Apple brought computers to the phone business and computers were a business Apple was already in and already understood very well. Phones are basically computers and Apple brought this fact front and center. Despite the fact that they are increasingly digital, automobiles are not computers and there is a vast amount of engineering expertise in them that is WAY outside Apple's wheelhouse. (suspensions, motors, etc) I suppose nothing is impossible but I really can't see Apple getting into the car business if for no other reason than profit margin. The most profitable auto manufacturers have net margins around 8-10%. Apple's net margins are north of 25%. If Tim Cook got into a low margin business like cars he'd be out of his job probably faster than you could say "shareholder lawsuit".
OpenOffice or LibreOffice can be configured to store files in.doc and.xls and.ppt formats - problem solved!
While true, that doesn't mean either of those products are permitted in every office. A lot of IT departments are notoriously inflexible on this sort of matter. If your organization standardizes on something, odds are they aren't going to want you using some other unapproved product. If you were to point out that this inflexibility is probably dumb, I am inclined to agree with you. Nevertheless it does occur and it is a real problem. Microsoft isn't strictly wrong here though they are being a bit disingenuous regarding some of the nuances of the situation.
I have standardized my company on LibreOffice but its ability to read and write Microsoft Office files is imperfect at best. It's particularly bad at the more recent.docx and.xlsx files. It reads and writes them well enough to be useful most of the time but don't expect perfection.
I entirely agree, but when has this stopped other companies from making foolish acquisitions?
Neither Google nor Apple (especially Apple) has a history of making silly acquisitions. I'm not overly worried they are going to start now. Of the two, Google has made the riskier moves of the two so if either of them was going to buy something stupid I'd bet on Google to do it.
Both Google and Apple are swimming in money that they just can not seem to find a good way to spend.
Very true but they aren't going to change industries altogether. Apple is going to remain in consumer electronics and Google is going to remain in advertising. Getting into the auto business would be very foolish of them since they have no particular expertise to bring to the table there. Google is doing some interesting research projects with cars but that's a very far cry from producing real products they sell to retail customers. Furthermore if they buy Tesla they likely are limiting their ability to sell to any other auto maker (GM, Ford etc) and that is likely to be a MUCH bigger market.
Google really seems to hate the idea of becoming a hardware company but Apple is all about hardware.
This is somewhat of a myth. Yes Apple works hard on making some very nice hardware and they do have some real expertise but at their core Apple is a software company. There really is very little difference on the inside between a Mac and a Dell. Put Windows on a Mac and you'd be hard pressed to tell who made the computer unless you looked at the box. Same with the iPhone, the underlying electronics aren't much different than their competitors. Same with the iPad. Furthermore Apple designs the hardware but they don't make it and have outsourced most of what manufacturing expertise they once possessed to specialist companies.
Apple makes money by selling a bunch of software that they tie to their own hardware. NOBODY would pay a premium for a Mac that ran Windows only, no matter how nice the box. So what that really means is that people are buying the software. What sets Apple products apart (for better or worse) is their software. Apple just realizes that the best channel to sell their software is by bundling it with hardware they design and control. This costs them market share but so far has brought them tremendous profits.
In a normal, healthy, functioning market, those services should become fairly commoditized and the price of those services should drop.
Most banking and financial services ARE commoditized. Remember that for the most part bankers sell an undifferentiated product and they don't make a whole lot of money per transaction. However, the transaction volume is enormous and thus banks can make some pretty big profits at the end of the day ala Walmart.
The places where big margin profits are made is in markets where there are information asymmetries and/or where transaction volume is relatively low. The elimination of Glass-Steagall was an enormous mistake because it immediately created a conflict of interest for banks. Hopefully the Voelker rule will restore some of the sanity though that remains to be seen.
The fact that huge profits are being made year after year is an indicator that something is wrong with that mechanism.
Huge profits from a huge bank should not be shocking and by themselves are not sufficient evidence of something being broken. What we need to worry about is the margins they are making.
Bankers earn a profit by moving other peoples' money around and taking some off the top.
True, and the reason they can make money at this is because it is a VERY valuable activity to society. Far more valuable than the bit they keep for themselves most of the time. If you need evidence of how valuable it is, merely look at our recent financial crisis when the flow of money froze up.
There are plenty of jobs that don't involve making things but nevertheless are very valuable. Don't confuse the value of the activity with the behavior of the parties involved.
