Because of these exclusive deals, most San Franciscans without cable cannot watch the Olympics. NBC no longer has broadcasting towers in SF, so there are very few areas with good reception. Furthermore, with the hilly terrain, AT&T has little competition from satellite TV, because it's tough to get that 30 degree SSW line of sight, or whatever it is.
Obviously in the long run NBC is worried about losing these viewers, but because of bad timing (the big switch just happened 12/31), they have not had time to do anything about it yet, so San Francisco gets screwed.
Now granted, the olympics have a lot of problems with being over commercialized, but in a situation like this, extraordinary security precautions are warrented.
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." That's my personal favorite version of the quote, because it's somewhat less sappy.
Yes, I too wasted most of high school not asking girls out, but once I did start asking them out, I have never gone for more than a month without a girl (lifting weights has helped with that too...).
No, he didn't. Have you been following this case at all? Insider trading and fraudulent accounting are illegal. Shredding incriminating documents is illegal. People will go to jail over this, and furthermore Arthur Andersson will go out of business, because no one wants AA's name on their audits anymore.
Why did GWB do nothing for California? Because 1) they weren't suffering. There were approximately 2 power outages the entire year. 2) Because there was nothing that could be done. You can't wave a magical presidential wand and create more power plants. You can't fix a shortage of supply. The only thing to do was try to conserve and wait for the new power plants under construction to come online.
But, I should point out that we have moved very far from the topic of the viability of free markets. I have little interest in a prolonged debate on the merits or lack thereof displayed by GWB.
You seem to misunderstand the constitution. The constitution specifies what the government can and cannot do. The government can't tell you what you can and cannot say (except of course in the case of military secrets, which is kind of a grey area, but so far the SCOTUS seems to consider that in the fire in a crowded theatre department). But there's nothing in the constitution that says you cannot enter into a contract that forbids you from saying something, or forces you to say something. In fact, actors routinely enter into contracts to say exactly what is printed on a script that is handed to them. Do you think this is unconstitutional as well?
Kenny boy was the term of endearment that GWB used to use for Ken Lay, of Enron.
Ah, okay, that clears things up a little at least. Regardless though, GWB didn't lift a finger to keep Enron from going under, so obviously they didn't buy as much influence as they thought, eh? Also, as dismissive as you are of "token heads" rolling at Enron, just think about this for a moment. You're a millionaire head of a major corporation one day, and a few months later, you're IN JAIL, with most of your money taken away for insider trading. That is a huge disincentive to do this kind of thing, and you can already see other companies are scared, and doing the best to clean up their books.
What country are we talking about, anyway? That could substantially alter our discussion. Different countries have vastly different regulatory environments, which can make a big difference.
Sellers only have power if there are few sellers, or if they are very well organized. This gets into oligopolies or collusion, both of which are generally illegal in capitalist countries.
Alright, more on housing. I still argue with your basic premise that a really big house is anywhere near four times as good as a small house. I would pay almost everything I own for a small house, but if I had a small house, I would not pay almost everything I own for a much bigger house. The marginal utility has gone down dramatically once that roof gets put over your head. Furthermore, you're making a fairly obvious blunder when you threw in "better location." What makes a neighborhood good? Rich people live there. I think what you're talking about is that a house in the inner city that costs half as much as a house in the suburbs may be only 1/4 the size. As well it should be! Cities are densely populated, and hence land is expensive. Suburbs are sparsely populated, so land is cheap. The tradeoff is that people in the suburbs have to commute farther, a tradeoff that the wealthy are willing to make, but that the poor are not.
Who cares what the manufacturing costs are? It would cost YOU more than $1 to make a soft drink (especially once you consider opportunity costs), and that's mainly what's important. Besides, in the soft drink industry, most of the value added is in advertising, more glamorous images make people happier to drink soda, so they're selling an emotion as well as a drink.
You're right, the government pays too much in subsidies. Subsidies should be abolished, thereby making markets more free. I wholeheartedly agree on this point.
