Those design decisions you criticize allow them to make the laptop sleek and sexy. Outside of the Slashdot/techy crowd that's what sells laptops, not repairability.
That's not the same thing as interest, that's an alternative to interest, and one I have no problem with.
Maybe we're using different words to describe it, but I don't see how it's substantively different. You're still effectively charging a sum determined as a percentage of the value of the purchase over time. The sum will be lower for those with good credit (lower risk), and higher for those with bad credit (higher risk). This reminds me of Sukuk. They function exactly like bonds for all intents and purposes, but because of the way the agreement is worded they're Sharia compliant
As for the friction of transactions, that's a product of human social constructs and can be changed just like anything else
Well, sure, but now the argument has gone from "it can make as much sent to buy as to rent" to "it can make as much sense to buy as to rent, if we change a bunch of social constructs that make buying disadvantageous".
would-be landlords would have to sell on terms that would-be renters could afford, or else get no money for their property at all
Maybe in the short term. Long term, I suspect you'd see a drop in home construction rates as property ownership becomes less lucrative, and the market of potential customers shrinks. The relatively wealthy looking for housing will be just fine - those who were renting for whatever reason will switch over to ownership. The people who will struggle with this are the poor, or those with poor credit. They'll be forced to either move somewhere where they can afford to buy property (possibly at the expense of a higher paying job), or be faced with high fees on the "alternative to interest" scheme.
Whoops - meant to reply to your second point as well
Buying and selling a property isn't a frictionless transaction. I'm a big fan of the NYT Rent vs Buy calculator. If you're going to stay in a place for 5 years or fewer, you can pay quite a lot in rent before it starts making sense to buy, even with optimistic estimates of home value growth.
I think that's what almost every buyer would have to do, since they couldn't afford the risk that the buyer defaults and stops making the payments on which they're now relying to pay for their housing.
That 'institution' couldn't be expected to provide this service for free, though. They would have to charge some sort of fee to be cover the administrative overhead, and to cover the losses they might incur on the small percentage of properties where the owner defaults and the value of the property has decreased. Because the magnitude of the risk scales with the amount that is owed, that fee would probably be assessed as a percentage of the amount owed on the property.
And of course the faster the buyer completes the purchase, the lower the overall fee should be because this institution has their money in limbo for a shorter period of time and is thus less likely to make a loss.
So, in the end we have an institution who has purchased the property on behalf of the buyer, and then collects regular payments which cover both the the purchase of the property and a fee computed as a percentage of the outstanding balance that covers the risk to the institution. See where I'm going with this? Without even getting into opportunity cost of fronting the money to buy the property, we find ourselves with a 'institution' (ie bank) that collects payments that go towards principal and interest.
Ban rent, and watch housing become more affordable.
There are reasons to rent other than being unable to afford to purchase. Short term commitment, less exposure to fluctuations in home prices, and a much lower barrier to entry. All of these things are ideal if you're feeling out an area before settling down, or if you're at a point in your life where you're chasing new jobs every few years looking for a raise.
And if you want to ban interest, how do you propose you find a lender to supply the mortgage on your new home? Do you live with your parents until you've saved up the cash to buy a property outright? I suppose you could rent a property but if that's banned too...
Your original statement was like saying "being bit doesn't hurt." Yeah, that's true for being bit by a mosquito, but being bit by a gorilla hurts quite a lot so there certainly needs to be qualification on your statement.
When you're listening to a recording "quality" is usually defined as how faithfully you're able to reproduce the original piece. The record was mastered assuming that it would be played at a very specific RPM. If you're deviating from that, you're losing fidelity.
Deviations in frequency are in audible providing they remain constant
Perhaps at the magnitude of frequency deviation we're discussing here, but generally this is not true. For a simple counterexample play one of your 45s at 33rpm, or vice versa. You'll notice a difference in sound quality pretty quick.
