Oh, I don't doubt that rural deliveries would be more expensive -- but that's the responsibility you accept when you decide to move further away from urban areas. More gas to go places, more costs for communications (digital and physical), less choice in what you can buy locally, etc. The upside is more privacy, possibly more personal security, etc, etc.
I serve some churches in Alaska, and my shipping charges via FedEx are more expensive, but not that much more. I recently shipped an 8 pound package to Alaska and I believe the charge for FedEx ground was around $20. Shipping the same package to California is around $8. Considering the distance, that's not a huge price difference. Since the market sets prices based on supply and demand, it would make letters to Chicago cheap, and letters to Alaska expensive for me. That's normal, but how many people are mailing things to Alaska to begin with, compared to Chicago?
Maybe it is time to seriously consider revoking the monopoly provision that the USPS has in terms of being the only legal first class mail deliverer. The last time this was seriously proposed and enacted was over 150 years ago. That one competitive business put the USPS to shame and lowered prices and increased quality (as competition does).
I still can't figure out why we're accepting the postal service when there are many more companies that provide better service for other forms of mail (priority, ground, freight, etc). Even the USPS uses FedEx for their International Express service.
The USPS has one big problem: it can not compete well. It's run by bureaucrats who know they'll get paid regardless of service levels or prices. UPS and FedEx woo my businesses regularly (we mail a ton of stuff), and the prices haven't changed much even with fuel surcharges and the rest. I get an amazing rate for local deliveries of packages under 8 pounds, and it all ends up landing next day just via ground delivery.
I really haven't heard one good reason why we can't let competition into the first class mail market. Yes, the Constitution provides for the Federal Government to maintain mail delivery, but it doesn't actually say they should be the only providers. I'd think the USPS would do fine for remote areas of the country, and the big boys would bring prices down, and service up, by entering the market that desperately needs help.
Maybe the Republic IS moving towards more freedom and less tyranny. 400 more like these guys and I may actually shut up about 70% of my gripes. Not all, but most.
I also think it's funny that most of the ads about how great it is to have high quality feature sporting events. I don't care about sporting events, so that doesn't matter to me. I might care about seeing the bead of sweat on Obi-Wan Kenobi's brow or something, but not on some NASCAR driver.
TV viewing for me is solely about "leaving reality behind." Sports are a bore, except for sporting events that may help me communicate better with customers on a personal level. I do like watching horse races, too, but not for gambling purposes. News media is all a bunch of cronies of powermongers, so I usually ignore it. YouTube is fine for catching up on segments. I'd pay for that, actually.
Because we watch a lot of movies (lately a lot of Indian Bollywood types, ha!), we want to "leave reality behind" for 2-3 hours. For me that means a very clear picture (without static, yes), with great sound. You can get both for under $2000 nowadays, even half that if you buy used (which we did) and cosmetically damaged. We picked up a 42" Sharp Aquos literally 9 days after it was released because it had a huge dent in the rear and was used for around 100 hours as a demo. Retail was $2000 or so (this is the 1080p model), we negotiated it down to $1200. Not bad, and I can run a full 1920x1080 resolution signal from my laptop if I am working on a video project.
The clarity of HD does enable us to slip into the movie better, for sure. I'm not sure it is necessary, but I did compare Star War A New Hope in HD versus DVD upconverted, and it was a remarkable difference, but not necessarily "necessary." A high quality mastered DVD, progressive, upconverted, really looks amazing. The difference between HD and SD-DVD, so far, is that some HD DVDs are mastered better, so the quality is better regardless of the resolution (better contrast, better colors, better sharpness, fewer film flaws).
I won't go back to SD, because HD is so darn cheap. Our bedroom TV is HD as well (picked up a 25" Samsung for $319 used and damaged on the stand). It feeds movies and signal from our Media Center in our living room, so we don't need to store DVDs anymore. I buy a DVD, digitize it, and stick the DVD in a leather case that holds 500 of them. Toss the case out, too.
We probably watch 5 movies a week at home, a few times with friends, so the benefit outweights the costs, I think. For me, I don't mind "blowing" $50 an hour on entertainment (or more) if its good entertainment that lets life's stresses fall away. Even going to church can be stressful, mind you. I figure if we spend 15 hours a week watching the telly, that's 750 hours a year. If the hardware lasts 3 years (and it will), that's 2250 hours a year for around $3000 for everything we have, including the movies (which we buy used, as well). $1.33 per hour for entertainment can't be beat. I figure I could spend $56,000 over 3 years and still feel "profitable," so we have a looooong way to go.
We have both formats, and use neither. They're old formats that we're quickly finding are not able to keep up with the future of media: digital transport. While I may be a video purist (and have been for over a decade), I am finding that more and more people don't care about getting the maximum quality out of their video system, and are pleased with just decent quality, even at high def. For most of my friends and family, simple SD-DVD upconverted to 1080i is enough to make them happy.
We've downloaded quite a few (mostly) legal HD videos off the net, and while they do take some time to download, the quality is impressive, considering the excessive compression of XViD or whatever codec is used to provide a high def video in a smaller file. We may be in the minority today with our media centers, but I'm seeing more and more people who are quite pleased with the quality of the newest HD TiVo, and are starting to move away from the DVD/disc format entirely.
The biggest two problems today are industry related: the big guns don't want digital transport, and few seem to be ready to jump on the on-demand bandwagon. There are numerous devices that can support on-demand downloadable HD movies, but even with the long download they are faster than NetFlix or the hassle of picking up and dropping off a rental. I still can't figure out WHY an industry is battling the obscure piracy problems, because it is obvious that there is no way to win that battle except to lower prices and increase options.
Yes, movies cost tens of millions to make, but there are over a hundred million households. Many are moving to HD (1080i/720p) flat panels, which are coming down in price. The cost of a TiVo-like box that plugs into your broadband router is negligible, and possibly offset by a monthly commitment to buying X HD movies a month (or a flat rate that includes X movies a month). The hardware is not that complicated, but it needs to be able to progress to using newer codecs as they're released. We have HDMI working fairly well as a video/audio transport, so cabling isn't a big issue (although I still use component for one device). Many households have broadband, so transport to the home is not a huge problem, considering that a 2GB file can be downloaded fairly quickly, even by bittorrent.
Yet the industry continues to try to hold on to old technology and standards, which are completely counterproductive for their growth. The movie theatre establishment is dying (or dead in some areas), and commercial-subsidized videos are also quickly falling apart. I know more people who to go YouTube to watch the news and oped pieces than deal with cable's scheduled service. Why is YouTube exploding, but Comcast is losing customers (or at least growing much slower than before)? Because people want a la carte, when they want it, and they don't want to deal with waiting for a show, storing hundreds of DVDs somewhere in their already cramped and cluttered living rooms, and trying to figure out which standard is better than the other one.
This is a gross oversimplification. The reality is that overbuilding is allowed in many places in the US. It's not like regulators don't want competition in the cable market, they'd love it. But in practice it almost never happens. That's because it's just not that easy. In order to roll out a network you need to get a whole bunch of property owners to agree at the same time. If one of them holds out, well, depending where he is located you might be able to route around it at increased cost. If several hold out, you may have to scrap that loop. So whoever is going to be that last person who kills the project has the cable company by the balls for the full commercial value of the proposed network. The implication is that for a given property owner, if they let you string your network, they'll benefit from increased competition to the tune of maybe $5-10/mo. But if they can hold out and be the last piece of the puzzle for the network, they can extract tens of thousands of dollars from the cable company. Everyone has an incentive to be the holdout and get the big payday. It's a nightmare of transaction costs. This is what eminent domain exists for.
Here you're forgetting that part of entering new markets is sometimes a burden for thousands of small businesses rather than a few large ones. We're talking about acquiring land rights to run a pipe or a wire. In some cases, the burden for acquisition doesn't have to be on an international conglomerate. A local business investor can do just fine, especially in smaller towns or areas. The business investors has a better chance of acquiring the land rights (through direct involvement with property owners), and once they've acquired the rights, they can then lease them to other companies, or even outright sell those rights to another larger middleman. It could even be tens of thousands of individuals acquiring the rights in various areas. Currently, we have the towns using force (eminent domain) and padding their own pockets, but it is not necessary to use eminent domain for things that people need and want.
We want phone service and Internet service. If that's the case, we should pay the costs the market bears on us to find the best provider at the best cost and best level of service that meets our needs. This may vary from area to area, and even block to block, depending on the needs of the people there. You may find that a part of a city block wants T3-level service, whereas another area may be happy with dialup-level service. The municipalities "force it on everyone through eminent domain" aspect really doesn't give people much choice in service/cost.
But you're talking about businesses that sell fungible products. Selling cable service is nothing like selling jeans. It is not inefficient to have 1000 jeans manufacturers. The all pump supply onto the market, and the supply matches up with demand. If people demand more, they produce more, if people demand less, they produce less. But with last mile telecom networks, every network needs to reach all the consumers in its area, and does so at immense cost, but each consumer generally utilizes only one network. They have to pay out to reach every consumer in their region whether the consumer buys their product or not. Each existing network in the region cuts down proportionally on how many of the homes they will reach they can expect to subscribe. With a very low number of last mile networks you quickly reach the point where that proportion is no longer sufficient to fund construction of the network. This is nothing like selling jeans at all.
