July 8, 2023 • 38 mins
Originally aired Aug 18th 2016
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:12):
Ladies and gentlemen. Good morning andwelcome back to the third Thursday morning of
the month. Jones here along withmy mobile concierge, mister Nick Williams.
It's the Texas Overnight Tech Show forthis particular morning, Phone number triple eight
two five sixteen eighty best enjoyed whilewatching the Marfa Lights. Okay, roight
to you by bang bang there yougo. All right, Todds, I
(00:33):
just got a very nice thing fromFacebook. What was that microphone Mick were
just talking about. It's the SamsonMeteor mic. Yes, Samson Media mic.
Samson is the company, but Meteors. Then it's got little leggs and
it's got a place to plug yourheadphones in. Ye is it a Is
it a three millimeter or larger?That's the standard three three millimeter So you're
like the walkman, So your headphonephones will work and you can hear you
(00:55):
can hear the mic through that.So so that means basically it's a pre
amp in there. Yeah, ithas a vine rolled in. Oh that
is so cool. Yeah, it'sall it's all USB power and then you
can send it nun down the lineand your Win seven and Win ten will
recognize this punk up the proper driversand if you in depending on what app
you use, you are you areleaning cleaning and a full frequency to wherever
that you send that signal. Yeah, like I use it with a ball
(01:17):
camera. I got a Logitech cameraand of course he's got a built in
a microphone. Sure, so yougo into your settings and you tell it
now, I don't want the microphoneon the ball. I want to use
the Samson, so it'll take thevideo from the camera and then the Samson
Mike oh man that you're talking onSkype and it sounds like wonderful that you're
having this conversation. That is uberslick. Yeah, I love that.
(01:38):
All right, let it dude,It's fine, Okay. Phone number is
triple eight, two, five,six, ten, eighty Home Audio,
all the stuff there's it's just amazingwhat you can do now. And there
was a time when you can doall stuff and it cost your fortune,
but now it doesn't cost you verymuch at all, and you get quality
results, which is boy, there'sa double edged sword. Yeah, let's
go to the telephones here in GrandPrairie, Texas. Hey, Doug,
(01:59):
are you there, sir, I'mhere Moni, sir, how are you
doing it all right? I've gota question or two, Yes, sir,
um. Windows has kind of takenthe Windows Media Center technology out of
there, uh operating system to Winten. Yeah, Windows eight and ten
neither one of them have the whatdo they call it? Windows Media Center?
(02:23):
The Windows Media Center has been expunged. How okay, what do you
what do you do for for audioand video? Well, I've got I've
stayed with Windows seven, yes sirand uh. And it's been really frustrating
with the with the push to geteverybody to go to Windows ten, because
every time you bate your computer,you've got to fight with the Windows ten
(02:46):
to keep it from its converting youautomatically or something. Yes, sir.
Anyway, that's that's another that's anotherissue. But I just wanted if there's
some better technology than Windows Media Centerthat I should consider trying to move to.
I look for number for quite afew years that trying to do it
with Linux, and I could neverfind something that I felt comfortable with.
(03:10):
But maybe there's some things that havecome on in the last few years,
and I just hadn't done a reviewof it for a while, and I
thought that might be a topic youpeople the bigger crack yet. Yeah,
Windows Media Center was nice because theyhad all sorts of things that you could
do, and after XP and seventhey've kind of kicked it out. But
the bad part is you always hadWindows Media Player sure, so you can
always play music, videos or whatever, and I think with ten they killed
(03:35):
it. It's not even there,so the only way you can keep it.
From my understanding, I could bewrong, but if you have seven
or something that has media Player alreadyon board and you do an upgrade,
it's supposed to carry over to ten. But if you have like ten straight
or you wipe everything off your driveand start off with a fresh ten,
there's no player. But there's acompany called Cyberlink that's been around a long
(04:00):
time and they have a DVD playerthat you can get from them and they'll
play audio and video. Um.I think they have some stuff similar to
the Media Center. Have to checkit, but they've been around with a
lot of different programs and players,even going back to the XP days.
I don't I don't never use WindowsMedia are very rarely. You said,
I'm just recording over the year oftelevision. Yeah, and you might check
(04:26):
a page that they make a lotof the TV How do you spell that?
H A U P page? Likea page New York I got.
I got four of their teams inone of the Chines and I've got the
four. Um, yeah, Iwould. I would check with them because
they're always, you know, doingtheir stuff and upgrading and moving along with
(04:46):
the with the OSS. They mighthave something that might be able to use.
But as far as like a directreplacement, I haven't. I haven't
seen anything, but I would thinka page would be a great place to
start. Okay, And one morething you you mentioned, and at least
I got the impression that you werereferring to the rather uh the rather sneaky
encouraging that Microsoft does for people togo to Windows ten back when it was
(05:09):
free, little pestering pop ups andstuff that downloads the OS for you.
Ready, you've had experience with that? Yes? Oh yeah, okay,
let me recommend something to you.UM go to uh GRC dot com slash
never ten and it's it's GRC thatI think I heard that from you once
and I did that, so I'vekind of gotta right now. Oh very
(05:32):
good. Then you're then you're squaredaway. That's a great uh. That's
a great uh. It's a wonderfultool Icon finally went away. I have
never understood why Microsoft would would takepeople that are obviously power users, that
are long term Windows folks and havenot gone to a Buntwo or whatever,
and would pester them, nag themand nanny them like that. I don't
(05:55):
understand it it of all, whateverreason they have for doing that, they
offend far more people than they've thanthey befriended. It was all. I
think what they were doing is theywere trying to set it up if their
operating systems more like a cell phone, so that contract everything you do,
and they were trying to trying tosell the data they would collect that way.
(06:15):
Operating systems do that and the oldones didn't. But it's just it's
just unfortunate to treat your entire yourentire clientele as some group of betas instead
of your power users and being niceto them because they've they've made you what
you are and you need their continuedbelief, subscription, and compliance. What
made me mad about it was thefact of do it now, I don't
(06:36):
want to do it. Do itnow, I don't want to do it,
And then I did the show withyou, and the next morning the
Dune thing went and did it onits own. That made me very angry,
and I had to pull everything backevery every time I had to get
an update to be you know,fifteen different things that were going to change,
I go to them one other timeand read the extra information about each
one of them. Is there anythingto do with upgrades? I just I've
(07:00):
hide it generally. And the shameis, you know, Microsoft is really
they've developed, they developed a verygood system for keeping computers update and protected,
and they did a great job ofthat, and then they stick this
commercial deal in it to sell yousomething that and if you don't want it,
okay, finding good. You'll getthere anyway. They're they're like the
undertaker. They can sign it eventuallyyears because they are you know, yeah,
sooner or later you're gonna have tocome and see me. I think
(07:23):
of why thank you were talking aboutswitching to boot throw, and I'm giving
that more serious consideration. I players, have you got anything like that?
It's a Media Center PC. Well, I've got to I've got an xp
UM. It's an old h Ithink it's an Asus um laptop at home
that I've revived. We found therestore disks, restored it, put Windows
(07:46):
Service Pack for in it, whichis the customer that makes Windows. Think
this is an ATM that's the runningon XP so it gets updates. It
still gets updates from from Microsoft.And I'm gonna I'm gonna put a Buntu
into it and see what I thinkof it, see if I can make
it work, right, because ifit does, I'm told that it's a
much faster operating system, even onsomething as old as a two gig XPIEN
(08:07):
system. So it's the operating system. I've used it a little bit and
I like it as good as Microsoft. Now. Now tell me by virtue
of you, you've you've had significantWindows experience and Buntu you can make sense
of it. Yes. Yeah,it's a little hard to get used to
the to the up to the commandline approach, you know, but you
(08:30):
finally catch onto it. It's nottoo bad. All right, that'll work,
mister duck, Thank you, sir. Good look at what's going on,
buddy. Let us know what luckyou have, would you please?
All right? Thanks? Sure,yes sir? Right, and by the
way, folks, stuff for oneof the reasons people like nuver ten.
It's only it's only eighty three K. It's a little bitty program and all
it does it doesn't really install anything, just makes a change and then wipes
itself out. You'll never know it'sthere. And I got it. I
(08:52):
got a hand to that Gibson guy. He knows his stuff. He's very
good. He's very good at whathe does. All right, Well,
mister mister Williams, what if weIs it okay to talk about Barnes and
Noble. Yeah, yeah, becauseone of the kinds of technology that I
really and truly love. Our booksand my lovely in talented wife and I
usually spend one weekend, maybe twoout of the month on a Friday,
(09:13):
we'll go out to eat, havefun, and we'll drop into our friendly
local Barnes and Noble and well we'llperuse, you know, all this printed
media and it's just really great tospend the evening reading and see all of
the back and forth traffic that goeson there. But we've noticed across the
last couple of years that there's beenthis this creeping change moving through Bonds and
Noble. Pardon me, the thethe couvery little nooks that they've had in
(09:37):
places to read different marks the storehave disappeared, one by one by one,
and they're used to. There wasa set of comfortable chairs over here,
some chairs over there, and nowthere's one. There are four upholstered
chairs, and that's it. Everythingelse of those hard back chairs with the
steel bottoms that they have in thecoffee shop, and that's it. Yep.
