Samsung, Toshiba, Others Accused of LCD Price-Fixing

We will see... by Pharmboy · 2010-08-06 09:28 · Score: 4, Interesting

We will see what comes out in court, although I'm holding back judgement until I see the evidence. If they are doing what the complaint alleges, then yes, fine them enough to discourage them (and others) in the future, ie: heavily. Personally I'm glad to see a bit of consumer protection going on for a change. The FTC has become pretty much useless over the last few decades.

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Re:We will see... by poetmatt · 2010-08-06 10:02 · Score: 2, Insightful

I hope they get around to hard drive price fixing too. It's been going on for 10 years now.
Re:We will see... by Kepesk · 2010-08-06 10:12 · Score: 1

It wouldn't surprise me if this were true; I've always thought LCD prices have been uniformly way too high considering the materials involved and the maturity of manufacturing processes.

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Re:We will see... by geekoid · 2010-08-06 10:16 · Score: 2, Insightful

Since the price of HD keeps falling like rock, I doubt it.

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Re:We will see... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 10:17 · Score: 0

Why don't they go after real villains, phone companies, cable, movies, music, etc.? Electronics is one area where prices keep going down or keeping steady despite inflation.
Re:We will see... by WrongSizeGlass · 2010-08-06 10:18 · Score: 1

Wasn't Samsung (among others) recently in trouble for price fixing/collusion in the Flash RAM market?

Samsung - I do not think it means what you think it means.
Re:We will see... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 11:14 · Score: 0

We will see what comes out in court,
Are you a newborn in this country? Not to need to way. Predictable outcome: each one pays $N million to the AG to settle 9where N is fraction of each's profits;) the "public" is then satisfied (according to the AG;) case close.
Re:We will see... by sexconker · 2010-08-06 11:26 · Score: 4, Insightful

We will see what comes out in court, although I'm holding back judgement until I see the evidence. If they are doing what the complaint alleges, then yes, fine them enough to discourage them (and others) in the future, ie: heavily. Personally I'm glad to see a bit of consumer protection going on for a change. The FTC has become pretty much useless over the last few decades.
Fine them?
This is the problem.
There is no punishment.
JAIL the ones responsible - the CXOs and board members.
FORCE the company to sell their products at government-determined fair prices or FORBID them from doing business in the US.
Problem fucking SOLVED.
Re:We will see... by Beer+Drunk · 2010-08-06 11:47 · Score: 2, Interesting

One of these days the foreign manufacturers will realize that America is broke and they don't need us anymore as customers since all we do is buy things with money we borrow from their countries and probably can't pay back. We will then revert to a stone age civilization since all our manufacturing has been exported to other places and the lawyers can sue each other for hides and buffalo dung etc.
Re:We will see... by eiMichael · 2010-08-06 11:56 · Score: 2, Interesting

Exactly. They conspired against the free market. You know what we used to do to the people that did that? Look back at McCarthy. Your ass would be blacklisted and you could no longer play with others that followed the rules. They would also spare no expense at throwing the legal system at you (regardless of the legality of their arguments).
Weather or not I agree with what happened back then it is plain to see just how different the American public feels about protecting their Free Market these days.
Re:We will see... by StormyWeather · 2010-08-06 13:11 · Score: 1, Insightful

That's an idea parroted right off huffpo, and it's just as stupid here as it is there. If you could go after people working for a company personally then nobody would work for a company, because it would be impossible to limit your liability, and the economy would collapse.
Force companies to sell goods for a fixed price, and they just stop selling to your market therefore removing competition further, and in turn pushing their competitors prices up by artificially limiting supply.
Typical step 1 leftist group thinking.
Re:We will see... by Tablizer · 2010-08-06 13:13 · Score: 1

And split them in two to make more competition.

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Table-ized A.I.
Re:We will see... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 14:00 · Score: 0

then nobody would work for a company
That just isn't true; it's the negative side of wishful thinking. There are tons of people willing to run a moral business, even if they'd be responsible for more than their share, because they are moral people and like good practices to flourish. They'd be willing to work for a lot less, even. But they just don't get a chance because they'd be working morally and they'd try to get the job morally, too. Which obviously doesn't work because of [favorite game theory scenario].
Re:We will see... by chissg · 2010-08-06 14:05 · Score: 1

Really? What's wrong with taking *personal* responsibility for *your own* illegal actions? I thought that was a central Republican tenet? If *you* do something against the law, *you* get punished. It's that simple. The Government price-fixing is no better than corporate price-fixing, I agree -- five year plan, anyone? Going to jail for something *you* did, though? I wouldn't call that leftist.
Re:We will see... by LordLucless · 2010-08-06 14:20 · Score: 5, Insightful

If you could go after people working for a company personally then nobody would work for a company
Just like if you could go after a contractor directly, nobody would be a contractor? Oh wait, you can, and there are. I'm pretty much on the far right politically, when it comes to economics. But I still don't necessarily support the idea of the corporate shield. Capitalism and corporatism are two separate concepts, and one can support one without the other.
Besides, the buck should stop with those who make the decisions, not those who are forced to carry them out. Removing the corporate shield wouldn't make working for a company any more dangerous - just running one. And I think we've seen enough examples lately to know that their just plain isn't sufficient accountability at that level of corporate management - the corporate shield is being abused.

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Re:We will see... by Bigjeff5 · 2010-08-06 14:22 · Score: 1

Have you seen the situation in Europe lately? They are all either broke as hell or stable but too small to hold a candle to America's buying power.
America may be going broke, but it's still has far more purchasing power than any other western country. It takes a whole continent pooling their resources to even approach what the US can do, and they still fall a little short. Foreign investors are going to ride this pony until it collapses, and then look for another pony. They aren't going to get off while it's still the biggest, baddest horse in the world.

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Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Re:We will see... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 14:46 · Score: 0

I disagree. Make those individuals who hold those positions financially and criminally responsible. While this isn't possible for non US based companies, a way to deal with that is increase the tariffs and tax on all products imported as a fine. Make it not financially intelligent to get caught. To stop this behavior you first have to add REAL risk.
Most of these companies operate on very slim margins, which is why they do this allowing them to reap greater profits when new methods are found for production (lowering cost) such as the new methods for LCD crystal production (cut costs by 75%). No this doesn't mean LCD monitors will cost 75% less, just certain parts.
1) Make it not financially worth the risk.
2) Companies found to be free of any collusion would get a discount on taxes and tariffs after 2 years
You might come and say companies will just use shell corporations to get by. Not so... we're talking big named guys here. They cannot afford to do such things as they depend on their name for their brand. Luckily this is already starting to occur in parts manufacturing and RAM. Maybe it will happen here.
Re:We will see... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 14:52 · Score: 0

Or maybe people running companies would stop doing illegal shit because they personally would be held responsible.
Re:We will see... by Bigjeff5 · 2010-08-06 14:56 · Score: 1

In what world do you live in where a State government has the right to split a foreign company in two?
Whatever world it is, leave me out of it please. Thanks.

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Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Re:We will see... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 15:20 · Score: 0

Yeah, no one would work for six to nine figures if they had to make sure that they obeyed the law. I mean, in no other field can someone go to jail for breaking the law.
Re:We will see... by MBGMorden · 2010-08-06 15:25 · Score: 1

Eh - LCD prices have been falling pretty good too. Since 2001 I've went from a 17" 4:3, to a 19" 4:3, to a 21" 16:10, to now a 23" 16:9, and each time I've paid less and less for my screen - the latest one costing $170 - the first was around $450. My parents are actually using a 15" lcd monitor (they're very light users and just needed something to replace their dead 15" CRT) that I picked up on sale 3 or 4 months ago for $45. Sure it's tiny, but a usable display for under $50 is just insane.
The thing is, if this suit is true, then LCD prices would have been *even lower* had the market worked properly. The same could technically be true of hard drives.

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"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Re:We will see... by MeNeXT · 2010-08-06 15:51 · Score: 1

There is someone in charge. He is the president of the company. He sets the goals and the rules. He has the authority so why not the responsibility?
The corporation broke the law! For a set period they need to pay extra for their risk. If the competition ups their prices new players will enter the market. Why not make it that the law will only protect companies that obey the law. You broke certain laws then you lose your patent or copyright protection. There must be a penalty that will HURT the shareholder and not the consumer.
Leftist? This idea that companies are above the law is getting on my nerves.

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DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
Re:We will see... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 17:19 · Score: 0

The EU is the largest economy in the world according to the IMF, and it acts as a single market. The EU also has a larger GDP than the US. A more interesting (and perhaps appropriate) way to think about it is to compare states to countries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_between_U.S._states_and_countries_nominal_GDP
Re:We will see... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 17:56 · Score: 0

It's so good to see from the replies under your post that some people still believe that imprisonment is a deterrent to criminality.
Re:We will see... by OnePumpChump · 2010-08-06 18:32 · Score: 1

Limited liability means the investors cannot lose money beyond their actual investment. Limited liability shouldn't mean limitation of criminal liability.
Re:We will see... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 20:04 · Score: 0

Oh, so now it's "leftist" to want to see criminals punished?
I get sick of all this bullshit about "competition" when it's obvious that the *managers* and *executives* of these companies have no desire to compete. At all.
Put these companies into liquidation, use the cash to pay hefty redundancies to the employees and jail the bastards who directly did the crime. Now THAT is wing-neutral justice, not left and not right.
Re:We will see... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 22:59 · Score: 0

I too wouldn't make up my mind before I saw the evidence, but I have noticed some strange trends. Something with a similar spec to the PVA-panel monitor I bought a few years ago is actually more expencive now than my panel was when I bought it. Since the HDTV craze hit, there has been a premium on anything 1080P/'Full HD', despite the fact that panels with the same resolution were available more cheaply in the past. Isn't the price tag of old technology supposed to fall over time? Now I'd usually have chalked this up to manufacturers charging what they could to a dumb public, the sort of people who believe "You get what you pay for", but would I rule-out some dealing behind closed doors? Not at all.
Re:We will see... by drinkypoo · 2010-08-07 01:37 · Score: 1

Besides, the buck should stop with those who make the decisions, not those who are forced to carry them out.
When they stick the ProctoProd(tm) up your arsehole and start driving you around like a radio controlled sherman tank then you get bullshit excuses like that. Until then there is no "forced to carry them out", there is only "chose to carry them out". Those who make the bad decisions and those who carry them out MUST share the responsibility. Otherwise there is too much opportunity for argument over who in a given relationship is responsible. Further, there is no motivation not to do the thing! That is a complete failure of logic.

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"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:We will see... by timeOday · 2010-08-07 02:27 · Score: 1

If you could go after people working for a company personally then nobody would work for a company, because it would be impossible to limit your liability, and the economy would collapse.... Typical step 1 leftist group thinking.
Wow, responsibility and accountability are leftist now?
You've heard of the concept of "privatize the profits socialize the losses." I've realized it's not some vague allegation; it's how our system is designed: limited liability shields the individual, thus the consequences fall on somebody (or everybody) else.
That said, I still support limited liability (a reasonable degree of it), for exactly the reasons you state. By allowing entrepreneurs to fail, and fail again, and again, and then finally succeed, I am persuaded that some degree of socialism (that's what it is) actually stimulates business. The same goes for allowing individuals to file personal bankruptcy, and the same goes for unemployment insurance and (IMHO) nationalized healthcare. If you give people a safety net, they can make much bolder economic leaps (just like trust fund babies are allowed to do).
However, now that we're socializing some of the losses, you have to look at the flipside - privatizing the gains. By accepting limited liability and other socialist benefits, you accept some responsibility to contribute back to the system, in various ways. One is that people can go bankrupt and screw their creditors, which may include you. Another is paying a reasonable amount of taxes.
No, none of this means I think the USSR had it right; most of the profits should be privatized, and most of the losses should too.
Re:We will see... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-07 02:55 · Score: 0

Well, I am kinda left guy.
Now, what do we have? BIG bunch of companies in a criminal conspiracy... You ban one or two, ok, market decreased, some people will suffer, but than, rest of them(companies) will have prices down, since competition will take its place, since profits will grow(less competition - more sold product). Do it(reject ability to sell goods) to Japanese corporation, like Samsung, and it will also promote local producer of goods! Sounds like a win-win situation. I am not American BTW.
Re:We will see... by ArsonSmith · 2010-08-07 05:05 · Score: 1

I think there should be a government program of Universal flat-screen TVs for everyone. Think of all the poor people this would help. You know how much it sucks to be unemployed and have to watch a crappy 27" CRT?

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Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Re:We will see... by ArsonSmith · 2010-08-07 05:07 · Score: 1

Corporatism is another non-freemarket government sponsored entity.

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Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Re:We will see... by ArsonSmith · 2010-08-07 05:11 · Score: 1

So when a car is found to have a problem of sudden acceleration and starts killing people we should throw the guy putting the tires on these cars in jail along with everyone else? What about the janitor? Receptionist? The factory tour group that saw it all happening? Maybe we should just throw everyone in jail within a 12 mile radius of the factory.

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Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Re:We will see... by ArsonSmith · 2010-08-07 05:13 · Score: 1

In some ways you are right, but if a president/CEO/Owner sets a policy of make this unsafe, then he should be held responsible. If he says get this done and make sure it is safe and some lower level manager ignores the make it safe part then it is that lower level manager that needs to be held responsible. There should be pressure on the top level to do something about the lower level but there shouldn't be liability in his lap.

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Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Re:We will see... by hkmwbz · 2010-08-07 12:19 · Score: 1

Typical step 1 leftist group thinking.
So: Company CEO sets strategy to break the law. Company breaks the law. Punishing the person who got the company to break the law is "leftist group thinking"?

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Re:We will see... by causality · 2010-08-07 13:03 · Score: 1

If you could go after people working for a company personally then nobody would work for a company
Just like if you could go after a contractor directly, nobody would be a contractor? Oh wait, you can, and there are. I'm pretty much on the far right politically, when it comes to economics. But I still don't necessarily support the idea of the corporate shield. Capitalism and corporatism are two separate concepts, and one can support one without the other.
Besides, the buck should stop with those who make the decisions, not those who are forced to carry them out. Removing the corporate shield wouldn't make working for a company any more dangerous - just running one. And I think we've seen enough examples lately to know that their just plain isn't sufficient accountability at that level of corporate management - the corporate shield is being abused.
Agreed. In fact the concept is so damned simple that few want to acknowledge it.

The corporate shield should be for any tort that could land an individual in civil court. It should also shield against debt, failed business ventures (businesses often take risks and those risks don't always work out for the business), and the like.

The corporate shield should absolutely never protect anyone against anything that would land an individual in criminal court. Collusion is just a fancy way of committing fraud. This is fraud. Fraud is a crime. Individuals who commit this crime go to prison. The executives who decided that this was a good idea are individuals who can be prosecuted. They are merely using the corporation as a proxy to commit the crime and are still guilty of fraud, just like a person who hires a hit-man is still guilty of murder even though he didn't do the deed directly.

None of this is difficult to understand. It's amazing how much debate there can be about such simple concepts.

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It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Re:We will see... by drinkypoo · 2010-08-07 16:19 · Score: 1

So when a car is found to have a problem of sudden acceleration and starts killing people we should throw the guy putting the tires on these cars in jail along with everyone else?
Only a total fucking idiot, a compleat troll, or an incompetent shill would equate the argument that both he who gives an illegal order and he who knowingly follows an illegal order with the argument that everyone who ever touched a Toyota should be held responsible for unexplained acceleration. Which are you?
Anyone and everyone who gives or follows an illegal order should be held responsible. Anyone and everyone who actually caused any sudden acceleration problem with Toyotas should be held responsible. Any asshole who knows anything about cars knows that the guy who put the tires on the car is not part of that group, because while tires are involved in acceleration, they don't cause it.
Why don't you try making an argument that makes sense instead of trying to discredit me from left field? This is one of the most incompetent and illogical attempts to attack my viewpoint I've ever seen.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:We will see... by Tablizer · 2010-08-07 17:05 · Score: 1

I'm talking in general. Perhaps we can make an agreement with other countries.

