>Or perhaps record labels and software companies should be forced by law to send replacement CDs/DVDs for free if you mail them a scratched disc with a self-addressed envelope.
It would be enough already if they honored their rebate scheme. I'm still waiting for my $10 from Paramount for upgrading my Transformers DVD to BD. Of course they don't ship rebates to POBOXES (but you do have to send all the stuff to a POBOX) and unfortunately I live in a place where we don't have mail delivery so USPS gives a free POBOX to each household. I communicated the situation and even provided my physical address asking to please send the rebate to my POBOX instead. They didn't and there's no way to contact them as there is no contact info on the rebate form.
Then you have smart states like North Dakota (the only one AFAIK) that passed a law under which companies MUST ACCEPT PO BOXES to deliver the rebates. I'm disgusted. I never buy anything that shows a mail-in rebate anymore.
Yes, even in that case I do think I have a right to make a copy. What happens if my Blu-Ray is destroyed for any reason? I should have the right to make a copy and store it in a different place than the original for extra protection. The movie industry never quite understood that it's not the people who legally buy a movie and make a backup copy that end up distributing them. I own over 500 DVD and a dozen BD and I wouldn't dream about giving away for free what I had to work so hard to purchase.
This time I have to applaud Disney for putting a digital copy in every one of their BD.
If the car was ever made by Apple the battery would be integrated and after a year or two you'd have to send the car in to have the battery replaced and you'd have to rent a car from them (mandatory by contract) for 2 weeks while you wait for your car to get back with the new battery.
The car would also only run on proprietary roads with proprietary electricity:-p
Then you should compare to what happens when you cross from the US to Mexico or to Canada. See, Finland and Norway are different countries; New York and New Jersey are the SAME country.
What happens when you cross from Tuscany to Umbria? Nothing. Same country.
>Western Europe | 514 people/mi^2
>United States | 86.5 people/mi^2
You cannot make direct comparison. In the US there are large chunks of states full of NOTHING, not even people like: Wyoming (where I live), Montana, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Kansas (don't even get a signal on the interstate there) etc.
So, before comparing apples cases + apples and apples you need to remove the case, roughly 1/2 of the surface of the U.S. There's still more people per square miles in Europe, but a lot less than the original number.
>All these companies need to pay for health insurance for all their full time employees. They dont get it via 20+% taxes like you do in Europe. So things cost more but you pay less taxes.
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Ok, I'll take the bite and go offtopic, since I'm not the first one.
Born in Europe, lived there 25 years, I've lived in the U.S. 13 years so allow me to know exactly what goes on in both places.
You DO NOT pay less taxes in the U.S., it just seems so. Wanna crunch some numbers?
Using Sweden as an example, feel free to use any other country
Sweden minimum wage: $20/hour
U.S. minimum wage: $6.75/hour
Sweden taxes off the paycheck: 50%
US taxes off the paycheck: (depends on which state you live in: 20% to 30%)
Sweden health care system: excellent
US Health care system: Excellent if you are rich. Add $200/month (my plan with $500 deductible, which is ridiculous that I still have to pay the first $500 and also doctor visits) or more for medical plan. That's $2500/year. Pretend that it's coming out of your paycheck as part of your taxes and see how much higher your tax percentage goes)
Sweden education system: Universities (less than $5000 for 5 years including books, much less with scholarships)
U.S. education system: Universities ($50,000 to $400,000+). $50,000 gets you a degree in a low quality university. Add that to your taxes.
Swedish High Schools system: very good
U.S. High School system: Mediocre
Sweden paid vacation: 5 weeks/year
U.S. paid vacation: 2 weeks/year (when you're lucky, I don't get any, only unpaid time off).
Street lights in Sweden: really good. Even rural areas are well lit.
US: not even big cities are well lit everywhere, nearly nonexistent in rural areas.
Want me to go on? Nobody likes to pay more taxes, but comparing tax rates directly without taking into account everything else is pure fiction.
By the way, I'm not swedish. I could have used any other country as an example.
You don't seem to understand basic logic. What works for you does NOT work for the majority of people. Your plan does not make US prices all of a sudden affordable. I pay nearly $70/month with ATT for 450 minutes and 1500 txt messages. They don't have anything cheaper and around here my options are limited to ATT, Verizon (which I dropped for bad customer service after 5 years) and that's about it. $15 extra dollars / month for 1500 sms comes to a huge rate by kilobyte, and not even mms available. I also have several European sims as I travel a lot to Europe and the US has the oldest/slowest network with the highest prices. I don't even have data plan added to my monthly plan or it would be an extra $30/month bringing the price to $100/month, ridiculous. One of the main reasons why I refuse to get an iPhone, don't wanna be forced into a data plan. Plus I'll never give money to Apple.
If you notice all providers have similar prices, the government should investigate into that as price fixing is illegal.
hmmm Sony fanboys? They are in the millions, you know. People in the market for that will buy it just for the fact that it's called "Sony" (my father among them).
Without counting the fact that Sony has a much larger reach than Amazon. Even in Europe there are countries where Amazon is totally unknown. Sony isn't.
