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Krispy Kareem posted:But it goes to show just how mind boggling those next generation MP3 players were. You went from flash based space measured in mb to gigs of room on a hard drive. I'm sure in 10 years, the Nexus 7 tablet I bought a few months ago will seem like a waste of money.
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Mar 6, 2014 15:00
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Humphreys posted:I vaguely remember there were TomTom or similar DUO PRO cards that actually had a GPS receiver in them for it. Also some enterprising coder found a way around the 1GB file limit of the regular DUO PRO cards, but the trade off was no bluetooth or something.
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Mar 6, 2014 15:11
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Collateral Damage posted:I recall there were SD cards for the Palmpilot that had built-in Bluetooth and I thought they were the awesomest thing ever, but I never got around to buying one before the Palmpilot became obsolete. Remember the buzzword "Road Warrior" describing business people who always work on the road? It was almost an incarnation of the buzzword "yuppie" from what I recall and it even spawned dedicated tech magazines which I might still have floating around in a box somewhere. All I wanted was a laptop with a data cable for a Nokia 9xxx series Communicator phone as a modem and hit the road with my Palm Pilot to write my meeting notes in, while talking on my bluetooth headset. HAHA! Speaking of laptops, this failed but awesome design: gScreen Spacebook:  and its cute friend: 
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Mar 6, 2014 15:21
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Iron Crowned posted:I'm sure in 10 years, the Nexus 7 tablet I bought a few months ago will seem like a waste of money. I considered getting into the developer program to get a Blackberry Playbook for free. I feel that it would have been a waste even if I hadn't paid a cent for it.
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Mar 6, 2014 16:00
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Humphreys posted:I think of it as the schoolyard arms race. Before that the biggest one I remember was with marbles. One cheeky bugger brought snooker balls and huge ball bearings. He called them 'super jupiters' and 'stellar steelies' respectively. http://www.walkmancentral.com/products/wm-ex618 Is this the Walkman?
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Mar 6, 2014 16:04
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mints posted:http://www.walkmancentral.com/products/wm-ex618 No unfortunately, I kind of remember it being silver and the battery compartment (AA) clipped onto the end of it. A modular design. Sorry, that's all I remember of it. EDIT: I'm assuming it was Sony, but may have been Panasonic. I'm searching though that site right now. EDIT 2: Oh my, while GISing for it, I came across the bane of my existance for many years. SD Video 'Decks' for digitizing tapes to AVID. drat I hated those drat things and like a watched pot, it only hosed up and lost the timecode when you walked off for a coffee. Humphreys has a new favorite as of 16:28 on Mar 6, 2014 |
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Mar 6, 2014 16:14
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Spamtron7000 posted:The Revenger  This was my jam. Small, easily portable and concealable, unassuming for those not familiar with it, annoying as all hell.
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Mar 6, 2014 16:36
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Humphreys posted:My father had a car phone in his work truck but as a builder the phone would always ring when he was up scaffolding so went all out and got a OKI (yes THOSE OKIs that certain people had lots of fun with, as did I when I got a little older). The Oki 900 was a straight-up James Bond phone in its day. Just by punching in service codes you could listen in on other peoples' phone calls or clone an ESN and impersonate that phone on the network (I think you even could pull the ESN from the phone-tower handshake,) hook it up to a computer and you could get the location of calls based on cell tower triangulation and choose which phone to listen in on. Also, I just checked and Phone Losers of America is still around http://www.phonelosers.org/ 
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Mar 6, 2014 19:19
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Pleads posted:
WOAH that thing brings back memories. What noises did it make?
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Mar 6, 2014 20:06
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Humphreys posted:Speaking of laptops, this failed but awesome design: You're gonna have to elaborate, because I have no idea how the hell these designs are practical
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Mar 6, 2014 20:47
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Roblo posted:WOAH that thing brings back memories. What noises did it make? It made a bunch of digitized noise, but the very best was the bomb dropping/exploding noise, which was so good it was later sampled in the Groove Armada song Superstylin' and so it managed to follow me until long after all the Smarties doohickeys were extinct.
