I was there too and it was unbelievably awesome for a kid of 10.

Not much left nowadays but the globe. Some of the exhibits were packed up and sent to Disney World. I know for sure the Pepsi Small World and the GE Home of Tomorrow in which the audience revolved around I think four stages depicting home technology through the ages. We took the kids to D-world a few years ago and they had just closed the home of tomorrow -those damn small world things were still singing though!

For me the fair took the Space Age off the TV and out of Nat Geo and made it real.

Huge bummer they're all lunch.

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20080301/note13.asp

There's always been an "Emperor's New Clothes" kind of mystique around audiophile gear. My favorites are the NoName Resonance Absorbing Balls (made of pendula wood!) http://www.nonamehifi.com/ShoppingNrab.php

and the ever popular "cable lifters" http://www.nonamehifi.com/ShoppingLifters.php.

I think these must be a joke (like my own Lirpa 1 Wireless Cable http://www.bstock.com/Lirpa1.htm.)

Now for extra credit visit a High Def television facility, where frequencies are well into the megaHertz, and count the gold connectors. You can stop at zero because there are none. Gold offers no advantage even at those frequncies which are way higher than audio. Yet you will often see people coming home with a 2K plasma screen and 300 bucks worth of cable -cables the cable guy will give you for free if you just ask him!

The point is not if gold is theoretically better than nickel -heck, it is! It's whether gold is audibly better at audible frequencies. It ain't even close.

As to how the stores make their money, it's the same way printer companies do -it's not the printer it's the ink. Audio joints make money on the accessories and the install and exclusive dealerships where it's hard for you to shop the price. I'll humbly beg to differ with one poster on the notion that speakers are not profitable -the dealer margin is usually 50% so even discounting they are getting 25-30% and that's respectable.

In the store's defense I'll say that the good old hifi store of yesteryear with knowledgeable salespeople had a hard time making any money when people picked their brains and then went to Best Buy to make the purchase. Most are gone.

As to the idea that you should purchase better cables to avoid corrosion; might I suggest continuing to use lamp cord but simply replacing it at the first sign of corrosion. Or, even cheaper, cut off an inch at each end and restrip it to the shiny new copper that's most certainly underneath the insulation. If you add a foot at each end on the initial install you could probably use the cables till you die.

Second hand analog linear is dirt cheap and even though I sell this old stuff for a living you are a cretin (nothing personal) if you even consider old cuts or AB roll systems for "My First Video Editor" -or even your tenth. You are most definitely better off buying a Mac and Final Cut.

Video aside though, The demise of knobs and sliders over the past coupla decades has been very sad to see -and not just for the nostalgia factor. Pro video gear, and I'm sure pro controllers in any field, tend to be positively festooned with knobs and sliders (the secret, BTW, to their inherent coolness) because you just need to get at stuff quickly without blowing through menus designed by engineers.

I know that many folks (well me anyway) would like a few knobs and sliders on their laptop and PC keyboard that they can assign functions to (like maybe volume!). I've seen a few USB knobs out there like the Griffen PowerMate, but for 45 bucks -Heywood Jablome.

A simple few knobular controllers and a slidey thing or two on a keyboard -well, I'm surprised they haven't just been there all along. For this I'll give the Xeno an honorable mention even though in the pro video world the poor thing'll soon evaporate like the infamous Sony Vidimagic projector.

Dr. Lirpa would be proud.

And who can forget the godfather of clear thinking, Rudolf Flesch, author of The Art of Clear Thinking, How to Write Speak and Think Effectively and Why Johnny Can't Read among many others.

I treasure my 70's paperback editions, now dog eared and falling apart, for the tremendous difference they made in my life. They are dated with references to WWII and early TV shows but they are simply golden.

Flesch was also the guy who came up with the readability test which is enshrined, ironically, in uber-bloatware Microsoft Word.

When I signed up that's what it said and they noted it might even be a day or two.

I find it charming that the choice for age on the Tor signup has a choice for age ranges

1-11
12-17
18-30
30+

(old man voice) Why, young whippersnappers, I was reading SciFi before you were born.

Always wanted to say that.

During WWII B.F Skinner trained pigeons to peck at pictures of ships on a tiny screen. The pigeons could discriminate between friendly and enemy ships. A contact on their beak and a grid of gold wire on the screen were hooked to a guidance system for a missle the hapless birds were to ride in.

This avian kamikaze project ever got off the ground, er, so to speak.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon