I like the idea, but I foresee significant possibility for abuse.
I see, so, we use the 'potential' for abuse in the future to avoid dealing with the ongoing, and escalating abuse in the past and present? All I can say is, I hope you don't vote.
There's no reason to mention Leopard. Mod article "troll".
As a longtime Apple user, I disagree. What do you expect? Do you really think there's only one or two sides to people's impression of where Apple is today?
Leopard is only escaping being trashed, mercilessly, because Microsoft had the good sense to release Vista to an expectant (sort of) and very underwhelmed public.
Apple fucked up with their setting of crazy 'defaults' in the ACLs. They took away the only GUI frontend for what used to be handled by NetInfo Manager. The "Time Machine" looks like a 'kickback' to the shitty hard drive industry. Pathetic. The Finder is only marginally improved (you can sometimes get it to do two things almost 'at once' without it going apoplectic). It needs to be replaced, totally, along with the hackneyed HFS+ file system, the insanity surrounding resource forks, the CNODEs (use inodes, jerks, faster, etc), the breadcrumbs strewn all over (Spotlight indexes, and all that BS, and STILL Xfile, FileBuddy, and any NS-centered file manager runs rings around the Finder and Spotlight... yada yada yada)
The only really nice addition to the Tiger: "Spaces", which Apple did a good job on, improving, slightly, upon something that's been in Linux for years.
Meanwhile, the stores draw, mostly because of what they aren't. (The others). Which, come to think of it, as a design issue, is right in there with the iPod and iPhone. Design, or, waiting for all the originators of the gadget to ape each other to death, and then swing in with, admittedly well-thought-out differentiation (not original, but fucking intelligent, no doubt). Now, all they need to do, is 'design' some salespeople that aren't arrogant little basement rugrats. And get some geniuses whose second 'guess' isn't "Archive & Install", shee-it, where'd they invent that at? Ten years ago on MS support lines? Come on.
I've bought Apple gear (sniping the 'good' stuff) since 1979, I have a license to bitch. I used NeXT boxes, SGIs, DEC Alphas, and the usual Ataris and a couple of SPARCStations tossed in for good measure, and Leopard, kiddies, is a loser. Is it a game-breaker? Fuck no, most MAc users are too ignorant to know what's up, and the PC switchers are too into the 'look' or the newness, I guess, and the Unix switchers are just happy to have a nice GUI 'fallback' or complement to the shell.
Funny that the Times got it right, re: "Leopards a turd, but check this action over here." Bingo.
I'm sure someone is going to mod me for flamebait, but I never understand the people who insist Apple is the greatest company of the fan of the planet when there is plenty of proof that Apple is a corporation (for better or worse) on par with most corporations.
I hate to break this to you, asswipe, but most Apple owners don't actually give a shit, one way or the other, about the company, itself, and even less of a shit about guys like you, with your sniveling, whiny 'mantra' about hordes of imaginary Apple users with idealized visions of a fucking company that happens to make good gear.
So, grow up,. or shut the fuck up. Choice is yours, asshole. Fucking tired of you paranoid whining sissies. Get a fucking life, and then get some professional help, and try to regain a grip on reality. Barring all that, which, now that I see all those horrifying tasks in front of you, looks way beyond your abilities... skip it, and just take a flying fuck in some other direction. jesus, ya fuckin' hallucinating wimpy cunt.
Thanks to the ACs for pointing out my goof on the Wheel of Fortune vs. Jeopardy. Jeeze, it's been a while, but yeah I can see Dvorak in there with the wheel spinning, waiting for a shot at a vowel.
Dvorak is the Howard Cosell of the IT industry, and that's probably paying him a complement he doesn't deserve.
Jesus, how in the world did you come up with Cosell and this idiot, Dvorak, in the same lifetime, never mind sentence? No offense, as it looks, from the second half of your sentence, like you knew the allusion was vague (putting it mildly), but, if you get a minute, check out this obit from the Washington Post, and forget about this turd, Dvorak (who, by the way, ought to get on Jeopardy and buy a fucking vowel)
To be fair, I rarely use Consumer Reports for anything having to do with computers or software, because I can get more reliable expert opinions elsewhere.
