The biggest problem is people speculating on oil prices, buying oil that they're never going to use and might not even have been produced thus somebody is stockpiling something somewhere only to keep the prices up at the pump There has ALWAYS been speculation in oil as well as lots of other commodities. Nothing new there. Certainly speculation is a piece of the puzzle but it's not enough by itself to explain everything. Rapidly increasing demand from China and other nations, instability in key supplying nations (Iraq especially), poor policies which encouraging gas guzzling vehicles, an overly oil dependent infrastructure (truck deliveries), and very importantly a weak dollar - the currency most oil sales are denominated in. With a weak dollar it costs more to buy the same amount of oil from a foreign source.
You're right though, supply and demand will win out in the end. Personally I'm not especially disappointed by the high oil & gas prices. Maybe it will finally cause some responsible behavior here in the US.
the same amendments that limit the fed from invading privacy also apply to the states. Lucky me, wa.us has reasonable protections for its residents in its constitution So if the same limitations apply, why does your state need special laws? The answer is that the same privacy laws do NOT apply the same everywhere. In fact the Constitution explicitly prohibits the federal government from being involved in certain activities of the States. Privacy is a VERY broad and complicated topic and it is barely addressed in the US Constitution. Many federal laws do apply to the states but many do not.
Screwed up priorities?
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Terminal Chaos
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· Score: 5, Insightful
If somebody really needs to get to another continent within a day, it should be because somebody they love is on their deathbed. It shouldn't be because of yet another business deal. Our priorities are so screwed these days, but I guess that's progress. Who the hell are you to tell me or anyone else what our priorities should be? I welcome fast travel. The faster the better within reason and safety. My life is finite and I'd rather not waste it traveling in unnecessarily slow vehicles when I could be spending my life the way I want to. If slow travel makes you happy that's fine but don't you dare tell me my priorities are screwed up because I don't want to take a week or a month out of my life to travel a few thousand miles.
getting there is supposed to be half the fun. Unless your goal is specifically to wander (nothing wrong with that) then no, getting there is NOT half the fun. It's not even 1% of the fun. When I visited China I went to see China - not to have "half the fun" on the inside of a 747 and certainly not getting seasick on a boat for several weeks. That prospect does not appeal to me in the slightest.
I personally don't enjoy the actual act of riding/driving/flying from point A to point B in most cases. I consider it a waste of my time and hence my life. If I want to stop a bunch of places along the way I'd prefer it be intentional. You may feel differently and that's fine. I would like to spend my life doing the things I enjoy, not the things you think I should enjoy. Riding a vehicle somewhere is not what I personally enjoy.
There is also no government power to invade my privacy, so by default I have that right. In principle you are right but you seemed to have missed the point of my previous post. We DO have a right to privacy - it simply isn't explicitly defined anywhere in the Constitution.
Plus what is "privacy" and how does one define it and what constitutes invading privacy? That is not addressed directly in the Constitution either. All rights to privacy in the Constitution are either implied or indirectly derived which means they are defined by acts of Congress and judiciary case law. That is a MUCH different situation than having the "power to invade privacy" defined and prohibited explicitly in the Constitution.
Furthermore you are not completely reading the 10th amendment. There is more to it:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
The power to invade privacy is not delegated to the United States nor prohibited to it by the States. So far so good. However you can read the 10th amendment such that the power to invade privacy IS a power of the States. That my friend is one HUGE possible loophole.
Ever read this? The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. Many times.
While some rights to privacy have been inferred from the fourth amendment as well as several other parts of the Constitution, the fourth amendment does not explicitly grant or define any "right to privacy". Furthermore it only restricts the actions of the US federal government. In principle States as well as private organizations and individuals are exempt from fourth amendment requirements to a significant degree.
Privacy IS regulated under the Privacy Act of 1974 among numerous other laws and rulings. The US Supreme Court has upheld an implied right to privacy through various case law rulings. But there is NO right to privacy defined or guaranteed in the Constitution. Don't take my word for it, go find yourself a lawyer who specializes in Constitutional law. I'm confident they will tell you substantially what I've outlined above.
