More importantly, it's a loan from which the costs of recording are paid. In other words... Out of that advance, Britney has to pay:
1. The studio
2. The producer
3. The musicians
4. The songwriters
5. The backup singers
6. The business agent
7. The manager
8. Security
9. Staff
10. Personal assistants
11. Music techs
12. Sound engineers (yes, they cost extra)
13. Transportation
Usually, the entire advance gets spent on all of the above... the artist is now sitting with zero in the bank or even a negative balance after all is said and done.
Now here's where it gets scary...
The entire advance is a loan... That's right... it's owed back to the record company.
Recoupment works like this...
If Warner Bros. pays you a $500,000 advance for album 1, and has you optioned for three more...
First you have to recoup the $500,000... but you don't recoup it at the gross MSRP of the albums sold. You recoup it at your royalty rate.
The royalty rate an artist gets is not based on the MSRP. In other words, if an album retails for $15.98, the artist's cut... probably around 14% for Britney... is not 14% of $15.98. It's 14% of the royalty base less gross margin, i.e. about $7.98... after deducting marketing, distribution, packaging, promotions, and related costs.
So now, that's about $1.12... pretty high actually for a Britney, believe it or not. But let's be generous and say that her royalty is $1.12.
She has to recoup the $500,000 at that rate... $1.12 per album. So, she has to sell 446,428 albums just to pay back her advance.
Now... UNTIL she pays back her advance, she does not get to keep a DIME of royalties. So, given that with a $500,000 advance she's probably spent every last dime of it, she's going to be broke if her album doesn't go gold. What's worse, she's still tied to her contract until she delivers the other optioned albums.
But wait, it gets worse...
If she gets a larger advance, she now has to sell even more albums to pay back the advance, meaning it takes even longer before she gets paid a dime... and usually when artists get a larger advance, they still blow every dime of it on all the aforementioned expenses.
But here's what's more... If she has any contracts with band members or producers to get paid royalties... their percentage take comes OUT OF that $1.12... Then the business agent and managers take their cut... 15% of what's left? No, 15% of $1.12 per album.
It still gets worse... the artist is the last person to get paid. The business manager handles all disbursements (just like a lawyer on retainer)... everybody else gets paid, then the artist takes what's left.
It gets worse, still... If any tracks on the demo submitted to the A&R department are rejected, Britney has to go back to the studio and record some more...but if she's blown her advance already, then the additional recording costs come out of her pocket.
It gets even worse, even now...
If Britney's album is a failure and lets say $200,000 has not been recouped... When her next album is due, the $200,000 unrecouped balance gets pooled with the advance for the new album. Now she has to still recoup both... but there's more. Until she has paid off all her debts, she cannot get out of her contract... she still owes the record company material.
But there's still more...
The record company may incur additional expenses related to the promotion of the album... whenever an A&R agent wines & dines a program director at a radio station, whenever someone uses a jet to fly from LA to New York and meet with program directors there, whenever transportation costs and other overhead expenditures are incurred in relation to the promotion of her album, etc.... all these expenses are deducted from her advance and/or royalty checks first.
It's RIAA's worst nightmare. Not piracy... but artist independence. The entire reason that RIAA has been resisting internet music distribution since it became a reality in the mid-1990's is precisely because the industry's 50-year old distribution monopoly (Read "This Business of Music" by Sidney Shemel and M. William Krasilovsky.) is directly threatened on such a wide-open medium with so few barriers to entry.
The industry cannot compete on the internet effectively, and artists are awakening to the fact that in such a venue, they don't need to become the indentured servants of record companies just to see global distribution. The fact is, if they sell so much as one album on their own, they've made more money than 85 percent of the recording artists signed to major labels alone--who do not sell enough albums to recoup their recording advance.
Using the royalty computation model explained in "All You Need to Know About the Music Business" by Don Passman, an industry lawyer and professor, the average mid-level artist has to sell a quarter-million albums just to start seeing a dime of royalties.
This luring of artists away from their record companies, into direct distribution, and cutting out about 9 or 10 middle-entities along the way, is basically "phase two" of the emergence of internet distribution as the dominant model.
To make matters more interesting... Think about the implications here... In a world where even an artist selling 500 copies can make a better profit than a Britney Spears should her latest album sell less than enough to cover whatever six or seven figure advance she's been paid, there's going to be a much bigger selection of talented artistry out there... available for mass consumption. One won't have to resort to ridiculous marketing and promotions to make a buck... and that will make it harder for Britney Spears and the like to dominate the scene because they essentially bring nothing to the table
Record companies with their moronic A&R departments so myopically focused on putting every last ounce of energy into pushing only the biggest international artists stand to lose everything... and their employees along with it (especially the overpaid, underimaginative executives).
So, if you're still wondering why RIAA spends so much time, effort and money ice-skating uphill... It's because they have everything to lose, anyway. All they can do now is try to postpone the inevitable... and they're failing to do even that. But if they let down, it means they're going to have to get off their asses and find real jobs.
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.
>open mailbox
"Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2005 08:58:18 -0700 (PDT)
From: Moses Odiaka [mosesadiaha@go.com]
To: mosesadiaha@go.com
Subject: CONFIDENTIAL PROPOSAL
My name is Mr.Moses Odiaka.I work in the credit and accounts department of
Union Bank of Nigeria, Plc.,Lagos, Nigeria. I write you in respect of a
foreign customer with a Domicilliary account..."
Let me also add... regarding the "save" function... I've always wondered what was the point of a "Save" button in the toolbar, anyway... when "File > Save" is immediately above it?
Are people seriously that stupid that they need a million redundant functions?
I like Pages... the toolbar isn't cluttered to hell with icons so small the elderly, who are the most computer-illiterate to begin with, generally can't tell one apart from the other.
And for those who truly are computer-illiterate... like my 63-year old mother... Having to jog the mouse one more inch on the screen is the least of her problems. Windows has been an enormous hassle for her... so much that we, the kids, are considering getting her a Mac Mini.
Windows doesn't have compatible control keys from one application to the next. Apple is far more strict about uniformity between applications.
Also, because Windows uses Ctrl and Apple uses Command... is not an argument. The fact is, it took my wife less than a few days to be completely adjusted to Macs after a lifetime of using Windows.
2) Save button on toolbars. I don't think any of the Apple software ever gives you the option to include a Save button.
