That’s it!
In Romney’s speech announcing he will not continue his race for the white house, he said the following:

As I said to you last year, conservative principles are needed now more than ever. We face a new generation of challenges, challenges which threaten our prosperity, our security and our future.
I am convinced that unless America changes course, we will become the France of the 21st century – still a great nation, but no longer the leader of the world, no longer the superpower. And to me, that is unthinkable.
Europe is facing a demographic disaster. That is the inevitable product of weakened faith in the Creator, failed families, disrespect for the sanctity of human life and eroded morality.

Boy am I glad one less extremist prick is running for office!
What do you do with a potential president of the united states with idea’s like that. Islamic extremism is terrorism, catholic extremism… is running for the white house.

Yeah that will improve the world!

If you are reading this, please vote for a democrat!

We have Philips and Sony to thank for the Compact Disc, Philips made the laser and disc technology and Sony developed the digital encoding used in the standard.
It would take some time before the new and expensive standard took over from vynil and cassettes. Five years later, in 1987, CD players started outselling LP players, and next year CDs outsold vynil LPs for the first time, and we all know where it went from there.

New high definition standards aren’t doing great either, since the sound quality of the plain CD or MP3 is enough for most people and more and more consumers put an emphasis on portability and ease of use, i.e. they’ll rather buy iPods and other MP3 players.

The CD ruled the nineties, and the recording industry loved it, since its quality was quickly recognized by consumers. The second half of the decade, with the advent of cheap CD-RW drives and media, saw a rampant jump in piracy, and the new century threatened it with flash based MP3 players.
Since 1982 about 200 billion Cd’s have been sold. Nevertheless, sales are down due to new technologies & piracy.

Now, let’s get back to what I told in the beginning: prices varied from $10 to $20: so basically in 25 years time the price of a record hasn’t changed a BIT!
Normally due to mass media and the economy of scale, prices of technologies seem to drop over the years. I’m full aware a record has to cost a minimum because a lot of work goes into making one. But let’s get real here. 25 years ago making a CD would have probably been more expensive to produce (not the costs an artist has to pay, but I’m rather speaking about the production costs for making it) than nowadays. But still the price has been quite the same for the last 25 years.
No wonder people get their music from different sources, legal or not.

I’m getting sick and tired of music labels always blaming the customers! They should see at themselves as well! In a world of digital media and promo, new artists often realize they do not need a label to get their music to the masses. If music labels do not watch out and get realistic, they too could be in serious problems in 1 or 2 decades.

As a finishing note, I stumbled upon an article from the band Nine Inch Nails:

They give an example of “absurd retail pricing” of their recent album Year Zero in Australia. “Shame on you, UMG. Year Zero is selling for $34.99 Australian dollars ($29.10 US). No wonder people steal music. Avril Lavigne’s record in the same store was $21.99 ($18.21 US).
By the way, when I asked a label rep about this his response was: “It’s because we know you have a real core audience that will pay whatever it costs when you put something out – you know, true fans. It’s the pop stuff we have to discount to get people to buy.”
So… I guess as a reward for being a “true fan” you get ripped off.”

NIN are critical of marketing tricks used by the labels. “The point is, I am trying my best to make sure the music and items NIN puts in the marketplace have value, substance and are worth you considering purchasing. I am not allowing Capital G to be repackaged into several configurations that result in you getting ripped off.”

While browsing this morning, I came across a really funny blog-post. The author surfed the web looking for crazy or funny captcha’s. If you don’t know what that is, it’s the little word (or combination of letters or numbers) you have to provide on a page in order to continue. Mostly used for registering on a website or for adding comments to content on a website.
It’s useful to fight spam on your website. Due to these images, an automated bot cannot crawl through your website and post the same content over and over and over again. (mostly containing links to pornographic material).
I’ve got a captcha on this site as well. (I hope it’s readable for everyone )

Anyways just check out the post to show you what I mean: http://www.tonsai.de/blog-english/2007/craziest-captchas-on-the-web/

Check it out:

for more information, check the site here