What you don't seem to understand is exactly -how- these companies got big in the first place. It wasn't the free market, it was through governments giving companies money to "modernize" the US.
Because established companies got a head start (because they had the equipment to run an ISP and the money to bribe Congress) it made the barrier for breaking into the ISP market quite high because wiring is expensive and your competition already has it thanks to the government.
Because of a lack of competition, the already large companies got larger both through legitimate means (providing a good service) and illegitimate means (by taking government money). This increased the barrier to breaking into the market even more.
It was through regulation that this happened. In a fully free market these things don't happen. All the things you've mentioned that "deregulation" caused, didn't happen because of deregulation! All that happened was the regulations were changed. The financial sector was never "deregulated", some of the regulations were simply changed and changed poorly.
True deregulation would have meant no government involvement, which isn't what happened.
So in other words this boils down to, by getting less I can save more?
I can save money by getting rid of a car and buying a bike, I can save money by getting rid of the bike and walking. But the quality decreases a lot as well. A BMW and an old beat up Ford Pinto will both get you from point A to point B but in general it will be a lot more enjoyable driving the BMW than the Pinto.
The problem I have observed with most Americans is that they don't know HOW to save money.
That is because, quite simply, it makes no economic sense to save cash. Even using the hilariously manipulated official statistic of inflation, the Consumer Price Index, the US dollar has an inflation rate of 1.66%. Using the CPI as it was originally designed without the manipulation gives you a real inflation rate of ~5%. Now, a savings account will pay you, what?.35% interest if you're lucky? A 1 year CD rate will pay you about 1% or so. A 1 year treasury bond will pay about.2%. This means to an American if they keep cash or any other traditionally "safe" investments of cash they are taking a guaranteed loss. Which means that their only other options are to invest it in stocks, foreign bonds, real estate, or commodities such as gold or silver in order to even keep the same purchasing power they have today.
We work hard to earn money..... we should also work hard to save it rather than waste it.
Ok, so where do you put cash that will at least keep up with inflation without scaring the masses off?
The fact is, most Americans don't save because there is no financial incentive to save. Cash is a "hot potato" that needs to be spent and invested in -something- or else you take a guaranteed loss.
Depends on where you are. China is about following the rules and not getting caught and thrown into the government's secret concentration camps, as such it is very much based on not showing individualism. I'd imagine the case would be the same in North Korea.
In Kong Kong and Singapore, things are much more individualistic. The focus in work is about climbing the company ladder and being the best for yourself. Japan is a mix between the two, on one hand they don't want to be the "squeaky wheel" on the other hand they idolize individuals who go out and do something. So it is rather caught in the middle, you can see this in Japanese media, especially anime where the hero has some great power, but must use it in a collectivist way.
Japan is a weird place. On one hand it is very much into collectivism. On the other hand, it also has a strong amount of individualism in its culture due to the influence of the west. So often you see the two basic philosophies clash.
Yep, but that's how it is with most laws. Consider the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970, reading the title you think it would require the bank to obtain less personal information, not to disclose its information and generally be more privacy friendly. Nope, instead it does the opposite, creating less bank secrecy and whole heck of a lot less privacy.
Right, because I forgot about how much change has happened against unjust laws by people following them and just writing letters to their congressman. I forgot all the monumental change that has happened because of that.
Oh wait, that never happened and it will never happen. I remember back during the early days of the DMCA I wrote in a letter to my congressman urging him to oppose it. A few days later I get a letter back assuring me that he was -supporting- it.
Civil disobedience is really the only way to protest effectively and get real change.
It isn't hard to use the phone, but, lets say you want to use the USB mode to access your phone's Micro-SD card like a flash drive. This mode is accessed differently depending on the phone. My captivate glide it must be accessed (confusingly) from the Wireless and Network settings, my old HTC phone a dialog box popped up letting you choose disk mode. My friends Motorola accesses it through an entirely different menu.
I really don't see the need to spend $400 on an outdated tablet. I can buy an Android tablet, brand new, for $200. If I wanted bleeding edge, I can buy an Asus EEE Pad Transformer for $500 (the same price of a bottom-end iPad 3) and have a lot better specs (double the storage space, better CPU, better camera, etc.).