Nobody doubts Bill Gates' vision helped bring computers to the masses a great deal... If Bill Gates had been the only one trying or had an insightful viewpoint I might agree with you. He was merely the most successful financially, NOT in my opinion the most visionary or even particularly helpful most of the time. Compaq cloning the original PC BIOS had a lot more to do with bringing computers to the masses than Microsoft. Mitch Kapor and Lotus 1-2-3 was the killer app that really got the PC off the ground. Microsoft was merely one of many companies involved with making the IBM compatible PC the most dominant platform. Bill Gates is to my mind the poster child for the value of network effects.
Bill Gates vision? You mean his business model? Nothing visionary or new there. He was selling an operating system product that was included with each PC so OF COURSE he wanted "a computer on every desk". So would you if you were selling a product with zero marginal cost. He just was lucky enough to get on the right horse with one of the two most important products on the PC (along with Intel's CPUs). It wasn't an especially good product even by the standards of the day. If it wasn't him it would have been someone else - have no doubt of that. Microsoft wasn't even in the operating system business relatively late in the game but it turned out to be a cash cow that put them where they are today.
Vision? No I'm not convinced Bill Gates' "vision" helped accelerate adoption of PCs. You can make a reasonable (though hypothetical) argument that his company's crappy technology and operating system monopoly held adoption of computers by the masses back by several years. Don't get me wrong, there are many things he deserves credit for - both good and bad - but his vision isn't among them.
I just added two lines to my plan and got $450 worth of phones for free. I'm trying to figure out why anyone would pay. A few reasons.
1) In my case the phone I wanted (Nokia E70) was not sold through any carrier in the US. So my options were either get a different phone which suited my needs/wants less or buy the phone myself. I chose the later option.
2) Another reason is that you might want a different phone without a contract extension. Buy a subsidized phone from your carrier and usually you get an extra year or two on your contract for the privilege. Not always a problem but some folks might not want to extend their contract. I certainly never do unless I have to.
3) You want an unlocked phone. Most phones sold through US carriers are locked to their service. You can unlock them yourself usually but it's less aggravation and less risk to just buy it unlocked to begin with.
4) You are buying the phone for travel purposes and don't want a contract along with the phone since you won't use the phone regularly.
There are other reasons. I'm not against the practice of subsidizing phonesbut I haven't bought a subsidized phone for 7 or 8 years for various reasons. There are lots of good reasons to buy phones directly yourself.
Yes, certainly the contract time pays for the phone, but if I could use no contract, a simple robust phone would be fantastic. I'd not spend money on the things. That, my friend, is why they don't do it. Many services are pay-per-use, even in wealthy countries. Low income folks don't have $50-100/month to pay for a contract. Or they are like my grandmother who just wants a phone for emergencies but won't use it otherwise. You're right that the phone companies like the contracts (predictable revenues and all that) but that business model isn't feasible everywhere.
How would you like it if you did a lot of business with Europe, but they still used cartwheels, furlongs, leagues, and all that stuff? In England they do, at least informally. I had an English roomie in college who insisted on giving weight in stones. I'll stop being pedantic now...
I do wish we'd switch to metric here but I doubt we will in my lifetime.
And for the record, I'm Canadian, living in the US. I STILL haven't gotten a feel for American units, but I'm getting a little better at doing the conversions in my head. That being said, I had no idea what 70F was until googling it. Apparently you haven't lived here long since temperatures are pretty much always given in Fahrenheit here. In fact (sadly) most US citizens couldn't tell a metric temperature other than 0C or 100C if their life depended on it.
If you ever actually watched the end of keynote you'd see that often Lord Jobs asks the engineers to stand for a round of applause. Jobs is also well known for being aggressive, demanding and egotistical. He frequently has been not-very-nice to those who work for him. He's a talented manager but has rarely been described as kind or gentle. He gets results which is why people tolerate his style. I suspect he does care about the people who work for him but he appears to be hard to work for at times.
Will Apple have to raise salaries to match the market rate, or face defections? Depends on what else they can offer employees and how good they are at recruiting talent. Salaries are an important part of the equation but not the only one. The perks at Google are legendary which is perhaps the clearest admission that salary isn't everything.
