Blogs will penetrate the masses much more than Mr. Gomes thinks. They are the journals of our age and may not be read on a regular basis by the masses now... but think about future generation being able to go back and read the blogs of the past.
Journals and diaries have fallen into disuse. Our old blogs and emails are what OUR children will be reading when we die.
I'm slightly stunned that the above view, absent evidence or reasoned argumentation, would be modded as insightful. It's an intriguing thought, but, to pick apart one underlying assumption in your bold statement, where's the basis for the claim that future generations will even be able to access today's writings on the Web? In what (expurgated) format? How might they be concretely associated with their authors in cases where authorship is uncertain or spoofed? Who will take on the responsibility of migrating content in context?
Working through similar efforts to preserve digital content such as archive.org or Google Groups leaves one with a sense that voluntary commitment to preservation is still very much hit-or-miss, even when motivated and overseen by a third party. Perhaps this, too, will change in time, but I don't yet see blogs as anything more than ephemeral in nature. I have doubts that even the most dedicated individual efforts to maintain, migrate, and archive contents are doomed to eventual failure -- either through excessive linkrot (which debases context for many blogs) or simple human mortality (is there any guarantee that and individual's writings will persist beyond author death in any meaningful way?).
Indeed. He sneers at graphic design and pretty much anything beyond plaintext, claiming that "gimmicks" like animation impair usability. What he fails to understand is that when properly applied, these very same techniques can aid usability substantially...
An oversimplification of his position, I'm sure...
Your second thought is the correct one: your opening statements are a gross oversimplification of Nielsen's position.
I've read more than my fair share of his writings -- and disagree with Nielsen on any number of points -- but he isn't opposed to paratextual content in the least. He is, as you sense, quite opposed unthinking graphic and interactive design, though.
Fact is, we need an entirely new set of standards that are complete and well written. Patching the existing ones hasn't been working.
That judgment is facile. Truth is, if you push any existing Web browser on the better written and more "complete" (er, least ambiguous and self-confounding) recommendations, they tend to cover a great deal of ground yet manage to leave gaps behind (some small, others rather large).
My own assessment may be as much a gloss as yours, but in attempting to corral these tools to work alone or in unison according to what passes for specs, too many times have I personally been let down. Browser camps need not take an all-or-nothing approach to recommendations (and when taken, it's inevitably a mess: Mozilla's early back-and-forth on "pure" HTML only; Microsoft's recent reluctance to engage more fully CSS 2.1 for IE7 because it wasn't "finished") but it would be nice for a change for any/all teams to better grasp what's more important in the real world and what isn't (Safari, I'm looking at you: CSS drop shadows are pretty, but can y'all consider implementing a little more of HTML 4.01?).
There is always ambiguity in a large enough recommendation or standard, but to cease improving what's already there in favor of something wholly new is akin to throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
For a website that is aimed at non-technical users, it's probably too early to ignore 800x600 usability.
...or those who are running at higher resolutions, but prefer not to full-screen browser sessions. Those types always seem to be overlooked when people start to throw about statistics of this sort.
I don't think it possible that any designer will think of every conceivable combination of bits that can be toggled in and out. Just get reasonably close and we can fill in the missing gaps.
It was more a warning to others than anything else. And (not to be a snot) but it seems odd for there to be a need for this contest if there's already that level of "filling in the gaps" unless this is all a fishing expedition for cheap labor.
Your interface should work for Logged in and Anonymous users.
...and I would think that y'all ought to share sample static pages
for subscribers and non-subscribers, as the former get little extra
"bits" within each page, too (e.g. 'Tags'). Right?
...and it would probably also be prudent to conjure a static article
layout that includes possible combinations of the markup users are
permitted to place withing HTML comments... I stress combinations,
as I can easily imagine a (re)designer depending on a cascade effect
that borks on nested markup rather easily.
Since such a large percentage of Macs are widescreen, I don't think I've ever seen a Mac game that did not support them.
