"We've got it on tape"

[Boyd Ostroff]

Don't touch that dial - keep it set right here at DVInfo.net!

[Greg Smith]

My favorite expression, which I still hear regularly at the local radio stations, is to "cut a tape." It's a pretty fine linguistic achievement to capture two generations of obsolete recording technologies in a single three word phrase.

[Doug Jensen]

"Rewind", "check tape", "shutter angle", "overcrank", and "undercrank" have no relevance anymore.
And why do we continue to use "Non-Linear Editor (NLE). The last linear editing system disappeared more than 30 years ago, so why should we make the distinction anymore? "VE" for "Video Editor" makes more sense.

I'm sure there are dozens of other outdated terms if someone spent a few minutes thinking about it.

[David Banner]

hahah. this brings back memories. Back in the early 90s we had a saying "better get it on film" because my friends were always telling me stories of all the wild escapes and car stunts they were doing and usually not capturing the footage of it. I soon realized this was incorrect and started saying "get it on tape" because we were shooting videotape.
Now all these years later I still hear people say they are going to "cut" a spot and "roll" cameras. Sometimes someone would tell me they were filming a movie or making a film and I'd ask, are you shooting on 35mm? Answer was always no.
I often hear the term "video taping" used still today when they are recording on solid state media, haha.

Anyway today I say "recording" or "shooting" instead of filming. And call TV shows "shows" and motion pictures "movies" instead of films since hardly anything is shot on film anymore. It doesn't bother me that other people use the wrong terms. I just try not to

[Boyd Ostroff]

Quote of the day, from Senator Dick Durbin on CNN:

"We're living in a videotape world."

[Doug Jensen]

Reminds me of this one. Senators are not exactly our best and brightest . . .

"The Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material" -- Senator Ted Stevens

[Vince Pachiano]

Hey you kids, get off my lawn

[Allan Black]

Just wait till the USA changes to the metric system, then the fun’ll start. When we did in Aust., the Govt. was understandably very concerned that our new Dollars and Cents money system was completely understood, so we could all buy stuff to live.

One of our clients had the Govt. metric adv. contract and for 6 months we were driven nuts recording jingles, radio spots and soundtracks for their ads. I can still hear the theme, ‘On the 14th February 1966’ to the 0z folk tune, Click go the Shears.

The only other new important metric changeover was MPH to KPH. 0z did it at midnight July 1st 1974 after all the major road signs had been changed over.

Inches, feet, yards, miles, ounces, pounds, tons etc. came last. Even now older folk have trouble and use that Imperial system, kids can’t understand them.

Cheers.

[Andrew Smith]

A while ago Ch 9 in Australia once promoted an event as being on "direct delay". I think that meant they had it on tape for replay at its late night timeslot.

Only ever saw them use "direct delay" in a promo once.

Andrew

[Jim Michael]

USA made a weak attempt to switch to metric some time ago, 60s or 70s. Didn’t go well.

[Boyd Ostroff]

Originally Posted by Allan Black

Just wait till the USA changes to the metric system, then the fun’ll start.

I have been waiting for over 70 years and really doubt that it will ever happen in my lifetime. Spent a career working with people from other countries and mentally convert between systems, I would be very happy to make the switch.

When I was a kid in school, we kept hearing that the US would switch but it obviously never happened. Norman Blake, a bluegrass musician that I like, mentioned this in a song back in the 70's

Inches, feet, miles and yards
Is changin' all around,
A meter's what you put your money in
When you park downtown.

[Steve Game]

We've been a metric nation officially since about 1980 and by intent since 1962. Despite that there are still many adults who were born well after 1980 who claim that they don't understand metric measurement, and they don't like buying goods in 454gm packets or fluids in 568ml bottles.
I quite happily flip between metric and imperial measurements (obviously not with precision except at cardinal points) despite having learnt imperial measure for most of my school years, consequently having my brain hard-wired into visualising in feet and inches (i.e.100mm still looks like four inches to me).
Something that is a problem with metric is the misleading (and not strictly legal) use of the centimetre and it's derivatives. The SI system stated that we use millmetres and metres (plus microns and kilometres) yet many retailers and hence their lay customers insist on centimetres because they have difficulty in multiplying by10.
Strangely though, they don't talk about 3 1/2 cm film!

[Greg Miller]

My present peeve is going to Lowe's (a big box store) and buying a box of 8-32 screws and nuts, all made in the third world somewhere. Yes, the screws are really #8 diameter and 32 threads per inch, and they mate properly with the nuts. But the outside measure of the hex nuts is *not* any US fractional size. So they will *not* fit any standard US nutdriver or socket wrench. Someone please tell those folks in East Slobenia that you do *not* use metric size nuts with US size screws.

I can remember (back in the '60s?) when some US equipment came out with 1/8" connectors, which are 3.175mm diameter. They do *not* mate properly with 3.5mm connectors. Yet a lot of people still call the mini size 1/8 inch, even though they really are 3.5mm now. Try convincing someone that the difference is significant.

In the US, land surveyors use feet and hundredths of feet. Of course 1/8" = 1/96 foot, not quite the same as 1/100. I don't know whether surveyors still use "rods," "chains," and furlongs as units of length. (In physics class, I sometimes turned in my homework answers in "furlongs per fortnight" just to annoy the prof.) US military surveyors divide a circle into 400 grads and centigrads, rather than 360 degrees, minutes, and seconds. Go figure ...

[Allan Black]

I always think the classic is, when Airbus was building the first A380, the French built the fuselage and the Germans built the tail.

When they delivered the tail, it wouldn’t fit because the French used one computer program and the Germans used another. Company officials said the head of the A380 program, Charles Champion, sought to persuade the managers of the Hamburg design shops of Airbus to adopt the French software for use with the A380 as early as 2001.

He met a wall.

German engineers preferred to work with an older design software made by a U.S. company, Computervision. The program had been the gold standard of industrial design tools in the 1980s but was only capable of producing two-dimensional blueprints.

"It was partly a question of national pride," said Williams. "The German engineers sort of felt that there was a French solution being imposed on them. But the fact was, there was a tool being used in Hamburg that was behind the times."

Bet Boeing got a laugh out of that one.

Cheers.

[Doug Jensen]

Back in 1999 NASA lost a $125-million Mars Climate Orbiter because engineers failed to convert from English to metric measurements when exchanging vital data before the craft was launched. Oops.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-...288-story.html