I'm not sure why you think that since you can't see factories from your area that they aren't any around. First, you live in the RTP. Research generally means white collar, learning type of work and not manufacturing. Second, drive about 4 hours to Greenville and visit the BMW plant sometime. Drive a couple more hours to the Honda plant that's also in SC. There is plenty of manufacturing around even if you can't see it from your porch.
US manufacturing is doing just fine. Here is a recent analysis. The problem is that productivity has risen through automation and manufacturing jobs have disappeared. This was bound to happen no matter what and these jobs are not coming back (I'm surprised that we still need people AT ALL during the manufacturing of a car for example). The conclusions from the well written article I linked to above:
1.) The US still manufactures goods. In fact, the US still manufactures plenty of goods. Take a look at the types of exports in the latest trade data from the Census. It includes exports of industrial supplies, capital goods, autos and consumer goods.
2.) While outsourcing does happen -- that is, companies do go overseas to open new factories at the expense of US employees -- it is not the primary cause of manufacturing job losses.
3.) Going back to the recent post on employment remember that in this recession the unemployment rate of specific groups was heavily influenced by education level. In fact, according to the BLS, higher education levels (college graduates and above) were remarkably untouched in the latest recession while lower education levels (high school graduates, high school with some secondary education) had higher rates of unemployment. Lower levels of education are typically associated with manufacturing and construction employment -- the two areas of jobs that account for the largest percentage of job losses in this recession.
Offshoring manufacturing is a boogeyman that isn't backed up by the facts.
Fair enough. I used to live in a town with tons of small one off restaurants. Now, I would generally consider these places as not needing to post nutritional information because most places of this kind use fresh ingredients that are properly seasoned to begin with because good food is their business. Would it be helpful? Absolutely.
Unlike the chains, most of these types of places are also not trying to pass crap (covered in salt to hide the flavor) as edible food. This is why when I think of a nutrition signs I immediately think of chains and not the small local bistro up the street serving the perfectly seared grouper and side of asparagus. Now I'm getting hungry lol...
Also, I did make a mistake and say ingredients instead of nutritional information. That could have thrown you off. It does look like the government may push a national law through with the healthcare bill. So while it's not a US wide thing now, it's spreading.
New York City health officials looking for a new way to fight obesity began requiring chain restaurants to post calorie counts for the likes of burgers, pizza and doughnuts in 2008. Similar laws have since been approved in more than a dozen places, including Philadelphia and California. Congress is considering a national measure as part of health care reform.
Good point. I used to live in a town similar to NO where there were lots of one off great restaurants. Thing is, I wouldn't really think these need to have the nutrition values listed because they mostly used fresh ingredients, properly seasoned, etc... When you have fresh food over salting is usually very noticeable. It's the crap from the chains that we need to know how stuff is in it because if you put enough salt on crap it sometimes passes as edible lol.
Ah, well in that case I simply mis-spoke as salt is an ingredient and usually listed with nutritional information. I'll fire my/. post editor so it doesn't happen again.
Looks like a lot of places have laws in place for chain restaurants.
New York City health officials looking for a new way to fight obesity began requiring chain restaurants to post calorie counts for the likes of burgers, pizza and doughnuts in 2008. Similar laws have since been approved in more than a dozen places, including Philadelphia and California. Congress is considering a national measure as part of health care reform.
I'm not 100% sure these include sodium content, but usually the basic calorie count includes, calories, fat, trans fat, carbs, and sodium.
Since so many restaurants do this now I incorrectly assumed it was some regulation that had passed for any restaurant with more than a certain number of locations. It doesn't appear that's the case, but laws are getting passed on a state by state basis.
Oregon is the second state in the U.S. to pass menu-labeling legislation setting standards for the disclosure of caloric information. House Bill 2726 requires that chain restaurants with 15 or more locations provide nutritional information to diners. Effective January 1, 2010, brochures detailing Calorie content, Saturated Fat, Trans Fat, Carbohydrates and Sodium must be made available upon customer request. Effective January 1, 2011, this nutrition information must be prominently displayed on menus, menu boards and food display tags.
Pretty much any chain already offers this information. And in reality I would guess most chains are the least healthy foodwise so this is where we need it most (think McDonalds).
I guess smaller, individual type restaurants are exempt, but nearly every chain I can think of I can find their content online.
So, while they may not have to it appears that many do. Some states are even passing laws.
