Yes, but if you've upgraded to HDMI then the DRM isn't an issue. You've got the secure path, the ICT won't be activated, and you'll get the full 1920x1080 signal.
The people that get burned are folks who bought HDTVs before HDCP/HDMI had hit the market; they've got connections fully capable of feeding 1080p signals in, but they'll be screwed when the image constraint tokens starts getting activated.
HDMI is DVI video + digital audio + a DRM system called HDCP (High-bandwidth digital copy protection). HDMI cables have a different pin-out than traditional DVI connectors, but there are adapters that can take one to the other. The DRM system is not required unless the media requires it (more on this below). So, for example, I have my home theater PC connected to my HDTV via a DVI->HDMI cable, and it works just fine. The digital audio on HDMI has the ability to transmit faster than the old S/PDIF system, but other than that it's pretty straight forward.
The HDCP DRM functions by way of a system called the image constraint token. You can plug an HD-DVD or blu-ray player into a tv via analog component (RGB), but the manufacturers of those discs have the ability to activate the image constraint system on the disc if they wish. Unless the player reports that it's connected via HDMI (and thus has the ability to encrypt the signal), the output resolution on the video is reduced to 1/4th the original (960x540 vs. 1920x1080). As far as I know, no disc currently shipping implements the constraint token, and the studios stated that they planned to hold off on activating it until 2009.
In the computer world, the OS as well as your computer hardware has to support the system if you want to playback video that requires HDCP encryption for full resolution. Many video card manufacturers are currently shipping cards with DVI that has HDCP capability, but you'll need Vista to enable it as far as I know. You'll also need a monitor or television with HDCP support. This usually means purchasing a monitor with HDMI inputs, but there are many that use DVI and support HDCP over DVI. One manufacturer I know of, ASUS, is currently shipping a mainboard based on the NForce chipset that has an HDMI output that actually combines the onboard video and audio into the single cable, but for everyone else you'll generally have to run the audio over coaxial or optical digital and the video over HDCP-eqipped DVI or an HDMI connection that isn't transmitting audio.
The comical part, of course, is that they've spent so much time locking down the video stream when it's far more likely that people will crack all of the DRM at the disc level. HD-DVD has already been mostly compromised, and Blu-Ray discs have an extra level of DRM that hasn't yet been implemented but is theoretically supported in all Blu-ray player. Of course, I'm sure it will be just as foolproof as all the other DRM systems...
At the end of the day, the principle complaint that people have with HDMI is that the need to handshake for encryption sometimes gets screwed up, especially when switching inputs. So, for example, most people who plug their PS3 straight into the TV do fine, but if you plug it into an audio receiver and plug the receiver into the TV, people may experience a blank screen when they switch back to the PS3 input because the system is convinced that the link has been broken. In this situation, you have to go unplug and replug the HDMI cable to re-establish the link and get your video signal back. Highly annoying, but nothing like the ridiculous "We're closing our online video store so your purchases are now worthless because they can no longer be authenticated." In my opinion, the benefits of the single cable digital audio+video outweigh the minor and occasional annoyance, although it sucks that the annoyance only exists because of the asinine requirement for DRM on the cable.
Wow, that's atrociously bad. I know people in the middle of nowhere, places where they have to have PO Boxes separate from their actual addresses, and they still get most channels in digital. I guess something big will likely happen for you before February '09, unless that decrepit tower serves such a small area that they can legitimately crank the power down and slide under the requirement.
The reason the government is giving out these coupons is because as of February 17, 2009, all full-power stations must transmit in digital only. Full-power stations are basically any of the ones you'd actually want to watch; community access stations are generally the only ones that wouldn't qualify as full power.
Are you sure you aren't confusing the lack of HD broadcasts in your area (720p. 1080i) for a lack of digital broadcasts (480i/480p)? I know plenty of rural folks who are able to pick up digital programming from their majors already.
Re:Are the underwear gnomes in charge?
on
Where are Wii?
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· Score: 1
Of course you'd rather break even on a larger number of consoles, but what about if your market projections show that $20 price difference (or even $40 or $50) won't make enough difference to change the number you sell? Just lowering the price doesn't close the deal for some people, and every price cut just means more games need to be sold to recoup the losses. As mentioned before, I wouldn't mind a PS3, but it isn't the price alone that's catching me. $500 alone doesn't make me cringe, but the lack of exclusives is what is getting me; without my 360, it would be a tougher choice because many games are cross platform. At $300 for the higher-end PS3, I'd be willing to buy, but I doubt that I'd buy enough games to justify the price cut.
The only other reason to cut the price would be the generate momentum on the sales, but the console is already doing that at its current price.
As for the cheap blu-ray players: Lite-On sells an SATA interface model for $199 (decoding handled on CPU obviously). What reason would Lite-On have to subsidize Blu-Ray?
Re:Are the underwear gnomes in charge?
on
Where are Wii?
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· Score: 1
I'm not asserting that Sony is making serious profit on the PS3 hardward here, merely that they aren't taking a loss with the expectation that they'll make it up on licensing fees. If you're amortizing the development costs, maybe, but all the rhetoric of "razor blade models" hasn't really been demonstrated in anything other than the original XBox. I've seen industry insiders support both sides of the argument in various books and web posts, but all things being equal, it would be hard to convince me that Sony has made this a policy. Again, we're talking about your original claim that Sony and MS did this, and my counterclaim that Sony doesn't necessarily do it after a very early point. I'm still talking about all of their systems, not just the PS3. But, since we're on the subject...
The only true feature loss - backwards compatibility - is something that consumers have actually shown to be somewhat indifferent to. It helps a lot at the beginning of a system cycle, but after a decent market has been established it's not as necessary as many of us think. You also have to consider that Sony is significantly more reliant on the third-parties than Nintendo or even MS, and can't count on as many licensing fees even with the same number of games sold.
We're talking about a game console that launched at $500-$600 when Blu-Ray players were going for $800, and at that point I'd buy the loss argument. Blu-Ray players now go for $300, the 2.5" internal HDDs can be bought at retail for $40 less than they were a year ago, the CPU design has been overhauled, and economies of scale are starting to hit. Add to that the fact that the PS3 is starting to find its niche; the exclusives are getting better and more plentiful, and the cross-platform games are helping beef up the selection. I won't buy one yet because my 360 already eliminates the cross-platform games from the consideration, but I'd seriously consider one otherwise. It certainly isn't doing as well as Sony predicted (I don't think anything could have met their predictions), but I think the serious risk of it actually being a failure are gone.
Again, I don't think the PS3 hardware is a cash cow, but those numbers start to add up to a scenario where it isn't a stretch to believe that they're making a few bucks per console or at least breaking even, and where the bean counters and strategists have decided that cutting the price further won't help the economic scenario. And again, I'll reiterate - I think that if you evaluate their strategy, it doesn't appear that Sony made it a general policy through the 13 or 14 years they've been in the console market of taking losses on the systems other than right around launch.
Re:Are the underwear gnomes in charge?
on
Where are Wii?
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· Score: 1
Sony's first fab redesign (the V9 revision) hit somewhere early to mid-2002, about a year and a half after the US launch. However, the V3 revision was the first time everything was placed on a single circuit board, and was the first cost-cutting approach. They also shifted manufacturing to China around that time.