I disagree. I took a look at the Kelley Blue Book numbers for a 2017 Honda Accord. (warning - site will require you to disable your ad blocker). At a purchase price of $27,500 I'd hardly consider it a "super economical" car
At 15,000 miles/year, the cost of ownership is $0.49 per mile over 5 years. The marginal cost of putting more miles on the car is cheap. Bump that up to 40,000 miles/year and the cost of ownership drops to $0.24 per mile over 5 years. Other cars in the class (Ford Fusion, Toyota Camry) come in at a similar price.
To get up to $0.75-$1 per mile, I had to look at a BMW 3 series at 15,000 miles/year. At 40,000 miles/year, it's down to $0.40 per mile.
Yes. A new moderator mistakenly believed that a channel was against Youtube's content policy and removed the channel. This isn't a "Whoops! Wrong button!" mistake.
You write this as if it's Apple that cares if you use the analog output to store movies. They don't own the content. If anyone's pushing for this, it's the movie producers who are demanding more concrete guarantees that someone can't rent a movie from Apple and immediately upload the torrent to the Pirate Bay, or keep a copy around for unlimited re-watches. Apple is going along with it because it lets them license more content at lower cost, which makes 99.99% of their consumer base happy.
If what you write is even half true, the documentation that Google will present as justification for firing him should make for some entertaining reading.
so high as to only be affordable to people with 6 figure or higher salaries
To start, maybe. Musk realized that an electric car wasn't going to be cost competitive right off the bat. He had launch a luxury brand so that consumers would be willing to pay the premium until prices could be brought down. The base price of the Model 3 ($35,000) is 60% lower than the base price of the 2008 Roadster (~$90,000), and you get a much more practical car for your money.
What about (b) sounds like "crumbling infrastructure"? Is your idea of infrastructure spending a crew of guys with blow dryers warming up frozen bearings in the winter? If any component of a bridge in Minnesota can't handle the cold, that's a design flaw.
it is a cynical attempt to screw the player to pay more money to unlock a game they've already paid for
What if you haven't actually paid full price for the game yet? Even if you only consider inflation, a AAA title that cost $60 in 2005 should cost ~$75 in 2016 dollars. If anything $75 is low, as production and marketing budgets have grown faster than the rate of inflation. Extra Credits (a game design Youtube channel) did a really interesting episode on this a few weeks ago. Their next episode is about why publishers can't just slash their budgets to get the price of the game down - worth checking out if this is a subject you're interested in.
Publishers are faced with a decision - raise the sticker price of the game, or find other ways to monetize it. Market studies show that consumers would balk at a $75-80 game so we're left with things like day one DLC, microtransactions, monthly subscription fees, and most recently loot boxes. Personally I'd support a higher sticker price, but I'm also the guy who waits until the game is 80% off on Steam a year after release, so maybe I'm the wrong person to ask.
Is this worse than the repair policy on the Amazon Echo? I couldn't find a number anywhere with a quick search, but it wouldn't shock me to learn that it costs 70-80% of the original retail price to send the thing back to Amazon for an out of warranty repair.
The real question is in how user-repairable the device is. Can you easily replace individual speakers (the part most likely to fail)? Given Apple's recent history I'm not overly optimistic...but we'll see what iFixit has to say.
It's hard to call one approach the right approach and one the wrong approach.
If there are humans sitting on top of your rocket, one is clearly the right approach. (depending on the value you place on your astronauts' lives, I guess)
I'm also willing to trade my freedom to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater in exchange for the safety of not dying in a stampede. No freedom is absolute. That's the philosophy underpinning modern Western society going back to Hobbes and Locke. Individuals sacrifice their natural right to absolute freedom in exchange for the safety and stability that comes with living in a society where people aren't free to rob and murder each other.
Tinkering with some devices can kill people. Cars, for example. I don't want to be driving down the highway at 80mph next to the amateur who rooted his car's ECM, bypassing safety features in order squeeze out a few extra horsepower, probably following the steps of a Youtube video tutorial.