We have to remember too that Apple is not really a direct competitor to Yahoo or Google. Sure there is some significant overlap but the real question is what are their competitors at Dell, HP, Nokia, RIM, Motorola, and Microsoft paying. I suspect Apple is likely fairly competitive on the pay. HR folks are pretty aware of what the going rate for talent is in a given area.
I don't know too much about Apple's corporate culture but clearly they are able to attract some pretty talented folks. All other things being equal people talent will migrate towards higher pay but things are rarely equal. Speaking for myself I'd rather make a little less in a fun place with interesting work and cool co-workers. Benefits are also a consideration.
For the devices however the lower speed modes of USB are a godsend. Having clocks running at hundreds of megahertz causes all sorts of issues (probablly requiring multilayer PCBs possiblly with components on both sides to get decent decoupling performance) that drive up price and is totally unessacery in a keyboard or mouse. Unnecessary for some devices but not for others. Even USB 1.1 is faster than keyboards and mice actually need so clearly it isn't a serious engineering problem, merely an economic one. The variable costs are only marginally different between USB2.0 and Firewire 400 and with enough units the differences in fixed costs are negligible. The value in the flexibility of the higher speed ports more than offsets any engineering challenges posed by having a faster port than is strictly necessary.
Look, I'm an engineer and I value efficient design as much as most engineers here but if my mouse costs an extra $1 so it can utilize a faster bus on my system, I don't really care. In case you hadn't guessed I'm not a big fan of legacy ports. My feeling is if we need them that is what expansion cards are for.
It also drives up the cable requirements which is especially bad for devices like mice where a long flexible cable is important. Fast buses can fail down to slower speeds. USB, Firewire and ethernet all can and do. This permits the use of cheaper more flexible wire in many cases. You can use Cat5e instead of Cat6 with gigabit ethernet and at worst it will fail down to 100Mbps or even 10Mbps. USB2.0 is backwards compatible with the older 1.1. Firewire actually can run at slower speeds than 400Mbps. Frankly I don't see a serious engineering issue here. Yes it's a little harder and more complicated but the benefits easily outweigh the extra costs.
...lions are dangerous. If you get near one, they are way more dangerous than spiders. Which by your own arguments you won't get near one so they aren't dangerous. You should be disappearing in a poof of logic about right now.
BTW I enjoyed all the made up statistics. I enjoy some good fiction.
That means that every perhipheral has to have chips capable of handling a 400 megabit per second interface even if it doesn't need anywhere near that ammount of bandwidth. So what? A keyboard doesn't need the bandwidth of the original USB spec but we still use it for that purpose. You don't need a 2Ghz CPU for most tasks but we use one. Why? Because the flexibility it provides is worth more than cost of theoretically cheaper components. I probably don't need all the bandwidth that firewire or USB2.0 provides but there is a chance I might. The system designer doesn't know what I'll use the port for in advance so doesn't it make sense to design for a higher speed even if it isn't needed? That's the whole point of general purpose computers.
Furthermore I think most of the cost advantage of USB comes from economies of scale since so much more USB equipment is manufactured. Once the chips and other equipment is designed and being manufactured, the cost falls as the fixed costs are amortized over an increasing number of units. The difference in variable costs between firewire and USB are trivial past a few million units. Produce more firewire devices and the cost will naturally fall as you spread the fixed costs over more units. Yes firewire is slightly more complicated but not so much as to make a big difference once minimum efficient scale is reached.
First, the mountain lion numbers are a lie. Have you ever tried to find a mountain lion that did not want to be found. It's impossible. You're right that finding the animal itself would be a challenge. But they do leave evidence of their existence. Scat, carcasses, tracks, etc. It's hard to find a mountain lion but it's only impossible to find one that doesn't exist.
I live in Arkansas, and technically they don't exist, but ask some of my hunting buddies around here. We have a very large breeding population. With all due respect to your hunting buddies I'm not impressed by extrapolations from anecdotal stories. Mountain lions have been known to appear in much of the US in small numbers. By your own arguments if there was a large breeding population the impact would be seen.
Also, coyotes, wolves, and mountain lions pose a serious threat to a ranchers livelihood. There aren't enough wolves in the US to pose a serious threat to ranchers finances here. Coyotes are an issue but they also are not even close to endangered and ranchers are free to hunt them as needed.
