NAFTA hasn't stopped the US from applying tariffs on goods from Canada or Mexico where there is a political will to do so.
In fact, such trade agreements tend to support limited use of tariffs; the price of renouncing the treaty, for all signatory nations, is much greater than one or two unresolved trade disputes.
Finally, a levy such as this, which applies universally whether the source is foreign or domestic and cannot be shown to be contrived to limit imports and favor domestic production is unlikely to be deemed actionable via trade treaty. Otherwise such things as enviornmental charges (new tires, beverages, batteries, etc) would all be illegal.
Canada had to lobby vigorously to be exempted from the steel tariff; the bill as introduced applied to all nations equally.
'''... corrupt government formed by polititians who are being paid by the record industry...."
The "record industry" doesn't get a dime. These levies are paid, in whole, to musicians and songwriters directly through the same mechanism the get money for airplay, publishing, etc. It's a performer-controlled organisation that collects and distributes the cash. The "corrupt Government" collects and then pays each penny to an organisation controlled by creative artists, directly.
In fact, the "record industry" are actually cutting checks to this same performer's association; (for example:) if you write a song; somebody records it; and it appears on a CD, the record company pays a royalty for each sale to you via this association.
The musicians themselves get checks in the mail (collected and distributed based on the above examples, from radio stations based on airplay, etc) and the songwriters get checks in the mail; if you were Michael Jackson, you would be getting money based on owning the words & lyrics to Beatles songs, and sales/airplay/etc of these songs in Canada; but you would also be getting some money based on how popular Bealtes songs are (sales, performance, broadcasting) relative to all music, from the pool of money already collected on blank cassette tapes and CD-Rs (two forms of media that have been covered since the last revision).
It's proposed that these same creative artists get to share in the levy for newer forms of blank media that can and is used to record music.
That's why it is perfectly legal in Canada to make a copy of any CD (or any musical performance of any kind) and there is no requirement to show "fair use" (which exists only in US law); you can borrow them from the library if you want. You are correct about the Industry's position, however. They constantly provide erronious information to naive reporters, consumers, and the public citing US "Fair Use" as somehow applying in Canada; I have never seen a Canadian Record Company link to relevant Canadian Statutes; they send you to a US-based site in an attempt to convice the curious of what they want you to believe.
Finally, this is a proposed levy, not final. The amounts mentioned are amounts musicians and songwriters have lobbied for; and is subject to change based on public input. This is the first time the proposed amounts have been made public; basically it reflects what the musician's organisation wants and has lobbied for.
The recording industry would much rather outlaw copying altogether and control artist incomes directly; a lot of the noise in the media is from the record industry itself. If this story hasn't been posted to SlashDot by an outraged consumer feeling "ripped off" because a mechanism exists for actually compensating musicians, I humbly suggest that the next most likely candidate would be a Record Company Executive.
Lastly, these levies have existed for eons in Canada; this latest outbreak is based on a proposal to increase the levies themselves and to introduce new media not previously covered. It's not written in stone (as far as the amount itself); the actual amounts levied and exactly what new media is appropriate is open to comment, discussion, and change.
For example, the last time it was revised, cassettes of under 40 minutes were exempted (because they are predominantly used for dictation). The do have good stats on what percentage is used for data and what for copying music; that's almost certainly why the drive-in-a-mp3-player levy is so high while the same drive in a laptop is unaffected.
A "loss leader" is an unusually low price on an advertised item. It doesn't have to be sold at a loss, but must be low enough that it makes your competitors reluctant to match the price; typically this does mean a loss from your normal wholesale price; often it is simply priced at cost without shipping or overhead added (but could be just something you bought cheap in volume). The price is always based on price history, your competition, etc (ie it has to be percieved as a genuine bargain to your target customer for this strategy to work).
The Loss Leader approach is simply to bring customers into your store; it works best if you are having a sale but in any case profit potential is based on some people buying other, reasonably profitable items at the same time; it is also fairly common when a new player enters a market to create a public perception of value and competition.
Advertising a "Loss Leader" and then trying to switch the customer to a high-profit alternative is called "Bait and Switch" and is illegal. So is advertising a "Loss Leader" when you don't have very many (see next paragraph).
You generally have to either have sufficent quantites on hand for anticipated demand; or notify the consumer with perfectly legal disclaimers such as "limited quantites" "no rainchecks" and (eg.) "Only 25 available".
It is not illegal to suggest an alternative if you have provided an appropriate disclaimer and have genuinely run out of the item. Doing so when lying about actual quantites on hand (claiming there are none when there are some) is illegal.
In any case, "Loss Leaders" must be advertised (even if only a mall-entrance banner or marquee sign); otherwise it's just a regular, ordinary bargain which doesn't really fit the definition (doesn't bring customers to the store; it was found by someone already shopping there).
