Thanks. In offense of myself, I hae to admit that I am unreasonable. My views of anarchocapitalism are hard to understand, but I have spent years testing them.
I _would_ abe willing to try a government of anyone if we were guaranteed a few things:
1. A 100% gold-backed currency. Wars are fought and corporations are built on counterfeit money.
2. No politician serving more than 15,000 citizens. I think I'd rather have one representative who knows me rather than 35 who don't.
Here's my big problem with social health care: getting rid of personal responsibility and giving people an out for basic problems.
My doctor friends see more people for non-problems that 20 years ago would be taken care of with soup and bed rest. One of my doctor friends wastes almost 30% of his day just seeing old people who come up with problems in order to be around others. I don't have his quote unfortunately, but it's true.
When the government can steal from the masses to pay for your problems, you tend to not protect yourself against the problems. Have you seen how many fat bastards are out there? It is disgusting. Being fat is likely causing 50%+ of the problems we're seeing in medicine today! STOP EATING SO MANY SUGARS, people.
I was fat for about 2 years. I went to the doctor at least every 3 months with various pains and problems. I cut my carbs and trans fats and I'm back to my high school weight and health. I go yearly for a check up that I pay CASH for. I am significantly healthier.
Yet I look around me and see society getting fatter and unhealthier every day. If people had to pay for their own care and insurance rather than forcing hospitals and companies to subsidize it, I think we'd see people living healthier lives.
No offense to any chunky geeks out there, but I have to tell you -- I was that way for a few years and for many of you, it is far easier to lose the weight that you'd believe.
I agree, and I think it will be a very bright and intersting future for smaller producers as well. I'm thinking of doing a video-style podcast shortly, in fact.
For me, the big "scare" for any mass market video or audio producer is the idea of massively available wireless broadband. For an anarchocapitalist such as myself, it is the opposite: not a scare in the least. The availability of information when we want it without being tied to our home or our business will really increase the destruction of the highly regulated and mercantilistic market that we cann the mass media.
I think you CAN blame an overreaching Congress, here. The insurance companies are, of course, pushing Congress to mandate buying insurance. Any mandate causes the price to go up. Yet many laws on the books that criminalize cocaine, heroine/opiates, and even marijuana cause the prices of drugs to go up as well (legal ones).
Here is a decent article regarding the health care problem and how over-regulation and over-mandation (is that a word, editors?) is causing the nightmare.
My doctor is 80. He remembers the day that he could prescribe drugs for $5 and he could make housecalls for $5 (free to his poorest patients). He admits it is government that has destroyed his love for helping the sick. He is no anarchist, like me.
Socialized health care is the rot of the world, second only to the legal profession that has created the mess of laws we live under today.
Tivo is in a world of hurt, from what I can tell. As one of the first Tivo users, my Tivo units just sit in the closet for the past few years.
Everything I see is pointing to the fact that people want on demand video more and more. The Pirate Bay's top downloads are consistently TV shows! Maybe it is because these shows are not available in Europe? Either way, people want TV when they want it, and they're willing to wait for a download of a show with no commercials and no price.
The profitability for a video provider is taking that 12-72 hour free download and turn it into a fast (real time?) download for the consumer when they want it. I'm not sure how we'll see this happen in the far future, but in the near future, it could just be On Demand from Comcast (which is actually pretty amazing) or Microsoft IPTV style downloads.
Tivo is wise to try to connect with Intel on selling their name as the "Video as you want it when you want it" brand. As an early adopter in almost everything, I can tell you my biggest complaints about Tv shows and movies are the following:
1. If I download a show, it is always in a codec that I can't view easily. AVC doesn't run well on any of my platforms (I mostly have 1.8Ghz P4s). XViD seems better, but I get odd pixelization on occasion. Intel has the power to combine with Tivo and offer a codec that is specific to their hardware platform, whereas illegal torrents aren't really targetted at anyone. I would gladly pay for that consistency. So would most adults.
2. I want it quick. Yesterday I had to redownload Quicktime and I was watching the download at aroun 850K/s. That's damn fast (I'm testing a new broadband provider right now). My neighbor's comcast cable was getting consistent 400K/s downloads. BitTorrent and other P2P systems halt at about 50K for me (with and without NAT). If I want to download a file, I want it near real time or faster.
3. I want to be able to pause, fast forward and rewind. I'm sick of getting movies that I have to re-encode beause someone screwed up and prevented me from skipping data.
4. I want it to look good at 720p and 1080i. There is nothing worse that trying to watch cable at 110" and seeing crap. I can watch DVDs from 6 years ago upcoverted to 1080i and they look great. There is no reason for bad quality images, even at reduced resolutions.
5. I want to be able to store it for the future or be able to redownload it at a cheaper price.
6. Rather that reconverting my shows for various watching formats (PDA, SDTV, HDTV or whatever) I should just have the option of redownloading it. I am currently converting an AVC to WMV for my PDA and it seriously says it will take 90 hours. Ouch.
7. I should be able to select my price to pay versus what I am willing to give up. In some situations I wouldn't mind paying less and be forced to watch ads. In other cases, I don't mind reporting what I fast forwarded past and rewound to review. It depends on what it is. I'd love to be able to say "I'll pay full price if I can keep it forever, never watch an ad, pause it as I'd like and rewind all I want" and also say "I'll pay zero but I will accept not being able to skip ads."
My fear is that Intel's VIIV and Microsoft's MCE are both looking to try to capitulate to a dying industry. I use Microsoft's MCE and absolutely love it but I won't upgrade to the latest patches that involve DRM. I am not against DRM, but I am against DRM that doesn't offer something to the end user.
Once a consumer tastes the sweetness of a new feature (even if illegal), there is NO way to back out of it. Instead, the market has been permanently changed and the suppliers need to modify their product to offer what the consumer is looking for.
The FCC just announced it will allow serving channels a la carte on cable. What a STUPID STUPID STUPID regulation we've had to deal with for decades. Guess what? Channels a la carte is so 1990, too!
People are getting used to on demand everything. On demand opeds via blogs, on demand news via the web and SMS, on demand coupons, on demand everything. Storing information that is identical between millions (or even dozens) of users when information can be shared can show a huge savings in many ways (electricity, storage space, labor to secure it, etc).
We will see the day, soon, that iTunes will stream via national WiFi networks music on demand.