Also, coyotes, wolves, and mountain lions pose a serious threat to a ranchers livelihood. Mountain lions kill at least one large herd animal a week. So that's 50,000 * 52= 2.6 million animals a year. First off, mountain lions are generalist predators that will eat a wide variety of prey ranging from deer to insects (yes insects) depending on what is locally available. Second the number is 50,000 SPREAD ACROSS TWO CONTINENTS. Your numbers sound impressive but the number of prey animals are FAR greater. For example the number of domestic sheep in the US alone at any given time is more than double that number and NO predator is even close to causing a decline. Once in a while a rancher has some bad luck but that's the way it goes with farming. Furthermore you are presuming that every animal a predator takes is a domestic animal which is clearly not even close to being the case.
They have major problems with reintroduced wolves. Also, mountain lions and coyotes are responsible for a lot of livestock deaths. "Major problems"? Please. The number of livestock killed by reintroduced wolves is miniscule. There are less than 2000 reintroduced wolves in the lower 48 states. Even including Alaska the entire US has only about 9000 wolves. Ranchers fear wolves but they are not a serious problem in any way, shape or form. There simply are not enough of them to be a significant problem except for the occasional unlucky rancher.
Coyotes were responsible for significantly more sheep deaths but even then it is a small portion of the population. A bit over 100,000 deaths were due to coyotes out of a population of 4.6 million. Coyotes often experience dramatic population restructuring in areas where wolves (which are bigger and stronger) are reintroduced. Coyotes however are also much better at living close to humans. I saw one in my backyard twice this year and I live 5 miles from one of the ten largest cities in the US.
Mountain lions have a total breeding population of around 50,000 spread across both of the americas. They are a threatened species and there are estimated to only be several thousand of them in the US most of them in and around the Rocky mountains with a few in south Florida. Like wolves, in most places their numbers simply aren't large enough to constitute a serious threat to most ranchers.
1% of annual profit is NOT a rounding error. Thats material and noticeable. First off, figure of speech. Second off, you're assuming that all costs would be in addition to their current costs - highly unlikely. Third, you are assuming there are no offsetting revenues - if there aren't there is no point in offering the service in the first place. Fourth, $500/month/location (which is the amount to get to 1% of annual profit) would almost certainly be more than it would be worth to any restaurant - their margins aren't that good - so clearly it does not cost that much. Finally you are assuming no economies of scale which Starbucks clearly would have.
The biggest reason why a company like Starbucks wouldnt do it is because its not their core business. Which is why they outsourced it to T-Mobile and now AT&T.
So they'd have to build a whole internal department in their company to manage this, and it would end up being more like 3-5% of gross revenue. There is NO WAY a wifi rollout would cost Starbucks $282 million (3% of 2007 gross revenue - your numbers not mine) That would be $33,000 per store. There is no way they would get anywhere CLOSE to enough extra business to justify such an expense. That would be approximately half the annual profit of every store they own. Do the numbers before saying something so clearly wrong.
The NBA is THE most difficult sport to officiate because of the constant pace of action and breadth of rules (3 second violations are physically impossible to monitor precisely). You'll get no argument from me that basketball is a hard sport to officiate. It's loaded with rules that are illogical, difficult to monitor and rarely or (worse) selectively enforced. It's allegedly a non-contact sport but it certainly isn't played like one.
However, the league has definitely hurt itself with the loose interpretation of rules. Plus, crap like fudging calls based on reputation and superstar status really detracts from the game. If I remember right Michael Jordan never (or almost never) fouled out of games which I find ridiculously unlikely to have happened without a lot of referees looking the other way. I can't begin to count the number of extra steps superstars get to take when "dribbling" the ball. It's not right and it detracts from the game. If the superstars really are better they don't need special treatment.
A lot of that is the referee's fault for not calling the rules as written. If the rules need changing that's fine but the rules should be enforced as they are in the rulebook, without exception. The league bears some responsibility too for not enforcing the rules or changing them appropriately. "Let them play" is a tired and illogical argument against enforcing the actual rules of the game. If a rule shouldn't be enforced at all times then it shouldn't be a rule.