Wrong In any application where a document is created for the purposes of customized use by the user, e.g. Pages, Adobe Photoshop, etc., the "X" (close window) button in the file window changes to a dot. Clicking it prompts a "Save" dialogue box. Windows has no such function.
Also see "File > Save"... consistent in every OS X application, including those which aren't designed for custom document creation (e.g. Safari).
I don't know if the same can be said of Windows, but I would hope so.
3) A multi button mouse.
This argument is the single most repeated, ad nauseum, by those who have never really been aware of Mac's features for the past twenty years.
4) Only show relevant file types in open and save dialogs.
Last I checked, they do precisely that. Unlike Windows, which, if it doesn't recognize a file type, will give you a choice of every possible application under the sun, OS X displays the ones it thinks are most likely to work, or you can select "Other" and pick the one you want to attempt.
Furthermore, control-option-click will switch "Open With..." to "Always Open With...", so the next time you open that document, it always opens with the application you want it to....
Edited something in Photoshop, exported as JPEG and now you want Preview to open it instead of waiting for Photoshop's plug-ins to load? There you go... "Always open with..."
In an "Open" dialogue box, generally, the application shows you all files, but greys out any files that can't be opened by that application. Personally, I like seeing other file types.
If I'm in Microsoft excel, and I want to take a crack at opening a CSV or other such file into Excel, Windows won't so much as show me the file. Granted, it might not open the file anyway... but what use is a directory-browsing function if you can't see what's in it? Maybe I forgot the file type and I don't want to have to use Windows' horrible desktop navigation to find it since I'm already browsing a directory in the 'Open' dialogue box.
Windows Microsoft Excel just shows me the.xls files in the directory... and I personally find that annoying as hell because it saves me no time... and I'm not so computer-illiterate that I'd open Final Cut Pro thinking I want to use it to work on that Excel spreadsheet... considering one would create a spreadsheet in excel, any third-grader should remember that Excel is the preferred application to launch in the first place if you want to be opening XLS files.
But for that matter, certain OS X apps that have a need for cross-application support (like Final Cut Pro, which, by the way, does export batch lists in CSV format... one reason I might want to SEE other file formats in Excel)... Also have a selector that allows you to choose between showing all file types, or just those native to the application.
Some of us like having the option. Isn't "choice" what Bill Gates keeps telling us Windows is all about?
5) Sort folders to top of directory listings I know that we don't go folder mining as much since we got Spotlight, so I won't labor on about this one.
You see that label at the top of your Finder window that says "Kind"... click it and be amazed.
6) More context sensitive help. I notice since I first raised this two years ago, more of it has crept into OS X. So I guess at least I can't be flamed for this o
What better way to force people to upgrade to OS X software than make it impossible to run "Classic Mode" applications without the performance hit from running a PPC emulator on Intel?
Why exactly would this be a problem?
Classic applications on OS X are already running inside an emulator, or at least an OS inside an OS (which is still a drag on CPU, GPU and memory), more or less... some of the Classic apps are 680x0-based while others were optimized for the PPC 603 and 604... a radically-different architecture from the G4 (e.g. PPC 750) and G5 (PPC 970).
Furthermore, Why would they take a performance hit from next year's Intel Macs when those Intel Macs will be unquestionably faster processors than the PPCs that ran Classic...and infinitely faster than the original Motorola 680x0's, and still ridiculously more powerful than the 603 and 604, for which the original PPC-native Classic apps were designed.
I don't see [b]anyone[/b] complaining that Apple II emulators on Windows are taking a performance hit compared to Apple II emulators on OS X.
A friend of mine who did production design for several motion pictures (e.g. Back to the Future, Star Trek) said in an interview, of the pre-production process, that he who gets the project last wins.
He was referring to how a concept would go from the production designer to the concept arist then to the model makers and then the vfx team... getting tweaks all along the way. And he's right, he who gets the project last wins... by then, it's too late for anyone else to weigh in their opinion on the changes.
Well, in marketing it works the other way around... He who gets there first wins. The truth is, Morgan Freeman understands, clearly, as does any reasonable individual in the motion picture industry, that piracy is never going to be completely eliminated... nor is it likely to decrease in proportion to an ever-increasing number of theatrical releases. This is especially true if the current trend of quantity over quality continues... where filmgoers are reluctant to pay upwards of $10 a pop to see a crappy movie every week.
The reason that the delay to DVD release has been shortened is largely to stem losses from piracy. The reasoning is that most individuals are less inclined to go through the relatively cumbersome act of fishing P2P networks for a film (much less a [b]decent[/b] copy) if they don't have to wait very long for a $15 DVD with extra content that won't be attached to a P2P file.
Same logic here... iTunes already proved that people will pay a premium (i.e. more than "free") for music downloads if there's justification for it. iTunes offers things no pirate P2P network does... in terms of their library, the fidelity of MPEG-4, and the ease of use facilitated by smart interface design... not to mention the most insanely brilliant global load balancing I've ever seen (and I work for a company that shares global load balancing for giants like Sony and Ebay).
So, the logic is this...
Release nothing on the internet, and get lots of piracy.
Release something IMMEDIATELY on the internet, and get somewhat less piracy than you would have.
You're going to get piracy either way... so all you can do is try to make a buck while you can.
Why do you think, in the business of theatrical releases, every single motion picture studio in the universe bets the farm on that first weekend?
I think the key to my program's success is going to be to publicize it in places where Mac users who dabble in GarageBand and software synthesizers hang out. Also, I think it will gain a lot more attention once I get it localized for France, Germany, and Japan. Beyond buying ads in the appropriate places, I think shareware like mine depends on word-of-mouth to gain momentum. So although the sales have so far been disappointing, they could theoretically increase exponentially.
You're on the right track here. There are a number of questions and observations I have, but I couldn't really go into enough detail on Slashdot to really make a dent in your sales.
Marketing is a complex and fickle bitch... That being said, I think there's considerable money to be made in the music software market. I certainly have spent a ton of money on it!
You are right on about word of mouth... musicians love to talk shop with one-another... in the course of an hour at Guitar Center, for example, you could run into four or five different musicians who might each recommend something. Even better if you develop solid relationships with the software sales staff in places like that.
It's going to take a considerable amount of investigation and research to determine where your greatest chances lie for spreading word of mouth, though... but I would do that before you spend a cent on advertising.
There's a weight-loss clinic here in Minneapolis that was going on word-of-mouth, including referrals from physicians, and they'd been booked fairly solid before they ran a single advertisement. When their first TV ad ran, business exploded.
