It wasn't so much the 5% failure rate that was the problem. That and probably more was expected. It was the fact that when those loans failed, they could not be recovered because house values had actually slipped in a lot of places - that had never happened before on any kind of wide scale. But you're right that it could be predicted, and I'd expect your formula for predicting a market collapse of some kind is probably pretty acurrate in a general "rule of thumb" sense.
This housing market collapse was predicted over a decade ago. The recipe for disaster was there, the only question was exactly how long it would take.
Heavy-handed incetives to take risky loans that were first implemented 20 some-odd years ago, but greatly ramped up by the Clinton administration, created a climate where it was quite profitable to take on bad loans, and then shift, move, and otherwise hide that they were bad. The housing market itself was able to hide the risk of taking on so much bad debt, for as long as house values went up faster than interest rates, even extremely high risk loans (like fixed payment loans, and second and third mortgages) would almost always be covered when a house was sold. Homeowners who can't pay their bill just sell, banks get their money back, and nobody loses. Even when forclosure was necessary banks could reliably recoup most of their money, though forclosure is less than ideal.
However, as soon as housing prices stagnated the model became tenuous, and when it slipped, even a little, the model collapsed. You ended up with thousands of loans that could not be covered by the sale of the home, and forclosure was the only option.
This is BAD. Forclosures are expensive anyway, and only cover the balance left on the house for the initial bank, the secondary balance if there is one, or the homeowner if there isn't gets what's left. Forclosures that can't even get the primary loan balance back are a financial nightmare. What's more, the homeowners that tended to default were also more likely to get second and third mortgages to stave off forclosure. Houses went from being "guaranteed income" for banks to a massive liability. Companies like CountryWide - which embraced the Government's high-risk low income loans and who either Fannie May or Freddie Mac, I don't remember which, touted as the "model" for lending - was the first company to fail (no bailout for you! too bad so sad!). AIG, by the way, profited by shifting the risk of these loans via a special insurance type. Obviously that worked out well for them.
I personally think the healthiest thing to do would have been to let the market collapse and allow other companies to fill the voids. Definitely more painful in the short term, but in the long term I think it would be better. We'll be suffering for a long time with the current bailout plan. Though of course, I'm no economist, but they haven't done so hot anyway so...
There is going to be a lot of new software that won't be made for WinXPsp3, and a lot of legacy software that won't be made for Win7.
What does a company do when it wants to run both?
Upgrade to Win7.
See? Microsoft makes it possible now, where it wasn't possible with Vista. Plus, most corporate service agreements don't include non-supported operating systems, which XP should have been already and almost certainly will be after Win7. That's a big motivator to upgrade, and a lot of companies already tried and failed to upgrade to Vista. Thus the big WinXP extension - it was EOL'd like 2 years ago and yet, it's still supported.
For those questioning WinXP support after this, who says Microsoft has to put out a patch for the standalone XP when they patch their XP VM? If the support is gone, it's gone, and any updates would technically be for the WinXP component of Win7, not WinXP as a standalone OS.
I could see them going this route as a way to appease customers and still -finally- get rid of XP like they've wanted to since Vista's release.
You have a very shallow understanding of the IT industry, and if you are in the industry I doubt you are in any decision making capacity. If you are, you are lucky to be in a job that does not require legacy applications.
Sure, there are plenty of cases where what you said is true, where there is commercially available upgrades. In reality the C?O's are the ones who are more likely to say "Oooh shiny Vista/Win7/whatever!! Why can't I have that? Let's upgrade today!" Unless they come from an accountant backround, in which case you wouldn't get the money for it even if you really needed to upgrade.
However, there are as many or more cases of custom software or software with a million+ dollar price tag that is targeted at a very limited but critical user base. For these applications there is no readily available upgrade, and the cost of creating one is astronomical.
I work for an oil company where this is the case, they actually spent $20 million or so attempting to find workarounds and upgrades and alternatives and figuring out what it would cost to upgrade to Vista. The project was scrapped, because the cost to upgrade was -significantly- higher than the benefits. It makes sense if you think about it, monitoring software hooked in to 30 year old devices that are in perfect working order, eventually the software gets left behind. Since Vista dropped backwards compatability in a large way, re-writing software to tie into these old devices may not have even been possible, which means the device has to be replaced. These devices, depending their function, can range in price from $10 to $1million or more. Multiply that out thousands of times, and you'd go bankrupt trying to upgrade to Vista.
The oil industry is hardly unique, the banking industry comes to mind of another example in a similar situation.
The customers that are most likely to need it, you mean.
There are hundreds of giant corporations and thousands of smaller companies that cannot upgrade because of some legacy, but critical app that cannot be ported to Vista or better for one reason or another. That represents millions of customers who cannot upgrade. These customers are the -only- reason XP was extended as long as it was. On the whole, few retail consumers actually downgrade from Vista to XP after purchasing a new PC. It's quite the opposite for many large corporations. And not necessarily because they want to either.
Consumers - i.e. the folks that only need the lower end versions - can usually do without any legacy programs or upgrade to newer software. Many businesses have special software that there is no replacement for. And if they DO need an XP VM for one application or another, downloading VirtualPC and setting up a VM is worth learning.
The global company (probably a couple million employees, total) I work for would likely be using Vista right now if it had a feature like this. I'd guarantee it if the XPVM were seemless, or nearly so, in its implementation. Dunno if it is or not.
Or more likely customers that think they've got an XP dependency.
Not just think, most of them actually do.
My company spent $10-20 million to test the feasability of moving to Vista from XP, and had to scrap it. Couldn't do it, and this was at a time when the company was raking in cash, it wasn't a money problem. It does become a problem, however, when you have to replace billions of dollars of infrastructure because the programs you have to use to tie in to do not work in Vista, then it becomes a money issue.
Especially when the only real percieved benefit is a snazzier interface for your office workers, maybe a little less headache in some ways, and ultimately what you are using now is adequate for the forseeable future.
