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They reported that their single sales for the year was at their lowest ever.

what they probably also failed to mention was that they released the fewest singles in a long time.

the trend of selling singles is becoming much less popular these days but albums are selling much better.

there's a few ways to look at this, but here's one: maybe a lot of singles are being d/l and not so much albums as most people still only have dial-up internet. this would reduce the demand for singles therefore they would release less singles.

this would also dramatically effect the singles charts, and the record co's would have much more control of which 'artists' (models that can't sing) will be up the top. which makes it also cheaper for them to promote, so they still rake it in.

I have no idea who's in the charts these days anyway.

singles are just a way to get more album sales anyway, so if they freely let people d/l music, it's proven that more people will hear their music and buy the album.

so I have no idea what they're complaining about

This comp has always had it's ups and downs, you may get no entries or a few on any given month, I haven't voiced my opinions much about MAGS lately as it seemed to have picked itself up and has been going well for the last year.

I didn't get to set the rules when I won in feb 2003, but it was going through a new stage at the time but since then the rules have been set by the winner, and it should  stay like that, unless there are no entries.

and the presentation ceremony thing sounds like a cool idea, I think I got the last one, but doing it with the previous winners characters is a great idea.

good luck to this months contenders

My dentist told me (from xrays) that I have no wisdom teeth when I was a kid, I still don't have wisdom teeth at 28, and I've never been able to feel any signs of them.

I have a feeling my mum had the same thing told to her and she eventually got them around 30 although I could be imagining things.

maybe I'll never be wise, or maybe I'm so wise I don't need them?


Hope the pain goes away after the removal, and have fun with the gas, I've never had the gas before, I guess it depends on the dentist you have.

If you started a band and ended up selling 1 million copies of your first album, you'd be a multi-millionaire, it's not like the bands don't get anything. If they write their own songs you'd be surprised how much they get, which is why all these pop-stars get hardly anything unless they're as big as Britney Spears. Also that's why you see less rock bands on TV, they don't need the money from the show as much.

I always buy the albums of my favourite bands.

not necessarily true, if you sold 1milliion copies of your first album you'd probablly get a nice sum of cash, but the band would still probably be in debt to the record company, after a few albums if still successful you might become a multi-millionaire, but it also depends how many people are in yout band.

of course it's very rare to sell that many albums first up without a hell of a lot of promotion, and expenditure from the record co, and that's where the debt comes from, but if they don't fuck you over, eventually you might be on the healthy side of it all.

most of the bands I like aren't too big anyway, so their concerts are where they make most of their money. And I do buy albums occasionally, I don't d/l that much music, there isn't much out there that I like. (quite often the albums or EP's that I actually buy are at the gig, sometimes from a band I've just heard or are hearing)

Oil, Jelly, Mud, any of that wrestling fondling is good, but it can be a bit degrading to women, I'm surprised you're into it.

Sorry, I have no idea about what you're talking about, but It's good to hear your on holidays, I'm in the middle of holidays from work, I've been on a trip to Newcastle (NSW), and I'm Heading to Cairns (tropical north QLD) tomorrow. I'll be doing those cool things you can't do online like hang out in Rainforest's and snorkling on the Great Barrier Reef.

I'll probably see sum Mud there which is rare, cause I haven't seen any rain for months

The artists get [practically] nothing from CD sales.  When bands that I like (and there aren't many) come in concert I pay to go see them.  That's where the artists make their money.

That's exactly how I feel about the situation, and there are pleanty of bands that I've seen, which I've quite happily paid to see their concerts (sometimes even twice in the same tour [which can end up costing more than the albums]) yet never buy their albums and can feel I deserve to downlaod them.

In the end more of the money is going to the right place


As far as this stupid idea goes, I can't believe people would seriously feel the need for it.

Paranoid greedy fucks

I'm not really sad about it, he would have lived a great life being a movie star and president.

It's also the 1st US president I remember as a kid, and he did do some good things for the world.

It's more sad that he went through Alzheimer's, cause living to 93 is a pretty good effort.

I've known people with Alzheimer's and it's hard for the person in the early stages cause they sort of know it's happening, but in the later stages it's much worse for the family to see them like it.

So really for everyone involved it's probably more of a releif than any sort of sad occasion, he now gets to rest in peace happily.