The only trouble with that scenario is, if you haven't spent significant time building up your product, support and business model, you may not be prepared for the "big time" and people will waffle out. Let's not forget that even Apple suffered serious setbacks with the mangled rollout of PowerPC, and later the mangled rollout of Copland (which had to be scaled down just to recover).
Word of mouth is your first, best place to start testing the waters... I'd be more than glad to field other questions, perhaps even work out a business plan with you if you're interested.
Prior to iTunes and the iTunes store, almost every poster here agreed that DRM is pure dag nasty evil period, end of story, will boycott any vendor, etc.
Suffice it to say... I was not one of them.
In fact, I've had quite enough of coding hypocrites who stash huge amounts of pirated Mp3s but insist that getting paid for their coding skills is a "right".
Mind you... not that I have a problem with piracy. It's inevitable, and I think Apple understands that. Even so, that doesn't preclude anyone from the right to at least, in principle, try to protect their "intellectual property" (if there is such a thing) and profit exclusively from it.
I wrote a research paper in 1996, realizing that internet music distribution was the greatest, single threat to the canned Britney Spears and Mariah Careys of the world.
So, while I accept piracy as a reality, I applaud Apple's efforts to shut up RIAA's objections to iTunes Music Store by trying to meet them halfway with DRM... because in the end, it'll be the death knell for the major labels, anyway.
As much as piracy is inevitable, that isn't the industry's greatest fear. Obsolescence of a 50-year old music distribution model is. Same with the Motion Picture Association.
If theaters move to encrypted digital streams to download films for DLP projection, it will effectively eliminate 85 percent of the costs associated with motion picture distribution... and, consequently, a huge number of jobs.
To the MPAA and RIAA, I have this to say: That's life, get used to it.
DRM is a double-edged sword... because it doesn't ensure that major distributors will maintain a monopoly on the internet. They can't... by simple virtue of the internet's design, it's impossible. The marketing and distribution channels that open to anyone on the internet with enough of an audience dictate that a major label's distribution network is no longer a necessary part of the equation... but what DRM does is it gives [b]independent[/b] artists an opportunity to see that [i]their[/i] right to profit from their work is exclusively protected... without having to rely on shifty record deals with A&R vipers at record labels to do so.
The net effect is a larger library of better quality music available at lower prices to anyone with access to an internet-connected computer... something that will bury RIAA and MPAA for once and for all.
Independent musicians and filmmakers have a better incentive to get on the wagon of internet distribution with DRM than without it... and we stand a better chance of flushing the Jerry Bruckheimer shlockfests and Mariah Carey egofests down the toilet for once and for all.
As I mentioned, I've used Apples since 1979. I currently own 3 or 4, and have owned a total of 7 in my lifetime. I have seen them go through many changes, including processor suppliers.
Even Steve Jobs thought that relying on Sony (see the folklore.org forums for the story on this) for microfloppy drives would kill the Macintosh project... the Mac team found a way to integrate the Sony drives and meet their launch deadline, which they would have missed otherwise.
As much as there are users like me who understand technologies thorougly before plunking down the money to get them... the majority of users aren't like that. To the majority of users, release dates, everyday functionality, cost... things like these matter. No matter how much quality you put into a product
Alienating your "base" is really a nonsensical argument... in the sense that every company's target market demographic evolves over time. There are consumers who adapt and consumers who don't... I've rolled with Apple's changes over the years, not because I'm a loyalist, but because even at their worst I still found the machines to be infinitely better designed than anything the rest of the PC market has to offer (let's not forget Apple made "Personal Computer" a household term). Apple has alienated their base before, and brought them back screaming with joy over Jobs return, the completely redesigned Macs and a total departure from OS X... while recently posting their highest-revenue and highest-profit quarter in the history of the company.
With the Wintel product, the problem isn't Intel so much as it's Windows. Itanium hasn't taken off in the consumer marketplace, despite being comparable to G5 processors, because Windows has really zilch for ability to capitalize on Itanium's abilities. Not true for Apple and Mac OS X.
The thought also occurred to me... If OS X can run on an Intel processor, then conceivably bridging the gap by being able to run Microsoft applications in the OS rather than through an emulator (like Virtual PC) would be a huge switch motivator for customers.
You don't snag customers by making something so radically different... but what you have to do is give them a foot in, and then show them yours is better... genuinely better, by experience, not just marketing. Apple is very good at that. I have yet to meet a PC user who really dove into a Mac and wasn't so impressed that the only thing holding them back from buying one was how abrupt they'd have to dump their existing applications.
If Apple's marketing people are geniuses, and they are... They'll zero in on the fact that, in today's world, planned obsolescence is a reality that can be taken advantage of.
Users need to be reminded their apps are going to be completely useless a few years from now anyway, and support/patches for older Microsoft products and the notoriously exploitable operating system is going to disappear. So, there's going to be a reinvestment at some point... It might as well be in an Intel-based Mac that could easily run existing apps and allow you to take advantage of the native apps that perform better than anything Microsoft has ever coded.
If you test drive a Mercedes-Benz, you aren't going to get back in your Nissan and ever feel quite the same... Mercedes knows this, and that's how they snag people.
I'm sure there were people pissing and moaning when Apple wanted to go away from their "radically different" classical OS to a more mainstream UNIX architecture... but let's not forget one thing:
Ever since Apple cashed in on the Xerox PARC team's GUI, they've been doing just what Sony does... examining an existing idea, and making it better. Who's to say they won't be the first company to truly squeeze the most performance out of an Intel processor?
I've been an Apple user since 1979, and, I think this is a good move.
In the hands of a forward-thinking individual like Steve Jobs, it could be the greatest coup Apple ever engineered against the computing industry as a whole, since the launch of the Apple II.
It would be extremely risky, except the biggest risk, engineering the OS to run on Intel processors, has already been done.
What the analysts, the slashdot naysayers and the investors may not be immediately pondering are the long-term implications.
By virtue of the fact that Mac OS has been engineered to run on Intel processors (using a binary translator like Rosetta... but still without recompiling or porting), it's conceivable Mac OS X could run on ANY PC... This is a huge difference from the last time Apple headed in the direction of licensing, where Mac clones that could run System 7.5 had to be engineered from the ground up... and they weren't very good. Don't even get me started on the Franklin Ace...