There are plenty of OS X native games that don't support widescreen. The last one that I personally played was Tropico 2: Pirate Cove to give some idea of how recent a game can be, yet plagued with this issue out of the box.
I see that the Atari 5200 controller made #10. And that the Intellivision controller made #4. Where on earth is the original ColecoVision hand controller? Hardware-wise, the things were about as flaky as the 5200's (both wear out far too easily), and in terms of ergonomics, they far surpass the Intellivision's for crapitude.
Recessed keypad: check. Overlays that get mangled on repeated insertion and removal: check. Uncomfortable "flat-top mushroom" joystick: check. The ColecoVision's hand controllers have to rank up there as among the worst, and yet IGN overlooked it somehow.
Not even the firing buttons were properly designed.
As Consumer Reports wrote at the time of its release: "You must press the trigger buttons with the same thumb and forefinger that hold the controller, unless you rest the controller on a table top; pressing the buttons can be awkward and fatiguing."
And when the Coleco ADAM came to light, the only change to the controllers made by Coleco Industries was to the color. I think the Connecticut Leather Company deserves special mention for not only a terrible "first gen" design, but the chutzpah to recycle it for there "second gen" system. Gah!
No - the idea... is to HIJACK (!) the... A tag and perform a javascript option instead. If javascript is disabled or unavailable, then the original link will fire. They're not trying to get a value from the PopUp function...
I think you're missing a third option: that JavaScript is available, but popUp() doesn't work as intended. In the case of the original, nothing would happen. There's no telling what popUp() attempts, and so, there's no guarantee from generalized parsing of a call that it will succeed such that the original link shouldn't be navigated to instead.
And so, the small tweak offered. Trust me, you want to return the value of false (in this case, the measure of success) from the function rather than offering it regardless of outcome.
Re:Sample chapter! :D
on
DOM Scripting
·
· Score: 2, Informative
They talk about graceful degradation, using code like this:
All that said, Opera seems to have decided it's worth the effort, as you can download a couple of dozen possible RPMs -- though that may be in part because it's built into fewer distributions.
Probably because, in the case of Opera, there's no source to be shared to shift the burden of packaging onto others... I would think that's the reason why Opera does the work to distribute that many packages themselves, no?
For people who don't know, Civ IV, while mechanically a great game, was rushed out of the door unfinished. I would suggest that the *majority* of people who bought it had technical difficulties with the game...
Don't know about you, but the last three Meier-branded titles (Civ II - MicroProse, SMAC - Firaxis, Civ III - Firaxis) I owned all came out of the gate in a similar state: promising but buggy with an air of being rushed. I'm not so sure Take 2 really made things any worse in terms of game development. Can't speak to Pirates!, but the Firaxis crew has a knack for releasing undercooked titles. The technical difficulties quite a few are encountering probably has more to do with coupling the franchise to a new graphic engine and all its scalable 3D goodness than anything else.
Mac users have already been enjoying lightning-fast boot and wake-from-sleep times for years. IME, OS X boot times beat the living shit out of Windows boot times.
I can't speak to the Windows comparison, but on my side of the fence even though OS X wins points for its wake-from-sleep implementation, I've never experienced "lightning-fast" boots on my PowerBooks. There's room for improvement there. (And if the Intel PR is to be taken at face value, other benefits attach for laptop users through adoption of Robson.)
The trailing remark meant more that Robson -- if it does provide tangible benefits to users -- offers Apple an opportunity to exploit by taking the lead in implementing Intel tech and fueling its marketplace acceptance ahead of Intel's other customers. Instead of waiting for something like this to filter down from the enterprise level to consumers, Apple might now be in a position to bring it to consumers (or "prosumers") ahead of schedule, so to speak.
Or not. Robson cache technology could always turn out to be a bust on any number of fronts.
FTFA: "It's up to the [equipment manufacturers] to decide how it will be implemented. My guess is that enterprise users will likely see it first," [Mooly Eden, VP and GM of Intel's mobile platform group] said.
