Answer one is: Proportinately more per user. The base costs are the same and , while the incremental costs are down, the revenue stream has tanked, giving it a net negative effect. The business model wasn't designed to support a steadily declining customer base over a long period of time.
Answer two: New content is not forthcoming at a fast enough rate to make the thing profitable. With the 360, hot new games lead to hot new DLC that MS gets a cut of in a distro deal. On the old system, not so much.
That, and I would guess getting assigned to maintain old X-Box titles has a certain Siberia-esque feel to it around the office.
Dollars and politics, essentially. And, btw, I typed this thing using paragraphs, but it won't display that way. Sry bout that.
That 200 bil was gonna get spent, anyhow, through the state medicaid system picking up the tab for the uninsured who are forced into bankruptcy, thus defaulting on their medical bills. Likely, actually, there will be a savings, as the collection agencies will be cut out of the middle thus eliminating a whole layer of cost that will more than offset the beureaucratic expense incurred. It's not an added expense, but a shifted cost with a more consolidated base of purchasing power. It's also very good for the credit health of the lower, working and middle classes, and therefore the consumer economy as a whole.
But then again, it is California. So, yeah, chances are they'll bone it.
Dear Canuckistani/.ers,
Your anecdotal evidence has convinced me that Antarcitca is clearly a place for jam-shorts, cocoa butter and daquiris. Thanks for the vacation idea.
Much Love,
Snarkalicious
As a news junky, I associate with other news junkies of various stripes. My Facebook Feed reads like an amalgamation of Fox News, CNN, BBC, Slashdot and The National Enquirer. Put me in there with my friends list intact, and I'd probably be able to replace HLN.
I assume it's a similar deal with these journalists.
Try it with a random sample of people and get back to me.
Just for the record, you don't have to be white to be a redneck, or gay to suck balls.
Capitalists built railroads on the backs of pressed Chinese and Irish workers, built power plants that ruined rivers, created hospitals that only the only the wealthy can afford and on and on.
The issue we are having in this little back and forth is that we're both stubborn bastards, so I'll drive to the heart of the issue to maybe get us to a more peaceful place on all this. What we're talking about here is the corruption of those in power. Whether you're speaking of the great capitalist magnate, or the sitting Senator from whereverthehell, that person has fair odds of being ambitious, self-serving and greedy. So people get screwed. Doesn't really matter which one is in charge, really. If you de-bone the government of all authority, you create a vaccuum of power. In Capitalism EVERYTHING is a commodity. So who do you think would fill the void? Rugged Montana survalists who grow their own corn and hunt their own fur? Single mothers with two shitty jobs? Middle managers of telemarketing firms? Hardly. Same goes on the other side of the coin. I ain't such a fan of the Hugo Chaves model either, truth be told. A public education, a library card and a voter registration ID are more accessible to the common citizen than appreciable economic wealth and influence. I would rather strengthen government and be able to vote out those who screw over the people, than to weaken it and be beholden to the profit motive in a system that dictates that vastly more lose than win.
I'm ranting. Let me reel it back in.
Taft was a Plutocrat in a time of corporate ownership of government. Just like Dick Cheney, Hank Paulson, Bush Jr., Bush Sr, Tim Giethner, JFK, Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon, Henry Kissenger, and yeas the savior himself Barrack Obama, too. None of those assholes were, or are, owned by communists. I lied, I'm not done ranting.
Do you know why we're having issues with farming in places like the San Fernando valley? Because we're chasing an impossible dream. We want to all get rich and eat steaks and fuck models, but we can't. No matter how far we grow the economy, it won't be enough. The indefinite expansion of wealth is not sustainable. There isn't enough stuff. We're losing the rainforests, ecosystems are collapsing (thanks for bringing up nitrogen in algae blooms, btw. put me in mind of the dead zone in the Gulf, and then the huge trash soup patch in the Pacific to name a few) and a preponderance of evidence points to it keeping on going, and it being our damn fault. Capitalism is blind to the distant future, and myopic at best concerning any cost or reward outside of quarterly cost and profit. It only self regulates with these things to guide it, and when the end comes, and it all crashes down, some derivatives whiz is going to die, last and smiling, with trillions of fucking dollars because he bet it would happen that way. Winner, winner, chicken dinner. Why the hell do you think we have an impossibly huge derivatives and credit markets to come crashing down in the first place? It's because we need more money, and we can't compete in terms of labor end environmental costs in the industrial markets while still making sure our people can eat and breathe, so we've started conjuring money out of thin air to keep the machine going.
