light bulbs for their Easy-Bake Oven! It's not like CF and LED lamps are gonna work for that purpose.
Think of the children!! (?)
For that, get an LCD monitor that uses an IPS panel. The vast majority of LCD monitors and TVs have TN panels.
IPS screens are vastly superior to TN panels in terms of viewing angles and color gamut. They're also more expensive, but the cost difference has really declined in recent years, and they've become more common. My 27" Dell Ultrasharp monitor (with an IPS+ panel) retailed for about $1000 when I bought it about 4 years ago (I got mine as a refurb for "only" $599 or so), but it was money well spent.
Once you see a *good* IPS monitor (some seem to be a bit better than others), you won't go back to a regular TN panel monitor.
Exactly.
My family was literally the first in town to own a VCR. This was in 1979, well before video rental stores started to appear in our area. ...And indeed, a blank tape cost about $20 and a prerecorded tape of a reasonably major motion picture cost about $80. We had a Toshiba Betamax-format VCR, BTW.
"Everyone" always said Beta was superior, but the only "first-hand" source I ever saw was a Sony advertising poster, though it mostly tried to demonstrate how U-load systems (such as Sony's Betamax and U-Matic) were better than M-load systems (such as VHS). Apparently this advertisement or one like it was the germ of this "Beta is better than VHS" trope.
I have a few early VCRs in my collection, and I can vouch that early VHS machines tend to have "clunkier" load mechanisms than early Betamax VCRs, and this would be much to do with the M-versus-U loading mechanism. I would also not be surprised if a first-generation Betamax VCR using the original Beta I speed (which was quickly discontinued in favor of the slower Beta II speed) offered slightly more resolution than a first-gen VHS machine on SP. However, VHS-format VCRs got better rather quickly, and I doubt that Betamax had any visual advantages over VHS once you got to the early/mid 1980's.
Besides, back in the late 70's when these new-fangled home VCRs appeared, people didn't have TV sets with composite inputs and comb filters, since there was no real prior need for the former and I don't think the latter existed yet. They had sets like our then-new 25" Zenith System 3 console with only an RF input and no special video enhancements. Even if there was a difference of 10 or so line-pairs of horizontal resolution, it'd be negated by the consumer TV technology of the day.
By the way, while maximum runtime was indeed a big part of the picture, it's interesting that VHS originally got longer recording times not because JVC was particularly interested, but because RCA (which was in the process of getting VCRs OEM'ed from Matsushita (Panasonic)) insisted on having a longer running time than 2 hours on a T-120 tape for the American market, so they and Matsushita came up with the "LP" speed. JVC never really endorsed the LP speed, but they then started adding the even slower SLP (later known as EP) speed to the format.
I think that's already been taken to its logical extreme. ...and it just so happens to be based on a BMW.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/07/07/0229224/real-version-of-homer-simpsons-dream-car-built
Is that a U-boat?
No, that's not-a my boat.
...Except that EA bought Pinball Construction Set from Bill Budge. I had (still have) the original BudgeCo version of that game for my Apple //e. Great times.
Y'know, it used to be that disasters in SimCity were things like fires, floods, and Godzilla attacks. What now? "Emergency! Market share of Crest(tm) toothpaste among Sims has fallen below 50%!" To respond to this disaster, you have to deploy advertising defenses and retailer goodwill to increase brand awareness and Sim purchasing levels.
Next thing you know, in addition to such city services as police, fire, water, and sanitation, Sims will start demanding such things as Coca-Cola(tm) bottling facilities and McDonald's(tm) restaurants.
Cyclamates.
That (sodium cyclamate) is what Diet Pepsi was originally sweetened with-- until it (the sweetener) was banned in the USA.
Canada could still have "Throwback Diet Pepsi" though.
Well, one difference is that Apple products tend to look like they were designed by someone at Fisher-Price.
A nice Thinkpad (especially a T or X series model), on the other hand, never looks like something that came from Toys R Us.
Pennies..? I didn't know Canada was still using British monetary units. I suppose the sixpence and shilling will be next to go..?
I thought Canada's primary monetary unit was called "dollars" and the secondary unit was "cents". ...Either that, or it's Canadian Tire Money, I forget which.
Note: The U.S. and Canada do not produce pennies at all(unless their mints are producing coins under contract for other countries that use such units). They produce one-cent coins called "cents". The Whitman "Red Book" wouldn't lie to me, would it? A "penny" is a British coin, originally worth 1/12 of a shilling, or 1/240th of a pound sterling. Since Great Britain changed over to a decimal currency, the "new" penny is a much smaller coin and worth 1/100th pound. The use of "penny" in the U.S. and Canada to refer to a one cent coin is technically just a common slang term.
OK, that all seemed a bit picky. But, hey, someone had to point it out...
Just thought I'd put in my two groats' worth.
Y'know, I wondered if anyone was going to point out something along those lines. Actually, IIRC, the original maximum "official" memory capacity of the early 64K PC1 was in fact 256K if you only used official IBM memory expansion cards, but the memory map officially allowed up to 512K of RAM (and was supported by some 3rd party expansion cards). A few years later, IBM apparently realized that there wasn't really a need to reserve the entire remaining 512K of addressing space for ROM and device-specific RAM (such as video RAM), so they "unreserved" a block of 128K, thus bringing the official maximum to 640K.
