Second, always compare with an only marginally related industry or discipline. There has to be enough of a connection to convince the readership, but not enough of one to disprove your preconceived notions.
Ok, I haven't RTFP yet, though I definitely plan to. Maybe he doesn't make the link particularly clear. But the analogies between transportation and telecommunication networks have long fascinated me, since shortly after I abruptly left the tech support field to get a Master's in Transportation Planning. (For example, if you consider that the basic traffic system has to be collision-avoidance based rather than collision-detection based, it explains a little about why transportation networks tend to be relatively inefficient and have pretty high overhead. You can't retransmit a car.)
Quick note: I'm a little irritated by hearing some American politician label maglev trains as "sexy science fiction" and "stupid". To me, it's part of a worrying trend I'm seeing in all too much of the US, where there is an apparent phobia of making any actual progress in anything. To me, progress is the certain bit. What happens to those who reject it - that's not so certain.
I did a search for this in the paper and didn't see it, so where is it from? I'm curious which politician that was, and which project they were talking about. Mostly because it sounds like they're quoting my advisor;-).
But the fact is, maglev in particular is a somewhat inappropriate technology. Over shorter distances, it's wasted; you spend the entire trip either accelerating or decelerating. Over longer distances, though, it's much more expensive and difficult to provide, not to mention it's hard to find a solid stretch of right-of-way that you can take over preemptively full-time. Maglevs pretty much have to be fully grade-separated, and building an elevated track is about 10x the cost of building it on the ground (generally speaking; I don't know if there are any special considerations with building elevated maglevs).
It is a fun idea, but from everything I've seen it's not a practical component in our existing transportation infrastructure. It might be eventually, but at the moment, it's got a lot of issues.
ie, how many people don't have a land line telephone? every year a lot more people go to just cel and cable. but most of them are "new" customers fresh out of college, so the telcos don't see them in disconnection stats. there's lots of research holes like that one.
And then there's folks like me at my old apartment, who didn't use a landline, but the phone company still saw me as a customer because they could charge me the regular phone rate on top of my DSL charges. Couldn't figure out where to route my complaint to at the FCC...
For the cell phone, I would use the new services, but it is so hard to upgrade. I have to buy a new phone, sign up for two years, and maybe even pay an activation fee. What the hell do they think? That after several years of staying with the same company I am going renew a plan and then quit after a few months. They have to create a reasonable path so that old customer can migrate to thier new services.
Have never had a problem upgrading with Cingular. Every 12-18 months, I wander into a convenient Cingular store, find out what new phone I can get for free, find out what the new bells and/or whistles are on the contract that has the same price as my existing one, sign a couple pieces of paper, pay the sales tax and nothing else, then take home my brand-new phone and, after charging it as the instructions say, pop in my trusty SIM card. Then the next day I find myself a new faceplate I can stand.
In fact, anyone who *doesn't* upgrade their contract every year or so is paying way more for way less than they should be. If your service provider makes this too cumbersome, that's what number portability is for.;-)
Costs of running a network are broken into two areas - Capital Expenses (ie. usually initial, setup costs), and Operational Expenses (ie. ongoing running costs).
Strangely enough, this is also the case in transportation. I haven't read the paper yet, though I definitely plan to... and I'll probably work it in as a reference in one of my assignments this or next quarter.
Comparing the two solutions using capital expenses, I'd suggest the initial set costs of the first solution would only be in the order of about 20% more than the second, accounted for by the additional bandwidth expenses incurred.
But I'd consider additional bandwidth to be an operational expense. Sure, the capital expenses are also going to be higher, but unless you *own* the bandwidth (i.e. you're a backbone provider) you'll have a monthly lease on it.
Railroads exist as a sad remnant of their former glory, due to being regulated in their innovation by government, and competition with a government run monopoly: roads.
Competition with a free road network did a lot to kill off rail in much of the US, but government regulation didn't kill them... it avoided killing people. If you want to talk about the urban streetcar systems, that's another story, but the "regulation" was what the streetcar operators agreed to in order to maintain a monopoly on a given route.
Regulated travel and transportation is far safer than deregulated. Take a look at airplane accident statistics pre- and post-Regan deregulation. It's pretty horrifying (and firing all the experienced air traffic controllers didn't help one bit).
Innovation is what keeps networks alive, the ability for new players to enter the market without hinderance is what allows the greatest innovation.
And in many cases, it's only through government regulation that new players can enter those markets unhindered. See Sprint/MCI vs. Ma Bell, for instance. How much better did telecom innovation get in the US when the government stepped in and broke down the monopoly? How much has the Telecom Act of 1996 allowed smaller providers to come in and do what the big phone companies are prohibited from doing unless they open their networks?
The expert testimony in the Richmond and FTC trial, which the DOJ also seems to be leaning to, show that RDRAM at most would have cost LESS than 5% over that of DDR. It was the collusion of the memory makers (MICRON, INFINEON, HYUNDI and others) that actually led to the higher price of RDRAM.
Ok, that's nice.
Now, once again, my question is... How do they explain this? What collusion did the other memory makers engage in that made Rambus's prices so darn high? Sure, one can maintain that they colluded to make their own prices lower, but supposedly they then marked their prices up... how come the disparity has always been, and still is, so gigantic?
