They make un-oaked reds for you folks. Bedell First Crush or Beaujolais.
But seriously, how can you stand it, when all the taste is on the back-end and none on the tip? Un-oaked reds taste GREAT, if you give them five seconds...
Like the hi-fi market, experts know the difference. One of the biggest factors is aeration. An expensive wine ($20+ U.S.) will benefit from being opened up to, and exceeding, 24 hours before tasting.
The real experts know the difference immediately. They can taste the stiffness, and know that it will degrade into softness over time.
For the rest of us, proper aeration is required for the soft "flower" to "bloom".
Retail is more like 1.5. It can vary from 1.3 to 2x. Example, a $6.67 wine is priced to sell at $9.99 (That's 1.5). If you can get a $6 wine and sell it for $11.99, then you're a big winner. $4 for $11.99 is possible, but rare.
Not to mention, without proper aeration (4-24 hours) it would have tasted stiff.
It makes me wonder, what is the point of drinking expensive wine at a restaurant? The most important factor - aeration - is missing. Since this usually takes 12-24 hours (less with a decanter), it seems that restaurants are uniquely unqualified to deliver a proper wine-tasting experience.
There's no question that you can smell chlorine in tap water. Come on. I purposely let my taps run until I can smell the chlorine and that's how I know it's "fresh".
The real question is if you can taste plastic in bottled water.
As someone who reads the wine press, there's a recurring meme, that the best wines in the world are about $15-20 U.S.
As someone who shops wine, I know what they mean. They mean off-brands. They mean great wines from producers who really don't give a fuck. They have a terrific product, but no saleable brand (Kendall Jackson, J. Lohr, BV, etc). So they just put their wines out there, and if you find them, you win.
I've tasted $15 wines that beat $20 wines from reputable vineyards. And there are $11 wines that make you wonder why you would pay $15.
Italy and France are a gamble, quite frankly. They are slow to catch up to the "clean" style of America/Australia and are usually a waste of money imo.
True, but a $50 bottle will taste better the following day.
So you should really open both and taste them tomorrow for an accurate sample.
If you taste them immediately, the $5 bottle will have the advantage. And not fairly.
Great wines have structure, and that can be intimidating on first glance. No bottle under $20 (US) should be drank without decanting and aeration, on the order of many hours.
Credit cards take (I believe) 2-3% of the transaction.
So ask your retailer, "Do you take credit cards?"
If the answer is an enthusiastic "YES!" then you're in the clear.
If you're buying 2 bagels from the corner bagel store then you should probably pay in cash. Credit cards (generally) have a $1 minimum, which translates to a $5-10 purchase depending on your merchant's profit margin.
Thus the "$10 charge minimum", which is illegal, but salient.
>Now imagine these kinds of gimmicks in the hands of a 13 year old girl, whose cell phone bill you pay...
Well that *IS* Verizon's m.o.
I signed up for Verizon because everyone had it. Verizon promised better coverage than el-cheapo T-Mobile. Of course, while Verizon does have better coverage, it's the same or worse at my house. And Verizon charges up the ass.
Verizon has a great network, obfuscated by countless layers of smoke and mirrors. Are you 13? Do you have no self-control? Do you need Miley Cyrus' latest song now? Then Verizon Wireless is for you.
This is a company that will not admit a mistake and will not charge less than anyone else.
>The warning about Behringer gear isn't that it doesn't produce good sound. It does, especially for the price.
Depends if it's difficult. I have a small Behringer mixer that I wrote off as "too noisy" but it turns out it's fine. As long as you use the 1/4" jacks and don't use the mic pre-amps (XLR).
It turns out you don't get quality mic pre-amps for $50. Somehow I'm not surprised by that.
Behringer is barely-pro audio, more like consumer gear repackaged and upsold. You're taking a risk.
>Also I just want to say the RCA type dual line in jacks have never been popular on sound cards as far as I know
But they should be. I never fail to break those dinky 1/8" connectors. It's just a cost issue and what people are "satisfied" with. Most people are fine with 1/8". Personally, I've been sick of them for years.
RCA pre-molded cables are horrible. They use incredibly tiny amounts of wire, and an RCA cable is virtually guaranteed to break in time.
But the RCA connector is great. It's a far-flung industry standard and you can make your own cables pretty easily. The connector is grounded and the channels isolated. It's a virtual drop-in replacement for a guitar patch (1/4").
