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doctorfrog posted:Same with phones. Apple was pretty smart about using those OS updates to slow down old phones, and probably received next to no negative repercussions for doing it. I wonder how much of our economy runs on people who are too time-broke to figure out the most optimal way to use technology, versus those who have enough disposable income to drop $600 on a phone every year. There's a class action lawsuit about it, and I haven't heard anything recently, , but they updated in some later version to let the user control the throttling. But yeah users might get a few bucks and the attorneys will walk away with millions.
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Jan 8, 2019 19:10
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A FUCKIN CANARY!! posted:They saw the advertising blitz leading up to the change, then bought a converter box AND got cable television. Cable because over the air broadcasting was ending, and a converter box because "I guess TV doesn't work without a converter box now." This reminds me of an ad I saw in the early 90's of a cheesy $19.95 TV antenna that came with a tiny satellite dish thing on it. It claimed to "pull signals right out of the air." Someone I knew bought the thing. The tiny satellite dish was a plastic half dome that you stuck two metal sticks into that were connected to nothing, and you'd turn a big knob and the dish would rotate and do nothing. The two rabbit ears, just like the ones you were replacing, pulled the signal right out of the air.
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Jan 8, 2019 19:24
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doctorfrog posted:This reminds me of an ad I saw in the early 90's of a cheesy $19.95 TV antenna that came with a tiny satellite dish thing on it. It claimed to "pull signals right out of the air." I can respect this level of craft in swindling people who don't know better. I'm certain the person claimed that they got a whole new level of reception from it, too.
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Jan 8, 2019 19:33
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doctorfrog posted:The two rabbit ears, just like the ones you were replacing, pulled the signal right out of the air. The thing is, rabbit ears aren't a bad antenna, the major problem with them is you were conditioned to put them directly on top of your TV which is the worst place for them.
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Jan 8, 2019 19:47
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Lowen SoDium posted:With analog, as signal strength decreases, you get more static and noise, but you still have a picture and sound. When Finland switched over for good, my parents couldn't get a picture at all. My dad wanted me to climb up on the roof to "fix the antenna" but instead I took a look behind the TV set, noticed there was a "signal booster", removed that and plugged the antenna cord straight into the TV, and hey presto we got a perfect picture. So my dad's all: "There can't be anything wrong with the booster I bought it from a radio shop!" It had hell of loose connectors, like maybe 1mm too big, so there was no proper connection at all. They'd been watching grainy analog TV for years because my dad thought people trying to sell you things are to be trusted at all.
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Jan 8, 2019 20:16
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A FUCKIN CANARY!! posted:They saw the advertising blitz leading up to the change, then bought a converter box AND got cable television. Cable because over the air broadcasting was ending, and a converter box because "I guess TV doesn't work without a converter box now." Are you saying that antenna won’t work?
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Jan 8, 2019 21:37
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Jerry Cotton posted:When Finland switched over for good, my parents couldn't get a picture at all. My dad wanted me to climb up on the roof to "fix the antenna" but instead I took a look behind the TV set, noticed there was a "signal booster", removed that and plugged the antenna cord straight into the TV, and hey presto we got a perfect picture. This reminds me of something else that is fitting for this thread. When I was about 12 or 13 years old, my mom and step-dad moved us our of the little city we lived in and out into the countryside. I HATED that we couldn't get cable TV out there. My step-dad finally had a TV antenna put up inside the attic. He thought that having the antenna out side on a pole or a tower would look ugly, even though everyone else on the street had the one. This antenna was just hung from the roof rafters, pressed up against the roof. Not aimed at anything in particular, which did nothing to help the reception of anything. The antenna was connected to a signal booster, which was connected to a 6 way coax splitter. Several of the coax runs where not connected to TVs or terminators. This once again, did nothing to help the reception of anything. The ends that did go to TVs had another signal booster connected to them before running into the TVs. These signal boosters would "go bad" nearly every time there was lightning in the area. You would know that they had "gone bad" because even the TV station that was 15 miles from us would be noisy and practically unwatchable. My step dad would stop by Radioshack about once a month to buy more of them. This continued for about 5 years when they finally got DirecTV and only needed OTA for the local news which they used a small indoor antenna, with no signal booster.
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Jan 8, 2019 21:44
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BigFactory posted:Are you saying that antenna won’t work? It'll work, and it's better than nothing, but it's not going to be a great experience. Those kind of antennas are basically designed to be plugged directly into (and behind) the TV and forgotten about. As I said it'll work, but there'll be a ton of interference from the TV itself, as well as any structures nearby. There's nothing wrong with an indoor antenna, but you want it as high and far away from electronics as possible. The people who buy those things aren't going to research what to do, and basically burn their $20 and then go back to cable.