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Table-ized A.I.
Re:We will see... by ArsonSmith · 2010-08-07 20:28 · Score: 1

Ok, so just the guy that puts the computer into the car, the manager that told him to and the engineer that designed it wrong should be held responsible. Got it. Thanks for clarifying that for me.

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Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Re:We will see... by drinkypoo · 2010-08-08 01:12 · Score: 1

Ok, so just the guy that puts the computer into the car, the manager that told him to and the engineer that designed it wrong should be held responsible. Got it. Thanks for clarifying that for me.
I have concluded that you are either being deliberately obtuse to try to make me look bad, or are just too stupid to continue talking to. A four year old could figure this out if they had enough interest. You apparently cannot. Leave me alone.

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"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:We will see... by ArsonSmith · 2010-08-08 14:03 · Score: 1

I have it figured out, I am just trying to understand others opinions on the subject.

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Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Re:We will see... by jonadab · 2010-08-09 03:12 · Score: 1

> FORCE the company to sell their products at government-determined fair prices

Anything but that. That would be *significantly* worse than the existing problem.

> Fine them? This is the problem. There is no punishment.

Depends on the amount of the fine. If, for instance, you fine them the full retail price of all the price-fixed merchandise they have sold since they started doing it, that would be a major deterrent. (The company might or might not survive that. Whether it does or doesn't isn't really important.)

That's not, of course, what will actually happen. They will be fined some ridiculously tiny amount, which sounds large to most people in a lump sum but is nothing compared to the amount they have made on the price-fixed merchandise. You know, three million dollars or something like that, which is, as you say, no punishment. But it's not no punishment because it's a fine; it's no punishment because it's far too *small* a fine.

> FORBID them from doing business in the US.

That sounds like it would work, but in practice it would have very little impact. (All you do is spin off a legally separate distribution company, sell to them at a price that gives the parent company almost all of the profit, and let the distribution company handle business within the country in question.)

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Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.

Its always interesting to see these allegations by jpolonsk · 2010-08-06 09:28 · Score: 3, Interesting

In areas where prices are dropping rapidly its interesting that they are able to find price fixing. It used to be memory now I guess it's moved on to screens.

Re:Its always interesting to see these allegations by Pharmboy · 2010-08-06 09:30 · Score: 5, Informative

RTFA, it covers 1996 to 2006, a time when prices were still pretty damn high. I know, I have a $600 20" monitor from that era.

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Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Re:Its always interesting to see these allegations by jpolonsk · 2010-08-06 09:30 · Score: 2, Funny

I could have had a 24 inch screen for under $200 4 years ago if it weren't for the price fixing.
Re:Its always interesting to see these allegations by lawnboy5-O · 2010-08-06 09:42 · Score: 1

I bought a 27'' for 967$ in 2006. No doubt in my min it was price fixing. As amongst the "top" LCD TV's this was the cheapest of its time.
Re:Its always interesting to see these allegations by NFN_NLN · 2010-08-06 09:43 · Score: 1

I was holding out with my 17" CRT for as long as I could. When it died I was going to go LCD.

Unfortunately, it died when the BenQ 15" LCD Monitors were still $550 CAN.

Biggest rip off ever.
Re:Its always interesting to see these allegations by mobby_6kl · 2010-08-06 10:04 · Score: 1

Of course prices were pretty damn high, the LCD displays was still very new then! Not to mention that 4:3 20" LCD monitors still cost almost as much.
Re:Its always interesting to see these allegations by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 10:44 · Score: 0

I can beat that, 19" samsung 191t, cost me over $900. Went to put it on ebay a few years ago, worth fuck all so didn't bother. These days using a 30" lp3065, cost about $1300. Apple's displays were low on spec high on price, so who made their panels?
Re:Its always interesting to see these allegations by emkyooess · 2010-08-06 11:26 · Score: 1

Oh 4:3, how I miss you.
Re:Its always interesting to see these allegations by Loconut1389 · 2010-08-06 11:40 · Score: 1

I have two LG L1920P's (19") that were about $800 a piece. I bought two new LG 24" screens, and the stands are plastic, they turn themselves off and on and wont stay on or off, worst pieces of shit ever. I returned them, the new ones were the same, I complained to LG, didn't get any response. I just live with them and swear every time it turns off and I have to power cycle it for 30 seconds in the middle of doing something. On the bright side, they were "only" $250 each.
Re:Its always interesting to see these allegations by commodore64_love · 2010-08-06 11:41 · Score: 2, Informative

I bought a 21" CRT for $70 (2006).

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"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Re:Its always interesting to see these allegations by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 14:37 · Score: 0

Hah i have a 21" samsung from around 2005 that cost me about $1000
Re:Its always interesting to see these allegations by toddestan · 2010-08-07 13:58 · Score: 1

20" 4:3 screens did get down to just under $300 (for a TN panel) right before widescreen completely took over. This was probably around mid-2007. Should have picked up a few when I had the chance. The remaining 4:3 20" screens seem to IPS screens be aimed at the pro market. For an IPS panel they really aren't too out of line price-wise with the IPS widescreens.

if it goes through by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 09:34 · Score: 0

we'll just see prices stay the same now while the parties involved attempt to regain losses.

Not enough by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 09:34 · Score: 0, Insightful

Also, require them to sell their crap at lower prices, otherwise they will just keep on overcharging without any more meetings.

Punish price-fixing by price-fixing, at least for a period.

Oh and while you are at it send some money to everybody that bought an LCD monitor.

Re:Not enough by h4rr4r · 2010-08-06 10:01 · Score: 1

No, they can pass on that cost and people will use other parts.
Re:Not enough by commodore64_love · 2010-08-06 10:03 · Score: 5, Interesting

>>>Punish price-fixing by price-fixing, at least for a period.
(1) That's unconstitutional. The New York Constitution does not grant such a power as "price fixing".
(2) There's no need for such extremes. When the record companies were caught price-fixing CDs (thereby forming an illegal cartel), they were ordered by the courts to refund ~$25 to all their customers, so that erased any illicit profits they had earned.
(3) And then the free market was left to its own devices, and the cost of CDs plummeted from $13 to $9 within a year, since the cartel was no longer allowed to operate. The same will happen to LCDs too, after the price-fixing cartel is broken-up.

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"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Re:Not enough by Red_Chaos1 · 2010-08-06 10:04 · Score: 1

I think this is a good approach, personally. A much more significant and lasting punishment for the crime.
Question is, how long to punish? I think it would only be fair to force them to sell at a lowered price for the same duration they sold at jacked up prices. If they go out of business, tough shit. Should have thought about the consequences of the actions.
And yes, everyone who bought an LCD during those dates should either receive a reimbursement equal in % to what they were overcharged, or receive a coupon for that % off a purchase of any new LCD from that company that they buy.
No more light slaps on the back of the hands, corporations need a solid punch in the gut for pulling stunts like this.
Re:Not enough by logjon · 2010-08-06 10:04 · Score: 0

That's stupid. Artificially pricing goods is never a good thing, even if it's done lower. 'Requiring' is just a shitty concept, economically speaking. That's why GP said to fine them heavily enough to discourage such things; it still allows for free market competition, except they have to take the possibility of legal action into consideration as another factor toward that competition. Do you even understand what you just typed?

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Re:Not enough by geekoid · 2010-08-06 10:14 · Score: 1

They can put a ceiling on the price.

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Re:Not enough by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 10:50 · Score: 0

Dont forget to stop them bending over to the MPAA and make some proper size/res panels.
Enough of the 1080p low-res rubbish.
Re:Not enough by Zocalo · 2010-08-06 10:55 · Score: 2, Informative

In theory perhaps, but it could be a bitch in practice. Manufacturing costs are ultimately at the whim of commodity prices, which in case you haven't noticed, have in some instances been quite dynamic with the current financial turmoil. Should the combined price of raw materials go up to the extent that it is no longer possible to manufacture a product and still make a profit the obvious step for a manufacturer to take is to scale back production and concentrate on other, more profitable, product lines. Net result is that product availability goes down, retailers who are not going to be bound by the court imposed price ceilings,will almost certainly push the prices up to make a quick profit, and ultimately the customer will end up the loser.

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UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Re:Not enough by Moryath · 2010-08-06 10:59 · Score: 5, Informative

(1) That's unconstitutional. The New York Constitution does not grant such a power as "price fixing".
The court could certainly order that they retain only a certain percentage markup on their products for a given time, to be verified with inspectors double-checking their books.
(2) There's no need for such extremes. When the record companies were caught price-fixing CDs (thereby forming an illegal cartel), they were ordered by the courts to refund ~$25 to all their customers, so that erased any illicit profits they had earned.
You're joking right? That settlement was a COMPLETE FRAUD. Customers who had bought 5-6 dozen music CD's over a decade, at $10+ overcharge per CD, were ripped off with a measly $25 voucher to BUY MORE OVERPRICED PRODUCT. The MafiAA companies pocketed the rest, flipped the bird at the artists they regularly rip off, and laughed at how fucking stupid our legal system is.
(3) And then the free market was left to its own devices, and the cost of CDs plummeted from $13 to $9 within a year, since the cartel was no longer allowed to operate. The same will happen to LCDs too, after the price-fixing cartel is broken-up.
Have you seen the prices lately? Pretty fucking uniform - Walmart, Bestbuy, Amazon, all seem to have exactly the same price (or somewhere within 50 cents of each other) on every goddamn CD again, and new releases are hovering steadily around $18. It sounds more like the MafiAA cartel laid low for a few years and went right back to their old tricks again.
Re:Not enough by icebike · 2010-08-06 11:12 · Score: 1

Well the suit alleges that the these shortages were not real but rather part of the "story".
However, how are they going to prove that any of this took place when these companies are all foreign corporations, and the persons involved were almost surely overseas. (They would have to be extra dumb ti include their US branch personnel in such meetings).
I don't think NY has the clout to demand documents from Taiwan or Korea.

--
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Re:Not enough by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 11:13 · Score: 0

I hate your sig. How is a statement made in 1977 at all relevant 22 years later?
Re:Not enough by commodore64_love · 2010-08-06 11:28 · Score: 1

>>>They can put a ceiling on the price.
Which creates shortages, as not enough items are produced to meet customer demand.

--
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Re:Not enough by commodore64_love · 2010-08-06 11:34 · Score: 4, Informative

>>>That settlement was a COMPLETE FRAUD. Customers who had bought 5-6 dozen music CD's over a decade, at $10+ overcharge per CD
The overcharge was estimated by the court to be $3 per disc. So if you got a $25 refund that covered the overcharge for eight-and-a-half discs. Yes there were some people who bought more than 8.5 discs, but there were also people who bought zero discs (like my mom) and were still eligible for a refund. It all averages out.
AND it punished the companies with a several hundred million dollars loss.
.
>>>were ripped off with a measly $25 voucher to BUY MORE OVERPRICED PRODUCT
False. I got a check, as did my mom, brother, and my two nieces. The checks were converted to CASH. Maybe you should not make false assumptions about something you known nothing about. It was a true refund.
Likewise when Paypal got in trouble, I received a Cash refund of $75 due to a court order. Not a voucher - actual money.

--
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Re:Not enough by geekoid · 2010-08-06 11:36 · Score: 1

Historically, those issue are dealt with be allowing the companies go back to the court and show them they need to raise the price based on things not within their control.
it would probably be heavy handed in this issue. Fine them, then have a substantial larger fine over their head if the court finds them to be colluding at a latter date... plus give me 2 50" LED TVs.

--
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
Re:Not enough by commodore64_love · 2010-08-06 11:38 · Score: 1

>>>Walmart, Bestbuy, Amazon, all seem to have exactly the same price (or somewhere within 50 cents of each other)
Naturally. They are in competition with one another and watch prices. Of course they will all be in the same ballpark. They want to undercut each other, but still high enough to keep a profit.
.
>>>new releases are hovering steadily around $18.
Well sure. New releases are always higher due to demand, but after awhile they drop to around $9.... which is 3 dollars less than the price-fixed $12-13 they used to cost. It's just the same way that Video games start at $50 but eventually drop to $20 (or less). High demand == high price.

--
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Re:Not enough by Moryath · 2010-08-06 12:08 · Score: 0, Offtopic

Offtopic but what the hell:
it's a statement made by George Lucas himself during the making of the original Star Wars trilogy.
Very relevant to the crapsacks that were the "prequel trilogy", which had basically no storyline and were filled with overdone, annoying special effects.
Re:Not enough by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 12:15 · Score: 0

Hmm, Walmart, Bestbuy and Amazon paying about the same wholesale price and having similar markups? I am shocked and appalled to see such behavior. The MafiAA members have a monopoly on each given album. Most likely their research/past data indicate that the wholesale price resulting in $18 retail is where they maximize initial profits on new albums and it is doubtful that genre influences this price much, so they all come out about the same.
Re:Not enough by causality · 2010-08-06 12:25 · Score: 5, Insightful

No, they can pass on that cost and people will use other parts.
Before we talk about the pros and cons of various forms of sanction against these companies, I have a simple question.

These multiple companies are being accused of colluding. That's a word for a specific type of conspiracy. Since this involves those companies conspiring together, does that mean we immediately scoff at the notion, dismiss it out-of-hand without examination of evidence, and accuse anyone who supports the notion of being a tin-foil hat-wearing nutter?

I just want a little consistency. That's how we treat anyone who suggests that people within government would conspire in some way when both money and power is involved. Why don't we act the same way when anyone suggests that people within corporations would conspire in some way when only money is involved?

Oh, right, because you can choose not to do business with particular corporations so you feel little to no need to bury your heads in the sand when they conspire. It's not so easy to escape the malfeasance of your own government, so you feel a desperate need to say that it isn't and could never be so.

--
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Re:Not enough by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 12:26 · Score: 0

While you may be correct that the settlement did little to lower CD prices, the 20ish dollars I received from the RIAA for signing on came as a check.
Re:Not enough by ScislaC · 2010-08-06 12:35 · Score: 1

Most games start at $60 these days and the drop is to $30. Nintendo charges $50 for Wii games and their first party games don't tend to ever get the price drops.

--
ART on dA
Re:Not enough by causality · 2010-08-06 12:43 · Score: 2, Interesting

I think this is a good approach, personally. A much more significant and lasting punishment for the crime.
Question is, how long to punish? I think it would only be fair to force them to sell at a lowered price for the same duration they sold at jacked up prices. If they go out of business, tough shit. Should have thought about the consequences of the actions.
And yes, everyone who bought an LCD during those dates should either receive a reimbursement equal in % to what they were overcharged, or receive a coupon for that % off a purchase of any new LCD from that company that they buy.
No more light slaps on the back of the hands, corporations need a solid punch in the gut for pulling stunts like this.
There's one thing that needs to take place if you want a truly effective deterrent.

All top-level executives who supported this collusion need to be personally conviced of fraud in a criminal court. I'm guessing that fraud on the scale of multiple millions of dollars would land them some hard time in a maximum-security prison. Fraud is fraud even if the criminal who perpetrated the fraud did not directly receive the money out of which the victims were defrauded (i.e. it went directly to his/her corporation).

What needs to end NOW, and in fact is long overdue, is to remove the "untouchable" status of the people behind the scenes. If we did that, I personally wouldn't care if the corporation itself is fined or not because we'd be taking the punitive measures directly to the source of the problem. By contrast, a heavy fine proportional to the crime that is levied against the corporate entity might end up harming customers and/or rank-and-file employees who had no decision-making input regarding whether or not massive fraud was going to be committed.