Finally, prosecution for fraud and misleading advertising (bait and switch, insufficent quantites, no disclaimer) is much rarer than the occurance of it; in many jurisdictions a consumer or competitor must make a complaint for any action to begin. So, it you see unfair practises, complain; a lot of this goes unprosecuted and they just do it again.
It gets even better... Run this Linux program and beam music all over the house, by turning your monitor into a radio station (modulating it's signal). It's a pretty convincing proof for those who doubt the "story" about reading your CRT from a properly equipped van down the street.
Thanks for the comments, I (at least) found them informative.
I'm pretty sure BM wasn't the web's best example of ineptitude, but I spoke about it mostly because the original story referred to it.
I would still say that online greeting cards (in and of themselves) aren't BM's business; you could probably say they are a service company and have found a market (albiet a smaller one) for doing what some people are willing to pay for rather than do themselves.
This is exactly the kind of exercise necessary if this industry is going to "make it", and the answers will be different for each situation; rather than the "me too" business models that seem all too common.
Perhaps BM does "get it" and they have asked the questions and made the changes to reflect that. At $35 million it might be viable; at $1 billion+ (Excite's blunder) I think it does show that some.com firms are out to lunch, though.
I liked the read, it was interesting and thought provoking. Right or wrong (to me) isn't important, because now we have a discussion to help us sort that out.
What happened here? He wrote a piece, it got somebody's attention, and now he's getting traffic. Some of us are going to bookmark his link and go back for his content, not his comments.
Attention is the currency of the web; it is limited (we have only a certain amount of time to surf in a day) which makes it valuable (scarcity of goods).
What you do with that "currency" is your business (literally). Find a real-world product to generate revenue is one way (sell me a t-shirt, etc). That's pure advertising, plain and simple.
Some.com-ers think the content itself is the product, and for a few it is. But what if the content is not the product, but the message? Ask me to pay for a message, and I won't. Give me a product that I value, and I might. But use the content to encourage me to buy a tangible good, and there's one revenue stream (and I'm sure there are others).
It's no different from TV, newpaper, magazine or (the best of all) word of mouth and cachet. You've got my attention, what do you do with it? Ask me to click on a banner? Dumb idea. I hate ads, advertising, and the weasel language that goes with it. It's not exactly SPAM, but it uses the same business model.
He uses the greeting card (Blue Mountain) example in his rant. Blue Mountain's mistake is thinking their product is virtual greeting cards. It's not. (If someone can't make up a greeting card and eMail it, well they probably don't belong at a desktop). The product is more akin to the FTD flower business. What could BM have done, what real tangible good or service could they have offered me? That's for them to figure out, but charging for online cards simply eliminates a bunch of captive eyes that they actually already had (and paid for). If we agree that the currency of the web is attention, their stock just went down.
This business isn't easy; free enterprise isn't supposed to be. Losers always outweigh winners, and that won't change, whether you're a dot-com or Burma Shave. Everybody's got to figure it out for themselves, and the hardest part (apparently) is: a) knowing who your customers are, b) what you're offering them, and c) whether they can get it elsewhere.
There seem to be a lot of dot-coms who somehow have convinced themselves the answer to c) is "no".There very well may be cases where it's true, but not nearly as often as some web firms seem to think it is. And if you're wrong on that, it's pretty much a given you won't get a) and b) right either.
As strange as this may sound, Whitehorse Yukon is far more likely to have hi-tech telecomm than even urban areas of Ontario and Quebec; it's the nature of the beast.
They've been getting their TV from home sattelites for 30 years; phone networks are not based on landlines, etc. If a rural resident (which in the Yukon means "doesn't live in Whitehorse") has a telephone and a computer, it's almost certainly a sat-based TV/broadband service they're hooked up to. Satellite phones are nearly as common in the Yukon as regular cellphones are in many urban areas (recent trouble by Qualcomm, etc hasn't affected Canadian customers, just like Iridium continued for a year in Canada after US customers where cut off).
For those in Whitehorse (a town composed of college-educated administrators and young, single men, typically transplants from somewhere else in Canada and there for the work; the Yukon has Canada's highest average income) they get broadband from the same Teleco and Cable firms that operate in BC and Alberta.
In other words, this is the land of early communications adopters.
Indian bands cannot stop roads, power, etc in Canada.
This is now entrenched in law; the Supreme Court has ruled that any aboriginal or treaty right may be infringed to develop the social and economic resources or infastructure of Canada.
Part of the reason the Supreme Court had to make a ruling at all is that each and every band in Canada negotiated a specific, individual treaty and therefore they are all unique.
Hamlet, village, town, city are decided by two factors: Provincial law (say, anything 10K or over must be a city) and local preference (we're at 5500, over the minimum; do we want to be a town or a city?).
The actual figures (minimum & maximum population) will vary from province to province.