Since when does the "sniff test" trump a paper in a peer-reviewed journal, written by scientists from the US Geological Survey? The introduction to the paper suggests a mechanism (with citations) by which mercury is concentrated in the permafrost.
"Vampire private venture capitalists" are better than "vampire shareholders"?
At least for a public company, the barrier to sharing in a company's profits is a few hundred bucks and an account with an online investing platform. There's no way you're investing in any of these private startups without a few million (minimum) in VC money to throw around.
Your battery is worn out. Please visit an Apple store for a repair. In the meantime you may see lower performance
Slashdot headline the next day: "Apple advertising Apple Stores with claim that degraded batteries may affect performance"
Slashdot comment the next day: "I CAN'T BELIEVE APPLE WOULD DARE ADVERTISE THEIR SERVICES ON MY PHONE! Why don't they just make the obvious choice of dynamically throttling the processor to avoid the most negative consequences?"
Apple will never win in the argument against the armchair product designers.
Extra Credits (a Youtube channel producing videos about game development and design) put out a fantastic video about this a few days ago. Games Should Not Cost $60 Anymore
.
Their thesis is that $60 is an unsustainably low price for producing a modern AAA game. Just considering inflation they should cost at least 25% more (~$75). Market studies indicate that consumers wouldn't accept that. Smartphone apps and Steam have already conditioned us to expect much cheaper games. That's led publishers to trying to find other ways to monetize their games - day one DLC, monthly subscription fees, and (most recently) loot boxes.
As consumers, we need to collectively decide whether we prefer in-game monetization tactics or a higher sticker price. Personally I'd rather see the sticker price rise over developers having to paywall content, but I think the market disagrees.
Slashdot Mirror
Those design decisions you criticize allow them to make the laptop sleek and sexy. Outside of the Slashdot/techy crowd that's what sells laptops, not repairability.
That's not the same thing as interest, that's an alternative to interest, and one I have no problem with.
Maybe we're using different words to describe it, but I don't see how it's substantively different. You're still effectively charging a sum determined as a percentage of the value of the purchase over time. The sum will be lower for those with good credit (lower risk), and higher for those with bad credit (higher risk). This reminds me of Sukuk. They function exactly like bonds for all intents and purposes, but because of the way the agreement is worded they're Sharia compliant
As for the friction of transactions, that's a product of human social constructs and can be changed just like anything else
Well, sure, but now the argument has gone from "it can make as much sent to buy as to rent" to "it can make as much sense to buy as to rent, if we change a bunch of social constructs that make buying disadvantageous".
would-be landlords would have to sell on terms that would-be renters could afford, or else get no money for their property at all
Maybe in the short term. Long term, I suspect you'd see a drop in home construction rates as property ownership becomes less lucrative, and the market of potential customers shrinks. The relatively wealthy looking for housing will be just fine - those who were renting for whatever reason will switch over to ownership. The people who will struggle with this are the poor, or those with poor credit. They'll be forced to either move somewhere where they can afford to buy property (possibly at the expense of a higher paying job), or be faced with high fees on the "alternative to interest" scheme.
Whoops - meant to reply to your second point as well
Buying and selling a property isn't a frictionless transaction. I'm a big fan of the NYT Rent vs Buy calculator. If you're going to stay in a place for 5 years or fewer, you can pay quite a lot in rent before it starts making sense to buy, even with optimistic estimates of home value growth.
sell to an institution who will do so for them.
I think that's what almost every buyer would have to do, since they couldn't afford the risk that the buyer defaults and stops making the payments on which they're now relying to pay for their housing.
That 'institution' couldn't be expected to provide this service for free, though. They would have to charge some sort of fee to be cover the administrative overhead, and to cover the losses they might incur on the small percentage of properties where the owner defaults and the value of the property has decreased. Because the magnitude of the risk scales with the amount that is owed, that fee would probably be assessed as a percentage of the amount owed on the property. And of course the faster the buyer completes the purchase, the lower the overall fee should be because this institution has their money in limbo for a shorter period of time and is thus less likely to make a loss.