You hit the nail right on the head there. That's the critical fact that these guys wasting resources with their attacks, oops, I mean arguments, are missing, totally. I wouldn't go to CR for info on anything that I either already thought I 'knew' about, or had access to more in-depth comparisons, regarding.
But for info on something I'm not aware of for the most part, it would be invaluable, and could give even the researcher-types out here a point of departure for further hair-splitting, or whatever.
I run Apple at home (a couple of G4 laptops), but have worked in Solaris and Windows environments, and my present job is running a small Windows server-based network, but I would recommend an iMac (on the low end) for the new 'average' (email, online buying and bill-paying types) user, based on ease of use, relative security, hardware quality, etc. But a real gamer? Ha ha, water-cooled powerhouse box with DirectX-10, of course. I'm not a gamer, but you go with the right tool for the job, and make suggestions based on the user's expressed needs. Period.
a hahaa hahah, no kidding!.... That_might have_be_en,,,, the worst syntax and punctuation____f_ck_up, yet scene..(.hereabouts. I got )a feeling a CT scan of that dude's brain might reveal actual physical proof of dyslexia wrapped inside of some sort of House of Mirrors___ shit_uation. On the bright side,
Folks,
the Shitty Sentence Contest is Over!!!! We Have a Winner!!!!!
As an Apple user since 1979, all I can say is: You won't get bashed by me. I use VLC and MPlayer for just about everything except the wmv files that Flip4Mac handles as a QT plugin... heheh, using QT for Windows Media. The QuickTime Pro player on an adequate Mac, with the prefs set 'just right', is not a bad thing, but... when you absolutely want to playback anything (with minor exceptions), VLC is the way to go on the Mac.
I've seen latest QT Pro, in Leopard, on 4 Macs here, 'kick' an mp3 on the grounds that it "Can't play this movie file type", and all I can say is, WTF? Not sure if that's all QT's fault, or it's getting an assist from the wonky Apple HFS+ (UNIX-incompatible) file system, but whatever... vive la France!
Wrong! Carter didn't let them all out. Reagan cut all the fed budget for mental institutions and that forced all them out onto the streets.
AC gets it exactly right, and I'll add that Reagan 'practiced', as Governor, on California, first. Market Street 'screamers' anyone? I knew a majority of my fellow Californians were out iof their trees, but, at the time, never dreamed that a huge majority of Americans were also bona fide mental midgets... and it's been all downhill, with only brief mirages of 'hope', ever since.
It figures that anybody 'crazy' enough to familiarize themselves with "stupid things" like facts, here where the 'smart' guys hang out, on Slashdot, would have to go the AC route... the World's a mess.
It's simple: He's assuming none of us out here know anything about OS/hardware performance gains in Linux and OS X. He's an idiot, in other words, in public, instead of private.
Apparently nobody sees stuff posted anonymously, so you might be the only one who's read it.
Not the case at all; I'm sure plenty of us read at 0 or -1 to get all the points of view. There is a bit of attrition involved, of course.:=) But it's the only way to go if an open mind has any meaning...
. I'm left wondering how you can file a series of lawsuits [CC] inadvertently.
The use of inadvertent, was to denote that the lawsuits went after 'pirates', but the collateral damage was inflicted, mostly, on 'consumers.' get it? We sue on purpose, but accidentally bite that hands that feed us. God damn, it isn't rocket science, and Warner Bros guy should get a little slack here.
What would be ironic is if Apple had lost the case and had had to fire Steve Jobs
Exactly. Somebody mod the AC up.
I hope the plaintiffs paid through the ass. AAPL took a 7% 'hit' in after hours trading when the results of Apple's internal investigation (the original 'alert'), when it was posted to the SEC. ( I know, because I proofed, corrected, and posted the little 2-pager myself, part of my boring, temporary job, at the time, and I recall being tempted to snag a cell phone and call a couple guys to see if they wanted to short AAPL, and buy it back the next day... heheh, the go-to-prison idea nixed it for me). Apple recovered almost immediately.