Also, your analogy is bad. The players aren't expected to make good plays all the time. Refs are expected to make the right call all the time. That's their job. That is also impossible and every athletic rule book I've ever seen (and I've seen a lot of them) makes allowances for imperfection in play calling. Doctors are ideally expected to be perfect too but they aren't and never will be. Expecting unattainable perfection is stupid especially in the context of a game.
Make no mistake, I highly encourage the use of technology wherever it might make play calling more accurate. Just understand that perfection is unattainable in judging any sport.
Oh, and athletes ARE expected to be perfect too, they're just not expected to be impartial. Their mistakes only hurt themselves or their team. Tell Bill Buckner or Earnest Byner that it's ok to be imperfect sometime. Both were castigated and remembered for a single bad play despite a career of outstanding play.
Fans are sick and tired of the outcomes of games being decided by people who aren't even playing. That's the most self contradictory thing I've read in a long time. Using technology to assist officiating will NOT make the calls perfect. The game will still be decided by the calls made which will not be by the individuals playing. EVERY contest is decided by the players on the field - sometimes the officials play a role too. If the contest happens to be so close that a referee's call can make the difference between winning and losing that is simply part of the game. Don't like it? Too bad. It's never going to change. There simply are always some situations that are ambiguous in any athletic contest.
Furthermore if the "fans" (and I'm presuming you are one) think they (or you) can do better they are welcome to try. I'm not aware of any sport that could not use more officials. Grab a whistle and get out there if you think you could do it perfectly.
Why should a fair game be sacrificed just because refs have limited sensors and time resolution? Time to modernize the game, not just the broadcasts. I agree with your conclusion but not your reasoning. The possibility of incorrect calls is unfortunate but impossible to eliminate. It is simply a part of the game and no amount of hand-wringing will make it otherwise. Can't deal with it? Don't play or don't watch. It is just a game after all.
All the more reason to eliminate referees entirely, and simply automate them out of existence: a computer can do their job better. While there are some tasks that can be automated at the pro level (I've long wondered why balls and strikes are still called by a human in MLB for example) most of what an official does cannot be automated. There is NO substitute for having an experienced official on the field. You have to remember officials not only judge disputed calls but in most contests they also ensure smooth and orderly flow of the game. You could not have organized sports without them. If you could, don't you think the athletes would LOVE to have the refs taken out of the equation?
You don't have to believe me. Sign up to officiate high school sports in the sport of your choice. You'll find it VERY enlightening.
Now try doing the same when you got one angle, no zoom, no slow motion and one chance to even notice that there even is a situation, far less what the decision should be. And yet anything less than perfection is not acceptable. What is amazing is how often the refs get it right despite their sensory limitations. Even in the most critical situations the referees are right FAR more often than they are wrong. That said, a referee may know perfectly well that something occurred but cannot call something unless they see it with their own (admittedly imperfect) eyes and as you say, they only have the one perspective to go by. A lot of that is experience and knowledge of the game. Many have been officiating longer than many of the players playing have been alive.
I've been around sporting officials most of my life and I'm speaking from direct experience here. While there are occasionally corrupt or incompetent officials they are extremely rare, especially at the higher levels of play. Most officials don't give a rat's ass who wins, they just want a fair contest with no controversy. Ron Luciano wrote some entertaining books that are worth reading though perhaps not universally applicable. Most refs are talented, hard working, and get way more abuse than they are actually paid to take by fans who generally have a very incomplete understanding of the rules of the game.
MEGACORPS have to play by some rules little guys don't
100.19 per MONTH covers my highspeed COMMERCIAL connection from comcast which I am not allowed to use to supply wifi to the public Yeah, they get negotiating power and economies of scale. 8500 stores gives a LOT of negotiating leverage. A company I used to own paid $250/month for a shitty speed connection but we had no negotiating options as there were no competitors available. Starbucks isn't in that position.
That said, the $100 figure was just an example. Even if the cost were 5 times that (possible though I think unlikely) it still is less than 1% of their annual profit. The cost of Wifi is a rounding error to Starbucks. I don't blame Starbucks for getting people to pay if they are willing to pay but they certainly can afford to provide it for free.
All that technology and they can't use replay to correct the mistakes of inept refs. If you think those referees are so "inept", why don't you get out there and officiate? Might give you some badly needed perspective.