As to why not just get an all-in-one? I think the answer in the long run is customization. For me, my PDA phone is a miracle. It does everything I could want in a PC, and it weighs nothing and fits in a pocket. If I need GPS, I have it via bluetooth the instant I get in my car. If I need music, I could get it via a bluetooth headset. If I need to check my car's maintenance needs, maybe it could communicate to my PDA what it needs. I think my next PDA phone will actually be a phone with bluetooth and a PDA with a bigger screen and a better processor. I honestly don't mind a few different devices, especially since some devices could be docked permanently (in the car, in the house, in my wallet murse, etc).
Information will become on demand once we have information available everywhere. I really think landline permanent connections will slowly give way to massive pipes connecting to access points able to feed thousands simultaneously. It would be in all the comm companies interests to offer completely free WiFi connections at 64Kbps, but sell access at 10Mbps for those who want it (or anywhere in between). What we need is to kick the damn FCC out and open up all that wasted regulated bandwidth to WiFi style services. Fine, have some organization monitor that bandwidth but why the hell do we need to differentiate between cell calls and analog TV and radio and whatever, when it all can just be IP?
This is an interesting item but it is so 1990. The review's comment of "I am a sucker for any tool or gadget that tries to combine more than one use or function into a single item" is exactly why we don't need so many all-in-one items, but instead, mininetworked items.
Why is Bluetooth such a relative failure? My PDA has bluetooth and I use it ALL the time. The problem is that I don't see very many viable, workable, user friendly bluetooth devices.
If I want an MP3 player, what I'd really want is a portable deposit/store/memory bank (SD card is fine), a very tiny MP3 player and a bluetooth set of headphones. I can't find anything of the sort that WORKS.
My bluetooth headset for my phone has TERRIBLE sound quality. The bandwidth for bluetooth should allow for a decent sound in stereo, but the mono headset is just crap. Can anyone recommend a good stereo set of bluetooth headphones that work?
I believe the future of portable music will probably not be the MP3 player, especially as network availability becomes more pronounced. I use Shoutcast on my PDA phone to stream my entire MP3 collection from home as I want to. GPRS at 33.6K is fairly crap quality, but when I am in range of a public WiFi router (my phone has WiFi as well) I can get pretty awesome quality streaming. Nowadays I am near a public WiFi router probably 15% of the time, compared to 5% last year.
Will we even NEED storage or a large bulky scratchable iPod when we can stream terabytes of music in a few years?
Canada solved their health care problem very fairly and affordably, thanks. What you want is for government to abandon the poor to the tender mercies of the health corporations. Then the poor will have no options.
The same Canada that just voted their Congress out of office?
The same Canada that almost killed a friend of mine whose plane was grounded on 9/11, got a stomach flu and almost died in a Canadian hospital while he waited THREE DAYS for a doctor to see him?
The same Canada where people are on waiting lists for years for a basic MRI that I can drive down the street here in the States and get in a mere hours?
Sorry, the poor have had access to medicine for decades until Big Government colluded with Big Business to try to subsidize healthcare. Many doctors performed housecalls for the poor back in the 1900's to 1960's until insurance premiums disallowed it. Insurnace was dirt cheap and affordable for the poor until the HMO Act of 73 forced employers to offer it, causing rates to skyrocket. High taxation and high regulation is the reason the poor can't afford health insurance.
The Canadian health care system is a mess. I pray I am never doing business in Canada when I get ill.
We (here on Slashdot) are a bunch of geeks, we have very long feed lists, and are completely comfortable with reading everything online.
I employ teenagers who are NOT geeks. My customer base is either teenage or has siblings or kids who are teenagers. Teenagers, in general, are VERY Internet savvy. I bet the majority of blogs out there are teen blogs (MySpace, etc).
I like reading the paper, nothing like spending the morning sitting on the porch reading pulp, sipping coffee, and yes, going through the ads
How old are you, though? Generation X might be the last rag generation. I love reading my trade zines as well, but most of my news comes from my PDA phone (on the porch, with my coffee).
The one here (more rural) still serves 50,000+. Sure, not all these people read the paper, but it still is a very large potential market.
Absolutely! 50K - 3.5M is a huge market, indeed, but it is a very difficult one to rebuild if you lose it. The local gas station used to carry about 12 newspaper just last winter, now they're down to 3 or 4 and only 1 is a national paper. Businesses that want to succeed need to look at not just tomorrow but 10 years from today. 10 years from today the average 15 year old will likely not be subscribing to a paper when they're so accustomed to instant news.
Even "worse" is that news within cliques is becoming more "normal." Just reading some MySpace account pages and blogs of my employees I see that they create their own news groups -- "Did you hear about MC Widget's new album?" or "Man I really hate the traffic by the amusement park I was stuck there for 1/2 hour today" and then there are instantly comments, within and without the group. That IS news.
Also, what else will serve to aggragate local news? Television?
This is a great question that I have no answer to. I have no idea how prevalent information will be in 5-10 years, but I believe it will be so accessible EVERYWHERE that paper-form will be either ePaper or dead. My PDA phone gets/. instantly (I get first post often because my RSS reader of/. tells me instantly when an article goes live). When the format is more user friendly (and a little larger with better battery life) I believe more people will use the format. Heck, 98% of my comments here are from my phone! Yes, I am unique, but I others will follow.
Sure, etext is nice, but its not a natural format.
Books are not time sensitive. I can read The Icarus Hunt over 2 weeks 10 years after it was written and it won't matter. But hearing about Katrina for the first time 10 years after it happened changes more than just your knowledge, it can change your entire social structure.
As we experience more "hazards" in life and the news hits us even quicker, we'll dump paper even faster. I can forsee it: driving down Route 21 and Route 137, my dashboard pops up a warning that there is an accident 2 miles down the road. Or, my RSS feed is constantly searching for "Gold $500 ounce" and it will beep when the first articles hit. I can't even imagine how news will REALLY travel when information is everywhere, always, at high speed. We're so close.
If you don't mind me asking, what type of product/service did you advertise? I think it matters, since some things are not conductive of paper ads, like tech stuff.
I am involved in 5 main businesses: writing (social/political), retail (skateboards/paintball), IT (network/communications/futuretech), Construction (engineering/communications) and business consulting. I've tried advertising for all of them, and the winner? Good service = word of mouth = 3. Profit!!!