It affects whether you are under provincial or local jurisdiction (eg water quality, traffic laws); your ability to raise taxes, ability to borrow money, pass certain kinds of bylaws, zoning, administer schools, etc.
Each local area must decide by vote (if there's a choice) and it basically boils down to how much control you want vs. how much money & services you get, and whether you have to raise the cash yourself or the province pays.
But, you should realise that the government of Alberta is rich, rich, rich.
Unlike the US, Canadian provinces own all the land and minerals in the jurisdiction.
Alberta has huge Oil resources (taxed at the lowest rate vs. other provinces; there's just so much of it the money keeps rolling in), the lowest taxes in Canada (lowest income tax; there is talk of eliminating it, least public Health Care support, no sales tax, etc), and literally Many $ Billions in the bank (the Alberta Heritage Fund, based on the premise that Oil is depleteable and money should be saved for a "rainy day").
These guys are both politically and financially conservative.
Alberta politicians are the most right-wing, free enterprise-friendly in the Canada. It is typically referred to as "the Bible Belt"; the country was run for decades by a fiercely conservative government founded by a preacher; his legacy has not abated.
They have elected conservative (read: Republican in the US) goverments without exception for virtually all of the Province's history (created 1905).
Most, if not all North American jurisdictions simply don't have the cash, but they do.
The issue with Albertans is more about whether Broadband is important enough to spend money on; ie is there an economic benifit that outweighs the value of keeping it in the bank to offset the inevitable higher taxes when the oil runs out a century from now (and they have to start raising money like a "regular" Government, conservative or otherwise).
The really suprising thing about this initiative is not that it's publicly funded but rather that such a Conservative administration decided to spend anything at all.
My understanding is that Europe requires manufacturers to be responsible for the recycling of their own products; for example Apple must take old computers and monitors back at no charge and dispose/recycle them in a proper manner.
It's why you see companies like BMW touting the near 100% recycleablity of their cars, and the like. Since ultimately they have to pay to clean up the remnants of their manufacturing, it makes economic sense to create a product that can be easily separated into compatible piles of junk.
I stand corrected on the Aluminum thing; various sites say things like 90% less energy than creating aluminum from ore. An Aluminum Industry site noted 87% of the energy used to create new aluminum comes from electicity.
The same sites (I checked out more than one) claim glass recycling uses about 35% less energy than new glass, in case you're interested.
I think that we probably don't disagree on the merits of recycling. But it annoys me that companies can paint themselves with a "green" brush while promoting ever-increasing consumption of goods just because they are "recyclable".
I wonder what would happen if we weighted the goods going into a house vs the remnants coming out; and people paid a collection fee based on: A) how much stuff you bring in, and: B) the ratio of stuff in vs stuff out.
Recycle would take a back seat to reduce and reuse pretty fast, I think.
Of course, nobody would stand for it right now. But the day may well come (stranger things have happened).
I would consider myself an envornmental skeptic... not that I don't believe pollution, etc is a problem. It clearly is.
My skepticism lies with this: I see a lot of "solutions" that only make the problem worse, and I see these being endorsed by those who should know better. (I haven't read the book, but I probably will; I want to hear what he says).
Recycle, Reuse and Reduce.
By far the most important of these are Reuse and Reduce. Recycling is a band aid to fix things when people don't, or won't, do the other two.
It begs a lot of questions: is it better to use a 20-year old vehicle sparingly, or should I buy a new, high-milage vehicle and feel good about my "contribution" to the envornment?
Certainly Industry wants me to buy a new product when a perfectly good one already exists. But is this a good solution? The question is hardly ever asked (and I'm not saying I know the answer; I am saying why is the default answer always seem to be: make more stuff, because it's "better" than the old stuff?).
Recycle aluminum cans? Why is this the "green" solution, when it costs as much in energy (electicity, at least some of which is coal-fired) to make aluminum as it does to recycle it? Why not use less aluminum?
I hope he asks and attempts to answer some of these questions; I would be interested in his conclusions.
Thanks for reading my post; now I have to go back to surfing with my own [personal heavy-metal laden, coal-burning, disposable] enviormental nightmare (a computer)...
But your only real choices for what you want are: Linux cluster (Beowolf) http://www.beowulf.org/ or Mac cluster (MacOS or LinuxOS, AppleSeed): http://exodus.physics.ucla.edu/apples eed/appleseed.html
There is no real, available, and viable WindowsOS solution. You would be in beta-land, at best.
Consider it if MS will pony up big time (all the HW, SW, and maybe cash for overhead, salaries, gifts to the campus library). Consider it a research project (proof of concept).
You won't be getting your "real" work done with this, though. Use a proven solution if that's your goal.
"...He added that it was "beyond logic" that artists would choose to leave their music off Pressplay and "effectively encourage the use of illegal services."..."
