Agreed. Apple should be net benefit from my calculations in real $$. A current IPhone is manufactured in China with components sourced semi-internationally (mostly china I -- assume--.). As the USD rises, the net USD revenues per phone drop, but the total cost to manufacture stays the same (unless they sign their agreements tagged to the USD with their factories). Only costs incurred in USD would rise relative to the overseas sales price, given that this is an iPhone, and its 'engineered' in the US, this is likely an insignificant portion of the individual phone costs. My guess is that patent licensing poses a bigger $ value per phone. However, since the USD is stronger, any ability to purchase phones for USD priced countries would result in an increase in revenues. Ultimately, as a net importer, a strong USD should be better than a weak USD. It does open them to more competition from non-USD involved smartphone makers, as their total costs would be lower in the US market as a result, but given their recent financial results, its pretty hard to believe that they aren't more than offsetting a decline in overall revenue with an increase in overall margin. And margin is what matters.
Just FYI.. a Monopoly is typically considered one company controlling the entire market and supply of a category of products or services. (See Bell before the Breakup)
Your sentence itself points out that this is not the case...
developers/publishers were the only entity
First, plural suppliers of a product category may be an oligopoly but not a monopoly. Second, mixing plural and non-plural subject references is just plain wrong.
The cost of games today is determined by market forces. Look at the cost of a movie at a theatre and compare that to a game. While a game is 4x the price of a night at the movies, it has replayability which the movie does not.. Therefore the market is happy with the value and purchases it. Piracy tends to be a difficult concept for economy theory..
while its theft in a simple form, the act does not remove the ability for the seller to sell the stolen item. So, it is possible for additional sales to be generated by word of mouth through pirated items, piracy can only be considered a net benefit if the revenue gained through it exceeds the opportunity cost of selling to those who would have discovered it only without piracy happening. Obviously, since the act of piracy is illegal, its difficult to quantify and determine how it fully affects games in general and their pricing.
I used to pirate games after I bought them because the pirate editions were generally easier to use and I didn't have to have a disk laying around to play it.
Ok, I know how frustrating 'Insert Play Disc' is.. (Even more so when it gets scratched and then you have to buy another whole copy of Red Alert to play the damn Game!... (thats another story...))
But then you sign off with:
'll finally be able to get what I want, when I want it, and the way I want it. Perhaps I could get back into video games on the PC again
So while the concept of playing a game by putting a cd in was a big hassle, and you can't do all of this 'work' in keeping track of your computer games to put them in the dvd tray, but by the 'video games on the pc again' it seems as though you haven't given up Video Games entirely, just PC Based ones.. Now I'm going to assume you're not the small percentage of people that have an Xbox or a Wii that don't actually have or rent any games (ie, nothing to organize), and so i am forced to ask :
Why do you find it soo much harder to 'mess around with any of that crap' (paraphrased) on a PC Video Game, but on an Xbox / Playstation / Nintendo system, its no issue?
While you're intention was good and to show the benefits of a developer moving towards a customer centric model, the problem is that you've tried to logically explain an apparrent emotional decision to not PC Game. (Considering most console games are played on a couch type situation 4-6' from the monitor / video game console, while computers are typically within arm's reach of the 'playing location', it would seem that changing discs / cartridges is much more of a pain on the console than a computer?)
In all honesty though, i'm probably just wasting my time pointing this out, as I generally agree with your dislike on current PC gaming, but my anal retentive nature has caused me to point out this.
Petitioning the government, etc is not the 'problem', imho, the problem arises when Corporations seem to be doing the majority of the 'petitioning' and the majority of the 'contributions'... becoming a government of the corp, by the people, for the corp...
If the public wants to bribe / support (similar meanings in this case) congressmen to have better 'redressing' its a different issue, but should not be a 'charitable' donation (ie, tax creditable), there are far too many examples of Congressmen / Senators / politicians getting 'support' and giving 'support'..
The real question should be : What is the problem, buying the 'support' or selling the 'vote'
No, but the real irony is that while it's not illegal to charge for your Opinion, it may be to charge for your Vote which is really an 'Opinion on who should win'... (i know that's very rudimentary, but for the purposes of this discussion lets not go there). I guess the difference is that money could influence freedom, potentially disenfranchising the poor.
