Another article said that the money represents the gross revenues in ad buys from the Canadian pharmacies, plus the earnings generated from illegal sales of drugs to American consumers.
Did you hurt yourself with all that twisting? Google did not 'happen to index' illegal pharmacies, they sold ads for them, directly profiting off an illegal activity. And yes, it is the governments responsibility to crack down on illegal activity (such as selling ads for unlicensed pharmacies), which they did quite successfully by suing Google (the perpetrators of said illegal activity).
Innovate: to introduce new methods, devices, etc. Any ability to detect emotions would by definition be innovative, because it would be new.
As for what to do with the sensed emotions - well that opens up a whole world of possibilities. FPS games are a perfect example. If you sense that your enemy is scared you would certainly use different tactics (exploit the fear, back them into a corner) than if your enemy is just plain crazy with anger (go into defensive mode). That would increase the realism, not detract from it.
The emotions sensed should not be the emotions of a detached person sitting on the couch holding a controller, they should be the emotions of someone fully immersed in the game.
Yes, clearly we need government involvement to protect us from the big bad companies who want to sell us stuff. I mean just yesterday I was in a restaurant, and the men had a description of an item that sounded so good I just had to get it, even though I knew it had too much fat and calories to be good for me. My first thought was '"Someone should call the justice department to prevent them from making this yummy item". Then I saw an ad for a really cool looking car, so I cashed out my 401K so I could buy this car. If only the government had prevented them from selling that car...
If you're too weak-willed to control your usage of a service, no matter how attractive they make that service, don't use it. There is no need for government involvement.
So what? All this is is a tool, to allow people to control what they do or do not want to see. That is a perfectly legitimate thing. The fact that maybe some government could abuse the tool is completely immaterial. Ever since man first sharpened a stick every tool created could potentially be abused by someone. If that happens, complain about the abuse and the abusers, not the tool.
When you use the 'guide' function, the channel you are watching shrinks to one-quarter of the screen. Next to that is a space that shows a synopsis of whatever channel you select with the guide. The bottom half of the screen is the guide itself, scrolling left-right (times) and up-down (channels). This lets you continue seeing the show you are currently watching, while also seeing if there is something else on.
When you use VOD, the same thing happens: what you are watching (your VOD program) shrinks to one-quarter of the screen. Instead of the guide taking up the bottom half of the screen, the synopsis of the currently selected title is placed below the video. The entire left half of the screen (top to bottom) is a scrollable (up/down) list of available VOD titles. It is a very efficient layout. I am not sure what else you want on the screen. I suppose they could change the GUI so that if you aren't currently watching any VOD title you get a column and a half of available titles, but that would just be weird.
Channel flipping is slow, but that is not because of the cable box. There are several things that must happen when you switch channels: find what SDV channel is being used for the channel you want (and get it tuned in if it is not currently available), wait for a key frame, and set up the decoder for the resolution of the particular channel. All that takes time.
No, I don't work for a cable company. I don't know why they don't use the ports that are there. But it is still cheaper to buy ports you may never use than to have to replace millions of boxes if you do decide to use a port.
TFA states what the goal is - running more complex software on simpler computers. It even says what the joules-per-op is - 45 picojoules per event, about 1000 times less than conventional computers.
First, the 'ads' appear in the space that would normally be showing the currently tuned in channel. The only time you see an ad is when you are on a VOD channel and have not yet selected a show to watch. The alternative to showing the ad is either a) show a blank space, or b) have a UI that changes based on something unrelated to what you are trying to do (sucky UI design). If you are spending so much time on the VOD channel but not watching anything that the ad repetition becomes annoying, maybe they should show some more ads to help you select something to watch.
Yes, in the old days of three channels you could flip through the channels. The alternative was picking up a copy of TV Guide and reading it. With these here new-fangled boxes you have hundreds of channels to choose from, so flipping is kind of pointless. However, they helpfully provide you with an on-screen guide so you can see what is on the other channels even if the other channels are currently showing commercials. You can also go to ANY of those channels at any time, without even turning the knob. Amazing, isn't it?