So, why not put out -two- downloadable versions-one free and containing the normal ads (such ads could even be localized by ZIP code or IP address), and the paid version ad-free.
Additional production, distribution, and support costs. That, and any such plan to repurpose over-the-air ads for legal media downloads would necessitate further wrangling over sponsor contracts, fee schedules, and demographic targeting (hint: it won't be the same online as OTA). If one is to "add ads" to online media, might as well treat it all as a separate ad buy and not futz with the mess of region-locked ads that somehow overlap with OTA ad scheduling. Simpler, no?
The 3d Realms website does not seem to timestamp its news posts - as I've not looked at it for about 6 years, there's no way of knowing how long that post has been up there. Could have been a few hours, a few weeks, 6 months, a year, or more.
I have two hopes for Civ IV: (1) That they contemplate an OS X port and don't treat it like the red-headed stepchild it will likely be, if at all; and (2) That the game is put together more cleanly than the string of Civ II-Alpha Centauri-Civ III titles, each of which were plagued with bugs and, in some cases, unbelievable sloppiness that eventually saw clean-up in patch after patch (but never fully). Love the series, more or less, but the games have never been standouts in stability, balance, or efficiency out of the gates.
I halfway fear that the ballyhoo surrounding the player modification system(s) is nother more than another "oh, shiny!" meant to distract from yet another patchfest for the game's core.
Ah, but who am I kidding? I'll probably buy it regardless.
you get the full purchase price minus a $1 service fee and the Amazon seller fee.
Uh, you get the sale price less the Amazon seller fee and a $1 service charge. It's not based off the original purchase price, as resold DVDs typically don't sell for anywhere near original cost to you. And who gets the extra amount Amazon reimburses for shipping (which is treated separately from its fees)?
Whomever is behind replaylink.com is basically printing out the mailer and charging you for that nicety. Why not sell it yourself and not pay the fee? It's pretty easy to list items for sale on Amazon, with no need to share information with another third-party.
It also seems a bit shady vis-a-vis Amazon's resale policy, what with a seller listing items for trade that aren't in its direct possession... neat idea, but it basically introduces a second middle-man (in addition to Amazon) to the transaction between true buyer and true seller.
If they were "clearly aimed at the US market", then they missed the mark by a rather wide margin, as both films relied on international popularity to make their money.
That's a bit of a stretch for both Titanic and The Passion of the Christ, don't you think? The latter was budgeted at about $30 million, and took in $370 million in the United States alone. Titanic, though budgeted at around $200 million, took in $600 million in the United States.
Yes, both films gained from worldwide receipts ([US+International gross:] Titanic - $1.8+ billion, Passion - $600 million+)... but to say that either relied on the international market to make money is absurd. More money, yes. A profit, no.
You probably mean The Godfather: Part II, in reference to the depiction of the early years of Vito Corleone (as portrayed by De Niro) before he became Don Corleone. That story was told alongside another narrative within a single film.
The Godfather, on the other hand, was a straightforward tale and not a prequel of any kind.
Can you image the expense to a single company (even Wal-Mart) of editing movies simply to sell a PG-13 version of an R rated movie? I would bet the movie producer created both versions and Wal-Mart chose to only market the cleaned up one.
Movies are frequently edited in advance into formats "suitable" for general television audiences and other venues, such as in-flight presentation. I would hazard to guess that in many cases, packaging for retail toned-down titles would cost no more than that of manufacture, as the materials have already been produced. With a marketer as large as Wal-Mart, the additional manufacturing cost is likely negligible.
The reason why CDs and DVDs are a valid comparison is that they are usually competing for the same consumers.
I would actually counter with the proposal that both movie and music markets are highly segmented, and that on a number of fronts they are not direct competition to one another for the same entertainment dollar uniformly. Other than, as you point out, the gross analysis of discretionary income. That is, the type of entertainment and utility of a movie on DVD is not that of a series of songs on CD, and determination of "best value" involves much more than simply how much either costs.