Fact is the NBA refs are extremely good at their jobs. You just notice when the occasional, inevitable mistake crops up. Funny how when LeBron James makes a bad pass or Kobe Bryant makes a bad shot no one calls them "inept". I have no problem with the use of replay in important situations, especially in the pros where they have the money to do it right, but to call the refs "inept" is just ignorance at its finest.
And in the interest of disclosure, yes I officiate sporting events and have for some years. Yes it is a LOT harder than most people even remotely realize.
Nice idea but it doesn't work - the wifi costs to maintain, and someone has to pay for that. OK. Starbucks made approximately $672 million in profit during 2007. They also had approximately 8500 stores during that time. Assuming it costs in total $100 per store for wifi, That is still less than two tenths of one percent (0.2%) of Starbucks profit for 2007 alone. Somehow I don't think that will break the company...
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You're right though, supply and demand will win out in the end. Personally I'm not especially disappointed by the high oil & gas prices. Maybe it will finally cause some responsible behavior here in the US.
I personally don't enjoy the actual act of riding/driving/flying from point A to point B in most cases. I consider it a waste of my time and hence my life. If I want to stop a bunch of places along the way I'd prefer it be intentional. You may feel differently and that's fine. I would like to spend my life doing the things I enjoy, not the things you think I should enjoy. Riding a vehicle somewhere is not what I personally enjoy.
Plus what is "privacy" and how does one define it and what constitutes invading privacy? That is not addressed directly in the Constitution either. All rights to privacy in the Constitution are either implied or indirectly derived which means they are defined by acts of Congress and judiciary case law. That is a MUCH different situation than having the "power to invade privacy" defined and prohibited explicitly in the Constitution.
Furthermore you are not completely reading the 10th amendment. There is more to it:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
The power to invade privacy is not delegated to the United States nor prohibited to it by the States. So far so good. However you can read the 10th amendment such that the power to invade privacy IS a power of the States. That my friend is one HUGE possible loophole.
While some rights to privacy have been inferred from the fourth amendment as well as several other parts of the Constitution, the fourth amendment does not explicitly grant or define any "right to privacy". Furthermore it only restricts the actions of the US federal government. In principle States as well as private organizations and individuals are exempt from fourth amendment requirements to a significant degree.
Privacy IS regulated under the Privacy Act of 1974 among numerous other laws and rulings. The US Supreme Court has upheld an implied right to privacy through various case law rulings. But there is NO right to privacy defined or guaranteed in the Constitution. Don't take my word for it, go find yourself a lawyer who specializes in Constitutional law. I'm confident they will tell you substantially what I've outlined above.
Bill Gates vision? You mean his business model? Nothing visionary or new there. He was selling an operating system product that was included with each PC so OF COURSE he wanted "a computer on every desk". So would you if you were selling a product with zero marginal cost. He just was lucky enough to get on the right horse with one of the two most important products on the PC (along with Intel's CPUs). It wasn't an especially good product even by the standards of the day. If it wasn't him it would have been someone else - have no doubt of that. Microsoft wasn't even in the operating system business relatively late in the game but it turned out to be a cash cow that put them where they are today.
Vision? No I'm not convinced Bill Gates' "vision" helped accelerate adoption of PCs. You can make a reasonable (though hypothetical) argument that his company's crappy technology and operating system monopoly held adoption of computers by the masses back by several years. Don't get me wrong, there are many things he deserves credit for - both good and bad - but his vision isn't among them.
1) In my case the phone I wanted (Nokia E70) was not sold through any carrier in the US. So my options were either get a different phone which suited my needs/wants less or buy the phone myself. I chose the later option.
2) Another reason is that you might want a different phone without a contract extension. Buy a subsidized phone from your carrier and usually you get an extra year or two on your contract for the privilege. Not always a problem but some folks might not want to extend their contract. I certainly never do unless I have to.
3) You want an unlocked phone. Most phones sold through US carriers are locked to their service. You can unlock them yourself usually but it's less aggravation and less risk to just buy it unlocked to begin with.
4) You are buying the phone for travel purposes and don't want a contract along with the phone since you won't use the phone regularly.
There are other reasons. I'm not against the practice of subsidizing phonesbut I haven't bought a subsidized phone for 7 or 8 years for various reasons. There are lots of good reasons to buy phones directly yourself.