(10:00):
And there's some kind of creeping changerolling through there. I don't know
why, necessarily for those of youwho went to Barnes and Noble because Taylor's
bookstore was too was wasn't too friendly. It seems like Barnes and Noble's going
in the same direction. Touch onthat. Texas Overnight at seventeen past hour.
This is Texas Overnight with Charlie Joneson News Radio ten A d k
(10:24):
r l D Texas Overnight at twentyone after the hour. So make you
(10:45):
were just I was complaining about Facebook, I mean Facebook, about Barnes and
Noble, and you were nodding inwisdom. What do you see in there?
I'm seeing a lot of things.One, they're not doing too good.
How come well, seals have notbeen good? They just ousted their
CEO yesterday. Wait a minute,Wait a minute, didn't they just hire
him? Yeah? He had himin a year and it was amazing because
the family owns Barnes and Noble,and I think they're still in the stock
(11:09):
Exchange. And they asked him andput out this terse little press release saying,
well, he wasn't a good fitand this and that, and I
forget their name, was it Runsomething or other? But he was the
guy that was in charge of Applestores. And he left and went on
to J. C. Penny Yes, yeah, and made a whole mess
of that and a mess of pennies. Because pennies. I mean, he's
the one that took out the redapple sale and all that jazz. He
(11:31):
was Ron Johnson did so many ofthe My wife and my daughter loved those
those pennies. Yeah, the cuponsand stuff. It was the red apple
or the yellow banana whatever they calledit. Yeah, And they loved these
sales. And they did go andthey'd almost always come back with two or
three things. And when this guystarted, they first thing he changed the
store and the girls came back justcomplaining about it. Then they they changed
(11:52):
the stance, the store took intheir ads and I thought, man,
the Pennies is a chick store,and if you guys do this, and
he said, well, you knowthis, this is how that's how we
we've apped Apple. We're gonna doit. We're gonna bring modern day to
department stores. Many they screwed itup and the girls haven't been back.
Yeah, and they're still running ata loss. And they've went back to
their old CEO and J. C. Penny is still running a loss.
(12:15):
They're getting better, but they're havinga long time having to dig out of
that hole. This guy, yeah, and this guy is kind of number
two. When you think about whathappened with J. C. Penny,
that's what's happening with Barnes and Noble. And you're having an issue where you
don't have as much stuff. Peoplearen't coming like they used to. You
have kindle and e books now.You also, like you were talking about
(12:37):
with the coffee shops, you goand be friendly. And it's like there's
a fine line between being friendly,I guess in their eyes and freeloading because
like Starbucks, people go, theydrink coffee, they stay, they take
their notebooks or whatever. I've seenpeople go to Starbucks pretty much at five
o'clock and don't leave until close.People with no life, I understand,
yeah, and and they're happy withthat. That's what they do with some
(12:58):
of them go back. That's whyStarbucks was such a good fit for Barnes
Noble, because Barnes and Noble verymuch had that atmosphere and Starbucks Starbucks very
much added to that and make yourselfwelcome, make yourself comfortable, And at
the apex of that particular kind offriendliness, we almost always bought some stuff,
and we noticed that the amount ofwhat the actual purchasing we're doing is
(13:18):
steadily trailed off. The less friendlyof the store has gotten that and I
don't think they intended it to bethat way, but that's the way it
feels. Yea. And you canstill buy books there. But then the
problem you walk into places like that, and a lot of them that went
out of business before Barnes, likeBorders and even the I forget some of
the names. Don't forget Taylor's well, Taylor's books a million. And then
(13:39):
there was a lot of these guysthat were chains that were in malls that
are now gone. And the biggestproblem with him, was the books cost
so much versus going to a Walmartor something. But now you can also
buy a book and have it shippedto you practically for nothing from Amazon and
get a better price. And youdon't have to go get in the car,
you don't have to fight the traffic. It comes right to your door.
(14:01):
But you've got to be And somaking the book the bookstore a welcome
place made a lot of sense.Right as you wanted to be inviting,
you got to say, boy,I want to get away from the house.
I'm gonna go to the bookstore andgo hang out. And if you're
turning around and making it bad towhere we don't want you, then you're
not gonna go. And it's like, wow, screw and I'm gonna go
order it on Amazon. I'll makemy own coffee and read my own book.
Yeah, but that's one of thereasons that people tend to spend time
(14:22):
in stores and buy things. It'sbecause they feel welcome. That's how the
library works. Yeah, And there'sno reason that Barnes and Noble can't be
partly library because I've faced all thesegreat books and people have loved to read,
hang out, read a little bit. Just it's there's a there's a
general there's a cultural taste there thatis beginning to miss. That's a sad
thing because Barnes and Noble really usedto be a comfortable place and now it's
(14:46):
let's just say, for the Jonesfamily, it's no longer the destination it
once was. Ye and then they'vedepended on the Knook because they try to
compete with Kendall. I thought theywere going to blow off the Knook,
well, didn't I read that.I've heard stuff about the Knooks like they
weren't going to make it as bigas a presence. And then before that
they had worked up a deal withMicrosoft where Microsoft was going to come and
do the programming inside it and revampthe whole thing. So the Knook's been
(15:09):
kind of in play, but notin play. But still Amazon is constantly
evolving with the Kindle and all thedifferent models, and then you've got the
Kindle Fire and all these things andjust really eating their lunch. And so
that has not been good for themas far as trying to capture that market.
Well, that's interesting. They've gota lot of holes and if they're
not careful, they're going to gothe way of the Dodo like borders and
(15:31):
a lot of the others have.Yeah. Well, the one thing that
destruct Janelle and I, um,we go there strictly for the books,
you know. They also they gotall kinds of briefcases and in calendars and
all this other stuff. But whatstruck me are the toys. I especially
they were they had a very nicefour rotorum style drone camera, the whole
(15:52):
thing three hundred bucks. Wow.Now, who is going to go into
Barnes and Noble and drop three hundred, three hundred dollars on a drone that
there are better prices for it lswhere obviously I go to like HobbyTown USA
or something. It's just not thekind of thing you're dropping. Think I'll
just swing buy a Barnes and Nobleand buy me and buy me a jone
drone that I can read my ebooks. Yeah. And they've got all
these these plastic characters from from variousand sundry games. Yeah, and those
(16:17):
are collector items. Those can sell, Okay, but I don't. I
don't see Barnes and Noble as agamer location, right. But the other
problem with that is you used tohave a lot of comic bookstores that did
that, like Lone Star Comics sure, and Lone Star Comics believe it or
not, folded back in twenty twelve. Ye, they're all mail order now
and a lot of that collector stuff. The bookstores are taking that on because
people like to buy the Pokemon stuffand the Game of Thorns, and they've
(16:41):
got collectors of the Walking Dead andall these different shows and movies and whatever.
So it probably works a little moreat Christmas, but still they have
that there because people like to buythat kind of stuff, and there's not
many places left like the comic bookstoresto be able to pick up that that
market, you know, speaking ofmarkets, I've I've I've had an experience,
and I don't understand why it's happening. Are you? Are you beginning
(17:03):
to get more and more AD blockerthings. I was reading a piece.
I was reading a piece on Wiredand what I said about it was about
it was about the Chomebook two andbasically, if you have a Chromebook two
that you bought the last year,more than likely it'll be able to you'll
be able to go to the beforelong, go to the the Google store
and come on with all the theuh Android apps that you want, and
(17:25):
you're reading along on these all ofa sudden suddenly here's the thing with ad
blockers. We get it. Adsaren't what you're here for. We really
appreciate you pay us a dollar aweek for the advert and then and no,
I'm not going to pay you guysa dollar a week. I will
uninstall um you know ad stock whatwe're calling it this week. And what
is the big deal about ad blockI'm well, I could tell you some
(17:47):
stories about ad blockers and it reallydrives me nuts. Well, there's some
things going on in the background thatthey're not telling us about. And I
have a love hate relationship with themnow so perfect. So we got to
talk about that. So we're gonnacome back a bit of vitry all for
mister mc william. More vitriol allthe time. And if you've if you've
had the ad block issue and youfigured out something to do, or you've
had a relevant experience, it's tripleeight two eighteen. You're listening to Texas
(18:11):
Overnight with Charlie Jones on news radioten eight k r LD. So here's
the story, and by the way, welcome to Texas Over night at the
(18:33):
Tech Show for the third Thursday ofthe month. I'm there's a remarkable thing
going on that in a couple ofmonths, Chromebook is gonna make it possible
for you to go to the tothe Google Store and put together Android apps
(18:55):
for your Chromebook. And while I'mreading this, suddenly this thing pop up.
Here's the thing with ad blockers,and Nick, I gotta tell you,
it's driving me nuts. It says, put it on my list.
