Scientifically, it seems like a significant discovery. I'm far more worried about how it is used.
Tonight I'm going to have a nightmare about a Tom Cruise infomercial selling an L Ron Hubbard book that guarantees you'll score higher on the EEG stupidity scale for only 3 EZ payments of $99.95...
Many (if not most) similar committees and associations are made up not of the right people for the job, but instead those that were corralled into the positions or couldn't find anything better.
On the other hand, Microsoft's primary goal is to maintain their privileged monopoly wherever and however possible. I actually had an eerie conversation with a Microsoft paralegal, who described her job as "palm-greasing officials in the Asian market". She also described how the executive were no longer concerned with making money, "they're in a position to change the world". I asked her what level of government they planned to get elected, and she replied, "why would they run for office? That would be a demotion!" And that was almost 10 years ago.
Assuming she was giving a truthful account, and her office was directly below Bill Gates, so I imagine she does know what goes on, the Microsoft executive believe that since power is available to them, they are entitled to use their influence wherever and however possible, and that their ability to do so justifies itself.
So show me a group of vigilante multi-billionaires and I'll show you dozens of half-witted committees that bend to their will, despite overwhelming reasoning to do otherwise.
My biggest concern about police investigations isn't that they'll pin a crime on the wrong person, but rather police misconduct messing with the lives of innocent people.
In my town, the police's closure rate is less than 30%. That means over 70% of reported crimes go unpunished. What's worse is that the officers are primarily interested in advancing their careers, so if you need a minor situation remedied, they don't even take a report. Realisticly you have at most a 1-in-8 chance of getting caught for committing a minor crime here, even if your victim identifies you and tries to make a report.
In the past two years I've been the target of a violent con artist and a very malicious landlord, neither of which were considered worthy of a criminal report by the local police. 18 months after leaving the apartment I'm still taking the landlord to court for defamation of character, harassment, malice of intent, and fraud by false pretenses, all of which could have been prevented if a police officer had taken the initial trespassing report and simply warned the landlord that his next criminal act gets him a night on a steel bed.
Instead the landlord conned the officer (also a landlord himself) into believing I was a con man trying to coerce him into free rent. They ambushed me in the apartment while I was sick to gather/manufacture evidence to evict me. At the hearing the officer said I allowed them to enter, and the judge believed him even though he and the landlord had different descriptions of how I indicated that to them.
And guess who handles police misconduct reports? Other officers.
So I whole-heartedly welcome a more accountable approach to criminal investigation, and Facebook is an outstanding tool for gathering and disseminating crucial information for crime prevention. No officer is ever going to harass you or dismiss a legitimate complaint when it's in black and white, subject to review and/or media publication. The same goes for people giving false statements to the police.
I keep tabs on the con artist thanks to Facebook and a few brave friends who pretend to be his allies just to track his movements. He had planned to steal equipment from local musicians and sell it in another city. He now has a nationwide warrant for his arrest for uttering threats and stealing a car, and we can't wait to rat him out.
As for people impersonating police officers, considering how serious a crime that is and how little there is to gain compared to any other form of deception, I can't see it becoming a serious problem. Facebook can and really should take steps to ensure the identity and validity of officers using the network for official purposes. Police pay for tools that stop crime, no reason Facebook shouldn't capitalize on it, even without revealing any more information than normal users can see.
I meant "covered it" from a journalistic perspective. How many experiments have you done on the subject? Should the Mythbusters decide whether cel phones should be allowed or not? They would be the first to say HELL NO!
The bottom line is they did demonstrate an undisputable example of cel phone frequencies really screwing with aircraft instrumentation. Like it or not, that's informative. They may be hacks in the scientific community, but they don't pad their stats or rig their experiments to achieve specific results. That's the entire appeal, they're regular curious nerds like us, with a budget and production crew.
I'm not even really a fan, I just have a lot of open time in the early evenings, as a touring musician and sound tech. I'll take Mythbusters over Survivor and Deal Or No Deal any day! (and my drummer is an incurable Discovery Channel addict)
I think your point about jamming phones down people's throats has as much or more merit as the potential for them to cause interference. I sure appreciate any sleep I can get on a plane, and even ringing cel phones will screw that up. Hysterical passengers have brought down more planes than idle cel phones (forced them to land for security purposes).
