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In the realm of stores and obsolete tech, PC Parts Stores. In my town and the city about 45 minutes away, we had probably close to 15 or more places between local indie stores and stores like Best Buy, CC, Staples, that had a decent supply of PC components for builds and upgrades. Now it's probably down to about 5 total, and I think even a few of those don't even really stock anything, they just do repairs and will just order what you want. I can get that, though. Tech changes and drops in price pretty quickly, you have to deal with all sorts of issues with those parts, you need to have just about 1 of everything in stock for the same price as the online retailers at the same price to keep customers buying.
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Jan 20, 2018 21:10
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Krispy Wafer posted:Most stuff probably gets one printing, maybe two. Pretty much. I've heard it said by authors that staying in print when you're alive is hard enough, but staying in print after you're dead means being a best seller. Pratchett, Jordan and Gemmell are still in print, but authors like Richard Laymon and Robert Asprin have essentially disappeared and even a bunch of David Eddings books are "between editions" now.
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Jan 20, 2018 21:17
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Krispy Wafer posted:Star Wars Christmas Special is all the evidence you need. Once digitized, stuff never goes away. Not really though. That's actually infamous and part of one of the largest fandoms of anything. I think you'll find digital media suffers from a similar fate to physical media, at least in terms of access. Sure, it may exist in a repository somewhere, but that by no means guarantees access. Partly because knowing what you're looking for is vital, and if people don't remember, it's as good as gone. There's so much stuff from the early internet that is already fading. The sheer quantity of it means that necessarily it can't last. If anything, physical media is somewhat more likely to be preserved and rediscovered. I recently went looking for a song, to which I'm almost certain I know the name of the artist and song, which is unfortunately a common phrase. It's been deleted from YT and it's impossible to find it on Google. Does it still exist out there? Possibly. Possibly not. It's really more to do with what human beings are still interested and looking at. Just because some lovely Kindle title with 2 downloads may still exist technically in the great server city of Amazon Prime in the year 2118 doesn't really mean it hasn't gone away. It's about as relevant as a book published that's catalogued in the Library of Congress and hasn't been read in 100 years too. Eventually all physical copies of a never reprinted book may be lost to attrition, but equally stuff is forgotten and just lost into digital chaos eventually. It's natural turnover.
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Jan 20, 2018 21:23
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Krispy Wafer posted:Every time a format changes (vinyl to cassette to CD to digital) some stuff gets left behind. At least with digital there's a lower barrier of entry to convert old media to a new medium. Except there's this thing called DRM, which just fucks up everything.
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Jan 20, 2018 21:26
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Krispy Wafer posted:Some genealogy stuff that's specifically meant to be archived and researchable requires a 300 mile one way trip to access. So it's not unavailable, you just live in the wrong city  (I live in a city with not one but two archival libraries. Used to be three but that ended in 2017. But between the two they have publicly available literally every piece of printed matter ever published in this country.)
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Jan 20, 2018 21:29
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KozmoNaut posted:Except there's this thing called DRM, which just fucks up everything. Yeah enjoy listening to your Microsoft PlaysForSureTM tracks. Oh I know I know because of the analog loophole people made back-ups of all of them, right? (A bad example in that I'm sure they never had anything that isn't still readily available on CD, records, or cassette.)
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Jan 20, 2018 21:33
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Jeza posted:Not really though. That's actually infamous and part of one of the largest fandoms of anything. I think you'll find digital media suffers from a similar fate to physical media, at least in terms of access. Sure, it may exist in a repository somewhere, but that by no means guarantees access. Partly because knowing what you're looking for is vital, and if people don't remember, it's as good as gone. For media though if it's 'lost' and then found it can be easily re-circulated in a lossless format. My Star Wars Christmas special example was saved for all time by analogue means, but if not for digital distribution the quality would have gotten progressively worse as the original 'masters' were lost or supplanted by later generations. So you're right in that digital formats don't guarantee immortality, but they make preservation a lot easier. KozmoNaut posted:Except there's this thing called DRM, which just fucks up everything. DRM existed on music for about 4 or 5 years and those were dark times. Even then you could burn your music to a CD. I will say streaming is a problem because publishers can pull content without any recourse. At least with your Kindle or your iTunes music purchases, you own those items and they can't be easily revoked. JediTalentAgent posted:In the realm of stores and obsolete tech, PC Parts Stores. Microcenter is about the only decent PC shop left.
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Jan 20, 2018 21:42
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JediTalentAgent posted:In the realm of stores and obsolete tech, PC Parts Stores. Frankly, any services for repairing anything that costs less than a used car. Krispy Wafer posted:At least with your Kindle or your iTunes music purchases, you own those items and they can't be easily revoked.