Exactly. There hasn't been a single UI that has really been better than stock Android. It makes it an absolute pain to figure any settings out for someone else unless you have the exact same phone.
It really isn't fragmentation and it isn't really Google's fault. But it isn't what you are describing.
What phones get updates are random and have little to do with hardware specs. One phone might be stuck with 1.6 while another phone with the same (or lesser) hardware specs might be upgradeable to Android 2.1. Even worse the exact same phone might have different OSes based on the network or country.
Yep. $35 is really hard to beat. By the time it gets to about $50, I can get a used PC for that price, sure, it won't be ARM but that's really no big deal.
Mods generally don't work on console games (unless you emulate them on a PC)
And yes, I'm quite aware that online scoreboards and online multiplayer exist today.
What I mean by cheaper localization is that in the past there were a lot of games that could be easily translated, but the cost of distributing them in physical cartage form might not make any profit. Case in point, Earthbound Zero (Mother 1) a fully complete translation that was never actually released due to the limitations of cartridge media. But today, even games with a rabid fanbase and a complete (fan) translation aren't released such as Mother 1+2 for GBA and Mother 3, both of which could simply be released for the 3DS virtual console. But they haven't.
Not to mention the huge back library Nintendo has for SNES RPGs that have never made it to the US or Europe (Fire Emblem series to name one)
And yes, you can get rid of region restrictions by modding/emulating but it really isn't the same.
On point 1, these channels weren't just like CSPAN or some weird niche channel but were pretty popular channels such as nickelodeon and MTV.
I've never understood cable though, if I'm paying for cable and the cable company is paying other companies for their content, shouldn't it be ad free? Wouldn't it just make more sense to be fully supported by ads or fully supported by the cable companies and their consumers?
And we still had those games back before the internet. Heck, it was even worse back then because your only source of reviews were magazines and word of mouth (or if you were really really lucky you could play a few minutes of the game in the stores).
Yeah, and this really sucks because I much prefer to play my games on a console than a PC if, for nothing else, they "just work" and will "just work" for 7 years or more and will play all the latest games without any extra hardware. I'm hoping that eventually Valve will release at least a small update to fix some of the bugs of the 360 version and add in new weapons and a map or two.
Yep, this is the biggest pitfall with console gaming that the internet was supposed to fix. For example, one only needs to look at Team Fortress 2 for Xbox/PS3 vs the PC counterpart.
Back in the early days of the internet me and my friends used to dream of what the internet would bring, new levels, new modes, online scoreboards, new content, online multiplayer, cheaper localization, the end of region restrictions...
Right, because I remember the time I was almost forced by the NFL to be a starting quarterback, was almost forced by the NBA to play professional basketball, etc.
Its their choice to:
A) Play their chosen sport professionally
B) Play in a league that allows it
C) Participate in taking those drugs/hormones
Because a good story can make the game a lot better, it can't make a crap game good, but it can turn a solid game into a legendary game.
Look at Final Fantasy VII, the storyline is what really made it all fit together.
Some games need no storyline to make it fun, for example, no one really questions why blocks are falling from the Soviet skies in Tetris, they just are. Same with Team Fortress 2. On the other hand, take away the story from most RPGs and adventure games and you are just some guy running around the world. Its a lot better to feel like you've just saved the world than it is that you just mowed down a bunch of enemies.
So in other words they managed to jailbreak iOS 6 beta 3using a previously known exploit which exploits things that are hard-coded... How is this exciting news? If you exploit hardware you should be able to jailbreak any OS on there, its simply just porting some software. To make it even less exciting this is a tethered jailbreak which means its useless for nearly everyone.
Pretty much. That seems to be the problem with this generation, at least for me. Either a game requires very little input of the player (Final Fantasy XIII anyone?) or it is such a vast world and requires lots of time to fully enjoy it (like Skyrim, and Minecraft to a lesser extent).
All I really want is a fun game that is:
A) challenging
B) doesn't require much investment
C) Is rewarding
D) has enough content to justify its price
Today it seems like the focus is either on the (really) hardcore gamer or casual non-gamers.
Where was the rise of fiction in video games? We look at the previous generation with rose-tinted glasses by ignoring all the crap games and just looking at the gems.