Buffering channels on either side of where you are now would require three tuners, and you would be hogging three SDV channels even though you are only watching one. All for an activity no-one does (sequential channel flipping).
Additional inputs and outputs are called 'building for the future'. Just because they are unused now doesn't mean they will always be. And if those future devices come along, it is a hell of a lot cheaper to build in ports you are not using than it is to replace every box when a new device comes along.
Reading problems? The creditors did not invest in the barge, the government did. The shipyard is the one with financial problems, and the government wants to protect it's investment in the barge before the barge gets declared as an asset of the shipyard.
When did any of that ever happen? I have seen and heard lots of old radio and TV, and never encountered that. What actually happened was the show would pause, an announcer would say 'and now a word from our sponsor', they would do the commercials, the announcer would say 'and now back to the show', and the show would continue. Since it was all going out live, they usually just used the same performers to do the commercials. Occasionally the performers would do commercials as the characters from the show, but it was never woven into the story.
Advertisers back then did not want to be subtle. They wanted the audience to know that the only reason they were getting this show was because we paid for it, with the implied 'and if you want to keep getting the show you better buy our products'.
Having single brands is only noticeable if those brands are out of place. For instance, if they showed a corporate office where everyone was using a Lenovo Thinkpad, I would not think that odd at all - I see that every day at work. On the other hand, if the same scene showed everyone with an iPad, that would be extremely jarring.
You notice Apple's placements because they are so unbelievable that their inclusion is every bit as annoying as an actual interruption for a commercial. Someone drinking a can of Coke? OK, that happens in real life, easily believable. A police station where every desk has a Mac on it? That interrupts the story enough to make you say wtf.
OK, look at it this way. Let's say Intel has turned into a charity, and will sell all of their chips for cost - no profit at all. The price of a commodity chip pretty much has zero design costs in it (it is approaching the marginal cost), right? So, if you want a commodity chip (no new features or performance), Intel will sell you one. It costs $200, which is the marginal cost. However, if you want a non-commodity chip (new features and/or performance), it will cost you the marginal cost, plus your share of the development of the non-commodity features you want. That is going to be substantially more than the commodity price.
You can't say that just because they sell some chips at a commodity price they can sell all of the chips at that price, because then the development of the non-commodity features is not paid for, and the product is an enormous loss.
So what are the options? Well, they could put a single price on the new chip, which would be higher than the commodity price but lower than the high-end price is now. If there were no competitors this would be a viable option. But there are competitors, so all the customers who only need a commodity chip will flee to a vendor who is offering a better (commodity) price. That will cause the price of the non-commodity chips to rise to exactly where they are now, because the design cost is spread across the same number of customers that it is now.
Or, they could manufacture two different chips - a commodity chip and the non-commodity chip. The non-commodity chip would have the same development costs as it does now (maybe a little cheaper because the could remove the crippling capability). On the other hand, making two chips is not as efficient, so the cost rises some because of that, and the cost of the non-commodity chip will be right where it is now.
As long as development is going on someone is going to have to pay for that development. As long as there are competitors in the commodity space that someone is the user who needs the non-commodity stuff. And any competitors in the non-commodity space will have the same development costs to be paid, so the existence of competitors is not going to magically drive the cost of new stuff down.
My mistake - I thought we were discussing the real world, and not some fantasy land where all chip development stops so we can have 'commoditisation'. When would you have preferred we reached this highly desirable state? 8085? 486? Pentium II?
As to your analogy - if I didn't need seats or a paintjob (ie I am going to customize the vehicle), yes, it sounds like a good deal. A more realistic scenario would be disabling the nav system and saving me $1500 - sounds great to me. Similarly, if I have no need for a high-performance chip, I see no need to pay for performance I am not going to use. If you can disable some of that performance and give me a break on the price I see nothing wrong with that at all.
