Thanks for pointing out the obvious. Yes, I'm smarter than that, no I'm not "one of those". I posted in haste and forgot to mention that United stock, 3 years ago in January, was around $100/share. 2 years ago, $40. Last year, below $20, and now, just over a buck.
I picked this stock as an example of a stock that's been battered over 3 years for a variety of reasons. The internet bubble bursting, Sept. 11, '01. The price of the stock has fallen from a pretty high height, and I was outlining the fact that despite the fact that it's lost 99% of it's value in 3 years, the newspapers/tv news mentions it like it's a shock, the worst thing in the world. If a stock goes from $100 to $66, that's a huge drop, meaningful. To an outsider like me. $3 to $2 doesn't seem like much.
I know that they do have quite a few assets that include partnerships with hotels, the Mileage Plus program, dedicated employees, airplanes, airport gateways.... It's a good company, but I was commenting more on the way it's played out in the media than the value of the company, or how a stock correlates to that.
And I say it as the son of a man who just retired after speniding 38 years as an employee of that company, the last few as an employee/owner. I'm not bitter about the stock price, and neither is he. I could have named other stocks that I've heard/felt this about, but United was the one that jumped to mind, for obvious reasons.
The part I hate is when a company, I'll pick United Airlines because it's been in the news lately, has a low stock price and the headlines scream "United Stock Plummets 33%" when that 33% turns out to be a dollar, going from $3 to $2.
Um, it's in the crapper already, why scream that the sky is falling? It's already all around your feet.
Unfortunately, like with many things, the answer is yes and no.
Yes, you can chug away with your old computer, until something so compelling comes along that you can't do without. My story? I had a 6100/66 (that's a 66 MHz processor, kiddies) that I bought in January '95 and used, happily, for about 3 years. Then broadband came along, and suddenly I didn't have enough space (upgraded to a 1GB drive, even), and the processor was too slow to display the pages that were now shooting down the pipe. So I bought an 8600/300. CRAZY fast, that thing was, even though the brand-spanking new G3 computers were out, I bought a machine with the 604e chip, because it was pretty durn fast and had audio in/out. And it was a refurb, so I got a good deal on it.
Flash forward to 2002, and I'm in a new house, stuck in the basement with my old computer, and there's all sorts of OS X stuff coming, and OS 9 is going the way of the dodo. So I upgraded, bought a TiBook with WiFi so I don't have to be in the basement to use the computer. Glad I didn't get one of the first revs, because I've heard of hinge cracking, paint chipping, etc. For me, the adage "Never buy 1.0 of anything" is still pretty good advice.
Actually, I guess you could say that my upgrades have been bourne from outside sources (broadband, OS changes), not necessarily from neccessity. That said, if I had the disposable income for an iBook (or one of the new 12" PowerBooks), I'd get one darn quick for my wife to use. Being an Apple user, I'm not a MHz queen, because it gets you nowhere, and in my days selling Apples, the answer to the MHz question was "Does your current computer do everything you need it to, as fast as you need it to? Then you're fine". People buying a new, faster machine to do basic word processing and play solitaire, not needed. Photoshop users, people editing novels, digital video editors, sure.
I imagine that if Kazaa became pay only, people would just get their music elsewhere.
My postulation is that the music industry shot itself in the foot with the Napster debacle. You say people would get their music elsewhere. I say that Napster, at it's height, claimed what, 10 20 million subscribers? Now, had the record companies worked it out and said to Napster "Charge everyone $20/month for all the music you can download. You keep track of all the songs downloaded, we'll work it out with ASCAP/BMI to get the royalties paid and you give us $19.99 out of that $20/month and we'll divide the money up to the artists and ourselves.", I think they would have made a killing and done away with the need for the Kazaas and Gnutellas of the world.
Sure, peer-to-peer apps like them would be out there, but say 1 million people said "$20 a month to download all the music I want? OK!", that would have been $20 mil a month that the record companies don't have. I have a conscience, and I love music, and if they had worked it out like that, I'd probably make room in my budget to download music, guilt free. And I bet there are close to a million people that would do it, too.
If not, if there were only half a million? Still $10 mil more a month than they're getting now. I have no pity for the record companies because they had the perfect distribution model already set up, a central company/location where they could track it all. What did they do? Kill it.
If all/.ers vow to only download their music this year, I bet we can get up to an 11% decline in the year 2003! Who's with me? Let's goooooooooooooooo!
Sorry, got caught up in the moment....
Re:This brings a few questions to mind...
on
SAUNAAB
·
· Score: 1
This seems to be the case with Foster's from Australia. It's the most heavily marketed Australian beer here in America, but most Australians will tell you that it's crap.
