Now i know the ignorance level is at an all time high here at slashdot these days, but every single comment i just read full of it.
"i went to that dumb website when it started, and its dumb. Its still dumb now. This advertisement is Dumb. Sorry i missed out on all the DUMB"
Now while I see what you are saying and I agree with you at least as far as everyone hating everything... I have to say that marketing schemes have been popping up everywhere trying to get people involved and it seriously reminds me that you need to watch A Christmas Story more than once during its Thanksgiving -> Christmas Eve runs...
"BE SURE TO DRINK YOUR OVALTINE"
Remember that in this day and age we have pay-for radio play so that songs get boosted on the charts, we have Jeep getting involved with Geocaching to spread little yellow pieces of marketing trash around, and payphones ringing across the country just so people get excited about a product.
How about you not get suckered in and you buy the product because it's superior not because the marketing gods have your brain by the balls.
Well, Slashdot has become a marketing website for a prominent MP3 player, a certain browser, and various OSs that are not made by Bill Gates. Does that stop people from coming here? No.
What it does do, though, is give us a place to bitch about it:)
Well, honestly, while N and OBSD have their merits (as were mentioned) I know that I wouldn't want to deal with Linux if Linus was as big of a raving fuckwit as Theo is.
Now, I can't say that Theo's erratic and basically socially unacceptable behavior would be my only reason for not using it (as the blurb seems to suggest) but it certainly would be a major deterrent.
Oh no custom scrollbars! The world is ending!:P To customize form fields, add "-moz-appearance: none !important;" to the field's style, and then add style accordingly.
Remember that geeks already typically use Firefox. This whole thread was started about how it's going to be in a national magazine targeted towards non-geeks.
Non-geeks go to websites that may or may not be formed with standards in mind. They are likely IE specific. If the site has custom scrollbars and the user has to add that ridiculous tag to get them to work they aren't going to like it.
You people constantly forget that geeks aren't the majority.
I doubt it. You didn't switch to simply try it out, like 99.9% who use/used firefox?
Everyone here seems to point out tabbed browsing as being the IE killer. I don't see the usefulness in it at all. Perhaps he did.
Then you have some setup that isn't default. I just tried the exact same thing and it doesn't work. No matter what text size I try on Firefox it doesn't look the same as the IE side.
It already can properly render most of the web. Also if a web page is actually broken, there is no way to properly render it. At best you can best guess what maybe it is supposed to be.
Yet none of the page fonts look the way they do under IE. Under IE the page fonts look clean and crisp. Under Firefox they look like blocky text. Reminds me of what Netscape and Mozilla looked like under X.
People are going to switch from IE and load their favorite page. The page isn't going to look as good and people are going to run. That's the problem and I don't think that the Firefox team necessarily wants that to happen.
Now, I realize that browsers can fake this information but let's assume that it's basically correct. Just about any hit that comes from a referrer outside of slashdot is not Firefox/Moz.
"A declaration of independence from a stagnant web." Now that's an interesting statement. Perhaps a stagnant browser market or a stagnant browser war but the web certainly isn't stagnant. Hopefully they editors of this full page add will do a better job than the Slashdot editors did.
Personally I don't care for Firefox as the rest of the web doesn't really support it and pages don't render correctly. Firefox will not be THE player until the day that people start writing pages that work under Firefox, ignore IE's "quirks", and when they start to understand what spyware is, how to defend against it, and how to get rid of it.
I have very little faith that the public cares enough to do any of those things.
Exactly. Kildall was never known for his business sense. He was known as an "inventor" and a programmer. Gates was smart in doing what he did back then (royalty fees and the such). He let others do the work for him and he made the money. Others just couldn't see the future. Apparently Gates could (at least then).
Some might view Kildall's story as being a sad one. A man driven to alcohol because his wife wouldn't sign an NDA or because he supposedly went flying. Whatever. The man had a poor business sense and he didn't see the value in doing what he needed to do to win.
It's not like he didn't make a ton of money. He ended up selling out to Novell for something like $125 million. Honestly, I think that's significant.
Movies while working are newsworthy & producti
on
A Dual Monitor Experiment
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Dual monitors isn't news for anyone. It's been easy to do for years and years. Hell, Win98 did it just as easily as the current Windows versions. I remember the difficulties I ran into when I was trying to do it with two different sized monitors with X and no GUIs. I wish there had been a single repository of easy to interpret information back then.