As for the PS3, do you think their aggressive cost cutting efforts on the PS3 might have something to do with the $200 drop in price since this time last year? Granted, the $600 model had backwards compatibility and a slightly larger drive, but that's still a substantial drop. If they really were redesigning to keep from losing money hand over fist, dropping the price so substantially would still be a bad idea even if it was helping them remain competitive.
Re:Are the underwear gnomes in charge?
on
Where are Wii?
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· Score: 1
The only one that it has ever held true with was MS with the original Xbox. Their use of off-the-shelf parts and the fact that they didn't retain the IP meant that it was difficult for them to transition to lower prices. For proof, you need look no further than the disappearance of the XBox almost as soon as the XBox 360 arrived.
Sony may have lost money right at the beginning on their products, but that "fact" has only been shown through semi-arbitrary "back of the coaster" estimates. Sony designed the processors and manufactured many of the internals on the PS2. Because they owned most of the designs, they were able to do things such as combining processors onto single dies to reduce cost. Contrast that with Microsoft's design, where they relied on Intel and NVidia and thus couldn't be as aggressive with the cost-cutting approach.
The simple fact that both the Playstation and the Playstation 2 have continued retail sale for years after their successors hit should tell you that Sony isn't losing money on them. Plenty of people still like the PS2, sure, but it's not as though the average person who is just buying a PS2 is likely to go purchase a large amount of games to subsidize the "loss."
Are the underwear gnomes in charge?
on
Where are Wii?
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Urban legends tell us that console manufacturers make no profit on the console but recoup the losses on games. Of course, various articles over the years have debunked that belief, and the general message seems to be that Nintendo was making a healthy profit on the Wii LAST year when they started selling it. With the reduction in cost on the various components, it can only be better this time around.
The simple fact is that Nintendo has underestimated demand YET ANOTHER time. It's not as though they were the only ones who made this mistake - tons of third party companies jumped in around July and August this year to announce that they'd be releasing titles for the Wii now (presumably they hadn't been onboard earlier because they expected it to be a failure). Analysts have been continuously stating that the Wii would "lose steam" when people got over the novelty. It never happened. Now demand is through the roof again, and it's a tough problem. Getting the output just right for the holiday season is tricky - too few and you're left with the current situation, but too many and you'll have factories sitting idle after the fact. Couple all of that with the problem other posters have mentioned, ebay and Amazon "scalping" of Wiis, and you've got more difficult problem than you might first think.
Bottom line: Nintendo makes good money on every Wii sold. Every Wii sold at holiday season also likely represents at least one more wiimote+nunchuk combo sale, which nets them even more cash, not to mention the additional games. But obviously Nintendo would rather turn down millions in profit so that they can keep the system "elite" or some such business. This is starting to sound like the old underwear gnomes business model meme.
Think of this way, if it helps: RockBand is also selling out like crazy. EA and Harmonix have publicly stated that they can't make enough to satisfy demand. They make a profit on the package. Do you think they're not selling more as part of some brilliant plan to make it even cooler?
All countries have religious fundamentalists. While I'll grant that the US likely has the most in the western world (although there might be some Latin American countries that could compete in that category), it's not something that I think could be accurately described as prevalent.
At least as far as the ID/evolution nonsense goes, the debate exists because of the way our government is structured. The United States has always been about a sort of coalition of states who are afforded a greater degree of autonomy than in most places. The US constitution spells out all of the things the federal government CAN do, then goes on to say that all other power are reserved for the states. Granted, there is a large catch-all section that allows for all sorts of federal powers that aren't explicitly spelled out, but it still goes to illustrate how the systems is structured.
The system continues its reservation of powers all the way down to what is the smallest division in many places, the school district. A larger town or city may have several school districts, and each district is usually made up of a handfull of high schools and the lower level schools that feed them. I apologize for what probably seems like an unnecessarily lengthy post, but you have to understand the division of the system to understand where the problem comes from.
At a national level, religious extremism is "generally" kept in check. People could bring up a hundred examples of what they feel represents religious extremism winning, but there are plenty of checks and balances in the system that do keep fundamentalists' hands tied. This is not so at the local level, and the problems play out there.
Rather than having an education system where most decisions are made at the national level, we are the complete opposite. Take textbooks, for example. The federal government has nothing to do with textbooks. In most states, a list of "acceptable" textbooks is decided on by a state level organization based on criteria that state decides on, and school districts (the tiny entities we talked about earlier) then get to choose which of the approved textbooks they want to purchase. Thus, the battle over choosing a book that includes ID - or a biology curriculum that addresses it - doesn't play out at national level, but rather over and over in different states and districts.
And of course the smaller the government entity, the fewer people that actually vote for it. Presidential elections generally draw just over 50% of registered voters, Congressional (national) elections usually pull about 33% when they don't coincide with a presidential elections. Houston Independent School District, which is the seventh largest district in the US, pulled less than 10% in their last election. Those are registered voters, by the way, not all adults who would be eligible to vote.
The smaller numbers in the local elections mean more opportunities for an individual voice to be heard, and fundamentalist churches exploit that. They're great at acting as political motivators (even though it's technically against the tax code), and it's common for a religious leader to tell his "flock" to go vote for/against this or that issue. Religious fundamentalists, like retirees, are greatly overrepresented in government because they are willing to participate in higher numbers in our elections. Combine that with the decentralization of educational power, and you get to see the ID issue play out over and over again in various state education systems and local districts.
The next time you hear about ID or creationism being debated in the US, pay attention to the news story and see what's actually going on. It's not about national level issues - it's usually some school district somewhere having a debate about whether to teach it in their three high schools.
Please read the wiki again; the root of the term is the high stress caused to transportation workers. The first citation anyone can find refers to the traffic snarls and the associated headaches for traffic police, cab/bus drivers, etc.
As the wiki points out (and common sense will tell you), bleeding money for 11 months of the year and hoping to recoup it in the last one is one of the most asinine business plans since the "???->profit" joke. Similarly, the wiki points out that quarterly SEC filings from any decent retailer will show you that they do make a profit in the other quarters, as well.
Unless you're a Christmas decoration specialty retailer or something similar, waiting until the fourth Friday in November to turn a profit would be a recipe for failure.
I apologize for the tardiness in my response; I was busy consuming ludicrous amounts of Calories at the in-laws:-)
No one is arguing that all Calories are created equal; at least, no one who isn't part of some random fad diet. You (and Feinman in the second article) are arguing about something that people have anecdotally known for years - fat and protein keep you "full" for a longer period of time. Logically, it makes sense that those foods are, perhaps, taking longer to digest and those using more of your energy in the process. It's good to have verifiable, empirical evidence to back up that assertion, but it's not much new.
When people say "A Calorie is a Calorie," they're trying to say that Calories matter. The unfortunate fact is that both Taubes and Atkins seem focused on "replace this bad category of food with this other one!" when the reality is that we're eating too much food, period. 3800-3900 Calories a day is too much, no matter if they're from a food source that requires more energy to digest or not. Granted, 3900 fat and protein Calories might equal less internal yield than 3900 carb Calories, but it's still too many Calories.
The reason.com article cited by another poster is a spectacular summary of the real issue: people who are told "eat all you want as long as it isn't carbs" do far worse in weight loss than people who are put on Calorie-controlled diets.
Again, read what I said. A low carbohydrate diet is a good idea, as long as it's also a diet that has a number of Calories consistent with your exercise level. Most carbs that people in the Western world consume are straight up sucrose, and getting rid of those is a spectacularly easy way to make a balanced, low-Calorie diet.