The only thing that's really better is XLR. And I wouldn't expect that on a sound card.
They will never teach typing in school because it's far too useful for the general population. If everybody knew how to type, then any ol' high school grad could make $14/hr. Ho! Watch college enrollment drop right off.
They will never teach how to drive a car or money management. They will never teach resumes or job interview. They will never teach physical fitness or weight training. They will never teach oil change or tire rotation. These are all "electives."
They will never teach speech or diction. If you can talk, great. Good for you. They will never teach foreign languages. (What's known as "Spanish class" is for doing math homework.) They stopped teaching algebra already. Otherwise they would still have kids remember it by 11th grade.
They will never teach how to write, because there's just no time, Jim. Hand cramps for everybody. They will never teach teamwork because it's far too complicated.
They teach history, physics, and animal dissection. Interesting choices those.
They should call the Nintendo DS a "Macintosh" and say that it has all kinds of educational software. They will get loads of sales to schools.
That strategy kept Apple afloat for two decades before they invented the iPod.
Just make sure the 'DS comes with WYSIWG text editor, and a primitive paint program with a brick tileset and "spraypaint" brush. Bonus points if they revert to black and white.
>history shows service industries to be the poor cusions of people with something to sell.
MS probably could not be as big as they are with support contracts. But they have licenses, which is like a support contract where they don't have to do any work.
MS and Oracle are all about IP. Just like support wouldn't work for MS, I doubt selling and licensing IP would work for most smaller software companies. There just isn't the need. Once you decide not to license from the big boys, everything else is cheaper and better.
I mean, have you ever heard of a startup company saying "I'm going to make an even *better* database than oracle and I'm going to charge MORE for it?" That's what would happen in any other industry besides software.
I don't remember ever watching an entire commercial show or movie on YouTube. It has a pretty bad reputation for clip length and resolution, so it's not exactly my first choice for watching, say, The Office.
No that's a perfect example. 60's music is old crap that everyone is tired of hearing. If that was free, then new music would have to be better to attract dollars.
Instead, people are still paying for that 60's shit, indirectly, every time it's on the radio. And the radio just avoids playing new stuff, because it isn't very good.
I think you just nailed the issue of why obsolete media shouldn't be protected. Because it's obsolete. Everyone's heard it, and everyone has a copy already. There's no natural market there.
What about e-books? Do you think they should cost the same as books?
What about the quality of the paper, and the sturdiness of the binding? Do those things matter? How about paperbacks, which were invented specifically to be cheap. It looks like Kindle books cost more.
I guess no artist is forced to release their work. But releasing it under one label means monopoly pricing. Imagine if only one store sold potatoes. That's the flaw in your argument. We never did see CD prices go well below $15, because every CD is unique to a distributor. But potatoes are cheap, because everyone sells them.
So then why don't they band together and change the law?
It seems every society on the planet is "democratic" at the local level. Sure it might be "illegal" to "rape children," but if everyone in the parish looks the other way, then what are the consequences?
Leaving laws on the books that you disagree with just leaves open the possibility that somebody from outside will come in and screw you over. Marijuana is a great example. It's "legal" as far as anyone is concerned, until they get arrested.
As long as you hide your supposedly-legal activities, you're admitting they should remain illegal. If your activities can stand up to scrutiny (with community support), then the law can be changed.
In a record store you can listen to anything before you buy it. I wonder if most people have ever been to one. It makes music shopping absolutely a treat. And suffice to say, every album in the store competes on the merits.
Like a lot of newfangled ideas, it's been done, and it worked.
Slashdot Mirror
>Except most people use gasoline in gallons and printer ink in milliliters.
Doesn't matter. That's about a thousand dollars a pound. Pure silver is only about $270/lb. Copper is $3.40/lb.
Besides, you failed your own comparison. This college does use printer ink by the gallon.
They make un-oaked reds for you folks. Bedell First Crush or Beaujolais.
But seriously, how can you stand it, when all the taste is on the back-end and none on the tip? Un-oaked reds taste GREAT, if you give them five seconds...
Like the hi-fi market, experts know the difference. One of the biggest factors is aeration. An expensive wine ($20+ U.S.) will benefit from being opened up to, and exceeding, 24 hours before tasting.
