Yes, but no. You are right on what the original intent is, but forcing H1Bs to compete with high paying jobs is the wrong approach. The simplest of all fixes is to increase the ridiculously low filing fee to a six figure value. Rather than setting 110k as minimum wage for H1B make that the non-refundable filing fee. That will limit H1B truly to those positions where talent cannot be found in the US. For all other cases it is cheaper to hire local talent or pay for moving expenses and provide a sign on bonus. It is even cheaper to pay the education of potential candidates.
In regards to your post's footnote, the TSA generated a lot of jobs. It is a massive government employment program and sadly that is the only thing it accomplished. It did not make air travel any safer than it already was.
So far H1B were often used for mundane, entry level jobs that provide wages that aren't great to start with. With Cruz's suggestion the H1Bs would compete with the real jobs that pay well. What a dumb idea! I rather see low end jobs get outsourced or shipped overseas so that we can focus on getting one of the high paying positions. Cruz once again shows that he has absolutely no clue and excels only in radical religious fundamentalism (like ISIS or Boka Harom).
Why be afraid? If you are then argue even more against any laws that are put in place to counter terrorism. Since 9/11 about 400 US citizens have been killed by terrorist, but over 400,000 were shot by the many firearms within the country. Body counts are always a bad metric, but in this case it is a drastic difference and clearly shows that both politicians and the public have their priorities wrong. The only one who gets it mildly right is the Gov from CT banning anyone on the (much criticized) no fly list to buy a firearm although the CT review process of such a ban typically results in allowing the sale. Same provision was put in front of Congress and the Republicans shot it down. Yes, they want to keep potential terrorists off planes but are perfectly fine with them buying guns. Seriously?? Things can only turn for the better when this idiotic conservative think is gone.
Repeal the 2nd Amendment or finally enforce it in a way that makes sense today. Well-regulated militias are police, state police, and national guard, but not every Dick and Jane in suburbia.
We can only hope that the gubement comes finally through and does take away the guns. What the frack does anyone need a gun for? Besides that, if you have one your are more likely to get shot yourself.
Spell check has no clue if I intentionally misspell something or if a word is indeed spelled correctly but not English. Spell check also has no idea what the content of the document is. A dumb tool will eliminate content coming from either side.
As much as I loathe the fanatic religious fundamentalists (ISIS, Boka Harom, Ted Cruz) we should not employ dumb tools to do the policing and especially not put Google in charge.
Homeschooling is legal in the UK and as a parent I would opt for that if the well-being of my child is in danger. And what is so special about the WiFi frequency range compared to many other sources of RF? I do not want to dismiss the pain of the loss of her child, but Fry has really no case here.
The gap might be closing but even the forecast for 2017 shows SSDs being three times more expensive per GB as HDDs. With 10 TB HDDs available today SSDs need to not only come down in price way more but also grow in capacity a lot. SSDs are great and worth their money, but it is very premature to celebrate the death of HDDs.
It depends on HOW they do this. If it will end up like the Gates foundation then it might just be better to have Sugarmountain keep his riches and have fun with it. The Gates foundation funds pet projects that to this day have not yielded any significant contribution to humankind while also doling out money to all those who are tempted to point that out. The Gates foundation is mainly stifling research and quieting critical voices.
So what is of interest with Sugarmountain is what his foundation will do and who will decide what is a worthy cause. Yes, the letter names a few high level points such as using technology to give people access to education. A worthy cause maybe if we know what the curriculum is. ISIS uses tech to provide plenty of "education" but not the kind that I think anyone should fund. The Gates foundation drops millions into K-12 with quite a few strings attached and an underlying nudge to pull more Microsoft stuff through.
It is too early to cast a verdict. For now, it is welcome that Sugarmountain wants to do something for the greater good. One thing might be fighting obesity due to lack of activity. Many just spend too much time posting on FB.;)
The sole point of the Pi is not to remain an uneducated fool. Part of computing is understanding the workings of the underlying hardware...plenty of developers these days don't. I also think the Zero is more aimed at being the device that is to be resident in whatever gizmo it will operate. At that point all you need is the Zero, power, and WiFi. One might wonder why then the HDMI port is populated and the GPIO is not, but it might just have been part usage research and production cost calculation. Maybe the HDMI port is cheaper to install than the GPIO pins and when stuffing the Zero into a device one might as well solder the cables right onto the pads. I am sure there was also some motivation to see if a 5$ SBC is possible.
