You quote the ESRB classifications as being the definition of a "mature game", and use this to justify saying "the point is simply that mature games portray realistic graphics", despite the fact that the ESRB ratings say nothing about graphics at all ("content" can refer to anything in the box, including printed materials, and a text adventure could contain strong language). Of course, you also _conveniently_ fail to mention that the first retail game to carry an ESRB "mature" rating was Doom 2, which runs quite happily on a GameBoy Advance nowadays...
"I have some doubt that the Wii will ever get out of that casual-gamer niche again"
I fully agree that poor Nintendo are likely to be stuck the tiny 99.99% population niche who aren't lonely single males between 17 and 25 that live with their parents and spend all their free time indoors masturbating and playing video games.
Because who else except a floundering closed-source company that bought a Linux distro in a desperate attempt to find a new business model could unanimously act as IP Position spokesman for the entire "open source world", as His Ballmerness so eloquently put it?
"Just think about it - how the record industry created these "Big Stars" - just like Hollywood and the National League [of your favourite sport here]"
This isn't something the modern world invented. The ancient Greeks had competitions for musicians and poets that resulted in great renown and wealth for for the winners. There is a life-size Roman statue of an aulos player, and one had to be pretty important to get a statue made; and both Greek and Roman sportsmen became notable celebrities, with gladiators especially being able to gain empire-wide fame, and earn _vast_ wealth. There is for example a documented account of a renowned gladiator who turned down six large farms with a total of 250,000 slaves on them plus 4 million sesterces for a single performance because it was "a paltry offer".
"Centuries ago, art and music served as a form of worship, reaching for the highest ideals and aspirations that Man could strive for."
Balderdash. Most art and music was produced for wealthy sponsors, and reflected what they wanted. Today's equivalent would be a commission to produce music or artwork for movies, TV series, video games, etc.
"Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel"
Because the Pope paid him to do it. If the Pope had asked him to cover the ceiling with porn, he would have done so, because artists who ate had learned to do what the guy with the money said.
"Shakespeare wrote his plays"
Shakespeare was part of a theatre company who performed for money (The Chamberlain's Men, later The King's men), so his plays were written to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, hence the presence of jokes and "comic relief" characters in so many of them. They were thus as much of an exercise in pure commercialism as movies such as "Casablanca" or "Gone With The Wind", which are now lauded as a classic despite having been made as vehicles for earning lots of money.
"Byron, Shelley, Keats wrote poetry"
Lord Byron came from an extremely privileged background, and lived a life that wouldn't be out of place for any modern celebrity with a "bad boy" image (he claimed to have slept with over 250 women in a single year, appears to have liked men and boys too, and lived in extravagant luxury); Shelley was originally supported by his parents, who were minor nobility, and later by an inheritance after his grandfather died, plus some income from Byron (Mary, his live-in lover and later wife had a bastard child by Byron, which he supported). The only one of modest background was Keats, who was notably poor throughout his life.
"Handel wrote his choral works"
Handel's a particularly bad example to cite, because he was an international "star" during his life, had various royal patrons in a number of countries, and his works were so popular that there was standing-room only when some of them were performed (he also had an appetite for the good life, and squandered what were at the time vast amounts of money on it, thus rendering him near broke on several occasions).
"Beethoven"
Again a star during his life with various wealthy patrons who became life-long friends. At a time when there was no form of instant communication, an estimated 30,000 people attended his funeral, including a number of celebrities -- Schubert for example was one of his pall-bearers, Franz Grillparzer (reckoned to be one of the greatest German writers of the period) wrote a special funeral prayer, and this was read by the renowned actor Heinrich Anschütz.
"Vivaldi"
A priest who enjoyed a fair level of celebrity during his early life, but that diminished in later years, and many of his works are now lost due to a century of complete disinterest which would likely have continued until the present day if it weren't for the fact that Bach was influenced by him, and arranged several of his concertos for keyboard.
"Mozart"
A star from an early age who went on several European tours and lived a lavish life-style that sometimes put him into deb
"The day it mutates to spread from human to human, we might look forward to a pandemic that makes the 1918 influenza pandemic look minor."
You are writing this as if it is a fact that (a) H5N1 will mutate into a form that can be passed from human to human, and (b) it will remain as deadly after mutating as it was beforehand. Reality check: it has not yet mutated into a form that can be transferred between humans, and we have no way of knowing whether it can do so, or if such a mutation would allow it to remain as deadly to humans as the current version is. Your assertions are therefore pure conjecture, not facts.
"And this is one of the most quickly mutating organisms known to man"
Type A influenza viruses in general mutate very quickly, but mutations that make them more dangerous or more infectious are very rare -- the _vast_ majority are prejudicial to the virus, just like the vast majority of mutations in all other organisms reduce rather than increase their viability. An excellent example of this is H1N1, the 1918 "Spanish Flu" that killed millions, which then mutated into a wide variety of less deadly strains that (among various other type A viruses such as H1N2 and H3N2) cause seasonal flu all over the world.
Note that the above is also true of H5N1, which was first reported in 1959, and has mutated into thousands of strains since then, most of which only affect a few avian species, are of low severity (i.e. not deadly), or both. Of all these strains, only two main clades (each with a small series of known sub-clades) have emerged in the half century since it was first isolated that can infect humans, and then only with difficulty.
"That is because you are suffering from the "well I don't understand it, so it can't be true" fallacy."
The one who doesn't understand things and is therefore labouring under a fallacy is yourself, because none of the things you've said have happened yet, and there's no proof that they will.
Fact: H5N1 has killed around 200 people in the half century since it was first reported. All of these lived in extremely close proximity with domestic fowl.
Fact: there have been several outbreaks in Europe during the last couple of years, including one in the UK last month. No human has been infected in any of these incidents.
Fact: during that same two year period, and estimated 12,000 Europeans are likely to have died from ordinary seasonal flu, yet the alarmist FUD merchants don't seem to be concerned about that at all, just as they seem to ignore that fact that _any_ of these strains is statistically just as likely to mutate into a high-mortality pathogen as H5N1 is to gain human-to-human infection capabilities.
Fact: H7N7 is also an avian flu variant that can infect humans, seals, horses, pigs, and birds. It is more infectious to non-avians than H5N1, and is known to have killed one person -- it is therefore just as likely to mutate into a deadly pandemic as H5N1.
Fact: H7N2, H7N3, H9N2, and H10N7 are also avian flu variants that have been known to infect humans. Again, any one of these could just as easily mutate into a deadly global pandemic as H5N1.
Fact: alarmists were saying exactly the same things about Ebola a decade or so ago, hence several (rather bad) movies being made about it.