In arguing about the efficiency of machines, you and Feinman are looking at the wrong point in the problem. If we assume that a person is a transmission, and that we want the least amount of power (surplus Calories that will become fat) leaving the output stage, Feinman is caught on figuring out how to introduce the most inefficiencies to the process. It's a great plan, but it ignores the fact that we're putting too much power in at the input stage. When we reach a point where the average person is consuming 2200 Calories, research on digestive efficiency is going to help us greatly in satisfying the human urge for certain tastes while keeping things balanced. In the meantime, though, "A Calorie is a Calorie" should be interpreted to mean "I don't care if fat or protein uses more energy to digest - stop eating so damned much of it."
You must be confusing the local news' overly-simplified reporting of random journal publications ("Coffee may be bad for you... we'll ignore the entire study and the stipulations to the findings stated by the researchers at 10") with medical research.
Does a pharmaceutical-coated stent produce better outcomes vs. a regular stent? Does keeping the hospital super-cold to ward off infection actually weaken patient immune systems? Does a new steroid compound actually help inflammation better than the old one? Keep in mind that you'll need to design your study to compensate for the fact that you can only do that research on sick patients. You still need control groups, and that becomes more complicated when you're talking about finding morbidity rates on people already near death.
On a similar note: doesn't the vaunted physics laboratory look like a similar gathering of firebrand ministers if you only take the mainstream news' reports of "random physicist has a new twist on string theory that will answer all of our questions!"
By the same line of reasoning, engineers aren't scientists since they are applying scientific principles to solving a problem - in effect practicing. That of course ignores the fact that the word "practice" has two very different meanings and people only confuse the two for comedic or dramatic effect.
Bloodletting? Are you serious? You might as well say astronomy isn't a science because people used to think that the universe orbited Earth.
Lobotomies - scientifically proven and highly effective as a treatment for all of the things they used it for. Granted, the side effects make it so worthless that you'd never want to use it, but the science to back up the how and why of the lobotomy works perfectly.
Stomach staples: work very well, as long as you're willing to recognize the negative side effects. Are you implying that there's no scientific rationale for gastric bypass procedures in obese patients? Sure, it would be better if people would lose weight the correct way, and in theory communism works.
Also, let's not get confused and thing that medicine=diagnoses only. Diagnoses as art? "I have a hypothesis that patient suffers from X... if I do Y then Z should happen. If Q instead happens, then my hypothesis was wrong and we'll start again at the beginning." I'm not really sure how you wish to define science, but diagnosing disease follows the scientific method pretty damned well.
Medicine is a non-science? Wow. I whole heartedly invite anyone who believes that line to go take a gander at any clinical trial design for any drug, device, or procedure.
As for the book, I haven't read it but I did read both the Amazon and boingboing summary and listen to the podcast. Taubes main points seem to be:
1. Replacing fat with starch is a bad idea 2. High fat diets don't have as much of an impact on cholesterol counts as we believe and that triglyceride levels are a better indicator of heart disease risks 3. Exercise isn't as good an idea for weight loss as we might think. (Because people might consume more calories afterward than they expended) 4. Atkins is a great diet plan.
Look, you don't sell a diet book or any book titled, "Stop eating so much, jackass!" What does sell well are systems that help us accomplish that goal and books that tell us why what we're doing is wrong.
Put simply, excess calories make you fat; it's basic thermodynamics and can be (and has been) proven with the simplest of experiments. It is easier to eat excess calories in a diet high in carbohydrates for a number of reasons. For many people, cutting those excess carbohydrates needs to happen because they aren't eating a proper diet. I've seen studies that indicate that the average American eats 3800 Calories in a day, and I'm sorry, but most of us aren't doing that with baked potatoes, whole-grain bread, or pasta - we're getting there with coke, chocolate, "coffee" drinks that might once have contained a coffee bean, and candy.
If you need a book to tell you to remove carbs before you'll start watching how much you eat, then I hope you buy that book now. If you need to be on a partcular diet scheme to force you to check the caloric value on a box of pre-packaged food, then I hope you start that diet now. If you want to build a strawman based on decades old medical advice taken out of context of what has been the constant recommendation for a balanced diet with a quantity of food suited for your activity level, then please, write that book as long as it helps people lose weight.
While there is some variance from person to person, a diet book that was two pages long could easily satisfy nearly everyone on earth. It would essentially say: 1. Burn the amount of Calories that you take in. 2. Guess what? You're probably eating way more Calories than you think you are. 3. Don't believe us? Track what you eat everyday for a week. Yes, that includes snacks. Yes, that includes really measuring how much of a given food you ate. 4. See, we told you you ate too much. 5. Stop drinking your Calories, dammit! Coke doesn't fill you up at all, but it's an easy 10% of your daily intake per glass. 6. If you sit around all day, non-stop, then you're going to need to cut back more. If you want to eat more, go get some exercise. 7. Lather, rinse, and repeat. 8. By the way, you'll probably start using fewer Calories as you get older. If you find this difficult to follow, start again at step one.
Intel graphics are already in Macbook (non-pros) and the Mac Mini; the low range of Apple products hasn't had a dedicated GPU/VRAM setup since the PowerPC days. In fact, there are fewer product lines with ATI chips than there are any others, since ATI is now only present in the iMac line of products and as a BTO option on the Mac Pro.
You have to go pretty far back in Apple's product line to find a point where there wasn't a pretty even mixture of video card combination available.
Amazon's "customers choose" promotion/vote resulted in a limited number of XBOX 360 Core systems (then retailing for $300) being put on sale for $100 on Black Friday.
It brought Amazon to its knees. Loading individual pages, even those unrelated to the XBox, took over three minutes in some cases. I'm sure the XBox was meant as a simple loss-leader like most other Black Friday promotions, but the "sale" resulted in an extreme difficulty purchasing anything from Amazon for the two to three hours after the sale price went active. Ultimately, I'm sure a lucky few got the XBox, but I doubt they bought anything else. As for the rest of us, it was a pain to buy anything else even if we wanted to.
The saddest part was that this was 2006, not 1999. I knew it would be the equivalent of a/.-style hit, but I didn't figure that a company as big as Amazon would have any problems handling that load in this day and age. I guess I was wrong.
A few weeks later, some proposed that Amazon used it as a test-bed for their hosting/load leveling service that they unveiled a little later, so it's possible that the promotion was worth it to them if that was the case. Outside of that possibility, though, I can't believe CIO.com left this example out.
Ah, but the Accord isn't remotely comparable to the SVT Contour. You're confusing my saying resale value is the only criteria (ridiculous) with using it as a tie-breaker when looking at different classes of cars ("a fact for consideration in that category.")
In 1999, there wasn't a whole lot out there like the SVT Contour. If I remember correctly Mazda was producing some tweaked version of the Protegé at the time, although I don't think it was the turbocharged Mazdaspeed model yet. There were a scant few 4-dour Integra GSRs produced, so that could have been a possibility. The closest thing might well have been the '99 Maxima SE, which was available with a nice, stiff suspension and manual transmission, but it was much larger and a bit more expensive than the SVT Contour. 1999 was a sad year for people who wanted performance with more than two doors.
Assuming we could flash forward to, say, 2002, you'd be presented with the same argument. Would you still buy the SVT Contour given that the Impreza WRX, the MazdaSpeed Protegé, and the Sentra SE-R V-Spec were available? You said so in your post: If there was a specialty model available with factory tuning that would hold its value better, you would definitely have considered the resale value.