If you do not want to worry that much about cabling and moving SD cards around have a look at the CHIP. It costs 8$, has 4GB onboard storage, does not have HDMI (only composite, but HDMI and VGA are available via extension boards), and comes with WiFi on board. The last piece is what make me hesitate to buy a Zero because that would have been the "killer feature". Even the regular Pi 2 would do very well with WiFi and both would do even better with Bluetooth on board so that you do not have to wire up any keyboard or mouse but simply connect wirelessly.
I am sure both teams around the Pi and CHIP discussed and continue to discuss where they want to go, what is possible, and how much reliable tech they can stuff into the form factor and price range.
Just think back a few years, there was nothing like the Pi. The original Pi was groundbreaking, a 35$ SBC that can do HD video output. The Pi 2 addressed the shortcomings by doubling RAM and improving performance significantly. I have a Pi 2 with a fast SD card and it does light office work and web browsing as well as any more expensive beefed up PC.
Now you get that in a decent form factor that compete in price even with low cost IoT solutions that only give you a chip and nothing else. This is just mindboggling! There is not enough credit that can be given to Upton and his team for the Pi....which they mainly design in their spare time. AFAIK they still have their day jobs.
Get the Pi 2 or the CHIP with accessories, way cheaper and plenty powerful for plain simple desktop use.
Aside from that, any AMD based system will be less expensive than an Intel based system. Intel is overpriced for low end systems.
But they are still in it for the money, even state schools are interested in cash first, education second.
Have a look at the tuition costs of Union College, a private, non-profit, tax exempt university. They did have the NCAA ice hockey champions a few years back, but otherwise while still being a good school they are not that stellar given the steep price. And the real kicker is that Union was founded solely because at that time the middle class could not afford the established colleges and wanted a low cost alternative.
I suggested a fix to that supposed shortage years ago: Drop tuition for STEM degrees and remove any restrictions on the number of students per program. Yes, the classrooms will get crowded (so what, my Math I class at a Germany university had 1,200 students in it, by Math II it was down to a few hundred), but everyone gets a fair chance and students will drop out of the programs. Still, the number of graduates will rise significantly. And best of all, the graduates do not have to compete for the top paying jobs as much because they do not leave college at the brink of bankruptcy.
Since I mentioned it, Germany has very low tuition, capped at 500€ per semester with the fees being typically much lower than the max. You have to pay for room and board on your own, but in almost all university cities student apartments are available (most of them one room studios). Also, most universities include the half year local and regional public transit without restrictions in the fees. If you are a legal resident of Germany you can also apply for BAFöG, which is a federal subsidy and determined on your own and your parents income. The subsidy is paid out half as a grant and half as a no interest loan. If you pay back that loan in a lump sum there are significant discounts offered. Why does the US not offer something like that? How come that US education has morphed from educating the young to a multi-billion Dollar for profit service industry? How come that US tuition rose sharply the past ten years while the expenses for academia remained flat? Do we really have to have the money pits of college athletics (all but maybe two or three programs lose money) that siphon off incredible amounts of cash from what universities should do? Do we really need the manicured greens and posh buildings? Do we really need the excessive amount of administrative staff that does not have any impact on the quality of studies? US colleges are nothing else than a massive employment program and you are paying for it!
A bit of history that often remains unmentioned. In regards to Trump, he appears to be the reincarnation of Himmler and Goebbels in personal unity. Typically, you tell people like Trump to just stay calm because the men in the white shrubs are coming soon. That guy is a case for the psych ward.
If it is indeed old look at either a rewrite or throw away all approaches and ideas and start from scratch. At times you will find that the way the old app did it is indeed the best way, but all that needs to be discussed and reviewed.
Ask support and product management to get access to what customers think about the product. As long as customers are happy and the product can be sold you have no case, even if you are right (I am sure you are). Such projects only come to the forefront when customers start dropping off citing the cumbersome and outdated UI. Of course, it is too late at that point and fixing UX will be very difficult and annoying, especially because it impacts the entire application.
Definitely put your concern in front of decision makers, ideally as email or other retainable document. It might not help that much, but with every "I told you so" moment you might get more clout. It all comes down to money, a business looks at a UX improvement as putting a lot of resources into an application just to have it do exactly the same as it does before. The value in better UX is not obvious. If you can analyze support tickets and put Dollar amounts on things then you got something to work with. Think "generate value" rather than "easy of use" or "looks pretty". Many people are perfectly fine with buggy apps as long as they deliver value to them.