On my last flight I was coughing like crazy because my gate got changed and I had to run a little over a mile in under 10 minutes wearing winter clothes and hauling my carry-on etc. The flight ended up returning to the airport because there was a small fire somewhere on the plane, they sad it was the air conditioning (but who really knows). The passengers were more concerned with me, worried I was going to make them sick. I'm just not in olympic shape! And the mild smoke fumes sure didn't help.
Air travel makes people paranoid, even before 9/11, steps should be taken to minimize the threat of basic human nature. Cel phones don't help. Need to contact someone? Buck up and use the plane phone. Don't like it? Take a train.
What would make more sense is to have text messaging available, or better yet wi-fi. Oh, it's already in the works...
There was a Mythbusters episode (season 4 episode 6) where they got serious interference under test conditions with actual airplane instruments, but were unable to interfere with the instruments on an actual plane. They concluded that even though they couldn't create a hazardous situation, it would be an extremely bad idea to take the risk, since it is plausible and there's only one way to find out!
They also made a good point that air travel would be prohibitively expensive if insurance companies required airlines to verify that every component of every plane in their fleets were impervious to cel phone interference. That makes the $5 plane phone seem a lot less sinister.
Same with cable TV receivers, and many digital devices like laptops have a cylindrical "lump" at the device end, which is an RFI filter. Because they require a relatively substantial iron mass, they're quite costly.
I have yet to see a PCI (or PCI-E) audio card with any such shielding, even the pro-sumer ones. And the consumer ones use minijacks, lightning rods for EMI and RFI. Presumably they know anyone that really cares will get an external audio device.
But don't presume too much when it comes to audio, trust me...
I'm familiar with Cirrus and Burr-Brown (Texas Instruments) converter chips as being among the best in professional audio devices, in fact the best Protools interfaces (HD192) use Cirrus chips. But having an S/N ratio of 123dB is moot when the analog circuitry is unshielded and housed inside a computer, which is EMI and RFI hell.
The noise floor is going to be at least -66dB, so 57dB of dynamic range is lost to noise. That means the noise level is at least 724 times higher than the lowest discernable sound the card can process. If you're going to spend a penny to improve your computer's sound, it should go towards an external USB or Firewire device.
And don't get me started on "computer speakers". Try this: knock on the sides of your speakers. That resonance is added to every sound emitted from your speakers. Think a better sound card is gonna help?
Firstly, who the hell is going to mistake the GreeNYC logo to represent Apple, or vice versa? Apple has no more claim to the use of apples in commercial logos than Apple Records does, who pre-existed Apple Inc by over a decade (the label for The Beatles).
Ironically, Apple Records has filed numerous trademark/copyright infringment suits against Apple Inc, and as a result Apple Inc stayed out of the music industry entirely, even long after Macintosh became the prevalent computer platform used in recording studios in the early 90's. Obviously that's no longer the case, since Apple introduced iTunes in 2001, and numerous infringement suits ensued.
I imagine Apple Inc is just trying to head off any possible interference by any logo ressembling an apple, and is bullying GreeNYC into a strict trademark agreement. Apple Inc learned their lesson when they spent millions in legal fees to gain the position they have in the music industry today. But somehow I doubt Apple has to worry about GreeNYC making computers!
The suit is very inconsistent with Apple's public image, especially to attack a non-profit environmental organization in today's political climate (pardon the pun). And they sure could have picked a smaller consumer base to pick on! How many computer owners do you figure are in the NYC metro area?! 50 million?
Trent Reznor doesn't drive his own van, lug his own gear, and book his own gigs. If you're suggesting you can get from indie to icon giving away your music, you're sadly mistaken.
The OP said no album and only give away free tracks. I suggested free live recordings, meaning a 45 minute set. They can check out the quality of the studio recording online, that's as far as I'm willing to go. We're pleading a similar case, just in different ways.
I disagree that indies are not selling albums. Stage-side sales are at least 30% of our touring revenue. The farther you get from home, the more likely folks are to buy your CD, not knowing when you'll be back.
And free tracks doesn't make much sense either. It's pretty easy to make your music available for net stream and make it tricky to keep the MP3 (note I didn't say make it impossible).