Being a FedEx employee I think it's obvious which one I hope will survive.
What do you think of the Kinko's buyout? As a former Kinko's employee who still owns 53 shares of stock, I'm hoping to profit from it... but I don't know if it's going to be good for FedEx or not.
business models and management techniques don't matter in the face of just providing a good service to the customer. Bending over backwards when you can and personifying your business helps more than any advertising ever could, in my opinion.
What makes this story ridiculous is that the DDR manufacturers didn't *have* to collude to price Rambus out of the market; Rambus is just a whole heck of a lot more expensive... partly just because you have to buy them in tandem.
Have you actually ever *used* another protocol than Yahoo?
Yeah, I have. Been using ICQ since 1997 or so. Had to use AIM at work. So far, though, Yahoo is the only one I've seen that gives you the option *when you log on* to already be invisible. Perhaps MSN as well, but that one I haven't used.
This article is ridiculously confusing. First of all, it looks like they're saying that 76% of people who use the web also use other programs besides web browsers to get internet content. But it doesn't help that apparently "Internet" has a very particular meaning, which excludes email (otherwise email traffic would have figured in here somewhere) but also miraculously excludes the web, since "Internet Applications" are only used by 76% of web surfers according to this article. This means either that web browsers are not, in fact, "internet applications," or that 24% of web surfers surveyed have direct telepathic connections to the 'net.
Unfortunately, there's no better info available... The company's original press release is pretty much reproduced in its entirety, word for word, by bigblueball news. I hope that Nielsen's clients aren't actually paying for info like this.
Weird is... an understatement. Granted, the plagarist's post is better-formatted than your original from September, but... wow. How does this happen? Who thinks this is a good idea?
(BTW, if anyone has trouble with the link, try clicking here... there was a stray space in the one above.)
Media players, instant messengers and file sharing applications are the most popular Internet applications.
Is that unambiguous enough?
No... because they also say,
"With 76 percent of Web surfers using Internet applications, functionality has grown beyond the browser to become a fundamental piece of the overall desktop,"
So obviously, "Internet Applications" means something besides web browsers. Otherwise, 24% of people would be accessing the web via direct telepathic connection or something.
Half the time I'm on there are people on or come on that I have no desire to carry a conversation with. And if you simply ignore these people they get offended. When I login I'm looking for one particular person to converse with not the every bloody person on my friends list.
And this is why Yahoo! Messenger rocks... you check a box, and "log on invisible." Unlike every other client that notifies everyone who has you on their list with bells and whistles when you log on.
Praytell, what other market are you talking about where similar copyright issues aren't involved?
Telecom -- VoIP, cellular, even third-party long-distance providers can come in, do business differently using new technology, and vastly change the market.
Banking -- No longer necessary to consider where my "branch" is and whether it's convenient for me. I can do my banking anywhere, anytime, via the internet. My bank stopped using "branches" years ago... where the branch address used to be on my checks, it now has their web address.
Tax preparation -- People who used to go to accountants with relatively simple returns because the forms made them dizzy can now spend a lot less money on software to put it all together for them.
Shipping -- The USPS now has tracking and delivery confirmation available for express service, because they have to compete with FedEx.
I could go on for days, really, because almost *every* market has had to change because of technological innovation. Only the music market has been able to keep prices substantially the same while costs fall, and then complain that their sales have dropped at the same rate as *all* consumer spending.
And ignoring the ridiculous argument that seems to suggest the consumer has the right to steal a product if they'll have to wait a couple hours until a store opens to get it,
Who made that argument? My point was simply that if people want a product or service, and it's available to them, they will choose it. In other industries, it's possible to offer this competitive service legally without being beholden to the original service providers. Not so in music.
it seems to me that the RIAA *has* come up with a reasonable way to get people the songs they want on their computers right now. The most prominent example at the moment (that is likely to contain most RIAA music that you're looking for) is iTunes, which is just starting to come into its own.
Yes, the RIAA is finally buckling to pressure... barely. However, if it had been legal to compete with them all along, we might have had a reasonable service many years ago, when Napster was the biggest thing on the block.
What is their motivation? Your money, which is the root of capitalist competition. Not this strange idea that companies are beholden to the consumer for anything else.
No, companies are NOT beholden to the consumer for anything else, you're right. Which is why competition works. However, it is NOT LEGAL to compete with the RIAA. Therefore, if you don't fork over your money to them up front, they can send you a letter demanding $3,000 and in most cases get it from you.
The way you get companies to change their way of business is (surprise, surprise) not giving them your money.
Which takes us back to illegal file sharing. That's exactly what people are doing... not giving the RIAA their money. Unfortunately, they don't have another way to get 80% of the music out on the market legally. In other industries, that's a monopoly. It might be a natural one, which if it's not abused can go on just fine... but I'd say extorting $3,000 out of whoever was unlucky enough to have a stupid ISP who handed over their personal info is abuse.
So that was my point. Not that file sharing is somehow not breaking the law, but that it's an inevitable consequence of living in a capitalist system, and that the RIAA will not be successful fighting it. They can't lick 'em, they have to join 'em.