Yeah, two monitors COULD be more beneficial if you're looking to be productive. This guy mentions that but then switches to say that he enjoys multi-tasking and watching a movie at the same time as he is working. Personally, that's not exactly "productive" and honestly it's likely not something that's permitted outside of your home. The only time I am TRULY looking to be productive is when I'm at work and Slashdot has cornered the market on hoarding my time while I'm there.
He talks a little bit about the cost of having a dual monitor setup. Yeah, CRTs are cheap and LCDs are costing less and less but I'm mostly concerned with the amount of electricity that two monitors use up when they are both fired up and running constantly. I ran a 17" and a 15" CRT on my desktop for several years but recently I have switched back to just running one. Why? Even if it saves me $1 on my electric bill (it actually saves a bit more than that) it's beneficial. That's a beer, a burger, or $1 to go towards something else that's more important than being able to have Word open on one monitor and AIM on another.
Personally, I'm going to stick to running a single CRT for now and have to waste all that time hitting ALT+TAB to get to my AIM window when it starts flashing. So much for being able to watch a movie and do my work while being productive at the same time.
The numbers seem to reflect that ambiguity. In a June report, the nonprofit National Taxpayers Union estimated that more than half of new homeland security funding since 2001--$164 billion--is being spent on programs unrelated to defense or response to terrorist attacks. As an example, the organization cited the renaming of the Agriculture Act of 2001 as the "Farm Security Act" after Sept. 11.
"As if chickpeas, lentils and mohair have anything to do with national security. One congressman even stated that a peanut subsidy, with a $3.5 billion price tag, 'strengthens America's national security,'" the 335,000-member group said. "Members of Congress have been cloaking old-fashioned pork in the robes of 'security' for the 'homeland.'"
Because the tax-payers are transfixed by his bumbling speeches. They apparently believe that he is a better candidate for protecting us against terror. The public really feels that their monies are going to support protection. They just fail to understand that the money isn't going 100% to protect them. It's going to the same old shit it was before just under assumed names with the guise of more security.
As long as he can keep their one-track minds going in the direction that he has been he's going to be able to do what he wants with the money we have to throw at him.
And if you are worried about security, Google claims that it's more secure than AOL Instant Messenger," said Nathan Weinberg, who runs the InsideGoogle blog.
You mean it's more secure than sending and receiving plaintext + HTML? Wow. I'm impressed. Personally I think everyone should be proxying their AIM sessions over encrypted tunnels (especially if you are on a college campus) but I'd be more worried about Google archiving and learning my chat preferences. Soon I'd be getting "spam" to my GMail account based on my most frequently used words.
Personally, I don't want to log and search my AIM conversations. Most of that is quick chat or non-sense. I see where in corporate environments it would be useful but for MY home use I just don't see the need. YMMV.
Perhaps she'll learn a lesson here, but my [cynical] guess is that she'll just continue to blame other people/companies for her lack of parenting skills.
Ever think she did find her child "gambling" online because she was doing her job as a parent?
I don't agree with regulations due to bad parenting but this one might actually seem like an active parent discovering what their child did because they were paying attenion not because they heard a Dateline (or similiar program down under) story about it and decided to be vocal.
From a manufacturer's perspective, it is better to have that customer buy your product, and then purchase Wifi later, then it is to lose that customer to some other manufacturer based on them having a lower cost device. If people really want Wifi, then, simply create a bundle that lets people purchase your PDA along with the CF card that gives them WIFI, and then the problem is solved. That way, you can market your product to both sets of people and straddle the two segments of customers.
Well, you're probably right, from what I see (and how many open WAPs there are around me) that more people want wifi than don't. Thus I believe it would be more beneficial to include it into the device (what are we talking a $25 increase at most?) and let those that don't need it not use it.
CD/DVD playback -- 4GB is a lot of space but what if you want to play movies?
On a PDA? You realize that that would increase the size/weight of the unit drastically right? Yeah, I understand that movies/music are important and that people want to start consolidating devices but personally I'd prefer to keep the device small and light.
Unlike Sony's PDAs, there's no wireless on the Sharp model, only infra-red. There's an SD and a CompactFlash card slot for expansion, so there's scope to add Bluetooth or Wi-Fi later on. There's also the usual USB port for connecting the device to a PC, and an earphones socket.
I don't understand their decision not to include wireless into the device. Yeah you could add it with a CF card but that's an added expense and something else to carry w/you. Plenty of businesses now offer wireless service (Old Chicago, Kinkos, coffee houses, and a bunch of bars come to mind) and I would certainly think that most people would consider wifi a necessary feature.