Will I do what they tell me? I go in, I click the
ad block hot com, I clickdon't run pages on this to Maine,
and then I reload the page andread about halfway down and it comes right
(19:17):
back. What's it? What doesit do? I there was a time
when you'd casually see this, butI'm seeing this. Here's the thing with
ad blockers all the time. Whyam I seeing this so much? Well?
Ad blockers are a great thing.They're free, you can download and
boil. Do they work. I'vegot them on almost every piece of equipment
I have. I love them forFacebook because it knocks out all the ads
(19:37):
I have to scroll through all ofthis stuff. But things are happening.
They're figuring out now, like WhenI go to Forbes, they can see
I'm running an ad blocker, andForbes will come up with a little wisdom
before the day and then flip youover into the article, and before it
flips it goes, oh, Isee that you're using an ad blocker.
We would really appreciate it that youturn your ad blocker off when using or
(20:00):
put you on your white list.But then what's funny is you go back
and you do it again. Itsees it, and then it gets terse
oh, I see you're still usingan ad blocker. We really wish And
now I'm like, you know what, I think I'll read this article from
somewhere else, because all I gottado is go through Google News and there's
seven or eight different other people thataren't giving me your crap, and I
(20:21):
get the same information but in adifferent place, a different article. Yeah.
But now I found out a couplemonths ago there was a thing in
the news that ad blocker is good. It is so good. It is
really hacking off all of these sitesand companies. And what they're doing now
is they're going to ad blocker andsay, hey, we'll give you some
cash onto the table if you don'tblock us. These companies are paying ad
(20:45):
blocker not to block them and thengive us a hard time. Yeah.
I believe part of the problem maybethat you're trying to block a site that
has paid not to be blocked.And Facebook is nuts because you know,
Facebook loves beveraging you with ads andall this stuff they're doing now, and
ad blocker works so wonderfully on Facebook. And so Facebook's been having this cat
(21:08):
and mouse game with the ad blockers. They turn around and redo their algorithms,
and one day you come up inFacebook. Boom, there is everybody.
All the ads are there, andthen add blockers will come in and
go, oh you change your algorwayof them. Hang on a minute,
Boola boop, and now it's blockedagain, and maybe a couple days will
go by. All sudden the adsare there. So they're playing this cat
(21:30):
and mouse back and forth that theychange the algorithm, they match, change
the algorithm match And this has beengoing on for some time. Wow.
Yeah, And I thought, youknow a lot of ad blockers you see
is kind of like, oh,pay me and we'll block. They really
don't block, or you really gotto get down and dirty with them and
put every single thing in Yes towhitelist. But ad blocker has done an
(21:52):
excellent job. It automatically updates,They automatically take care of everything for you
in the background. Yes, theyadd more stuff the black list, and
it's been great and now it's gottentoo great, and I'm surprised lawsuits haven't
been filed yet. This is interesting. I did my white list to let
me read Wired for the umteenth time. It came right back. And just
(22:15):
for the heck of it, Iwent to Privacy Badger, which I had
forgotten I'd put on this on thisChrome page, and I turned off Privacy
Badger's page and suddenly when everything's backup, So it wasn't just it wasn't
just ad blocker, although that's whatthey thought. It was privacy Badger as
well, which is it was checkstrackers. Wow, who to think that?
And when you use tunnel bear,you know that you get I've been
talking about to watch other sites.Yes, you can use the US feed
(22:37):
and it shreds cookies, any cookiesthat throws two. It just shreds nice.
So that's even for that alone.If you like really private stuff,
it's a great thing to use,all right, that'll work, okay,
folks, Phone number triple eight twofive eighty. This is always the short
break at the bottom of the hour. Gary and fort Worth, Sir,
you are on deck and he's gota v A VHS question. This ought
to be interesting, So Gary,hang on a second, body, we
(23:00):
will come right to you, andboys and goes, we'd like to join
us. It's a triple eight twofive sixteen eighty and at some point in
the next hour or so I willtrot out to you be basically saying the
South if if your kids are goingback to school. There are a lot
of chromebooks out there that won't thatthis won't work with. But before too
long, millions of Android apps willbe available on your chromebook and folks,
(23:22):
that's going to change chromebook completely.It's gonna make touch screens important for some
of that, but for the mostpart, the marriage of Android and chromebooks,
that's gonna be something back and justdoing it. This is Texas Overnight
with Charlie Jones on News Radio teneighty k r LD. Come on Texas
(23:52):
Overnight, Good morning, Welcome back, Jones. Here long with mister McWilliams
on the phones. We go thistime in Cowtown. Hey Gary, are
you there, sir? Yes,sir, welcome, start to Texas over
and I what's up? Thank you, thank you. I like a lot
of people, I have hours andhours of VHS family videos convert to digital.
I used to do this years agowith an old XP computer, but
I haven't done it in many years. And I keep looking out there and
(24:15):
saying, well, let's see wherethe technology is at today. But the
key is I find a lot ofthem that will take it and convert it
to digital, but will not letme add it is the one you guys
recommend. Wow, it's a goodquestion. I haven't seen anything of late.
Well, it looks looks like ifif it converts it to digital,
(24:36):
and I guess, I guess you'reseeing it on the screen as a wave
for him right right, and you'relooking for you to make but you need
to be able to see the screenwhile you do you do video edits,
Yes, sir, that's a goodquestion. Man. I can't think of
a system I've ever seen that.I mean, transcribing is easy because they've
got automatic limitters and all this otherstuff built in, But as far as
(24:56):
actually choppin' mop, don't know,well, there was a lot of kids.
I've seen their like forty nine dollarscome with software and it's a box
and cables that allows you to hookthe VCR directly into the back of the
computer, and it's supposed to havesome kind of editing software. One of
the things that drives me nuts aboutstuff, especially if your tape is older,
it's very grainy, and when youtry to go through and edit it
(25:18):
and put it into digital form,it's really greeny. And there's this software
I've been trying to find for years. It may have been taken off the
market because basically it was just toodarn good. There was a piece of
software called Video Soap and it usedto come i think with Correll stuff because
Carrel had a lot of editors andstuff back then. Yeah, And basically
what it did was it took yourvideo and cleaned it up in real time,
(25:41):
and they showed it before and afterand you'd have a kind of a
haze to the videos and it wouldclean it up and made it nice and
bright and everything. And it camewith some of their cards and some of
the software, and then they soldit on their own. And I've never
been able to find it, andevery time I try to do a search
on its almost like it's classified.How do you like that? Yeah,
(26:03):
so there's still some companies out therethat do that and probably have to look
around. I will continue searching.I'll probably go. Let me ask you
this, what kind of what kindof VCR are you using to play the
tape back on? Well, Ihaven't plugged it in in a couple of
years, so it's an old Sonystereo VCR. Okay, time it was
high end when I had it.How is it's tracking? Well, once
(26:26):
again, I haven't used it solong, I have no idea. Okay,
Well, if you have problems withlet me deplute the inn alo something.
If you have to replace it,go up on eBay and look for
Mitsu Bitsy VCRs and there's a VCR. I have one myself, and I
can't remember what the model number itis. But they were about a thousand
dollars back in the day. Andwhat was amazing about them was they claim
(26:48):
because you know, when you takea tape and you record on a VCR
and you stick in another VCR,no matter what you do, you can
never get it to track right.It depends on the VCR. Some VCRs
adjust they're biased tracking well and othersdon't. Right. Well. This thing
claims that it can lock onto thesignal track or the control track on the
tape and brings it out rock solid, no matter what tape, what machine,
No kidding, And so I boughtone of these, and I'm going
(27:11):
to add it into my system here, hopefully in the coming months. But
if you do have problems with it, look for it, because that was
their claim to fame. It's oneof the reasons it was VHS Super VHS
hi Fi. I mean, brushyour teeth, but the cat out.
But you can find these things nowfor under one hundred dollars. Wow.
Cleaner input gives you a much betteroutput once you convert it certain right,
(27:32):
and then if you've got something thatwill keep the track solid, then of
course it's going to look great.And you don't have the little track lines
and stuff and the horizontal bars.No, Gary, that's one thing I
never thought about. For most ofus, the VHS is of our families
and our parents and our grandparents andall this other stuff that we've acquired across
the years. You acquire the tapes, but you don't acquire the players they
were made on, and as aresult, it may have looked great Granddad's
(27:55):
player, and it may look likestink on the one that you've got to
dub it from, because the headarrangement, the tracking arrangement, the sensors.
I mean, so much of thatwas proprietary back in the day.
And some of them were metal gears, and then some of them were belts,
and then they got cheap. Theyhave this little donut wheel that flips
back and forth, and those thingsshave all the plastic off and the rubber
(28:15):
and gets really bad. Have anice day, all right, Gary,
sir? Anything else, No,sir, I appreciate you very much.
Some one of these guys that finallyhit the age or sixty five next month
and will retire, and I havelots of time to do these things and
wanting to do for years. Congratulations, man, well done. Let us
know how it goes well. AndI've got five hundred cassettes sitting in boxes,
(28:36):
so if you ever want to takea crack at him, oh jeez,
I think I have years and yearsin my library, so I'll be
Gary, take care of sols.Thank you, Texas over night at forty
six past the hour. I'll neverdie because I've got to work on those.