Even then, it was still possible to get beyond 640K of base ram by adding RAM in the "holes" unused by ROM on your particular PC, and using an appropriate driver in MS-DOS so that DOS would know about it. Examples of such "holes" in the memory map would be the space reserved for PCjr cartridge ROM, or the MDA video RAM space if you didn't have an MDA (or the CGA space if you had an MDA instead of a CGA). When VGA became commonplace, there was a shareware driver out there that would map the 64K VGA "window" to MS-DOS use, and switch the card to CGA compatibility mode. This gave you 704K of usable base RAM in DOS without any additional hardware, and was great for text-mode or CGA-mode only software where the VGA modes wouldn't be needed anyway.
Bingo. Also, while NTSC has 525 scan lines, some of them are "invisible" since they're part of the vertical refresh interval. That leaves, oh, just over 480 scan lines for the actual picture. Since it's an analog signal, horizontal resolution is not measured in pixels, but in line pairs-- essentially the densest arrangement of pairs of black and white vertical lines you can have across the frame before they are no longer distinguishable as individual black and white vertical lines (and look like a solid gray area instead). Normal NTSC TV receivers top out at about 270 line pairs unless they are equipped with a comb filter circuit, but the NTSC broadcast signal itself is good for somewhere around 320 or 340 line pairs. Double the line pair number to get an approximate "pixel" count for a digital equivalent, and you get about 640 pixels. Hmm. 640x480 pixels. Where have we seen that before..?
BTW, in the days before color, the video amplifiers in some early 525-line B&W TV receivers had bandwidths that covered the full 4 MHz video channel, giving them even better horizontal resolution than NTSC color would allow. This results in the odd experience of being able to "see" the colorburst signal (3.579545 MHz) when viewing a color NTSC program on such sets, which appears as a fine grid-like pattern of shimmering dots on the screen.
As others have mentioned, the "Usa, Japan" story is an urban legend. That doesn't mean that you've entirely misremembered your own "little transistor radio," however. Many of the early small transistor radios were in fact made in the USA. It wasn't until the early 1960's that the American radio manufacturers pretty much gave up that market, and contented themselves with selling re-badged Japanese-made transistor radios. [Some high-end Zenith and (perhaps) GE transistor radios were made in the USA for a while longer, though]
Actually, the new Metro interface reminds me a lot of the old Program Manager from Windows 3.x. Apparently Microsoft has forgotten why they replaced it with the Windows 95 "Start Menu" style of program selection. The problem with Program Manager was that it started to become unwieldy after you installed about a half-dozen major applications, each having multiple shortcut icons. ...And unlike the formerly-known-as-Metro interface in Windows 8, Program Manager at least let you organize the icons (shortcuts) into folders and minimize or overlap groups of shortcuts on the desktop so they wouldn't have to all be visible together.
What's next? A comeback for the Windows 1.x and 2.x "MS-DOS Executive" as the default Windows shell? [I guess you could do essentially the same thing by putting explorer.exe on the desktop...]
Ask Jimmy Kennedy and Nat Simon. They're the ones who actually wrote that song. ...back in 1953. I've got at least two different versions of it on old shellac 78's. The Joe "Fingers" Carr version is probably the most common, and there was a reissue of that one on LP. The Four Lads version is earlier, but seems to be more difficult to find.
It is rather amusing to play one of those 78's on a wind-up Victrola and watch the reaction of fellow TMBG fans...
You're correct-- Polaroid SX-70 and other integral films have turned out to be quite stable indeed. Polaroid B&W peel-apart prints are also incredibly stable-- as stable as conventional B&W prints on silver halide paper.
The only Polaroid prints that tended to fade were the (mostly older) "coater-required" B&W peel-apart films-- if you didn't bother to use the print coater! Also the Kodak Instant films (at least in the early days) faded pretty badly when exposed to UV (i.e. sunlight), but those weren't Polaroid products.
I don't know about a Kodak instant transparency film, but Polaroid had a product exactly like what you're thinking-- namely Polachrome 35mm film. It was fairly successful for the reasons you just mentioned. I was a pretty dense film and was slow, but it was pretty neat to be able to develop a 36-exposure roll of color slides in about 5 minutes! ...and without a darkroom at that. All you needed was the Polaroid 35mm Autoprocessor box (not very expensive for the manual-crank model)-- and the processing cartridge that was provided with the film.
Oh, and there was also a B&W version that was faster and had more normal density (the color film used additive color filter stripes to produce color).
Also, oddly enough, Polachrome wasn't much more expensive than Ektachrome + processing. [It also has turned out to be much more stable-- my Ektachrome slides from the 1980's look pretty bad now, but the Polachrome ones still seem to look like they did the day they were processed.]
Um, your Super Ikonta is a nice camera, but it is not an SLR.
The more modern Fuji folding cameras are not SLRs either. Folding cameras were once very popular indeed, but none of those were SLRs.
The magic of the SX-70 design was not that it folds up (heck, even the original Polaroid 95 was a folding camera), but that it was the first folding single-lens reflex camera.
The closest thing to a folding production SLR before that was the Graflex family, but those aren't really folding cameras, since the mirror box doesn't collapse. The only "folding" aspect to those is the bellows and focusing track similar to a folding camera, but the lens can only retract a bit past infinity. Also, the big folding "chimney" viewing shield on most models gives it a "folding camera" look, but that's just a sun shield over the waist-level finder. Anyway, as far as I know, the only folding SLR ever made that was not an SX-70 or one of its decendants was also a Polaroid product-- the Polaroid Craptiva. ...I mean Captiva. I never did understand the logic behind going through the trouble to create a whole new folding SLR design around that model, given that it had a rather slow lens and had only a very limited two-zone AF system (and no manual overrride), and no close-focus capability aside from a rarely-seen closeup accessory.