The "limited liability" nature of a corporation should be for failed business ventures and unintentional negligence only (i.e. honest mistakes). It absolutely should never apply to intentional, willful criminal activity.

--
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Re:Not enough by TheVelvetFlamebait · 2010-08-06 12:54 · Score: 1

And then the free market was left to its own devices, and the cost of CDs plummeted from $13 to $9 within a year, since the cartel was no longer allowed to operate. The same will happen to LCDs too, after the price-fixing cartel is broken-up.
So, if I buy three or four LCDs, I'll be under budget enough to buy a $39 bluray disk? Awesome!

--
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Re:Not enough by Servaas · 2010-08-06 13:33 · Score: 1

Do you? I think the OP is kind of jaded with fines of a couple of million for multi billion dollar corporations. A fine will only put a very small amount of money from the companies into the governments pocket while the people who get really screwed don't see a dime from this.
Re:Not enough by fast+turtle · 2010-08-06 13:34 · Score: 1

What I feel would work is make it a mandantory 2 year sentence at Leavenworth Federal Prison - Low Security the first time around. Give em hard labor and personally fine them. Increase the penalty to 5 years in the medium security section and if they're found guilty a thrid time, life in maximum security with the real dangerous criminals. Furthermore, place them in with the general population instead of the damn country club. Also in regards to the 2nd and 3rd offenses, you punish their families too. They have to prove that the house was bought with Mom's Money instead of Daddies and may be what it takes to get them thinking before they commit such crimes.

--
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
Re:Not enough by P0ltergeist333 · 2010-08-06 14:22 · Score: 4, Interesting

>>>(2) There's no need for such extremes. When the record companies were caught price-fixing CDs (thereby forming an illegal cartel), they were ordered by the courts to refund ~$25 to all their customers, so that erased any illicit profits they had earned.
If you really believe they came anywhere NEAR paying out what they gained by even just the five years of price fixing that they got caught for, you're delusional. The industry shipped over one billion units in the year 2000. Their settlement of 64 million cash to consumers and 75 million in CD's (at a likely actual cost of a few percent of the 75 million) distributed to non-profit organizations was nowhere near the billions they profited.
And just because when they came up with a lower price fix eventually thereafter is hardly evidence of the 'free market left to it's own devices' adjusting correctly. You'd have to be a total tool to believe these things.
The bottom line is that at least two of these companies (Samsung and Toshiba) were directly involved and found guilty of memory price fixing at least once in recent times by multiple courts, and neither the governmental remedies nor the supposed hand of the free market impacted them enough to stop them from doing it again with LCDs. Nothing will stop them and millions of other companies from continuing to screw the consumer in the future. Your premise fails in both theory and application.

--
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
Re:Not enough by causality · 2010-08-06 14:26 · Score: 4, Insightful

What I feel would work is make it a mandantory 2 year sentence at Leavenworth Federal Prison - Low Security the first time around. Give em hard labor and personally fine them. Increase the penalty to 5 years in the medium security section and if they're found guilty a thrid time, life in maximum security with the real dangerous criminals. Furthermore, place them in with the general population instead of the damn country club. Also in regards to the 2nd and 3rd offenses, you punish their families too.
If you or I committed such crimes personally without a corporation that resulted in the same amount of monetary loss, we would not get such light treatment as a low security prison away from the hardened prison population. Neither should the executives who create these issues.

I cannot rightly support punishing their families. If family members are proven beyond a reasonable doubt to have committed a crime, then by all means prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. Otherwise, advocating the punishing of innocents is much worse than any fraud the execs in question may have perpetrated. In fact it's quite likely that such innocents were as deceived by the perpetrators as anyone else. You should be ashamed for desiring such an outcome, sir. This is not honor or justice. It's a smack in the face to both. You lose the right to represent either honor or justice the moment you want to harm innocents who remain innocent until proven guilty. I cannot overstate how pathological such an urge actually is.

They have to prove that the house was bought with Mom's Money instead of Daddies and may be what it takes to get them thinking before they commit such crimes.
They have to prove nothing. That burden of proof is squarely on the shoulders of the prosecution should an accusation be made. You dishonor and shame yourself for advocating such a witch-hunt. It is beneath you. If it is not, it should be. If you are so easily corrupted by outrage then you are manifestly unfit to deal correctly with injustice, for you represent what you claim to be against.

If that stings a bit, it doesn't sting enough. How do you suppose people like those execs become so amoral and corrupt in the first place? It's because they see injustice like anyone else and eventually they become just like what they hate. Take this as a warning if there is any wisdom within you.

--
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Re:Not enough by P0ltergeist333 · 2010-08-06 14:30 · Score: 0, Offtopic

In theory perhaps, but it could be a bitch in practice. Manufacturing costs are ultimately at the whim of commodity prices, which in case you haven't noticed, have in some instances been quite dynamic with the current [ rampant speculation by a criminally deregulated financial system which resembles Las Vegas gambling more than any actual investment in future potential.]

Fixed that for you.

--
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
Re:Not enough by P0ltergeist333 · 2010-08-06 14:43 · Score: 3, Interesting

For what it's worth, yes, they gave out checks. I got one as well. But then I was young, single, and working on my CD collection. I literally spent thousands of dollars in those years on music CDs. I know of many others who spent as much or more, and did not find out about the settlement until it was too late to file. By your own admission, they overcharged 10$ per CD. The RIAA's own figures say they shipped 1 Billion units in the last year covered by the suit, 1999-2000. And the cash settlement was 64 million. So that's 64 million out of ten billion. You make my argument for me.

--
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
Re:Not enough by MeNeXT · 2010-08-06 15:39 · Score: 1

To all their customers? I never saw a red cent...

--
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
Re:Not enough by T+Murphy · 2010-08-06 21:20 · Score: 3, Insightful

The courts don't have to remove all profit from price fixing, just enough that companies believe they can profit more when competing. For example:

Let's say they can boost profits by 30% by colluding, but a conviction is severe enough to hurt profits 10% compared to not colluding. Now let's also say that part of the conviction penalty involves paying non-colluding competitors, so those competitors profit an extra 5% per guilty company. Given a high enough chance of conviction and a 3-company market, it would on average be more profitable if your company competes, the others collude, and they get convicted (so your company boosts profits by 10%). As long as companies act selfishly, they all want to be the odd man out, so they never agree to collude.

Of course, price fixing doesn't happen without all parties cooperating- my example just illustrates how you can use the prisoner's dilemma against companies so the optimal solution (all colluding) never happens.

--
My webcomic
Re:Not enough by P0ltergeist333 · 2010-08-06 22:13 · Score: 1

First off, let me commend you for bringing an interesting idea to the discussion. I certainly think the idea has merit.
At the same time, we have to get even progressive administrations to do more than just give lip service to enforcing current antitrust laws (primarily the Sherman Act.) We also need to ensure people know exactly what neoconservatives and their ideological allies the right wing libertarians (closet neocons) think about ALL antitrust laws and litigation. You merely have to look at the Bush admin for an example. They didn't see a merger they didn't like, and only the most egregious acts of antitrust got prosecuted at all under that regime. For the most part the right wing's whole anti-trust philosophy boils down to caveat emptor (buyer beware.)
From ADM and their price-fixing of lysine and other food and feed additives, which literally robbed everyone in America of hundreds of millions, to the music industry, who robbed billions, to the memory makers Toshiba, Samsung, Mitsubishi, and Hynex, to this LCD price fixing, to very likely your local grocery and liquor stores (haven't you ever noticed how their prices are almost identical on a majority of items?) price fixing and collusion is commonplace. There is no such thing as a free market. The corporations decide how much you are going to pay. Even Newegg and Tiger Direct now have all but identical pricing. People need to open their eyes.

--
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
Re:Not enough by strikethree · 2010-08-06 22:24 · Score: 1

"Have you seen the prices lately? Pretty fucking uniform - Walmart, Bestbuy, Amazon, all seem to have exactly the same price (or somewhere within 50 cents of each other) on every goddamn CD again, and new releases are hovering steadily around $18. It sounds more like the MafiAA cartel laid low for a few years and went right back to their old tricks again."
The parent poster claimed CDs were something like $13. I have not looked at the price of a CD in over a decade now and they were $18 then. I am sad that I missed the $8-$13 prices, but was that when they were putting root kits and corrupted tracks and such on their CDs? It is good to see that the prices are back to $18 again. :/
strike

--
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
Re:Not enough by kenshin33 · 2010-08-06 23:43 · Score: 1

high demand => high price for gold .. oil .. cake ... hell even potatoes (true scarcity) to get a potato you need to wait a long time . but CDs DVDs, games ?? think it's an artificial one ... as the marginal cost of pressing those things is very very low (relatively to the overall cost) what prevent theme from pressing enough to meet the demand at lower prices ?
Re:Not enough by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-07 01:32 · Score: 1, Insightful

WTF are you talking about?
This article is about an Attorney General with enough evidence of a conspiracy to believe he can convict these companies in a court.
This is nothing like your ridiculous unsubstantiated ideas about aliens or JFK or Obama's birth certificate or Bush planning 9/11.
Re:Not enough by drinkypoo · 2010-08-07 01:42 · Score: 1

Just in case you were wondering where the punishment of the families comes in, seen what they do during drug convictions? You have to prove that you bought your home before you started engaging in drug activity or they will seize it. Do you think that this is going to happen to these execs? Is there any reason why money made from drugs and money made from fraud should be treated differently by the state? I mean, besides one's personal feelings regarding the regulation of business, under which both of these hypotheticals fall?

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:Not enough by commodore64_love · 2010-08-07 02:37 · Score: 1

>>>By your own admission, they overcharged 10$ per CD.
I said nothing of the kind. I said the typical cost of a catalog CD (i.e. not a new release) was $12 and after the cartel was broken up it dropped to $9. Sometimes less. I don't know where you keep inventing this imaginary "10$" because I never said it.

--
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Re:Not enough by commodore64_love · 2010-08-07 02:42 · Score: 1

High demand == high price. i.e. They can charge $50 or $60 because you people who need it now now NOW are stupid enough to pay it. Whereas a smart person like msyself simply waits for the "Greatest Hits" version at $20.
AND ALSO you say pressing the discs is cheap, but that's Not the REAL cost of a game. I'd guess 95% of the cost is labor (programmers, artists, etc), and that's what you're paying for.

--
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Re:Not enough by commodore64_love · 2010-08-07 02:48 · Score: 1

Yeah fine The whole market is fixed. In fact ya know Ebay? That's fixed too. Sellers manipulate the prices!!!! So let's jsut have government take-over Ebay and set all the prices on your items! You say you want to sell Final Fantasy 7 for approximately $150 (the current going price). Well too bad! The government will force you to sell it for the "fair value" price of $15.
Sound nuts?
Well that's how you sound to me. There is NOT some grand conspiracy. There WAS a cartel amongst CD companies, but the government broke it up, punished them with a ~100 million fine, and now the price is floating again..... just like prices on ebay float. To continue insisting the cartel exists makes you sound like that nutter Alex Jones ("they are poisoning the water with flouride!").

--
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Re:Not enough by commodore64_love · 2010-08-07 02:51 · Score: 1

>>>your local grocery and liquor stores (haven't you ever noticed how their prices are almost identical on a majority of items?
That's simply not true. I have a local store that charges about 1 dollar more than Walmart does. The local family-owned store charges $2.50 for a frozen meal, while Walmart only asks $1.80. Other stores charge around $2 or $2.25. Prices DO vary.

--
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Re:Not enough by commodore64_love · 2010-08-07 03:06 · Score: 1

Lesson learned: Read the newspaper. The companies offered the rebate to ALL their customers..... it's not their fault you did not read the announcement. It was widely disseminated at the time (2001).

--
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Re:Not enough by T+Murphy · 2010-08-07 03:19 · Score: 1

Yeah even though I think it is possible to have a legal system that properly discourages collusion and whatnot, I know it won't happen until we properly discourage collusion between the government and corporations (likely never).

--
My webcomic
Re:Not enough by P0ltergeist333 · 2010-08-07 06:33 · Score: 1

Yeah, accuse me of being unreasonable when you obviously have no reply to the fact that you plainly claimed that the CD cartel "erased the profits they had earned" with the ~100 million dollar fine when they didn't even come close to erasing the illicit profits (based on YOUR and the RIAA's numbers) of 10 BILLION just for the year 1999-2000. And you clearly have no reply for the fact that Toshiba and Samsung (who are involved in the price fixing mentioned in TFA) were found guilty by multiple entities of price fixing of DRAM, and here they are again doing the same with LCD's.
All you can do is bring out fallacious argument. One is the intellectually challenged straw man that the mega-mart prices differently than a mom and pop. Well, duh. But the Walmarts, Safeways, and King Soopers' (or whatever your local brand of mega-mart) all have the same prices on many products. Your other fallacy is accusing me of endorsement of government control of pricing. I have made no such endorsement, explicit or implied in any way, shape or form. To act as if I did is just plain underhanded and dishonest.
What I DO endorse, as can be easily sussed from my posts is that the government should aggressively investigate and prosecute anti competitive practices by enforcing long standing antitrust laws.

--
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
Re:Not enough by P0ltergeist333 · 2010-08-07 07:21 · Score: 1

Straw man. Of course your mega-mart has different prices than the mom and pop. On the other hand, the mega marts (most cities with more than one traffic light have more than one mega mart) have remarkably similar prices on products of similar quality and value. (mega mart for this discussion= Safeway, Albertsons, Walmart, King Soopers(Kroger), Piggly Wiggly, Mega Target, Costco, etc.)
And this does not even mean that the stores themselves are the ones engaging in anti competitive activity. It very well might be their suppliers, especially since a great many of them have been involved in mega-mergers in the Bush years. Especially when it comes to meat-packing.
You seem to want to even deny that the ADM price fixing occurred (which directly affected meat and other food prices) Or that there weren't HUGE mergers occurring in the last ten years that have drastically reduced competition in many instances.

--
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
Re:Not enough by causality · 2010-08-07 12:04 · Score: 1

Just in case you were wondering where the punishment of the families comes in, seen what they do during drug convictions? You have to prove that you bought your home before you started engaging in drug activity or they will seize it. Do you think that this is going to happen to these execs? Is there any reason why money made from drugs and money made from fraud should be treated differently by the state? I mean, besides one's personal feelings regarding the regulation of business, under which both of these hypotheticals fall?
Not only am I against the asset forfeiture laws that are excused by the War on (some) Drugs, I believe they are blatantly unconstitutional. Carrying a lot of cash? Well, "we know it's for drugs" so we're going to seize it without charging you with any crime, that way we don't have to prove anything.

If it were up to me we'd end the whole War on (some) Drugs and only concern ourselves with crimes that actually involve an unwilling victim. That would also de-fund all of the gangs and organized criminals that view illicit contraband as an important source of income. It would tremendously reduce crime -- no one had gunfights and died in the streets over alcohol until it was made illegal, for all of the same reasons we have so much violent crime now that is drug-related. The War on (some) Drugs is a complete and total failure according to any of its stated goals. Sorry to put it so bluntly but only a moron wants to continue doing something that fails over and over again while causing gigantic social costs, financial costs, and other collateral damage.

Ending this BS is such a good idea that no one with political power wants to do it. It would deprive them of useful crises and problems to solve.

If I responded strongly to the other poster, it's because anyone who sees injustice like the asset forfeiture laws and says "but it's acceptable if we really don't like you" is part of the problem. That's just the sort of character weakness that perpetuates this kind of injustice.