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Jan 20, 2018 21:47
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Libraries have tons of old stuff, it's like bro do you even ILL
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Jan 20, 2018 21:48
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ryonguy posted:In a move that angered customers and generated waves of online pique, Amazon remotely deleted some digital editions of [George Orwell's 1984] from the Kindle devices of readers who had bought them. They deleted an unauthorized copy of a book. 1984 is under copyright for another 20 years or so. In the article it even says... quote:Amazon’s published terms of service agreement for the Kindle does not appear to give the company the right to delete purchases after they have been made. It says Amazon grants customers the right to keep a “permanent copy of the applicable digital content.” Digital stuff can sometimes be tricky. I've been trying to find Grand Theft Auto for years now and it was a digital product that is no longer available digitally. But, by and large digital is much better than physical media unless North Korea activates an EMP over the U.S.
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Jan 20, 2018 22:00
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Krispy Wafer posted:They deleted an unauthorized copy of a book. 1984 is under copyright for another 20 years or so. Completely irrelevant to the discussion. No-one can delete a boot-leg copy of a physical book once I have it in my hands.
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Jan 20, 2018 22:13
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gently caress E-books, and gently caress streaming services. I can't resell, I can't even let my kids inherit the stuff. (Give them access to my device to read my books after I'm gone? Hell no, they're not gonna get to read my secret gay porn so they're not getting any of it.)
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Jan 20, 2018 22:22
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Jerry Cotton posted:boot-leg copy of a physical book Really.
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Jan 20, 2018 22:24
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Hippie Hedgehog posted:gently caress E-books, and gently caress streaming services. I can't resell, I can't even let my kids inherit the stuff. Bruce Willis had this very problem: Bruce Willis to fight Apple over right to leave iTunes library in will, wants extensive music collection to be inherited by daughters instead of reverting to Apple ownership oh, hold on: quote:This article was amended on 4 September 2012 to add a link to a subsequent story which reports that Willis's wife has denied on Twitter that he is considering any such legal moves.
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Jan 20, 2018 22:31
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One thing I just thought about now is that while it's perfectly legal and dead easy to make unlimited copies of any printed matter for personal use, copying commercial e-books is illegal. (This of course may or may not apply in your jurisdictions.) e: Unlimited in that an unlimited number of people can do it, not that a single person can legally make unlimited copies. Not that they would, anyway.
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Jan 20, 2018 22:32
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Jerry Cotton posted:Completely irrelevant to the discussion. No-one can delete a boot-leg copy of a physical book once I have it in my hands. Now I'm picturing a room full of monks huddled over copies of Twilight, studiously copying each word for future generations. Maybe putting those fancy big letters at the start of each chapter in their bootlegs. Jerry Cotton posted:One thing I just thought about now is that while it's perfectly legal and dead easy to make unlimited copies of any printed matter for personal use, copying commercial e-books is illegal. (This of course may or may not apply in your jurisdictions.) I'm pretty sure consumers are allowed to make backup copies of digital media. Amazon or Barnes & Nobel don't have to make it easy for you, but you can get file server access to your device and copy files to your heart's content.
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Jan 20, 2018 22:47
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Krispy Wafer posted:Now I'm picturing a room full of monks huddled over copies of Twilight, studiously copying each word for future generations. Maybe putting those fancy big letters at the start of each chapter in their bootlegs. Given the weird poo poo that bored monks would draw on things like academic texts and the Bible, the illumination on Twilight would have to be amazing.
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Jan 20, 2018 22:55
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Krispy Wafer posted:I'm pretty sure consumers are allowed to make backup copies of digital media. Amazon or Barnes & Nobel don't have to make it easy for you, but you can get file server access to your device and copy files to your heart's content. Oddly and shittily enough, Finnish law since 2006 does not allow for circumvention of DRM of anything except computer software.
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Jan 20, 2018 22:58
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Krispy Wafer posted:Digital stuff can sometimes be tricky. I've been trying to find Grand Theft Auto for years now and it was a digital product that is no longer available digitally. Rockstar made it available for free download a while ago, and I think GTA2 as well. Can't find it now, though. But:  
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Jan 20, 2018 23:00
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GotLag posted:I don't know why nerds are so down on bodice-rippers, they're just a different flavour of cheap escapism. Because they tend to be terribly written?
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Jan 20, 2018 23:02
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Samizdata posted:Because they tend to be terribly written? have you looked at a sci-fi section in a bookstore or library recently
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Jan 20, 2018 23:08
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Grand Prize Winner posted:have you looked at a sci-fi section in a bookstore or library recently Yeah, but the romance novels strike me as worse.
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Jan 21, 2018 00:20
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KozmoNaut posted:Rockstar made it available for free download a while ago, and I think GTA2 as well.
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Jan 21, 2018 00:29
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Bad Angus! Bad!
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Samizdata posted:Yeah, but the romance novels strike me as worse. How many have you read? I've read a lot of the kind of sci-fi you find on store shelves and on reflection most of it sucks. Haven't read any romance novels so I'm willing to extend the benefit of the doubt.
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Jan 21, 2018 02:37
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rndmnmbr posted:This has always been my problem with used book stores. Three rooms of Harlequin romances, two shelves of poo poo I actually want to read. hoo man, try visiting a used bookstore near any beach town sometime. Yikes.