And so we're back at square one - soul or no, the resale value is a definite point for consideration in a given category.
I haven't driven the charger, but it's not tremendously fair to judge cars based on rentals. Manufacturers often have special trim models that they produce for "Fleet" cars like your rental.
I don't know if the newest revision Camry has a "CE" model, but as recently as the '02 and '03 models, you could actually buy a Camry without Air conditioning. The "CE" model was missing some other features as well, and it was reasonably common for dealers to order it and install Toyota's aftermarket AC at the dealership in order to offer cheaper models. CEs were intended as fleet vehicles, and I have no doubt that they ended up in many a rental line-up.
Of course, you're right about not buying a Chrysler; Daimler-Benz's completely ludicrous "merger" with Chrysler produced negative effects for both parties. It's a sad time indeed when Mercedes are readily recognized as having worse reliability than American vehicles.
Stewbacca is right; this guy is quoting Dave Ramsey, and Dave Ramsey is great for people who have two financed cars and revolving credit card debt. Those people have already proved that they don't think in terms of math. We can only hope that whenever they finally get to the point where they CAN pay cash for the car, that Dave's other messages about investments click and they learn the meaning of the word "leverage."
To paraphrase the old maxim: "Absolutes are never right."
You're right, people do buy the car they want. I certainly did. However, I don't think most people have A SINGLE CAR that they want when they're looking; usually, they can narrow it down to a few models, and anyone who is reasonably intelligent does allow resale value to become a fact for consideration in that category.
In my case, for example, I wanted a two door, four cylinder coupe that was closer to the sporty side than the fuel economy one.
I looked at the Civic, but didn't particularly care for the dash or the seats; the Civic Si was selling for sticker when I was looking, and I don't pay sticker.
I looked at the VW Rabbit/Golf, but couldn't bring myself to risk the repair problems (The current 2.5L engine is AWFUL).
I ruled out the domestics and Korean models because of the resale issues and reliability problems on certain models.
Mitsubishi - reliability problems.
Nissan, Mazda, Subaru, Toyota - don't sell a two door coupe like what I was looking for.
So, essentially my choices were Civic, Scion, and VW. The VW would've needed an extended warranty purchased before I'd feel comfortable with it, so that deal was killed. Between the Civic and the Scion, the resale issue was moot, but I liked that the Scion had a much torque-ier engine than the Civic and ultimately settled on the Scion.
I didn't look at the Domestics here because on those particular models (Focus, Cobalt/Cavalier) the reliability ratings are not as good as I'd want them. If they were, though, resale value would've been an easy tie breaker.
Yep, you'll occasionally run into weird situations like that. The best example I've ever seen was the 1996 Chevrolet Impala SS. Chevy took the Caprice body (the old full-sized Chevy that was often used as a police car) and crammed the Camaro Z28 (or was it the Corvette?) engine in it. It was a 300 hp, rear wheel drive, full-sized sedan. People loved them, and they held their value ridiculously well.
A guy I worked with bought one in 1996, brand new, for $25K. He sold it in 2002, with 102,000 miles on it, for $22K.
Your car should never be financed at more than 60 months, 72 if you were absolutely insane and incapable of doing math (since the payment on a 72 month note is never much less than a 60 month).
Anyway, 5 years worth of driving should put your car between 60,000 and 75,000 miles (assuming 12K to 15K miles per year). Your car is now paid off, but if it's at all reliable, it will still work. Assuming you drive the average 12,000 miles a year, you can now spend almost four more years saving before your car even hits 100K. Four years of saving just the car payment every month - plus the resale value of the car - should get you a pretty nice ride.
On top of that, 100K isn't really a lot of miles for a car. I like to unload mine about that time because a lot of wearable parts are coming due - the 100K mile tune-up is usually a major cost, the car is probably about to have its second or third set of tires replaced, depending on what kind of tires it uses, the brakes (pads definitely, rotors possibly) will need replacing soon. The struts probably need replacing, too. On top of that, I always seem to replace clutches around 120K to 140K, although I've never before owned a brand-new car, so it may just be bad luck with prior owners. So like I said, I replace mine because there's about to be a ~$2,000 retail cost in the year or so after the car hits 100K miles, but it's not as though that's a huge amount of miles for a car nowadays. Just keep driving it and putting the money into savings, and don't get a new one until you've examined the whole situation and think that it makes sense to ditch your current car.
By most people I mean most potential customers for the automakers, since this post was about why promo pricing was killing their profitability. People who are buying $3,000 - $6,000 cars are not in anyone's target market other than maybe Kia.
You're right on the supply and demand side, but I think you've misinterpreted what I mean by the "dealers changing the price." Promotional pricing is itself created by temporary shifts in supply and demand; I didn't say that in my post because it goes without saying.
Say the Ford Fusion is selling slower than Ford hoped - obviously they'd slow production. In many situations, though, their union deals essentially "force" them to make cars. Ford pays the same labor costs whether or not their cars are rolling off the line, so they might as well crank out another Fusion and make a small profit on the sale plus the potential gains from financing. To sell the cars in the short-term glut, they offer $3K incentives at that moment that effectively change the MSRP from $23K to $20K. The problem with this scenario (besides their lousy profitability) is that the promotional pricing doesn't always exist. Even after they fix the supply problem, the cost of a Fusion is no longer $23K, at least not to any reasonably savvy consumer. This shift in cost trickles down to the used market and hurts prices there.
Toyota dealerships have a small effect on the used market, yes, but Toyota themselves (and their motor credit division) have a huge effect on the used market for cars with fewer than about 100K miles on them. Unless we're talking about a rare or unusual car such as a Supra, those cars' value is heavily influenced by what it would cost to buy a comparable NEW model. Toyota has a pretty good track record of keeping their pricing and financing essentially consistent; unless we're talking about the model-year changeover, I'm not worried that I'll pay $23K for my Camry while the next month I could pay $20K. Things don't work the same way over at Ford. Unfortunately, that means that when someone gets ready to sell their $23K-at-purchase Fusion, they could be trying to sell it in a market where the new Fusion goes for $23K or $20K and might have an APR that's 6% or 7% below the rate for a used car.
There is no shortage of Camrys (pl?); it's the best selling car in America. There are always plenty of them on the used market, and their price is very much affected by Toyota's decisions after the sale. If Toyota decided today to cut the price of new Camrys by $1,500 and make up the difference in volume, the entire sub-100K mile used Camry market would instantly shift about $1,500 down in price. Auto magazines and groups like Consumer reports have been consistently saying for the last five or so years that American cars have caught up in reliability; as for fuel economy, I think most Americans have generally shown that they love bitching about gas prices but genuinely don't care about fuel economy as a criteria in buying cars. Even if they have caught up, and even if the public opinion does shift to recognize that, people still won't buy domestics because promotional pricing (brought on by temporary gluts in supply) could radically change the value of their car. That's to say nothing of the fact that radical, random shifts in pricing produce a "wait-and-see" mentality for the new car buyer.
You're right in that supply and demand does ultimately dictate the cost - that's elementary economics. The issue is the way that the US automakers have chosen to deal with potential shifts. Retail products shouldn't drastically and unpredictably change in price from one month to the next, but rather than try to address the scenarios where their supply continues to press on even when it isn't desired, US automakers change the effective price of a $23K car by $8,000 from one month to the next (incentives plus financing charges). In the end, the used car seller isn't just competing against other used cars, he's competing against new ones too, and if he bought at a time when his car was at the top of that $8,000 difference, then he's royally screwed. "Firesale" prices, driven by uncontrollable supply, kill the resale value of American cars such that even if they were better in every respect than Japanese cars, they'd still be a terrible deal.
