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evobatman posted:I picked this lot up just a few minutes ago today: Maaaaan I had that exact model as my first machine but eventually gave in and upgraded after 2 years as I couldn't resist the inline remote with the LCD screen. Trying to type in the band name and title before the song ended was tough at times when recording in real time and listening to alot of punk albums with 1 minute songs. Loved that thing
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Mar 20, 2017 22:39
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Iron Crowned posted:To be honest, last time I went into Best Buy, I'm surprised they can afford to keep the lights on. As someone who worked site-to-site contract IT, I can tell you why Best Buy still exists: "We need you to go to <pedophile dentist's office 50 miles away> and fix his server. All of the drives in the RAID have crashed out save two, and you'll need eight replacement drives of the same model number. Best Buy sells them. Buy ten and give me the receipt, we'll comp you next paycheck."
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Mar 20, 2017 22:41
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Grumbletron 4000 posted:I was an insufferable little poo poo in middle school and this thing was a goddamned weapon of terror in my filthy little hands. I had this one... After buying a 2nd hand TV without a remote and realising my s6 has an IR blaster, I discovered the joys of free Android apps that allow me to discreetly turn the TV off or randomly open up the menu once every Team Meeting at work. I'd previously bought one of those keyfob remotes backa bout 2005 that would just spam every manufacturer code as you held down the command. It would take a few seconds sometimes but it was pretty much guaranteed to tun off the supermarket TV wall in about 8 seconds
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Mar 20, 2017 22:44
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Exit Strategy posted:As someone who worked site-to-site contract IT, I can tell you why Best Buy still exists: Honestly since Amazon started charging sales tax in my state, I've been spending a lot more at Best Buy. Price is usually a wash on things available at both, and I can pick it up today.
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Mar 20, 2017 22:53
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Haha look at this scrub who doesn't live in a Free Same Day Delivery area  Also I have yet to figure out the sales tax policy on Amazon because I only get charged tax like half the time, is it based on the state the item is shipped from or something?
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Mar 20, 2017 22:54
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whiteyfats posted:There was this small chain called Media Play in the 90s that was nice. Could get books, music and movies all in one place. Went to the one in Gainesville, FL a lot, then it up and shut down one day. Oh, we had Media Play too. I think the last thing I bought there was NIN's Fragile. It closed around 2000 in Indy.
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Mar 20, 2017 23:42
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Mammal Sauce posted:Oh, we had Media Play too. I think the last thing I bought there was NIN's Fragile. It closed around 2000 in Indy. Yeah, wiki says the entire chain closed at the same time.
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Mar 21, 2017 00:33
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poo poo. I remember driving for like 45 minutes with my mom to CompUSA and being blown away by a store that only sold computers. I bought this: So it had to be around 1987 or so. I think we also bought a mouse.
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Mar 21, 2017 01:21
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Mar 21, 2017 01:44
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Kelp Me! posted:Also I have yet to figure out the sales tax policy on Amazon because I only get charged tax like half the time, is it based on the state the item is shipped from or something? I think it's based on who exactly you're buying from and whether they have a presence in your state. For me, that largely seems to boil down to sales tax on purchases directly from Amazon, but not on third-party purchases via Amazon.
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Mar 21, 2017 01:58
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Aussie nostalgia overload here: https://www.gamesmen.com.au/old-catalogues Old catalogues from The Games Men. Games weren't cheap in Australia. Flipping through stuff like Myst cost $99 at release. Plus back in 1995 the multimedia boom with under the Microsoft Home banner and the glut of shovelware titles of glorified reference CD-Roms. And all of the adult titles casually tossed into the mix as well.
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Mar 21, 2017 02:28
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Kelp Me! posted:a book on Netscape Navigator Please tell me you bought this for your parents  I had a book on how to use ftp, gopher, archie, etc. from the command line
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Mar 21, 2017 03:14
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I have one of these: How quaint.
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Mar 21, 2017 03:25
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Is there a book still in print that would teach me how to use irc again? I forgot after 1996.
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Mar 21, 2017 03:34
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Platystemon posted:I have one of these: Even back then, that thing had to be, like, 95% porn.