"Don't say that good PCs are $1000, because that is the cost of Apple"
A Mac Mini costs 599 Euros including VAT, which is only 50 Euros more than the retail version of Windows Vista Ultimate edition -- alternatively, you'll be able to spend that 599 Euros on a PlayStation 3 in a month or so, which is also rather more expensive than in the US, but starts to look like a real bargain when compared to Microsoft's Vista European pricing.
Some other comparisons:
OS X 10.4 (Tiger) boxed retail edition: 120 Euros. Nintendo Wii: 249 Euros, or 30 Euros more than a Home Premium upgrade.
"I heard the same thing about the early low-end Mac Minis and OS X"
It wasn't just the Mac Minis, but all Apple's consumer machines (e.g. iMac G5), which were at that time supplied with 256MB RAM by default, and a lot of ordinary users bought the basic configuration because Apple charged a lot for RAM upgrades (I know that they could be obtained elsewhere for less, but few users felt like attempting a DIY upgrade, especially on the Mini). This simply wasn't enough for OS X, which is painful with less than 512MB, and like Win XP, has a "sweet spot" at around the 1GB mark, and requires even more for power users who like loading multiple large applications or manipulating big images with PhotoShop.
"Also and FYI, Windows 1.0 - Windows 386 didn't look ANYTHING like a Mac desktop"
That's because Windows 1.0 was released _after_ Apple sued MS. The pre-release versions that Microsoft demonstrated at trade shows were virtual clones of MacOS, as indeed was the pre-release version of DR's GEM, but both companies settled out-of-court with Apple by changing the appearance and functionality of their products before releasing them.
"Microsoft DOES NOT make the Video Drivers, nor do they have control over what features the MFR puts in the drivers"
Microsoft does in fact make video drivers, but they tend to be the default ones such as the VGA GDI driver Windows loads when it can't find anything suitable for a machine's hardware (or when it's being run in safe mode), and the software rendering layer that DirectX and old versions of Windows OpenGL use in similar circumstances. The problem is that while most card manufacturers have specialist driver sets for GDI, DirectX, and OpenGL, they didn't write any for GDI+, so everything gets rendered using the Microsoft default software engine even on hardware that's easily capable of doing everything itself, as for example is certainly the case with DirectX 7 compliant systems, and probably DirectX 6 ones.
"There are issues with the GDI+ features that are GDI like but perform poorly, but if the Video Driver from the MFR doesn't accelerate this as they are DIFFERENT calls, GDI+ will be slow."
There are AFAIK no MFR-supplied GDI+ drivers because the only people who used GDI+ to any extent were.NET programmers, and.NET had other issues that prevented it from being used for the sort of high performance applications that sell graphics cards (e.g. CAD, gaming, animation, etc.), so there wasn't enough customer demand to justify writing GDI+ drivers when most consumer Windows applications only used GDI, and other graphics-intensive software was written for DirectX or OpenGL.
"However, with that aside, WPF is fully accelerated, even on XP via DirectX7."
I know, hence my statement about developers feeling that Microsoft's default GDI+ driver should also have used DirectX instead of a lame software renderer, because DirectX 7 has been around since 1999, and GDI+ wasn't publicly launched until 2001, so it was an obvious choice. Alternatively, they could have made such a driver available for download a year or two later when it became clear that OEMs and graphics chip-set manufacturers weren't going to release their own GDI+ drivers, and developers were first complaining loudly, and then avoiding it because of performance issues with Microsoft's default driver.
"So MS didn't make the same mistake as they did by leaving GDI+ out in the cold"
I don't think anybody cares about GDI+ itself, but a lot of developers are pretty pissed (although I'm not one of them) at having followed Microsoft's instructions about using GDI+ to ensure that they'd be compatible with Longhorn, only to find out that it's being dumped for yet another shiny but totally incompatible system, leaving them with large bodies of code that will either have to be completely rewritten, or run inefficiently forever.
"anyone that knows anything about Video Cards and GDI from the past 15 years can easily answer this question for you..."
I didn't ask a question, but stated something, i.e. that GDI+ is slow, and also made the point that the reasons for this are in its drivers.
"Video cards started adding 2D acceleration, most notably with the IBM 8514, and with the popularity of Windows, the 2D acceleration design of most Video cards is SPECIFICALLY designed around the Windows GDI to basically make the Windows desktop as fast as possible."
The problem with GDI+ though is that it doesn't use the acceleration features even for things that should "map" more or less directly to the standard Windows GDI, so it is much slower at doing standard "GDI-ish" things than GDI is..NET developers have thus become accustomed to intermixing GDI+ code with calls to GDI via pinvoke, or using DirectX's drawing system.
"If I remember right, MS even requested that Companies like ATI and NVidia not focus on adding GDI+ 2D acceleration, as they expected Vista to come out much sooner than it did."
I don't recall any major card manufacturers offering to implement GDI+ functions in hardware, because a lot of the functionality that MS added to GDI+ was already present in their cards, but Microsoft's GDI+ drivers don't use it, just like they don' t use the GDI-compatible hardware that's been in most of them for a decade or so.
"So why is GDI+ slow in comparison? Many of the features it offers like anti-aliasing and translucency are not in any Video cards 2D hardware acceleration feature set, which is what they use to render the pre-Vista Windows Application Drawing and desktop."
Lest we forget, the post I was answering compared GDI+ to Apple's equivalent system, which in this case would be Quartz 2D. The Apple development site says the following in its introduction:
"The Quartz 2D API is easy to use and provides access to powerful features such as transparency layers, path-based drawing, offscreen rendering, advanced color management, anti-aliased rendering, and PDF document creation, display, and parsing."
With the exception of the PDF bits, this is pretty much what GDI+ does, yet Quartz 2D manages to do it a lot more quickly than GDI+ even on Macs with less than stellar graphics hardware. In Microsoft's defence is the fact that Windows has to run on a much more varied collection of graphics subsystems than OS X, but by the same token, so does GDI and indeed DirectX. This raises the question (and it is one that many developers have asked) of why MS didn't write GDI+ as an abstraction layer that tied existing hardware-supported GDI functionality together with stuff in DirectX, both of which would be supplied by existing OEM drivers, instead of writing something that requires a different set of drivers.
"So, yes GDI+ is slower than pure GDI, and you will also find that the features of GDI+ that slow it down"
It is the way the features are implemented that slows it down, not the features themselves.
"when implemented on other OSes that also don't have 2D acceleration for these features, these operations on other OSes are also slow"
What developers are moaning about isn't the fact that it's slow at doing things GDI couldn't, but that it's slow at everything, including stuff that GDI was already capable of.
"if you take professional cards (like a Quadro) that have 2D acceleration for GDI+ 'like' features, you will find that GDI+ isn't a slowdown."