Also, watch out if a lead developer who built the current UI moved up into a management position. I've come across many cases where there is resistance because some peon criticizes what the big boss clobbered together 10 years ago.
Scrum is the worst implementation of any software development process and it is inherently non-agile. Scrum generates so much overhead that it becomes necessary to hire people (Scrum master) just to handle the administrative overhead. Even worse is the artificial time boxing into 2-4 week sprints. After that time work might be deliverable, but it does not generate value. What good does a database schema do without a UI and business logic to go with it? Or an UI that is nothing else than a Potempkin village?
What really puts the vinegar icing on one the anchovy cake is the retrospective. I was in plenty where the scrum master asked me how I feel about how things are. We spend hours discussing how we felt, listed tasks, and none of those got done. In fact, the time we spent talking about stuff we could have used fixing the obvious issues. We also spent excessive amounts of time splitting up tasks to small chunks that could be completed on their own.
Scrum adds way too much process that yields absolutely no value claiming to reduce process. There are also way too many useless documents while claiming to reduce documentation. And the short sprints are nothing else than mini waterfalls. Scrum and Agile in general give the false impression as that the same work can now magically be done in less time.
If there needs to be an Agile process with a name go for Kanban. It focuses on delivering value and quality quickly.
Apple also said that large phones are stupid, small tablets are moronic, and a stylus is for losers. Cook is only miffed because he didn't have that idea.
After selling only two Zunes since product launch it is way too early to tell if this is a flop or not. Microsoft needs to have more stamina and reevaluate products after they sold the first ten, so they should be in a much better position to make call in 2028.
I don't mind the amount of commercials, what I do mind is the insane monthly fees for cable TV AND the large amount of ads. A decent TV/Internet/Phone package is now more expensive than a car payment (yes, I drive cheap cars!).
.... but do not often act upon it. They may honestly encourage to have folks not work long nights and weekends, giving employees a stern talk that do anyway. But next planning meeting the backlog to be tackled for upcoming release makes it quite evident that with the resources available the work cannot be done in the time available. And then add the 80/20 program to it where 20% of the time is intended to be used for being creative and innovative. That leads to employees being stressed, frustrated, angry and unmotivated dragging down productivity.
The work will take the time it needs. If management wants to get stuff done quicker then make decisions faster and give employees better tools. It does not even need more people.
Customers do not pay for quality! They expect some level of quality to be there, but many of glitches and flaws that clearly show the laziness and lack of care by the developers are no longer a reason for users to not see value. As for a game, as long as it entertains the player it will be fine the broken way it is. That is reflected in the reviews. It all comes down to how easily even annoying flaws can be overcome. If it takes just a second to reset to the point of where things went off the rails many will not even consider this to be a significant quality issue.
While I understand that point of view I wished users would be more critical. I've seen plenty of apps with misaligned UI controls, spelling errors, and flawed validation. If developers don't bother with lining things up to cut down on optical noise for the sake of reducing visual fatigue how much effort did they put into fixing things that are a magnitude more difficult to correct? How much did they bother with security measures? How much effort did they put into preventing SQL/JS/HTML injections and XSS vulnerabilities?
Companies ship mediocre software because as long as they can make money on it the quality is good enough. Getting to market quickly is more important that delivering a product that the customers paid for. None of that will change as long as customers do not ask for their money back when they encounter craptastic software.
It all gets worse when software companies decide to be Agile now....Agile as implemented is the death of software quality, especially when using scrum. That's a different discussion....
I doubt this is the end of Betamax in general. Most TV studios and broadcasters use Betacam and DigiBeta as medium. It provides incredible quality at a rather low price and incremental addition cost compared to hard disk based libraries. Especially DigiBeta is so robust you can swipe sandpaper over the tape and wrinkle it all up, you may end up with a few blocks in the image if that.
As far as consumer grade is concerned, VHS was/is the worst of them all. Betamax was better, but the best was Video2000. Far better picture quality, stereo audio before any TV station broadcasted in stereo, and up to 8 hours in recording length...ok, to be fair, more 2 x 4 hours per cassette because you needed to flip it around like an audio cassette. VHS only won the video wars because it was dirt cheap and it clearly shows.
I guess with HD streaming and torrenting content only die hards who like the sound of the loading arm wrapping the tape around the head drum will use video tapes.