I don't believe movie studios consider which albums are about to hit stores when setting release schedules, nor do I think the reverse is true, either. That is, excepting cross-market promotional appeals such as soundtracks.
Your suggestion, though true in a very general sense, strikes me as a backdoor to the notion that albums and movies are interchangeable goods. They're not wholly so.
That's right. Look again. The soundtrack to the movie costs 150% of the cost of buying the whole movie.
I believe your second link should have been Who Made Who which appears to be out of print. I'm not sure where you're pulling a $15 MSRP on a non-existent album. In this case, I don't quite see the evidence, but I get your drift. Maximum Overdrive is a poor example, as its a dated film with barebones and underengineered DVD release to the point where the studio behind it is just minting money off a product retread. The price point is intended to hit impulse buys... who's going to throw down $20-$25 on a slapdash mastering of Maximum Overdrive?:)
You simply cannot convice me that the cost of producing a movie AND a soundtrack comes even close to the cost of producing just a sound track. You also will not convice me that the only way that the people involved with producing sound tracks can only make a profit through the seperate sale of those soundtracks. It's just not that big of a genre.
And I'm not going to attempt to convince you on those points. I would question your assumption that soundtracks don't show sell-through figures - look at the growth of the soundtrack as a cross-merchandising opportunity in the last twenty years and the number released (the burgeoning genre of TV soundtracks for teenie-bopper shows like today's O.C. is a good example) each year. Modern film/television soundtracks (and not scores, which are another matter) are the perfect example of two industries profiting off what both can bring to the table in a joint venture.
Seriously, I never claimed that neither movie studios nor record labels will seek to pocket as much profit as they can when given the opportunity. My point is that both parties, in seeking to maximize profits, cannot approach CDs and DVDs as interchangeable goods simply because they happen to utilize similar technologies. Nowhere did I state that the cost of their endeavors is equivalent, only that movie studios have already hit consumers up at least once (through theatrical release or rental, unless you're the odd duck who purchases DVDs blind) before the typical DVD purchase is made. This is simply not the case for original run CDs, where record labels need to profit off the media sale first and foremost.
The relation to actual cost is arbitrary, but it seems pretty clear to me that movie studios get a lot of people coming and going.
As an aside, this notion that DVDs magically all cost $10-$15 (as I often see bandied about in making the apples-to-oranges comparison of DVDs to CDs) is poppycock. They don't, with pricing over a rather wide range based on target consumer audience and the nature of the material (e.g. library titles v. first-run releases).
These are different products with different markets and financial dynamics. To take the price of a random CD and a random DVD (or some guesstimate of what they "average") and proclaim that the backers of one medium compared to another are more "with it" or "less greedy" grossly simplifies reality.
Soundtracks... ? You don't really think the record labels are the only ones who profit one way or another there, do you?
And in the sad case of Maximum Overdrive, the movie studio has the wonderful opportunity to rerelease it again as an SE or CE for another run a profit (hitting up buyers of the bare version for another sale), whereas the best the soundtrack can hope for is a reissue which owners of its initial run have no reason to purchase a second time. The mechanics of profit are simply not equivalent between the two media. There are similarities, and yes, both sets of content producers are out to make a buck, but direct cost comparison is a bit short-sighted.
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I'm slightly stunned that the above view, absent evidence or reasoned argumentation, would be modded as insightful. It's an intriguing thought, but, to pick apart one underlying assumption in your bold statement, where's the basis for the claim that future generations will even be able to access today's writings on the Web? In what (expurgated) format? How might they be concretely associated with their authors in cases where authorship is uncertain or spoofed? Who will take on the responsibility of migrating content in context?
