"Things used to work in this country. This is the stock complaint of the Baby Boomers, and if you are lucky enough to inherit a piece of their technology, you may find yourself agreeing"
This point is key, I could name many devices that I own that are faulty or buggy when they left the factory, and or have short operational lives, and or whose ergonomic design is just terrible—unacceptably bad. This stuff isn't engineered, rather it's just thrown together. From my perspective the problem is of epidemic proportions.
Take software for instance, manufacturers have even trained the population at large to not expect it to work as specified when first out of the box, and that bugs a just a normal condition of the product.
But why is it that no one bothers to complain?
Perhaps after all we—the lay public—are really dumb and stupid in that we've actually let ourselves be so manipulated in recent decades.
Before we can fix the problem we need to know exactly how we were manipulated into this mess in the first instance.
Also, I agree with you with some buts - as someone who has lots of vintage electronics, I'm not sure thats 100% true - cheap consumer products always had issues - the higher end gear came with a good manual and an errata sheet - so I dont think its new. The lack of repairability, is a frustration point, but its also a function of the price of the goods being so much lower, if you want repairable stuff, it will cost more, and thats the trade off.
That however is not why I slid into this comment - you replied to me some weeks ago about your time with RCA, but alas, I didn't catch it until it was out of of the reply window. I really enjoyed reading it, and you're a great writer, you could write a book - or should blog if you were interested.
You mentioned AWA which made me think about something, the product I work on was originally developed by AWA, which became someone else, which became someone else, and eventually we acquired it.
I'd love to chat more, if you're amiable, feel free to send me an email at aloha <at> blastpuppy <dot> com.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 14.9 ms ] threadThis point is key, I could name many devices that I own that are faulty or buggy when they left the factory, and or have short operational lives, and or whose ergonomic design is just terrible—unacceptably bad. This stuff isn't engineered, rather it's just thrown together. From my perspective the problem is of epidemic proportions.
Take software for instance, manufacturers have even trained the population at large to not expect it to work as specified when first out of the box, and that bugs a just a normal condition of the product.
But why is it that no one bothers to complain?
Perhaps after all we—the lay public—are really dumb and stupid in that we've actually let ourselves be so manipulated in recent decades.
Before we can fix the problem we need to know exactly how we were manipulated into this mess in the first instance.
That however is not why I slid into this comment - you replied to me some weeks ago about your time with RCA, but alas, I didn't catch it until it was out of of the reply window. I really enjoyed reading it, and you're a great writer, you could write a book - or should blog if you were interested.
Also, on the RCA Electro Optics Handbook, there is a PDF online - https://www.ok1rr.com/tubes/burle/Electro-Optics-Handbook.pd...
You mentioned AWA which made me think about something, the product I work on was originally developed by AWA, which became someone else, which became someone else, and eventually we acquired it.
I'd love to chat more, if you're amiable, feel free to send me an email at aloha <at> blastpuppy <dot> com.