Why nor use a Linux boot CD like Knoppix or SuSe? If you don't have a CD-ROM, a hard drive isn't that expensive. I understand the power savings part, but you might only be able to do so much with a non bootable USB port.
My father is 59, very bad eyes from diabetes, didn't start using a computer until 2 years ago. Observing him, and dealing with his problems, has shown me that simple is the best. Keep the eye candy on the screen to a minimum. Use fonts like Arial which have clean lines. Make sure the text and background contrast very well. Give them a clean black text on white background, over a blue text on gray background. Use basic colors, no light yellow, light gray, ect ect.
As far as structure. Simple Simple Simple. Big bold headers. Big separators. Lots of CLICK HERE links. Most people miss the mouseovers and don't really understand hyperlinking. And make those mouseovers VERY different. Invert the colors of the link when there is a mouseover event. Lastly, aim for 800x600, no bigger. My father uses XP at 8x6 on a 19" monitor and it is too small for him.
You might even want to consider a regular name brand CD player, and get a good universal remote with a big LCD screen that can been seen easily. My father has the poor eyesight and a good remote goes a long way. Even if it doesn't light up, good tactile design makes all the difference. He can't see most LCD's so I made sure that he has a remote with different shaped buttons that can be felt easily. Check out http://www.remotecentral.com for reviews.
A song, like a book (or book series), is a discrete unit of art
Lets try a better book analogy. The album is the book, the songs are the chapters. Try reading Chapter 6 then 2 then 9 then 3. You won't get the same effect as you would reading them in order would you?
Granted most music out here now tends to be 2 hit songs and filler. So the book is really a magazine/newspaper, and the songs are articles. Makes no difference to the reader what order the are presented.
With that being said, there still are artists who are actually artists, and control the order of songs, and do so it in a deliberate way. The Floyd examples are good, but the album was a story that needed to be in order to really get the full effect. Other albums do not need to be in order, but the artist wanted it that way for whatever reason.
Seriously - I'm not sure what business you're in, but do your clients really need to be using AOL?
I am not sure about what he means by clients, but we have this problem with
customers.
One of the sites I manage
DressKids.com , sends out an email
conformation for the order, a CC card conformation from the processor (not my
choice) and then an email when the order is shipped. Plus we send out a
newsletter about every 3-4 months. Pretty reasonable right? We don't spam, we
don't sell lists. Our emails do not get through to AOL subscribers. Why? because
people repost them as spam, whether it is intentional or not. We get many phone
calls from cranky customers complaining they didn't get their email. But those
same people are reporting those emails as spam. About 20% of our base is on AOL.
Most of them are new moms/housewives on AOL. They have no clue what they are
doing. Plus they don't care that they have no clue and take it out on us.
AOL needs to do something about this. Having to contact AOL on a regular basis
to reverse something dumb that their customers are doing is unreasonable. Spam
is a problem, no argument with that. But when legit emails do not get through
because of false reports, who's fault is it? Who should fix it? Who has the
time?
They do not drop them, they just raise the prices. Mfg's that use windows exclusively will get better negotiated discounts on their volume OEM license purchases. But if the Mfg sells "alternative" OS's they will not give then as good of a price.
With the slim margins in the PC market getting smaller, that MS exclusive discount can be the difference between in the black or the red.
Once you get the ticking, clicking, and screeching sounds you might be out of
luck. Mechanical failures tend to destroy the actual data on the platters. Heads
crash, bearing explode or shred leaving metal shaving on the platters and cause
physical damage. Some recovery is possible, but rarely total recovery.
Most big data recovery operations keep new units of every type and model of
hard drives around for recovery. If you had an armature go, they pull your
platters out of your drive, and put them in EXACTLY the same make and model HD
in their clean room and try to recover the data with standard software. You
could try and do this yourself but buying EXACTLY the same make model and series
of drive. But opening up one of these units while not in a clean room is not a
good idea.
