That would be nice... Andromeda has been losing it's edge for a while... Last season was bad, this season is awful. The old creative team with Science Fiction fans, and you saw the way they handled the lack of budget. Things were designed to work around the budget (space battles being blips on the screen are straight out of classic Science Fiction literature).
After sacking the creative team, this one doesn't know how to do anything but Star Trek style Sci Fi, which is fine, but without the budget, Star Trek doesn't work. Space battles need to look cool, explosions be impressive, etc.
I really liked the idea behind Enterprise, because I was expected more what Andromeda was (a captain BUILDING alliances)... Hunt understood Real Politick. His idealism slowly waned through the show which was GREAT (especially because Sorbo is such an awful actor -- he pulled it off)... Imagine if Picard was thrust into EITHER Kirk or Hunt's time. He would have adapted to not having the idealistic Federation behind him and cut whatever deals were necessary to build alliances. You saw his abilities in occaisional episodes on the fringe.
Taking the Andromeda theme, sticking Star Trek in the title, and using Star Trek aliens could be interesting...
Klingons occupying earth/most of the Federation. Vulcans kinda disappearing. Ferengi controlling trade (i.e. the Collectors) and perhaps Riker in the Enterprise-E trying to rebuild the Federation. Could work... will never happen.
The ST:TNG formula is understood by suits. If they want a new ST:TNG, shoot another ST:TNG. Pick the "modern" timeline, put the crew in a big-ass Galaxy or better class Star Ship. And have another ST:TNG. Instead they try to create these creative "spins" on Star Trek, and immediately make the episodes ST:TNG episodes, without the background that makes ST:TNG make sense.
It was last year (was that season 1) where they met a guy on a desert world who gave them hospitality, and they befriended. They enjoyed hanging with him and his clan. They were contacted by the world government that called the group terrorists...
The desert "terrorists" who were portrayed in a positive light wore the headgarb associated with Arabs (which really is generic desert gear, but we see it on Middle Eastern Arabs all the time), and the representative from the world government was a Jewish guy with stereotypical Jewish curls...
I couldn't watch the show after that. ST:TOS was a drama that tackled big issues b/c being in space, the metaphores were there but not in your face. This one offended me, as I couldn't help but see it as Anti-American/Anti-Israel/Anti-Semetic bullshit.
Enterprise blew from the beginning. They used what appeared to be left-over ST:TNG scripts, instead of protraying the crew as REALLY being the first crew in space. Too much idealism, no sense of Real Politick, no concept of making allies for Earth... just not realistic for the first flight out.
The show should have been "rougher" than Star Trek, not more enlightened than ST:TNG.
That was the idea and premise, but the delivery was ST:TNG with new aliens... It was Voyager. Voyager, DS9, Enterprise, all started with the premise of "something new" in Star Trek, with odd crew memebers (terrorists, terrorists, pre-Kirk days), and quickly became another ST:TNG ripoff.
ST:TNG had the background for the super-enlightened team... Giant ship with families on board, shields and weapons that can waste ANYTHING in space (until the Borg), older, established Captain. Fleet's flagship with unlimited resources. That makes it reasonable to do a happy-shiny enlightened show. The other 3 shows were "frontier" Star Treks (like the original), but didn't have the campy shoot from the hip feel that Star Trek had.
The original Betamax was only ~60-90 (I forget) minutes of recorded programming. While they had a lead, the need to fight it out in court cut down their lead in the marketplace, and they lost first mover advantage. The second mover, VHS, provided 2 hours of recorded programming. Coincidentally, 2 hours was the average/max running of movies and movies on TV at the time.
Before the concept of time shifting TV became reality with the time-based recorder (if you have to be home to record the show, there isn't MUCH of an advantage to time shifting), VCRs were used to record movies.
That meant that the VHS was a BETTER VCR because it could actually record the movie.
By the time the extended Betamax came out that could record two movies, VHS had the upperhand in the market, and got economies of scale (which combined with the competition) lowered prices. VHS then got the ability to record up to 6 hours at crappy quality, but given the expense of the tapes, was likely popular (all our old tapes at home had to be trashed, because they were recorded at that quality that degraded to nothing... but I can't guess at actual use in the marketplace from my parents behavior).
In addition, the dirty little secret of VHS was that because it was open, all the porn was in VHS. We now see porn as an easily available vice, but at the time, you choices were go to a seedy theater or VHS. The novelty of being able to watch porn at home likely pushed VHS a bit, even if nobody talked about it. This was in an era before 3 (or even 1/2) adult channels on cable + PPV, Internet porn, etc), and if adults wanted to watch dirty movies in the privacy of their own home, VHS was the only game in town.
However, the REAL reason for VHS's early dominance was the 2 hour recording limit.
While modern TV displays are high quality (especially 1080i/720p HDTV-ready sets), the TVs at the time were MUCH lower quality. The visual difference between VHS and Betamax when actually viewed on a television isn't the night-and-day difference that people make it out to be when using it as an arguement for worse is better.
Facts on the urban legend surrounding Betamax, including Sony's alledged refusal to license betamax.
After collecting accolades from the liberal press (and lambasted by the conservative press, we do have both), he was in the audience for one of Clinton's state of the union addresses, etc. Became a local celebrity.
Well, of course what he did was absurd, and the company completely tanked.
It didn't "come out of bankruptcy," it basically got bought out by GE Capital, and there were a bunch of layoffs anyway because the company had to be restructured to make money back for the new ones.
Look, there is nothing wrong with treating your workers well, you SHOULD do that. But to put the company under (and their livelihoods) to get attention in the press... not too smart.
Look, I've missed plenty of payrolls (and made senior/junior partners do the same) to keep things going through hard times, every entreprenuer has. However, would I put everything at risk to pay people to not work? No, that's lunacy.
1. Prevent a flood of new employees from entering the market immediately after returning from defeating Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan...
2. Self betterment and personal fulfillment...
3. Place for rich kids to go and join a fraternity and meat other rich kids before they take over the family business...
4. Have an extended adolescence because your WW II Vet. parents want to provide you the best in life.
or, the most common (if you haven't noticed, reasons 1-4 haven't applied in 30 years, but those were the ORIGINAL reasons for higher education)...
5. Get sent to have an extended adolescents by your boomer parents because they enjoyed having free sex and lots of drugs in college... provided of course that the drinking age is 21, sex use is limited, and the school shuts down parties and drug use...:>
Seriously, there is LITTLE to know reason for 50% of the country to be attending higher education. Many jobs/career paths do NOT require a liberal arts education. Most office jobs require a 2-year vocational program and the careers should only last 10-15 years while the efficiencies of automation make it unreasonable.
I mean, the motivation for educating yourself is for you internally. Corporate America doesn't exist to provide you with a job, they exist to provide returns to their shareholders... creating jobs is a nice side effect.
Look, do what you want, but don't expect HP to owe you something.
Get an education for self betterment or because YOU believe that it will help you career wise. However, there is no guaranteed each path with cushy jobs... at least not anymore.
Don't forget that the Dems have VETO-PROOF majorities in both houses. This makes the governor only symbolic when it comes to legislative issues, because the leaders of the house and senate get together on a porch, smoke a cigar, and decide on funding issues. The only reason that the commonwealth hasn't collapsed has been the fiscally conservative democrats have been holding the leadership positions...
Your other point doesn't really emphasize the problem. Not only is the entire Mass congressional delegation democrats, the senators are Kennedy (liberal leader in the Senate), and Kerry (Presidential candidate). This really hurts the state, as the GOP in Congress is more than happy to let us mire in our own stew...
Voting against Kerry in '02 was satisfying, even if it was throwing a vote away on the libertarians... not nearly as satisfying as voting for Bush in Fla. in '00...:)
Look, pre-dotcom, the number of people entering the computer science fields was DECLINING, and demand was going up. Beyond qualitative measurements like caliber of programmers (people that love computers vs. learn in school without the passion to excel), this results in the salaries moving up and fewer people employed than if more people entered the field.