Yes, certainly the contract time pays for the phone, but if I could use no contract, a simple robust phone would be fantastic. I'd not spend money on the things. That, my friend, is why they don't do it. Many services are pay-per-use, even in wealthy countries. Low income folks don't have $50-100/month to pay for a contract. Or they are like my grandmother who just wants a phone for emergencies but won't use it otherwise. You're right that the phone companies like the contracts (predictable revenues and all that) but that business model isn't feasible everywhere.I do wish we'd switch to metric here but I doubt we will in my lifetime. And for the record, I'm Canadian, living in the US. I STILL haven't gotten a feel for American units, but I'm getting a little better at doing the conversions in my head. That being said, I had no idea what 70F was until googling it. Apparently you haven't lived here long since temperatures are pretty much always given in Fahrenheit here. In fact (sadly) most US citizens couldn't tell a metric temperature other than 0C or 100C if their life depended on it.
No no no... it's just off of East-NorthEast
We have to remember too that Apple is not really a direct competitor to Yahoo or Google. Sure there is some significant overlap but the real question is what are their competitors at Dell, HP, Nokia, RIM, Motorola, and Microsoft paying. I suspect Apple is likely fairly competitive on the pay. HR folks are pretty aware of what the going rate for talent is in a given area.
I don't know too much about Apple's corporate culture but clearly they are able to attract some pretty talented folks. All other things being equal people talent will migrate towards higher pay but things are rarely equal. Speaking for myself I'd rather make a little less in a fun place with interesting work and cool co-workers. Benefits are also a consideration.
Look, I'm an engineer and I value efficient design as much as most engineers here but if my mouse costs an extra $1 so it can utilize a faster bus on my system, I don't really care. In case you hadn't guessed I'm not a big fan of legacy ports. My feeling is if we need them that is what expansion cards are for. It also drives up the cable requirements which is especially bad for devices like mice where a long flexible cable is important. Fast buses can fail down to slower speeds. USB, Firewire and ethernet all can and do. This permits the use of cheaper more flexible wire in many cases. You can use Cat5e instead of Cat6 with gigabit ethernet and at worst it will fail down to 100Mbps or even 10Mbps. USB2.0 is backwards compatible with the older 1.1.
Firewire actually can run at slower speeds than 400Mbps. Frankly I don't see a serious engineering issue here. Yes it's a little harder and more complicated but the benefits easily outweigh the extra costs.
...lions are dangerous. If you get near one, they are way more dangerous than spiders. Which by your own arguments you won't get near one so they aren't dangerous. You should be disappearing in a poof of logic about right now.BTW I enjoyed all the made up statistics. I enjoy some good fiction.
Furthermore I think most of the cost advantage of USB comes from economies of scale since so much more USB equipment is manufactured. Once the chips and other equipment is designed and being manufactured, the cost falls as the fixed costs are amortized over an increasing number of units. The difference in variable costs between firewire and USB are trivial past a few million units. Produce more firewire devices and the cost will naturally fall as you spread the fixed costs over more units. Yes firewire is slightly more complicated but not so much as to make a big difference once minimum efficient scale is reached.
Coyotes were responsible for significantly more sheep deaths but even then it is a small portion of the population. A bit over 100,000 deaths were due to coyotes out of a population of 4.6 million. Coyotes often experience dramatic population restructuring in areas where wolves (which are bigger and stronger) are reintroduced. Coyotes however are also much better at living close to humans. I saw one in my backyard twice this year and I live 5 miles from one of the ten largest cities in the US.
Mountain lions have a total breeding population of around 50,000 spread across both of the americas. They are a threatened species and there are estimated to only be several thousand of them in the US most of them in and around the Rocky mountains with a few in south Florida. Like wolves, in most places their numbers simply aren't large enough to constitute a serious threat to most ranchers.
