Harry P.

You pay to get TV service into your home. You are not paying for the programs themselves, the advertisers are. The channels have to run advertising, because the advertisers paid for that airtime. It's just like if you buy a magazine. Yes, you paid for the magazine, but you're still going to get the ads, because the advertisers paid for those ads.

I'm not so sure that seeing Snookie in high-def is necessarily a good thing...

Yeah, coming down pretty heavy, too. Oh well, our snowless winter was sure nice while it lasted.

The legal age for a license isn't 13 anywhere...

That bugs me too. I have an older TV with the "old" aspect ratio. It's a bigscreen, works perfectly and I have no reason to get rid of it. But it's annoying when I'm watching a show that's being transmitted in the new picture format and a bunch of the image is cut off left and right. I notice it mostly when watching a documentary... when they have a person on screen making a comment, and their name (usually on the side of the face) is almost completely cut off by my Flintstones-era TV.

Those areas on top of some dashboards with the molded-in "trays" do seem pretty stupid. Obviously they're meant to hold stuff, yet just as obviously anything you actually put there will go flying in a moving car. So what's the point of putting those things there in the first place? Yeah... how does a 13-year old get to drive?

http://www.google.co...iw=1245&bih=715 Whenever you need photos, a web search is always the first thing you do.

In many cases they were more than "practically" the same car... they were totally the same car (minus minor trim variations). GM was the king of "badge engineering." One of these cars is a '78 Chevy Impala, the other a '78 Pontiac Bonneville.

I know what you mean. With some of these gadgets, you practically have to know how they work beforehand, so you can understand the instruction manual! I think I know the answer: It's the techies vs. the rest of us. The people who dream up and make all these gadgets are very tech-oriented, and they don't think the way the typical consumer does. They tend to assume that the typical Joe Sixpack in Sheboygen will understand their techno-jargon instruction manuals. Too many times the instructions are written by techies for techies. It happens with software, too. If you ever go to the "help" section of some software programs, the instructions are basically useless.

Spoiled and Depressed? Hey, at least you're not Dazed and Confused...

It looks like their website is down for maintenance. You can call and subscribe over the phone. 303-296-1600 They are in Denver (mountain time zone)

So I hear! Bring it on!

Yeah, I guess. It's all what you're used to, I suppose. I was "brought up" on a Mac, so PCs always seemed weird to me. But I have noticed that both the Mac and PC interfaces have become more and more alike lately, to the point where there's not a whole lot of difference anymore in the way they operate. I mean, the stuff "behind the curtain" may be different, but the way they operate as far as the user is concerned is more alike these days than different.

Looking at your photos, it's impossible to see where you had any problems with this kit. It looks fantastic!

Flexibility, schmexibility. Mac OS is way better.

But why would anyone want to???

Mmmmmm... I like Swiss cheese...

You and I would get along just fine...

Ditto on the guitar solo. Gilmour is one of the more underrated guitarists, IMO.

Doesn't it just kill you that you can get one today for a couple hundred bucks??? I............have become............. comfortably numb............

Yeah baby... now yer talkin!...

Actually it was more like $2700. It was a lot... but I stil have it today! So I think I got my money's worth!

I remember Marantz being a big name back then, also Macintosh (not Apple!). Jonathan, I don't remember exact numbers, but the tuner was around $500, the amp and preamp probably around a grand, the turntable maybe 4-5 hundred and the speakers I remember (don't know why but I remember!) were $750 for the pair. BIG $$$ back in the '70s for a kid paying his own way through college on a part-time job! It's weird, but to this day I still remember the clerk at the stereo store when I bought the Crown amp and preamp. He told me that while they were expensive, they were the last amp and preamp I would ever have to buy. And it turns out he was right!

I was a real audiophile back in my college days. I subscribed to "Stereo Review" and always kept up on the latest and greatest audio gear. I still have the stereo system that I put together back in the '70s (after a lot of careful research back then!) Sansui TU9900 tuner (the cream of the crop in tuners back then)... Crown amp and pre-amp... used to have a Thorens turntable but switched to a Denon (which is the one I still have) with a Stanton cartridge... Dahlquist DQ10 speakers. All state of the art back in the mid-70s, and I'm guessing all collector's items today.

Jonathan, yep, laser disks were the size of a vinyl LP. I think the technology was basically the same as a DVD, but maybe because of the size of the disks they never caught on? I really don't know. But for whatever reason, laser disks are just a tiny footnote in the technology parade. Who knows... maybe my LD player is a collector's item today!