--
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Re:Not enough by Spugglefink · 2010-08-07 17:15 · Score: 1

Is there any reason why money made from drugs and money made from fraud should be treated differently by the state?
Yes, obviously. Drugs are bad, m'kay?
Yeesh.
Re:Not enough by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-07 18:38 · Score: 0

I cannot rightly support punishing their families. If family members are proven beyond a reasonable doubt to have committed a crime, then by all means prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. Otherwise, advocating the punishing of innocents is much worse than any fraud the execs in question may have perpetrated. In fact it's quite likely that such innocents were as deceived by the perpetrators as anyone else. You should be ashamed for desiring such an outcome, sir. This is not honor or justice. It's a smack in the face to both. You lose the right to represent either honor or justice the moment you want to harm innocents who remain innocent until proven guilty. I cannot overstate how pathological such an urge actually is.
As much as it sucks for their families if they lose everything, guess what, that is the same thing that happens to normal people.
If I commit a crime, even if my family had nothing to do with it, they are going to take my money and land my family in an awful situation that they never should have endured, we are just holding them to the same standard.
I say that a company does stuff such as the Price Fixing mentioned or any other types of illegal activities, we shouldn't be fining the company directly as that hurts the customers and rank-n-file employees without actually doing anything to remedy the problem. You go after the executives, you sue them directly, the fines are paid out of their pockets and the shareholders dividends, only after they are broke along with all money they have given to others taken back (Just like they would take if I gave $100 to a friend that I made with drug money) would they go after the companies cash and put them in prison just like any other person would. Remove the Corporation Shield as it does not provide anything toward the overall good and only serves to enable sociopathic bosses feel they have nothing to fear and no remorse for their actions.
So the CEO Tyco takes 100 million dollars through illegal means through a company, then the CEO gets fined the 200 million dollar fine and gets to eat some jail time while the Shareholders end up losing some of their dividends as it is going to pay the fines and they must find a new CEO, the companies regular employees and overall income remains untouched unless said CEO couldn't pay his entire fine and any cash the CEO gave out to anyone else doing that time would be considered to be stolen goods and will be confiscated along with any physical purchase he gave so he couldn't just buy all these expensive stuff that could easily be resold later and give them away, could imagine one spending millions on gold bars and giving them to family to be resold later if he were caught without having to turn it in.
Would suck to be that CEO, but guess what it would suck for me if I caught stealing cash and they came in, took my cash, took my families cash that I gave them and threw my in jail leaving my family without my assistance. That is everyday life and they deserve it just as much as we do if not more so considering their position of power.
Re:Not enough by Golddess · 2010-08-09 04:33 · Score: 1

(1) That's unconstitutional. The New York Constitution does not grant such a power as "price fixing".
Citation needed. A cursory glance through the New York Constitution appears to not indicate a requirement for the state constitution to grant the power, but maybe I skimmed over that part.

--
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
Re:Not enough by kenshin33 · 2010-08-12 16:40 · Score: 1

High demand == high price. i.e. They can charge $50 or $60 because you people who need it now now NOW are stupid enough to pay it. Whereas a smart person like msyself simply waits for the "Greatest Hits" version at $20.
who are you includeing the the "you" and who are you calling "stupid" smart ass ??? High demand == hig price ... b/c of scarcity not anything else!

AND ALSO you say pressing the discs is cheap, but that's Not the REAL cost of a game. I'd guess 95% of the cost is labor (programmers, artists, etc), and that's what you're paying for.
assming that is the case then it costs next to nothing to presse more discs and satisfy the demand of the market ... thus the "scarcity" in this case is virtual. So exaplin to me in which way that contradicts my post ???? explain please

Par for the course by RiddleofSteel · 2010-08-06 09:39 · Score: 5, Insightful

Sadly this is one of the biggest problems with out country today. The biggest bane to Capitalism is a monopoly. And unfortunately almost every major product we buy be it power, automobiles, computers, food, media, etc. has a group of three or four huge companies that completely control that market. They get together and price fix, control the market, and even control the laws and regulations that are supposed to keep them in check. These types of collusion are no good except for the people at the top of these companies and their stock holders.

Re:Par for the course by mobby_6kl · 2010-08-06 10:06 · Score: 0, Troll

Hey, I thought collective bargaining was supposed to be a good thing! Did they lie to me this whole time?
Re:Par for the course by tlhIngan · 2010-08-06 10:21 · Score: 4, Insightful

Sadly this is one of the biggest problems with out country today. The biggest bane to Capitalism is a monopoly. And unfortunately almost every major product we buy be it power, automobiles, computers, food, media, etc. has a group of three or four huge companies that completely control that market. They get together and price fix, control the market, and even control the laws and regulations that are supposed to keep them in check. These types of collusion are no good except for the people at the top of these companies and their stock holders.
Actually, monopolies are the goal of capitalism. It's the ideal end-game - to own the entire market. If you can't own it, then you'll either acquire your competition, or collude to ensure that everyone can go home with big fat paycheques and bonuses and lots of cash. And that's the goal of a capitalistic society - to earn as much money as possible.
What threatens a monopoly the most is the young startup who dares to disturb whatever nice arrangement you have making money. Which a monopoly or a collusion would go and prevent by either outright purchasing the new competition, or make it impossible for it to survive, by dumping.
Monopolies are allowed and legal, however, governments tend to institute measures to ensure that monopolies don't abuse their power (leveraging a monopoly in one area to gain it on another, dumping to drive competition out of business, etc).
Re:Par for the course by rickb928 · 2010-08-06 10:25 · Score: 1

"power, automobiles, computers, food, media"
Power - Always has been a local monopoly in America. Usually driven by who owns the power distribution network.
Automobiles - Ford, GM, Chrysler, Toyota, Nissan, Subaru, Mitsubishi, Honda, Kia, Hyundai, Volkswagen/BMW, Mercedes, Fiat, Tata, and I'm forgetting a few actual companies. Plenty of competition I think.
Computers - Lenovo, Dell, Gateway, Toshiba, Panasonic, HP, Acer, Apple. Now this is an area where competition seems lacking, right? Who did I miss?
Food - I'm lost, but there are a lot of huge conglomerates, though competition I cannot judge.
Media - There are dominant players, but I'm not sure the Internet has let them be so dominant as before. Except for Google.
Now the real competition/monopoly issue is further along. Wal-Mart is dominating retail, Amazon/iTunes dominate other areas. I don't know that there is no price fixing going on, but it is the suppliers probably. Look for the scarcity and you will find the collusion. LCD screens are in short supply, probably due to fixing. RAM seems tolerably priced. CPUs are not cheap, but AMD keeps pressuring Intel on price. Other components seem cheap enough. Blu-Ray drives are expensive. Hard drives seem pretty competitive, but you never know, cause that is a small group of manufacturers - Seagate, Samsumg, Toshiba, who else?
It's an easy complaint to make. I wonder how true it is.

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deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Re:Par for the course by Grishnakh · 2010-08-06 10:26 · Score: 4, Insightful

The thing is, market forces work so that companies naturally merge to only 3 or 4 main competitors when an industry is mature. When the industry is young, sure, there's lots of smaller competitors. But as the industry matures, the poorer competitors die out, and others merge together, and eventually there's only 3 or 4. At this time, these larger companies are able to take advantage of economies of scale that smaller competitors cannot, and as the industry and technology is mature, new small competitors can't bring any new innovation to the table that outweighs their lack of brand recognition and economies of scale. We saw this in the automotive industry, and many others.
In a healthy market with a mature industry, 3 or 4 main competitors is the most efficient. The catch is, you need a decent government in place which oversees them and makes sure that they don't form a cartel or collude in any way to screw over the customers. Without any government regulation, you'll either end up with a cartel/oligopoly, or a monopoly, and then you don't have a free market at all, since there's no real competition and no choice for the consumers.
Unfortunately, the Rand-worshiping free-market fans almost always forget about the role government has in ensuring the marketplace remains a level playing field. (And those who oppose the free-market Randians want a giant centralized government that basically micromanages everything.)
Re:Par for the course by FooAtWFU · 2010-08-06 10:34 · Score: 3, Insightful

Capitalism is a system. Systems hate it when you anthromorphize them.
Monopoly profits may be the goal of capitalists, but when they're not colluding (or when there are low enough barriers to entry that it doesn't matter, which may not be the case here, especially with patents involved) other capitalists just stab each other in the back (business-wise) so they can get their share. Eventually, they're just making normal profits, and it's not all that interesting, so they can go off and do other things with their money.
That's the "everyman" take-away, anyway.

--
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Re:Par for the course by haruchai · 2010-08-06 10:45 · Score: 5, Funny

Systems hate it when you anthromorphize them.
Do systems love it when they're not anthromorphized? Can I hurt the feelings of systems by ascribing feelings to them?

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Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Re:Par for the course by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 11:03 · Score: 0

No, the goal is to *try* to make money and obtain larger market share. But the trick is, there is always supposed to be competitors out there to keep you honest. If an entity obtains monopoly status, they were probably breaking the rules.
Re:Par for the course by Antisyzygy · 2010-08-06 11:11 · Score: 1

Basically, we need to forbid politicians from entering the corporate upper management for a length of time and also forbid the converse. Additionally, we need to impose severe restrictions on who can contribute to political campaigns both directly and indirectly through separate agencies. Its really a joke how much corruption hits capital hill. Unfortunately I don't see any reason it will ever get better unless a highly educated population has a revolution. There were only a few times this happened in the history of human kind, and it doesn't look like our society will do it anytime soon since we already have a decayed and continually decaying education system.

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That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
Re:Par for the course by Rockoon · 2010-08-06 11:22 · Score: 1

Unfortunately, the Rand-worshiping free-market fans almost always forget about the role government has in ensuring the marketplace remains a level playing field.

The rand-worshipers that I have heard have pointed out the role that government has in enabling and creating monopolies.

Patents, Licenses, Grants, etc.. barriers to entry.. brought to you by Uncle Sam.

Economies of scale isnt a valid argument. Even in mature markets with only 2 or 3 competitors, its not unheard of for a new competitor to enter the market and be successful. If there is enough money to be made, investors will follow, and start-ups can be huge from the outset because of it.

When I was growing up, there was no Walmart. There was K-Mart, Caldors, and Bradlees. Caldor is notable because it was the largest chain in the country. Now its gone.

--
"His name was James Damore."
Re:Par for the course by emkyooess · 2010-08-06 11:32 · Score: 1

Not in a free market. Note, corporations as we know them cannot exist within a free market. (Share holder companies can, but "limited liability" is a major monstrosity of a government creation. Were not the barriers to entry into a market (often governmental/regulatory [including patents]), and were not so many companies (corporations) favored over others, a monopoly is pretty much *impossible* in a free market, except perhaps in some localized resources that have few natural sources.
Re:Par for the course by Grishnakh · 2010-08-06 11:32 · Score: 1

I have another idea: how about a law forbidding lawyers from holding public office? I think that would solve many of our problems. The way it is now, most people in Congress are lawyers, the President is a lawyer, and everyone in the Supreme Court is a lawyer.
At the very most, only Congresspeople should be allowed to be lawyers, since they write the laws. The President and SCOTUS Justices should never be lawyers.
Re:Par for the course by Grishnakh · 2010-08-06 11:43 · Score: 1

Randians are full of shit. Standard Oil didn't need patents to build a monopoly. Yes, economies of scale are a valid argument, despite whatever you're smoking. Bigger companies can buy in bigger quantities, and get better discounts. The only way new competitors enter the market is if they have a new innovation that outweighs the economies of scale their entrenched competitors enjoy. In a mature industry, this isn't likely. For instance, if you want to start an oil company to compete with Chevron, Texaco, and BP, exactly how do you think you're going to do it? There's no new innovations there that would let you compete with them. You could get into a whole different form of energy (like solar), but now you're creating a new industry, not competing in an existing, mature industry.
I suppose the other way new competitors can enter a market is if their competition is all incompetent. I don't know about Wal-Mart, but I suspect this is what happened there. (I've never heard of Caldors, but I do remember Bradlees and even Woolworth, and of course K-Mart is still around, barely.) But even Wal-Mart isn't a monopoly; they're competing against Target, as well as regular grocery stores and Amazon.com and other internet retailers.
Re:Par for the course by commodore64_love · 2010-08-06 11:45 · Score: 0

>>>Monopolies are allowed and legal, however, governments tend to institute measures to ensure that monopolies don't abuse their power
Monopolies aren't legal in the US, unless they first ask permission from the government (an exclusive contract). SO: Who regulates the monopoly known as government? Who controls Amtrak from over-charging me? Or from charging decent prices, but then not delivering the service promised (like losing my mail)?
A government monopoly is no better than a corporate monopoly.

--
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Re:Par for the course by Timothy+Brownawell · 2010-08-06 11:51 · Score: 4, Informative

Monopolies aren't legal in the US, unless they first ask permission from the government (an exclusive contract).
This is not true.
Pay attention to what our occasional anti-trust cases are actually about. They're never "X has a monopoly", they're "X has been engaging in anti-competitive behavior", "X has been abusing their monopoly on Y to cheat in market Z", etc.
Re:Par for the course by Achromatic1978 · 2010-08-06 12:04 · Score: 1

SCOTUS Justices should never be lawyers
Wait, what? The people who are the ultimate arbiters of law in the country, capable of setting binding precedent, and overturning any other legal or court decision in the country, should not have any formal training in law?!? That should make things interesting...
Actually, I think the situation of Congress being what, 90%+ lawyers, is the one that needs to change. Even if it means Congress gets its own special legal team to draft legislation as passed by Congress.
Re:Par for the course by Rockoon · 2010-08-06 12:10 · Score: 2, Interesting

Yes, economies of scale are a valid argument, despite whatever you're smoking. Bigger companies can buy in bigger quantities, and get better discounts.
Companies can enter the market as a big player. This can be a new startup with a lot of investors, or an existing company entering a new market. If you dont address that point then you are just repeating the refuted argument.

As far as Standard Oil, it was broken up and rightly so. But you are forgetting that Standard Oil's main leverage was railroad discrimination, and the existing railroads had a government protected monopoly. The government created Standard Oil's advantage.

--
"His name was James Damore."
Re:Par for the course by bill_mcgonigle · 2010-08-06 12:18 · Score: 1

Unfortunately, the Rand-worshiping free-market fans almost always forget about the role government has in ensuring the marketplace remains a level playing field.
And what of the role of government in allowing these corporations to exist in the first place? Partnerships and companies rarely achieve anything near the size of corporations.

--
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Re:Par for the course by Grishnakh · 2010-08-06 12:18 · Score: 1

Wait, what? The people who are the ultimate arbiters of law in the country, capable of setting binding precedent, and overturning any other legal or court decision in the country, should not have any formal training in law?!? That should make things interesting...
I never said that. I only said they shouldn't be lawyers.
Instead, they should be judges. Who went to school to be judges, not lawyers.
That's the way France does it, as does other Civil Code countries. Judges are not former lawyers; they're specifically trained to be judges. Only in the idiotic English Common Law countries do lawyers become judges.
The recent appointment of Kagan to the SCOTUS is a good example of something that should not have happened. She was never a judge before, only a lawyer, so she basically passed up all the other experienced judges in the court system nationwide and went straight from being a crappy lawyer to being one of the highest Judges in the land, with absolutely no experience whatsoever in being a judge. Judge Judy would have been a better pick, just because of experience.
Re:Par for the course by Antisyzygy · 2010-08-06 12:34 · Score: 1

I would support that.

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That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
Re:Par for the course by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 12:41 · Score: 0

The pursuit of monopoly is the goal of capitalism: good things come from competition. Actually obtaining a monopoly is the goal of the capitalist but is something the system would rather not happen since it removes that competitive process. Even some capitalists believe that robust competition in their industry is better than having a monopoly because, by increasing the quality of their products, it increases the amount of money people spend on their class of product, more than making up for any loss in share to competitors.
Re:Par for the course by symbolset · 2010-08-06 15:11 · Score: 1

Many outstanding Supreme Court justices were not lawyers. John Marshall, Earl Warren, William Rehnquist - not a judge among them.