If the WinXP VM is seamless in Win7, then there's no reason not to upgrade. Then they can replace that billion+ dollars worth of infrastructure when they actually need to, and upgrade their interface systems at the same time.
I personally am starting to think it would have been better if the US Government, instead of saying "here's a monopoly and some cash, go build us a telco infrastructure!", and contracted out the work to Bell and the like and retained ownership. They could have leased the lines to cover ongoing costs, and even a researve for future upgrades. In this way they could have encouraged competition, and given incentives for servicing rural areas. More expensive up front but much better in the long run, and it would have eventually paid for itself.
Video streaming of TV shows makes no sense, period.
Wow, you really can't think of any possible situations outside your own can you? Way to think inside a very narrow box, my man.
Streaming has a huge advantage over traditional TV in that you can watch what you want, whenever you want to. This is not possible with any kind of multicast service, with multicast (cable TV is multicast system) you are locked in to the transmition date and time. It can be "shifted" later by recording at one of the destinations, which is pretty efficient, but your shifting device is still locked in to that date and time.
For example, because of what I do and where I work, I can only watch TV from about 11pm EST until technically 11am EST, though I need 8 hours of sleep in there so it's actually 11pm till 3am. That's my window, and I don't have access to a DVR. Know how many shows I want to watch are on at those times? None. Does that mean there aren't shows I want to watch? Of course there are! And video streaming is the only way to do it.
So take off your blinders and think of other reasons why someone might want to use the service. Hulu would not exist, and certainly would not be profitable, if streaming video made no sense. Period.
Of course pure capitalism doesn't work, neither does pure socialism. However, capitalism requires less effort to be made to work well than socialism.
The key is to leverage the "willing to do anything to make a profit". It's called MOTIVATION, and greed is a very effective motivator. Properly leveraged it can be extremely beneficial with very little effort. Socialism lacks this kind of motivator, as very few people are actually inspired to do their best work based on "the good of the people", and most modern socialism relies leaching off what is left of the capitalism in the system.
"Capitalism" didn't fail, it just did what it always has and always will do. What may have failed (and it hasn't gotten there yet folks, these things take time to play out and work out) is our leveraging of capitalism in this instance. And who do we appoint to make sure capitalism is leveraged to our best benefit (via regulations on industry)? That's right, local, state, and federal representatives.
So where is the failure? Is it capitalism doing what it has always done, and will always continue to do? Or was it the government's failure to reign it in? If a government official can be bribed, that's not a failure of capitalism.
Who set up these monopolies in the first place? Who CAN set up these monopolies? Only one entity, and that is the Government of these United States. I suggest you read up on the history of our telecomunications network. There were good reasons for it, but the monopolies created the current situation, and we have done little to fix it.
So explain to me where it clearly states the limits on Data?
You know, that's an important part of a contract. If they are going to sell you a service, and what you agree to is an "always on" connection at X speed, it is reasonable to assume that connection will always be on at X speed, or close to it. In fact, just browsing the website, there is no disclaimer, or any statement restricting the service. It is quite reasonable to assume this connection has no limits, because they didn't place any limits on it! Not that they told you about, not that you agree to. BTW, in case you don't get it, it's the "agree to" part that is important. You have to agree to it to make it legal
It is quite unreasonable to expect someone to make an odd jump to "unlimited time" from "Always on at X speed". Never mind the fact that, by disconnecting this guy they did not fulfill "always on" or "unlimited time" of your argument.
Your argument is bogus no matter how you look at it.
True that. From my understanding talking to contract lawyers and such (IANAL), TOS's are generally regarded as weak contracts - weak because they throw everything but the kitchen sink in, regardless of enforceability. There are general contract laws and specific federal, state and local consumer protection and contract enforcement type laws that supercede anything that may be in a TOS contract (it is a contract, by the way, you have to agree to it to use the service).
It's basically a CYA in case someone misunderstands something, they might be able avoid liability with a TOS.
It is by no means a license to do whatever the hell they want, regardless of what is explicitly stated in the TOS.
UPS and FedEx are both hella expensive for anybody outside the continental US.
HELLA. EXPENSIVE.
Cheapest option on solid goods is generally 5-10 times more expensive than USPS. Especially UPS. They can't figure out how to drive through Canada, or put goods on a barge, they'll only send it via air freight, which is generally 2nd day service and obscenely expensive because of it.
DHL is better than both on price, but they are still more expensive than USPS, and good luck finding an online retailer who uses DHL.
Honestly, I've never had an issue with my local USPS. I live in a condo with the little metal mailboxes and I don't get broken DVD's, or mis-delivered items (well, that I've ever known about). It sounds like a local problem with your local government employees, and if it really bothers you, you should get some other locals together and put some pressure on your local representatives to DO something about it.
Anyways, back to Gamefly, I'll bet their biggest problem is a lack of distribution centers. Turnaround on Netflix for me is usually 3 days, which is a day to get to netflix, a day to process, and a day to get back. No way they are hitting that without a local distro, probably more than one even. Also, if Netflix's packaging forces hand-sorting, I could see that as being a bonus as well. They have very low protection, just a fiber sleeve, and they don't -seem- to be having the same issues, at least not on the ratio that GF has.
As far as copyright goes, you are correct. It is legal to copy a DVD.
What is NOT legal is to circumvent the copy protection on said DVD, thanks to the DMCA. It's a catch-22. You have the legal right to copy it for a personal backup (no distribution), but in order to make that copy you have to break the law.
He seems more like a computer guy who doesn't like change that reduces functionality and/or efficiency.
Honestly, if those are the guys you're firing, good luck. Changing for the sake of change is idiotic at best, and self-destructive at worst. There are a lot of reasons change can be bad, and the smart computer guy looks at his individual situation and sees if change is A) Necessary B) an Improvement and C) Feasable.