Oregon is the second state in the U.S. to pass menu-labeling legislation setting standards for the disclosure of caloric information. House Bill 2726 requires that chain restaurants with 15 or more locations provide nutritional information to diners. Effective January 1, 2010, brochures detailing Calorie content, Saturated Fat, Trans Fat, Carbohydrates and Sodium must be made available upon customer request. Effective January 1, 2011, this nutrition information must be prominently displayed on menus, menu boards and food display tags.
I can't think of any fast food restaruant (probably the worst health wise) that doesn't post their nutrition content somewhere in the store or online. The next step up of sit down chains (Chilis, Applebees, etc..) also all seems to have theirs online.
So what exactly was so wrong about my original assertion?
I for one thank god that we have a government who views its job as to protect us the citizens from the people who would poison us to make a quick buck and I hope they do more to reign in corporate profits over public health.
Hmm...are you talking about the same government that purposely poisoned it's own citizens during prohibition? Or is it that same government that spies on its own people without warrants in order to protect them?
No matter what people think, the government has more power than any corporation can ever hope to have. They are the only ones who can come into your house and take anything and everything at gun point and leave you with zero recourse. Google all the eminent domain cases where the local government took houses in order to give the land to shopping malls or where they simply took peoples cash under the guise that it's drug money. Need I go on?
Every restaurant has to post their ingredients somewhere (often online). Now, I know they often under estimate on portion size, but are you saying that they are flat out not listing the true salt content? If I was going to lie about it, I would put it much lower than most list now.
This is very much a free market issue. People know that prepared food has tons of salt in it and is in general not very healthy. If people didn't like it they wouldn't eat it and the restaurants would change or either go out of business. I don't eat a lot of salt so most prepared food are way too salty for me, but that doesn't mean that I should force all restaurants to my tastes.
And the thing with injecting chicken with salt water (or any water for that matter) sounds more like a fraud case than anything else.
I don't really see MMOs as a waste of money. The game fee and then the monthly probably give way more hour/$ of entertainment than most $60 console games. What MMOs do waste is tons of time.
A sys admin I used to work with played DAoC back when it was popular. He actually became pretty e-famous in the game because he could play 6-9 hours while at work and then another 6+ hours at home nearly every day. I'm sure there were things he should have been doing, but he also had most things automated to the point where he didn't have much that he HAD to do each day.
I'm just not comfortable playing a game while at work. I'd much rather just check/. or other news during any break time.
I keep wondering the same thing, but you can't ignore the Apple marketing machine and the people who love all their shiny toys (even I enjoy my MBP and iPhone). The problem is if someone already has an iPhone and a MB/MBP I don't see what the iPad brings to the equation. I guess it could simply take the e-reader market?
I've read a lot of people saying that the iPad will replace their laptop of some sort. That might work if they only consume content, but even my non-techie friends seem to do a lot of typing on IM, email, FB, etc.. and the iPad seems horrible for any sort of typing (and awkward when typing then touching the screen and typing again). I'm sure someone will point me to the keyboard accessory, but if you're going to carry around an iPad and the attachable keyboard why not just get a proper laptop to begin with?
I wasn't tooting my own horn, but it was more of how I view software creation - it's done in order to solve problems. And, in a lot of problems today software is only a piece of the overall solution to a problem. I view my work as not just a programmer or software engineer, but as someone who is helping solve the larger overall business problems at hand.
Efficient is generally defined by the customer since my least efficient might be their most efficient etc... Anything that is left up to me I make a decision on what I think is best for them. If the choices mean a large list of pros and cons (for example, cheap and brittle versus expensive and robust versus everything in between) I explain them in detail and then guide the customer to a decision that works for them.
Cool, so I'll guess for each problem we'll start with writing the OS... I'm only half joking. If need to build a website do I need to start by building a web server or can I use Apache?
Starting at the appropriate level of abstraction (and understanding the trade offs) is in of itself a skill. It could be argued that in order to solve more complex problems you HAVE to start at a higher level of abstraction or else you mentally get bogged down in the details (many of which do not matter as long as they just work).
Even within the group of actual programmers you need different skill sets for different problems. Think of a general contractor and the plumber working for him. The GC knows enough about plumbing (algos) so he knows what he needs and doesn't get screwed, but he isn't the one who builds out all of the plumbing. His skill is getting together all the other parts required to build the house (complete piece of software that solves a customers problem) rather than knowing every intimate detail of how each individual job is done. Think generalist versus specialist.