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Help stamp out iliturcy.
Re:Par for the course by GrumblyStuff · 2010-08-06 16:06 · Score: 1

...Tata...
Hmm. Can you tell me more about this manufacturer?
I've only seen their stuff online and I gotta say I like how perky the look. I have no idea how they feel on the road though and definitely would like to get my hands on one at least once.
You know, to fool around with.
Re:Par for the course by drinkypoo · 2010-08-07 01:45 · Score: 1

The thing is, market forces work so that companies naturally merge to only 3 or 4 main competitors when an industry is mature.
What do you mean by "market forces"? There has never been a time when there have existed companies which have been unregulated. The free market is a myth, and always has been. We have the car companies of today because they were most useful to the military.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:Par for the course by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-07 01:55 · Score: 1, Interesting

In a healthy market with a mature industry, 3 or 4 main competitors is the most efficient. The catch is, you need a decent government in place which oversees them and makes sure that they don't form a cartel or collude in any way to screw over the customers. Without any government regulation, you'll either end up with a cartel/oligopoly, or a monopoly, and then you don't have a free market at all, since there's no real competition and no choice for the consumers.
Actually, our current form of regulation is one of the biggest problems.
When companies get large enough, they can lobby for complex and expensive regulations - this prevents smaller entrants to the market which don't have huge legal departments to navigate the regulatory maze.
Another issue with our current system are the tax breaks we give to big companies for "creating jobs".
Those companies then ship those jobs overseas, or import indentured labor (via H1-B).
It would be far harder for large companies to overcome the inefficiencies of their size without these government gifts (and other tax shelters).
Re:Par for the course by commodore64_love · 2010-08-07 02:58 · Score: 1

Standard Oil wasn't abusing its monopoly when it was broken-up. It was simply a target for Teddy Roosevelt to aim his gun at - he hated monopolies even ones that were not acting abusive. In fact most historians now say that Standard HAD a monopoly, but lost it, when new competitors rose-up in Texas. So there was no reason for the government to act.
Ma Bell was also broken-up, even though they were not abusing anything.
And then there's the EU case against Microsoft - they were not found to be abusing anything either, but the EU politicians forced them to insert a browser choice screen anyway. It helped them score political points and get re-elected.

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"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Re:Par for the course by Velox_SwiftFox · 2010-08-07 03:06 · Score: 1

The US Constitution (as interpreted by SCOTUS) contains the qualifications for being president or a congresscritter. Said US Congress and the state governments do not, with or without executive signature, have the power to add additional restrictions like former professions, term limits, and so on to the few requirements mentioned.
Re:Par for the course by ArsonSmith · 2010-08-07 07:42 · Score: 1

"You could get into a whole different form of energy (like solar), but now you're creating a new industry, not competing in an existing, mature industry."
This is quite possibly the most ridiculous analysis of competition I have ever read. Oil is part of the energy Industry creating another energy that competes with oil is competition.

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Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Re:Par for the course by Grishnakh · 2010-08-07 09:17 · Score: 1

Not exactly. Have you tried powering your car with a type of energy not derived from oil? It isn't trivial. How about heating your home if it uses heating oil? You can't exactly hook up some natural gas to an oil-fired boiler.
Re:Par for the course by ArsonSmith · 2010-08-07 17:48 · Score: 1

WalMart is somewhat uniq in that they are the opposite of a monopoly. They are nearly a single buyer when it comes to their ability to distribute stuff. It's actually called a Monopsony. There are many manufactures competing to get Walmart to distribute their goods. Walmart pretty much gets to set the buying price.

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Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Re:Par for the course by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-07 19:53 · Score: 0

Alcoa was about "Alcoa has a monopoly". Alcoa did everything right and fair and played by all of the rules and it was victimised by the DoJ.
Re:Par for the course by ArsonSmith · 2010-08-07 20:34 · Score: 1

So your argument is that if you use oil to do something try not using it to do that and you wont be able to? If I used heating oil I could just switch to a wood burning stove, electric furnace or heat pump. Sure oil just happens to be the best thing to power cars currently, but there have been plenty of attempts to do this in other ways, or you could ride a bike, take the electric subway, walk, run, skate, or any number of other tings that get you from point a to point b. Your argument is identical to saying, "Try riding a bike without a bike."

--
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Re:Par for the course by Grishnakh · 2010-08-08 03:56 · Score: 1

If you have to switch from heating oil to a heat pump, exactly how much money do you think that's going to cost? Heat pumps aren't free. In fact, they're probably worth 2-5 years' worth of heating oil.
The point is, changing to a different form of energy requires a very significant up-front cost because the existing infrastructure doesn't support it.
Such as for the electric subways you mention, try that in any medium-size American city. You can't, because they don't exist. Putting in subways costs billions of dollars. Again, there's a large up-front cost.
And yes, try riding a bike without a bike. You can't. The bike costs money. Of course, bikes are relatively cheap (unless you get a good one, in which case they're at least $1000) unlike the other things mentioned here (heat pumps, subways, etc.), but the point stands. Switching forms of energy usually comes with giant infrastructure costs, which you seem to completely ignore.
Re:Par for the course by ErikZ · 2010-08-08 05:17 · Score: 1

They weren't abusing ANYTHING? Really?
Wow. I now have a new appreciation of historians. People forget that quickly.
Here's a SNL clip from that era: http://www.hulu.com/watch/4163/saturday-night-live-ernestine

--
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.

Forget price fixing, what about resolution fixing? by Fry-kun · 2010-08-06 09:40 · Score: 5, Interesting

Whose ass do you have to sue to get some highres monitors around here?

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Did you know that "FTW" ("for the win") is a direct translation of "Sieg Heil"?

isn't this everywhere though by TravisHein · 2010-08-06 09:40 · Score: 2, Interesting

such as any telco company, VOIP termination provider, or even gasoline?

Re:isn't this everywhere though by CarpetShark · 2010-08-06 10:01 · Score: 1

No. At least, hopefully not. Most of these things are controlled by raw material prices, production costs, taxes, upstream suppliers who also supply other stores, etc. The prices may seem to be fixed across lots of stores, but really lots of stores just share the same costs, and sell competitively, so prices end up much the same everywhere. For instance, most garages/petrol stations don't make much money on fuel; they make it on the snacks and cigarettes and groceries that people buy while they're paying for the fuel.
Re:isn't this everywhere though by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · 2010-08-06 10:29 · Score: 2, Informative

or even gasoline?
Yeah ... ever hear of OPEC ? They basically do this at a multi national level. Although, I really don't know if the price would be any different if they didn't. Demand has almost outstripped supply capacities.

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Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Re:isn't this everywhere though by Antisyzygy · 2010-08-06 11:13 · Score: 1

Gas would be cheaper for sure. They do the same thing DeBeers does. Limit the supply, maintain demand, price goes up.

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That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
Re:isn't this everywhere though by runner_one · 2010-08-06 11:21 · Score: 2, Interesting

I have never understood this. Every few months we hear about a new round of companies in trouble for price fixing for one product or another.
Yet OPEC gets together and does it right out in the open, heck their meetings are on the network news, and we just bend over and take it up the pooper.
I just don't get it.
Re:isn't this everywhere though by Timothy+Brownawell · 2010-08-06 11:36 · Score: 1

Because OPEC is a bunch of foreign governments, which aren't subject to our laws.
Re:isn't this everywhere though by geekoid · 2010-08-06 11:38 · Score: 1

oh yeah, oil prices have often been change due to things besides supply and demand.

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The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
Re:isn't this everywhere though by Antisyzygy · 2010-08-06 12:50 · Score: 2, Interesting

Well, they are subject to our borders. Unfortunately we cannot continue existing without their oil. Its completely the fault of our senators and presidents for the last 25 years for allowing such a dependence to occur. It is a blatant security threat. We should be beating their old asses up for it.

--
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
Re:isn't this everywhere though by blahplusplus · 2010-08-06 14:57 · Score: 1

"I just don't get it."
Energy is the lifeblood of any economy, therefore it is the most fucked with by corporatiosn and governments in the world in the geopolitical arena, you act like oil is not a strategic resource of utmost importance to the very foundation of modern economies. They get away with it because energy prices are too important militarily and geopolitically. If only the free market fuckups would think about the real world - why do we have militaries? Why do countries invade other countries? It sure as fucking hell is not to bring "democracy" or "world peace" or any of that bullshit. It's to control resources, price fixing is just another weapon in economic warfare, you act like countries are at peace with one another - they are at war with one another always, that's what captialism is fundamentally - social warfare. You know there was this guy named karl marx and others like Thorstein veblen who explained all this shit?
Re:isn't this everywhere though by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · 2010-08-06 23:16 · Score: 1

That may have been historically true, but they we're really close to maxing out Saudi Arabia's current production rate. During the $4 gas days, OPEC was doing everything it could to increase production, but still couldn't get the price down. They understand that a price too high will lead to an increased searching for alternatives.

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Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Re:isn't this everywhere though by Chowderbags · 2010-08-09 01:23 · Score: 1

Many of them are state owned corporations. Good luck suing a foreign country.

sounds familiar by gandhi_2 · 2010-08-06 09:42 · Score: 2, Interesting

agreeing to output levels and keeping prices artificially high

Sounds familiar.

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THL phish sticks

Re:sounds familiar by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 09:56 · Score: 0

Unfortunately, they're all nations. And the only way to impose your wants is through counter-sanctions or military threats. The civil way to resolve this with companies are through lawsuits. Unless you're the Mexican drug cartel....but that's another story.
Re:sounds familiar by h4rr4r · 2010-08-06 11:42 · Score: 1

Or fund an alternative and tax the hell out of their product.
That would be a far better punishment.

Good thing I bought a plasma... by damn_registrars · 2010-08-06 09:52 · Score: 0

... oh, wait. The plasma displays are priced pretty much the same as the LCDs. I guess those of us who want better contrast and refresh (without buying LEDs) get treated the same as those who don't.

It does leave one to wonder, though which technology is actually better margin for the manufacturer. It seems unlikely that the production costs of the two technologies would really be that close.

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Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.

Re:Good thing I bought a plasma... by h4rr4r · 2010-08-06 10:03 · Score: 1

And higher power use, screen burn in(which is not fixed just covered up), and reflections worse than any CRT ever had.
Re:Good thing I bought a plasma... by damn_registrars · 2010-08-06 10:12 · Score: 2, Informative

And higher power use
On the order of 30-50% higher than an LCD. Not exactly an enormous difference; most people would never see the difference in their electric bill as the consumption would still be drowned out by their refrigerator.

screen burn in(which is not fixed just covered up)
Not much of an issue on any plasma made in the last 5-10 years. The manufacturers have been aware of the problem and implemented several techniques to pretty well reduce the rate of burn-in to negligible; more LCDs have dead pixels now than plamsas have burn-in.

and reflections worse than any CRT ever had
I don't know what kind of lighting you were watching a plasma on back in the 90s, but that issue has been pretty well quashed as well. Sure, they need glass fronts as opposed to the LCDs with their plastic fronts, that is a requirement for the gas pressure. But we do have more than one way to make glass now...

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Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Re:Good thing I bought a plasma... by camperdave · 2010-08-06 10:17 · Score: 1

Something I've always wondered, in an LCD monitor, is there one big pool of liquid crystal, or are there individual cells for each pixel?

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When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Re:Good thing I bought a plasma... by Grishnakh · 2010-08-06 10:30 · Score: 0, Offtopic

Just get one of the new LED-backlit LCDs. I have a 24" monitor like this, and it's great. Better color than standard LCDs, and significantly lower power consumption too. My office gets hot enough as it is, I don't need my monitor generating even more heat.
The LED-backlit LCD TVs I've seen look fantastic.
Re:Good thing I bought a plasma... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 11:13 · Score: 0

I'd imagine Individual cells. Otherwise the current used to turn the liquid crystals would short across the entire screen. Then you'd just have one, really large, pixel. In monochrome.
Re:Good thing I bought a plasma... by geekoid · 2010-08-06 11:57 · Score: 2, Insightful

From my research, tis at LEAST 50%, sometime double. It's probably more then a refrigerator.
400W TV, on an average of 4 hours a day 1600 * 365 586 KW per year. A little higher then an average side by side 25cubic foot refrigerator.(about 525 KW per year
refrigerator should not be Turning on more then a 20% of the time during normal use.
They use tricks to try and hide burn in. Move the image, dim the other pixels, and so on. Both these just delay the effect.
I would rather have a TV that doesn't have burn in issues at all
They still have a horrid reflection/glare problem.

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The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
Re:Good thing I bought a plasma... by Bigjeff5 · 2010-08-06 14:44 · Score: 1

You're joking, right?

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Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Re:Good thing I bought a plasma... by damn_registrars · 2010-08-06 15:22 · Score: 1

From my research, tis at LEAST 50%, sometime double. It's probably more then a refrigerator. 400W TV,
I think your research is dated. Here's a current model plasma 1080p HDTV rated at 298W.

They use tricks to try and hide burn in. Move the image, dim the other pixels, and so on. Both these just delay the effect.
Wrong. Moving the image can prevent the burn in. That is the whole point of it. If the technology was worthless why would they even bother making it? Granted, if you're playing tetris marathons every day for months on end, you'll likely burn in (or out) pretty much any display. I can show you a pile of burned in CRT sets at my work...

I would rather have a TV that doesn't have burn in issues at all
So you're saying the choice is dead pixels (LCD) or burn in issues (CRT). OK, I'll stick with the plasma, thank you for reinforcing what I already knew. I strongly suggest you pick up where you left off with your "research" before you go around trashing a technology that you are inadequately informed on.

They still have a horrid reflection/glare problem.
If you're using glass from the 1990s, sure. Which is probably where you got most of your information from.

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Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Re:Good thing I bought a plasma... by Mad+Merlin · 2010-08-06 16:42 · Score: 1

...If the technology was worthless why would they even bother making it?
Because it's marketable enough to sell. See anything Microsoft has ever made.

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Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
Re:Good thing I bought a plasma... by camperdave · 2010-08-06 17:12 · Score: 1

I'd imagine Individual cells. Otherwise the current used to turn the liquid crystals would short across the entire screen. Then you'd just have one, really large, pixel. In monochrome.

Not necessarily. The image could be painted in much the same way that a CRT does it: horizontal and vertical scanning. You don't get one really large pixel with a crt, even though it uses a single common vacuum tube rather than a bunch of little vacuum tubes.

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When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Re:Good thing I bought a plasma... by drinkypoo · 2010-08-07 01:50 · Score: 1

I guess those of us who want better contrast and refresh (without buying LEDs) get treated the same as those who don't.
You cannot draw that conclusion from this article. If Plasma costs more to produce than LCD then it might well cost the same in a world in which LCD prices are fixed.
The benefit of Plasma isn't refresh rate; it refreshes at the same rate as LCD. The advantage is that you don't need to do retarded processing to scale or otherwise process video. It does switch a little slower, but choosy gamers have Bravia or Aquos displays (I have the latter) which not only don't have the burn-in/burn-off problems of plasma, but which have a 5ms update speed which is just fine. You're not going to perceive any lag at 5ms. I can't think of a single reason to buy a Plasma over an LED-backlit LCD.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:Good thing I bought a plasma... by drinkypoo · 2010-08-07 01:53 · Score: 1

The manufacturers have been aware of the problem and implemented several techniques to pretty well reduce the rate of burn-in to negligible; more LCDs have dead pixels now than plamsas have burn-in.
Who is getting all the dead pixels? I've had a couple dozen devices with LCD displays including two 1080p televisions (sold the first one and upgraded) and had exactly one dead pixel, which I fixed with a pencil.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"

now we can get to... by sevenfactorial · 2010-08-06 10:02 · Score: 5, Interesting

This is great. Hopefully in the near future we can address price fixing in everything else, like text-messages, internet service, cell phone service .... etc etc etc.