He can't die. He's only onthe Didn't that what the George Mercer's
to say? He was just waitingfrom all the rest of them to die
(28:56):
so we can have everything. It'sright, all right, So we've mean,
we've come in a bunch of stufftonight. I've got that the stuff
on the conebook thing coming up postit's it's it's pretty remarkable. And by
the way, i'd forgotten night installedprivacy Badger. Once I turned privacy Badger
off on the wired side of worksfine, and I gotta thank you.
Wasn't it nice? But I can'tbelieve that ad Backer wants me to contribute
(29:18):
a dollar or more. Just howmuch do you feel like contributing? None?
Yeah, they have a thing withPayPal where they say, you know,
if you use this police contribute andyou can or you can't. But
I have a real hard time.It's like, I don't mind contributing,
but if you're taking money under thetable to have people not block them,
why should I pay you money tocreate the software and keep it going?
(29:41):
There we go? Are you upto speed at all? On the self
driving car nonsense a little bit wet. We had to touch on that because
I'm reading a piece here than inLovely Helsinki, Finland. Love At this
time of year, I'm sure Helsinkiis introducing self driving buses onto their city
streets in the next couple of weeks. Have you seen the Chinese bust they're
testing. No, the thing isthe size of a freeway and it carries
(30:07):
all these people and it goes alonglike a monorail, but the cars that
are on the freeway run underneath it. Really, it is huge, and
they've been they've been doing preliminary tests. They've got a digital video of it
that shows how it's run, andthey've been doing their first test on It's
fantastic Texas. That sounds so bizarre. Yeah, yeah, you're listening to
(30:27):
Texas Overnight with Charlie Jones on newsRadio ten d k r l D Texas
(30:53):
Overnight at FIP two one f theRM. Let me just get a get
a bit of personality off of youhere, Buddy, the CEO of Ford.
On Monday gave a press conference wherehe was saying that Ford plans to
have cars with no steering wheel andno pedals for twenty one twenty twenty two.
Google has already said there their targetis twenty eighteen. Uh, Tesla
(31:14):
and Ford and Toyota and GM,they're all on the same page about this.
And I'm just wondering, your bigtech guy, what's it going to
take for you to get in abus or a cab kind of like Uber
and minus the driver, Oh,ziza, is that going to be a
big, big hill for you?Do you have that kind of confidence?
Never just like that. Like doctorMcCoy has a problem with transporters, I
(31:40):
have a problem with travel as cars. I find it amazing that all the
biggies are talking about about shared ownership. Our car is going to be that
expense. I can't imagine that wehave a system that can without a gigantic
amount of investment in the infrastructure,that could can run all the cars.
I mean, think about rush hourin any large Texas or US city.
(32:02):
I mean, is there going tobe the ram? Is there going to
be the bandwidth and every car isgoing to have to have its own transponder?
Yep, And then you've gone allof these cars you gotta keep track
of. We already have an issuenow where you know, they have internet
in the cars, and you gotall these cars running around picking up Pandora
and all this stuff, running downthe towers, and you know, then
(32:23):
you got to take that information andrun it through satellite, run it through
the towers. But the thing thatI always have is I don't like flying.
And I don't like flying mainly becauseof the security and everything. And
I can get in the car andI can drive, sure, But one
of the things I like is thatif I'm going to crash, I'm behind
the wheel and not the pilot.That's the main reason I like driving,
(32:43):
is if I'm gonna crash, Ican grab the wheel and try to you
know, avert. Well, that'sthat's what I was asking. I mean
when when Ford says we anticipate vehiclesthat are that are completely autonomous with no
steering wheel and no pedals. Yeah, by twenty twenty two, come on,
guys, and I go out betweenhere and tex Ar Canna. I'm
getting ready to go to Arkansas thisweekend. Yeah. And there's that stretch
(33:06):
you know where it is down bythe Pilgrim's plant. It's a good mile
from pilot Point or whatever it is, right up to about New Boston.
There is no service at and TT Mobile whatever. God, I hope
you don't have to call Triple Abecause you've got a long walk, because
you're not going to call Triple A. That's right. Now. Imagine being
in an area like that and you'vegot no signal for this thing. There
is a place between Lake Charles andJasper which is it's completely signals. Yeah
(33:30):
there unless now maybe if you hada large external intent on the car and
maybe a three watt amp, maybeyou could. You could you could snag
a tower, but I don't thinkso. Yeah, in places like that,
you know something satellite is about theonly thing that's going to work.
And the thing that strikes me aboutthis if if what they're then the guys
at GM and Ford, the bigguys are saying, look, we they're
(33:51):
not saying that that Uber. Thisis Uber without the driver, but that's
what they're thinking. What's the pointgoing to be of having a Ford or
a or a Chevy or a Mercedesor a Porsche If all you're gonna do
is get in some little tin canwith no steering wheel and no no pedals
and get behind some other little featurelesstin can and you read the paper,
or you you play on the wayor whatever, all the way to work.
(34:12):
What's the point. You might aswell take the bus. You know,
when they talk about multiple ownership,it sounds like the bus. Yeah.
And a car like a Portia orJag or some kind of sports car.
The whole point of owning that thingis driving it. It is the
freedom, that's right, driving bythe seat of your pants. Of course,
now it's got GPS and everything init, but back in the day,
well, but the thing about itis to go down through a set
(34:35):
of curves that you know we're there, and you go snorting down there just
a little too hot, and havingone of those seat of the pants moments.
You come out, oh man,that was great, the cars not
making any expensive noises, and youcome back refreshed, thrilled, recreated.
And this this idea of a robotmechanical highway, I'll tell you what I
think about that when I'm driving intowork at night. Then the Dallas Fort
(34:57):
Worth airy folks, they have justfinished up This express line used to be
the hov lane. Well now it'sthe express, say, and you can
pay money to be on it.The only problem is it's one lane wide,
so you can only go as fastas the guy ahead of you.
And if he decides to drive atfifty five and text or he's listening to
Beethoven or something, he's off inanother world and he's doing about fifty,
(35:19):
then guess what your express lane.That's going to be your experience because it's
completely turned by the guy ahead ofyou. And it reminds me that old
thing that you see on the sideof the igloo. Unless you're the lead
dog, the view never changes.And who I try to imagine charging for
this express lane when you you cango sixty if the guy had a views
going sixty, stay out for thethree lanes where you have control of your
(35:43):
life. Who's going to pay forthis express Have you seen the trick they're
doing now? Used to be likesix thirty five you have the text press,
yeah, and you could go seventymiles an hour. Sure, Well
then they decided, now we're goingto kick you down to sixty five,
and if you want to go seventy, you're gonna pay for it. And
I guess a bunch of people complainedand they say, Okay, you're gonna
stay seventy, but if you godown the text press. Now you can
do seventy five, and I'm like, I Am not paying extra to do
(36:06):
seventy miles an hour, no way, And then they changed that up and
it was like, good, nowI do my seventy and you guys go
do what you want to do.The thing that I find interesting, Texas
has always had the finest, someof the finest freeways in the country because
we had petroleum, and by virtueof the petroleum taxes and all this other
stuff, Texas has always been ableto build what it needed when it needed,
(36:27):
and we would take our time andbuild the things up as necessary.
Now suddenly we have all these tollways. I know, we have more
money in the kitty from fracking andall the additional confirmed reserves that we know
that we have, and suddenly drivingon Texas highways has become enormously expensive.
Where's the money going? The statedoesn't need a state's making plenty. We'll
(36:47):
tell you what scares me. They'redoing a pilot program in California because they
claim that jacking up the tax andthe gasolene is not getting it done.
So now they want you to payper mile that you drive and They've got
these guys with special computers that pluginto their O B D two and track
where they are and then they payfor whatever amount of mileage that they drive.
(37:08):
And I think there's also a testprogram in Connecticut. There's somewhere up
in the Northeast they're also doing it. And that scares me because I like
driving. I like having the freedomto drive and have somebody tell me,
oh, we're going to tax youfor mile Well, you know, there
may be a solution. Learn tospeak German and go talk to the guys
the advised Volkswagen on their on theiremissions test and you can probably you can
(37:30):
probably jiggle the numbers all you want, say, this thing never left zero?
What's up? There's an app forthat. Yeah, that's right.
I have Infinity my leedge make Ifpeople want to contact you, well,
what should they do? Please sir? Well, then go over to my
Facebook page, which is Facebook dotcom, slash cyberline net cyb E R
L I N E N E tall one word and I join up.
We'll be through the month until thenext show. We'll keep up with stuff
(37:52):
and also we've got links to stuffwe talked to about tonight. Well,
sir, that'll work just fine.Let's see the next month. Let me
look forward in time here, thatshould be the fifteenth of September. Yeah,
the anniversary of Lost in Space premieringfar out. Yeah, mister mc,
thank you, sir, You're mostwelcome. All right, buddy,
ladies and gentlemen, and just meremoments. So there's all kinds of stuff
to cover tonight, and we willbegin that coverage in just mere moments on
(38:15):
these Texas State Network stations. You'reright back
Ladies and gentlemen. Good morning andwelcome back to the third Thursday morning of
the month. Jones here along withmy mobile concierge, mister Nick Williams.