The attorneys that handled the case had to have known it was without merit. If they didn't, and were working on a pay-only-when-we-win basis, then it's a case of the 'greedy' getting the 'stupid' to do the dirty, in which case the whole thing smacks of justice, after all.
Why do musicians some how assume that because they're "artists" that they don't have to follow the same rules of life as everyone else?
Who says they assume anything of the sort? What the fuck? You're confusing the range of comments here in this thread with some 'amorphous' opinion or belief, that in your little fragmented mind is held by "musicians" (that's 'noise' in your empty head, pal).
I worked as a musician, and with many others for decades, and the rules of the game were start small (solo, for the most part), work hard, get bigger (maybe, hardly likely, zero guarantee)... Does that sound like an attitude or work ethic of 'entitlement' to you, asshole?
If sitting on your ass, spending mom & dad's cash in a two-bit school, to get a piece of paper, entitling you to now sit in a redundant job in a building somewhere, isn't your cup 'a' tea, then perhaps you should have taken piano lessons, after all. Too bad for you, but don't assume you know shit about being a musician, because as soon as you started typing you proved you know nothing.
Don't look for malice where incompetence will do. -- Napoleon
Is 'Napoleon' your nick? Because you can't be attributing the quote to Napoleon, right? Robert Heinlein (in "Logic of Empire") a little after Napoleon's time.
When vinyl was introduced, this structure was retained, even though breakage almost completely disappeared
Whoa; Completely wrong.
Did they 'break' when they were vinyl? No. BUT, I worked for major chains, pal, and the automatic returns system (accounting) was valid because an enormous number of records ended up as returns. You have no idea what you're talking about. Big stores usually had staff whose sole purpose was to validate returns. The main cause of the returns? Warpage. And the reason for that? Two things: Thinner LPs, with less actual vinyl, and the killer cause: The major labels never veered away from tight 'shrink-wrapping', which, in combination with the standard 60 LPs to a box in trucks with higher heat... equaled Warp City.
On big number pressings, where sales were easily predicted at hundreds of thousands of units, the returns could hit 15-20% easily in Southern California, which makes the notion, that the "10% breakage" policy was an unnecessary artifact from the past, all the way wrong.
I worked, briefly, all over Southern Cali, for WEA, doing Inventory, and part of it was dealing with returns. Did the labels mitigate some of the loss as part of overall contract strategy? Sure. But a mitigated LOSS, is still a LOSS. And trust me, when we shipped X number of units we wanted wholsale times X back. Nobody wanted to lose shit, mitigated or not. That's Business 101. Nice paranoid try, though.
Sorry if I sound harsh. But I hate the way the labels have treated artists and the fans. I always have. But we can expose these people, and their methods by stating the facts and telling the truth. It's not valid to get the facts wrong in pursuit of any 'point' one is trying to make. I hated the 'returns' thing, back in the day, because it was simply more evidence of the cheap-assed cynical methods that were being employed and 'perfected' before, during and after my stint in that part of the biz, before I went back to 'just' being a working, touring musician.
Nobody can hear the difference between a 160kbps MP3 and a CD - at least, not if you're actually listening to the MUSIC...
I'm with AC, on this one. I played as a musician, was a huge 'fan' and collector of records, and worked in studios and had friends and relatives with all sorts of playback systems, and what I found out was: If you're after the music itself, the playback system and bit-rates (etc) don't mean a fucking thing.
Was I ever spoiled, and capable of 'quoting' audio theory in support of utopian audio playback prejudice? Sure, I was. And what a miserable place it was to be, because when the crunch came, and I wanted to just hear it all, it really didn't matter if I was sitting in front of a $25 thousand system, or using some little portable, God-forsaken, scratchy, dull-needled, pull-down cheapie... The music ruled. Period.
Do I go after the VBRs with high bit-rate 'floors'? Sure, and why not? But, when all is said and done, it's the music that matters, and these days it's trivial to tweak a bit of software to pull down whatever's being over-emphasized, and 'bring out' what was 'neglected' in the sample rates, etc. Piece o' cake, really.
That has been proven for established artists. It has not been proven for new bands that have never signed with a label. Once that happens, it will be the death of the record industry.