Or, Record Companies can leave it on Pressplay despite cease-and-desist orders, thereby effectively encouraging the use of illegal services.
As one poster has already mentioned, at least with Napster somebody was listening.
In theory, you're absolutely right. In practise, well...
I bought a clone, came with a HP USB keyboard. Also came with drivers for said KB, but they didn't work. No problem, go to Hewlett-Packard...
HP has never heard of the device. Go figure. Even tech support says things like, "yeah, there's the part number, but we don't know what it is, there's no drivers, but another user has found a driver on our site, we don't know where it is, but go to his site and it points back to ours (!)..."
You get the idea. The numeric keypad doesn't work, with HP's "official" but mysteriously located driver, etc etc
Standards are only half the battle, not the end of the war.
"... But starting last month (January 2002) the bandwidth used by the rest of campus increased in an unexpected and unexplained way. During peak periods the demand now exceeds 70 Mbps...."
Student goes home for Xmas. Student gets new Windows XP box. Student chats like a 20-something adult using built-in chat SW.
Bandwidth dissapears Jan 03, 2002.
" I don't know [if] it really is better on a Mac. I can't see how it would be. They must have equivalent problems like uninstallers leaving crap around... "
All in good fun, but you shouldn't assume every platform has the same problems yours has. Different problems, probably. More or less? I think the consensus is less (than Windows), but that's anecdotal evidence so it's not admissable.
I have never used an uninstaller on a Mac. You just trash the app and it's associated files, they're only in a few possible places and easy to find for any reasonably computer-literate person. Most apps have an install script which tells you what was installed, where, so you can go about hunting them down if you want.
Installation doesn't write to OS files, so uninstalling by simply throwing files away usually doesn't affect how the computer runs. (Sometimes an installer will move OS files to a "disabled" folder, you might have to move them back manually).
"... He also ignores that M$ hold 40% of the shares of Apple,..."
Say, What?
You have to publicly announce to a stock exchange and the investing public whenever you own (depending on the exchange) 5 or 10% of the outstanding shares. Let's see... Microsoft, Apple, NASDAQ... nothing.
Microsoft bought $150 million worth of Apple Stock in August 1997. Based on market cap at the time, it probably wasn't even 1%.
I suppose they own 40% of Corel, too (MS buys $135 million of Corel stock, 24 million non-voting shares at about $CDN 6 each).Corel's market cap is a fraction of Apple's, but it wasn't even enough for a seat on the board (usually around 10% gets you at least that).
"... Steve Jobs has been for months making these bold predictions that we'll all be making home movies with our computers, but I just don't buy that. What we do with home movies is shoot them then put them in a drawer or closet and forget they exist...."
Ref: I, Cringley:
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit2000113 0. html
So, what does he want us to do with OSX on i86? Run MS Word?
This is the same guy who said "Broadband is Dead". I don't think Steve Jobs is going to pay much attention.
And if he does, goodbye Word on OSX.
ClarisWorks and AppleWorks run on Windows, but I've never met a Wintel user who owns a copy. It would be the same for OSX; the average Windows user would yawn, say "where's the games?", and reboot.
That's for the few that pay attention; most wouldn't read the second line of an article that has Apple in the first line.
If you NEED OSX (or some Mac function/application), you buy a Mac box. If you don't, you buy SGI, Wintel, a GameCube, or a pen and paper.
"... To summarize, in canada, if someone gets BB access at more than 40$, that's somewhat illegal... "
You apply to the CRTC with what you want to charge, and they say yes or no. I don't think they've ever said no, by the way.
You need to reapply to change that rate; again a "no" answer is pretty much unheard of, although sometimes they will balk if you can't show the price is reasonable (you need the money for profits, infastructure, etc), so you might have to revise your rate.
There are plenty of services that are more than $40, although you are correct in that most are in the $40 to $45 range.
... (in my opinion) was that the Judge found that because:
1) A one-time fee paid for the software and the license; and
2) The license granted use of the software forever for this one-time payment;
Then the transaction became subject to all the ordinary laws about buying any good.
Implied in that (again, as I see it) is that SW developers can get out from under this judgement by employing:
A scheme similar to what MS is proposing for corporate clients (the annual subscription); or
Creating Software that expires; or
some other, new licensing scheme designed to thwart the ruling.
Standard Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and I always seem to interpret these judgements differently than real lawyers do (or at least that's what lawyers keep telling me).
Slashdot Mirror
NAFTA hasn't stopped the US from applying tariffs on goods from Canada or Mexico where there is a political will to do so.
In fact, such trade agreements tend to support limited use of tariffs; the price of renouncing the treaty, for all signatory nations, is much greater than one or two unresolved trade disputes.