Now that companies are finally moving on it, the problem is that it doesn't meet our exact specifications, and instead of trying to work with them we continue to pirate. Hmm, sounds like somebody wants a half-brained excuse to take a five-fingered discount.
In other markets, when this happens, we call it "capitalist competition." But when you bring copyright into it, the record companies have a perfectly legal monopoly, and if new technology changes the market, they can shove the old way of doing things down our throats to their heart's content.
On the other hand, I've only used P2P to get two songs, both of which were songs from CDs that I own, somewhere, but can't find. I'm one of those file-sharers who uses it *legally*, since I own a license to digital versions of those songs.
People want music to be available to them *now*, even after Borders is closed and even though the album they want isn't in stock. Since it's possible for them to get the song they want to listen to right now from their computer right now, rather than getting in the car and going to a music store which might or might not have it, or waiting two-three days (if you're lucky) to get a CD they ordered online, they'll do it. If the RIAA comes up with a reasonable way to sell music in this manner, people will do that instead (for the most part... those who continue to pirate music, however, are the ones who were pirating music before the P2P phenomenon, and aren't interested in paying for it regardless, so they're not exactly "lost sales").
Emphasis on "was." I ripped mine out years ago and I don't know of anyone who uses them now. Nor have I seen the media for sale in a long time.
Well, let's see... anyone who uses them now? They're installed in every desktop computer at my work (9,000 employees), and in the computer lab at school (60 stations). They're sold in every office supply store, and at the UCLA computer store, usually in volume. All my co-workers and classmates have at least one, because unlike me, they don't have their own domain to store stuff on. And there have been times when I've been at a disadvantage for not using them, since it takes longer to upload a 90 MB GIS project via an internet connection than to copy it all to a disk, even one as slow as a Zip! drive.
I've had bad experiences with them, from when I was working at Kinko's and we went through them like mad. But they were much more reliable and easier to use than the SyQuest drives there, so we didn't rush to replace them even then.
But perhaps this is a local phenomenon. I'm sure you're right, and the Zip! drive has gone the way of the pteradactyl everywhere outside Los Angeles.
So you're one of those, "Punish the kids for having bad parents folks."
No, I'm one of those who thinks that we should make it a ridiculous concept for people who have to rely on the rest of the world to look out for their own children to have kids in the first place.
But, since birth control and abortion are such hideous concepts, maybe we have to rely on the world being a dangerous place for children again. Then parents either will be forced to do their job, or they'll face a very serious loss.
The kids, on the other hand, are screwed no matter what. If the world makes it safe for them to go through life without parents to look out for them, they still aren't getting what they need. It's not punishing kids for having bad parents... it's that kids with bad parents are *already* punished, so let's not make it any easier for their parents.
Well, a lot of them are interesting, some are amusing, and a few seem actually potentially useful. But some of them I take issue with.
12 Make email addresses portableEmail addresses *are* portable... just pony up for a domain name. Anyway, that's like saying "Make home addresses portable." If I live on Green Avenue, my mail shouldn't say 1234 Brown Street. the domain is *where* your email goes.
Now, if they'd said "Require all paid email providers to forward your email for free for 90 days when you cancel your account" that would make sense.
16 Simplify Web publishing Why can't we post files from our desktop to a Web site in one drag-and-drop move? Maybe you can't, but I can. Type ftp://username:password@ftp.domain.com/public_html into the Windows Explorer address bar, and have fun. But usually I use Filezilla, which works just dandy too.
If you're trying to "publish" via some stupid HTML composer, then I'd rather it be *harder* than easier. Then we wouldn't have government agencies building websites in MS Word (tried to get the link, but it's broken... but LADOT did have one of these up as recently as last week).
28 Simplify disposable addresses This is actually a suggestion for *cutting down* on spam. Make it easier for any 13-year-old to send email that they don't actually care about. This seems like an excellent idea.
53 Give away a good spam filter Mozilla.org is already doing this. Hm, maybe they could sue MS for an anticompetitive action if they enter this market.
54 Ship antivirus wizard Why can't the paper clip guy tell us something important, like "This message is infected with Sobig"? Again, is this MS's job? And how long would it take folks to turn it off if it was Clippy?
59 Make anonymous Net use easier Because, when Microsoft says I'm anonymous, I believe them. What kind of a suggestion is this? How is this remotely a job for MS? And why on earth would we trust them to do it?
61 Create a security advisory board Appoint some outsiders (hello, Dan Geer?) to decide which security upgrades should be auto-pushed to consumers' PCs - then make it happen. NO--- don't auto-push *anything* to *my* computer. That's why it's *mine*. Not yours. I don't care how many "advisors" you get or how far "outside" they are. How about they beta test the product, so they can say "Hey, MS, before this goes gold, you might want to turn off the 'allow any random idiot to connect to your computer from anywhere on the Internet' service..."
63 Offer more language translation We want to read those Iranian blogs. Again, this is MS's job how? I'm thinking they meant something besides "translation," like maybe character sets. And yeah, sure, add more of those. But before you publish an article in a slick magazine, find the right word.