One of those jobs is necessary for us to progress.
Think so? Try building a company without access to banking or financial services. You won't get very far. Anyone who thinks banking and financial services aren't necessary for progress doesn't understand finance. It's like saying your car doesn't need oil. Technically true for a little while but it won't work very well or for very long.
Because the minute China stop supporting that dictatorship half a dozen country, the first of them being the US of A, go get rid of that family, and a reunited US-friendly Korean is reborn. And China doesn't want another US friendly country near by..
Which is logic I don't really understand. Let's say that Korea reunites peacefully and is firmly pro-US. What is the downside to China? It's not like Korea is going to invade China even with US backing. As long as China remains peaceful, trade will benefit both sides hugely. A reunited Korea would be less of a financial burden on China and they wouldn't have to worry (much) about refugees coming across the border. China would have ample opportunity to "persuade" Korea to be friendly to China.
I just don't get the logic at work here. I fully admit there must be a lot of nuance I don't really understand and I'm sure there are certain racial and historical tensions I don't appreciate but even so their behavior makes little sense to me.
Don't forget to hard disable the microphone on the laptop if it has one. There is a malware that can communicate using high frequency sound, from a networked machine to un-networked one.
I think that is about as likely as getting molested by a unicorn.
Seriously folks, I'm all for reasonable amounts of security but this sort of thing is just hide under the bed paranoia.
would you like to recommend and aternative that works better in your experience?
Lately I've had the best luck with Trendnet and Apple. Dlink and Netgear are usually fine though I have run across a few bad pieces of gear. Linksys I've had mixed luck with and their stuff has gotten worse over time. My small office uses a Netgear 24 port switch, a few Trendnet gigabit switches and an Apple Airport Express for wireless. Haven't had any problems with any of it. We had a Netgear router (replaced by the Airport) which handled our wireless until it died for unexplained reasons.
Sample size here is small though so don't take my word without a lot of NaCl.
I used to like Netgear, but they're crap now. You say Belkin is too, OK, who then?
I've at least had mixed luck with Netgear stuff, mostly fine with a few duds. Same with Linksys, D-Link, Trendnet and some others. Apple gear I've used has been solid if pricey. But I have yet to have a bit of Belkin gear that didn't do something unexpected (in a bad way). Maybe some of their stuff is fine but I haven't come across it.
What is it with these guys? Every piece of gear of theirs I've tried over the years has been flaky or just plain crap. I realize I don't have a large sample size but I've seen other people make similar comments about their gear. Their stuff just always seems to have some sort of problem.
And if he'd said illiterate little brother it wouldn't have been? Why?
He could have easily left gender out of it but chose not to. The discussion had nothing whatsoever to do with gender so why bring it into the mix? Furthermore are you aware of the relative proportions of males versus females in IT? Hell I've been guilty myself of using my mom as an example of computer illiteracy when my dad is probably even worse with computers than she is. If gender has nothing to do with the story then don't bring it up.
Do you think boys are naturally more stupid than girls or are you just angling for some right-on brownie points? Which it looks like you didn't get btw.
Right. That is why I pointed out a comment which needlessly brought gender into a discussion that had nothing to do with gender. I'm just desperate for the attaboys from the anonymous slashdot masses.
If North Korea became hostile to China, they would lose a lof of naval power.
If North Korea became hostile to China, China would and could simply topple the country and could do so quickly. China wouldn't even break a sweat putting Kim Jong-Un out of power. They don't do it because it would cause all sorts of other problems and hasn't been necessary so far but North Korea isn't really much of a threat to China.
Rather, it is China's view that it is no one's business outside the DPRK how the DPRK conducts it's affairs.
Baloney. If that were the case then China wouldn't be subsidizing the regime. China thinks it is China's business what the DPRK does.
China never wants to be involved in other countries' problems nor do they seek to impose their will on other countries - you don't see China out trying to spread their own unique brand of communist/capitalism elsewhere do you?
They most certainly do get themselves involved in other countries problems. Ask Tibet. Need more examples? Look at what China is doing in Africa. They are investing hugely there and they certainly are pushing their own interests. China is contesting with Japan over various islands (over oil mostly), they continue to insist that Taiwan is their property, they are increasingly becoming a force in east asian geo-politics, they are growing their military rapidly, etc. Claims that China doesn't exert power in other parts of the world is complete nonsense and demonstrably so.