It seems everyone wants to be a "software engineer", but nobody wants to focus on the "hard stuff", and instead chant "let java/X do it for you".
I guess it depends on the goal of the programmer/engineer. If my goal is the solve a problem for a customer (as opposed to doing something to simply learn it) then I'm going to do that in the most efficient way possible. Should I be writing an entire stack of libraries every time I need to solve a problem? I hope not. Libraries that already exist make it possible to focus on and build solutions to even harder problems.
BTW, I think there is a lot of skill needed to be able to look at problem, figure out what libraries can/can not help and then pull it all together into a cohesive solution.
This is exactly what happened when moving from 2.0 to 3.0. Developers had to update their apps or they may have stopped working and got pulled. It doesn't matter if you used improper APIs.
And bitching at Apple is part of what Apple gets for being the sole provider/gatekeeper/censor for the app store. They have forced themselves into that role, so I don't think they can complain when they catch the complaints in addition to the compliments.
While I'm ranting on the app store, another huge annoyance is the refunds. Apple gives them but will never tell the developer why. Instead they give some form message that if you get a lot of refunds you might have a quality issue. Huh? To get a refund you have to fill out a whole form. Why can't that form be anonymously sent to the developer? They treat developers like crap and this issue with the APIs is just more of the same.
Why do they need to protect me from maintaining my app? If I use an API and they do something that breaks it, it's my responsibility to fix it or they pull the app. This is the exact same way it worked going from the 2.0 SDK to the 3.0 SDK and will be how it works as they deprecate parts of the API going forward.
The stability reason is just an excuse to remove apps at will for whatever real reason they have at the time.
Haha. If you know C and have an idea about OO concepts then obj-c is just as easy to learn as anything else. Many (most? all?) C libraries that don't rely on graphics should work just fine on the iPhone. Maybe it's C that's too hard for people to learn?
You should try reading some economic papers on scalping sometime. Most that I have read agree that the scalpers are simply helping clear the market because the event typically sets prices too low considering the real demand.
Some of the more interesting papers try and figure out why the event is priced so low to begin with and most end up saying the best way to 'fix' scalping is to raise event prices from the start.
I'm sorry if that doesn't fit with your view on how economics works, heck even wikipedia says what I've been saying for pages:
Ticket resale is a form of arbitrage that arises when the amount demanded at the sale price exceeds the amount supplied (that is, when event organizers charge less than the equilibrium prices for the tickets).
And later (bolded is mine)
Individuals who genuinely wish to attend a popular event may find themselves unable to get tickets, as they have already been sold to ticket resellers. This practice enables the ticket resellers to sell the tickets at market value, with no effective loss because they had no intention of attending the event in the first place. On the other hand, if the resellers buy the tickets and the tickets are not then sold out, then they risk a loss.
I'll continue on not having a clue about market based economics.
I'm not sure why I'm even arguing anymore. There are plenty of economics papers that fully explain scalpers and how they help clear the market. Very few economist think scalping should be illegal because they recognize the scalpers are serving a market. I'm paraphrasing, but Dan Seligman of Forbes once wrote that having laws against ticket scalping was in the top ten dumbest ideas of the century.
The primary cause for scalping is underpriced tickets to begin with.
This is what happens in the commodities markets, it's not economics 101 - it's called price gouging [wikipedia.org]. The box office sells out a concert - which mitigates their risk and the scalper engages the risk to generate profit. The disconnect is between the Bands who miss out on earnings and the Fans who pay more for tickets, the brokers however profit nicely and their mutual expense.
Price gouging is tough to do unless you a) have a majority of the tickets and I haven't seen any scalpers with the ability to buy 20k-30k seats that many venues have and b) have something for sale that people are forced to buy. Generally the term price gouging is used during emergencies when people are forced to by food at an increased price. Finally, even your own link has comments from economist against ANY restrictions on price.
Except it's not really, the scalpers have a software mechanism to buy tickets and I do not. This means that they have asserted a coercive monopoly [wikipedia.org] control over the supply and demand. This means that the equilibrium can never be met because so called "market efficiencies" are biased towards demand.
