Businesses are free to set their own prices. There is no fraud going on here; it is not illegal to make a big profit. It is not government's job to set prices or profit margins. If you think the current prices of refined oil in Australia are too high, please tell us of your wonderful supplier that is willing and able to supply oil for a lower price. Better yet, contact them and sell the oil yourself, and you will be able to make a profit.
Could a commercial broadcaster ever take a step like this
Of course they could, if they could impose a mandatory tax on all owners of television sets, whether or not those people watch their network. It's very easy to give things away when your revenue stream is guaranteed by law.
Various industry types have been espousing this method for years as an antidote to artificial concepts of media supply and demand (e.g. that Big Record Label cannot support small acts as it must press x copies of the album)
It's not an artificial concept. The more of the same CD they press, the more efficient they become at producing it. For example, if it costs $2000 to produce an album worth of music, and only one CD is pressed, then the cost per CD is $2000. If two CD's are pressed, the cost per CD is $1000. Therefore they need to press enough CD's such that the cost per CD is at least below the sale price of the CD. This isn't artificial; this is a basic business need, that of turning a profit.
Firstly, instant runoff is a stupid name; preferential voting sounds cooler.
Whatever its potential benefits, instant-runoff voting is prone to one of voting theory's most bewildering paradoxes. If a candidate is in the lead during an election season, making a great speech that attracts even more supporters to his cause shouldn't make him lose. But in the instant-runoff system, it can.
It then proceeds to cite a ridiculous example, where only three different order permutations, A-B-C, B-C-A, and C-A-B exist. Of course, under stupid assumptions, stupid things can happen. When you start to include A-C-B, B-A-C, and C-B-A, which are all valid orders of preference, the "problems" with the preferential voting system don't seem so dire. The candidate with the most broad-based support will end up winning (which, btw, is what happened in the ridiculous example in the article anyway, but the article's tone cleverly ignores this important fact).
I'd like to think that Eldred vs Ashcroft has a good chance of siding with the little guy, but key statistics indicate Eldred being beaten by a margin of at least 400,000!
That's all nice in Bizzaro-world, but in reality Linux is not a substitute for Windows (and probably vice versa), so comparing their price is pointless.
Other than that you just say that alltheweb gave more hits for you on a couple of searches. That's a pretty useless measure of search tool quality to anyone else. The parent post said it gave more useful hits. Whilst the "value" (usefulness) of the search results is very subjective, the resulting word-of-mouth about it is a good measure of search tool quality. It wouldn't have been that long ago when I first heard from someone, "try google.com, its a good search engine".
Is this what happens when you give one company a license to print money?
No. If you give one company a license to print money, they will probably print money. However, if you give one company an artificial monopoly in a top-level domain name, they may pump-up prices due to lack of competition pressuring the price down.
Kevin Harrington? The grim American? You might have confused the name with "Patrick Warburton". I can see how you might get confused, what with them both ending with "ton".
And the highest grossing Australian film in the history of Australian cinema? That honour belongs to Crocodile Dundee, unfortunately.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been waiting for Mozilla to repond for a long time. I always felt their original pond could not attract the top quality ducks...
Businesses are free to set their own prices. There is no fraud going on here; it is not illegal to make a big profit. It is not government's job to set prices or profit margins. If you think the current prices of refined oil in Australia are too high, please tell us of your wonderful supplier that is willing and able to supply oil for a lower price. Better yet, contact them and sell the oil yourself, and you will be able to make a profit.
Could a commercial broadcaster ever take a step like this
Of course they could, if they could impose a mandatory tax on all owners of television sets, whether or not those people watch their network. It's very easy to give things away when your revenue stream is guaranteed by law.
Maybe the quality of music got better!
The right thing to do would be to let the people of Iraq determine their own government.
It's not an artificial concept. The more of the same CD they press, the more efficient they become at producing it. For example, if it costs $2000 to produce an album worth of music, and only one CD is pressed, then the cost per CD is $2000. If two CD's are pressed, the cost per CD is $1000. Therefore they need to press enough CD's such that the cost per CD is at least below the sale price of the CD. This isn't artificial; this is a basic business need, that of turning a profit.
Firstly, instant runoff is a stupid name; preferential voting sounds cooler.
Whatever its potential benefits, instant-runoff voting is prone to one of voting theory's most bewildering paradoxes. If a candidate is in the lead during an election season, making a great speech that attracts even more supporters to his cause shouldn't make him lose. But in the instant-runoff system, it can.
It then proceeds to cite a ridiculous example, where only three different order permutations, A-B-C, B-C-A, and C-A-B exist. Of course, under stupid assumptions, stupid things can happen. When you start to include A-C-B, B-A-C, and C-B-A, which are all valid orders of preference, the "problems" with the preferential voting system don't seem so dire. The candidate with the most broad-based support will end up winning (which, btw, is what happened in the ridiculous example in the article anyway, but the article's tone cleverly ignores this important fact).
I'd like to think that Eldred vs Ashcroft has a good chance of siding with the little guy, but key statistics indicate Eldred being beaten by a margin of at least 400,000!
Too much text, all in italics. Whatever happened to summaries, or are the editors just refusing to do any editing now?
Users will be able to accomplish productive goals or just waste time.
I dispute half that statement.
That's all nice in Bizzaro-world, but in reality Linux is not a substitute for Windows (and probably vice versa), so comparing their price is pointless.
Nice troll though.
Other than that you just say that alltheweb gave more hits for you on a couple of searches. That's a pretty useless measure of search tool quality to anyone else.
The parent post said it gave more useful hits. Whilst the "value" (usefulness) of the search results is very subjective, the resulting word-of-mouth about it is a good measure of search tool quality. It wouldn't have been that long ago when I first heard from someone, "try google.com, its a good search engine".
Is this what happens when you give one company a license to print money?
No. If you give one company a license to print money, they will probably print money. However, if you give one company an artificial monopoly in a top-level domain name, they may pump-up prices due to lack of competition pressuring the price down.
Slashdot editors are getting lazy. They're not even bothering to fake the submission as coming from an Anonymous Coward anymore.
Hackers by Steven Levy.
It's like the EFF, but instead of a second F, there's an A
http://www.efa.org.au/JoinEFA/
Kevin Harrington? The grim American? You might have confused the name with "Patrick Warburton". I can see how you might get confused, what with them both ending with "ton". And the highest grossing Australian film in the history of Australian cinema? That honour belongs to Crocodile Dundee, unfortunately.