I definitely have to agree with you on this one. I've lived in Iowa my whole life, and when I get out my bicycle to go for a ride or just walk around town, people stare at me in total horror - as if they've never seen someone move without a car.
Unless Iowa is different than the parts of the US where I've been (which is pretty near most of it) - you're imagining things.
One point you missed though: despite the long hours and few vacation days in the US, there are more Americans in poverty now in real terms than at any time since the Great Depression.
Of course, back then poverty meant starving. Today it means making do with a two year old car and three year old computer.
So the point you missed is that millions of Americans are in a state of profound poverty.
Only if you redefine the meaning of 'profound poverty' to such an extent that it no holds any meaning.
The official 'Poverty Line' is similarly not based on any meaningful cost of living index (it is uselessly taken as 3 times the cost of food; food is dramatically cheaper now than even 25 years ago, and much less healthy, so this metric is positively retarded).
In this reality - food is more expensive than it was 25 years ago. Your reality may differ.
The simple fact of the matter is shipping costs are nothing compared to the overhead of rent (or construction + property tax), utilities, cashiers and sales reps and customer service reps (who can't be outsourced, unlike online stores' reps), uniforms for the reps, general upkeep and maintenance, etc.
Here in the real world, online companies have to pay rent (or construction + property tax) and utilities - they don't operate out of the back of a pickup truck. (And those premises require upkeep and maintenance too.)
They don't have to pay cashiers - but they do have to pay pickers and packers. (In fact their costs are *higher*, because they have to pay for support as well as pickers and packers - where a B&M store can (and does) pay use it's cashier for all three.) Their costs for packing materials are higher too - but they pass that right on to you.
One of the great myths that emerged out of the dot bomb era is that somehow online stores have 'no overhead' as compared to B&M store.
How Amazon et al win out over the B&M stores is volume from a single facility and from placing that facility where they can pay the least taxes and wages. (The last being a luxury that B&M stores don't have.) They can also automate and thus reduce labor costs. Generally, they handle the product less than a B&M store which also reduces labor costs even sans automation.
I think the real problem will come from the disparity of prices of the same item across sharded MMOs. An item on one server that is worth, let's say, 500 gold, may in fact be worth 2000 gold on another. Even inflation adjusted some items will just not match up pricewise across servers. So which do the appraiser pick? The highest? The lowest? The average? What if on one server, the item is worth disproportionately less than the other servers?
That's trivially easy to answer, he picks the value on the shard/server the item exists on. The same way he values other properties based on their physical location. (If you asked a bookseller in the US to value a first edition Jane Austen, he's going to do so to US prices not UK prices.)
The basic problem is that MMOs are not real life. As stupid as it is to state the obvious, it's extremely relevant to the situation. Trying to apply real-world value to an item that has no true, real intrinsic value is absurd.
Appraisers routinely assign dollar values to items with no intrinsic value (think the upside down Jenny) or that don't exist in the 'real' (physical) world (think 'goodwill' or intellectual property), as these are all items that real people pay real money for on a daily basis. (Intrinsic value, or lack thereof, is a social construct- not a fixed law of the universe.) If people will pay money for it on eBay, then a dollar value can be assigned - because a fair market can be demonstrated to exist.
In general, to issue money, you don't need to be a government. You just need to be a bank. If I want to start my own currency, I might gather together a huge pile of gold, and issue vouchers good for exchange for One Gram of Gold at the Bank of Meringuoid. If my promise is good, then those vouchers are as good as gold, and are effectively money.
You don't even need to be a bank. You don't even need piles of gold.
>What is the "fair market value" for a +15 sword of the undead?
Why, 500 mana crystals, of course! This isn't a new problem, actually -- what's the fair market value of a "The Ybarra 'Don Quixote', 1780 (four volumes)", for example?
The market value of such a book is fairly easily obtained - if you know where to ask. I do, so do many insurance companies, and so does the IRS. (Back when I was one of the persons to ask, I got calls from both.) For any type of property you can think of (real, personal, intellectual, or otherwise) there's an appraiser or professional dealer who'll tell you (or the IRS, your lawyer or your insurance agent) the value of it.
