iTunes Plus: Major Yawnage.

The good news is that iTunes Plus is sans-DRM. This is smart. This is helpful. This is a good thing.

The stupid news is the quality argument. From Apple’s press release:

featuring high quality 256 kbps AAC encoding for audio quality virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings

Gag me with a spoon. For the mathematically-uninclined (or the “just plain lazy”), let me lay out some math. The music on the CDs you buy at the store is at 1,411 kbps. The music is often recorded in the studio at much higher rates – four times that or more. The studios don’t do that for their health or to keep the disk drive industry happy. For those in the audience keeping score, 256 is about 1/5th of 1,411. Good lossless compression algorithms use variable rates that range between 500 kbps and 1,000 kbps. So at best iTunes Plus is “half of lossless” but on average it’s more like a third of lossless, and at worst it’s still a quarter of lossless.

I know I can be cynical sometimes, but as far as the ‘quality’ issues are concerned, this smells like a marketing gimmick. First, Apple got you to spend $0.99 per track for a whole bunch of your favorite tunes in crap-quality. Now they’re trying to get you to spend $1.29 per track for better quality versions of your favorite tracks. May I be so brash as to predict that in early 2008, Apple will be asking you to re-purchase all your favorites again in “iTunes PlusPlus” to be released in early 2008 for “audiophile quality 384kbps” tracks at $1.49 each?

Truth in advertising: iTunes Plus is about charging higher prices so a select group of publishers can get higher payments per song in exchange for dropping DRM requirements. The rest of it is garbage.

JST SY N T LSSY MSC!

Robert Reich and IPOs

Robert Reich had an interesting piece on NPR Marketplace today. You can read the transcript or listen to it on the NPR site. I think Reich is a scary smart guy. But I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve agreed with his conclusions.

The net-net of his piece was that the stock market run-up over the past few years is because of PE and buy-backs. Specifically, at an ultra-macro level, the PE folks and corporations via buy-backs are taking public companies out of play, and thus reducing the amount of stock instruments available to be purchased.

Last year, corporate buybacks and leveraged buyouts totaled about $600 billion. That was roughly 3.5 percent of the whole value of the American stock market. At the rate buybacks and buyouts are going this year, the total is going to be close to about $900 billion. That’s another 4 .5 percent of U.S. market capitalization taken out of circulation.

Too much money pursuing too few stocks means higher stock prices. On the face of it, the argument seems to not be illogical.

But what occurred to me after I thought about this for a minute was that if the problem is simply supply and demand for fungible instruments, why hasn’t the IPO market gone berzerk? Here’s a quick stat from Hoovers:

Obviously, these numbers are relatively flat. Also note that these are pricings, not issuances. Furthermore, if the US stock markets represents $20T in value (Reich’s 4.5% number being $900B) then the IPOs represent nothing more than a rounding error – maybe, at the outside, one quarter of one percent of the value of the US stock markets.

He’s smarter than me, but I’m not buying his argument on this one. Anyone care to tell me why I’m wrong?

This is Cool!

I’ll be the first guy to admit that I can be a tad jaded about “new stuff” on the Internet. I’ve been “on the ‘net” now for over twenty years – maybe I’m just getting old . But every once in a while, something really fun pops into the mix…

The site EveryScape has done a teaser launch of what is basically photo-realistic 3D real virtual worlds. If you can’t parse that, it means that they have 3D virtual worlds you can walk around that are in fact real world places. Right now you can hang out in Union Square in SF – even hit some stores!

Huge opportunities for this tech. Neat stuff! I’m jonesing for Yerba Buena Park SOMA – I remember when they built it, and I’ve always enjoyed relaxing there.

Who is Hilary Courting?

I was pointed to this article covering Senator Clinton’s visit to NH today, where she had a lot to say about our country’s economic situation, including these snippets:

“I believe our government can once again work for all Americans. It can promote the great American tradition of opportunity for all and special privileges for none.”

“There is no greater force for economic growth than free markets. But markets work best with rules that promote our values, protect our workers and give all people a chance to succeed…”

“Fairness doesn’t just happen. It requires the right government policies.”

Beyond education, Clinton said she would reduce special breaks for corporations, eliminate tax incentives for companies that ship jobs overseas and open up CEO pay to greater public scrutiny.

High on rhetoric and low on detail, as stump speeches are wont to be. But to this reader, it sounds a bit too much like what Hugo Chavez is touting. Socialism doesn’t work. That horse left the barn a few millenia ago.

I know Senator Clinton is way smarter than to believe this sort of claptrap. So who is she courting? The cynic in me says that the most likely constituency is the half of the nation that doesn’t pay taxes. Sad, unfortunate, and scary state of affairs.