Which, as someone has already pointed out, is the case with Budweiser and I would add Coors Light. My guess is that they're only available overseas because they can produce the volume and/or get the distribution agreements.
For a beer that's more indicative of the proliferation of great American beers, I'd guess that Sam Adams is more readily available overseas. If you wanted to give that a try.
Ditto MT & Elroy! I knew it wasn't going to be an original thought, but I thought I'd check and see who else had my sense of humour.:)
Re:This brings a few questions to mind...
on
SAUNAAB
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
My response to #3, 'cause it's a sweet hack! There have been stories about building a skyline of Manhattan outside of a kitchen, a Saab sauna is easily just as sweet.
Maybe not as visually pleasing or computer-related, but when you add the grill (and beer, natch), it's pretty great.
I can see someone reading this and saying "Well, that's crap! I'll just throw my old hard drives right into the trash!" Contributing to landfill and the whole "poisonous chemicals in the landfill & water supply" debate.
If the situation is that bad, then I must say I really do support some sort of recycling program for computers (I do anyway, but am saying that maybe more needs to be done to make it worthwhile for your average joe/company).
At the very least, the article should have addressed it when it mentioned that hard drives end up in the trash, with something to the effect of "...however, just throwing the drive in the trash contribues to {insert environmental harm issue here}, so they should be zeroed out, then recycled at the Computer Recycling Center." Especially in a San Francisco paper!!
Since I have no mod points presently, I'll just post offtopic and say that this thread is one to be noted for intelligent, informed discussion, and I applaud Pii and TFloore for their insights and intellectual openness.
What's the point of having a "countdown" article when you spoil #1 in #5 - "...in the same way we talk about Duke Nukem Whenever (the sarcastic nickname for Duke Nukem Forever; see below)."
Most of my early memories seem to be related to music, i.e. the song "Little Willy" by Sweet, which was a US 1973 release as far as I can find. I remember that song, not so much a specific memory, but I do remember the song, which I could have heard into '74 or '75, but it doesn't strike me as that popular of a song, which says to me that 73-4 would be the most likely timeframe, at which time I was 3-4 years old.
Likewise, I remember driving in my dad's 1970 240z to the airport, listening to the Allman Brother's Brothers & Sisters with "Ramblin' Man", which was a 1973 release.
This is all conjecture, but it's the closest I can come to empirical evidence of my earliest memories. I'd say with some leeway that my earliest are from when I was 4 years old.
You're right, and it's actually *all* recording and marketing that's charged to the artist.
You also mentioned royalties, and now that I think about it, that's the bigger bugaboo. To even get signed to a "major label", you're essentially giving at *least* half of your songwriting royalties back to the record companies. So, I'm a major label, I'm whining because I'm not *selling* as much. But you know what, I'm still making money every time (and I mean EVERY TIME) that Christina or Britney or Jimmy Eat World or Bob Dylan song is played, pretty much anywhere, except for non-profit places like college radio stations. Well, some college radio stations. Anyway, my point is, anywhere people are getting paid to put their programming on-air (tv, radio, movies), the record company, as well as the artist, are getting paid for creating that work. I still contend that artists make most of their money by having a hit song, not by selling records (that's an easy assertion) or touring. Touring *can* make you some money, but consider a song like "Time of your life" by Green Day. Damn song was even on E.R.! Billy, as if he wasn't already, was getting fat paid for that. Oh, and when the song plays in reruns? Billy gets paid. When they use it for the backdrop music for that "Outside the Lines" on ESPN? Paid.
And jade tree, home to the Promise Ring (well, except their latest), Jets to Brazil, Girls Against Boys, and Pitchblende, amongst others.
Also Alias records (a label that I was almost signed to, in a former life, long ago). Home to such artists (for however many albums) as American Music Club, the Loud Family, Archers of Loaf and even Yo La Tengo.
There's more out there, and great stuff that you won't be supporting the RIAA. Check it out, don't be a sheep or a hermit crab.
I was once speaking with a member of the generation prior to mine, and she told me that her husband, who was an investment banker, got a Christmas bonus. The bonus was his salary.
Okay, let me make that more clear. The bonus was the equivalent of his salary, ON TOP OF HIS SALARY.
It totally floored me. I mean, I don't make all that much, but a bonus of my salary would be awesome. And this guy was making BIG dollars. Amazing.
Unless she's a supaBitch (which it kind of sounds like she is), you're right, they'd pay. They'd pay just to be done with it. And, just for fun, maybe send the invoice to her boss, so that person knows how valuable you still are, and that your ex-boss has to call an ex-employee in an emergency.
