Observations

We Humans are certainly silly Monkeys aren't we? The recent ipod craze and subscription....sorry I mean Satellite Radio confuse me. I understand the portable music player thing, I do. I had a Walkman and a Discman at one time in my life, actually the Discman became my stereo in my Saturn because you had that little cassette looking thing that you could hook to your Discman and play it through your car speakers. I get it. What I don't get is why someone has to get an ipod??? I NEED an ipod Man!!!! My Stepdaughter had 120 bucks burning a hole in her pocket after selling her Gamecube which she rarely played, she'd rather play my PS2, and she had mentioned she wanted an ipod Nano. I asked her if she knew what an ipod really was, I figured some other kid had one and was boasting about it, and she replied that no she didn't really know what one was. I explained it to her that it was a place to put music you purchased from the comptuer on to carry around. The only problem is that with an ipod you had to purchase your music from one place; itunes and that it was always 1.00 and higher per song. She thought about it and decided to not get one. Smart kid. I did some research trying to find cheaper players, and found a crapload of other players that were just as good for as low as 79 bucks!!! The good thing about these is you can go to any number of sites and download music and they sell it sometimes for .40 a song!! So why would you shell out 300 bucks for something where you are limited to one place to buy music when you can pay anywhere from 79-150 for something that gives you the power to comparison shop and get the best deal? That I don't get. There's also an aftermarket of accessories for your ipod; I wonder just how well those folks are doing? I know my knew Boss has a clock radio thing that she can stick her ipod into. The convienience of these things is that they are docking stations where you can recharge your ipod on. But still, this doesn't warrant me buying one. Nor am I going to buy my child one. Some folks may think me mean, but I want to teach her a lesson. She was dying for a pair of those stupid Heely shoes.....I told her that her Mom and I weren't going to pay 70 dollars for a pair of tennis shoes no matter what they had on the bottom of them. We had a Yard Sale, and she sold a bunch of her crap and with the money she made she bought her own pair of Heelys. I then warned her not to bring her wheels to school because her VP would be like the Discourser when he worked at one school; he had a collection of wheels from those stupid shoes. Well about 3 months later the novelty wore off and she hardly wears them anymore. She has a pair of Vans like shoes we got her and she wears those all the time. Now you know why I didn't pay 70 bucks for a damn pair of Tennis Shoes. Besides, those things encourage bad posture...seriously, all kidding aside you have to walk on the balls of your feet to be able to walk in them.....and you'd think they'd make them with the pop down wheels. Anyway, back on topic. So you would think that with the popularity of MP3 players (because that's really what an ipod is an MP3 player with a proprietary format) and the fact that people can download whatever individual song they want and organize them into playlists, that radio would be a thing of the past. No Dear Reader....we now have radio that you have to pay for. Huh????? Yep....radio you have to pay for. It's broadcast via a satellite and you can get your "station" wherever you are. They play a loop of songs in a particular style you like, oh but get this.....there is still a DJ. The benefit? No commercials. Don't most cars come with a CD player nowadays? And don't most of those car stereos allow for MP3 format? I know mine does. It basically allows me to play CD's that I make from audio files that I rip from CD's that I own. I currently took all the Depeche Mode stuff I have and made 3 80 minute CD's worth of all the good stuff. What did it cost me? Not a dime (well okay the 10 bucks I paid for the stack of blank CD's). So why would you pay 10-12 dollars (sometimes more) a month, plus the 200-300 or so for the equipment to listen to the Radio???? Oh and you can listen to the Snoop Dogg hour or some crap like that. Great!!! It's bad enough we have to sometimes hear his unintelligable, stoned out of his mind speech for free, now you can pay for it!!!!!! Oh, and not only do you pay a subscription for the "talk" radio stuff, but it has commercials. Yeah, I can subscribe to hear Howard Stern, pay 12 bucks a month to hear him uncensored and have to sit through commercials. Hell I didn't listen to that Ass when he was on the public airwaves why the Hell would you pay to hear him???? But yet, these same people with their ipods were the same people that used to steal music when Napster wasn't a legitimate business like it is now. I find that humorous. These folks that used to steal music and fill up their computers with it, now have forked out 300 bucks and pay Apple 1.00 a song to do the same thing they used to do for free and illegally. Damn that's funny. These are also the same people that used to listen to the radio for free and now they listen to Satellite radio because they are tired of "Corporate rehashed crap". Ummmmm XM and Sirius, are CORPORATIONS DUMBASS!!!! You are still listening to Corporate rehashed crap, but now you are paying for it. It's like my evil ex-Wife. She used to watch Wrestling like crazy....don't get me started......for free every time it was on TV. Then she used to want to pay 30 bucks to watch the Pay-Per-View "big events" which was essentially like watching 4 hours of the weekly crap. I'm so glad Cat isn't like that. Kind of why we've been married almost 4 years now. Like I said, I get the ipod's, I just don't get paying that much for a music player and have to only go to one company to get your music. It's like Sony with their BluRay DVD format now. BluRay is just Sony's version of HD DVD. Simple. They have their own coding on it though that makes it so you can only view them on Sony BluRay players, whereas HD DVD can be viewed on any player capable of handling an HD format. Didn't Sony learn with the Betamax format of video tape? Yes Betamax apparently was the better format, but which one won out? Yep, VHS, the format that consumers could comparison shop for. BluRay is going to go the same way. Apple gets away with it because they get loyalists who love their products. I will hand it to Steve Jobs, they do make a good product, but so does other Companies. You see PC's in the workplace because it is cost effective to outfit an entire 300-4000 person office with PC's than it would be with iMacs. Apple survives because of a niche market. They rock for making multimedia stuff and graphics work; you can't beat the programs on a Mac. Sony trying to be proprietary with Betamax and now with BluRay won't work because Video tape is video tape and Hi-Definition DVD's are Hi-Def DVD's. The average consumer would rather pay 400 for a HD DVD player than pay Sony 1,000 for a BluRay....or you can buy a PS3 for 600 and get a BluRay player....but why would you do that? Panasonic, Toshiba, Mitsubishi, Philips; these are all great brands, just as great if not better than Sony. Nice try Mr. Matsushita; I think you better go back to business school, your Company will be tanking soon if you don't drop the price on those PS3's and give up on your BluRay. Time for this Monkey to go listen to his old school CD's...........anyone got a banana?