Re: MD: What up with MD
On 4 Aug 2000, at 21:19, las wrote: From all of the e mails I have read here, it seems that even Best Buy has thrown in the towel on MD. They still stock plenty of it in Sacramento, where the Good Guys also reports selling a lot of it. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: What's up with Best Buy !
On 3 Aug 2000, at 11:29, Mike Burger wrote: One thing I learned a long time ago: If you're looking for sales people with even a moderate facsimilie of a clue, never shop at Best Buy or CompUSA. Even half the Circuit City folks I talk to have no clue. These are all stores that inspect potential employees' urine. I've learned that while businesses that do not drug test _may_ get stupid, obnoxious employees, businesses that do drug test _always_ get stupid, obnoxious employees. It seems to have something to do with the mindset (or lack thereof) that allows one to submit to such degradation. It seems to be getting worse the longer the U.S. economy does well and more and more people are refusing to submit to testing for employment. The truly talented are working in better jobs, everyone else is working for Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: What's up with Best Buy !
"These are all stores that inspect potential employees' urine. " Are you stating a fact about BB or are you just assuming? I have a friend that was recently hired to be a manager in one of the departments of a BB that is soon to open in the King Of Prussia PA area. I'll have to check on that. One thing I can tell you about BB and Staples is that they DO NOT pay commission. The turnover at the local Staples is higher then I have ever seen in any store. If people last a month (including managers) that's good. But commission seems to have no effect on the quality of people that work in these stores. Circuit City pays on commission and seems to always get either stupid obnoxious sales people or nice people that are just total idiots. I can't tell you how many times I have either explained or corrected sales people about something at Circuit City. For example one of the "better" sales people once gave me this answer to the question, "Does this digital camera have a video output?" Answer, "No". At the very same time they were displaying images from one of them on a video monitor! There is dumb and dumber. I think that the problem is that most of the people that they hire think they know something. They are not like most of us on the list, either students or people with "real" jobs/professions who spend a lot of time reading about technology. These people learn about new products at sales meetings. These are meetings that people who work the evening shift are forced to come in for on a Sunday morning at 8 AM. They are pissed to be their in the first place. They pretending to be awake and leave there know even less then when they came in. The competition for many of the products (especially the "hot" items) is so great that there really is nothing left to pay qualified sales people. Take my future son in law. He is a recent college graduate. Very creative and very knowledgeable about computers and audio/video equipment. So what did CC do with him (he was still in college at the time). They put him in customer service. (I did I forget to mention that he hates dealing with people). Finally he had (he is not very assertive) it and told them that either they put him in sales or he is going to quit). The manager from the computer department told him that he wasn't qualified to work there because, and I quote, "You'll talk over the customers heads"!!! That's one for the books. He did get the sales job and did very well (because he really knew what he is talking about, he didn't have to BS) until he got a real job using his creativity. That's why I don't support most local business of this type. I have found that you usually get better service and lower prices in the net. Of course all a person needs to run a business on the net is a registered web site and a good source for their products. They don't need to invest a million dollars in a huge store that is much nicer then the houses the majority of us live in (not to mention the electric bills from having a billion watts of lights on all day. Ramblings of a mad man, sorry. Regards, Larry It seems to be getting worse the longer the U.S. economy does well and more and more people are refusing to submit to testing for employment. The truly talented are working in better jobs, everyone else is working for Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
MD: Radio Shack Rechargeable Sealed Lead Battery
I just found out that Radio Shack has now officially "devalued" their Portable CD Player Power Pack. This unit was originally priced at $40.00. Now they are going for $1.00 (one dollar). I love these things. I have been using a couple of them with my portable DAT player for a couple of years. They claim up to 20 hours of run time and enough charges to replace 5,000 alkaline batteries. The output is 3 - 4.5v. It recharges with any 4.5v wall wart. It even mentions "mini-disc players" on the casing. If you are lucky enough to find one for a buck, buy it. That is a bargain even if you use it for a paper weight. I am not sure about the shelf life so those that remain in the stores could be nearing the end but . . . Jim Lee -- == James S. Lee| Net: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Communication Studies, CB# 6235 | Phn: 919-962-4963 University of North Carolina - CH | Fax: 919-962-3305 Chapel Hill, NC 27599-6235 | Web: www.unc.edu/~jimlee/ == - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: What's up with Best Buy !