So, in the end we have an institution who has purchased the property on behalf of the buyer, and then collects regular payments which cover both the the purchase of the property and a fee computed as a percentage of the outstanding balance that covers the risk to the institution. See where I'm going with this? Without even getting into opportunity cost of fronting the money to buy the property, we find ourselves with a 'institution' (ie bank) that collects payments that go towards principal and interest.
Ban rent, and watch housing become more affordable.
There are reasons to rent other than being unable to afford to purchase. Short term commitment, less exposure to fluctuations in home prices, and a much lower barrier to entry. All of these things are ideal if you're feeling out an area before settling down, or if you're at a point in your life where you're chasing new jobs every few years looking for a raise.
And if you want to ban interest, how do you propose you find a lender to supply the mortgage on your new home? Do you live with your parents until you've saved up the cash to buy a property outright? I suppose you could rent a property but if that's banned too...
Your original statement was like saying "being bit doesn't hurt." Yeah, that's true for being bit by a mosquito, but being bit by a gorilla hurts quite a lot so there certainly needs to be qualification on your statement.
When you're listening to a recording "quality" is usually defined as how faithfully you're able to reproduce the original piece. The record was mastered assuming that it would be played at a very specific RPM. If you're deviating from that, you're losing fidelity.
Deviations in frequency are in audible providing they remain constant
Perhaps at the magnitude of frequency deviation we're discussing here, but generally this is not true. For a simple counterexample play one of your 45s at 33rpm, or vice versa. You'll notice a difference in sound quality pretty quick.
I disagree. I took a look at the Kelley Blue Book numbers for a 2017 Honda Accord. (warning - site will require you to disable your ad blocker). At a purchase price of $27,500 I'd hardly consider it a "super economical" car
At 15,000 miles/year, the cost of ownership is $0.49 per mile over 5 years. The marginal cost of putting more miles on the car is cheap. Bump that up to 40,000 miles/year and the cost of ownership drops to $0.24 per mile over 5 years. Other cars in the class (Ford Fusion, Toyota Camry) come in at a similar price.
To get up to $0.75-$1 per mile, I had to look at a BMW 3 series at 15,000 miles/year. At 40,000 miles/year, it's down to $0.40 per mile.
Yes. A new moderator mistakenly believed that a channel was against Youtube's content policy and removed the channel. This isn't a "Whoops! Wrong button!" mistake.
You write this as if it's Apple that cares if you use the analog output to store movies. They don't own the content. If anyone's pushing for this, it's the movie producers who are demanding more concrete guarantees that someone can't rent a movie from Apple and immediately upload the torrent to the Pirate Bay, or keep a copy around for unlimited re-watches. Apple is going along with it because it lets them license more content at lower cost, which makes 99.99% of their consumer base happy.
If what you write is even half true, the documentation that Google will present as justification for firing him should make for some entertaining reading.
so high as to only be affordable to people with 6 figure or higher salaries
To start, maybe. Musk realized that an electric car wasn't going to be cost competitive right off the bat. He had launch a luxury brand so that consumers would be willing to pay the premium until prices could be brought down. The base price of the Model 3 ($35,000) is 60% lower than the base price of the 2008 Roadster (~$90,000), and you get a much more practical car for your money.
Likelihood of "PEBCAK" increased by the fact that he wrote Facebook as "FaceBook."