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Yes, but if you've upgraded to HDMI then the DRM isn't an issue. You've got the secure path, the ICT won't be activated, and you'll get the full 1920x1080 signal.
The people that get burned are folks who bought HDTVs before HDCP/HDMI had hit the market; they've got connections fully capable of feeding 1080p signals in, but they'll be screwed when the image constraint tokens starts getting activated.
HDMI is DVI video + digital audio + a DRM system called HDCP (High-bandwidth digital copy protection). HDMI cables have a different pin-out than traditional DVI connectors, but there are adapters that can take one to the other. The DRM system is not required unless the media requires it (more on this below). So, for example, I have my home theater PC connected to my HDTV via a DVI->HDMI cable, and it works just fine. The digital audio on HDMI has the ability to transmit faster than the old S/PDIF system, but other than that it's pretty straight forward.
The HDCP DRM functions by way of a system called the image constraint token. You can plug an HD-DVD or blu-ray player into a tv via analog component (RGB), but the manufacturers of those discs have the ability to activate the image constraint system on the disc if they wish. Unless the player reports that it's connected via HDMI (and thus has the ability to encrypt the signal), the output resolution on the video is reduced to 1/4th the original (960x540 vs. 1920x1080). As far as I know, no disc currently shipping implements the constraint token, and the studios stated that they planned to hold off on activating it until 2009.
In the computer world, the OS as well as your computer hardware has to support the system if you want to playback video that requires HDCP encryption for full resolution. Many video card manufacturers are currently shipping cards with DVI that has HDCP capability, but you'll need Vista to enable it as far as I know. You'll also need a monitor or television with HDCP support. This usually means purchasing a monitor with HDMI inputs, but there are many that use DVI and support HDCP over DVI. One manufacturer I know of, ASUS, is currently shipping a mainboard based on the NForce chipset that has an HDMI output that actually combines the onboard video and audio into the single cable, but for everyone else you'll generally have to run the audio over coaxial or optical digital and the video over HDCP-eqipped DVI or an HDMI connection that isn't transmitting audio.
The comical part, of course, is that they've spent so much time locking down the video stream when it's far more likely that people will crack all of the DRM at the disc level. HD-DVD has already been mostly compromised, and Blu-Ray discs have an extra level of DRM that hasn't yet been implemented but is theoretically supported in all Blu-ray player. Of course, I'm sure it will be just as foolproof as all the other DRM systems...
At the end of the day, the principle complaint that people have with HDMI is that the need to handshake for encryption sometimes gets screwed up, especially when switching inputs. So, for example, most people who plug their PS3 straight into the TV do fine, but if you plug it into an audio receiver and plug the receiver into the TV, people may experience a blank screen when they switch back to the PS3 input because the system is convinced that the link has been broken. In this situation, you have to go unplug and replug the HDMI cable to re-establish the link and get your video signal back. Highly annoying, but nothing like the ridiculous "We're closing our online video store so your purchases are now worthless because they can no longer be authenticated." In my opinion, the benefits of the single cable digital audio+video outweigh the minor and occasional annoyance, although it sucks that the annoyance only exists because of the asinine requirement for DRM on the cable.
Wow, that's atrociously bad. I know people in the middle of nowhere, places where they have to have PO Boxes separate from their actual addresses, and they still get most channels in digital. I guess something big will likely happen for you before February '09, unless that decrepit tower serves such a small area that they can legitimately crank the power down and slide under the requirement.
The reason the government is giving out these coupons is because as of February 17, 2009, all full-power stations must transmit in digital only. Full-power stations are basically any of the ones you'd actually want to watch; community access stations are generally the only ones that wouldn't qualify as full power.
Are you sure you aren't confusing the lack of HD broadcasts in your area (720p. 1080i) for a lack of digital broadcasts (480i/480p)? I know plenty of rural folks who are able to pick up digital programming from their majors already.
Of course you'd rather break even on a larger number of consoles, but what about if your market projections show that $20 price difference (or even $40 or $50) won't make enough difference to change the number you sell? Just lowering the price doesn't close the deal for some people, and every price cut just means more games need to be sold to recoup the losses. As mentioned before, I wouldn't mind a PS3, but it isn't the price alone that's catching me. $500 alone doesn't make me cringe, but the lack of exclusives is what is getting me; without my 360, it would be a tougher choice because many games are cross platform. At $300 for the higher-end PS3, I'd be willing to buy, but I doubt that I'd buy enough games to justify the price cut.
The only other reason to cut the price would be the generate momentum on the sales, but the console is already doing that at its current price.
As for the cheap blu-ray players: Lite-On sells an SATA interface model for $199 (decoding handled on CPU obviously). What reason would Lite-On have to subsidize Blu-Ray?
I'm not asserting that Sony is making serious profit on the PS3 hardward here, merely that they aren't taking a loss with the expectation that they'll make it up on licensing fees. If you're amortizing the development costs, maybe, but all the rhetoric of "razor blade models" hasn't really been demonstrated in anything other than the original XBox. I've seen industry insiders support both sides of the argument in various books and web posts, but all things being equal, it would be hard to convince me that Sony has made this a policy. Again, we're talking about your original claim that Sony and MS did this, and my counterclaim that Sony doesn't necessarily do it after a very early point. I'm still talking about all of their systems, not just the PS3. But, since we're on the subject...
The only true feature loss - backwards compatibility - is something that consumers have actually shown to be somewhat indifferent to. It helps a lot at the beginning of a system cycle, but after a decent market has been established it's not as necessary as many of us think. You also have to consider that Sony is significantly more reliant on the third-parties than Nintendo or even MS, and can't count on as many licensing fees even with the same number of games sold.
We're talking about a game console that launched at $500-$600 when Blu-Ray players were going for $800, and at that point I'd buy the loss argument. Blu-Ray players now go for $300, the 2.5" internal HDDs can be bought at retail for $40 less than they were a year ago, the CPU design has been overhauled, and economies of scale are starting to hit. Add to that the fact that the PS3 is starting to find its niche; the exclusives are getting better and more plentiful, and the cross-platform games are helping beef up the selection. I won't buy one yet because my 360 already eliminates the cross-platform games from the consideration, but I'd seriously consider one otherwise. It certainly isn't doing as well as Sony predicted (I don't think anything could have met their predictions), but I think the serious risk of it actually being a failure are gone.
Again, I don't think the PS3 hardware is a cash cow, but those numbers start to add up to a scenario where it isn't a stretch to believe that they're making a few bucks per console or at least breaking even, and where the bean counters and strategists have decided that cutting the price further won't help the economic scenario. And again, I'll reiterate - I think that if you evaluate their strategy, it doesn't appear that Sony made it a general policy through the 13 or 14 years they've been in the console market of taking losses on the systems other than right around launch.
Sony's first fab redesign (the V9 revision) hit somewhere early to mid-2002, about a year and a half after the US launch. However, the V3 revision was the first time everything was placed on a single circuit board, and was the first cost-cutting approach. They also shifted manufacturing to China around that time.
As for the PS3, do you think their aggressive cost cutting efforts on the PS3 might have something to do with the $200 drop in price since this time last year? Granted, the $600 model had backwards compatibility and a slightly larger drive, but that's still a substantial drop. If they really were redesigning to keep from losing money hand over fist, dropping the price so substantially would still be a bad idea even if it was helping them remain competitive.