From the screen shot it looks to me like this guy has a "system" that makes him efficient at what he does. If you'd rather your imployees remain generic and not take full advantage of an OS to improve their ability to work, for the sake of pending "change" every 5-10 years, you are probably a really crappy manager. You probably also think you are a great manager. Kinda funny how that tends to work out.
Know where I can get "the olds"? I think I'd rather have that than "the news", the news is way too unreliable.
I don't want the really old olds though, that's just history. Maybe something they've worked the bugs out of but is still relevant? Maybe all these newspapers that are failing should change their models and become recentpapers? Or maybe reliablepapers? That might help them out a bit.
Well, if you're building a system with base organisms that are food for higher level organisms, which are food for even higher level organisms, etc. then having the wrong handedness means you cannot participate in the chain.
How does a left handed cow eat right handed grass? Furthermore, how would a right handed tiger eat a left handed cow?
They try to use it as evidence against a creator and for evolution, but that doesn't make much sense, since a creator would have to build two separate and completely incompatible eco-systems. It makes more sense to make just one that is fully inter-dependant and self-supporting.
Actually killer evidence against a creative entity would be if it were found that we did have more than one biological system on the planet - one right handed and one left handed. They would eventually merge into the two regardless, and in truth one would probably eventually eliminate the other, but there is no reason evolution shouldn't initiate more than one system. In fact, it should have initiated millions of them, which eventually "stuck" and were able to flourish. This would almost guarantee two systems, at least in the beginning.
Anyways, those are just my thoughts. The handedness of molecules is new to me.
The headline uses the word "Slick", and the emphasis is on that slickness. Actual functionality isn't mentioned, because it's not interesting to the reviewer. What's interesting is "Oooh, Pretty!" When reviews and sales are dependent on this, we should expect that the software developers would push for glitz.
It's great when someone reads the headline and assumes they know evertything in an article. It really makes you look foolish and ignorant of what you are writing about. You've basically just attempted to say the article is meaningless because what REALLY matters is... exactly what the article was talking about. Brilliant.
When the author said "slick", he meant it in the way that actually counts: easier to use. I haven't used it, but apparently Windows 7 is "slick" because it is snappy, responsive, and easy to use. The author uses Vista as the opposite of "slick" because, though pretty, it is slow and unresponsive (I've used that one and I agree).
Ubuntu 9.04 is not out-of-the-box prettier than previous versions, the author even says not to bother with looking at screenshots, they won't tell you anything useful. What it is, apparently, is snappier and more intuitive, and so more functional. Slick. Polished. I couldn't say for sure though, I haven't used it myself. Though I'm probably going to upgrade my laptop in a couple weeks.
He couldn't get the touchscreen to work on the linux install, which means linux was unusable on his tablet. So, he couldn't install Linux on it and use it for its intended purpose (i.e. could not install linux). This was frustrating, because aside from the touchscreen problem Linux worked better and used less battery. However, for a tablet PC no touchscreen is an obvious deal-breaker.
He was able to use Windows with difficulty, and that is what he is stuck with.
I know you didn't RTFA, cause nobody does, but that was EXACTLY the point of the article. They didn't mean "slick" as in shiny and pretty and cool effects, they even said so. They said don't bother looking at screenshots, because that's not the kind of "slick" that they meant. They meant "slick" as in responsive, windows pop up quickly, feels quick instead of sluggish.
They made some comparisons like: Vista - oh so not slick Mac OSX Tiger - Very slick Mac OSX Leopard - Not as slick as Tiger, but slick Windows 7 - surprisingly slick Ubuntu pre-9.04 - Not slick Ubuntu 9.04 - Very slick
The guy who wrote the article apparently uses Mac OSX, Linux, and Windows 7 on a regular basis, and he was focusing on user-interface improvements. He noted that Leopard, while it added lots of "cool features" over Tiger, the usablility slipped in a few areas. He noted that the MS team got it right for once, and the Windows 7 UI is impressive. He noted that the Ubuntu team dedicated the UI that was formed last September has made some great improvements, and it should finally be competative with the other two brands' user interfaces.
The theme itself though, sadly, hasn't changed. Fortunately it's a heck of a lot easier to customize the theme in Ubuntu than it is in Windows or OSX.:)
Actually the court has been fairly consitantly saying that recieving copyright-infringed goods is not illegal. It's the copier/distributor (aka the uploader) who is breaking the law, not the person who recieves the goods (aka the downloader).
Lately the courts have been saying you can download whatever you want, because copyright law makes no statements about recieving copied goods. It's a copyright restrcition, not a receiveright restriction. You certainly don't have the right to make copies of that work to distribute, however, and that is what they have to go after. That's what makes proving infringement for small time players so tough for the RIAA.
It's pretty easy to get a single instance of someone infringing, just plug in to any torrent that is sharing an unauthorized copy of whatever and you've got hundreds of IP addresses to start from. But to make it worth suing over, they need many instances from one individual. Finding IP addresses distributing enough music to be worth going after is tough, and verifying individuals behind those addresses is significantly more difficult - many times impossible.
It's an uphill battle, and they aren't getting away with scare tactics and dirty moves any more. I'd feel sorry for them if they weren't such pricks about it. Maybe if they'd gone about the process righteously to protect their interests I'd feel more sympathetic, but they've been asshats and dirty weasles the entire time. They desearve their comeupance.
Add to that the fact that you have to show some form of competition (i.e. the potential for tricking people into using a product not affiliated with the trademark holder) by using said trademark.
I can use the trademarked term "Microsoft Windows" in any way I want, as long as I am not convincing people to use my product because it is Microsoft's by associating myself with their trademark.
For example, a website called mswindowssucks.com which promotes the downloading and installing Linux is not infringing on the trademark. However, a website called mswindowsrocks.com that sells "MS Windows" for $9.99 and gives you a copy of Linux re-branded to look like Windows would definitely be infringing.