What we have done is record shows with just a pair of mics and pass CD's around letting everyone know it's ok to copy and give to others. We act like our own "tapers" (and I happen to be very good at it). It's a good promotional tool and people still buy the studio CD of the same songs.
And you complain about driving one hour to a show? Got three words for you: TRY TOURING CANADA! Last tour we drove 8500mi and played 26 shows in 25 days, that's an average of 340mi per day crammed into a minivan for almost a month. We also made decent money, renewed interest from the venues in those 26 towns, added a few hundred to the facebook group, and each tour we get better media support.
It's completely worth it, but not without an album to sell. No album = no media = nobody knows you're coming. With media support, you can draw and get paid better than cover bands.
I agree, support your local bands, but support the touring ones too! Gas is our biggest expense, and it's not looking to get any cheaper anytime soon...
Actually, I gotta give kudos to MySpace. The big labels have billions invested in their talent, and they needed the means to integrate into the internet better. MySpace is cashing in on that. They'll be the only ones left smiling in the end, but it's still a good move for them.
This is hardly progress. This is just another attempt to keep alive one of the most archaic and outdated marketing models still in widespread use. They say "before anyone did anything, Elvis Presley did everything" but in reality his unprecidented success screwed everything. Music marketeers have been blindly flogging the same horse ever since, despite the endless painfully obvious indicators that a paradigm shift is imperative to their survival.
The fundamental flaw in the Elvis marketing model is that the product is not the music, it's the idols. To the labels, the artists aren't considered the purveyors of the music, they're just the packaging. They create idolization of the artist among consumers and then cash in on it. Music is only barely relevant to the process. Look at Paris Hilton... what does she do again?
That's why there are so few major labels. It's not a matter of signing the right talent, it's an incredibly cut-throat competition to manufacture the most influential icons. Making cars is far more expensive and complicated, yet there are 10 international auto makers for every major music label.
But now consumers can access anyone's music just as freely as the radio spewing out any big label's next wannabe hit. So traditional mass media is losing its dominance over the preferences of consumers to the internet, which by definition cannot be bought or controled. As a result, idols have less influence these days, and are becoming increasingly expensive to create.
So what's the next step? If I knew I sure wouldn't post it to a public forum! But what I will say is that the next successful music marketing model will not generate its profits from selling "music units", be they albums, songs, subscriptions, etc.
As a touring musician, live/studio engineer, and producer, I can assure you that there is a powerful motivational force between musical performers and their audiences that has never been engaged for profit to even a fraction of its potential. A bar owner paying a band 10% of sales to pack his bar and sell $12k in booze in one night makes much more sense than a label spending $5M on promotions hoping it holds a candle to the other label's $5M promotions.
But as long as labels treat their talent like packaging, they will continue to falter with repeated "innovations" on the same old game. Consumers have free access to all the content they could ever desire. Fancy packaging simply isn't enough to sell ice to eskimos.
Begs the question, if people were indifferent about a company, how would we know?
The appealing aspects of Apple have their downsides too. Their hardware/software integration and uniformity offer excellent benefits, but that limits the variety of computer models they can offer. For example you currently have to get their full professional model just to have a second internal hard drive. Not a big deal to most, but I know lots of audio guys that curse Apple over that. Add up all the users with specific needs Apple doesn't satisfy well, and you've got significant opposition.
And Google's success proves you don't have to be disliked to get or stay on top.
As an indie musician and producer, I can assure you that successful indie bands do not sell CD's for $10, much less several. Stage-side CD sales should be for $20 or more, partly because of the opportunity to get them signed by the band, also because it's an inelastic demand - anyone willing to spend $10 on a CD at a show will typically spend $20, so selling for less does not sell more copies. It's only when there is a selection of 100's of bands that purse strings tighten.
I feel compelled to reply because I don't want folks to think they can talk any musician down to $10 on a CD. Some you can, but they probably recorded it in their garage.
And while it does cost indies more per CD to manufacture them, major labels typically have much higher production budgets. I produce for between $3k-$8k, majors are typically $50k and up. There are many hits on the radio which cost over $1M for just the one song. And if it flops, the artist(s) gets the bill!
Ironically, the least expensive component of a CD is pressing the content, the most expensive is printing the artwork. That's big motivation to go the iTunes route.