So a single scalper is holding all the tickets or are you saying they are all in collusion? I think the original story said that the scalper had 2k seats to sell over the course of the Yankee playoffs. Yankee stadium holds 50,086+ people. So either the scalper was in collusion with all other scalpers or he was simply selling tickets at market value. I think it's much more likely he was selling at market value.
Yes it would, you're assuming that everyone who would buy a ticket at %100 percent of the cost would buy it at %250.
Um, that's demand change and has nothing to do with supply. There are a fixed amount of tickets from the start. They are usually under priced (nearly every scalping economics papers on google talks about this) so demand outstrips supply.
You're also assuming Scalpers sell *all* the tickets where they only enough to cover their costs and make a profit. Of course they *want* to sell all the tickets but at >%200 of the cost the scalper only has to sell *half* of the tickets they purchase to make a profit. So getting rid of Artificial scarcity *would* increase supply. I have been to sold out gigs where there were clearly plenty of seats available.
Now a scalper may try to hold tickets back, but again to do this en masse you would need all the scalpers working in collusion. The arena in Phoenix that have made a scalper section that helps protect against this.
And only a poor scalper would not sell all his tickets. It doesn't matter if he's already profitable, any tickets left in his hand equals a loss.
Locking a ticket to a person is nothing like DRM. A ticket is not a digital issue. A performance is rent, not purchase. You aren't buying the right to watch a show forever (thats called a dvd, or a download, and requires a server), just when its live. You are purchasing an experience, like food. You get it at a specific time and place. You show an ID to buy groceries (if you use a credit or debit card), so it shouldnt be a big deal to show that you are the person who purchase a ticket.
The DRM analogy was how DRM locks a digital asset to a single person or device in order to maintain control. By locking a ticket to someone they are doing the same thing. And no, I rarely show ID to buy food. I use cash 99% of the time.
Again, you are retarded, because I gave you no connection between small town shows which tend not to have scalpers and performances that have scalpers which cause sellouts with significant numbers of empty seats.
You're the one who brought up small cities in a previous post and mentioned they have no problems with scalpers. I'm not sure that in larger cities artist will ever quit showing up because of scalpers. There is just too much money to be had in larger cities.
I believe in a free market, in which performers can decide which venues in which to perform, part of which is determinate upon their personal gain and part of which is determined upon how the prospective audience will be treated in its ability to attend and enjoy such performance (there certainly will be other considerations, but that's the basis of a free market:) ).
I'm not sure how you can believe in the free market and then want to limit my (or anyone else's) ability to re-sell a ticket, perhaps even for a profit. Why can't I sell my steak to someone else? Did you ever sell lemonade as a kid? Those kids bought those lemons so they should eat them. How dare they sell the for a profit. That is about as anti-free market as it comes.
You seem to be so worked up about defending your position (the name calling is really unnecessary) that you quit thinking about what you were writing. I'll go ahead and link to some papers/sites about scalping and how they help clear the market (and that the main driver is prices set too low to begin with):
The Yankees do sell tickets until they are sold out. Even without scalpers they would be sold out in minutes.
So what? Why is that a problem?
It's a problem if I wanted to attend. And since I'm willing to pay more than the next guy why shouldn't I be allowed to buy a ticket from whomever?
Yeah, maybe so, but I'm not arguing about what the proper price is for any given event. I'm arguing against one entity buying up all of the supplies of a finite resource, then doling them out for a higher price. That's simply not fair.
Well you can't talk about scalpers, tickets, etc... without talking about price. If they are selling tickets at what the market will handle I don't see what the problem is. Their goal is obviously to sell the tickets, so they will price them accordingly. And what do you consider fair? Is it fair that the jobless guy who can camp out for weeks gets a ticket and I don't because I'm working?
When corporations do that it's called price fixing. What do you think Apple would do if one group bought 90% of the iPads on launch day, then turned around and started selling each one for twice as much on ebay?
Price fixing generally requires cornering the entire market. Find me a scalper who is buying 20k-30k seats at venues and fixing the price. They aren't. Scalpers are simply selling tickets at market value. And the Apple thing is funny. They are already priced in a way that excludes anyone without disposable income. If one group wanted to take the risk that Apple underpriced demand, I would tell them to have it and good luck. My guess is that most people would simply wait for Apple to get more stock and buy them direct and that mythical group would end up a lot of iPads.
