I bet the olde-tyme professors who taught these whiny new professors complained about C and C++, pining for the good old days of punch cards. Is it really any surprise that a move to higher-level programming construct has tradeoffs? By making your language easier to understand, you: 1) Open it to a much wider audience, improving adoption rates among would-be programmers. 2) Increase the number of applications written because it's supposedly more expressive (or less tedious). 3) Increase the number of poorly-written programs due to the generally poorer skills of your programming community.
There can be no doubt that there's a point of diminishing returns. I'm trying to imagine a graph in several dimensions but failing miserably due to my poor calculus skills. Some of the possible axes: * Language expressiveness * Number of applications written * Application efficiency * Users served
Or something like that. In my mind's eye, this graph would plainly show that writing in assembler results in amazingly fast code but is such a pain in the ass that nobody ever does it any more. Likewise it would show that Ruby is great for fast prototyping but sucks in certain colossal and demanding production environments. This sort of tradeoff seems obvious to me.
I often wonder if there is some way that an elegant, expressive programming language might somehow be more tightly coupled with the underlying hardware. Seems to me that the multi-core concept should have come much sooner. We need some kind of Isaac Newton/Einstein/Turing type of guy to really take a good hard look at the relation between hardware and programming language and see if there's a better way.
In David Foster Wallace's book, "Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity", Wallace describes the evolution of the concept of infinity in mathematics. He also describes how it drove the early thinkers (like Cantor) crazy. There was some other guy who lost his mind too. I think there's something about spending all your time thinking about abstractions - either it's a pursuit that only crazy people are suited to or it drives people crazy.
I'm not at all certain about this but I'd bet that indexes can't solve every problem. I was working on a search routine that would attempt to pick 5 records at random from a database containing potentially a billion records. The search criteria were quite complex and included full-text search of a TEXT field and geographic proximity to a given zip code among other things. They client wanted this done in a fraction of a second.
Personally, I'm amazed at what the various google search engines do and would bet that this technique they describe is what ties together their 200,000 servers. I wouldn't dismiss it so quickly.
Can you get info from other engineers? People who have worked on the code are your single best resource. It's a sure thing they'll get tired of you pestering them but they can really help by leaps and bounds.
I haven't worked on C or C++ code in years but an automatic code-parsing documentation generator sounds like a fairly good idea. If you look at the comments, do they look like this?/**
* Short Description here
*
* Longer Description here
* @param type a variable description here
* etc.
*/
Note that the comment begins with two asterisks. This is the 'Javadoc' style of commenting. Sun offers a tool (http://java.sun.com/j2se/javadoc/) to automatically parse source code and turn those comments into a fairly useful guide to the code. The comments themselves are written with that in mind and the auto-parsed output can be amazingly useful if they are done well. PHPDocumentor can parse them for PHP code and possibly other types as well.
A Debugger also helps a lot. If you can step through the code you get a much better idea of exactly what is happening.
A good time to download the source
on
Sun Buys MySQL
·
· Score: 1
MySQL doth rule. This is too bad. I hate Java to death. Or rather I hate it so much I wish it was dead. Unfortunately, that's currently my only hope of getting any apps onto a mobile device.
I really hope they don't screw it up. This might be a good time to download the latest build for storage.
I wasn't aware that anything useful had ever been written in LISP. I know many programmers who speak with a lisp, but none who write anything useful with it.
As you may have surmised, I'm not exactly experimental when it comes to software.
Flash (the authoring environment) is plenty buggy and resource-intensive on its own. I'd hate to try and run it on top of Wine. I could try one of those other flash IDEs but I have spent plenty of time learning the GUI and would hate to start over with a new one. Plus I'm fairly happy to buy it because I get it for $40 from a friend who works at Adobe.
I have considered a dual-boot setup but so far I haven't found any MUST HAVE software that is driving me to linux -- unless maybe that would be running a Apache/MySQL/PHP on my dev machine to speed my work as a PHP developer. I can load A/M/P on a win machine but it's fairly different. Are there any awesome PHP IDE's for GUI linux?