Let me know when the price drops to $49.99
I have no intentions of spending a lot of money for the hardware to read books that I also have to pay for. I'm not opposed to paying for books, but just don't want to pay $200 or $300 for being able to buy books.
RCL (891376), get your stupid head out of your ass. Your claims are just baseless.
I have plenty friends in several countries in Europe that are doing ordinary jobs INCLUDING working at McDonald's and they graduated with high marks from university. And they're all "Aborigines." I grew up in Europe and filled several of those position myself, including cleaning tables at restaurants with coworkers that were all Europeans. I know what is like there.
The simple fact that you started your sentence with "socialist-minded Europe" spells the fact that you are an american ignorant of the reality of the job market and ignorant of what value politics have. You don't even understands the meaning of "socialism." Now go hide because the communists are coming (from Cuba).
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Not my usual tone when I write on/. but I had enough of putting up with ignorant narrow-minded pricks.
I'm sorry to disappoint you in your quest to blame everything on Microsoft but the laptop sucks because HP built it with shitty parts. a Double core CPU with 2GB or RAM that runs slower than my C64. Vista had a part in it, but was not all of it. Since I can't change the hardware changing the OS is the only option.
Europe has different laws than the US and the European anti-trust commission doesn't work solely on absolute monopoly cases. For they same reason they told Apple they must built their iPhones in a way that users can change the batteries themselves.
I did not buy an iPhone, I refuse to follow Apple's rules, and I they don't tell me what to do. That simple.
BTW, this is not gonna fly in Europe where the European Anti-Trust Commission will see Apple as pushing a monopoly, but in the U.S. as usual they'll do whatever they want because corporations come before individuals.
Funny, but in reality even the RC1 was already very stable. Still hasn't crashed once in my 2 computers in a month. Desktop = new install. Laptop = upgrade from Vista.
Not so with 7. After using 7 on my desktop for a while (I decided to go all beta, I'm using 7 and FireFox 3.5 and no other OS installed) I decided to do an upgrade on my laptop from Vista. Too much hell to reinstall all software, personal settings. Well, my laptop now runs better than ever. I actually almost threw it out of the balcony on a couple of occasions but with Windows 7 it actually works and much faster, too. All software works. Seriously my laptop was hell to deal with, the worst laptop I ever had (an HP) but now I can stand it without crying in frustration while I'm using it. Previous Vista installation was over a year ago.
A better test would be locking the astronauts for 105 days in a small box, letting them out in the middle of the desert of Arizona for 2 weeks and then relocking them for another 105 days. Unless we only care for them to get sane to Mars but we don't really care if they are not sane when they get back to Earth. Unless (2) we're not planning of getting them back.
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Then compare the European Union as a whole and throw in there Japan too. My point remains valid.
That's a good point.
Good addition. Too many numbers to crunch, I'll go take a walk :)
The car analogy doesn't make sense, as you use the car, whereas in a DVD/BD you're interested in the content, not the physical media itself.
It would be enough already if they honored their rebate scheme. I'm still waiting for my $10 from Paramount for upgrading my Transformers DVD to BD. Of course they don't ship rebates to POBOXES (but you do have to send all the stuff to a POBOX) and unfortunately I live in a place where we don't have mail delivery so USPS gives a free POBOX to each household. I communicated the situation and even provided my physical address asking to please send the rebate to my POBOX instead. They didn't and there's no way to contact them as there is no contact info on the rebate form.
Then you have smart states like North Dakota (the only one AFAIK) that passed a law under which companies MUST ACCEPT PO BOXES to deliver the rebates. I'm disgusted. I never buy anything that shows a mail-in rebate anymore.
Yes, even in that case I do think I have a right to make a copy. What happens if my Blu-Ray is destroyed for any reason? I should have the right to make a copy and store it in a different place than the original for extra protection. The movie industry never quite understood that it's not the people who legally buy a movie and make a backup copy that end up distributing them. I own over 500 DVD and a dozen BD and I wouldn't dream about giving away for free what I had to work so hard to purchase. This time I have to applaud Disney for putting a digital copy in every one of their BD.
If the car was ever made by Apple the battery would be integrated and after a year or two you'd have to send the car in to have the battery replaced and you'd have to rent a car from them (mandatory by contract) for 2 weeks while you wait for your car to get back with the new battery. The car would also only run on proprietary roads with proprietary electricity :-p
What happens when you cross from Tuscany to Umbria? Nothing. Same country.
Attila, don't wreak havoc ;-)
>United States | 86.5 people/mi^2
You cannot make direct comparison. In the US there are large chunks of states full of NOTHING, not even people like: Wyoming (where I live), Montana, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Kansas (don't even get a signal on the interstate there) etc.
So, before comparing apples cases + apples and apples you need to remove the case, roughly 1/2 of the surface of the U.S. There's still more people per square miles in Europe, but a lot less than the original number.
In NY state I used to pay around 33%. Add to that the cost of insurance alone and now european taxes don't seem to be so far off, do they?
Where I live roofers make $30 to $50 / hours and I'm not talking management but people who are on the roof... ehm... roofing. :)
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Ok, I'll take the bite and go offtopic, since I'm not the first one.