The base of the unit above the keyboard looks a bit thick. I wonder if it is meant to be held in your hands and you type w/your thumbs or if it is to sit on a surface and you type normally. Personally I prefer holding a device in my hands and typing but that's just me.
I am now, more than ever, interested in some sort of "palm top" device for use in my home. I love being able to walk around and do what I need to do online from wherever. Even a laptop seems too bulky for me these days. At a little over 10.5 ounces this would be the perfect device for that purpose.
If you have an open WAN for anonymous people to connect to the internet over, can the owner of the router (and ISP connection) be held responsible for sharing files over said connection?
What if it isn't open and someone hacks you can you be held liable? We have too many people out there that have open WAPs are we going to expect all those people to become knowledgable about WLANs and close it up?
I mean there are 4 open WAPs in the immediate vicinity around my house (and when I say open, I mean default passwords and SSIDs as well). Several more are in the neighborhood. I can only imagine what it is like everywhere else.
"They are uploading music on a massive scale, effectively stealing the livelihoods of thousands of artists and the people who invest in them."
Yet they chose Brittany Spears to be the front-person for the anti-pirating campaign. How about paying some of those starving artists to play frontman instead?
Do you ever consider anyone else's point of view? Reading through all of your comments, all I see is that they are all super-biased and don't actually involve any rational thought. You are a selfish, elitist prick.
The personal attacks are unnecessary and should be modded troll.
Just because you don't like the music being sold at Wal-Mart doesn't mean that it sucks.
The point was that Walmart is supposedly selling music by developing/independent artists. I said that I haven't seen anything like that in the Walmarts I have shopped in.
Tensions are not as high now as they were last winter, but making sure Wal-Mart is happy remains one of the music industry's major priorities.
How about making the customers happy? Personally, I can't believe that 1 out of 5 CDs are sold in Walmarts. I can't stand their stores. I absolutely DREAD entering one. They aren't clean, they aren't friendly after you pass the greeter, and they aren't someplace that I want to shop for music as it's just usually a mess and full of people.
Why not concentrate on making music available for less money somewhere that I might want to buy it instead of worrying about making sure Walmart is happy.
Virtually no industry executives would publicly comment about their company's relationship with Wal-Mart. But off the record, many record-industry executives shared their concerns. "I don't think there is a music supplier in America who really enjoys doing business with Wal-Mart," says one major-label rep.
Awww, are we supposed to feel sorry for them? Am I supposed to shed a tear from the corner of my drying eyes that they don't like something? Here's the river... Notice it's dry.
I don't like dealing with either company and I certainly don't think that Walmart is going to bat for the consumer. They are only doing this to make themselves richer. We aren't exactly benefiting by buying a $10 CD.
Wal-Mart is like no traditional record seller. Unlike a typical Tower store, which stocks 60,000 titles, an average Wal-Mart carries about 5,000 CDs. That leaves little room on the shelf for developing artists or independent labels.
I was at Walmart recently buying something I couldn't find at Target. I happened to stop into the electronics section while my fiancé did some shopping elsewhere. Perhaps I wasn't looking in the right spots but I wasn't finding anything by developing and independent artists. If anything it was most older music that wasn't exactly getting radio play. I saw the typical teenybopper crap but nothing that I would consider new and exciting.
"When you're buying CDs for twelve dollars and selling them for ten like Wal-Mart, it makes the rest of us look like we're gouging the customer, when we're not," says Don Van Cleave, head of the Coalition for Independent Music Stores, a retail consortium. "It's supertough to compete with that price point."
Most independent stores I have gone to shop for music in are charing $16+ for a CD. If you're buying it for $12 and making $4+ a CD I seriously believe that you are gouging us. I don't feel bad for you.
"They proposed it to a bunch of artists and managers, but everyone was worried that we are sending a message that instead of the sixteen-track album we sold, those nine extra songs were filler," says a label executive.
You sent the message when we bought your shit music for $16+ and found that 14 of the songs were filler. Walmart didn't help to spread that message... Your crappy albums did.
Slashdot Mirror
Now i know the ignorance level is at an all time high here at slashdot these days, but every single comment i just read full of it.
"i went to that dumb website when it started, and its dumb. Its still dumb now. This advertisement is Dumb. Sorry i missed out on all the DUMB"
Now while I see what you are saying and I agree with you at least as far as everyone hating everything... I have to say that marketing schemes have been popping up everywhere trying to get people involved and it seriously reminds me that you need to watch A Christmas Story more than once during its Thanksgiving -> Christmas Eve runs...