Both. What's confusing you is this: most EULAs are "restrictive," meaning that they take away rights you would ordinarily have under first sale doctrine. This is why for commercial software, the validity of EULAs is such a big deal. If they are found to be invalid, then all software will revert to first sale, copyright defaults. So a 12 year old might be able to publish a review if he wants, but would not be able to redistribute the software.
On the other hand, the GPL is "permissive," meaning that you can choose one of two options: either go ahead and be bound by copyright law (which will forbid redistribution), or agree to this license which gives you more rights than you would get under the law. If the GPL is held to be invalid, it's not a big deal, becasue then the software will simply revert to the more restrictive legal situation, and whoever violated the GPL will still be in violation of copyright law.
Huh? This is very poorly argued. I will agree a little bit with the idea that free markets almost never exist in a "pure" state. There is nearly always some sort of externality or imperfect information which will be controlled for to some extent. That being said, markets can be and in many cases are still very free.
Enron committed many crimes. The corporate heads will be spending time in jail, rest assured. That may be small comfort to those who lost their pensions, but as with any crime, what can you do? A murder victim may not care that his killer gets the chair either.
A free market does not ideally have two people negotiating from an equal position. Indeed, most economic models start with the assumption that neither the buyer nor the seller has ANY POWER WHATSOEVER by himself. Check your corner store, how much do they sell soda for? Say $1.05 for a 20 oz coke. Check every store in your neighborhood, I bet none sells it for more than $0.10 different than that. Neither you, the consumer, nor the store owner has enough market power to force an increase or decrease to that price. Even the almighty Coca-Cola company cannot raise prices more than a few cents for fear that people will buy Pepsi instead. As for pawn shops, I personally have never even seen one (and I have lived in very poor neighborhoods), so my guess is that the business model of selling used goods is simply not economical, poor people will generally either wait until they have the extra $50, or they will do without. Hence, what you're seeing is just the last efforts of a dying business to remain profitable.
As for $200,000 houses being 4 times as good as a $100,000 house, this has not been my experience. My experience has been that the marginal utility of each additional dollar spent decreases. So just getting a roof over your head provides tremendous benefit, ever try sleeping on the street? Beyond that, adding extra rooms pales in comparison. So maybe you meant a $200,000 house is 4 times as large, or 4 times as pretty? Still not the case in my experience, but maybe that is true in some areas.
Your second paragraph makes no sense to me. "What is worse, a president who is 'friends' with someone who is too young for him, or one who is a friend of 'Kenny-boy.'" I seriously don't get what that means, care to explain?
Seriously, are there any competitive alternatives to NVidia these days? Personally, I'm starting to think about replacing my TNT2, but I'd kind of like to get something with open source linux drivers. At the same time, I don't want to have to go back to a Voodoo 5 or some shit like that just because it is open.
So, does any company make good graphics cards with open specs?
There's a high demand for watching basketball, and a low supply of 7'8" genetic freaks to play. If we started tampering with our genes to all become basketball players, the situation would reverse.
The rise in IQ scores has been widely accepted as being the result of lessened levels of lead in our environment. In particular, few houses these days have lead paint.
Quantitatively, I've heard that IQ tests have had to be recentered about 3 points per decade, for about the last 100 years.
Basically, in case you didn't notice, they've discontinued the two cd set. So, now the cheapest version you can buy is what used to be the deluxe version, hence the price.
Mandrake has done something similar. The download version now no longer comes in a box, it's just $5 per cd. It's simply not worth the effort for the distro companies to make these cheap versions, which is why they are now making various types of subscription services.
Red Hat has never (okay, I take that back, maybe at some point they did, but not for very long) expected to make money selling their distro to consumers. Where they make their money is selling to corporations, and the home version is basically just advertising.
Yeah, seriously. That whole "Overview" section was just so frustratingly moronic. You have to be pretty low on the imagination scale not to be able to realize the uses for "pervasive computing." I don't understand why every article on wearables has to spell it out for us again.
If one in 10 people are flagged...
