Actually, I ran a multiline BBS (Chicago suburb) for years, and I made money the last 2 years of it (actually a profit at that!).
I was lucky though, all of Chicago was the local Bell, but my suburb was one of 2 that used Centel. I was getting phone lines for like $8 a month (no dial tone, etc), so for 8 nodes it was $64. Since I charged $5 to $15 (depending on usage) we did pretty well, I think we were up to 175 subscribers at one point in time, and pulling about $600 a month profit.
The co-sysops worked for free time, and there was VERY little maintenance.
And BBS pussy, while few and far between, was still pretty rad for a 15 year old geek sysop...
I really do miss those days. Competition was real, but the friends were, too.
This idea has been a dream of mine for the past 19 years. When I was 9 years old, I wanted a pirate radio network that also was combined with "wireless telephone access" nation-wide. Why did I want these two things?
I ran a fairly "largish" BBS in Chicago that had 8 lines, but only locally, and I figured if I could bounce the modem signals over some sort of packet radio network, I could reach users everywhere.
Of course, being 9 years old, I had no knowledge of the Internet (although I still believe I came up with the idea of TCP/IP around that time without former knowledge).
In the past 5 years, a friend of mine and I have been working on some ideas for a similiar network, progressing now to 802.11b, and it seems to work well, even with up to 5 car-nodes in a small area. I had no idea that Mesh existed, and since it does, we'll probably abandon hope on our project (a hobby, not a profit maker).
This guy is right. The car makers can nuke the phone, Internet, and even radio industry in one fell swoop. Then the FCC will regulate these devices, and everything will collapse, but I don't see why one can't operate something like this "illegally."
Even if you can drop a good 500 or so Mesh-type routers within a metropolitan area, I can see it succeeding, and succeeding well. Co-op the costs of transmissions, and I really believe you will be able to make a profit. For those people who don't want to receive "commercial radio," let them purchase their own "sending modules" and transmit their own information.
You can prioritize bandwidth based on how many people are listening to what "stations" and give those "stations" priority on data throughput.
The idea is scary, methinks, but the idea that the Internet will stay cabled has to come to a close. I hate broadband (I pay $130 a month for IDSL, and I could get 1mbit wireless for $40 a month except for a shitty condo association regulation banning radio antennae). I hate dialup.
I installed an 802.11 router on my IDSL, and within a week, about 10 people jumped on my bandwagon (and guess what, I don't care). I know that the future is to throw bandwidth around EVERYWHERE.
Cars will do it. People walking with WiFi enabled PDAs eventually will do it when battery technology can get you a full 10 hour day without shutting down.
So, the question is, what is preventing it from happening? The idea that hard drive manufacturers won't look far enough ahead is bullshit. I can buy 1 gig of RAM for around $200 wholesale, probably cheaper in bulk. 512MB "storage" for the car is MORE than enough for mobile use, and maps, etc, can be burned on a weekly updateable CD or DVD-ROM that the end user can update as they need to. Screw magnetic storage entirely.
Again, the socialists and un-politically-savvy geeks are blaming big business, when it is really big government that is the problem.
Want to wipe the RIAA, ClearChannel, and all these "big bad businesses" out of business? Deregulate the radio industry. Entirely. Don't allow the feds to regulate who can broadcast on what radio frequency.
Overnight, you'll see ma and pa (and large commercial) radio stations pop up all over the place. If the airwaves are free, why do we need government to regulate it? Let the airwaves be what they are good for -- to broadcast to your peers and those around you. Big radio antennaes shouldn't broadcast hundreds of miles anyway, let the locals decide what they want to hear...
I'm sick of people thinking its BIG BUSINESS that causes corruption in America. It's not. It's government giving itself powers it constitutionally can not have.
Every 3 or 4 or 6 letter law you guys are afraid of, and every big organization or company you're afraid of, would NEVER throw money at Congress and the President if the fucking federal government would abide by the limitations set forth in the 9th and 10th Amendments of the Constitution.
Want to hurt these pricks? Vote libertarian. On your 2002 ballot, you'll find a lot of them, no matter where you live.
The RIAA and MPAA have both come out proclaiming Hayes' new 4800 baud modem with MNP5 as the best connection system possible, and are subsidizing the conversion from broadband to these hardware devices with a $50 rebate until the end of the year.
You can't compare high end DLP with home theater DLP as they do in the discussion groups (I attend to all of these regularly).
The home versions use a single DLP with a spinning color wheel to "recreate" the colors you need. The professional versions use 3 DLPs with a prism to get more exacting colors.
The home theater versions use weaker bulbs, much lower quality lenses, and power supplies that all contribute to lower contrast ratios. The digital theater projects use MLA's and other techniques to extract as much information as possible to the screen.
