But the price of special editions is all over the map, too, and not closely related to the cost of production. It's all style, and flash (in the marketing, not the memory, sense), and gaming the system. It's setting a price point to attract the people willing to pay $30.00 for an album, and the people willing to pay for a gimmick, and the people who just bought a 128M flash card for $30.00 and figure the music's free, and the people who add up the $1.00 a pop it'd cost at iTMS and figure the flash card's free, and the completists who HAVE to get the special silk-wrapped CD case or the album in the funny-shaped box, and the collectors and speculators...
My original point was that this is a gimmick, and not a sensible idea for normal music distribution. So it seems we agree.
They could, if the price of an album was related to its packaging. But it isn't, so they wouldn't.
It's not normally, because the packaging isn't usually a significant cost (CDs are basically free), and the cost of packaging is pretty constant across albums. But when switching to a more expensive medium, prices must rise to pay for that medium. That's not a very difficult concept.
When the new medium has no advantage over the old medium (unless you were in need of a crappy 128MB thumbdrive) and lots of disadvantages - doesn't work in cars, lower quality, costs about 1000% more, etc - I really don't see the point. If they're that set upon "embracing MP3", they should cut the middleman and release it for paid download online.
A CD with 30 tracks on it in compressed format would not be expected to sell for less than (say) a 2- or 3- CD set with the same tracks on it.
Yes, it would. At least by myself and anyone else who understands the concept of lossy compression.
So the point you're missing is that there's no disadvantage to the free flash drive that's bundled with the 30 songs and additional material either.
The disadvantage is that the flash drive isn't free. You're paying for it as part of that $30. Whatever cut they're making now, they could drop the price by $10 and make the same cut without the flash drive.
You're comparing apples to oranges. A CD holds more uncompressed audio than a flash drive, and it can hold more compressed audio. Either way, there's no advantage to a flash drive other than the gimmick factor.
Actually, it is, from their point of view. The physical CD+case+packaging only costs a dollar or so to produce, and maybe another dollar for shipping and such. Retailers take their cut either way, whether it's Apple or Tower Records. So the record industry isn't making any extra profit off of online sales.
Last time I checked, CDs held ~700MB of data. In no possible way can you fit more songs on a 128MB flash drive than on a CD. And blank CDs are much cheaper than a flash drive.
As for the amount of music, I haven't seen any concrete figures released, but assuming 3 minutes per song (typical for BNL judging by a quick iTMS search), it comes out to 87 minutes total. That's barely more than one CD's worth. Add in the bonus video clips and assorted stuff on a data track, and they could have sold this package as a double CD set. It would have been $10 cheaper and much more useful. This flash drive release is nothing more than a gimmick, albeit apparently a rather successful one press-wise.
You can download and burn MP3/AAC/WMA files from wherever and the CDDB will recognize them. The only thing it cares about are the length of the tracks, and there's some flexibility even there.
The stick also includes video clips and other stuff. So figure 100 minutes of music into 100MB of space. That comes out to 140kbps. That's probably no better than the 128kbps AAC you'd get on iTunes, and it's far worse than the lame --alt-preset-whatever VBR MP3s that one can find easily on eDonkey/Kazaa/etc.
Any confusion between CSI and reality exists solely in the brain of a viewer that is either too ignorant to know better or too lazy to bother to learn the truth (and yes, I know that's probably most viewers).
True. But it requires much more stupidity to confuse Doom, computer-generated demons in a Martian base and such, with reality than to confuse CSI, which is live-action with real people and purports to show real cities.
the game informs the game player that predatory violence is fun, acceptable, cool, and risk-free
What "risk-free" violent games have you been playing? I get killed all the time in Quake, GTA, etc. And for the most part, the protagonists commit violent acts because it's necessary, not because they're having fun.
If you shoplift, and everyone else shoplifts, you get free stuff, but the store soon fails. Bad.
If you don't shoplift, and everyone else shoplift, you spend a lot of money, and the store STILL fails. Awful.
If you don't shoplift, and nobody else shoplift, you spend money, and the store survives. Good.
If you shoplift, and nobody else shoplifts, you get free stuff, and the store survives. Great!
Before anyone gets all pissy, I'm not trying to equate adblocking with theft, morally speaking. But the cause/effect situation is similar. One person shoplifting is not going to significantly affect the bottom line of a business, and will probably not cause prices to go up. But that doesn't mean shoplifting is OK. This is where the tragedy of the commons comes in - if we all block ads/shoplift/let our cattle graze on the commons, then there will be nothing left for anyone and we all lose. That's the flaw in your argument - just because you have a small impact doesn't mean you have no impact.
They're probably DRM'd WMAs playable with Windows Media Player, some portable players and yes, Winamp. It would make very little sense for Sprint to create its own incompatible DRM format.