It is hard for people in the West to believe this because in the West foreign policy is essentially *ALL ABOUT* spreading your influence and trying to spread democracy. China has no interest in any of this.
Bullshit China doesn't have any interest. China is NO different than any other large nation state. They definitely see themselves as a player on the world stage and they are behaving like a country with global interests. To simply keep their economic engine humming they HAVE to be involved in other parts of the world whether they want to or not.
What you said is true for say, a building. ISPs's networks are not "you purchase it once" items.
Sure they are from a cost perspective. They do NOT replace all their equipment every 3 years. Don't take my word for it, look at their financials statements. Hell, the phone poles outside my house were replaced last year for the first time in 45 years. They are NOT going to buy a switch expecting to replace it in 12 months. They might buy new equipment but they aren't ripping out the old stuff for a pretty good stretch of time. My father worked for the phone company for 30 years in engineering so I got to see a lot this first hand. Why do you think it has taken so long for a lot of places to get even 100Mbit networking? The switches have been available for decades but I couldn't get service that fast to my house until the last 2-3 years and I don't expect to see gigabit speeds for another decade where I live. They might add capacity but they aren't ripping out old equipment until it has seen quite a few years of use.
You say "yes it does scale somewhat but only in the short run", and that's right, infrastructure costs are only particularly important for equipment that is kept in service for less than 10 years - such as networking equipment.
"Short run" in this case is based on how long it takes to amortize the fixed costs. This is typically a matter of months to a few years in most cases. Certainly we're not talking 10+ years except in rare cases. If a company doesn't recoup its investment on assets within 3-5 years, in most cases they'll be out of business faster than you can say "Chapter 11".
What is important is how much is planned versus necessary outlays. All other things equal, a company like Comcast is going to want to minimize infrastructure investment to maximize profitability. Most of their costs are going to be fixed costs and their profitability depends almost entirely on how long they can keep the assets they have before they have to replace them. Given that fact, do you really think they aren't going to plan ahead and buy equipment they won't have to replace every year?
Technically yes. The Korean war theoretically never actually ended. There was an armistice but never any permanent peace agreement. $Diety knows what they think they still have to fight about...
North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, has been warned that he could face prosecution for crimes against humanity after a United Nations inquiry accused him of some of the worst human rights abuses since the Second World War.
Not as long as China protects him he won't. For various reasons I don't entirely understand China has elected to keep this family in power. (I know they want a buffer from South Korea but there has to be more to it than that) They don't even seem concerned about North Korea possessing nuclear weapons.
If China decides to withdraw support, the North Korean regime will be gone pretty quick most likely. Until then, nothing will happen unless a war starts between North and South Korea.
There is no commodity they produce that is consumed.
Sure there is - a byte of information. The unit price on this commodity is small but it is measurable and it is consumable too. Information has value and it has cost to create and deliver.
If the pipe sits dormant or if its working at capacity, there is no material difference in cost to the provider...
You're forgetting about a whole host of variable other costs beyond simply the physical cost of delivery. There are interchange fees, content license costs, customer support, and more. Granted, the fixed costs dominate but that doesn't mean the variable costs here are negligible. The variable costs are relatively small but definitely not zero.
So in fact the infrastructure cost DOES scale with bandwidth.
Yes it does scale somewhat but only in the short run. You purchase it once and the cost of maintaining it is essentially unchanged. What happens is that the additional fixed cost of the new equipment gets amortized over the units (of data) sold. So the payback time is longer but eventually the fixed costs per unit sold go down asymptotically to a good approximation of zero. In time the difference in cost between the two devices is so small as to be insignificant. The only question is how long it takes this to occur.
Someone who uses 10GB a month should pay ten times as much as someone who uses 1GB a month and they should be able to use 100GB if they can afford it.
I'm a cost accountant professionally and your analysis of the economics here is complete nonsense. You are assuming that delivering 10GB/month costs 10X as much as delivering 1GB/month. In reality it doesn't work like that. There are two types of costs, fixed and variable. Fixed costs are things like electricity and salaries and rent that you have to pay every month regardless of how many customers you have or products you produce. Variable costs are things like raw materials or data interchange fees that scale with each unit of product delivered. For companies like Comcast, fixed costs hugely outweigh variable costs, meaning that it costs them only fractionally more to deliver 10GB than it does 1GB. The equipment used is the same, the salaries of their employees are the same, their electricity costs are the same, etc. The cost to serve a customer is generally not affected greatly by the amount of data they use in most cases once the infrastructure is in place to serve them.