As someone doing a lot of Flash/Actionscript/Javascript it seems easier and more efficient to use an environment that most folks in the U.S. are using. It doesn't cost me much to have window$ -- I only upgrade every other version of windows. I only switched from win98 to winxp about 2 years ago.
On the other hand, I'm a cheap bastard and love to save every dime I can. I truly love linux. It's such a trip to set up a website with a forum and payment gateway and image uploads, etc. and have it run flawlessly for 2 years without a hitch or reboot. When I think that the software running on it is all free, that's mind boggling! I'm definitely looking for a good time/reason to make the switch, but I kind of dread learning the ins and outs of the linux GUI.
Thanks for the tips. I have installed ClamAV on a LAMP stack before which is kind of a nightmare to get running. Between Postfix/Dovecot/SpamAssassin/ClamAV/Amavis, there is A LOT of configuration and not much documentation.
For my desktop I run windows because I need Adobe Flash. I use McAfee because I bought it years ago and stuck with it because I'm familiar with it. My current copy is about 6 mos expired so I should probably upgrade. On the other hand, my surfing habits are pretty good. On the third hand, I like the fact that McAfee scans all the email attachments and internet downloads automatically and has a firewall -- on a handful of occasions, it has intercepted a virus I would not otherwise have detected.
I use McAfee and have had good luck so far (knock knock on wood). Is there a better virus/firewall application out there for Win XP that I don't know about? Do tell!
The first thing I want to ask is WHAT IS THE EXPECTED BANDWIDTH OF A 700MHZ DEVICE? I'm not talking about theoretical bandwitdh here...I mean practical on-the-street bandwidth. Could someone tell me in bps? or Bps?
Secondly, I hope these dopes arguing about how it's wrong for the government to be licensing this spectrum and making billions off will stop and think about a few things:
1) Unlike the internet, which runs on wires between computers, wireless communications propagate through space. For this particular frequency range, there is currently no practical way to isolate one broadcast from another in a particular area except by limiting broadcasts to different frequencies within the spectrum. If you and I both broadcast from our personal antenna on 700.635MHZ, then we both get noise--or the guy with the more powerful antenna wins but with a really messy signal. In other words, the guy with the most money wins just like the case now--except the licensing rules prevent competing broadcasters on a given wavelength.
If we hope to use this spectrum as the valuable resource it really is, we need spectrum licensing. To say it should be 'free' is like saying there should be no traffic laws. It has a certain ideological panache but is really useless from a practical standpoint. The suggestion that we have 'established rules for non-interference' sounds interesting but I doubt it's feasible given the broadcast range of these frequencies. On the other hand, I'm no expert. Perhaps something akin to ethernet might work.
2) The 700 mhz range should permit several providers in a given area. I'm not sure how wide each block is but I believe the spectrum being auctioned would allow 2 or 3 new players to offer wireless services in a given area. There's a graph at arstechnica. More players means more competition means lower cost. Look at the cost of long distance since the breakup of AT&T in 1984.
3) The Internet as we know it is built on technologies created by the United States Defense Department, specifically DARPA. These are funded with tax dollars like the kind raised by this auction or the kind siphoned from your pocket. I'm under no illusions that this auction money will be well-spent, but I'm happy the government isn't asking me for money. On the other hand, if this spectrum belongs to all of us, I'd like to have my 1/300,000,000th of the money raised. At the very least, I'd like to see more discussion about how this money gets allocated.
A different model might be where the government uses tax dollars to build a publicly owned infrastructure and then service providers bid on its usage to provide services in a given area. Is that what the Japanese model is like? Personally I don't like that model because a) the gov't would have to raise taxes instead of the windfall they get from these bids, b) anybody who's been to the DMV knows that gov't offices are totally inefficient, c) the technology would NEVER get updated because of the slow-moving bureacracy.
