Interesting. But think about this: if the government forces the companies to normalize their volume levels then no volume-level-based detection algorithm is going to work to detect commercials anymore, and we'll lose that ability, because I don't know of any intelligent systems that can determine from the *content* of the broadcast what is a commercial and what is not... in fact, even in some movies there are fake commercials which could very easily confuse the intelligent algorithms which are no longer based on simple volume measurements, and that could be ugly in itself.
Firstly, this is not a monopolistic situation, it is closer to an oligopoly.
Secondly, regulation is only good if what it regulates has a more negative effect on the economy than the increased government expenditures (which translates into higher taxation). I cannot see that this is proven to be the case; what negative impacts do loud commercials have vs. introduction of new laws which must be enforced using resources that may have been used elsewhere?
Just because you are 'tired of it' does not mean we should raise our taxes to appease you.
I hate loud commercials too, but this is just too much government IMHO. I'd much rather just have intelligent TVs or receivers that turned the volume down upon detecting a commercial...based on the settings *I* want, not what the government thinks is best for me.
I'd like to see how long the battery lasts during heavy internet use.
Days? Sorry, but I just don't think so. My Kindle DX battery lasts about two weeks, as long as I don't have wireless on and only read 1-2hrs a day. If wireless is on, substantially less. If I'm *using* the wireless a lot, even less than that.
So, let's leave the hyperbole out of the summary, shall we?
From what I've read, this is weakly analogous to an ADC.... Let's call it a QDC.
They've basically taken quantum interaction and converted or translated the interaction into a binary format. Like taking an analog sine wave and converting it into binary. Only much more complex.
The resulting 'trained' binary system runs conventionally, but is much better than anything someone would've written by 'hand'.
There's no reason to convince you otherwise. Usually the agenda carried by money is self-perpetuating: Money tries to make more of itself.
Sure, some scientists and their practices may be tainted by political bias, but that's hardly cause for real alarm. This will be the case as long as politics exists. Care to fathom a guess when the scheduled day for the cancellation of politics is? Yeah...
But getting back to the sponsors' suppositions... Many only suppose that they want to ethically and morally make more money, either by inventing a new product or improving their existing products, so their only real supposition is that they want to see results. As long as the science being performed is on the ethical 'fairway' and not the 'rough', which I would propose involves a large bit of the spectrum of scientific inquiry, then political agendas and bias are very simply not a going concern with respect to them impacting the science.
What I'm saying is: There are always going to be avenues of scientific inquiry which base themselves in something somehow fundamental to or aligned within the continuum of humanity.
Then maybe you shouldn't get together with a girl who will go googling what you bought her for Christmas? (assuming you somehow mean that's going to be possible via something that Google does) Some people actually like the surprise factor, you know. If I was with someone who was going to track my every move, and do things like sneak into my email accounts, etc, then I'd say the answer is pretty simple: dump the bitch.
Not saying this is a reason to destroy privacy... but your counter to their (il)logic is hardly case-closed.
That's all well and good, but Science and History aren't the same thing at all.
Yes, people are prone to believe history, just as they are prone to believe in god. And guess what? They both offer what seems like logical, rational reasons for acting in certain ways -- we can call these "lessons learned" if you want.
But don't lump Science into this debate. No self-respecting scientist EVER said something is 100% true. Just because a scientist might believe E does in fact equal MC^2 does not mean science is a flawed system.
There's a relatively simple solution to the problem the app store poses to Apple's competitors: Develop software that makes it extremely easy to port an application from the iPhone to Android, etc.
Then, suddenly, all of these app developers who aren't Apple find out they can put their app on the Android or Windows Mobile app stores also, and those stores rapidly catch up to Apple's store. In other words, sit back and let Apple take the lead then use all of Apple's effort against them.
At least, that's what I would be very busy doing if I were Google and Microsoft.
I'm not surprised that you say the applications were all irrelevant. If you just want a phone for a phone, then the iPhone is probably not your best choice, not by any measure. Almost all of the applications are 'like to haves' instead of 'must haves'. I can't really think of any apps that are 'must haves'.
And the texting is clunky at best and can never be as good as a good tactile keypad.
Quite frankly, and I have a new 3GS, I have reservations about getting an iPhone as my next mobile.
Here's a couple gripes:
- I despise iTunes. If it had a less bloated interface then I'd be much happier, but as it is, the interface is my main gripe. It's unresponsive and annoying.