It's just a matter of time.
The precedent exists, and earlier than this Radiohead venture. Back in the mid to late 70s there was a band that had been playing seedy clubs in the Hollywood/LA area (Madame Wong's, etc), that went into the studio and came out, with a record that cost $17,000 in recording/mastering costs. At the same time, roughly, Fleetwood Mac was in a variety of big studios spending an estimated $2 Million on a record that was a huge flop (Tusk). The 'little band' was The Knack, and they sold millions of copies of that record.
At the time, in the LA music industry, the major labels were floored, and being the clueless types that they've always been (with notable exceptions of legendary stature) they went out and signed 'everybody.' It was the beginning of the end of disco, and really made everyone in the business take a hard look at recording budgets. After most of the newly-signed bands didn't pan out there were major layoff/firings at the Big Labels.
The Knack did a series of small shows in the months leading up to the release of this record. There was no radio airplay, no advance at all. Even at the shows, whose tickets/passes had been given out to the 'little people' in the industry (record store clerks and indie shop owners, clerks, etc), the band came out and did nothing but 'covers' of British Invasion hits.
I saw a few of the shows, and they were absolutely great. Pure and simple. The 'buzz' was contagious, and when the first single, "My Sharona" debuted, it was on the charts in the #1 spot for weeks... They sold the first 500,000 records in 13 days.
I mention this, partly because it was one of those periods where it was great to be in LA, and because all of the current 'models' and conjectures about 'can it be done?', etc, have this clear precedent, which involved low budgets, 'viral' marketing, and of course, at the root of it all: talent, and a passion for the work at hand.
Like I said, just a matter of time before the next one hits, from out of nowhere, and hopefully this time many more will follow along, and things will evolve. But the labels are entrenched, scared, and influential. As a longtime (retired) pro musician, I know that the industry is corrupt. The Musician's Union (AFM) has been a mob entity for its entire history, and the labels and studios look at the performers as necessary 'evils' in their money-making thing. But the time will come, bank on it.
Note: I have seen the budget for the Knack's first record as being $18,000, not 17, but I stand by my numbers. They sold 5 million copies of the album, and faded rather quickly... Assuming $1.50-1.65 as the band's 'share' of each record sold, the return on investment was fabulous for the group, and rather not-too-shabby for their label, either. They rode the top (#1) of the charts for 5 weeks, knocking Donna Summer's album Bad Girls out of the Number 1 spot, and being displaced, six weeks later, by Led Zeppelin's "In Through the Out Door".
Hmmnn... You bring up a very interesting notion. It's kinda like Computer software...
Computer software, yes. Your comment can be taken a couple of ways, by me. Neither of which might be as it was intended. But, I don't want to paint the world of software development with one brush. It is diverse, and all that. But I have seen a large number of apps that, after versioning iterations, shoot themselves in the foot, and forget to do that "one thing really well" that made them 'great' at one time. (This is pretty subjective, so I won't list my personal examples, but we all see this at some point, I think). Perhaps that what you meant?
Of course, on the other hand, some apps roll with the punches of the OS they operate with (I'm thinking of DiskWarrior, on the Mac) and actually do their one or two things better, and faster, almost in spite of the two steps forward, one step back, changing nature of their OS environment. I use Windows a lot also (and like it, go figure) but don't understand its evolution enough to draw similar examples, but I have faith they exist. It's the nature of the business, and the individuals need to tinker (which can really pay off, or really blow up), it seems.
BUT THEN SHE WOULD TAKE IT OFF THE WALL AND KEEP ON ADDING TO IT.
You bring up a very interesting notion. One of the things that is very similar between artists and children is that they can walk away from something; It is done, or 'finished', whereas most of us keep refining, 'adding to', the older we get. My mother painted late in her life, also. I don't recall that she kept adding to her oils. But I did have a few lady friends who would occasionally show me their paintings that were nearly 3D what with the thickness of the layers of oil in places. It was rather astonishing. Or peculiar. Or maybe just a graphic example of 'A woman's work is never done.' Who knows?