All this doesn't sound that bad, and yet its perfectly fine for there to even exist Lobbyists, which in practice is there to buy or coerce the legislation on issues affecting corporations (which have no 'vote' and are not whom the government is supposed to serve in the first place)
So, while you can't sell a vote, you can buy a law... gotta love the results of democracy.
But hey, at least they can't sit down while eating lunch together!
I think it was determined that Green On Black was the ideal method back in the day (When color monitors / technology was too $$$ / unavailable)
Or it could have something to do with our eye's ability to see various wavelengths of color. For instance, the same 'intensity' green laser is 8x more visible than a red laser. This wiki link:
shows the nm of light that each type of receptor can see. If you see, the Green wavelength appears to be near the middle, so although ianad (I Am Not A Doctor), the green theory seems to hold up.
Also, i heard / read it somewhere a long time ago (ie, why all the crummy dumb terms seem to be green on black)
I would guess that the biggest difference is not the 'major federal offense', as it is (IANAL) likely an offense to do the same 'stupid' things you're referring to in the private sector also. (After all, electronic vandalism, IS electronic vandalism, not just in the.gov world)
My guess (from my experience) is that the big concern is that 'Profit' word that the private sector has to worry about (and the.gov doesn't). In our office, it is always better to prevent an unlikely offence than it is to recover from an unexpected one, at least where employee departure comes into it. Now, that stated, we do apply different policies to different departments / situations. For example, if someone in Sales is leaving, they get the good old escort (so as to minimize 'free' leads garnishedhttp://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/23/1331230# Preview in their remaining weeks for competitors), whereas the IT department only has their accounts removed AFTER departure, since our policy is, if they really want to screw us over, they're gonna be able to do it anyways, since they're the ones designing and implementing the security.
Tom Tom Map Share -- more detailed
on
Open US GPS Data?
·
· Score: 1
I recently bought a TomTom GO 720, specifically because of this feature. While it is nice, it is a little less 'moderated' than the op's suggestion. There are options to decide which updates to accept, and that is good, but its hard to say how effective it is. Unfortunately, the only updates I feel safe with are the ones near my house, but coincidentally, they're also the ones I don't need:)
What would be nice would be a single 'map data' source so that changes could happen much more rapidly. I myself notice street names, etc that do not match my gps while flying down the highway / interstate, but as I am driving above 100 km / hr and trying to get to a destination, I don't stop to change them.
In my family we actually have 4 brands of GPS running, TomTom, Magellan, Mio / Pioneer, Garmin and all of them have different peculiarities to their mapping. The one thing that is consistent is the maps are definately improving. The Garmin is older, and one time it tried to have me 'take local roads' across the Mississippi! that ended up costing us approximately 3 hrs of travel time we weren't expecting..
To restate my previous point, aggregated map data would be great, then the GPS' would compete more on 'features / benefits / price' than they do currently on map quality / etc. For me, having more control of routing preferences would then be high priority on my list while currently it is map accuracy.
I think the best way that i've ever heard 'Process Improvement' pitched was by the CEO of General Electric Canada (not sure of exact title, but She is the highest on the Totem Pole in Canada)
She was talking about specifically their Aerospace division in Quebec, and how they 'Breath Improvement and Productivity'
The common interpretation of Productivity / Efficiency and Process Improvements is that it is to 'reduce costs'. While this is true, it is also true that most employees don't / can't see that sentence as 'reduce costs' they see it as 'reduce employees'. Obviously, that provides little incentive to improve. As I heard Elise from GE put it however, Productivity / Process Improvements actually result in Job Security. Because this Aerospace location in Quebec is so productive and geared to process improvements, they are constantly lowering their costs as a result. However, this equates to better market share and stronger sales resulting in more work to drive more improvements.
If you can get people to look at the Documentation / Process Changes / Improvements as an ever changing competitive tool that will allow them to have job security, then it might go easier. However, if you can get everyone to believe this without much difficulty, I have a bunch of Ice i would like you to sell to some extreme north dwelling people.