I see no reason to suspect that virtual property will be any different.
Here's an excerpt of the first comment on the above referenced story (again, emphasis mine):
In the U.S., the Internal Revenue Service will eventually take notice of the phenomena when someone who makes lots of real-world money by selling virtual goods gets audited by an ambitous Revenue Agent. Until then, unless you're actually converting virtual goods into real greenbacks, there's not much to say on the subject.
Here's a hint - don't get your tax advice from a Slashdot post. (Mostly because you can be liable for taxes on barter sales and sales in currencies other than U$D under certain circumstances.)
Of course, if this comes to pass, it should also work both ways...e.g. I can write off my Second Life costs as 'business expenses'.
I suspect that avatars will end up having to pass some form of Home Office Test[1]. I.E. Spending time in Doom (UO) farming artifacts will mean that characters U$D costs can be written off - but time spent at the Barbie Club or the Ahern Welcome Area (SL) won't be for an object maker.
[1] Contrary to popular belief - it's not that easy to write off a portion of one's home as a business expense, even for businesses operated from the home.
Re:USian snail mail: return receipt requested
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Spam Gets Personal
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I can't speak for UKian snail mail, but here in the US critically important mail -- usually legal mail -- is sent return receipt requested. Meaning that someone has to sign for the mail, and if no one is available to sign one must go to the post office to sign and pick up the letter.
Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. Sometimes it's merely sent registered (as in the sender gets proof of mailing, and the postman fills out a form when he puts it in your mailbox). Sometimes it's merely sent certified. In fact, while settling my father-in-laws estate over the last year and a half, not one single piece of critical mail was sent 'return receipt requested'. In fact, virtually every contract I've ever signed where mailing was critical, *certified mail* was the specific form called out in the contract. (Certified mail provides the sender with a receipt that he mailed an envelope. Legally he is presumed to have mailed the proper things, and you are assumed to have recieved it *as of the date and time on the receipt* - even if the USPS takes days to deliver it, or loses it entirely. Which is why it's virtually the only one called out - plus it's considerably cheaper.)
Seems that the industry is in the same pit that the musc industry was in, during the late eighties. Rehashing all the old crap from the 60's. Untill Cobaine came along and shook things up a bit.
That's the way it must have looked - to somebody enslaved by the Big Media Music Machine. Those of use listening to New Wave and Alternative were feasting on a broad variety of innovative music - Kurt Cobain was a latecomer who got noticed, not a creator, not an innovator.
What I find amusing is how the Microsoft toadies come running every time their sacred cow gets gored.
I hope you are not accusing me of being one - as that's quite far from the truth. OTOH, I'm not a Google uber alles fanboi either.
Google is the most popular search engine, Yahoo is number two, it makes sense from an application design standpoint to make them the easyest to use. Firefox does this quite well.
You imply that the relationship between Google and Firefox is the same as that between IE and MSN but of course they are not the same at all.
No, I allude nothing of the sort. But if it comforts you to think so - go ahead.
The rules for monopolies are different that those for the rest of us and for very good reasons.
And in the end, after aspersions, logical fallacies, and incomprehension, you complete the circle with an unsupported assumption. Bravo! for demonstrating my point so neatly.
The amusing part is watching the Google apologists doing logical backflips to explain why it's bad for IE/MSNsearch to behave unethically, yet it's good for Firefox/Google to behave in exactly the same manner.
The overall context is the station: shuttle is essentially a bottleneck. If shuttles can't get back to multiple flights per year, then we've got a problem. Soyuz and the Russian space program have literally saved NASA's ass in the past couple of years getting supplies up.
Not really. Supply flights have been flying at exactly the same rate for years now.
The bottleneck is in station construction - except for the vaporware Russian ones, all the remaining hardware has to ride the Shuttle.
For reasons most likely political, ESA has not been part of a solution, which is unfortunate and a separate topic.