Thats material and noticeable. First off, figure of speech. Second off, you're assuming that all costs would be in addition to their current costs - highly unlikely. Third, you are assuming there are no offsetting revenues - if there aren't there is no point in offering the service in the first place. Fourth, $500/month/location (which is the amount to get to 1% of annual profit) would almost certainly be more than it would be worth to any restaurant - their margins aren't that good - so clearly it does not cost that much. Finally you are assuming no economies of scale which Starbucks clearly would have. The biggest reason why a company like Starbucks wouldnt do it is because its not their core business. Which is why they outsourced it to T-Mobile and now AT&T. So they'd have to build a whole internal department in their company to manage this, and it would end up being more like 3-5% of gross revenue. There is NO WAY a wifi rollout would cost Starbucks $282 million (3% of 2007 gross revenue - your numbers not mine) That would be $33,000 per store. There is no way they would get anywhere CLOSE to enough extra business to justify such an expense. That would be approximately half the annual profit of every store they own. Do the numbers before saying something so clearly wrong.
A lot of that is the referee's fault for not calling the rules as written. If the rules need changing that's fine but the rules should be enforced as they are in the rulebook, without exception. The league bears some responsibility too for not enforcing the rules or changing them appropriately. "Let them play" is a tired and illogical argument against enforcing the actual rules of the game. If a rule shouldn't be enforced at all times then it shouldn't be a rule.
Make no mistake, I highly encourage the use of technology wherever it might make play calling more accurate. Just understand that perfection is unattainable in judging any sport.
Oh, and athletes ARE expected to be perfect too, they're just not expected to be impartial. Their mistakes only hurt themselves or their team. Tell Bill Buckner or Earnest Byner that it's ok to be imperfect sometime. Both were castigated and remembered for a single bad play despite a career of outstanding play. Fans are sick and tired of the outcomes of games being decided by people who aren't even playing. That's the most self contradictory thing I've read in a long time. Using technology to assist officiating will NOT make the calls perfect. The game will still be decided by the calls made which will not be by the individuals playing. EVERY contest is decided by the players on the field - sometimes the officials play a role too. If the contest happens to be so close that a referee's call can make the difference between winning and losing that is simply part of the game. Don't like it? Too bad. It's never going to change. There simply are always some situations that are ambiguous in any athletic contest.
Furthermore if the "fans" (and I'm presuming you are one) think they (or you) can do better they are welcome to try. I'm not aware of any sport that could not use more officials. Grab a whistle and get out there if you think you could do it perfectly. Why should a fair game be sacrificed just because refs have limited sensors and time resolution? Time to modernize the game, not just the broadcasts. I agree with your conclusion but not your reasoning. The possibility of incorrect calls is unfortunate but impossible to eliminate. It is simply a part of the game and no amount of hand-wringing will make it otherwise. Can't deal with it? Don't play or don't watch. It is just a game after all.
You don't have to believe me. Sign up to officiate high school sports in the sport of your choice. You'll find it VERY enlightening.
I've been around sporting officials most of my life and I'm speaking from direct experience here. While there are occasionally corrupt or incompetent officials they are extremely rare, especially at the higher levels of play. Most officials don't give a rat's ass who wins, they just want a fair contest with no controversy. Ron Luciano wrote some entertaining books that are worth reading though perhaps not universally applicable. Most refs are talented, hard working, and get way more abuse than they are actually paid to take by fans who generally have a very incomplete understanding of the rules of the game.
100.19 per MONTH covers my highspeed COMMERCIAL connection from comcast
which I am not allowed to use to supply wifi to the public Yeah, they get negotiating power and economies of scale. 8500 stores gives a LOT of negotiating leverage. A company I used to own paid $250/month for a shitty speed connection but we had no negotiating options as there were no competitors available. Starbucks isn't in that position.
That said, the $100 figure was just an example. Even if the cost were 5 times that (possible though I think unlikely) it still is less than 1% of their annual profit. The cost of Wifi is a rounding error to Starbucks. I don't blame Starbucks for getting people to pay if they are willing to pay but they certainly can afford to provide it for free.
Fact is the NBA refs are extremely good at their jobs. You just notice when the occasional, inevitable mistake crops up. Funny how when LeBron James makes a bad pass or Kobe Bryant makes a bad shot no one calls them "inept". I have no problem with the use of replay in important situations, especially in the pros where they have the money to do it right, but to call the refs "inept" is just ignorance at its finest.
And in the interest of disclosure, yes I officiate sporting events and have for some years. Yes it is a LOT harder than most people even remotely realize.