Is there any reason to be shocked that when salaries go up because there aren't enough people in the field that more people will enter the market? It just so happens that the people entering the market aren't in America?
Most college grads make $20k-$25k in entry level jobs. Entry level engineering jobs were traditionally in the $45k-$50k range (adjusted for inflation, I'm looking at the last few years). Entry level programmers were making $60k-$75k out of college.
That is a market out of whack. That pulls more people into the field and they happen to be overseas.
The problem isn't just salaries and cost-of-living, our exploding taxes/regulations (particularly payroll) tax is problematic. While rates haven't been rising (except in 93), the costs are relatively higher. For high-wage jobs, the comparison is no longer Western Europe (where the lower US cost structure provided a competitive advantage) but non-Japan Asia, where the US cost structure is higher.
Remember, to "outsource" you have to hire people on your end that can oversea outsourcing (MUCH more skill involved than being a lead developer, you have to speak geek to people in a different time zone, so you can't walk over to their cube, the spec needs to actually make sense or you lose a day or two turn-around with info requests), pay for the management on that end, and pay for the counter-parts overseas that speak English and understand the requests from the client.
It is really expensive to outsource. People talk about the salaries being 10%-20% of the US, but somehow the cost savings are in the 20% range on company financials. Want an easy way to fix that?
Drop the "employer-side" of the payroll tax (there is 14% cost savings), and reduce employee taxes by 6% (and cut salaries accordingly) and all of a sudden, there is no cost savings to oursourcing.
To keep the jobs high-paying in the US, you simply have to get the costs of doing work in the US down.
For every dollar that the company spends on you (forget overhead), you are lucky if 55 cents makes it into your bank account.
The good thing, is that when these companies overseas get more demand, salaries will go up. This will eat away at the cost savings. In addition, the non-oursource members of society will start to decry the "rich" over there, and adopt a punative tax structure like ours, and the advantage will go away.
After NAFTA, certain manufacturing companies that were going under in the states anyway set up plants in Mexico for labor-intensive and capital-light production. Within a few years, wages/costs went up in Mexcio, and those plants shut down and the work was outsourced to Asia. But in the mean time, Mexico has joined the global economy.
Labor-intensive proceses will always move to cheaper locations. It puts more profits in US companies that use it, and salaries move up. A rising tide lifts all boats, and the US will find a new innovation to replace the 20 year old microcomputer to build our next waive of growth.
I'm not looking for world peace. I'm looking for a wedge to break the pan-Arabic nationalism that is the cause of terrorism. A democratic capitalist Bahgdad would likely have much in common with the democratic socialist/capitalist Jerusalem. I don't want world peace, but I see two countries that would have a vested interest in producing an Arabic-friendly open office. If there was collaboration on certain projects, you'd see ties being developed between those countries.
An oil pipeline through Jordan and out Israeli ports hasn't been operational since the Israeli War of Independance, but would potentially be a source of revenue for Jordan, Iraq, and Israel (and maybe a future Palestine, haven't looked at where the pipeline runs).
Mutual economic interests decreases the likelihood of war. I'm not looking for world peace, just something that breaks the garbage in the middle easy, where despotic dictators keep their people in line by blaming everything on "the zionist entity."
Whatever establishes ties between the new Iraqi government and the state of Israel is good for American interests in the region, even if it doesn't create world peace.
Best hope is that a new free Iraq creates an image that freedom is possible and that Israel isn't to blame for all Arab problems... The House of Saud has already decided to institute municipal elections next year, and one of their princes talked about the "chutzpah" (a Yiddish word) of France and Germany wanting reconstruction contracts.
I'm not a pointed headed liberal, but a realist with a belief in real politick that wants to see pan-Arab unity and it's anti-American, anti-Semetic, and anti-Western values crushed.
Remember, Israel is a Jewish state and the Jewish homeland, but has an Arab minority that is 20% of the population. While the government caters to its Jewish majority, there are Arab MPs and Arabs in various positions of local governments.
Even if Israel doesn't officially care about Arabic support, there are many members of the Israeli population (what's left of the Left, Labor has been collapsing faster than the Democrats have in the states) that would love to have support for Arabic in their chosen platform.
Remember, one of the promises of Oslo/Middle East peace process for a regional peace process, where Israel could export it's technology and agricultural goods and import oil from the region.
How nice would it be if programmers in Iraq AND Israel were working on Arabic support in Free Software/Open Source projects? The middle east has 1 democracy, in 7 months, it's supposed to have 2. If the "Palestinians" ever get their act together, there could be a third. Those countries would conceivably stop focusing on holy war and instead focus on commerce, consumerism, and all the lovely western "values" that result in a desire for peace and prosperity.
Besides, if Israel starts adopting Linux/OSS programs regularly, they might want to share documents with the new fellow-democracy a few hundred miles away... assuming that post-Saddam Iraq focuses more on commerce and less on "death to Jews"/"death to Zionists"/"death to Americans".
Find me an American that has never had a business relationship with AT&T?
Never called collect (with whatever 800 number is involved).
I'm more familiar with the travesty of California's law, but I recall that there are rules for bulk email, but more generic stuff for unsolicited commercial email.
UCE, without the bulk modifier, is called doing business in the USA.
If I see a website that I want to do business with, I find the contact information and send an email. If you aren't careful in the law, my email can be construed as spam.
Targetted lead generation is part of how small businesses generate new business.
Under this law, AT&T's new subsidiary can email ANYONE, but my small business that competes with it cannot?
This isn't pro-spam, it's anti-small business, pro-big business regulations...
Ah, when the GOP's fascist wing (state and big business in combination) combines with the Democrat's communist anti-business wing, and they can wrap it all up in populist rhetoric.
It's more than the Guardian caught. Lok at the "classic" B-movies from the late 70s/early 80s, that featured the nerds, and the jocks/cheerleaders... In the post computer (and NASA, modern pharmacuticals, chemical advances, and the general explosion in engineering and technology) and wall street (80s greed is good, smart people making millions on wallstreet, etc.) and the cheesy comedies that were still appealing to the (now older) baby boomers feature 30 and 40 somethings.
Al Bundy is the classic stereotype... High school athlete and popular kid, now sells shoes. How many movies can you remember from the 90s that had people going to their high school reunion, terrified of seeing their tormentors, and their tormentor jock/cheerleader classmates worked in dead end jobs and their cheerleader wives got fat and miserable. And our hero, the high school nerd, impresses everyone with their accomplishments in business, engineering, etc.
The post-WW2 economy was about manufacturing jobs and the middle-class careers came from there.
The Information age jobs stemmed from math, science, or general intellectual pursuits. Sure Jobs/Gates made billions with computers, but Wall Street traders made millions in the 80s, and those weren't the football washouts.
There was a cultural change that followed the baby boomers aging. Manufacturing was replaced with the service sector, and the service sector is divided into minimum wage temps and high paid managers, with less and less middle management every year.
The good looking and popular football player that excelled in the factory because he was worshipped is gone, and the stereotype is now that he works as an automechanic or car salesman. The geek is seen as a high paid engineer or a successful executive.
Sega developed the ultimate 2D system, and showed it at a tradeshow. At the same tradeshow, Sega execs saw the Playstation, which was a 3D system and were terrified.
They spent a fortune on the Saturn, and the theory was to sell it for $400+ to gamers for a year, before the price dropped to reality.
However, they determined that it would cost more than $400 to manufacture.
They wanted retailers to pay $408 (I beleive) for the box and sell it at $400. Everyone would take a bath to get the product to consumers.
The retailers balked (obviously at $8/machine loss, the goal would be to NOT sell systems so competitors lose money, and you sell games).
Normally, retailers make $0-$10 a system, and then make $8-$10/game, depending on their ability to get cheap prices. It's a volume business, which is why there is an obsession on big games.
Nintendo has traditionally always made money on the console... the games make the money evolved after the NES financials came out and everyone realized how much money you could make moving 8-10 games/consumer if you can get more marketshare.