The only real fix is to move all tickets sales to a dutch auction style. This will fairly price tickets according to demand but will also eliminate those without much money. I see the venues moving towards this because news like the original article shows they are leaving a lot of money on the table and severely underestimating demand.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure why you think that since you can't see factories from your area that they aren't any around. First, you live in the RTP. Research generally means white collar, learning type of work and not manufacturing. Second, drive about 4 hours to Greenville and visit the BMW plant sometime. Drive a couple more hours to the Honda plant that's also in SC. There is plenty of manufacturing around even if you can't see it from your porch.
US manufacturing is doing just fine. Here is a recent analysis. The problem is that productivity has risen through automation and manufacturing jobs have disappeared. This was bound to happen no matter what and these jobs are not coming back (I'm surprised that we still need people AT ALL during the manufacturing of a car for example). The conclusions from the well written article I linked to above:
Offshoring manufacturing is a boogeyman that isn't backed up by the facts.
Fair enough. I used to live in a town with tons of small one off restaurants. Now, I would generally consider these places as not needing to post nutritional information because most places of this kind use fresh ingredients that are properly seasoned to begin with because good food is their business. Would it be helpful? Absolutely.
Unlike the chains, most of these types of places are also not trying to pass crap (covered in salt to hide the flavor) as edible food. This is why when I think of a nutrition signs I immediately think of chains and not the small local bistro up the street serving the perfectly seared grouper and side of asparagus. Now I'm getting hungry lol...
Also, I did make a mistake and say ingredients instead of nutritional information. That could have thrown you off. It does look like the government may push a national law through with the healthcare bill. So while it's not a US wide thing now, it's spreading.
Good point. I used to live in a town similar to NO where there were lots of one off great restaurants. Thing is, I wouldn't really think these need to have the nutrition values listed because they mostly used fresh ingredients, properly seasoned, etc... When you have fresh food over salting is usually very noticeable. It's the crap from the chains that we need to know how stuff is in it because if you put enough salt on crap it sometimes passes as edible lol.
Ah, well in that case I simply mis-spoke as salt is an ingredient and usually listed with nutritional information. I'll fire my /. post editor so it doesn't happen again.
Thanks!
Looks like a lot of places have laws in place for chain restaurants.
I'm not 100% sure these include sodium content, but usually the basic calorie count includes, calories, fat, trans fat, carbs, and sodium.
Since so many restaurants do this now I incorrectly assumed it was some regulation that had passed for any restaurant with more than a certain number of locations. It doesn't appear that's the case, but laws are getting passed on a state by state basis.
Oregon is the second state in the U.S. to pass menu-labeling legislation setting standards for the disclosure of caloric information. House Bill 2726 requires that chain restaurants with 15 or more locations provide nutritional information to diners. Effective January 1, 2010, brochures detailing Calorie content, Saturated Fat, Trans Fat, Carbohydrates and Sodium must be made available upon customer request. Effective January 1, 2011, this nutrition information must be prominently displayed on menus, menu boards and food display tags.
Pretty much any chain already offers this information. And in reality I would guess most chains are the least healthy foodwise so this is where we need it most (think McDonalds).
I guess smaller, individual type restaurants are exempt, but nearly every chain I can think of I can find their content online.
So, while they may not have to it appears that many do. Some states are even passing laws.
I can't think of any fast food restaruant (probably the worst health wise) that doesn't post their nutrition content somewhere in the store or online. The next step up of sit down chains (Chilis, Applebees, etc..) also all seems to have theirs online.
So what exactly was so wrong about my original assertion?
Hmm...are you talking about the same government that purposely poisoned it's own citizens during prohibition? Or is it that same government that spies on its own people without warrants in order to protect them?
No matter what people think, the government has more power than any corporation can ever hope to have. They are the only ones who can come into your house and take anything and everything at gun point and leave you with zero recourse. Google all the eminent domain cases where the local government took houses in order to give the land to shopping malls or where they simply took peoples cash under the guise that it's drug money. Need I go on?
Every restaurant has to post their ingredients somewhere (often online). Now, I know they often under estimate on portion size, but are you saying that they are flat out not listing the true salt content? If I was going to lie about it, I would put it much lower than most list now.
This is very much a free market issue. People know that prepared food has tons of salt in it and is in general not very healthy. If people didn't like it they wouldn't eat it and the restaurants would change or either go out of business. I don't eat a lot of salt so most prepared food are way too salty for me, but that doesn't mean that I should force all restaurants to my tastes.