Working through similar efforts to preserve digital content such as archive.org or Google Groups leaves one with a sense that voluntary commitment to preservation is still very much hit-or-miss, even when motivated and overseen by a third party. Perhaps this, too, will change in time, but I don't yet see blogs as anything more than ephemeral in nature. I have doubts that even the most dedicated individual efforts to maintain, migrate, and archive contents are doomed to eventual failure -- either through excessive linkrot (which debases context for many blogs) or simple human mortality (is there any guarantee that and individual's writings will persist beyond author death in any meaningful way?).
Your second thought is the correct one: your opening statements are a gross oversimplification of Nielsen's position.
I've read more than my fair share of his writings -- and disagree with Nielsen on any number of points -- but he isn't opposed to paratextual content in the least. He is, as you sense, quite opposed unthinking graphic and interactive design, though.
That judgment is facile. Truth is, if you push any existing Web browser on the better written and more "complete" (er, least ambiguous and self-confounding) recommendations, they tend to cover a great deal of ground yet manage to leave gaps behind (some small, others rather large).
My own assessment may be as much a gloss as yours, but in attempting to corral these tools to work alone or in unison according to what passes for specs, too many times have I personally been let down. Browser camps need not take an all-or-nothing approach to recommendations (and when taken, it's inevitably a mess: Mozilla's early back-and-forth on "pure" HTML only; Microsoft's recent reluctance to engage more fully CSS 2.1 for IE7 because it wasn't "finished") but it would be nice for a change for any/all teams to better grasp what's more important in the real world and what isn't (Safari, I'm looking at you: CSS drop shadows are pretty, but can y'all consider implementing a little more of HTML 4.01?).
There is always ambiguity in a large enough recommendation or standard, but to cease improving what's already there in favor of something wholly new is akin to throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
It was more a warning to others than anything else. And (not to be a snot) but it seems odd for there to be a need for this contest if there's already that level of "filling in the gaps" unless this is all a fishing expedition for cheap labor.
I don't. I did on launch, but not now.
There are plenty of OS X native games that don't support widescreen. The last one that I personally played was Tropico 2: Pirate Cove to give some idea of how recent a game can be, yet plagued with this issue out of the box.
I see that the Atari 5200 controller made #10. And that the Intellivision controller made #4. Where on earth is the original ColecoVision hand controller? Hardware-wise, the things were about as flaky as the 5200's (both wear out far too easily), and in terms of ergonomics, they far surpass the Intellivision's for crapitude.
Recessed keypad: check. Overlays that get mangled on repeated insertion and removal: check. Uncomfortable "flat-top mushroom" joystick: check. The ColecoVision's hand controllers have to rank up there as among the worst, and yet IGN overlooked it somehow.
Not even the firing buttons were properly designed. As Consumer Reports wrote at the time of its release: "You must press the trigger buttons with the same thumb and forefinger that hold the controller, unless you rest the controller on a table top; pressing the buttons can be awkward and fatiguing."
And when the Coleco ADAM came to light, the only change to the controllers made by Coleco Industries was to the color. I think the Connecticut Leather Company deserves special mention for not only a terrible "first gen" design, but the chutzpah to recycle it for there "second gen" system. Gah!
I think you're missing a third option: that JavaScript is available, but popUp() doesn't work as intended. In the case of the original, nothing would happen. There's no telling what popUp() attempts, and so, there's no guarantee from generalized parsing of a call that it will succeed such that the original link shouldn't be navigated to instead.
And so, the small tweak offered. Trust me, you want to return the value of false (in this case, the measure of success) from the function rather than offering it regardless of outcome.
Not to be too picky, but that onclick should really run more along the lines of (as a start):
onclick="return popUp(this.href)"
Where popUp() returns true or false depending on whether it actually fired properly. One can never be too careful...
Probably because, in the case of Opera, there's no source to be shared to shift the burden of packaging onto others ... I would think that's the reason why Opera does the work to distribute that many packages themselves, no?
From the project site:
"Surrogate files for online distribution were created with Sound Forge 6.0's batch converter (mp3 files) and Cleaner XL (mov files)."