Last month, I saw a DVD movie (basically 720x480 resolution) upconverted to 1080p (1920x1080 resolutino) and then projected on a Sony G90 CRT projector, in a guy's basement, onto a 140" horizontal screen.
I was literally blown away, and I know good quality when I see it in theatres. This low resolution DVD absolutely gave me the most breathtaking, goosebumping movie experience I had ever seen, and it was in this guy's basement, accomplished with less than $40,000 in hardware.
If Star Wars takes 1280x1024 resolution (which is 4+ times higher resolution than the upconverted DVD I watched), its not resolution that will bother me, not even on a 80 foot wide screen...
The only 35mm film that can get 20 million pixels worth of resolution is a single snap frame of a perfectly lit scene, shot a tripod and high end lens that weighs a ton.
Add motion, irregular lighting, and the vibrations of the camera onto the film media as it passes, and you really end up with somewhere between 3 million and 5 million "pixels."
Go through a few generations of editing, color correction (very important), and other steps, and you may be closer to 1 to 3 million.
You will NEVER see a film with 20 million pixels, or even half that. It just won't happen.
Great post, but your theories on resolution needing to be higher are really flawed...
I do a lot of "hobby" work in the home theater field, and I have to say, a crappy old CRT-based video projector will run circles around almost any LCD, DLP, or other digital projector. Why?
Not resolution at all, but CONTRAST. The resolution factor is a must, but to say that 35mm film is "higher resolution" than the DLP's they use in high end digital cinema is flawed as well. Maybe the original masters are pristine, but the film we're watching is flawed because it could be 5 or 6 generation, and it's going to be old (scratches, warps, missing spliced frames, etc). Also, the film has a definite grain that can be seen even on 70mm prints. With digital, it's the same movie, every time.
The problem with digital is that the color gamut is not as great as film (although soon will be beyond what film can produce at the generations of film we watch). The other problem is the contrast generally sucks. The reason old low resolution CRTs (worth $500 used) that are properly calibrated can look better than LCDs that cost $50,000 is because the color gamut is better, the contrast is WORLDS away from digital, and there is no screen door effect.
In the next few years, I believe digital theatres will overwhelm analog, mostly because of the cost controls the studios can impose (controlling how often the film is played), distribution costs being lower, and eventually, the medium will be better quality.
Already we're into our third generation of digital theatre projectors, and the ones that are up and coming just literally blow film away in many ways, with contrast, and yes, even resolution getting better at each step.
The free market continues to fix the problems that intervention caused...
As more and more third parties (whom Microsoft relies heavily on to promote and support their wares) get chagrined with Microsoft's control tactics, more and more of them will find reasons to dump MS for a competitor or two... >
I know of a few (much much smaller, but significant for their developers) projects that said NO to Windows, only to support Mac and shortly Linux, because they're unhappy with MS, and hope their software is significant enough for their client base to make a switch to another OS, at least for the workstation in mind...
Let the government step back, and let the consumer and third parties decide which way the dice will land.
"Big Oil" was never broken up by government -- they were broken up by their own shortsightedness. The regulations that government instituded to try to control Big Oil had actually helped their competitors take over the reins, and in fact, the companies that fell would have fallen regardless of "anti-trust" regulation.
Can anyone name ONE monopoly that truly exists in a monopolistic fashion that was not brewed by the government, or wholly subsidized by the government?
True monopolies don't exist in a free market. The only monopoly we battle every day is the federal government, and anyone with common sense can see that.
We're all just too lazy to want to try to compete with those with better ideas, more desire to work, and the drive to succeed...
Microsoft doesn't have infinitely deep pockets -- people thought the same of Xerox in the photocopying industry (where are they today?), General Motors in the auto industry, and on and on. A good business man always spends a lot on R&D, because that allows them to make their marketable products better by incorporating features.
I'm glad Microsoft is around and doing well in business, everything they do trickles down to more business for us. Buggy operating systems? Keep them coming! Half the business comes in to support their shit code, the other half of the business comes in to install OSes that don't have the problems. Win, win, if you ask me.
When Microsoft goes the way of General Motors or Xerox or any one of the number of companies that were feared to be monopolies (and it will, probably in the next decade), you guys will be bitching and moaning about government regulation for whatever is the next huge company, even though you don't have the brain capacity to realize that these companies are doing great things for the economy as a whole.
Go forth and compete. Stop jerking off to porn and reading your little comic books, how about working 100 hours a week on what you think the market wants -- Microsoft won't prevent you from taking out a loan, running an ad campaign, and shipping a better product, so why aren't you doing it?
Maybe its because its easier to complain and ask the government for help, even though all it does in the end is hurt all of us through newer regulations that only HELP those we wanted to hurt, and HURT those like us.
