My numbers aren't necessarily realistic, but I think they are close enough to reality to illustrate that this is, at best, a razor thin business to be in.
In a free market, any business is "razor thin." Competition forces prices to the lowest they can be such that the well-managed companies survive. That the prices for these games were normal for the industry, and they nearly squeaked by, suggest that your numbers are probably pretty close.
It's not that simple. Republicans can be pro-small business as easily as pro-big business (look at proposed tax cuts), since *some* of them appreciate the benefits of free markets. Democrats can be anti-business (i.e., pro-government...most are) or anti-freedom (i.e., pro-government...again, hardly unusual).
If you're dealing with a Democrat, I'd suggest...dealing with a Republican. Seriously, you're not going to find a Democrat who'd rather let you decide what to do with your personal property than pass a bill letting him or her decide him- or herself. The response to expect is, "don't worry, we'll take care of it."
With a Republican, revert to quotations from the Constitution, intentions of our forefathers, etc. You don't need to resort to invoking the Almighty, though in certain states that won't cost you points.
I put in a new hard drive and did a fresh install of Win2K, installed all the drivers and everything as before, installed Video Studio 5, and everything works fine.
Oh, you just had to replace the hard drive? No problem, I do that twice a week anyway. At least the remote came with batteries...
Last year I had already decided to buy one of those when I discovered that no such thing yet exists.:-( Also no luck finding any kind of free noise cancellation project. I can actually kind of understand why, since I could imagine people upgrading machines (requiring more fans) to have enough cycles to run their fan-cancelling program... But wouldn't it be cool to have like a "gear shift" that would set different levels of clock speed and noise cancellation?
Someone mod this up. How anyone could propose that government control could increase competition is beyond me. Competition is the natural state of the free market, and all government can do is make it less free.
I agree, Apple has really struck a balance between upgrading and backward compatibility. They have always been careful to provide emulation to run "legacy" programs, even through the 68k->PPC transition. The only times I encountered difficulties running older software was in running apps that weren't 32-bit clean on chips that couldn't be set to 24-bit mode, and when playing old games that relied on the processor being 8MHz to provide timing: those ran, but waaaay to fast to play.
I just don't see the logic in being bastardly with drivers.
Did you mean "niggardly"? I know it sounds worse, but "bastardly" is derived from "bastard," an offensive term, while "niggardly" has, well, legitimate origins (that's kind of an obtuse pun there).
How fast do you think someone would get hauled in if they handed out flyers touting "Hot Teen Action" complete with full color beaver shots at a grade school?
In public schools (where attendance is required, and the whole thing publicly funded and state controlled), hauling in anyone is a violation of free speech. In private schools, the owners can freely determine who is allowed to do what.
In real life, obviously it doesn't work this way, but that has more to do with a) Puritanism (those guys again!) and b) widespread (and very reasonable) confusion as to the role public schools are to play. One of my favorite examples of this (in the U.S.) is that, while the Supreme Court has ruled (correctly) that "students' rights don't stop at the school room door," it is somehow okay to install metal detectors at that same school room door, thus denying students their 2nd Amendment rights. This gets so confusing: can students be forced to implicate themselves if testifying in school? Can students be placed twice in jeopardy for the same crime...in school? If jailed in school, does a student have a right to representation or a speedy trial?
Someone who forces me (yes forces me) to receive and deal with stuff I do not and would never ask to see is wrong by my standards. It's akin to nuisance phone calls, or someone who follows you around and won't leave you alone
This is not really true to the definition of "force," since no one forces you to check your email, read your email, have an email account, etc. Likewise, no one forces you to have a telephone or answer the telephone. And no one forces you to go into public areas where someone could follow you around and bother you.
The only entity that can really force you to do anything is the government. If it were made a crime to not read every email addressed to you, then I would completely agree with you. But in that case, the villain would be the one forcing you to read email.
Apologies for the libertarian rhetoric, but I see making obnoxious behavior a crime as somewhat of a slippery slope.
I'm sure Google gained a much bigger user base in that time. Also, a few more factors: I think a lot of people were getting more comfortable with the web, and thus wasted less time. And web design probably improved, as it always seems to be doing, which is to say that sites have tended to adopt more standard "look and feels" and in general streamline and categorize better.
It's also not just the bandwidth (though I'm sure that makes a difference), but better hardware on the server side (client side, not as much, since that was when "no one will ever sell another PC again" or whatever...). So, certain tasks (read all my email on yahoo, check for news on all my stocks, etc.) involved less wait (weight?).
Spam transfers the cost of reading their shit onto the reader. You pay for the connection, for the hit in network performance on the internet (as it processes it all), on your time as you delete it and set up filters. At least with snail mail, they are paying and you can derive some small satisfaction when you toss it in the bin. There are also mature laws covering postal mail.