What happened to trust busting?

Re:now we can get to... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 10:40 · Score: 0

...and diamonds. Seriously, it's been a cartel for decades. Everyone knows it, yet nobody seems to care. Why?
Re:now we can get to... by jmerlin · 2010-08-06 13:06 · Score: 2, Insightful

To offset the insane price markup on text messaging, it's going to need to cost each one of those companies some billions of dollars. They've been doing it forever, charging $5/month for 300 texts or $20/month for unlimited, when in fact it costs them $0.000000 for each text message. That markup nears infinity, it's clearly a massive scam, too bad the FCC is too busy failing in every way possible, if we had a real FCC texting would be free already. To be honest, how has this texting scam remained so long? Would charging people per e-mail while simultaneously charging them for internet service last this long?
Re:now we can get to... by ignavus · 2010-08-08 21:52 · Score: 1

What happened to trust busting?
The trusts got themselves - or rather their representative - elected president.

--
I am anarch of all I survey.

Again? by unburleyvable · 2010-08-06 10:02 · Score: 5, Informative

Are they at it again? Apparently it's worth it! ... 2008 - http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/08/11/12/215212/3-Firms-Confess-To-Fixing-LCD-Prices-Agree-To-Pay-585M-Fine ... 2009 - http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/03/11/2228206/Hitachi-Fined-31-Million-For-LCD-Price-Fixing http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/12/12/0114248/860-Million-In-Fines-Handed-Out-For-LCD-Price-Fixing

Re:Again? by Bigjeff5 · 2010-08-06 14:52 · Score: 1

Were any of those in New York?
Cause that's what TFA is about - price fixing in New York.
See, in America, we have these things called "States". You could almost think of a State as a sub-country - they get to make a most of their own laws (in fact, they have far fewer restrictions on what laws they can make than the federal government does), and in most cases are able to bring charges in addition to any other state or federal charges, with the caveat being that the charges only apply to any elements of the crime that took place within that particular state. New Hampshire can't bring charges against Hitachi for price fixing that solely occurred in New Mexico, for example. The Federal government gets to bring charges against someone no matter where they are in the country, but they have pretty tight restrictions on what laws they can make and enforce.
Understand how things work a little better now?
In other words, it's probably the same price fixing, New York is just getting around to bringing charges for the portion of it that occurred in New York.

--
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Re:Again? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 21:19 · Score: 0

Nah, Cuomo's going after them for the old stuff (the suit covers '96 to '06). A cynic might figure it has something to do with his campaign for governor.

Maybe price fixing isn't so bad by mc6809e · 2010-08-06 10:03 · Score: 2, Interesting

Under fixed prices, they could worry less about lowering prices and instead concentrate on quality and eliminating dead pixels.

But what we see instead is cut-throat competition on price that lowers quality. The same thing happened to the airlines after deregulation. Under regulation, prices were fixed. They now compete on price only and quality has suffered.

Sometimes competition on price can be destructive. Jobs are lost, quality suffers, and ultimately monopolies emerge after competitors have been driven out of business.

Re:Maybe price fixing isn't so bad by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 10:34 · Score: 0

Under fixed prices, they could worry less about lowering prices and instead concentrate on quality and eliminating dead pixels.
But what we see instead is cut-throat competition on price that lowers quality. The same thing happened to the airlines after deregulation. Under regulation, prices were fixed. They now compete on price only and quality has suffered.
Sometimes competition on price can be destructive. Jobs are lost, quality suffers, and ultimately monopolies emerge after competitors have been driven out of business.
There are two generic business strategies: low cost and differentiation.
One of the problems with differentiation is that consumers dont know that it is a strategy.
Re:Maybe price fixing isn't so bad by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 11:27 · Score: 0

Two wrongs don't make a right.
If you want to pay more for no dead pixels (as do I for one) then legislate that dead pixels mean a defective product that the mfr must exchange/refund.
Re:Maybe price fixing isn't so bad by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 12:27 · Score: 0

"Jobs are lost" - this is not a bug, but a feature due to improved productivity driven by competitive forces. Look back at the last century, was it a bad thing that we went from 50% farmers to something like 2% (might be 5%, I forget the exact figure) due to mechanization? I'll grant that you have an argument on price vs quality, but I wonder how much more first class on regional jets/business on international are than economy would be under regulation? It may be that we've added a "steerage" class through deregulation that consumers as a group prefer to the old economy class.
Re:Maybe price fixing isn't so bad by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 14:05 · Score: 0

Price fixing only preserves the status quo, it does not encourage quality competition. Remember: companies exist to make maximum profit, when you have a choice between spending some of your cash on R&D or just holding it since all your "competitors" are holding price as well then you would be stupid to spend it.
The airline thing you're talking about doesn't show what you think it does. Essentially, customers used to be forced to buy a particular level of quality at a minimum, as it is now you will need to pay extra for Business or whatever class. This is putting the choice in the hands of the people instead of paternally making it for them, if people choose to suffer on the cheapest, most crappy flight they can find rather than pay extra for decent service then I contend that it is their right to do so. If it was intolerable, nobody would fly anyway.
Everything I just said applies to screens as well, by forcing the companies to compete it drops the bottom out of the market on everyday basic monitors and forces the companies to R&D better designs to differentiate against each other at the higher ends.
Re:Maybe price fixing isn't so bad by Waccoon · 2010-08-06 19:08 · Score: 1

But what we see instead is cut-throat competition on price that lowers quality.
What ensures quality are sales and complaints. The bottom line is that many people, if not most, simply put up with what they get. Why not? PCs have always been seen as disposable. After a few years, it's obsolete, regardless of how useful it really is.
Do you know how hard it is to find an IPS LCD monitor for a computer? People seem perfectly happy with with the horrible, crappy TN panels they are getting with their PCs now. By comparison, viewing angles and colors are much, much better on HDTVs, even when shopping for them at Wal-Mart. That's not just a coincidence.

Isn't that Nashe's theory? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 10:06 · Score: 0

Where competitors cooperate they end up to gain more. Everyone does that. To me it's obvious that LCD companies got sued because no large US company holds substancial interests in glass substrates design and manufacturing.

Re:Isn't that Nashe's theory? by Grishnakh · 2010-08-06 11:01 · Score: 2, Interesting

To me it's obvious that LCD companies got sued because no large US company holds substancial interests in glass substrates design and manufacturing.
Very few US companies hold substantial interests in manufacturing anything these days, except maybe military hardware.
Re:Isn't that Nashe's theory? by Locke2005 · 2010-08-06 11:27 · Score: 1

And those military hardware companies are run by such fine, upstanding CEOs!

--
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Re:Isn't that Nashe's theory? by moortak · 2010-08-06 16:43 · Score: 1

The US is still the world's largest manufacturing nation and many manufacturing companies are based in the US. http://www.industryweek.com/research/iw1000/2010/iw1000rank.asp Can we put this myth to rest at least until the US slips to second or third.

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Xavier Rabourdin for president 2012
Re:Isn't that Nashe's theory? by Grishnakh · 2010-08-07 09:09 · Score: 1

Citation needed. You provided a link to a list of companies by revenue growth, and the ones at the top were all energy companies. Energy companies don't manufacture anything, they pump black stuff out of the ground, refine it, and sell it to people to burn. Worse, the list listed companies by the nation they are headquartered in. That doesn't say anything about manufacturing. Ford is supposedly an American company, but its cars are built in Hermosillo, Mexico. That doesn't count towards "American manufacturing".
To my knowledge, America is already pretty far down in manufacturing. All that's left here is 1) military hardware, 2) Boeing airplanes, and 3) Intel CPUs (but only the bare chips, the packaging is done in Malaysia). There's two really big manufacturing countries in the world: China and Germany. These two are almost tied at #1 and #2 for exports by dollar value. China makes tons of cheap junk (along with computer hard drives, iPhones, and all kinds of other consumer goods), and Germany makes high-end cars and extremely expensive industrial equipment, machine tools, and electronic test equipment. America, by contrast, is pretty far down in exports, which is pretty shameful considering its size. Worse, its exports are mostly low-value commodities, namely coal, corn, and other agricultural products, along with minerals (copper, etc.).
Re:Isn't that Nashe's theory? by moortak · 2010-08-08 07:55 · Score: 1

The UN stats disagree with you. http://unstats.un.org/unsd/snaama/dnllist.asp

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Xavier Rabourdin for president 2012
Re:Isn't that Nashe's theory? by Grishnakh · 2010-08-08 08:14 · Score: 1

Ok, GDP by nation is definitely a better measure than a list of multinational companies by revenue, I'll admit.
However, I still have to wonder exactly how the GDP is calculated. For instance, suppose Ford makes a bunch of cars in Mexico and has no plants in the USA (for the sake of argument, I realize they still have a few old plants here), how does that affect the GDP? Basically, Ford would get a bunch of profits from the cars sold, even though it manufactured nothing in the USA in this scenario. And sure, some engineers and office workers in the USA might get paid (unless they outsource the engineering too), and the executives would get paid millions, but that doesn't really help the USA economy much.
GDP doesn't confine itself to manufacturing activity, plus it includes all the service-sector work which isn't productive at all (people making coffees for each other or cutting each other's grass doesn't produce anything of lasting value), and has absolutely no use for exporting activity, which keeps a country's economy competitive. A bunch of corporate profits flowing through American companies, with a large chunk being siphoned off for the executives, and the rest being distributed to shareholders all over the world, doesn't do much for the economy either. The executives will save up their money in Swiss bank accounts and spend it on land and mansions in foreign countries, while their fellow Americans are stuck with shitty jobs brewing coffee, which are the first thing to go when the economy hits a bump.
Re:Isn't that Nashe's theory? by moortak · 2010-08-08 14:03 · Score: 1

The second paragraoh doesn't really apply to this data set because it has the information broken down by sector as well as straight GDP info. Looking at other parts of the site it appears they use nation of production rather than nation of ownership of the companies. http://unstats.un.org/unsd/industry/docs/M90.pdf It starts laying out the relevant parts of the methodology on page 13.

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Xavier Rabourdin for president 2012

Re:Forget price fixing, what about resolution fixi by sky289hawk1 · 2010-08-06 10:06 · Score: 1

Bring on the retina displays for computers!

Track Record with this Bunch by gpronger · 2010-08-06 10:23 · Score: 1

"unburleyvable" pointed out an important point here (wish I had some mod points), this isn't the first time around with price fixing with this stuff. I for one think that something new has to be applied to the situation based upon track record. It would seem that their perspective (manufacturer's) after getting caught must be that the point isn't not to do it (price fix) but not to get caught doing it.

Greg

Say what? by SEWilco · 2010-08-06 10:32 · Score: 0

Whatever this story is about, why won't my laptop display it on its monitor? :-)

Time for stronger laws by erroneus · 2010-08-06 10:33 · Score: 4, Insightful

We need jail time for decision makers. I mean serious jail time. We have seen this over and over and over again with chips and LCDs and CDs and all manner of things like this. It's not as if they don't know it's illegal. They KNOW it is illegal. It is time to either make this type of behavior legal or to get serious about the punishment. Corporations are too often shields for unethical, unlawful, immoral, inhumane, harmful and illegal behavior. When the "corporation" takes all the risk, what is to stop individuals from persisting?

Re:Time for stronger laws by selven · 2010-08-06 11:02 · Score: 1

Well at least it looks like they might be getting fined here. That's better than another article here I read recently where the punishment for breaking the law is "don't break the law any more for the next 10 years please". I wish I could get that kind of treatment.
Re:Time for stronger laws by Jamu · 2010-08-06 11:16 · Score: 1

When the "corporation" takes all the risk, what is to stop individuals from persisting?
Isn't that the purpose of the company? To move individual responsibility to an abstract legal entity.

--
Who ordered that?
Re:Time for stronger laws by Antisyzygy · 2010-08-06 11:17 · Score: 1

Illegal and immoral are different things. I would bet they took protections to make it as legal as possible.

--
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
Re:Time for stronger laws by Timothy+Brownawell · 2010-08-06 11:32 · Score: 1

We need jail time for decision makers. I mean serious jail time.
Why is sentencing people to prison rape always the solution? "the punishment should fit the crime", right? Fine them 2x what they made from it, maybe bar them from holding that sort of position in the future.
Re:Time for stronger laws by erroneus · 2010-08-06 11:39 · Score: 1

Individuals make the decisions. Fining a corporation does not punish the individuals responsible for the actions. Trying to extract "what they made from it" can and is hidden through dirty accounting tricks.
Sentencing people to prison time is a deterrent to show that they have something to lose. At the moment, they have nothing to lose.
Re:Time for stronger laws by Timothy+Brownawell · 2010-08-06 11:46 · Score: 1

Fining a corporation does not punish the individuals responsible for the actions.
Which is why you fine the people responsible, as well as the corporation.

Trying to extract "what they made from it" can and is hidden through dirty accounting tricks.
I'm sure they can come up with a reasonable upper bound.

Sentencing people to prison time is a deterrent to show that they have something to lose.
So is executing them. Why don't we just do that for everything?

At the moment, they have nothing to lose.
Apart from personal fortunes and nice jobs.
Re:Time for stronger laws by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 12:39 · Score: 0

Let us arrest people who are productive. That will send the right message.
Re:Time for stronger laws by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 13:07 · Score: 0

No, there is no reason to separate people from society if they aren't dangerous. Go ahead and punish people for illegal behavior, but if it isn't dangerous, I cannot think of a reason to lock them up (revenge isn't a reason). Take their property, prevent them from being a head of a corporation, there are plenty of ways to deal with it that doesn't include locking up non-violent people.
Corporations are shielded from unethical and illegal behavior because that is the entire point of a corporation. It protects the owners from liability. If you don't like that, then you don't like corporations. I wish they didn't exist or at least were fewer in number and extremely regulated. Rather than lock up people, lets change the system so this doesn't happen. People should be responsible for their own businesses. If the owners were personally responsible, they would be much less likely to hire bad people or put pressure on people towards bad behavior.
Re:Time for stronger laws by StormyWeather · 2010-08-06 13:16 · Score: 1

If you transfer risks to the individual people, then the people won't work for the corporations, and companies globally will crater.
Can I subscribe to your newsletter so that I may have something to burn to keep me warm when we enter the dark age that would happen if your kind of thinking gained momentum globally?
Re:Time for stronger laws by sjames · 2010-08-06 14:41 · Score: 1

Perhaps the punishment for shoplifting should be 50% of the value of the stuff you actually get caught with (similar to the fines levied on corporate felons). Then the rest of us will have some chance to make up the difference.
Re:Time for stronger laws by erroneus · 2010-08-07 00:35 · Score: 1

Oh no they won't. Only people who are interested in doing illegal thing might tend to shy away from illegal behavior... and as always, those people will simply push the boundaries to the very edge and slightly over within a certain "forgiveable" range. They know all too well what they are doing.
Re:Time for stronger laws by erroneus · 2010-08-07 00:43 · Score: 1

Define "dangerous" if you will.
Armed robbery is definitely dangerous. Someone might be violently injured or killed. But what about financial crimes that harm the public? It is really better because the harm is spread out more evenly? And what of extreme situations like ENRON? Families were harmed in ways far greater than a robbery might result in. Their livelihoods, their reputations and even their employability have undoubtedly been affected.
We want to think of direct violence as the real threat to society, but I cannot subscribe to that point of view. I tend to classify that level of danger as similar to the weather in most respects -- it essentially cannot be helped. It's a part of the world we live in and the range that an individual instance is rather contained and limited.
When it becomes a matter of global financial crimes, it affects everyone and isn't quite so easily contained.