Finally, a levy such as this, which applies universally whether the source is foreign or domestic and cannot be shown to be contrived to limit imports and favor domestic production is unlikely to be deemed actionable via trade treaty. Otherwise such things as enviornmental charges (new tires, beverages, batteries, etc) would all be illegal.
Canada had to lobby vigorously to be exempted from the steel tariff; the bill as introduced applied to all nations equally.
''' ... corrupt government formed by polititians who are being paid by the record industry. ..."
The "record industry" doesn't get a dime. These levies are paid, in whole, to musicians and songwriters directly through the same mechanism the get money for airplay, publishing, etc. It's a performer-controlled organisation that collects and distributes the cash. The "corrupt Government" collects and then pays each penny to an organisation controlled by creative artists, directly.
In fact, the "record industry" are actually cutting checks to this same performer's association; (for example:) if you write a song; somebody records it; and it appears on a CD, the record company pays a royalty for each sale to you via this association.
The musicians themselves get checks in the mail (collected and distributed based on the above examples, from radio stations based on airplay, etc) and the songwriters get checks in the mail; if you were Michael Jackson, you would be getting money based on owning the words & lyrics to Beatles songs, and sales/airplay/etc of these songs in Canada; but you would also be getting some money based on how popular Bealtes songs are (sales, performance, broadcasting) relative to all music, from the pool of money already collected on blank cassette tapes and CD-Rs (two forms of media that have been covered since the last revision).
It's proposed that these same creative artists get to share in the levy for newer forms of blank media that can and is used to record music.
That's why it is perfectly legal in Canada to make a copy of any CD (or any musical performance of any kind) and there is no requirement to show "fair use" (which exists only in US law); you can borrow them from the library if you want. You are correct about the Industry's position, however. They constantly provide erronious information to naive reporters, consumers, and the public citing US "Fair Use" as somehow applying in Canada; I have never seen a Canadian Record Company link to relevant Canadian Statutes; they send you to a US-based site in an attempt to convice the curious of what they want you to believe.
Finally, this is a proposed levy, not final. The amounts mentioned are amounts musicians and songwriters have lobbied for; and is subject to change based on public input. This is the first time the proposed amounts have been made public; basically it reflects what the musician's organisation wants and has lobbied for.
The recording industry would much rather outlaw copying altogether and control artist incomes directly; a lot of the noise in the media is from the record industry itself. If this story hasn't been posted to SlashDot by an outraged consumer feeling "ripped off" because a mechanism exists for actually compensating musicians, I humbly suggest that the next most likely candidate would be a Record Company Executive.
Lastly, these levies have existed for eons in Canada; this latest outbreak is based on a proposal to increase the levies themselves and to introduce new media not previously covered. It's not written in stone (as far as the amount itself); the actual amounts levied and exactly what new media is appropriate is open to comment, discussion, and change.
For example, the last time it was revised, cassettes of under 40 minutes were exempted (because they are predominantly used for dictation). The do have good stats on what percentage is used for data and what for copying music; that's almost certainly why the drive-in-a-mp3-player levy is so high while the same drive in a laptop is unaffected.
Just to clarify...
A "loss leader" is an unusually low price on an advertised item. It doesn't have to be sold at a loss, but must be low enough that it makes your competitors reluctant to match the price; typically this does mean a loss from your normal wholesale price; often it is simply priced at cost without shipping or overhead added (but could be just something you bought cheap in volume). The price is always based on price history, your competition, etc (ie it has to be percieved as a genuine bargain to your target customer for this strategy to work).
The Loss Leader approach is simply to bring customers into your store; it works best if you are having a sale but in any case profit potential is based on some people buying other, reasonably profitable items at the same time; it is also fairly common when a new player enters a market to create a public perception of value and competition.
Advertising a "Loss Leader" and then trying to switch the customer to a high-profit alternative is called "Bait and Switch" and is illegal. So is advertising a "Loss Leader" when you don't have very many (see next paragraph).
You generally have to either have sufficent quantites on hand for anticipated demand; or notify the consumer with perfectly legal disclaimers such as "limited quantites" "no rainchecks" and (eg.) "Only 25 available".
It is not illegal to suggest an alternative if you have provided an appropriate disclaimer and have genuinely run out of the item. Doing so when lying about actual quantites on hand (claiming there are none when there are some) is illegal.
In any case, "Loss Leaders" must be advertised (even if only a mall-entrance banner or marquee sign); otherwise it's just a regular, ordinary bargain which doesn't really fit the definition (doesn't bring customers to the store; it was found by someone already shopping there).
Finally, prosecution for fraud and misleading advertising (bait and switch, insufficent quantites, no disclaimer) is much rarer than the occurance of it; in many jurisdictions a consumer or competitor must make a complaint for any action to begin. So, it you see unfair practises, complain; a lot of this goes unprosecuted and they just do it again.
It gets even better...