It's the Texas Overnight Tech Show forthis particular morning, Phone number triple eight
two five sixteen eighty best enjoyed whilewatching the Marfa Lights. Okay, roight
to you by bang bang there yougo. All right, Todds, I
(00:33):
just got a very nice thing fromFacebook. What was that microphone Mick were
just talking about. It's the SamsonMeteor mic. Yes, Samson Media mic.
Samson is the company, but Meteors. Then it's got little leggs and
it's got a place to plug yourheadphones in. Ye is it a Is
it a three millimeter or larger?That's the standard three three millimeter So you're
like the walkman, So your headphonephones will work and you can hear you
(00:55):
can hear the mic through that.So so that means basically it's a pre
amp in there. Yeah, ithas a vine rolled in. Oh that
is so cool. Yeah, it'sall it's all USB power and then you
can send it nun down the lineand your Win seven and Win ten will
recognize this punk up the proper driversand if you in depending on what app
you use, you are you areleaning cleaning and a full frequency to wherever
that you send that signal. Yeah, like I use it with a ball
(01:17):
camera. I got a Logitech cameraand of course he's got a built in
a microphone. Sure, so yougo into your settings and you tell it
now, I don't want the microphoneon the ball. I want to use
the Samson, so it'll take thevideo from the camera and then the Samson
Mike oh man that you're talking onSkype and it sounds like wonderful that you're
having this conversation. That is uberslick. Yeah, I love that.
(01:38):
All right, let it dude,It's fine, Okay. Phone number is
triple eight, two, five,six, ten, eighty Home Audio,
all the stuff there's it's just amazingwhat you can do now. And there
was a time when you can doall stuff and it cost your fortune,
but now it doesn't cost you verymuch at all, and you get quality
results, which is boy, there'sa double edged sword. Yeah, let's
go to the telephones here in GrandPrairie, Texas. Hey, Doug,
(01:59):
are you there, sir, I'mhere Moni, sir, how are you
doing it all right? I've gota question or two, Yes, sir,
um. Windows has kind of takenthe Windows Media Center technology out of
there, uh operating system to Winten. Yeah, Windows eight and ten
neither one of them have the whatdo they call it? Windows Media Center?
(02:23):
The Windows Media Center has been expunged. How okay, what do you
what do you do for for audioand video? Well, I've got I've
stayed with Windows seven, yes sirand uh. And it's been really frustrating
with the with the push to geteverybody to go to Windows ten, because
every time you bate your computer,you've got to fight with the Windows ten
(02:46):
to keep it from its converting youautomatically or something. Yes, sir.
Anyway, that's that's another that's anotherissue. But I just wanted if there's
some better technology than Windows Media Centerthat I should consider trying to move to.
I look for number for quite afew years that trying to do it
with Linux, and I could neverfind something that I felt comfortable with.
(03:10):
But maybe there's some things that havecome on in the last few years,
and I just hadn't done a reviewof it for a while, and I
thought that might be a topic youpeople the bigger crack yet. Yeah,
Windows Media Center was nice because theyhad all sorts of things that you could
do, and after XP and seventhey've kind of kicked it out. But
the bad part is you always hadWindows Media Player sure, so you can
always play music, videos or whatever, and I think with ten they killed
(03:35):
it. It's not even there,so the only way you can keep it.
From my understanding, I could bewrong, but if you have seven
or something that has media Player alreadyon board and you do an upgrade,
it's supposed to carry over to ten. But if you have like ten straight
or you wipe everything off your driveand start off with a fresh ten,
there's no player. But there's acompany called Cyberlink that's been around a long
(04:00):
time and they have a DVD playerthat you can get from them and they'll
play audio and video. Um.I think they have some stuff similar to
the Media Center. Have to checkit, but they've been around with a
lot of different programs and players,even going back to the XP days.
I don't I don't never use WindowsMedia are very rarely. You said,
I'm just recording over the year oftelevision. Yeah, and you might check
(04:26):
a page that they make a lotof the TV How do you spell that?
H A U P page? Likea page New York I got.
I got four of their teams inone of the Chines and I've got the
four. Um, yeah, Iwould. I would check with them because
they're always, you know, doingtheir stuff and upgrading and moving along with
(04:46):
the with the OSS. They mighthave something that might be able to use.
But as far as like a directreplacement, I haven't. I haven't
seen anything, but I would thinka page would be a great place to
start. Okay, And one morething you you mentioned, and at least
I got the impression that you werereferring to the rather uh the rather sneaky
encouraging that Microsoft does for people togo to Windows ten back when it was
(05:09):
free, little pestering pop ups andstuff that downloads the OS for you.
Ready, you've had experience with that? Yes? Oh yeah, okay,
let me recommend something to you.UM go to uh GRC dot com slash
never ten and it's it's GRC thatI think I heard that from you once
and I did that, so I'vekind of gotta right now. Oh very
(05:32):
good. Then you're then you're squaredaway. That's a great uh. That's
a great uh. It's a wonderfultool Icon finally went away. I have
never understood why Microsoft would would takepeople that are obviously power users, that
are long term Windows folks and havenot gone to a Buntwo or whatever,
and would pester them, nag themand nanny them like that. I don't
(05:55):
understand it it of all, whateverreason they have for doing that, they
offend far more people than they've thanthey befriended. It was all. I
think what they were doing is theywere trying to set it up if their
operating systems more like a cell phone, so that contract everything you do,
and they were trying to trying tosell the data they would collect that way.
(06:15):
Operating systems do that and the oldones didn't. But it's just it's
just unfortunate to treat your entire yourentire clientele as some group of betas instead
of your power users and being niceto them because they've they've made you what
you are and you need their continuedbelief, subscription, and compliance. What
made me mad about it was thefact of do it now, I don't
(06:36):
want to do it. Do itnow, I don't want to do it,
And then I did the show withyou, and the next morning the
Dune thing went and did it onits own. That made me very angry,
and I had to pull everything backevery every time I had to get
an update to be you know,fifteen different things that were going to change,
I go to them one other timeand read the extra information about each
one of them. Is there anythingto do with upgrades? I just I've
(07:00):
hide it generally. And the shameis, you know, Microsoft is really
they've developed, they developed a verygood system for keeping computers update and protected,
and they did a great job ofthat, and then they stick this
commercial deal in it to sell yousomething that and if you don't want it,
okay, finding good. You'll getthere anyway. They're they're like the
undertaker. They can sign it eventuallyyears because they are you know, yeah,
sooner or later you're gonna have tocome and see me. I think
(07:23):
of why thank you were talking aboutswitching to boot throw, and I'm giving
that more serious consideration. I players, have you got anything like that?
It's a Media Center PC. Well, I've got to I've got an xp
UM. It's an old h Ithink it's an Asus um laptop at home
that I've revived. We found therestore disks, restored it, put Windows
(07:46):
Service Pack for in it, whichis the customer that makes Windows. Think
this is an ATM that's the runningon XP so it gets updates. It
still gets updates from from Microsoft.And I'm gonna I'm gonna put a Buntu
into it and see what I thinkof it, see if I can make
it work, right, because ifit does, I'm told that it's a
much faster operating system, even onsomething as old as a two gig XPIEN
(08:07):
system. So it's the operating system. I've used it a little bit and
I like it as good as Microsoft. Now. Now tell me by virtue
of you, you've you've had significantWindows experience and Buntu you can make sense
of it. Yes. Yeah,it's a little hard to get used to
the to the up to the commandline approach, you know, but you
(08:30):
finally catch onto it. It's nottoo bad. All right, that'll work,
mister duck, Thank you, sir. Good look at what's going on,
buddy. Let us know what luckyou have, would you please?
All right? Thanks? Sure,yes sir? Right, and by the
way, folks, stuff for oneof the reasons people like nuver ten.
It's only it's only eighty three K. It's a little bitty program and all
it does it doesn't really install anything, just makes a change and then wipes
itself out. You'll never know it'sthere. And I got it. I
(08:52):
got a hand to that Gibson guy. He knows his stuff. He's very
good. He's very good at whathe does. All right, Well,
mister mister Williams, what if weIs it okay to talk about Barnes and
Noble. Yeah, yeah, becauseone of the kinds of technology that I
really and truly love. Our booksand my lovely in talented wife and I
usually spend one weekend, maybe twoout of the month on a Friday,
(09:13):
we'll go out to eat, havefun, and we'll drop into our friendly
local Barnes and Noble and well we'llperuse, you know, all this printed
media and it's just really great tospend the evening reading and see all of
the back and forth traffic that goeson there. But we've noticed across the
last couple of years that there's beenthis this creeping change moving through Bonds and
Noble. Pardon me, the thethe couvery little nooks that they've had in
(09:37):
places to read different marks the storehave disappeared, one by one by one,
and they're used to. There wasa set of comfortable chairs over here,
some chairs over there, and nowthere's one. There are four upholstered
chairs, and that's it. Everythingelse of those hard back chairs with the
steel bottoms that they have in thecoffee shop, and that's it. Yep.