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Yes, but no. You are right on what the original intent is, but forcing H1Bs to compete with high paying jobs is the wrong approach. The simplest of all fixes is to increase the ridiculously low filing fee to a six figure value. Rather than setting 110k as minimum wage for H1B make that the non-refundable filing fee. That will limit H1B truly to those positions where talent cannot be found in the US. For all other cases it is cheaper to hire local talent or pay for moving expenses and provide a sign on bonus. It is even cheaper to pay the education of potential candidates. In regards to your post's footnote, the TSA generated a lot of jobs. It is a massive government employment program and sadly that is the only thing it accomplished. It did not make air travel any safer than it already was.
So far H1B were often used for mundane, entry level jobs that provide wages that aren't great to start with. With Cruz's suggestion the H1Bs would compete with the real jobs that pay well. What a dumb idea! I rather see low end jobs get outsourced or shipped overseas so that we can focus on getting one of the high paying positions. Cruz once again shows that he has absolutely no clue and excels only in radical religious fundamentalism (like ISIS or Boka Harom).
Why be afraid? If you are then argue even more against any laws that are put in place to counter terrorism. Since 9/11 about 400 US citizens have been killed by terrorist, but over 400,000 were shot by the many firearms within the country. Body counts are always a bad metric, but in this case it is a drastic difference and clearly shows that both politicians and the public have their priorities wrong. The only one who gets it mildly right is the Gov from CT banning anyone on the (much criticized) no fly list to buy a firearm although the CT review process of such a ban typically results in allowing the sale. Same provision was put in front of Congress and the Republicans shot it down. Yes, they want to keep potential terrorists off planes but are perfectly fine with them buying guns. Seriously?? Things can only turn for the better when this idiotic conservative think is gone. Repeal the 2nd Amendment or finally enforce it in a way that makes sense today. Well-regulated militias are police, state police, and national guard, but not every Dick and Jane in suburbia.
We can only hope that the gubement comes finally through and does take away the guns. What the frack does anyone need a gun for? Besides that, if you have one your are more likely to get shot yourself.
Spell check has no clue if I intentionally misspell something or if a word is indeed spelled correctly but not English. Spell check also has no idea what the content of the document is. A dumb tool will eliminate content coming from either side. As much as I loathe the fanatic religious fundamentalists (ISIS, Boka Harom, Ted Cruz) we should not employ dumb tools to do the policing and especially not put Google in charge.
Homeschooling is legal in the UK and as a parent I would opt for that if the well-being of my child is in danger. And what is so special about the WiFi frequency range compared to many other sources of RF? I do not want to dismiss the pain of the loss of her child, but Fry has really no case here.
The gap might be closing but even the forecast for 2017 shows SSDs being three times more expensive per GB as HDDs. With 10 TB HDDs available today SSDs need to not only come down in price way more but also grow in capacity a lot. SSDs are great and worth their money, but it is very premature to celebrate the death of HDDs.
It depends on HOW they do this. If it will end up like the Gates foundation then it might just be better to have Sugarmountain keep his riches and have fun with it. The Gates foundation funds pet projects that to this day have not yielded any significant contribution to humankind while also doling out money to all those who are tempted to point that out. The Gates foundation is mainly stifling research and quieting critical voices. So what is of interest with Sugarmountain is what his foundation will do and who will decide what is a worthy cause. Yes, the letter names a few high level points such as using technology to give people access to education. A worthy cause maybe if we know what the curriculum is. ISIS uses tech to provide plenty of "education" but not the kind that I think anyone should fund. The Gates foundation drops millions into K-12 with quite a few strings attached and an underlying nudge to pull more Microsoft stuff through. It is too early to cast a verdict. For now, it is welcome that Sugarmountain wants to do something for the greater good. One thing might be fighting obesity due to lack of activity. Many just spend too much time posting on FB. ;)
The sole point of the Pi is not to remain an uneducated fool. Part of computing is understanding the workings of the underlying hardware...plenty of developers these days don't. I also think the Zero is more aimed at being the device that is to be resident in whatever gizmo it will operate. At that point all you need is the Zero, power, and WiFi. One might wonder why then the HDMI port is populated and the GPIO is not, but it might just have been part usage research and production cost calculation. Maybe the HDMI port is cheaper to install than the GPIO pins and when stuffing the Zero into a device one might as well solder the cables right onto the pads. I am sure there was also some motivation to see if a 5$ SBC is possible. If you do not want to worry that much about cabling and moving SD cards around have a look at the CHIP. It costs 8$, has 4GB onboard storage, does not have HDMI (only composite, but HDMI and VGA are available via extension boards), and comes with WiFi on board. The last piece is what make me hesitate to buy a Zero because that would have been the "killer feature". Even the regular Pi 2 would do very well with WiFi and both would do even better with Bluetooth on board so that you do not have to wire up any keyboard or mouse but simply connect wirelessly. I am sure both teams around the Pi and CHIP discussed and continue to discuss where they want to go, what is possible, and how much reliable tech they can stuff into the form factor and price range. Just think back a few years, there was nothing like the Pi. The original Pi was groundbreaking, a 35$ SBC that can do HD video output. The Pi 2 addressed the shortcomings by doubling RAM and improving performance significantly. I have a Pi 2 with a fast SD card and it does light office work and web browsing as well as any more expensive beefed up PC. Now you get that in a decent form factor that compete in price even with low cost IoT solutions that only give you a chip and nothing else. This is just mindboggling! There is not enough credit that can be given to Upton and his team for the Pi....which they mainly design in their spare time. AFAIK they still have their day jobs.