Happy Birthday Chron X !!!

Way back in 1996 – an eternity ago – I started a company called Genetic Anomalies with a few other nutcases. Chron X was our first product. It is an online strategy game that pioneered the “virtual property” economic model. Chron X went live ten years ago on 05/26/1997.

I’m proud to say that the game has been in operation since launch. I don’t have a clue what sort of stats exist for online game endurance, but I’m sure ten years is nothing to sneeze at! Genetic Anomalies operated the product through 2002 or so when it was taken over by a former employee, who has managed it since. It was announced this weekend that a new group was taking the reins, with plans to materially improve and extend it.

Talk about legs!

Kudos and congrats to the crew that launched Chron X way back when, including George, Michael, David, and the numerous stupendous artists and beta testers. Fond memories, all. Kudos and congrats to Andrea and BSRD crew for carrying the baton for the last bunch of years. And best wishes to the crew at Darkened Sky in their efforts to take it forward!

Smart People, Dumb Groups, Wise Crowds

I was having a few conversations this past week about odd or negative group behaviors in history that were brought into focus by, of all things, a line from the film Men In Black:

A person is smart. People are dumb. Everything they’ve ever ‘known’ has been proven to be wrong. A thousand years ago everybody knew as a fact, that the earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on it. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.

At first blush, one might argue that the writers of the film had obviously never read Suroweicki’s The Wisdom of Crowds, but if you think about it a bit more deeply, one can argue there is probably a bell curve of intelligence as it pertains to groups.

Or more accurately, a bell curve for the potential for things to go awry in groupthink. Jamestown and the Nazis are two particularly egregious examples of ‘dumb’ groups.

More to Surowiecki’s thesis, the big part of this curve must presumably represent the lack of one or more of the elements he asserts are required for a group to be ‘wise’: diversity of opinion, independent thought, decentralization of knowledge, and a mechanism to aggregate knowledge.

Sometimes ‘people’ really can be dumb. Quite sad.

Early-Stage Drug Dealers

I’ve been told by folks, who purportedly should know, that the most successful drug dealers do not use their own product. In the same vein of thinking, I’ve often wondered what the statistics are re: venture capitalists. That is to say, who are the most successful early-stage investors: former entrepreneurs or non-entrepeneurs who never used their own product?

Are there any statistics on this? What percentage of early-stage tech VCs are in fact former entrepreneurs? What percentage of VCs have raised money for their own early-stage tech companies? Are these ex-entrepreneur VCs better or worse early-stage investors over time than their counterparts who were never entrepreneurs?

Billy Bragg on Henry Rollins

I’ve had tremendous respect for Billy Bragg’s musical talents for over two decades now. One can argue with his politics, but his songwriting and lyrical skills are top-shelf.

I was channel surfing last weekend and saw that he would be appearing on The Henry Rollins Show, and hit the record button. Watched the show this morning. I can’t find it on the net, but if you can catch a re-run, Bragg’s performance of a quite-updated Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards was a hoot. Stephen William Bragg turns 50 at the end of this year, and it’s impressive that he still has the drive and emotion that made him a great songwriter half his age ago.

Payback – Director’s Cut

I’ve long been a fan of Brian Helgeland and Mel Gibson’s film Payback. I always considered it a guilty pleasure though. I enjoyed Porter’s amusing quips and general disregard for most homo sapien. The film was just chock full of great characters – the two detectives, David Paymer’s character, Lucy Liu’s character, and of course Carter & Fairfax were both done up stellarly by Devane and Coburn. I really enjoyed the distinctive blue hue the film had. But it definitely was silly in many regards. Clearly it was a ‘Hollywood’ film.

I won’t include spoilers here, but I will say that the film is no longer a guilty pleasure. Last month Paramount released Payback Straight Up: The Director’s Cut. It is a different movie. New score. Much tighter. Much (much) darker. Minimal levity. Porter wants his money. Don’t get in his way. This is what Helgeland intended to release back when, but the studio pushed back – they wanted ground beef, not chateaubriand.

NOTE: do not watch the special features first – watch the movie first. Lots of spoilers in the special features.

TorrentSphere Update

My last post on tracking the growth of the TorrentSphere was on February 14th. I’m way overdue – perhaps this will become a quarterly gig instead of monthly!

As of this moment, isoHunt claims to be tracking 477 TB. It’s not a scientific analysis, but I would hazard a guess that TorrentSphere growth might be slowing down a bit. It was moving at about +50 TB per month, but the last three months show a total increase of only (only!) 119 TB, or 40 TB per month.

the half-a-petabyte mark will surely be crossed before summer starts.