Dangerous? Fraught with peril? Sure, but whaddya got to lose??
27 million Comcast/AT&T subscribers still leaves almost 50 million households getting their cable from elsewhere.
That's approximately 27 million with no competition other than Dish, which for some people isn't an option (no line of sight, apartment living with contract w/cable company). People say that DBS would jack the prices for rural, which is crap. A DishNet/DTV merger would have forced the ATT/Comcast giant to compete with someone. Dish has ONE RATE for the entire country, not one price for LA, one for Anaheim, one for Long Beach, etc. Cable companies charge differently by town (which "regulates" the cable co.s), seemingly by ability to pay.
Dishes would have to compete at the profit centers, i.e. the cities, not the rural areas, where they probably have most subscribers, but no competition from cable. Think they would abandon the cities to cable if they merged? doubt it.
I agree with you on the financing part, and while I agree that downloading songs and listening to them helps to figure out if you want to buy the CD, I think that it would at least help to have major CD purchasing sites have little 96-128 bit 30-second snippets of the songs. It's not the full song, but it would at least help. What gets me is that they have the snips in Real or WMP formats. I have a Mac, and Real is okay, but in Beta (and doesn't have the response/integration that I'd like) and WMP...nonexistent. MP3 is already out there and ubiquitous. I think most people can tell from 10 30-second snips if they're going to like an album. I was Music Director at my college radio station for a while and that was part of my job, listening to every album that came in. I'd usually cruise through, hearing the first little bit (15-30 sec) and then maybe ffwding into the meat of the song. If it couldn't capture me, if a few songs couldn't capture my ear, then I pretty much knew I was done, it wasn't for me.
Well, I don't know about Retrospect being history. It seems that the home user's not gonna set up something like this to do what Retrospect Express can do for US $50. I'd rather back up locally (which Backup can do), than remotely (which is what it seems designed for), and I doubt that Backup backs up the whole computer, much less restores it all from bare metal, which is the most important part of backup.
If Dantz goes away, it will be for other reasons, not from Apple's dinky Backup program.
My guess, Jack, is that you got modded down because the modder thought it obvious that they can't transcribe copyrighted works. They're still under copyright and the PG site states - We cannot publish any texts still in copyright. This generally means that our texts are taken from books published pre-1923. (It's more complicated than that, as our Copyright Page explains, but 1923 is a good first rule-of-thumb for the U.S.A.)
So you won't find the latest bestsellers or modern computer books here. You will find the classic books from the start of this century and previous centuries, from authors like Shakespeare, Poe, Dante, as well as well-loved favorites like the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the Tarzan and Mars books of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Alice's adventures in Wonderland as told by Lewis Carroll, and thousands of others.
The texts you mention are "illegal" replications/duplications. But please do read about the travesty of copyright laws on their site as well. And vote accordingly in 2004. And don't get discouraged - keep posting.
Mod this down, offtopic, whatever, but AvC makes an excellent point, and does it concisely. So very well stated, this should be flown from banners in front of every music company & the RIAA.
I hate that music on CDNow & elsewhere is in proprietary formats to listen to, if they have snippets to listen to at all. I think CDNow has some stuff in MP3, but not all. Most are RealPlayer or some Windows format. Put them in MP3! A 30-second rip at 128 bits or less - everyone can play that! Help us consumers out!
My new car has a 6 CD changer that languishes thanks to my iRock Wireless Adapter and iPod. Over 1500 songs of my own liking, including my own songs, why would I want to listen to the radio, except for the college station from Boulder?
I'm very strongly for artist's rights, and the idea that the artists should be compensated. However, it's articles and actions like this that make me want to download songs instead of giving my money to these weasels. Most companies, if they acted this way, you'd see a direct hit to their bottom line in the form of fleeing customers.
Perhaps they really are losing all of their customers with this attitude.
Slashdot Mirror
I picked this stock as an example of a stock that's been battered over 3 years for a variety of reasons. The internet bubble bursting, Sept. 11, '01. The price of the stock has fallen from a pretty high height, and I was outlining the fact that despite the fact that it's lost 99% of it's value in 3 years, the newspapers/tv news mentions it like it's a shock, the worst thing in the world. If a stock goes from $100 to $66, that's a huge drop, meaningful. To an outsider like me. $3 to $2 doesn't seem like much.
I know that they do have quite a few assets that include partnerships with hotels, the Mileage Plus program, dedicated employees, airplanes, airport gateways.... It's a good company, but I was commenting more on the way it's played out in the media than the value of the company, or how a stock correlates to that.
