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Jerry Cotton posted:It's amazing that stores like Kmart, Sears, and Woolworth have died withing our life-times. Kmart is doing really well in Australia and New Zealand. They had a big restructure a few years ago and it has been a pretty amazing turn-around.
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Jan 21, 2018 22:09
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GotLag posted:I don't need to, it's been covered pretty well already: Wow, it's "bless the rains", not "I guess the rain's down in Africa". I've been ever confused because Africa was more well known to me for struggling with drought all the time. Thank you Steve Almond, I've been living a lie all these years.
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Jan 21, 2018 22:22
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lil bip posted:Kmart is doing really well in Australia and New Zealand. They had a big restructure a few years ago and it has been a pretty amazing turn-around. It's like Woolworths in Australia in that it isn't owned by the same people. It looks like Kmart Australia is run by Wesfarmers.
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Jan 21, 2018 22:22
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JnnyThndrs posted:MTV was like the only thing I ever got in on the ground floor on. My sister and I didn’t have cable, but my aunt did, so we went over there a day or two after it started and were mesmerized. There were only about 25 videos played regularly, and I think a quarter of them were by Peter Gabriel, but it was still the coolest thing 15-year-old me ever saw. I remember watching the first video on their premiere.
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Jan 21, 2018 22:25
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Pontiac still lives on as Holden in Australia too.
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Jan 22, 2018 02:37
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dialhforhero posted:Pontiac still lives on as Holden in Australia too. Uhh what? The Australian Holden Commodore got briefly badged as a Pontiac for export (and later a Chevrolet) but that's dead now anyway so Holden is now a mix of Korean, Thai and European sourced GM stuff
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Jan 22, 2018 02:39
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Samizdata posted:I remember watching the first video on their premiere. And how many times over the next two years did you have to watch that drat Buggles video again? 
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Jan 22, 2018 03:27
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Dick Trauma posted:And how many times over the next two years did you have to watch that drat Buggles video again? Innagaddadavita! WAY TOO MANY! 
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Jan 22, 2018 03:42
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dissss posted:Uhh what? The Monaro and Torana would pop up in video games every now and again. The Commodore a bit too but mostly the track car version.
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Jan 22, 2018 03:48
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I need to go back sometime and try to compare very early MTV videos to stuff that came out about a decade later. For some reason I get the recollection that there was a strange vibe to some early MTV videos and I don't know if that was because no one really had a basis for what the standards and practices should be for a long time.
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Jan 22, 2018 04:46
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JediTalentAgent posted:I need to go back sometime and try to compare very early MTV videos to stuff that came out about a decade later. For some reason I get the recollection that there was a strange vibe to some early MTV videos and I don't know if that was because no one really had a basis for what the standards and practices should be for a long time. Pretty much. A lot of the video effects hardware was new, crude, and no one really knew what to do with it also.
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Jan 22, 2018 04:49
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I remember people going nuts over the video for peter gabriel's "sledgehammer" and how groundbreaking it was
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Jan 22, 2018 05:30
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JediTalentAgent posted:I don't know if that was because no one really had a basis for what the standards and practices should be for a long time. There was also this weird space where no one kind of knew where the use of a music video was, so you got some stuff like Peter Gabriel's videos, stuff that was one step removed from the lipsynch performances on talk shows, or huge mini-movies buoyed by a Name. Later on they figured it was a way to sell a record so it got less weird (until you get Missy Elliot)
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Jan 22, 2018 05:35
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rndmnmbr posted:I don't like MtG. Not only is it expensive, but also no one seems to play it the way I like - zero stakes, all cards allowed in any number, 3-6 person games, just having fun. Okay. I'll play 60x Chancellor of the Dross. GG. Edit: Actually a friend has informed me that 60x Soul Spike beats it. Which loses to 60x Memnite, which loses to Chancellor, so now we just have a game of rock-paper-scissors. Keiya has a new favorite as of 07:35 on Jan 22, 2018 |
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Jan 22, 2018 07:20
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lil bip posted:Kmart is doing really well in Australia and New Zealand. They had a big restructure a few years ago and it has been a pretty amazing turn-around. We’ll see how long they survive after Amazon moves into Australia. The New Zealand retailers have a head start to pick up their game and get ahead of the curve, but I doubt they’ll do anything, They’ll just have a moan like they did with the parallel importers and import shopping, see their profits dwindle further then slowly close like dekka. rndmnmbr posted:I don't like MtG. Not only is it expensive, but also no one seems to play it the way I like - zero stakes, all cards allowed in any number, 3-6 person games, just having fun. The mtg store I used to go to had a pretty vast stock of old-series cards selling for cheap. Me and my coworker started making and playing gimmick decks instead of the churn or new series’s. was a lot more fun. But yeah, the kids just wanted to play the latest poo poo with the intensity of a power washer.
