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Is it a phone? The hilarious reactions of baffled children presented with a Sony Walkman..
UK Daily Mail ^ | April 15, 2014 | Sadie Whitelocks

Posted on 04/15/2014 9:47:23 AM PDT by C19fan

Children's perplexed reactions to a Sony Walkman have been caught on camera, with the majority frustrated at operating clunky buttons over a touch screen. Los Angeles-based filmmakers Benny and Rafi Fine asked volunteers aged six to 13 to guess what the bulky device was, with suggestions including a 'walkie-talkie' or 'boombox'. 'What is this?' one nine-year-old girl quizzed as she investigated the Eighties-era cassette player, while another exclaimed 'I'm not going to give up, I'm a survivor,' as she determinedly tried to figure out how it worked.

(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Computers/Internet; Music/Entertainment
KEYWORDS: cassette; consumerelectronics; goodolddays; oldfartsclub; oldstuff; technology; walkman
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To: Dr. Bogus Pachysandra

I also have an Ampex reel to reel another foot away! I’m old!


81 posted on 04/15/2014 11:27:34 AM PDT by Dr. Bogus Pachysandra ( Ya can't pick up a turd by the clean end!)
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To: Veggie Todd

“We used to have to get up and walk over to the t.v. to change the channel.”

naw, that’s what younger siblings were for.


82 posted on 04/15/2014 11:28:57 AM PDT by ViLaLuz (2 Chronicles 7:14)
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To: Clump

False accusers collect lots of data points so they can invent any crime and criminal out of unlimited bits and pieces. It’s what demons consider to be creative work, crafting lies.

The whole of human history is littered with the corpses of those who did nothing wrong. Modern technology is a double-edged sword, but there’s really nothing new under the sun.


83 posted on 04/15/2014 11:32:48 AM PDT by Ezekiel (All who mourn the destruction of America merit the celebration of her rebirth.)
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To: Organic Panic
“After buying my first fuel injected motorcycle (Ducati) I will NEVER buy another carb based bike.”

Still riding an old carb model BMW here. Still have to sync them once in awhile but they're simple. Do you set your own valves? I used to help a guy who raced Ducks, so am one of the few people who have worked on desmo valves who never owned a Ducati. I would love to someday.

84 posted on 04/15/2014 11:35:52 AM PDT by CrazyIvan (Obama phones= Bread and circuits.)
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To: NorthMountain

I was there too, spent the better part of a decade with a walkman or clone attached to me. And I remember all the problems, bumping the stop button, mechanical failure.

Necessity doesn’t improve design. Yes they had to be clunky for reasons we both pointed out, that doesn’t make them not clunky, it just makes them nor more clunky than was needed. Big giant buttons with a half inch of play aren’t elegant. The fact is until you get into high end home decks that used electronic motors to move the play head around there were no clunky cassette decks. Some LOOKED nice, but then you pushed the button half an inch until you heard the click and all elegance disappeared.

Nobody is mind reading, you’re demonstrably offended at having the painful obvious mechanical deficiencies of the 30 year old device acknowledged. The short way of saying that is you took it personally. And every time you insist that clunky is meaningless you show you continue to make it personal. It’s in the dictionary bud, and few things in this world are as awkward or clumsy as tape deck buttons, heck they even made a clunking sound.


85 posted on 04/15/2014 12:19:10 PM PDT by discostu (Call it collect, call it direct, call it TODAY!)
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To: dhs12345
I just checked Amazon (8 pack). I didn't investigate it any further so I am not certain if the tapes are newly manufactured or old as the hills.

My source was the manufacturers' Web sites, as I wanted to see what the various companies actually offered (as opposed to what the retailers were selling). Maxell cassettes are still a going concern! (They're still making VHS cassettes, too.) Couldn't find anything about cassettes on the other sites.

I have a high end Nakamichi tape deck. Unfortunately, I haven't used it in years.

But there is no doubt that the sound quality is better. LPs too. Even ripping to digital from an LP sounds better.

I find it ironic that many stereo manufacturers are still producing turntables, but only a few are still selling cassette players (I could only find a handful of Sony boomboxes and a Teac deck or two).

I'd love to have a couple hundred to spend on one. I've got hundreds of tapes, a good number of which are of out-of-print albums, so it would be a worthwhile investment. Some of the aforementioned Teac decks also have USB ports, so all that out-of-print analog can probably be digitized easily.

86 posted on 04/15/2014 12:43:41 PM PDT by RansomOttawa (tm)
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To: Marie

I have a turntable and still have to do that for my old records. I love them!

Alas, some of my first Stereo records were ruined by playing on mono turntables with mono needles.

Nothing like listening to VICTORY AT SEA on vinyl.


87 posted on 04/15/2014 12:55:36 PM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar (Sometimes you need 7+ more ammo. LOTS MORE.)
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To: C19fan
Had one, too--cool at the time but now digital music is just so bloody convenient. Carry and fart around swapping out from a case full of 8-tracks/cassettes/cd's, feh upon that lot!