Born in Europe, lived there 25 years, I've lived in the U.S. 13 years so allow me to know exactly what goes on in both places.
You DO NOT pay less taxes in the U.S., it just seems so. Wanna crunch some numbers?
Using Sweden as an example, feel free to use any other country
Sweden minimum wage: $20/hour
U.S. minimum wage: $6.75/hour
Sweden taxes off the paycheck: 50%
US taxes off the paycheck: (depends on which state you live in: 20% to 30%)
Sweden health care system: excellent
US Health care system: Excellent if you are rich. Add $200/month (my plan with $500 deductible, which is ridiculous that I still have to pay the first $500 and also doctor visits) or more for medical plan. That's $2500/year. Pretend that it's coming out of your paycheck as part of your taxes and see how much higher your tax percentage goes)
Sweden education system: Universities (less than $5000 for 5 years including books, much less with scholarships)
U.S. education system: Universities ($50,000 to $400,000+). $50,000 gets you a degree in a low quality university. Add that to your taxes.
Swedish High Schools system: very good
U.S. High School system: Mediocre
Sweden paid vacation: 5 weeks/year
U.S. paid vacation: 2 weeks/year (when you're lucky, I don't get any, only unpaid time off).
Street lights in Sweden: really good. Even rural areas are well lit.
US: not even big cities are well lit everywhere, nearly nonexistent in rural areas.
Want me to go on? Nobody likes to pay more taxes, but comparing tax rates directly without taking into account everything else is pure fiction.
By the way, I'm not swedish. I could have used any other country as an example.
You don't seem to understand basic logic. What works for you does NOT work for the majority of people. Your plan does not make US prices all of a sudden affordable. I pay nearly $70/month with ATT for 450 minutes and 1500 txt messages. They don't have anything cheaper and around here my options are limited to ATT, Verizon (which I dropped for bad customer service after 5 years) and that's about it. $15 extra dollars / month for 1500 sms comes to a huge rate by kilobyte, and not even mms available. I also have several European sims as I travel a lot to Europe and the US has the oldest/slowest network with the highest prices. I don't even have data plan added to my monthly plan or it would be an extra $30/month bringing the price to $100/month, ridiculous. One of the main reasons why I refuse to get an iPhone, don't wanna be forced into a data plan. Plus I'll never give money to Apple. If you notice all providers have similar prices, the government should investigate into that as price fixing is illegal.
hmmm Sony fanboys? They are in the millions, you know. People in the market for that will buy it just for the fact that it's called "Sony" (my father among them). Without counting the fact that Sony has a much larger reach than Amazon. Even in Europe there are countries where Amazon is totally unknown. Sony isn't.
Let me know when the price drops to $49.99 I have no intentions of spending a lot of money for the hardware to read books that I also have to pay for. I'm not opposed to paying for books, but just don't want to pay $200 or $300 for being able to buy books.
...
Not my usual tone when I write on /. but I had enough of putting up with ignorant narrow-minded pricks.
I'm sorry to disappoint you in your quest to blame everything on Microsoft but the laptop sucks because HP built it with shitty parts. a Double core CPU with 2GB or RAM that runs slower than my C64. Vista had a part in it, but was not all of it. Since I can't change the hardware changing the OS is the only option.
I haven't read that anywhere else. I already pre-ordered a copy of 7 Professional at $99.
That would be nice but profit doesn't work that way and Microsoft is just a drop in the oceans of companies selling bad products.
Europe has different laws than the US and the European anti-trust commission doesn't work solely on absolute monopoly cases. For they same reason they told Apple they must built their iPhones in a way that users can change the batteries themselves.
I did not buy an iPhone, I refuse to follow Apple's rules, and I they don't tell me what to do. That simple. BTW, this is not gonna fly in Europe where the European Anti-Trust Commission will see Apple as pushing a monopoly, but in the U.S. as usual they'll do whatever they want because corporations come before individuals.
Funny, but in reality even the RC1 was already very stable. Still hasn't crashed once in my 2 computers in a month. Desktop = new install. Laptop = upgrade from Vista.
The F-23 was gorgeous (I still have a plastic model) and far better looking than the F-22. It looked like something between an F-14 and a spaceship.
Not so with 7. After using 7 on my desktop for a while (I decided to go all beta, I'm using 7 and FireFox 3.5 and no other OS installed) I decided to do an upgrade on my laptop from Vista. Too much hell to reinstall all software, personal settings. Well, my laptop now runs better than ever. I actually almost threw it out of the balcony on a couple of occasions but with Windows 7 it actually works and much faster, too. All software works. Seriously my laptop was hell to deal with, the worst laptop I ever had (an HP) but now I can stand it without crying in frustration while I'm using it. Previous Vista installation was over a year ago.
A better test would be locking the astronauts for 105 days in a small box, letting them out in the middle of the desert of Arizona for 2 weeks and then relocking them for another 105 days. Unless we only care for them to get sane to Mars but we don't really care if they are not sane when they get back to Earth. Unless (2) we're not planning of getting them back.