*shakes head* I'll never understand how geeks want government out of privacy and copyright, but want them involved in regulation. It never ceases to amaze me that the Socialists of the 50s and 60s have gotten EVERYTHING they wanted politically, and nobody cares enough to realize how much farther ahead we'd all be in a truly free market economy...
Socialism Leaves All Servants Having Dreams Over Triumphs...
That money's not all gone -- most of it probably went to the upper echelon investors, people who have invested in the home industry (buying their $5 million houses), the hobbiest airline industry, the expensive car industry, and whatever is left was probably reinvested back into the stock market in companies that hopefully could use the money to benefit us all.
Even a failure can trickle down to helping others who didn't have a foot in the door in a bad idea that duped a lot of investors...
(The free market at work. Even the rich help the poor).
Consumer Protection Laws that are currently active don't protect the consumer at all. They've only moved to help "big business" and you know that's true.
What about Microsoft? Can you name ONE competitor to ANY of Microsoft's products that works decently enough, that is compatible across the board with the hardware that the average user has, that is easy to teach to the laymen, and that looks and feels good?
Netscape? Crap. You know it is. I've tried, for years, to replace Office with my clients. I've tried (and will continue to try) to replace Outlook. I've tried to find a replacement for IE55. It's not because of Microsoft's monopoly, its because of BAD competition -- the incentive is there, and with time, Microsoft will be toppled. They've been a super power for only 10 years, how long were Ford and Xerox super powers? They toppled pretty much on their own.
Competition WORKS for the consumer. But we let government subsidize everyone (the steel industry most recently, the farm industries will be getting new subsidies soon) to the consumer's loss.
How is selling a printer for $50 and cartridges for $30 colluding? If I come out with a $300 printer and $10 cartridges, will you buy it?
The "Libertarian bullshit" about starting a company won't work well as long as we have all this government protection of "big business." End Corporate Welfare is every libertarian's MAIN chant. Even libertarian Congress Ron Paul just proclaimed an end to corporate welfare just last week. Libertarians know that big business NEVER prospers when it gets too big, and that is why big business pays off the government for subsidies.
The solution is all you people who want laws, throw your money into a corporation, and COMPETE.
If you can do it for cheaper, THEN DO IT.
I, myself, can not. I looked at the cost of getting it all to work. There is no way to do it. Since they know you won't pay $600 for a printer, and $5 for cartridges, they do it the way they have to do it to make a profit, albeit a small one.
Epson, HP, Canon, they're not in bed together. This is no boat race. They found out that the average American barely uses their printer, but enough that spending $100-$150 a year on cartridges is not a bad deal, rather than paying $500 for a new printer and $25 a year on cartridges.
There are numerous other ways to print in color. I bought an HP Color LaserJet 4500. I print everything. The damn thing is a personal printer for me, and it runs ALL the time. The cost over the past year? Maybe $200, including tons of toner (thousands of pages printed). I love it. I will NEVER go back to Ink Jet.
Go, compete. The market is open. Once the government regulates, you think it'll help us, or help HP and Epson?
What a socialistic mindframe. Many big civilizations fell because they became Empire, and were too difficult to control.
Capitalism works because of Free Market premises -- in America, Capitalism has failed only because government has subsidized too many companies, and tariffed others. Get rid of ALL tariffs, subsidies, and embargoes, and the American capitalist system will succeed like no other in the world -- industries that rely on subsidies will fail, and those that have been embargoed and tariffed will blossom. That's what the laws of supply and demand dictate.
It's people like you that make me sick to be an American. You probably also love welfare, social security, and social engineering. Ugh.
Regulating who should be given a merchant account and who shouldn't is crazy. They are in the business (Mastercard) to MAKE MONEY. If you force them to support everyone, then all that will happen is ALL Merchant rates will go up. For some small companies, they pay 7% to the merchant. For large companies, they pay 1.5%. Why is this? Because the large companies have a habit of getting customers who don't dispute their bills often, and don't give major headaches to the merchants account companies.
I am a small business owner. I pay more for my merchant account than I would if I collected money through paypal. I probably only collect $5000 a year through my merchant account. I got the account because I KNEW the merchant account companies eventually would do this. If you want to be in business, its not that hard to get a merchant account. Have a bank account for a year, with a positive balance. Have decent credit. Have a business plan. Go get merchant account.
This is NOTHING about big vs. small business. Those big businesses were once small also, and they had to go through WORSE hoops to accept credit and charge cards. Plus, when you see a tiny merchant on the Internet who accepts credit cards, what a lot of people think is "I may as well go for their cheaper-than-usual price, if I get screwed, the merchant account company will credit me back if I don't get anything." And that hurts all of us in added credit card overhead costs.
No thanks, Congress. Keep your noses where the Constitution tells you to, and let the free market handle the rest.
A wealthy American actor by the name of Harrison Ford has his phone taken care of in his Montana property by the USF. There is no need for anyone to pay for anyone else's phone service, let alone a millionaire's.