What about (b) sounds like "crumbling infrastructure"? Is your idea of infrastructure spending a crew of guys with blow dryers warming up frozen bearings in the winter? If any component of a bridge in Minnesota can't handle the cold, that's a design flaw.
it is a cynical attempt to screw the player to pay more money to unlock a game they've already paid for
What if you haven't actually paid full price for the game yet? Even if you only consider inflation, a AAA title that cost $60 in 2005 should cost ~$75 in 2016 dollars. If anything $75 is low, as production and marketing budgets have grown faster than the rate of inflation. Extra Credits (a game design Youtube channel) did a really interesting episode on this a few weeks ago. Their next episode is about why publishers can't just slash their budgets to get the price of the game down - worth checking out if this is a subject you're interested in.
Publishers are faced with a decision - raise the sticker price of the game, or find other ways to monetize it. Market studies show that consumers would balk at a $75-80 game so we're left with things like day one DLC, microtransactions, monthly subscription fees, and most recently loot boxes. Personally I'd support a higher sticker price, but I'm also the guy who waits until the game is 80% off on Steam a year after release, so maybe I'm the wrong person to ask.
Is this worse than the repair policy on the Amazon Echo? I couldn't find a number anywhere with a quick search, but it wouldn't shock me to learn that it costs 70-80% of the original retail price to send the thing back to Amazon for an out of warranty repair.
The real question is in how user-repairable the device is. Can you easily replace individual speakers (the part most likely to fail)? Given Apple's recent history I'm not overly optimistic...but we'll see what iFixit has to say.
It's hard to call one approach the right approach and one the wrong approach.
If there are humans sitting on top of your rocket, one is clearly the right approach. (depending on the value you place on your astronauts' lives, I guess)
I'm also willing to trade my freedom to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater in exchange for the safety of not dying in a stampede. No freedom is absolute. That's the philosophy underpinning modern Western society going back to Hobbes and Locke. Individuals sacrifice their natural right to absolute freedom in exchange for the safety and stability that comes with living in a society where people aren't free to rob and murder each other.
Besides, the Ben Franklin quote you're paraphrasing doesn't mean what you think it means.
There is literally no legitimate reason
Tinkering with some devices can kill people. Cars, for example. I don't want to be driving down the highway at 80mph next to the amateur who rooted his car's ECM, bypassing safety features in order squeeze out a few extra horsepower, probably following the steps of a Youtube video tutorial.
Since when does the "sniff test" trump a paper in a peer-reviewed journal, written by scientists from the US Geological Survey? The introduction to the paper suggests a mechanism (with citations) by which mercury is concentrated in the permafrost.
"Vampire private venture capitalists" are better than "vampire shareholders"?
At least for a public company, the barrier to sharing in a company's profits is a few hundred bucks and an account with an online investing platform. There's no way you're investing in any of these private startups without a few million (minimum) in VC money to throw around.
Your battery is worn out. Please visit an Apple store for a repair. In the meantime you may see lower performance
Slashdot headline the next day: "Apple advertising Apple Stores with claim that degraded batteries may affect performance"
Slashdot comment the next day: "I CAN'T BELIEVE APPLE WOULD DARE ADVERTISE THEIR SERVICES ON MY PHONE! Why don't they just make the obvious choice of dynamically throttling the processor to avoid the most negative consequences?"
Apple will never win in the argument against the armchair product designers.
Why Does Every Word Begin With A Capital?
Capitalizing the first letter of everything but articles and prepositions (under 5 letters long) is called "Title Case"
Extra Credits (a Youtube channel producing videos about game development and design) put out a fantastic video about this a few days ago. Games Should Not Cost $60 Anymore
.
Their thesis is that $60 is an unsustainably low price for producing a modern AAA game. Just considering inflation they should cost at least 25% more (~$75). Market studies indicate that consumers wouldn't accept that. Smartphone apps and Steam have already conditioned us to expect much cheaper games. That's led publishers to trying to find other ways to monetize their games - day one DLC, monthly subscription fees, and (most recently) loot boxes.
As consumers, we need to collectively decide whether we prefer in-game monetization tactics or a higher sticker price. Personally I'd rather see the sticker price rise over developers having to paywall content, but I think the market disagrees.