There is no difference, whatsoever. If there is a demand for a product, that demand is based on getting a certain quality of service/product at a certain price. If the area is against selling wiring rights to others, the cost of the product goes up and the service level goes down. Money suppliers (i.e. consumers) will quickly learn that their resistance to selling land-rights means higher costs due to less competition in the area. Maybe t
You can't get the local municipalities out of the cable business for the simple reason that the cable companies cannot possibly buy via the free market the property rights necessary to string up a network. It's a classic holdout problem. Every property owner (including the municipality itself) that sits in a strategic position will have the leverage and incentive to hold out from selling access until they can extract all of the cable company's profits. Without the political process to facilitate the necessary access to public and private property, it just doesn't happen. It's the same for the landline phone business. And wireless has its own reasons for requiring regulation. The simple fact is that this has always been a regulated business, and it always will be. It's the unavoidable nature of the business.
That's a ridiculous supposition. You're making the assumption that "business transaction" means "a business selling to a consumer" when in fact a "business transaction" means two suppliers of products or services exchanging for each other's products or services. In most "business transactions" it is one entity with cash and one entity with product or service, but this is not always the case. In the case of needing a right-of-way, this is exactly why we should see middlemen who take the risk to acquire right-of-way status (through payment or provision of service) and lease it out to others.
When it comes to private property, there is absolutely no reason why a cable-connect middleman can NOT go to each person and tender an agreement to utilitize their property for cabling. Part of the agreement would be the transfer of rights in the process of selling or leasing that property to others. It's done now with cell phone towers quite successfully on private land. I know of three building owners who get a nice chunk of change in exchange for placement of a cell tower on their property.
If someone does not want to sell, that's an issue, but not a big one. There is always a price. Also, there is a negotiable option for each person to utilize the service of the provider at a reduced rate based on a reduced price for agreeing to provide the right-of-way. Because right-of-way is two dimensional, you can navigate around those who wish not to give you the rights, so you have numerous angles of attack to provide service to particular areas. Overall, I believe you'd see MOST people would be happy to exchange right-of-way for a discount of services provided through that particular middle-man's cable run. Some middle-men may just run their own pipe, allowing for multiple competitive conduits within the same small access pipe.
What if everyone or a majority of landowners say "no" to renting/selling right of way access? That's easy to resolve, too: they don't get any access to any communications services provided. If you're the one person in the way of thousands, guess what the communications providers will say is the reason for no service in your area? They'll point to the hold-out. This is an excellent market solution, since it puts the burden of explanation on the person holding out. It's also a net gain for the pipe middlemen, since they have no reason to be concerned about a profit where their product is not wanted at any cost.
Right now, you're practically forced to accept powerlines and conduits through your backyard, since many of those backyards are "naturally" owned by the municipality. This infringes on your property rights, though. Look at the nice fees your cable company charges you for the rights that your town gets for allowing monopoly access. Those fees could be yours to keep, and even earn, depending on your location. Someone who is the "sole pathway" to a town may end up making a nice penny if they improbably own all the land surrounding a town. That's a market provision, and anyone is able to negotiate buying a piece of that land just to provide cheaper access for the pipe middlemen.
Your conclusion is correct, even if your reasoning is inane. T
I have a long history with stereolithographic devices (I used to consult with CNC companies as a teenager and young adult), and my dream was to have a SL device that made custom chocolate bars and pieces. While proper chocolate has to be poured at the right temperature into the mold, I've always wondered if there is a future to make a machine like an SL 3D printer that can print in chocolate.
I've done some basic searching, but found no one even talking about it. Yes, it's corny, but I'd love to know if anyone has played with candy/sugar/chocolate as the substrate for a 3D printer.
Time and again we have people who moan about monopolistic tendencies of large corporations. They offer negative opinions of the so-called free market. Unfortunately for the consumer, the FCC and local municipalities have assured us of never having a truly free market in cable (and cable-provided services).
We need to stomp on the FCC and allow them to truly deregulate (which they've never really done) at the national level. The FCC should have no mandate over cable, or any non-wireless communications provider. It all boils down to property rights, and the ability for competitive companies to utilize public and private property to run their networks.
I know of so many people who are concerned that deregulation (national and local) of cable and comm providers would end up giving us millions of wires overhead on the telephone poles. This is untrue. It would primarily open up the market of physical cabling middlemen who would run their cables and provide access to others. For years, we had the so-called "dry pair" which the phone companies provided. Then DSL came, and the phone companies lobbied Congress and the State government for control of the network. Instead of opening competition up to more companies to offer dry pairs (or newer technology) leased to others, the various regulating bodies shut down competition more and more.
I'm not afraid of having billions of wires all over the place, since the cost to run the network cabling is prohibitive to many businesses -- but still possible to raise through stock IPOs, bond issues, and other market economy money drives. If one company has the only cables, prices will be high, but so will the opportunity to compete: more companies will consider entering that market if they can see a long term profit.
We also need to allow the market to work for remote installations. I know of a few people who live in the boonies and complain about the lack of communications providers: this is part of the "cost" of living far from an urban area, and a cost that people should live with if they want the privacy, and security, of exurban living. There should be no subsidization of remote towns, or anyone. There are tradeoffs, and profits, for life's decisions, and that cost should be evident and transparent, not hidding and paid for by others who didn't make that decision.
Thankfully, we're seeing more solutions slowly popping up. WiFi networks, maybe WiMax networks, and other competitive products should hopefully push the cabled providers to lowering their prices, which may end up having the effect of creating a deregulated market before government will move to unrestrict that competition.
Thanks to the mini-USB connector on my phone, battery life is completely not important to me. In the car, I charge my phone. At work or at a client's, I plug it into a laptop or PC. If I am desperate, I have a little USB hand crank that can power my phone for 20 minutes with about 3 minutes of cranking.
When cell phones had proprietary connectors that changed with each new model, battery life was maybe #3 on my list of important features. Now I don't even think of it. I can not recall a day in the past year when I had less than 60% battery life (even with WiFi and Bluetooth enabled on my HTC Trinity).
Is it really a big deal for a lot of people? Where are you that you can't plug in, even if just for 10-15 minutes to top off your battery?
As a semi-pro blogger who does receive compensation (from advertising, paid product placement, and subscriptions), I still believe there is a long way to go to compete with the biggest old media outlets, especially newspapers. The key difference that I've seen, so far, is that the newspapers still have reporters, while the new media has just journalists. There is a decline in old media reporting, though, as more and more newspapers just regurgitate whatever the AP is reporting. Google News is hilarious when you find 500 identically written articles by major media outlets.
The WSJ has a unique combination of reporters, journalists, and oped pieces. They're going to be hard to topple. Their biggest downside is their support for war and their support for more government. So far, though, it has not hampered their growth.
I am one of the few new media writers that still has faith in the old media, but not most of it. There's room for a few dozen major newspapers to compete, but the majority of them will find themselves without readers, or advertisers, as they continue to lose market share to the new media writers who are faster, more varied in opinion, and closer to home for their readers.
I still am trying to figure out how the Supreme Court allows Congress to support, or directly provide, loans at the Federal level for college students. It makes absolutely no sense to me that anyone can find support for money taken from me so that you can get your college education.
My father came to this country penniless, and worked as a waiter to get through college. He didn't have Federal support for college, so upon graduating he had no debt. Today, most of my friends who graduated in 1996-1998 still are paying off their bills, and I'm sure I'm partially paying for some of it through whatever fraudulent taxation system the Feds use to acquire my funds to pay for others.
Can't people see that Federally-financed loans are one of the primary reasons that tuition is so high? Before Federal loans, colleges would loan students their own money (at 1-2% interest) to go to school. The colleges had good reason to keep tuition low since they were taking a risk with their own money. Now we have people paying for college loans until they're 35 -- and those who never went to college and never wanted to are supporting others as well.
Combine that with no Constitutional mandate for regulation of the Internet, or for criminalizing non-physical content sharing, and you have a really hilarious law that would make the Founders roll in their graves non-stop.
This bill is a non-issue. It protects the inherent rights of no individual, but provides subsidies to special interest groups. Where's the Supreme Court when you need them?
The term "old media" is a semi-ad hominem style attack that I like to use against the previously monopolistic media, mostly TV, radio and newspaper. Yet that term holds true to any company that attempts to use the force of law to keep and protect monopolistic practices in any communications market, including cell phones and land lines.
Google has proven that the monopoly of distribution can be broken by their network, and their applications. AdSense replaces expensive marketing and advertising departments, Blogger.com replaces the need for physical media and the costs associated. Google Search replaces direct advertising campaigns, and YouTube is trumping the cable networks in giving people a la carte entertainment at a moment's notice. I have high hopes that Google's foray into the wireless market will offer huge gains for those of us who are sick and tired of the old media cell phone technology (locked phones, expensive monthly charges, limited application support, etc).
As WiFi exploded in use, I continued to be amazed at how relatively unregulated bandwidth worked so well in all the market locales I had WiFi implemented in. Yes, I've heard horror stories by relatively few, but in my office in downtown Chicago, our WiFi network worked seamlessly with dozens of others in the same building. Up to now, I still can't find verifiable proof that other wireless bandwidth segments can't be shared by dozens, or hundreds, of providers in the same vicinity. With the advent of software radios (frequency hopping, output power changes, etc), it seems that the first person to relinquish full control of their bandwidth nation-wide will really hurt the old media strangehold in the wireless market.