"BE SURE TO DRINK YOUR OVALTINE"
Remember that in this day and age we have pay-for radio play so that songs get boosted on the charts, we have Jeep getting involved with Geocaching to spread little yellow pieces of marketing trash around, and payphones ringing across the country just so people get excited about a product.
How about you not get suckered in and you buy the product because it's superior not because the marketing gods have your brain by the balls.
Well, Slashdot has become a marketing website for a prominent MP3 player, a certain browser, and various OSs that are not made by Bill Gates. Does that stop people from coming here? No.
:)
What it does do, though, is give us a place to bitch about it
Well, honestly, while N and OBSD have their merits (as were mentioned) I know that I wouldn't want to deal with Linux if Linus was as big of a raving fuckwit as Theo is.
Now, I can't say that Theo's erratic and basically socially unacceptable behavior would be my only reason for not using it (as the blurb seems to suggest) but it certainly would be a major deterrent.
Oh no custom scrollbars! The world is ending! :P To customize form fields, add "-moz-appearance: none !important;" to the field's style, and then add style accordingly.
Remember that geeks already typically use Firefox. This whole thread was started about how it's going to be in a national magazine targeted towards non-geeks.
Non-geeks go to websites that may or may not be formed with standards in mind. They are likely IE specific. If the site has custom scrollbars and the user has to add that ridiculous tag to get them to work they aren't going to like it.
You people constantly forget that geeks aren't the majority.
I doubt it. You didn't switch to simply try it out, like 99.9% who use/used firefox?
Everyone here seems to point out tabbed browsing as being the IE killer. I don't see the usefulness in it at all. Perhaps he did.
Then you have some setup that isn't default. I just tried the exact same thing and it doesn't work. No matter what text size I try on Firefox it doesn't look the same as the IE side.
It already can properly render most of the web. Also if a web page is actually broken, there is no way to properly render it. At best you can best guess what maybe it is supposed to be.
Yet none of the page fonts look the way they do under IE. Under IE the page fonts look clean and crisp. Under Firefox they look like blocky text. Reminds me of what Netscape and Mozilla looked like under X.
People are going to switch from IE and load their favorite page. The page isn't going to look as good and people are going to run. That's the problem and I don't think that the Firefox team necessarily wants that to happen.
Talk about facts. My website which is mostly hit from slashdot referrers throughout the day has stats that look like this:
1 12576 38.70% MSIE 6.0
2 12435 38.27% Mozilla/5.0
Now, I realize that browsers can fake this information but let's assume that it's basically correct. Just about any hit that comes from a referrer outside of slashdot is not Firefox/Moz.
Hopefully they editors of this full page add will do a better job than the Slashdot editors did.
:)
And hopefully I won't be one of those editors either
"A declaration of independence from a stagnant web." Now that's an interesting statement. Perhaps a stagnant browser market or a stagnant browser war but the web certainly isn't stagnant. Hopefully they editors of this full page add will do a better job than the Slashdot editors did.
Personally I don't care for Firefox as the rest of the web doesn't really support it and pages don't render correctly. Firefox will not be THE player until the day that people start writing pages that work under Firefox, ignore IE's "quirks", and when they start to understand what spyware is, how to defend against it, and how to get rid of it.
I have very little faith that the public cares enough to do any of those things.
Exactly. Kildall was never known for his business sense. He was known as an "inventor" and a programmer. Gates was smart in doing what he did back then (royalty fees and the such). He let others do the work for him and he made the money. Others just couldn't see the future. Apparently Gates could (at least then).
Some might view Kildall's story as being a sad one. A man driven to alcohol because his wife wouldn't sign an NDA or because he supposedly went flying. Whatever. The man had a poor business sense and he didn't see the value in doing what he needed to do to win.
It's not like he didn't make a ton of money. He ended up selling out to Novell for something like $125 million. Honestly, I think that's significant.
Dual monitors isn't news for anyone. It's been easy to do for years and years. Hell, Win98 did it just as easily as the current Windows versions. I remember the difficulties I ran into when I was trying to do it with two different sized monitors with X and no GUIs. I wish there had been a single repository of easy to interpret information back then.
Yeah, two monitors COULD be more beneficial if you're looking to be productive. This guy mentions that but then switches to say that he enjoys multi-tasking and watching a movie at the same time as he is working. Personally, that's not exactly "productive" and honestly it's likely not something that's permitted outside of your home. The only time I am TRULY looking to be productive is when I'm at work and Slashdot has cornered the market on hoarding my time while I'm there.