The big problem with the trailer idea is that when you need the extra distance or power, the last thing you'll want is a trailer's weight and aerodynamic drag. The whole point of hybrids is to have a relatively high-output engine recharge a low-output electric system *for light-duty usage*, offering the same range and refueling options as any regular gas vehicle. A diesel car will beat any hybrid in a long-distance race, and will undoubtedly win this X-Prize.
While hybrids are efficient and have very low emmissions for city driving, under load they are worse than diesels in every regard. If the contestant's cars have to be street-legal, a hybrid might use marginally less fuel to complete the race, but a diesel will definitely get there faster.
Hybrids have two motors, one electric, the other typically gas, plus a big heavy power cell, plus a big alternator to charge the power cell. The two motors typically have less combined horsepower than their gas equivalents, and much less torque. So accelleration is poor and not very efficient, and at highway speeds generally the electric motor is only barely enough, so the gas motor is more frequently engaging to recharge the power cell and supplement the power when cimbing/passing. It's only when cruising at 20-40mph that the efficiency of a hybrid is truely remarkable.
But whenever the electric motor's output is exceeded for a long period of time, the relatively small gas engine has to take over. In order for a hybrid to have the necessary power to compete with a diesel, the motors and power cells will weigh more than the entire diesel car. So in a race, the hybrid loses every time.
Hybrids are great for city drivers, but diesels have many applications which are being ignored and aren't served well by hybrids. And for under $1000 you can put together a rig to filter waste vegetable oil for use in an unmodified diesel vehicle. That's even better for the environment than biodiesel because it's a recycled product and no chemicals are necessary to prepare it, where biodiesel requires enough lye and methanol that it competes with petro diesel for environmental damage. Just run the waste oil through a centrifuge filter (removes water and particulate down to under 0.5 microns, including glycerin). It's even possible to clean the oil on the road using the engine's power to heat and pump the oil through the centrifuge. Waste veg oil cleaning waste veg oil, in transit.
Let's face it, hybrids are sexy, diesels aren't. But just watch which engine type wins this prize.
Teach evolution, creationism, hedonism, whatever, just don't leave kids the slightest notion that we don't have it all figured out. We need them spending their dispensible income and polluting the planet as soon as possible. The damage of any undue delay would greatly outweigh any feasible benefits of the little brats exercising freewill. It is imperative that doctrine be imposed to catch anyone who doesn't fully accept materialism from TV and video games to be sure all innocent hope is quashed.
The scary part is that our brains probably treat computers as an extension of our brains.
There's no question that the brain is capable of adapting to treat "tools" in the same way it treats the body. The body is in essence a tool itself. Lose an arm, acquire a prosthesis, and the brain adapts no differently than if you only lose use of a finger or two. It's the same adaptative process athletes and musicians use every day to train their brains to play what they couldn't play at first. Ask any guitar teacher or golf pro about "muscle memory".
But what about our brains adapting to having calculation tools readily available? Early tools like the abacus acted as an aid to enable humans to calculate far beyond what we could do with pen and paper, but still relied on the brain for higher calculations. But now everything from a scientific calculator to a CAD program handles far more than what our brains can't. They're designed to not only serve as an aid for a well-trained brain, but to replace the training.
Quick, what's 23 x 2.65? Sorry, a computer beat you to it. You're fired.
The premise behind the Terminator movies and the new series is blunt, yet curious. How willing are we to hand over the facilities that make us what we are, with the risk that our "benefactor" tools may one day take over? I personally own several audio workstations that each make me more money per hour than most of the wage-earners in North America, never mind third world countries, and they each cost far less than the houses they live in. Ironically I resent the effort I have to make to administer to them, mostly because I'd rather be working on what I enjoy most, utilizing my brain more. But economics demand that I diversify and "adapt".
Cheers to getting richer and stupider
So this "revelation" is that animals are prone to reject perceived negative stimuli they have rejected in the past. Anyone that is surprised by this has never had pets, much less children!! Even insects demonstrate that level of awareness and self-preservation. Why were they testing this on monkeys and not bacteria! Those monkeys could be saving lives! What's their next gig? Proving that animals fart? What did this study cost?
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Scientifically, it seems like a significant discovery. I'm far more worried about how it is used.