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Jan 8, 2019 21:57
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Iron Crowned posted:It'll work, and it's better than nothing, but it's not going to be a great experience. Those kind of antennas are basically designed to be plugged directly into (and behind) the TV and forgotten about. As I said it'll work, but there'll be a ton of interference from the TV itself, as well as any structures nearby. It depends how close you are to the towers too. That’s all I have and for watching a football game once a week or so it’s more than fine
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Jan 8, 2019 22:11
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I was curious and I did a search on that antenna, and it's apparently a reasonable price for an antenna, with stupidly inflated shipping prices (a classic eBay style scam), and/or requires you to fill out a form with a bunch of datamining junk in it. Here's something dumb: I had nothing but antenna-based reception in my childhood, and channel 7 always came in best out of the VHF stations for some reason, just clear as a bell. I don't have cable, and in the digital age, channel 7 is the only one that works consistently without dropping out. But I don't watch TV very much anyway because I'm too used to entertainment and news without commercials. My god how I despise commercials. I'd rather watch nothing at all than a single commercial.
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Jan 9, 2019 00:20
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doctorfrog posted:This reminds me of an ad I saw in the early 90's of a cheesy $19.95 TV antenna that came with a tiny satellite dish thing on it. It claimed to "pull signals right out of the air." This probably isn't the device you're thinking of, but you reminded me of it - it looks like a satellite dish so it must get better reception than the cheaper plain ones! And there was plenty of room for it back on the CRT TVs. Honestly I should probably go buy a cheap pair again, my apartment has a connector in the wall but something is hosed on the path to the rooftop and a few channels drop out randomly. 
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Jan 9, 2019 00:53
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A typical antenna set has VHF(rabbit ears) and UHF(thin round metal loop) antennae. What those guys did was encase the UHF loop in plastic to make it appear more sophisticated. There's probably metal on the edge of the plastic dish, so it does have a function, but I don't think the plastic dish itself does anything useful other than help move them off retail shelves by idiots.
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Jan 9, 2019 01:16
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Lowen SoDium posted:The issue with digital isn't really power, it's that you either have enough signal for it to work, or you do not. There isn't a fade off like there is in analog. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_effect
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Jan 9, 2019 01:32
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Laslow posted:A typical antenna set has VHF(rabbit ears) and UHF(thin round metal loop) antennae. Suddenly I'm flashing back to an iffy TV channel only coming in clearly when someone was physically touching the rabbit ears.
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Jan 9, 2019 03:42
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Powered Descent posted:Suddenly I'm flashing back to an iffy TV channel only coming in clearly when someone was physically touching the rabbit ears. Sometimes it would be a matter of simply standing near the TV, not even touching it. So you'd adjust the antenna, then have to step away to check. If you didn't step far enough, it might go bad when you sit back down on the couch. Digital TV still does this, some channels will drop out when I walk around the corner or if I discharge static electricity (I seem to build up static when I stand up from the couch, enough that I ground myself every time I stand up)
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Jan 9, 2019 05:22
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I miss being so close to the tower that I could use just a loop of dollar store coax as my digital TV antenna. Also living in a place with fewer trees and moisture. I've been putting off buying a real antenna and refuse to make the plywood/coat-hanger monstrosity that the OTA TV DIY crowd seems to love.
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Jan 9, 2019 05:33
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A FUCKIN CANARY!! posted:They saw the advertising blitz leading up to the change, then bought a converter box AND got cable television. Cable because over the air broadcasting was ending, and a converter box because "I guess TV doesn't work without a converter box now." https://www.wsj.com/articles/millennials-unearth-an-amazing-hack-to-get-free-tv-the-antenna-1501686958
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Jan 9, 2019 11:30
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evobatman posted:https://www.wsj.com/articles/millennials-unearth-an-amazing-hack-to-get-free-tv-the-antenna-1501686958 I can't read the whole thing, but I know this is going to be a "durrr, look how dumb millenials are, durr" article, but it never ceases to amaze me just how many people forget about antennas. I'm probably one of the earlier cord cutters as I dropped cable in 2006 and haven't missed it past the initial sting. I cut my cord after I was tired of the cable company telling me it was my problem that I was getting bad signals and not fixing their poo poo. It really does amaze me that there hasn't been more of a backlash in recent years considering how poorly people view cable companies. Instead we just get Time Warner changing their name to Spectrum and hoping no one notices, I guess it's just TV Stockholm Syndrome.
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Jan 9, 2019 13:27
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Microsoft did something cool. They made a wall of GPU history from boxes of old cards they worked on for DirectX. Don't know why the pictures have the resolution of a 90's floppy camera... https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/directx/2019/01/07/wall-of-gpu-history/
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Jan 9, 2019 19:53
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It all started with an etch-a-sketch 
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Jan 9, 2019 20:12
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Ohh poo poo, I had an intel i740 too!