I think you need to check your facts here, because Microsoft admit that GDI+ is _significantly_ slower than GDI on all graphics hardware, professional or otherwise, because the only drivers for it are their own, and they implement _everything_ in software, and are thus incapable of using any advanced 2D drawing support that may be present on certain cards.
"MS did screw up with GDI+, as it wasn't used like it 'could' have been, and even though it is fairly rich, MS new they would be replacing GDI
"OSX's vector based graphics API is EQUIVALENT to GDI+ that has been available in Windows since 2001. Go look this up, please."
And I suggest you go and look up the 110,000 pages Google gave me when I entered "GDI+ slow", because developers have been complaining about this since it was introduced (Microsoft admit that the most commonly asked question about GDI+ is "Why is it so slow?)". Yes, it has lots of nice features that aren't in standard GDI such as anti-aliased drawing and alpha blending, but the drivers don't use a graphics card's accelerator features, and although Microsoft promised that this would change, nearly six years later we're still waiting (it also has a nasty memory leak which still AFAIK hasn't been fixed yet)..NET developer sites have thus been suggesting ways to avoid using it, including going through the DirectX 9 layer, which offers many of the same features without the performance penalty, but isn't as easy to use.
NB:.NET Windows Forms used GDI+, and MS received many, many complaints about their slow drawing compared with (for example) VB6 forms. Despite several years of promises that this would be fixed, they eventually simply deprecated Windows Forms, thus leaving all the people who they initially told to "keep using Windows forms because the performance issues will be resolved by an update in the near future" with a slow mess that will probably need converting to their very different XAML-based system at some point.
"As opposed to the time the average Windows user spends installing antivirus, antispyware, a personal firewall, dozens of patches"
Unfortunately, this is what exceptional Windows users do, not average ones. Average Windows users think that their "peecee" is going slowly because the chip's getting worn out, and that having their drive and modem / network router lights permanently on and a screen full of pop-ups advertising "Barely Legal Teens" and Genuine Rolexes for $4 is just a normal part of the computing experience.
" An enterprise buyer might have more of an argument, but I doubt it, given that there are enterprise Linux distros."
Enterprise buyers can easily get machines without an OS (or effectively so) from big vendors like Dell and HP because they have corporate Windows licenses, and therefore won't buy from anybody that expects them to also pay for an OEM end-user license on each box. Check out this link for example, and note that you can buy these machines with nothing more than FreeDOS on them if you want, an option that HP seem to have for most enterprise customers (http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/en/WF04a/124 54-64287-89301-321860-f50.html).
"the #1 (and probably nos 2-5, too) reason people don't buy a Mac is the price"
That's the #1 reason nerds don't buy them; #2 is not enough games; and #3 is that OS X isn't entirely FOSS.
Ordinary consumers on the other hand don't compare specifications of even slightly complex devices, because they don't understand them, so they can't tell that this $700 computer is effectively the same as another costing $1500, especially if the $1500 one looks more expensive on the outside. Furthermore, they're accustomed to products from name brands costing more than similar ones from less known companies, and believe that this is because "they're better", so they'd be quite surprised if a computer from Apple, who they've heard of, _didn't_ cost a lot more than one from (for example) Acer, whose name is unknown to them.
So why then aren't all these consumers buying Macs instead of Windows PCs, if they aren't particularly worried about them costing more? The answer lies in the places they tend to buy computers from, which are usually the same places they go to for TVs and other electric and electronic gear. Few of these even sell Macs, and in the unlikely event you'll find one there, it will usually be turned off and ignored because the sales droids know even less about it than they do Windows, and therefore would prefer not to be asked any awkward questions. If the place you go to for "a computer" only sells Windows PCs, or the staff are only interested in selling Windows PCs, you won't be buying a Mac, irrespective of how much or how little they cost. That's why Apple have been making those nerd-annoying "I'm a Mac" ads -- if consumers know that the "iPod company" also makes computers, they might ask about them when they're considering buying one instead of simply thinking that "peecee" == computer.
"Many companies that are using the "widely available" documentation is having trouble getting their apps to play nice with Vista, and those that have released things in the last year or so find themselves having to patch their app to work right under Vista"
Companies whose applications have to run on platforms other than just Windows are likely to have even more problems because they usually have sets of (possibly proprietary in-house) toolkits so that most of the main code-base can be platform-independent. These frameworks will have to be certified (i.e. tested, where necessary rewritten, tested again, and so on) for all current _retail_ versions of Vista (not betas or RCs, because MS have a habit of changing things at the last minute), after which the applications that use them will also have to be individually certified. This is notably non-trivial with complex commercial applications and frameworks, large portions of which are likely to have written by contractors or employees who left long ago, and which can fail in obscure ways that would take significant amounts of time and effort to track down even in one's own code, let alone someone else's.
Perhaps some of the those laying blame on Apple, MS or whoever would do well to take a look at some of the forums for professional programmers who are involved with maintaining major applications, because a lot of them are having trouble adapting substantial existing code bases to Vista. Microsoft have made every possible effort to document Vista APIs and make betas and release candidates available to developers, but the fact of the matter is that betas and release candidates are by their nature liable to change, and the documentation doesn't always track those changes reliably, and even where it does, isn't 100% accurate because it's written by people, and people make mistakes. In most cases, it isn't the big changes that cause most of the problems, but subtle ones that manifest themselves as intermittent faults on some machine / OS combinations that can be difficult to duplicate, and whose causes are very hard to track down and fix. A big code base can have tens or hundreds of this type of issue, each of which has to be resolved without breaking something else in code written by other programmers whose motivations and practices are unknown to the maintainer.
NB: the Slashdot gestalt seems to be notably deficient in the area of long-term memory (hence all the dupes!), because it's forgotten how many applications that worked fine under Windows 9X or NT4 were notably problematic on XP (including a lot of Microsoft's ones), that many of these took a long time to be fixed, and that some of them still don't work properly (or at all) today. More recently, XP Service Pack 2 broke a bunch of stuff from Microsoft and others, and still causes enough problems to ensure that significant numbers of corporate users have stayed with SP1 because it's easier and cheaper than having the IT department validate all the software they use for SP2.
"I think you misunderstand these articles... all they say is that when record companies pay up front expenses on the album, they recoup them before the artist sees any money."
It seems to be you who are misunderstanding them, because what they actually say is that _all_ costs, including recording, publicity, producers' "points", cover art, breakages, free promotional materials -- all fixed and many variable costs are deducted from the artist's royalties _before_ the record company deducts even more to pay for any advances that may have been paid. This is in stark contrast to you claimed, i.e.: "Those large fixed costs are entirely absorbed by the record company". The record company _absorbs nothing_, as I said in my previous post.
"Well, yeah. If your band isn't profitable, you don't get paid"
You obviously either did not read those articles, or are deliberately weaving straw men, because they in fact make it quite clear that even CD sales which have made significant profits often end up with the artist owing the record company money after all the deductions have been made.