Tonight I'm going to have a nightmare about a Tom Cruise infomercial selling an L Ron Hubbard book that guarantees you'll score higher on the EEG stupidity scale for only 3 EZ payments of $99.95...
"Are you sure you're not getting stupider?"
Many (if not most) similar committees and associations are made up not of the right people for the job, but instead those that were corralled into the positions or couldn't find anything better.
On the other hand, Microsoft's primary goal is to maintain their privileged monopoly wherever and however possible. I actually had an eerie conversation with a Microsoft paralegal, who described her job as "palm-greasing officials in the Asian market". She also described how the executive were no longer concerned with making money, "they're in a position to change the world". I asked her what level of government they planned to get elected, and she replied, "why would they run for office? That would be a demotion!" And that was almost 10 years ago.
Assuming she was giving a truthful account, and her office was directly below Bill Gates, so I imagine she does know what goes on, the Microsoft executive believe that since power is available to them, they are entitled to use their influence wherever and however possible, and that their ability to do so justifies itself.
So show me a group of vigilante multi-billionaires and I'll show you dozens of half-witted committees that bend to their will, despite overwhelming reasoning to do otherwise.
My biggest concern about police investigations isn't that they'll pin a crime on the wrong person, but rather police misconduct messing with the lives of innocent people.
In my town, the police's closure rate is less than 30%. That means over 70% of reported crimes go unpunished. What's worse is that the officers are primarily interested in advancing their careers, so if you need a minor situation remedied, they don't even take a report. Realisticly you have at most a 1-in-8 chance of getting caught for committing a minor crime here, even if your victim identifies you and tries to make a report.
In the past two years I've been the target of a violent con artist and a very malicious landlord, neither of which were considered worthy of a criminal report by the local police. 18 months after leaving the apartment I'm still taking the landlord to court for defamation of character, harassment, malice of intent, and fraud by false pretenses, all of which could have been prevented if a police officer had taken the initial trespassing report and simply warned the landlord that his next criminal act gets him a night on a steel bed.
Instead the landlord conned the officer (also a landlord himself) into believing I was a con man trying to coerce him into free rent. They ambushed me in the apartment while I was sick to gather/manufacture evidence to evict me. At the hearing the officer said I allowed them to enter, and the judge believed him even though he and the landlord had different descriptions of how I indicated that to them.
And guess who handles police misconduct reports? Other officers.
So I whole-heartedly welcome a more accountable approach to criminal investigation, and Facebook is an outstanding tool for gathering and disseminating crucial information for crime prevention. No officer is ever going to harass you or dismiss a legitimate complaint when it's in black and white, subject to review and/or media publication. The same goes for people giving false statements to the police.
I keep tabs on the con artist thanks to Facebook and a few brave friends who pretend to be his allies just to track his movements. He had planned to steal equipment from local musicians and sell it in another city. He now has a nationwide warrant for his arrest for uttering threats and stealing a car, and we can't wait to rat him out.
As for people impersonating police officers, considering how serious a crime that is and how little there is to gain compared to any other form of deception, I can't see it becoming a serious problem. Facebook can and really should take steps to ensure the identity and validity of officers using the network for official purposes. Police pay for tools that stop crime, no reason Facebook shouldn't capitalize on it, even without revealing any more information than normal users can see.
I meant "covered it" from a journalistic perspective. How many experiments have you done on the subject? Should the Mythbusters decide whether cel phones should be allowed or not? They would be the first to say HELL NO!
The bottom line is they did demonstrate an undisputable example of cel phone frequencies really screwing with aircraft instrumentation. Like it or not, that's informative. They may be hacks in the scientific community, but they don't pad their stats or rig their experiments to achieve specific results. That's the entire appeal, they're regular curious nerds like us, with a budget and production crew.
I'm not even really a fan, I just have a lot of open time in the early evenings, as a touring musician and sound tech. I'll take Mythbusters over Survivor and Deal Or No Deal any day! (and my drummer is an incurable Discovery Channel addict)
Are airplane passengers in any less grave peril?
Do hospital patients/visitors have any less need to communicate?
Are medical devices any less shielded from interference?