The US has number portability as well, and unlocked phones are available if you want to pay for them. But 90% of service plans include free or heavily discounted phones that are locked to the carrier, with the condition that you must subscribe for at least x months/years.
iPods are generally pretty competitive price-wise. Sure, you might be able to find a 30GB player somewhere else for less than $299, but there are many that cost more as well. I bought an iPod because it's a great music player that does exactly what I need it to and doesn't get in the way, and it integrates seamlessly with iTunes, which is a great music player/database in its own right. The fact that lots of people think iPods are cool is only a bonus.
My parents have a Prius and love it; it's a great car for what they need. But I don't see how you could consider it "fun to drive". It's not available with a manual transmission, it's relatively slow, and while the handling is on par with Toyota's usual standards, it's nothing special. My ten-year old Corolla wagon (with a stick shift) is quite a bit peppier and much more enjoyable to drive then my parents's new Prius.
Obviously, the Prius wasn't designed to be a sports car, and it's not. It's designed to be comfortable, efficient, and reliable transportation and it does that very well. But I can't imagine anyone buying it for its driving characteristics, which are frankly boring, especially compared to the Ford Focus, Mazda3, VW Jetta TDI (which can get 40-50mpg), and other vehicles in its class.
AAC is an open format, at least to the same extent that MP3 is. Apple doesn't have any sort of exclusive license to use AAC. It's just unfortunate that no other manufacturers have chosen to support it.
Now, if we're talking about FairPlay files from the iTMS, then you have a point. But that's not what the parent said.
The PS2 has basically a PS1-on-a-chip inside it, and the GBA has a whole seperate Z80 processor for running Game Boy games (no, the Cube doesn't run GBA games). It would be difficult for MS to put an XBox subsystem inside the 360; they'd have to stick in a Celeron and an nVidia card at the very least. That'd probably add $100 to the cost and make the system twice as bulky.
All critical system information stored in an easily corrupted proprietary binary database, that's what's wrong. Even on NT-based Windowses, the registry is fragile, and if something happens to it the system is utterly hosed; it won't even boot to a command line in safe mode.
Now, if all you mean by the "idea" of the registry is a standard preferences management system, then there's nothing inherenrtly wrong with it, and other vendors (notably GNOME with gconf and Apple with NetInfo) have done it quite well. But the Windows implementation is horribly flawed.
It's absolutely insane that in order to get a new game to play these days, you have to have a $1000 PC with a $200 video card.
WTF are you talking about? Gaming PCs are cheaper than they've ever been. $1000 isn't exactly extravagant (that's probably about the average new PC price these days), but even that's more than you need. You can easily build a very capable gaming box for $500 or so.
Well, I think in practice it's often a little more obvious. If you have PGP installed and a bunch of gibberish emails with BEGIN PGP MESSAGE at the beginning of them, you'd have a tough time convincing people they weren't encrypted. Likewise, if you have TrueCrypt installed, a 30GB "random data" file on your desktop, and your document history shows lots of suspiciously-named files saved to a Y:\ drive that isn't currently mounted, you're in trouble.
Now obviously a smart terrorist will use harder-to-detect encryption, but these aren't the people whose files Britian is expecting to crack in 90 days. Less adept terrorists will leave evidence, and then the police can hold them while they attempt to crack it and prove their case.
Slashdot Mirror
My original point was that this is a gimmick, and not a sensible idea for normal music distribution. So it seems we agree.
It's not normally, because the packaging isn't usually a significant cost (CDs are basically free), and the cost of packaging is pretty constant across albums. But when switching to a more expensive medium, prices must rise to pay for that medium. That's not a very difficult concept.
When the new medium has no advantage over the old medium (unless you were in need of a crappy 128MB thumbdrive) and lots of disadvantages - doesn't work in cars, lower quality, costs about 1000% more, etc - I really don't see the point. If they're that set upon "embracing MP3", they should cut the middleman and release it for paid download online.
Yes, it would. At least by myself and anyone else who understands the concept of lossy compression.
So the point you're missing is that there's no disadvantage to the free flash drive that's bundled with the 30 songs and additional material either.
The disadvantage is that the flash drive isn't free. You're paying for it as part of that $30. Whatever cut they're making now, they could drop the price by $10 and make the same cut without the flash drive.
You're comparing apples to oranges. A CD holds more uncompressed audio than a flash drive, and it can hold more compressed audio. Either way, there's no advantage to a flash drive other than the gimmick factor.
Actually, it is, from their point of view. The physical CD+case+packaging only costs a dollar or so to produce, and maybe another dollar for shipping and such. Retailers take their cut either way, whether it's Apple or Tower Records. So the record industry isn't making any extra profit off of online sales.