Without actually believing that any of this is likely, possible, or even possibly effective in helping guide the population pick their next 'leader of the free world'. It is interesting in its intent. However, I'm not certain that a knowledgeable leader effectively leads to being a 'good leader'. Don't get me wrong, an ignorant leader can do horrible things and it is not my intent to suggest complete ignorance. I'd be more interested to see WHO they would pick as their 'science advisor' and have an interview with both the Potential Candidate and their selected 'Science Advisor'. Since a good leader is able to 'delegate' and should pick the most appropriate people for the job, that would perhaps tell more about their potential term than answers to questions would. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of them preselecting their appointments before running for President. This way there would be less 'recent campaign favors' to pay back and everyone would know who is 'actually' going to run the country, make decisions, etc.
I had a similar problem occur with Pro Engineer Pro/ Flythrough by PTC. (I think that was the package portion). This software costs thousands of dollars a year to keep 'maintained' these fees are a percentage of total purchase price, which varies depending upon when you buy it. Also, if you have licenses that are like 10 years old, and extremely expensive (as there has been several price drops since) you pay the upgrad price on the initial purchase price, even if you would be paying less for being a less loyal consumer and having bought it more recently. Further, within the last year, they have unilaterally decided to replace operation of some components of some licenses. This is software they are replacing, that i am paying to keep using, but they are discarding it and requiring me to purchase new stuff. It will still run after the discard date, but not if i use any of the new software i'm paying thousands of dollars a year to maintain. What a scam. I have basically paid them thousands of dollars a year for NOTHING. I would move to OSS in a heartbeat if it wouldn't destroy my company's production abilities so massively, as there is not a oss competitor.
Great move there buddy, call on the standard ko line of all imbeciles. Call the person a terrorist, and it immediately makes you righteous, right? Perhaps you should more closely read the constitution of the United States, or the principles the country was founded upon, instead of resorting to tagging people as terrorists. I personally, would argue that what Intuit is doing is a removal of property, since they are removing usable access from a program that is one's property. After all, property is protected by the constitution. Also, the argument that there is a disclaimer has already been previously denied in court. So without proper packaging, or advertising the product simply as a service, i don't see how they are not removing property. But, don't resort to calling people terrorists, simply becuase they don't want to give away their personal information to a company. Besides stating that a company is honest simply states that you don't follow the news, or the recent ENRON, scandal INCLUDING their TAX COMPANY. (Accounting, but whatever). So why should you be forced to TRUST a company.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. Apple should be net benefit from my calculations in real $$. A current IPhone is manufactured in China with components sourced semi-internationally (mostly china I -- assume--.). As the USD rises, the net USD revenues per phone drop, but the total cost to manufacture stays the same (unless they sign their agreements tagged to the USD with their factories). Only costs incurred in USD would rise relative to the overseas sales price, given that this is an iPhone, and its 'engineered' in the US, this is likely an insignificant portion of the individual phone costs. My guess is that patent licensing poses a bigger $ value per phone. However, since the USD is stronger, any ability to purchase phones for USD priced countries would result in an increase in revenues. Ultimately, as a net importer, a strong USD should be better than a weak USD. It does open them to more competition from non-USD involved smartphone makers, as their total costs would be lower in the US market as a result, but given their recent financial results, its pretty hard to believe that they aren't more than offsetting a decline in overall revenue with an increase in overall margin. And margin is what matters.
Hey there ark1...
Just FYI.. a Monopoly is typically considered one company controlling the entire market and supply of a category of products or services. (See Bell before the Breakup)
Your sentence itself points out that this is not the case ...
developers/publishers were the only entity
First, plural suppliers of a product category may be an oligopoly but not a monopoly. Second, mixing plural and non-plural subject references is just plain wrong.
The cost of games today is determined by market forces. Look at the cost of a movie at a theatre and compare that to a game. While a game is 4x the price of a night at the movies, it has replayability which the movie does not.. Therefore the market is happy with the value and purchases it.
Piracy tends to be a difficult concept for economy theory..
while its theft in a simple form, the act does not remove the ability for the seller to sell the stolen item. So, it is possible for additional sales to be generated by word of mouth through pirated items, piracy can only be considered a net benefit if the revenue gained through it exceeds the opportunity cost of selling to those who would have discovered it only without piracy happening. Obviously, since the act of piracy is illegal, its difficult to quantify and determine how it fully affects games in general and their pricing.
Just a logic check here ..
I used to pirate games after I bought them because the pirate editions were generally easier to use and I didn't have to have a disk laying around to play it.