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The Eyes Have It
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· Score: 1
that's going to be a dozen or so per plane. All it means is that they might have their bags sniffed by dogs, or get their shoes scanned, or something like that. The government doesn't have time to detain and interrogate 1/10 of all airline passengers.
No no, he know's someone whose *brother* has a girlfriend.
Where the Hell did this come from?
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The Euro
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Powerful economies help everyone. I am American, and would be thrilled to have the EU really come together and kick economic ass. I don't think it's likely to happen, the EU is too restrictive for nations that have been independent for hundreds of years. The language barriers will be painful. The only thing that binds the EU together seems to be this desire to "beat" the US, as though we were trying to keep them down.
I believe that the EU will come apart within the next 10 years, and when it does, it will be messy.
Slashdot Mirror
Obviously in the long run NBC is worried about losing these viewers, but because of bad timing (the big switch just happened 12/31), they have not had time to do anything about it yet, so San Francisco gets screwed.
Now granted, the olympics have a lot of problems with being over commercialized, but in a situation like this, extraordinary security precautions are warrented.
Yes, I too wasted most of high school not asking girls out, but once I did start asking them out, I have never gone for more than a month without a girl (lifting weights has helped with that too...).
No, he didn't. Have you been following this case at all? Insider trading and fraudulent accounting are illegal. Shredding incriminating documents is illegal. People will go to jail over this, and furthermore Arthur Andersson will go out of business, because no one wants AA's name on their audits anymore.
Why did GWB do nothing for California? Because 1) they weren't suffering. There were approximately 2 power outages the entire year. 2) Because there was nothing that could be done. You can't wave a magical presidential wand and create more power plants. You can't fix a shortage of supply. The only thing to do was try to conserve and wait for the new power plants under construction to come online.
But, I should point out that we have moved very far from the topic of the viability of free markets. I have little interest in a prolonged debate on the merits or lack thereof displayed by GWB.
You seem to misunderstand the constitution. The constitution specifies what the government can and cannot do. The government can't tell you what you can and cannot say (except of course in the case of military secrets, which is kind of a grey area, but so far the SCOTUS seems to consider that in the fire in a crowded theatre department). But there's nothing in the constitution that says you cannot enter into a contract that forbids you from saying something, or forces you to say something. In fact, actors routinely enter into contracts to say exactly what is printed on a script that is handed to them. Do you think this is unconstitutional as well?
Ah, okay, that clears things up a little at least. Regardless though, GWB didn't lift a finger to keep Enron from going under, so obviously they didn't buy as much influence as they thought, eh? Also, as dismissive as you are of "token heads" rolling at Enron, just think about this for a moment. You're a millionaire head of a major corporation one day, and a few months later, you're IN JAIL, with most of your money taken away for insider trading. That is a huge disincentive to do this kind of thing, and you can already see other companies are scared, and doing the best to clean up their books.
What country are we talking about, anyway? That could substantially alter our discussion. Different countries have vastly different regulatory environments, which can make a big difference.
Sellers only have power if there are few sellers, or if they are very well organized. This gets into oligopolies or collusion, both of which are generally illegal in capitalist countries.
Alright, more on housing. I still argue with your basic premise that a really big house is anywhere near four times as good as a small house. I would pay almost everything I own for a small house, but if I had a small house, I would not pay almost everything I own for a much bigger house. The marginal utility has gone down dramatically once that roof gets put over your head. Furthermore, you're making a fairly obvious blunder when you threw in "better location." What makes a neighborhood good? Rich people live there. I think what you're talking about is that a house in the inner city that costs half as much as a house in the suburbs may be only 1/4 the size. As well it should be! Cities are densely populated, and hence land is expensive. Suburbs are sparsely populated, so land is cheap. The tradeoff is that people in the suburbs have to commute farther, a tradeoff that the wealthy are willing to make, but that the poor are not.
Who cares what the manufacturing costs are? It would cost YOU more than $1 to make a soft drink (especially once you consider opportunity costs), and that's mainly what's important. Besides, in the soft drink industry, most of the value added is in advertising, more glamorous images make people happier to drink soda, so they're selling an emotion as well as a drink.