People say if we don't pay this fee, people living in the outbacks of the country won't have phone service. Guess what? When you move to the middle of nowhere, you best understand that getting phone lines or electricity will cost you more. That's one of the downsides of living in the middle of nowhere.
It is unbelievable that so many of you support socialist wealth distribution or price distribution. I would love to find a phone company that doesn't provide service to those in the middle of nowhere, and not charge me to support those who made those decisions, but send the bill to me.
Have artists ever been compensated for their music
on
Web Radio and the RIAA
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Since when has the RIAA compensated actual artists for their music? This money will just go into the RIAA coffers, some of it being distributed to the top 20 or 50 or whatever sellers of any particular music medium.
The artists I like make all their money selling t-shirts and products on tour...
On March 21, 2002, Honorable Senator Hollins presented a bill to the Senate called the CBDTPA (the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act). This bill, if voted into law, would prohibit the sale of of kind of electronic device, unless the device had copy-protection standards built-in as set by the federal government.
As you may know from previous letters I have sent to you, I am a strict privacy and consumer rights advocate. In the 2000 election, many of my friends, clients, and collegues considered my recommendations before they cast their votes. This bill will quite possibly be the most important vote you will cast in my consideration for voting to continue your incumbency in your next election. I urge you to vote NO to this bill, or any bills with similiar intent.
As is consistent with the soft-money problems the Congress and Senate have been facing, this bill has been created solely to protect the copyright holders, and to prevent consumers from utilizing all the rights given to them in the numerous copyright laws that have been past over our nation's history. I believe this bill is justly unconstitutional, and it would be against your oath of office to vote such unconstitutional text into law.
I am a firm believer in a copyright holder's right to protect their works, but no law should prevent copyright purchasers from exercising their rights. The CBDTPA goes too far in condemning piracy -- it prevents MANY of the rights given to the purchasers of a copywritten material. Let the free market offer better ways to protect the rights of the copyright holders, such as better research into encryption technology, or let the software manufacturers create their own hardware that will only play their products. There are ways to totally lock the consumer out of their rights, without resorting to laws that will infrindge on those rights. Let the software authors and publishers work them out themselves.
If you vote YES to this bill, I will assume that you have fallen pray to the large donations your campaign has received from corporate proponents of this bill, such as $2000 you received this year from the MPAA, or the $1000 you received this year from the NAB, or the $5000 you received this year from the National Cable Television Association. If this is the case, then I know that you are no longer working for your constituents or for the common man, but for big business, and my vote will not be YES to keep you in office.
And, thankfully, the free market sets the price just fine. Some people find great value in a good interface and a product backed by a company that has surprising amounts of reboundability.
I personally would not pay $500 for this device, but since its selling, many people will. Why question it, you either can't afford it, or don't see value in that product for that price. If you want it cheaper, asking Apple won't hurt though...
And nothing prevents you from getting a few investors in your town and starting your own cable company. Get a few C-band satellite dish receivers, and distribute. If its too expensive to do it and sell service cheaper than the one who is servicing you now, there's your answer. If its cheaper, then why aren't you turning a profit?
Its not deregulation that makes it $27 a month. Its the fact that other regulations prevent competitors from coming in and running their own lines to attempt to break into the market. It's the fact that cell phone minutes get cheaper and cheaper, and its IS getting more and more expensive to support the old land line format as more customers drop it (my ex-wife's apartment complex has almost 30% without local phone service). Let them charge $27 a month. Eventually, a competitor will come, and when they do, you'll say goodbye to your local phone company, maybe forever.
And many credit unions also enhance their insured values beyond that with private insurance companies that cost less and aren't tied to the good faith of the U.S. Government.
Check my sources in my own response, and you'll see it wasn't capitalism or even corporations that caused the Great Depression. People put trust in government, and government played with their money and their insurance plans and the value of the dollar, and the prices of goods. In the end, it all backfired.
Enron is TOTALLY different. Enron committed fraud (alledgely) against their investors. The investors are probably due some money, but nowhere near what they lost, because all investments are a gamble, including even being lied to by the company. Don't put all your eggs in one basket.
The depression was caused directly by the Federal Reserve playing with money and interest rates. It was not caused by underregulated banks, in fact, banks had a wonderful history in America of handling the dollar properly.
Our government plays many games with the dollar. They brought us to 20% inflation last year, but hid it by buying and selling gold. They abuse their powers and look into accounts of people they don't like. They freeze accounts of people they don't like. Look at the problems happening in Japan - 0% overnight loan rates. Not caused by the free market, caused by governments trying to stop the free market from stablizing to where the market SHOULD be. For better or for worse.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I ran a multiline BBS (Chicago suburb) for years, and I made money the last 2 years of it (actually a profit at that!).