I believe that the Gamecube actually sold at a small loss ( $10/system) at some point in it's cycle. I think that it was AT launch (like the first 1-3 months) because they wanted to be $100 cheaper than the rest, instead of $50-$75 cheaper).
However, Microsoft established a corporate goal of getting a consumer presence. They NEVER had one. People started getting MS computers at home so that they could work at home. As the game market evolved, enough people had Windows machines at home (work-at-home, parent does, etc.) that a consumer market evolved. But MS rightly realizes that AOL and others are gunning for them and things like Linux have a potential to eliminate the consumer market from them.
Ultimate TV, XBox, etc., they are all ways for MS to use it's cash (the shareholders money that is held by MS) to try to grab more markets. Look at MS's stock price... what would have happened if in 1997 they realized that they were an OS/Office suite maker, and stopped there. If instead of pissing away BILLIONS of dollars chasing the next big thing, they paid substantial dividends for YEARS. Their stock price would have slowly raised with their dividend increases, and start-ups might have been able to establish business models WITH profits could have played in these other markets (hell, Netscape might have been able to sell web browsers for $50/station for years, with competition, better browsers, and eventually ( $10 browsers).
When Nintendo has a monopoly (NES days) they limited 3rd party developers to 5 games/year, officially to keep quality up, but also to keep competitors week. The modern notion of a game system maker separate from game makers (like Sony + MS, which are marketed primarily for 3rd party games) started with Sony's Playstation system, which was designed as an add-on/upgrade to the SNES (was going to play SNES games + multi-media CD-ROM games), Sony essentially created the new market because Nintendo pulled the deal and they had done all the R&D already.
Nintendo limited game makers to 5 games/year to prevent anyone from getting powerful. With 5 games/year, you couldn't make enough money to get big enough to put your own console out. You also had to sign an exclusivity agreement, the games couldn't be released on another platform for 5 years or something absurd.
In a nutshell, Nintendo got in trouble because they HAD a monopoly, and they were illegally protecting the monopoly. Exclusivity agreements to gain market advantage is FINE in a competitive market (like now), but not when you have a monopoly. Sega was trying to break into the market (Sega Master System, Genesis - which did), and Nintendo's agreements prevented game makers from making games for both platforms, which is illegally protecting their market.
That is why Microsoft, which exploded (Win3.1 wasn't that big, Win95 was a monopoly), got in trouble originally. Their agreements on pricing (buy Windows for all computers) was fine in an open Market with DR-DOS, DOS, DOS+Windows, OS/2, etc., all in the market. But when Win95 grabbed 95% of the market, suddenly those agreements which were designed to help them gain marketshare (you can get Windows cheaper if you are all Windows), became anti-trust violations and resulted in the original anti-trust decree.
It takes more than keeping your price up in a competitive market to be violating anti-trust law. Every company aims to be a monopoly to get monopoly pricing power. However, when you get monopoly status, you are allowed to exploit your monopoly to make profits, you aren't allowed to protect your monopoly. The theory is that while you gouge your customer to receive monopoly "rents," that creates a market opportunity for competitors. Eventually the monopoly breaks, and you return to a competitive market.
If you have a monopoly and DON'T extract rents, then there is no way for competitors to enter the market (no excess profits to grab), but there is no problem with a monopoly, because you aren't creating dead-weight loss anyways.
And this money comes from where? Old-fashioned capitalism?
Ebay is great, it's established an actual market for used items, why not sell at the market price?
You suggest raising funding (and therefore taxes) to support what? Selling library books (public assets) at below market value? Let me guess, you also blast the White House for the no-bid gov't contracts in Iraq because they may have paid above market rates...
As a rule, things like mortgage leads, is that most players work with brokers (BTW: email spam mortgage leads don't net $50/lead). So the spammers are all dumping to the brokers. In general, the brokers combine search engine placement leads, search engine spam leads, legit leads (people that solicit it from financial sites, etc.), into one lead pool that is sold. What would happen, is that over time, you would drive the value of that broker's leads down (although that assume perfect information), but you would INCREASE the percentage of the leads that are from that spammer.
That means that everyone dealing in leads makes less money, but the spammers make more. That would squeeze everyone, until the only ones making money in mortgages are spammers. This would result in rich spammers, plowing more money into spam.
The lead business is much less efficient than you think, with hundreds/thousands of buyers and sellers, so if one company dumps the lead broker, another one will pick up their leads. The leads are mostly unpriced, and buyers are chasing lead sources.
Look, the lawyers are taking 20% plus cash. That's okay for a company whose sole asset depends upon this case. You want your lawyers incentivized on a life-or-death (for the company) case.
Also, one of the "likely" ways to settle the lawsuit would be to buy SCO and get control of the Unix assets. If IBM concludes that they are likely to lose, then they NEED to buy SCO, rather than letting SCO run around destorying Linux. Remember, Linux is worth more to IBM that SCO's current marketcap.
So, if the lawyers are entitled to part of the settlement, should they get part of the sale? Absolutely. The most likely scenario for IBM to "settle" would be to purchase SCO and/or SCO's assets for some sum of money, and then terminate the lawsuit. How could the lawyers NOT be compensated for that when they are entitled to a percentage of a cash settlement?
Look, you want a simple life, go get it. You want a short week, go for it. You want a 35 hour job and can't get one, start your own business and see if you can provide one.
It's not enough that 46 cents of every dollar my company produces goes into a government coffer before hitting one of the employees bank acounts?
How many chains do you want to put on us.
Without excessive government interference, we'd be twice the size we are now (read that as "creating more jobs" for those of you that believe in our Marxist/Fascist economy).
The middle class is getting squeezed by your policies. The government bails out/subsizes the biggest businesses to keep the stop market rising, which shifts tax money to the richest Americans (because they own stocks). Then the tax code hits people generating income.
So: produce wealth, get it taxed away. Simply own wealth, and much of that money comes back to you.
The government taxes productive businesses to give it to unproductive ones to "keep existing jobs."
Sure, the Steel Tariffs saved jobs in the steel industry. For every job saved, how many jobs were lost/not created in the automotive industry because of higher steel prices. How many jobs were not created in corporate America because the company car-fleet costs more than it should? How many jobs were lost in the computer industry because consumers had less discretionary spending because their car lease costs an extra $10-$20/month.
All this meddling destroys economic growth, and is killing those of us willing to work 60-100 hours/week greating the economic engine that the rest of you live off of.
Fox owns Fox News, FX, and a bunch of other channels (and DirecTV soon). NBC owns MSNBC, CNBC for news, Bravo, etc. CBS owns UPN. and I forget which cable stations. Time Warner owns WB, and a bunch of cable stations (including HBO/Cinemax), etc., etc. Disney owns ABC, etc.
Yes I'm simplifying, sometimes mentioning the network, sometimes the parent company, I apologize for being inconsistent.
My point is that each of the "6" networks (really 5 because the Viacom division owns/operates both CBS and UPN), owns/operates multiple cable channels with lots of distribution.
As a result, I don't even think that there is a significant free speach issue. Reasonable regulations for their control of the public airwaves seems fine. As they all operate multiple cable stations, nobody's "free speech" is infringed, as 90% of the population has cable/DBS.
I figure, let the FCC regulate the "big 3/4/6" however they want, and if the program isn't adequate for "public" broadcasting, they can run it on their cable channels.
NBC already was using this, running the pilot and promotions for "Queer Eye" on NBC. CBS is, in my opinion, abusing their waiver to own two networks by promoting UPN on CBS and CBS on UPN.
We have 4 networks with national distribution, and two more with pretty good distribution. Do whatever you want to the public airwaves (but must carry/pay for carry was a mistake), and let those same companies excercize their "free commercial speech" on their cable networks.
There is also a side affect. Excessive product placement biases networks towards certain genres that support them. Science Fiction can't really use product placement, nor can historical set shows. With unlimited product placement, you will banish those categories to cable channels, EVEN if more viewers want them.