Every generation complains about the same thing: too many sequels, not enough original properties. I mean, 5 years later we will be looking back and looking at this generation with longing.
Because its optimized for the Raspberry Pi hardware and the tweaks it uses are likely to be near worthless for most other hardware. Its like all the distributions that were coming out for the EEE PC (first low cost netbook to gain popularity) which had the main advantage of being really easy to install/use on the particular platform. In other words, instead of spending a few hours configuring Debian to optimize it for my hardware I can just install a simple OS.
And do you really think that X candidate will really be better than Y candidate when both candidates have a chance of being elected? Sure Z and A candidates might be better but won't have a chance of being elected.
Voting for change is just as stupid as clicking "like" to cure cancer.
It really isn't worth it to get scrap gold from plated items including CPUs and motherboards. Tom's Hardware did a thing on how to do it and I tried it only to come up with a tiny chunk of gold (if 100% pure still only worth about $4 today). Industrially it may be possible to get gold/silver but I'm not sure how economically viable it is due to labor being very expensive and it being a labor intensive process.
When it comes down to it, if you have to pay to recycle something, the recycling is not economically viable. If they pay you to recycle it, recycling is economically viable.
Ok, so you say that having a few Pirate Party members would be a good thing for the US, how do you expect them to get elected? Look at the Libertarian Party, which has ~1% of the vote in a good portion of every election and is pretty much the largest third party in the US. Now with 1% of the vote, you'd expect 1 seat out of every 100 in a legislative body to have at least one Libertarian, but there isn't. The only legislative body in the US with a Libertarian is the RI house of representatives meaning the Libertarian party has 1 seat of 7916 available. At least that is better than the Green Party who is another contender to be the major third party (it has more registered voters but generally does poorer in elections) with 0 seats out of 7916.
Yes, I vote and I generally vote with a protest vote, its unlikely that most of my candidate choices (except in local elections) will ever get in. There are several times where I write in "None of the Above" (especially in local elections). But does voting change anything? No. It hasn't historically changed anything in the US and won't change anything in the future, its only benefit is you can pat yourself on the back when another Republocrat screws up the nation and say, well, I didn't vote for him...
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What you don't seem to understand is exactly -how- these companies got big in the first place. It wasn't the free market, it was through governments giving companies money to "modernize" the US.
Because established companies got a head start (because they had the equipment to run an ISP and the money to bribe Congress) it made the barrier for breaking into the ISP market quite high because wiring is expensive and your competition already has it thanks to the government.
Because of a lack of competition, the already large companies got larger both through legitimate means (providing a good service) and illegitimate means (by taking government money). This increased the barrier to breaking into the market even more.
It was through regulation that this happened. In a fully free market these things don't happen. All the things you've mentioned that "deregulation" caused, didn't happen because of deregulation! All that happened was the regulations were changed. The financial sector was never "deregulated", some of the regulations were simply changed and changed poorly.
True deregulation would have meant no government involvement, which isn't what happened.
I can save money by getting rid of a car and buying a bike, I can save money by getting rid of the bike and walking. But the quality decreases a lot as well. A BMW and an old beat up Ford Pinto will both get you from point A to point B but in general it will be a lot more enjoyable driving the BMW than the Pinto.
The problem I have observed with most Americans is that they don't know HOW to save money.
That is because, quite simply, it makes no economic sense to save cash. Even using the hilariously manipulated official statistic of inflation, the Consumer Price Index, the US dollar has an inflation rate of 1.66%. Using the CPI as it was originally designed without the manipulation gives you a real inflation rate of ~5%. Now, a savings account will pay you, what? .35% interest if you're lucky? A 1 year CD rate will pay you about 1% or so. A 1 year treasury bond will pay about .2%. This means to an American if they keep cash or any other traditionally "safe" investments of cash they are taking a guaranteed loss. Which means that their only other options are to invest it in stocks, foreign bonds, real estate, or commodities such as gold or silver in order to even keep the same purchasing power they have today.
We work hard to earn money..... we should also work hard to save it rather than waste it.
Ok, so where do you put cash that will at least keep up with inflation without scaring the masses off?
The fact is, most Americans don't save because there is no financial incentive to save. Cash is a "hot potato" that needs to be spent and invested in -something- or else you take a guaranteed loss.