Then you have borderline cases, like Lindows, which was similar enough to be confused with windows by uniformed users. They either lost outright settled, I don't remember which, but they didn't get to use the term Lindows any more.
All this is fine and dandy, except if you can show a trademark wasn't vigorously defended at every turn then the trademark gets nullified. That's a HUGE risk, so companies with a trademark must sue at the drop of a hat, even if they themselves might think it is rediculous. It isn't worth losing the trademark down the line.
For an example of what happens when you don't defend your trademark, look at the WWE, formerly the WWF for 20+ years. They lost it to the World Wildlife Fund because they didn't defend it sufficiently. The WWE lost an incredible amount of mindshare and brand awareness because of it. I don't even like pro-wrestling and WWE sounds dumb to me compared to WWF. It's that kind of thing Wikipedia has to defend against. Hopefully though this is just a token defense so they can say they defended it if it comes up again.
I'm in the same boat here in Alaska. I pay $80 per month for 3mb internet with a 20gb cap. I think the 6mb service is around $100. The other option is DSL, which tops out at half the speed for a similar price.
I was paying $140 for their "premium" cable package with HD content and 3mb unlimited internet. It was just too much for me. I'm even considering going back to the wireless option, which is cheaper and high bandwidth but high latency also.
There just aren't any good options, we need a third wired provider.
It's a misunderstanding of exactly WHY private entities are usually better. Capitalism isn't a nicer economic system than socialism, it's actually much much crueler.
Capitalism, however, can much more easily be leveraged to the benefit community at large than socialism, odd as it may seem. Capitalism has a huge leverage point, and that is profit. Companies want the most profit they can possibly get. If there are at least 3 competitors in a market, each competitor must provide a higher percieved value than the other two in order to maximise profit because consumers will seek the highest value, naturally. A cycle begins of "one-up-manship" to draw the most customers, and pretty quickly the consumer recieves the best product possible at the lowest price. Depending on what the market values, this results in either the cheapest products/services possible, or the highest quality, or a mix of the two.
This does not work with a monopoly. In a monopoly the drive for profit is not being leveraged by the market, and instead of the most value possible, you get the least value tolerable. When your options are "this or nothing", "this" has to be so poor than "nothing" is a superior product/service. That's pretty piss poor.
The reason there is a monopoly in this case is the government's fault anyway. They granted it to TWC in the first place, and have continued to grant it to TWC until this local municipality was able to work around it. Since they are attempting to maximise their profits, they will first attempt to legislate out their competition. If, and only if, that doesn't work, THEN TWC will compete and the system will work like it is supposed to.
Before you run around on your high horse there, just remember that it was government intervention that created the lack of competition, which took away the incentive for efficiency, that caused the initial problem. Necessary originally? Probably. Necessary now? Obviously not. Fixable? Apparently. Asking then answering my own questions getting annoying? Definitely.
In this case the city used bonds, which can be payed back any number of ways. Usually this is through taxes, but since internet/cable tv service is generally expected to be paid for, it would be quite reasonable for the bonds to be paid for via service fees to those who use the service.
I don't know if that is what they did, but you are making a bit of an assumption there. Furthermore, your numbers are probably off as well, because bonds generally need to be approved via a vote, so at least 50% of voters wanted the service, which can be reasonably extrapolated out to 50% of the community.
Anyway, don't make assumptions, it makes an ass out of you and umption.
PS: If it were me voting on a tax funded bond, I'd have voted no, and would have voted no anyway depending on how the deal was structured. I agree with your position on taxes.
The question is why TWC WON'T do that if private industry is so much better?
It's not so much private industry that is so much better, it's leveraging profit (aka greed) via competition that makes private industry so efficient. If there is no competition - which was the case prior to Greenlight - then there is no leverage on the profit, i.e. nobody taking it away from you if you are less efficient than they are. You need at least 3 players for private industry to be more efficient.
If they've got a monopoly, why in the world would they want to drop prices or improve service? Any idiot can see that if you've got a high demand service and a monopoly, you raise prices to the maximum you think the market will support before demand drops off too low.
Greenlight introduced competition - pretty ruthless competition from what I gather by selling at cost - and TWC is making an attempt to legislate Greenlight out of existance and resume their monopoly, with the added bonus of likely using the new infrastructure to boot. Hopefully, the what happens is Greenlight is rolled over into a non-government non-profit co-op type of entity (I'm really not a fan of government backed companies, they tend to bloat faster than corporations!), and TWC will attempt to compete with that. In that scenario the community should benefit even further.
The capitalist argument is that private companies are favourable to nationalised industries as the private companies can provide higher service or lower costs.
The key word there is "can". Private companies can be expected to eventually produce the most efficient product or service possible. However, this only happens when there is sufficient competition, and 2 companies is generally not enough. They generally balance out and become the same thing, only different. The government actually has the most ability to provide the highest value of a product or service, but they rarely have the motivation of profit that a private company does.
It's competition that drives capitalism's efficiencies, and in pretty much every case where it fails it is because for one reason or another, there is not enough competition.
The problems we have with internet service were generated by the government mandated telephone system. At the time it was deemed necessary to have a nation-wide telegraph/telephone system, but there was nobody large enough, and it was too expensive, for anybody to make it happen. So the government granted monopolies to those companies willing to risk the investment, and our teleco's have been thriving off it ever since. Sure the monopolies were broken up from a huge monopoly to smaller regional monopolies, and it helped the problem, but it wasn't enough. In many areas there is still little to no choice, and the monopoly rears its ugly head and the consumer gets screwed.
There needs to be a change, but I'm not sure how to push it. I don't like the idea of government backed companies, but I do like the idea of government owned infrastructure. It was a mistake to allow the telco's to claim ownership of the phone lines. Perhaps we should have just been more patient; I'll bet the technology would have proliferated eventually anyway, and our telco situation would be drastically different. Better or worse, who knows.
