White_Wolf
Baseband Member
- Messages
- 92
I smell sarcasm, yet I have to bite anyway. Is there a way of actually building a webcam or digicam or camcorder yourself? If so, you got any info or links on the subject?
You miss the point of the post.
As for your advice, finding a gadget that doesn't come with all these frills, bells and whistles, is like finding a needle in a haystack. That was more or less the point.
Also, you know what else bugs me… people who complain insistently about people who complain insistently. It bugs me so much I find myself complaining insistently over it.
Yeah I hate that on paid software, I don't mind it on free software. But what I really hate is when there is no box to tick, and it just installs these "helpful" things by itself and then I have to figure out where this new "helpful" thing just came from. Oh, and I just love it when uninstalling the original program doesn't make the new "helpful" program go away.
Solution go to your local pc store and look at them demo'd
General public want a intgrated device that does everything rather then multiple devices hence why universal remotes sell per example
I never actually thought of going to the store and checking out a demo. However, I got Wal-Mart and RadioShack. I don't know of any computer stores any where near me. I even did a google for Maryland+"computer store" and there were like 7 that popped up, but none of them within an hour's drive. And the nearest required me to go through downtown Baltimore... NO!!
In the mean time, I will just bug everyone on youtube who has a nice looking video "dude, what did you use to record this video with?" and pray I get an answer that isn't "a $600 camcorder" and will be holding out for the answer "a $20 webcam called…"
And yeah I get that the general public wants a one million trick pony, even if the pony can't do even one of the tricks half way decent.
I divide the electronics consumer public into three basic categories:
1. Casual Buyer (two subdivisions):
a) The mall rat: female, impulsively wastes money on anything shiny, sparkly, colorful, fluffy. The captivating image on the packaging is 90% of the sale.
b) Macho techy: male, impulsively buys gadgets that make macho claims of power and capability. He has to have it to keep up with everyone else, or he might look weak in the eyes of those who have a device with more horse power. The techno-jargon on the box is 100% of the sale. Despite the fact he can't understand even one word of it.
2. The Thrifty Old People (two subdivisions):
a) Little Old Lady: she's been thinking about moving up from VHS to DVD. After all, her upgrade from gas/electric-oven to microwave-machine 8 years ago really paid off. However, what are these MP3's I keep hearing about? and what is an iPod?
b) Stubborn Old Man: he knows more than the punk kid at the counter, after all, he was running programs on a Commador64 back when that kid was in diapers, so he knows computers. He also knows that if a $10 item has 20 features, that's 2 features per dollar; now that's a bargain!
3. The informed shopper (two subdivisions)
a) Brainy Smurf: he thinks he knows it all. He's done a little homework on these subjects, and now walks around with the confidence that he is an expert in the field. In reality, he knows more than the average Joe, but not enough to differentiate between quality and marketing hype.
b) Poppa Smurf: He actually does know it all, realizes 90% of everything is pure over priced crap, and those 20 hyped features are actually three features divided into various words and fluff-lingo. He spends his life searching in vane for quality, and once in a great while he'll find it... just in time for the technology to become obsolete next year.
There is yet another kind of electronics shopper, but they are as rare as a college professor who doesn't suffer from megalomania, or as rare as a kind hearted soul who comments on other peoples youtube videos. He is...
The McGuiver Guru!
These people know more about electronics and physics than the heads of NASA. They haven't bought a DVD player because they realized they could modify their old CD player to read DVD's. It just dawned on them one day that if they add the right potentiometer, cross the circuit with an old digital watch circuit, siphone power from the mobo's speaker pin, soldered a paper clip to the lightscribe laser, they could make this thing read and right to a DVD... at 1x read, and -12x write. sure, it only burns a DVD at 12KBps, but in four and half days he'll have his 2 hour Carl Sagan documentary on DVD! But in the mean time, he has this idea on how to make an old Atari play N64 games... all he needs is a telephone, a pocket calculator, and some daisy chained multimeters.