Depends on where you are. China is about following the rules and not getting caught and thrown into the government's secret concentration camps, as such it is very much based on not showing individualism. I'd imagine the case would be the same in North Korea.
In Kong Kong and Singapore, things are much more individualistic. The focus in work is about climbing the company ladder and being the best for yourself. Japan is a mix between the two, on one hand they don't want to be the "squeaky wheel" on the other hand they idolize individuals who go out and do something. So it is rather caught in the middle, you can see this in Japanese media, especially anime where the hero has some great power, but must use it in a collectivist way.
Japan is a weird place. On one hand it is very much into collectivism. On the other hand, it also has a strong amount of individualism in its culture due to the influence of the west. So often you see the two basic philosophies clash.
Yep, but that's how it is with most laws. Consider the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970, reading the title you think it would require the bank to obtain less personal information, not to disclose its information and generally be more privacy friendly. Nope, instead it does the opposite, creating less bank secrecy and whole heck of a lot less privacy.
All laws are newspeak.
Right, because I forgot about how much change has happened against unjust laws by people following them and just writing letters to their congressman. I forgot all the monumental change that has happened because of that.
Oh wait, that never happened and it will never happen. I remember back during the early days of the DMCA I wrote in a letter to my congressman urging him to oppose it. A few days later I get a letter back assuring me that he was -supporting- it.
Civil disobedience is really the only way to protest effectively and get real change.
It isn't hard to use the phone, but, lets say you want to use the USB mode to access your phone's Micro-SD card like a flash drive. This mode is accessed differently depending on the phone. My captivate glide it must be accessed (confusingly) from the Wireless and Network settings, my old HTC phone a dialog box popped up letting you choose disk mode. My friends Motorola accesses it through an entirely different menu.
I really don't see the need to spend $400 on an outdated tablet. I can buy an Android tablet, brand new, for $200. If I wanted bleeding edge, I can buy an Asus EEE Pad Transformer for $500 (the same price of a bottom-end iPad 3) and have a lot better specs (double the storage space, better CPU, better camera, etc.).
Exactly. There hasn't been a single UI that has really been better than stock Android. It makes it an absolute pain to figure any settings out for someone else unless you have the exact same phone.
And the pre-loaded crap? Get rid of it.
It really isn't fragmentation and it isn't really Google's fault. But it isn't what you are describing.
What phones get updates are random and have little to do with hardware specs. One phone might be stuck with 1.6 while another phone with the same (or lesser) hardware specs might be upgradeable to Android 2.1. Even worse the exact same phone might have different OSes based on the network or country.
Yep. $35 is really hard to beat. By the time it gets to about $50, I can get a used PC for that price, sure, it won't be ARM but that's really no big deal.
Mods generally don't work on console games (unless you emulate them on a PC)
And yes, I'm quite aware that online scoreboards and online multiplayer exist today.
What I mean by cheaper localization is that in the past there were a lot of games that could be easily translated, but the cost of distributing them in physical cartage form might not make any profit. Case in point, Earthbound Zero (Mother 1) a fully complete translation that was never actually released due to the limitations of cartridge media. But today, even games with a rabid fanbase and a complete (fan) translation aren't released such as Mother 1+2 for GBA and Mother 3, both of which could simply be released for the 3DS virtual console. But they haven't.
Not to mention the huge back library Nintendo has for SNES RPGs that have never made it to the US or Europe (Fire Emblem series to name one)
And yes, you can get rid of region restrictions by modding/emulating but it really isn't the same.
On point 1, these channels weren't just like CSPAN or some weird niche channel but were pretty popular channels such as nickelodeon and MTV.
I've never understood cable though, if I'm paying for cable and the cable company is paying other companies for their content, shouldn't it be ad free? Wouldn't it just make more sense to be fully supported by ads or fully supported by the cable companies and their consumers?
And we still had those games back before the internet. Heck, it was even worse back then because your only source of reviews were magazines and word of mouth (or if you were really really lucky you could play a few minutes of the game in the stores).
Yeah, and this really sucks because I much prefer to play my games on a console than a PC if, for nothing else, they "just work" and will "just work" for 7 years or more and will play all the latest games without any extra hardware. I'm hoping that eventually Valve will release at least a small update to fix some of the bugs of the 360 version and add in new weapons and a map or two.