He talks a little bit about the cost of having a dual monitor setup. Yeah, CRTs are cheap and LCDs are costing less and less but I'm mostly concerned with the amount of electricity that two monitors use up when they are both fired up and running constantly. I ran a 17" and a 15" CRT on my desktop for several years but recently I have switched back to just running one. Why? Even if it saves me $1 on my electric bill (it actually saves a bit more than that) it's beneficial. That's a beer, a burger, or $1 to go towards something else that's more important than being able to have Word open on one monitor and AIM on another.
Personally, I'm going to stick to running a single CRT for now and have to waste all that time hitting ALT+TAB to get to my AIM window when it starts flashing. So much for being able to watch a movie and do my work while being productive at the same time.
The numbers seem to reflect that ambiguity. In a June report, the nonprofit National Taxpayers Union estimated that more than half of new homeland security funding since 2001--$164 billion--is being spent on programs unrelated to defense or response to terrorist attacks. As an example, the organization cited the renaming of the Agriculture Act of 2001 as the "Farm Security Act" after Sept. 11.
"As if chickpeas, lentils and mohair have anything to do with national security. One congressman even stated that a peanut subsidy, with a $3.5 billion price tag, 'strengthens America's national security,'" the 335,000-member group said. "Members of Congress have been cloaking old-fashioned pork in the robes of 'security' for the 'homeland.'"
Because the tax-payers are transfixed by his bumbling speeches. They apparently believe that he is a better candidate for protecting us against terror. The public really feels that their monies are going to support protection. They just fail to understand that the money isn't going 100% to protect them. It's going to the same old shit it was before just under assumed names with the guise of more security.
As long as he can keep their one-track minds going in the direction that he has been he's going to be able to do what he wants with the money we have to throw at him.
And if you are worried about security, Google claims that it's more secure than AOL Instant Messenger," said Nathan Weinberg, who runs the InsideGoogle blog.
You mean it's more secure than sending and receiving plaintext + HTML? Wow. I'm impressed. Personally I think everyone should be proxying their AIM sessions over encrypted tunnels (especially if you are on a college campus) but I'd be more worried about Google archiving and learning my chat preferences. Soon I'd be getting "spam" to my GMail account based on my most frequently used words.
Personally, I don't want to log and search my AIM conversations. Most of that is quick chat or non-sense. I see where in corporate environments it would be useful but for MY home use I just don't see the need. YMMV.
Perhaps she'll learn a lesson here, but my [cynical] guess is that she'll just continue to blame other people/companies for her lack of parenting skills.
Ever think she did find her child "gambling" online because she was doing her job as a parent?
I don't agree with regulations due to bad parenting but this one might actually seem like an active parent discovering what their child did because they were paying attenion not because they heard a Dateline (or similiar program down under) story about it and decided to be vocal.
From a manufacturer's perspective, it is better to have that customer buy your product, and then purchase Wifi later, then it is to lose that customer to some other manufacturer based on them having a lower cost device. If people really want Wifi, then, simply create a bundle that lets people purchase your PDA along with the CF card that gives them WIFI, and then the problem is solved. That way, you can market your product to both sets of people and straddle the two segments of customers.
Well, you're probably right, from what I see (and how many open WAPs there are around me) that more people want wifi than don't. Thus I believe it would be more beneficial to include it into the device (what are we talking a $25 increase at most?) and let those that don't need it not use it.
CD/DVD playback -- 4GB is a lot of space but what if you want to play movies?
On a PDA? You realize that that would increase the size/weight of the unit drastically right? Yeah, I understand that movies/music are important and that people want to start consolidating devices but personally I'd prefer to keep the device small and light.
Unlike Sony's PDAs, there's no wireless on the Sharp model, only infra-red. There's an SD and a CompactFlash card slot for expansion, so there's scope to add Bluetooth or Wi-Fi later on. There's also the usual USB port for connecting the device to a PC, and an earphones socket.
I don't understand their decision not to include wireless into the device. Yeah you could add it with a CF card but that's an added expense and something else to carry w/you. Plenty of businesses now offer wireless service (Old Chicago, Kinkos, coffee houses, and a bunch of bars come to mind) and I would certainly think that most people would consider wifi a necessary feature.
The base of the unit above the keyboard looks a bit thick. I wonder if it is meant to be held in your hands and you type w/your thumbs or if it is to sit on a surface and you type normally. Personally I prefer holding a device in my hands and typing but that's just me.