Ok, I know how frustrating 'Insert Play Disc' is.. (Even more so when it gets scratched and then you have to buy another whole copy of Red Alert to play the damn Game!... (thats another story...))
But then you sign off with :
'll finally be able to get what I want, when I want it, and the way I want it. Perhaps I could get back into video games on the PC again
So while the concept of playing a game by putting a cd in was a big hassle, and you can't do all of this 'work' in keeping track of your computer games to put them in the dvd tray, but by the 'video games on the pc again' it seems as though you haven't given up Video Games entirely, just PC Based ones.. Now I'm going to assume you're not the small percentage of people that have an Xbox or a Wii that don't actually have or rent any games (ie, nothing to organize), and so i am forced to ask :
Why do you find it soo much harder to 'mess around with any of that crap' (paraphrased) on a PC Video Game, but on an Xbox / Playstation / Nintendo system, its no issue?
While you're intention was good and to show the benefits of a developer moving towards a customer centric model, the problem is that you've tried to logically explain an apparrent emotional decision to not PC Game.
(Considering most console games are played on a couch type situation 4-6' from the monitor / video game console, while computers are typically within arm's reach of the 'playing location', it would seem that changing discs / cartridges is much more of a pain on the console than a computer?)
In all honesty though, i'm probably just wasting my time pointing this out, as I generally agree with your dislike on current PC gaming, but my anal retentive nature has caused me to point out this.
Petitioning the government, etc is not the 'problem', imho, the problem arises when Corporations seem to be doing the majority of the 'petitioning' and the majority of the 'contributions'... becoming a government of the corp, by the people, for the corp...
If the public wants to bribe / support (similar meanings in this case) congressmen to have better 'redressing' its a different issue, but should not be a 'charitable' donation (ie, tax creditable), there are far too many examples of Congressmen / Senators / politicians getting 'support' and giving 'support'..
The real question should be : What is the problem, buying the 'support' or selling the 'vote'
No, but the real irony is that while it's not illegal to charge for your Opinion, it may be to charge for your Vote which is really an 'Opinion on who should win'... (i know that's very rudimentary, but for the purposes of this discussion lets not go there). I guess the difference is that money could influence freedom, potentially disenfranchising the poor.
All this doesn't sound that bad, and yet its perfectly fine for there to even exist Lobbyists, which in practice is there to buy or coerce the legislation on issues affecting corporations (which have no 'vote' and are not whom the government is supposed to serve in the first place)
So, while you can't sell a vote, you can buy a law... gotta love the results of democracy.
But hey, at least they can't sit down while eating lunch together!
I think it was determined that Green On Black was the ideal method back in the day (When color monitors / technology was too $$$ / unavailable)
Or it could have something to do with our eye's ability to see various wavelengths of color. For instance, the same 'intensity' green laser is 8x more visible than a red laser. This wiki link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visible_light
shows the range of colours in wavelength form, while this one :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_vision
shows the nm of light that each type of receptor can see. If you see, the Green wavelength appears to be near the middle, so although ianad (I Am Not A Doctor), the green theory seems to hold up.
Also, i heard / read it somewhere a long time ago (ie, why all the crummy dumb terms seem to be green on black)
I would guess that the biggest difference is not the 'major federal offense', as it is (IANAL) likely an offense to do the same 'stupid' things you're referring to in the private sector also. (After all, electronic vandalism, IS electronic vandalism, not just in the .gov world)
.gov doesn't). In our office, it is always better to prevent an unlikely offence than it is to recover from an unexpected one, at least where employee departure comes into it. Now, that stated, we do apply different policies to different departments / situations. For example, if someone in Sales is leaving, they get the good old escort (so as to minimize 'free' leads garnishedhttp://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/23/1331230#
My guess (from my experience) is that the big concern is that 'Profit' word that the private sector has to worry about (and the
Preview in their remaining weeks for competitors), whereas the IT department only has their accounts removed AFTER departure, since our policy is, if they really want to screw us over, they're gonna be able to do it anyways, since they're the ones designing and implementing the security.
I recently bought a TomTom GO 720, specifically because of this feature. While it is nice, it is a little less 'moderated' than the op's suggestion. There are options to decide which updates to accept, and that is good, but its hard to say how effective it is. Unfortunately, the only updates I feel safe with are the ones near my house, but coincidentally, they're also the ones I don't need :)
What would be nice would be a single 'map data' source so that changes could happen much more rapidly. I myself notice street names, etc that do not match my gps while flying down the highway / interstate, but as I am driving above 100 km / hr and trying to get to a destination, I don't stop to change them.