For sector damage, non physical damage, there are tons of tools like
this and
this out there that might
help. But sometimes the damage to the MBR and backup MBR are so bad that
recovery tools might not be able to make sense of the bits. I have one sitting
right here that is like that. Somehow the bits got shredded over the ENTIRE
disk. I assume there was a physical malfunction that dragged the head across the
platters and made Swiss cheese of it.
My first and last experience was at Rutgers University. At the time Rutgers had lots on info running over Gopher for school stuff. But even then WWW was taking over as THE source for information. Every Comp Sci major (back then it meant programming only) was learning this new language called HTML. We spent more time doing stuff with that than actual work. Not to mention some hacking of the schools network.
Gopher seemed very antiquated since this new HTML thing allowed you to do the same stuff as Gopher, but also format it, use different text sizes and WOW... pictures. We downloaded this thing called Netscape and opened a text editor and went at it. Anyone at the school that had a "Computer" account could post these so called "web pages" to their personl storage space. It was a very generous amount of space too, 2 MB. We were amazed, we could put almost two 3 1/4 floppies worth of useless stuff there for everyone to see.
I had bought a new Dell PC back in 1995, a Pentium 100, and spent $800 on a 17" monitor. I have used it everyday since then.
I have gone through 7 PC's in that time(maybe 8), but the monitor has stayed. I have run at 10x7 most of that time. Can't run higher res, but is rock solid at 85Hz at 10x7.
I want to get something bigger, but this one works. I imagine my upgrade will be this year when I get a 42" WEGA LCD TV with a DVI connector. Come one, Doom3 in 5.1 and on a 42" LCD.... But I will keep the old girl around for when I want to use both at the same time.
Paying $10 an hour for Wi-Fi access is almost twice as you pay for a movie. Would you pay $20 to see a movie?
Well, around me it is $9-$10 for a single movie ticket, and that is considered cheap compared to Philly and NYC. I have seen $14 theaters in Philly. (I am in NJ, ten minutes from Philly)
Dinner and a movie will end up being a $100 for the night if you go anywhere but MacDonalds and Blockbuster.
Why? Because they're cheaper. Almost every game will come out at one of the mall stores for $50 and be available at CompUSA, etc. the same day or a few days later for $40. And they rapidly fall to $30-35 (except for the hottest titles), while the mall stores keep them at $50.
I think that price is one factor, but I feel as though location is another.
Look at where EB shops are at... Malls. Where are GameStops? Strip malls.
Most people who play PC games aren't going to be regulars at malls, and if they are they know they can get PC games cheaper elsewhere.
But now if you are a 15 year old kid who wants to get the latest FPS for Xbox, you will get it where you can. And the mall is the place parents drop off kids for 6 hours and get them later. They wouldn't do that at Best Buy. Plus, the prices for console games don't vary much from store to store, even IF that mattered to them as much as the ability to purchase the game at all. So what ends up happening is that the EB will sell more console game since the clientele for games at the mall tends to be young.
Sorry, I forgot to observe my tiredness when writing this morning...
Meta agree physical truth is waaaaaayyyyy OT for this story.
I think of the truth as a blob, it may stretch and move and change shape, but it is still a blob. And on a perticular day, I might see it differently. So I agree with you again.
Scientists know that there is always more. Once you find an answer to a question, you will open to the door to 3 more questions about something else. It is the way advances are made. You create a theory, which you test, and from those results you come up with more theories.
With this particular test, they wanted to rerun test that have been run before to see if the results from the Viking Mission hold up with the more accurate equipment available now.
Truth is only as good as the information you have. At first there was earth wind fire and water (no jokes please). Then there were atoms. Then the atoms where broke down to electrons proton and neutrons. Then those particles where broke down into quarks. Then quarks where broke down into mueons. Each time, they add to the new truth.
The fundamental philosophy of that truth doesn't change, just the details showing it is.
Pearl Jam used laptops for mixing the shows the same night they where recorded on the past two tours. The Boston Globe had a great interview on the process with Brett Eliason, but now you have to pay to view the article.