Something I realized recently (one of my businesses is on the verge of bankruptcy) was that a business I will soon lose could have earned me over a million dollars a year if we focused better on treating our customers with respect and good service. My staff (and the owners including myself) did NOT.
This is the wonderful aspect of the free market when it comes to ethics: you are completely free to live your life believing in the ethical angles you believe in, and allow others to do the same without affecting your ethics or theirs.
If a doctor wants to perform this surgery for a patient that wants it, awesome!
I do believe we need to see a change in how parts are donated, though. Honestly, I would love to say "If my family can get $x,000 for this part and $xx,000 for that part when I am brain dead, then transplant." I hate the fact that hospitals can make hundreds of thousands of dollars over a transplant's life (anti-rejection drugs, therapies, surgery, actual sale of the organ) and the person it was taken from is left with jack for their family.
Yeah, yeah, only the rich blah blah blah. Don't ridicule the idea until you get government out of insurance which is the reason why the poor can't afford it.
Yet the best form of advertising today is not advertising at all. It is an amazing free market resource that can never be regulated nor disturbed, and the Internet allowed it to come to complete fruition.
Consumer Rating.
Yes, you can find out about products from a TV commercial (or skip it). You can find out about products in a mailer (or throw them out). The future is to just make quality products, and let the new huge version of "word of mouth" carry you to success. Have you seen how many products on Amazon's top 100,000 are not actually massively advertised? It blows my mind.
The best advertising for any product is word of mouth, and that only comes through providing a great product or a great service. When you treat your customers with respect, you can always ask them to "write a review if you were happy or unhappy." Don't be shy about.
Will this allow someone to sell millions of a certain product? In time, yes.
The decline percentage is misleading as well. The MORE important figure to go with (IMHO) is advertiser decline, which is not readily published.
In the last 6 months, I have received more phone calls from my ad people at the local radio station, cable network, newspaper, coupon clipper and movie theaters that I used to advertise in. One of the ladies earned mid 6 figures just 5 years ago, this year she's considering bankruptcy.
I feel a little responsible in hurting the ad industry in my region. When I found out that most of my ad sales people bought through the Internet the same items I sell, I thought twice about what they were selling me. I asked myself this basic question: What do I do with the product I am advertising through?
TV ADS: PVR skip. RADIO ADS: Change station. COUPON CLIPPER: Throw in trash. NEWSPAPER: Never buy. MOVIE THEATER ADS: Show up 10 minutes after start.
I started to tell this to other businesses in my area. Now, when new sales people come through the store, I tell my managers to tell the sales people we only buy advertising from sales people who shop at our store for at least a year. Guess how many ads we run now?
If you think newspapers are dying, try the periodicals industry. More and more periodicals I used to read seem to have become strictly advertising for one massive dotcom. One "trade" magazine I used to read had 70% of its ads from one megadistributer that owns about 100 brand names.
My dame runs the stores, but I'm a primary owner. I'm getting out of retail in the next 6-12 months (one store will be bankrupt and one will grow out of control likely) as I can't compete with the dotcoms any more. The sad thing is that the competition is great for consumers' pocketbooks but terrible for the scenes that are really needed to keep the sports alive. Oh well.
My construction business (engineering consulting) is a slow growth mid volume business that is really a concern as I do believe we're experiencing a terrible real estate bubble that will affect commercial properties before residential ones. I'll take advantage of the business while it lasts, but I don't forsee it lasting many more years.
My IT business was originally my main income but IT is more of a commodity business that gains a consistent customer base to sell other products and services to. Our market was only Chicagoland for the first 6 years but I am now focusing on an international market in 2006. There is so much money AND manpower floating around in the Middle East and Eastern Europe that is just waiting to be tapped by the right individuals.
Never be involved in only one form of business. In my 18 years of business, I've seen many companies disappear in literally months in years where I thought they'd gross 7 figures. Two words to success: cash flow!
Any ear doctor can hook you up with them. The custom silicone ones are decent, but the more you spend the more they'll last and the better they'll work.
More recently I've found the need to replace mine as they have newer versions that can let through the midrange better. When I go to a concert I always wear non-custom ones that just block almost all sound across the board. I once lost one of my custom plugs at a show and it sucked balls.
If you go to the doctor for your impression, always request the long full canal impression. It will cost more but the plugs will be better suited to you. I've had to have my plugs remolded once as I knew they didn't work perfectly, but the second remold was fine.
You'd be amazed at the sound levels of regular life. I know some street noise can hit 115db without even seeming painful! My church band can hit 105db with regularity, so even at church I wear plugs.
I've been reading news "online" since 1984 when I received my first Hayes 300 baud full length internal ISA modem.
I am so accustomed to online news that I only read the news on my PDA phone (on the go, on the throne, in the plane). I will read zines and some opinion ed newsletters in paper form, but that's about it.
One of my businesses is a retail store with the customers being generally 13-31 year old males. The younger ones (under 25) don't read the paper at all, in fact, more news gets passed through SMS than even e-mail or web forum. I can't believe how many kids have AIM on their phones.
Old people are also transitioning to online and simple message information sharing. My father is legally blind yet he uses the Microsoft magnifying lens and his wife to read his news online rather than deal with the paper (he's retired).
There is no survival of defunct and obsolete media.
Television advertisers will return to product placement, billboards and bus advertisements. DVR's are becoming so prevalent that the TV ad is dead. I ran tens of thousands of dollars over advertising in TV and radio over the years and this year my ads cost almost $2000 per customer gained (versus $20 just a few years ago). My newspaper ads are never read any longer.
The "Everything" newspapers will be the first to die -- they are at least 6 hours and at most 18 hours late on the news. The TV news channels are dying as well as the information that is read is obviously of no concern to the talking heads, and the information is so generic that it likely affects no one.
I still see room for opinion media forms -- preaching to the choir is a great income source.
The commentary of the editor is interesting:
Much of the Chron's circulation decrease was because it stopped giving away free papers.
How do you give away a paper for free when the advertisers pull out en masse? I will never advertise in a newspaper or magazine or coupon clipper ever again. More and more advertisers are pulling out as well.
Achenblog and The Debate, prominently displayed on the Opinions page that almost always draw 100+ comments per post.
100 comments out of a paper that used to reach millions is piss-poor sorry. If I was an advertiser and saw only 100 comments, I'd dump that paper in seconds. No thanks.