The only one that it has ever held true with was MS with the original Xbox. Their use of off-the-shelf parts and the fact that they didn't retain the IP meant that it was difficult for them to transition to lower prices. For proof, you need look no further than the disappearance of the XBox almost as soon as the XBox 360 arrived.
Sony may have lost money right at the beginning on their products, but that "fact" has only been shown through semi-arbitrary "back of the coaster" estimates. Sony designed the processors and manufactured many of the internals on the PS2. Because they owned most of the designs, they were able to do things such as combining processors onto single dies to reduce cost. Contrast that with Microsoft's design, where they relied on Intel and NVidia and thus couldn't be as aggressive with the cost-cutting approach.
The simple fact that both the Playstation and the Playstation 2 have continued retail sale for years after their successors hit should tell you that Sony isn't losing money on them. Plenty of people still like the PS2, sure, but it's not as though the average person who is just buying a PS2 is likely to go purchase a large amount of games to subsidize the "loss."
Urban legends tell us that console manufacturers make no profit on the console but recoup the losses on games. Of course, various articles over the years have debunked that belief, and the general message seems to be that Nintendo was making a healthy profit on the Wii LAST year when they started selling it. With the reduction in cost on the various components, it can only be better this time around.
The simple fact is that Nintendo has underestimated demand YET ANOTHER time. It's not as though they were the only ones who made this mistake - tons of third party companies jumped in around July and August this year to announce that they'd be releasing titles for the Wii now (presumably they hadn't been onboard earlier because they expected it to be a failure). Analysts have been continuously stating that the Wii would "lose steam" when people got over the novelty. It never happened. Now demand is through the roof again, and it's a tough problem. Getting the output just right for the holiday season is tricky - too few and you're left with the current situation, but too many and you'll have factories sitting idle after the fact. Couple all of that with the problem other posters have mentioned, ebay and Amazon "scalping" of Wiis, and you've got more difficult problem than you might first think.
Bottom line: Nintendo makes good money on every Wii sold. Every Wii sold at holiday season also likely represents at least one more wiimote+nunchuk combo sale, which nets them even more cash, not to mention the additional games. But obviously Nintendo would rather turn down millions in profit so that they can keep the system "elite" or some such business. This is starting to sound like the old underwear gnomes business model meme.
Think of this way, if it helps: RockBand is also selling out like crazy. EA and Harmonix have publicly stated that they can't make enough to satisfy demand. They make a profit on the package. Do you think they're not selling more as part of some brilliant plan to make it even cooler?
All countries have religious fundamentalists. While I'll grant that the US likely has the most in the western world (although there might be some Latin American countries that could compete in that category), it's not something that I think could be accurately described as prevalent.
At least as far as the ID/evolution nonsense goes, the debate exists because of the way our government is structured. The United States has always been about a sort of coalition of states who are afforded a greater degree of autonomy than in most places. The US constitution spells out all of the things the federal government CAN do, then goes on to say that all other power are reserved for the states. Granted, there is a large catch-all section that allows for all sorts of federal powers that aren't explicitly spelled out, but it still goes to illustrate how the systems is structured.
The system continues its reservation of powers all the way down to what is the smallest division in many places, the school district. A larger town or city may have several school districts, and each district is usually made up of a handfull of high schools and the lower level schools that feed them. I apologize for what probably seems like an unnecessarily lengthy post, but you have to understand the division of the system to understand where the problem comes from.
At a national level, religious extremism is "generally" kept in check. People could bring up a hundred examples of what they feel represents religious extremism winning, but there are plenty of checks and balances in the system that do keep fundamentalists' hands tied. This is not so at the local level, and the problems play out there.
Rather than having an education system where most decisions are made at the national level, we are the complete opposite. Take textbooks, for example. The federal government has nothing to do with textbooks. In most states, a list of "acceptable" textbooks is decided on by a state level organization based on criteria that state decides on, and school districts (the tiny entities we talked about earlier) then get to choose which of the approved textbooks they want to purchase. Thus, the battle over choosing a book that includes ID - or a biology curriculum that addresses it - doesn't play out at national level, but rather over and over in different states and districts.
And of course the smaller the government entity, the fewer people that actually vote for it. Presidential elections generally draw just over 50% of registered voters, Congressional (national) elections usually pull about 33% when they don't coincide with a presidential elections. Houston Independent School District, which is the seventh largest district in the US, pulled less than 10% in their last election. Those are registered voters, by the way, not all adults who would be eligible to vote.
The smaller numbers in the local elections mean more opportunities for an individual voice to be heard, and fundamentalist churches exploit that. They're great at acting as political motivators (even though it's technically against the tax code), and it's common for a religious leader to tell his "flock" to go vote for/against this or that issue. Religious fundamentalists, like retirees, are greatly overrepresented in government because they are willing to participate in higher numbers in our elections. Combine that with the decentralization of educational power, and you get to see the ID issue play out over and over again in various state education systems and local districts.
The next time you hear about ID or creationism being debated in the US, pay attention to the news story and see what's actually going on. It's not about national level issues - it's usually some school district somewhere having a debate about whether to teach it in their three high schools.
Please read the wiki again; the root of the term is the high stress caused to transportation workers. The first citation anyone can find refers to the traffic snarls and the associated headaches for traffic police, cab/bus drivers, etc.
As the wiki points out (and common sense will tell you), bleeding money for 11 months of the year and hoping to recoup it in the last one is one of the most asinine business plans since the "???->profit" joke. Similarly, the wiki points out that quarterly SEC filings from any decent retailer will show you that they do make a profit in the other quarters, as well.
Unless you're a Christmas decoration specialty retailer or something similar, waiting until the fourth Friday in November to turn a profit would be a recipe for failure.
I apologize for the tardiness in my response; I was busy consuming ludicrous amounts of Calories at the in-laws :-)
No one is arguing that all Calories are created equal; at least, no one who isn't part of some random fad diet. You (and Feinman in the second article) are arguing about something that people have anecdotally known for years - fat and protein keep you "full" for a longer period of time. Logically, it makes sense that those foods are, perhaps, taking longer to digest and those using more of your energy in the process. It's good to have verifiable, empirical evidence to back up that assertion, but it's not much new.
When people say "A Calorie is a Calorie," they're trying to say that Calories matter. The unfortunate fact is that both Taubes and Atkins seem focused on "replace this bad category of food with this other one!" when the reality is that we're eating too much food, period. 3800-3900 Calories a day is too much, no matter if they're from a food source that requires more energy to digest or not. Granted, 3900 fat and protein Calories might equal less internal yield than 3900 carb Calories, but it's still too many Calories.
The reason.com article cited by another poster is a spectacular summary of the real issue: people who are told "eat all you want as long as it isn't carbs" do far worse in weight loss than people who are put on Calorie-controlled diets.
Again, read what I said. A low carbohydrate diet is a good idea, as long as it's also a diet that has a number of Calories consistent with your exercise level. Most carbs that people in the Western world consume are straight up sucrose, and getting rid of those is a spectacularly easy way to make a balanced, low-Calorie diet.