What these companies are doing is in many cases creating artificial scarcity and engaging in price discrimination to maximize revenues while minimizing costs. Investing in infrastructure (a large fixed cost) is expensive so companies don't want to do it if they don't have to. Furthermore they know that some people are willing to pay $100 per month while others only $30 so they are using the fact that there is a minor difference in variable cost for data delivery to extract more money out of those who are willing to pay more for faster/more data. Companies like Comcast don't like companies like Netflix because Netflix customers start demanding more out of their existing infrastructure which screws up their cost models and forces them to invest in infrastructure (big fixed costs) soon than they intended.
If you want to charge differential pricing based on usage, then you need to have a flat access fee based off the actual (fixed) cost of providing the service (plus some profit for the ISP) and then you charge a per-byte usage fee for the variable cost of delivering the data. The variable cost in this instance should be a relatively small amount compared to the flat access fee. Right now by paying a flat fee, users who use less data subsidize those who use more.
No, The Free Market will solve all that. Unless Government interferes.
Ahh, yes. Sprinkle a little Free Market (tm) pixie dust and every problem will go away like a fart in the wind. After all, corporations are benign entities that only have our best interests at heart. That Evil Government (tm) however is always trying to force them to do things that benefit those Undeserving Consumers (tm) who don't realize that what is best for them is to hand over most of their money to corporations for safe keeping.
And it's not about net neutrality, but about net capacity.'
Bullshit. This is an argument being made by very large companies who would like nothing better than to extract economic rents from other companies to maximize their own profits without any consideration for whether this benefits consumer or the economy as a whole. They do see the opportunity to charge extra to google and amazon and to throttle potential competitive threats like Netflix. They can simultaneously limit competition to their own content and charge extra to competitors who will have no choice but to go through them to reach vast portions of the public.
But these concerns are premature, unfounded, and arise mostly from status quo bias: Carriers and providers haven't priced like this before, so of course change will create some kind of harm,'
Again, bullshit. This presumes that we have no insight into the likely behaviors and consequences of eliminating net neutrality. We know EXACTLY how companies like Comcast will act if they are allowed to charge discriminatory pricing and we also know that it is extremely unlikely to benefit consumers. Frankly Comcast doesn't give a rat's posterior about me specifically because I am a teeny, tiny fraction of a rounding error of their revenue stream. No action I could possible take as an individual is likely to have any meaningful effect on their behavior. But there is a LOT of money to be made for them without net neutrality.
The main bit of technology that we'd really need to develop, before anything else, is the ability to set up manufacturing sites on the Moon, and to mine and refine ores on the Moon and use them for manufacturing there, rather than having to lift everything from the Earth's surface.
I think you are badly underestimating the amount of infrastructure required to manufacture anything on a significant scale other than on Earth. Want to make steel on the moon? In no particular order you will need a large source of iron ore, carbon, oxygen, alloying compounds like chromium or vanadium. You'll need equipment to mine, transport, process, store, all of these plus their byproducts. You need furnaces capable of generating and withstanding temperatures higher than 1375C and not just little ones. You'll need a vast source of power with all the attendant infrastructure that goes into generating that power. You need the ability to test the steel and to adjust production to keep the chemical composition correct. You need another complete infrastructure to turn the steel into useful products. Then you need another set of infrastructure to actually do something useful with the products you have just made. Bear in mind that ALL of this tech will have to be developed for an environment where we have little experience, unproven tech and where the difficulties and costs are multiplied by orders of magnitude.
I haven't even touched on the economic problems either.
Quite frankly, simply getting some equipment to the Moon is the least of the problems we face in doing extraterrestrial manufacturing. We take the infrastructure we have here on earth for granted sometimes but you can't do that elsewhere. This is one of many reasons why the notion of mining asteroids is largely absurd. Don't get me wrong, I'm actually all for trying to manufacture in space but let's not pretend that the challenges are trivial. We're talking about something that is MUCH harder than the Apollo missions and vastly more expensive in all likelihood.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple didn't change the phone business?