I think your point about jamming phones down people's throats has as much or more merit as the potential for them to cause interference. I sure appreciate any sleep I can get on a plane, and even ringing cel phones will screw that up. Hysterical passengers have brought down more planes than idle cel phones (forced them to land for security purposes).
On my last flight I was coughing like crazy because my gate got changed and I had to run a little over a mile in under 10 minutes wearing winter clothes and hauling my carry-on etc. The flight ended up returning to the airport because there was a small fire somewhere on the plane, they sad it was the air conditioning (but who really knows). The passengers were more concerned with me, worried I was going to make them sick. I'm just not in olympic shape! And the mild smoke fumes sure didn't help.
Air travel makes people paranoid, even before 9/11, steps should be taken to minimize the threat of basic human nature. Cel phones don't help. Need to contact someone? Buck up and use the plane phone. Don't like it? Take a train.
What would make more sense is to have text messaging available, or better yet wi-fi. Oh, it's already in the works...
There was a Mythbusters episode (season 4 episode 6) where they got serious interference under test conditions with actual airplane instruments, but were unable to interfere with the instruments on an actual plane. They concluded that even though they couldn't create a hazardous situation, it would be an extremely bad idea to take the risk, since it is plausible and there's only one way to find out!
They also made a good point that air travel would be prohibitively expensive if insurance companies required airlines to verify that every component of every plane in their fleets were impervious to cel phone interference. That makes the $5 plane phone seem a lot less sinister.
Nuclear explosives though are actually poor tools to fracture a well with since the intense heat "glasses" the rock and prevents flow.
"NUKE THE OIL FIELDS!!" That was a joke I made in high school, ~18 years ago, never has it seemed more frightfully appropriate...Same with cable TV receivers, and many digital devices like laptops have a cylindrical "lump" at the device end, which is an RFI filter. Because they require a relatively substantial iron mass, they're quite costly.
I have yet to see a PCI (or PCI-E) audio card with any such shielding, even the pro-sumer ones. And the consumer ones use minijacks, lightning rods for EMI and RFI. Presumably they know anyone that really cares will get an external audio device. But don't presume too much when it comes to audio, trust me...
The noise floor is going to be at least -66dB, so 57dB of dynamic range is lost to noise. That means the noise level is at least 724 times higher than the lowest discernable sound the card can process. If you're going to spend a penny to improve your computer's sound, it should go towards an external USB or Firewire device.
And don't get me started on "computer speakers". Try this: knock on the sides of your speakers. That resonance is added to every sound emitted from your speakers. Think a better sound card is gonna help?
Firstly, who the hell is going to mistake the GreeNYC logo to represent Apple, or vice versa? Apple has no more claim to the use of apples in commercial logos than Apple Records does, who pre-existed Apple Inc by over a decade (the label for The Beatles).
Ironically, Apple Records has filed numerous trademark/copyright infringment suits against Apple Inc, and as a result Apple Inc stayed out of the music industry entirely, even long after Macintosh became the prevalent computer platform used in recording studios in the early 90's. Obviously that's no longer the case, since Apple introduced iTunes in 2001, and numerous infringement suits ensued.
I imagine Apple Inc is just trying to head off any possible interference by any logo ressembling an apple, and is bullying GreeNYC into a strict trademark agreement. Apple Inc learned their lesson when they spent millions in legal fees to gain the position they have in the music industry today. But somehow I doubt Apple has to worry about GreeNYC making computers!
The suit is very inconsistent with Apple's public image, especially to attack a non-profit environmental organization in today's political climate (pardon the pun). And they sure could have picked a smaller consumer base to pick on! How many computer owners do you figure are in the NYC metro area?! 50 million?
Trent Reznor doesn't drive his own van, lug his own gear, and book his own gigs. If you're suggesting you can get from indie to icon giving away your music, you're sadly mistaken.
The OP said no album and only give away free tracks. I suggested free live recordings, meaning a 45 minute set. They can check out the quality of the studio recording online, that's as far as I'm willing to go. We're pleading a similar case, just in different ways.
I disagree that indies are not selling albums. Stage-side sales are at least 30% of our touring revenue. The farther you get from home, the more likely folks are to buy your CD, not knowing when you'll be back.
And free tracks doesn't make much sense either. It's pretty easy to make your music available for net stream and make it tricky to keep the MP3 (note I didn't say make it impossible).
