Is that the new version of 'in five years'?

I predict that 'in two years' they'll announce that they 'still have a few details to work out' and that it will be released 'in (the) next year's model'.. and so on..

MATERIAL quality of the 1-hour tapes, not RECORDING quality, goddamnit..

You're reading WAY too much into two words here ('broadcast quality'). They were 'broadcast quality' because they were 1-hour tapes, not the typical garden-variety 2-hour tapes, the tape itself was thicker and overall higher quality than consumer-grade VHS tapes, and they weren't cheap when I bought them; the 'broadcast quality', if you're not getting it still, referred to the material quality of the tapes (better quality tape itself, better quality shell, better quality tape-path components within the shell, etc), not in any way, shape, or form referring to improvement of recording quality (which is impossible, VHS is VHS.

If the overall quality is a high priority to you then why not get a decent video capture device and do it yourself? By the way, if it's all on analog video tape like VHS, isn't it going to have degraded somewhat all by itself over time anyway? I've still got some VHS tapes I recorded myself that are at least 10 years old, and a high-end Sony VCR I kept (used to have two) and even though they were brand-new 'broadcast quality' tapes recorded at 2-hour speed, they really don't look all that great now. Honestly if it were I, and it was that important, I'd get a good video capture device, capture it all to the most uncompressed format I could, and do the editing myself.

First of all I'm not 'terrified' of anything at the moment because there is so far as I know no imminent threat, I'm pissed off at these people who act worse than wild animals. I'm also pissed off at people with their heads in the sand/wearing rose-colored glasses who think we should just stay in our little corner of the world and let every group of assholes out there do whatever they want so long as it's not on U.S. soil. As much as I wish we lived in a world where that could be the way of things, the fact of the matter is the world is too small for that sort of thinking anymore, and as I keep on saying: It's WAY too late to just pull in and ignore things.

Also you people who keep criticizing me and keep putting words in my mouth and assuming what I'm thinking can go fuck yourselves. I'm sick and bloody well tired of clueless people who refuse to see beyond the end of their own nose telling me I'm suffering from any number of neuroses when the fact of the matter is I am paying attention to what the fuck is going on when apparently the rest of you are off in your own little make-believe worlds full of nothing but roses and hearts and butterflies. Seriously, try UNDERSTANDING the news before you try to lecture ME on it, you assholes.

What you are is an idiot for not seeing the necessity of spinning a 'what if' scenario for short-sighted people who think we (the U.S.) should just 'mind our own business' and ignore what's going on in the rest of the world, and apparently your eyesight is at least a myopic considering your 'it couldn't happen here!' attitude. Do I really have to go through old news stories and find all the instances since 9/11 of domestic terrorism in 1st-world countries including right here in the U.S.? In any case please shut the fuck up you're annoying.

..and by the way: How is anything I've said FUD? Do you not read the news? Have you not heard what these and other Islamic religious extremists have said about the U.S., and seen what they've done to U.S. citizens they've captured? Have you not heard the numerous stories about schoolgirls being brutally attacked and maimed or killed for having the audacity to go to school? Can you not see that it doesn't take any imagination at all to see what they'd do to us all given carte blanche to do as they please? Is your head really buried that deep in the sands of denial?

I'm not 'conservative' by any stretch of the imagination, but I can see the writing on the wall. Apparently you can't.

Tell you what, buddy: You think your grasp of world politics is so awesomely genius? Write down all your ideas and send them to the Secretary of State and to the President and let's see what happens. While you're at it please write them all down in detail in this thread so we can laugh at you, too.

Sure thing buddy, great idea. Let's see how you feel about your own ideology when you wake up one morning to find Islamic Jihadists pointing guns at you and informing you that you need to convert to Islam, immediately, or face execution, or that you are now subject to Sharia Law whether you like it or not, and that your daughters will have acid thrown in their faces for having the gall to actually go to school to learn to read, write, and do math. As distasteful as it may be, you have to face the reality of the fucked-up world we're living in: There are people out there that hate you just because you exist, they don't care what your opinions are, they don't care what your politics are, they want you, your family, and everyone you know dead because their interpretation of their fucking religion (or their using religion as an excuse, you decide which is which) says that you're an abomination in the eyes of Allah and as such they have a duty to wipe you from the face of the earth. Of course I'll be shouted down now by a thousand assholes here on /. with rhetoric like 'it's all about money' or 'it's all about oil' or whatever, but the fact remains: We can't go back now. We abandon our allies based on idealism? We'll be abandoned in turn, hated even worse, and left to be destroyed. Sorry buddy, there's no turning back now.

For cryin' out loud, people, did some idiot politician with no idea how tech works in the real world come up with this idea?

Here's the problem:
Simply put, any tech can be hacked. As you'll note from the last several decades, copy protections, DRM, what have you, can and have all been hacked to circumvent them, and in some cases it took a fraction of the time to hack them than it did to create them in the first place! You design some sort of technology to 'remotely disable' weapons of war and two things will happen:
1. The 'enemy' will hack them at a critical moment so you can't use them, and
2. You leave them behind, they'll hack them and use them anyway.

You want to 'disable' weaponry you're forced to leave behind? The best way is the tried-and-true old-fashioned way: You rig them with explosives and destroy them. For bonus points, you booby-trap them so that the enemy sets them off when they come to take posession of the aforementioned weapons left behind, so that you not only destroy the hardware, you destroy as many of them as possible in the process, and in the case of these 'Islamic State' assholes, the more of them you can take out, the better. Congratulations, you've made the world a better place through the use of demolition charges.

This.
4chan's fate was sealed as soon as it became mainstream; it was just a matter of time after that.

I second the motion; fuck that. We're already 'tracked' in enough ways we (apparently) can't control, I'll be damned if I do it willingly. As is I'm getting fucking sick and fed up with feeling more and more every year like we're animals in a zoo or criminals in a prison.

It's a very common page from the playbook of every dictator and oppressive regime. Keep the people in the dark as much as possible, or better yet in the case of religion, demonize other, non-church-authority sources of information, insist that if you use them you are committing a sin, and that only information from church leaders is valid and right. The only good thing in this story is that moves like this just highlight how desperate these people are to maintain power over the people, and how much that power is, year by year, slipping through their fingers like so much sand, as they grip tighter and tighter.

I don't want to live forever, but for this one reason alone: I'd be pleased to live long enough to see humans, as a race, finally evolve beyond this silly need for 'god(s)' and 'religion' and finally realize they've been relying on themselves all along, and that it's a Good Thing to be that way. Then power-hungry and/or deluded people like this 'Grand Ayatollah', and the Pope, and anyone like them, would no longer hold sway over people. Then we'll really have a shot at having a civilization to be proud of.

Agreed. And this decision is utter and complete bullshit. The DA's office should all be fired over this. Cop needs to go to jail, plain and simple: Distracted driving, vehicular manslaughter.