I was lucky though, all of Chicago was the local Bell, but my suburb was one of 2 that used Centel. I was getting phone lines for like $8 a month (no dial tone, etc), so for 8 nodes it was $64. Since I charged $5 to $15 (depending on usage) we did pretty well, I think we were up to 175 subscribers at one point in time, and pulling about $600 a month profit.
The co-sysops worked for free time, and there was VERY little maintenance.
And BBS pussy, while few and far between, was still pretty rad for a 15 year old geek sysop...
I really do miss those days. Competition was real, but the friends were, too.
Bimodem Leech was good stuff...
This idea has been a dream of mine for the past 19 years. When I was 9 years old, I wanted a pirate radio network that also was combined with "wireless telephone access" nation-wide. Why did I want these two things?
;)
I ran a fairly "largish" BBS in Chicago that had 8 lines, but only locally, and I figured if I could bounce the modem signals over some sort of packet radio network, I could reach users everywhere.
Of course, being 9 years old, I had no knowledge of the Internet (although I still believe I came up with the idea of TCP/IP around that time without former knowledge).
In the past 5 years, a friend of mine and I have been working on some ideas for a similiar network, progressing now to 802.11b, and it seems to work well, even with up to 5 car-nodes in a small area. I had no idea that Mesh existed, and since it does, we'll probably abandon hope on our project (a hobby, not a profit maker).
This guy is right. The car makers can nuke the phone, Internet, and even radio industry in one fell swoop. Then the FCC will regulate these devices, and everything will collapse, but I don't see why one can't operate something like this "illegally."
Even if you can drop a good 500 or so Mesh-type routers within a metropolitan area, I can see it succeeding, and succeeding well. Co-op the costs of transmissions, and I really believe you will be able to make a profit. For those people who don't want to receive "commercial radio," let them purchase their own "sending modules" and transmit their own information.
You can prioritize bandwidth based on how many people are listening to what "stations" and give those "stations" priority on data throughput.
The idea is scary, methinks, but the idea that the Internet will stay cabled has to come to a close. I hate broadband (I pay $130 a month for IDSL, and I could get 1mbit wireless for $40 a month except for a shitty condo association regulation banning radio antennae). I hate dialup.
I installed an 802.11 router on my IDSL, and within a week, about 10 people jumped on my bandwagon (and guess what, I don't care). I know that the future is to throw bandwidth around EVERYWHERE.
Cars will do it. People walking with WiFi enabled PDAs eventually will do it when battery technology can get you a full 10 hour day without shutting down.
So, the question is, what is preventing it from happening? The idea that hard drive manufacturers won't look far enough ahead is bullshit. I can buy 1 gig of RAM for around $200 wholesale, probably cheaper in bulk. 512MB "storage" for the car is MORE than enough for mobile use, and maps, etc, can be burned on a weekly updateable CD or DVD-ROM that the end user can update as they need to. Screw magnetic storage entirely.
Fuck MTV, I want my Mesh
Again, the socialists and un-politically-savvy geeks are blaming big business, when it is really big government that is the problem.
Want to wipe the RIAA, ClearChannel, and all these "big bad businesses" out of business? Deregulate the radio industry. Entirely. Don't allow the feds to regulate who can broadcast on what radio frequency.
Overnight, you'll see ma and pa (and large commercial) radio stations pop up all over the place. If the airwaves are free, why do we need government to regulate it? Let the airwaves be what they are good for -- to broadcast to your peers and those around you. Big radio antennaes shouldn't broadcast hundreds of miles anyway, let the locals decide what they want to hear...
I'm sick of people thinking its BIG BUSINESS that causes corruption in America. It's not. It's government giving itself powers it constitutionally can not have.
Every 3 or 4 or 6 letter law you guys are afraid of, and every big organization or company you're afraid of, would NEVER throw money at Congress and the President if the fucking federal government would abide by the limitations set forth in the 9th and 10th Amendments of the Constitution.
Want to hurt these pricks? Vote libertarian. On your 2002 ballot, you'll find a lot of them, no matter where you live.
The RIAA and MPAA have both come out proclaiming Hayes' new 4800 baud modem with MNP5 as the best connection system possible, and are subsidizing the conversion from broadband to these hardware devices with a $50 rebate until the end of the year.
You can't compare high end DLP with home theater DLP as they do in the discussion groups (I attend to all of these regularly).
The home versions use a single DLP with a spinning color wheel to "recreate" the colors you need. The professional versions use 3 DLPs with a prism to get more exacting colors.
The home theater versions use weaker bulbs, much lower quality lenses, and power supplies that all contribute to lower contrast ratios. The digital theater projects use MLA's and other techniques to extract as much information as possible to the screen.
Last month, I saw a DVD movie (basically 720x480 resolution) upconverted to 1080p (1920x1080 resolutino) and then projected on a Sony G90 CRT projector, in a guy's basement, onto a 140" horizontal screen.