I am now, more than ever, interested in some sort of "palm top" device for use in my home. I love being able to walk around and do what I need to do online from wherever. Even a laptop seems too bulky for me these days. At a little over 10.5 ounces this would be the perfect device for that purpose.
Nice, pulling what I said from another one of my posts and then making it seem like I said it? Heh.
This is all too much.
If you have an open WAN for anonymous people to connect to the internet over, can the owner of the router (and ISP connection) be held responsible for sharing files over said connection?
What if it isn't open and someone hacks you can you be held liable? We have too many people out there that have open WAPs are we going to expect all those people to become knowledgable about WLANs and close it up?
I mean there are 4 open WAPs in the immediate vicinity around my house (and when I say open, I mean default passwords and SSIDs as well). Several more are in the neighborhood. I can only imagine what it is like everywhere else.
"They are uploading music on a massive scale, effectively stealing the livelihoods of thousands of artists and the people who invest in them."
Yet they chose Brittany Spears to be the front-person for the anti-pirating campaign. How about paying some of those starving artists to play frontman instead?
Dont agree to them. Simplest way to deal with EULAs. They offer you a contract, you decline it.
No, the easiest way to do it is to violate the EULA and happily have someone fight MSFT in court on your behalf.
EULAs are going to continue to exist even though their legality has never been proven. We need to fight these click through licenses and end them.
If you don't sign something and have it notarized it shouldn't be considered legal.
Yeah, you're right. I did mess up. I apologize.
Do you ever consider anyone else's point of view? Reading through all of your comments, all I see is that they are all super-biased and don't actually involve any rational thought. You are a selfish, elitist prick.
The personal attacks are unnecessary and should be modded troll.
Just because you don't like the music being sold at Wal-Mart doesn't mean that it sucks.
The point was that Walmart is supposedly selling music by developing/independent artists. I said that I haven't seen anything like that in the Walmarts I have shopped in.
Whaddya think all those people are doing in the music section of Walmart? Jerking off?
The music section is located in the electronics section which is small and usually full of people nearly shoulder to shoulder.
Tensions are not as high now as they were last winter, but making sure Wal-Mart is happy remains one of the music industry's major priorities.
How about making the customers happy? Personally, I can't believe that 1 out of 5 CDs are sold in Walmarts. I can't stand their stores. I absolutely DREAD entering one. They aren't clean, they aren't friendly after you pass the greeter, and they aren't someplace that I want to shop for music as it's just usually a mess and full of people.
Why not concentrate on making music available for less money somewhere that I might want to buy it instead of worrying about making sure Walmart is happy.
Virtually no industry executives would publicly comment about their company's relationship with Wal-Mart. But off the record, many record-industry executives shared their concerns. "I don't think there is a music supplier in America who really enjoys doing business with Wal-Mart," says one major-label rep.
Awww, are we supposed to feel sorry for them? Am I supposed to shed a tear from the corner of my drying eyes that they don't like something? Here's the river... Notice it's dry.
I don't like dealing with either company and I certainly don't think that Walmart is going to bat for the consumer. They are only doing this to make themselves richer. We aren't exactly benefiting by buying a $10 CD.
Wal-Mart is like no traditional record seller. Unlike a typical Tower store, which stocks 60,000 titles, an average Wal-Mart carries about 5,000 CDs. That leaves little room on the shelf for developing artists or independent labels.
I was at Walmart recently buying something I couldn't find at Target. I happened to stop into the electronics section while my fiancé did some shopping elsewhere. Perhaps I wasn't looking in the right spots but I wasn't finding anything by developing and independent artists. If anything it was most older music that wasn't exactly getting radio play. I saw the typical teenybopper crap but nothing that I would consider new and exciting.
"When you're buying CDs for twelve dollars and selling them for ten like Wal-Mart, it makes the rest of us look like we're gouging the customer, when we're not," says Don Van Cleave, head of the Coalition for Independent Music Stores, a retail consortium. "It's supertough to compete with that price point."
Most independent stores I have gone to shop for music in are charing $16+ for a CD. If you're buying it for $12 and making $4+ a CD I seriously believe that you are gouging us. I don't feel bad for you.
"They proposed it to a bunch of artists and managers, but everyone was worried that we are sending a message that instead of the sixteen-track album we sold, those nine extra songs were filler," says a label executive.
You sent the message when we bought your shit music for $16+ and found that 14 of the songs were filler. Walmart didn't help to spread that message... Your crappy albums did.