(10:00):
And there's some kind of creeping changerolling through there. I don't know
why, necessarily for those of youwho went to Barnes and Noble because Taylor's
bookstore was too was wasn't too friendly. It seems like Barnes and Noble's going
in the same direction. Touch onthat. Texas Overnight at seventeen past hour.
This is Texas Overnight with Charlie Joneson News Radio ten A d k
(10:24):
r l D Texas Overnight at twentyone after the hour. So make you
(10:45):
were just I was complaining about Facebook, I mean Facebook, about Barnes and
Noble, and you were nodding inwisdom. What do you see in there?
I'm seeing a lot of things.One, they're not doing too good.
How come well, seals have notbeen good? They just ousted their
CEO yesterday. Wait a minute,Wait a minute, didn't they just hire
him? Yeah? He had himin a year and it was amazing because
the family owns Barnes and Noble,and I think they're still in the stock
(11:09):
Exchange. And they asked him andput out this terse little press release saying,
well, he wasn't a good fitand this and that, and I
forget their name, was it Runsomething or other? But he was the
guy that was in charge of Applestores. And he left and went on
to J. C. Penny Yes, yeah, and made a whole mess
of that and a mess of pennies. Because pennies. I mean, he's
the one that took out the redapple sale and all that jazz. He
(11:31):
was Ron Johnson did so many ofthe My wife and my daughter loved those
those pennies. Yeah, the cuponsand stuff. It was the red apple
or the yellow banana whatever they calledit. Yeah, And they loved these
sales. And they did go andthey'd almost always come back with two or
three things. And when this guystarted, they first thing he changed the
store and the girls came back justcomplaining about it. Then they they changed
(11:52):
the stance, the store took intheir ads and I thought, man,
the Pennies is a chick store,and if you guys do this, and
he said, well, you knowthis, this is how that's how we
we've apped Apple. We're gonna doit. We're gonna bring modern day to
department stores. Many they screwed itup and the girls haven't been back.
Yeah, and they're still running ata loss. And they've went back to
their old CEO and J. C. Penny is still running a loss.
(12:15):
They're getting better, but they're havinga long time having to dig out of
that hole. This guy, yeah, and this guy is kind of number
two. When you think about whathappened with J. C. Penny,
that's what's happening with Barnes and Noble. And you're having an issue where you
don't have as much stuff. Peoplearen't coming like they used to. You
have kindle and e books now.You also, like you were talking about
(12:37):
with the coffee shops, you goand be friendly. And it's like there's
a fine line between being friendly,I guess in their eyes and freeloading because
like Starbucks, people go, theydrink coffee, they stay, they take
their notebooks or whatever. I've seenpeople go to Starbucks pretty much at five
o'clock and don't leave until close.People with no life, I understand,
yeah, and and they're happy withthat. That's what they do with some
(12:58):
of them go back. That's whyStarbucks was such a good fit for Barnes
Noble, because Barnes and Noble verymuch had that atmosphere and Starbucks Starbucks very
much added to that and make yourselfwelcome, make yourself comfortable, And at
the apex of that particular kind offriendliness, we almost always bought some stuff,
and we noticed that the amount ofwhat the actual purchasing we're doing is
(13:18):
steadily trailed off. The less friendlyof the store has gotten that and I
don't think they intended it to bethat way, but that's the way it
feels. Yea. And you canstill buy books there. But then the
problem you walk into places like that, and a lot of them that went
out of business before Barnes, likeBorders and even the I forget some of
the names. Don't forget Taylor's well, Taylor's books a million. And then
(13:39):
there was a lot of these guysthat were chains that were in malls that
are now gone. And the biggestproblem with him, was the books cost
so much versus going to a Walmartor something. But now you can also
buy a book and have it shippedto you practically for nothing from Amazon and
get a better price. And youdon't have to go get in the car,
you don't have to fight the traffic. It comes right to your door.
(14:01):
But you've got to be And somaking the book the bookstore a welcome
place made a lot of sense.Right as you wanted to be inviting,
you got to say, boy,I want to get away from the house.
I'm gonna go to the bookstore andgo hang out. And if you're
turning around and making it bad towhere we don't want you, then you're
not gonna go. And it's like, wow, screw and I'm gonna go
order it on Amazon. I'll makemy own coffee and read my own book.
Yeah, but that's one of thereasons that people tend to spend time
(14:22):
in stores and buy things. It'sbecause they feel welcome. That's how the
library works. Yeah, And there'sno reason that Barnes and Noble can't be
partly library because I've faced all thesegreat books and people have loved to read,
hang out, read a little bit. Just it's there's a there's a
general there's a cultural taste there thatis beginning to miss. That's a sad
thing because Barnes and Noble really usedto be a comfortable place and now it's
(14:46):
let's just say, for the Jonesfamily, it's no longer the destination it
once was. Ye and then they'vedepended on the Knook because they try to
compete with Kendall. I thought theywere going to blow off the Knook,
well, didn't I read that.I've heard stuff about the Knooks like they
weren't going to make it as bigas a presence. And then before that
they had worked up a deal withMicrosoft where Microsoft was going to come and
do the programming inside it and revampthe whole thing. So the Knook's been
(15:09):
kind of in play, but notin play. But still Amazon is constantly
evolving with the Kindle and all thedifferent models, and then you've got the
Kindle Fire and all these things andjust really eating their lunch. And so
that has not been good for themas far as trying to capture that market.
Well, that's interesting. They've gota lot of holes and if they're
not careful, they're going to gothe way of the Dodo like borders and
(15:31):
a lot of the others have.Yeah. Well, the one thing that
destruct Janelle and I, um,we go there strictly for the books,
you know. They also they gotall kinds of briefcases and in calendars and
all this other stuff. But whatstruck me are the toys. I especially
they were they had a very nicefour rotorum style drone camera, the whole
(15:52):
thing three hundred bucks. Wow.Now, who is going to go into
Barnes and Noble and drop three hundred, three hundred dollars on a drone that
there are better prices for it lswhere obviously I go to like HobbyTown USA
or something. It's just not thekind of thing you're dropping. Think I'll
just swing buy a Barnes and Nobleand buy me and buy me a jone
drone that I can read my ebooks. Yeah. And they've got all
these these plastic characters from from variousand sundry games. Yeah, and those
(16:17):
are collector items. Those can sell, Okay, but I don't. I
don't see Barnes and Noble as agamer location, right. But the other
problem with that is you used tohave a lot of comic bookstores that did
that, like Lone Star Comics sure, and Lone Star Comics believe it or
not, folded back in twenty twelve. Ye, they're all mail order now
and a lot of that collector stuff. The bookstores are taking that on because
people like to buy the Pokemon stuffand the Game of Thorns, and they've
(16:41):
got collectors of the Walking Dead andall these different shows and movies and whatever.
So it probably works a little moreat Christmas, but still they have
that there because people like to buythat kind of stuff, and there's not
many places left like the comic bookstoresto be able to pick up that that
market, you know, speaking ofmarkets, I've I've I've had an experience,
and I don't understand why it's happening. Are you? Are you beginning
(17:03):
to get more and more AD blockerthings. I was reading a piece.
I was reading a piece on Wiredand what I said about it was about
it was about the Chomebook two andbasically, if you have a Chromebook two
that you bought the last year,more than likely it'll be able to you'll
be able to go to the beforelong, go to the the Google store
and come on with all the theuh Android apps that you want, and
(17:25):
you're reading along on these all ofa sudden suddenly here's the thing with ad
blockers. We get it. Adsaren't what you're here for. We really
appreciate you pay us a dollar aweek for the advert and then and no,
I'm not going to pay you guysa dollar a week. I will
uninstall um you know ad stock whatwe're calling it this week. And what
is the big deal about ad blockI'm well, I could tell you some
(17:47):
stories about ad blockers and it reallydrives me nuts. Well, there's some
things going on in the background thatthey're not telling us about. And I
have a love hate relationship with themnow so perfect. So we got to
talk about that. So we're gonnacome back a bit of vitry all for
mister mc william. More vitriol allthe time. And if you've if you've
had the ad block issue and youfigured out something to do, or you've
had a relevant experience, it's tripleeight two eighteen. You're listening to Texas
(18:11):
Overnight with Charlie Jones on news radioten eight k r LD. So here's
the story, and by the way, welcome to Texas Over night at the
(18:33):
Tech Show for the third Thursday ofthe month. I'm there's a remarkable thing
going on that in a couple ofmonths, Chromebook is gonna make it possible
for you to go to the tothe Google Store and put together Android apps
(18:55):
for your Chromebook. And while I'mreading this, suddenly this thing pop up.
Here's the thing with ad blockers,and Nick, I gotta tell you,
it's driving me nuts. It says, put it on my list.
Will I do what they tell me? I go in, I click the
ad block hot com, I clickdon't run pages on this to Maine,
and then I reload the page andread about halfway down and it comes right
(19:17):
back. What's it? What doesit do? I there was a time
when you'd casually see this, butI'm seeing this. Here's the thing with
ad blockers all the time. Whyam I seeing this so much? Well?