With RSS feeds and the number of specific blogs with actually decent information growing every day, classic news on the web is as ancient as the newspaper idea. Consumers can now create their own content papers. I'd rather find a decent RSS-Newspaper portal that helps me formulate my own daily paper than go to Washpost.com.
Print-them-yourself coupons.
I like this idea, and I have tried it in many avenues and I have never seen a coupon come in that was generated online. Not one (and my customer is usually a 13-31 year old male). I've tried e-mail coupons, too, and I believe we received one customer out of it. Coupons are dead when you have Froogle and Amazon already telling your customer that your store is too expensive.
Online ad circulars
Again, dead. Froogle and Amazon make this idea bunk. "Hey I can save $5 on the Widget at Dada's Shop, oh but wait it's $15 cheaper at Amazon with free shipping!"
Selling sponsorships for community calendars and other "public interest" sections that should be on every newspaper's Web site
And as the web grows bigger, I see more people ignoring their communities of people dissimilar to them and gain respect for their web communities of people similar to themselves. More geeks on/. know others here than they do their own real life neighbors.
Sponsored, "free to individuals and small businesses," local classifieds.
Great idea. Advertise to 500 readers for free, or sell it on ebay to 5M readers for $1. Hmm, I think I'll take option 2.
'Local' is the Key Word
I wish that was the case. When I attempted to create some local scenes over the years online, as more of my customer base jumped on the internet, more of the local scenes online fell way to the nationally-oriented scenes. The punks that used to stick to our punk rock forum (we sold punk music) dropped us for the national scene. The paintballers that used to frequent our paintball forum (we sell paintball equipment) dumped us for the national scene. The skateboards that used to frequent our skate spot forum (we sell skate equipment) did the same. Why? 5 messages a day from the same 100 people is boring compared to hundreds of opinions.
It's time for local newspapers to become truly local
And attempt to sell itself to 500 people? I think it is more important for newspaper to face reality -- you can't please all of the people all of the time if the group is small. It is bet
I'm 31 and I have ultra high frequency sensitivity still. I wear custom ear plugs whenever there is a loud ambient noise and the lady never did and she can never hear half of what I can.
You'd be surprised that you are likely paying more than 50% of your income in taxation.
One year I calculated my total tax burden to be over 60% (of course we do receive SOMETHING in return but I believe it is far more expensive than if I was free to pick and choose what I'd pay for).
Remember, taxation is not just income tax. You're already paying about 15% in FICA on top of your IRS tax. There's the State income tax as well. Don't forget sales tax, gas taxes, property taxes, regulatory costs and even the taxes passed on to everything you buy or purchase. There are hundreds of taxes you're paying and when you add them all up, they account for more than 50% of your income.
Yes, it is. The original intent of combining the words United and States was to promote competition between the individual States (countries) while still offering the citizens protection of their basic rights from tyrannical governments.
The States united under a central government that was set up in order to protect the citizens rights, not take from the many to give to the few. Every federal official had very select limited powers and could never trample on the basic human rights we are all born with.
The United States was not meant to be an insurance policy for those unwilling to save for a time of need.
For history alone, it is worth keeping.
I don't care about your past, I care about my future. If you want to save something for history sake, get a bunch of people to finance it voluntarily, not through the force of government.
do you realized how much comes into the US from our ports?
Do I care? The reason New Orleans continues to degrade is because our government decided to attempt to negotiate with mother nature. It failed. If New Orleans washed into the Gulf completely, there would still be a Mississippi for boats to move up and down. It has nothing to do with New Orleans or the businesses that are there, in fact, most of the income that flows into and out of the Mississippi is 70 miles or more away from the port. The port has a long history of being used for political manipulation (the Spaniards cut off the Americans as one of the first political uses of the port).
and we have a majority of the refineries down here. No one else seems to want them in their 'back yard'.
Actually, the refinery business is a monopoly enforced by the federal government. With more refineries, or better yet, fewer special-blends, we'd see lower gas prices. The companies that refine in New Orleans have a long history of lobbying to protect their businesses.
The devastation that occured is directly tied to the inept government that set the standards the insurance companies followed. These insurance companies knew that if they followed the government standards and something bad happened, they'd get bailed out by FEMA. That is what happened.
If you want to see New Orleans prosper, kick every government out. Allow companies to build where they want to and find ways to get insurance for their buildings. Get rid of taxes and business regulations for maybe 10 years and you'll see an explosion of businesses running your way.
For now, only vultures and those who like to tax and spend will make their way to New Orleans. Oh, and those who are lazy and love the government dole.
Actually in the past 20 or so years we've seen central banking inflation cause prices to sky rocket while wages and taxes have not kept up.
Also, in the past 30 years or so we've seen average household tax levels go from ~20% of total income to over 50% of total income, forcing the second parent to work.
We've seen teachers asking for raises that out-perform what others in their towns are getting, causing higher property taxes (and higher rents).
We've seen savings robbed from central bank destruction of interest rates to help investors over the poor.
Don't get me started on why the poor are still poor. It is a problem so diverse, yet in the end I have to blame government way more than I can blame competitive businesses.
Actually demand for electricity SHOULD be directly affected by the price. I know when my electric bill is high one month, I notice for a new months when I leave my lights on, my TV on, and even cut back a little on other electrical usage (my projector, etc). The same is true for my natural gas and all that.
I give almost $100 extra a month in tithes to my church to be put into a fund marked for poor families at my church so they can have basic utilities (including a Christian ISP). Guess what? Recently, a guy who used the benevolence fund was found to be using crack -- AGAIN. He's getting cut out of the fund until he seeks help (which we will pay for). I'd rather see the really poor and disturbed get help from a charity that can monitor their progress than a government that wants to keep them poor.
Many of you can't/won't give to charity because you're spending 50% of your income at taxes of every level so some government official can keep doling out welfare. If they solved the problems of the poor and unforunate, we wouldn't need government. Better to keep them stuck.
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Thanks. In offense of myself, I hae to admit that I am unreasonable. My views of anarchocapitalism are hard to understand, but I have spent years testing them.
I _would_ abe willing to try a government of anyone if we were guaranteed a few things:
1. A 100% gold-backed currency. Wars are fought and corporations are built on counterfeit money.
2. No politician serving more than 15,000 citizens. I think I'd rather have one representative who knows me rather than 35 who don't.