The real experts know the difference immediately. They can taste the stiffness, and know that it will degrade into softness over time.
For the rest of us, proper aeration is required for the soft "flower" to "bloom".
Retail is more like 1.5. It can vary from 1.3 to 2x. Example, a $6.67 wine is priced to sell at $9.99 (That's 1.5). If you can get a $6 wine and sell it for $11.99, then you're a big winner. $4 for $11.99 is possible, but rare.
Restaurant is generally 2x to 3x. Not 4x.
Nice try, you almost had it.
>Probably a 35 dollar bottle that was marked up.
Not to mention, without proper aeration (4-24 hours) it would have tasted stiff.
It makes me wonder, what is the point of drinking expensive wine at a restaurant? The most important factor - aeration - is missing. Since this usually takes 12-24 hours (less with a decanter), it seems that restaurants are uniquely unqualified to deliver a proper wine-tasting experience.
There's no question that you can smell chlorine in tap water. Come on. I purposely let my taps run until I can smell the chlorine and that's how I know it's "fresh".
The real question is if you can taste plastic in bottled water.
As someone who reads the wine press, there's a recurring meme, that the best wines in the world are about $15-20 U.S.
As someone who shops wine, I know what they mean. They mean off-brands. They mean great wines from producers who really don't give a fuck. They have a terrific product, but no saleable brand (Kendall Jackson, J. Lohr, BV, etc). So they just put their wines out there, and if you find them, you win.
I've tasted $15 wines that beat $20 wines from reputable vineyards. And there are $11 wines that make you wonder why you would pay $15.
Italy and France are a gamble, quite frankly. They are slow to catch up to the "clean" style of America/Australia and are usually a waste of money imo.
Correction: No bottle over $20 (US). My bad.
True, but a $50 bottle will taste better the following day.
So you should really open both and taste them tomorrow for an accurate sample.
If you taste them immediately, the $5 bottle will have the advantage. And not fairly.
Great wines have structure, and that can be intimidating on first glance. No bottle under $20 (US) should be drank without decanting and aeration, on the order of many hours.
I doubt it. There's nothing about a plastic bag that screams "quality." And they do pick up the plastic taste over time.
What's different about the process? I hope you realize you're talking about the end result here. Barreling should be the same.
Credit cards take (I believe) 2-3% of the transaction.
So ask your retailer, "Do you take credit cards?"
If the answer is an enthusiastic "YES!" then you're in the clear.
If you're buying 2 bagels from the corner bagel store then you should probably pay in cash. Credit cards (generally) have a $1 minimum, which translates to a $5-10 purchase depending on your merchant's profit margin.
Thus the "$10 charge minimum", which is illegal, but salient.
>Now imagine these kinds of gimmicks in the hands of a 13 year old girl, whose cell phone bill you pay...
Well that *IS* Verizon's m.o.
I signed up for Verizon because everyone had it. Verizon promised better coverage than el-cheapo T-Mobile. Of course, while Verizon does have better coverage, it's the same or worse at my house. And Verizon charges up the ass.
Verizon has a great network, obfuscated by countless layers of smoke and mirrors. Are you 13? Do you have no self-control? Do you need Miley Cyrus' latest song now? Then Verizon Wireless is for you.
This is a company that will not admit a mistake and will not charge less than anyone else.
Verizon Wireless: For your pimp-mobile (tm).
>The warning about Behringer gear isn't that it doesn't produce good sound. It does, especially for the price.
Depends if it's difficult. I have a small Behringer mixer that I wrote off as "too noisy" but it turns out it's fine. As long as you use the 1/4" jacks and don't use the mic pre-amps (XLR).
It turns out you don't get quality mic pre-amps for $50. Somehow I'm not surprised by that.
Behringer is barely-pro audio, more like consumer gear repackaged and upsold. You're taking a risk.
Would you care to describe your problems with M-Audio? I've been interested in one for some time.
I agree that 16-bit sound and 1/8" jacks are awfully generic. The only obvious step up is M-Audio. What are you using that's better?
>Also I just want to say the RCA type dual line in jacks have never been popular on sound cards as far as I know
But they should be. I never fail to break those dinky 1/8" connectors. It's just a cost issue and what people are "satisfied" with. Most people are fine with 1/8". Personally, I've been sick of them for years.
