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Samsung, Toshiba, Others Accused of LCD Price-Fixing
GovTechGuy writes "Toshiba, Samsung, Sharp, LG and other major technology companies allegedly colluded to fix the prices of LCD screens used in televisions and computers, according to an antitrust suit filed Friday by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. The complaint alleges that top-level executives at those firms attended secret meetings on a monthly or quarterly basis where they agreed upon minimum prices, price targets, increases and rates to be charged to specific computer manufacturers. The suit also accuses the companies of exchanging product information, agreeing to output levels and keeping prices artificially high by avoiding competition. Cuomo is seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in damages and punitive charges for the alleged overcharging of state institutions."
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.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
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.
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.
Whose ass do you have to sue to get some highres monitors around here?
Did you know that "FTW" ("for the win") is a direct translation of "Sieg Heil"?
such as any telco company, VOIP termination provider, or even gasoline?
agreeing to output levels and keeping prices artificially high
Sounds familiar.
THL phish sticks
No, they can pass on that cost and people will use other parts.
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?
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
>>>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.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
And higher power use, screen burn in(which is not fixed just covered up), and reflections worse than any CRT ever had.
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.
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.
Bring on the retina displays for computers!
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...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
They can put a ceiling on the price.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
"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
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?
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.
If they can't fix the price, they may well have to compete more on actual features...
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.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
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
(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.
Its probably not easy to reduce dot pitch and pixels. Go sue someone for lack of flying cars..
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.
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.
Really? http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202424438569
rm
Sci-Fi Storm
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.
...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.
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
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.
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.
>>>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
>>>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
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
>>>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
My phone has a much lower dot pitch, it uses an lcd.
1920x1080 @ 27" is merely 81.5 DPI -- high res, sure, but still quite pixelated. I bet the GP meant to say high-DPI screens.
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.
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.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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 :)
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
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)
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
Yes, the people demand LCDs capable of 640x960!
Wait...
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
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
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.
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. :-)
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
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.
Table-ized A.I.
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.
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
If only OPEC could be held to the standards of everyone else...
Bye!
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.
>>>(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
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 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
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
You're joking, right?
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
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.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
To all their customers? I never saw a red cent...
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
From http://mises.org/daily/3801
Wonder what the public key field is for?
I think USB flash drives are price fixed. Prices haven't changed much for last 2 years.
DeBeers was able to sustain a wildly lucrative monopoly without government assistance for roughly a century.
Xavier Rabourdin for president 2012
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!
Because it's marketable enough to sell. See anything Microsoft has ever made.
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
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.
Xavier Rabourdin for president 2012
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.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
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.
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
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).
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.
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
"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
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 ?
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.
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.'"
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.'"
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.'"
More specifically, if they're price fixing, how cheap should these things be? 24" IPS panels go on sale for like $249. That's price fixed? That already seems insanely cheap to me.
>>>By your own admission, they overcharged 10$ 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
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
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
>>>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
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
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
Weren't they already found guilty of this?
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
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
Ugly as sin http://www.tatamotors.com/
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
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.).
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.
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
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.
Generally speaking, I've found HDTV to be more expensive than computer monitors. Especially considering most TVs under 32" are only 720p.
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.
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.
The UN stats disagree with you. http://unstats.un.org/unsd/snaama/dnllist.asp
Xavier Rabourdin for president 2012
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.
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.
Xavier Rabourdin for president 2012
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.
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
(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)-
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