Ad blockers are a great thing.They're free, you can download and
boil. Do they work. I'vegot them on almost every piece of equipment
I have. I love them forFacebook because it knocks out all the ads
(19:37):
I have to scroll through all ofthis stuff. But things are happening.
They're figuring out now, like WhenI go to Forbes, they can see
I'm running an ad blocker, andForbes will come up with a little wisdom
before the day and then flip youover into the article, and before it
flips it goes, oh, Isee that you're using an ad blocker.
We would really appreciate it that youturn your ad blocker off when using or
(20:00):
put you on your white list.But then what's funny is you go back
and you do it again. Itsees it, and then it gets terse
oh, I see you're still usingan ad blocker. We really wish And
now I'm like, you know what, I think I'll read this article from
somewhere else, because all I gottado is go through Google News and there's
seven or eight different other people thataren't giving me your crap, and I
(20:21):
get the same information but in adifferent place, a different article. Yeah.
But now I found out a couplemonths ago there was a thing in
the news that ad blocker is good. It is so good. It is
really hacking off all of these sitesand companies. And what they're doing now
is they're going to ad blocker andsay, hey, we'll give you some
cash onto the table if you don'tblock us. These companies are paying ad
(20:45):
blocker not to block them and thengive us a hard time. Yeah.
I believe part of the problem maybethat you're trying to block a site that
has paid not to be blocked.And Facebook is nuts because you know,
Facebook loves beveraging you with ads andall this stuff they're doing now, and
ad blocker works so wonderfully on Facebook. And so Facebook's been having this cat
(21:08):
and mouse game with the ad blockers. They turn around and redo their algorithms,
and one day you come up inFacebook. Boom, there is everybody.
All the ads are there, andthen add blockers will come in and
go, oh you change your algorwayof them. Hang on a minute,
Boola boop, and now it's blockedagain, and maybe a couple days will
go by. All sudden the adsare there. So they're playing this cat
(21:30):
and mouse back and forth that theychange the algorithm, they match, change
the algorithm match And this has beengoing on for some time. Wow.
Yeah, And I thought, youknow a lot of ad blockers you see
is kind of like, oh,pay me and we'll block. They really
don't block, or you really gotto get down and dirty with them and
put every single thing in Yes towhitelist. But ad blocker has done an
(21:52):
excellent job. It automatically updates,They automatically take care of everything for you
in the background. Yes, theyadd more stuff the black list, and
it's been great and now it's gottentoo great, and I'm surprised lawsuits haven't
been filed yet. This is interesting. I did my white list to let
me read Wired for the umteenth time. It came right back. And just
(22:15):
for the heck of it, Iwent to Privacy Badger, which I had
forgotten I'd put on this on thisChrome page, and I turned off Privacy
Badger's page and suddenly when everything's backup, So it wasn't just it wasn't
just ad blocker, although that's whatthey thought. It was privacy Badger as
well, which is it was checkstrackers. Wow, who to think that?
And when you use tunnel bear,you know that you get I've been
talking about to watch other sites.Yes, you can use the US feed
(22:37):
and it shreds cookies, any cookiesthat throws two. It just shreds nice.
So that's even for that alone.If you like really private stuff,
it's a great thing to use,all right, that'll work, okay,
folks, Phone number triple eight twofive eighty. This is always the short
break at the bottom of the hour. Gary and fort Worth, Sir,
you are on deck and he's gota v A VHS question. This ought
to be interesting, So Gary,hang on a second, body, we
(23:00):
will come right to you, andboys and goes, we'd like to join
us. It's a triple eight twofive sixteen eighty and at some point in
the next hour or so I willtrot out to you be basically saying the
South if if your kids are goingback to school. There are a lot
of chromebooks out there that won't thatthis won't work with. But before too
long, millions of Android apps willbe available on your chromebook and folks,
(23:22):
that's going to change chromebook completely.It's gonna make touch screens important for some
of that, but for the mostpart, the marriage of Android and chromebooks,
that's gonna be something back and justdoing it. This is Texas Overnight
with Charlie Jones on News Radio teneighty k r LD. Come on Texas
(23:52):
Overnight, Good morning, Welcome back, Jones. Here long with mister McWilliams
on the phones. We go thistime in Cowtown. Hey Gary, are
you there, sir? Yes,sir, welcome, start to Texas over
and I what's up? Thank you, thank you. I like a lot
of people, I have hours andhours of VHS family videos convert to digital.
I used to do this years agowith an old XP computer, but
I haven't done it in many years. And I keep looking out there and
(24:15):
saying, well, let's see wherethe technology is at today. But the
key is I find a lot ofthem that will take it and convert it
to digital, but will not letme add it is the one you guys
recommend. Wow, it's a goodquestion. I haven't seen anything of late.
Well, it looks looks like ifif it converts it to digital,
(24:36):
and I guess, I guess you'reseeing it on the screen as a wave
for him right right, and you'relooking for you to make but you need
to be able to see the screenwhile you do you do video edits,
Yes, sir, that's a goodquestion. Man. I can't think of
a system I've ever seen that.I mean, transcribing is easy because they've
got automatic limitters and all this otherstuff built in, But as far as
(24:56):
actually choppin' mop, don't know,well, there was a lot of kids.
I've seen their like forty nine dollarscome with software and it's a box
and cables that allows you to hookthe VCR directly into the back of the
computer, and it's supposed to havesome kind of editing software. One of
the things that drives me nuts aboutstuff, especially if your tape is older,
it's very grainy, and when youtry to go through and edit it
(25:18):
and put it into digital form,it's really greeny. And there's this software
I've been trying to find for years. It may have been taken off the
market because basically it was just toodarn good. There was a piece of
software called Video Soap and it usedto come i think with Correll stuff because
Carrel had a lot of editors andstuff back then. Yeah, And basically
what it did was it took yourvideo and cleaned it up in real time,
(25:41):
and they showed it before and afterand you'd have a kind of a
haze to the videos and it wouldclean it up and made it nice and
bright and everything. And it camewith some of their cards and some of
the software, and then they soldit on their own. And I've never
been able to find it, andevery time I try to do a search
on its almost like it's classified.How do you like that? Yeah,
(26:03):
so there's still some companies out therethat do that and probably have to look
around. I will continue searching.I'll probably go. Let me ask you
this, what kind of what kindof VCR are you using to play the
tape back on? Well, Ihaven't plugged it in in a couple of
years, so it's an old Sonystereo VCR. Okay, time it was
high end when I had it.How is it's tracking? Well, once
(26:26):
again, I haven't used it solong, I have no idea. Okay,
Well, if you have problems withlet me deplute the inn alo something.
If you have to replace it,go up on eBay and look for
Mitsu Bitsy VCRs and there's a VCR. I have one myself, and I
can't remember what the model number itis. But they were about a thousand
dollars back in the day. Andwhat was amazing about them was they claim
(26:48):
because you know, when you takea tape and you record on a VCR
and you stick in another VCR,no matter what you do, you can
never get it to track right.It depends on the VCR. Some VCRs
adjust they're biased tracking well and othersdon't. Right. Well. This thing
claims that it can lock onto thesignal track or the control track on the
tape and brings it out rock solid, no matter what tape, what machine,
No kidding, And so I boughtone of these, and I'm going
(27:11):
to add it into my system here, hopefully in the coming months. But
if you do have problems with it, look for it, because that was
their claim to fame. It's oneof the reasons it was VHS Super VHS
hi Fi. I mean, brushyour teeth, but the cat out.
But you can find these things nowfor under one hundred dollars. Wow.
Cleaner input gives you a much betteroutput once you convert it certain right,
(27:32):
and then if you've got something thatwill keep the track solid, then of
course it's going to look great.And you don't have the little track lines
and stuff and the horizontal bars.No, Gary, that's one thing I
never thought about. For most ofus, the VHS is of our families
and our parents and our grandparents andall this other stuff that we've acquired across
the years. You acquire the tapes, but you don't acquire the players they
were made on, and as aresult, it may have looked great Granddad's
(27:55):
player, and it may look likestink on the one that you've got to
dub it from, because the headarrangement, the tracking arrangement, the sensors.
I mean, so much of thatwas proprietary back in the day.
And some of them were metal gears, and then some of them were belts,
and then they got cheap. Theyhave this little donut wheel that flips
back and forth, and those thingsshave all the plastic off and the rubber
(28:15):
and gets really bad. Have anice day, all right, Gary,
sir? Anything else, No,sir, I appreciate you very much.
Some one of these guys that finallyhit the age or sixty five next month
and will retire, and I havelots of time to do these things and
wanting to do for years. Congratulations, man, well done. Let us
know how it goes well. AndI've got five hundred cassettes sitting in boxes,
(28:36):
so if you ever want to takea crack at him, oh jeez,
I think I have years and yearsin my library, so I'll be
Gary, take care of sols.Thank you, Texas over night at forty
six past the hour. I'll neverdie because I've got to work on those.