I used to work for Best Buy years ago, and they do screen for drugs. I can't say for an of the other stores that have been mentioned. -Jeffrey On Sat, 5 Aug 2000, las wrote: "These are all stores that inspect potential employees' urine. " Are you stating a fact about BB or are you just assuming? I have a friend that was recently hired to be a manager in one of the departments of a BB that is soon to open in the King Of Prussia PA area. I'll have to check on that. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: monauralizing algorithms
On Fri, 4 Aug 2000, David W. Tamkin wrote: And a volume of -1.2 dB will still light up the last bar, I believe. Yes... I think the values marked on the scale are the top levels for each bar. All right; where do I get a different tone generating program? It can write .wavs, right? Then I could copy those to CDRW (on the computer's burner, not on the standalone, since my soundcard has only analog ports) and record them to MD, then back to CDRW on the standalone, then rip them to the computer again for analysis ... aw gee, it's complicated. For an alternative, if you have Windows, why not try the Winamp tone generator plugin: the disk writer will allow it to produce .wav files for burning CDs. I'm glad my work was appreciated :) Jonathan - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: What up with MD
Charles Redell wrote: I hate to say this but I really have to say that I don't think we are going to see MD become the cassette of the aughts and tens Sony has very much abandonded the concept here and is now marketing it solely to us, those people who will pay more for quality sound and performance... I agree, it's a niche market. It has been a niche market for quite some time, and it seems that some of the execs at Sony are happy to keep it that way. I have no idea why, there are MANY things they could have done that would have made it FAR more successful than it is now. It's odd, if you think about it because Sony (and Sharp and JVC etc...) COULD make so much more money if they made portable MD players and recorders: 1) sturdy for actual use outside of the home 2)easily compatable with computer downloads (which from my lurking on this list sounds like its a hard thing to do. (I don't downlaod now due to a slow connection)). Actually computer downloads would have been pretty easy. There have already been people with the ability to write their own ATRAC codecs that work on PC's. An MP3 to ATRAC converter would have been pretty simple. They could have done it all in software and just had a USB data interface that transfers the raw ATRAC data to some kind of MD device which would write it directly to disc. An ATRAC codec on the PC side would also be easily upgradeable. I think it just comes down to Sony's indifference to the MP3 market when it comes to MD. They'd rather try to push their memory stick for Internet music. I have no idea why, memory stick is still WAY too expensive. If they made portables that were truely portable, of semi-decent quality and, of course, afforadable(not US$200 or more) MD would fly off the shelves. They have sports walkmen, sports CDmen (which, like all discmen is totally clunky and dumb) , and I'm sure I've seen portable, sports TVs If they can get a picture to work in any portable TV or DVD player, they can make a sturdier portable MD. Well, I don't think MD portables would fly off the shelves that quickly unless there were prerecorded media available as well. Sony failed to see the importance of prerecorded media, but consider some of the most successful media - CD, CD-ROM, DVD, DVD-ROM... those all started out as READ ONLY media which had a WIDE offering of prerecorded selections available. For everyone that like self-recording, there are probably 10 people that would rather just buy a prerecorded disc. Obviously music is going to be downloaded... whatever format can downlaod is going to win. Their insistence on not making MDs easily compatible with MP3s is the begining of the death knoll for the MD. Money is being poured into MP3 and its players here in the states so that is what people know and will buy. No one knows MD exisits except those who actually research these kinds of things, and we are in the minority. What is available is king. What is convienent and at hand wins and my friends, the makers of MD are not making it convient or available. I definitely agree. I think it would even be easy to design an MP3 compatible MD recorder with existing technology for a very low price. Sony is just complacent when it comes to MD. They're placing all their bets on memory stick. I think Sony has found a way to shove a memory stick slot in every single digital device they come out with these days. Now if they had discretely placed an MD slot in every one of their CD players, car stereos, digital cameras, etc, it would have been far more successful. I don't know why Sony also didn't take JVC's idea and make a combination MD/CD transport. They could have designed a few variations of combo MD/CD transports and slickly integrated MD into all their CD/DVD offerings. Shawn 1stUp.com - Free the Web Get your free Internet access at http://www.1stUp.com - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: What up with MD
Obviously music is going to be downloaded... whatever format can downlaod is going to win. Their insistence on not making MDs easily compatible with MP3s is the begining of the death knoll for the MD. Money is being poured into MP3 and its players here in the states so that is what people know and will buy. I agree with you on this. If MD is not made (easily) MP3 compatible it probably will die, or at least never become a mainstream long term product. I think one of the problems with this is that Sony are very much anti-MP3 as such - they have a bit of a dilemma here, having large record publishing/copyright interests and having at the same time a small, cheap portable recording device that could easily become an MP3 player as well. Making an MD player compatible with the Sony proprietary (copyright protected) MP3 alternative is not really going to save it, they have to get on the MP3 wave and I think that is very difficult for them to do, from a corporate POV... Another possible problem may be a technical one - the main reason (besides poor marketing) that dataMD failed was the slow write speed of MD. Whilst MD write speeds have improved over the years, I wonder if they are fast enough to provide market-acceptable MP3 data transfer speeds, compared to flash memory devices? (I would think so, especially as a disc based system has huge cost benefits (at the moment) over flash memory) GB - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: What up with MD
Sony failed to see the importance of prerecorded media, but consider some of the most successful media - When the MD was first introduced, Sony had huge displays for prerecorded MDs. I remember this huge picture of Michael Jackson and a really complex high class display. But the store didn't actually have any to sell!! MD could still be a big thing if a) People were educated. b) They started to fill music stores with prerecorded MDs that were selling for the price of cassettes, not CDs. c) They started offering recorders and players at realistic and competitive prices. I can't see any reason why a portable MD player should cost more then a portable CD player. But everyone has their hits and misses. When Phillips and Sony got together and created the CD they eventually had a hit on their hands (CDs were not moving off of the shelves for quite some time after they were introduced). Sony had Beta. Phillips had the DCC. You have to admit that the DCC was a much bigger failure then Beta. Beta is still used professionally and did generate some sales. But how many people do you know who own a DCC? Phillips also had the CD-I. Another bust. Expensive and you had to buy a separate video module to play movies and certain games. The quality of the movies was not good. When I was a kid RCA had the original cassette. It was much bigger in size then the compact cassette, but didn't sell. DATs never caught on in the consumer market. BTW, who has the license on the DVD?? There's one that really made it. Larry - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