3. No law can pass without 73% of the vote.
4. No law can be more than 150 words.
5. All laws must sunset after 4 years.
Here's my big problem with social health care: getting rid of personal responsibility and giving people an out for basic problems.
My doctor friends see more people for non-problems that 20 years ago would be taken care of with soup and bed rest. One of my doctor friends wastes almost 30% of his day just seeing old people who come up with problems in order to be around others. I don't have his quote unfortunately, but it's true.
When the government can steal from the masses to pay for your problems, you tend to not protect yourself against the problems. Have you seen how many fat bastards are out there? It is disgusting. Being fat is likely causing 50%+ of the problems we're seeing in medicine today! STOP EATING SO MANY SUGARS, people.
I was fat for about 2 years. I went to the doctor at least every 3 months with various pains and problems. I cut my carbs and trans fats and I'm back to my high school weight and health. I go yearly for a check up that I pay CASH for. I am significantly healthier.
Yet I look around me and see society getting fatter and unhealthier every day. If people had to pay for their own care and insurance rather than forcing hospitals and companies to subsidize it, I think we'd see people living healthier lives.
No offense to any chunky geeks out there, but I have to tell you -- I was that way for a few years and for many of you, it is far easier to lose the weight that you'd believe.
I agree, and I think it will be a very bright and intersting future for smaller producers as well. I'm thinking of doing a video-style podcast shortly, in fact.
For me, the big "scare" for any mass market video or audio producer is the idea of massively available wireless broadband. For an anarchocapitalist such as myself, it is the opposite: not a scare in the least. The availability of information when we want it without being tied to our home or our business will really increase the destruction of the highly regulated and mercantilistic market that we cann the mass media.
What about maintenance?
I think you CAN blame an overreaching Congress, here. The insurance companies are, of course, pushing Congress to mandate buying insurance. Any mandate causes the price to go up. Yet many laws on the books that criminalize cocaine, heroine/opiates, and even marijuana cause the prices of drugs to go up as well (legal ones).
Here is a decent article regarding the health care problem and how over-regulation and over-mandation (is that a word, editors?) is causing the nightmare.
My doctor is 80. He remembers the day that he could prescribe drugs for $5 and he could make housecalls for $5 (free to his poorest patients). He admits it is government that has destroyed his love for helping the sick. He is no anarchist, like me.
Socialized health care is the rot of the world, second only to the legal profession that has created the mess of laws we live under today.
Tivo is in a world of hurt, from what I can tell. As one of the first Tivo users, my Tivo units just sit in the closet for the past few years.
Everything I see is pointing to the fact that people want on demand video more and more. The Pirate Bay's top downloads are consistently TV shows! Maybe it is because these shows are not available in Europe? Either way, people want TV when they want it, and they're willing to wait for a download of a show with no commercials and no price.
The profitability for a video provider is taking that 12-72 hour free download and turn it into a fast (real time?) download for the consumer when they want it. I'm not sure how we'll see this happen in the far future, but in the near future, it could just be On Demand from Comcast (which is actually pretty amazing) or Microsoft IPTV style downloads.
Tivo is wise to try to connect with Intel on selling their name as the "Video as you want it when you want it" brand. As an early adopter in almost everything, I can tell you my biggest complaints about Tv shows and movies are the following:
1. If I download a show, it is always in a codec that I can't view easily. AVC doesn't run well on any of my platforms (I mostly have 1.8Ghz P4s). XViD seems better, but I get odd pixelization on occasion. Intel has the power to combine with Tivo and offer a codec that is specific to their hardware platform, whereas illegal torrents aren't really targetted at anyone. I would gladly pay for that consistency. So would most adults.
2. I want it quick. Yesterday I had to redownload Quicktime and I was watching the download at aroun 850K/s. That's damn fast (I'm testing a new broadband provider right now). My neighbor's comcast cable was getting consistent 400K/s downloads. BitTorrent and other P2P systems halt at about 50K for me (with and without NAT). If I want to download a file, I want it near real time or faster.
3. I want to be able to pause, fast forward and rewind. I'm sick of getting movies that I have to re-encode beause someone screwed up and prevented me from skipping data.
4. I want it to look good at 720p and 1080i. There is nothing worse that trying to watch cable at 110" and seeing crap. I can watch DVDs from 6 years ago upcoverted to 1080i and they look great. There is no reason for bad quality images, even at reduced resolutions.
5. I want to be able to store it for the future or be able to redownload it at a cheaper price.
6. Rather that reconverting my shows for various watching formats (PDA, SDTV, HDTV or whatever) I should just have the option of redownloading it. I am currently converting an AVC to WMV for my PDA and it seriously says it will take 90 hours. Ouch.
7. I should be able to select my price to pay versus what I am willing to give up. In some situations I wouldn't mind paying less and be forced to watch ads. In other cases, I don't mind reporting what I fast forwarded past and rewound to review. It depends on what it is. I'd love to be able to say "I'll pay full price if I can keep it forever, never watch an ad, pause it as I'd like and rewind all I want" and also say "I'll pay zero but I will accept not being able to skip ads."
My fear is that Intel's VIIV and Microsoft's MCE are both looking to try to capitulate to a dying industry. I use Microsoft's MCE and absolutely love it but I won't upgrade to the latest patches that involve DRM. I am not against DRM, but I am against DRM that doesn't offer something to the end user.
Once a consumer tastes the sweetness of a new feature (even if illegal), there is NO way to back out of it. Instead, the market has been permanently changed and the suppliers need to modify their product to offer what the consumer is looking for.
Thanks. I found it based on your post :) I will check it out next month for sure. Good find!
They will do it, probably.
The FCC just announced it will allow serving channels a la carte on cable. What a STUPID STUPID STUPID regulation we've had to deal with for decades. Guess what? Channels a la carte is so 1990, too!
People are getting used to on demand everything. On demand opeds via blogs, on demand news via the web and SMS, on demand coupons, on demand everything. Storing information that is identical between millions (or even dozens) of users when information can be shared can show a huge savings in many ways (electricity, storage space, labor to secure it, etc).
We will see the day, soon, that iTunes will stream via national WiFi networks music on demand.