And as far as headlines go of course an expresident, exprime minister, exworld leader is going to get headlines. there's pleanty of people in this world that go unrecognised for heroic things, way more heroic than any world leaders, but that doesn't sell papers, and that's what it's all about in the corporate world.

Did Boyd Smith get in the media for sending dirty text messages, accepting blowjobs from strange people, 'not' having 'sexual relations' with dead Antelope's? of course not

Just send them a disclaimer within the virus telling them what they are getting.

I'm sure it won't work as their security should stop the virus.

but seriously, spyware isn't that much of a problem if you don't use IE and don't download or use programs that have the included 'software'.

you may get some from websites but they are easily gotten rid of.


What you should do is start tracking the spyware, see where all the data it collects goes, steal the results, study the results, then you should have enough info to start up your own multinational co. by which you will have the means to take over all the companies that use spyware, then remove the spyware, run the spy's out of business, create an adventure game about it, then sell it (with included spyware with no disclaimer)

I just got round to finishing this one, never heard of it before this thread.

It was pretty good I thought, and the temple thingy at the end was rather hard, and tedious, but feels good to complete.

I thought it was Indiana Jones in Jurassic Park

I'm sure there's a lot of them out there as already pointed out, but none that spring to mind like IMDB. I guess that's the hardest part, promoting well enough to deep root into peoples minds to make it the first thing they think about when it comes to looking up music (if only you could add nicotine).

It is a good idea, and I've thought about it before, but never got off my arse to do anything about it as it is a huge task.

As far as comparing it to IMDB as already mentioned in different words, the amount of movies in history probably wouldn't even register 1% of musical artists let alone albums, letalone individual tracks.

So obviously it would be a continually growing project, adding new stuff and finding stuff that has been missed (and then still obviously you'd still miss out on millions of artists)

It could be a lot of fun, but whether it gets used much is another thing, and if you want it to earn money is another thing entirely.


I had a group project at Tafe in 2000 where we had to come up with a website concept where we had to fully design the site as well as come up with the theory of how we'd get it to work, as well as make money.

I came up with the idea of illegally having music for download calling it "Criminal Records" as it was all theory I thought we'd get away with it as it would be a comedy event at the presentation. But luckily I spoke to the teacher at an early stage and he said it sounded like a great idea but as it wasn't a legitimate idea, we couldn't do it.

Eventually we came up with an idea to create a site for unsigned bands, ie bands that haven't been signed by a record label, and have bios, history, photos, gig dates, full downloads as well as samples. Bands would have a small fee to add themselves, and that would be the income.

I wanted to do this seriously and eventually start up a record label in association with it, but I never got round to implementing it.


These days though it's rather easy and cheap to start up a website and there are so many out there that it's really hard to stick your head above the crowd without having a lot of money spent on advertising and promotions.


but having said all that, I think it's worth doing, even just as a hobby, If it's done really well without ads (well only promotion of music [hopefully not too commercial] as that fucks up any site) you never know what might happen, it might just slip right up there for no reason and just become popular and a household name.

The other key is sticking at it for a long time, If it's around for years with the same name, it will have more chance of being remembered (unless you change the name with a huge promotion from the millions of dollars you've made)

As far as user entries are concerened, I'm sure it's possible to have it so it doesn't go directly into the site once proof read and possibly edited, I think that's the best way for user submissions. Although if it becomes huge and you're getting thousands of submissions a day, it could be a problem, but that's when you'll need staff and money to pay them.

anyway, good luck

New South Wales

Well the ending was a big let down, but I still don't know how I got the lighter because the way I got it I, had tried many times previously and it didn't work, but once it did, it worked all the time (I'd say it's a bug in the programming or I couldn't work out what I did diferently to get it)

Czar, if you hadn't found it already

Spoiler

the top shelf above the locked book, you can look at the shelf then look at each side from there

[close]

They're addictive enough to finish, but they also suck

" VirtualDub is a video capture/processing utility for 32-bit Windows platforms (95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP)"

As it says it's not quite as powerful as Adobe Premiere but it kicks arse as a completely free video processing tool.
http://www.virtualdub.org/


"AsfTools is a free windows 98/ME/2000/XP program to process ASF,WMV and WMA files."
http://www.geocities.com/myasftools/


I guess most people know about this one
http://www.scummvm.org/


Dosbox - If you have XP and you want to use DOS
http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/


VDMSound - another program to get older games to work in XP - including GF
http://sourceforge.net/projects/vdmsound/

edit: actually I'm not sure if this is the same thing but here's another link
http://www.ece.mcgill.ca/~vromas/vdmsound/

There's a few more progs, I'll probably think of some more later

Great Idea LGM

It is frustrating, It's annoying with the pixel hunting, I guess they have sound effects to give some clues but it still doesn't always help. has anyone finished yet?