My biggest fear for wireless is the push for more laws to regulate "network neutrality," which I am against vehemently. I believe that paying for access tiers makes more sense than forcing the market to all stay at a certain level of service for everyone at a flat price. It doesn't make sense to me (neither as a businessman, nor as an individual). I'm hoping to see Google offer the bandwidth in markets they can't reach in a relatively unregulated and openly competitive atmosphere. In an adjoining town to mine, Libertyville, Illinois, there are numerous WiFi Internet providers who are doing gangbusters sticking access points on leased towers and giving people in the region what they want (including even free WiFi at a throttled speed) at the price they're willing to pay. The old media companies (AT&T, Comcast, etc) have fought tooth and nail to shut down these hooligans, but the city has held its ground in allowing them to compete. My own town won't allow this to happen (although we do have a bunch of WiFi sharing groups on within 2 blocks of me), so I'd love to see a national push by a major new media company to open bandwidth for all to play with to see what the market can provide with reduced FCC rules created by the old monopolists.
My big concern is the names Sprint and T-Mobile associated with the post. I use T-Mobile for 60% of my wireless communication (mostly EDGE and voice), and AT&T for the remainder (3G), and while I'm happy, I also use unlocked foreign phones and hardware devices. My friends who use the locally provided versions of the same devices are really unhappy, and don't have anywhere near the amount of customization and freedom that I get by providing my own (expensive) devices.
I do see a big WMD for the old media ahead, ready to explode. It's called competition, and it will come from all levels: locally, nationally, internationally. I've spent more time on YouTube in the past 2 weeks than watching TV in the past 6 months. I'm prepared with my wallet to pay in advance for broadcasts I like (such as Sanctuary, which I feel isn't there yet), and I can't wait to see what foreigners with a great grasp of English start producing with the technology available. Combine that with a relatively cheap and open range of bandwidth frequencies, and the radio/tv/cell monopolists are dead.
I can't wait. Who do I write a check to at Google?
Worthless without a cooling fan...
on
Lap Desks
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I've been using primarily laptops for about 2 years, and none of them are suited for desktop replacement, because of the massive heat generated. I've been through 3 laptops in 9 months that had physical failures due to heat. I started a site to rant on about the hinge crack on my HP dv9000 model, and have received a few hundred search hits in a month or two.
I replaced that unit with a higher end Gateway, and now that one is generating too much heat. My previous model, a Toshiba, had the same problem. My Lenova, same problem.
Now I am searching on a decent desktop unit. All my computer life I always built my own, but I'm tired of it. I just want a powerful system that works for me without hardware issues. Software I can deal with, but it does seem that none of the manufacturers have any idea how to build a long term solution (and by long term, I mean just 12-18 months of use).
I built a lap-desk a year ago with cooling fans (not plywood, either), and it was functional, but still not perfect. I'd love to see Fellows or another ergonomically-inclined designer produce something useful, but I think the "art" and look-and-feel get in the way of making something truly functional.
My dream lap-desk? A Herman Miller designed desk for my Aeron chair. That would be just perfection, I believe.
While I'm anti-State, I do accept the Constitution for what it is -- if it was followed properly.
I believe the Federal Government's primary goal is to protect the inherent rights of the People (not grant them, not restrain them). I believe the States, individual countries in their own design, should be prevented from passing legislation that revokes, restrains, regulates or perverts inherent rights, especially those listed in the Bill of Rights.
Municipalities are bribed by large cable and communications companies for monopoly licensing. This is counter-liberty. While I abhor the FCC and believe it is unconstitutional, I think Congress has a place to tell the States to stop licensing monopolies and restricting competition.
I'd rather see Congress remove OLD laws that provide for the non-competitive nature, but it is what it is. I don't think more government intrusion into the market will make it more competitive, though.
ardor: I appreciate that viewpoint. I also disagree.
In my experience, the best thing for my "career" has been openness. I'm an anarcho-capitalist, yet I get hired by companies who knows it. I'm a Pantelist, yet hundreds of Dispensationalist churches hire me even though I disagree vehemently with their view on the Bible. My religious background from my parents is Muslim/Roman-Catholic, which I am open about, yet I work with Jews, Hindus, Evangelicals and Atheists. When I fight with my wife, I'm not afraid to discuss it openly (either on my blog, or with people I know who complain about their spouses). When I received my first kidney stone (and later, a hemorrhoid), I had no embarassment to share the pain and the fix with others. I don't mask the fact that I like to go out and have an expensive glass of Scotch (even the most anti-drinking Christian clients of mine know), and I don't hide the fact that I love Vegas for the lack of law-oversight in many actions I deem non-harmful to others.
If the day comes that a whacko takes over government (and I'd say that day has come a long time ago), I have the choice to move. If they come to ethnically cleanse me, what difference would it make if I hid my beliefs or was open about them? I pride myself on my beliefs, and the only way I can make the world better is by sharing my ups and downs with others, so they may some day come to understand and even agree with what I believe in. You would be surprised how many devout Evangelicals have changed their doctrine to Preterism after talking with me for years or months -- even though I risked losing business and a significant investment by sharing those details. You'd be surprised how many Jews hire me knowing I come from a Muslim background (heck, a Jewish gal even married me) and support all religions and faiths in a freedom to worship God their way. A lot of family told me to hide my background, in fact two of my relatives are fairly famous and went so far to change their names to hide their heritage.
I see no reason to hide myself. I've screwed up, often. I still do, every day. But when I share these things with others, a trust level is created even though I've screwed people over in the past. That trust level is important to me, because it gives me a sense of stability with my relationships with others. When I do screw up, and I do often, they're more willing to hear me out, especially if I am honest about the screw up (usually it is laziness combined with a bad case of A.D.D.). The flip side is having to make excuses, or having to try to change something inherent about myself.
Your NET cost may be zero, but there is a cost in your time. If you choose to value the return from that cost as equal, that's fine. But there is STILL A COST.
Only if the good producer assigns a cost to that time. The Austrian Economists call it "Time Preference" which sort of covers the cost of your time, and while I agree with most of their theory, I do also truly believe that many of us (provably) set no cost to certain periods of time in our lives. I actually DO assign a time cost to sleep, and I also assign a time cost to vacations, but I don't assign a time cost to entertainment up to a certain amount per week (generally). For example: if I have a BIG project I am working on, on a tight deadline, I may pass up on sleep (entirely or just some sleep) because the profit of the project (financial or long term reputation gain) more than exceeds the time preference cost of sleeping for that time. But even if I am working my tail off, I still set aside entertainment time, because for me it is a needed variable, and I assign no loss of gain to that time. It might be a movie, or couch surfing, or writing on a blog or a newsletter I publish, but it is entertainment, and it is a zero-cost need in my life. Even if a HUGE profit project came up, I won't shovel off that entertainment time. Some people have countered that I have set my entertainment to an infinite cost, since it overrides any other possible profit or loss, but I look at it differently. Since I am not "gaining or losing" during my entertainment time, I look at it as a zero cost situation.
From my research into the daily actions of differing people I meet and know, I would say that legal actions are hidden more closely than illegal ones. I grew up in a "mob town" of Rosemont, Illinois, and saw that most illegal activity was out in the open, relatively known by common citizens and the police department (both corrupt and straight). In the town I live in today, the drug dealers, prostitutes and other "criminals" are relatively out in the open also. Sure, there are a lot of criminals who attempt to obfuscate their identity or actions to try to get ahead of the law, but in reality, the best way to perform a crime profitablly is to just pay off the overseers of the law. Problem solved, and you can expand your market because you can be more open about it.
Yes it is the LEGAL activities that surprise me at how much people try to hide. Look at slashdot. My name, my real name, is right here. You can look me up and call me or visit my home. I hide nothing, why should I? Yet most of you are hiding your identities for whatever reason -- and how many of you are doing something illegal by posting here? Browse the blogs, too, and see how many people use their real names.
We hide more than that -- I brought up the question of sex (marital) with a friend, and he freaked when I asked him about his sex life. As if sex when you're married is immoral or illegal, but still people hide behind the idea that we need privacy about such matters.
Most of what the law officers do is hidden, with even FOIA acts not bringing much information to light. This is supposedly legal operations of people who serve me, and yet I have no ability to discern what they're doing, and if they're doing their jobs right. Again, hidden yet probably legal actions.
The more I look around my life, the more I am amazed at how private people are, because they're afraid that some of their actions may be construed as immoral, or immature -- yet most of the people in my life are doing the exact same thing as others, and just hiding it. We post on forums and blogs, but we feel we must keep our names private because others might see what we write, even if others are thinking the same thoughts, or if those same others pretend to believe in freedom of expression but may secretly use it against you.
In terms of encrypting torrents, I do. I run a video sharing site for church videos, and all our torrents are legal and public domain. Yet we encrypt it because unencrypted torrents seem to run slower (I'm sure there is a reason for this, but I never really inspected the protocol specs). Therefore, we encrypt not to obfuscate the legality of what we're sharing, but because the market's limitations on torrent sharing give us a need to encrypt so we can provide a higher bandwidth for the sharing of legal, public domain content.