Yep, this is the biggest pitfall with console gaming that the internet was supposed to fix. For example, one only needs to look at Team Fortress 2 for Xbox/PS3 vs the PC counterpart.
Back in the early days of the internet me and my friends used to dream of what the internet would bring, new levels, new modes, online scoreboards, new content, online multiplayer, cheaper localization, the end of region restrictions...
Only to never see them fully realized.
Right, because I remember the time I was almost forced by the NFL to be a starting quarterback, was almost forced by the NBA to play professional basketball, etc.
Its their choice to:
A) Play their chosen sport professionally
B) Play in a league that allows it
C) Participate in taking those drugs/hormones
Because a good story can make the game a lot better, it can't make a crap game good, but it can turn a solid game into a legendary game.
Look at Final Fantasy VII, the storyline is what really made it all fit together.
Some games need no storyline to make it fun, for example, no one really questions why blocks are falling from the Soviet skies in Tetris, they just are. Same with Team Fortress 2. On the other hand, take away the story from most RPGs and adventure games and you are just some guy running around the world. Its a lot better to feel like you've just saved the world than it is that you just mowed down a bunch of enemies.
So in other words they managed to jailbreak iOS 6 beta 3using a previously known exploit which exploits things that are hard-coded... How is this exciting news? If you exploit hardware you should be able to jailbreak any OS on there, its simply just porting some software. To make it even less exciting this is a tethered jailbreak which means its useless for nearly everyone.
Pretty much. That seems to be the problem with this generation, at least for me. Either a game requires very little input of the player (Final Fantasy XIII anyone?) or it is such a vast world and requires lots of time to fully enjoy it (like Skyrim, and Minecraft to a lesser extent).
All I really want is a fun game that is:
A) challenging
B) doesn't require much investment
C) Is rewarding
D) has enough content to justify its price
Today it seems like the focus is either on the (really) hardcore gamer or casual non-gamers.
Where was the rise of fiction in video games? We look at the previous generation with rose-tinted glasses by ignoring all the crap games and just looking at the gems.
Every generation complains about the same thing: too many sequels, not enough original properties. I mean, 5 years later we will be looking back and looking at this generation with longing.
Because its optimized for the Raspberry Pi hardware and the tweaks it uses are likely to be near worthless for most other hardware. Its like all the distributions that were coming out for the EEE PC (first low cost netbook to gain popularity) which had the main advantage of being really easy to install/use on the particular platform. In other words, instead of spending a few hours configuring Debian to optimize it for my hardware I can just install a simple OS.
And do you really think that X candidate will really be better than Y candidate when both candidates have a chance of being elected? Sure Z and A candidates might be better but won't have a chance of being elected.
Voting for change is just as stupid as clicking "like" to cure cancer.
It really isn't worth it to get scrap gold from plated items including CPUs and motherboards. Tom's Hardware did a thing on how to do it and I tried it only to come up with a tiny chunk of gold (if 100% pure still only worth about $4 today). Industrially it may be possible to get gold/silver but I'm not sure how economically viable it is due to labor being very expensive and it being a labor intensive process.
When it comes down to it, if you have to pay to recycle something, the recycling is not economically viable. If they pay you to recycle it, recycling is economically viable.
Ok, so you say that having a few Pirate Party members would be a good thing for the US, how do you expect them to get elected? Look at the Libertarian Party, which has ~1% of the vote in a good portion of every election and is pretty much the largest third party in the US. Now with 1% of the vote, you'd expect 1 seat out of every 100 in a legislative body to have at least one Libertarian, but there isn't. The only legislative body in the US with a Libertarian is the RI house of representatives meaning the Libertarian party has 1 seat of 7916 available. At least that is better than the Green Party who is another contender to be the major third party (it has more registered voters but generally does poorer in elections) with 0 seats out of 7916.
Yes, I vote and I generally vote with a protest vote, its unlikely that most of my candidate choices (except in local elections) will ever get in. There are several times where I write in "None of the Above" (especially in local elections). But does voting change anything? No. It hasn't historically changed anything in the US and won't change anything in the future, its only benefit is you can pat yourself on the back when another Republocrat screws up the nation and say, well, I didn't vote for him...