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It wasn't so much the 5% failure rate that was the problem. That and probably more was expected. It was the fact that when those loans failed, they could not be recovered because house values had actually slipped in a lot of places - that had never happened before on any kind of wide scale. But you're right that it could be predicted, and I'd expect your formula for predicting a market collapse of some kind is probably pretty acurrate in a general "rule of thumb" sense.
This housing market collapse was predicted over a decade ago. The recipe for disaster was there, the only question was exactly how long it would take.
Heavy-handed incetives to take risky loans that were first implemented 20 some-odd years ago, but greatly ramped up by the Clinton administration, created a climate where it was quite profitable to take on bad loans, and then shift, move, and otherwise hide that they were bad. The housing market itself was able to hide the risk of taking on so much bad debt, for as long as house values went up faster than interest rates, even extremely high risk loans (like fixed payment loans, and second and third mortgages) would almost always be covered when a house was sold. Homeowners who can't pay their bill just sell, banks get their money back, and nobody loses. Even when forclosure was necessary banks could reliably recoup most of their money, though forclosure is less than ideal.
However, as soon as housing prices stagnated the model became tenuous, and when it slipped, even a little, the model collapsed. You ended up with thousands of loans that could not be covered by the sale of the home, and forclosure was the only option.
This is BAD. Forclosures are expensive anyway, and only cover the balance left on the house for the initial bank, the secondary balance if there is one, or the homeowner if there isn't gets what's left. Forclosures that can't even get the primary loan balance back are a financial nightmare. What's more, the homeowners that tended to default were also more likely to get second and third mortgages to stave off forclosure. Houses went from being "guaranteed income" for banks to a massive liability. Companies like CountryWide - which embraced the Government's high-risk low income loans and who either Fannie May or Freddie Mac, I don't remember which, touted as the "model" for lending - was the first company to fail (no bailout for you! too bad so sad!). AIG, by the way, profited by shifting the risk of these loans via a special insurance type. Obviously that worked out well for them.
I personally think the healthiest thing to do would have been to let the market collapse and allow other companies to fill the voids. Definitely more painful in the short term, but in the long term I think it would be better. We'll be suffering for a long time with the current bailout plan. Though of course, I'm no economist, but they haven't done so hot anyway so...
There is going to be a lot of new software that won't be made for WinXPsp3, and a lot of legacy software that won't be made for Win7.
What does a company do when it wants to run both?
Upgrade to Win7.
See? Microsoft makes it possible now, where it wasn't possible with Vista. Plus, most corporate service agreements don't include non-supported operating systems, which XP should have been already and almost certainly will be after Win7. That's a big motivator to upgrade, and a lot of companies already tried and failed to upgrade to Vista. Thus the big WinXP extension - it was EOL'd like 2 years ago and yet, it's still supported.
For those questioning WinXP support after this, who says Microsoft has to put out a patch for the standalone XP when they patch their XP VM? If the support is gone, it's gone, and any updates would technically be for the WinXP component of Win7, not WinXP as a standalone OS.
I could see them going this route as a way to appease customers and still -finally- get rid of XP like they've wanted to since Vista's release.
You have a very shallow understanding of the IT industry, and if you are in the industry I doubt you are in any decision making capacity. If you are, you are lucky to be in a job that does not require legacy applications.
Sure, there are plenty of cases where what you said is true, where there is commercially available upgrades. In reality the C?O's are the ones who are more likely to say "Oooh shiny Vista/Win7/whatever!! Why can't I have that? Let's upgrade today!" Unless they come from an accountant backround, in which case you wouldn't get the money for it even if you really needed to upgrade.
However, there are as many or more cases of custom software or software with a million+ dollar price tag that is targeted at a very limited but critical user base. For these applications there is no readily available upgrade, and the cost of creating one is astronomical.
I work for an oil company where this is the case, they actually spent $20 million or so attempting to find workarounds and upgrades and alternatives and figuring out what it would cost to upgrade to Vista. The project was scrapped, because the cost to upgrade was -significantly- higher than the benefits. It makes sense if you think about it, monitoring software hooked in to 30 year old devices that are in perfect working order, eventually the software gets left behind. Since Vista dropped backwards compatability in a large way, re-writing software to tie into these old devices may not have even been possible, which means the device has to be replaced. These devices, depending their function, can range in price from $10 to $1million or more. Multiply that out thousands of times, and you'd go bankrupt trying to upgrade to Vista.
The oil industry is hardly unique, the banking industry comes to mind of another example in a similar situation.
The customers that are most likely to need it, you mean.
There are hundreds of giant corporations and thousands of smaller companies that cannot upgrade because of some legacy, but critical app that cannot be ported to Vista or better for one reason or another. That represents millions of customers who cannot upgrade. These customers are the -only- reason XP was extended as long as it was. On the whole, few retail consumers actually downgrade from Vista to XP after purchasing a new PC. It's quite the opposite for many large corporations. And not necessarily because they want to either.
Consumers - i.e. the folks that only need the lower end versions - can usually do without any legacy programs or upgrade to newer software. Many businesses have special software that there is no replacement for. And if they DO need an XP VM for one application or another, downloading VirtualPC and setting up a VM is worth learning.
The global company (probably a couple million employees, total) I work for would likely be using Vista right now if it had a feature like this. I'd guarantee it if the XPVM were seemless, or nearly so, in its implementation. Dunno if it is or not.
Or more likely customers that think they've got an XP dependency.
Not just think, most of them actually do.
My company spent $10-20 million to test the feasability of moving to Vista from XP, and had to scrap it. Couldn't do it, and this was at a time when the company was raking in cash, it wasn't a money problem. It does become a problem, however, when you have to replace billions of dollars of infrastructure because the programs you have to use to tie in to do not work in Vista, then it becomes a money issue.
Especially when the only real percieved benefit is a snazzier interface for your office workers, maybe a little less headache in some ways, and ultimately what you are using now is adequate for the forseeable future.