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Jan 22, 2018 10:14
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Nvm
Mondian has a new favorite as of 12:01 on Jan 22, 2018 |
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Jan 22, 2018 11:59
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ladron posted:I remember people going nuts over the video for peter gabriel's "sledgehammer" and how groundbreaking it was That and The Cars' "You Might Think".
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Jan 22, 2018 13:34
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I think there was possibly also a lot of boundary pushing on MTV because they didn't know if where that limit was, too. You get a lot of the heavy metal groups with their bizarre supernatural themes and trying to make themselves into leather-wearing sex symbols, you have things like the Tubes' "She's A Beauty" video. I don't know if any of it would be more or less scandalous today or not.
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Jan 22, 2018 13:40
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ladron posted:I remember people going nuts over the video for peter gabriel's "sledgehammer" and how groundbreaking it was That's the only video I remember from my childhood.
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Jan 22, 2018 14:13
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I also like(d) the song so
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Jan 22, 2018 14:18
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Those easily-remembered videos like ‘Sledgehammer” and such came later though; the very early days of MTV were filled with the same 25-50 videos and the vast majority of them were really terrible by today’s standards; Fleetwood Mac lip-syncing in the desert, Cheap Trick standing in a room motionless while a hanging lamp swings back and forth endlessly, etc. But it was so different and so cool at the time that it spread in popularity like crazy; the ‘I want my MTV’ campaign was crazy-effective and had never been done before - consumers lobbying cable providers was unprecedented. The really sad thing, to me, is that a huge number of people got really wealthy off of MTV and the original VJ’s got absolutely screwed, their pay was like $35K a year in Manhattan and they had to come up with all their own wardrobe. When they fought for better pay after the channel was a huge success, most of them got canned.
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Jan 22, 2018 14:29
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Horse Clocks posted:it’s interesting how in countries where amazon hasn’t turned up and decimated the local stores, the chains are still doing ok, and totally contrary to most of the chat in this thread. 
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Jan 22, 2018 15:23
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All this Sears talk made me thing of when Brandon Byrd did a series of painting on some of the great Sears in our nation.        
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Jan 22, 2018 15:43
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Lowen SoDium posted:All this Sears talk made me thing of when Brandon Byrd did a series of painting on some of the great Sears in our nation. lol these are really great
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Jan 22, 2018 16:26
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Lowen SoDium posted:All this Sears talk made me thing of when Brandon Byrd did a series of painting on some of the great Sears in our nation. Looks like something they'd hang in cheap frames in the employee break room.
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Jan 22, 2018 16:49
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SEARS SEARS SEARS SEARS SEARS SEA S SEARS SEARS SEARS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yamOer6lsjo
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Jan 22, 2018 17:27
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JnnyThndrs posted:Those easily-remembered videos like ‘Sledgehammer” and such came later though; the very early days of MTV were filled with the same 25-50 videos and the vast majority of them were really terrible by today’s standards; Fleetwood Mac lip-syncing in the desert, Cheap Trick standing in a room motionless while a hanging lamp swings back and forth endlessly, etc. Back in the day artists had to sign over all rights to have their video played on MTV, which is why Beavis and Butthead could rip on lovely videos in the 90s, but not when they briefly brought the show back a few years ago.
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Jan 22, 2018 18:53
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The_Franz posted:Back in the day artists had to sign over all rights to have their video played on MTV, which is why Beavis and Butthead could rip on lovely videos in the 90s, but not when they briefly brought the show back a few years ago. I'm not sure this is right, because if MTV owned all the rights, there would have been DVD releases with all the videos on them. This happens with a lot of TV from before DVD came around, because no one expected anyone to own a complete series on VHS.
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Jan 22, 2018 18:57
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Iron Crowned posted:I'm not sure this is right, because if MTV owned all the rights, there would have been DVD releases with all the videos on them. Probably broadcast rights versus retail sales. The funny thing is that owning all the episodes of a show became a thing around the middle of the 00’s to the extent that the writers’ strike was partly because they wanted a bigger cut of DVD sales. Then streaming happened and everyone stopped buying DVD’s. I’m sure they still get a cut of streaming residuals, but I doubt it compares to their cut off physical media.