Short version of the article... they would use the feed from the main mixer, send it to the tour bus, do a rough mix in an hour or two, post the MP3's of the shows online the next day. While they where traveling to the next show, Bret Eliason would do a full mix on the show, then send it to WAM!NET which would then create the master, and manufacture the CD's within 48 hours. So basically within 24hours, you could have MP3's of the show, and within a week (damn slow post office) have a fully mastered double CD of the show you saw.
Try doing that with "conventional" studio equipment.
You could use a Quake or Halflife editor and show them that they can make their own games. Now this isn't quite real programming, but for little kids their minds work with shapes and colors. They are just learning how to use words. But they are adept at building things with blocks. Making a simple map is basically plopping walls and ceilings down, like blocks.
You could show them how to make a copy of their classroom in the computer. Go to the room ahead of time and take pictures of the blackboard, bulletin boards, doors, whatever catches your eye. Use them as textures and eye candy. You don't have to make a full map, but show them that you can make anything with computer, including a copy of their classroom.
My father has sight problems from diabetes. He has a problem with blues, and clarity. I have him running XP on a 19" monitor at 800x600, and that is sometimes not enough. Usability and layout are more important than using colors to differentiate between controls. I just got him into email and surfing a few years ago and I see how he struggles with colors on the screen, even when viewing a simple local news site. The ones he has good luck are ones with very large contrasts in colors. He visits casino sites to check his points and comps, he lives in Southern NJ only an hours from AC. Those sites give him problems with their dark on dark color schemes. But the ones that are simple and have dark text on light backgrounds work great. This goes for other programs like Outlook and Act!. Outlooks default worked fine, but in ACT! Not so. Is had a dark grey background, small text boxes, and just ugly. So I made the background white and text boxes a medium gray, more or less reversing the colors, and all is well.
I have used Pro-Tools and various other audio programs and it can be difficult to navigate, and I am not color blind.
I work for two small web only retailers and know the business practices and policies.
International shipments are a pain in the ass. And this goes for receiving shipments (large bulk orders) into the US and shipping from the US to the end customers.
For the Importing into the US, the main problem is documentation. You have to file so many damned forms it is ridicules. Right now, the shipper of our products forgot some form, and customs told us to get some form from the manufacturer, who is the only one who can create it, and give it to the customs office or they will DESTROY yes destroy $20k worth of products. Now that is our cost, retail is 5 times that.
As for sending customers items....
FRAUD
Everyone gets this one. Of all the fraud we run across, most of it is from outside the US CA and UK. Of course we get it from inside the US too, but most are outside.
Credit Card Companies rules on fraud
We have US customers who call their CC company after they get their items, tell them they didn't order the stuff, or say they sent it back, then the CC take their money back. We are out products, CC service fees, and shipping. We can fight this type of fraud inside the US, not outside.
Cost of shipping
It is damned expensive for packages over one pound.
Time
It takes minimally twice as long to ship an international package vs. a domestic. Some take longer depending on the items being shipped. Some require extra paperwork, some items can't be imported at all.
With all that being said, we still take most international orders. But we usually do a manual verification of the credit card with the CC processor. Which takes time. But some we just refund outright and don't contact the customer. Like UPS Express Expedited (More or less next day) for a $5 item, and shipping is $200, and going to Indonesia. Not likely a good order. We have added some extra steps to get international orders out just to try and make people happy. But they are only a small percentage of our daily orders. Problems with international packages take much more time and money to get resolved than US orders.
I remember Fresh Gear on Tech TV loved the MindStor device. But I only see it in 10g. B&H has a Delkin which is simular, in 60g. BTW B&H rules, bought lots of stuff from them.
Lets assume they have a 5MP camera (I have a Sony 5MP). Each picture is about 2.5 MB in JPG format. You'd get about 24000 pictures on the 60g drive.
If they are going to carry a laptop around also, they might want to purchase a DVD burner and just move them from the laptops hard drive onto the DVD after some time. You can get a external burner for $350 or less, and $1 a disc.