Holy crap! You really don't understand the issue, do you? First off, the majority of the cost of a chip is in design and fab setup, not raw materials and manufacturing labor. So your 'marginal cost' theory goes right out the window. The only way a chip manufacturer can approach marginal cost is by selling such a huge volume of chips that the design cost per chip is very small.
Lets assume Intel and your competitor have similar design and manufacturing costs and similar profit margin, and in very high volumes that works out to about $225/chip on average.
Intel gets the volumes up by offering lower performance chips at less than the optimal price of $225/chip, and fewer high performance chips above that point.
What is your super-hero one-price-fits-all competitor going to do? Offer the chip for $225? Three-quarters of Intel's volume comes from $200 chips. Why is someone going to buy your $225 chip when they can get what they need from Intel for $200? So you just lost 3/4 of your volume, and now your optimal price per chip just jumped to $500, and you have lost all of your customers, because Intel's most expensive option is only $300.
Or, is your competitor going to beat Intel's lowest price of $200? That is substantially below the optimum point, so they won't be in business very long.
Complete bullshit. What magic is a competitor going to use to get the price that low? The only way Intel could sell for that price is to get enough people who don't care about performance to pay for something they don't want. So let's say you have a competitor who is willing to sell for $225 - Intel can chop them off at the knees by offering a lower performance chip for $200 (you know, healthy market and all that). The competitor just lost all those customers, and their $225 dollar chip now costs $500, while Intel's top end chip costs $300, just like the example above. Unless you are claiming that Intel is making excessive profit on the whole product line (not demonstrated), a competitor is going to face the same pressures.
This is the result of a healthy market. If there was not a healthy market there would be no reason for a $200 version of the chip, just the highest price. Selling chips like this actually keeps prices down at both the low and high ends, some people are just unable to see it.
Chips have huge fixed costs - chip design and fabs are expensive. The more units you can make, the smaller the portion of the fixed costs each unit must carry. Let's say by using this pricing method they can sell 3 $200 chips for every $300 chip they sell. Let's also say that at those volumes, $100 of each chip goes towards the fixed costs. So now we have an average income per chip of $225. So I suppose your theory is that that is what they should do - one price of $225, only fast chips.
But, there is competition. many people put a higher priority on price than on performance. So if a competitor is selling a lower performance chip for $200, they will buy that one. So now, instead of selling 4 chips, they only can sell 3. The fixed cost per chip just went up to $133, raising the chip price to $258. Even fewer people will buy at that price, so your fixed cost per chip just went even higher. Before long, only people who absolutely must have high performance are buying the chips (the same ones who are paying $300 now). But guess what - instead of a $100 per chip fixed cost, they must now bear the fixed costs of those other lost sales, so their fixed cost is $400 per chip - for a chip price of at least $500.
We know that Intel could afford to sell processors running at the faster speed for $200 and make a worthwhile profit
No, we don't know that. We know that by selling a combination of processors, with some at $200 and some at $300, they can make a worthwhile profit. Let's say for every $300 chip they sell they sell 3 at $200. That makes for an average chip price of $225. The question is: would people who don't need a fast chip pay $225? Intel thinks they would not. After all, people don't like paying for things they don't need, leaving an opportunity for someone else to come in and make cheaper chips that meet their needs. So that means they must further raise the price of the chips to make up for the lost sales, leading to still more people who would not buy the chip, and so on. Pretty soon you are selling the chips to only people who demand high performance, for a price greater than $300.
And it makes perfect sense economically. It would cost way more to have two different designs and two separate production lines, raising the price of both low-end and high-end chips.
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Another article said that the money represents the gross revenues in ad buys from the Canadian pharmacies, plus the earnings generated from illegal sales of drugs to American consumers.