Given that the government created artificial scarcity by giving the media companies exclusive rights to spectrum, making them be reasonable seems fair.
Look, society enforces and protects property rights, against foreign AND domestic transgresion. I mean, police exist in large part to protect property rights, as does the military. You point about the initial land rights is valid, but somewhat irrelevant. I suggest that property taxes is a better tax system than income taxes.
Income taxes don't "tax the rich," they tax the prosperous, that's an IMPORTANT difference. The "rich" don't want a free economy. The rich want a system that simply increases the value of their current money. They WANT governments to bail out big businesses that underperform, because that increases their net worth. They don't care about tax rates, because their money is made by having wealth, not creating it.
Look at the US political system, the Democratic party is HEAVILY financed by "the rich." The wealthiest percentage of Americans give more to the Democrats than Republicans. Why is that? In the name of "protecting workers" or "protecting the environment" the Democratic Party erects barriers to entry.
We don't tax wealth, we tax income, which I believe is a mistake. If you believe that we should tax the rich, then you should be promoting a wealth tax AND a decrease in the income tax. A small wealth tax, like a property tax, would push the burden of the government's actions in protecting that wealth (policing markets, policing property, policing borders).
The income tax simply takes a portion of your productivity (like half of your productivity) and gives it to the government to give to those that aren't productive. That's the flaw in "taxing" the "richest x% of people." You're taxing their incomes. You are taking away the wealth that they are PRODUCING, not the wealth that they possess. This hammers small businesses and professionals that create value, and protects those that already "have theirs."
Look, I personally hate Microsoft, I was one of the NT 4 MCSEs that got screwed (it's not a coincidence that Linux is taking over a lot of NT markets, a lot of alienated MCSEs are among those pushing it). However, I will acknowledge that Bill Gates created a LOT of wealth. Until 5 years ago, they had no "Washington presence." Regardless of the morality/legality of their actions, his company hired software engineers (like many other companies) and created more value from those engineers than his competitors.
If you don't have any property rights, you don't have a free economy. And, regardless of fairness "in starting point," historical evidence abounds about the benefits to ALL of property rights.
While the family that has the land has benefitted from it, it isn't as real as you imagine. If they did a poor job exploiting the resource, someone would buy it from them and exploit it better. Sure the initial land grab was "unfair" but at a certain point, there needs to be an assignment of property rights. Look at the DNS system, it was first come/first serve, and now the properties are valuable. There is a huge market for good generic domain names.
If you have a valuable domain name (say, television.com), and you fail to exploit it, you'll probably sell it to someone who could exploit it for the right price. Is it "fair" that a guy the registered it for free or $100/2 years, or whatever he did when the initial grab happened? No, it isn't "fair." However, without ANY system of property rights in domain names, we couldn't have them, and the Internet economy would collapse.
Those that are around when new frontiers happen benefit, so what. What happens beyond then is the issue that markets concern themselves with.
The gap between the "rich" and "poor" keeps increasing, so we keep taxing income more and more and providing more handouts. We then observe that the economy is "more unfair" and their is less ability to move between income brackets. As a result, we KEEP taxing "excessive" income more and more... What happens? The rich stay rich, the poor stay poor, and we tax away the ability of the poor to become rich. The problem gets worse, and nobody considers that their "solution" is what is creating the problem.
Their spending doesn't increase as a percentage over time, it decreases. Most of the money is being spent on investments, creating more wealth.
If the people are smart, their net worth increases over time.
If not, they lost money, and the money flows to people with a better use of that capital.
That money is used to create and expand businesses, loan money to governments, loan money to businesses, etc.
That's how the economy works. Those with capital (from production or from investments of previous production) invest in businesses.
They also provide charitable contributions, the contributions of the rich are what fund most charities.
Of course, lots of their gains from using their capital efficiently (i.e. getting a return on investment), then it is taxed away from them. Of course, if you invest poorly in parts (losses), then the government lets you write that off (have to penalize success and subsidize failure).
If it was up to our many socialist slashdot friends, they would tax that money as much as possible, because they don't "need" that money, and we all know that "need" is more important than property rights, right?
So we tax away some of the money from them using capital wisely, and give it to the government to use not as wisely, which of course includes support programs for those that can't produce, weapons programs that the military doesn't need because it is in influential congressmen's districts, corporate welfare for America's largest corporations to keep them from suffering from poor decisions, etc.
So some of the money can be invested and either sink/swim on it's own merit, others is sent to the government to subsidize failure and corruption.
The American military has lots of excesses from the cold war. We have too large of a surface and submarine fleet. Without the former Soviet fleet, there is no need for our forces to be SO biased towards responding to a nuclear first strike (where first strike is designed to incapacitate our land-based missiles from responding), etc.
We should probably shift more of the money from excessive stealth fighters (there are no dogfights anymore, we just need a first wave to take out anti-aircraft response) towards more troops and better equipment for them.
However, if you are going to talk about the American military, it's our aircraft carriers that let us rule the world. That is how we can project power across the globe. It let's us send air power anywhere.
I look at things in Europe and the US the way children and adults see life. Children see the next purchase as a video game, and that their parents should pay for it. Adult understand that they need to work hard, earn a living, and pay for things like food and shelter.
You expect others to pay for your desires, we understand that we need to pay our own way.
You would think that 50 years of the US subsidizing Europes existance, plus the thousand year head start on civilization would put your standard of living tremendously beyond our own. However, the opposite is the case. Somehow the side affect of expecting others to pay for your lifestyle has resulting in productivity hits that are more significant than the savings from having us subsidize your defense.
Money has to be made, by producing goods and services desired. Anything granted by the government is a hand-out from money taken at gun point from those that produce wealth. Money is an indicator of productivity, nothing more.
It's weird. Most of the cross-platform toolkits assume that you will use VC++ on Windows, and don't support the Borland compiler very well, which is a shame. Trolltech also has a cross-platform environment (Qt), and they include OS X in there. I don't understand why Qt assumes VC++ on Windows, as opposed to Borland and/or GCC.
I also don't understand making the effort to do Win32 and some sort of X11 interface, and not building an OS X one? Carbon is C based, and you should be able to build a Carbon wrapper.
May not be a HUGE market, but the Mac market isn't THAT small., and it's MUCH bigger than Linux. Admittedly, there are probably about as many corporate Linux desktops as OS X desktops, but I know many Unix guys running OS X.
When did I call TrollTech evil? I am a happy customer, sending them thousands of dollars/year, and using Linux desktops based upon KDE?
They DO care about writing quality code. They also have HEAVILY supported KDE development to create a market for their API as cross-platform.
What about that is evil?
The fact that the resulting desktop is made available for free under the GPL makes it great. They provide for "free," albeit restricted for development, environemtn, to push their product.
What a great side effect of the invisible hand! In their creation of a market, everyone gets free benefits.
The only thing that I would like from Qt is a better RAD environment to work with. One of our project upgrades was going to be moved from Cocoa to Qt, which was cancelled because certain limitations in using Qt for RAD development. I look forward to new versions of Qt, they keep getting stronger.
BTW: as a commercial licensee of Qt, I am REALLY happy that a lot of the KDE core is on Trolltech's payroll. Each version of Qt incorporates more functionality that was handled at the KDE level, and KDE is upgraded to use the new Qt. That makes the features available to those of us wanting Qt's cross platform benefits.
The Qt/Mac GPL release was also great (although, obviously, with Panther including X11 in the OS, they had no choice, as Qt/X11 on Panther would hit the dreadful "good enough" level without Qt on board). I look forward to the Qt/Mac KDELIB port being in the main tree, and being able to install KDE apps under OS X for my power use.
Slashdot Mirror
That would be nice... Andromeda has been losing it's edge for a while... Last season was bad, this season is awful. The old creative team with Science Fiction fans, and you saw the way they handled the lack of budget. Things were designed to work around the budget (space battles being blips on the screen are straight out of classic Science Fiction literature).