Oh, and Enron is the answer you're looking for. A state with better than 120% of peak power needs, due to the de-regulation of energy markets, allowing one company (unless you want to try to paint them as nefarious agents of Stalin In leage with Alinsky and the Teletubbies, or whatever) to drive prices up by caging supply while creating rolling brownouts/blackouts to create the illusion of scarcity.
We need a stong government just as much as we need strong markets. It sucks, really, but if you vest too much power in a single system that can separate itself from accountability, it breaks everything. You get shantytowns, you get Hitler, you get a slave trade, you get Mao.
Oh, and on
No, in point of fact, but there's no good business model for that in Iceland to begin with. After abducting all six of the black folks they've got, the company would be out of business.
So, when you said "Capitalism doesnt have a framework. In fact, a free society and a capitalism is the antithesis of a "framework," and I responded with a broad attack on the history of laissez-faire capitalism in our country (and others, for that matter), I was implying you were making an argument for violent anarchy, somehow? You just used a strawman to paint a picture of a strawman suit on a pseudo-specific argument. I'm impressed. Seriously. You bullshit like I bullshit, and we should do this more often.
Also, when we on the left use the term 'teabagger' as pejorative, it is with a deep sense of irony. Considering that those who identify with the "Tea Party" and all of it's iterations not only tend to be homophobes (and nothing is quite so easy on the schadenfreude organ of the average homo/bi-sexual as needling a raging homophobe, regardless of political affiliation, with gay sex jokes), but they actually used the term to describe themselves first. All praise be to Glenn Beck for that-un. High-larry-oos.
As to the link between 'benevolent' government and the persistence of geographic and racialy poverty (if i've misunderstood the conncetion you're making, please let me know) I would argue that, in a pre-welfare system, 'benevolent' capitalists didn't do a whole lot for poor folk, either. Poverty is an old problem after all, and will take a long, concerted, expensive effort to have a serious impact on. Programs of said nature are just, but have the nasty side effect of being bad for short profits. Add in a healthy dose of buyable influence (yes, my commie ass wants publicly funded elections), and you have a perfect storm that keeps them from being implemented.
And antitrust is still important. Also.
Right now? If you're looking to business as anything other than a bank/investment firm, white slavery operation or kiddie porn ring in Iceland, the answer to just about any request is going to be 'yes'. It's a great time for businesses to extract concessions from Iceland's govt.
No time for a concerted thesis on this, esp since we're going pretty far afield, as is good and proper in such a forum. Perhaps more later if I find myself with the time.
Some Thoughts:
The system was already going down. I smelled the crap in Greenspan's pants from halfway across the country.
The Community Reinvestment Act, as it was originally designed, was put in place to help alleviate the institutional racism experienced by African American communities which were subjected to discrinatory lending practices. It was in later revisons of the bill (under considerably more conservative stewardship...unless you'd argue that George HW, Clinton and W, along with their attendent congresses fall to the LEFT of Carter and his) that pried open the regulatory controls that surrounded the act and ushered in such wonderful products as Securitized NINA Loan Bundles (which gave rise to two loads in the aforementioned Fed Chair's pants: a white one in the 90's, then a brown one at the outset of the recent unpleasantness).
I don't want further regulation, I want proper regulation. The type of regulation that's aimed at preserving that other great American value: equality. Unfettered capitalism gave us the glory days of scrip and blacklung, and it would lead us right back there in pursuit of the bottom line if we let it.
Alinsky was an advocate of social, economic and political change through deomocratic community action, not communism or socialism. The informed and organized actions of citizens are a natural market force, able to create an economic and govenmental system which is a steward of the people as opposed to an exploiter of them. Long term, Alinsky is as much a friend of yours as he is of mine.
Cloward and Piven were dolts.
I did, in point of fact, catch the part where you said I'm either a liar, or just an idiot. Well done on the artful language, and not at all in bad form. After all, I started by covering 'whatever, McCarthy' in about a half-inch of rhetorical soil.
Cheers.