But, if you are going to fill the camera, and need to empty it quickly, the hard drive storage will be best. You could always go with the cheaper hard drive unit, and a DVD drive. Once you get enough pictures on the unit, move them to the laptop, then to DVD, or even CD.
Since the company I work for is a home based business, I hope this helps. Most townships here in Southern NJ are ok with home businesses, but there are still rules. Some will want you register for taxing purposes, hitting you on top of your property taxes. You can't have people coming and going from your home all the time. And can't have big trucks making deliveries all the time, UPS is ok. But since you are doing software development only the people coming and going applies to you.
Best thing to do is to go to your Borough Hall and ask the clerk what the town requires. Most likely they will have quick and simple answer for you. Plus having nice neighbors helps.
But you can always just not tell anyone. Especially if no one comes and goes, who will know the difference?
Agreed. Creed (which I do not personally like), made their first album for $5000 or so. They did everything in a home studio with that owner producing it. That album sold what, $10 million copies? That's one hell of a profit. But Michael Jackson just spent millions on his last album, and sold less than a million copies. A lot of the time when you see ridiculous amount for recording, it is when you have big name producers, and all the luxury that goes with the studio. But when you strip down the costs by producing it yourself or having your own studio you can do as good of a job for a tenth of the cost. Aerosmith recorded their latest CD in Joe Perry's and Steven Tyler's home studios using Pro Tool rigs. Yah, the Pro Tools rigs they had may have cost $30,000 each with all the equipment and mics. But lets say that it cost them $60,000 in equipment, the rest is their time. And when they go to record the next album it only cost time. When they get a producer and a masterer to come in that will quadruple the cost of making the album. Nothing changed but WHO mix and cleaned the sound. My friend's ska band recorded half a dozen songs for about $1000, sounds damned good. Yah, things need to be fixed and redone to make it releasable by mainstream standards. But lets say they tripled the time spent, totaling $3000. They would have an amazing album that sounds as good as anything else out there.
I think that if you can disable the tag easily they are fine. But the real issue is when the manufactures start embedding them into the packaging themselves, which can't be removed easily. As if the plastic of a DVD case, wrapper of a piece of candy, in the soles of your shoe. The main purpose is so they can't be removed; so having them removable is defeating the whole purpose of having them.
For example we will use a candy bar. The tag is embedded into the wrapper. You leave the store and pay for that item. You put it in your pocket to eat it later, and leave. You go to another store to purchase another item. You walk through checkout and that same candy bar gets rescanned and you get charged again. You could rewrap the candy. But how practical is that? You now have go to stores with nothing on you. Every item you have might still have the tag in it somewhere and set off the checkout scanners and you have to pay again.
That would be all negated if there were a way to kill the tags. But right now they are a passive product that doesn't die unless you really destroy it. Good luck finding a tag the size of a grain of sand in the paper wrapper of your candy bar.
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Why nor use a Linux boot CD like Knoppix or SuSe? If you don't have a CD-ROM, a hard drive isn't that expensive. I understand the power savings part, but you might only be able to do so much with a non bootable USB port.
As far as structure. Simple Simple Simple. Big bold headers. Big separators. Lots of CLICK HERE links. Most people miss the mouseovers and don't really understand hyperlinking. And make those mouseovers VERY different. Invert the colors of the link when there is a mouseover event. Lastly, aim for 800x600, no bigger. My father uses XP at 8x6 on a 19" monitor and it is too small for him.
You might even want to consider a regular name brand CD player, and get a good universal remote with a big LCD screen that can been seen easily. My father has the poor eyesight and a good remote goes a long way. Even if it doesn't light up, good tactile design makes all the difference. He can't see most LCD's so I made sure that he has a remote with different shaped buttons that can be felt easily. Check out http://www.remotecentral.com for reviews.
Lets try a better book analogy. The album is the book, the songs are the chapters. Try reading Chapter 6 then 2 then 9 then 3. You won't get the same effect as you would reading them in order would you?