67 End phone subsidies A byzantine maze of hidden revenue transfers - universal service, excise tax, TTY/TDD access, 911, et cetera - discourages innovations like Vonage that don't fit the regulatory format. Pay for all this stuff from general taxes instead of sneaking it onto the phone bill. Phone taxes should be simplified, and explained better. But paying for things out of general revenues is a terrible idea. Systems that rely on user fees are better maintained and offer better service than those paid for out of general revenues. Which do you count on more... getting a dialtone when you pick up the phone or getting from point A to point B on the freeway in a reasonable amount of time? Could be because only 1/3 of highway and road maintenance (at least in California) is paid for by gas taxes, vehicle registration fees, and truck fees... the rest they have to beg from the same pot as education, health care, and parks.
68 Write to President Schwarzenegger When he gets to Washington in, oh, 2012, maybe he can
A list of names, office numbers, email, phone numbers and so on was mailed out a couple months ago. It should have been a tiny text file (especially in csv format), but ended up being about a megabyte. Even in Excel format it would have been more usable.
It could be worse...
Frequently we get emails sent to "all recipients..." that's about 9000 addresses in the company I work for... with gigantic POWERPOINT slides advertising "Free cookies and punch at lunchtime for Saint Patrick's Day!" and stuff like that.
There's no way to unsubscribe, and I've had no luck whatsoever convincing Outlook that by "filter messages matching this description into this folder" I mean that I want it to actually *move* things, so I delete a LOT of email.
Obviously the needs of the user aren't important in your world.
I dunno, users who are someone's mom often have outdated computers with dial-up connections, sometimes with the overhead of AOL added to them, so embedding images is pretty rude when they have to wait 5 minutes for the message to load.
On the other hand, when we got the first ultrasounds of my mom's first grandchild, we posted a web page immediately and sent her the link... which was much more useful than sending an HTML email.
I don't get any spam because I use a Hotmail account for anything public. I don't get pop-ups because I use Opera. I don't get hacked because I keep my patches up to date (which means not bitching about an RPC hole that was patched two months before that the government warned twice about).
Internet is just fine for me.
And then what about the "smothering regulation" part? You also have an anonymous offshore wireless access point or something?;-)
A car is not a weapon unless it is inentionally used to injure a person. You cannot use a car as a weapon and not go to jail.
A weapon is a tool you use to hurt or kill someone. All sorts of unlikely things have been legally determined to be weapons because people used them to kill others. Ever play Clue? Candlesticks, ropes, wrenches... those are the weapons of the game. True, the charge "assault with a deadly weapon" requires the *intent* to hurt someone. But generally speaking, we consider an item a weapon if you use it to kill someone, even if that wasn't exactly what you were trying to do at the time.
But with cars, people get behind the wheel when they *know* (or should know) they shouldn't be driving, kill people, and then frequently walk away, badly shaken but not a criminal. We basically invented the charge "involuntary manslaughter" so that killing someone with a car was a less serious crime than other kinds of killing people without malice. On July 17th, an 86-year-old man, who had repeatedly hit his garage door and once drove over a friend's retaining wall because he confused the gas and brake pedals, killed 10 people and injured 53 others by driving up to 60 mph through a farmer's market while fleeing the scene of a rear-end collision he'd caused. A few weeks ago, the CHP finally released a preliminary report that determined that the cause of the incident was nothing else besides driver error. So, in another month or so, the Santa Monica Police Department will decide whether or not the guy committed a crime when he killed those people.
The implication here is that the number of deaths is acceptable. That is not the case at all. Every year cars are being made safer. Compare a car today to a car 15-20 years ago, and you'll see what I mean.
20 years ago, 50,000 people in the US died annually in auto accidents. Half of those were drunk-driving accidents.
Now, 40,000 people die annually from auto accidents. Half of those are drunk-driving accidents.
Cars are safer than they used to be, by leaps and bounds. But the roads are more dangerous. We follow too close (if we all were keeping adequate stopping distance between us and the car in front of us on the roadways, peak flows would happen at 45 miles per hour... but CalTrans sensor data shows that peak flows are occuring at 60 miles per hour, meaning we're crowding each other). We drive faster (the Arroyo Parkway, aka The Pasadena Freeway or the 110, was built in 1939 with a vision of cars whizzing along at 45 miles per hour... currently freeways are designed for 70 mph). And there's just MORE of us.
The bright side is, congestion keeps getting worse, and slowing us down. As my transportation engineering instructor put it last spring, we're getting so slow, when we hit each other, we can't kill each other anymore.
But tell me one other deadly weapon that you can hit and kill someone with and not necessarily go to jail. (We're still waiting to see if the Santa Monica Police Department will arrest the guy who drove through the Farmer's Market at 60 miles an hour while fleeing the scene of another accident, killing 10 people and injuring dozens.) We *are* exceptionally tolerant of people's stupidity with cars. Now, if it was wind turbines, and there's a company to sue, that would be different, I think... but I half agree with the grandparent post.
What about young children who can't know any better?
Back in the day, we had these things called "parents." They put dangerous things out of reach, answered questions, explained hazards, and generally kept an eye on things. Not sure exactly when or why they went out of style; I guess they were just too expensive to maintain or something.