Apple brought computers to the phone business and computers were a business Apple was already in and already understood very well. Phones are basically computers and Apple brought this fact front and center. Despite the fact that they are increasingly digital, automobiles are not computers and there is a vast amount of engineering expertise in them that is WAY outside Apple's wheelhouse. (suspensions, motors, etc) I suppose nothing is impossible but I really can't see Apple getting into the car business if for no other reason than profit margin. The most profitable auto manufacturers have net margins around 8-10%. Apple's net margins are north of 25%. If Tim Cook got into a low margin business like cars he'd be out of his job probably faster than you could say "shareholder lawsuit".
OpenOffice or LibreOffice can be configured to store files in .doc and .xls and .ppt formats - problem solved!
While true, that doesn't mean either of those products are permitted in every office. A lot of IT departments are notoriously inflexible on this sort of matter. If your organization standardizes on something, odds are they aren't going to want you using some other unapproved product. If you were to point out that this inflexibility is probably dumb, I am inclined to agree with you. Nevertheless it does occur and it is a real problem. Microsoft isn't strictly wrong here though they are being a bit disingenuous regarding some of the nuances of the situation.
I have standardized my company on LibreOffice but its ability to read and write Microsoft Office files is imperfect at best. It's particularly bad at the more recent .docx and .xlsx files. It reads and writes them well enough to be useful most of the time but don't expect perfection.
I entirely agree, but when has this stopped other companies from making foolish acquisitions?
Neither Google nor Apple (especially Apple) has a history of making silly acquisitions. I'm not overly worried they are going to start now. Of the two, Google has made the riskier moves of the two so if either of them was going to buy something stupid I'd bet on Google to do it.
Both Google and Apple are swimming in money that they just can not seem to find a good way to spend.
Very true but they aren't going to change industries altogether. Apple is going to remain in consumer electronics and Google is going to remain in advertising. Getting into the auto business would be very foolish of them since they have no particular expertise to bring to the table there. Google is doing some interesting research projects with cars but that's a very far cry from producing real products they sell to retail customers. Furthermore if they buy Tesla they likely are limiting their ability to sell to any other auto maker (GM, Ford etc) and that is likely to be a MUCH bigger market.
Google really seems to hate the idea of becoming a hardware company but Apple is all about hardware.
This is somewhat of a myth. Yes Apple works hard on making some very nice hardware and they do have some real expertise but at their core Apple is a software company. There really is very little difference on the inside between a Mac and a Dell. Put Windows on a Mac and you'd be hard pressed to tell who made the computer unless you looked at the box. Same with the iPhone, the underlying electronics aren't much different than their competitors. Same with the iPad. Furthermore Apple designs the hardware but they don't make it and have outsourced most of what manufacturing expertise they once possessed to specialist companies.
Apple makes money by selling a bunch of software that they tie to their own hardware. NOBODY would pay a premium for a Mac that ran Windows only, no matter how nice the box. So what that really means is that people are buying the software. What sets Apple products apart (for better or worse) is their software. Apple just realizes that the best channel to sell their software is by bundling it with hardware they design and control. This costs them market share but so far has brought them tremendous profits.
In a normal, healthy, functioning market, those services should become fairly commoditized and the price of those services should drop.
Most banking and financial services ARE commoditized. Remember that for the most part bankers sell an undifferentiated product and they don't make a whole lot of money per transaction. However, the transaction volume is enormous and thus banks can make some pretty big profits at the end of the day ala Walmart.
The places where big margin profits are made is in markets where there are information asymmetries and/or where transaction volume is relatively low. The elimination of Glass-Steagall was an enormous mistake because it immediately created a conflict of interest for banks. Hopefully the Voelker rule will restore some of the sanity though that remains to be seen.
The fact that huge profits are being made year after year is an indicator that something is wrong with that mechanism.
Huge profits from a huge bank should not be shocking and by themselves are not sufficient evidence of something being broken. What we need to worry about is the margins they are making.
Bankers earn a profit by moving other peoples' money around and taking some off the top.
True, and the reason they can make money at this is because it is a VERY valuable activity to society. Far more valuable than the bit they keep for themselves most of the time. If you need evidence of how valuable it is, merely look at our recent financial crisis when the flow of money froze up.
There are plenty of jobs that don't involve making things but nevertheless are very valuable. Don't confuse the value of the activity with the behavior of the parties involved.
One of those jobs is necessary for us to progress.