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Jan 21, 2018 03:37
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Grand Prize Winner posted:How many have you read? I've read a lot of the kind of sci-fi you find on store shelves and on reflection most of it sucks. Haven't read any romance novels so I'm willing to extend the benefit of the doubt. Quite a few, both the flat-out romances (like Harlequin) and the stealth romances. My ex-wife used to like them a lot (from before we were married) so I tried jumping in for a shared hobby.
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Jan 21, 2018 03:48
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Doccers posted:Riverside, I'm betting. I think it was the North Valley Mall. Probably long gone by now.
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Jan 21, 2018 03:58
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Krispy Wafer posted:Microcenter is about the only decent PC shop left. Can confirm and agreed. I built my current and last PC with what they have. It's a great store. And they price match amazon, newegg, etc.
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Jan 21, 2018 04:45
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q260bjSiyq0 It’s seen a lot of similar videos, but this one is outstanding in its field.
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Jan 21, 2018 07:10
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Surely if anything's obsolete there it's Toto's Africa
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Jan 21, 2018 08:10
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It's a timeless classic you philistine.
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Jan 21, 2018 08:13
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GotLag posted:Surely if anything's obsolete there it's Toto's Africa Don't you talk smack about that song.
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Jan 21, 2018 08:14
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Proteus Jones posted:Don't you talk smack about that song. <head in hands> I saw it performed live...
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Jan 21, 2018 08:56
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I can remember back when MTV was a thing and I'd be sitting there waiting for a cool video to come on and it would be something like "Rosanna" instead. The first couple of years there were like, 30 videos, then things exploded around 1983 and every song had to have a video. Or two. Or three. EDIT: Hoooly poo poo the first MTV Top 20 Video Countdown from 1984: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6LWeVkzTTA I just experienced nostalgia so severe I went blind in one eye. MY HIGH SCHOOL YEARS...  EDIT 2: I started browsing '82 videos and had to hold myself back from posting them all here. 
Dick Trauma has a new favorite as of 09:51 on Jan 21, 2018 |
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Jan 21, 2018 09:49
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Dick Trauma posted:I can remember back when MTV was a thing and I'd be sitting there waiting for a cool video to come on and it would be something like "Rosanna" instead. The first couple of years there were like, 30 videos, then things exploded around 1983 and every song had to have a video. Or two. Or three. MTV was like the only thing I ever got in on the ground floor on. My sister and I didn’t have cable, but my aunt did, so we went over there a day or two after it started and were mesmerized. There were only about 25 videos played regularly, and I think a quarter of them were by Peter Gabriel, but it was still the coolest thing 15-year-old me ever saw.
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Jan 21, 2018 10:33
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The Floppotron is a loving national treasure. Sure, it may be Polish, but that's still a nation, and it's a loving treasure.
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Jan 21, 2018 11:19
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Proteus Jones posted:Don't you talk smack about that song. I don't need to, it's been covered pretty well already: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3fxkhWZbx0
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Jan 21, 2018 11:46
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Delivery McGee posted:Yeah, like ten years ago, I played the poo poo out of free GTA2. GOURANGA!!! But they took it down a couple years ago, probably when x64 computer became mainstream and poo poo that old won't run on them. Nah, they took them down for unknown reasons. Well, mostly. GTA1 was always broken in its digital rerelease, it'd run once, but not work after that. The fix was something dead simple, but Rockstar never cared to actually fix it, so welp. GTA2 runs absolutely fine, though. I have it on my 64-bit Win 10 PC right now (it's literally just the GTA2 folder from Program Files off an old Vista laptop too) and it runs perfectly, with no problems whatsoever. Doesn't obviously support widescreen or resolutions higher than 1600x1200, but at the same time all the fancy effects work fine, the framerate is correct (not too fast or too slow) and even the intro video plays correctly. It also doesn't crash suddenly or have weird sound issues. In other words, it actually works better than any of the GTA releases after, with the exception of GTA V 
Ruflux has a new favorite as of 15:37 on Jan 21, 2018 |
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Jan 21, 2018 15:33
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Ruflux posted:Nah, they took them down for unknown reasons. Well, mostly. GTA1 was always broken in its digital rerelease, it'd run once, but not work after that. The fix was something dead simple, but Rockstar never cared to actually fix it, so welp. Trying and failing to play computer video games on an IBM PC -compatible personal computer system is, indeed, very relevant to this thread
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Jan 21, 2018 16:24
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Ruflux posted:In other words, it actually works better than any of the GTA releases after, with the exception of GTA V I was completely shocked when I booted up the Steam release of San Andreas on a lark, using my steamlink and a wireless ds4. Not only did it run in a proper widescreen resolution, but the controller was mapped perfectly by default, including the right sick. When I played the PC version on release, there right sick camera control wouldn't work without a third party program called SAAC.
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Jan 21, 2018 21:51
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