Slashdot Mirror
Second, always compare with an only marginally related industry or discipline. There has to be enough of a connection to convince the readership, but not enough of one to disprove your preconceived notions.
;-).
Ok, I haven't RTFP yet, though I definitely plan to. Maybe he doesn't make the link particularly clear. But the analogies between transportation and telecommunication networks have long fascinated me, since shortly after I abruptly left the tech support field to get a Master's in Transportation Planning. (For example, if you consider that the basic traffic system has to be collision-avoidance based rather than collision-detection based, it explains a little about why transportation networks tend to be relatively inefficient and have pretty high overhead. You can't retransmit a car.)
Quick note: I'm a little irritated by hearing some American politician label maglev trains as "sexy science fiction" and "stupid". To me, it's part of a worrying trend I'm seeing in all too much of the US, where there is an apparent phobia of making any actual progress in anything. To me, progress is the certain bit. What happens to those who reject it - that's not so certain.
I did a search for this in the paper and didn't see it, so where is it from? I'm curious which politician that was, and which project they were talking about. Mostly because it sounds like they're quoting my advisor
But the fact is, maglev in particular is a somewhat inappropriate technology. Over shorter distances, it's wasted; you spend the entire trip either accelerating or decelerating. Over longer distances, though, it's much more expensive and difficult to provide, not to mention it's hard to find a solid stretch of right-of-way that you can take over preemptively full-time. Maglevs pretty much have to be fully grade-separated, and building an elevated track is about 10x the cost of building it on the ground (generally speaking; I don't know if there are any special considerations with building elevated maglevs).
It is a fun idea, but from everything I've seen it's not a practical component in our existing transportation infrastructure. It might be eventually, but at the moment, it's got a lot of issues.
ie, how many people don't have a land line telephone? every year a lot more people go to just cel and cable. but most of them are "new" customers fresh out of college, so the telcos don't see them in disconnection stats. there's lots of research holes like that one.
And then there's folks like me at my old apartment, who didn't use a landline, but the phone company still saw me as a customer because they could charge me the regular phone rate on top of my DSL charges. Couldn't figure out where to route my complaint to at the FCC...
For the cell phone, I would use the new services, but it is so hard to upgrade. I have to buy a new phone, sign up for two years, and maybe even pay an activation fee. What the hell do they think? That after several years of staying with the same company I am going renew a plan and then quit after a few months. They have to create a reasonable path so that old customer can migrate to thier new services.
;-)
Have never had a problem upgrading with Cingular. Every 12-18 months, I wander into a convenient Cingular store, find out what new phone I can get for free, find out what the new bells and/or whistles are on the contract that has the same price as my existing one, sign a couple pieces of paper, pay the sales tax and nothing else, then take home my brand-new phone and, after charging it as the instructions say, pop in my trusty SIM card. Then the next day I find myself a new faceplate I can stand.
In fact, anyone who *doesn't* upgrade their contract every year or so is paying way more for way less than they should be. If your service provider makes this too cumbersome, that's what number portability is for.
Costs of running a network are broken into two areas - Capital Expenses (ie. usually initial, setup costs), and Operational Expenses (ie. ongoing running costs).
Strangely enough, this is also the case in transportation. I haven't read the paper yet, though I definitely plan to... and I'll probably work it in as a reference in one of my assignments this or next quarter.
Comparing the two solutions using capital expenses, I'd suggest the initial set costs of the first solution would only be in the order of about 20% more than the second, accounted for by the additional bandwidth expenses incurred.
But I'd consider additional bandwidth to be an operational expense. Sure, the capital expenses are also going to be higher, but unless you *own* the bandwidth (i.e. you're a backbone provider) you'll have a monthly lease on it.
Railroads exist as a sad remnant of their former glory, due to being regulated in their innovation by government, and competition with a government run monopoly: roads.
Competition with a free road network did a lot to kill off rail in much of the US, but government regulation didn't kill them... it avoided killing people. If you want to talk about the urban streetcar systems, that's another story, but the "regulation" was what the streetcar operators agreed to in order to maintain a monopoly on a given route.
Regulated travel and transportation is far safer than deregulated. Take a look at airplane accident statistics pre- and post-Regan deregulation. It's pretty horrifying (and firing all the experienced air traffic controllers didn't help one bit).
Innovation is what keeps networks alive, the ability for new players to enter the market without hinderance is what allows the greatest innovation.
And in many cases, it's only through government regulation that new players can enter those markets unhindered. See Sprint/MCI vs. Ma Bell, for instance. How much better did telecom innovation get in the US when the government stepped in and broke down the monopoly? How much has the Telecom Act of 1996 allowed smaller providers to come in and do what the big phone companies are prohibited from doing unless they open their networks?
The expert testimony in the Richmond and FTC trial, which the DOJ also seems to be leaning to, show that RDRAM at most would have cost LESS than 5% over that of DDR. It was the collusion of the memory makers (MICRON, INFINEON, HYUNDI and others) that actually led to the higher price of RDRAM.
Ok, that's nice.
Now, once again, my question is... How do they explain this? What collusion did the other memory makers engage in that made Rambus's prices so darn high? Sure, one can maintain that they colluded to make their own prices lower, but supposedly they then marked their prices up... how come the disparity has always been, and still is, so gigantic?