I like using the laptops. No problem with that. But with the slow advent of wi-fi, WiMax, etc, there are going to be plenty of opportunities to be 'out' and not have any desire, per se, to do 'work' which uses the wireless hotspots, but really appreciate being able to interact with those times when a brief access to files or the Web would be very handy.
I know when I am going outdoors if I am targeting a Starbucks, or whatever, to do real work. It's all those other times that I refer to when I think of the ability to opportunistically react to a notion or whatever.
Something in between the Blackberry and a laptop... sounds like a killer hardware whose time might have come. Again. Sort of.:)
Slashdot Mirror
I see, so, we use the 'potential' for abuse in the future to avoid dealing with the ongoing, and escalating abuse in the past and present? All I can say is, I hope you don't vote.
I don't know about the rest of these guys, but I'd start googling for 'cheats' like, right away!
As a longtime Apple user, I disagree. What do you expect? Do you really think there's only one or two sides to people's impression of where Apple is today?
Leopard is only escaping being trashed, mercilessly, because Microsoft had the good sense to release Vista to an expectant (sort of) and very underwhelmed public.
Apple fucked up with their setting of crazy 'defaults' in the ACLs. They took away the only GUI frontend for what used to be handled by NetInfo Manager. The "Time Machine" looks like a 'kickback' to the shitty hard drive industry. Pathetic. The Finder is only marginally improved (you can sometimes get it to do two things almost 'at once' without it going apoplectic). It needs to be replaced, totally, along with the hackneyed HFS+ file system, the insanity surrounding resource forks, the CNODEs (use inodes, jerks, faster, etc), the breadcrumbs strewn all over (Spotlight indexes, and all that BS, and STILL Xfile, FileBuddy, and any NS-centered file manager runs rings around the Finder and Spotlight... yada yada yada)
The only really nice addition to the Tiger: "Spaces", which Apple did a good job on, improving, slightly, upon something that's been in Linux for years.
Meanwhile, the stores draw, mostly because of what they aren't. (The others). Which, come to think of it, as a design issue, is right in there with the iPod and iPhone. Design, or, waiting for all the originators of the gadget to ape each other to death, and then swing in with, admittedly well-thought-out differentiation (not original, but fucking intelligent, no doubt). Now, all they need to do, is 'design' some salespeople that aren't arrogant little basement rugrats. And get some geniuses whose second 'guess' isn't "Archive & Install", shee-it, where'd they invent that at? Ten years ago on MS support lines? Come on.
I've bought Apple gear (sniping the 'good' stuff) since 1979, I have a license to bitch. I used NeXT boxes, SGIs, DEC Alphas, and the usual Ataris and a couple of SPARCStations tossed in for good measure, and Leopard, kiddies, is a loser. Is it a game-breaker? Fuck no, most MAc users are too ignorant to know what's up, and the PC switchers are too into the 'look' or the newness, I guess, and the Unix switchers are just happy to have a nice GUI 'fallback' or complement to the shell.
Funny that the Times got it right, re: "Leopards a turd, but check this action over here." Bingo.
I hate to break this to you, asswipe, but most Apple owners don't actually give a shit, one way or the other, about the company, itself, and even less of a shit about guys like you, with your sniveling, whiny 'mantra' about hordes of imaginary Apple users with idealized visions of a fucking company that happens to make good gear.
So, grow up,. or shut the fuck up. Choice is yours, asshole. Fucking tired of you paranoid whining sissies. Get a fucking life, and then get some professional help, and try to regain a grip on reality. Barring all that, which, now that I see all those horrifying tasks in front of you, looks way beyond your abilities... skip it, and just take a flying fuck in some other direction. jesus, ya fuckin' hallucinating wimpy cunt.
that, it might have been born at night, but it certainly wasn't born last night!
Thanks to the ACs for pointing out my goof on the Wheel of Fortune vs. Jeopardy. Jeeze, it's been a while, but yeah I can see Dvorak in there with the wheel spinning, waiting for a shot at a vowel.
Fixed that for you.
