Death of hi-fi predicted; podcast at 11

[unixronin]

"Apple Computer, on the bus, with the iPod."

According to this article, the iPod — or, more accurately, the current ubiquity of music-on-the-go via a small portable player — is killing hi-fi.  JVC and Kenwood just merged in an effort to cut costs and stay competitive in a shrinking and crowded market, and the parent company of Denon, Marantz Boston Acoustics, Snell Acoustics and McIntosh is up for sale.

Comments

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Condos are good for:
--those who prefer living in a city
--those who don't want or need a whole lot of living space, e.g. single people
--those who can't afford a single-family home just yet but want to get onto the property ladder, hoping to trade up in a few years. of course, this assumes that your property will actually appreciate.

Other than that, they're just plain annoying. Condo associations telling you what you can and can't do, thin walls, condo fees that far exceed what you'd pay on your own for snow shoveling, repairs, landscaping, and trash removal--given that if you owned a single family home you'd end up doing a fair bit of the labor yourself "for free". No thanks.

One peculiarity of Boston-area condos is that so many of them are located in converted two- and three-family houses. This makes the condo association very small, and it makes special assessments for repairs to the structure and/or grounds problematic. There's always one person in the group who can't or won't pay, and then the owners of the units end up suing each other and making enemies of each other.

If I'd had the scratch for a down payment I'd've bought one when I was 25, *mumble* years ago, but now? no way.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

Condo associations telling you what you can and can't do

Don't you get that in (some) suburbs, too? Coming from a country where homeowners' associations and gated communities are almost unknown, it sounds like hell on earth.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

It can happen in lots of single-family-home oriented suburbs as well. Much to the annoyance of folks like myself and unixronin, one common restriction is "no motorcycles."

HOAs often perform the same functions as a town or city government. In places like New England, NY, and NJ, where every bit of land is incorporated into some municipality, HOAs aren't that common. But once you get into the South and West, where there's lots of housing built on unincorporated land, you get more and stronger HOAs. I could rant for days about how evil HOAs can get.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Yes, there are neighborhood homeowners' associations too. Someone I know was commenting recently about getting warning letters from his HOA because he hadn't mowed his lawn in two weeks, regardless of the fact it had rained every weekend for the past three weeks. I've also heard stories of HOA people going around the neighborhood with rulers measuring people's lawns and issuing warning notices.

Personally, I think all of them need to go and get laid or something, or find something productive to do with their time.