Being a FedEx employee I think it's obvious which one I hope will survive.
What do you think of the Kinko's buyout? As a former Kinko's employee who still owns 53 shares of stock, I'm hoping to profit from it... but I don't know if it's going to be good for FedEx or not.
business models and management techniques don't matter in the face of just providing a good service to the customer. Bending over backwards when you can and personifying your business helps more than any advertising ever could, in my opinion.
That *is* a business model.
...Now that DDR manufacturers have colluded to raise prices on them, if I want 512 MB of memory, I can choose to buy:
- 2 x 256 MB Simpletech RDRAM at $95 each for a total of $190.00
Or
- 1 x 512 MB Crucial PC-2700 DDR SDRAM at $72.00
What makes this story ridiculous is that the DDR manufacturers didn't *have* to collude to price Rambus out of the market; Rambus is just a whole heck of a lot more expensive... partly just because you have to buy them in tandem.
Have you actually ever *used* another protocol than Yahoo?
Yeah, I have. Been using ICQ since 1997 or so. Had to use AIM at work. So far, though, Yahoo is the only one I've seen that gives you the option *when you log on* to already be invisible. Perhaps MSN as well, but that one I haven't used.
This article is ridiculously confusing. First of all, it looks like they're saying that 76% of people who use the web also use other programs besides web browsers to get internet content. But it doesn't help that apparently "Internet" has a very particular meaning, which excludes email (otherwise email traffic would have figured in here somewhere) but also miraculously excludes the web, since "Internet Applications" are only used by 76% of web surfers according to this article. This means either that web browsers are not, in fact, "internet applications," or that 24% of web surfers surveyed have direct telepathic connections to the 'net.
Unfortunately, there's no better info available... The company's original press release is pretty much reproduced in its entirety, word for word, by bigblueball news. I hope that Nielsen's clients aren't actually paying for info like this.
Weird is... an understatement. Granted, the plagarist's post is better-formatted than your original from September, but... wow. How does this happen? Who thinks this is a good idea?
(BTW, if anyone has trouble with the link, try clicking here... there was a stray space in the one above.)
No... because they also say, So obviously, "Internet Applications" means something besides web browsers. Otherwise, 24% of people would be accessing the web via direct telepathic connection or something.
Half the time I'm on there are people on or come on that I have no desire to carry a conversation with. And if you simply ignore these people they get offended. When I login I'm looking for one particular person to converse with not the every bloody person on my friends list.
And this is why Yahoo! Messenger rocks... you check a box, and "log on invisible." Unlike every other client that notifies everyone who has you on their list with bells and whistles when you log on.
Praytell, what other market are you talking about where similar copyright issues aren't involved?
Telecom -- VoIP, cellular, even third-party long-distance providers can come in, do business differently using new technology, and vastly change the market.
Banking -- No longer necessary to consider where my "branch" is and whether it's convenient for me. I can do my banking anywhere, anytime, via the internet. My bank stopped using "branches" years ago... where the branch address used to be on my checks, it now has their web address.
Tax preparation -- People who used to go to accountants with relatively simple returns because the forms made them dizzy can now spend a lot less money on software to put it all together for them.
Shipping -- The USPS now has tracking and delivery confirmation available for express service, because they have to compete with FedEx.
I could go on for days, really, because almost *every* market has had to change because of technological innovation. Only the music market has been able to keep prices substantially the same while costs fall, and then complain that their sales have dropped at the same rate as *all* consumer spending.
And ignoring the ridiculous argument that seems to suggest the consumer has the right to steal a product if they'll have to wait a couple hours until a store opens to get it,
Who made that argument? My point was simply that if people want a product or service, and it's available to them, they will choose it. In other industries, it's possible to offer this competitive service legally without being beholden to the original service providers. Not so in music.
it seems to me that the RIAA *has* come up with a reasonable way to get people the songs they want on their computers right now. The most prominent example at the moment (that is likely to contain most RIAA music that you're looking for) is iTunes, which is just starting to come into its own.
Yes, the RIAA is finally buckling to pressure... barely. However, if it had been legal to compete with them all along, we might have had a reasonable service many years ago, when Napster was the biggest thing on the block.
What is their motivation? Your money, which is the root of capitalist competition. Not this strange idea that companies are beholden to the consumer for anything else.
No, companies are NOT beholden to the consumer for anything else, you're right. Which is why competition works. However, it is NOT LEGAL to compete with the RIAA. Therefore, if you don't fork over your money to them up front, they can send you a letter demanding $3,000 and in most cases get it from you.
The way you get companies to change their way of business is (surprise, surprise) not giving them your money.
Which takes us back to illegal file sharing. That's exactly what people are doing... not giving the RIAA their money. Unfortunately, they don't have another way to get 80% of the music out on the market legally. In other industries, that's a monopoly. It might be a natural one, which if it's not abused can go on just fine... but I'd say extorting $3,000 out of whoever was unlucky enough to have a stupid ISP who handed over their personal info is abuse.
So that was my point. Not that file sharing is somehow not breaking the law, but that it's an inevitable consequence of living in a capitalist system, and that the RIAA will not be successful fighting it. They can't lick 'em, they have to join 'em.