If the WinXP VM is seamless in Win7, then there's no reason not to upgrade. Then they can replace that billion+ dollars worth of infrastructure when they actually need to, and upgrade their interface systems at the same time.
Good move by MS on this. If they do it well.
I personally am starting to think it would have been better if the US Government, instead of saying "here's a monopoly and some cash, go build us a telco infrastructure!", and contracted out the work to Bell and the like and retained ownership. They could have leased the lines to cover ongoing costs, and even a researve for future upgrades. In this way they could have encouraged competition, and given incentives for servicing rural areas. More expensive up front but much better in the long run, and it would have eventually paid for itself.
Video streaming of TV shows makes no sense, period.
Wow, you really can't think of any possible situations outside your own can you? Way to think inside a very narrow box, my man.
Streaming has a huge advantage over traditional TV in that you can watch what you want, whenever you want to. This is not possible with any kind of multicast service, with multicast (cable TV is multicast system) you are locked in to the transmition date and time. It can be "shifted" later by recording at one of the destinations, which is pretty efficient, but your shifting device is still locked in to that date and time.
For example, because of what I do and where I work, I can only watch TV from about 11pm EST until technically 11am EST, though I need 8 hours of sleep in there so it's actually 11pm till 3am. That's my window, and I don't have access to a DVR. Know how many shows I want to watch are on at those times? None. Does that mean there aren't shows I want to watch? Of course there are! And video streaming is the only way to do it.
So take off your blinders and think of other reasons why someone might want to use the service. Hulu would not exist, and certainly would not be profitable, if streaming video made no sense. Period.
Of course pure capitalism doesn't work, neither does pure socialism. However, capitalism requires less effort to be made to work well than socialism.
The key is to leverage the "willing to do anything to make a profit". It's called MOTIVATION, and greed is a very effective motivator. Properly leveraged it can be extremely beneficial with very little effort. Socialism lacks this kind of motivator, as very few people are actually inspired to do their best work based on "the good of the people", and most modern socialism relies leaching off what is left of the capitalism in the system.
"Capitalism" didn't fail, it just did what it always has and always will do. What may have failed (and it hasn't gotten there yet folks, these things take time to play out and work out) is our leveraging of capitalism in this instance. And who do we appoint to make sure capitalism is leveraged to our best benefit (via regulations on industry)? That's right, local, state, and federal representatives.
So where is the failure? Is it capitalism doing what it has always done, and will always continue to do? Or was it the government's failure to reign it in? If a government official can be bribed, that's not a failure of capitalism.
Who set up these monopolies in the first place? Who CAN set up these monopolies? Only one entity, and that is the Government of these United States. I suggest you read up on the history of our telecomunications network. There were good reasons for it, but the monopolies created the current situation, and we have done little to fix it.
So explain to me where it clearly states the limits on Data?
You know, that's an important part of a contract. If they are going to sell you a service, and what you agree to is an "always on" connection at X speed, it is reasonable to assume that connection will always be on at X speed, or close to it. In fact, just browsing the website, there is no disclaimer, or any statement restricting the service. It is quite reasonable to assume this connection has no limits, because they didn't place any limits on it! Not that they told you about, not that you agree to. BTW, in case you don't get it, it's the "agree to" part that is important. You have to agree to it to make it legal
It is quite unreasonable to expect someone to make an odd jump to "unlimited time" from "Always on at X speed". Never mind the fact that, by disconnecting this guy they did not fulfill "always on" or "unlimited time" of your argument.
Your argument is bogus no matter how you look at it.
True that. From my understanding talking to contract lawyers and such (IANAL), TOS's are generally regarded as weak contracts - weak because they throw everything but the kitchen sink in, regardless of enforceability. There are general contract laws and specific federal, state and local consumer protection and contract enforcement type laws that supercede anything that may be in a TOS contract (it is a contract, by the way, you have to agree to it to use the service).
It's basically a CYA in case someone misunderstands something, they might be able avoid liability with a TOS.
It is by no means a license to do whatever the hell they want, regardless of what is explicitly stated in the TOS.
UPS and FedEx are both hella expensive for anybody outside the continental US.
HELLA.
EXPENSIVE.
Cheapest option on solid goods is generally 5-10 times more expensive than USPS. Especially UPS. They can't figure out how to drive through Canada, or put goods on a barge, they'll only send it via air freight, which is generally 2nd day service and obscenely expensive because of it.
DHL is better than both on price, but they are still more expensive than USPS, and good luck finding an online retailer who uses DHL.
Honestly, I've never had an issue with my local USPS. I live in a condo with the little metal mailboxes and I don't get broken DVD's, or mis-delivered items (well, that I've ever known about). It sounds like a local problem with your local government employees, and if it really bothers you, you should get some other locals together and put some pressure on your local representatives to DO something about it.
Anyways, back to Gamefly, I'll bet their biggest problem is a lack of distribution centers. Turnaround on Netflix for me is usually 3 days, which is a day to get to netflix, a day to process, and a day to get back. No way they are hitting that without a local distro, probably more than one even. Also, if Netflix's packaging forces hand-sorting, I could see that as being a bonus as well. They have very low protection, just a fiber sleeve, and they don't -seem- to be having the same issues, at least not on the ratio that GF has.
As far as copyright goes, you are correct. It is legal to copy a DVD.
What is NOT legal is to circumvent the copy protection on said DVD, thanks to the DMCA. It's a catch-22. You have the legal right to copy it for a personal backup (no distribution), but in order to make that copy you have to break the law.
Cheers.
He seems more like a computer guy who doesn't like change that reduces functionality and/or efficiency.
Honestly, if those are the guys you're firing, good luck. Changing for the sake of change is idiotic at best, and self-destructive at worst. There are a lot of reasons change can be bad, and the smart computer guy looks at his individual situation and sees if change is A) Necessary B) an Improvement and C) Feasable.