Think so? Try building a company without access to banking or financial services. You won't get very far. Anyone who thinks banking and financial services aren't necessary for progress doesn't understand finance. It's like saying your car doesn't need oil. Technically true for a little while but it won't work very well or for very long.
What's wrong with hiding under the bed?
It's crowded with all the monsters under there.
Because the minute China stop supporting that dictatorship half a dozen country, the first of them being the US of A, go get rid of that family, and a reunited US-friendly Korean is reborn. And China doesn't want another US friendly country near by..
Which is logic I don't really understand. Let's say that Korea reunites peacefully and is firmly pro-US. What is the downside to China? It's not like Korea is going to invade China even with US backing. As long as China remains peaceful, trade will benefit both sides hugely. A reunited Korea would be less of a financial burden on China and they wouldn't have to worry (much) about refugees coming across the border. China would have ample opportunity to "persuade" Korea to be friendly to China.
I just don't get the logic at work here. I fully admit there must be a lot of nuance I don't really understand and I'm sure there are certain racial and historical tensions I don't appreciate but even so their behavior makes little sense to me.
Don't forget to hard disable the microphone on the laptop if it has one. There is a malware that can communicate using high frequency sound, from a networked machine to un-networked one.
I think that is about as likely as getting molested by a unicorn.
Seriously folks, I'm all for reasonable amounts of security but this sort of thing is just hide under the bed paranoia.
would you like to recommend and aternative that works better in your experience?
Lately I've had the best luck with Trendnet and Apple. Dlink and Netgear are usually fine though I have run across a few bad pieces of gear. Linksys I've had mixed luck with and their stuff has gotten worse over time. My small office uses a Netgear 24 port switch, a few Trendnet gigabit switches and an Apple Airport Express for wireless. Haven't had any problems with any of it. We had a Netgear router (replaced by the Airport) which handled our wireless until it died for unexplained reasons.
Sample size here is small though so don't take my word without a lot of NaCl.
I used to like Netgear, but they're crap now. You say Belkin is too, OK, who then?
I've at least had mixed luck with Netgear stuff, mostly fine with a few duds. Same with Linksys, D-Link, Trendnet and some others. Apple gear I've used has been solid if pricey. But I have yet to have a bit of Belkin gear that didn't do something unexpected (in a bad way). Maybe some of their stuff is fine but I haven't come across it.
...from Belkin
What is it with these guys? Every piece of gear of theirs I've tried over the years has been flaky or just plain crap. I realize I don't have a large sample size but I've seen other people make similar comments about their gear. Their stuff just always seems to have some sort of problem.
And if he'd said illiterate little brother it wouldn't have been? Why?
He could have easily left gender out of it but chose not to. The discussion had nothing whatsoever to do with gender so why bring it into the mix? Furthermore are you aware of the relative proportions of males versus females in IT? Hell I've been guilty myself of using my mom as an example of computer illiteracy when my dad is probably even worse with computers than she is. If gender has nothing to do with the story then don't bring it up.
Do you think boys are naturally more stupid than girls or are you just angling for some right-on brownie points? Which it looks like you didn't get btw.
Right. That is why I pointed out a comment which needlessly brought gender into a discussion that had nothing to do with gender. I'm just desperate for the attaboys from the anonymous slashdot masses.
If North Korea became hostile to China, they would lose a lof of naval power.
If North Korea became hostile to China, China would and could simply topple the country and could do so quickly. China wouldn't even break a sweat putting Kim Jong-Un out of power. They don't do it because it would cause all sorts of other problems and hasn't been necessary so far but North Korea isn't really much of a threat to China.
Rather, it is China's view that it is no one's business outside the DPRK how the DPRK conducts it's affairs.
Baloney. If that were the case then China wouldn't be subsidizing the regime. China thinks it is China's business what the DPRK does.
China never wants to be involved in other countries' problems nor do they seek to impose their will on other countries - you don't see China out trying to spread their own unique brand of communist/capitalism elsewhere do you?
They most certainly do get themselves involved in other countries problems. Ask Tibet. Need more examples? Look at what China is doing in Africa. They are investing hugely there and they certainly are pushing their own interests. China is contesting with Japan over various islands (over oil mostly), they continue to insist that Taiwan is their property, they are increasingly becoming a force in east asian geo-politics, they are growing their military rapidly, etc. Claims that China doesn't exert power in other parts of the world is complete nonsense and demonstrably so.