As to why not just get an all-in-one? I think the answer in the long run is customization. For me, my PDA phone is a miracle. It does everything I could want in a PC, and it weighs nothing and fits in a pocket. If I need GPS, I have it via bluetooth the instant I get in my car. If I need music, I could get it via a bluetooth headset. If I need to check my car's maintenance needs, maybe it could communicate to my PDA what it needs. I think my next PDA phone will actually be a phone with bluetooth and a PDA with a bigger screen and a better processor. I honestly don't mind a few different devices, especially since some devices could be docked permanently (in the car, in the house, in my wallet murse, etc).
Information will become on demand once we have information available everywhere. I really think landline permanent connections will slowly give way to massive pipes connecting to access points able to feed thousands simultaneously. It would be in all the comm companies interests to offer completely free WiFi connections at 64Kbps, but sell access at 10Mbps for those who want it (or anywhere in between). What we need is to kick the damn FCC out and open up all that wasted regulated bandwidth to WiFi style services. Fine, have some organization monitor that bandwidth but why the hell do we need to differentiate between cell calls and analog TV and radio and whatever, when it all can just be IP?
This is an interesting item but it is so 1990. The review's comment of "I am a sucker for any tool or gadget that tries to combine more than one use or function into a single item" is exactly why we don't need so many all-in-one items, but instead, mininetworked items.
Why is Bluetooth such a relative failure? My PDA has bluetooth and I use it ALL the time. The problem is that I don't see very many viable, workable, user friendly bluetooth devices.
If I want an MP3 player, what I'd really want is a portable deposit/store/memory bank (SD card is fine), a very tiny MP3 player and a bluetooth set of headphones. I can't find anything of the sort that WORKS.
My bluetooth headset for my phone has TERRIBLE sound quality. The bandwidth for bluetooth should allow for a decent sound in stereo, but the mono headset is just crap. Can anyone recommend a good stereo set of bluetooth headphones that work?
I believe the future of portable music will probably not be the MP3 player, especially as network availability becomes more pronounced. I use Shoutcast on my PDA phone to stream my entire MP3 collection from home as I want to. GPRS at 33.6K is fairly crap quality, but when I am in range of a public WiFi router (my phone has WiFi as well) I can get pretty awesome quality streaming. Nowadays I am near a public WiFi router probably 15% of the time, compared to 5% last year.
Will we even NEED storage or a large bulky scratchable iPod when we can stream terabytes of music in a few years?
Add [/.] to your user name for the Slashdot Clan, haha.
Canada solved their health care problem very fairly and affordably, thanks. What you want is for government to abandon the poor to the tender mercies of the health corporations. Then the poor will have no options.
The same Canada that just voted their Congress out of office?
The same Canada that almost killed a friend of mine whose plane was grounded on 9/11, got a stomach flu and almost died in a Canadian hospital while he waited THREE DAYS for a doctor to see him?
The same Canada where people are on waiting lists for years for a basic MRI that I can drive down the street here in the States and get in a mere hours?
Sorry, the poor have had access to medicine for decades until Big Government colluded with Big Business to try to subsidize healthcare. Many doctors performed housecalls for the poor back in the 1900's to 1960's until insurance premiums disallowed it. Insurnace was dirt cheap and affordable for the poor until the HMO Act of 73 forced employers to offer it, causing rates to skyrocket. High taxation and high regulation is the reason the poor can't afford health insurance.
The Canadian health care system is a mess. I pray I am never doing business in Canada when I get ill.
We (here on Slashdot) are a bunch of geeks, we have very long feed lists, and are completely comfortable with reading everything online.
/. instantly (I get first post often because my RSS reader of /. tells me instantly when an article goes live). When the format is more user friendly (and a little larger with better battery life) I believe more people will use the format. Heck, 98% of my comments here are from my phone! Yes, I am unique, but I others will follow.
I employ teenagers who are NOT geeks. My customer base is either teenage or has siblings or kids who are teenagers. Teenagers, in general, are VERY Internet savvy. I bet the majority of blogs out there are teen blogs (MySpace, etc).
I like reading the paper, nothing like spending the morning sitting on the porch reading pulp, sipping coffee, and yes, going through the ads
How old are you, though? Generation X might be the last rag generation. I love reading my trade zines as well, but most of my news comes from my PDA phone (on the porch, with my coffee).
The one here (more rural) still serves 50,000+. Sure, not all these people read the paper, but it still is a very large potential market.
Absolutely! 50K - 3.5M is a huge market, indeed, but it is a very difficult one to rebuild if you lose it. The local gas station used to carry about 12 newspaper just last winter, now they're down to 3 or 4 and only 1 is a national paper. Businesses that want to succeed need to look at not just tomorrow but 10 years from today. 10 years from today the average 15 year old will likely not be subscribing to a paper when they're so accustomed to instant news.
Even "worse" is that news within cliques is becoming more "normal." Just reading some MySpace account pages and blogs of my employees I see that they create their own news groups -- "Did you hear about MC Widget's new album?" or "Man I really hate the traffic by the amusement park I was stuck there for 1/2 hour today" and then there are instantly comments, within and without the group. That IS news.
Also, what else will serve to aggragate local news? Television?
This is a great question that I have no answer to. I have no idea how prevalent information will be in 5-10 years, but I believe it will be so accessible EVERYWHERE that paper-form will be either ePaper or dead. My PDA phone gets
Sure, etext is nice, but its not a natural format.
Books are not time sensitive. I can read The Icarus Hunt over 2 weeks 10 years after it was written and it won't matter. But hearing about Katrina for the first time 10 years after it happened changes more than just your knowledge, it can change your entire social structure.
As we experience more "hazards" in life and the news hits us even quicker, we'll dump paper even faster. I can forsee it: driving down Route 21 and Route 137, my dashboard pops up a warning that there is an accident 2 miles down the road. Or, my RSS feed is constantly searching for "Gold $500 ounce" and it will beep when the first articles hit. I can't even imagine how news will REALLY travel when information is everywhere, always, at high speed. We're so close.
If you don't mind me asking, what type of product/service did you advertise? I think it matters, since some things are not conductive of paper ads, like tech stuff.
I am involved in 5 main businesses: writing (social/political), retail (skateboards/paintball), IT (network/communications/futuretech), Construction (engineering/communications) and business consulting. I've tried advertising for all of them, and the winner? Good service = word of mouth = 3. Profit!!!
