JohnS Posted November 20, 2003 Report Posted November 20, 2003 Lord 4.4 is due out end of November. As a buyer of 3.3 I think I'll take advantage of the half price offer and the early purchase discount. The new edition features cut and paste, something badly lacking from 3.3. Any takers for my old one ! Quote
Michael Fitzgerald Posted November 20, 2003 Report Posted November 20, 2003 Ah, but selling your original 3.3 would be illegal - you are only getting that special price because you are *upgrading*. If you bought 4.4 at full new non-upgrade price then you could legitimately sell your full price original 3.3. And why is it that the version numbers are going up like that? Prior to 3.3 was 2.2 - does anyone honestly think there was a 3.0, 3.1, 3.2? They certainly weren't available to the public. More deceptive advertising on the part of Lord - who has a history of smothering anything negative about his products. Most recently, he had some influence on the IAJRC Journal not running a review that addressed faults in his database programming (later distributed via email by the author, Sheryl Smith). And while Lord is eager to email us with the hype of reviews of the CD-ROM (often written by journalists, not serious discographers), he makes statements like "I am very surprised that a man of your stature in the jazz community would even consider writing an article about 70 Years [the Bruyninckx books which were his direct competition] when it is not commercially available and in fact has been produced in a clandestine manner." - from correspondence to Barry Kernfeld, who in a review in Notes (journal of the music library association) proved Lord wrong on his allegations. I'll try to get permission to put that amazing article online. It originally appeared back in 1994 (and also covered the Bruyninckx books). In an incredibly detailed review, the authors (Barry Kernfeld & Howard Rye) concluded that they could not recommend libraries purchase the discography series on ethical grounds ("worse than plagiarism" is a quote). (There will also be a review of the Lord CD-ROM v.3.3 in a future edition of the Annual Review of Jazz Studies, published by the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies.) Kernfeld and Rye also discuss some of the flawed reasoning that Lord was using to justify his project. In my view, it all comes down to money. And Lord certainly seems to be raking that in - his is the only discography ever to be advertising with such a media barrage. Of course, the other discographies were all done by Europeans who were too busy typing or checking the facts to deal much with marketing. Will I buy the upgrade? Yes. It's the first time in over a decade that any of Lord's information will see correcting. We'll see how many of the mistakes (many copied straight from Bruyninckx or the earlier Jepsen) are fixed. Would have been nicer if he copied from more accurate sources to begin with..... BTW, for those interested in the alternative, I am told that Walter Bruyninckx will issue the final installment of his CD-ROM (which will include updates and corrections to A-T as well as adding the letters U-Z) in May 2004. Mike Quote
Brad Posted November 20, 2003 Report Posted November 20, 2003 Come to think about it, Mike, you're probably selling it is illegal. Lord probably only grants a license to use the material in the cd rom and my guess is that it's a non-transferable license. Quote
JohnS Posted November 20, 2003 Author Report Posted November 20, 2003 I don't know. Am I buying an "upgrade" or a stand alone product at a discounted price as I put my money up front and supported the product. Quote
Michael Fitzgerald Posted November 20, 2003 Report Posted November 20, 2003 Interesting question - I see that on the website there is mention of the "CD 3.3 upgrade" (isn't it ridiculous that this wouldn't be called 3.4 or 3.3b or something? So one user could be at 3.3 with the upgrade and another could be at 3.3 without the upgrade - that's just stupid!). I guess one factor would be whether the v.4.4 installation looks for an existing installation of v.3.3. But then again, Lord is now selling his remaining stock of v.3.3 at $199 and without the future version discount. I suspect a lot of these licensing issues have already been addressed by other software vendors such as the eternally "upgrading" Microsoft. Oh for the days when programmers wrote their code properly and efficiently and tested it *in-house* before unleashing it on the world. Nowadays we the public are just the beta testers and rather than releasing a bug fix, we get charged for an "upgrade"! Mike Quote
mikeweil Posted November 20, 2003 Report Posted November 20, 2003 There was a review full of praise in one of the last issues of the oldest German jazz magazine, Jazz Podium that made no mention whatsoever of his errors or the Bryuninckx alternative. Probably written by someone who never saw a properly researched discography ... Quote
Michael Fitzgerald Posted November 22, 2003 Report Posted November 22, 2003 Some further thoughts: I took the time to thoroughly investigate what is included on v.4.4 - For $149 (limited time offer to those who dropped their money on v.3.3 or even the poor suckers who spent all the money for the complete set of books AND CD-ROM 2.2 which was only available to book subscribers AND v.3.3), you will get the following additional information not included in CD-ROM 3.3 - Updates on letters A-Bou That's it. Lord tries to make it sound like you're getting more by saying that v.4.4 includes everything in volumes 1-33 (1-26 were the original books, all of which are on v.3.3). Sounds like you're getting SEVEN more volumes added! But 27 and 28 were the musician index - already on 3.3, 29-31 were the tune index - already on v.3.3. So a "significantly upgraded" software revision in fact only has two books worth of updates, plus an improvement in functionality - searching appears to be much better and copy and paste works. For me, it's only the searching that makes it worth the money. Less than 2 alphabetical letters of updates for $149 is a clear rip-off - but not as much as the books: book volumes 32 and 33 together cost $155. Man, the least Lord could offer us is throwing in the Cadence All-Years Index for free on the same CD-ROM....... Boy, I do feel sorry for those who bought the whole ball of wax: $60/book x 26, plus $115 for CD-ROM v.2.2, plus $277 for v.3.3, plus $149 for v.4.4 - those are the cheapest prices, let alone whether they bought the addendums - $585 total for those - even without them it's over $2100. And in terms of updated information, letter C is still stuck in 1992.... Mike Quote
Guest ariceffron Posted November 28, 2003 Report Posted November 28, 2003 you guys are so crazy take the 244 dollars and buy 244 dollars worth of jazz lps instead. or start a genesis collection. oh my god. what in the hell is wrong with all of you Quote
EKE BBB Posted November 28, 2003 Report Posted November 28, 2003 These crazy completists and scholars... BTW: I´ll pick the latest CD-Rom version for Christmas... though I´m not a scholar Quote
JohnS Posted November 28, 2003 Author Report Posted November 28, 2003 Neither am I EKE, it's a nice thing to have and I refer to it frequently. Quote
neveronfriday Posted November 28, 2003 Report Posted November 28, 2003 There's probably someone out there who is willing to, err, reproduce that one on one of those round silver thingies, just out of natural curiosity? I'd like to meet that individual ... if only to chat a bit via PM. You know, make him/her see the error of his/her ways and all of that. Quote
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