- Apple software updates are a mixed bag. If you aren't careful you can brick your device pretty easily. I tried updating from work and our firewall denied Apple's servers some kind of connection... the result was a bricked device. I can't imagine why I have to use the internet in the process of a firmware upgrade. I should be able to just download the firmware upgrade and install it without having to hope I don't lose my connection in the middle and wind up with a device that has to be restored from a backup.
All said, the iPhone is not a must have. It's a luxury item. You can easily get another smart phone for much, much cheaper without a service contract and save yourself quite a large sum of money in the process.
To solve this a game would have to take a lesson from the real world. There isn't just one bank in the Pittsburgh area, and if the demand increases enough then more will arise to reap the reward of that demand (and lessen the waiting times at other banks).
MMOs could and should do the same thing with city design. There is no need to instance this: players would learn the hard way at first that trying to get to their bank/storage at the busiest bank in town is going to be problematic for them. And implementing a 'solid body' mode in the cities would mean you simply couldn't go there anyway if it was too packed, because you can't walk through people (which to me was always an immersion destroyer anyway).
So what happens when 10 or more asshats decide they're going to stand in the entrance to the auction house, blocking everyone's access?
The game responds intelligently, because it has an algorithm that detects if any city entrance has been blocked for x amount of time. If so, the game dispatches law enforcement type NPCs to the area and they break it up. Failing that, the game then just turns off the solid body mode in that area temporarily.
I agree. And you're right-- it's not realistic right now to increase the average bandwidth per player a thousand-fold. This change would require a technological step-change in available bandwidth to pull off. It would be very cool though.
Also, you would never have to go to the store to buy the game, and you'd never have to download the game or install the game on your machine. You'd never have to patch it either. As soon as you're ready, the game streams to you. No waiting.
On the downside, customization and modding would be more difficult, but not impossible.
Haha yeah it's all good. Most people probably think of the network requirements in terms of one update per second, but that's certainly not enough to get a good gaming experience. Your model of 30 per second is closer, but think about FPS games, where 30 updates a second would essentially mean the fastest latency a player could experience was 33.3ms.
Myself, I can tell the difference between 100ms, 33ms and 0ms (when I'm the server). At 100ms I can hold my own pretty well against anyone. At 33ms I am competitive. At 0ms, I become a unstoppable machine and people call me a cheater.
Granted, MMOs hardly need to give every player an update every 5-10ms.
Anyway, as one person responded to me, if you created a thin-client MMO which did all of the computation on the server side and streamed the video to the player then you'd have a linear growth model. Only problem is that currently that model would use MUCH more bandwidth for the average player than what is currently used, so it's just not practical... yet.
They are as prepared to solve it as the business model is prepared to pay for it, and frankly, there's no proof that spending the amount of money it would take to increase the amount of concurrent players in a specific area at once would be worth the investment. So, why?
And furthermore, your presumption about the limitations being the result of a design flaw regarding servers representing game space is incorrect.
The problem is simply one of technical capability and cost: technology isn't good enough and the cost is too high (these are correlated). Servers are irrelevant; the problem is the network. The technological networking requirements to handle multiple concurrent players in a game space grows logarithmically with the number of players who can interact in 'real time'.
Two players in the same area need only send and receive information about themselves and the other player. Fifty players in the same area means the server must send the actions of all 50 of those players to each and every player. In other words, on a rough maximum, that's approximately 600 times as much data going around than with the two player scenario (2500 vs 4).
Up this number to 250, and you have over 60,000 times as much data moving around. At 1000 players you have 250,000 times as much data moving around than with the original 2 players.
Let's imagine that with all of the overhead -- network security, game action, other information, etc -- each player must be sent several kilobytes a second over the net. For solo players, this would be the minimum and if they had a really slow connection, like say dial-up, they really wouldn't be able to enjoy the experience. Remember, this is for solo players who are alone in the MMO world. But what about those well-organized huge battles?
Even if only 1k/second of each player's network resource requirement was movement/action information, and you have 1000 players in an area, then you are potentially already up to 1000kb/sec of bandwidth that each player would need to just to experience the event in 'real time'. And for the server? The server has to send this data to all 1000 of those players in 'real time', which means that for an epic battle in say Star Wars Galaxies of the Rebels vs. the Imperials, with 500 players on each side, all in a fantastic melee, the server is forced to have an upload bandwidth of 1,000,000kb/s, or 1000mb/s or 1gb/s.
