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- Path: sparky!uunet!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!ai-lab!zurich.ai.mit.edu!philg
- From: philg@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Philip Greenspun)
- Newsgroups: rec.audio
- Subject: Re: Focal Press books overpriced (Re: AES/EBU)
- Message-ID: <PHILG.92Sep8172401@zug.ai.mit.edu>
- Date: 8 Sep 92 21:24:01 GMT
- References: <23632@alice.att.com> <1992Sep7.065850.29923@news.cs.brandeis.edu>
- Sender: news@ai.mit.edu
- Reply-To: philg@martigny.ai.mit.edu
- Organization: M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence Lab.
- Lines: 40
- In-reply-to: jacob@max.cc.brandeis.edu's message of 7 Sep 92 06:58:50 GMT
-
-
- In article <1992Sep7.065850.29923@news.cs.brandeis.edu> jacob@max.cc.brandeis.edu ( ) writes:
-
- Why is it that (some?) Focal Press books are so wildly overpriced?
-
- I don't know about this one, but there's 400 p. paperback on recording
- ("Introduction to Recording" or something like that) that's 60$ !!!!
-
- Hey, Focal Press used to publish Swine Nutrition magazine too. Do you
- suppose that this was as popular as Time? The fact of the matter is
- that most Americans are apparently too lazy or too stupid to want to
- understand digital audio. They'd rather spend endless years reading
- through conjectures in Audio, Absolute Sound, and Stereophile and
- still be just as confused as when they started (rather than one
- weekend with Watkinson, which would be enough for any reasonably
- intelligent layman). I have met the enemy and he is us.
-
- If the same goes for Watkinson's book, I'd suggest looking into one
- of Ken Pohlman's books.
-
- Ken Pohlman is a nice guy, but he is not an electrical engineer as far
- as I can recall (I think his education is in music and he teaches in a
- music department). I've seen his book and it really isn't appropriate
- for anyone with any technical sophistication.
-
- Another netter compared the price to the price of a good education.
- Since you come from Brandeis, you are no doubt familiar with the price
- of education. Consider that tuition at the big private schools is now
- about 1/2 the salary of an assistance professor. That means 10
- students could get together, and, for what they would have spent on
- tuition, hire 5 PhD's full-time to tutor them semi-privately in the
- comfort of their own homes.
-
- The Justice Department's victory against MIT puts this into
- perspective recently. Let's look at our colleges, which have doubled
- their administrative staffs in recent decades, before complaining
- about Focal Press.
-
- Philip Greenspun
- MIT Department of EECS
-