RCA pre-molded cables are horrible. They use incredibly tiny amounts of wire, and an RCA cable is virtually guaranteed to break in time.
But the RCA connector is great. It's a far-flung industry standard and you can make your own cables pretty easily. The connector is grounded and the channels isolated. It's a virtual drop-in replacement for a guitar patch (1/4").
The only thing that's really better is XLR. And I wouldn't expect that on a sound card.
They will never teach typing in school because it's far too useful for the general population. If everybody knew how to type, then any ol' high school grad could make $14/hr. Ho! Watch college enrollment drop right off.
They will never teach how to drive a car or money management. They will never teach resumes or job interview. They will never teach physical fitness or weight training. They will never teach oil change or tire rotation. These are all "electives."
They will never teach speech or diction. If you can talk, great. Good for you. They will never teach foreign languages. (What's known as "Spanish class" is for doing math homework.) They stopped teaching algebra already. Otherwise they would still have kids remember it by 11th grade.
They will never teach how to write, because there's just no time, Jim. Hand cramps for everybody. They will never teach teamwork because it's far too complicated.
They teach history, physics, and animal dissection. Interesting choices those.
They should call the Nintendo DS a "Macintosh" and say that it has all kinds of educational software. They will get loads of sales to schools.
That strategy kept Apple afloat for two decades before they invented the iPod.
Just make sure the 'DS comes with WYSIWG text editor, and a primitive paint program with a brick tileset and "spraypaint" brush. Bonus points if they revert to black and white.
>history shows service industries to be the poor cusions of people with something to sell.
MS probably could not be as big as they are with support contracts. But they have licenses, which is like a support contract where they don't have to do any work.
MS and Oracle are all about IP. Just like support wouldn't work for MS, I doubt selling and licensing IP would work for most smaller software companies. There just isn't the need. Once you decide not to license from the big boys, everything else is cheaper and better.
I mean, have you ever heard of a startup company saying "I'm going to make an even *better* database than oracle and I'm going to charge MORE for it?" That's what would happen in any other industry besides software.
Maybe Yang just didn't want to sell out to Microsoft? After all, we'd all have to get new email accounts if he did.
Was the quality good enough to call it "pirated"?
I don't remember ever watching an entire commercial show or movie on YouTube. It has a pretty bad reputation for clip length and resolution, so it's not exactly my first choice for watching, say, The Office.
Is it for anyone else?
>most businesses want cogs they can slot into an open spot. Hardly cynical to state what's pretty manifestly the truth.
Well they should have mentioned this in school instead of telling us that if we're smarter than everyone else, we'll get hired.
It only took me about 10 years to figure out how mundane a "job" is supposed to be.
No that's a perfect example. 60's music is old crap that everyone is tired of hearing. If that was free, then new music would have to be better to attract dollars.
Instead, people are still paying for that 60's shit, indirectly, every time it's on the radio. And the radio just avoids playing new stuff, because it isn't very good.
I think you just nailed the issue of why obsolete media shouldn't be protected. Because it's obsolete. Everyone's heard it, and everyone has a copy already. There's no natural market there.
What about e-books? Do you think they should cost the same as books?
What about the quality of the paper, and the sturdiness of the binding? Do those things matter? How about paperbacks, which were invented specifically to be cheap. It looks like Kindle books cost more.
I guess no artist is forced to release their work. But releasing it under one label means monopoly pricing. Imagine if only one store sold potatoes. That's the flaw in your argument. We never did see CD prices go well below $15, because every CD is unique to a distributor. But potatoes are cheap, because everyone sells them.
So then why don't they band together and change the law?
It seems every society on the planet is "democratic" at the local level. Sure it might be "illegal" to "rape children," but if everyone in the parish looks the other way, then what are the consequences?
Leaving laws on the books that you disagree with just leaves open the possibility that somebody from outside will come in and screw you over. Marijuana is a great example. It's "legal" as far as anyone is concerned, until they get arrested.
As long as you hide your supposedly-legal activities, you're admitting they should remain illegal. If your activities can stand up to scrutiny (with community support), then the law can be changed.
In a record store you can listen to anything before you buy it. I wonder if most people have ever been to one. It makes music shopping absolutely a treat. And suffice to say, every album in the store competes on the merits.
Like a lot of newfangled ideas, it's been done, and it worked.