The second implication, and perhaps the more important one for Apple... they've always been a hardware company. Whether Markkula, Sculley, Spindler, Amelio, et. al. ever understood this is another thing. Steve Jobs, however, clearly does. Other than their core audience for software... the pro audio and video crowd, they don't focus heavily on software. Instead, they have a line of computers and some digital peripherals (like the iPod) and some core suites (like iLife and iWork) that allow people to use the computer like a digital hub... to interface with other aspects of their lifestyle... rather than making the computer the centerpiece of everything.
Likewise, the possibility exists that the new Macs could boot in Linux, OS X, Windows, what have you.
Lastly, also consider IBM's exit from the PC market. The Thinkpad is going off the market. There aren't really any other PC manufacturers making a laptop remotely comparable in quality to the Thinkpad to truly satisfy that market segment... That is, until Apple introduces Intel-based Powerbooks.
Therefore, Apple seems to be interested in a race with Microsoft, but really I think they're going after a much larger share of the PC market... after all, this is where Apple's largest profit margins exist.
Another point to consider about Apple's stealth advantage here... Not only has Apple been preparing for this (everyone knows that Apple likes to wait to announce an innovation until they actually have it, and can demo it)... There was a recent article on Slashdot that pointed out a study that nailed Apple's actual install base as 16 percent. That's considerably larger than the assumption-laden market share figures. Because analysts have always been pegging market share, Apple could easily catch the industry off guard, given the... what, eight orders of magnitude by their actual market proliferation is underestimated.
It would be a great thing if Apple has the sense, and I think they do, to not bother competing with Microsoft directly... but instead compete with the PC manufacturers themselves, giving customers an option outside the traditional Wintel marriage that most PC manufacturers haven't been able to wrangle themselves away from... which is a death sentence for them if Microsoft's product should ever fall out of favor with the public (gee, I wonder why such a thing would happen... *patchpatch*virus*patchpatch*worm*....)
"Raw" data is unaltered, yes, but it isn't "straight off the sensor"... It's straight off the A-to-D, the Analog-to-Digital converter, which is hardwired directly to the sensor in a manner that cannot be bypassed.
.NEF however, is not uncompressed... It's a proprietary lossless compression format. So, no, raw is not a format... but.NEF is.
Photoshop does not directly, officially support.NEF, but the PictureProject software with the D2H and most Nikon digital SLRs (including the D70, which I have), has a plugin for Photoshop that allows import of.NEF files into Photoshop, with a control panel for white balance and exposure adjustment during import. It's not as decent in terms of absolute resolution or artifact elimination compared to Nikon Capture Editor, but it's reasonable.
The best method for transferring work to Photoshop with the fewest artifacts and best absolute resolution/clarity would be to convert the image to a TIFF in Nikon Capture Editor or View Editor first.
I have a Nikon D70, and it comes packaged with Nikon's own proprietary plugin for importing NEF RAW files into Photoshop.
I checked, and the D2X is also packaged with PictureProject software, which carries the installer for the NEF plugin for Photoshop.
But this is a non-issue in more ways than one... at least for Mac users. OS X 10.4's Core Image component has a number of realtime filters that, in principle, can be integrated by developers into any application... giving every OS X application the potential for image manipulation rivaling Photoshop's capabilities.
Given how Apple has beaten Adobe in virtually every multimedia software category they have decided to compete (e.g. Final Cut Pro vs. Premiere, Shake or even Motion vs. After Effects, etc.), I wouldn't be surprised if Apple blows Photoshop out of the water with native Photoshop abilities by encouraging developers to capitalize on Core Image's potential in every imaging-related app they create.
I don't know if the D2X supports HDRI, but if it does, Photoshop doesn't anyway, not fully... You can convert images to 16-bit but you can't do a damned thing with them... You'd probably want to get Gimp or Film Gimp, and the HDRI plugin available free from Lucasfilm/ILM.
I'm almost positive that I've seen this exact same "17 megabytes in 20 minutes" nonsense before on the boards... I smell a troll.
I'm curious... do you happen to put all your media files on the same partition as your applications? In a word: Don't.
I have nearly half a terabyte of storage, and I run TechTool Pro regularly to defrag and perform directory maintenance.
IMPORTANT:
1. If you're not performing system/memory disk diagnostics and maintenance regularly, then your problem isn't the Mac... your problem is your own lack of common sense. Once, I discovered that one of my memory cards was not seated properly... You might never catch that if you don't confirm how much RAM your system is recognizing. So, as a rule, perform diagnostics regularly on everything.
2. To narrow down where your drag is occuring, run the Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder... check network, memory and disk activity to pinpoint more specifically where the unnecessary load is occurring.
3. The dumbest thing you can do is configure your System Disk as your scratch/capture disk... Always use separate physical drives for scratch/capture.
In short... sit down, shut up, and fix the problem.
1. I have three G4s... the noise doesn't seem to "bother" me... and I'm the kind of guy who can hear my CRTs' 60-120Hz refresh cycles.
2. The guy complained the so-called fanless PC was noisy. For whatever reason, his solution was... well, personally I'd have told him to get a G4 laptop and be done with it. I do video editing on my G4 laptop... so don't tell me it's not sufficient.
Look, if you wanted to tell us all that you're jealous, just have the guts to say you're fucking jealous. I know I am
Jealous? Of what exactly? His office? Here's mine Sure, I may not have two 30 inch flat monitors, but who needs it when you have a $3600 desk big enough to hold two workstations, 3 CRTs, a LaserJet printer, a DAT deck, a 32 track recording system, and plenty of overhead cabinet space for all your manuals?
.
I have about five or six layers of network and physical security protecting all this... and a $40,000 insurance policy... so no, I wouldn't say I'm jealous, exactly.
...and then...
4. Realize you're still running Windows, with font aliasing so bad it'll poke your eye out, and no ColorSync.
So, basically, you've just spent $6000 on monitors capable of displaying a level of clarity that Windows cannot, in even its greatest wet dreams, fully utilize... that is, unless this guy comes up with an equally-absurd, obscenely expensive, and Rube Goldbergian solution to make OS X run on an AMD or Intel chip.... which makes you wonder... why didn't he just buy a Mac.
With the kind of money this idiot likes to waste, maybe he should just rent time at Bell Labs' anechoic chamber... so he can listen to John Cage's 4'33" in all its tacit bliss. Obviously, he'll have to listen to it in his imagination, so he doesn't have to bear the sound of CD player spinning. Finally, he can enjoy 4 minutes and 33 seconds of absolute silence... not having to listen to anything except the sound of his circulatory and nervous systems operating... which will, undoubtedly, provoke him to write letters of complaint to Charles Darwin, who would be spinning in his grave... if it weren't for the fact that it would generate enough noise to provoke even further complaint from this pretentious, phonophobic ass.