Run this Linux program and beam music all over the house, by turning your monitor into a radio station (modulating it's signal). It's a pretty convincing proof for those who doubt the "story" about reading your CRT from a properly equipped van down the street.
http://www.erikyyy.de/tempest/
Thanks for the comments, I (at least) found them informative.
.com firms are out to lunch, though.
I'm pretty sure BM wasn't the web's best example of ineptitude, but I spoke about it mostly because the original story referred to it.
I would still say that online greeting cards (in and of themselves) aren't BM's business; you could probably say they are a service company and have found a market (albiet a smaller one) for doing what some people are willing to pay for rather than do themselves.
This is exactly the kind of exercise necessary if this industry is going to "make it", and the answers will be different for each situation; rather than the "me too" business models that seem all too common.
Perhaps BM does "get it" and they have asked the questions and made the changes to reflect that. At $35 million it might be viable; at $1 billion+ (Excite's blunder) I think it does show that some
I was referring to this one-time event, and how his readership has probably improved to some degree; it was meant to illustrate my comments.
I am not particularly interested in the history of his site and slashdot, per se; it was an example.
I liked the read, it was interesting and thought provoking. Right or wrong (to me) isn't important, because now we have a discussion to help us sort that out.
.com-ers think the content itself is the product, and for a few it is. But what if the content is not the product, but the message? Ask me to pay for a message, and I won't. Give me a product that I value, and I might. But use the content to encourage me to buy a tangible good, and there's one revenue stream (and I'm sure there are others).
What happened here? He wrote a piece, it got somebody's attention, and now he's getting traffic. Some of us are going to bookmark his link and go back for his content, not his comments.
Attention is the currency of the web; it is limited (we have only a certain amount of time to surf in a day) which makes it valuable (scarcity of goods).
What you do with that "currency" is your business (literally). Find a real-world product to generate revenue is one way (sell me a t-shirt, etc). That's pure advertising, plain and simple.
Some
It's no different from TV, newpaper, magazine or (the best of all) word of mouth and cachet. You've got my attention, what do you do with it? Ask me to click on a banner? Dumb idea. I hate ads, advertising, and the weasel language that goes with it. It's not exactly SPAM, but it uses the same business model.
He uses the greeting card (Blue Mountain) example in his rant. Blue Mountain's mistake is thinking their product is virtual greeting cards. It's not. (If someone can't make up a greeting card and eMail it, well they probably don't belong at a desktop). The product is more akin to the FTD flower business. What could BM have done, what real tangible good or service could they have offered me? That's for them to figure out, but charging for online cards simply eliminates a bunch of captive eyes that they actually already had (and paid for). If we agree that the currency of the web is attention, their stock just went down.
This business isn't easy; free enterprise isn't supposed to be. Losers always outweigh winners, and that won't change, whether you're a dot-com or Burma Shave. Everybody's got to figure it out for themselves, and the hardest part (apparently) is:
a) knowing who your customers are,
b) what you're offering them, and
c) whether they can get it elsewhere.
There seem to be a lot of dot-coms who somehow have convinced themselves the answer to c) is "no".There very well may be cases where it's true, but not nearly as often as some web firms seem to think it is. And if you're wrong on that, it's pretty much a given you won't get a) and b) right either.
As strange as this may sound, Whitehorse Yukon is far more likely to have hi-tech telecomm than even urban areas of Ontario and Quebec; it's the nature of the beast.
They've been getting their TV from home sattelites for 30 years; phone networks are not based on landlines, etc. If a rural resident (which in the Yukon means "doesn't live in Whitehorse") has a telephone and a computer, it's almost certainly a sat-based TV/broadband service they're hooked up to.
Satellite phones are nearly as common in the Yukon as regular cellphones are in many urban areas (recent trouble by Qualcomm, etc hasn't affected Canadian customers, just like Iridium continued for a year in Canada after US customers where cut off).
For those in Whitehorse (a town composed of college-educated administrators and young, single men, typically transplants from somewhere else in Canada and there for the work; the Yukon has Canada's highest average income) they get broadband from the same Teleco and Cable firms that operate in BC and Alberta.
In other words, this is the land of early communications adopters.
Indian bands cannot stop roads, power, etc in Canada.
This is now entrenched in law; the Supreme Court has ruled that any aboriginal or treaty right may be infringed to develop the social and economic resources or infastructure of Canada.
Part of the reason the Supreme Court had to make a ruling at all is that each and every band in Canada negotiated a specific, individual treaty and therefore they are all unique.
It's a matter of local adminstration.
Hamlet, village, town, city are decided by two factors: Provincial law (say, anything 10K or over must be a city) and local preference (we're at 5500, over the minimum; do we want to be a town or a city?).
The actual figures (minimum & maximum population) will vary from province to province.
It affects whether you are under provincial or local jurisdiction (eg water quality, traffic laws); your ability to raise taxes, ability to borrow money, pass certain kinds of bylaws, zoning, administer schools, etc.