1. This is the same for any advertising method. 2. Whether or not you derive satisfaction from doing *anything* is really your own business and not anyone's fault but your own (I realize that was tongue in cheek, but still). 3. Postal mail is (everywhere? At least in the US) a government-created/-maintained monopoly, and if all email went through one body you can bet there would be some nice features as well, but at what cost?
Snail mail also tends to be targetted, touting for legitimate business, whereas spam is almost entirely illegitmate being randomly targetted, offensive (adult sites), sleazy (penis enlargers, viagra, pheromones, fake subjects, js popups etc.), illegal (nigerian money scams, mlms, cable descramblers etc.) or purely incomprehensible (taiwanese). Worse yet, forged headers and open relays mean you have no idea where this crap came from. I get 30 or more pieces of crap like this a day and I deeply resent having to deal with it.
Your taste, comprehension, and resentment are, again, all your own business. You have made a convincing argument that you don't like spam, but how does any of this make it wrong?
The recipient's ISP has to pay for extra storage capacity, bandwidth costs, and larger SMTP servers, so that his infrastructure doesn't collapse under the deluge of spam. The open relays between the spammer and ISP also incur significant bandwidth and processing costs, with no compensation.
This cost is included in the cost of the account. That is, the cost to the ISP is borne by the recipient. As for the cost of bandwidth and temporary storage between sender and recipient, that is always paid for by the "next guy down." So the ISP is paying whomever they lease their bandwidth from, and the recipient pays them. Really, it only costs individuals with Internet accounts (other things being equal, evenly). The fortunate side effect is, the less spam there is, the less everyone pays for it, so when people protect their email addresses, everyone benefits.
At least with junk mail, the sender pays a bulk mailing rate and covers the costs of delivering it. He can send as much as he likes, but now there's an incentive to control his costs and make some attempt to target his mailings.
Are you complaining that there is no per-email fee? If this made economic sense, we would already be paying per item. Or you could set up a mail server that, when someone emails you, responds with a message asking for a micropayment. But I'm guessing that might make you a little unpopular.
If there were a way of passing the true costs of spam back to the original sender, we would probably see a sharp reduction in volume.
The true costs are minimal. I spend all of 15 seconds, if that, deleting spam a day. After using this address exclusively for 3.5 years, and posting freely to slashdot and Usenet, and with no filtering in place. That's less time than it takes me to sort out real snail mail from spam, and I don't need to carry it to the wastebasket.
As for hardware costs, more nonsense. The spam I get in a month is probably less than the size of a single Flash banner ad.
Slashdot Mirror
In a free market, any business is "razor thin." Competition forces prices to the lowest they can be such that the well-managed companies survive. That the prices for these games were normal for the industry, and they nearly squeaked by, suggest that your numbers are probably pretty close.
Was that a pun?
Please do not help perpetuate Mac-user stereotypes.
If you're dealing with a Democrat, I'd suggest...dealing with a Republican. Seriously, you're not going to find a Democrat who'd rather let you decide what to do with your personal property than pass a bill letting him or her decide him- or herself. The response to expect is, "don't worry, we'll take care of it."
With a Republican, revert to quotations from the Constitution, intentions of our forefathers, etc. You don't need to resort to invoking the Almighty, though in certain states that won't cost you points.
Ah, vi doesn't need the control key.
Or even a layperson musician and a member of the clergy who isn't a musician.
Oh, you just had to replace the hard drive? No problem, I do that twice a week anyway. At least the remote came with batteries...
Last year I had already decided to buy one of those when I discovered that no such thing yet exists. :-( Also no luck finding any kind of free noise cancellation project. I can actually kind of understand why, since I could imagine people upgrading machines (requiring more fans) to have enough cycles to run their fan-cancelling program... But wouldn't it be cool to have like a "gear shift" that would set different levels of clock speed and noise cancellation?
Someone mod this up. How anyone could propose that government control could increase competition is beyond me. Competition is the natural state of the free market, and all government can do is make it less free.
I agree, Apple has really struck a balance between upgrading and backward compatibility. They have always been careful to provide emulation to run "legacy" programs, even through the 68k->PPC transition. The only times I encountered difficulties running older software was in running apps that weren't 32-bit clean on chips that couldn't be set to 24-bit mode, and when playing old games that relied on the processor being 8MHz to provide timing: those ran, but waaaay to fast to play.
Did you mean "niggardly"? I know it sounds worse, but "bastardly" is derived from "bastard," an offensive term, while "niggardly" has, well, legitimate origins (that's kind of an obtuse pun there).
Try: "Reports of Blender's death have been greatly exaggerated."