"Think of it as financing-- record companies are basically banks specialize in one kind of business: bands."
Two points:
(1) How does what you are saying now square with your prior claim that ""Those large fixed costs are entirely absorbed by the record company"? Oh, that's right, it doesn't!
(2) Unlike a bank, record companies are already getting the lion's share of the income from sales of the artist's work. If you'd read those articles, you would know that artists get between 10% and 20% of what the record company sells their works for (i.e. the wholesale price) after variable costs such as pressing, transport, etc. have been deducted. This means that an artist can expect to see an average of 15% of _the net profits_ made from wholesale CD sales, and all the costs you previously claimed were absorbed by the record company are paid from that 15%, including repayments on advances. Put another way, the record company takes 85% of the net income from a recording, and pays none of the costs associated with making or promoting it out of that 85%.
"It happens to be a very risky sectors, so interest/profits are high."
There is actually very little risk for the record company, because artists have to pay back advances and all the other costs that are normally deducted from their royalties one way or the other. Any costs not covered by the sales of one CD will be carried forward to the next one, and so on until the contract expires, at which time the artist will be expected to find some other way of paying them back if they choose not to renew. So yes, it is risky, but nearly all of those risks are assumed by artists rather than their record companies, although one wouldn't know it from reading their press releases (O woe is us, we're so downtrodden and unprofitable, but unlike other multinationals who simply pull out of unprofitable sectors, we keep expanding ours by buying up successful independent labels because we love artists so much that we don't care if it's unprofitable).
"Just because the loan is revenue backed doesn't mean it isn't a loan."
It is not revenue-backed any more than a monthly loan payment that's automatically deducted from your bank account is "revenue backed", because in both cases you are liable to pay the lender back irrespective of whether you have enough income.
NB: your "tell some lies, and then throw out straw men if challenged by one of those annoying types who cite contrary documentary evidence" bear a remarkable similarity to what record company marketing droids do. I wonder if this is more than a mere coincidence?
"I have a friend who likes to make "Mix" CD's for other friends, and they keep getting frustrated when iTunes tells them some of their tracks can't be converted to MP3."
Just tell him/her the truth: giving copies of iTunes store songs to others is illegal, so the iTunes program won't let you do it.
"MSDN is "cheap" because it is for development purposes."
It's only actually for testing and debugging purposes, hence the MSDN EULA permitting Windows version to be used with a VM, as VMs are very commonly used in test rigs. Actual software development requires a standard Windows end-user, site, or corporate license for each machine.
"The only things that come close to the British plugs are the 240V heavy-duty sockets used in the US for stoves, washers and the like"
These sound like the sort of plugs some European countries use for similarly heavy-duty applications. The bit that "mates" with the socket is a flat rectangle with three thick, flat pins in a diamond configuration with the earth at the top which are surrounded by a "lip" that fits into a channel around the socket to form a watertight seal (watertight in the domestic sense of leaky pipes, not the Surayan-connecor "bottom of the San Marianas trench" definition of watertight).
"Aren't there around 3 types of socket in common use? The tank-like giant socket with three rectangular pins."
That's the BS 1363, which was standardised as an electrical appliance connector in 1962. It contains an integral fuse which can be replaced without opening the plug itself, is rated for 13 amps, and is considered by many engineers to be one of the best designed and safest domestic plugs in the world. Most appliances sold in the UK during the last couple of decades have one of these fitted (nowadays usually directly moulded to the cable).
"The socket with three round pins (possibly in two different sizes!)"
They're the older BS 546 type which was originally available in 2 amp (small) and 5 amp (bigger) variants. It's rare to see them as standard electrical appliance connectors in the UK nowadays even in old houses, because they've mostly been replaced by BS 1363 types, but they're sometimes used today for centrally switched domestic lighting circuits, where a fused plug can be inconvenient due to being hard to reach and therefore check / change.
"Also an "electric razor socket" putting out 115V in a bathroom"
You mostly only find these (BS 4573) in hotels and guest houses so that foreigners can plug stuff in without it blowing up. British consumer and safety laws don't allow 115v items to be sold in general retail (although some specialist devices are available for particular applications), so it's very unusual indeed to find one of these in a domestic setting, especially as they're commonly in bathrooms where UK law requires that sockets of this type be connected to an isolation transformer, thus making them rather expensive. A lot of domestic bathrooms do have two pin shaver connectors, but they're usually C17/E "Europlugs" that only output a standard British 240V/50Hz rather than the BS 4573 type.
"Fixed cost is the amount it costs to sign artists and record CDs (studio equipment, staff to run that equipment, etc)"
Which the artists themselves pay for. The record companies give them an advance, just as book publishers give some authors an advance, but it must be paid back.
"the recording industry is exposed to a big risk that they have to cover-- most artists flop, only a few are sucessful, but you can't spot this before you record and attempt to sell a CD"
Artists who flop still have to pay back the advances the record company gave them.
"those large fixed costs are entirely absorbed by the record company"
They are actually entirely absorbed by the artists. Check out these links if you doubt this:
"Look, the simple economics of it is that if somebody else could do what the big record companies do, and for cheaper, they would be doing it and making a fortune."
Unfortunately, any labels that show signs of popularity immediately get absorbed by the big four, who ended up owning a whole slew of previously independent record companies after progressive consolidation by a series of multinationals (not all of whom previously had any history in the music industry, e.g. Sony and what would come to be known as Vivendi). This continues to happen today, as the labels that came out of the "indie resurgence" of the 1990s get absorbed whenever they show signs of popularity, with some (relatively) recent examples being Sinatra's Reprise Records, Herb Alpert's A&M, and Madonna's Maverick records.
Note also that because these multinationals tend to also own things such as TV and radio networks, print media, and even major performance venues, like the Robber Barons of the 19th century, they can erect artificially high barriers for any companies that aren't part of the cartel, either denying them access to these needed publicity resources entirely, or charging much more for them than they do to each-other.
Slashdot Mirror
You quote the ESRB classifications as being the definition of a "mature game", and use this to justify saying "the point is simply that mature games portray realistic graphics", despite the fact that the ESRB ratings say nothing about graphics at all ("content" can refer to anything in the box, including printed materials, and a text adventure could contain strong language). Of course, you also _conveniently_ fail to mention that the first retail game to carry an ESRB "mature" rating was Doom 2, which runs quite happily on a GameBoy Advance nowadays...
"I have some doubt that the Wii will ever get out of that casual-gamer niche again"
I fully agree that poor Nintendo are likely to be stuck the tiny 99.99% population niche who aren't lonely single males between 17 and 25 that live with their parents and spend all their free time indoors masturbating and playing video games.