I was literally blown away, and I know good quality when I see it in theatres. This low resolution DVD absolutely gave me the most breathtaking, goosebumping movie experience I had ever seen, and it was in this guy's basement, accomplished with less than $40,000 in hardware.
If Star Wars takes 1280x1024 resolution (which is 4+ times higher resolution than the upconverted DVD I watched), its not resolution that will bother me, not even on a 80 foot wide screen...
The only 35mm film that can get 20 million pixels worth of resolution is a single snap frame of a perfectly lit scene, shot a tripod and high end lens that weighs a ton.
Add motion, irregular lighting, and the vibrations of the camera onto the film media as it passes, and you really end up with somewhere between 3 million and 5 million "pixels."
Go through a few generations of editing, color correction (very important), and other steps, and you may be closer to 1 to 3 million.
You will NEVER see a film with 20 million pixels, or even half that. It just won't happen.
Great post, but your theories on resolution needing to be higher are really flawed...
I do a lot of "hobby" work in the home theater field, and I have to say, a crappy old CRT-based video projector will run circles around almost any LCD, DLP, or other digital projector. Why?
Not resolution at all, but CONTRAST. The resolution factor is a must, but to say that 35mm film is "higher resolution" than the DLP's they use in high end digital cinema is flawed as well. Maybe the original masters are pristine, but the film we're watching is flawed because it could be 5 or 6 generation, and it's going to be old (scratches, warps, missing spliced frames, etc). Also, the film has a definite grain that can be seen even on 70mm prints. With digital, it's the same movie, every time.
The problem with digital is that the color gamut is not as great as film (although soon will be beyond what film can produce at the generations of film we watch). The other problem is the contrast generally sucks. The reason old low resolution CRTs (worth $500 used) that are properly calibrated can look better than LCDs that cost $50,000 is because the color gamut is better, the contrast is WORLDS away from digital, and there is no screen door effect.
In the next few years, I believe digital theatres will overwhelm analog, mostly because of the cost controls the studios can impose (controlling how often the film is played), distribution costs being lower, and eventually, the medium will be better quality.
Already we're into our third generation of digital theatre projectors, and the ones that are up and coming just literally blow film away in many ways, with contrast, and yes, even resolution getting better at each step.
The free market continues to fix the problems that intervention caused...
As more and more third parties (whom Microsoft relies heavily on to promote and support their wares) get chagrined with Microsoft's control tactics, more and more of them will find reasons to dump MS for a competitor or two...
>
I know of a few (much much smaller, but significant for their developers) projects that said NO to Windows, only to support Mac and shortly Linux, because they're unhappy with MS, and hope their software is significant enough for their client base to make a switch to another OS, at least for the workstation in mind...
Let the government step back, and let the consumer and third parties decide which way the dice will land.
"Big Oil" was never broken up by government -- they were broken up by their own shortsightedness. The regulations that government instituded to try to control Big Oil had actually helped their competitors take over the reins, and in fact, the companies that fell would have fallen regardless of "anti-trust" regulation.
Can anyone name ONE monopoly that truly exists in a monopolistic fashion that was not brewed by the government, or wholly subsidized by the government?
True monopolies don't exist in a free market. The only monopoly we battle every day is the federal government, and anyone with common sense can see that.
We're all just too lazy to want to try to compete with those with better ideas, more desire to work, and the drive to succeed...
Microsoft doesn't have infinitely deep pockets -- people thought the same of Xerox in the photocopying industry (where are they today?), General Motors in the auto industry, and on and on. A good business man always spends a lot on R&D, because that allows them to make their marketable products better by incorporating features.
I'm glad Microsoft is around and doing well in business, everything they do trickles down to more business for us. Buggy operating systems? Keep them coming! Half the business comes in to support their shit code, the other half of the business comes in to install OSes that don't have the problems. Win, win, if you ask me.
When Microsoft goes the way of General Motors or Xerox or any one of the number of companies that were feared to be monopolies (and it will, probably in the next decade), you guys will be bitching and moaning about government regulation for whatever is the next huge company, even though you don't have the brain capacity to realize that these companies are doing great things for the economy as a whole.
Go forth and compete. Stop jerking off to porn and reading your little comic books, how about working 100 hours a week on what you think the market wants -- Microsoft won't prevent you from taking out a loan, running an ad campaign, and shipping a better product, so why aren't you doing it?
Maybe its because its easier to complain and ask the government for help, even though all it does in the end is hurt all of us through newer regulations that only HELP those we wanted to hurt, and HURT those like us.
*shakes head* I'll never understand how geeks want government out of privacy and copyright, but want them involved in regulation. It never ceases to amaze me that the Socialists of the 50s and 60s have gotten EVERYTHING they wanted politically, and nobody cares enough to realize how much farther ahead we'd all be in a truly free market economy...