Get the Pi 2 or the CHIP with accessories, way cheaper and plenty powerful for plain simple desktop use. Aside from that, any AMD based system will be less expensive than an Intel based system. Intel is overpriced for low end systems.
But they are still in it for the money, even state schools are interested in cash first, education second. Have a look at the tuition costs of Union College, a private, non-profit, tax exempt university. They did have the NCAA ice hockey champions a few years back, but otherwise while still being a good school they are not that stellar given the steep price. And the real kicker is that Union was founded solely because at that time the middle class could not afford the established colleges and wanted a low cost alternative.
I suggested a fix to that supposed shortage years ago: Drop tuition for STEM degrees and remove any restrictions on the number of students per program. Yes, the classrooms will get crowded (so what, my Math I class at a Germany university had 1,200 students in it, by Math II it was down to a few hundred), but everyone gets a fair chance and students will drop out of the programs. Still, the number of graduates will rise significantly. And best of all, the graduates do not have to compete for the top paying jobs as much because they do not leave college at the brink of bankruptcy. Since I mentioned it, Germany has very low tuition, capped at 500€ per semester with the fees being typically much lower than the max. You have to pay for room and board on your own, but in almost all university cities student apartments are available (most of them one room studios). Also, most universities include the half year local and regional public transit without restrictions in the fees. If you are a legal resident of Germany you can also apply for BAFöG, which is a federal subsidy and determined on your own and your parents income. The subsidy is paid out half as a grant and half as a no interest loan. If you pay back that loan in a lump sum there are significant discounts offered. Why does the US not offer something like that? How come that US education has morphed from educating the young to a multi-billion Dollar for profit service industry? How come that US tuition rose sharply the past ten years while the expenses for academia remained flat? Do we really have to have the money pits of college athletics (all but maybe two or three programs lose money) that siphon off incredible amounts of cash from what universities should do? Do we really need the manicured greens and posh buildings? Do we really need the excessive amount of administrative staff that does not have any impact on the quality of studies? US colleges are nothing else than a massive employment program and you are paying for it!
A bit of history that often remains unmentioned. In regards to Trump, he appears to be the reincarnation of Himmler and Goebbels in personal unity. Typically, you tell people like Trump to just stay calm because the men in the white shrubs are coming soon. That guy is a case for the psych ward.
I had exactly the same thought. No matter which director, a boring script/book is just that....boring.
If it is indeed old look at either a rewrite or throw away all approaches and ideas and start from scratch. At times you will find that the way the old app did it is indeed the best way, but all that needs to be discussed and reviewed.
Ask support and product management to get access to what customers think about the product. As long as customers are happy and the product can be sold you have no case, even if you are right (I am sure you are). Such projects only come to the forefront when customers start dropping off citing the cumbersome and outdated UI. Of course, it is too late at that point and fixing UX will be very difficult and annoying, especially because it impacts the entire application. Definitely put your concern in front of decision makers, ideally as email or other retainable document. It might not help that much, but with every "I told you so" moment you might get more clout. It all comes down to money, a business looks at a UX improvement as putting a lot of resources into an application just to have it do exactly the same as it does before. The value in better UX is not obvious. If you can analyze support tickets and put Dollar amounts on things then you got something to work with. Think "generate value" rather than "easy of use" or "looks pretty". Many people are perfectly fine with buggy apps as long as they deliver value to them. Also, watch out if a lead developer who built the current UI moved up into a management position. I've come across many cases where there is resistance because some peon criticizes what the big boss clobbered together 10 years ago.