Something I realized recently (one of my businesses is on the verge of bankruptcy) was that a business I will soon lose could have earned me over a million dollars a year if we focused better on treating our customers with respect and good service. My staff (and the owners including myself) did NOT.
This is the wonderful aspect of the free market when it comes to ethics: you are completely free to live your life believing in the ethical angles you believe in, and allow others to do the same without affecting your ethics or theirs.
If a doctor wants to perform this surgery for a patient that wants it, awesome!
I do believe we need to see a change in how parts are donated, though. Honestly, I would love to say "If my family can get $x,000 for this part and $xx,000 for that part when I am brain dead, then transplant." I hate the fact that hospitals can make hundreds of thousands of dollars over a transplant's life (anti-rejection drugs, therapies, surgery, actual sale of the organ) and the person it was taken from is left with jack for their family.
Yeah, yeah, only the rich blah blah blah. Don't ridicule the idea until you get government out of insurance which is the reason why the poor can't afford it.
They have no other choice but to try.
Yet the best form of advertising today is not advertising at all. It is an amazing free market resource that can never be regulated nor disturbed, and the Internet allowed it to come to complete fruition.
Consumer Rating.
Yes, you can find out about products from a TV commercial (or skip it). You can find out about products in a mailer (or throw them out). The future is to just make quality products, and let the new huge version of "word of mouth" carry you to success. Have you seen how many products on Amazon's top 100,000 are not actually massively advertised? It blows my mind.
The best advertising for any product is word of mouth, and that only comes through providing a great product or a great service. When you treat your customers with respect, you can always ask them to "write a review if you were happy or unhappy." Don't be shy about.
Will this allow someone to sell millions of a certain product? In time, yes.
The decline percentage is misleading as well. The MORE important figure to go with (IMHO) is advertiser decline, which is not readily published.
In the last 6 months, I have received more phone calls from my ad people at the local radio station, cable network, newspaper, coupon clipper and movie theaters that I used to advertise in. One of the ladies earned mid 6 figures just 5 years ago, this year she's considering bankruptcy.
I feel a little responsible in hurting the ad industry in my region. When I found out that most of my ad sales people bought through the Internet the same items I sell, I thought twice about what they were selling me. I asked myself this basic question: What do I do with the product I am advertising through?
TV ADS: PVR skip. RADIO ADS: Change station. COUPON CLIPPER: Throw in trash. NEWSPAPER: Never buy. MOVIE THEATER ADS: Show up 10 minutes after start.
I started to tell this to other businesses in my area. Now, when new sales people come through the store, I tell my managers to tell the sales people we only buy advertising from sales people who shop at our store for at least a year. Guess how many ads we run now?
If you think newspapers are dying, try the periodicals industry. More and more periodicals I used to read seem to have become strictly advertising for one massive dotcom. One "trade" magazine I used to read had 70% of its ads from one megadistributer that owns about 100 brand names.
My dame runs the stores, but I'm a primary owner. I'm getting out of retail in the next 6-12 months (one store will be bankrupt and one will grow out of control likely) as I can't compete with the dotcoms any more. The sad thing is that the competition is great for consumers' pocketbooks but terrible for the scenes that are really needed to keep the sports alive. Oh well.
My construction business (engineering consulting) is a slow growth mid volume business that is really a concern as I do believe we're experiencing a terrible real estate bubble that will affect commercial properties before residential ones. I'll take advantage of the business while it lasts, but I don't forsee it lasting many more years.
My IT business was originally my main income but IT is more of a commodity business that gains a consistent customer base to sell other products and services to. Our market was only Chicagoland for the first 6 years but I am now focusing on an international market in 2006. There is so much money AND manpower floating around in the Middle East and Eastern Europe that is just waiting to be tapped by the right individuals.
Never be involved in only one form of business. In my 18 years of business, I've seen many companies disappear in literally months in years where I thought they'd gross 7 figures. Two words to success: cash flow!
Any ear doctor can hook you up with them. The custom silicone ones are decent, but the more you spend the more they'll last and the better they'll work.
More recently I've found the need to replace mine as they have newer versions that can let through the midrange better. When I go to a concert I always wear non-custom ones that just block almost all sound across the board. I once lost one of my custom plugs at a show and it sucked balls.
If you go to the doctor for your impression, always request the long full canal impression. It will cost more but the plugs will be better suited to you. I've had to have my plugs remolded once as I knew they didn't work perfectly, but the second remold was fine.
You'd be amazed at the sound levels of regular life. I know some street noise can hit 115db without even seeming painful! My church band can hit 105db with regularity, so even at church I wear plugs.
I've been reading news "online" since 1984 when I received my first Hayes 300 baud full length internal ISA modem.
I am so accustomed to online news that I only read the news on my PDA phone (on the go, on the throne, in the plane). I will read zines and some opinion ed newsletters in paper form, but that's about it.
One of my businesses is a retail store with the customers being generally 13-31 year old males. The younger ones (under 25) don't read the paper at all, in fact, more news gets passed through SMS than even e-mail or web forum. I can't believe how many kids have AIM on their phones.
Old people are also transitioning to online and simple message information sharing. My father is legally blind yet he uses the Microsoft magnifying lens and his wife to read his news online rather than deal with the paper (he's retired).
There is no survival of defunct and obsolete media.
/. know others here than they do their own real life neighbors.
Television advertisers will return to product placement, billboards and bus advertisements. DVR's are becoming so prevalent that the TV ad is dead. I ran tens of thousands of dollars over advertising in TV and radio over the years and this year my ads cost almost $2000 per customer gained (versus $20 just a few years ago). My newspaper ads are never read any longer.
The "Everything" newspapers will be the first to die -- they are at least 6 hours and at most 18 hours late on the news. The TV news channels are dying as well as the information that is read is obviously of no concern to the talking heads, and the information is so generic that it likely affects no one.
I still see room for opinion media forms -- preaching to the choir is a great income source.
The commentary of the editor is interesting:
Much of the Chron's circulation decrease was because it stopped giving away free papers.
How do you give away a paper for free when the advertisers pull out en masse? I will never advertise in a newspaper or magazine or coupon clipper ever again. More and more advertisers are pulling out as well.
Achenblog and The Debate, prominently displayed on the Opinions page that almost always draw 100+ comments per post.