Socialism Leaves All Servants Having Dreams Over Triumphs...
That money's not all gone -- most of it probably went to the upper echelon investors, people who have invested in the home industry (buying their $5 million houses), the hobbiest airline industry, the expensive car industry, and whatever is left was probably reinvested back into the stock market in companies that hopefully could use the money to benefit us all.
Even a failure can trickle down to helping others who didn't have a foot in the door in a bad idea that duped a lot of investors...
(The free market at work. Even the rich help the poor).
Consumer Protection Laws that are currently active don't protect the consumer at all. They've only moved to help "big business" and you know that's true.
What about Microsoft? Can you name ONE competitor to ANY of Microsoft's products that works decently enough, that is compatible across the board with the hardware that the average user has, that is easy to teach to the laymen, and that looks and feels good?
Netscape? Crap. You know it is. I've tried, for years, to replace Office with my clients. I've tried (and will continue to try) to replace Outlook. I've tried to find a replacement for IE55. It's not because of Microsoft's monopoly, its because of BAD competition -- the incentive is there, and with time, Microsoft will be toppled. They've been a super power for only 10 years, how long were Ford and Xerox super powers? They toppled pretty much on their own.
Competition WORKS for the consumer. But we let government subsidize everyone (the steel industry most recently, the farm industries will be getting new subsidies soon) to the consumer's loss.
How is selling a printer for $50 and cartridges for $30 colluding? If I come out with a $300 printer and $10 cartridges, will you buy it?
The "Libertarian bullshit" about starting a company won't work well as long as we have all this government protection of "big business." End Corporate Welfare is every libertarian's MAIN chant. Even libertarian Congress Ron Paul just proclaimed an end to corporate welfare just last week. Libertarians know that big business NEVER prospers when it gets too big, and that is why big business pays off the government for subsidies.
The solution is all you people who want laws, throw your money into a corporation, and COMPETE.
If you can do it for cheaper, THEN DO IT.
I, myself, can not. I looked at the cost of getting it all to work. There is no way to do it. Since they know you won't pay $600 for a printer, and $5 for cartridges, they do it the way they have to do it to make a profit, albeit a small one.
Epson, HP, Canon, they're not in bed together. This is no boat race. They found out that the average American barely uses their printer, but enough that spending $100-$150 a year on cartridges is not a bad deal, rather than paying $500 for a new printer and $25 a year on cartridges.
There are numerous other ways to print in color. I bought an HP Color LaserJet 4500. I print everything. The damn thing is a personal printer for me, and it runs ALL the time. The cost over the past year? Maybe $200, including tons of toner (thousands of pages printed). I love it. I will NEVER go back to Ink Jet.
Go, compete. The market is open. Once the government regulates, you think it'll help us, or help HP and Epson?
Think hard. I know you can...
What a socialistic mindframe. Many big civilizations fell because they became Empire, and were too difficult to control.
Capitalism works because of Free Market premises -- in America, Capitalism has failed only because government has subsidized too many companies, and tariffed others. Get rid of ALL tariffs, subsidies, and embargoes, and the American capitalist system will succeed like no other in the world -- industries that rely on subsidies will fail, and those that have been embargoed and tariffed will blossom. That's what the laws of supply and demand dictate.
It's people like you that make me sick to be an American. You probably also love welfare, social security, and social engineering. Ugh.
Go read Why Government Doesn't Work and tell me you still want government taking care of this.
Regulating who should be given a merchant account and who shouldn't is crazy. They are in the business (Mastercard) to MAKE MONEY. If you force them to support everyone, then all that will happen is ALL Merchant rates will go up. For some small companies, they pay 7% to the merchant. For large companies, they pay 1.5%. Why is this? Because the large companies have a habit of getting customers who don't dispute their bills often, and don't give major headaches to the merchants account companies.
I am a small business owner. I pay more for my merchant account than I would if I collected money through paypal. I probably only collect $5000 a year through my merchant account. I got the account because I KNEW the merchant account companies eventually would do this. If you want to be in business, its not that hard to get a merchant account. Have a bank account for a year, with a positive balance. Have decent credit. Have a business plan. Go get merchant account.
This is NOTHING about big vs. small business. Those big businesses were once small also, and they had to go through WORSE hoops to accept credit and charge cards. Plus, when you see a tiny merchant on the Internet who accepts credit cards, what a lot of people think is "I may as well go for their cheaper-than-usual price, if I get screwed, the merchant account company will credit me back if I don't get anything." And that hurts all of us in added credit card overhead costs.
No thanks, Congress. Keep your noses where the Constitution tells you to, and let the free market handle the rest.
I agree with Peridriga entirely.
A wealthy American actor by the name of Harrison Ford has his phone taken care of in his Montana property by the USF. There is no need for anyone to pay for anyone else's phone service, let alone a millionaire's.