In arguing about the efficiency of machines, you and Feinman are looking at the wrong point in the problem. If we assume that a person is a transmission, and that we want the least amount of power (surplus Calories that will become fat) leaving the output stage, Feinman is caught on figuring out how to introduce the most inefficiencies to the process. It's a great plan, but it ignores the fact that we're putting too much power in at the input stage. When we reach a point where the average person is consuming 2200 Calories, research on digestive efficiency is going to help us greatly in satisfying the human urge for certain tastes while keeping things balanced. In the meantime, though, "A Calorie is a Calorie" should be interpreted to mean "I don't care if fat or protein uses more energy to digest - stop eating so damned much of it."
You must be confusing the local news' overly-simplified reporting of random journal publications ("Coffee may be bad for you... we'll ignore the entire study and the stipulations to the findings stated by the researchers at 10") with medical research.
Does a pharmaceutical-coated stent produce better outcomes vs. a regular stent? Does keeping the hospital super-cold to ward off infection actually weaken patient immune systems? Does a new steroid compound actually help inflammation better than the old one? Keep in mind that you'll need to design your study to compensate for the fact that you can only do that research on sick patients. You still need control groups, and that becomes more complicated when you're talking about finding morbidity rates on people already near death.
On a similar note: doesn't the vaunted physics laboratory look like a similar gathering of firebrand ministers if you only take the mainstream news' reports of "random physicist has a new twist on string theory that will answer all of our questions!"
By the same line of reasoning, engineers aren't scientists since they are applying scientific principles to solving a problem - in effect practicing. That of course ignores the fact that the word "practice" has two very different meanings and people only confuse the two for comedic or dramatic effect.
Bloodletting? Are you serious? You might as well say astronomy isn't a science because people used to think that the universe orbited Earth.
Lobotomies - scientifically proven and highly effective as a treatment for all of the things they used it for. Granted, the side effects make it so worthless that you'd never want to use it, but the science to back up the how and why of the lobotomy works perfectly.
Stomach staples: work very well, as long as you're willing to recognize the negative side effects. Are you implying that there's no scientific rationale for gastric bypass procedures in obese patients? Sure, it would be better if people would lose weight the correct way, and in theory communism works.
Also, let's not get confused and thing that medicine=diagnoses only. Diagnoses as art? "I have a hypothesis that patient suffers from X... if I do Y then Z should happen. If Q instead happens, then my hypothesis was wrong and we'll start again at the beginning." I'm not really sure how you wish to define science, but diagnosing disease follows the scientific method pretty damned well.
Medicine is a non-science? Wow. I whole heartedly invite anyone who believes that line to go take a gander at any clinical trial design for any drug, device, or procedure.
As for the book, I haven't read it but I did read both the Amazon and boingboing summary and listen to the podcast. Taubes main points seem to be:
1. Replacing fat with starch is a bad idea
2. High fat diets don't have as much of an impact on cholesterol counts as we believe and that triglyceride levels are a better indicator of heart disease risks
3. Exercise isn't as good an idea for weight loss as we might think. (Because people might consume more calories afterward than they expended)
4. Atkins is a great diet plan.
Look, you don't sell a diet book or any book titled, "Stop eating so much, jackass!" What does sell well are systems that help us accomplish that goal and books that tell us why what we're doing is wrong.
Put simply, excess calories make you fat; it's basic thermodynamics and can be (and has been) proven with the simplest of experiments. It is easier to eat excess calories in a diet high in carbohydrates for a number of reasons. For many people, cutting those excess carbohydrates needs to happen because they aren't eating a proper diet. I've seen studies that indicate that the average American eats 3800 Calories in a day, and I'm sorry, but most of us aren't doing that with baked potatoes, whole-grain bread, or pasta - we're getting there with coke, chocolate, "coffee" drinks that might once have contained a coffee bean, and candy.
If you need a book to tell you to remove carbs before you'll start watching how much you eat, then I hope you buy that book now. If you need to be on a partcular diet scheme to force you to check the caloric value on a box of pre-packaged food, then I hope you start that diet now. If you want to build a strawman based on decades old medical advice taken out of context of what has been the constant recommendation for a balanced diet with a quantity of food suited for your activity level, then please, write that book as long as it helps people lose weight.
While there is some variance from person to person, a diet book that was two pages long could easily satisfy nearly everyone on earth. It would essentially say:
1. Burn the amount of Calories that you take in.
2. Guess what? You're probably eating way more Calories than you think you are.
3. Don't believe us? Track what you eat everyday for a week. Yes, that includes snacks. Yes, that includes really measuring how much of a given food you ate.
4. See, we told you you ate too much.
5. Stop drinking your Calories, dammit! Coke doesn't fill you up at all, but it's an easy 10% of your daily intake per glass.
6. If you sit around all day, non-stop, then you're going to need to cut back more. If you want to eat more, go get some exercise.
7. Lather, rinse, and repeat.
8. By the way, you'll probably start using fewer Calories as you get older. If you find this difficult to follow, start again at step one.
Intel graphics are already in Macbook (non-pros) and the Mac Mini; the low range of Apple products hasn't had a dedicated GPU/VRAM setup since the PowerPC days. In fact, there are fewer product lines with ATI chips than there are any others, since ATI is now only present in the iMac line of products and as a BTO option on the Mac Pro.
You have to go pretty far back in Apple's product line to find a point where there wasn't a pretty even mixture of video card combination available.
November 2006: Amazon.com
/.-style hit, but I didn't figure that a company as big as Amazon would have any problems handling that load in this day and age. I guess I was wrong.
Amazon's "customers choose" promotion/vote resulted in a limited number of XBOX 360 Core systems (then retailing for $300) being put on sale for $100 on Black Friday.
It brought Amazon to its knees. Loading individual pages, even those unrelated to the XBox, took over three minutes in some cases. I'm sure the XBox was meant as a simple loss-leader like most other Black Friday promotions, but the "sale" resulted in an extreme difficulty purchasing anything from Amazon for the two to three hours after the sale price went active. Ultimately, I'm sure a lucky few got the XBox, but I doubt they bought anything else. As for the rest of us, it was a pain to buy anything else even if we wanted to.
The saddest part was that this was 2006, not 1999. I knew it would be the equivalent of a
A few weeks later, some proposed that Amazon used it as a test-bed for their hosting/load leveling service that they unveiled a little later, so it's possible that the promotion was worth it to them if that was the case. Outside of that possibility, though, I can't believe CIO.com left this example out.
Ah, but the Accord isn't remotely comparable to the SVT Contour. You're confusing my saying resale value is the only criteria (ridiculous) with using it as a tie-breaker when looking at different classes of cars ("a fact for consideration in that category.")
In 1999, there wasn't a whole lot out there like the SVT Contour. If I remember correctly Mazda was producing some tweaked version of the Protegé at the time, although I don't think it was the turbocharged Mazdaspeed model yet. There were a scant few 4-dour Integra GSRs produced, so that could have been a possibility. The closest thing might well have been the '99 Maxima SE, which was available with a nice, stiff suspension and manual transmission, but it was much larger and a bit more expensive than the SVT Contour. 1999 was a sad year for people who wanted performance with more than two doors.
Assuming we could flash forward to, say, 2002, you'd be presented with the same argument. Would you still buy the SVT Contour given that the Impreza WRX, the MazdaSpeed Protegé, and the Sentra SE-R V-Spec were available? You said so in your post: If there was a specialty model available with factory tuning that would hold its value better, you would definitely have considered the resale value.
And so we're back at square one - soul or no, the resale value is a definite point for consideration in a given category.
I haven't driven the charger, but it's not tremendously fair to judge cars based on rentals. Manufacturers often have special trim models that they produce for "Fleet" cars like your rental.