It's not politics - it's the fact that the European cargo carrier is a couple of years behind schedule.
Personally I haven't been able to make an argument for the station at all and would love to see a bare bones report of any sci/tech knowledge we've truly gained.
There hasn't been much sci/tech results from the station - like all research facilities, not much research can be done with only the foundation poured. (Which is essentially the situation the ISS is in.)
Between 2) and 3) you need to insert "2.5) Find distributors for a product who know you're not Apple but will be selling a product branded as Apple, therefore putting themselves at risks of lawsuits. This limits you to organized crime, and they'll be demanding a high margin on the products. Which they'll be selling discounted anyway. Congratulations.
Nah. Just get yourself a couple of dozen eBay accounts and sell 'em direct.
Counterfeit goods are more likely to show up at retailers that don't buy from authorized distributors. The companies that specialize in inventory liquidations, overruns, excess inventory, etc. They can be fooled by a smooth salesman with a genuine-looking product at an attractive price. Some don't need to be fooled. They know they are selling counterfeit merchandise and do not care.
Ever wonder where those eBay sellers get the $NAME_BRAND_ELECTRONICS that they are selling for 1/2 (or less) of the MSRP?
This is not supposed to be called piracy of a company, it's a trademark violation, unauthorized and fraudulant usage of the NEC trademark. The affected factories claims that they have papers to prove that they were licensed to manufacturer the goods, but the papers were faked, which is considered fraud. The term 'piracy' has been utterly bastardized and overused already, please be more specific.
No, this is a legitimate usage of the word 'piracy' based on comparable usage going back centuries, you've been mislead by anti-[MPAA|RIAA] marketdroids into believing otherwise. The term 'piracy' actually has much broader meaning than they would have you believe.
A news organization's purpose is to inform, not to proffer an opinion.
I think you mean should be. Traditionally, US media's purpose has been neither; it has been to profit. Fox news is breaking new ground in pushing a particular point of view.
Breaking new ground? Hardly. Having a definite slant/POV/opinion to broadcast is an old (as in 'right back to the origins of mass media in the 16-1700's') tradition. The idea that the media should be 'neutral, fair, and balanced' (or at least seem to be) is very new - since WWII.
Was that supposed to be a slight ?...because to me it sounded like an immense compliment. "No entire planet 3D map" vs. "Wikipedia quality entire planet 3D map"
I imagine from a certain fanboy point of view, yes - it could be considered a compliment. But from a realistic point of view, Wikipedia's coverage (outside of episode guides for The Simpsons and Star Trek) is spotty to say the least.
Perfection will never happen because it is too expensive. Wikipedia is accurate and reliable enough to be extremely useful, and just as importantly, free. For that I am thankful.
No one is asking for perfection - but I am asking for accuracy and usefulness. On not one single topic that I am knowledgeable about would I send people to the Wikipedia. [1] Even just random page jumping shows a preponderance of stubs, grammatical and logical errors, and information that outright wrong where it isn't misleading. It *seems* accurate and useful to the geek fanboi because it's accurate and useful in that minor subset of human knowledge that interests them. (Anime, SF, and computers.) But get outside of that, and it breaks down pretty quickly. (The geek fanboi doesn't realize how badly because his ability to accurately judge the value of a source isn't a good as he think it is.)
[1] And I did try editing - for over a year, but each and every one of my articles was re-edited into nonsense.
The one that galled me the worst was when an article was reverted because my edits couldn't be confirmed via a google search. Never mind they shelves of expensive reference books on the obscure topic in question that I own... To two editors and three admins - if it wasn't on Google, it didn't exist. That was the straw that broke the camels back.
I'd imagine a huge opensource type project where people contribute their own models of places into this. Then eventually the entire planet will be mapped in 3D.
Yeah, with about as much accuracy and reliability as the Wikipedia or the IMDB.
That's fine. Go ahead and tell my exactly what you hate about it, and I'll make the improvements.:)
Not bad at all. But where are the slashboxes? Also, I like some form of highlighting/attention grabbing on a per story basis. How about a nice line beneath the story headline? (*Not* an underline.)
