It's true. This is the same thing that Twitter is doing - keeping Rails for the front-end and using Scala for the back-end. Much of the grunt work for Facebook is not done using PHP, and much of the grunt work for Twitter will not be done with Ruby.
Economic theory states that as the number of competitors approaches infinity, then the price will equal marginal cost. After a certain point, the difference between the price and the marginal cost will be small enough that it doesn't matter, but 4 is not really close to that point.
Your analysis also requires very limited barriers to entry/exit. The current cell providers are experts on creating barriers to entry - for example, restrictive 3-year contracts that prevent the customer base from migrating to a better provider.
Other commenters are right: the price is based on supply as much as demand. However in this case the main determinant of the supply is the price since other factors are negligible (things like labour or other input costs). The price will be determined by demand - which, I may add, is rather inelastic given how addictive text messages are.
Of course, the economic analysis of text-messaging services is much more sophisticated than the back-of-napkin stuff we have here. Maybe we should stop applying introductory economics courses to where they do not belong.
There doesn't need to be just one alternative to IE. How many people do you think switched from IE to Firefox and then back to IE because they thought Firefox sucked? Or switched from IE6 to Firefox and then to IE7? I know a number of my non-techie friends did this, they liked the way IE7 did things more than Firefox. Maybe Chrome will attract some of those users.
It seems like everywhere, people are praising the spread of Linux, or arguing against it, or blah blah. My question is, why do Linux geeks care if Linux gains market share? There's no profits to be made or anything like that. If average Joe User used Linux, then I wouldn't have the excuse of, "no I can't fix your computer, because I don't use Windows." Why do we want to spread Linux?
These languages are clean, easy to learn, and abstract away from the machine architecture enough that young'ns don't need to worry about all that stuff just yet.
You don't really expect things like Fibonacci numbers or binary calculators to entertain a 12-year old do you? Why not make something actually fun, like a game. One class when I was in university had an assignment where you had to remake the "Hunt the Wumpus" game. Little games like that might be better for getting kids into programming than the boring stuff like Fibonacci.
No mention of jQuery versus other similar JS libraries? My company is considering switching from mootools to jQuery for new projects, but the only significant benefit I see is better documentation. So how does it stack up against the competition?
I've used jQuery, Mootools and Prototype/Scriptaculous extensively and I have to say jQuery is my favourite. I can't really compare to extjs since I haven't used it.
You're right, the documentation is much much better than the others that I've used. That alone IMO is a reason to use it.
Two more reasons:
I find that with jQuery you tend to write less code than you do with Mootools or Prototype because of the jQuery object and selectors.
I find you can do client-side processing more easily. I've been working on is a web app that let's you filter through a large amount of data. I've started to attach things to pieces of data using hidden divs and/or classes, and then with jQuery use selectors to apply filters instead of having to make requests back to the server and get SQL to filter them. Takes a huge load off of your databases. You can do this with the other JS libraries, it's just very elegant with jQuery selectors: $(".user.male").hide() will filter out any male users from the list.
There are reasons not to use it too. It is higher level, so if you're old school and want to do things the old school way, then you'll probably have to fight a bit with jQuery to do it. When I first tried jQuery I hated it because it wouldn't let me do things the way I always had. However after you get used to it, I think it is an investment well made.
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Somebody must have typed "google" into Google. It's the only possible explanation.
Google is "too big" to fail.
You've obviously never tried to install Gentoo.
It's true. This is the same thing that Twitter is doing - keeping Rails for the front-end and using Scala for the back-end. Much of the grunt work for Facebook is not done using PHP, and much of the grunt work for Twitter will not be done with Ruby.
That porn site must have a lot of servers to take up that many Post-it notes!
This is called the Heisenbug principle.
Damn! You beat me to this one.
Vim? Please don't leave me...
If it's Gentoo-based you could install things with ehmerge.
Because boron boride is actually the cure for cancer. You'll see.
Economic theory states that as the number of competitors approaches infinity, then the price will equal marginal cost. After a certain point, the difference between the price and the marginal cost will be small enough that it doesn't matter, but 4 is not really close to that point.
Your analysis also requires very limited barriers to entry/exit. The current cell providers are experts on creating barriers to entry - for example, restrictive 3-year contracts that prevent the customer base from migrating to a better provider.
Other commenters are right: the price is based on supply as much as demand. However in this case the main determinant of the supply is the price since other factors are negligible (things like labour or other input costs). The price will be determined by demand - which, I may add, is rather inelastic given how addictive text messages are.
Of course, the economic analysis of text-messaging services is much more sophisticated than the back-of-napkin stuff we have here. Maybe we should stop applying introductory economics courses to where they do not belong.
There doesn't need to be just one alternative to IE. How many people do you think switched from IE to Firefox and then back to IE because they thought Firefox sucked? Or switched from IE6 to Firefox and then to IE7? I know a number of my non-techie friends did this, they liked the way IE7 did things more than Firefox. Maybe Chrome will attract some of those users.
It seems like everywhere, people are praising the spread of Linux, or arguing against it, or blah blah. My question is, why do Linux geeks care if Linux gains market share? There's no profits to be made or anything like that. If average Joe User used Linux, then I wouldn't have the excuse of, "no I can't fix your computer, because I don't use Windows." Why do we want to spread Linux?
Or a not-so-small country near the US (which is a not-so-small country near Mexico).
These languages are clean, easy to learn, and abstract away from the machine architecture enough that young'ns don't need to worry about all that stuff just yet.
You don't really expect things like Fibonacci numbers or binary calculators to entertain a 12-year old do you? Why not make something actually fun, like a game. One class when I was in university had an assignment where you had to remake the "Hunt the Wumpus" game. Little games like that might be better for getting kids into programming than the boring stuff like Fibonacci.
It's called natural selection. If we let just anybody become a Sith Lord, they wouldn't be so scary would they?
No mention of jQuery versus other similar JS libraries? My company is considering switching from mootools to jQuery for new projects, but the only significant benefit I see is better documentation. So how does it stack up against the competition?
I've used jQuery, Mootools and Prototype/Scriptaculous extensively and I have to say jQuery is my favourite. I can't really compare to extjs since I haven't used it.
You're right, the documentation is much much better than the others that I've used. That alone IMO is a reason to use it.
Two more reasons:
There are reasons not to use it too. It is higher level, so if you're old school and want to do things the old school way, then you'll probably have to fight a bit with jQuery to do it. When I first tried jQuery I hated it because it wouldn't let me do things the way I always had. However after you get used to it, I think it is an investment well made.