Don't confuse brands with manufacturers. by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 10:38 · Score: 2, Insightful

You're confusing what are basically brands with manufacturers.

Many of the automotive companies you listed make cars for one another. That ends up rendering them more as brands, rather than outright manufacturers. Even then, many of them buy their parts from the same parts manufacturers, and only act as mere assemblers most of the time.

The situation is even worse with computers. Like with the automotive companies you listed, all of those computer companies merely assemble computers. They all use components made by a very small number of manufacturers. They basically just assemble them, and stick their company name on the final system. They end up just being brands for what is essentially the same product. You can buy a modern Apple laptop, or buy five older Dell laptops for the same price, and the parts inside will be virtually identical.

Re:Don't confuse brands with manufacturers. by Antisyzygy · 2010-08-06 11:08 · Score: 1

I like how you took a stab at apple while making a point. Clever, and I agree.

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That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
Re:Don't confuse brands with manufacturers. by Dogtanian · 2010-08-06 11:08 · Score: 1

The situation is even worse with computers. Like with the automotive companies you listed, all of those computer companies merely assemble computers. They all use components made by a very small number of manufacturers
The obvious- and most central- example is that of the x86 PC's CPU itself, where the market is basically a duopoly that's just a few not-quite-competitive AMD releases away from being a monopoly.

--
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Re:Don't confuse brands with manufacturers. by ewanm89 · 2010-08-06 12:39 · Score: 1

actually, it's three way, Intel, AMD and Via. This is due to and agreement on certain patents they hold. However no one says you must use an x86 cpu, there's PPC, SPARC, MIPS and ARM architectures among others which are used frequently outside the desktop/laptop PC markets.
Re:Don't confuse brands with manufacturers. by petermgreen · 2010-08-06 13:05 · Score: 1

actually, it's three way, Intel, AMD and Via.
IIRC there are a few manufacturers making 486 clones (there can't be many patents left on stuff that old can there?) for the embedded market as well.
Still it remains that for high end desktop PCs there is only one choice and for ordinary desktops/laptops there are only two reasonable choices. Via only really have chips in the netbook/nettop range afaict. I do wonder how long AMD will be able to hang on now intel have got their act together, being forced to sell your top end chip at the same price as your competitors upper-midrange stuff must really hurt those margins, especially when you get to spread your fixed costs over fewer units.

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note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Re:Don't confuse brands with manufacturers. by ChunderDownunder · 2010-08-06 13:43 · Score: 1

However no one says you must use an x86 cpu
Microsoft does.
The last viable consumer alternative, PowerPC, was silenced 4 years ago. An iPad inspired revolution may stir a few OEMs to release ARM tablets but Joe Consumer will be stuck with Windows 7 or higher on x86-64 for the foreseeable future.
Re:Don't confuse brands with manufacturers. by rickb928 · 2010-08-09 11:10 · Score: 1

Um, you blew it:
"An iPad inspired revolution may stir a few OEMs to release ARM tablets but Joe Consumer will be stuck with Windows 7 or higher on x86-64 for the foreseeable future"
Like, say Apple, though of course their table isn't going to be competitive, since it's not running Windows, right?
You were doing so well, too.

--
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.

Re:Forget price fixing, what about resolution fixi by Sabriel · 2010-08-06 10:44 · Score: 1

If they can't fix the price, they may well have to compete more on actual features...

Re:Forget price fixing, what about resolution fixi by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 10:45 · Score: 0

No kidding. My 8 year old laptop has a 15" 1600x1200 screen. I have not seen anything close to that pixel density before or since. I thought by now we would all be using 4000x3000 27" screens when in fact we have moved backwards with craptacular 1920x1080 screens (1080?! WTF, my ancient laptop is better!).

The price fixing sucked (or sucks) though. I have two 20" LCD's from 2004 that were over $700 each. Big 'ol scam they had running there.

Re:Forget price fixing, what about resolution fixi by haruchai · 2010-08-06 10:57 · Score: 1

Did you know that "FTW" ("for the win") is a direct translation of "Sieg Heil"?

No, I didn't and no, it's not. The direct translation is Hail Victory.

--
Pain is merely failure leaving the body

Re:Forget price fixing, what about resolution fixi by orange47 · 2010-08-06 11:00 · Score: 1

Its probably not easy to reduce dot pitch and pixels. Go sue someone for lack of flying cars..

what really is price fixing? by supernova87a · 2010-08-06 11:01 · Score: 1

Perhaps someone can explain/frame for me the whole notion of regulating anti-competitive behavior, and how legal authority to regulate is derived/justified from consistent principles, in a nascent industry? Because it seems very case-by-case to me, as well as pick-and-choose based on "what we don't like".

What I mean is that I sometimes don't understand cases like the following:

- Companies making LCD screens are accused of price fixing for charging high prices, yet Apple, which is the only producer of the iPhone, does not count as a monopoly and is not similarly found to be price fixing a (at one point) $600 phone.

- XM radio and Sirius merged, to much scrutiny of the SEC because this would consolidate the industry and "reduce competition". But how was consolidating into one player any different when there was only one player in the industry at the beginning of this technology? Why is government interested now, but not back then?

I guess I'm confused about fundamental questions. When does it become society's right/responsibility to say that a service/product has evolved such that you cannot use your competitive advantage to gain as much as possible from it? Is it when something rises to the level of being a public good / commodity / right?

Wouldn't you be frustrated that if you had a technology you basically created, you were told that you must allow someone else to compete with you and benefit from your work?

Some things are confusing.

Re:what really is price fixing? by spire3661 · 2010-08-06 11:28 · Score: 1

First of all monopolies are NOT illegal, abusing one is. Secondly, Apple holds absolutely NO monopolies in any sector of business, at all. I think you really need to go and read about what a monopoly really is, in the CONTEXT of the law. XM and Sirius merged because they couldn't stay viable any other way. It was either let them merge or watch them both slowly die. That was a big part of the SEC scrutiny and ultimately why it was allowed. It becomes society right when a manufacturer controls so much of a market that it impossible to have competitors play on level playing field. IN recent history there have been very few real abusive monopolies. ATT and Microsoft come to mind and thats about it. Your ending statement describes basically a patent. Either you have it or you dont. The whole issue in this particular case is that you have several companies that are supposed to compete with each other to create a robust marketplace that are illegally conspiring to form an abusive monopoly. When they act as one, they are no longer competitors, but illegal colluders.

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Good-bye
Re:what really is price fixing? by geekoid · 2010-08-06 12:03 · Score: 1

The iPhone isn't a market, the cell phone industry is. SO if apple became the dominant players, they could have a monopoly.
Monoply law is more detailed then portrayed here on /.
Also, someone needs to file a suit. So if you are abusing your monopoly, but now one files then nothing will be done.
Too answer your last question:
Sure I would be frustrated. But just because I create the technology doesn't mean I get to stop other people from doing similar things. If you have a bread store, you can't tell me not to make bread.

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The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
Re:what really is price fixing? by Antisyzygy · 2010-08-06 12:45 · Score: 1

Unfortunately for you, my IP includes many recipes for various forms of bread. If you make anything resembling I will be forced to take legal action against you for copyright infringement.

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That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
Re:what really is price fixing? by cowscows · 2010-08-06 12:45 · Score: 1

Price fixing is different than setting a price. It's not illegal to set a price, you can generally charge whatever you want and let people decide whether or not to buy it. It only becomes problematic if you control such a big portion of that particular market that you're using your position to unfairly suppress competitors, or to charge a price beyond what the market would normally accept. (Or colluding with the other players in the market to do the same). The iPhone is, at the end of the day, just a fancy mobile phone, and in a very real sense has to compete with $20 phones that are sold on shelves right across from them at the AT&T store. People have plenty of phones to choose from at a wide range of prices if they don't want to spend $600 on an iPhone.
Your satellite radio example is kind of silly when you think about it. Should the government not allow any new business models or products until there are at least two companies ready to sell them? One of the basic tenants of capitalism is that competition forces efficiency, and the market benefits from that. Once you've got that competition, allowing one side to buy out all of its peers is basically reducing that competitive pressure, and in the long run slows the evolution of that market.
There's certainly no agreement on when it's right for society/government/whoever to step in and regulate these things, but the general idea is to maintain some level of competition, because it forces the various players to continually improve their products and stay efficient. Companies that fail to do so eventually weaken or even collapse, and that creates space for new players and new ideas. Then there are more specific instances, such as commodities/utilities, but even then it's often only an issue in less competitive markets. An example would be if the gas station down the street from me decided that tomorrow they were going to raise their prices to $17.00 per gallon. That would be unlikely to draw a government response, because there are four other gas stations within a couple minutes drive that I could go to to get reasonably priced gasoline. Now if the managers of all of the gas stations in the area got together and decided that they'd all raise their price that high, then that'd be price fixing, and the government would come down hard on them (if public outcry didn't change their mind first). A similar issue happens because I live in a hurricane zone, and when there's an evacuation, sometimes a gas station will try to significantly raise their prices to profit off of people who are trying to leave, and that's considered price gouging and can get them in some serious trouble.

--
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Re:what really is price fixing? by sjames · 2010-08-06 15:51 · Score: 1

I don't have good answers for a lot of your questions, but I can address at least one at a fundamental level:

When does it become society's right/responsibility to say that a service/product has evolved such that you cannot use your competitive advantage to gain as much as possible from it? Is it when something rises to the level of being a public good / commodity / right?
Unlike actual people, corporations have NO intrinsic right to exist. They are granted a corporate charter. Though in practice it's never enforced anymore, in law the charter is contingent on the corporation's existence being in the public interest. Even if a corporation hasn't done anything specifically wrong, the charter can be revoked if the public interest calls for it.
Given that, it's clear that the people are very much within their rights to limit the behavior of a corporation.
In practice, even while we impose a three strikes rule on individuals, we routinely give three time losers like Microsoft yet another chance.
Frankly, if my invention makes me a multi-billionaire, I'll happily take my retirement.
I can partially answer some of the rest. The SEC was more worried about the merger, a deliberate action that didn't HAVE to happen and could be a deliberate move to monopolize the market than they were about the intrinsic situation that someone had to be the first and at that time there was no proven market to monopolize.
There is more concern about collusion covering an entire class of product (LCD displays) than about Apple having sole control over one particular instance (the iPhone) of a broader class of product (smart phones).

Again? by Caduceus1 · 2010-08-06 11:04 · Score: 1

Really? http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202424438569

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rm /dev/mem
Sci-Fi Storm

The only way for a fine to work... by joocemann · 2010-08-06 11:15 · Score: 1

...is if the fine costs far more than what was made from the corrupt action. If it isn't, then the fine is no more than a cost of doing business. As in most cases, the fine probably *won't* be greater than the profits made, and thus there is nothing good that will come of it.

libertarians, free market fundamentalists, and by circletimessquare · 2010-08-06 11:18 · Score: 1, Flamebait

other assorted tea party morons:

you need a powerful government to regulate the market and keep it fair. left on its own, the market is abused by its largest players. point of economic historical fact

wake the fuck up from your idealistic idiocies please

--
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it

Re:libertarians, free market fundamentalists, and by theverylastperson · 2010-08-06 11:40 · Score: 1

I'm looking at a 21" LCD I paid $129.00 for. Just fifteen years ago these didn't exist (If they did they'd cost a lot more than $129). Is a $129 an abusive price? The very system you argue against is the very system that produces, what I think, is an amazing product at an extremely affordable price.
Who would you rather be abused by? Toshiba or a Powerful Government? I know which one Stalin would pick.Now that's a man who had "idealistic idiocies".
There's a fine line we walk between protecting consumers and protecting liberties. Attacking a group of companies that have revolutionized our civilization by producing items that 100 years ago would be considered magic, seems somehow foolish. Left unchecked there is a high chance that they may some day abuse their market power, but I would have to see some kind of abuse that outweighs the true value of the product they produce.

--
ed duval the very last person
Re:libertarians, free market fundamentalists, and by Vaphell · 2010-08-06 11:46 · Score: 1

government with the power to crack down on market abuse? sounds fine
problems start when governments start to regulate even the minute details and pretty much can decide who is the winner (tax breaks, subsidies and whatnot). When that happens, the biggest players prefer to game the system by political influence and not by using market forces to their advantage. Also big companies love shitloads of regulation - yes, they have to pay more to be compliant, but they win less competition from smaller firms. Big ones can accomodate compliance costs thanks to their size but smaller firms cannot, thus making them more expensive and less competitive.
There is also one drawback of too much regulation - companies start to lose ground to firms from other countries which don't have to do all the costly paperwork required.
Re:libertarians, free market fundamentalists, and by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 14:44 · Score: 0

For what its worth, the 21 inch LCD I paid about 300 dollars four (four years ago) has outlasted every other component in my computer but the case (which is damaged, but still keeps my hardware in place) and the mouse (which is starting to wear out, but will not be replaced until it either breaks or I find a suitable replacement).
The only complaint I have about said monitor is the shoddy stand, which I had to replace with a much sturdier one I built out of old toys. No dead pixels, a mostly unlimited field of view, and, no visible ghosting, and, most importantly, none of the flickering and high-pitched buzzing I got out of CRTs.
That LCD, which Samsung may or may not have sold under a price-fixing arrangement, has definitely provided me with greater value than the price I paid for it. I've heard prices have come down on similar & better displays anyway. Is price fixing to blame for reduced prices and improved products?

Re:Forget price fixing, what about resolution fixi by Locke2005 · 2010-08-06 11:23 · Score: 1

I just bought a Samsung 27" 1920x1080 monitor, which is plenty highres enough for me. The monitor only is $330 at Costco, the monitor with digital TV built in is $380, for for $50 I went for the one with a tuner, remote control, and build in speakers.

--
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.

Re:Forget price fixing, what about resolution fixi by h4rr4r · 2010-08-06 11:41 · Score: 1

My phone has a much lower dot pitch, it uses an lcd.

Re:Forget price fixing, what about resolution fixi by PhrostyMcByte · 2010-08-06 11:44 · Score: 1

1920x1080 @ 27" is merely 81.5 DPI -- high res, sure, but still quite pixelated. I bet the GP meant to say high-DPI screens.

Re:Forget price fixing, what about resolution fixi by Jaime2 · 2010-08-06 11:56 · Score: 5, Interesting

I'm posting this from a 1920x1200 24" monitor that I bought three years ago for about $200.00. Almost nobody makes an affordable display with more than 1080 rows any more. You can blame HDTV for it, monitor manufacturers would much rather sell computer users the HDTV screens they are already making than create computer-specific resolutions. Before HDTV, monitors were on a steady march to higher resolution, after 1080p became popular, monitors backtracked and have been stuck ever since.

Re:Forget price fixing, what about resolution fixi by A+Friendly+Troll · 2010-08-06 12:03 · Score: 3, Interesting

Whose ass do you have to sue to get some highres monitors around here?

Forget it.

The only way that's going to happen is if the pixel count gets magically quadrupled, so you can immediately jump from 1900x1200 on a 24" monitor to 3800x2400.

Any intermediate solutions simply wouldn't work due to issues with scaling existing content. Read: it would look like blurred shit. If you don't want to scale things up in size and keep everything 1:1, then tough luck, because it would require perfect vision and strain the eyes, which would make it inaccessible for the vast majority of people out there (and even then, there are limits). I have a 22" running the bog-standard 1680x1050, and to be honest, sometimes I wouldn't mind having a 24" with the same resolution for extra comfort, after a long day of work...