Are most torrents legal? I have no idea, but I do use torrents to send large files to multiple people every day in a variety of markets I do business in. For me, the torrent is an awesome solution to a problem I've had for years dealing with large files.
This is what most people don't understand, the price will drop, but it will never reach zero cost for new goods due to the fact that there IS a cost associated with production that must be recouped.
In terms of economic theory, this has not been proven or even insightfully debated.
Per my own economic theory, which has roots in the Austrian school but we differ in many areas, I truly believe that even new goods have no intrinsic cost unless such cost is applied or assumed by the creator of the goods (or services). Not all creators of goods or services place an inherent cost to creation. I don't. I spend close to 20 hours a week inventing, writing, recording or whatnot, and I place absolutely NO cost on that time. My view on time preference is that my content is pure entertainment value, so the actual cost to me to write, or create, is actually negative -- I gain a profit (entertainment value) from the act of creating.
If we take this perspective (for myself), the cost of goods is negative, let us say I can assign it a value of $-10. The entertainment I've gained has an equity of $-10 because I would have to spend $10 to get the same entertainment elsewhere ($10 cost - $10 in entertainment received gives a time preference net value of $0), so for me I have ($0 cost - $10 in entertainment or a time preference net value of $0). Since I already set aside a certain amount of hours each week (consciously and subconsciously), I don't attribute those hours to my normal time preference value which has a net value of +$100 per hour. Some Austrians might factor in the entertainment "Zero Hours" into an average of the positive net time preference hours, but I don't.
Now, with a negative cost of goods, and and a near infinite supply of those goods once created, the price actually falls to a negative based on the flawed supply and demand curves. This is why I am a fan of supply and demand theory, but have written extensively on the failures when one does not consider a zero sum net time preference value or even a negative cost association. Sure, you can say that web hosting has a cost, but I use NearlyFreeSpeech, so I pay around $0.01 per megabyte transfered, and if a typical blog post or RSS feed is 3K, I can have 333 readers for $0.01, so there is SOME intrinsic cost, but it is part of my entertainment value. In fact, I receive LESS entertainment value just writing an article in Notepad than I do in Wordpress, so even the hosting charge is not considered a positive cost to me.
Do most people think this deep about creating free content? Surely not, but most people aren't aware of time preference or supply and demand curves. "Mmm, writing on MySpace blog good." Why do they do it? Because there is an inherent profit to entertaining yourself because of the zero cost, other than time preference losses.
Why do I do it? Because not only do I lose nothing (other than time I set aside to lose), AND gain entertainment, I also gain something MOST bloggers, musicians, producers and artists don't perceive as a gain: I get a HUGE response to what I create. Beyond the minimal income that advertising gives me, I get hundreds of e-mails a week with amazing insights, criticisms, comments, and debate points that I can work into my real life (work). This gives me an edge and an enhanced time preference profit because now I have MORE information to sell to my clientele.
...with the vast amount of bandwidth, private networks, and users who are happy to share anything they spend time ripping and encoding.
The Internet has been very exciting for me -- I've never put a copyright on my works, and always openly let people copy and distribute what I've created. I'm even OK with no attribution, and letting others put their name on my productions. In the long run, it increases the interest in the markets I'm in.
The little guy has rarely been helped by copyright. There are a few examples, but in general, copyright has been about protecting distribution monopolies and NOT protecting the artists or content creators. It changed when copyright lost its 7+7 year cap.
Since then, distributors have had a de facto strangehold on most markets. That's fine -- the more people have access to the web, the faster the amateur, pro-am, and casual artists will be able to distribute without the old media monopolists.
You can try to "fix" copyright, but why beat a dead horse? I get more excited from seeing the massive influx of new artists in ALL markets (music, video, cartoons, comics, blogs, etc) where the artists openly place their content for the world to use. I can't recall the guy's name (mphillips, maybe?), but there's an artist who produced pencil art of Serenity/Firefly characters (yes, they're protected for some strange reason), and he distributes the high res images freely only. He makes his money by selling his own prints -- but anyone is free to print their own. Why let the artist print? Because some people feel a MORAL obligation to compensating the artist (I do), so they "donate" to keep him going. That's how most art was commissioned until the copyright monster reared its ugly head.
The future is bright for those who don't resist the open atmosphere of the new public domain, which is what I would consider MOST of the Internet. Yes, most blogs have a copyright statement at the bottom, but the long term solution to battling people who "steal" your "work" is to just notify your fans about them, and let simple reputation take care of the rest. What happens if a big company takes your work? Good luck fighting them in court. A single artist with a Cease and Desist has almost NO chance of even going to court -- the laws are written against artists.
10 years from now, I bet we'll see even MORE people sharing the photos freely on flickr, writing freely on blogs, producing videos and music freely. Sure, all those sites have some creative commons license, but again -- who will have the money to fight infringement?
Embrace the new market -- supply is near infinite, demand is finite, so price drops to zero. But the reputation you can build from producing years of quality new content is more than enough to compensate you in the long run; financially and otherwise.
You said: Google has anything but a monopoly. The search business can easily go to an engine that performs better. Google has most of the market share because they are quite simply the best at performing searches.
You meant: Google has anything but a permanent monopoly, because monopolies don't naturally exist for a long period of time. The search business can easily go to an engine that performs better, or the whole idea of a search engine may go away when a new technological discovery replaces it with something even better. Google has the most market share because they are quite simply the best at performing searching, just like Microsoft has/had most of the market share because they are quite simply the best at offering OS users the compatibility and efficiency and reduced learning curve that they desire.
You said: Microsoft on the other hand plays in a completely different arena. Switching from one OS to another is nearly impossible for many users and at least difficult for most.
You meant: Microsoft on the other hand plays in a completely different arena, one that is quickly going the way of the do-do. Switching from one OS to another is nearly impossible for many users and at least difficult for most, only because the people who spend time pretending that Microsoft has a temporary monopoly have forgotten about IBM, Compaq, Ford, and all the previous monopoly fears that were destroyed by competition. In reality, the future of the OS has Microsoft greatly scared of what likely will be a return to a client-server environment, the same environment that Microsoft temporarily destroyed because people wanted power on the desktop, and now they want power in an interactive environment.
There are no monopolies in the long run, regardless of how slow government is to react when one company actually gains customers because they are far and away the best of the competition pile. Microsoft will be like IBM -- quiet, weak, and still holding enough of a market share to hang on. The desktop is toast, and when you have a company like Microsoft that only knows about the desktop, they'll wither along with the old platform. Give it time, and the entire sphere of influence will return to its roots in shared resources. All we need is the bandwidth.
...I spent years building my own home theaters in each house I owned and lived in. Since I performed all the labor myself, they actually did add value upon resale.
One area that, in my experience, offers the most bang-for-the-buck is a two-part issue: room dimensions and sound-proofing, i.e. room treatment.
There are a LOT of expensive and probably useless room treatments. For me, the ultimate sound didn't come from watts or speaker power-handling but in properly sound-proofing the room against external noise. The lower the noise floor, the clearer the sound. This is key to having a good movie experience, I'd say, because you don't need it loud to be dynamic.
Room dimensions can be just as important, as certain rooms (square is the worst) have standing waves that emphasize or de-emphasize certain frequencies at certain locations. My ultimate theater had an odd shape (slightly angular walls and ceiling) but the sound was amazing. We also covered the walls in fairly cheap acoustic foam of varying lengths, and covered the foam with nice acoustically transparent cloth (red) so you couldn't see the varying foam squares. It was a slightly dead room, but it really had punch for the action films my friends liked.
Lastly, the proper bass crossover combined with the proper bass drivers is the final key for those who want action-style entertainment. I am a HUGE fan of Bag End from Barrington, Illinois. They make an ELF crossover and driver system which is just a miracle in a box. It is the flatest, most dynamic bass system imaginable, and the crossover was wonderful since it didn't overemphasize higher frequency bass to muddle male vocals or punchy sound effects.
One sidenote: I almost never focused on surround sound. Honestly, I was more happy with pseudo-surround out of low power, but dynamic speakers, than I was at have 16.5 channel surround sound. When I removed my rear channels, my visitors were always blown away by the clarity and depth of the properly positioned, amplified and mounted front 2 to 3 speakers I had installed. My current home theatre only has 3 speakers, and we're extremely happy with the install, which I did for a fraction of the overblown sound system my neighbor has. Even better, we're only driving the efficient and dynamic speakers with HEAVY 30 watt amps each, but since our noise floor is so low and our room is so quiet and dead, the sound is gorgeous, even for music.
I'm done with my theatre days, as the money is best spent elsewhere, and the upgrade bug is finally over.
Geek Post Subject: Comcast Throttles Bandwidth, Breaks Contract
Geek Post Comments: I can't believe Comcast! They promised me an unlimited 200mbit connection and all I am getting is 60mbit! I want what I paid for, who cares how fast my connection was 3 years ago! I demand my 200mbit connection, and at $50 per month!11!
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Oh, I don't doubt that rural deliveries would be more expensive -- but that's the responsibility you accept when you decide to move further away from urban areas. More gas to go places, more costs for communications (digital and physical), less choice in what you can buy locally, etc. The upside is more privacy, possibly more personal security, etc, etc.