Granted most music out here now tends to be 2 hit songs and filler. So the book is really a magazine/newspaper, and the songs are articles. Makes no difference to the reader what order the are presented.
With that being said, there still are artists who are actually artists, and control the order of songs, and do so it in a deliberate way. The Floyd examples are good, but the album was a story that needed to be in order to really get the full effect. Other albums do not need to be in order, but the artist wanted it that way for whatever reason.
I am not sure about what he means by clients, but we have this problem with customers. One of the sites I manage DressKids.com , sends out an email conformation for the order, a CC card conformation from the processor (not my choice) and then an email when the order is shipped. Plus we send out a newsletter about every 3-4 months. Pretty reasonable right? We don't spam, we don't sell lists. Our emails do not get through to AOL subscribers. Why? because people repost them as spam, whether it is intentional or not. We get many phone calls from cranky customers complaining they didn't get their email. But those same people are reporting those emails as spam. About 20% of our base is on AOL. Most of them are new moms/housewives on AOL. They have no clue what they are doing. Plus they don't care that they have no clue and take it out on us. AOL needs to do something about this. Having to contact AOL on a regular basis to reverse something dumb that their customers are doing is unreasonable. Spam is a problem, no argument with that. But when legit emails do not get through because of false reports, who's fault is it? Who should fix it? Who has the time?
With the slim margins in the PC market getting smaller, that MS exclusive discount can be the difference between in the black or the red.
Most big data recovery operations keep new units of every type and model of hard drives around for recovery. If you had an armature go, they pull your platters out of your drive, and put them in EXACTLY the same make and model HD in their clean room and try to recover the data with standard software. You could try and do this yourself but buying EXACTLY the same make model and series of drive. But opening up one of these units while not in a clean room is not a good idea.
For sector damage, non physical damage, there are tons of tools like this and this out there that might help. But sometimes the damage to the MBR and backup MBR are so bad that recovery tools might not be able to make sense of the bits. I have one sitting right here that is like that. Somehow the bits got shredded over the ENTIRE disk. I assume there was a physical malfunction that dragged the head across the platters and made Swiss cheese of it.
Gopher seemed very antiquated since this new HTML thing allowed you to do the same stuff as Gopher, but also format it, use different text sizes and WOW... pictures. We downloaded this thing called Netscape and opened a text editor and went at it. Anyone at the school that had a "Computer" account could post these so called "web pages" to their personl storage space. It was a very generous amount of space too, 2 MB. We were amazed, we could put almost two 3 1/4 floppies worth of useless stuff there for everyone to see.
Not to mention QB Bills ...
The most injured player ever.
I have gone through 7 PC's in that time(maybe 8), but the monitor has stayed. I have run at 10x7 most of that time. Can't run higher res, but is rock solid at 85Hz at 10x7.
I want to get something bigger, but this one works. I imagine my upgrade will be this year when I get a 42" WEGA LCD TV with a DVI connector. Come one, Doom3 in 5.1 and on a 42" LCD.... But I will keep the old girl around for when I want to use both at the same time.
Well, around me it is $9-$10 for a single movie ticket, and that is considered cheap compared to Philly and NYC. I have seen $14 theaters in Philly. (I am in NJ, ten minutes from Philly)
Dinner and a movie will end up being a $100 for the night if you go anywhere but MacDonalds and Blockbuster.
Look at where EB shops are at ... Malls. Where are GameStops? Strip malls.
Most people who play PC games aren't going to be regulars at malls, and if they are they know they can get PC games cheaper elsewhere.
But now if you are a 15 year old kid who wants to get the latest FPS for Xbox, you will get it where you can. And the mall is the place parents drop off kids for 6 hours and get them later. They wouldn't do that at Best Buy. Plus, the prices for console games don't vary much from store to store, even IF that mattered to them as much as the ability to purchase the game at all. So what ends up happening is that the EB will sell more console game since the clientele for games at the mall tends to be young.
I guess you have never seen a child playing Pokeman?