....is driving around in circles and wasting fuel a "sport"? NASCAR is as senseless as American Football.
Scrum is the worst implementation of any software development process and it is inherently non-agile. Scrum generates so much overhead that it becomes necessary to hire people (Scrum master) just to handle the administrative overhead. Even worse is the artificial time boxing into 2-4 week sprints. After that time work might be deliverable, but it does not generate value. What good does a database schema do without a UI and business logic to go with it? Or an UI that is nothing else than a Potempkin village? What really puts the vinegar icing on one the anchovy cake is the retrospective. I was in plenty where the scrum master asked me how I feel about how things are. We spend hours discussing how we felt, listed tasks, and none of those got done. In fact, the time we spent talking about stuff we could have used fixing the obvious issues. We also spent excessive amounts of time splitting up tasks to small chunks that could be completed on their own. Scrum adds way too much process that yields absolutely no value claiming to reduce process. There are also way too many useless documents while claiming to reduce documentation. And the short sprints are nothing else than mini waterfalls. Scrum and Agile in general give the false impression as that the same work can now magically be done in less time. If there needs to be an Agile process with a name go for Kanban. It focuses on delivering value and quality quickly.
Apple also said that large phones are stupid, small tablets are moronic, and a stylus is for losers. Cook is only miffed because he didn't have that idea.
After selling only two Zunes since product launch it is way too early to tell if this is a flop or not. Microsoft needs to have more stamina and reevaluate products after they sold the first ten, so they should be in a much better position to make call in 2028.
I don't mind the amount of commercials, what I do mind is the insane monthly fees for cable TV AND the large amount of ads. A decent TV/Internet/Phone package is now more expensive than a car payment (yes, I drive cheap cars!).
.... but do not often act upon it. They may honestly encourage to have folks not work long nights and weekends, giving employees a stern talk that do anyway. But next planning meeting the backlog to be tackled for upcoming release makes it quite evident that with the resources available the work cannot be done in the time available. And then add the 80/20 program to it where 20% of the time is intended to be used for being creative and innovative. That leads to employees being stressed, frustrated, angry and unmotivated dragging down productivity. The work will take the time it needs. If management wants to get stuff done quicker then make decisions faster and give employees better tools. It does not even need more people.
Customers do not pay for quality! They expect some level of quality to be there, but many of glitches and flaws that clearly show the laziness and lack of care by the developers are no longer a reason for users to not see value. As for a game, as long as it entertains the player it will be fine the broken way it is. That is reflected in the reviews. It all comes down to how easily even annoying flaws can be overcome. If it takes just a second to reset to the point of where things went off the rails many will not even consider this to be a significant quality issue. While I understand that point of view I wished users would be more critical. I've seen plenty of apps with misaligned UI controls, spelling errors, and flawed validation. If developers don't bother with lining things up to cut down on optical noise for the sake of reducing visual fatigue how much effort did they put into fixing things that are a magnitude more difficult to correct? How much did they bother with security measures? How much effort did they put into preventing SQL/JS/HTML injections and XSS vulnerabilities? Companies ship mediocre software because as long as they can make money on it the quality is good enough. Getting to market quickly is more important that delivering a product that the customers paid for. None of that will change as long as customers do not ask for their money back when they encounter craptastic software. It all gets worse when software companies decide to be Agile now....Agile as implemented is the death of software quality, especially when using scrum. That's a different discussion....
Yep! Recent survey shows that landline and fax machine are considered essential in Japanese offices.
I doubt this is the end of Betamax in general. Most TV studios and broadcasters use Betacam and DigiBeta as medium. It provides incredible quality at a rather low price and incremental addition cost compared to hard disk based libraries. Especially DigiBeta is so robust you can swipe sandpaper over the tape and wrinkle it all up, you may end up with a few blocks in the image if that. As far as consumer grade is concerned, VHS was/is the worst of them all. Betamax was better, but the best was Video2000. Far better picture quality, stereo audio before any TV station broadcasted in stereo, and up to 8 hours in recording length...ok, to be fair, more 2 x 4 hours per cassette because you needed to flip it around like an audio cassette. VHS only won the video wars because it was dirt cheap and it clearly shows. I guess with HD streaming and torrenting content only die hards who like the sound of the loading arm wrapping the tape around the head drum will use video tapes.