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Jan 10, 2019 01:50
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I kind of hope intel makes good on their promise and releases a PCIe graphics card again, if nothing else then for the novelty of using an intel graphics card with an AMD CPU.
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Jan 10, 2019 20:32
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Computer viking posted:I kind of hope intel makes good on their promise and releases a PCIe graphics card again, if nothing else then for the novelty of using an intel graphics card with an AMD CPU. I hope the intel drivers detect this and then crank up the voltage on the CPU to kill it.
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Jan 10, 2019 20:49
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It’ll probably just detect the AMD CPU and artificially decrease performance by 15%. Then the variable will be found in the drivers and it’ll be a scandal.
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Jan 11, 2019 00:45
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 I had this piece of poo poo in my first post-dos machine in 8th grade and it straight up didn't support textures in non idtech games gently caress 3dlabs, this card should be broken down to its base materials
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Jan 11, 2019 02:29
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oohhboy posted:Microsoft did something cool. They made a wall of GPU history from boxes of old cards they worked on for DirectX. Don't know why the pictures have the resolution of a 90's floppy camera... https://twitter.com/shawnhargreaves/status/1082832535426486274 Boooo
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Jan 11, 2019 02:38
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Nerd. Release the photos you cowards
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Jan 11, 2019 03:13
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doctorfrog posted:This reminds me of an ad I saw in the early 90's of a cheesy $19.95 TV antenna that came with a tiny satellite dish thing on it. It claimed to "pull signals right out of the air." This is the beauty you're thinking of:  The phrase "Not technical razzle dazzle, but a marketing breakthrough" has been stuck in my head for over 20 years. I love it. The whole ad is masterful.
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Jan 11, 2019 04:19
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They admit multiple times emphasised in italics that it's just an ordinary pair of "rabbit ears" loving incredible
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Jan 11, 2019 04:29
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I like the "Legal in all 50 states." Like the slight suggestion of it being maybe slightly illegal might make it more powerful!
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Jan 11, 2019 04:39
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Horace posted:This is the beauty you're thinking of: It was exactly this piece of garbage. It's beyond brilliant in its bald, stupifying ad copy. Someone mentioned that maybe the dish bit that rotated secreted a UHF antenna, and it didn't. It was a plastic cup with two bent rods stuck in it that were connected to nothing and one kept falling out. The two knobs did nothing, but they clicked like they did. I'm fascinated with illusion, bullshit, and ripoffs, and how to avoid them, and it's at least partly because of my encounter with this device and advertisement as a kid. doctorfrog has a new favorite as of 05:02 on Jan 11, 2019 |
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Jan 11, 2019 04:52
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https://twitter.com/tomscott/status/1083023988211757057 !
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Jan 11, 2019 05:48
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I love those ads that create a false sense of urgency with artificial bullshit. Like "only these zip codes are eligible" or "if your last name is A-M call on this day, N-Z this day" or "call in the next 15 minutes and get"
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Jan 11, 2019 08:57
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There was an ad that said you were eligible for some special offer if your credit card started with 3, 4 or 5. My friend showed it to me and was wondering if my card started with those numbers too. Of course it did, because all Amex start with 3, Visa 4, and Mastercard 5.
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Jan 11, 2019 09:06
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Buy this game and you too can be as disappointed as Robert Carrier looks on the box.
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Jan 11, 2019 09:55
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ElwoodCuse posted:I love those ads that create a false sense of urgency with artificial bullshit. Like "only these zip codes are eligible" or "if your last name is A-M call on this day, N-Z this day" or "call in the next 15 minutes and get" For some of these in more recent years they have different phone numbers in the ad so they know what programming drove you to call them.
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Jan 11, 2019 13:27
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Barudak posted:For some of these in more recent years they have different phone numbers in the ad so they know what programming drove you to call them. It's common to see "visit sketchycompany.com/TV47" in ads, but I remember one company that actually registered sketchycompany1.com through sketchycompany99.com and used a different url in each ad. That's dedication!
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Jan 11, 2019 15:02
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Wait what is that person whose hands are sticking out to the sides doing
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Jan 11, 2019 15:04
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Wrath of Mordark posted:I like the "Legal in all 50 states." Like the slight suggestion of it being maybe slightly illegal might make it more powerful! From 1984, an "illegal" cordless phone with a 1500ft range. "imagine walking your dog while talking on the phone".  The tl;dr of this million word ad is that the phone is way overpowered but legal to sell until the FCC finalise the regulations, so buy NOW.
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Jan 11, 2019 15:07
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