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Mar 6, 2014 21:55
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Humphreys posted:No unfortunately, I kind of remember it being silver and the battery compartment (AA) clipped onto the end of it. A modular design. Sorry, that's all I remember of it. I had one like that, it was an AIWA. Bought it with my first credit card, it was barely bigger than the tape that went in it, and was a gunmetal grey colour. I remember it being extremely expensive! Might have been called an HX-something. monkeytennis has a new favorite as of 00:15 on Mar 7, 2014 |
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Mar 7, 2014 00:10
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Pleads posted:
I wanted one of these way too much. Never got one though. 
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Mar 7, 2014 00:33
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Dogan posted:You're gonna have to elaborate, because I have no idea how the hell these designs are practical The bottom one is a thinkpad W700ds. Massive 17" workstation laptop; optional wacom tablet in the wrist rest (to the right of the trackpad), optional colorimeter (so you can close the lid and have it automatically calibrate the main screen). The lid is extra thick, allowing them to hide another dingy extra screen you can pull out.
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Mar 7, 2014 01:35
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Tena Twister posted:Oh, weird. My mom just found one of these (in white) that I had back in like 1992-- it apparently annoyed her so much that she took it from me and put it on top of one of our kitchen cabinets to ensure I wouldn't be able to get at it. Annnnd it stayed there till Nov 2013, when she finally found it again and gave it back to me. The original batteries somehow still work, even. It's insane. No wonder she kept it!
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Mar 7, 2014 01:44
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Pleads posted:
I mailed away smarties tokens to get this.. I think mine was orange or brown though. The sounds can be heard here http://www.classaxe.com/smarties/uk/tubes/1/index.shtml#Zapper_Pouch
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Mar 7, 2014 15:17
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Cleaning out a closet I just found 40 sealed disposable film cameras along with 40 little motors and wiring. These were going to be forming a low budget bullet-time rig back in 2002 or so to emulate what they did with The Matrix. Oh the memories of silly old film disposable cameras. Great for making tasers and not so good at taking photos if you were too cheap to get the one with a flash. I have maybe 7 photos from my time in the military due to trying to save $5 each camera. No flash = lovely photos.
Humphreys has a new favorite as of 08:59 on Mar 9, 2014 |
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Mar 9, 2014 08:01
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Humphreys posted:Cleaning out a closet I just found 40 sealed disposable film cameras along with 40 little motors and wiring. These were going to be forming a low budget bullet-time rig back in 2002 or so to emulate what they did with The Matrix. Oh the memories of silly old film disposable cameras. Great for making tasers and not so good at taking photos if you were too cheap to get the one with a flash. I have maybe 7 photos from my time in the military due to trying to save $5 each camera. No flash = lovely photos. When I worked at the one-hour photo lab (SCREW YOU RITZ CAMERA), we used to take apart the single-use cameras and put the charged capacitors in random places to surprise the next shift. Yeah, I know, not funny, what if someone got hurt, blah blah blah. Screw you, we were idiot teenagers. My favorite was to just say "Catch!" and toss one to someone.
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Mar 10, 2014 15:07
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Krispy Kareem posted:But it goes to show just how mind boggling those next generation MP3 players were. You went from flash based space measured in mb to gigs of room on a hard drive. I spent a whole tax return on a Creative Labs MP3 player. Half the computers I was using at the time didn't have USB ports, even then it needed drivers installed from floppy disks and I upgraded it to 128 megabytes with a memory card that cost about half as much as the player itself. I couldn't fit two albums on it but it was smaller than a discman so I was happy.
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Mar 10, 2014 15:28
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PhotoKirk posted:When I worked at the one-hour photo lab (SCREW YOU RITZ CAMERA), we used to take apart the single-use cameras and put the charged capacitors in random places to surprise the next shift. Yeah, I know, not funny, what if someone got hurt, blah blah blah. Screw you, we were idiot teenagers. My favorite was to just say "Catch!" and toss one to someone. My rule of thumb is that if someone tosses you a capacitor larger than the last joint of your little finger, you let that sucker drop. If it's the size of a beer can, you duck and cover. Taking electronics classes in trade school was nerve-wracking at times. Pocket Billiards posted:I spent a whole tax return on a Creative Labs MP3 player. Half the computers I was using at the time didn't have USB ports, even then it needed drivers installed from floppy disks and I upgraded it to 128 megabytes with a memory card that cost about half as much as the player itself. I couldn't fit two albums on it but it was smaller than a discman so I was happy. And now you can get an MP3 player with 512GB of flash storage, if you're willing to sell your firstborn for a FiiO X5 with a pair of 256GB SDXC cards. Apparently, cards up to the full 2TB SDXC spec will be supported in the future. Who the hell carries around that much music?