Jesus, how in the world did you come up with Cosell and this idiot, Dvorak, in the same lifetime, never mind sentence? No offense, as it looks, from the second half of your sentence, like you knew the allusion was vague (putting it mildly), but, if you get a minute, check out this obit from the Washington Post, and forget about this turd, Dvorak (who, by the way, ought to get on Jeopardy and buy a fucking vowel)
You hit the nail right on the head there. That's the critical fact that these guys wasting resources with their attacks, oops, I mean arguments, are missing, totally. I wouldn't go to CR for info on anything that I either already thought I 'knew' about, or had access to more in-depth comparisons, regarding.
But for info on something I'm not aware of for the most part, it would be invaluable, and could give even the researcher-types out here a point of departure for further hair-splitting, or whatever.
I run Apple at home (a couple of G4 laptops), but have worked in Solaris and Windows environments, and my present job is running a small Windows server-based network, but I would recommend an iMac (on the low end) for the new 'average' (email, online buying and bill-paying types) user, based on ease of use, relative security, hardware quality, etc. But a real gamer? Ha ha, water-cooled powerhouse box with DirectX-10, of course. I'm not a gamer, but you go with the right tool for the job, and make suggestions based on the user's expressed needs. Period.
God Damn!!!! "Huh" is putting it mildly
a hahaa hahah, no kidding!.... That_might have_be_en,,,, the worst syntax and punctuation____f_ck_up, yet scene..(.hereabouts. I got )a feeling a CT scan of that dude's brain might reveal actual physical proof of dyslexia wrapped inside of some sort of House of Mirrors___ shit_uation. On the bright side,
Folks,
the Shitty Sentence Contest is Over!!!! We Have a Winner!!!!!
Congratulations, (Wandering)Point Underscore_Dude!!!
As an Apple user since 1979, all I can say is: You won't get bashed by me. I use VLC and MPlayer for just about everything except the wmv files that Flip4Mac handles as a QT plugin... heheh, using QT for Windows Media. The QuickTime Pro player on an adequate Mac, with the prefs set 'just right', is not a bad thing, but... when you absolutely want to playback anything (with minor exceptions), VLC is the way to go on the Mac.
I've seen latest QT Pro, in Leopard, on 4 Macs here, 'kick' an mp3 on the grounds that it "Can't play this movie file type", and all I can say is, WTF? Not sure if that's all QT's fault, or it's getting an assist from the wonky Apple HFS+ (UNIX-incompatible) file system, but whatever... vive la France!
AC gets it exactly right, and I'll add that Reagan 'practiced', as Governor, on California, first. Market Street 'screamers' anyone? I knew a majority of my fellow Californians were out iof their trees, but, at the time, never dreamed that a huge majority of Americans were also bona fide mental midgets... and it's been all downhill, with only brief mirages of 'hope', ever since.
It figures that anybody 'crazy' enough to familiarize themselves with "stupid things" like facts, here where the 'smart' guys hang out, on Slashdot, would have to go the AC route... the World's a mess.
It's simple: He's assuming none of us out here know anything about OS/hardware performance gains in Linux and OS X. He's an idiot, in other words, in public, instead of private.
Not the case at all; I'm sure plenty of us read at 0 or -1 to get all the points of view. There is a bit of attrition involved, of course. :=) But it's the only way to go if an open mind has any meaning...
The use of inadvertent, was to denote that the lawsuits went after 'pirates', but the collateral damage was inflicted, mostly, on 'consumers.' get it? We sue on purpose, but accidentally bite that hands that feed us. God damn, it isn't rocket science, and Warner Bros guy should get a little slack here.
Exactly. Somebody mod the AC up.
I hope the plaintiffs paid through the ass. AAPL took a 7% 'hit' in after hours trading when the results of Apple's internal investigation (the original 'alert'), when it was posted to the SEC. ( I know, because I proofed, corrected, and posted the little 2-pager myself, part of my boring, temporary job, at the time, and I recall being tempted to snag a cell phone and call a couple guys to see if they wanted to short AAPL, and buy it back the next day... heheh, the go-to-prison idea nixed it for me). Apple recovered almost immediately.