After sacking the creative team, this one doesn't know how to do anything but Star Trek style Sci Fi, which is fine, but without the budget, Star Trek doesn't work. Space battles need to look cool, explosions be impressive, etc.
I really liked the idea behind Enterprise, because I was expected more what Andromeda was (a captain BUILDING alliances)... Hunt understood Real Politick. His idealism slowly waned through the show which was GREAT (especially because Sorbo is such an awful actor -- he pulled it off)... Imagine if Picard was thrust into EITHER Kirk or Hunt's time. He would have adapted to not having the idealistic Federation behind him and cut whatever deals were necessary to build alliances. You saw his abilities in occaisional episodes on the fringe.
Taking the Andromeda theme, sticking Star Trek in the title, and using Star Trek aliens could be interesting...
Klingons occupying earth/most of the Federation. Vulcans kinda disappearing. Ferengi controlling trade (i.e. the Collectors) and perhaps Riker in the Enterprise-E trying to rebuild the Federation. Could work... will never happen.
The ST:TNG formula is understood by suits. If they want a new ST:TNG, shoot another ST:TNG. Pick the "modern" timeline, put the crew in a big-ass Galaxy or better class Star Ship. And have another ST:TNG. Instead they try to create these creative "spins" on Star Trek, and immediately make the episodes ST:TNG episodes, without the background that makes ST:TNG make sense.
Alex
It was last year (was that season 1) where they met a guy on a desert world who gave them hospitality, and they befriended. They enjoyed hanging with him and his clan. They were contacted by the world government that called the group terrorists...
The desert "terrorists" who were portrayed in a positive light wore the headgarb associated with Arabs (which really is generic desert gear, but we see it on Middle Eastern Arabs all the time), and the representative from the world government was a Jewish guy with stereotypical Jewish curls...
I couldn't watch the show after that. ST:TOS was a drama that tackled big issues b/c being in space, the metaphores were there but not in your face. This one offended me, as I couldn't help but see it as Anti-American/Anti-Israel/Anti-Semetic bullshit.
Enterprise blew from the beginning. They used what appeared to be left-over ST:TNG scripts, instead of protraying the crew as REALLY being the first crew in space. Too much idealism, no sense of Real Politick, no concept of making allies for Earth... just not realistic for the first flight out.
The show should have been "rougher" than Star Trek, not more enlightened than ST:TNG.
That was the idea and premise, but the delivery was ST:TNG with new aliens... It was Voyager. Voyager, DS9, Enterprise, all started with the premise of "something new" in Star Trek, with odd crew memebers (terrorists, terrorists, pre-Kirk days), and quickly became another ST:TNG ripoff.
ST:TNG had the background for the super-enlightened team... Giant ship with families on board, shields and weapons that can waste ANYTHING in space (until the Borg), older, established Captain. Fleet's flagship with unlimited resources. That makes it reasonable to do a happy-shiny enlightened show. The other 3 shows were "frontier" Star Treks (like the original), but didn't have the campy shoot from the hip feel that Star Trek had.
Alex
No sympathy from me... If I want the performance benefits of Panther (which were huge), I get brushed metal everywhere...
One brushed metal app gets you ZERO sympathy from me...
Alex
Betamax WAS ONLY superior in visual quality...
The original Betamax was only ~60-90 (I forget) minutes of recorded programming. While they had a lead, the need to fight it out in court cut down their lead in the marketplace, and they lost first mover advantage. The second mover, VHS, provided 2 hours of recorded programming. Coincidentally, 2 hours was the average/max running of movies and movies on TV at the time.
Before the concept of time shifting TV became reality with the time-based recorder (if you have to be home to record the show, there isn't MUCH of an advantage to time shifting), VCRs were used to record movies.
That meant that the VHS was a BETTER VCR because it could actually record the movie.
By the time the extended Betamax came out that could record two movies, VHS had the upperhand in the market, and got economies of scale (which combined with the competition) lowered prices. VHS then got the ability to record up to 6 hours at crappy quality, but given the expense of the tapes, was likely popular (all our old tapes at home had to be trashed, because they were recorded at that quality that degraded to nothing... but I can't guess at actual use in the marketplace from my parents behavior).
In addition, the dirty little secret of VHS was that because it was open, all the porn was in VHS. We now see porn as an easily available vice, but at the time, you choices were go to a seedy theater or VHS. The novelty of being able to watch porn at home likely pushed VHS a bit, even if nobody talked about it. This was in an era before 3 (or even 1/2) adult channels on cable + PPV, Internet porn, etc), and if adults wanted to watch dirty movies in the privacy of their own home, VHS was the only game in town.
However, the REAL reason for VHS's early dominance was the 2 hour recording limit.
While modern TV displays are high quality (especially 1080i/720p HDTV-ready sets), the TVs at the time were MUCH lower quality. The visual difference between VHS and Betamax when actually viewed on a television isn't the night-and-day difference that people make it out to be when using it as an arguement for worse is better.
Facts on the urban legend surrounding Betamax, including Sony's alledged refusal to license betamax.
Alex
After collecting accolades from the liberal press (and lambasted by the conservative press, we do have both), he was in the audience for one of Clinton's state of the union addresses, etc. Became a local celebrity.
Well, of course what he did was absurd, and the company completely tanked.
It didn't "come out of bankruptcy," it basically got bought out by GE Capital, and there were a bunch of layoffs anyway because the company had to be restructured to make money back for the new ones.
Look, there is nothing wrong with treating your workers well, you SHOULD do that. But to put the company under (and their livelihoods) to get attention in the press... not too smart.
Look, I've missed plenty of payrolls (and made senior/junior partners do the same) to keep things going through hard times, every entreprenuer has. However, would I put everything at risk to pay people to not work? No, that's lunacy.
Alex
Reasons for higher education:
:>
1. Prevent a flood of new employees from entering the market immediately after returning from defeating Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan...
2. Self betterment and personal fulfillment...
3. Place for rich kids to go and join a fraternity and meat other rich kids before they take over the family business...
4. Have an extended adolescence because your WW II Vet. parents want to provide you the best in life.
or, the most common (if you haven't noticed, reasons 1-4 haven't applied in 30 years, but those were the ORIGINAL reasons for higher education)...
5. Get sent to have an extended adolescents by your boomer parents because they enjoyed having free sex and lots of drugs in college... provided of course that the drinking age is 21, sex use is limited, and the school shuts down parties and drug use...
Seriously, there is LITTLE to know reason for 50% of the country to be attending higher education. Many jobs/career paths do NOT require a liberal arts education. Most office jobs require a 2-year vocational program and the careers should only last 10-15 years while the efficiencies of automation make it unreasonable.
I mean, the motivation for educating yourself is for you internally. Corporate America doesn't exist to provide you with a job, they exist to provide returns to their shareholders... creating jobs is a nice side effect.
Look, do what you want, but don't expect HP to owe you something.
Get an education for self betterment or because YOU believe that it will help you career wise. However, there is no guaranteed each path with cushy jobs... at least not anymore.
Alex
Don't forget that the Dems have VETO-PROOF majorities in both houses. This makes the governor only symbolic when it comes to legislative issues, because the leaders of the house and senate get together on a porch, smoke a cigar, and decide on funding issues. The only reason that the commonwealth hasn't collapsed has been the fiscally conservative democrats have been holding the leadership positions...
:)
Your other point doesn't really emphasize the problem. Not only is the entire Mass congressional delegation democrats, the senators are Kennedy (liberal leader in the Senate), and Kerry (Presidential candidate). This really hurts the state, as the GOP in Congress is more than happy to let us mire in our own stew...
Voting against Kerry in '02 was satisfying, even if it was throwing a vote away on the libertarians... not nearly as satisfying as voting for Bush in Fla. in '00...
Alex
Look, pre-dotcom, the number of people entering the computer science fields was DECLINING, and demand was going up. Beyond qualitative measurements like caliber of programmers (people that love computers vs. learn in school without the passion to excel), this results in the salaries moving up and fewer people employed than if more people entered the field.