The mp3s/webstreams are for the unwashed masses. The assumption is that the original captures have been retained in a more suitable archival format.
Don't know about you, but the last three Meier-branded titles (Civ II - MicroProse, SMAC - Firaxis, Civ III - Firaxis) I owned all came out of the gate in a similar state: promising but buggy with an air of being rushed. I'm not so sure Take 2 really made things any worse in terms of game development. Can't speak to Pirates!, but the Firaxis crew has a knack for releasing undercooked titles. The technical difficulties quite a few are encountering probably has more to do with coupling the franchise to a new graphic engine and all its scalable 3D goodness than anything else.
I can't speak to the Windows comparison, but on my side of the fence even though OS X wins points for its wake-from-sleep implementation, I've never experienced "lightning-fast" boots on my PowerBooks. There's room for improvement there. (And if the Intel PR is to be taken at face value, other benefits attach for laptop users through adoption of Robson.)
The trailing remark meant more that Robson -- if it does provide tangible benefits to users -- offers Apple an opportunity to exploit by taking the lead in implementing Intel tech and fueling its marketplace acceptance ahead of Intel's other customers. Instead of waiting for something like this to filter down from the enterprise level to consumers, Apple might now be in a position to bring it to consumers (or "prosumers") ahead of schedule, so to speak.
Or not. Robson cache technology could always turn out to be a bust on any number of fronts.
FTFA: "It's up to the [equipment manufacturers] to decide how it will be implemented. My guess is that enterprise users will likely see it first," [Mooly Eden, VP and GM of Intel's mobile platform group] said.
S.Jobs: "Oh, yeah?"
Additional production, distribution, and support costs. That, and any such plan to repurpose over-the-air ads for legal media downloads would necessitate further wrangling over sponsor contracts, fee schedules, and demographic targeting (hint: it won't be the same online as OTA). If one is to "add ads" to online media, might as well treat it all as a separate ad buy and not futz with the mess of region-locked ads that somehow overlap with OTA ad scheduling. Simpler, no?
*cough* archive.org *cough*
Check for yourself. The wording has changed on that page over the years, but the pre-ordering sentiment has been there since at least mid-2000.
As in, the article is a complete puff piece.
I have two hopes for Civ IV: (1) That they contemplate an OS X port and don't treat it like the red-headed stepchild it will likely be, if at all; and (2) That the game is put together more cleanly than the string of Civ II-Alpha Centauri-Civ III titles, each of which were plagued with bugs and, in some cases, unbelievable sloppiness that eventually saw clean-up in patch after patch (but never fully). Love the series, more or less, but the games have never been standouts in stability, balance, or efficiency out of the gates.
I halfway fear that the ballyhoo surrounding the player modification system(s) is nother more than another "oh, shiny!" meant to distract from yet another patchfest for the game's core.
Ah, but who am I kidding? I'll probably buy it regardless.
Uh, you get the sale price less the Amazon seller fee and a $1 service charge. It's not based off the original purchase price, as resold DVDs typically don't sell for anywhere near original cost to you. And who gets the extra amount Amazon reimburses for shipping (which is treated separately from its fees)?
Whomever is behind replaylink.com is basically printing out the mailer and charging you for that nicety. Why not sell it yourself and not pay the fee? It's pretty easy to list items for sale on Amazon, with no need to share information with another third-party.
It also seems a bit shady vis-a-vis Amazon's resale policy, what with a seller listing items for trade that aren't in its direct possession ... neat idea, but it basically introduces a second middle-man (in addition to Amazon) to the transaction between true buyer and true seller.
That's a bit of a stretch for both Titanic and The Passion of the Christ, don't you think? The latter was budgeted at about $30 million, and took in $370 million in the United States alone. Titanic, though budgeted at around $200 million, took in $600 million in the United States.
Yes, both films gained from worldwide receipts ([US+International gross:] Titanic - $1.8+ billion, Passion - $600 million+) ... but to say that either relied on the international market to make money is absurd. More money, yes. A profit, no.