And I say it as the son of a man who just retired after speniding 38 years as an employee of that company, the last few as an employee/owner. I'm not bitter about the stock price, and neither is he. I could have named other stocks that I've heard/felt this about, but United was the one that jumped to mind, for obvious reasons.
Um, it's in the crapper already, why scream that the sky is falling? It's already all around your feet.
Yes, you can chug away with your old computer, until something so compelling comes along that you can't do without. My story? I had a 6100/66 (that's a 66 MHz processor, kiddies) that I bought in January '95 and used, happily, for about 3 years. Then broadband came along, and suddenly I didn't have enough space (upgraded to a 1GB drive, even), and the processor was too slow to display the pages that were now shooting down the pipe. So I bought an 8600/300. CRAZY fast, that thing was, even though the brand-spanking new G3 computers were out, I bought a machine with the 604e chip, because it was pretty durn fast and had audio in/out. And it was a refurb, so I got a good deal on it.
Flash forward to 2002, and I'm in a new house, stuck in the basement with my old computer, and there's all sorts of OS X stuff coming, and OS 9 is going the way of the dodo. So I upgraded, bought a TiBook with WiFi so I don't have to be in the basement to use the computer. Glad I didn't get one of the first revs, because I've heard of hinge cracking, paint chipping, etc. For me, the adage "Never buy 1.0 of anything" is still pretty good advice.
Actually, I guess you could say that my upgrades have been bourne from outside sources (broadband, OS changes), not necessarily from neccessity. That said, if I had the disposable income for an iBook (or one of the new 12" PowerBooks), I'd get one darn quick for my wife to use. Being an Apple user, I'm not a MHz queen, because it gets you nowhere, and in my days selling Apples, the answer to the MHz question was "Does your current computer do everything you need it to, as fast as you need it to? Then you're fine". People buying a new, faster machine to do basic word processing and play solitaire, not needed. Photoshop users, people editing novels, digital video editors, sure.
Oh, YMMV. :)
I don't buy, sounds just fine.....
My postulation is that the music industry shot itself in the foot with the Napster debacle. You say people would get their music elsewhere. I say that Napster, at it's height, claimed what, 10 20 million subscribers? Now, had the record companies worked it out and said to Napster "Charge everyone $20/month for all the music you can download. You keep track of all the songs downloaded, we'll work it out with ASCAP/BMI to get the royalties paid and you give us $19.99 out of that $20/month and we'll divide the money up to the artists and ourselves.", I think they would have made a killing and done away with the need for the Kazaas and Gnutellas of the world.
Sure, peer-to-peer apps like them would be out there, but say 1 million people said "$20 a month to download all the music I want? OK!", that would have been $20 mil a month that the record companies don't have. I have a conscience, and I love music, and if they had worked it out like that, I'd probably make room in my budget to download music, guilt free. And I bet there are close to a million people that would do it, too.
If not, if there were only half a million? Still $10 mil more a month than they're getting now. I have no pity for the record companies because they had the perfect distribution model already set up, a central company/location where they could track it all. What did they do? Kill it.
Morons.
If all /.ers vow to only download their music this year, I bet we can get up to an 11% decline in the year 2003! Who's with me? Let's goooooooooooooooo!
Sorry, got caught up in the moment....
Which, as someone has already pointed out, is the case with Budweiser and I would add Coors Light. My guess is that they're only available overseas because they can produce the volume and/or get the distribution agreements.
For a beer that's more indicative of the proliferation of great American beers, I'd guess that Sam Adams is more readily available overseas. If you wanted to give that a try.
Personally, my favorites are Red Nectar from California, and pretty much all of the beers available from the New Belgium Brewing Company in Colorado. And for a lighter beer, I prefer Saxer Lemon Lager from Oregon.
Ditto MT & Elroy! I knew it wasn't going to be an original thought, but I thought I'd check and see who else had my sense of humour. :)
Maybe not as visually pleasing or computer-related, but when you add the grill (and beer, natch), it's pretty great.
If the situation is that bad, then I must say I really do support some sort of recycling program for computers (I do anyway, but am saying that maybe more needs to be done to make it worthwhile for your average joe/company).
At the very least, the article should have addressed it when it mentioned that hard drives end up in the trash, with something to the effect of "...however, just throwing the drive in the trash contribues to {insert environmental harm issue here}, so they should be zeroed out, then recycled at the Computer Recycling Center." Especially in a San Francisco paper!!
Thanks for the opportunity to think.
What's the point of having a "countdown" article when you spoil #1 in #5 - "...in the same way we talk about Duke Nukem Whenever (the sarcastic nickname for Duke Nukem Forever; see below)."