Is there any reason to be shocked that when salaries go up because there aren't enough people in the field that more people will enter the market? It just so happens that the people entering the market aren't in America?
Most college grads make $20k-$25k in entry level jobs. Entry level engineering jobs were traditionally in the $45k-$50k range (adjusted for inflation, I'm looking at the last few years). Entry level programmers were making $60k-$75k out of college.
That is a market out of whack. That pulls more people into the field and they happen to be overseas.
The problem isn't just salaries and cost-of-living, our exploding taxes/regulations (particularly payroll) tax is problematic. While rates haven't been rising (except in 93), the costs are relatively higher. For high-wage jobs, the comparison is no longer Western Europe (where the lower US cost structure provided a competitive advantage) but non-Japan Asia, where the US cost structure is higher.
Remember, to "outsource" you have to hire people on your end that can oversea outsourcing (MUCH more skill involved than being a lead developer, you have to speak geek to people in a different time zone, so you can't walk over to their cube, the spec needs to actually make sense or you lose a day or two turn-around with info requests), pay for the management on that end, and pay for the counter-parts overseas that speak English and understand the requests from the client.
It is really expensive to outsource. People talk about the salaries being 10%-20% of the US, but somehow the cost savings are in the 20% range on company financials. Want an easy way to fix that?
Drop the "employer-side" of the payroll tax (there is 14% cost savings), and reduce employee taxes by 6% (and cut salaries accordingly) and all of a sudden, there is no cost savings to oursourcing.
To keep the jobs high-paying in the US, you simply have to get the costs of doing work in the US down.
For every dollar that the company spends on you (forget overhead), you are lucky if 55 cents makes it into your bank account.
The good thing, is that when these companies overseas get more demand, salaries will go up. This will eat away at the cost savings. In addition, the non-oursource members of society will start to decry the "rich" over there, and adopt a punative tax structure like ours, and the advantage will go away.
After NAFTA, certain manufacturing companies that were going under in the states anyway set up plants in Mexico for labor-intensive and capital-light production. Within a few years, wages/costs went up in Mexcio, and those plants shut down and the work was outsourced to Asia. But in the mean time, Mexico has joined the global economy.
Labor-intensive proceses will always move to cheaper locations. It puts more profits in US companies that use it, and salaries move up. A rising tide lifts all boats, and the US will find a new innovation to replace the 20 year old microcomputer to build our next waive of growth.
Alex
I'm not looking for world peace. I'm looking for a wedge to break the pan-Arabic nationalism that is the cause of terrorism. A democratic capitalist Bahgdad would likely have much in common with the democratic socialist/capitalist Jerusalem. I don't want world peace, but I see two countries that would have a vested interest in producing an Arabic-friendly open office. If there was collaboration on certain projects, you'd see ties being developed between those countries.
An oil pipeline through Jordan and out Israeli ports hasn't been operational since the Israeli War of Independance, but would potentially be a source of revenue for Jordan, Iraq, and Israel (and maybe a future Palestine, haven't looked at where the pipeline runs).
Mutual economic interests decreases the likelihood of war. I'm not looking for world peace, just something that breaks the garbage in the middle easy, where despotic dictators keep their people in line by blaming everything on "the zionist entity."
Whatever establishes ties between the new Iraqi government and the state of Israel is good for American interests in the region, even if it doesn't create world peace.
Best hope is that a new free Iraq creates an image that freedom is possible and that Israel isn't to blame for all Arab problems... The House of Saud has already decided to institute municipal elections next year, and one of their princes talked about the "chutzpah" (a Yiddish word) of France and Germany wanting reconstruction contracts.
I'm not a pointed headed liberal, but a realist with a belief in real politick that wants to see pan-Arab unity and it's anti-American, anti-Semetic, and anti-Western values crushed.
Alex
Remember, Israel is a Jewish state and the Jewish homeland, but has an Arab minority that is 20% of the population. While the government caters to its Jewish majority, there are Arab MPs and Arabs in various positions of local governments.
Even if Israel doesn't officially care about Arabic support, there are many members of the Israeli population (what's left of the Left, Labor has been collapsing faster than the Democrats have in the states) that would love to have support for Arabic in their chosen platform.
Remember, one of the promises of Oslo/Middle East peace process for a regional peace process, where Israel could export it's technology and agricultural goods and import oil from the region.
How nice would it be if programmers in Iraq AND Israel were working on Arabic support in Free Software/Open Source projects? The middle east has 1 democracy, in 7 months, it's supposed to have 2. If the "Palestinians" ever get their act together, there could be a third. Those countries would conceivably stop focusing on holy war and instead focus on commerce, consumerism, and all the lovely western "values" that result in a desire for peace and prosperity.
Besides, if Israel starts adopting Linux/OSS programs regularly, they might want to share documents with the new fellow-democracy a few hundred miles away... assuming that post-Saddam Iraq focuses more on commerce and less on "death to Jews"/"death to Zionists"/"death to Americans".
Alex
Prior business relationship.
Find me an American that has never had a business relationship with AT&T?
Never called collect (with whatever 800 number is involved).
I'm more familiar with the travesty of California's law, but I recall that there are rules for bulk email, but more generic stuff for unsolicited commercial email.
Alex
Spam is normally untargetted, bulk email.
UCE, without the bulk modifier, is called doing business in the USA.
If I see a website that I want to do business with, I find the contact information and send an email. If you aren't careful in the law, my email can be construed as spam.
Targetted lead generation is part of how small businesses generate new business.
Under this law, AT&T's new subsidiary can email ANYONE, but my small business that competes with it cannot?
This isn't pro-spam, it's anti-small business, pro-big business regulations...
Ah, when the GOP's fascist wing (state and big business in combination) combines with the Democrat's communist anti-business wing, and they can wrap it all up in populist rhetoric.
A frustrated Republican,
Alex
It's more than the Guardian caught. Lok at the "classic" B-movies from the late 70s/early 80s, that featured the nerds, and the jocks/cheerleaders... In the post computer (and NASA, modern pharmacuticals, chemical advances, and the general explosion in engineering and technology) and wall street (80s greed is good, smart people making millions on wallstreet, etc.) and the cheesy comedies that were still appealing to the (now older) baby boomers feature 30 and 40 somethings.
Al Bundy is the classic stereotype... High school athlete and popular kid, now sells shoes. How many movies can you remember from the 90s that had people going to their high school reunion, terrified of seeing their tormentors, and their tormentor jock/cheerleader classmates worked in dead end jobs and their cheerleader wives got fat and miserable. And our hero, the high school nerd, impresses everyone with their accomplishments in business, engineering, etc.
The post-WW2 economy was about manufacturing jobs and the middle-class careers came from there.
The Information age jobs stemmed from math, science, or general intellectual pursuits. Sure Jobs/Gates made billions with computers, but Wall Street traders made millions in the 80s, and those weren't the football washouts.
There was a cultural change that followed the baby boomers aging. Manufacturing was replaced with the service sector, and the service sector is divided into minimum wage temps and high paid managers, with less and less middle management every year.
The good looking and popular football player that excelled in the factory because he was worshipped is gone, and the stereotype is now that he works as an automechanic or car salesman. The geek is seen as a high paid engineer or a successful executive.
That's been the see of change.
Alex
Right, this absurdity stems from the Saturn.
Sega developed the ultimate 2D system, and showed it at a tradeshow. At the same tradeshow, Sega execs saw the Playstation, which was a 3D system and were terrified.
They spent a fortune on the Saturn, and the theory was to sell it for $400+ to gamers for a year, before the price dropped to reality.
However, they determined that it would cost more than $400 to manufacture.
They wanted retailers to pay $408 (I beleive) for the box and sell it at $400. Everyone would take a bath to get the product to consumers.
The retailers balked (obviously at $8/machine loss, the goal would be to NOT sell systems so competitors lose money, and you sell games).
Normally, retailers make $0-$10 a system, and then make $8-$10/game, depending on their ability to get cheap prices. It's a volume business, which is why there is an obsession on big games.