Because who else except a floundering closed-source company that bought a Linux distro in a desperate attempt to find a new business model could unanimously act as IP Position spokesman for the entire "open source world", as His Ballmerness so eloquently put it?
"Just think about it - how the record industry created these "Big Stars" - just like Hollywood and the National League [of your favourite sport here]"
This isn't something the modern world invented. The ancient Greeks had competitions for musicians and poets that resulted in great renown and wealth for for the winners. There is a life-size Roman statue of an aulos player, and one had to be pretty important to get a statue made; and both Greek and Roman sportsmen became notable celebrities, with gladiators especially being able to gain empire-wide fame, and earn _vast_ wealth. There is for example a documented account of a renowned gladiator who turned down six large farms with a total of 250,000 slaves on them plus 4 million sesterces for a single performance because it was "a paltry offer".
"Centuries ago, art and music served as a form of worship, reaching for the highest ideals and aspirations that Man could strive for."
Balderdash. Most art and music was produced for wealthy sponsors, and reflected what they wanted. Today's equivalent would be a commission to produce music or artwork for movies, TV series, video games, etc.
"Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel"
Because the Pope paid him to do it. If the Pope had asked him to cover the ceiling with porn, he would have done so, because artists who ate had learned to do what the guy with the money said.
"Shakespeare wrote his plays"
Shakespeare was part of a theatre company who performed for money (The Chamberlain's Men, later The King's men), so his plays were written to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, hence the presence of jokes and "comic relief" characters in so many of them. They were thus as much of an exercise in pure commercialism as movies such as "Casablanca" or "Gone With The Wind", which are now lauded as a classic despite having been made as vehicles for earning lots of money.
"Byron, Shelley, Keats wrote poetry"
Lord Byron came from an extremely privileged background, and lived a life that wouldn't be out of place for any modern celebrity with a "bad boy" image (he claimed to have slept with over 250 women in a single year, appears to have liked men and boys too, and lived in extravagant luxury); Shelley was originally supported by his parents, who were minor nobility, and later by an inheritance after his grandfather died, plus some income from Byron (Mary, his live-in lover and later wife had a bastard child by Byron, which he supported). The only one of modest background was Keats, who was notably poor throughout his life.
"Handel wrote his choral works"
Handel's a particularly bad example to cite, because he was an international "star" during his life, had various royal patrons in a number of countries, and his works were so popular that there was standing-room only when some of them were performed (he also had an appetite for the good life, and squandered what were at the time vast amounts of money on it, thus rendering him near broke on several occasions).
"Beethoven"
Again a star during his life with various wealthy patrons who became life-long friends. At a time when there was no form of instant communication, an estimated 30,000 people attended his funeral, including a number of celebrities -- Schubert for example was one of his pall-bearers, Franz Grillparzer (reckoned to be one of the greatest German writers of the period) wrote a special funeral prayer, and this was read by the renowned actor Heinrich Anschütz.
"Vivaldi"
A priest who enjoyed a fair level of celebrity during his early life, but that diminished in later years, and many of his works are now lost due to a century of complete disinterest which would likely have continued until the present day if it weren't for the fact that Bach was influenced by him, and arranged several of his concertos for keyboard.
"Mozart"
A star from an early age who went on several European tours and lived a lavish life-style that sometimes put him into deb
"The day it mutates to spread from human to human, we might look forward to a pandemic that makes the 1918 influenza pandemic look minor."
You are writing this as if it is a fact that (a) H5N1 will mutate into a form that can be passed from human to human, and (b) it will remain as deadly after mutating as it was beforehand. Reality check: it has not yet mutated into a form that can be transferred between humans, and we have no way of knowing whether it can do so, or if such a mutation would allow it to remain as deadly to humans as the current version is. Your assertions are therefore pure conjecture, not facts.
"And this is one of the most quickly mutating organisms known to man"
Type A influenza viruses in general mutate very quickly, but mutations that make them more dangerous or more infectious are very rare -- the _vast_ majority are prejudicial to the virus, just like the vast majority of mutations in all other organisms reduce rather than increase their viability. An excellent example of this is H1N1, the 1918 "Spanish Flu" that killed millions, which then mutated into a wide variety of less deadly strains that (among various other type A viruses such as H1N2 and H3N2) cause seasonal flu all over the world.
Note that the above is also true of H5N1, which was first reported in 1959, and has mutated into thousands of strains since then, most of which only affect a few avian species, are of low severity (i.e. not deadly), or both. Of all these strains, only two main clades (each with a small series of known sub-clades) have emerged in the half century since it was first isolated that can infect humans, and then only with difficulty.
"That is because you are suffering from the "well I don't understand it, so it can't be true" fallacy."
The one who doesn't understand things and is therefore labouring under a fallacy is yourself, because none of the things you've said have happened yet, and there's no proof that they will.
Fact: H5N1 has killed around 200 people in the half century since it was first reported. All of these lived in extremely close proximity with domestic fowl.
Fact: there have been several outbreaks in Europe during the last couple of years, including one in the UK last month. No human has been infected in any of these incidents.
Fact: during that same two year period, and estimated 12,000 Europeans are likely to have died from ordinary seasonal flu, yet the alarmist FUD merchants don't seem to be concerned about that at all, just as they seem to ignore that fact that _any_ of these strains is statistically just as likely to mutate into a high-mortality pathogen as H5N1 is to gain human-to-human infection capabilities.
Fact: H7N7 is also an avian flu variant that can infect humans, seals, horses, pigs, and birds. It is more infectious to non-avians than H5N1, and is known to have killed one person -- it is therefore just as likely to mutate into a deadly pandemic as H5N1.
Fact: H7N2, H7N3, H9N2, and H10N7 are also avian flu variants that have been known to infect humans. Again, any one of these could just as easily mutate into a deadly global pandemic as H5N1.
Fact: alarmists were saying exactly the same things about Ebola a decade or so ago, hence several (rather bad) movies being made about it.
"The cost of the OS is now more than the computer it runs on"
This is even more the case in Europe, where MS are charging much more for Vista than they are in the US. Some examples of "street prices" for Vista:
Business Edition: 409 Euros retail, 279 upgrade ($537/367)
Home Basic: 279 Euros retail, 149 upgrade ($367/200)
Home Premium: 329 euros retail, 219 upgrade ($432/288)
Ultimate: 549 Euros retail, 369 upgrade ($721/485)
"Don't say that good PCs are $1000, because that is the cost of Apple"
A Mac Mini costs 599 Euros including VAT, which is only 50 Euros more than the retail version of Windows Vista Ultimate edition -- alternatively, you'll be able to spend that 599 Euros on a PlayStation 3 in a month or so, which is also rather more expensive than in the US, but starts to look like a real bargain when compared to Microsoft's Vista European pricing.