Scale up: looks like shit
Don't scale up: include a magnifying glass with the monitor

Now, if the pixel count gets quadrupled, then you can keep everything displayed completely the same as now, have the OS lie about resolution and scale everything internally, but also add some new API functions to allow apps to draw certain things (such as font glyphs) at the true native resolution. About seven to ten years later (!), you could consider the transitions successful because all monitors sold would be high-res, all maintained software would have been written to make use of the new API, and all toolbar icons would have been quadrupled in resolution as well.

Unfortunately, you'd still have the issue of graphics on the web, so you'd also need a new image format that would hold a low res and a high res version, and if you said something was "300px" wide, it would technically be a lie, but never mind that.

In conclusion, it's not going to happen, and you can forget it :)

Price-fixing creates opportunity for little guys. by Ungrounded+Lightning · 2010-08-06 12:10 · Score: 2, Interesting

The thing is, market forces work so that companies naturally merge to only 3 or 4 main competitors when an industry is mature. ... At this time, these larger companies are able to take advantage of economies of scale that smaller competitors cannot, and as the industry and technology is mature, new small competitors can't bring any new innovation to the table that outweighs their lack of brand recognition and economies of scale.

So far so good...

The catch is, you need a decent government in place which oversees them and makes sure that they don't form a cartel or collude in any way to screw over the customers.

And there's where you disconnect from both your own argument's internal consistency and what the "Rand-worshiping free-market fans" claim.

The catch, for the cartel-seekers, is that in order to screw over the customers they have to raise prices. And THAT over-compensates for the economies of scale and lack of opportunity for competition on innovation in a mature market. Once the upstarts start up they have to drive the prices back down to keep from being hamstrung.

Meanwhile the upstarts have second-mover advantage: They don't have to make all the design and market-choice mistakes and incur all the related costs that the established players did. Meanwhile a market never REALLY matures - science and technology march on even when the current market players aren't incorporating the incremental and breakthrough improvements. When building new plant it's about as easy to design for the latest-and-greatest as to replicate a former decade's technology - and it may actually be cheaper. Once the new guys are playing the old ones are stuck with aging plant that needs replacement or an expensive retrofit.

So, in the absence of some anticompetitive externality the lifetime of a monopoly or cartel that engages in gouging is limited. It recreates the conditions that lead to the rise of new competitors.

The fly in this ointment (as a previous poster has pointed out) is the government. By a number of mechanisms it can (and tends to) favor the existing players and raise the barriers to the entry of new competitors - or even prescribe a monopoly. THAT's what allows cartels and monopolies to gouge for long periods.

A monopoly or cartel that doesn't mistreat its customers can continue to exist for a long time. Example: Alcoa. It had an effective monopoly on aluminum production for decades - mainly BECAUSE it priced its products low, treated its customers well, and focussed on improving its processes rather than playing zero-sum games to transfer its customers' wealth to itself. Thus competition was both unnecessary to achieve the benefits of a competitive market - and (until post-WWII demobilization enabled Reynolds and Kaiser) market forces drove investment to other areas where more value-added was available.

The problem isn't monopoly per se - it's COERCIVE monopoly. And the main source of coercion (especially coercion that limits entry to markets) is government action.

--
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way

Re:Forget price fixing, what about resolution fixi by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 12:13 · Score: 0

Agreed, I'm so sick of 1920x1080.. What ever happened to the higher res monitors? 1080p monitors have gotten so cheap but the others have stayed the same (or even gone up) it seems..

Re:Forget price fixing, what about resolution fixi by bill_mcgonigle · 2010-08-06 12:21 · Score: 1

In conclusion, it's not going to happen, and you can forget it

Really? In a hundred years, the maximum vertical resolution on a display will be 1080?

The reasonable question is, 'when'? At some point current small high-res screen tech yields will be good enough that the TV companies can spend next to nothing more and have a marketing advantage. That still seems to be a few years off, unfortunately.

--
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)

Re:Forget price fixing, what about resolution fixi by Cerium · 2010-08-06 12:26 · Score: 1

Yes, the people demand LCDs capable of 640x960!

Wait...

Great Job, Andrew Cuomo - by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 12:29 · Score: 0

... For proving once again that antitrust law applies only to the computer electronics and software industries.

Enjoy your dog and pony show.

Re:Forget price fixing, what about resolution fixi by TheVelvetFlamebait · 2010-08-06 12:59 · Score: 1

I love the way you're modded "interesting" and not "funny". Some people apparently haven't given up on their faith in the legal system's ability to poke its nose where it doesn't belong. :-)

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You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.

Economic Mitosis by Tablizer · 2010-08-06 13:08 · Score: 1

If a company grows too big, split it in half. That shouldn't hurt stock owners on average because the total value of the stock stays the same. You just have two listed stocks instead of one. Economic mitosis.

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Table-ized A.I.

weeeeeeeeee by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 13:44 · Score: 0

nothing death will not solve, also, not surprised.

Andrew Cuomo is as corrupt as his father by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 13:47 · Score: 0

Andrew Cuomo is as corrupt as his father, Mario, but has much better political connections now, one generation removed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Cuomo

Lawsuits such as these recall the Eliot Spitzer days, for those of you whose recollection is vague. From all reports, Eliot Spitzer was the "Champion of the Common Man", during his stint as AG of NYS, and we all know how that turned out, once he was elected Governor of New York.

But, you can be sure that Andrew's skeletons will be much better buried: If the Cuomos have learned anything from their association with the Kennedy clan, it's how to cover "stuff" up.

Just NYS politics in action.

Posting AC, for obvious reasons.

Re:Andrew Cuomo is as corrupt as his father by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 17:05 · Score: 0

Posting AC, for obvious reasons.
Because you're a paranoid schizophrenic?

Sigh by ADRA · 2010-08-06 14:06 · Score: 3, Interesting

If only OPEC could be held to the standards of everyone else...

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Bye!

Re:Sigh by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 22:41 · Score: 0

If only OPEC could be held to the standards of everyone else...
My thoughts exactly. If every other industry is punished for such behavior, why does OPEC exist? It does exactly this kind of behavior.
Re:Sigh by Ixokai · 2010-08-07 05:05 · Score: 1

Err, maybe because the C in OPEC stands for ... Countries.
You can't exactly regulate the behavior of *nations* in quite the same way as you can companies, even when those nations are acting as businesses in an industry.
Since they have like, sovereignty, and all. That, and a few of them wouldn't even recognize our legal authority to ask them to to wash their hands after taking a dump.

Re:Forget price fixing, what about resolution fixi by ChunderDownunder · 2010-08-06 14:07 · Score: 1

Any intermediate solutions simply wouldn't work due to issues with scaling existing content.

Some of us use computer displays for more than displaying 'existing content'. Like doing actual work in portrait mode. At least some monitors support pivoting, for those whose employers won't fork out for a fancy monitor stand.

Re:Forget price fixing, what about resolution fixi by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 14:33 · Score: 0

No way, my 15" 1600x1200 screen looks fine. The same density in a larger size would kick ass.

I say you just have bad eyesight old man.

Tom Smith and His Incredible Bread Machine by diamondmagic · 2010-08-06 15:52 · Score: 1

From http://mises.org/daily/3801

The lawyer then went on,
These very simpIe guidelines
You can rely upon:
You're gouging on your prices if
You charge more than the rest.
But it's unfair competition
If you think you can charge less.
A second point that we would make
To help avoid confusion:
Don't try to charge the same amount:
That would be collusion!
You must compete. But not too much,
For if you do, you see,
Then the market would be yours
And that's monopoly!"

--
Wonder what the public key field is for?

USB flash drives price fixed? by Ultracrepidarian · 2010-08-06 16:08 · Score: 1

I think USB flash drives are price fixed. Prices haven't changed much for last 2 years.

will they ever learn by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 16:17 · Score: 0

Will they ever learn?

here is the news results for LCD price fixing in 2010
http://www.google.com/search?q=lcd+price+fixing&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=QpG&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tbs=nws:1,cd_min:2010,cd_max:2010,cdr:1&prmd=nl&source=lnt

here is the news results for LCD price fixing in 2009
http://www.google.com/search?q=lcd+price+fixing&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=fUb&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tbs=nws:1,cd_min:2009,cd_max:2009,cdr:1&prmd=nl&source=lnt

here is the news results for LCD price fixing in 2008
http://www.google.com/search?q=lcd+price+fixing&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=8Vb&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tbs=nws:1,cd_min:2008,cd_max:2008,cdr:1&prmd=nl&source=lnt

Re:Price-fixing creates opportunity for little guy by moortak · 2010-08-06 16:27 · Score: 1

DeBeers was able to sustain a wildly lucrative monopoly without government assistance for roughly a century.

--
Xavier Rabourdin for president 2012

Re:Forget price fixing, what about resolution fixi by Mad+Merlin · 2010-08-06 16:37 · Score: 1

That's the stupidest argument I've ever heard. The core problem with it is that it relies on the assumption that an OS and it's respective applications will break horribly at anything other than 96 DPI. While this is true on Windows (and indeed would make running Windows on a 200 DPI screen a prescription for eye strain), it is a Windows-only problem.

Font scaling and image scaling are solved problems, get with the times.

--
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!

Re:Forget price fixing, what about resolution fixi by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 17:48 · Score: 1, Informative

Vista and Windows 7 already have all the functionality you're asking for: on a high-resolution screen old applications get a false legacy DPI value and their output is scaled by Windows, and new applications can request to turn that functionality off and work on the real high-resolution DPI. Now all we need is the applications and the high-resolution monitors.... I'm not holding my breath.

Re:Forget price fixing, what about resolution fixi by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-06 20:03 · Score: 0

Reducing production costs, so simple rule, DO NOT BUY OVERPRICED MONITORS, just buy an HDTV at cheaper price as its the same technology and screen resolutions and panels.

Re:Forget price fixing, what about resolution fixi by A+Friendly+Troll · 2010-08-06 21:26 · Score: 1

Vista and Windows 7 already have all the functionality you're asking for: on a high-resolution screen old applications get a false legacy DPI value and their output is scaled by Windows, and new applications can request to turn that functionality off and work on the real high-resolution DPI.

Have you seen how those scaled apps look?

I'll tell you: they look like blurry shit. I've covered that in the parent post.

By "new apps" you mean those written in WPF, and, well, so far I've only seen one - a savegame editor for FM2009. Strangely enough, that one *also* looked like blurry shit, with horrible font rendering (at least on my XP box).

Re:Forget price fixing, what about resolution fixi by A+Friendly+Troll · 2010-08-06 21:45 · Score: 1

That's the stupidest argument I've ever heard. The core problem with it is that it relies on the assumption that an OS and it's respective applications will break horribly at anything other than 96 DPI. While this is true on Windows (and indeed would make running Windows on a 200 DPI screen a prescription for eye strain), it is a Windows-only problem.

Sort of. Windows can lie about DPI and scale everything up, so that interface layouts don't break like they used to in the past. Se7en improved it by a lot, but it's still not good enough and requires a ton of work from application developers.

You can end up with this:

http://www.istartedsomething.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/120.png

The start menu looks fine, because Seven comes with 128x128 icons for everything, if I'm not mistaken. However, take a close look at Wordpad - the toolbar icons and the zoom on the bottom.

It gets much worse for legacy apps. For example, this:

DPI virtualization: http://a.imagehost.org/0342/SS-2010-05-15_01_14_47.png
XP-mode scaling: http://h.imagehost.org/0718/SS-2010-05-15_01_18_02.png

The first one looks like blurry shit (as I've said before), and the second one breaks the layout.

Font scaling and image scaling are solved problems, get with the times.

As you can see above, it's *not* a solved problem.

Protectionism? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-07 00:21 · Score: 0

Why do American prosecutors only go after foreign companies?

Wait.. didn't this happen before? by drunkennewfiemidget · 2010-08-07 01:57 · Score: 1

More specifically, if they're price fixing, how cheap should these things be? 24" IPS panels go on sale for like $249. That's price fixed? That already seems insanely cheap to me.

Again? by Charliemopps · 2010-08-07 04:06 · Score: 1

Weren't they already found guilty of this?

Not the Tata you are looking for. by mrmeval · 2010-08-07 08:29 · Score: 1

Ugly as sin http://www.tatamotors.com/

--
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty

Given that Cuomo's going the Spitzer route... by sethstorm · 2010-08-07 11:52 · Score: 1

How long until someone creates a scandal out of him to "dispose of him"?

--
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.

Re:Forget price fixing, what about resolution fixi by toddestan · 2010-08-07 14:05 · Score: 1

They can easily reduce the dot pitch. For the first round, I would be happy if they took some of the laptop screens from a few years back (such as 1600x1200 @ 15"), put them in a case with a DVI port and called it a monitor.

Re:Forget price fixing, what about resolution fixi by toddestan · 2010-08-07 14:09 · Score: 1

Generally speaking, I've found HDTV to be more expensive than computer monitors. Especially considering most TVs under 32" are only 720p.

Re:Forget price fixing, what about resolution fixi by toddestan · 2010-08-07 14:23 · Score: 1

I don't see why things would have to be scaled up. ATI's Evergreen GPU already supports high resolutions like 7680x3200. Right now, you have to use multiple screens and span the image across them because the monitor technology doesn't exist, but if someone built a high resolution monitor such as 3800x2400, the card would be able to drive it.

Re:Price-fixing creates opportunity for little guy by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-07 17:41 · Score: 0

Well, other than military protection and control.

Re:Forget price fixing, what about resolution fixi by flowwolf · 2010-08-08 20:15 · Score: 1

I wanted so badly a monitor with 1920x1200 native, but every single place that sells them on my island only has 1080p computer screens now.
They're not even labeled with resolution anymore. It's all 1080p models they say. Like they're selling fucking TV's.
Manufacturers should be sued for stupidfying the market.

Re:Forget price fixing, what about resolution fixi by flowwolf · 2010-08-08 20:25 · Score: 1

My progression through resolutions over my life. Not one of these steps has been a doubling. They're all incremental.

640x200 -> 640x480 -> 800x600 -> 1024x768 -> 1280x1024 -> 1680x1050 -> 1900x1080

Each one of these has been an instant improvement in my day to day computing. I don't exactly understand your problem with scaling content. A more powerful computer and the natural progression of NEW content has always solved that

Again?... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-09 03:15 · Score: 0

I guess the fines from the last time didn't impress them. Maybe the profits are greater than the fines. Kind of like the Toyota fine and the amount saved by not complying with all the safety rules.

Re:Forget price fixing, what about resolution fixi by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-09 17:16 · Score: 0

Fry, check out Barco, they got what you need, well the LC-5621 and MDCC-6130 are almost there.

A Friendly, I agree that web is an issue(there is em though...), but the fact that any modern OS has DPI(PPI) scaling negates any troll-like-perceptions you might have regarding the issue; hi-rez should be referred to as hi-ppi today, its about making displays sharper not the content smaller. Anyone remember the IBM T221, from years ago?, that could have used PPI scaling...

QuadHD(3840x2160) or 3800x2400 is hardly unrealistic as a next step though(ati 5xxx gen. can theoretically do 8000x8000ish, though DisplayPort tops out at QHDish) and as pointed out, doubling or quadrupling non-ppi-compliant content a good way to make the transition...

So, it is happening, and if you got the cash, you can have one before they become ubiquitous. ;)

Not having hi-ppi is the real price we pay for lcd collusion though, sure a quality 24LCD is half the price it was 8 years ago, but its the same rez, and while the picture quality is slowly improving it is still below that of the CRT's they replaced.

Imagine if CPU, GPU and Ram improved in a similar fashion, that would be no fun...

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Samsung, Toshiba, Others Accused of LCD Price-Fixing

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