Now, I don't know about you, but I think maintaining a 1 gigabyte per second upload bandwidth for what amounts to a very small percentage of the playerbase is not exactly a feasible situation given the technology we have today.
disclaimer: I've used rough numbers, only to serve as examples. I believe my premise is sound, though I admit that the final numbers could work out to be much lower than what I've written here. I'm doubtful that anyone with real experience in the matter is going to come forward with 'real' numbers, but I would be grateful if they did.
1. Your X-Box could be warranted for 3, 5, or 7 years, or forever, but you'll still most likely be replacing it one or more times over the course of that warranty. Kind of a pain in the butt, even if it's 'free'. Or you could go with a PS3 and quite probably enjoy the unit until the next generation of consoles comes out without it ever failing.
2. You claim that Sony stuff is 'over priced' and 'lower quality' and yet you disprove the latter in your very next sentence! (Regardless, the numbers speak for themselves: SCE products are high quality products. Higher than similar M$ electronics in any case.) Regarding the former, you mention that Microsoft gave you 3 months of X-Box Live for free, and yet Sony's PS3 network is 100% free. Indeed, you seem to have defined the term "overpriced" for us all. Thanks, but you can keep your definition for yourself.
3. You mention that you tell Sony customer service to "Fuck off". This is a strong indicator that you are not a very polite individual, and it would not be a large leap to believe you began your customer service experience with the camera on the wrong foot from the start. Assholes like yourself are not treated nicely, and that's for a reason. As someone who has worked in service, I can tell you that I have no patience for asshats like you.
Yeah, well that's just one person's experience, yours, so take this with a grain of salt.
Here's another person's experience: Mine.
I purchased my first PS3 off of E-bay, back when they were rather spendy and hard to find (right after they first came out). The unit failed after 14 months or so. I called Sony and informed them of the failure, and they asked me how long it had been since I purchased the PS3, where I had purchased it from, and if I had a receipt. And at this point I thought I was screwed.
I told them I bought it "about a year ago" which was not a lie, I wasn't exactly sure at the moment. I told them I got it from E-Bay and that I didn't have an original receipt.
You would think they would have refused me, and offered no help.
Instead, they sent me a free-shipping box for the old unit, and a new unit free of charge, and asked me to retain my receipts in the future.
Lo and behold, the new unit failed immediately upon trying to run System Update. I called Sony, informed them of what happened, and they again sent me a free-shipping box, and sent me a new unit free of charge.
Again, this is just one person's experience. Mine. And as an aside, I've found that it doesn't matter which company I am dealing with, if I am not a jerk to the service rep on the phone, and actually ask them how their day is going and have a genuine conversation with them, instead of just demanding that they fix my problem, I get a LOT further towards a solution. You can talk all the shit you want about a company, you can claim that it shouldn't matter what my attitude is on the phone, but then you can also expect to get a lot lower level of service from people. Despite the fact that you're dealing with a big corporation you are also, at the most basic level, dealing with another human being.
The procedures and policies a company has for customer service are just your baseline. If you are cordial, polite and genuine with them, you'll find that the baseline at times can be far exceeded.
Uh, the second Death Star was never completed, you idiot. The rebels learned about it and attacked it before it had everything completed so anything like "four paths to the central core" or "exposed shafts" could well have been necessary during its construction. Haven't you seen Clerks or watched Robot Chicken's parody of Palpatine trying to talk to the foreman?
IIRC it was made operationally ready and intended to be used far before the Rebel spies thought it was operational. Therefore, if the Empire INTENDED to use it in this state, and they left it wide open to destruction at this point... who is the idiot? I'll give you a hint, it's not John Scalzi.
This is the cost of doing business with eBay, and is a major reason why eBay is on the decline. The future of online auctioning and payment is decentralized and dynamic. eBay is trying to stay afloat in a medium that is losing specific gravity -- it's GOING to sink eventually.
As much as I hate to think so, this might just be "good business". The company can and should push the limits of their service while still maintaining their customer base. IF one way to do that is to incrementally increase fees until they see a detrimental business impact, then why shouldn't they try it? If they overdo it, then competition will step in and offer cheaper alternatives. And if PayPal is truly being anti-competitive then there are ways to legally resolve that as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting. But think about this: if the government forces the companies to normalize their volume levels then no volume-level-based detection algorithm is going to work to detect commercials anymore, and we'll lose that ability, because I don't know of any intelligent systems that can determine from the *content* of the broadcast what is a commercial and what is not... in fact, even in some movies there are fake commercials which could very easily confuse the intelligent algorithms which are no longer based on simple volume measurements, and that could be ugly in itself.