Was digging in archive.org and ran across a review of the [cassette]Walkman's successor, the Sony MiniDisc player, oy, the price, from 2001...

Question for audiophiles here:

Many moons ago [circa 1994 or so] I was in an electronics store and saw a music player/reciever combo that used a disk not unlike a floppy disk but half the size. I cannot find any reference as to what it was. Anyone here ever see such a beast back in the day? Every reference I see goes vinyl/8-track/cassette/minidisc-cd/MPx and that's it.

88 posted on 04/15/2014 1:15:06 PM PDT by W. (Only those who survived the regime know the horrors of communism, annnnd we're there.)
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To: Veggie Todd
We used to have to get up and walk over to the t.v. to change the channel.

When I was a kid, we were the remote control.

89 posted on 04/15/2014 1:21:49 PM PDT by zeugma (Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened - Dr. Seuss (I'll see you again someday Hope))
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To: C19fan

Those videos are cute, but the information boxes that show up at the bottom of the screen are really annoying.


90 posted on 04/15/2014 1:29:53 PM PDT by Fresh Wind (The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away.)
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To: Ezekiel
and are then used as substitutes for human memory,

Case in point... how many phone numbers do you currently know, compared to the past?

91 posted on 04/15/2014 1:31:24 PM PDT by zeugma (Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened - Dr. Seuss (I'll see you again someday Hope))
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To: Dr. Bogus Pachysandra
I also have an Ampex reel to reel another foot away! I’m old!

I have a Tandberg Reel to Reel player made in 1966. It's one of the first consumer model with 3 heads so you could listen to the playback as you recorded that I'm aware of. Needs a new record head. The old one is corroded a bit from spending much of its life in Houston. It wasn't a bad little deck. It's the only hardware I still have with tubes in it.

92 posted on 04/15/2014 1:38:02 PM PDT by zeugma (Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened - Dr. Seuss (I'll see you again someday Hope))
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To: RansomOttawa
Cassette tapes.... Looks like Maxell (on Amazon).

Turntables? — with a USB port, I think? I think that the marketing idea was to allow people to copy music from their old LPs and quality be damned. Then again, it might be okay.

Much better to feed the analog audio from an amp/preamp (from a turntable) into the back of the PC and digitizing it. I did that with a bunch of LPs and the quality is so much better than ITunes. And I don't think that it is related to the bit and sampling rate. Something else is going on. Maybe aliasing? — digital source being digitally sampled.

Sorry if I get a bit long winded here....

At one point, as a fun project, I was going to try to record in 5.1 and I needed three tape decks. I have all three but needed microphones I have some software that will make an AC3 surround recording for playback on a dvd player. A fun project.

93 posted on 04/15/2014 1:38:15 PM PDT by dhs12345
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To: zeugma

Ha, that’s exactly one example that comes up in this household regularly.

I use a phone rarely so even if the technology for the phone number storage didn’t exist, I would still have trouble remembering important numbers. Of course as a teenager I had quite a phone book in my head.

I have key numbers written down in real notebooks. Same with the rest of the family. Dead/lost/stolen phone and there go the numbers of everyone you know.

Unfortunately for the-gadget-is-my-memory folks, even the most basic, utilitarian knowledge will go dead with the phone. That’s zombie apocalypse talk right there!


94 posted on 04/15/2014 1:54:36 PM PDT by Ezekiel (All who mourn the destruction of America merit the celebration of her rebirth.)
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To: Dr. Bogus Pachysandra
Hang on to it. It will be worth a fortune (if it isn't already). I rented one to convert my in-laws audio wedding tape to digital on CD. I paid $50 to rent it. That was a few years ago.
95 posted on 04/15/2014 2:10:04 PM PDT by dhs12345
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To: zeugma

” It’s the only hardware I still have with tubes in it.”

I have tubes! About 20 guitar amps, starting with a ‘47 Gibson, lots of Fenders, etc.. Tubes rule!


96 posted on 04/15/2014 3:25:37 PM PDT by Dr. Bogus Pachysandra ( Ya can't pick up a turd by the clean end!)
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To: dhs12345

I have used it to “sweeten” digital recorded tracks. Very nice!


97 posted on 04/15/2014 3:26:59 PM PDT by Dr. Bogus Pachysandra ( Ya can't pick up a turd by the clean end!)
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To: Dr. Bogus Pachysandra

Wow. And you can still get the tape?


98 posted on 04/15/2014 3:44:45 PM PDT by dhs12345
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To: C19fan
I'd like to see their reaction to one of these:


99 posted on 04/15/2014 3:54:52 PM PDT by uglybiker (nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-BATMAN!)
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To: uglybiker

One of those got me through engineering college.

The old “slip-stick”.


100 posted on 04/15/2014 4:00:32 PM PDT by exit82 ("The Taliban is on the inside of the building" E. Nordstrom 10-10-12)
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