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Mar 21, 2017 03:40
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WebDog posted:Aussie nostalgia overload here: Jesus Christ, I had no idea how much my parents had to fork out for my SNES games as a kid. Sim City was $110 at release, and SMW was $90 
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Mar 21, 2017 03:49
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whiteyfats posted:Oh, poo poo, I remember them. One closest to me had a pretty good selection. I was so stoked when I found a VHS of Transformers: The Motion Picture that I could buy there before the DVD release and quality movie piracy was a thing. I also to loved going into CompUSA and local computer stores to look at the hardware and overpriced RAM that would fluctuate wildly on a whiteboard. It was not a surprise to me these places were first against the wall when Newegg and Amazon came along.
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Mar 21, 2017 03:52
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brunch with yr parents posted:Even back then, that thing had to be, like, 95% porn. The image tag was added to HTML and Mosaic between the publication of the first edition of the book in 1992 and the second edition in 1994.
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Mar 21, 2017 03:55
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Those are Australian prices, which are super hosed up. Most games were still $60-70 US new, with big efforts like Final Fantasy 6 or Phantasy Star 4 getting close to $100. 16 bit games were even better. 
Karasu Tengu has a new favorite as of 04:06 on Mar 21, 2017 |
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Mar 21, 2017 03:57
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brunch with yr parents posted:Even back then, that thing had to be, like, 95% porn. My memory is hazy, but I remember a brief period of time...maybe 1996 or 97 where porn got scarce. I think there was an interpretation of obscenity laws that meant hardcore producers in California could be brought up on charges in places like Alabama and until the courts quickly cleared it up no one wanted to sell any of their jaypegs. And back then you bought your porn. It was a long time ago...but like our grandparents during the Great Depression - you remember when times are tough. Looking it up, I think it was the Communications Decency Act which managed to get voted down by all 9 Justices in the Supreme Court.
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Mar 21, 2017 04:13
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Krispy Kareem posted:It was a long time ago...but like our grandparents during the Great Depression - you remember when times are tough. Luxury: I remember when I was a wee boy, I had to get up, half 4 in the morning, light a kerosene lamp without waking my 10 brothers and sisters, and tip toe down to the woodshed in the freezing cold just so I could pulverize my loin like a spastic gibbon over a rusty 2" by 3" tin type stolen from my Father's drawer.
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Mar 21, 2017 10:06
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monolithburger posted:Luxury: I remember when I was a wee boy, I had to get up, half 4 in the morning, light a kerosene lamp without waking my 10 brothers and sisters, and tip toe down to the woodshed in the freezing cold just so I could pulverize my loin like a spastic gibbon over a rusty 2" by 3" tin type stolen from my Father's drawer. Oh. You had KEROSENE? And only TEN siblings? And we would have MURDERED for rust...
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Mar 21, 2017 11:29
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Krispy Kareem posted:My memory is hazy, but I remember a brief period of time...maybe 1996 or 97 where porn got scarce. I think there was an interpretation of obscenity laws that meant hardcore producers in California could be brought up on charges in places like Alabama and until the courts quickly cleared it up no one wanted to sell any of their jaypegs. And back then you bought your porn.  no you didn't. Jesus what an amateur.
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Mar 21, 2017 11:36
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Some more 90s bullshit : The Secure Digital Music Initiative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Digital_Music_Initiative Son of a bitches wanted to find a way to watermark MP3 files undetectably to normal people. Thank gently caress they never figured it out. quote:The strategy for the SDMI group involved two stages. Firstly to implement a secure digital watermarking scheme. This would allow music to be tagged with a secure watermark that was hard to remove from the source audio without damaging it. The second stage was to ensure that SDMI compliant players (see the SDMI Portable Device Specification) would not play SDMI tagged music that was not authorized for that device. The reasoning was that even if the files were distributed they could not be played as the device would detect the music was not authorized to be played on it.
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Mar 21, 2017 12:06
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Grumbletron 4000 posted:I would have loved that Beavis and Butthead toy. I'm sure that I wouldn't have been able to contain myself and it would have been confiscated the first day I brought it to school. That looks like the exact button type and colors from a Robocop toy I had. It was an early primer in 'circuit bending' for me as if you pushed 2 different buttons at the same time (blue and red) it would force the sound to be a different sound from a different button (green). In hindsight it was just a total resistance differential from two buttons equalling the same resistance of a single button.
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Mar 21, 2017 12:19
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Furby Bending https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvruD_twPN8
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Mar 21, 2017 12:29
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Wacky Delly posted:Honestly since Amazon started charging sales tax in my state, I've been spending a lot more at Best Buy. Price is usually a wash on things available at both, and I can pick it up today. The price should really be exactly the same. All you have to do is say "I'd like to price match this" at the checkout and they'll look it up on Amazon and Newegg and a few other sites and match the lowest price they find.