Spoiler

I have the cd case, 6 chinese characters, a bundle of incense sticks, a medicine bottle, a can of beer, black hair, a photo of male & photo of female, and a photo frame.

I can put the incense, beer, frame & cd case on the table, and when you hit the bell thingy sometimes you get a different message, depending on what's on the table.

I guess there must be some key to open that locked book, I guess that's what I need to proceed, there's also a sound effect when you look at the bin screen next to the fridge, but I don't know what the clue means.

there's probably more screens but I guess that's the frustrating part, finding where to click to get there, silly friggin game, but addictive enough to make me want to beat the friggin thing.

[close]

anyone got any clues?

If I remember correctly they brought in the golden point rule after the Tied series a few years back, with QLD retaining the trophy but not actually winning it. So they figured they needed to have a result.

but I agree that field goals are a let down to a team winning, even golden TRY would be much better.

The same goes for Union, and they really need a field goal changed from 3 points to 1, or else it will never end (but it wont as long as that English guy that won the world cup is still playing, I can't even remember his name, so much for him being a big star.)

The reason they make the song's volume so loud and compressed is simply because of this: they want their song the loudest song in comparison with others played on the radio or in a restaurant, and that way it will stand out the most. It is simply just LOUDER. In order to get their songs that loud, they resort to compression.

They also do this with TV comercials, "apparently" the dB is the same but it just seems louder. Have you noticed when watching tv with the sound fairly low, whenever the ads come on the volume seems to increase dramatically. They say it's not louder, just more compressed. which still doesn't mean shit cause it's still friggin louder.

I just watched it at home, didn't get into it as much as usual, I go for the Blues being from NSW.

As far as the game went, It was a pretty high standard considering the number of debutants and number of top players from each team out through injury or dirty sms's

I tend to get more excited when it comes to the second match (which I hope QLD win) so there can be a decider.

And if it's 1-1, the 3rd match becomes much more interesting.


I don't like the golden point rule, i think 10 mins each way extra time, then if still undecided keep having an extra 10 mins until at the end of one of those periods if a team is infront, they win (but that's just for crowd pleasing)

but Really if it's a draw it should just end there and be called a tie

Yeah, and it's football, not the soccer one, or the rugby union one, or the gridiron one, or the aussie rules one, or the gaelic football one, but the other rugby one, league, that's it

I think these days they like to fill as much sound into the gaps to make the music seem more full. eg. when you look at the EQ the little lights bounce up and down at more frequencies.

Have you ever recorded on a simple 4 track and notice how much sound seems to be missing when compared to a better recording system. (eg. for a band with drums, bass & guitar, it seems as if something is missing, really empty & if you look at the EQ there aren't many levels active) It does also come down to the quality of the recording instruments and the way everything is mic'd. but these days they seem to fill the gaps when mixing to keep it full.

When compressing a WAV to an MP3 you'll notice the WAV doesn't clip, but when converted to MP3 it will. not sure of the specific reason but I'm sure one of you musos knows.

This is all just general stuff as it doesn't occur in all cases.

(I'm not a musician, but I've got a little bit of experience in recording)

It's probably just an Australian thing, but the most common people to use the term are Mediterraneans.

In other words you're not really allowed to use the term unless you are a wog or are saying the name of this movie.



I have heard the term 'wops' before, specifically from 'True Romance'

but I've never heard people from the subcontinent refered to as wogs, they usually refer to themselves as asians, and as las said, the derogatory is curries.


This also reminds me of the come back to an aussie calling a wog, a wog, they call us 'skips' (as in skippy the kangaroo) which inturn reminds me of this company that rents out large garbage bins, called "Aussie Skips"

The 2nd picture is from the back of the 1st picture looking the other way, the little island is in both pictures if you can make it out.

Just a bit of Trivia, If anyone has seen the aussie soap 'Home & Away' the beach they mainly use is the one with the big arrow headland in the first picture.