Preservation of competition is about maintaing the health of the consumer market. The FTC isn't saying that Intel doesn't know how to make money, but that their practices are threatening to the maintenance of a robust competitive market. Capitalism without a framework of rules and standards that is about as sustainable over the long-term as the communist shadows your sig line is barking at. Take it from a left wing progressive: The policies put forth by Obama are centrist. The center has just been far enough to port long enough that most folks don't recognize it anymore.
Oh, and when we gave the Fed those billions, what they did was to prevent a total sieze-up of credit markets, without which large scale economic movement is essentially impossible. What they did there was to save capitalism from the ravages of an underregulated market.
Too right. A 'tepid' response is one that comes from 'administration officials'. Hillz is cabinet level, and internationally respected to boot. If she sends a letter, odds are good that Hu Jintao reads it himself.
If you want a low quality, detail light overview of the shit you heard the names of most on teh teevee, read TFA. Or you could masturbate for yourself.
fapfapfapfapfapfap
The problem isn't the people, actually. It's the contract that some numbfuck from Dell laid down in an attempt to get the cheapest price possible on labor. In return, they got a service that will fire anyone who deviates from a one-track script that runs straight through a diagnostic cd. That poor bastard likely realized what was going on just fine, but was one common sense suggestion away from homelessness at the time.
Perhaps in the near future it will be repurposed to filter out the stupid.
I, for one, would blow Bill Gates if he could just do this and kill Twitter.
Point taken, but I don't think the issue at hand has much to do with those who make informed, rational and proactive choices about what runs on their machines.
The greater masses would rather pay for something that looks like the easy way up front and then enjoy bitching about the buggery they're subjected to later. Cuz there ain't nothin more Murcan than overspending and then voicing dissatisfaction with the results.
The purpose of the border check system was never to actually stop the flow of drugs, silly. It was to drive out as many small players as possible, and concentrate the market into a few well funded/armed cartels. In this way, bribes come in at the director/secretary/senatorial level in a quiet and efficiant manner. Skipping the middle man (i.e. the border guard/local sheriff) on the bribery chain keeps my smack nice n' cheap.
Slashdot Mirror
Answer one is: Proportinately more per user. The base costs are the same and , while the incremental costs are down, the revenue stream has tanked, giving it a net negative effect. The business model wasn't designed to support a steadily declining customer base over a long period of time. Answer two: New content is not forthcoming at a fast enough rate to make the thing profitable. With the 360, hot new games lead to hot new DLC that MS gets a cut of in a distro deal. On the old system, not so much. That, and I would guess getting assigned to maintain old X-Box titles has a certain Siberia-esque feel to it around the office. Dollars and politics, essentially. And, btw, I typed this thing using paragraphs, but it won't display that way. Sry bout that.
Immune to shame/reason. No metaphorical bj for you.
That 200 bil was gonna get spent, anyhow, through the state medicaid system picking up the tab for the uninsured who are forced into bankruptcy, thus defaulting on their medical bills. Likely, actually, there will be a savings, as the collection agencies will be cut out of the middle thus eliminating a whole layer of cost that will more than offset the beureaucratic expense incurred. It's not an added expense, but a shifted cost with a more consolidated base of purchasing power. It's also very good for the credit health of the lower, working and middle classes, and therefore the consumer economy as a whole. But then again, it is California. So, yeah, chances are they'll bone it.
Dear Canuckistani /.ers,
Your anecdotal evidence has convinced me that Antarcitca is clearly a place for jam-shorts, cocoa butter and daquiris. Thanks for the vacation idea.
Much Love,
Snarkalicious
Creators recieve chance to increase wang size in 3...2...1...
As a news junky, I associate with other news junkies of various stripes. My Facebook Feed reads like an amalgamation of Fox News, CNN, BBC, Slashdot and The National Enquirer. Put me in there with my friends list intact, and I'd probably be able to replace HLN. I assume it's a similar deal with these journalists. Try it with a random sample of people and get back to me.