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Mar 21, 2017 12:31
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Circuit Bent Glitch Monster https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKXecfkne38
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Mar 21, 2017 12:38
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Vanagoon posted:Some more 90s bullshit : Universal has been doing it for years, it's still an issue on all of the streaming services, apparently. It seems they found an inaudible alternative or just stopped around 2013, but anything earlier than that will have an odd sort of warbling/vibrato/tremolo effect to it. https://www.mattmontag.com/music/universals-audible-watermark
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Mar 21, 2017 13:07
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I could spend hours looking at those Gamesmen catalogues. Its crazy now in retrospect how expensive the games were relative to the system. You could buy a snes in 92 for $200aud and pay $100 for a copy of Lemmings. A gameboy cost the same as SF2 Turbo on the snes Now a basic 500gb ps4 is maybe $400 rrp and the games are still about $100 new i.e. Mass Effect Andromeda.
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Mar 21, 2017 13:21
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Enos Shenk posted:
I did this. Pretty sure I never had any trouble buying one. Not sure I ever encountered a Radio Shack employee who cared if I was even breathing much less what I was doing with the stuff I was buying. HaB has a new favorite as of 13:41 on Mar 21, 2017 |
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Mar 21, 2017 13:33
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KozmoNaut posted:Universal has been doing it for years, it's still an issue on all of the streaming services, apparently. It seems they found an inaudible alternative or just stopped around 2013, but anything earlier than that will have an odd sort of warbling/vibrato/tremolo effect to it. Wasn't there some company who was working on a way to prevent the analog copying of music a few years back? They claimed to have "plugged the analog hole". Never heard much after that.
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Mar 21, 2017 14:49
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The problem with all of those claims is that the existing technology they're trying to replace is already too ubiquitous. They're trying to stick their fingers in the dam when it's already exploded and short of widespread consumer adoption of an entirely new format they're wasting their time. Also there's literally no way to "plug the analog hole" without access to magic or broad sweeping regulation by the government, and even then in the latter case it would just apply to new devices because there's no feasible way to force the general public to hand over all their recording devices. As long as people have access to magnetic tape there will be analog recording.
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Mar 21, 2017 15:00
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Trying to shoehorn DRM into existing DRM-free formats has failed again and again. That's pretty much the whole reason why formats such as DVD-Audio, SACD, iTunes "Fairplay", WMA "PlaysForSure", MQA and others have been introduced, they are futile attempts to displace existing DRM-free formats, and to make tons of licensing royalties for their creators. So far, every single one has been a massive failure, as they either require significant investment in new playback hardware, or present too many annoyances to be worth the effort for the average user. Streaming services have been successful in implementing DRM, because it's completely transparent to the users, and the annoyance is sufficiently low that people don't care. Unlike with DRMed WMA tracks for instance, I have never encountered a "could not download license, track cannot be played". It just works.
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Mar 21, 2017 15:12
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And even then, you always have manufacturers who are willing to build devices to spec but "accidentally" leak information on how to trivially defeat the anti-piracy measures, because if you're just manufacturing devices and don't have a stake in the actual recording industry it's good for your market share to have your device be known as the "hacker friendly" one. iPods and MP3 players in general would never have been a thing if you couldn't play illegal MP3s on them. Collateral Damage has a new favorite as of 15:53 on Mar 21, 2017 |
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Mar 21, 2017 15:16
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Yeah the late 90s/early 2000s were a clusterfuck for DRM'd music, because it took until Apple released the ITMS that they realized as long as it's easier to pirate something, people will just do that instead.
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Mar 21, 2017 15:42
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Explosionface posted:It was also the first place I saw a black computer (Acer Aspire?). I remember thinking it was weird and cool. Man it is impossible to find beige cases anymore. I want an ugly beige box! With a turbo button!
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Mar 21, 2017 16:20
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There was also that "DRM" that I think Sony had that was really just malware that installed itself if you put one of their CDs in your computer
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Mar 21, 2017 16:22
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Keiya posted:Man it is impossible to find beige cases anymore. I want an ugly beige box! With a turbo button! Or even for Apple's totally not-beige "platinum" color. Turbo buttons
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Mar 21, 2017 16:28
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Explosionface posted:Or even for Apple's totally not-beige "platinum" color. Turbo buttons Don't worry, leave them out in the sun for too long and they turned to piss color
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Mar 21, 2017 16:30
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