Each local area must decide by vote (if there's a choice) and it basically boils down to how much control you want vs. how much money & services you get, and whether you have to raise the cash yourself or the province pays.
This is Alberta (pop approx 2.5 million), not Canada. No other province can afford it.
n d/foreword.a sp
I believe Singapore is far ahead of any of the nations you mentioned.
http://www.sgbroadband.com.sg/broadba
Generally true, for Conservative philosophy.
But, you should realise that the government of Alberta is rich, rich, rich.
Unlike the US, Canadian provinces own all the land and minerals in the jurisdiction.
Alberta has huge Oil resources (taxed at the lowest rate vs. other provinces; there's just so much of it the money keeps rolling in), the lowest taxes in Canada (lowest income tax; there is talk of eliminating it, least public Health Care support, no sales tax, etc), and literally Many $ Billions in the bank (the Alberta Heritage Fund, based on the premise that Oil is depleteable and money should be saved for a "rainy day").
These guys are both politically and financially conservative.
Alberta politicians are the most right-wing, free enterprise-friendly in the Canada. It is typically referred to as "the Bible Belt"; the country was run for decades by a fiercely conservative government founded by a preacher; his legacy has not abated.
They have elected conservative (read: Republican in the US) goverments without exception for virtually all of the Province's history (created 1905).
Most, if not all North American jurisdictions simply don't have the cash, but they do.
The issue with Albertans is more about whether Broadband is important enough to spend money on; ie is there an economic benifit that outweighs the value of keeping it in the bank to offset the inevitable higher taxes when the oil runs out a century from now (and they have to start raising money like a "regular" Government, conservative or otherwise).
The really suprising thing about this initiative is not that it's publicly funded but rather that such a Conservative administration decided to spend anything at all.
AFAIK (I'm not in Europe) it works pretty well.
My understanding is that Europe requires manufacturers to be responsible for the recycling of their own products; for example Apple must take old computers and monitors back at no charge and dispose/recycle them in a proper manner.
It's why you see companies like BMW touting the near 100% recycleablity of their cars, and the like. Since ultimately they have to pay to clean up the remnants of their manufacturing, it makes economic sense to create a product that can be easily separated into compatible piles of junk.
I stand corrected on the Aluminum thing; various sites say things like 90% less energy than creating aluminum from ore. An Aluminum Industry site noted 87% of the energy used to create new aluminum comes from electicity.
The same sites (I checked out more than one) claim glass recycling uses about 35% less energy than new glass, in case you're interested.
I think that we probably don't disagree on the merits of recycling. But it annoys me that companies can paint themselves with a "green" brush while promoting ever-increasing consumption of goods just because they are "recyclable".
I wonder what would happen if we weighted the goods going into a house vs the remnants coming out; and people paid a collection fee based on:
A) how much stuff you bring in, and:
B) the ratio of stuff in vs stuff out.
Recycle would take a back seat to reduce and reuse pretty fast, I think.
Of course, nobody would stand for it right now. But the day may well come (stranger things have happened).
I would consider myself an envornmental skeptic... not that I don't believe pollution, etc is a problem. It clearly is.
My skepticism lies with this: I see a lot of "solutions" that only make the problem worse, and I see these being endorsed by those who should know better. (I haven't read the book, but I probably will; I want to hear what he says).
Recycle, Reuse and Reduce.
By far the most important of these are Reuse and Reduce. Recycling is a band aid to fix things when people don't, or won't, do the other two.
It begs a lot of questions: is it better to use a 20-year old vehicle sparingly, or should I buy a new, high-milage vehicle and feel good about my "contribution" to the envornment?
Certainly Industry wants me to buy a new product when a perfectly good one already exists. But is this a good solution? The question is hardly ever asked (and I'm not saying I know the answer; I am saying why is the default answer always seem to be: make more stuff, because it's "better" than the old stuff?).
Recycle aluminum cans? Why is this the "green" solution, when it costs as much in energy (electicity, at least some of which is coal-fired) to make aluminum as it does to recycle it? Why not use less aluminum?
I hope he asks and attempts to answer some of these questions; I would be interested in his conclusions.
Thanks for reading my post; now I have to go back to surfing with my own [personal heavy-metal laden, coal-burning, disposable] enviormental nightmare (a computer)...
But your only real choices for what you want are:s eed/appleseed .html
Linux cluster (Beowolf)
http://www.beowulf.org/
or
Mac cluster (MacOS or LinuxOS, AppleSeed):
http://exodus.physics.ucla.edu/apple
There is no real, available, and viable WindowsOS solution. You would be in beta-land, at best.
Consider it if MS will pony up big time (all the HW, SW, and maybe cash for overhead, salaries, gifts to the campus library). Consider it a research project (proof of concept).