From the screen shot it looks to me like this guy has a "system" that makes him efficient at what he does. If you'd rather your imployees remain generic and not take full advantage of an OS to improve their ability to work, for the sake of pending "change" every 5-10 years, you are probably a really crappy manager. You probably also think you are a great manager. Kinda funny how that tends to work out.
Know where I can get "the olds"? I think I'd rather have that than "the news", the news is way too unreliable.
I don't want the really old olds though, that's just history. Maybe something they've worked the bugs out of but is still relevant? Maybe all these newspapers that are failing should change their models and become recentpapers? Or maybe reliablepapers? That might help them out a bit.
Worth a shot eh?
Well, if you're building a system with base organisms that are food for higher level organisms, which are food for even higher level organisms, etc. then having the wrong handedness means you cannot participate in the chain.
How does a left handed cow eat right handed grass? Furthermore, how would a right handed tiger eat a left handed cow?
They try to use it as evidence against a creator and for evolution, but that doesn't make much sense, since a creator would have to build two separate and completely incompatible eco-systems. It makes more sense to make just one that is fully inter-dependant and self-supporting.
Actually killer evidence against a creative entity would be if it were found that we did have more than one biological system on the planet - one right handed and one left handed. They would eventually merge into the two regardless, and in truth one would probably eventually eliminate the other, but there is no reason evolution shouldn't initiate more than one system. In fact, it should have initiated millions of them, which eventually "stuck" and were able to flourish. This would almost guarantee two systems, at least in the beginning.
Anyways, those are just my thoughts. The handedness of molecules is new to me.
The headline uses the word "Slick", and the emphasis is on that slickness. Actual functionality isn't mentioned, because it's not interesting to the reviewer. What's interesting is "Oooh, Pretty!" When reviews and sales are dependent on this, we should expect that the software developers would push for glitz.
It's great when someone reads the headline and assumes they know evertything in an article. It really makes you look foolish and ignorant of what you are writing about. You've basically just attempted to say the article is meaningless because what REALLY matters is... exactly what the article was talking about. Brilliant.
When the author said "slick", he meant it in the way that actually counts: easier to use. I haven't used it, but apparently Windows 7 is "slick" because it is snappy, responsive, and easy to use. The author uses Vista as the opposite of "slick" because, though pretty, it is slow and unresponsive (I've used that one and I agree).
Ubuntu 9.04 is not out-of-the-box prettier than previous versions, the author even says not to bother with looking at screenshots, they won't tell you anything useful. What it is, apparently, is snappier and more intuitive, and so more functional. Slick. Polished. I couldn't say for sure though, I haven't used it myself. Though I'm probably going to upgrade my laptop in a couple weeks.
I believe what he meant was this:
He couldn't get the touchscreen to work on the linux install, which means linux was unusable on his tablet. So, he couldn't install Linux on it and use it for its intended purpose (i.e. could not install linux). This was frustrating, because aside from the touchscreen problem Linux worked better and used less battery. However, for a tablet PC no touchscreen is an obvious deal-breaker.
He was able to use Windows with difficulty, and that is what he is stuck with.
I know you didn't RTFA, cause nobody does, but that was EXACTLY the point of the article. They didn't mean "slick" as in shiny and pretty and cool effects, they even said so. They said don't bother looking at screenshots, because that's not the kind of "slick" that they meant. They meant "slick" as in responsive, windows pop up quickly, feels quick instead of sluggish.
They made some comparisons like:
Vista - oh so not slick
Mac OSX Tiger - Very slick
Mac OSX Leopard - Not as slick as Tiger, but slick
Windows 7 - surprisingly slick
Ubuntu pre-9.04 - Not slick
Ubuntu 9.04 - Very slick
The guy who wrote the article apparently uses Mac OSX, Linux, and Windows 7 on a regular basis, and he was focusing on user-interface improvements. He noted that Leopard, while it added lots of "cool features" over Tiger, the usablility slipped in a few areas. He noted that the MS team got it right for once, and the Windows 7 UI is impressive. He noted that the Ubuntu team dedicated the UI that was formed last September has made some great improvements, and it should finally be competative with the other two brands' user interfaces.
The theme itself though, sadly, hasn't changed. Fortunately it's a heck of a lot easier to customize the theme in Ubuntu than it is in Windows or OSX. :)
Actually the court has been fairly consitantly saying that recieving copyright-infringed goods is not illegal. It's the copier/distributor (aka the uploader) who is breaking the law, not the person who recieves the goods (aka the downloader).
Lately the courts have been saying you can download whatever you want, because copyright law makes no statements about recieving copied goods. It's a copyright restrcition, not a receiveright restriction. You certainly don't have the right to make copies of that work to distribute, however, and that is what they have to go after. That's what makes proving infringement for small time players so tough for the RIAA.
It's pretty easy to get a single instance of someone infringing, just plug in to any torrent that is sharing an unauthorized copy of whatever and you've got hundreds of IP addresses to start from. But to make it worth suing over, they need many instances from one individual. Finding IP addresses distributing enough music to be worth going after is tough, and verifying individuals behind those addresses is significantly more difficult - many times impossible.
It's an uphill battle, and they aren't getting away with scare tactics and dirty moves any more. I'd feel sorry for them if they weren't such pricks about it. Maybe if they'd gone about the process righteously to protect their interests I'd feel more sympathetic, but they've been asshats and dirty weasles the entire time. They desearve their comeupance.
Add to that the fact that you have to show some form of competition (i.e. the potential for tricking people into using a product not affiliated with the trademark holder) by using said trademark.
I can use the trademarked term "Microsoft Windows" in any way I want, as long as I am not convincing people to use my product because it is Microsoft's by associating myself with their trademark.
For example, a website called mswindowssucks.com which promotes the downloading and installing Linux is not infringing on the trademark. However, a website called mswindowsrocks.com that sells "MS Windows" for $9.99 and gives you a copy of Linux re-branded to look like Windows would definitely be infringing.