What we have done is record shows with just a pair of mics and pass CD's around letting everyone know it's ok to copy and give to others. We act like our own "tapers" (and I happen to be very good at it). It's a good promotional tool and people still buy the studio CD of the same songs.
And you complain about driving one hour to a show? Got three words for you: TRY TOURING CANADA! Last tour we drove 8500mi and played 26 shows in 25 days, that's an average of 340mi per day crammed into a minivan for almost a month. We also made decent money, renewed interest from the venues in those 26 towns, added a few hundred to the facebook group, and each tour we get better media support.
It's completely worth it, but not without an album to sell. No album = no media = nobody knows you're coming. With media support, you can draw and get paid better than cover bands.
I agree, support your local bands, but support the touring ones too! Gas is our biggest expense, and it's not looking to get any cheaper anytime soon...
Actually, I gotta give kudos to MySpace. The big labels have billions invested in their talent, and they needed the means to integrate into the internet better. MySpace is cashing in on that. They'll be the only ones left smiling in the end, but it's still a good move for them.
This is hardly progress. This is just another attempt to keep alive one of the most archaic and outdated marketing models still in widespread use. They say "before anyone did anything, Elvis Presley did everything" but in reality his unprecidented success screwed everything. Music marketeers have been blindly flogging the same horse ever since, despite the endless painfully obvious indicators that a paradigm shift is imperative to their survival.
The fundamental flaw in the Elvis marketing model is that the product is not the music, it's the idols. To the labels, the artists aren't considered the purveyors of the music, they're just the packaging. They create idolization of the artist among consumers and then cash in on it. Music is only barely relevant to the process. Look at Paris Hilton... what does she do again?
That's why there are so few major labels. It's not a matter of signing the right talent, it's an incredibly cut-throat competition to manufacture the most influential icons. Making cars is far more expensive and complicated, yet there are 10 international auto makers for every major music label.
But now consumers can access anyone's music just as freely as the radio spewing out any big label's next wannabe hit. So traditional mass media is losing its dominance over the preferences of consumers to the internet, which by definition cannot be bought or controled. As a result, idols have less influence these days, and are becoming increasingly expensive to create.
So what's the next step? If I knew I sure wouldn't post it to a public forum! But what I will say is that the next successful music marketing model will not generate its profits from selling "music units", be they albums, songs, subscriptions, etc.
As a touring musician, live/studio engineer, and producer, I can assure you that there is a powerful motivational force between musical performers and their audiences that has never been engaged for profit to even a fraction of its potential. A bar owner paying a band 10% of sales to pack his bar and sell $12k in booze in one night makes much more sense than a label spending $5M on promotions hoping it holds a candle to the other label's $5M promotions.
But as long as labels treat their talent like packaging, they will continue to falter with repeated "innovations" on the same old game. Consumers have free access to all the content they could ever desire. Fancy packaging simply isn't enough to sell ice to eskimos.
Begs the question, if people were indifferent about a company, how would we know?
The appealing aspects of Apple have their downsides too. Their hardware/software integration and uniformity offer excellent benefits, but that limits the variety of computer models they can offer. For example you currently have to get their full professional model just to have a second internal hard drive. Not a big deal to most, but I know lots of audio guys that curse Apple over that. Add up all the users with specific needs Apple doesn't satisfy well, and you've got significant opposition.
And Google's success proves you don't have to be disliked to get or stay on top.
As an indie musician and producer, I can assure you that successful indie bands do not sell CD's for $10, much less several. Stage-side CD sales should be for $20 or more, partly because of the opportunity to get them signed by the band, also because it's an inelastic demand - anyone willing to spend $10 on a CD at a show will typically spend $20, so selling for less does not sell more copies. It's only when there is a selection of 100's of bands that purse strings tighten.
I feel compelled to reply because I don't want folks to think they can talk any musician down to $10 on a CD. Some you can, but they probably recorded it in their garage.
And while it does cost indies more per CD to manufacture them, major labels typically have much higher production budgets. I produce for between $3k-$8k, majors are typically $50k and up. There are many hits on the radio which cost over $1M for just the one song. And if it flops, the artist(s) gets the bill!
Ironically, the least expensive component of a CD is pressing the content, the most expensive is printing the artwork. That's big motivation to go the iTunes route.