You won't be getting your "real" work done with this, though. Use a proven solution if that's your goal.
Of course you're right, but...
Isn't it possible to use these services from computers not on the dorm network?
"...He added that it was "beyond logic" that artists would choose to leave their music off Pressplay and "effectively encourage the use of illegal services." ..."
Or, Record Companies can leave it on Pressplay despite cease-and-desist orders, thereby effectively encouraging the use of illegal services.
As one poster has already mentioned, at least with Napster somebody was listening.
In theory, you're absolutely right. In practise, well...
..."
I bought a clone, came with a HP USB keyboard. Also came with drivers for said KB, but they didn't work. No problem, go to Hewlett-Packard...
HP has never heard of the device. Go figure. Even tech support says things like, "yeah, there's the part number, but we don't know what it is, there's no drivers, but another user has found a driver on our site, we don't know where it is, but go to his site and it points back to ours (!)
You get the idea. The numeric keypad doesn't work, with HP's "official" but mysteriously located driver, etc etc
Standards are only half the battle, not the end of the war.
"... But starting last month (January 2002) the bandwidth used by the rest of campus increased in an unexpected and unexplained way. During peak periods the demand now exceeds 70 Mbps. ..."
Student goes home for Xmas. Student gets new Windows XP box. Student chats like a 20-something adult using built-in chat SW.
Bandwidth dissapears Jan 03, 2002.
" I don't know [if] it really is better on a Mac. I can't see how it would be. They must have equivalent problems like uninstallers leaving crap around... "
All in good fun, but you shouldn't assume every platform has the same problems yours has. Different problems, probably. More or less? I think the consensus is less (than Windows), but that's anecdotal evidence so it's not admissable.
I have never used an uninstaller on a Mac. You just trash the app and it's associated files, they're only in a few possible places and easy to find for any reasonably computer-literate person. Most apps have an install script which tells you what was installed, where, so you can go about hunting them down if you want.
Installation doesn't write to OS files, so uninstalling by simply throwing files away usually doesn't affect how the computer runs. (Sometimes an installer will move OS files to a "disabled" folder, you might have to move them back manually).
I use both platforms and Linux.
"... He also ignores that M$ hold 40% of the shares of Apple, ..."
Say, What?
You have to publicly announce to a stock exchange and the investing public whenever you own (depending on the exchange) 5 or 10% of the outstanding shares. Let's see... Microsoft, Apple, NASDAQ... nothing.
Microsoft bought $150 million worth of Apple Stock in August 1997. Based on market cap at the time, it probably wasn't even 1%.
I suppose they own 40% of Corel, too (MS buys $135 million of Corel stock, 24 million non-voting shares at about $CDN 6 each).Corel's market cap is a fraction of Apple's, but it wasn't even enough for a seat on the board (usually around 10% gets you at least that).
"... Steve Jobs has been for months making these bold predictions that we'll all be making home movies with our computers, but I just don't buy that. What we do with home movies is shoot them then put them in a drawer or closet and forget they exist. ..."
3 0. html
Ref: I, Cringley:
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit200011
So, what does he want us to do with OSX on i86? Run MS Word?
This is the same guy who said "Broadband is Dead". I don't think Steve Jobs is going to pay much attention.
And if he does, goodbye Word on OSX.
ClarisWorks and AppleWorks run on Windows, but I've never met a Wintel user who owns a copy. It would be the same for OSX; the average Windows user would yawn, say "where's the games?", and reboot.
That's for the few that pay attention; most wouldn't read the second line of an article that has Apple in the first line.
If you NEED OSX (or some Mac function/application), you buy a Mac box. If you don't, you buy SGI, Wintel, a GameCube, or a pen and paper.
"... To summarize, in canada, if someone gets BB access at more than 40$, that's somewhat illegal... "
You apply to the CRTC with what you want to charge, and they say yes or no. I don't think they've ever said no, by the way.
You need to reapply to change that rate; again a "no" answer is pretty much unheard of, although sometimes they will balk if you can't show the price is reasonable (you need the money for profits, infastructure, etc), so you might have to revise your rate.
There are plenty of services that are more than $40, although you are correct in that most are in the $40 to $45 range.
All prices in Canadian Dollars (x 0.63 = $USD).
... (in my opinion) was that the Judge found that because:
1) A one-time fee paid for the software and the license; and
2) The license granted use of the software forever for this one-time payment;
Then the transaction became subject to all the ordinary laws about buying any good.
Implied in that (again, as I see it) is that SW developers can get out from under this judgement by employing:
A scheme similar to what MS is proposing for corporate clients (the annual subscription); or
Creating Software that expires; or
some other, new licensing scheme designed to thwart the ruling.
Standard Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and I always seem to interpret these judgements differently than real lawyers do (or at least that's what lawyers keep telling me).