I serve some churches in Alaska, and my shipping charges via FedEx are more expensive, but not that much more. I recently shipped an 8 pound package to Alaska and I believe the charge for FedEx ground was around $20. Shipping the same package to California is around $8. Considering the distance, that's not a huge price difference. Since the market sets prices based on supply and demand, it would make letters to Chicago cheap, and letters to Alaska expensive for me. That's normal, but how many people are mailing things to Alaska to begin with, compared to Chicago?
Maybe it is time to seriously consider revoking the monopoly provision that the USPS has in terms of being the only legal first class mail deliverer. The last time this was seriously proposed and enacted was over 150 years ago. That one competitive business put the USPS to shame and lowered prices and increased quality (as competition does).
I still can't figure out why we're accepting the postal service when there are many more companies that provide better service for other forms of mail (priority, ground, freight, etc). Even the USPS uses FedEx for their International Express service.
The USPS has one big problem: it can not compete well. It's run by bureaucrats who know they'll get paid regardless of service levels or prices. UPS and FedEx woo my businesses regularly (we mail a ton of stuff), and the prices haven't changed much even with fuel surcharges and the rest. I get an amazing rate for local deliveries of packages under 8 pounds, and it all ends up landing next day just via ground delivery.
I really haven't heard one good reason why we can't let competition into the first class mail market. Yes, the Constitution provides for the Federal Government to maintain mail delivery, but it doesn't actually say they should be the only providers. I'd think the USPS would do fine for remote areas of the country, and the big boys would bring prices down, and service up, by entering the market that desperately needs help.
Paul Broun ran on a "Ron Paul" ticket for Georgia and won based on those views. No doubt he's a decent politician (if I can use those terms).
Article about his Paul-like ideals
Maybe the Republic IS moving towards more freedom and less tyranny. 400 more like these guys and I may actually shut up about 70% of my gripes. Not all, but most.
I also think it's funny that most of the ads about how great it is to have high quality feature sporting events. I don't care about sporting events, so that doesn't matter to me. I might care about seeing the bead of sweat on Obi-Wan Kenobi's brow or something, but not on some NASCAR driver.
TV viewing for me is solely about "leaving reality behind." Sports are a bore, except for sporting events that may help me communicate better with customers on a personal level. I do like watching horse races, too, but not for gambling purposes. News media is all a bunch of cronies of powermongers, so I usually ignore it. YouTube is fine for catching up on segments. I'd pay for that, actually.
Because we watch a lot of movies (lately a lot of Indian Bollywood types, ha!), we want to "leave reality behind" for 2-3 hours. For me that means a very clear picture (without static, yes), with great sound. You can get both for under $2000 nowadays, even half that if you buy used (which we did) and cosmetically damaged. We picked up a 42" Sharp Aquos literally 9 days after it was released because it had a huge dent in the rear and was used for around 100 hours as a demo. Retail was $2000 or so (this is the 1080p model), we negotiated it down to $1200. Not bad, and I can run a full 1920x1080 resolution signal from my laptop if I am working on a video project.
The clarity of HD does enable us to slip into the movie better, for sure. I'm not sure it is necessary, but I did compare Star War A New Hope in HD versus DVD upconverted, and it was a remarkable difference, but not necessarily "necessary." A high quality mastered DVD, progressive, upconverted, really looks amazing. The difference between HD and SD-DVD, so far, is that some HD DVDs are mastered better, so the quality is better regardless of the resolution (better contrast, better colors, better sharpness, fewer film flaws).
I won't go back to SD, because HD is so darn cheap. Our bedroom TV is HD as well (picked up a 25" Samsung for $319 used and damaged on the stand). It feeds movies and signal from our Media Center in our living room, so we don't need to store DVDs anymore. I buy a DVD, digitize it, and stick the DVD in a leather case that holds 500 of them. Toss the case out, too.
We probably watch 5 movies a week at home, a few times with friends, so the benefit outweights the costs, I think. For me, I don't mind "blowing" $50 an hour on entertainment (or more) if its good entertainment that lets life's stresses fall away. Even going to church can be stressful, mind you. I figure if we spend 15 hours a week watching the telly, that's 750 hours a year. If the hardware lasts 3 years (and it will), that's 2250 hours a year for around $3000 for everything we have, including the movies (which we buy used, as well). $1.33 per hour for entertainment can't be beat. I figure I could spend $56,000 over 3 years and still feel "profitable," so we have a looooong way to go.
We have both formats, and use neither. They're old formats that we're quickly finding are not able to keep up with the future of media: digital transport. While I may be a video purist (and have been for over a decade), I am finding that more and more people don't care about getting the maximum quality out of their video system, and are pleased with just decent quality, even at high def. For most of my friends and family, simple SD-DVD upconverted to 1080i is enough to make them happy.
We've downloaded quite a few (mostly) legal HD videos off the net, and while they do take some time to download, the quality is impressive, considering the excessive compression of XViD or whatever codec is used to provide a high def video in a smaller file. We may be in the minority today with our media centers, but I'm seeing more and more people who are quite pleased with the quality of the newest HD TiVo, and are starting to move away from the DVD/disc format entirely.
The biggest two problems today are industry related: the big guns don't want digital transport, and few seem to be ready to jump on the on-demand bandwagon. There are numerous devices that can support on-demand downloadable HD movies, but even with the long download they are faster than NetFlix or the hassle of picking up and dropping off a rental. I still can't figure out WHY an industry is battling the obscure piracy problems, because it is obvious that there is no way to win that battle except to lower prices and increase options.
Yes, movies cost tens of millions to make, but there are over a hundred million households. Many are moving to HD (1080i/720p) flat panels, which are coming down in price. The cost of a TiVo-like box that plugs into your broadband router is negligible, and possibly offset by a monthly commitment to buying X HD movies a month (or a flat rate that includes X movies a month). The hardware is not that complicated, but it needs to be able to progress to using newer codecs as they're released. We have HDMI working fairly well as a video/audio transport, so cabling isn't a big issue (although I still use component for one device). Many households have broadband, so transport to the home is not a huge problem, considering that a 2GB file can be downloaded fairly quickly, even by bittorrent.
Yet the industry continues to try to hold on to old technology and standards, which are completely counterproductive for their growth. The movie theatre establishment is dying (or dead in some areas), and commercial-subsidized videos are also quickly falling apart. I know more people who to go YouTube to watch the news and oped pieces than deal with cable's scheduled service. Why is YouTube exploding, but Comcast is losing customers (or at least growing much slower than before)? Because people want a la carte, when they want it, and they don't want to deal with waiting for a show, storing hundreds of DVDs somewhere in their already cramped and cluttered living rooms, and trying to figure out which standard is better than the other one.
This is a gross oversimplification. The reality is that overbuilding is allowed in many places in the US. It's not like regulators don't want competition in the cable market, they'd love it. But in practice it almost never happens. That's because it's just not that easy. In order to roll out a network you need to get a whole bunch of property owners to agree at the same time. If one of them holds out, well, depending where he is located you might be able to route around it at increased cost. If several hold out, you may have to scrap that loop. So whoever is going to be that last person who kills the project has the cable company by the balls for the full commercial value of the proposed network. The implication is that for a given property owner, if they let you string your network, they'll benefit from increased competition to the tune of maybe $5-10/mo. But if they can hold out and be the last piece of the puzzle for the network, they can extract tens of thousands of dollars from the cable company. Everyone has an incentive to be the holdout and get the big payday. It's a nightmare of transaction costs. This is what eminent domain exists for.
Here you're forgetting that part of entering new markets is sometimes a burden for thousands of small businesses rather than a few large ones. We're talking about acquiring land rights to run a pipe or a wire. In some cases, the burden for acquisition doesn't have to be on an international conglomerate. A local business investor can do just fine, especially in smaller towns or areas. The business investors has a better chance of acquiring the land rights (through direct involvement with property owners), and once they've acquired the rights, they can then lease them to other companies, or even outright sell those rights to another larger middleman. It could even be tens of thousands of individuals acquiring the rights in various areas. Currently, we have the towns using force (eminent domain) and padding their own pockets, but it is not necessary to use eminent domain for things that people need and want.
We want phone service and Internet service. If that's the case, we should pay the costs the market bears on us to find the best provider at the best cost and best level of service that meets our needs. This may vary from area to area, and even block to block, depending on the needs of the people there. You may find that a part of a city block wants T3-level service, whereas another area may be happy with dialup-level service. The municipalities "force it on everyone through eminent domain" aspect really doesn't give people much choice in service/cost.
But you're talking about businesses that sell fungible products. Selling cable service is nothing like selling jeans. It is not inefficient to have 1000 jeans manufacturers. The all pump supply onto the market, and the supply matches up with demand. If people demand more, they produce more, if people demand less, they produce less. But with last mile telecom networks, every network needs to reach all the consumers in its area, and does so at immense cost, but each consumer generally utilizes only one network. They have to pay out to reach every consumer in their region whether the consumer buys their product or not. Each existing network in the region cuts down proportionally on how many of the homes they will reach they can expect to subscribe. With a very low number of last mile networks you quickly reach the point where that proportion is no longer sufficient to fund construction of the network. This is nothing like selling jeans at all.