He can't die. He's only onthe Didn't that what the George Mercer's
to say? He was just waitingfrom all the rest of them to die
(28:56):
so we can have everything. It'sright, all right, So we've mean,
we've come in a bunch of stufftonight. I've got that the stuff
on the conebook thing coming up postit's it's it's pretty remarkable. And by
the way, i'd forgotten night installedprivacy Badger. Once I turned privacy Badger
off on the wired side of worksfine, and I gotta thank you.
Wasn't it nice? But I can'tbelieve that ad Backer wants me to contribute
(29:18):
a dollar or more. Just howmuch do you feel like contributing? None?
Yeah, they have a thing withPayPal where they say, you know,
if you use this police contribute andyou can or you can't. But
I have a real hard time.It's like, I don't mind contributing,
but if you're taking money under thetable to have people not block them,
why should I pay you money tocreate the software and keep it going?
(29:41):
There we go? Are you upto speed at all? On the self
driving car nonsense a little bit wet. We had to touch on that because
I'm reading a piece here than inLovely Helsinki, Finland. Love At this
time of year, I'm sure Helsinkiis introducing self driving buses onto their city
streets in the next couple of weeks. Have you seen the Chinese bust they're
testing. No, the thing isthe size of a freeway and it carries
(30:07):
all these people and it goes alonglike a monorail, but the cars that
are on the freeway run underneath it. Really, it is huge, and
they've been they've been doing preliminary tests. They've got a digital video of it
that shows how it's run, andthey've been doing their first test on It's
fantastic Texas. That sounds so bizarre. Yeah, yeah, you're listening to
(30:27):
Texas Overnight with Charlie Jones on newsRadio ten d k r l D Texas
(30:53):
Overnight at FIP two one f theRM. Let me just get a get
a bit of personality off of youhere, Buddy, the CEO of Ford.
On Monday gave a press conference wherehe was saying that Ford plans to
have cars with no steering wheel andno pedals for twenty one twenty twenty two.
Google has already said there their targetis twenty eighteen. Uh, Tesla
(31:14):
and Ford and Toyota and GM,they're all on the same page about this.
And I'm just wondering, your bigtech guy, what's it going to
take for you to get in abus or a cab kind of like Uber
and minus the driver, Oh,ziza, is that going to be a
big, big hill for you?Do you have that kind of confidence?
Never just like that. Like doctorMcCoy has a problem with transporters, I
(31:40):
have a problem with travel as cars. I find it amazing that all the
biggies are talking about about shared ownership. Our car is going to be that
expense. I can't imagine that wehave a system that can without a gigantic
amount of investment in the infrastructure,that could can run all the cars.
I mean, think about rush hourin any large Texas or US city.
(32:02):
I mean, is there going tobe the ram? Is there going to
be the bandwidth and every car isgoing to have to have its own transponder?
Yep, And then you've gone allof these cars you gotta keep track
of. We already have an issuenow where you know, they have internet
in the cars, and you gotall these cars running around picking up Pandora
and all this stuff, running downthe towers, and you know, then
(32:23):
you got to take that information andrun it through satellite, run it through
the towers. But the thing thatI always have is I don't like flying.
And I don't like flying mainly becauseof the security and everything. And
I can get in the car andI can drive, sure, But one
of the things I like is thatif I'm going to crash, I'm behind
the wheel and not the pilot.That's the main reason I like driving,
(32:43):
is if I'm gonna crash, Ican grab the wheel and try to you
know, avert. Well, that'sthat's what I was asking. I mean
when when Ford says we anticipate vehiclesthat are that are completely autonomous with no
steering wheel and no pedals. Yeah, by twenty twenty two, come on,
guys, and I go out betweenhere and tex Ar Canna. I'm
getting ready to go to Arkansas thisweekend. Yeah. And there's that stretch
(33:06):
you know where it is down bythe Pilgrim's plant. It's a good mile
from pilot Point or whatever it is, right up to about New Boston.
There is no service at and TT Mobile whatever. God, I hope
you don't have to call Triple Abecause you've got a long walk, because
you're not going to call Triple A. That's right. Now. Imagine being
in an area like that and you'vegot no signal for this thing. There
is a place between Lake Charles andJasper which is it's completely signals. Yeah
(33:30):
there unless now maybe if you hada large external intent on the car and
maybe a three watt amp, maybeyou could. You could you could snag
a tower, but I don't thinkso. Yeah, in places like that,
you know something satellite is about theonly thing that's going to work.
And the thing that strikes me aboutthis if if what they're then the guys
at GM and Ford, the bigguys are saying, look, we they're
(33:51):
not saying that that Uber. Thisis Uber without the driver, but that's
what they're thinking. What's the pointgoing to be of having a Ford or
a or a Chevy or a Mercedesor a Porsche If all you're gonna do
is get in some little tin canwith no steering wheel and no no pedals
and get behind some other little featurelesstin can and you read the paper,
or you you play on the wayor whatever, all the way to work.
(34:12):
What's the point. You might aswell take the bus. You know,
when they talk about multiple ownership,it sounds like the bus. Yeah.
And a car like a Portia orJag or some kind of sports car.
The whole point of owning that thingis driving it. It is the
freedom, that's right, driving bythe seat of your pants. Of course,
now it's got GPS and everything init, but back in the day,
well, but the thing about itis to go down through a set
(34:35):
of curves that you know we're there, and you go snorting down there just
a little too hot, and havingone of those seat of the pants moments.
You come out, oh man,that was great, the cars not
making any expensive noises, and youcome back refreshed, thrilled, recreated.
And this this idea of a robotmechanical highway, I'll tell you what I
think about that when I'm driving intowork at night. Then the Dallas Fort
(34:57):
Worth airy folks, they have justfinished up This express line used to be
the hov lane. Well now it'sthe express, say, and you can
pay money to be on it.The only problem is it's one lane wide,
so you can only go as fastas the guy ahead of you.
And if he decides to drive atfifty five and text or he's listening to
Beethoven or something, he's off inanother world and he's doing about fifty,
(35:19):
then guess what your express lane.That's going to be your experience because it's
completely turned by the guy ahead ofyou. And it reminds me that old
thing that you see on the sideof the igloo. Unless you're the lead
dog, the view never changes.And who I try to imagine charging for
this express lane when you you cango sixty if the guy had a views
going sixty, stay out for thethree lanes where you have control of your
(35:43):
life. Who's going to pay forthis express Have you seen the trick they're
doing now? Used to be likesix thirty five you have the text press,
yeah, and you could go seventymiles an hour. Sure, Well
then they decided, now we're goingto kick you down to sixty five,
and if you want to go seventy, you're gonna pay for it. And
I guess a bunch of people complainedand they say, Okay, you're gonna
stay seventy, but if you godown the text press. Now you can
do seventy five, and I'm like, I Am not paying extra to do
(36:06):
seventy miles an hour, no way, And then they changed that up and
it was like, good, nowI do my seventy and you guys go
do what you want to do.The thing that I find interesting, Texas
has always had the finest, someof the finest freeways in the country because
we had petroleum, and by virtueof the petroleum taxes and all this other
stuff, Texas has always been ableto build what it needed when it needed,
(36:27):
and we would take our time andbuild the things up as necessary.
Now suddenly we have all these tollways. I know, we have more
money in the kitty from fracking andall the additional confirmed reserves that we know
that we have, and suddenly drivingon Texas highways has become enormously expensive.
Where's the money going? The statedoesn't need a state's making plenty. We'll
(36:47):
tell you what scares me. They'redoing a pilot program in California because they
claim that jacking up the tax andthe gasolene is not getting it done.
So now they want you to payper mile that you drive and They've got
these guys with special computers that pluginto their O B D two and track
where they are and then they payfor whatever amount of mileage that they drive.
(37:08):
And I think there's also a testprogram in Connecticut. There's somewhere up
in the Northeast they're also doing it. And that scares me because I like
driving. I like having the freedomto drive and have somebody tell me,
oh, we're going to tax youfor mile Well, you know, there
may be a solution. Learn tospeak German and go talk to the guys
the advised Volkswagen on their on theiremissions test and you can probably you can
(37:30):
probably jiggle the numbers all you want, say, this thing never left zero?
What's up? There's an app forthat. Yeah, that's right.
I have Infinity my leedge make Ifpeople want to contact you, well,
what should they do? Please sir? Well, then go over to my
Facebook page, which is Facebook dotcom, slash cyberline net cyb E R
L I N E N E tall one word and I join up.
We'll be through the month until thenext show. We'll keep up with stuff
(37:52):
and also we've got links to stuffwe talked to about tonight. Well,
sir, that'll work just fine.Let's see the next month. Let me
look forward in time here, thatshould be the fifteenth of September. Yeah,
the anniversary of Lost in Space premieringfar out. Yeah, mister mc,
thank you, sir, You're mostwelcome. All right, buddy,
ladies and gentlemen, and just meremoments. So there's all kinds of stuff
to cover tonight, and we willbegin that coverage in just mere moments on
(38:15):
these Texas State Network stations. You'reright back
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