Firstly, this is not a monopolistic situation, it is closer to an oligopoly.
Secondly, regulation is only good if what it regulates has a more negative effect on the economy than the increased government expenditures (which translates into higher taxation). I cannot see that this is proven to be the case; what negative impacts do loud commercials have vs. introduction of new laws which must be enforced using resources that may have been used elsewhere?
Just because you are 'tired of it' does not mean we should raise our taxes to appease you.
Nice, I may have to look into that.
On principle, yes.
I hate loud commercials too, but this is just too much government IMHO. I'd much rather just have intelligent TVs or receivers that turned the volume down upon detecting a commercial...based on the settings *I* want, not what the government thinks is best for me.
I'd like to see how long the battery lasts during heavy internet use.
Days? Sorry, but I just don't think so. My Kindle DX battery lasts about two weeks, as long as I don't have wireless on and only read 1-2hrs a day. If wireless is on, substantially less. If I'm *using* the wireless a lot, even less than that.
So, let's leave the hyperbole out of the summary, shall we?
From what I've read, this is weakly analogous to an ADC.... Let's call it a QDC.
They've basically taken quantum interaction and converted or translated the interaction into a binary format. Like taking an analog sine wave and converting it into binary. Only much more complex.
The resulting 'trained' binary system runs conventionally, but is much better than anything someone would've written by 'hand'.
There's no reason to convince you otherwise. Usually the agenda carried by money is self-perpetuating: Money tries to make more of itself.
Sure, some scientists and their practices may be tainted by political bias, but that's hardly cause for real alarm. This will be the case as long as politics exists. Care to fathom a guess when the scheduled day for the cancellation of politics is? Yeah...
But getting back to the sponsors' suppositions... Many only suppose that they want to ethically and morally make more money, either by inventing a new product or improving their existing products, so their only real supposition is that they want to see results. As long as the science being performed is on the ethical 'fairway' and not the 'rough', which I would propose involves a large bit of the spectrum of scientific inquiry, then political agendas and bias are very simply not a going concern with respect to them impacting the science.
What I'm saying is: There are always going to be avenues of scientific inquiry which base themselves in something somehow fundamental to or aligned within the continuum of humanity.
Then maybe you shouldn't get together with a girl who will go googling what you bought her for Christmas? (assuming you somehow mean that's going to be possible via something that Google does) Some people actually like the surprise factor, you know. If I was with someone who was going to track my every move, and do things like sneak into my email accounts, etc, then I'd say the answer is pretty simple: dump the bitch.
Not saying this is a reason to destroy privacy... but your counter to their (il)logic is hardly case-closed.
That's all well and good, but Science and History aren't the same thing at all.
Yes, people are prone to believe history, just as they are prone to believe in god. And guess what? They both offer what seems like logical, rational reasons for acting in certain ways -- we can call these "lessons learned" if you want.
But don't lump Science into this debate. No self-respecting scientist EVER said something is 100% true. Just because a scientist might believe E does in fact equal MC^2 does not mean science is a flawed system.
There's a relatively simple solution to the problem the app store poses to Apple's competitors: Develop software that makes it extremely easy to port an application from the iPhone to Android, etc.
Then, suddenly, all of these app developers who aren't Apple find out they can put their app on the Android or Windows Mobile app stores also, and those stores rapidly catch up to Apple's store. In other words, sit back and let Apple take the lead then use all of Apple's effort against them.
At least, that's what I would be very busy doing if I were Google and Microsoft.
I'm not surprised that you say the applications were all irrelevant. If you just want a phone for a phone, then the iPhone is probably not your best choice, not by any measure. Almost all of the applications are 'like to haves' instead of 'must haves'. I can't really think of any apps that are 'must haves'.
And the texting is clunky at best and can never be as good as a good tactile keypad.
Quite frankly, and I have a new 3GS, I have reservations about getting an iPhone as my next mobile.
Here's a couple gripes:
- I despise iTunes. If it had a less bloated interface then I'd be much happier, but as it is, the interface is my main gripe. It's unresponsive and annoying.