Sorry, I forgot to observe my tiredness when writing this morning...
Meta agree physical truth is waaaaaayyyyy OT for this story.
I think of the truth as a blob, it may stretch and move and change shape, but it is still a blob. And on a perticular day, I might see it differently. So I agree with you again.
It is misleading for the overall measurement. This is for a manmade signal transmitted to earth in a controlled environment.
Scientists know that there is always more. Once you find an answer to a question, you will open to the door to 3 more questions about something else. It is the way advances are made. You create a theory, which you test, and from those results you come up with more theories.
With this particular test, they wanted to rerun test that have been run before to see if the results from the Viking Mission hold up with the more accurate equipment available now.
Truth is only as good as the information you have. At first there was earth wind fire and water (no jokes please). Then there were atoms. Then the atoms where broke down to electrons proton and neutrons. Then those particles where broke down into quarks. Then quarks where broke down into mueons. Each time, they add to the new truth.
The fundamental philosophy of that truth doesn't change, just the details showing it is.
Pearl Jam used laptops for mixing the shows the same night they where recorded on the past two tours. The Boston Globe had a great interview on the process with Brett Eliason, but now you have to pay to view the article.
Short version of the article... they would use the feed from the main mixer, send it to the tour bus, do a rough mix in an hour or two, post the MP3's of the shows online the next day. While they where traveling to the next show, Bret Eliason would do a full mix on the show, then send it to WAM!NET which would then create the master, and manufacture the CD's within 48 hours. So basically within 24hours, you could have MP3's of the show, and within a week (damn slow post office) have a fully mastered double CD of the show you saw.
Try doing that with "conventional" studio equipment.
You could use a Quake or Halflife editor and show them that they can make their own games. Now this isn't quite real programming, but for little kids their minds work with shapes and colors. They are just learning how to use words. But they are adept at building things with blocks. Making a simple map is basically plopping walls and ceilings down, like blocks.
You could show them how to make a copy of their classroom in the computer. Go to the room ahead of time and take pictures of the blackboard, bulletin boards, doors, whatever catches your eye. Use them as textures and eye candy. You don't have to make a full map, but show them that you can make anything with computer, including a copy of their classroom.
My father has sight problems from diabetes. He has a problem with blues, and clarity. I have him running XP on a 19" monitor at 800x600, and that is sometimes not enough. Usability and layout are more important than using colors to differentiate between controls. I just got him into email and surfing a few years ago and I see how he struggles with colors on the screen, even when viewing a simple local news site. The ones he has good luck are ones with very large contrasts in colors. He visits casino sites to check his points and comps, he lives in Southern NJ only an hours from AC. Those sites give him problems with their dark on dark color schemes. But the ones that are simple and have dark text on light backgrounds work great. This goes for other programs like Outlook and Act!. Outlooks default worked fine, but in ACT! Not so. Is had a dark grey background, small text boxes, and just ugly. So I made the background white and text boxes a medium gray, more or less reversing the colors, and all is well. I have used Pro-Tools and various other audio programs and it can be difficult to navigate, and I am not color blind.
I work for two small web only retailers and know the business practices and policies. International shipments are a pain in the ass. And this goes for receiving shipments (large bulk orders) into the US and shipping from the US to the end customers. For the Importing into the US, the main problem is documentation. You have to file so many damned forms it is ridicules. Right now, the shipper of our products forgot some form, and customs told us to get some form from the manufacturer, who is the only one who can create it, and give it to the customs office or they will DESTROY yes destroy $20k worth of products. Now that is our cost, retail is 5 times that. As for sending customers items.... FRAUD Everyone gets this one. Of all the fraud we run across, most of it is from outside the US CA and UK. Of course we get it from inside the US too, but most are outside. Credit Card Companies rules on fraud We have US customers who call their CC company after they get their items, tell them they didn't order the stuff, or say they sent it back, then the CC take their money back. We are out products, CC service fees, and shipping. We can fight this type of fraud inside the US, not outside. Cost of shipping It is damned expensive for packages over one pound. Time It takes minimally twice as long to ship an international package vs. a domestic. Some take longer depending on the items being shipped. Some require extra paperwork, some items can't be imported at all. With all that being said, we still take most international orders. But we usually do a manual verification of the credit card with the CC processor. Which takes time. But some we just refund outright and don't contact the customer. Like UPS Express Expedited (More or less next day) for a $5 item, and shipping is $200, and going to Indonesia. Not likely a good order. We have added some extra steps to get international orders out just to try and make people happy. But they are only a small percentage of our daily orders. Problems with international packages take much more time and money to get resolved than US orders.