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Mar 10, 2014 15:47
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KozmoNaut posted:My rule of thumb is that if someone tosses you a capacitor larger than the last joint of your little finger, you let that sucker drop. If it's the size of a beer can, you duck and cover. Audiobooks and radio dramas take up lots of space uncompressed and I carry hundreds of them on my HDD iPod Classic.
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Mar 10, 2014 16:14
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KozmoNaut posted:And now you can get an MP3 player with 512GB of flash storage, if you're willing to sell your firstborn for a FiiO X5 with a pair of 256GB SDXC cards. Apparently, cards up to the full 2TB SDXC spec will be supported in the future. Who the hell carries around that much music?
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Mar 10, 2014 16:16
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DoctorWhat posted:Audiobooks and radio dramas take up lots of space uncompressed and I carry hundreds of them on my HDD iPod Classic. But...these are exactly the kinds of things that you can compress the hell out of without ruining them.  Music sounds noticeably like poo poo at 128 kbps, but you can get speech down to 64 without wrecking the experience.Collateral Damage posted:Or you just use your cell phone and stream music from Spotify or whatever your music service of choice is. And blow through your 2GB monthly data cap in a week.
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Mar 10, 2014 16:30
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Just use Wi-Fi to listen to them at home, then.
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Mar 10, 2014 16:34
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Penguissimo posted:But...these are exactly the kinds of things that you can compress the hell out of without ruining them. MP3 fits this thread entirely, you can get great sounding music at 96kbps with the right codec. AAC is also a poo poo load better than MP3 when made with the right encoder. Here's a 30 second sample at 64kbps: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwWJk3lK40SgZTV6ajh1MC1qbk0/edit?usp=sharing vvv Vorbis is also obsolete 
Anarchist Mae has a new favorite as of 16:54 on Mar 10, 2014 |
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Mar 10, 2014 16:45
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Penguissimo posted:Music sounds noticeably like poo poo at 128 kbps I think you'd be surprised at what a modern encoder such as LAME can do at 128kbps CBR or V5 VBR (~130kbps), never mind codecs such as AAC or Ogg Vorbis, which are even better than MP3 at low-bitrate settings. Try an ABX test. I guarantee that you will be surprised.
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Mar 10, 2014 16:45
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Penguissimo posted:And blow through your 2GB monthly data cap in a week. On my phone Spotify has used about 400MB in the last 30 days and I don't pre-cache a lot. (10GB/mo data cap  )
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Mar 10, 2014 17:18
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KozmoNaut posted:I think you'd be surprised at what a modern encoder such as LAME can do at 128kbps CBR or V5 VBR (~130kbps), never mind codecs such as AAC or Ogg Vorbis, which are even better than MP3 at low-bitrate settings. Thanks for the tip, I'll have to check this out! This of course means there's even less reason to have uncompressed recordings of speech on a portable device. Collateral Damage posted:At least for Spotify it caches any track you play and you can set it to pre-cache your playlists when on wifi, which also means you can keep playing cached tracks if you lose data connectivity.
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Mar 10, 2014 17:29
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Related to this: Back when I played Counterstrike in high school, there were a few dudes floating around the servers I played on with a program called Half Life Sound Selector and a small bank of converted songs / clips that they could stream over the voice channel. However, the voice channel was compressed to poo poo, so just about everything sounded like garbage. However, What Is Love was an exception. It was one of a few songs that didn't lose too much in the process, so people requested it out of desperation. Certain servers ended up with that song piped over the voice channel almost continuously.
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Mar 10, 2014 17:37
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Penguissimo posted:I think Google Play Music is known for being a data hog compared to Spotify, and Pandora (which is really popular here from what I understand) doesn't do caching at all. Rdio does caching very well. You can even set an album to cache while on the desktop app and depending on your phone it will actually cache it in the background (or, at worst you'll just need to launch the app first.)