Sounds more like a combination of arrogance, ignorance, social ineptitude, and idealism. Sounds like Slashdot.
And I thought the USA was supposed to be a classless society.
You did? I think you're thinking of the USSR.
Those have a large personal wealth must also make larger contributions back to the society.
Those who have large personal wealth earned from individuals of society must make larger contributions "back" to the government?
In public schools (where attendance is required, and the whole thing publicly funded and state controlled), hauling in anyone is a violation of free speech. In private schools, the owners can freely determine who is allowed to do what.
In real life, obviously it doesn't work this way, but that has more to do with a) Puritanism (those guys again!) and b) widespread (and very reasonable) confusion as to the role public schools are to play. One of my favorite examples of this (in the U.S.) is that, while the Supreme Court has ruled (correctly) that "students' rights don't stop at the school room door," it is somehow okay to install metal detectors at that same school room door, thus denying students their 2nd Amendment rights. This gets so confusing: can students be forced to implicate themselves if testifying in school? Can students be placed twice in jeopardy for the same crime...in school? If jailed in school, does a student have a right to representation or a speedy trial?
This is not really true to the definition of "force," since no one forces you to check your email, read your email, have an email account, etc. Likewise, no one forces you to have a telephone or answer the telephone. And no one forces you to go into public areas where someone could follow you around and bother you.
The only entity that can really force you to do anything is the government. If it were made a crime to not read every email addressed to you, then I would completely agree with you. But in that case, the villain would be the one forcing you to read email.
Apologies for the libertarian rhetoric, but I see making obnoxious behavior a crime as somewhat of a slippery slope.
It's also not just the bandwidth (though I'm sure that makes a difference), but better hardware on the server side (client side, not as much, since that was when "no one will ever sell another PC again" or whatever...). So, certain tasks (read all my email on yahoo, check for news on all my stocks, etc.) involved less wait (weight?).
I noticed that as well. Maybe "incite" is patented, and he didn't want to pay the license fee...
I don't think anyone's saying this product should be illegal. Just that it's tasteless and stupid.
If Gandhi had thought like this, the U.K. would now be an Indian colony.
How old is old enough for goatse.cx? Any chance you'd let me use your proxy as well? I never want to see that again...
So, you never said...why was your wife looking at apartments?
1. This is the same for any advertising method. 2. Whether or not you derive satisfaction from doing *anything* is really your own business and not anyone's fault but your own (I realize that was tongue in cheek, but still). 3. Postal mail is (everywhere? At least in the US) a government-created/-maintained monopoly, and if all email went through one body you can bet there would be some nice features as well, but at what cost?
Snail mail also tends to be targetted, touting for legitimate business, whereas spam is almost entirely illegitmate being randomly targetted, offensive (adult sites), sleazy (penis enlargers, viagra, pheromones, fake subjects, js popups etc.), illegal (nigerian money scams, mlms, cable descramblers etc.) or purely incomprehensible (taiwanese). Worse yet, forged headers and open relays mean you have no idea where this crap came from. I get 30 or more pieces of crap like this a day and I deeply resent having to deal with it.
Your taste, comprehension, and resentment are, again, all your own business. You have made a convincing argument that you don't like spam, but how does any of this make it wrong?
This cost is included in the cost of the account. That is, the cost to the ISP is borne by the recipient. As for the cost of bandwidth and temporary storage between sender and recipient, that is always paid for by the "next guy down." So the ISP is paying whomever they lease their bandwidth from, and the recipient pays them. Really, it only costs individuals with Internet accounts (other things being equal, evenly). The fortunate side effect is, the less spam there is, the less everyone pays for it, so when people protect their email addresses, everyone benefits.
At least with junk mail, the sender pays a bulk mailing rate and covers the costs of delivering it. He can send as much as he likes, but now there's an incentive to control his costs and make some attempt to target his mailings.
Are you complaining that there is no per-email fee? If this made economic sense, we would already be paying per item. Or you could set up a mail server that, when someone emails you, responds with a message asking for a micropayment. But I'm guessing that might make you a little unpopular.
If there were a way of passing the true costs of spam back to the original sender, we would probably see a sharp reduction in volume.
The true costs are minimal. I spend all of 15 seconds, if that, deleting spam a day. After using this address exclusively for 3.5 years, and posting freely to slashdot and Usenet, and with no filtering in place. That's less time than it takes me to sort out real snail mail from spam, and I don't need to carry it to the wastebasket.
As for hardware costs, more nonsense. The spam I get in a month is probably less than the size of a single Flash banner ad.
Any idea when Linus is going to add this? Thanks.
When I worked at a computer store the surge protectors claimed that they were Y2K compliant...