And the thing with injecting chicken with salt water (or any water for that matter) sounds more like a fraud case than anything else.
I don't really see MMOs as a waste of money. The game fee and then the monthly probably give way more hour/$ of entertainment than most $60 console games. What MMOs do waste is tons of time.
A sys admin I used to work with played DAoC back when it was popular. He actually became pretty e-famous in the game because he could play 6-9 hours while at work and then another 6+ hours at home nearly every day. I'm sure there were things he should have been doing, but he also had most things automated to the point where he didn't have much that he HAD to do each day.
I'm just not comfortable playing a game while at work. I'd much rather just check /. or other news during any break time.
I keep wondering the same thing, but you can't ignore the Apple marketing machine and the people who love all their shiny toys (even I enjoy my MBP and iPhone). The problem is if someone already has an iPhone and a MB/MBP I don't see what the iPad brings to the equation. I guess it could simply take the e-reader market?
I've read a lot of people saying that the iPad will replace their laptop of some sort. That might work if they only consume content, but even my non-techie friends seem to do a lot of typing on IM, email, FB, etc.. and the iPad seems horrible for any sort of typing (and awkward when typing then touching the screen and typing again). I'm sure someone will point me to the keyboard accessory, but if you're going to carry around an iPad and the attachable keyboard why not just get a proper laptop to begin with?
It'll be interesting to see how it plays out.
I wasn't tooting my own horn, but it was more of how I view software creation - it's done in order to solve problems. And, in a lot of problems today software is only a piece of the overall solution to a problem. I view my work as not just a programmer or software engineer, but as someone who is helping solve the larger overall business problems at hand.
Efficient is generally defined by the customer since my least efficient might be their most efficient etc... Anything that is left up to me I make a decision on what I think is best for them. If the choices mean a large list of pros and cons (for example, cheap and brittle versus expensive and robust versus everything in between) I explain them in detail and then guide the customer to a decision that works for them.
Cool, so I'll guess for each problem we'll start with writing the OS... I'm only half joking. If need to build a website do I need to start by building a web server or can I use Apache?
Starting at the appropriate level of abstraction (and understanding the trade offs) is in of itself a skill. It could be argued that in order to solve more complex problems you HAVE to start at a higher level of abstraction or else you mentally get bogged down in the details (many of which do not matter as long as they just work).
Even within the group of actual programmers you need different skill sets for different problems. Think of a general contractor and the plumber working for him. The GC knows enough about plumbing (algos) so he knows what he needs and doesn't get screwed, but he isn't the one who builds out all of the plumbing. His skill is getting together all the other parts required to build the house (complete piece of software that solves a customers problem) rather than knowing every intimate detail of how each individual job is done. Think generalist versus specialist.
I guess it depends on the goal of the programmer/engineer. If my goal is the solve a problem for a customer (as opposed to doing something to simply learn it) then I'm going to do that in the most efficient way possible. Should I be writing an entire stack of libraries every time I need to solve a problem? I hope not. Libraries that already exist make it possible to focus on and build solutions to even harder problems.
BTW, I think there is a lot of skill needed to be able to look at problem, figure out what libraries can/can not help and then pull it all together into a cohesive solution.
This is exactly what happened when moving from 2.0 to 3.0. Developers had to update their apps or they may have stopped working and got pulled. It doesn't matter if you used improper APIs.
And bitching at Apple is part of what Apple gets for being the sole provider/gatekeeper/censor for the app store. They have forced themselves into that role, so I don't think they can complain when they catch the complaints in addition to the compliments.
While I'm ranting on the app store, another huge annoyance is the refunds. Apple gives them but will never tell the developer why. Instead they give some form message that if you get a lot of refunds you might have a quality issue. Huh? To get a refund you have to fill out a whole form. Why can't that form be anonymously sent to the developer? They treat developers like crap and this issue with the APIs is just more of the same.
Why do they need to protect me from maintaining my app? If I use an API and they do something that breaks it, it's my responsibility to fix it or they pull the app. This is the exact same way it worked going from the 2.0 SDK to the 3.0 SDK and will be how it works as they deprecate parts of the API going forward.
The stability reason is just an excuse to remove apps at will for whatever real reason they have at the time.
IMHO, any framework that is accessible is by default public.