There is no difference, whatsoever. If there is a demand for a product, that demand is based on getting a certain quality of service/product at a certain price. If the area is against selling wiring rights to others, the cost of the product goes up and the service level goes down. Money suppliers (i.e. consumers) will quickly learn that their resistance to selling land-rights means higher costs due to less competition in the area. Maybe t
You can't get the local municipalities out of the cable business for the simple reason that the cable companies cannot possibly buy via the free market the property rights necessary to string up a network. It's a classic holdout problem. Every property owner (including the municipality itself) that sits in a strategic position will have the leverage and incentive to hold out from selling access until they can extract all of the cable company's profits. Without the political process to facilitate the necessary access to public and private property, it just doesn't happen. It's the same for the landline phone business. And wireless has its own reasons for requiring regulation. The simple fact is that this has always been a regulated business, and it always will be. It's the unavoidable nature of the business.
That's a ridiculous supposition. You're making the assumption that "business transaction" means "a business selling to a consumer" when in fact a "business transaction" means two suppliers of products or services exchanging for each other's products or services. In most "business transactions" it is one entity with cash and one entity with product or service, but this is not always the case. In the case of needing a right-of-way, this is exactly why we should see middlemen who take the risk to acquire right-of-way status (through payment or provision of service) and lease it out to others.
When it comes to private property, there is absolutely no reason why a cable-connect middleman can NOT go to each person and tender an agreement to utilitize their property for cabling. Part of the agreement would be the transfer of rights in the process of selling or leasing that property to others. It's done now with cell phone towers quite successfully on private land. I know of three building owners who get a nice chunk of change in exchange for placement of a cell tower on their property.
If someone does not want to sell, that's an issue, but not a big one. There is always a price. Also, there is a negotiable option for each person to utilize the service of the provider at a reduced rate based on a reduced price for agreeing to provide the right-of-way. Because right-of-way is two dimensional, you can navigate around those who wish not to give you the rights, so you have numerous angles of attack to provide service to particular areas. Overall, I believe you'd see MOST people would be happy to exchange right-of-way for a discount of services provided through that particular middle-man's cable run. Some middle-men may just run their own pipe, allowing for multiple competitive conduits within the same small access pipe.
What if everyone or a majority of landowners say "no" to renting/selling right of way access? That's easy to resolve, too: they don't get any access to any communications services provided. If you're the one person in the way of thousands, guess what the communications providers will say is the reason for no service in your area? They'll point to the hold-out. This is an excellent market solution, since it puts the burden of explanation on the person holding out. It's also a net gain for the pipe middlemen, since they have no reason to be concerned about a profit where their product is not wanted at any cost.
Right now, you're practically forced to accept powerlines and conduits through your backyard, since many of those backyards are "naturally" owned by the municipality. This infringes on your property rights, though. Look at the nice fees your cable company charges you for the rights that your town gets for allowing monopoly access. Those fees could be yours to keep, and even earn, depending on your location. Someone who is the "sole pathway" to a town may end up making a nice penny if they improbably own all the land surrounding a town. That's a market provision, and anyone is able to negotiate buying a piece of that land just to provide cheaper access for the pipe middlemen.
Your conclusion is correct, even if your reasoning is inane. T
Anyone notice that all the swivel chairs are bolted to the ground? I wonder why they made them fixed and permanent.
Thanks, that's sweet!
(mod -1/pun intended)
I have a long history with stereolithographic devices (I used to consult with CNC companies as a teenager and young adult), and my dream was to have a SL device that made custom chocolate bars and pieces. While proper chocolate has to be poured at the right temperature into the mold, I've always wondered if there is a future to make a machine like an SL 3D printer that can print in chocolate.
I've done some basic searching, but found no one even talking about it. Yes, it's corny, but I'd love to know if anyone has played with candy/sugar/chocolate as the substrate for a 3D printer.
Time and again we have people who moan about monopolistic tendencies of large corporations. They offer negative opinions of the so-called free market. Unfortunately for the consumer, the FCC and local municipalities have assured us of never having a truly free market in cable (and cable-provided services).
We need to stomp on the FCC and allow them to truly deregulate (which they've never really done) at the national level. The FCC should have no mandate over cable, or any non-wireless communications provider. It all boils down to property rights, and the ability for competitive companies to utilize public and private property to run their networks.
I know of so many people who are concerned that deregulation (national and local) of cable and comm providers would end up giving us millions of wires overhead on the telephone poles. This is untrue. It would primarily open up the market of physical cabling middlemen who would run their cables and provide access to others. For years, we had the so-called "dry pair" which the phone companies provided. Then DSL came, and the phone companies lobbied Congress and the State government for control of the network. Instead of opening competition up to more companies to offer dry pairs (or newer technology) leased to others, the various regulating bodies shut down competition more and more.
I'm not afraid of having billions of wires all over the place, since the cost to run the network cabling is prohibitive to many businesses -- but still possible to raise through stock IPOs, bond issues, and other market economy money drives. If one company has the only cables, prices will be high, but so will the opportunity to compete: more companies will consider entering that market if they can see a long term profit.
We also need to allow the market to work for remote installations. I know of a few people who live in the boonies and complain about the lack of communications providers: this is part of the "cost" of living far from an urban area, and a cost that people should live with if they want the privacy, and security, of exurban living. There should be no subsidization of remote towns, or anyone. There are tradeoffs, and profits, for life's decisions, and that cost should be evident and transparent, not hidding and paid for by others who didn't make that decision.
Thankfully, we're seeing more solutions slowly popping up. WiFi networks, maybe WiMax networks, and other competitive products should hopefully push the cabled providers to lowering their prices, which may end up having the effect of creating a deregulated market before government will move to unrestrict that competition.
Thanks to the mini-USB connector on my phone, battery life is completely not important to me. In the car, I charge my phone. At work or at a client's, I plug it into a laptop or PC. If I am desperate, I have a little USB hand crank that can power my phone for 20 minutes with about 3 minutes of cranking.
When cell phones had proprietary connectors that changed with each new model, battery life was maybe #3 on my list of important features. Now I don't even think of it. I can not recall a day in the past year when I had less than 60% battery life (even with WiFi and Bluetooth enabled on my HTC Trinity).
Is it really a big deal for a lot of people? Where are you that you can't plug in, even if just for 10-15 minutes to top off your battery?
As a semi-pro blogger who does receive compensation (from advertising, paid product placement, and subscriptions), I still believe there is a long way to go to compete with the biggest old media outlets, especially newspapers. The key difference that I've seen, so far, is that the newspapers still have reporters, while the new media has just journalists. There is a decline in old media reporting, though, as more and more newspapers just regurgitate whatever the AP is reporting. Google News is hilarious when you find 500 identically written articles by major media outlets.
The WSJ has a unique combination of reporters, journalists, and oped pieces. They're going to be hard to topple. Their biggest downside is their support for war and their support for more government. So far, though, it has not hampered their growth.
I am one of the few new media writers that still has faith in the old media, but not most of it. There's room for a few dozen major newspapers to compete, but the majority of them will find themselves without readers, or advertisers, as they continue to lose market share to the new media writers who are faster, more varied in opinion, and closer to home for their readers.
I still am trying to figure out how the Supreme Court allows Congress to support, or directly provide, loans at the Federal level for college students. It makes absolutely no sense to me that anyone can find support for money taken from me so that you can get your college education.
My father came to this country penniless, and worked as a waiter to get through college. He didn't have Federal support for college, so upon graduating he had no debt. Today, most of my friends who graduated in 1996-1998 still are paying off their bills, and I'm sure I'm partially paying for some of it through whatever fraudulent taxation system the Feds use to acquire my funds to pay for others.
Can't people see that Federally-financed loans are one of the primary reasons that tuition is so high? Before Federal loans, colleges would loan students their own money (at 1-2% interest) to go to school. The colleges had good reason to keep tuition low since they were taking a risk with their own money. Now we have people paying for college loans until they're 35 -- and those who never went to college and never wanted to are supporting others as well.
Combine that with no Constitutional mandate for regulation of the Internet, or for criminalizing non-physical content sharing, and you have a really hilarious law that would make the Founders roll in their graves non-stop.
This bill is a non-issue. It protects the inherent rights of no individual, but provides subsidies to special interest groups. Where's the Supreme Court when you need them?
The term "old media" is a semi-ad hominem style attack that I like to use against the previously monopolistic media, mostly TV, radio and newspaper. Yet that term holds true to any company that attempts to use the force of law to keep and protect monopolistic practices in any communications market, including cell phones and land lines.
Google has proven that the monopoly of distribution can be broken by their network, and their applications. AdSense replaces expensive marketing and advertising departments, Blogger.com replaces the need for physical media and the costs associated. Google Search replaces direct advertising campaigns, and YouTube is trumping the cable networks in giving people a la carte entertainment at a moment's notice. I have high hopes that Google's foray into the wireless market will offer huge gains for those of us who are sick and tired of the old media cell phone technology (locked phones, expensive monthly charges, limited application support, etc).