Slashdot Mirror
Britney doesn't get to keep the advance... it's a loan. See my response to the other guy for a more detailed explanation.
More importantly, it's a loan from which the costs of recording are paid. In other words... Out of that advance, Britney has to pay:
1. The studio
2. The producer
3. The musicians
4. The songwriters
5. The backup singers
6. The business agent
7. The manager
8. Security
9. Staff
10. Personal assistants
11. Music techs
12. Sound engineers (yes, they cost extra)
13. Transportation
Usually, the entire advance gets spent on all of the above... the artist is now sitting with zero in the bank or even a negative balance after all is said and done.
Now here's where it gets scary...
The entire advance is a loan... That's right... it's owed back to the record company.
Recoupment works like this...
If Warner Bros. pays you a $500,000 advance for album 1, and has you optioned for three more...
First you have to recoup the $500,000... but you don't recoup it at the gross MSRP of the albums sold. You recoup it at your royalty rate.
The royalty rate an artist gets is not based on the MSRP. In other words, if an album retails for $15.98, the artist's cut... probably around 14% for Britney... is not 14% of $15.98. It's 14% of the royalty base less gross margin, i.e. about $7.98 ... after deducting marketing, distribution, packaging, promotions, and related costs.
So now, that's about $1.12... pretty high actually for a Britney, believe it or not. But let's be generous and say that her royalty is $1.12.
She has to recoup the $500,000 at that rate... $1.12 per album. So, she has to sell 446,428 albums just to pay back her advance.
Now... UNTIL she pays back her advance, she does not get to keep a DIME of royalties. So, given that with a $500,000 advance she's probably spent every last dime of it, she's going to be broke if her album doesn't go gold. What's worse, she's still tied to her contract until she delivers the other optioned albums.
But wait, it gets worse...
If she gets a larger advance, she now has to sell even more albums to pay back the advance, meaning it takes even longer before she gets paid a dime... and usually when artists get a larger advance, they still blow every dime of it on all the aforementioned expenses.
But here's what's more... If she has any contracts with band members or producers to get paid royalties... their percentage take comes OUT OF that $1.12... Then the business agent and managers take their cut... 15% of what's left? No, 15% of $1.12 per album.
It still gets worse... the artist is the last person to get paid. The business manager handles all disbursements (just like a lawyer on retainer)... everybody else gets paid, then the artist takes what's left.
It gets worse, still... If any tracks on the demo submitted to the A&R department are rejected, Britney has to go back to the studio and record some more...but if she's blown her advance already, then the additional recording costs come out of her pocket.
It gets even worse, even now...
If Britney's album is a failure and lets say $200,000 has not been recouped... When her next album is due, the $200,000 unrecouped balance gets pooled with the advance for the new album. Now she has to still recoup both... but there's more. Until she has paid off all her debts, she cannot get out of her contract... she still owes the record company material.
But there's still more...
The record company may incur additional expenses related to the promotion of the album... whenever an A&R agent wines & dines a program director at a radio station, whenever someone uses a jet to fly from LA to New York and meet with program directors there, whenever transportation costs and other overhead expenditures are incurred in relation to the promotion of her album, etc.... all these expenses are deducted from her advance and/or royalty checks first.
The industry cannot compete on the internet effectively, and artists are awakening to the fact that in such a venue, they don't need to become the indentured servants of record companies just to see global distribution. The fact is, if they sell so much as one album on their own, they've made more money than 85 percent of the recording artists signed to major labels alone--who do not sell enough albums to recoup their recording advance.
Using the royalty computation model explained in "All You Need to Know About the Music Business" by Don Passman, an industry lawyer and professor, the average mid-level artist has to sell a quarter-million albums just to start seeing a dime of royalties.
This luring of artists away from their record companies, into direct distribution, and cutting out about 9 or 10 middle-entities along the way, is basically "phase two" of the emergence of internet distribution as the dominant model.
To make matters more interesting... Think about the implications here... In a world where even an artist selling 500 copies can make a better profit than a Britney Spears should her latest album sell less than enough to cover whatever six or seven figure advance she's been paid, there's going to be a much bigger selection of talented artistry out there... available for mass consumption. One won't have to resort to ridiculous marketing and promotions to make a buck... and that will make it harder for Britney Spears and the like to dominate the scene because they essentially bring nothing to the table
Record companies with their moronic A&R departments so myopically focused on putting every last ounce of energy into pushing only the biggest international artists stand to lose everything... and their employees along with it (especially the overpaid, underimaginative executives).
So, if you're still wondering why RIAA spends so much time, effort and money ice-skating uphill... It's because they have everything to lose, anyway. All they can do now is try to postpone the inevitable... and they're failing to do even that. But if they let down, it means they're going to have to get off their asses and find real jobs.
>open mailbox
"Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2005 08:58:18 -0700 (PDT)
From: Moses Odiaka [mosesadiaha@go.com]
To: mosesadiaha@go.com
Subject: CONFIDENTIAL PROPOSAL
My name is Mr.Moses Odiaka.I work in the credit and accounts department of Union Bank of Nigeria, Plc.,Lagos, Nigeria. I write you in respect of a foreign customer with a Domicilliary account..."
You have been eaten by a grue.
Let me also add... regarding the "save" function... I've always wondered what was the point of a "Save" button in the toolbar, anyway... when "File > Save" is immediately above it? Are people seriously that stupid that they need a million redundant functions? I like Pages... the toolbar isn't cluttered to hell with icons so small the elderly, who are the most computer-illiterate to begin with, generally can't tell one apart from the other. And for those who truly are computer-illiterate... like my 63-year old mother... Having to jog the mouse one more inch on the screen is the least of her problems. Windows has been an enormous hassle for her... so much that we, the kids, are considering getting her a Mac Mini.
1) Compatible control keys.
.xls files in the directory... and I personally find that annoying as hell because it saves me no time... and I'm not so computer-illiterate that I'd open Final Cut Pro thinking I want to use it to work on that Excel spreadsheet... considering one would create a spreadsheet in excel, any third-grader should remember that Excel is the preferred application to launch in the first place if you want to be opening XLS files.