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Mar 10, 2014 17:59
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Penguissimo posted:And blow through your 2GB monthly data cap in a week. I get unlimited data so I don't have a problem with that. 
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Mar 10, 2014 18:34
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MyFaceBeHi posted:I get unlimited data so I don't have a problem with that. And another vote for obsolete tech: Data caps.
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Mar 10, 2014 22:29
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Just something else that was a mysterious wonder from the 90's before there were PVRs there was: G-Code/VCR-Plus!  quote:The central concept of the system is a unique number, a PlusCode, assigned to each program, and published in TV listings in newspapers and magazines. To record a program, the number is taken from the newspaper and typed into the video recorder, which will then record on the correct channel at the correct time. The number is generated by an algorithm from the date, time and channel of the programme, and so does not rely on anything being broadcast over the air. This means it will not compensate for a disrupted schedule due to live sporting events or news bulletins, but many video recorders with these systems also incorporate Programme Delivery Control (PDC) and will use that to alter times if possible. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_recorder_scheduling_code
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Mar 11, 2014 00:28
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KozmoNaut posted:My rule of thumb is that if someone tosses you a capacitor larger than the last joint of your little finger, you let that sucker drop. If it's the size of a beer can, you duck and cover. If it's a medium voltage power factor correction capacitor... Well you cannot easily toss those.
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Mar 11, 2014 00:32
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I think I was the only kid who couldn't program the VCR. That G-Code thing was just utterly frustrating to access, let alone program, that I just resorted to pressing record at the right time. Somehow my parents (who get confused with how to turn their TV to HDMI) managed to wrangle that.Exit Strategy posted:And another vote for obsolete tech: Data caps. My mobile is on some horrid budget plan of 200mb for $59 a month due to austerity measures.
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Mar 11, 2014 00:39
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Our "Top Tier" internet plan from our major cable provider came with 150gb combined up/down. It was something ridiculous like $80/month.  We're with a reseller now, but you trade off more data for awful service.
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Mar 11, 2014 01:24
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WebDog posted:I think I was the only kid who couldn't program the VCR. That G-Code thing was just utterly frustrating to access, let alone program, that I just resorted to pressing record at the right time. Somehow my parents (who get confused with how to turn their TV to HDMI) managed to wrangle that. My grandmother taught us all how to program our VCRs....and even wrote little guides. I don't know if it is because she lived in the outback and had nothing better to do after feeding the chickens and managed to figure out the drat things like an expert. WebDog posted:Oh I loving wish. Come over to sunny Australia where you have obscenely small data caps. I was kinda lucky to stumble across a brief deal where my Internet provider gave me 150gb a month, but with upload and download counted. Australia really is terrible with data costs. My 4G connection costs about $90 and I get 2GB (I could me wrong, I haven't used it in a while. Even talking to Telstra about my Broadband woes, I mentioned the costs to the Indian callcentre person and tehy even admitted that it was amazingly expensive.
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Mar 11, 2014 02:33
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Humphreys posted:Just something else that was a mysterious wonder from the 90's before there were PVRs there was: I have an RCA model that does VCR Plus+. I bought it off eBay long after the function was obsolete, but it's a heavily touted option on the menus. Our first family VCR was this beast. It's a General Electric and from what I've been told, cost my parents a lot of c. 1985 money.  You see that 0217 to the far right? That's not time elapsed. The VCR could be programmed to record at a certain time, but it did not measure tapes in time. It used tracking numbers. I don't think it had an actual menu on the screen, either. You programmed it by opening the front right panel and setting switch-type things. I have yet to find a photo that shows it opened and I can't exactly remember how it worked, but it was strange.
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Mar 11, 2014 03:50
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RC and Moon Pie posted:I have an RCA model that does VCR Plus+. I bought it off eBay long after the function was obsolete, but it's a heavily touted option on the menus. This was my first VCR, the Panasonic PV-1220. Top-load with a wired remote that only controlled fast forward, rewind, and pause functions only after you pressed play on the VCR itself. 
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Mar 11, 2014 04:10
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RC and Moon Pie posted:tracking Now there is a word that brings me back!
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Mar 11, 2014 04:17
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