Some other comparisons:
OS X 10.4 (Tiger) boxed retail edition: 120 Euros.
Nintendo Wii: 249 Euros, or 30 Euros more than a Home Premium upgrade.
"I heard the same thing about the early low-end Mac Minis and OS X"
It wasn't just the Mac Minis, but all Apple's consumer machines (e.g. iMac G5), which were at that time supplied with 256MB RAM by default, and a lot of ordinary users bought the basic configuration because Apple charged a lot for RAM upgrades (I know that they could be obtained elsewhere for less, but few users felt like attempting a DIY upgrade, especially on the Mini). This simply wasn't enough for OS X, which is painful with less than 512MB, and like Win XP, has a "sweet spot" at around the 1GB mark, and requires even more for power users who like loading multiple large applications or manipulating big images with PhotoShop.
"Also and FYI, Windows 1.0 - Windows 386 didn't look ANYTHING like a Mac desktop"
That's because Windows 1.0 was released _after_ Apple sued MS. The pre-release versions that Microsoft demonstrated at trade shows were virtual clones of MacOS, as indeed was the pre-release version of DR's GEM, but both companies settled out-of-court with Apple by changing the appearance and functionality of their products before releasing them.
"Adobe has the same, near monopoly, in what they do"
As do for example AutoDesk with AutoCAD in their specialist but notably lucrative market.
"Another thing to thank GWB for. That and killing the MS anti trust case."
Just like Raegan killed a 12 year DOJ anti-trust investigation into IBM.
"Microsoft DOES NOT make the Video Drivers, nor do they have control over what features the MFR puts in the drivers"
.NET programmers, and .NET had other issues that prevented it from being used for the sort of high performance applications that sell graphics cards (e.g. CAD, gaming, animation, etc.), so there wasn't enough customer demand to justify writing GDI+ drivers when most consumer Windows applications only used GDI, and other graphics-intensive software was written for DirectX or OpenGL.
Microsoft does in fact make video drivers, but they tend to be the default ones such as the VGA GDI driver Windows loads when it can't find anything suitable for a machine's hardware (or when it's being run in safe mode), and the software rendering layer that DirectX and old versions of Windows OpenGL use in similar circumstances. The problem is that while most card manufacturers have specialist driver sets for GDI, DirectX, and OpenGL, they didn't write any for GDI+, so everything gets rendered using the Microsoft default software engine even on hardware that's easily capable of doing everything itself, as for example is certainly the case with DirectX 7 compliant systems, and probably DirectX 6 ones.
"There are issues with the GDI+ features that are GDI like but perform poorly, but if the Video Driver from the MFR doesn't accelerate this as they are DIFFERENT calls, GDI+ will be slow."
There are AFAIK no MFR-supplied GDI+ drivers because the only people who used GDI+ to any extent were
"However, with that aside, WPF is fully accelerated, even on XP via DirectX7."
I know, hence my statement about developers feeling that Microsoft's default GDI+ driver should also have used DirectX instead of a lame software renderer, because DirectX 7 has been around since 1999, and GDI+ wasn't publicly launched until 2001, so it was an obvious choice. Alternatively, they could have made such a driver available for download a year or two later when it became clear that OEMs and graphics chip-set manufacturers weren't going to release their own GDI+ drivers, and developers were first complaining loudly, and then avoiding it because of performance issues with Microsoft's default driver.
"So MS didn't make the same mistake as they did by leaving GDI+ out in the cold"
I don't think anybody cares about GDI+ itself, but a lot of developers are pretty pissed (although I'm not one of them) at having followed Microsoft's instructions about using GDI+ to ensure that they'd be compatible with Longhorn, only to find out that it's being dumped for yet another shiny but totally incompatible system, leaving them with large bodies of code that will either have to be completely rewritten, or run inefficiently forever.
"anyone that knows anything about Video Cards and GDI from the past 15 years can easily answer this question for you..."
.NET developers have thus become accustomed to intermixing GDI+ code with calls to GDI via pinvoke, or using DirectX's drawing system.
I didn't ask a question, but stated something, i.e. that GDI+ is slow, and also made the point that the reasons for this are in its drivers.
"Video cards started adding 2D acceleration, most notably with the IBM 8514, and with the popularity of Windows, the 2D acceleration design of most Video cards is SPECIFICALLY designed around the Windows GDI to basically make the Windows desktop as fast as possible."
The problem with GDI+ though is that it doesn't use the acceleration features even for things that should "map" more or less directly to the standard Windows GDI, so it is much slower at doing standard "GDI-ish" things than GDI is.
"If I remember right, MS even requested that Companies like ATI and NVidia not focus on adding GDI+ 2D acceleration, as they expected Vista to come out much sooner than it did."
I don't recall any major card manufacturers offering to implement GDI+ functions in hardware, because a lot of the functionality that MS added to GDI+ was already present in their cards, but Microsoft's GDI+ drivers don't use it, just like they don' t use the GDI-compatible hardware that's been in most of them for a decade or so.
"So why is GDI+ slow in comparison? Many of the features it offers like anti-aliasing and translucency are not in any Video cards 2D hardware acceleration feature set, which is what they use to render the pre-Vista Windows Application Drawing and desktop."
Lest we forget, the post I was answering compared GDI+ to Apple's equivalent system, which in this case would be Quartz 2D. The Apple development site says the following in its introduction:
"The Quartz 2D API is easy to use and provides access to powerful features such as transparency layers, path-based drawing, offscreen rendering, advanced color management, anti-aliased rendering, and PDF document creation, display, and parsing."
With the exception of the PDF bits, this is pretty much what GDI+ does, yet Quartz 2D manages to do it a lot more quickly than GDI+ even on Macs with less than stellar graphics hardware. In Microsoft's defence is the fact that Windows has to run on a much more varied collection of graphics subsystems than OS X, but by the same token, so does GDI and indeed DirectX. This raises the question (and it is one that many developers have asked) of why MS didn't write GDI+ as an abstraction layer that tied existing hardware-supported GDI functionality together with stuff in DirectX, both of which would be supplied by existing OEM drivers, instead of writing something that requires a different set of drivers.
"So, yes GDI+ is slower than pure GDI, and you will also find that the features of GDI+ that slow it down"
It is the way the features are implemented that slows it down, not the features themselves.
"when implemented on other OSes that also don't have 2D acceleration for these features, these operations on other OSes are also slow"
What developers are moaning about isn't the fact that it's slow at doing things GDI couldn't, but that it's slow at everything, including stuff that GDI was already capable of.
"if you take professional cards (like a Quadro) that have 2D acceleration for GDI+ 'like' features, you will find that GDI+ isn't a slowdown."