The big problem with the trailer idea is that when you need the extra distance or power, the last thing you'll want is a trailer's weight and aerodynamic drag. The whole point of hybrids is to have a relatively high-output engine recharge a low-output electric system *for light-duty usage*, offering the same range and refueling options as any regular gas vehicle. A diesel car will beat any hybrid in a long-distance race, and will undoubtedly win this X-Prize.
While hybrids are efficient and have very low emmissions for city driving, under load they are worse than diesels in every regard. If the contestant's cars have to be street-legal, a hybrid might use marginally less fuel to complete the race, but a diesel will definitely get there faster.
Hybrids have two motors, one electric, the other typically gas, plus a big heavy power cell, plus a big alternator to charge the power cell. The two motors typically have less combined horsepower than their gas equivalents, and much less torque. So accelleration is poor and not very efficient, and at highway speeds generally the electric motor is only barely enough, so the gas motor is more frequently engaging to recharge the power cell and supplement the power when cimbing/passing. It's only when cruising at 20-40mph that the efficiency of a hybrid is truely remarkable.
But whenever the electric motor's output is exceeded for a long period of time, the relatively small gas engine has to take over. In order for a hybrid to have the necessary power to compete with a diesel, the motors and power cells will weigh more than the entire diesel car. So in a race, the hybrid loses every time.
Hybrids are great for city drivers, but diesels have many applications which are being ignored and aren't served well by hybrids. And for under $1000 you can put together a rig to filter waste vegetable oil for use in an unmodified diesel vehicle. That's even better for the environment than biodiesel because it's a recycled product and no chemicals are necessary to prepare it, where biodiesel requires enough lye and methanol that it competes with petro diesel for environmental damage. Just run the waste oil through a centrifuge filter (removes water and particulate down to under 0.5 microns, including glycerin). It's even possible to clean the oil on the road using the engine's power to heat and pump the oil through the centrifuge. Waste veg oil cleaning waste veg oil, in transit.
Let's face it, hybrids are sexy, diesels aren't. But just watch which engine type wins this prize.
Teach evolution, creationism, hedonism, whatever, just don't leave kids the slightest notion that we don't have it all figured out. We need them spending their dispensible income and polluting the planet as soon as possible. The damage of any undue delay would greatly outweigh any feasible benefits of the little brats exercising freewill. It is imperative that doctrine be imposed to catch anyone who doesn't fully accept materialism from TV and video games to be sure all innocent hope is quashed.
And any domain registered to any corporation should be $1000 minimum.
The scary part is that our brains probably treat computers as an extension of our brains. There's no question that the brain is capable of adapting to treat "tools" in the same way it treats the body. The body is in essence a tool itself. Lose an arm, acquire a prosthesis, and the brain adapts no differently than if you only lose use of a finger or two. It's the same adaptative process athletes and musicians use every day to train their brains to play what they couldn't play at first. Ask any guitar teacher or golf pro about "muscle memory". But what about our brains adapting to having calculation tools readily available? Early tools like the abacus acted as an aid to enable humans to calculate far beyond what we could do with pen and paper, but still relied on the brain for higher calculations. But now everything from a scientific calculator to a CAD program handles far more than what our brains can't. They're designed to not only serve as an aid for a well-trained brain, but to replace the training. Quick, what's 23 x 2.65? Sorry, a computer beat you to it. You're fired. The premise behind the Terminator movies and the new series is blunt, yet curious. How willing are we to hand over the facilities that make us what we are, with the risk that our "benefactor" tools may one day take over? I personally own several audio workstations that each make me more money per hour than most of the wage-earners in North America, never mind third world countries, and they each cost far less than the houses they live in. Ironically I resent the effort I have to make to administer to them, mostly because I'd rather be working on what I enjoy most, utilizing my brain more. But economics demand that I diversify and "adapt". Cheers to getting richer and stupider
So this "revelation" is that animals are prone to reject perceived negative stimuli they have rejected in the past. Anyone that is surprised by this has never had pets, much less children!! Even insects demonstrate that level of awareness and self-preservation. Why were they testing this on monkeys and not bacteria! Those monkeys could be saving lives! What's their next gig? Proving that animals fart? What did this study cost?