Now that companies are finally moving on it, the problem is that it doesn't meet our exact specifications, and instead of trying to work with them we continue to pirate. Hmm, sounds like somebody wants a half-brained excuse to take a five-fingered discount.
In other markets, when this happens, we call it "capitalist competition." But when you bring copyright into it, the record companies have a perfectly legal monopoly, and if new technology changes the market, they can shove the old way of doing things down our throats to their heart's content.
On the other hand, I've only used P2P to get two songs, both of which were songs from CDs that I own, somewhere, but can't find. I'm one of those file-sharers who uses it *legally*, since I own a license to digital versions of those songs.
People want music to be available to them *now*, even after Borders is closed and even though the album they want isn't in stock. Since it's possible for them to get the song they want to listen to right now from their computer right now, rather than getting in the car and going to a music store which might or might not have it, or waiting two-three days (if you're lucky) to get a CD they ordered online, they'll do it. If the RIAA comes up with a reasonable way to sell music in this manner, people will do that instead (for the most part... those who continue to pirate music, however, are the ones who were pirating music before the P2P phenomenon, and aren't interested in paying for it regardless, so they're not exactly "lost sales").
Emphasis on "was." I ripped mine out years ago and I don't know of anyone who uses them now. Nor have I seen the media for sale in a long time.
Well, let's see... anyone who uses them now? They're installed in every desktop computer at my work (9,000 employees), and in the computer lab at school (60 stations). They're sold in every office supply store, and at the UCLA computer store, usually in volume. All my co-workers and classmates have at least one, because unlike me, they don't have their own domain to store stuff on. And there have been times when I've been at a disadvantage for not using them, since it takes longer to upload a 90 MB GIS project via an internet connection than to copy it all to a disk, even one as slow as a Zip! drive.
I've had bad experiences with them, from when I was working at Kinko's and we went through them like mad. But they were much more reliable and easier to use than the SyQuest drives there, so we didn't rush to replace them even then.
But perhaps this is a local phenomenon. I'm sure you're right, and the Zip! drive has gone the way of the pteradactyl everywhere outside Los Angeles.
So you're one of those, "Punish the kids for having bad parents folks."
No, I'm one of those who thinks that we should make it a ridiculous concept for people who have to rely on the rest of the world to look out for their own children to have kids in the first place.
But, since birth control and abortion are such hideous concepts, maybe we have to rely on the world being a dangerous place for children again. Then parents either will be forced to do their job, or they'll face a very serious loss.
The kids, on the other hand, are screwed no matter what. If the world makes it safe for them to go through life without parents to look out for them, they still aren't getting what they need. It's not punishing kids for having bad parents... it's that kids with bad parents are *already* punished, so let's not make it any easier for their parents.
Well, a lot of them are interesting, some are amusing, and a few seem actually potentially useful. But some of them I take issue with.
12 Make email addresses portable Email addresses *are* portable... just pony up for a domain name. Anyway, that's like saying "Make home addresses portable." If I live on Green Avenue, my mail shouldn't say 1234 Brown Street. the domain is *where* your email goes.
Now, if they'd said "Require all paid email providers to forward your email for free for 90 days when you cancel your account" that would make sense.
16 Simplify Web publishing Why can't we post files from our desktop to a Web site in one drag-and-drop move? Maybe you can't, but I can. Type ftp://username:password@ftp.domain.com/public_html into the Windows Explorer address bar, and have fun. But usually I use Filezilla, which works just dandy too.
If you're trying to "publish" via some stupid HTML composer, then I'd rather it be *harder* than easier. Then we wouldn't have government agencies building websites in MS Word (tried to get the link, but it's broken... but LADOT did have one of these up as recently as last week).
28 Simplify disposable addresses This is actually a suggestion for *cutting down* on spam. Make it easier for any 13-year-old to send email that they don't actually care about. This seems like an excellent idea.
53 Give away a good spam filter Mozilla.org is already doing this. Hm, maybe they could sue MS for an anticompetitive action if they enter this market.
54 Ship antivirus wizard Why can't the paper clip guy tell us something important, like "This message is infected with Sobig"? Again, is this MS's job? And how long would it take folks to turn it off if it was Clippy?
59 Make anonymous Net use easier Because, when Microsoft says I'm anonymous, I believe them. What kind of a suggestion is this? How is this remotely a job for MS? And why on earth would we trust them to do it?
61 Create a security advisory board Appoint some outsiders (hello, Dan Geer?) to decide which security upgrades should be auto-pushed to consumers' PCs - then make it happen. NO--- don't auto-push *anything* to *my* computer. That's why it's *mine*. Not yours. I don't care how many "advisors" you get or how far "outside" they are. How about they beta test the product, so they can say "Hey, MS, before this goes gold, you might want to turn off the 'allow any random idiot to connect to your computer from anywhere on the Internet' service..."
63 Offer more language translation We want to read those Iranian blogs. Again, this is MS's job how? I'm thinking they meant something besides "translation," like maybe character sets. And yeah, sure, add more of those. But before you publish an article in a slick magazine, find the right word.