4) Part of the reason this piece of spectrum is so valuable is because the buildout costs are expected to be quite low compared to other forms of digital communications. As you probably know from personal experience, wireless broadband like wifi doesn't travel through walls all that well. Relative to other frequencies, the 700Mhz spectrum is apparently prized for its ability to penetrate walls and vegetation. It was originally used for TV broadcast - a single tower might cover an entire metropolitan area or all of a small state.
5) The 'open access' rules that have been adopted are *supposed* to force spectrum purchasers to allow their users to use any device of their choosing with no preference or limitation on what types of traffic should be permitted. In practice, this might mean that you can send email freely with a device on the network rather than being charged for every single text message. Or perhaps you could use VOIP instead of having to buy minutes for calls. We'll see what really ha
In order to have an online name somewhere, you are usually forced to choose a unique identifier. Granted, you may have chosen TonyMontana@hotmail.com and some other tool chose TonyMontana@yahoo.com, but at each institution, there is only one of each. This uniqueness requirement for domains and for usernames within a domain makes it MUCH more likely that a nickname/username will be unique internet-wide and belong to no one but me--i.e., JoeSmith67301 is much more likely to be unique than JoeSmith.
The trade-off is that if I have a unique identifier, I can be uniquely identified and therefore held accountable for my flame wars, ch!ld pr0n searches, and ebay scams. In other words, a unique identifier means people can find out what I've done and associate it with me.
If my name is anonymous then I can do what I please and no one will ever know it's me.
In real life, I can google my very plain name and find at least three other guys, one of whom is a famous skateboarder, another of whom is also a web developer, and yet another who is an aspiring televangelist. I rather like the anonymity.
On the other hand, when I was nineteen the cops came to my house and arrested me in my underwear because they thought I was an acid dealer who went to my high school with the same first and last name as mine.
In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist; And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist; And then they came for the Jews, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew; And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up."
- Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892-1984)
Of course radiohead has benefitted from the record industry! This doesn't mean they "cheated" by releasing a record in a non-traditional way. On the contrary! They made a bold move and won big. If it was 'cheating' then they would surely be sued by someone. Describing it as cheating belittles the value in radiohead's music and reputation regardless of whether this value is inherent to the band or manufactured by the record industry. It's a move that took some balls because there's a lot for them to lose and it really pisses off the RIAA because they are a corrupt cartel. That in itself is newsworthy and justifies whatever publicity they get out of it.
As for KROQ, I doubt they would play your band even if you were Thom Yorke and your band was Radiohead and your current record was OK Computer unless they got paid (what i really mean is bribed) by someone to do so which is exactly what happened for Radiohead in the first place. Payola is a fact and as an unknown artist you should be furious about it. Come to think of it, OK Computer didn't get that much airplay because it's moody and 'artsy' with songs that are a bit too long for radio format.
I totally agree that it's more interesting to talk about unknown bands and how they might fare under such a scheme, but I think it's important to recognize the age-old fact that unknown bands suffer before they become well known. The trick to becoming famous is either a) find lots of money to market yourself by selling your soul or tender young orifices to some rich pervert or b) come up with The Next Big Thing or A Really Crazy Idea and shoot for some kind of viral popularity like lonelygirl on youtube or that guy who said "don't tase me bro" before getting justifiably tased. Does anyone remember Soy Bomb? That guy spazzing out behind Bob Dylan on the Grammies? A textbook example of pure marketing genius.
It's also important at some point to recognize that if your band takes its inspiration from Jimmy Buffet or Blues Traveler or Dave Matthews that you totally suck and should give up right now. Today. This very second.
I feel I should point out that V2 didn't give us an advance--not one penny. Our record label paid the entire cost of the recording and PAID them for distribution (somewhere around $10k I believe). There's no way they put $30,000 worth of effort into selling our record. Those people are crooks and always have been.
Which is not to suggest that I think *you* are a crook - on the contrary. A very dear friend of mine used to work for Interscope and described to me how a certain nameless exec would ask for a print of EVERY PHOTO from a photo shoot just so he didn't have to browse them on a computer. Cost: $10,000.