Just for the record, you don't have to be white to be a redneck, or gay to suck balls. Capitalists built railroads on the backs of pressed Chinese and Irish workers, built power plants that ruined rivers, created hospitals that only the only the wealthy can afford and on and on. The issue we are having in this little back and forth is that we're both stubborn bastards, so I'll drive to the heart of the issue to maybe get us to a more peaceful place on all this. What we're talking about here is the corruption of those in power. Whether you're speaking of the great capitalist magnate, or the sitting Senator from whereverthehell, that person has fair odds of being ambitious, self-serving and greedy. So people get screwed. Doesn't really matter which one is in charge, really. If you de-bone the government of all authority, you create a vaccuum of power. In Capitalism EVERYTHING is a commodity. So who do you think would fill the void? Rugged Montana survalists who grow their own corn and hunt their own fur? Single mothers with two shitty jobs? Middle managers of telemarketing firms? Hardly. Same goes on the other side of the coin. I ain't such a fan of the Hugo Chaves model either, truth be told. A public education, a library card and a voter registration ID are more accessible to the common citizen than appreciable economic wealth and influence. I would rather strengthen government and be able to vote out those who screw over the people, than to weaken it and be beholden to the profit motive in a system that dictates that vastly more lose than win. I'm ranting. Let me reel it back in. Taft was a Plutocrat in a time of corporate ownership of government. Just like Dick Cheney, Hank Paulson, Bush Jr., Bush Sr, Tim Giethner, JFK, Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon, Henry Kissenger, and yeas the savior himself Barrack Obama, too. None of those assholes were, or are, owned by communists. I lied, I'm not done ranting. Do you know why we're having issues with farming in places like the San Fernando valley? Because we're chasing an impossible dream. We want to all get rich and eat steaks and fuck models, but we can't. No matter how far we grow the economy, it won't be enough. The indefinite expansion of wealth is not sustainable. There isn't enough stuff. We're losing the rainforests, ecosystems are collapsing (thanks for bringing up nitrogen in algae blooms, btw. put me in mind of the dead zone in the Gulf, and then the huge trash soup patch in the Pacific to name a few) and a preponderance of evidence points to it keeping on going, and it being our damn fault. Capitalism is blind to the distant future, and myopic at best concerning any cost or reward outside of quarterly cost and profit. It only self regulates with these things to guide it, and when the end comes, and it all crashes down, some derivatives whiz is going to die, last and smiling, with trillions of fucking dollars because he bet it would happen that way. Winner, winner, chicken dinner. Why the hell do you think we have an impossibly huge derivatives and credit markets to come crashing down in the first place? It's because we need more money, and we can't compete in terms of labor end environmental costs in the industrial markets while still making sure our people can eat and breathe, so we've started conjuring money out of thin air to keep the machine going. Oh, and Enron is the answer you're looking for. A state with better than 120% of peak power needs, due to the de-regulation of energy markets, allowing one company (unless you want to try to paint them as nefarious agents of Stalin In leage with Alinsky and the Teletubbies, or whatever) to drive prices up by caging supply while creating rolling brownouts/blackouts to create the illusion of scarcity. We need a stong government just as much as we need strong markets. It sucks, really, but if you vest too much power in a single system that can separate itself from accountability, it breaks everything. You get shantytowns, you get Hitler, you get a slave trade, you get Mao. Oh, and on
No, in point of fact, but there's no good business model for that in Iceland to begin with. After abducting all six of the black folks they've got, the company would be out of business.
So, when you said "Capitalism doesnt have a framework. In fact, a free society and a capitalism is the antithesis of a "framework," and I responded with a broad attack on the history of laissez-faire capitalism in our country (and others, for that matter), I was implying you were making an argument for violent anarchy, somehow? You just used a strawman to paint a picture of a strawman suit on a pseudo-specific argument. I'm impressed. Seriously. You bullshit like I bullshit, and we should do this more often. Also, when we on the left use the term 'teabagger' as pejorative, it is with a deep sense of irony. Considering that those who identify with the "Tea Party" and all of it's iterations not only tend to be homophobes (and nothing is quite so easy on the schadenfreude organ of the average homo/bi-sexual as needling a raging homophobe, regardless of political affiliation, with gay sex jokes), but they actually used the term to describe themselves first. All praise be to Glenn Beck for that-un. High-larry-oos. As to the link between 'benevolent' government and the persistence of geographic and racialy poverty (if i've misunderstood the conncetion you're making, please let me know) I would argue that, in a pre-welfare system, 'benevolent' capitalists didn't do a whole lot for poor folk, either. Poverty is an old problem after all, and will take a long, concerted, expensive effort to have a serious impact on. Programs of said nature are just, but have the nasty side effect of being bad for short profits. Add in a healthy dose of buyable influence (yes, my commie ass wants publicly funded elections), and you have a perfect storm that keeps them from being implemented. And antitrust is still important. Also.