As WiFi exploded in use, I continued to be amazed at how relatively unregulated bandwidth worked so well in all the market locales I had WiFi implemented in. Yes, I've heard horror stories by relatively few, but in my office in downtown Chicago, our WiFi network worked seamlessly with dozens of others in the same building. Up to now, I still can't find verifiable proof that other wireless bandwidth segments can't be shared by dozens, or hundreds, of providers in the same vicinity. With the advent of software radios (frequency hopping, output power changes, etc), it seems that the first person to relinquish full control of their bandwidth nation-wide will really hurt the old media strangehold in the wireless market.
My biggest fear for wireless is the push for more laws to regulate "network neutrality," which I am against vehemently. I believe that paying for access tiers makes more sense than forcing the market to all stay at a certain level of service for everyone at a flat price. It doesn't make sense to me (neither as a businessman, nor as an individual). I'm hoping to see Google offer the bandwidth in markets they can't reach in a relatively unregulated and openly competitive atmosphere. In an adjoining town to mine, Libertyville, Illinois, there are numerous WiFi Internet providers who are doing gangbusters sticking access points on leased towers and giving people in the region what they want (including even free WiFi at a throttled speed) at the price they're willing to pay. The old media companies (AT&T, Comcast, etc) have fought tooth and nail to shut down these hooligans, but the city has held its ground in allowing them to compete. My own town won't allow this to happen (although we do have a bunch of WiFi sharing groups on within 2 blocks of me), so I'd love to see a national push by a major new media company to open bandwidth for all to play with to see what the market can provide with reduced FCC rules created by the old monopolists.
My big concern is the names Sprint and T-Mobile associated with the post. I use T-Mobile for 60% of my wireless communication (mostly EDGE and voice), and AT&T for the remainder (3G), and while I'm happy, I also use unlocked foreign phones and hardware devices. My friends who use the locally provided versions of the same devices are really unhappy, and don't have anywhere near the amount of customization and freedom that I get by providing my own (expensive) devices.
I do see a big WMD for the old media ahead, ready to explode. It's called competition, and it will come from all levels: locally, nationally, internationally. I've spent more time on YouTube in the past 2 weeks than watching TV in the past 6 months. I'm prepared with my wallet to pay in advance for broadcasts I like (such as Sanctuary, which I feel isn't there yet), and I can't wait to see what foreigners with a great grasp of English start producing with the technology available. Combine that with a relatively cheap and open range of bandwidth frequencies, and the radio/tv/cell monopolists are dead.
I can't wait. Who do I write a check to at Google?
I've been using primarily laptops for about 2 years, and none of them are suited for desktop replacement, because of the massive heat generated. I've been through 3 laptops in 9 months that had physical failures due to heat. I started a site to rant on about the hinge crack on my HP dv9000 model, and have received a few hundred search hits in a month or two.
I replaced that unit with a higher end Gateway, and now that one is generating too much heat. My previous model, a Toshiba, had the same problem. My Lenova, same problem.
Now I am searching on a decent desktop unit. All my computer life I always built my own, but I'm tired of it. I just want a powerful system that works for me without hardware issues. Software I can deal with, but it does seem that none of the manufacturers have any idea how to build a long term solution (and by long term, I mean just 12-18 months of use).
I built a lap-desk a year ago with cooling fans (not plywood, either), and it was functional, but still not perfect. I'd love to see Fellows or another ergonomically-inclined designer produce something useful, but I think the "art" and look-and-feel get in the way of making something truly functional.
My dream lap-desk? A Herman Miller designed desk for my Aeron chair. That would be just perfection, I believe.
While I'm anti-State, I do accept the Constitution for what it is -- if it was followed properly.
I believe the Federal Government's primary goal is to protect the inherent rights of the People (not grant them, not restrain them). I believe the States, individual countries in their own design, should be prevented from passing legislation that revokes, restrains, regulates or perverts inherent rights, especially those listed in the Bill of Rights.
Municipalities are bribed by large cable and communications companies for monopoly licensing. This is counter-liberty. While I abhor the FCC and believe it is unconstitutional, I think Congress has a place to tell the States to stop licensing monopolies and restricting competition.
I'd rather see Congress remove OLD laws that provide for the non-competitive nature, but it is what it is. I don't think more government intrusion into the market will make it more competitive, though.
ardor: I appreciate that viewpoint. I also disagree.
In my experience, the best thing for my "career" has been openness. I'm an anarcho-capitalist, yet I get hired by companies who knows it. I'm a Pantelist, yet hundreds of Dispensationalist churches hire me even though I disagree vehemently with their view on the Bible. My religious background from my parents is Muslim/Roman-Catholic, which I am open about, yet I work with Jews, Hindus, Evangelicals and Atheists. When I fight with my wife, I'm not afraid to discuss it openly (either on my blog, or with people I know who complain about their spouses). When I received my first kidney stone (and later, a hemorrhoid), I had no embarassment to share the pain and the fix with others. I don't mask the fact that I like to go out and have an expensive glass of Scotch (even the most anti-drinking Christian clients of mine know), and I don't hide the fact that I love Vegas for the lack of law-oversight in many actions I deem non-harmful to others.
If the day comes that a whacko takes over government (and I'd say that day has come a long time ago), I have the choice to move. If they come to ethnically cleanse me, what difference would it make if I hid my beliefs or was open about them? I pride myself on my beliefs, and the only way I can make the world better is by sharing my ups and downs with others, so they may some day come to understand and even agree with what I believe in. You would be surprised how many devout Evangelicals have changed their doctrine to Preterism after talking with me for years or months -- even though I risked losing business and a significant investment by sharing those details. You'd be surprised how many Jews hire me knowing I come from a Muslim background (heck, a Jewish gal even married me) and support all religions and faiths in a freedom to worship God their way. A lot of family told me to hide my background, in fact two of my relatives are fairly famous and went so far to change their names to hide their heritage.
I see no reason to hide myself. I've screwed up, often. I still do, every day. But when I share these things with others, a trust level is created even though I've screwed people over in the past. That trust level is important to me, because it gives me a sense of stability with my relationships with others. When I do screw up, and I do often, they're more willing to hear me out, especially if I am honest about the screw up (usually it is laziness combined with a bad case of A.D.D.). The flip side is having to make excuses, or having to try to change something inherent about myself.
Your NET cost may be zero, but there is a cost in your time. If you choose to value the return from that cost as equal, that's fine. But there is STILL A COST.
Only if the good producer assigns a cost to that time. The Austrian Economists call it "Time Preference" which sort of covers the cost of your time, and while I agree with most of their theory, I do also truly believe that many of us (provably) set no cost to certain periods of time in our lives. I actually DO assign a time cost to sleep, and I also assign a time cost to vacations, but I don't assign a time cost to entertainment up to a certain amount per week (generally). For example: if I have a BIG project I am working on, on a tight deadline, I may pass up on sleep (entirely or just some sleep) because the profit of the project (financial or long term reputation gain) more than exceeds the time preference cost of sleeping for that time. But even if I am working my tail off, I still set aside entertainment time, because for me it is a needed variable, and I assign no loss of gain to that time. It might be a movie, or couch surfing, or writing on a blog or a newsletter I publish, but it is entertainment, and it is a zero-cost need in my life. Even if a HUGE profit project came up, I won't shovel off that entertainment time. Some people have countered that I have set my entertainment to an infinite cost, since it overrides any other possible profit or loss, but I look at it differently. Since I am not "gaining or losing" during my entertainment time, I look at it as a zero cost situation.
From my research into the daily actions of differing people I meet and know, I would say that legal actions are hidden more closely than illegal ones. I grew up in a "mob town" of Rosemont, Illinois, and saw that most illegal activity was out in the open, relatively known by common citizens and the police department (both corrupt and straight). In the town I live in today, the drug dealers, prostitutes and other "criminals" are relatively out in the open also. Sure, there are a lot of criminals who attempt to obfuscate their identity or actions to try to get ahead of the law, but in reality, the best way to perform a crime profitablly is to just pay off the overseers of the law. Problem solved, and you can expand your market because you can be more open about it.
Yes it is the LEGAL activities that surprise me at how much people try to hide. Look at slashdot. My name, my real name, is right here. You can look me up and call me or visit my home. I hide nothing, why should I? Yet most of you are hiding your identities for whatever reason -- and how many of you are doing something illegal by posting here? Browse the blogs, too, and see how many people use their real names.
We hide more than that -- I brought up the question of sex (marital) with a friend, and he freaked when I asked him about his sex life. As if sex when you're married is immoral or illegal, but still people hide behind the idea that we need privacy about such matters.
Most of what the law officers do is hidden, with even FOIA acts not bringing much information to light. This is supposedly legal operations of people who serve me, and yet I have no ability to discern what they're doing, and if they're doing their jobs right. Again, hidden yet probably legal actions.
The more I look around my life, the more I am amazed at how private people are, because they're afraid that some of their actions may be construed as immoral, or immature -- yet most of the people in my life are doing the exact same thing as others, and just hiding it. We post on forums and blogs, but we feel we must keep our names private because others might see what we write, even if others are thinking the same thoughts, or if those same others pretend to believe in freedom of expression but may secretly use it against you.