People say if we don't pay this fee, people living in the outbacks of the country won't have phone service. Guess what? When you move to the middle of nowhere, you best understand that getting phone lines or electricity will cost you more. That's one of the downsides of living in the middle of nowhere.
It is unbelievable that so many of you support socialist wealth distribution or price distribution. I would love to find a phone company that doesn't provide service to those in the middle of nowhere, and not charge me to support those who made those decisions, but send the bill to me.
Since when has the RIAA compensated actual artists for their music? This money will just go into the RIAA coffers, some of it being distributed to the top 20 or 50 or whatever sellers of any particular music medium.
The artists I like make all their money selling t-shirts and products on tour...
Honorable Senator Durbin,
On March 21, 2002, Honorable Senator Hollins presented a bill to the Senate called the CBDTPA (the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act). This bill, if voted into law, would prohibit the sale of of kind of electronic device, unless the device had copy-protection standards built-in as set by the federal government.
As you may know from previous letters I have sent to you, I am a strict privacy and consumer rights advocate. In the 2000 election, many of my friends, clients, and collegues considered my recommendations before they cast their votes. This bill will quite possibly be the most important vote you will cast in my consideration for voting to continue your incumbency in your next election. I urge you to vote NO to this bill, or any bills with similiar intent.
As is consistent with the soft-money problems the Congress and Senate have been facing, this bill has been created solely to protect the copyright holders, and to prevent consumers from utilizing all the rights given to them in the numerous copyright laws that have been past over our nation's history. I believe this bill is justly unconstitutional, and it would be against your oath of office to vote such unconstitutional text into law.
I am a firm believer in a copyright holder's right to protect their works, but no law should prevent copyright purchasers from exercising their rights. The CBDTPA goes too far in condemning piracy -- it prevents MANY of the rights given to the purchasers of a copywritten material. Let the free market offer better ways to protect the rights of the copyright holders, such as better research into encryption technology, or let the software manufacturers create their own hardware that will only play their products. There are ways to totally lock the consumer out of their rights, without resorting to laws that will infrindge on those rights. Let the software authors and publishers work them out themselves.
If you vote YES to this bill, I will assume that you have fallen pray to the large donations your campaign has received from corporate proponents of this bill, such as $2000 you received this year from the MPAA, or the $1000 you received this year from the NAB, or the $5000 you received this year from the National Cable Television Association. If this is the case, then I know that you are no longer working for your constituents or for the common man, but for big business, and my vote will not be YES to keep you in office.
Your constituent,
xxxxxxxx
And, thankfully, the free market sets the price just fine. Some people find great value in a good interface and a product backed by a company that has surprising amounts of reboundability.
I personally would not pay $500 for this device, but since its selling, many people will. Why question it, you either can't afford it, or don't see value in that product for that price. If you want it cheaper, asking Apple won't hurt though...
And nothing prevents you from getting a few investors in your town and starting your own cable company. Get a few C-band satellite dish receivers, and distribute. If its too expensive to do it and sell service cheaper than the one who is servicing you now, there's your answer. If its cheaper, then why aren't you turning a profit?
Its not deregulation that makes it $27 a month. Its the fact that other regulations prevent competitors from coming in and running their own lines to attempt to break into the market. It's the fact that cell phone minutes get cheaper and cheaper, and its IS getting more and more expensive to support the old land line format as more customers drop it (my ex-wife's apartment complex has almost 30% without local phone service). Let them charge $27 a month. Eventually, a competitor will come, and when they do, you'll say goodbye to your local phone company, maybe forever.
And many credit unions also enhance their insured values beyond that with private insurance companies that cost less and aren't tied to the good faith of the U.S. Government.
Check my sources in my own response, and you'll see it wasn't capitalism or even corporations that caused the Great Depression. People put trust in government, and government played with their money and their insurance plans and the value of the dollar, and the prices of goods. In the end, it all backfired.
Enron is TOTALLY different. Enron committed fraud (alledgely) against their investors. The investors are probably due some money, but nowhere near what they lost, because all investments are a gamble, including even being lied to by the company. Don't put all your eggs in one basket.
Read these for more info on why the Federal Reserve caused the Great Depression. Eye-opening...
First
Second
The depression was caused directly by the Federal Reserve playing with money and interest rates. It was not caused by underregulated banks, in fact, banks had a wonderful history in America of handling the dollar properly.
Our government plays many games with the dollar. They brought us to 20% inflation last year, but hid it by buying and selling gold. They abuse their powers and look into accounts of people they don't like. They freeze accounts of people they don't like. Look at the problems happening in Japan - 0% overnight loan rates. Not caused by the free market, caused by governments trying to stop the free market from stablizing to where the market SHOULD be. For better or for worse.