As for the amount of music, I haven't seen any concrete figures released, but assuming 3 minutes per song (typical for BNL judging by a quick iTMS search), it comes out to 87 minutes total. That's barely more than one CD's worth. Add in the bonus video clips and assorted stuff on a data track, and they could have sold this package as a double CD set. It would have been $10 cheaper and much more useful. This flash drive release is nothing more than a gimmick, albeit apparently a rather successful one press-wise.
You can download and burn MP3/AAC/WMA files from wherever and the CDDB will recognize them. The only thing it cares about are the length of the tracks, and there's some flexibility even there.
The stick also includes video clips and other stuff. So figure 100 minutes of music into 100MB of space. That comes out to 140kbps. That's probably no better than the 128kbps AAC you'd get on iTunes, and it's far worse than the lame --alt-preset-whatever VBR MP3s that one can find easily on eDonkey/Kazaa/etc.
True. But it requires much more stupidity to confuse Doom, computer-generated demons in a Martian base and such, with reality than to confuse CSI, which is live-action with real people and purports to show real cities.
What "risk-free" violent games have you been playing? I get killed all the time in Quake, GTA, etc. And for the most part, the protagonists commit violent acts because it's necessary, not because they're having fun.
It's not like there's an unbreakable hundred-year tradition of only one Mario Kart game per console. Nintendo will do whatever they want.
If you don't shoplift, and everyone else shoplift, you spend a lot of money, and the store STILL fails. Awful.
If you don't shoplift, and nobody else shoplift, you spend money, and the store survives. Good.
If you shoplift, and nobody else shoplifts, you get free stuff, and the store survives. Great!
Before anyone gets all pissy, I'm not trying to equate adblocking with theft, morally speaking. But the cause/effect situation is similar. One person shoplifting is not going to significantly affect the bottom line of a business, and will probably not cause prices to go up. But that doesn't mean shoplifting is OK. This is where the tragedy of the commons comes in - if we all block ads/shoplift/let our cattle graze on the commons, then there will be nothing left for anyone and we all lose. That's the flaw in your argument - just because you have a small impact doesn't mean you have no impact.
Thanks; unfortunately the 128-char limit cut off the second "and I have promises to keep". ;-)
They're probably DRM'd WMAs playable with Windows Media Player, some portable players and yes, Winamp. It would make very little sense for Sprint to create its own incompatible DRM format.
With iTMS, you only enter your CC# once. After that, there are just two clicks standing between you and purchasing a song.
The US has number portability as well, and unlocked phones are available if you want to pay for them. But 90% of service plans include free or heavily discounted phones that are locked to the carrier, with the condition that you must subscribe for at least x months/years.
iPods are generally pretty competitive price-wise. Sure, you might be able to find a 30GB player somewhere else for less than $299, but there are many that cost more as well. I bought an iPod because it's a great music player that does exactly what I need it to and doesn't get in the way, and it integrates seamlessly with iTunes, which is a great music player/database in its own right. The fact that lots of people think iPods are cool is only a bonus.
Look at the asterisk by his name. He's a subscriber; subscribers can see stories before they're posted.
Obviously, the Prius wasn't designed to be a sports car, and it's not. It's designed to be comfortable, efficient, and reliable transportation and it does that very well. But I can't imagine anyone buying it for its driving characteristics, which are frankly boring, especially compared to the Ford Focus, Mazda3, VW Jetta TDI (which can get 40-50mpg), and other vehicles in its class.
Sure. In America, we err on the side of free speech. But if you can't provide evidence, no one will believe you.
Now, if we're talking about FairPlay files from the iTMS, then you have a point. But that's not what the parent said.
The PS2 has basically a PS1-on-a-chip inside it, and the GBA has a whole seperate Z80 processor for running Game Boy games (no, the Cube doesn't run GBA games). It would be difficult for MS to put an XBox subsystem inside the 360; they'd have to stick in a Celeron and an nVidia card at the very least. That'd probably add $100 to the cost and make the system twice as bulky.
Now, if all you mean by the "idea" of the registry is a standard preferences management system, then there's nothing inherenrtly wrong with it, and other vendors (notably GNOME with gconf and Apple with NetInfo) have done it quite well. But the Windows implementation is horribly flawed.
WTF are you talking about? Gaming PCs are cheaper than they've ever been. $1000 isn't exactly extravagant (that's probably about the average new PC price these days), but even that's more than you need. You can easily build a very capable gaming box for $500 or so.
Now obviously a smart terrorist will use harder-to-detect encryption, but these aren't the people whose files Britian is expecting to crack in 90 days. Less adept terrorists will leave evidence, and then the police can hold them while they attempt to crack it and prove their case.