In terms of encrypting torrents, I do. I run a video sharing site for church videos, and all our torrents are legal and public domain. Yet we encrypt it because unencrypted torrents seem to run slower (I'm sure there is a reason for this, but I never really inspected the protocol specs). Therefore, we encrypt not to obfuscate the legality of what we're sharing, but because the market's limitations on torrent sharing give us a need to encrypt so we can provide a higher bandwidth for the sharing of legal, public domain content.
Are most torrents legal? I have no idea, but I do use torrents to send large files to multiple people every day in a variety of markets I do business in. For me, the torrent is an awesome solution to a problem I've had for years dealing with large files.
This is what most people don't understand, the price will drop, but it will never reach zero cost for new goods due to the fact that there IS a cost associated with production that must be recouped.
In terms of economic theory, this has not been proven or even insightfully debated.
Per my own economic theory, which has roots in the Austrian school but we differ in many areas, I truly believe that even new goods have no intrinsic cost unless such cost is applied or assumed by the creator of the goods (or services). Not all creators of goods or services place an inherent cost to creation. I don't. I spend close to 20 hours a week inventing, writing, recording or whatnot, and I place absolutely NO cost on that time. My view on time preference is that my content is pure entertainment value, so the actual cost to me to write, or create, is actually negative -- I gain a profit (entertainment value) from the act of creating.
If we take this perspective (for myself), the cost of goods is negative, let us say I can assign it a value of $-10. The entertainment I've gained has an equity of $-10 because I would have to spend $10 to get the same entertainment elsewhere ($10 cost - $10 in entertainment received gives a time preference net value of $0), so for me I have ($0 cost - $10 in entertainment or a time preference net value of $0). Since I already set aside a certain amount of hours each week (consciously and subconsciously), I don't attribute those hours to my normal time preference value which has a net value of +$100 per hour. Some Austrians might factor in the entertainment "Zero Hours" into an average of the positive net time preference hours, but I don't.
Now, with a negative cost of goods, and and a near infinite supply of those goods once created, the price actually falls to a negative based on the flawed supply and demand curves. This is why I am a fan of supply and demand theory, but have written extensively on the failures when one does not consider a zero sum net time preference value or even a negative cost association. Sure, you can say that web hosting has a cost, but I use NearlyFreeSpeech, so I pay around $0.01 per megabyte transfered, and if a typical blog post or RSS feed is 3K, I can have 333 readers for $0.01, so there is SOME intrinsic cost, but it is part of my entertainment value. In fact, I receive LESS entertainment value just writing an article in Notepad than I do in Wordpress, so even the hosting charge is not considered a positive cost to me.
Do most people think this deep about creating free content? Surely not, but most people aren't aware of time preference or supply and demand curves. "Mmm, writing on MySpace blog good." Why do they do it? Because there is an inherent profit to entertaining yourself because of the zero cost, other than time preference losses.
Why do I do it? Because not only do I lose nothing (other than time I set aside to lose), AND gain entertainment, I also gain something MOST bloggers, musicians, producers and artists don't perceive as a gain: I get a HUGE response to what I create. Beyond the minimal income that advertising gives me, I get hundreds of e-mails a week with amazing insights, criticisms, comments, and debate points that I can work into my real life (work). This gives me an edge and an enhanced time preference profit because now I have MORE information to sell to my clientele.
...with the vast amount of bandwidth, private networks, and users who are happy to share anything they spend time ripping and encoding.
The Internet has been very exciting for me -- I've never put a copyright on my works, and always openly let people copy and distribute what I've created. I'm even OK with no attribution, and letting others put their name on my productions. In the long run, it increases the interest in the markets I'm in.
The little guy has rarely been helped by copyright. There are a few examples, but in general, copyright has been about protecting distribution monopolies and NOT protecting the artists or content creators. It changed when copyright lost its 7+7 year cap.
Since then, distributors have had a de facto strangehold on most markets. That's fine -- the more people have access to the web, the faster the amateur, pro-am, and casual artists will be able to distribute without the old media monopolists.
You can try to "fix" copyright, but why beat a dead horse? I get more excited from seeing the massive influx of new artists in ALL markets (music, video, cartoons, comics, blogs, etc) where the artists openly place their content for the world to use. I can't recall the guy's name (mphillips, maybe?), but there's an artist who produced pencil art of Serenity/Firefly characters (yes, they're protected for some strange reason), and he distributes the high res images freely only. He makes his money by selling his own prints -- but anyone is free to print their own. Why let the artist print? Because some people feel a MORAL obligation to compensating the artist (I do), so they "donate" to keep him going. That's how most art was commissioned until the copyright monster reared its ugly head.
The future is bright for those who don't resist the open atmosphere of the new public domain, which is what I would consider MOST of the Internet. Yes, most blogs have a copyright statement at the bottom, but the long term solution to battling people who "steal" your "work" is to just notify your fans about them, and let simple reputation take care of the rest. What happens if a big company takes your work? Good luck fighting them in court. A single artist with a Cease and Desist has almost NO chance of even going to court -- the laws are written against artists.
10 years from now, I bet we'll see even MORE people sharing the photos freely on flickr, writing freely on blogs, producing videos and music freely. Sure, all those sites have some creative commons license, but again -- who will have the money to fight infringement?
Embrace the new market -- supply is near infinite, demand is finite, so price drops to zero. But the reputation you can build from producing years of quality new content is more than enough to compensate you in the long run; financially and otherwise.
You said: Google has anything but a monopoly. The search business can easily go to an engine that performs better. Google has most of the market share because they are quite simply the best at performing searches.
You meant: Google has anything but a permanent monopoly, because monopolies don't naturally exist for a long period of time. The search business can easily go to an engine that performs better, or the whole idea of a search engine may go away when a new technological discovery replaces it with something even better. Google has the most market share because they are quite simply the best at performing searching, just like Microsoft has/had most of the market share because they are quite simply the best at offering OS users the compatibility and efficiency and reduced learning curve that they desire.
You said: Microsoft on the other hand plays in a completely different arena. Switching from one OS to another is nearly impossible for many users and at least difficult for most.
You meant: Microsoft on the other hand plays in a completely different arena, one that is quickly going the way of the do-do. Switching from one OS to another is nearly impossible for many users and at least difficult for most, only because the people who spend time pretending that Microsoft has a temporary monopoly have forgotten about IBM, Compaq, Ford, and all the previous monopoly fears that were destroyed by competition. In reality, the future of the OS has Microsoft greatly scared of what likely will be a return to a client-server environment, the same environment that Microsoft temporarily destroyed because people wanted power on the desktop, and now they want power in an interactive environment.
There are no monopolies in the long run, regardless of how slow government is to react when one company actually gains customers because they are far and away the best of the competition pile. Microsoft will be like IBM -- quiet, weak, and still holding enough of a market share to hang on. The desktop is toast, and when you have a company like Microsoft that only knows about the desktop, they'll wither along with the old platform. Give it time, and the entire sphere of influence will return to its roots in shared resources. All we need is the bandwidth.
...I spent years building my own home theaters in each house I owned and lived in. Since I performed all the labor myself, they actually did add value upon resale.
One area that, in my experience, offers the most bang-for-the-buck is a two-part issue: room dimensions and sound-proofing, i.e. room treatment.
There are a LOT of expensive and probably useless room treatments. For me, the ultimate sound didn't come from watts or speaker power-handling but in properly sound-proofing the room against external noise. The lower the noise floor, the clearer the sound. This is key to having a good movie experience, I'd say, because you don't need it loud to be dynamic.
Room dimensions can be just as important, as certain rooms (square is the worst) have standing waves that emphasize or de-emphasize certain frequencies at certain locations. My ultimate theater had an odd shape (slightly angular walls and ceiling) but the sound was amazing. We also covered the walls in fairly cheap acoustic foam of varying lengths, and covered the foam with nice acoustically transparent cloth (red) so you couldn't see the varying foam squares. It was a slightly dead room, but it really had punch for the action films my friends liked.
Lastly, the proper bass crossover combined with the proper bass drivers is the final key for those who want action-style entertainment. I am a HUGE fan of Bag End from Barrington, Illinois. They make an ELF crossover and driver system which is just a miracle in a box. It is the flatest, most dynamic bass system imaginable, and the crossover was wonderful since it didn't overemphasize higher frequency bass to muddle male vocals or punchy sound effects.
One sidenote: I almost never focused on surround sound. Honestly, I was more happy with pseudo-surround out of low power, but dynamic speakers, than I was at have 16.5 channel surround sound. When I removed my rear channels, my visitors were always blown away by the clarity and depth of the properly positioned, amplified and mounted front 2 to 3 speakers I had installed. My current home theatre only has 3 speakers, and we're extremely happy with the install, which I did for a fraction of the overblown sound system my neighbor has. Even better, we're only driving the efficient and dynamic speakers with HEAVY 30 watt amps each, but since our noise floor is so low and our room is so quiet and dead, the sound is gorgeous, even for music.
I'm done with my theatre days, as the money is best spent elsewhere, and the upgrade bug is finally over.
Geek Post Subject: Comcast Throttles Bandwidth, Breaks Contract
Geek Post Comments: I can't believe Comcast! They promised me an unlimited 200mbit connection and all I am getting is 60mbit! I want what I paid for, who cares how fast my connection was 3 years ago! I demand my 200mbit connection, and at $50 per month!11!
Geek Post Moderation: +5, Insightful