Likewise, I remember driving in my dad's 1970 240z to the airport, listening to the Allman Brother's Brothers & Sisters with "Ramblin' Man", which was a 1973 release.
This is all conjecture, but it's the closest I can come to empirical evidence of my earliest memories. I'd say with some leeway that my earliest are from when I was 4 years old.
You also mentioned royalties, and now that I think about it, that's the bigger bugaboo. To even get signed to a "major label", you're essentially giving at *least* half of your songwriting royalties back to the record companies. So, I'm a major label, I'm whining because I'm not *selling* as much. But you know what, I'm still making money every time (and I mean EVERY TIME) that Christina or Britney or Jimmy Eat World or Bob Dylan song is played, pretty much anywhere, except for non-profit places like college radio stations. Well, some college radio stations. Anyway, my point is, anywhere people are getting paid to put their programming on-air (tv, radio, movies), the record company, as well as the artist, are getting paid for creating that work. I still contend that artists make most of their money by having a hit song, not by selling records (that's an easy assertion) or touring. Touring *can* make you some money, but consider a song like "Time of your life" by Green Day. Damn song was even on E.R.! Billy, as if he wasn't already, was getting fat paid for that. Oh, and when the song plays in reruns? Billy gets paid. When they use it for the backdrop music for that "Outside the Lines" on ESPN? Paid.
Also Alias records (a label that I was almost signed to, in a former life, long ago). Home to such artists (for however many albums) as American Music Club, the Loud Family, Archers of Loaf and even Yo La Tengo.
There's more out there, and great stuff that you won't be supporting the RIAA. Check it out, don't be a sheep or a hermit crab.
Okay, let me make that more clear. The bonus was the equivalent of his salary, ON TOP OF HIS SALARY.
It totally floored me. I mean, I don't make all that much, but a bonus of my salary would be awesome. And this guy was making BIG dollars. Amazing.
Oops, that one was "Favorite Past Slashdot Headline", not "Funniest Slashdot Headline".
Dangerous? Fraught with peril? Sure, but whaddya got to lose??
That's approximately 27 million with no competition other than Dish, which for some people isn't an option (no line of sight, apartment living with contract w/cable company). People say that DBS would jack the prices for rural, which is crap. A DishNet/DTV merger would have forced the ATT/Comcast giant to compete with someone. Dish has ONE RATE for the entire country, not one price for LA, one for Anaheim, one for Long Beach, etc. Cable companies charge differently by town (which "regulates" the cable co.s), seemingly by ability to pay.
Dishes would have to compete at the profit centers, i.e. the cities, not the rural areas, where they probably have most subscribers, but no competition from cable. Think they would abandon the cities to cable if they merged? doubt it.
I agree with you on the financing part, and while I agree that downloading songs and listening to them helps to figure out if you want to buy the CD, I think that it would at least help to have major CD purchasing sites have little 96-128 bit 30-second snippets of the songs. It's not the full song, but it would at least help. What gets me is that they have the snips in Real or WMP formats. I have a Mac, and Real is okay, but in Beta (and doesn't have the response/integration that I'd like) and WMP...nonexistent. MP3 is already out there and ubiquitous. I think most people can tell from 10 30-second snips if they're going to like an album. I was Music Director at my college radio station for a while and that was part of my job, listening to every album that came in. I'd usually cruise through, hearing the first little bit (15-30 sec) and then maybe ffwding into the meat of the song. If it couldn't capture me, if a few songs couldn't capture my ear, then I pretty much knew I was done, it wasn't for me.
If Dantz goes away, it will be for other reasons, not from Apple's dinky Backup program.
So you won't find the latest bestsellers or modern computer books here. You will find the classic books from the start of this century and previous centuries, from authors like Shakespeare, Poe, Dante, as well as well-loved favorites like the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the Tarzan and Mars books of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Alice's adventures in Wonderland as told by Lewis Carroll, and thousands of others.
The texts you mention are "illegal" replications/duplications. But please do read about the travesty of copyright laws on their site as well. And vote accordingly in 2004. And don't get discouraged - keep posting.
I hate that music on CDNow & elsewhere is in proprietary formats to listen to, if they have snippets to listen to at all. I think CDNow has some stuff in MP3, but not all. Most are RealPlayer or some Windows format. Put them in MP3! A 30-second rip at 128 bits or less - everyone can play that! Help us consumers out!
I'm very strongly for artist's rights, and the idea that the artists should be compensated. However, it's articles and actions like this that make me want to download songs instead of giving my money to these weasels. Most companies, if they acted this way, you'd see a direct hit to their bottom line in the form of fleeing customers.
Perhaps they really are losing all of their customers with this attitude.
No, really. I will.