The attorneys that handled the case had to have known it was without merit. If they didn't, and were working on a pay-only-when-we-win basis, then it's a case of the 'greedy' getting the 'stupid' to do the dirty, in which case the whole thing smacks of justice, after all.
Who says they assume anything of the sort? What the fuck? You're confusing the range of comments here in this thread with some 'amorphous' opinion or belief, that in your little fragmented mind is held by "musicians" (that's 'noise' in your empty head, pal).
I worked as a musician, and with many others for decades, and the rules of the game were start small (solo, for the most part), work hard, get bigger (maybe, hardly likely, zero guarantee)... Does that sound like an attitude or work ethic of 'entitlement' to you, asshole?
If sitting on your ass, spending mom & dad's cash in a two-bit school, to get a piece of paper, entitling you to now sit in a redundant job in a building somewhere, isn't your cup 'a' tea, then perhaps you should have taken piano lessons, after all. Too bad for you, but don't assume you know shit about being a musician, because as soon as you started typing you proved you know nothing.
Is 'Napoleon' your nick? Because you can't be attributing the quote to Napoleon, right? Robert Heinlein (in "Logic of Empire") a little after Napoleon's time.
Whoa; Completely wrong.
Did they 'break' when they were vinyl? No. BUT, I worked for major chains, pal, and the automatic returns system (accounting) was valid because an enormous number of records ended up as returns. You have no idea what you're talking about. Big stores usually had staff whose sole purpose was to validate returns. The main cause of the returns? Warpage. And the reason for that? Two things: Thinner LPs, with less actual vinyl, and the killer cause: The major labels never veered away from tight 'shrink-wrapping', which, in combination with the standard 60 LPs to a box in trucks with higher heat... equaled Warp City.
On big number pressings, where sales were easily predicted at hundreds of thousands of units, the returns could hit 15-20% easily in Southern California, which makes the notion, that the "10% breakage" policy was an unnecessary artifact from the past, all the way wrong.
I worked, briefly, all over Southern Cali, for WEA, doing Inventory, and part of it was dealing with returns. Did the labels mitigate some of the loss as part of overall contract strategy? Sure. But a mitigated LOSS, is still a LOSS. And trust me, when we shipped X number of units we wanted wholsale times X back. Nobody wanted to lose shit, mitigated or not. That's Business 101. Nice paranoid try, though.
Sorry if I sound harsh. But I hate the way the labels have treated artists and the fans. I always have. But we can expose these people, and their methods by stating the facts and telling the truth. It's not valid to get the facts wrong in pursuit of any 'point' one is trying to make. I hated the 'returns' thing, back in the day, because it was simply more evidence of the cheap-assed cynical methods that were being employed and 'perfected' before, during and after my stint in that part of the biz, before I went back to 'just' being a working, touring musician.
Yes, well, misplaced concerns aside, Apple stock hit 52-week highs every day since the Greenpeace 'problem'. Next.
I'm with AC, on this one. I played as a musician, was a huge 'fan' and collector of records, and worked in studios and had friends and relatives with all sorts of playback systems, and what I found out was: If you're after the music itself, the playback system and bit-rates (etc) don't mean a fucking thing.
Was I ever spoiled, and capable of 'quoting' audio theory in support of utopian audio playback prejudice? Sure, I was. And what a miserable place it was to be, because when the crunch came, and I wanted to just hear it all, it really didn't matter if I was sitting in front of a $25 thousand system, or using some little portable, God-forsaken, scratchy, dull-needled, pull-down cheapie... The music ruled. Period.
Do I go after the VBRs with high bit-rate 'floors'? Sure, and why not? But, when all is said and done, it's the music that matters, and these days it's trivial to tweak a bit of software to pull down whatever's being over-emphasized, and 'bring out' what was 'neglected' in the sample rates, etc. Piece o' cake, really.
It's just a matter of time.
The precedent exists, and earlier than this Radiohead venture. Back in the mid to late 70s there was a band that had been playing seedy clubs in the Hollywood/LA area (Madame Wong's, etc), that went into the studio and came out, with a record that cost $17,000 in recording/mastering costs. At the same time, roughly, Fleetwood Mac was in a variety of big studios spending an estimated $2 Million on a record that was a huge flop (Tusk). The 'little band' was The Knack, and they sold millions of copies of that record.