I think you need to check your facts here, because Microsoft admit that GDI+ is _significantly_ slower than GDI on all graphics hardware, professional or otherwise, because the only drivers for it are their own, and they implement _everything_ in software, and are thus incapable of using any advanced 2D drawing support that may be present on certain cards.
"MS did screw up with GDI+, as it wasn't used like it 'could' have been, and even though it is fairly rich, MS new they would be replacing GDI
"OSX's vector based graphics API is EQUIVALENT to GDI+ that has been available in Windows since 2001. Go look this up, please."
.NET developer sites have thus been suggesting ways to avoid using it, including going through the DirectX 9 layer, which offers many of the same features without the performance penalty, but isn't as easy to use.
.NET Windows Forms used GDI+, and MS received many, many complaints about their slow drawing compared with (for example) VB6 forms. Despite several years of promises that this would be fixed, they eventually simply deprecated Windows Forms, thus leaving all the people who they initially told to "keep using Windows forms because the performance issues will be resolved by an update in the near future" with a slow mess that will probably need converting to their very different XAML-based system at some point.
And I suggest you go and look up the 110,000 pages Google gave me when I entered "GDI+ slow", because developers have been complaining about this since it was introduced (Microsoft admit that the most commonly asked question about GDI+ is "Why is it so slow?)". Yes, it has lots of nice features that aren't in standard GDI such as anti-aliased drawing and alpha blending, but the drivers don't use a graphics card's accelerator features, and although Microsoft promised that this would change, nearly six years later we're still waiting (it also has a nasty memory leak which still AFAIK hasn't been fixed yet).
NB:
"As opposed to the time the average Windows user spends installing antivirus, antispyware, a personal firewall, dozens of patches"
Unfortunately, this is what exceptional Windows users do, not average ones. Average Windows users think that their "peecee" is going slowly because the chip's getting worn out, and that having their drive and modem / network router lights permanently on and a screen full of pop-ups advertising "Barely Legal Teens" and Genuine Rolexes for $4 is just a normal part of the computing experience.
" An enterprise buyer might have more of an argument, but I doubt it, given that there are enterprise Linux distros."
4 54-64287-89301-321860-f50.html).
Enterprise buyers can easily get machines without an OS (or effectively so) from big vendors like Dell and HP because they have corporate Windows licenses, and therefore won't buy from anybody that expects them to also pay for an OEM end-user license on each box. Check out this link for example, and note that you can buy these machines with nothing more than FreeDOS on them if you want, an option that HP seem to have for most enterprise customers (http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/en/WF04a/12
"the #1 (and probably nos 2-5, too) reason people don't buy a Mac is the price"
That's the #1 reason nerds don't buy them; #2 is not enough games; and #3 is that OS X isn't entirely FOSS.
Ordinary consumers on the other hand don't compare specifications of even slightly complex devices, because they don't understand them, so they can't tell that this $700 computer is effectively the same as another costing $1500, especially if the $1500 one looks more expensive on the outside. Furthermore, they're accustomed to products from name brands costing more than similar ones from less known companies, and believe that this is because "they're better", so they'd be quite surprised if a computer from Apple, who they've heard of, _didn't_ cost a lot more than one from (for example) Acer, whose name is unknown to them.
So why then aren't all these consumers buying Macs instead of Windows PCs, if they aren't particularly worried about them costing more? The answer lies in the places they tend to buy computers from, which are usually the same places they go to for TVs and other electric and electronic gear. Few of these even sell Macs, and in the unlikely event you'll find one there, it will usually be turned off and ignored because the sales droids know even less about it than they do Windows, and therefore would prefer not to be asked any awkward questions. If the place you go to for "a computer" only sells Windows PCs, or the staff are only interested in selling Windows PCs, you won't be buying a Mac, irrespective of how much or how little they cost. That's why Apple have been making those nerd-annoying "I'm a Mac" ads -- if consumers know that the "iPod company" also makes computers, they might ask about them when they're considering buying one instead of simply thinking that "peecee" == computer.
"Many companies that are using the "widely available" documentation is having trouble getting their apps to play nice with Vista, and those that have released things in the last year or so find themselves having to patch their app to work right under Vista"
Companies whose applications have to run on platforms other than just Windows are likely to have even more problems because they usually have sets of (possibly proprietary in-house) toolkits so that most of the main code-base can be platform-independent. These frameworks will have to be certified (i.e. tested, where necessary rewritten, tested again, and so on) for all current _retail_ versions of Vista (not betas or RCs, because MS have a habit of changing things at the last minute), after which the applications that use them will also have to be individually certified. This is notably non-trivial with complex commercial applications and frameworks, large portions of which are likely to have written by contractors or employees who left long ago, and which can fail in obscure ways that would take significant amounts of time and effort to track down even in one's own code, let alone someone else's.
Perhaps some of the those laying blame on Apple, MS or whoever would do well to take a look at some of the forums for professional programmers who are involved with maintaining major applications, because a lot of them are having trouble adapting substantial existing code bases to Vista. Microsoft have made every possible effort to document Vista APIs and make betas and release candidates available to developers, but the fact of the matter is that betas and release candidates are by their nature liable to change, and the documentation doesn't always track those changes reliably, and even where it does, isn't 100% accurate because it's written by people, and people make mistakes. In most cases, it isn't the big changes that cause most of the problems, but subtle ones that manifest themselves as intermittent faults on some machine / OS combinations that can be difficult to duplicate, and whose causes are very hard to track down and fix. A big code base can have tens or hundreds of this type of issue, each of which has to be resolved without breaking something else in code written by other programmers whose motivations and practices are unknown to the maintainer.
NB: the Slashdot gestalt seems to be notably deficient in the area of long-term memory (hence all the dupes!), because it's forgotten how many applications that worked fine under Windows 9X or NT4 were notably problematic on XP (including a lot of Microsoft's ones), that many of these took a long time to be fixed, and that some of them still don't work properly (or at all) today. More recently, XP Service Pack 2 broke a bunch of stuff from Microsoft and others, and still causes enough problems to ensure that significant numbers of corporate users have stayed with SP1 because it's easier and cheaper than having the IT department validate all the software they use for SP2.
"I think you misunderstand these articles... all they say is that when record companies pay up front expenses on the album, they recoup them before the artist sees any money."
It seems to be you who are misunderstanding them, because what they actually say is that _all_ costs, including recording, publicity, producers' "points", cover art, breakages, free promotional materials -- all fixed and many variable costs are deducted from the artist's royalties _before_ the record company deducts even more to pay for any advances that may have been paid. This is in stark contrast to you claimed, i.e.: "Those large fixed costs are entirely absorbed by the record company". The record company _absorbs nothing_, as I said in my previous post.
"Well, yeah. If your band isn't profitable, you don't get paid"
You obviously either did not read those articles, or are deliberately weaving straw men, because they in fact make it quite clear that even CD sales which have made significant profits often end up with the artist owing the record company money after all the deductions have been made.
