Sony BMG smokes many, many bowls

Sony BMG has announced their new MusicPass system. Here's how it works:

• You buy a card at a store.
• You take this card home, or give it to someone who takes it home.
• You scratch the back of the card to reveal a code number.
• You enter the code at the MusicPass website which allows you to download an album.
• The album is in MP3 format with no DRM.

Here's an excerpt that I think sums up what is wrong with this program:

"We see MusicPass as a great way to bring digital music to the physical retail space," Mr. Hesse added. "We believe it will have strong appeal for a broad range of consumers, and that it will ultimately expand both the digital and physical markets for music. As we begin the roll out of this impressive new product we are extremely encouraged by the high levels of enthusiasm that MusicPass has generated among our artists and launch partners, and we look forward to making music fans across the U.S. and Canada a part of the MusicPass experience."

"We're happy to be participating in the launch of a new physical format of digital music for retail," commented Jennifer Johnston Schaidler, Vice President, Music, Best Buy. "Physical products like this will be another way for Best Buy to deliver music and entertainment to our customers in a manner that suits their needs whether it is an impulse purchase, gift, or great collectible. Digital music doesn't need to be restricted to online environments. We look forward to learning how physical products can help grow the digital marketplace."

Um, the whole idea of digital music is to eliminate the physical medium, not replace it with something else.  The only thing this gets you, maybe, that you won't get by just buying it on iTunes is that some albums will come with bonus material.

Hat tip to John Scalzi who naturally does a much better job than me at explaining why it won't work.

News of the day

A better source for ethanol?

One of the unintended consequences of the increased use of ethanol in gasoline has been a reduced availability of corn for other uses, and the consequent increase in price of corn and all things that use it.  This may change at some point in the future as we may get at least some of our ethanol from grass grown on marginal land using moderate amounts of fertilizer.

Hubble to keep on keepin' on.

NASA is planning the fifth and final servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope which should allow it to remain operational until at least 2013 with disposal scheduled for 2020.

Modern day discrimination

The FCC is going to investigate complaints from subscribers to Comcast's high-speed Internet service.  Seems Comcast has been performing "traffic shaping" to BitTorrent traffic.  While BitTorrent is often used for illegal file sharing, it also has legitimate uses.  For example, game patches are often downloaded via BitTorrent, with the most prominent example being World of Warcraft.