Nintendo has traditionally always made money on the console... the games make the money evolved after the NES financials came out and everyone realized how much money you could make moving 8-10 games/consumer if you can get more marketshare.
I believe that the Gamecube actually sold at a small loss ( $10/system) at some point in it's cycle. I think that it was AT launch (like the first 1-3 months) because they wanted to be $100 cheaper than the rest, instead of $50-$75 cheaper).
However, Microsoft established a corporate goal of getting a consumer presence. They NEVER had one. People started getting MS computers at home so that they could work at home. As the game market evolved, enough people had Windows machines at home (work-at-home, parent does, etc.) that a consumer market evolved. But MS rightly realizes that AOL and others are gunning for them and things like Linux have a potential to eliminate the consumer market from them.
Ultimate TV, XBox, etc., they are all ways for MS to use it's cash (the shareholders money that is held by MS) to try to grab more markets. Look at MS's stock price... what would have happened if in 1997 they realized that they were an OS/Office suite maker, and stopped there. If instead of pissing away BILLIONS of dollars chasing the next big thing, they paid substantial dividends for YEARS. Their stock price would have slowly raised with their dividend increases, and start-ups might have been able to establish business models WITH profits could have played in these other markets (hell, Netscape might have been able to sell web browsers for $50/station for years, with competition, better browsers, and eventually ( $10 browsers).
Alex
When Nintendo has a monopoly (NES days) they limited 3rd party developers to 5 games/year, officially to keep quality up, but also to keep competitors week. The modern notion of a game system maker separate from game makers (like Sony + MS, which are marketed primarily for 3rd party games) started with Sony's Playstation system, which was designed as an add-on/upgrade to the SNES (was going to play SNES games + multi-media CD-ROM games), Sony essentially created the new market because Nintendo pulled the deal and they had done all the R&D already.
Nintendo limited game makers to 5 games/year to prevent anyone from getting powerful. With 5 games/year, you couldn't make enough money to get big enough to put your own console out. You also had to sign an exclusivity agreement, the games couldn't be released on another platform for 5 years or something absurd.
In a nutshell, Nintendo got in trouble because they HAD a monopoly, and they were illegally protecting the monopoly. Exclusivity agreements to gain market advantage is FINE in a competitive market (like now), but not when you have a monopoly. Sega was trying to break into the market (Sega Master System, Genesis - which did), and Nintendo's agreements prevented game makers from making games for both platforms, which is illegally protecting their market.
That is why Microsoft, which exploded (Win3.1 wasn't that big, Win95 was a monopoly), got in trouble originally. Their agreements on pricing (buy Windows for all computers) was fine in an open Market with DR-DOS, DOS, DOS+Windows, OS/2, etc., all in the market. But when Win95 grabbed 95% of the market, suddenly those agreements which were designed to help them gain marketshare (you can get Windows cheaper if you are all Windows), became anti-trust violations and resulted in the original anti-trust decree.
It takes more than keeping your price up in a competitive market to be violating anti-trust law. Every company aims to be a monopoly to get monopoly pricing power. However, when you get monopoly status, you are allowed to exploit your monopoly to make profits, you aren't allowed to protect your monopoly. The theory is that while you gouge your customer to receive monopoly "rents," that creates a market opportunity for competitors. Eventually the monopoly breaks, and you return to a competitive market.
If you have a monopoly and DON'T extract rents, then there is no way for competitors to enter the market (no excess profits to grab), but there is no problem with a monopoly, because you aren't creating dead-weight loss anyways.
Alex
And this money comes from where? Old-fashioned capitalism?
Ebay is great, it's established an actual market for used items, why not sell at the market price?
You suggest raising funding (and therefore taxes) to support what? Selling library books (public assets) at below market value? Let me guess, you also blast the White House for the no-bid gov't contracts in Iraq because they may have paid above market rates...
Alex
As a rule, things like mortgage leads, is that most players work with brokers (BTW: email spam mortgage leads don't net $50/lead). So the spammers are all dumping to the brokers. In general, the brokers combine search engine placement leads, search engine spam leads, legit leads (people that solicit it from financial sites, etc.), into one lead pool that is sold. What would happen, is that over time, you would drive the value of that broker's leads down (although that assume perfect information), but you would INCREASE the percentage of the leads that are from that spammer.
That means that everyone dealing in leads makes less money, but the spammers make more. That would squeeze everyone, until the only ones making money in mortgages are spammers. This would result in rich spammers, plowing more money into spam.
The lead business is much less efficient than you think, with hundreds/thousands of buyers and sellers, so if one company dumps the lead broker, another one will pick up their leads. The leads are mostly unpriced, and buyers are chasing lead sources.
Alex
Look, the lawyers are taking 20% plus cash. That's okay for a company whose sole asset depends upon this case. You want your lawyers incentivized on a life-or-death (for the company) case.
Also, one of the "likely" ways to settle the lawsuit would be to buy SCO and get control of the Unix assets. If IBM concludes that they are likely to lose, then they NEED to buy SCO, rather than letting SCO run around destorying Linux. Remember, Linux is worth more to IBM that SCO's current marketcap.
So, if the lawyers are entitled to part of the settlement, should they get part of the sale? Absolutely. The most likely scenario for IBM to "settle" would be to purchase SCO and/or SCO's assets for some sum of money, and then terminate the lawsuit. How could the lawyers NOT be compensated for that when they are entitled to a percentage of a cash settlement?
Alex
Look, you want a simple life, go get it. You want a short week, go for it. You want a 35 hour job and can't get one, start your own business and see if you can provide one.
It's not enough that 46 cents of every dollar my company produces goes into a government coffer before hitting one of the employees bank acounts?
How many chains do you want to put on us.
Without excessive government interference, we'd be twice the size we are now (read that as "creating more jobs" for those of you that believe in our Marxist/Fascist economy).
The middle class is getting squeezed by your policies. The government bails out/subsizes the biggest businesses to keep the stop market rising, which shifts tax money to the richest Americans (because they own stocks). Then the tax code hits people generating income.
So: produce wealth, get it taxed away. Simply own wealth, and much of that money comes back to you.
The government taxes productive businesses to give it to unproductive ones to "keep existing jobs."
Sure, the Steel Tariffs saved jobs in the steel industry. For every job saved, how many jobs were lost/not created in the automotive industry because of higher steel prices. How many jobs were not created in corporate America because the company car-fleet costs more than it should? How many jobs were lost in the computer industry because consumers had less discretionary spending because their car lease costs an extra $10-$20/month.
All this meddling destroys economic growth, and is killing those of us willing to work 60-100 hours/week greating the economic engine that the rest of you live off of.
Alex
Fox owns Fox News, FX, and a bunch of other channels (and DirecTV soon). NBC owns MSNBC, CNBC for news, Bravo, etc. CBS owns UPN. and I forget which cable stations. Time Warner owns WB, and a bunch of cable stations (including HBO/Cinemax), etc., etc. Disney owns ABC, etc.
Yes I'm simplifying, sometimes mentioning the network, sometimes the parent company, I apologize for being inconsistent.
My point is that each of the "6" networks (really 5 because the Viacom division owns/operates both CBS and UPN), owns/operates multiple cable channels with lots of distribution.
As a result, I don't even think that there is a significant free speach issue. Reasonable regulations for their control of the public airwaves seems fine. As they all operate multiple cable stations, nobody's "free speech" is infringed, as 90% of the population has cable/DBS.
I figure, let the FCC regulate the "big 3/4/6" however they want, and if the program isn't adequate for "public" broadcasting, they can run it on their cable channels.
NBC already was using this, running the pilot and promotions for "Queer Eye" on NBC. CBS is, in my opinion, abusing their waiver to own two networks by promoting UPN on CBS and CBS on UPN.
We have 4 networks with national distribution, and two more with pretty good distribution. Do whatever you want to the public airwaves (but must carry/pay for carry was a mistake), and let those same companies excercize their "free commercial speech" on their cable networks.
