Here, Tay. I believe this article is pertinent now: Why VHS was better than Betamax.

It has to do with when something is techinically superior, it doesn't necessarily imply superiority in the minds of the general public (which, like it or not, is the de facto measure of superiority, purely because it's the one that matters most in a capitalist society.) Betamax was technically superior, but who cares if you can't record more than an hour? When you ascribe popularity to that coolness, it's really those other factors: aesthetics, convenience, usability, ubiquity, etc. Speaking as geek, it's really depressing, actually. For me, the glaring example is Windows. But that's just my pet peeve.

From the Al Gore video archives:

"I took the initiative in creating the Internet," Al Gore preposterously claimed on the March 9, 1999 Late Edition/PrimeTime, but that didn’t faze CNN’s Wolf Blitzer who just kept tossing softball questions.

AND THEN THE HILARIOUS FOLLOW UP:

Al Gore claims "I took the initiative in creating the Internet," but mixed up Web addressing. An August 8, 1996 story by Bob Schieffer on the CBS Evening News shows Bill Clinton and Gore looking over the shoulders of school kids who appear to be surfing the Web. Clinton asks Gore: "What's our e-mail address, Al? You know that?" Gore replies with a Web address: "Yeah, w, w, w, dot White House." Gore pauses and an aide pipes up "dot gov," prompting Gore to add an erroneous extra "dot" as he instructs the student to enter "dot gov dot."

And lastly for good measure:

During a January 17, 1993 pre-Inaugural tour of Thomas Jefferson's home, Al Gore points to statues of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Marquis de Lafayette, asking "Who are these people?". Also along on the tour: wife Tipper as well as Bill and Hillary Clinton.

You can't make this shit up!!!

WOW. That HI-MD shit looks amazing!!! I like how they're catering to the main reason I prefer MDs to begin with: the ability for high-quality live recording. They've now implemented compressionless PCM formatting which means that recording onto MD would be just as comparable in quality as recording onto your computer via an $800 sound-card. Not only that, but I think it's fucking brilliant that by plugging into a USB, your computer recognizes the MD as just another storage drive. And then from there you can loslessly upload recorded content ONTO your computer for further editing! InFUCKINGsane. I think this HI-MD format has incredible potential for revolutionizing low-budget studio recording techniques. Not only that, but think about how much impact it will have on musicians who sample audio? They'll be covertly recording every little sound with no more difficulty than taking a photograph. Then they'll take it home and upload it and manipulate it. For the sampler, it's the audio equivalent of the digital camera revolution.

But as with any product, whether it catches on or not has more to do with advertising and hyping the "cool" factor than it does with the quality of the product itself. I'm not saying that the iPod isn't a great little gadget (don't get me wrong, I think the iPod is great at what it does), but Apple's marketing campaign was air-tight and the bottom-line results are telling.

But then again, when Sony really wants to push a product, their marketing is pretty good too. We only need to look as far as the Playstation for an example. But I wonder why the MD was never marketed to North American consumers? I never really understood why they didn't market it outside of Japan.

Taylor's version of an iPOD killer?

SONY'S HI MINIDISC: http://www.sony.net/Products/Hi-MD/

each disc is close to a Gig of storage. that's pretty good.

english is so inadequate, Beck, i read your correction as
i think faster than i type (like, i think faster is better)

instead of

i think faster than i type


or ofcourse I could be the one inadequate.
or ofcourse I could be the one inadequate
or ofcourse I could be the one inadequate
or ofcourse I could be the one inadequate
or ofcourse I could be the one inadequate
or ofcourse I could be the one inadequate
or ofcourse I could be the one inadequate
or ofcourse I could be the one inadequate

sure you're not...

I think faster than I type...

that should be "I'm *not* overly interested in fashion"

Sorry Mary but I'll have to pass on that, if for no other reason than I'm overly interested in fashion. Plus, I wouldn't want to overshadow your relative coolness with my profound awesomliness.

Have fun though!

count-em paras, this makes 4 posts within the last hour...it's a new mary-record.

oh shit, I just realized it's snowing outside. When'd that happen? You sleep for a good 11 hours and it's like the whole world passes you by.