Did you hurt yourself with all that twisting? Google did not 'happen to index' illegal pharmacies, they sold ads for them, directly profiting off an illegal activity. And yes, it is the governments responsibility to crack down on illegal activity (such as selling ads for unlicensed pharmacies), which they did quite successfully by suing Google (the perpetrators of said illegal activity).
Innovate: to introduce new methods, devices, etc. Any ability to detect emotions would by definition be innovative, because it would be new.
As for what to do with the sensed emotions - well that opens up a whole world of possibilities. FPS games are a perfect example. If you sense that your enemy is scared you would certainly use different tactics (exploit the fear, back them into a corner) than if your enemy is just plain crazy with anger (go into defensive mode). That would increase the realism, not detract from it.
The emotions sensed should not be the emotions of a detached person sitting on the couch holding a controller, they should be the emotions of someone fully immersed in the game.
Yes, clearly we need government involvement to protect us from the big bad companies who want to sell us stuff. I mean just yesterday I was in a restaurant, and the men had a description of an item that sounded so good I just had to get it, even though I knew it had too much fat and calories to be good for me. My first thought was '"Someone should call the justice department to prevent them from making this yummy item". Then I saw an ad for a really cool looking car, so I cashed out my 401K so I could buy this car. If only the government had prevented them from selling that car...
If you're too weak-willed to control your usage of a service, no matter how attractive they make that service, don't use it. There is no need for government involvement.
How is funding someone's defense fraudulent or illegal?
So what? All this is is a tool, to allow people to control what they do or do not want to see. That is a perfectly legitimate thing. The fact that maybe some government could abuse the tool is completely immaterial. Ever since man first sharpened a stick every tool created could potentially be abused by someone. If that happens, complain about the abuse and the abusers, not the tool.
Do you also oppose adblock and such tools? If not, why? After all, they are 'censoring' in exactly the same way this is.
Quite right. We should also ban adblock and such things, because how dare someone decides what they do and do not want to see.
When you use the 'guide' function, the channel you are watching shrinks to one-quarter of the screen. Next to that is a space that shows a synopsis of whatever channel you select with the guide. The bottom half of the screen is the guide itself, scrolling left-right (times) and up-down (channels). This lets you continue seeing the show you are currently watching, while also seeing if there is something else on.
When you use VOD, the same thing happens: what you are watching (your VOD program) shrinks to one-quarter of the screen. Instead of the guide taking up the bottom half of the screen, the synopsis of the currently selected title is placed below the video. The entire left half of the screen (top to bottom) is a scrollable (up/down) list of available VOD titles. It is a very efficient layout. I am not sure what else you want on the screen. I suppose they could change the GUI so that if you aren't currently watching any VOD title you get a column and a half of available titles, but that would just be weird.
Channel flipping is slow, but that is not because of the cable box. There are several things that must happen when you switch channels: find what SDV channel is being used for the channel you want (and get it tuned in if it is not currently available), wait for a key frame, and set up the decoder for the resolution of the particular channel. All that takes time.
No, I don't work for a cable company. I don't know why they don't use the ports that are there. But it is still cheaper to buy ports you may never use than to have to replace millions of boxes if you do decide to use a port.
TFA states what the goal is - running more complex software on simpler computers. It even says what the joules-per-op is - 45 picojoules per event, about 1000 times less than conventional computers.
First, the 'ads' appear in the space that would normally be showing the currently tuned in channel. The only time you see an ad is when you are on a VOD channel and have not yet selected a show to watch. The alternative to showing the ad is either a) show a blank space, or b) have a UI that changes based on something unrelated to what you are trying to do (sucky UI design). If you are spending so much time on the VOD channel but not watching anything that the ad repetition becomes annoying, maybe they should show some more ads to help you select something to watch.
Yes, in the old days of three channels you could flip through the channels. The alternative was picking up a copy of TV Guide and reading it. With these here new-fangled boxes you have hundreds of channels to choose from, so flipping is kind of pointless. However, they helpfully provide you with an on-screen guide so you can see what is on the other channels even if the other channels are currently showing commercials. You can also go to ANY of those channels at any time, without even turning the knob. Amazing, isn't it?