67 End phone subsidies A byzantine maze of hidden revenue transfers - universal service, excise tax, TTY/TDD access, 911, et cetera - discourages innovations like Vonage that don't fit the regulatory format. Pay for all this stuff from general taxes instead of sneaking it onto the phone bill. Phone taxes should be simplified, and explained better. But paying for things out of general revenues is a terrible idea. Systems that rely on user fees are better maintained and offer better service than those paid for out of general revenues. Which do you count on more... getting a dialtone when you pick up the phone or getting from point A to point B on the freeway in a reasonable amount of time? Could be because only 1/3 of highway and road maintenance (at least in California) is paid for by gas taxes, vehicle registration fees, and truck fees... the rest they have to beg from the same pot as education, health care, and parks.
68 Write to President Schwarzenegger When he gets to Washington in, oh, 2012, maybe he can
A list of names, office numbers, email, phone numbers and so on was mailed out a couple months ago. It should have been a tiny text file (especially in csv format), but ended up being about a megabyte. Even in Excel format it would have been more usable.
It could be worse...
Frequently we get emails sent to "all recipients..." that's about 9000 addresses in the company I work for... with gigantic POWERPOINT slides advertising "Free cookies and punch at lunchtime for Saint Patrick's Day!" and stuff like that.
There's no way to unsubscribe, and I've had no luck whatsoever convincing Outlook that by "filter messages matching this description into this folder" I mean that I want it to actually *move* things, so I delete a LOT of email.
Obviously the needs of the user aren't important in your world.
I dunno, users who are someone's mom often have outdated computers with dial-up connections, sometimes with the overhead of AOL added to them, so embedding images is pretty rude when they have to wait 5 minutes for the message to load.
On the other hand, when we got the first ultrasounds of my mom's first grandchild, we posted a web page immediately and sent her the link... which was much more useful than sending an HTML email.
I don't get any spam because I use a Hotmail account for anything public. I don't get pop-ups because I use Opera. I don't get hacked because I keep my patches up to date (which means not bitching about an RPC hole that was patched two months before that the government warned twice about).
;-)
Internet is just fine for me.
And then what about the "smothering regulation" part? You also have an anonymous offshore wireless access point or something?
A car is not a weapon unless it is inentionally used to injure a person. You cannot use a car as a weapon and not go to jail.
A weapon is a tool you use to hurt or kill someone. All sorts of unlikely things have been legally determined to be weapons because people used them to kill others. Ever play Clue? Candlesticks, ropes, wrenches... those are the weapons of the game. True, the charge "assault with a deadly weapon" requires the *intent* to hurt someone. But generally speaking, we consider an item a weapon if you use it to kill someone, even if that wasn't exactly what you were trying to do at the time.
But with cars, people get behind the wheel when they *know* (or should know) they shouldn't be driving, kill people, and then frequently walk away, badly shaken but not a criminal. We basically invented the charge "involuntary manslaughter" so that killing someone with a car was a less serious crime than other kinds of killing people without malice. On July 17th, an 86-year-old man, who had repeatedly hit his garage door and once drove over a friend's retaining wall because he confused the gas and brake pedals, killed 10 people and injured 53 others by driving up to 60 mph through a farmer's market while fleeing the scene of a rear-end collision he'd caused. A few weeks ago, the CHP finally released a preliminary report that determined that the cause of the incident was nothing else besides driver error. So, in another month or so, the Santa Monica Police Department will decide whether or not the guy committed a crime when he killed those people.
The implication here is that the number of deaths is acceptable. That is not the case at all. Every year cars are being made safer. Compare a car today to a car 15-20 years ago, and you'll see what I mean.
20 years ago, 50,000 people in the US died annually in auto accidents. Half of those were drunk-driving accidents.
Now, 40,000 people die annually from auto accidents. Half of those are drunk-driving accidents.
Cars are safer than they used to be, by leaps and bounds. But the roads are more dangerous. We follow too close (if we all were keeping adequate stopping distance between us and the car in front of us on the roadways, peak flows would happen at 45 miles per hour... but CalTrans sensor data shows that peak flows are occuring at 60 miles per hour, meaning we're crowding each other). We drive faster (the Arroyo Parkway, aka The Pasadena Freeway or the 110, was built in 1939 with a vision of cars whizzing along at 45 miles per hour... currently freeways are designed for 70 mph). And there's just MORE of us.
The bright side is, congestion keeps getting worse, and slowing us down. As my transportation engineering instructor put it last spring, we're getting so slow, when we hit each other, we can't kill each other anymore.
But tell me one other deadly weapon that you can hit and kill someone with and not necessarily go to jail. (We're still waiting to see if the Santa Monica Police Department will arrest the guy who drove through the Farmer's Market at 60 miles an hour while fleeing the scene of another accident, killing 10 people and injuring dozens.) We *are* exceptionally tolerant of people's stupidity with cars. Now, if it was wind turbines, and there's a company to sue, that would be different, I think... but I half agree with the grandparent post.
What about young children who can't know any better?
Back in the day, we had these things called "parents." They put dangerous things out of reach, answered questions, explained hazards, and generally kept an eye on things. Not sure exactly when or why they went out of style; I guess they were just too expensive to maintain or something.