These companies are toast if they don't change. You don't need a million-dollar Neve board to record a record any more. You don't need a distribution company to reach your audience. It is with great pleasure that I watch the demise of this corrupt industry. Perhaps they will find some way to continue existing as providers of publicity.
A lucky band might get a deal whereby they are paid 15% of revenues *after the record label recoups it investment*. Costs to be recouped can include nearly anything: secretaries, fat cat lunches, photography and printing costs, air conditioning, parking, coffee. You name it. Perhaps most importantly, the label has to shell out a pretty hefty percentage of revenues to the distributors and manufacturers whether they be a disc manufacturer or iTunes.
My band had a record distributed through V2 records and I believe our tiny label was *supposed* to get paid about $2 per record. Despite selling a few thousand records, we never got paid a dime because they claimed they didn't recoup the cost of their sales department selling our record to Target, Best Buy, etc.
I'll admit my band isn't as popular as radiohead, but let's do a little arithmetic. Suppose radiohead sells 1 million copies of their record at $20 a pop. That's $20 million dollars. Let's further suppose they get an extremely generous (nay unheard-of!) deal whereby they're paid 20% of gross after the label recoups their 'investments'. Let's suppose they get an amazing distribution deal that only siphons off 10% of gross revenues. Hell let's go crazy and assume that the record label doesn't expect to recoup anything and pays radiohead their percentage from the first record sold.
20% of $20 million is $4 million
take 10% of that and give it to iTunes and that leaves $3.6 million dollars
I'd bet my right arm that radiohead have made out like bandits on this.
Slashdot Mirror
I bet the olde-tyme professors who taught these whiny new professors complained about C and C++, pining for the good old days of punch cards. Is it really any surprise that a move to higher-level programming construct has tradeoffs? By making your language easier to understand, you:
1) Open it to a much wider audience, improving adoption rates among would-be programmers.
2) Increase the number of applications written because it's supposedly more expressive (or less tedious).
3) Increase the number of poorly-written programs due to the generally poorer skills of your programming community.
There can be no doubt that there's a point of diminishing returns. I'm trying to imagine a graph in several dimensions but failing miserably due to my poor calculus skills. Some of the possible axes:
* Language expressiveness
* Number of applications written
* Application efficiency
* Users served
Or something like that. In my mind's eye, this graph would plainly show that writing in assembler results in amazingly fast code but is such a pain in the ass that nobody ever does it any more. Likewise it would show that Ruby is great for fast prototyping but sucks in certain colossal and demanding production environments. This sort of tradeoff seems obvious to me.
I often wonder if there is some way that an elegant, expressive programming language might somehow be more tightly coupled with the underlying hardware. Seems to me that the multi-core concept should have come much sooner. We need some kind of Isaac Newton/Einstein/Turing type of guy to really take a good hard look at the relation between hardware and programming language and see if there's a better way.
Joe K. set the skydive record and might have some useful pointers.
In David Foster Wallace's book, "Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity", Wallace describes the evolution of the concept of infinity in mathematics. He also describes how it drove the early thinkers (like Cantor) crazy. There was some other guy who lost his mind too. I think there's something about spending all your time thinking about abstractions - either it's a pursuit that only crazy people are suited to or it drives people crazy.
http://www.chrismckinstry.com
I know you can debunk a patent with prior art. Might not 'prior use' debunk this trademark?
I'm not at all certain about this but I'd bet that indexes can't solve every problem. I was working on a search routine that would attempt to pick 5 records at random from a database containing potentially a billion records. The search criteria were quite complex and included full-text search of a TEXT field and geographic proximity to a given zip code among other things. They client wanted this done in a fraction of a second.
Personally, I'm amazed at what the various google search engines do and would bet that this technique they describe is what ties together their 200,000 servers. I wouldn't dismiss it so quickly.
My money is on the pumpkin cannon. The distance record is over a mile and the technological requirements are significantly less.