- Apple software updates are a mixed bag. If you aren't careful you can brick your device pretty easily. I tried updating from work and our firewall denied Apple's servers some kind of connection... the result was a bricked device. I can't imagine why I have to use the internet in the process of a firmware upgrade. I should be able to just download the firmware upgrade and install it without having to hope I don't lose my connection in the middle and wind up with a device that has to be restored from a backup.
All said, the iPhone is not a must have. It's a luxury item. You can easily get another smart phone for much, much cheaper without a service contract and save yourself quite a large sum of money in the process.
To solve this a game would have to take a lesson from the real world. There isn't just one bank in the Pittsburgh area, and if the demand increases enough then more will arise to reap the reward of that demand (and lessen the waiting times at other banks).
MMOs could and should do the same thing with city design. There is no need to instance this: players would learn the hard way at first that trying to get to their bank/storage at the busiest bank in town is going to be problematic for them. And implementing a 'solid body' mode in the cities would mean you simply couldn't go there anyway if it was too packed, because you can't walk through people (which to me was always an immersion destroyer anyway).
So what happens when 10 or more asshats decide they're going to stand in the entrance to the auction house, blocking everyone's access?
The game responds intelligently, because it has an algorithm that detects if any city entrance has been blocked for x amount of time. If so, the game dispatches law enforcement type NPCs to the area and they break it up. Failing that, the game then just turns off the solid body mode in that area temporarily.
I agree. And you're right-- it's not realistic right now to increase the average bandwidth per player a thousand-fold. This change would require a technological step-change in available bandwidth to pull off. It would be very cool though.
Also, you would never have to go to the store to buy the game, and you'd never have to download the game or install the game on your machine. You'd never have to patch it either. As soon as you're ready, the game streams to you. No waiting.
On the downside, customization and modding would be more difficult, but not impossible.
Haha yeah it's all good. Most people probably think of the network requirements in terms of one update per second, but that's certainly not enough to get a good gaming experience. Your model of 30 per second is closer, but think about FPS games, where 30 updates a second would essentially mean the fastest latency a player could experience was 33.3ms.
Myself, I can tell the difference between 100ms, 33ms and 0ms (when I'm the server). At 100ms I can hold my own pretty well against anyone. At 33ms I am competitive. At 0ms, I become a unstoppable machine and people call me a cheater.
Granted, MMOs hardly need to give every player an update every 5-10ms.
Anyway, as one person responded to me, if you created a thin-client MMO which did all of the computation on the server side and streamed the video to the player then you'd have a linear growth model. Only problem is that currently that model would use MUCH more bandwidth for the average player than what is currently used, so it's just not practical... yet.
Oops, nice catch. Math was never my strong point :)
They are as prepared to solve it as the business model is prepared to pay for it, and frankly, there's no proof that spending the amount of money it would take to increase the amount of concurrent players in a specific area at once would be worth the investment. So, why?
And furthermore, your presumption about the limitations being the result of a design flaw regarding servers representing game space is incorrect.
The problem is simply one of technical capability and cost: technology isn't good enough and the cost is too high (these are correlated). Servers are irrelevant; the problem is the network. The technological networking requirements to handle multiple concurrent players in a game space grows logarithmically with the number of players who can interact in 'real time'.
Two players in the same area need only send and receive information about themselves and the other player. Fifty players in the same area means the server must send the actions of all 50 of those players to each and every player. In other words, on a rough maximum, that's approximately 600 times as much data going around than with the two player scenario (2500 vs 4).
Up this number to 250, and you have over 60,000 times as much data moving around. At 1000 players you have 250,000 times as much data moving around than with the original 2 players.
Let's imagine that with all of the overhead -- network security, game action, other information, etc -- each player must be sent several kilobytes a second over the net. For solo players, this would be the minimum and if they had a really slow connection, like say dial-up, they really wouldn't be able to enjoy the experience. Remember, this is for solo players who are alone in the MMO world. But what about those well-organized huge battles?
Even if only 1k/second of each player's network resource requirement was movement/action information, and you have 1000 players in an area, then you are potentially already up to 1000kb/sec of bandwidth that each player would need to just to experience the event in 'real time'. And for the server? The server has to send this data to all 1000 of those players in 'real time', which means that for an epic battle in say Star Wars Galaxies of the Rebels vs. the Imperials, with 500 players on each side, all in a fantastic melee, the server is forced to have an upload bandwidth of 1,000,000kb/s, or 1000mb/s or 1gb/s.