Then you have borderline cases, like Lindows, which was similar enough to be confused with windows by uniformed users. They either lost outright settled, I don't remember which, but they didn't get to use the term Lindows any more.
All this is fine and dandy, except if you can show a trademark wasn't vigorously defended at every turn then the trademark gets nullified. That's a HUGE risk, so companies with a trademark must sue at the drop of a hat, even if they themselves might think it is rediculous. It isn't worth losing the trademark down the line.
For an example of what happens when you don't defend your trademark, look at the WWE, formerly the WWF for 20+ years. They lost it to the World Wildlife Fund because they didn't defend it sufficiently. The WWE lost an incredible amount of mindshare and brand awareness because of it. I don't even like pro-wrestling and WWE sounds dumb to me compared to WWF. It's that kind of thing Wikipedia has to defend against. Hopefully though this is just a token defense so they can say they defended it if it comes up again.
I'm in the same boat here in Alaska. I pay $80 per month for 3mb internet with a 20gb cap. I think the 6mb service is around $100. The other option is DSL, which tops out at half the speed for a similar price.
I was paying $140 for their "premium" cable package with HD content and 3mb unlimited internet. It was just too much for me. I'm even considering going back to the wireless option, which is cheaper and high bandwidth but high latency also.
There just aren't any good options, we need a third wired provider.
It's a misunderstanding of exactly WHY private entities are usually better. Capitalism isn't a nicer economic system than socialism, it's actually much much crueler.
Capitalism, however, can much more easily be leveraged to the benefit community at large than socialism, odd as it may seem. Capitalism has a huge leverage point, and that is profit. Companies want the most profit they can possibly get. If there are at least 3 competitors in a market, each competitor must provide a higher percieved value than the other two in order to maximise profit because consumers will seek the highest value, naturally. A cycle begins of "one-up-manship" to draw the most customers, and pretty quickly the consumer recieves the best product possible at the lowest price. Depending on what the market values, this results in either the cheapest products/services possible, or the highest quality, or a mix of the two.
This does not work with a monopoly. In a monopoly the drive for profit is not being leveraged by the market, and instead of the most value possible, you get the least value tolerable. When your options are "this or nothing", "this" has to be so poor than "nothing" is a superior product/service. That's pretty piss poor.
The reason there is a monopoly in this case is the government's fault anyway. They granted it to TWC in the first place, and have continued to grant it to TWC until this local municipality was able to work around it. Since they are attempting to maximise their profits, they will first attempt to legislate out their competition. If, and only if, that doesn't work, THEN TWC will compete and the system will work like it is supposed to.
Before you run around on your high horse there, just remember that it was government intervention that created the lack of competition, which took away the incentive for efficiency, that caused the initial problem. Necessary originally? Probably. Necessary now? Obviously not. Fixable? Apparently. Asking then answering my own questions getting annoying? Definitely.
In this case the city used bonds, which can be payed back any number of ways. Usually this is through taxes, but since internet/cable tv service is generally expected to be paid for, it would be quite reasonable for the bonds to be paid for via service fees to those who use the service.
I don't know if that is what they did, but you are making a bit of an assumption there. Furthermore, your numbers are probably off as well, because bonds generally need to be approved via a vote, so at least 50% of voters wanted the service, which can be reasonably extrapolated out to 50% of the community.
Anyway, don't make assumptions, it makes an ass out of you and umption.
PS: If it were me voting on a tax funded bond, I'd have voted no, and would have voted no anyway depending on how the deal was structured. I agree with your position on taxes.
The question is why TWC WON'T do that if private industry is so much better?
It's not so much private industry that is so much better, it's leveraging profit (aka greed) via competition that makes private industry so efficient. If there is no competition - which was the case prior to Greenlight - then there is no leverage on the profit, i.e. nobody taking it away from you if you are less efficient than they are. You need at least 3 players for private industry to be more efficient.
If they've got a monopoly, why in the world would they want to drop prices or improve service? Any idiot can see that if you've got a high demand service and a monopoly, you raise prices to the maximum you think the market will support before demand drops off too low.
Greenlight introduced competition - pretty ruthless competition from what I gather by selling at cost - and TWC is making an attempt to legislate Greenlight out of existance and resume their monopoly, with the added bonus of likely using the new infrastructure to boot. Hopefully, the what happens is Greenlight is rolled over into a non-government non-profit co-op type of entity (I'm really not a fan of government backed companies, they tend to bloat faster than corporations!), and TWC will attempt to compete with that. In that scenario the community should benefit even further.
The capitalist argument is that private companies are favourable to nationalised industries as the private companies can provide higher service or lower costs.
The key word there is "can". Private companies can be expected to eventually produce the most efficient product or service possible. However, this only happens when there is sufficient competition, and 2 companies is generally not enough. They generally balance out and become the same thing, only different. The government actually has the most ability to provide the highest value of a product or service, but they rarely have the motivation of profit that a private company does.
It's competition that drives capitalism's efficiencies, and in pretty much every case where it fails it is because for one reason or another, there is not enough competition.
The problems we have with internet service were generated by the government mandated telephone system. At the time it was deemed necessary to have a nation-wide telegraph/telephone system, but there was nobody large enough, and it was too expensive, for anybody to make it happen. So the government granted monopolies to those companies willing to risk the investment, and our teleco's have been thriving off it ever since. Sure the monopolies were broken up from a huge monopoly to smaller regional monopolies, and it helped the problem, but it wasn't enough. In many areas there is still little to no choice, and the monopoly rears its ugly head and the consumer gets screwed.
There needs to be a change, but I'm not sure how to push it. I don't like the idea of government backed companies, but I do like the idea of government owned infrastructure. It was a mistake to allow the telco's to claim ownership of the phone lines. Perhaps we should have just been more patient; I'll bet the technology would have proliferated eventually anyway, and our telco situation would be drastically different. Better or worse, who knows.