People are wasteful

[RetroHacker]

UncleDon
What do you expect from a generation that woulnd't know quality electronics if it bit their @$$?

Too true. Technically, I'm from that generation, but I somehow managed to miss that aspect of it... I could go on for hours complaining about modern electronics, my favorite things to complain about being computer keyboards, television sets, phones, VCR's, any consumer audio equipment, contol layout/insanity on consumer electronics... the list goes on. But, it seems that these days, new is synonymous with better/best, and anything that even looks a _liittle_ outdated is 'ancient'. But, from what I have seen, newer is rarely better, and it typically breaks so quickly anyway that some of my friends are astonished that I've got stuff made in the 60's that still works. My generation has been conditioned to believe this, and conditioned by the media to flock like sheep to the next 'improvement'. Never mind that nobody will ever _use_ picture-in-picture, or the fact that having a TV on top of which nothing can be stacked is just plain silly and made even sillier by the requirement that the remote work so that any functions beyond on/off can be accessed, but the mass of cattle that is the American population will stampede for it.

What's even worse is when people will refuse things if they're not new or hip enough. A friend of mine was complaining that he didn't have a TV in his bedroom at his new apartment, and that he didn't want to go out and buy one. I offered him an extra set I had here, an RCA XL-100 15" color set, complete with a cable box to compensate for the knob tuning. He didn't want it. Some people would rather live without than have something deemed outdated or inconvenient.

-Ian