Can you get info from other engineers? People who have worked on the code are your single best resource. It's a sure thing they'll get tired of you pestering them but they can really help by leaps and bounds.
/**
I haven't worked on C or C++ code in years but an automatic code-parsing documentation generator sounds like a fairly good idea. If you look at the comments, do they look like this?
* Short Description here
*
* Longer Description here
* @param type a variable description here
* etc.
*/
Note that the comment begins with two asterisks. This is the 'Javadoc' style of commenting. Sun offers a tool (http://java.sun.com/j2se/javadoc/) to automatically parse source code and turn those comments into a fairly useful guide to the code. The comments themselves are written with that in mind and the auto-parsed output can be amazingly useful if they are done well. PHPDocumentor can parse them for PHP code and possibly other types as well.
A Debugger also helps a lot. If you can step through the code you get a much better idea of exactly what is happening.
MySQL doth rule. This is too bad. I hate Java to death. Or rather I hate it so much I wish it was dead. Unfortunately, that's currently my only hope of getting any apps onto a mobile device.
I really hope they don't screw it up. This might be a good time to download the latest build for storage.
Newegg/a has a bunch of IDE to USB adapters.
I wasn't aware that anything useful had ever been written in LISP. I know many programmers who speak with a lisp, but none who write anything useful with it.
Frameworks are for wimps. There I said it twice. Go ahead, flame away.
the site is too busy.
i played wii boxing and tennis for about 2 hours last nite and my arms are killing me.
As you may have surmised, I'm not exactly experimental when it comes to software.
Flash (the authoring environment) is plenty buggy and resource-intensive on its own. I'd hate to try and run it on top of Wine. I could try one of those other flash IDEs but I have spent plenty of time learning the GUI and would hate to start over with a new one. Plus I'm fairly happy to buy it because I get it for $40 from a friend who works at Adobe.
I have considered a dual-boot setup but so far I haven't found any MUST HAVE software that is driving me to linux -- unless maybe that would be running a Apache/MySQL/PHP on my dev machine to speed my work as a PHP developer. I can load A/M/P on a win machine but it's fairly different. Are there any awesome PHP IDE's for GUI linux?
As someone doing a lot of Flash/Actionscript/Javascript it seems easier and more efficient to use an environment that most folks in the U.S. are using. It doesn't cost me much to have window$ -- I only upgrade every other version of windows. I only switched from win98 to winxp about 2 years ago.
On the other hand, I'm a cheap bastard and love to save every dime I can. I truly love linux. It's such a trip to set up a website with a forum and payment gateway and image uploads, etc. and have it run flawlessly for 2 years without a hitch or reboot. When I think that the software running on it is all free, that's mind boggling! I'm definitely looking for a good time/reason to make the switch, but I kind of dread learning the ins and outs of the linux GUI.
Thanks for the tips. I have installed ClamAV on a LAMP stack before which is kind of a nightmare to get running. Between Postfix/Dovecot/SpamAssassin/ClamAV/Amavis, there is A LOT of configuration and not much documentation.
For my desktop I run windows because I need Adobe Flash. I use McAfee because I bought it years ago and stuck with it because I'm familiar with it. My current copy is about 6 mos expired so I should probably upgrade. On the other hand, my surfing habits are pretty good. On the third hand, I like the fact that McAfee scans all the email attachments and internet downloads automatically and has a firewall -- on a handful of occasions, it has intercepted a virus I would not otherwise have detected.
I'll check out your links.
I use McAfee and have had good luck so far (knock knock on wood). Is there a better virus/firewall application out there for Win XP that I don't know about? Do tell!
Push me and kick me if you must, master. Your time will come.
The first thing I want to ask is WHAT IS THE EXPECTED BANDWIDTH OF A 700MHZ DEVICE? I'm not talking about theoretical bandwitdh here...I mean practical on-the-street bandwidth. Could someone tell me in bps? or Bps?