It is hard for people in the West to believe this because in the West foreign policy is essentially *ALL ABOUT* spreading your influence and trying to spread democracy. China has no interest in any of this.
Bullshit China doesn't have any interest. China is NO different than any other large nation state. They definitely see themselves as a player on the world stage and they are behaving like a country with global interests. To simply keep their economic engine humming they HAVE to be involved in other parts of the world whether they want to or not.
What you said is true for say, a building. ISPs's networks are not "you purchase it once" items.
Sure they are from a cost perspective. They do NOT replace all their equipment every 3 years. Don't take my word for it, look at their financials statements. Hell, the phone poles outside my house were replaced last year for the first time in 45 years. They are NOT going to buy a switch expecting to replace it in 12 months. They might buy new equipment but they aren't ripping out the old stuff for a pretty good stretch of time. My father worked for the phone company for 30 years in engineering so I got to see a lot this first hand. Why do you think it has taken so long for a lot of places to get even 100Mbit networking? The switches have been available for decades but I couldn't get service that fast to my house until the last 2-3 years and I don't expect to see gigabit speeds for another decade where I live. They might add capacity but they aren't ripping out old equipment until it has seen quite a few years of use.
You say "yes it does scale somewhat but only in the short run", and that's right, infrastructure costs are only particularly important for equipment that is kept in service for less than 10 years - such as networking equipment.
"Short run" in this case is based on how long it takes to amortize the fixed costs. This is typically a matter of months to a few years in most cases. Certainly we're not talking 10+ years except in rare cases. If a company doesn't recoup its investment on assets within 3-5 years, in most cases they'll be out of business faster than you can say "Chapter 11".
What is important is how much is planned versus necessary outlays. All other things equal, a company like Comcast is going to want to minimize infrastructure investment to maximize profitability. Most of their costs are going to be fixed costs and their profitability depends almost entirely on how long they can keep the assets they have before they have to replace them. Given that fact, do you really think they aren't going to plan ahead and buy equipment they won't have to replace every year?
...designed for 'your computer illiterate little sister'...
Little bit sexist too apparently.
Aren't they still at war?
Technically yes. The Korean war theoretically never actually ended. There was an armistice but never any permanent peace agreement. $Diety knows what they think they still have to fight about...
North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, has been warned that he could face prosecution for crimes against humanity after a United Nations inquiry accused him of some of the worst human rights abuses since the Second World War.
Not as long as China protects him he won't. For various reasons I don't entirely understand China has elected to keep this family in power. (I know they want a buffer from South Korea but there has to be more to it than that) They don't even seem concerned about North Korea possessing nuclear weapons.
If China decides to withdraw support, the North Korean regime will be gone pretty quick most likely. Until then, nothing will happen unless a war starts between North and South Korea.
There is no commodity they produce that is consumed.
Sure there is - a byte of information. The unit price on this commodity is small but it is measurable and it is consumable too. Information has value and it has cost to create and deliver.
If the pipe sits dormant or if its working at capacity, there is no material difference in cost to the provider...
You're forgetting about a whole host of variable other costs beyond simply the physical cost of delivery. There are interchange fees, content license costs, customer support, and more. Granted, the fixed costs dominate but that doesn't mean the variable costs here are negligible. The variable costs are relatively small but definitely not zero.
So in fact the infrastructure cost DOES scale with bandwidth.
Yes it does scale somewhat but only in the short run. You purchase it once and the cost of maintaining it is essentially unchanged. What happens is that the additional fixed cost of the new equipment gets amortized over the units (of data) sold. So the payback time is longer but eventually the fixed costs per unit sold go down asymptotically to a good approximation of zero. In time the difference in cost between the two devices is so small as to be insignificant. The only question is how long it takes this to occur.
Someone who uses 10GB a month should pay ten times as much as someone who uses 1GB a month and they should be able to use 100GB if they can afford it.
I'm a cost accountant professionally and your analysis of the economics here is complete nonsense. You are assuming that delivering 10GB/month costs 10X as much as delivering 1GB/month. In reality it doesn't work like that. There are two types of costs, fixed and variable. Fixed costs are things like electricity and salaries and rent that you have to pay every month regardless of how many customers you have or products you produce. Variable costs are things like raw materials or data interchange fees that scale with each unit of product delivered. For companies like Comcast, fixed costs hugely outweigh variable costs, meaning that it costs them only fractionally more to deliver 10GB than it does 1GB. The equipment used is the same, the salaries of their employees are the same, their electricity costs are the same, etc. The cost to serve a customer is generally not affected greatly by the amount of data they use in most cases once the infrastructure is in place to serve them.