Now, I don't know about you, but I think maintaining a 1 gigabyte per second upload bandwidth for what amounts to a very small percentage of the playerbase is not exactly a feasible situation given the technology we have today.
disclaimer: I've used rough numbers, only to serve as examples. I believe my premise is sound, though I admit that the final numbers could work out to be much lower than what I've written here. I'm doubtful that anyone with real experience in the matter is going to come forward with 'real' numbers, but I would be grateful if they did.
1. Your X-Box could be warranted for 3, 5, or 7 years, or forever, but you'll still most likely be replacing it one or more times over the course of that warranty. Kind of a pain in the butt, even if it's 'free'. Or you could go with a PS3 and quite probably enjoy the unit until the next generation of consoles comes out without it ever failing.
2. You claim that Sony stuff is 'over priced' and 'lower quality' and yet you disprove the latter in your very next sentence! (Regardless, the numbers speak for themselves: SCE products are high quality products. Higher than similar M$ electronics in any case.) Regarding the former, you mention that Microsoft gave you 3 months of X-Box Live for free, and yet Sony's PS3 network is 100% free. Indeed, you seem to have defined the term "overpriced" for us all. Thanks, but you can keep your definition for yourself.
3. You mention that you tell Sony customer service to "Fuck off". This is a strong indicator that you are not a very polite individual, and it would not be a large leap to believe you began your customer service experience with the camera on the wrong foot from the start. Assholes like yourself are not treated nicely, and that's for a reason. As someone who has worked in service, I can tell you that I have no patience for asshats like you.
Yeah, well that's just one person's experience, yours, so take this with a grain of salt.
Here's another person's experience: Mine.
I purchased my first PS3 off of E-bay, back when they were rather spendy and hard to find (right after they first came out). The unit failed after 14 months or so. I called Sony and informed them of the failure, and they asked me how long it had been since I purchased the PS3, where I had purchased it from, and if I had a receipt. And at this point I thought I was screwed.
I told them I bought it "about a year ago" which was not a lie, I wasn't exactly sure at the moment. I told them I got it from E-Bay and that I didn't have an original receipt.
You would think they would have refused me, and offered no help.
Instead, they sent me a free-shipping box for the old unit, and a new unit free of charge, and asked me to retain my receipts in the future.
Lo and behold, the new unit failed immediately upon trying to run System Update. I called Sony, informed them of what happened, and they again sent me a free-shipping box, and sent me a new unit free of charge.
Again, this is just one person's experience. Mine. And as an aside, I've found that it doesn't matter which company I am dealing with, if I am not a jerk to the service rep on the phone, and actually ask them how their day is going and have a genuine conversation with them, instead of just demanding that they fix my problem, I get a LOT further towards a solution. You can talk all the shit you want about a company, you can claim that it shouldn't matter what my attitude is on the phone, but then you can also expect to get a lot lower level of service from people. Despite the fact that you're dealing with a big corporation you are also, at the most basic level, dealing with another human being.
The procedures and policies a company has for customer service are just your baseline. If you are cordial, polite and genuine with them, you'll find that the baseline at times can be far exceeded.
So uhh, if I have a jailbroken iPhone, can I get this app somehow? Because I'd really, really love to stick it to Apple on this one :p
Your statement seems to be in conflict with the +5 insightful above you, which says "I bet this is going to be a collectors item."
Landfills?
Ok, I'll bite (some Fanboi ass):
IIRC it was made operationally ready and intended to be used far before the Rebel spies thought it was operational. Therefore, if the Empire INTENDED to use it in this state, and they left it wide open to destruction at this point... who is the idiot? I'll give you a hint, it's not John Scalzi.
This is the cost of doing business with eBay, and is a major reason why eBay is on the decline. The future of online auctioning and payment is decentralized and dynamic. eBay is trying to stay afloat in a medium that is losing specific gravity -- it's GOING to sink eventually.
Good point. I suppose in a sense I am combining them together in some kind of hybrid. Wonder what it might called?
As much as I hate to think so, this might just be "good business". The company can and should push the limits of their service while still maintaining their customer base. IF one way to do that is to incrementally increase fees until they see a detrimental business impact, then why shouldn't they try it? If they overdo it, then competition will step in and offer cheaper alternatives. And if PayPal is truly being anti-competitive then there are ways to legally resolve that as well.