Secondly, I hope these dopes arguing about how it's wrong for the government to be licensing this spectrum and making billions off will stop and think about a few things:
1) Unlike the internet, which runs on wires between computers, wireless communications propagate through space. For this particular frequency range, there is currently no practical way to isolate one broadcast from another in a particular area except by limiting broadcasts to different frequencies within the spectrum. If you and I both broadcast from our personal antenna on 700.635MHZ, then we both get noise--or the guy with the more powerful antenna wins but with a really messy signal. In other words, the guy with the most money wins just like the case now--except the licensing rules prevent competing broadcasters on a given wavelength.
If we hope to use this spectrum as the valuable resource it really is, we need spectrum licensing. To say it should be 'free' is like saying there should be no traffic laws. It has a certain ideological panache but is really useless from a practical standpoint. The suggestion that we have 'established rules for non-interference' sounds interesting but I doubt it's feasible given the broadcast range of these frequencies. On the other hand, I'm no expert. Perhaps something akin to ethernet might work.
2) The 700 mhz range should permit several providers in a given area. I'm not sure how wide each block is but I believe the spectrum being auctioned would allow 2 or 3 new players to offer wireless services in a given area. There's a graph at arstechnica. More players means more competition means lower cost. Look at the cost of long distance since the breakup of AT&T in 1984.
3) The Internet as we know it is built on technologies created by the United States Defense Department, specifically DARPA. These are funded with tax dollars like the kind raised by this auction or the kind siphoned from your pocket. I'm under no illusions that this auction money will be well-spent, but I'm happy the government isn't asking me for money. On the other hand, if this spectrum belongs to all of us, I'd like to have my 1/300,000,000th of the money raised. At the very least, I'd like to see more discussion about how this money gets allocated.
A different model might be where the government uses tax dollars to build a publicly owned infrastructure and then service providers bid on its usage to provide services in a given area. Is that what the Japanese model is like? Personally I don't like that model because a) the gov't would have to raise taxes instead of the windfall they get from these bids, b) anybody who's been to the DMV knows that gov't offices are totally inefficient, c) the technology would NEVER get updated because of the slow-moving bureacracy.
4) Part of the reason this piece of spectrum is so valuable is because the buildout costs are expected to be quite low compared to other forms of digital communications. As you probably know from personal experience, wireless broadband like wifi doesn't travel through walls all that well. Relative to other frequencies, the 700Mhz spectrum is apparently prized for its ability to penetrate walls and vegetation. It was originally used for TV broadcast - a single tower might cover an entire metropolitan area or all of a small state.
5) The 'open access' rules that have been adopted are *supposed* to force spectrum purchasers to allow their users to use any device of their choosing with no preference or limitation on what types of traffic should be permitted. In practice, this might mean that you can send email freely with a device on the network rather than being charged for every single text message. Or perhaps you could use VOIP instead of having to buy minutes for calls. We'll see what really ha
Does she have a phone number? Can I email her on her home-made mobile phone?
In order to have an online name somewhere, you are usually forced to choose a unique identifier. Granted, you may have chosen TonyMontana@hotmail.com and some other tool chose TonyMontana@yahoo.com, but at each institution, there is only one of each. This uniqueness requirement for domains and for usernames within a domain makes it MUCH more likely that a nickname/username will be unique internet-wide and belong to no one but me--i.e., JoeSmith67301 is much more likely to be unique than JoeSmith. The trade-off is that if I have a unique identifier, I can be uniquely identified and therefore held accountable for my flame wars, ch!ld pr0n searches, and ebay scams. In other words, a unique identifier means people can find out what I've done and associate it with me. If my name is anonymous then I can do what I please and no one will ever know it's me. In real life, I can google my very plain name and find at least three other guys, one of whom is a famous skateboarder, another of whom is also a web developer, and yet another who is an aspiring televangelist. I rather like the anonymity. On the other hand, when I was nineteen the cops came to my house and arrested me in my underwear because they thought I was an acid dealer who went to my high school with the same first and last name as mine.
but it seemed marginally more appropriate here:
In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist;
And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew;
And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up."
- Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892-1984)
Of course radiohead has benefitted from the record industry! This doesn't mean they "cheated" by releasing a record in a non-traditional way. On the contrary! They made a bold move and won big. If it was 'cheating' then they would surely be sued by someone. Describing it as cheating belittles the value in radiohead's music and reputation regardless of whether this value is inherent to the band or manufactured by the record industry. It's a move that took some balls because there's a lot for them to lose and it really pisses off the RIAA because they are a corrupt cartel. That in itself is newsworthy and justifies whatever publicity they get out of it.
As for KROQ, I doubt they would play your band even if you were Thom Yorke and your band was Radiohead and your current record was OK Computer unless they got paid (what i really mean is bribed) by someone to do so which is exactly what happened for Radiohead in the first place. Payola is a fact and as an unknown artist you should be furious about it. Come to think of it, OK Computer didn't get that much airplay because it's moody and 'artsy' with songs that are a bit too long for radio format.
I totally agree that it's more interesting to talk about unknown bands and how they might fare under such a scheme, but I think it's important to recognize the age-old fact that unknown bands suffer before they become well known. The trick to becoming famous is either a) find lots of money to market yourself by selling your soul or tender young orifices to some rich pervert or b) come up with The Next Big Thing or A Really Crazy Idea and shoot for some kind of viral popularity like lonelygirl on youtube or that guy who said "don't tase me bro" before getting justifiably tased. Does anyone remember Soy Bomb? That guy spazzing out behind Bob Dylan on the Grammies? A textbook example of pure marketing genius.
It's also important at some point to recognize that if your band takes its inspiration from Jimmy Buffet or Blues Traveler or Dave Matthews that you totally suck and should give up right now. Today. This very second.
I feel I should point out that V2 didn't give us an advance--not one penny. Our record label paid the entire cost of the recording and PAID them for distribution (somewhere around $10k I believe). There's no way they put $30,000 worth of effort into selling our record. Those people are crooks and always have been. Which is not to suggest that I think *you* are a crook - on the contrary. A very dear friend of mine used to work for Interscope and described to me how a certain nameless exec would ask for a print of EVERY PHOTO from a photo shoot just so he didn't have to browse them on a computer. Cost: $10,000. These companies are toast if they don't change. You don't need a million-dollar Neve board to record a record any more. You don't need a distribution company to reach your audience. It is with great pleasure that I watch the demise of this corrupt industry. Perhaps they will find some way to continue existing as providers of publicity.
A lucky band might get a deal whereby they are paid 15% of revenues *after the record label recoups it investment*. Costs to be recouped can include nearly anything: secretaries, fat cat lunches, photography and printing costs, air conditioning, parking, coffee. You name it. Perhaps most importantly, the label has to shell out a pretty hefty percentage of revenues to the distributors and manufacturers whether they be a disc manufacturer or iTunes.
My band had a record distributed through V2 records and I believe our tiny label was *supposed* to get paid about $2 per record. Despite selling a few thousand records, we never got paid a dime because they claimed they didn't recoup the cost of their sales department selling our record to Target, Best Buy, etc.
I'll admit my band isn't as popular as radiohead, but let's do a little arithmetic. Suppose radiohead sells 1 million copies of their record at $20 a pop. That's $20 million dollars. Let's further suppose they get an extremely generous (nay unheard-of!) deal whereby they're paid 20% of gross after the label recoups their 'investments'. Let's suppose they get an amazing distribution deal that only siphons off 10% of gross revenues. Hell let's go crazy and assume that the record label doesn't expect to recoup anything and pays radiohead their percentage from the first record sold.
20% of $20 million is $4 million
take 10% of that and give it to iTunes and that leaves $3.6 million dollars
I'd bet my right arm that radiohead have made out like bandits on this.
For some interesting reading on the crooked record business, I would suggest Donald Passman's book All You Need to Know About the Music Business