... Also have a selector that allows you to choose between showing all file types, or just those native to the application.
Windows doesn't have compatible control keys from one application to the next. Apple is far more strict about uniformity between applications.
Also, because Windows uses Ctrl and Apple uses Command... is not an argument. The fact is, it took my wife less than a few days to be completely adjusted to Macs after a lifetime of using Windows.
2) Save button on toolbars. I don't think any of the Apple software ever gives you the option to include a Save button.
Wrong In any application where a document is created for the purposes of customized use by the user, e.g. Pages, Adobe Photoshop, etc., the "X" (close window) button in the file window changes to a dot. Clicking it prompts a "Save" dialogue box. Windows has no such function.
Also see "File > Save"... consistent in every OS X application, including those which aren't designed for custom document creation (e.g. Safari).
I don't know if the same can be said of Windows, but I would hope so.
3) A multi button mouse.
This argument is the single most repeated, ad nauseum, by those who have never really been aware of Mac's features for the past twenty years.
4) Only show relevant file types in open and save dialogs.
Last I checked, they do precisely that. Unlike Windows, which, if it doesn't recognize a file type, will give you a choice of every possible application under the sun, OS X displays the ones it thinks are most likely to work, or you can select "Other" and pick the one you want to attempt.
Furthermore, control-option-click will switch "Open With..." to "Always Open With...", so the next time you open that document, it always opens with the application you want it to....
Edited something in Photoshop, exported as JPEG and now you want Preview to open it instead of waiting for Photoshop's plug-ins to load? There you go... "Always open with..."
In an "Open" dialogue box, generally, the application shows you all files, but greys out any files that can't be opened by that application. Personally, I like seeing other file types.
If I'm in Microsoft excel, and I want to take a crack at opening a CSV or other such file into Excel, Windows won't so much as show me the file. Granted, it might not open the file anyway... but what use is a directory-browsing function if you can't see what's in it? Maybe I forgot the file type and I don't want to have to use Windows' horrible desktop navigation to find it since I'm already browsing a directory in the 'Open' dialogue box.
Windows Microsoft Excel just shows me the
But for that matter, certain OS X apps that have a need for cross-application support (like Final Cut Pro, which, by the way, does export batch lists in CSV format... one reason I might want to SEE other file formats in Excel)
Some of us like having the option. Isn't "choice" what Bill Gates keeps telling us Windows is all about?
5) Sort folders to top of directory listings I know that we don't go folder mining as much since we got Spotlight, so I won't labor on about this one.
You see that label at the top of your Finder window that says "Kind"... click it and be amazed.
6) More context sensitive help. I notice since I first raised this two years ago, more of it has crept into OS X. So I guess at least I can't be flamed for this o
Could I have some news with my advertisements? Do these guys understand the concept of Diminishing Marginal Return?
Shame on Slashdot for posting an article that's rife with spamvertising floaters and more ads than news.
In addition to being a tyrant, his boss is a cheap-ass who won't spring for DSL.
Why exactly would this be a problem?
Classic applications on OS X are already running inside an emulator, or at least an OS inside an OS (which is still a drag on CPU, GPU and memory), more or less... some of the Classic apps are 680x0-based while others were optimized for the PPC 603 and 604... a radically-different architecture from the G4 (e.g. PPC 750) and G5 (PPC 970).
Furthermore, Why would they take a performance hit from next year's Intel Macs when those Intel Macs will be unquestionably faster processors than the PPCs that ran Classic...and infinitely faster than the original Motorola 680x0's, and still ridiculously more powerful than the 603 and 604, for which the original PPC-native Classic apps were designed.
I don't see [b]anyone[/b] complaining that Apple II emulators on Windows are taking a performance hit compared to Apple II emulators on OS X.
A friend of mine who did production design for several motion pictures (e.g. Back to the Future, Star Trek) said in an interview, of the pre-production process, that he who gets the project last wins.
He was referring to how a concept would go from the production designer to the concept arist then to the model makers and then the vfx team... getting tweaks all along the way. And he's right, he who gets the project last wins... by then, it's too late for anyone else to weigh in their opinion on the changes.
Well, in marketing it works the other way around... He who gets there first wins. The truth is, Morgan Freeman understands, clearly, as does any reasonable individual in the motion picture industry, that piracy is never going to be completely eliminated... nor is it likely to decrease in proportion to an ever-increasing number of theatrical releases. This is especially true if the current trend of quantity over quality continues... where filmgoers are reluctant to pay upwards of $10 a pop to see a crappy movie every week.
The reason that the delay to DVD release has been shortened is largely to stem losses from piracy. The reasoning is that most individuals are less inclined to go through the relatively cumbersome act of fishing P2P networks for a film (much less a [b]decent[/b] copy) if they don't have to wait very long for a $15 DVD with extra content that won't be attached to a P2P file.
Same logic here... iTunes already proved that people will pay a premium (i.e. more than "free") for music downloads if there's justification for it. iTunes offers things no pirate P2P network does... in terms of their library, the fidelity of MPEG-4, and the ease of use facilitated by smart interface design... not to mention the most insanely brilliant global load balancing I've ever seen (and I work for a company that shares global load balancing for giants like Sony and Ebay).
So, the logic is this...
Release nothing on the internet, and get lots of piracy.
Release something IMMEDIATELY on the internet, and get somewhat less piracy than you would have.
You're going to get piracy either way... so all you can do is try to make a buck while you can.
Why do you think, in the business of theatrical releases, every single motion picture studio in the universe bets the farm on that first weekend?
I think the key to my program's success is going to be to publicize it in places where Mac users who dabble in GarageBand and software synthesizers hang out. Also, I think it will gain a lot more attention once I get it localized for France, Germany, and Japan. Beyond buying ads in the appropriate places, I think shareware like mine depends on word-of-mouth to gain momentum. So although the sales have so far been disappointing, they could theoretically increase exponentially.
You're on the right track here. There are a number of questions and observations I have, but I couldn't really go into enough detail on Slashdot to really make a dent in your sales.
Marketing is a complex and fickle bitch... That being said, I think there's considerable money to be made in the music software market. I certainly have spent a ton of money on it!
You are right on about word of mouth... musicians love to talk shop with one-another... in the course of an hour at Guitar Center, for example, you could run into four or five different musicians who might each recommend something. Even better if you develop solid relationships with the software sales staff in places like that.
It's going to take a considerable amount of investigation and research to determine where your greatest chances lie for spreading word of mouth, though... but I would do that before you spend a cent on advertising.