What these companies are doing is in many cases creating artificial scarcity and engaging in price discrimination to maximize revenues while minimizing costs. Investing in infrastructure (a large fixed cost) is expensive so companies don't want to do it if they don't have to. Furthermore they know that some people are willing to pay $100 per month while others only $30 so they are using the fact that there is a minor difference in variable cost for data delivery to extract more money out of those who are willing to pay more for faster/more data. Companies like Comcast don't like companies like Netflix because Netflix customers start demanding more out of their existing infrastructure which screws up their cost models and forces them to invest in infrastructure (big fixed costs) soon than they intended.
If you want to charge differential pricing based on usage, then you need to have a flat access fee based off the actual (fixed) cost of providing the service (plus some profit for the ISP) and then you charge a per-byte usage fee for the variable cost of delivering the data. The variable cost in this instance should be a relatively small amount compared to the flat access fee. Right now by paying a flat fee, users who use less data subsidize those who use more.
No, The Free Market will solve all that. Unless Government interferes.
Ahh, yes. Sprinkle a little Free Market (tm) pixie dust and every problem will go away like a fart in the wind. After all, corporations are benign entities that only have our best interests at heart. That Evil Government (tm) however is always trying to force them to do things that benefit those Undeserving Consumers (tm) who don't realize that what is best for them is to hand over most of their money to corporations for safe keeping.
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And it's not about net neutrality, but about net capacity.'
Bullshit. This is an argument being made by very large companies who would like nothing better than to extract economic rents from other companies to maximize their own profits without any consideration for whether this benefits consumer or the economy as a whole. They do see the opportunity to charge extra to google and amazon and to throttle potential competitive threats like Netflix. They can simultaneously limit competition to their own content and charge extra to competitors who will have no choice but to go through them to reach vast portions of the public.
But these concerns are premature, unfounded, and arise mostly from status quo bias: Carriers and providers haven't priced like this before, so of course change will create some kind of harm,'
Again, bullshit. This presumes that we have no insight into the likely behaviors and consequences of eliminating net neutrality. We know EXACTLY how companies like Comcast will act if they are allowed to charge discriminatory pricing and we also know that it is extremely unlikely to benefit consumers. Frankly Comcast doesn't give a rat's posterior about me specifically because I am a teeny, tiny fraction of a rounding error of their revenue stream. No action I could possible take as an individual is likely to have any meaningful effect on their behavior. But there is a LOT of money to be made for them without net neutrality.
The main bit of technology that we'd really need to develop, before anything else, is the ability to set up manufacturing sites on the Moon, and to mine and refine ores on the Moon and use them for manufacturing there, rather than having to lift everything from the Earth's surface.
I think you are badly underestimating the amount of infrastructure required to manufacture anything on a significant scale other than on Earth. Want to make steel on the moon? In no particular order you will need a large source of iron ore, carbon, oxygen, alloying compounds like chromium or vanadium. You'll need equipment to mine, transport, process, store, all of these plus their byproducts. You need furnaces capable of generating and withstanding temperatures higher than 1375C and not just little ones. You'll need a vast source of power with all the attendant infrastructure that goes into generating that power. You need the ability to test the steel and to adjust production to keep the chemical composition correct. You need another complete infrastructure to turn the steel into useful products. Then you need another set of infrastructure to actually do something useful with the products you have just made. Bear in mind that ALL of this tech will have to be developed for an environment where we have little experience, unproven tech and where the difficulties and costs are multiplied by orders of magnitude.
I haven't even touched on the economic problems either.
Quite frankly, simply getting some equipment to the Moon is the least of the problems we face in doing extraterrestrial manufacturing. We take the infrastructure we have here on earth for granted sometimes but you can't do that elsewhere. This is one of many reasons why the notion of mining asteroids is largely absurd. Don't get me wrong, I'm actually all for trying to manufacture in space but let's not pretend that the challenges are trivial. We're talking about something that is MUCH harder than the Apollo missions and vastly more expensive in all likelihood.