Buffering channels on either side of where you are now would require three tuners, and you would be hogging three SDV channels even though you are only watching one. All for an activity no-one does (sequential channel flipping).
Additional inputs and outputs are called 'building for the future'. Just because they are unused now doesn't mean they will always be. And if those future devices come along, it is a hell of a lot cheaper to build in ports you are not using than it is to replace every box when a new device comes along.
Where, exactly, does growing weed get you more time than rape or murder?
Maybe that is the case. However, the defendant is Motorola, and the plaintiff is Microsoft, so that does not apply.
There is a difference between being legal to own and being legal to buy (or sell). For instance, it is not legal to sell 23-channel CB radios.
Reading problems? The creditors did not invest in the barge, the government did. The shipyard is the one with financial problems, and the government wants to protect it's investment in the barge before the barge gets declared as an asset of the shipyard.
When did any of that ever happen? I have seen and heard lots of old radio and TV, and never encountered that. What actually happened was the show would pause, an announcer would say 'and now a word from our sponsor', they would do the commercials, the announcer would say 'and now back to the show', and the show would continue. Since it was all going out live, they usually just used the same performers to do the commercials. Occasionally the performers would do commercials as the characters from the show, but it was never woven into the story.
Advertisers back then did not want to be subtle. They wanted the audience to know that the only reason they were getting this show was because we paid for it, with the implied 'and if you want to keep getting the show you better buy our products'.
Having single brands is only noticeable if those brands are out of place. For instance, if they showed a corporate office where everyone was using a Lenovo Thinkpad, I would not think that odd at all - I see that every day at work. On the other hand, if the same scene showed everyone with an iPad, that would be extremely jarring.
You notice Apple's placements because they are so unbelievable that their inclusion is every bit as annoying as an actual interruption for a commercial. Someone drinking a can of Coke? OK, that happens in real life, easily believable. A police station where every desk has a Mac on it? That interrupts the story enough to make you say wtf.
OK, look at it this way. Let's say Intel has turned into a charity, and will sell all of their chips for cost - no profit at all. The price of a commodity chip pretty much has zero design costs in it (it is approaching the marginal cost), right? So, if you want a commodity chip (no new features or performance), Intel will sell you one. It costs $200, which is the marginal cost. However, if you want a non-commodity chip (new features and/or performance), it will cost you the marginal cost, plus your share of the development of the non-commodity features you want. That is going to be substantially more than the commodity price.
You can't say that just because they sell some chips at a commodity price they can sell all of the chips at that price, because then the development of the non-commodity features is not paid for, and the product is an enormous loss.
So what are the options? Well, they could put a single price on the new chip, which would be higher than the commodity price but lower than the high-end price is now. If there were no competitors this would be a viable option. But there are competitors, so all the customers who only need a commodity chip will flee to a vendor who is offering a better (commodity) price. That will cause the price of the non-commodity chips to rise to exactly where they are now, because the design cost is spread across the same number of customers that it is now.
Or, they could manufacture two different chips - a commodity chip and the non-commodity chip. The non-commodity chip would have the same development costs as it does now (maybe a little cheaper because the could remove the crippling capability). On the other hand, making two chips is not as efficient, so the cost rises some because of that, and the cost of the non-commodity chip will be right where it is now.
As long as development is going on someone is going to have to pay for that development. As long as there are competitors in the commodity space that someone is the user who needs the non-commodity stuff. And any competitors in the non-commodity space will have the same development costs to be paid, so the existence of competitors is not going to magically drive the cost of new stuff down.
My mistake - I thought we were discussing the real world, and not some fantasy land where all chip development stops so we can have 'commoditisation'. When would you have preferred we reached this highly desirable state? 8085? 486? Pentium II?