"Burglars couldn't get into your house if you had no doors or windows"
Technically, that's incorrect.
Current exterior wall construction for a large portion of the housing market consists of (from the outside-in)vinyl siding, Tyvek vapor barrier, a fibrous type sheathing (sometimes no more than 1/8" thick cardboard), glass fiber insulation, and gypsum wallboard. All of these material are easily cut with a $1.99 utility knife.
I can see that you've never actually *tried* it. Because niether the siding nor the wallboard is that easily cut.
You can get into most houses these days with a knife and 5 minutes by going right through the wall.
So long as those houses aren't located here in the real world.
And as you say, saying that this is so, does not make it so.
In this case, yes it does.
A role, from Dictionary.com:
The moment someone whips out a dictionary and cites an irrelevant definition, rather than presenting an arguement, is the moment I know I'm dealing with a clueless idiot. When the follow up it up with sophmoric rhetorical questioning, I know they don't even rise to that level.
I highly doubt that lo these 25 years ago, Richard Garriot thought to himself "Even though this here Akalabeth was inspired by my love for RPGs I know it's not one, but what the hell, I want to sell it and get rich so I'll market it as an RPG! Mwhahahaha!!!"
A statement that has precisely nothing to do with the question at hand. Typical.
"At least here in the US virtually everyone does, via their ATM cards - whether they realize it or not."
How do you figure? They don't know what you do with the $$'s after you leave the ATM.
How do I figure? I can read and think. You on the other hand, cannot - because you failed to note that I didn't say 'cash from an ATM', I said 'ATM cards'.
Even if it isn't the government-sancationed variety. I don't know of too many people that would willingly create a transaction record of payments for various of their habits.
At least here in the US virtually everyone does, via their ATM cards - whether they realize it or not.
Usually the lower beneath the surface a fossil is, the old it, due to the fact that soil is deposited over time. I wonder what the results of a carbon dating would show.
Carbon dating won't show anything useful as it requires a) the presence of organic matter and b) is only good to about 60k years back from the present.
Slashdot Mirror
They don't have to pay cashiers - but they do have to pay pickers and packers. (In fact their costs are *higher*, because they have to pay for support as well as pickers and packers - where a B&M store can (and does) pay use it's cashier for all three.) Their costs for packing materials are higher too - but they pass that right on to you.
One of the great myths that emerged out of the dot bomb era is that somehow online stores have 'no overhead' as compared to B&M store.
How Amazon et al win out over the B&M stores is volume from a single facility and from placing that facility where they can pay the least taxes and wages. (The last being a luxury that B&M stores don't have.) They can also automate and thus reduce labor costs. Generally, they handle the product less than a B&M store which also reduces labor costs even sans automation.
All you need is some pieces of paper.
I see no reason to suspect that virtual property will be any different.
[1] Contrary to popular belief - it's not that easy to write off a portion of one's home as a business expense, even for businesses operated from the home.
The amusing part is watching the Google apologists doing logical backflips to explain why it's bad for IE/MSNsearch to behave unethically, yet it's good for Firefox/Google to behave in exactly the same manner.
The bottleneck is in station construction - except for the vaporware Russian ones, all the remaining hardware has to ride the Shuttle.
It's not politics - it's the fact that the European cargo carrier is a couple of years behind schedule.There hasn't been much sci/tech results from the station - like all research facilities, not much research can be done with only the foundation poured. (Which is essentially the situation the ISS is in.)[1] And I did try editing - for over a year, but each and every one of my articles was re-edited into nonsense.
The one that galled me the worst was when an article was reverted because my edits couldn't be confirmed via a google search. Never mind they shelves of expensive reference books on the obscure topic in question that I own... To two editors and three admins - if it wasn't on Google, it didn't exist. That was the straw that broke the camels back.
Very impressive - but pointless I suspect. Channels that small won't hold much fluid, which means very little cooling capacity.