Haha. If you know C and have an idea about OO concepts then obj-c is just as easy to learn as anything else. Many (most? all?) C libraries that don't rely on graphics should work just fine on the iPhone. Maybe it's C that's too hard for people to learn?
You should try reading some economic papers on scalping sometime. Most that I have read agree that the scalpers are simply helping clear the market because the event typically sets prices too low considering the real demand.
Some of the more interesting papers try and figure out why the event is priced so low to begin with and most end up saying the best way to 'fix' scalping is to raise event prices from the start.
I'm sorry if that doesn't fit with your view on how economics works, heck even wikipedia says what I've been saying for pages:
And later (bolded is mine)
I'll continue on not having a clue about market based economics.
I'm not sure why I'm even arguing anymore. There are plenty of economics papers that fully explain scalpers and how they help clear the market. Very few economist think scalping should be illegal because they recognize the scalpers are serving a market. I'm paraphrasing, but Dan Seligman of Forbes once wrote that having laws against ticket scalping was in the top ten dumbest ideas of the century.
The primary cause for scalping is underpriced tickets to begin with.
Price gouging is tough to do unless you a) have a majority of the tickets and I haven't seen any scalpers with the ability to buy 20k-30k seats that many venues have and b) have something for sale that people are forced to buy. Generally the term price gouging is used during emergencies when people are forced to by food at an increased price. Finally, even your own link has comments from economist against ANY restrictions on price.
So a single scalper is holding all the tickets or are you saying they are all in collusion? I think the original story said that the scalper had 2k seats to sell over the course of the Yankee playoffs. Yankee stadium holds 50,086+ people. So either the scalper was in collusion with all other scalpers or he was simply selling tickets at market value. I think it's much more likely he was selling at market value.
Um, that's demand change and has nothing to do with supply. There are a fixed amount of tickets from the start. They are usually under priced (nearly every scalping economics papers on google talks about this) so demand outstrips supply.
Now a scalper may try to hold tickets back, but again to do this en masse you would need all the scalpers working in collusion. The arena in Phoenix that have made a scalper section that helps protect against this.
And only a poor scalper would not sell all his tickets. It doesn't matter if he's already profitable, any tickets left in his hand equals a loss.
The DRM analogy was how DRM locks a digital asset to a single person or device in order to maintain control. By locking a ticket to someone they are doing the same thing. And no, I rarely show ID to buy food. I use cash 99% of the time.
You're the one who brought up small cities in a previous post and mentioned they have no problems with scalpers. I'm not sure that in larger cities artist will ever quit showing up because of scalpers. There is just too much money to be had in larger cities.
I'm not sure how you can believe in the free market and then want to limit my (or anyone else's) ability to re-sell a ticket, perhaps even for a profit. Why can't I sell my steak to someone else? Did you ever sell lemonade as a kid? Those kids bought those lemons so they should eat them. How dare they sell the for a profit. That is about as anti-free market as it comes.
You seem to be so worked up about defending your position (the name calling is really unnecessary) that you quit thinking about what you were writing. I'll go ahead and link to some papers/sites about scalping and how they help clear the market (and that the main driver is prices set too low to begin with):
Ticket Scalping
Dynamic Ticket Pricing
Scalping
The Yankees do sell tickets until they are sold out. Even without scalpers they would be sold out in minutes.
It's a problem if I wanted to attend. And since I'm willing to pay more than the next guy why shouldn't I be allowed to buy a ticket from whomever?
Well you can't talk about scalpers, tickets, etc... without talking about price. If they are selling tickets at what the market will handle I don't see what the problem is. Their goal is obviously to sell the tickets, so they will price them accordingly. And what do you consider fair? Is it fair that the jobless guy who can camp out for weeks gets a ticket and I don't because I'm working?
Price fixing generally requires cornering the entire market. Find me a scalper who is buying 20k-30k seats at venues and fixing the price. They aren't. Scalpers are simply selling tickets at market value. And the Apple thing is funny. They are already priced in a way that excludes anyone without disposable income. If one group wanted to take the risk that Apple underpriced demand, I would tell them to have it and good luck. My guess is that most people would simply wait for Apple to get more stock and buy them direct and that mythical group would end up a lot of iPads.
The only real fix is to move all tickets sales to a dutch auction style. This will fairly price tickets according to demand but will also eliminate those without much money. I see the venues moving towards this because news like the original article shows they are leaving a lot of money on the table and severely underestimating demand.