As to your analogy - if I didn't need seats or a paintjob (ie I am going to customize the vehicle), yes, it sounds like a good deal. A more realistic scenario would be disabling the nav system and saving me $1500 - sounds great to me. Similarly, if I have no need for a high-performance chip, I see no need to pay for performance I am not going to use. If you can disable some of that performance and give me a break on the price I see nothing wrong with that at all.
Holy crap! You really don't understand the issue, do you? First off, the majority of the cost of a chip is in design and fab setup, not raw materials and manufacturing labor. So your 'marginal cost' theory goes right out the window. The only way a chip manufacturer can approach marginal cost is by selling such a huge volume of chips that the design cost per chip is very small.
Lets assume Intel and your competitor have similar design and manufacturing costs and similar profit margin, and in very high volumes that works out to about $225/chip on average.
Intel gets the volumes up by offering lower performance chips at less than the optimal price of $225/chip, and fewer high performance chips above that point.
What is your super-hero one-price-fits-all competitor going to do? Offer the chip for $225? Three-quarters of Intel's volume comes from $200 chips. Why is someone going to buy your $225 chip when they can get what they need from Intel for $200? So you just lost 3/4 of your volume, and now your optimal price per chip just jumped to $500, and you have lost all of your customers, because Intel's most expensive option is only $300.
Or, is your competitor going to beat Intel's lowest price of $200? That is substantially below the optimum point, so they won't be in business very long.
Complete bullshit. What magic is a competitor going to use to get the price that low? The only way Intel could sell for that price is to get enough people who don't care about performance to pay for something they don't want. So let's say you have a competitor who is willing to sell for $225 - Intel can chop them off at the knees by offering a lower performance chip for $200 (you know, healthy market and all that). The competitor just lost all those customers, and their $225 dollar chip now costs $500, while Intel's top end chip costs $300, just like the example above. Unless you are claiming that Intel is making excessive profit on the whole product line (not demonstrated), a competitor is going to face the same pressures.
This is the result of a healthy market. If there was not a healthy market there would be no reason for a $200 version of the chip, just the highest price. Selling chips like this actually keeps prices down at both the low and high ends, some people are just unable to see it.
Chips have huge fixed costs - chip design and fabs are expensive. The more units you can make, the smaller the portion of the fixed costs each unit must carry. Let's say by using this pricing method they can sell 3 $200 chips for every $300 chip they sell. Let's also say that at those volumes, $100 of each chip goes towards the fixed costs. So now we have an average income per chip of $225. So I suppose your theory is that that is what they should do - one price of $225, only fast chips.
But, there is competition. many people put a higher priority on price than on performance. So if a competitor is selling a lower performance chip for $200, they will buy that one. So now, instead of selling 4 chips, they only can sell 3. The fixed cost per chip just went up to $133, raising the chip price to $258. Even fewer people will buy at that price, so your fixed cost per chip just went even higher. Before long, only people who absolutely must have high performance are buying the chips (the same ones who are paying $300 now). But guess what - instead of a $100 per chip fixed cost, they must now bear the fixed costs of those other lost sales, so their fixed cost is $400 per chip - for a chip price of at least $500.
We know that Intel could afford to sell processors running at the faster speed for $200 and make a worthwhile profit
No, we don't know that. We know that by selling a combination of processors, with some at $200 and some at $300, they can make a worthwhile profit. Let's say for every $300 chip they sell they sell 3 at $200. That makes for an average chip price of $225. The question is: would people who don't need a fast chip pay $225? Intel thinks they would not. After all, people don't like paying for things they don't need, leaving an opportunity for someone else to come in and make cheaper chips that meet their needs. So that means they must further raise the price of the chips to make up for the lost sales, leading to still more people who would not buy the chip, and so on. Pretty soon you are selling the chips to only people who demand high performance, for a price greater than $300.
And it makes perfect sense economically. It would cost way more to have two different designs and two separate production lines, raising the price of both low-end and high-end chips.
Did you notice the 'research' part?