At the time, in the LA music industry, the major labels were floored, and being the clueless types that they've always been (with notable exceptions of legendary stature) they went out and signed 'everybody.' It was the beginning of the end of disco, and really made everyone in the business take a hard look at recording budgets. After most of the newly-signed bands didn't pan out there were major layoff/firings at the Big Labels.
The Knack did a series of small shows in the months leading up to the release of this record. There was no radio airplay, no advance at all. Even at the shows, whose tickets/passes had been given out to the 'little people' in the industry (record store clerks and indie shop owners, clerks, etc), the band came out and did nothing but 'covers' of British Invasion hits.
I saw a few of the shows, and they were absolutely great. Pure and simple. The 'buzz' was contagious, and when the first single, "My Sharona" debuted, it was on the charts in the #1 spot for weeks... They sold the first 500,000 records in 13 days.
I mention this, partly because it was one of those periods where it was great to be in LA, and because all of the current 'models' and conjectures about 'can it be done?', etc, have this clear precedent, which involved low budgets, 'viral' marketing, and of course, at the root of it all: talent, and a passion for the work at hand.
Like I said, just a matter of time before the next one hits, from out of nowhere, and hopefully this time many more will follow along, and things will evolve. But the labels are entrenched, scared, and influential. As a longtime (retired) pro musician, I know that the industry is corrupt. The Musician's Union (AFM) has been a mob entity for its entire history, and the labels and studios look at the performers as necessary 'evils' in their money-making thing. But the time will come, bank on it.
Note:
I have seen the budget for the Knack's first record as being $18,000, not 17, but I stand by my numbers. They sold 5 million copies of the album, and faded rather quickly... Assuming $1.50-1.65 as the band's 'share' of each record sold, the return on investment was fabulous for the group, and rather not-too-shabby for their label, either. They rode the top (#1) of the charts for 5 weeks, knocking Donna Summer's album Bad Girls out of the Number 1 spot, and being displaced, six weeks later, by Led Zeppelin's "In Through the Out Door".
Computer software, yes. Your comment can be taken a couple of ways, by me. Neither of which might be as it was intended. But, I don't want to paint the world of software development with one brush. It is diverse, and all that. But I have seen a large number of apps that, after versioning iterations, shoot themselves in the foot, and forget to do that "one thing really well" that made them 'great' at one time. (This is pretty subjective, so I won't list my personal examples, but we all see this at some point, I think). Perhaps that what you meant?
Of course, on the other hand, some apps roll with the punches of the OS they operate with (I'm thinking of DiskWarrior, on the Mac) and actually do their one or two things better, and faster, almost in spite of the two steps forward, one step back, changing nature of their OS environment. I use Windows a lot also (and like it, go figure) but don't understand its evolution enough to draw similar examples, but I have faith they exist. It's the nature of the business, and the individuals need to tinker (which can really pay off, or really blow up), it seems.
You bring up a very interesting notion. One of the things that is very similar between artists and children is that they can walk away from something; It is done, or 'finished', whereas most of us keep refining, 'adding to', the older we get. My mother painted late in her life, also. I don't recall that she kept adding to her oils. But I did have a few lady friends who would occasionally show me their paintings that were nearly 3D what with the thickness of the layers of oil in places. It was rather astonishing. Or peculiar. Or maybe just a graphic example of 'A woman's work is never done.' Who knows?
Yes.
I like using the laptops. No problem with that. But with the slow advent of wi-fi, WiMax, etc, there are going to be plenty of opportunities to be 'out' and not have any desire, per se, to do 'work' which uses the wireless hotspots, but really appreciate being able to interact with those times when a brief access to files or the Web would be very handy.
I know when I am going outdoors if I am targeting a Starbucks, or whatever, to do real work. It's all those other times that I refer to when I think of the ability to opportunistically react to a notion or whatever.
Something in between the Blackberry and a laptop... sounds like a killer hardware whose time might have come. Again. Sort of. :)