You're right, the government pays too much in subsidies. Subsidies should be abolished, thereby making markets more free. I wholeheartedly agree on this point.
You can absolutely sign away your free speech rights. What do you think an NDA is?
On the other hand, the GPL is "permissive," meaning that you can choose one of two options: either go ahead and be bound by copyright law (which will forbid redistribution), or agree to this license which gives you more rights than you would get under the law. If the GPL is held to be invalid, it's not a big deal, becasue then the software will simply revert to the more restrictive legal situation, and whoever violated the GPL will still be in violation of copyright law.
Enron committed many crimes. The corporate heads will be spending time in jail, rest assured. That may be small comfort to those who lost their pensions, but as with any crime, what can you do? A murder victim may not care that his killer gets the chair either.
A free market does not ideally have two people negotiating from an equal position. Indeed, most economic models start with the assumption that neither the buyer nor the seller has ANY POWER WHATSOEVER by himself. Check your corner store, how much do they sell soda for? Say $1.05 for a 20 oz coke. Check every store in your neighborhood, I bet none sells it for more than $0.10 different than that. Neither you, the consumer, nor the store owner has enough market power to force an increase or decrease to that price. Even the almighty Coca-Cola company cannot raise prices more than a few cents for fear that people will buy Pepsi instead. As for pawn shops, I personally have never even seen one (and I have lived in very poor neighborhoods), so my guess is that the business model of selling used goods is simply not economical, poor people will generally either wait until they have the extra $50, or they will do without. Hence, what you're seeing is just the last efforts of a dying business to remain profitable.
As for $200,000 houses being 4 times as good as a $100,000 house, this has not been my experience. My experience has been that the marginal utility of each additional dollar spent decreases. So just getting a roof over your head provides tremendous benefit, ever try sleeping on the street? Beyond that, adding extra rooms pales in comparison. So maybe you meant a $200,000 house is 4 times as large, or 4 times as pretty? Still not the case in my experience, but maybe that is true in some areas.
Your second paragraph makes no sense to me. "What is worse, a president who is 'friends' with someone who is too young for him, or one who is a friend of 'Kenny-boy.'" I seriously don't get what that means, care to explain?
Great, sounds like the ATI Radeon 7500 for me then. It's supposed to be more or less comparable to the GF 2, right?
So, does any company make good graphics cards with open specs?
You could always switch fingers. And when you run out of fingers, start on the toes! Now that would be fun to watch...
Actually, he's building a spaceship.
There's a high demand for watching basketball, and a low supply of 7'8" genetic freaks to play. If we started tampering with our genes to all become basketball players, the situation would reverse.
Perhaps that's the future of evolution, a world of people genetically predisposed towards Catholicism...
Quantitatively, I've heard that IQ tests have had to be recentered about 3 points per decade, for about the last 100 years.
I believe there is a rather large electric razor market, which absolutely consists of selling an expensive razor with little upkeep cost.
Mandrake has done something similar. The download version now no longer comes in a box, it's just $5 per cd. It's simply not worth the effort for the distro companies to make these cheap versions, which is why they are now making various types of subscription services.
Red Hat has never (okay, I take that back, maybe at some point they did, but not for very long) expected to make money selling their distro to consumers. Where they make their money is selling to corporations, and the home version is basically just advertising.
Konquer? Been using KDE a bit too much methinks.
I always thought he deserved an academy award for "best one line walk-on." He kicked so much ass, it was unbelievable.
Yeah, seriously. That whole "Overview" section was just so frustratingly moronic. You have to be pretty low on the imagination scale not to be able to realize the uses for "pervasive computing." I don't understand why every article on wearables has to spell it out for us again.
that's going to be a dozen or so per plane. All it means is that they might have their bags sniffed by dogs, or get their shoes scanned, or something like that. The government doesn't have time to detain and interrogate 1/10 of all airline passengers.
No no, he know's someone whose *brother* has a girlfriend.
I believe that the EU will come apart within the next 10 years, and when it does, it will be messy.
2) I like getting presents.
So fuck off.