"Think of it as financing-- record companies are basically banks specialize in one kind of business: bands."
Two points:
(1) How does what you are saying now square with your prior claim that ""Those large fixed costs are entirely absorbed by the record company"? Oh, that's right, it doesn't!
(2) Unlike a bank, record companies are already getting the lion's share of the income from sales of the artist's work. If you'd read those articles, you would know that artists get between 10% and 20% of what the record company sells their works for (i.e. the wholesale price) after variable costs such as pressing, transport, etc. have been deducted. This means that an artist can expect to see an average of 15% of _the net profits_ made from wholesale CD sales, and all the costs you previously claimed were absorbed by the record company are paid from that 15%, including repayments on advances. Put another way, the record company takes 85% of the net income from a recording, and pays none of the costs associated with making or promoting it out of that 85%.
"It happens to be a very risky sectors, so interest/profits are high."
There is actually very little risk for the record company, because artists have to pay back advances and all the other costs that are normally deducted from their royalties one way or the other. Any costs not covered by the sales of one CD will be carried forward to the next one, and so on until the contract expires, at which time the artist will be expected to find some other way of paying them back if they choose not to renew. So yes, it is risky, but nearly all of those risks are assumed by artists rather than their record companies, although one wouldn't know it from reading their press releases (O woe is us, we're so downtrodden and unprofitable, but unlike other multinationals who simply pull out of unprofitable sectors, we keep expanding ours by buying up successful independent labels because we love artists so much that we don't care if it's unprofitable).
"Just because the loan is revenue backed doesn't mean it isn't a loan."
It is not revenue-backed any more than a monthly loan payment that's automatically deducted from your bank account is "revenue backed", because in both cases you are liable to pay the lender back irrespective of whether you have enough income.
NB: your "tell some lies, and then throw out straw men if challenged by one of those annoying types who cite contrary documentary evidence" bear a remarkable similarity to what record company marketing droids do. I wonder if this is more than a mere coincidence?
"I'd love to know their basis for such a statement"
What statement? That analysts are full of BS? Just read what they say about anything, and you'll find plenty of "basis".
"I'm personally expecting the Wii to outsell the PS3 by 5:1 over the next three years"
Where in any of my posts did I say it wouldn't, or for that matter make any comment about the Wii or PS3, positive or negative?
"the bit about DRM-free utopia was his attempt to redirect ill-will toward the major labels"
Because they were having such a hard time generating ill-will without Jobs giving them a helping hand.
"I have a friend who likes to make "Mix" CD's for other friends, and they keep getting frustrated when iTunes tells them some of their tracks can't be converted to MP3."
Just tell him/her the truth: giving copies of iTunes store songs to others is illegal, so the iTunes program won't let you do it.
"Don't forget child molesters."
And terrorists.
"MSDN is "cheap" because it is for development purposes."
It's only actually for testing and debugging purposes, hence the MSDN EULA permitting Windows version to be used with a VM, as VMs are very commonly used in test rigs. Actual software development requires a standard Windows end-user, site, or corporate license for each machine.
"The only things that come close to the British plugs are the 240V heavy-duty sockets used in the US for stoves, washers and the like"
These sound like the sort of plugs some European countries use for similarly heavy-duty applications. The bit that "mates" with the socket is a flat rectangle with three thick, flat pins in a diamond configuration with the earth at the top which are surrounded by a "lip" that fits into a channel around the socket to form a watertight seal (watertight in the domestic sense of leaky pipes, not the Surayan-connecor "bottom of the San Marianas trench" definition of watertight).
"Aren't there around 3 types of socket in common use? The tank-like giant socket with three rectangular pins."
That's the BS 1363, which was standardised as an electrical appliance connector in 1962. It contains an integral fuse which can be replaced without opening the plug itself, is rated for 13 amps, and is considered by many engineers to be one of the best designed and safest domestic plugs in the world. Most appliances sold in the UK during the last couple of decades have one of these fitted (nowadays usually directly moulded to the cable).
"The socket with three round pins (possibly in two different sizes!)"
They're the older BS 546 type which was originally available in 2 amp (small) and 5 amp (bigger) variants. It's rare to see them as standard electrical appliance connectors in the UK nowadays even in old houses, because they've mostly been replaced by BS 1363 types, but they're sometimes used today for centrally switched domestic lighting circuits, where a fused plug can be inconvenient due to being hard to reach and therefore check / change.
"Also an "electric razor socket" putting out 115V in a bathroom"
You mostly only find these (BS 4573) in hotels and guest houses so that foreigners can plug stuff in without it blowing up. British consumer and safety laws don't allow 115v items to be sold in general retail (although some specialist devices are available for particular applications), so it's very unusual indeed to find one of these in a domestic setting, especially as they're commonly in bathrooms where UK law requires that sockets of this type be connected to an isolation transformer, thus making them rather expensive. A lot of domestic bathrooms do have two pin shaver connectors, but they're usually C17/E "Europlugs" that only output a standard British 240V/50Hz rather than the BS 4573 type.
"Fixed cost is the amount it costs to sign artists and record CDs (studio equipment, staff to run that equipment, etc)"
r .htmla ture1.htmle /resources/article_suit.html
Which the artists themselves pay for. The record companies give them an advance, just as book publishers give some authors an advance, but it must be paid back.
"the recording industry is exposed to a big risk that they have to cover-- most artists flop, only a few are sucessful, but you can't spot this before you record and attempt to sell a CD"
Artists who flop still have to pay back the advances the record company gave them.
"those large fixed costs are entirely absorbed by the record company"
They are actually entirely absorbed by the artists. Check out these links if you doubt this:
http://www.aandronline.com/reading-room/whats_fai
http://weeklywire.com/ww/06-22-98/austin_music_fe
http://www.arielpublicity.com/ariel_publicity_sit
"Look, the simple economics of it is that if somebody else could do what the big record companies do, and for cheaper, they would be doing it and making a fortune."
Unfortunately, any labels that show signs of popularity immediately get absorbed by the big four, who ended up owning a whole slew of previously independent record companies after progressive consolidation by a series of multinationals (not all of whom previously had any history in the music industry, e.g. Sony and what would come to be known as Vivendi). This continues to happen today, as the labels that came out of the "indie resurgence" of the 1990s get absorbed whenever they show signs of popularity, with some (relatively) recent examples being Sinatra's Reprise Records, Herb Alpert's A&M, and Madonna's Maverick records.
Note also that because these multinationals tend to also own things such as TV and radio networks, print media, and even major performance venues, like the Robber Barons of the 19th century, they can erect artificially high barriers for any companies that aren't part of the cartel, either denying them access to these needed publicity resources entirely, or charging much more for them than they do to each-other.