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Jan 22, 2018 19:03
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The_Franz posted:Back in the day artists had to sign over all rights to have their video played on MTV, which is why Beavis and Butthead could rip on lovely videos in the 90s, but not when they briefly brought the show back a few years ago. They did have some music videos in the comeback, but Mike Judge said he got the idea to bring the show back while watching some reality TV show and thought that Beavis and Butthead should be making fun of it.
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Jan 22, 2018 22:08
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Remember those old rear end Java phones you had back in probably 2004? This guy wrote an app for those phones on one of them and actually did a business with it.
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Jan 23, 2018 05:27
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Cat Hatter posted:They did have some music videos in the comeback, but Mike Judge said he got the idea to bring the show back while watching some reality TV show and thought that Beavis and Butthead should be making fun of it. Cue Beavis: "Ahhh. Too much Deena"
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Jan 23, 2018 05:41
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Horse Clocks posted:
True true. RIP Deka
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Jan 23, 2018 05:51
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Zemyla posted:Remember those old rear end Java phones you had back in probably 2004? That was a very interesting article. Thanks!
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Jan 23, 2018 09:08
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Cat Hatter posted:They did have some music videos in the comeback, but Mike Judge said he got the idea to bring the show back while watching some reality TV show and thought that Beavis and Butthead should be making fun of it. They did, but they never ripped on them like in the old days. I distinctly remember people saying at the time that they couldn't really make fun of music videos anymore because, unlike back in the 90s, *everything* had to go through legal and be cleared with the rights holders and nobody was going to voluntarily let them publicly mock their work. Mike Judge posted:It used to be that we could do anything. Now we have to clear everything.
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Jan 23, 2018 17:26
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Lowen SoDium posted:All this Sears talk made me thing of when Brandon Byrd did a series of painting on some of the great Sears in our nation. If I had 1050€ I'd totally buy "Hesburger in the Autumn Night" for my study  
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Jan 24, 2018 02:35
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I just gave myself a lesson in how obsolete the MP3 format actually is. I encoded 2.2GB of FLAC albums (so already compressed from straight CD-quality WAVs) down to just 210MB of ~96kbps Opus, and I cannot hear a drat lick of a difference between them, even on good headphones in a quiet room, while continuously repeating the same bits over an over. Nothing, not a drat difference to be heard. Circa 2000 Napster-using MP3-downloading me knew drat well that the claims of MP3 supposedly being "full CD quality" at 128kbps were complete bullshit, but now we have a freely available audio codec that delivers on that promise and more, which is kind of amazing. As a general purpose audio format that is meant to replace both Ogg Vorbis and Speex, it's better at both music and speech (and low-latency at that) than either of them, and better than any commercial codec currently available. You can encode music at like 6kbps and while it'll sound like poo poo lo-fi black metal, the vocals will still be intelligible, which is crazy. Maybe it's a super geeky thing to get worked up about, but it really is quite an achievement, and I genuinely hope it will see widespread adoption. KozmoNaut has a new favorite as of 16:00 on Jan 24, 2018 |
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Jan 24, 2018 15:53
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I can't tell the difference between 320kbps mp3 and flac.
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Jan 24, 2018 18:05
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KozmoNaut posted:I just gave myself a lesson in how obsolete the MP3 format actually is. My music library is 17GB of Opus @ 96/128. It's awesome. I participated in a listening test back in 2014 that concluded that Opus was better than the iTunes AAC encoder, which is quite something if you consider that Opus was released less than 2 years prior giving AAC a 17 year lead. Since then the encoder has only been improved too. The live example page is worth checking out.
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Jan 24, 2018 18:25
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I remember back around 1997 I made my first MP3s, probably with something like MPecker. The default back then was always 128, if only because the hard drive size explosion hadn't happened yet. I'm not an audiophile but as I played with the settings I recognized that watery, swishy sound of over-compressed music, but my Mac was so wimpy that bumping the encoding rate to 256 took too drat long!  With a better computer and more hard drive space I was able to set 256 as my minimum, but even so on certain songs I noticed the watery sound and had to tweak things a bit to stay ahead of the problem. Now that I don't buy CDs anymore it's annoying that so many tracks from the main providers sound crappy to me, obviously suffering from poor encoding. I often listen to Spotify on a free account and it's more of the same. It's kind of a bummer that sound quality has gone out the window, sort of like if every digital image was covered in compression artifacts.
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Jan 24, 2018 18:36
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