4 ms·

You include it but with no mention of it. Allow recoding to be activated with an obscure undocumented button push. Leave a subtle hong somewhere that someone c

You include it but with no mention of it. Allow recoding to be activated with an obscure undocumented button push. Leave a subtle hong somewhere that someone clever can find out. Wait for news of the functionality to go viral and additional products to walk off the shelf bought by people who feel clever.

ben_w 4mo ago
More likely to go viral in that case, a headline saying "Walkmans sometimes record over your tapes!" When I was about 10, someone lent the school a tape of Holst's The Planets for a school play, one of the other students pressed the record button, and shortly thereafter the teacher played to the class a recording of me shouting "no stop" as I rushed for the stop button having seen what they'd done just a moment too late. Now imagine that happening by undocumented feature, where nobody knows it would happen before it does.
- alnwlsn 4mo ago
  I thought that's what the little breakaway tabs on the bottom of the cassette are for Though I'll admit, when I used to use cassettes, I never write protected them
  - dpark 4mo ago
    This story probably involves a cassette that someone copied at home and then didn’t break off that little tab.
    - ben_w 4mo ago
      I hope so, though my memory was it was in an official-looking cassette box. Music back then wasn't cheap.
    - deleted 4mo ago
      [deleted]
  - burningChrome 4mo ago
    My next door neighbor was a few years older than me and was constantly showing me all kinds of nefarious stuff. One thing he showed me was if you tape over the tab on cassettes, you can erase and re-record what you want on them. One time my older sister and I got into a fight and to get back at her, I erased side A of her Michael Jackson's Thriller cassette she had just gotten a few weeks prior. She got it replaced at the music store and the salesperson was completely befuddled by the entire situation. That one day the music was there and the next day just gone? Inconceivable! I just played stupid at the time, but felt like a god knowing that little trick. So, sorry sis. But John C, you were the man.

ben_w 4mo ago

More likely to go viral in that case, a headline saying "Walkmans sometimes record over your tapes!" When I was about 10, someone lent the school a tape of Holst's The Planets for a school play, one of the other students pressed the record button, and shortly thereafter the teacher played to the class a recording of me shouting "no stop" as I rushed for the stop button having seen what they'd done just a moment too late. Now imagine that happening by undocumented feature, where nobody knows it would happen before it does.

alnwlsn 4mo ago
I thought that's what the little breakaway tabs on the bottom of the cassette are for Though I'll admit, when I used to use cassettes, I never write protected them
- dpark 4mo ago
  This story probably involves a cassette that someone copied at home and then didn’t break off that little tab.
  - ben_w 4mo ago
    I hope so, though my memory was it was in an official-looking cassette box. Music back then wasn't cheap.
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
- burningChrome 4mo ago
  My next door neighbor was a few years older than me and was constantly showing me all kinds of nefarious stuff. One thing he showed me was if you tape over the tab on cassettes, you can erase and re-record what you want on them. One time my older sister and I got into a fight and to get back at her, I erased side A of her Michael Jackson's Thriller cassette she had just gotten a few weeks prior. She got it replaced at the music store and the salesperson was completely befuddled by the entire situation. That one day the music was there and the next day just gone? Inconceivable! I just played stupid at the time, but felt like a god knowing that little trick. So, sorry sis. But John C, you were the man.