I don't know if the newest revision Camry has a "CE" model, but as recently as the '02 and '03 models, you could actually buy a Camry without Air conditioning. The "CE" model was missing some other features as well, and it was reasonably common for dealers to order it and install Toyota's aftermarket AC at the dealership in order to offer cheaper models. CEs were intended as fleet vehicles, and I have no doubt that they ended up in many a rental line-up.
Of course, you're right about not buying a Chrysler; Daimler-Benz's completely ludicrous "merger" with Chrysler produced negative effects for both parties. It's a sad time indeed when Mercedes are readily recognized as having worse reliability than American vehicles.
Stewbacca is right; this guy is quoting Dave Ramsey, and Dave Ramsey is great for people who have two financed cars and revolving credit card debt. Those people have already proved that they don't think in terms of math. We can only hope that whenever they finally get to the point where they CAN pay cash for the car, that Dave's other messages about investments click and they learn the meaning of the word "leverage."
To paraphrase the old maxim: "Absolutes are never right."
You're right, people do buy the car they want. I certainly did. However, I don't think most people have A SINGLE CAR that they want when they're looking; usually, they can narrow it down to a few models, and anyone who is reasonably intelligent does allow resale value to become a fact for consideration in that category.
In my case, for example, I wanted a two door, four cylinder coupe that was closer to the sporty side than the fuel economy one.
I looked at the Civic, but didn't particularly care for the dash or the seats; the Civic Si was selling for sticker when I was looking, and I don't pay sticker.
I looked at the VW Rabbit/Golf, but couldn't bring myself to risk the repair problems (The current 2.5L engine is AWFUL).
I ruled out the domestics and Korean models because of the resale issues and reliability problems on certain models.
Mitsubishi - reliability problems.
Nissan, Mazda, Subaru, Toyota - don't sell a two door coupe like what I was looking for.
So, essentially my choices were Civic, Scion, and VW. The VW would've needed an extended warranty purchased before I'd feel comfortable with it, so that deal was killed. Between the Civic and the Scion, the resale issue was moot, but I liked that the Scion had a much torque-ier engine than the Civic and ultimately settled on the Scion.
I didn't look at the Domestics here because on those particular models (Focus, Cobalt/Cavalier) the reliability ratings are not as good as I'd want them. If they were, though, resale value would've been an easy tie breaker.
Yep, you'll occasionally run into weird situations like that. The best example I've ever seen was the 1996 Chevrolet Impala SS. Chevy took the Caprice body (the old full-sized Chevy that was often used as a police car) and crammed the Camaro Z28 (or was it the Corvette?) engine in it. It was a 300 hp, rear wheel drive, full-sized sedan. People loved them, and they held their value ridiculously well.
A guy I worked with bought one in 1996, brand new, for $25K. He sold it in 2002, with 102,000 miles on it, for $22K.
Your car should never be financed at more than 60 months, 72 if you were absolutely insane and incapable of doing math (since the payment on a 72 month note is never much less than a 60 month).
Anyway, 5 years worth of driving should put your car between 60,000 and 75,000 miles (assuming 12K to 15K miles per year). Your car is now paid off, but if it's at all reliable, it will still work. Assuming you drive the average 12,000 miles a year, you can now spend almost four more years saving before your car even hits 100K. Four years of saving just the car payment every month - plus the resale value of the car - should get you a pretty nice ride.
On top of that, 100K isn't really a lot of miles for a car. I like to unload mine about that time because a lot of wearable parts are coming due - the 100K mile tune-up is usually a major cost, the car is probably about to have its second or third set of tires replaced, depending on what kind of tires it uses, the brakes (pads definitely, rotors possibly) will need replacing soon. The struts probably need replacing, too. On top of that, I always seem to replace clutches around 120K to 140K, although I've never before owned a brand-new car, so it may just be bad luck with prior owners. So like I said, I replace mine because there's about to be a ~$2,000 retail cost in the year or so after the car hits 100K miles, but it's not as though that's a huge amount of miles for a car nowadays. Just keep driving it and putting the money into savings, and don't get a new one until you've examined the whole situation and think that it makes sense to ditch your current car.
By most people I mean most potential customers for the automakers, since this post was about why promo pricing was killing their profitability. People who are buying $3,000 - $6,000 cars are not in anyone's target market other than maybe Kia.
You're right on the supply and demand side, but I think you've misinterpreted what I mean by the "dealers changing the price." Promotional pricing is itself created by temporary shifts in supply and demand; I didn't say that in my post because it goes without saying.
Say the Ford Fusion is selling slower than Ford hoped - obviously they'd slow production. In many situations, though, their union deals essentially "force" them to make cars. Ford pays the same labor costs whether or not their cars are rolling off the line, so they might as well crank out another Fusion and make a small profit on the sale plus the potential gains from financing. To sell the cars in the short-term glut, they offer $3K incentives at that moment that effectively change the MSRP from $23K to $20K. The problem with this scenario (besides their lousy profitability) is that the promotional pricing doesn't always exist. Even after they fix the supply problem, the cost of a Fusion is no longer $23K, at least not to any reasonably savvy consumer. This shift in cost trickles down to the used market and hurts prices there.
Toyota dealerships have a small effect on the used market, yes, but Toyota themselves (and their motor credit division) have a huge effect on the used market for cars with fewer than about 100K miles on them. Unless we're talking about a rare or unusual car such as a Supra, those cars' value is heavily influenced by what it would cost to buy a comparable NEW model. Toyota has a pretty good track record of keeping their pricing and financing essentially consistent; unless we're talking about the model-year changeover, I'm not worried that I'll pay $23K for my Camry while the next month I could pay $20K. Things don't work the same way over at Ford. Unfortunately, that means that when someone gets ready to sell their $23K-at-purchase Fusion, they could be trying to sell it in a market where the new Fusion goes for $23K or $20K and might have an APR that's 6% or 7% below the rate for a used car.
There is no shortage of Camrys (pl?); it's the best selling car in America. There are always plenty of them on the used market, and their price is very much affected by Toyota's decisions after the sale. If Toyota decided today to cut the price of new Camrys by $1,500 and make up the difference in volume, the entire sub-100K mile used Camry market would instantly shift about $1,500 down in price. Auto magazines and groups like Consumer reports have been consistently saying for the last five or so years that American cars have caught up in reliability; as for fuel economy, I think most Americans have generally shown that they love bitching about gas prices but genuinely don't care about fuel economy as a criteria in buying cars. Even if they have caught up, and even if the public opinion does shift to recognize that, people still won't buy domestics because promotional pricing (brought on by temporary gluts in supply) could radically change the value of their car. That's to say nothing of the fact that radical, random shifts in pricing produce a "wait-and-see" mentality for the new car buyer.
You're right in that supply and demand does ultimately dictate the cost - that's elementary economics. The issue is the way that the US automakers have chosen to deal with potential shifts. Retail products shouldn't drastically and unpredictably change in price from one month to the next, but rather than try to address the scenarios where their supply continues to press on even when it isn't desired, US automakers change the effective price of a $23K car by $8,000 from one month to the next (incentives plus financing charges). In the end, the used car seller isn't just competing against other used cars, he's competing against new ones too, and if he bought at a time when his car was at the top of that $8,000 difference, then he's royally screwed. "Firesale" prices, driven by uncontrollable supply, kill the resale value of American cars such that even if they were better in every respect than Japanese cars, they'd still be a terrible deal.