I remember Fresh Gear on Tech TV loved the MindStor device. But I only see it in 10g. B&H has a Delkin which is simular, in 60g. BTW B&H rules, bought lots of stuff from them. Lets assume they have a 5MP camera (I have a Sony 5MP). Each picture is about 2.5 MB in JPG format. You'd get about 24000 pictures on the 60g drive. If they are going to carry a laptop around also, they might want to purchase a DVD burner and just move them from the laptops hard drive onto the DVD after some time. You can get a external burner for $350 or less, and $1 a disc. But, if you are going to fill the camera, and need to empty it quickly, the hard drive storage will be best. You could always go with the cheaper hard drive unit, and a DVD drive. Once you get enough pictures on the unit, move them to the laptop, then to DVD, or even CD.
Since the company I work for is a home based business, I hope this helps. Most townships here in Southern NJ are ok with home businesses, but there are still rules. Some will want you register for taxing purposes, hitting you on top of your property taxes. You can't have people coming and going from your home all the time. And can't have big trucks making deliveries all the time, UPS is ok. But since you are doing software development only the people coming and going applies to you. Best thing to do is to go to your Borough Hall and ask the clerk what the town requires. Most likely they will have quick and simple answer for you. Plus having nice neighbors helps. But you can always just not tell anyone. Especially if no one comes and goes, who will know the difference?
Agreed. Creed (which I do not personally like), made their first album for $5000 or so. They did everything in a home studio with that owner producing it. That album sold what, $10 million copies? That's one hell of a profit. But Michael Jackson just spent millions on his last album, and sold less than a million copies. A lot of the time when you see ridiculous amount for recording, it is when you have big name producers, and all the luxury that goes with the studio. But when you strip down the costs by producing it yourself or having your own studio you can do as good of a job for a tenth of the cost. Aerosmith recorded their latest CD in Joe Perry's and Steven Tyler's home studios using Pro Tool rigs. Yah, the Pro Tools rigs they had may have cost $30,000 each with all the equipment and mics. But lets say that it cost them $60,000 in equipment, the rest is their time. And when they go to record the next album it only cost time. When they get a producer and a masterer to come in that will quadruple the cost of making the album. Nothing changed but WHO mix and cleaned the sound. My friend's ska band recorded half a dozen songs for about $1000, sounds damned good. Yah, things need to be fixed and redone to make it releasable by mainstream standards. But lets say they tripled the time spent, totaling $3000. They would have an amazing album that sounds as good as anything else out there.
I think that if you can disable the tag easily they are fine. But the real issue is when the manufactures start embedding them into the packaging themselves, which can't be removed easily. As if the plastic of a DVD case, wrapper of a piece of candy, in the soles of your shoe. The main purpose is so they can't be removed; so having them removable is defeating the whole purpose of having them. For example we will use a candy bar. The tag is embedded into the wrapper. You leave the store and pay for that item. You put it in your pocket to eat it later, and leave. You go to another store to purchase another item. You walk through checkout and that same candy bar gets rescanned and you get charged again. You could rewrap the candy. But how practical is that? You now have go to stores with nothing on you. Every item you have might still have the tag in it somewhere and set off the checkout scanners and you have to pay again. That would be all negated if there were a way to kill the tags. But right now they are a passive product that doesn't die unless you really destroy it. Good luck finding a tag the size of a grain of sand in the paper wrapper of your candy bar.