You probably mean The Godfather: Part II, in reference to the depiction of the early years of Vito Corleone (as portrayed by De Niro) before he became Don Corleone. That story was told alongside another narrative within a single film.
The Godfather, on the other hand, was a straightforward tale and not a prequel of any kind.
Movies are frequently edited in advance into formats "suitable" for general television audiences and other venues, such as in-flight presentation. I would hazard to guess that in many cases, packaging for retail toned-down titles would cost no more than that of manufacture, as the materials have already been produced. With a marketer as large as Wal-Mart, the additional manufacturing cost is likely negligible.
Anyone confused by the parent should realize it's an allusion to Primer.
Sorry to rain on anyone's parade.
I would actually counter with the proposal that both movie and music markets are highly segmented, and that on a number of fronts they are not direct competition to one another for the same entertainment dollar uniformly. Other than, as you point out, the gross analysis of discretionary income. That is, the type of entertainment and utility of a movie on DVD is not that of a series of songs on CD, and determination of "best value" involves much more than simply how much either costs.
I don't believe movie studios consider which albums are about to hit stores when setting release schedules, nor do I think the reverse is true, either. That is, excepting cross-market promotional appeals such as soundtracks.
Your suggestion, though true in a very general sense, strikes me as a backdoor to the notion that albums and movies are interchangeable goods. They're not wholly so.
I believe your second link should have been Who Made Who which appears to be out of print. I'm not sure where you're pulling a $15 MSRP on a non-existent album. In this case, I don't quite see the evidence, but I get your drift. Maximum Overdrive is a poor example, as its a dated film with barebones and underengineered DVD release to the point where the studio behind it is just minting money off a product retread. The price point is intended to hit impulse buys ... who's going to throw down $20-$25 on a slapdash mastering of Maximum Overdrive? :)
And I'm not going to attempt to convince you on those points. I would question your assumption that soundtracks don't show sell-through figures - look at the growth of the soundtrack as a cross-merchandising opportunity in the last twenty years and the number released (the burgeoning genre of TV soundtracks for teenie-bopper shows like today's O.C. is a good example) each year. Modern film/television soundtracks (and not scores, which are another matter) are the perfect example of two industries profiting off what both can bring to the table in a joint venture.
Seriously, I never claimed that neither movie studios nor record labels will seek to pocket as much profit as they can when given the opportunity. My point is that both parties, in seeking to maximize profits, cannot approach CDs and DVDs as interchangeable goods simply because they happen to utilize similar technologies. Nowhere did I state that the cost of their endeavors is equivalent, only that movie studios have already hit consumers up at least once (through theatrical release or rental, unless you're the odd duck who purchases DVDs blind) before the typical DVD purchase is made. This is simply not the case for original run CDs, where record labels need to profit off the media sale first and foremost.
The relation to actual cost is arbitrary, but it seems pretty clear to me that movie studios get a lot of people coming and going.
As an aside, this notion that DVDs magically all cost $10-$15 (as I often see bandied about in making the apples-to-oranges comparison of DVDs to CDs) is poppycock. They don't, with pricing over a rather wide range based on target consumer audience and the nature of the material (e.g. library titles v. first-run releases).
These are different products with different markets and financial dynamics. To take the price of a random CD and a random DVD (or some guesstimate of what they "average") and proclaim that the backers of one medium compared to another are more "with it" or "less greedy" grossly simplifies reality.
Soundtracks ... ? You don't really think the record labels are the only ones who profit one way or another there, do you?
And in the sad case of Maximum Overdrive, the movie studio has the wonderful opportunity to rerelease it again as an SE or CE for another run a profit (hitting up buyers of the bare version for another sale), whereas the best the soundtrack can hope for is a reissue which owners of its initial run have no reason to purchase a second time. The mechanics of profit are simply not equivalent between the two media. There are similarities, and yes, both sets of content producers are out to make a buck, but direct cost comparison is a bit short-sighted.