Right now? If you're looking to business as anything other than a bank/investment firm, white slavery operation or kiddie porn ring in Iceland, the answer to just about any request is going to be 'yes'. It's a great time for businesses to extract concessions from Iceland's govt.
No time for a concerted thesis on this, esp since we're going pretty far afield, as is good and proper in such a forum. Perhaps more later if I find myself with the time. Some Thoughts: The system was already going down. I smelled the crap in Greenspan's pants from halfway across the country. The Community Reinvestment Act, as it was originally designed, was put in place to help alleviate the institutional racism experienced by African American communities which were subjected to discrinatory lending practices. It was in later revisons of the bill (under considerably more conservative stewardship...unless you'd argue that George HW, Clinton and W, along with their attendent congresses fall to the LEFT of Carter and his) that pried open the regulatory controls that surrounded the act and ushered in such wonderful products as Securitized NINA Loan Bundles (which gave rise to two loads in the aforementioned Fed Chair's pants: a white one in the 90's, then a brown one at the outset of the recent unpleasantness). I don't want further regulation, I want proper regulation. The type of regulation that's aimed at preserving that other great American value: equality. Unfettered capitalism gave us the glory days of scrip and blacklung, and it would lead us right back there in pursuit of the bottom line if we let it. Alinsky was an advocate of social, economic and political change through deomocratic community action, not communism or socialism. The informed and organized actions of citizens are a natural market force, able to create an economic and govenmental system which is a steward of the people as opposed to an exploiter of them. Long term, Alinsky is as much a friend of yours as he is of mine. Cloward and Piven were dolts. I did, in point of fact, catch the part where you said I'm either a liar, or just an idiot. Well done on the artful language, and not at all in bad form. After all, I started by covering 'whatever, McCarthy' in about a half-inch of rhetorical soil. Cheers.
Preservation of competition is about maintaing the health of the consumer market. The FTC isn't saying that Intel doesn't know how to make money, but that their practices are threatening to the maintenance of a robust competitive market. Capitalism without a framework of rules and standards that is about as sustainable over the long-term as the communist shadows your sig line is barking at. Take it from a left wing progressive: The policies put forth by Obama are centrist. The center has just been far enough to port long enough that most folks don't recognize it anymore. Oh, and when we gave the Fed those billions, what they did was to prevent a total sieze-up of credit markets, without which large scale economic movement is essentially impossible. What they did there was to save capitalism from the ravages of an underregulated market.
Too right. A 'tepid' response is one that comes from 'administration officials'. Hillz is cabinet level, and internationally respected to boot. If she sends a letter, odds are good that Hu Jintao reads it himself.
What? You mean the MJ from the comic books wasn't in a perpetual state of Valium OD?
All snark aside, it would be a great way to put Brendan Frasier in the Wednesday post-primetime slot on TBS he so richly deserves.
Hope yer not hangin out waiting for that to be the price sans 2yr carrier contract. Apple has no call or need to drive prices that low.
If you want a low quality, detail light overview of the shit you heard the names of most on teh teevee, read TFA. Or you could masturbate for yourself. fapfapfapfapfapfap
Hey, it only cost three times as much and I got to have corn syrup instead of sugar, so suck it. ...
(thud)
This KoolAid is juuusssst right.
The problem isn't the people, actually. It's the contract that some numbfuck from Dell laid down in an attempt to get the cheapest price possible on labor. In return, they got a service that will fire anyone who deviates from a one-track script that runs straight through a diagnostic cd. That poor bastard likely realized what was going on just fine, but was one common sense suggestion away from homelessness at the time.
Perhaps in the near future it will be repurposed to filter out the stupid. I, for one, would blow Bill Gates if he could just do this and kill Twitter.
Point taken, but I don't think the issue at hand has much to do with those who make informed, rational and proactive choices about what runs on their machines. The greater masses would rather pay for something that looks like the easy way up front and then enjoy bitching about the buggery they're subjected to later. Cuz there ain't nothin more Murcan than overspending and then voicing dissatisfaction with the results.
The purpose of the border check system was never to actually stop the flow of drugs, silly. It was to drive out as many small players as possible, and concentrate the market into a few well funded/armed cartels. In this way, bribes come in at the director/secretary/senatorial level in a quiet and efficiant manner. Skipping the middle man (i.e. the border guard/local sheriff) on the bribery chain keeps my smack nice n' cheap.
Mom?