In my family we actually have 4 brands of GPS running, TomTom, Magellan, Mio / Pioneer, Garmin and all of them have different peculiarities to their mapping. The one thing that is consistent is the maps are definately improving. The Garmin is older, and one time it tried to have me 'take local roads' across the Mississippi! that ended up costing us approximately 3 hrs of travel time we weren't expecting..
To restate my previous point, aggregated map data would be great, then the GPS' would compete more on 'features / benefits / price' than they do currently on map quality / etc. For me, having more control of routing preferences would then be high priority on my list while currently it is map accuracy.
I think the best way that i've ever heard 'Process Improvement' pitched was by the CEO of General Electric Canada (not sure of exact title, but She is the highest on the Totem Pole in Canada)
She was talking about specifically their Aerospace division in Quebec, and how they 'Breath Improvement and Productivity'
The common interpretation of Productivity / Efficiency and Process Improvements is that it is to 'reduce costs'. While this is true, it is also true that most employees don't / can't see that sentence as 'reduce costs' they see it as 'reduce employees'. Obviously, that provides little incentive to improve. As I heard Elise from GE put it however, Productivity / Process Improvements actually result in Job Security. Because this Aerospace location in Quebec is so productive and geared to process improvements, they are constantly lowering their costs as a result. However, this equates to better market share and stronger sales resulting in more work to drive more improvements.
If you can get people to look at the Documentation / Process Changes / Improvements as an ever changing competitive tool that will allow them to have job security, then it might go easier. However, if you can get everyone to believe this without much difficulty, I have a bunch of Ice i would like you to sell to some extreme north dwelling people.
Without actually believing that any of this is likely, possible, or even possibly effective in helping guide the population pick their next 'leader of the free world'. It is interesting in its intent. However, I'm not certain that a knowledgeable leader effectively leads to being a 'good leader'. Don't get me wrong, an ignorant leader can do horrible things and it is not my intent to suggest complete ignorance. I'd be more interested to see WHO they would pick as their 'science advisor' and have an interview with both the Potential Candidate and their selected 'Science Advisor'. Since a good leader is able to 'delegate' and should pick the most appropriate people for the job, that would perhaps tell more about their potential term than answers to questions would. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of them preselecting their appointments before running for President. This way there would be less 'recent campaign favors' to pay back and everyone would know who is 'actually' going to run the country, make decisions, etc.
Just my $.02
I had a similar problem occur with Pro Engineer Pro/ Flythrough by PTC. (I think that was the package portion). This software costs thousands of dollars a year to keep 'maintained' these fees are a percentage of total purchase price, which varies depending upon when you buy it. Also, if you have licenses that are like 10 years old, and extremely expensive (as there has been several price drops since) you pay the upgrad price on the initial purchase price, even if you would be paying less for being a less loyal consumer and having bought it more recently. Further, within the last year, they have unilaterally decided to replace operation of some components of some licenses. This is software they are replacing, that i am paying to keep using, but they are discarding it and requiring me to purchase new stuff. It will still run after the discard date, but not if i use any of the new software i'm paying thousands of dollars a year to maintain. What a scam. I have basically paid them thousands of dollars a year for NOTHING. I would move to OSS in a heartbeat if it wouldn't destroy my company's production abilities so massively, as there is not a oss competitor.
Great move there buddy, call on the standard ko line of all imbeciles. Call the person a terrorist, and it immediately makes you righteous, right? Perhaps you should more closely read the constitution of the United States, or the principles the country was founded upon, instead of resorting to tagging people as terrorists. I personally, would argue that what Intuit is doing is a removal of property, since they are removing usable access from a program that is one's property. After all, property is protected by the constitution. Also, the argument that there is a disclaimer has already been previously denied in court. So without proper packaging, or advertising the product simply as a service, i don't see how they are not removing property. But, don't resort to calling people terrorists, simply becuase they don't want to give away their personal information to a company. Besides stating that a company is honest simply states that you don't follow the news, or the recent ENRON, scandal INCLUDING their TAX COMPANY. (Accounting, but whatever). So why should you be forced to TRUST a company.