100 comments out of a paper that used to reach millions is piss-poor sorry. If I was an advertiser and saw only 100 comments, I'd dump that paper in seconds. No thanks.
With RSS feeds and the number of specific blogs with actually decent information growing every day, classic news on the web is as ancient as the newspaper idea. Consumers can now create their own content papers. I'd rather find a decent RSS-Newspaper portal that helps me formulate my own daily paper than go to Washpost.com.
Print-them-yourself coupons.
I like this idea, and I have tried it in many avenues and I have never seen a coupon come in that was generated online. Not one (and my customer is usually a 13-31 year old male). I've tried e-mail coupons, too, and I believe we received one customer out of it. Coupons are dead when you have Froogle and Amazon already telling your customer that your store is too expensive.
Online ad circulars
Again, dead. Froogle and Amazon make this idea bunk. "Hey I can save $5 on the Widget at Dada's Shop, oh but wait it's $15 cheaper at Amazon with free shipping!"
Selling sponsorships for community calendars and other "public interest" sections that should be on every newspaper's Web site
And as the web grows bigger, I see more people ignoring their communities of people dissimilar to them and gain respect for their web communities of people similar to themselves. More geeks on
Sponsored, "free to individuals and small businesses," local classifieds.
Great idea. Advertise to 500 readers for free, or sell it on ebay to 5M readers for $1. Hmm, I think I'll take option 2.
'Local' is the Key Word
I wish that was the case. When I attempted to create some local scenes over the years online, as more of my customer base jumped on the internet, more of the local scenes online fell way to the nationally-oriented scenes. The punks that used to stick to our punk rock forum (we sold punk music) dropped us for the national scene. The paintballers that used to frequent our paintball forum (we sell paintball equipment) dumped us for the national scene. The skateboards that used to frequent our skate spot forum (we sell skate equipment) did the same. Why? 5 messages a day from the same 100 people is boring compared to hundreds of opinions.
It's time for local newspapers to become truly local
And attempt to sell itself to 500 people? I think it is more important for newspaper to face reality -- you can't please all of the people all of the time if the group is small. It is bet
I'm 31 and I have ultra high frequency sensitivity still. I wear custom ear plugs whenever there is a loud ambient noise and the lady never did and she can never hear half of what I can.
Best $150 ever spent.
We sell skateboards and paintball shit. We aren't in the mall.
1. Hide a few dozen of these in the mall shops
2. ???
3. Profit!!!
You'd be surprised that you are likely paying more than 50% of your income in taxation.
One year I calculated my total tax burden to be over 60% (of course we do receive SOMETHING in return but I believe it is far more expensive than if I was free to pick and choose what I'd pay for).
Remember, taxation is not just income tax. You're already paying about 15% in FICA on top of your IRS tax. There's the State income tax as well. Don't forget sales tax, gas taxes, property taxes, regulatory costs and even the taxes passed on to everything you buy or purchase. There are hundreds of taxes you're paying and when you add them all up, they account for more than 50% of your income.
Well, is this the United States?
Yes, it is. The original intent of combining the words United and States was to promote competition between the individual States (countries) while still offering the citizens protection of their basic rights from tyrannical governments.
The States united under a central government that was set up in order to protect the citizens rights, not take from the many to give to the few. Every federal official had very select limited powers and could never trample on the basic human rights we are all born with.
The United States was not meant to be an insurance policy for those unwilling to save for a time of need.
For history alone, it is worth keeping.
I don't care about your past, I care about my future. If you want to save something for history sake, get a bunch of people to finance it voluntarily, not through the force of government.
do you realized how much comes into the US from our ports?
Do I care? The reason New Orleans continues to degrade is because our government decided to attempt to negotiate with mother nature. It failed. If New Orleans washed into the Gulf completely, there would still be a Mississippi for boats to move up and down. It has nothing to do with New Orleans or the businesses that are there, in fact, most of the income that flows into and out of the Mississippi is 70 miles or more away from the port. The port has a long history of being used for political manipulation (the Spaniards cut off the Americans as one of the first political uses of the port).
and we have a majority of the refineries down here. No one else seems to want them in their 'back yard'.
Actually, the refinery business is a monopoly enforced by the federal government. With more refineries, or better yet, fewer special-blends, we'd see lower gas prices. The companies that refine in New Orleans have a long history of lobbying to protect their businesses.
The devastation that occured is directly tied to the inept government that set the standards the insurance companies followed. These insurance companies knew that if they followed the government standards and something bad happened, they'd get bailed out by FEMA. That is what happened.
If you want to see New Orleans prosper, kick every government out. Allow companies to build where they want to and find ways to get insurance for their buildings. Get rid of taxes and business regulations for maybe 10 years and you'll see an explosion of businesses running your way.
For now, only vultures and those who like to tax and spend will make their way to New Orleans. Oh, and those who are lazy and love the government dole.
Actually in the past 20 or so years we've seen central banking inflation cause prices to sky rocket while wages and taxes have not kept up.
Also, in the past 30 years or so we've seen average household tax levels go from ~20% of total income to over 50% of total income, forcing the second parent to work.
We've seen teachers asking for raises that out-perform what others in their towns are getting, causing higher property taxes (and higher rents).
We've seen savings robbed from central bank destruction of interest rates to help investors over the poor.
Don't get me started on why the poor are still poor. It is a problem so diverse, yet in the end I have to blame government way more than I can blame competitive businesses.
Coward:
Really?
A study conducted by University of Kentucky labor and health economist Dr. Aaron Yelowitz
Some grain of salt studies:
Government study so take it for what it is
another study
Actually demand for electricity SHOULD be directly affected by the price. I know when my electric bill is high one month, I notice for a new months when I leave my lights on, my TV on, and even cut back a little on other electrical usage (my projector, etc). The same is true for my natural gas and all that.
I give almost $100 extra a month in tithes to my church to be put into a fund marked for poor families at my church so they can have basic utilities (including a Christian ISP). Guess what? Recently, a guy who used the benevolence fund was found to be using crack -- AGAIN. He's getting cut out of the fund until he seeks help (which we will pay for). I'd rather see the really poor and disturbed get help from a charity that can monitor their progress than a government that wants to keep them poor.
Many of you can't/won't give to charity because you're spending 50% of your income at taxes of every level so some government official can keep doling out welfare. If they solved the problems of the poor and unforunate, we wouldn't need government. Better to keep them stuck.