There's a weight-loss clinic here in Minneapolis that was going on word-of-mouth, including referrals from physicians, and they'd been booked fairly solid before they ran a single advertisement. When their first TV ad ran, business exploded.
The only trouble with that scenario is, if you haven't spent significant time building up your product, support and business model, you may not be prepared for the "big time" and people will waffle out. Let's not forget that even Apple suffered serious setbacks with the mangled rollout of PowerPC, and later the mangled rollout of Copland (which had to be scaled down just to recover).
Word of mouth is your first, best place to start testing the waters... I'd be more than glad to field other questions, perhaps even work out a business plan with you if you're interested.
Suffice it to say... I was not one of them. In fact, I've had quite enough of coding hypocrites who stash huge amounts of pirated Mp3s but insist that getting paid for their coding skills is a "right".
Mind you... not that I have a problem with piracy. It's inevitable, and I think Apple understands that. Even so, that doesn't preclude anyone from the right to at least, in principle, try to protect their "intellectual property" (if there is such a thing) and profit exclusively from it.
I wrote a research paper in 1996, realizing that internet music distribution was the greatest, single threat to the canned Britney Spears and Mariah Careys of the world.
So, while I accept piracy as a reality, I applaud Apple's efforts to shut up RIAA's objections to iTunes Music Store by trying to meet them halfway with DRM... because in the end, it'll be the death knell for the major labels, anyway.
As much as piracy is inevitable, that isn't the industry's greatest fear. Obsolescence of a 50-year old music distribution model is. Same with the Motion Picture Association.
If theaters move to encrypted digital streams to download films for DLP projection, it will effectively eliminate 85 percent of the costs associated with motion picture distribution... and, consequently, a huge number of jobs.
To the MPAA and RIAA, I have this to say: That's life, get used to it.
DRM is a double-edged sword... because it doesn't ensure that major distributors will maintain a monopoly on the internet. They can't... by simple virtue of the internet's design, it's impossible. The marketing and distribution channels that open to anyone on the internet with enough of an audience dictate that a major label's distribution network is no longer a necessary part of the equation... but what DRM does is it gives [b]independent[/b] artists an opportunity to see that [i]their[/i] right to profit from their work is exclusively protected... without having to rely on shifty record deals with A&R vipers at record labels to do so.
The net effect is a larger library of better quality music available at lower prices to anyone with access to an internet-connected computer... something that will bury RIAA and MPAA for once and for all.
Independent musicians and filmmakers have a better incentive to get on the wagon of internet distribution with DRM than without it... and we stand a better chance of flushing the Jerry Bruckheimer shlockfests and Mariah Carey egofests down the toilet for once and for all.
No, it's not. My bad.
This is the same John Dvorak who was convinced his reorganized version of the standard keyboard would take off...
edit... where I Said "and a total departure from OS X" I meant from the classic OS (e.g. System 7, 7.5, 8, 9).
As I mentioned, I've used Apples since 1979. I currently own 3 or 4, and have owned a total of 7 in my lifetime. I have seen them go through many changes, including processor suppliers.
Even Steve Jobs thought that relying on Sony (see the folklore.org forums for the story on this) for microfloppy drives would kill the Macintosh project... the Mac team found a way to integrate the Sony drives and meet their launch deadline, which they would have missed otherwise.
As much as there are users like me who understand technologies thorougly before plunking down the money to get them... the majority of users aren't like that. To the majority of users, release dates, everyday functionality, cost... things like these matter. No matter how much quality you put into a product
Alienating your "base" is really a nonsensical argument... in the sense that every company's target market demographic evolves over time. There are consumers who adapt and consumers who don't... I've rolled with Apple's changes over the years, not because I'm a loyalist, but because even at their worst I still found the machines to be infinitely better designed than anything the rest of the PC market has to offer (let's not forget Apple made "Personal Computer" a household term). Apple has alienated their base before, and brought them back screaming with joy over Jobs return, the completely redesigned Macs and a total departure from OS X... while recently posting their highest-revenue and highest-profit quarter in the history of the company. With the Wintel product, the problem isn't Intel so much as it's Windows. Itanium hasn't taken off in the consumer marketplace, despite being comparable to G5 processors, because Windows has really zilch for ability to capitalize on Itanium's abilities. Not true for Apple and Mac OS X.
The thought also occurred to me... If OS X can run on an Intel processor, then conceivably bridging the gap by being able to run Microsoft applications in the OS rather than through an emulator (like Virtual PC) would be a huge switch motivator for customers.
You don't snag customers by making something so radically different... but what you have to do is give them a foot in, and then show them yours is better... genuinely better, by experience, not just marketing. Apple is very good at that. I have yet to meet a PC user who really dove into a Mac and wasn't so impressed that the only thing holding them back from buying one was how abrupt they'd have to dump their existing applications.
If Apple's marketing people are geniuses, and they are... They'll zero in on the fact that, in today's world, planned obsolescence is a reality that can be taken advantage of.
Users need to be reminded their apps are going to be completely useless a few years from now anyway, and support/patches for older Microsoft products and the notoriously exploitable operating system is going to disappear. So, there's going to be a reinvestment at some point... It might as well be in an Intel-based Mac that could easily run existing apps and allow you to take advantage of the native apps that perform better than anything Microsoft has ever coded.
If you test drive a Mercedes-Benz, you aren't going to get back in your Nissan and ever feel quite the same... Mercedes knows this, and that's how they snag people.
I'm sure there were people pissing and moaning when Apple wanted to go away from their "radically different" classical OS to a more mainstream UNIX architecture... but let's not forget one thing:
Ever since Apple cashed in on the Xerox PARC team's GUI, they've been doing just what Sony does... examining an existing idea, and making it better. Who's to say they won't be the first company to truly squeeze the most performance out of an Intel processor?
What... you actually thought Windows already had?
In the hands of a forward-thinking individual like Steve Jobs, it could be the greatest coup Apple ever engineered against the computing industry as a whole, since the launch of the Apple II.
It would be extremely risky, except the biggest risk, engineering the OS to run on Intel processors, has already been done.
What the analysts, the slashdot naysayers and the investors may not be immediately pondering are the long-term implications.
By virtue of the fact that Mac OS has been engineered to run on Intel processors (using a binary translator like Rosetta... but still without recompiling or porting), it's conceivable Mac OS X could run on ANY PC... This is a huge difference from the last time Apple headed in the direction of licensing, where Mac clones that could run System 7.5 had to be engineered from the ground up... and they weren't very good. Don't even get me started on the Franklin Ace...
