I have actually read about this.. it was way before my time,though. One of the first remote-based devices for TV's was entirely mechanical and based on higher-than-human hearing sound. You'd press a button on the remote, a knocker would hit one of several 'bells' (probably tuning forks?) and the TV would 'hear' this sound and change the channel. Apparently it wasn't quite silent, and it did annoy pets.

The term 'personal computer' was not coined by Ed Roberts, and technically, the 8008-based MCM/70 released in 1974 was more of a 'personal computer' (our of the box) than either the Altair or the Kenbak-1 (in that it had a keyboard, cassette drive, built-in programming language and a 1-line plasma display), and in fact the MCM/70 manual referred to it as such. I'm pretty sure I can go as far back as 1970 and still find a machine or two referred to as a 'personal computer', though. Of course if you ask most people, they will say the Apple II or Commodore PET would be the first PC's. In some sense they'd probably be correct, as anything that came before those two machines were targeted at the mere hobbyist.

I am almost certain I saw this kind of thing in a Radio Shack catalog in the 80's, lol i mean it was basically an LED and a photodetector and they sold it as a 'wireless communicator' or something but it was for hobbyists just mucking around, and it was only good for (what I assume was) low-quality voice communications.

Or.. you could unchain yourself from technology while you rake those leaves. Shocking concept, I know... you might *gasp!* miss something!!

I may be in the minority, but I didn't find any of the Fantastic Four movies to be terrible. I went in expecting a brief respite from reality, popcorn in hand, and I got exactly that. Mind you, I have yet to watch the Roger Corman FF film. I'm sure that is terrible.

haha, you're absolutely right about that!

I think people who go into a movie expecting to be entertained rather than expecting a movie to be 100% faithful to a comic-book generally walk away satisfied. It's the die-hard comic book fans with the high expectations that are usually more vocal about their opinions regarding movie adaptations.