Ethernet cables for $500?

I’ve blogged about audiophile lunacy before and this certainly isn’t the worst example out there, but it seems Denon is marketing some ethernet cables to audiophiles for a whopping five hundred dollars.

From the Boing Boing (second) link:

The people who sell super-expensive cables are on the march from Audiophileland to Nerdasia. Are we ready for the onslaught? First up: $500 ethernet cables from Denon!

IP is what we usually send over these cables, error-corrected from end-to-end. This means, generally, that throughput, rather than quality, is what drops with interference or long runs—the networking cards perform integrity checks on incoming packets and ask for re-sends if they’re imperfect.

From a standard computing perspective, then, this cable is outright robbery if what you use it for involves ethernet networking, with routers and computers and what-have-you.