The second implication, and perhaps the more important one for Apple... they've always been a hardware company. Whether Markkula, Sculley, Spindler, Amelio, et. al. ever understood this is another thing. Steve Jobs, however, clearly does. Other than their core audience for software... the pro audio and video crowd, they don't focus heavily on software. Instead, they have a line of computers and some digital peripherals (like the iPod) and some core suites (like iLife and iWork) that allow people to use the computer like a digital hub... to interface with other aspects of their lifestyle... rather than making the computer the centerpiece of everything.
Likewise, the possibility exists that the new Macs could boot in Linux, OS X, Windows, what have you.
Lastly, also consider IBM's exit from the PC market. The Thinkpad is going off the market. There aren't really any other PC manufacturers making a laptop remotely comparable in quality to the Thinkpad to truly satisfy that market segment... That is, until Apple introduces Intel-based Powerbooks.
Therefore, Apple seems to be interested in a race with Microsoft, but really I think they're going after a much larger share of the PC market... after all, this is where Apple's largest profit margins exist.
Another point to consider about Apple's stealth advantage here... Not only has Apple been preparing for this (everyone knows that Apple likes to wait to announce an innovation until they actually have it, and can demo it)... There was a recent article on Slashdot that pointed out a study that nailed Apple's actual install base as 16 percent. That's considerably larger than the assumption-laden market share figures. Because analysts have always been pegging market share, Apple could easily catch the industry off guard, given the... what, eight orders of magnitude by their actual market proliferation is underestimated.
It would be a great thing if Apple has the sense, and I think they do, to not bother competing with Microsoft directly... but instead compete with the PC manufacturers themselves, giving customers an option outside the traditional Wintel marriage that most PC manufacturers haven't been able to wrangle themselves away from... which is a death sentence for them if Microsoft's product should ever fall out of favor with the public (gee, I wonder why such a thing would happen... *patchpatch*virus*patchpatch*worm*....)
Photoshop does not directly, officially support .NEF, but the PictureProject software with the D2H and most Nikon digital SLRs (including the D70, which I have), has a plugin for Photoshop that allows import of .NEF files into Photoshop, with a control panel for white balance and exposure adjustment during import. It's not as decent in terms of absolute resolution or artifact elimination compared to Nikon Capture Editor, but it's reasonable.
The best method for transferring work to Photoshop with the fewest artifacts and best absolute resolution/clarity would be to convert the image to a TIFF in Nikon Capture Editor or View Editor first.
I checked, and the D2X is also packaged with PictureProject software, which carries the installer for the NEF plugin for Photoshop.
But this is a non-issue in more ways than one... at least for Mac users. OS X 10.4's Core Image component has a number of realtime filters that, in principle, can be integrated by developers into any application... giving every OS X application the potential for image manipulation rivaling Photoshop's capabilities.
Given how Apple has beaten Adobe in virtually every multimedia software category they have decided to compete (e.g. Final Cut Pro vs. Premiere, Shake or even Motion vs. After Effects, etc.), I wouldn't be surprised if Apple blows Photoshop out of the water with native Photoshop abilities by encouraging developers to capitalize on Core Image's potential in every imaging-related app they create.
I don't know if the D2X supports HDRI, but if it does, Photoshop doesn't anyway, not fully... You can convert images to 16-bit but you can't do a damned thing with them... You'd probably want to get Gimp or Film Gimp, and the HDRI plugin available free from Lucasfilm/ILM.
I'm curious... do you happen to put all your media files on the same partition as your applications? In a word: Don't.
I have nearly half a terabyte of storage, and I run TechTool Pro regularly to defrag and perform directory maintenance.
IMPORTANT:
1. If you're not performing system/memory disk diagnostics and maintenance regularly, then your problem isn't the Mac... your problem is your own lack of common sense. Once, I discovered that one of my memory cards was not seated properly... You might never catch that if you don't confirm how much RAM your system is recognizing. So, as a rule, perform diagnostics regularly on everything.
2. To narrow down where your drag is occuring, run the Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder... check network, memory and disk activity to pinpoint more specifically where the unnecessary load is occurring.
3. The dumbest thing you can do is configure your System Disk as your scratch/capture disk... Always use separate physical drives for scratch/capture.
In short... sit down, shut up, and fix the problem.
What's he do with all his hardware? Play Quake?
*snicker*
2. The guy complained the so-called fanless PC was noisy. For whatever reason, his solution was... well, personally I'd have told him to get a G4 laptop and be done with it. I do video editing on my G4 laptop... so don't tell me it's not sufficient.
Look, if you wanted to tell us all that you're jealous, just have the guts to say you're fucking jealous. I know I am
Jealous? Of what exactly? His office? Here's mine Sure, I may not have two 30 inch flat monitors, but who needs it when you have a $3600 desk big enough to hold two workstations, 3 CRTs, a LaserJet printer, a DAT deck, a 32 track recording system, and plenty of overhead cabinet space for all your manuals?
Here's the view from my place.
. I have about five or six layers of network and physical security protecting all this... and a $40,000 insurance policy... so no, I wouldn't say I'm jealous, exactly.
Photoshop is dead meat.
2. Get noisier PC.
3. Install two $3000 SWOP-certified monitors.
So, basically, you've just spent $6000 on monitors capable of displaying a level of clarity that Windows cannot, in even its greatest wet dreams, fully utilize... that is, unless this guy comes up with an equally-absurd, obscenely expensive, and Rube Goldbergian solution to make OS X run on an AMD or Intel chip.... which makes you wonder... why didn't he just buy a Mac.
With the kind of money this idiot likes to waste, maybe he should just rent time at Bell Labs' anechoic chamber... so he can listen to John Cage's 4'33" in all its tacit bliss. Obviously, he'll have to listen to it in his imagination, so he doesn't have to bear the sound of CD player spinning. Finally, he can enjoy 4 minutes and 33 seconds of absolute silence... not having to listen to anything except the sound of his circulatory and nervous systems operating... which will, undoubtedly, provoke him to write letters of complaint to Charles Darwin, who would be spinning in his grave... if it weren't for the fact that it would generate enough noise to provoke even further complaint from this pretentious, phonophobic ass.
In the last paragraph, meant to say the Free Exercise Clause... not the Establishment Clause.