There is also a side affect. Excessive product placement biases networks towards certain genres that support them. Science Fiction can't really use product placement, nor can historical set shows. With unlimited product placement, you will banish those categories to cable channels, EVEN if more viewers want them.
Given that the government created artificial scarcity by giving the media companies exclusive rights to spectrum, making them be reasonable seems fair.
Alex
But that's my point.
Look, society enforces and protects property rights, against foreign AND domestic transgresion. I mean, police exist in large part to protect property rights, as does the military. You point about the initial land rights is valid, but somewhat irrelevant. I suggest that property taxes is a better tax system than income taxes.
Income taxes don't "tax the rich," they tax the prosperous, that's an IMPORTANT difference. The "rich" don't want a free economy. The rich want a system that simply increases the value of their current money. They WANT governments to bail out big businesses that underperform, because that increases their net worth. They don't care about tax rates, because their money is made by having wealth, not creating it.
Look at the US political system, the Democratic party is HEAVILY financed by "the rich." The wealthiest percentage of Americans give more to the Democrats than Republicans. Why is that? In the name of "protecting workers" or "protecting the environment" the Democratic Party erects barriers to entry.
We don't tax wealth, we tax income, which I believe is a mistake. If you believe that we should tax the rich, then you should be promoting a wealth tax AND a decrease in the income tax. A small wealth tax, like a property tax, would push the burden of the government's actions in protecting that wealth (policing markets, policing property, policing borders).
The income tax simply takes a portion of your productivity (like half of your productivity) and gives it to the government to give to those that aren't productive. That's the flaw in "taxing" the "richest x% of people." You're taxing their incomes. You are taking away the wealth that they are PRODUCING, not the wealth that they possess. This hammers small businesses and professionals that create value, and protects those that already "have theirs."
Look, I personally hate Microsoft, I was one of the NT 4 MCSEs that got screwed (it's not a coincidence that Linux is taking over a lot of NT markets, a lot of alienated MCSEs are among those pushing it). However, I will acknowledge that Bill Gates created a LOT of wealth. Until 5 years ago, they had no "Washington presence." Regardless of the morality/legality of their actions, his company hired software engineers (like many other companies) and created more value from those engineers than his competitors.
If you don't have any property rights, you don't have a free economy. And, regardless of fairness "in starting point," historical evidence abounds about the benefits to ALL of property rights.
While the family that has the land has benefitted from it, it isn't as real as you imagine. If they did a poor job exploiting the resource, someone would buy it from them and exploit it better. Sure the initial land grab was "unfair" but at a certain point, there needs to be an assignment of property rights. Look at the DNS system, it was first come/first serve, and now the properties are valuable. There is a huge market for good generic domain names.
If you have a valuable domain name (say, television.com), and you fail to exploit it, you'll probably sell it to someone who could exploit it for the right price. Is it "fair" that a guy the registered it for free or $100/2 years, or whatever he did when the initial grab happened? No, it isn't "fair." However, without ANY system of property rights in domain names, we couldn't have them, and the Internet economy would collapse.
Those that are around when new frontiers happen benefit, so what. What happens beyond then is the issue that markets concern themselves with.
The gap between the "rich" and "poor" keeps increasing, so we keep taxing income more and more and providing more handouts. We then observe that the economy is "more unfair" and their is less ability to move between income brackets. As a result, we KEEP taxing "excessive" income more and more... What happens? The rich stay rich, the poor stay poor, and we tax away the ability of the poor to become rich. The problem gets worse, and nobody considers that their "solution" is what is creating the problem.
Alex
Their spending doesn't increase as a percentage over time, it decreases. Most of the money is being spent on investments, creating more wealth.
If the people are smart, their net worth increases over time.
If not, they lost money, and the money flows to people with a better use of that capital.
That money is used to create and expand businesses, loan money to governments, loan money to businesses, etc.
That's how the economy works. Those with capital (from production or from investments of previous production) invest in businesses.
They also provide charitable contributions, the contributions of the rich are what fund most charities.
Of course, lots of their gains from using their capital efficiently (i.e. getting a return on investment), then it is taxed away from them. Of course, if you invest poorly in parts (losses), then the government lets you write that off (have to penalize success and subsidize failure).
If it was up to our many socialist slashdot friends, they would tax that money as much as possible, because they don't "need" that money, and we all know that "need" is more important than property rights, right?
So we tax away some of the money from them using capital wisely, and give it to the government to use not as wisely, which of course includes support programs for those that can't produce, weapons programs that the military doesn't need because it is in influential congressmen's districts, corporate welfare for America's largest corporations to keep them from suffering from poor decisions, etc.
So some of the money can be invested and either sink/swim on it's own merit, others is sent to the government to subsidize failure and corruption.
The American military has lots of excesses from the cold war. We have too large of a surface and submarine fleet. Without the former Soviet fleet, there is no need for our forces to be SO biased towards responding to a nuclear first strike (where first strike is designed to incapacitate our land-based missiles from responding), etc.
We should probably shift more of the money from excessive stealth fighters (there are no dogfights anymore, we just need a first wave to take out anti-aircraft response) towards more troops and better equipment for them.
However, if you are going to talk about the American military, it's our aircraft carriers that let us rule the world. That is how we can project power across the globe. It let's us send air power anywhere.
I look at things in Europe and the US the way children and adults see life. Children see the next purchase as a video game, and that their parents should pay for it. Adult understand that they need to work hard, earn a living, and pay for things like food and shelter.
You expect others to pay for your desires, we understand that we need to pay our own way.
You would think that 50 years of the US subsidizing Europes existance, plus the thousand year head start on civilization would put your standard of living tremendously beyond our own. However, the opposite is the case. Somehow the side affect of expecting others to pay for your lifestyle has resulting in productivity hits that are more significant than the savings from having us subsidize your defense.
Money has to be made, by producing goods and services desired. Anything granted by the government is a hand-out from money taken at gun point from those that produce wealth. Money is an indicator of productivity, nothing more.
Alex
It's weird. Most of the cross-platform toolkits assume that you will use VC++ on Windows, and don't support the Borland compiler very well, which is a shame. Trolltech also has a cross-platform environment (Qt), and they include OS X in there. I don't understand why Qt assumes VC++ on Windows, as opposed to Borland and/or GCC.
I also don't understand making the effort to do Win32 and some sort of X11 interface, and not building an OS X one? Carbon is C based, and you should be able to build a Carbon wrapper.
May not be a HUGE market, but the Mac market isn't THAT small., and it's MUCH bigger than Linux. Admittedly, there are probably about as many corporate Linux desktops as OS X desktops, but I know many Unix guys running OS X.
When did I call TrollTech evil? I am a happy customer, sending them thousands of dollars/year, and using Linux desktops based upon KDE?
They DO care about writing quality code. They also have HEAVILY supported KDE development to create a market for their API as cross-platform.
What about that is evil?
The fact that the resulting desktop is made available for free under the GPL makes it great. They provide for "free," albeit restricted for development, environemtn, to push their product.
What a great side effect of the invisible hand! In their creation of a market, everyone gets free benefits.
The only thing that I would like from Qt is a better RAD environment to work with. One of our project upgrades was going to be moved from Cocoa to Qt, which was cancelled because certain limitations in using Qt for RAD development. I look forward to new versions of Qt, they keep getting stronger.
BTW: as a commercial licensee of Qt, I am REALLY happy that a lot of the KDE core is on Trolltech's payroll. Each version of Qt incorporates more functionality that was handled at the KDE level, and KDE is upgraded to use the new Qt. That makes the features available to those of us wanting Qt's cross platform benefits.
The Qt/Mac GPL release was also great (although, obviously, with Panther including X11 in the OS, they had no choice, as Qt/X11 on Panther would hit the dreadful "good enough" level without Qt on board). I look forward to the Qt/Mac KDELIB port being in the main tree, and being able to install KDE apps under OS X for my power use.
Alex