I know Macs are unpopular for desktops (never mind how many companies buy Windows desktops straight from Dell, that must REALLY count against Apple there)... but I have a hunch they're doing very well in the laptop arena.
University, perhaps - but not in the business world. I see a lot of people pull out laptops in airports and on planes, and I rarely see a Mac portable.
Two good exmaples of government facilitating infrastructure are electricity and telephone service. A similar situation existed, where companies had no incentive to provide those services to the rural areas of teh US (which were much more extensive than today), so the government stepped in to provide a way to get those services to those areas. The Rural Electrification Act created electrical cooperatives (amonsgts other things) that bought power from utilities and ran the infrastructure to their members. Toda, a lot of people in very urban areas still get their power from their EMC (or some variation on that name). Sure, it took tax money, but I think most people wouyld agree that it provided hugh benefits to everyone.
While looney libretarians (but I'm redundant there) may believe that free enterprise can solve every problem, the reality is that it will only provide what is profitable.
In a 2000 square foot video store, the manager told me that the little 150 square foot adult video area is responsible for 25% of their revenue.
Either this doesn't work on a nationwide level, or Blockbuster is just full of shit.
It doesn't work because of the ability for each community to block the sale and rental of adult videos, so Blockbuster would have to deal with thousands of different communities as it tries to decide who can carry what. Frankly, the legal fees, hassle and publicity aren't worth it. If it were easy and profitable, someone would have done it. But since it is more a less a local phenomena, that tells me it's yoo much trouble to replicate across the US.
Do a hotels near DCA serach - it shows the Sheraton north of teh Marriott Crystal Gateway, it is actually a block or so south - I think they reversed the pushpins
Well, I'd argue that patents protect innovation and a free market economy encourages innovation through the possibility of rewards, but that's really just a semantic difference more than a philosophical one. Either way, we need to protect, encourage and reward innovation in order to foster it.
Protection is the means, to encourage innovation is the end. And there are deep and serious questions regarding whether software patenting promotes or retards innovation in general.
I think were are in violent agreement overall. Our current patent system was designed for an economy where new ideas where innovation resulted in tangible items that expressed the idea, and patents protected that expression, not the fundamental concept. For example, I could patent a mechanical cash register, but not th idea of exchanging money and calculating how much change to give.
The problem with software patents is that software carries out an action, or enables carrying out existing actions (buying goods) in a new medium; and the manner in which underlying code can carry that out can be very different. As a result, people can't protect the way the task is accomplished by copyrighting the code, since non-infringing code code be created, so people have patented the what, not the how. Even though much of the what is merely restating things that have been accomplished in other mediums for some time (imagine someone trying to patent the "travel by steamship" in the age of sail) our system has allowed it because, and therefore needs to be changed.
Your sentiment would be correct if this were an open market and a level playing field for all competitors. When software patents are brought into the picture, they are first used to intimidate the customer away from what otherwise might be a technically superior product, and then later on actual lawsuits can be brought to remove that competitor from the market. When a product and competitor are removed for non-technical reasons, quality in general declines due to the decreased need for the remaining products to compete. Prices increase for the same reason. And the consumer loses.
If by level playing field you mean that ideas should not be patentable, there isn't a level playing field, in the US at least, due to our Constitution. Patents are designed to protect the owner's rights to use the idea for a limited period of time. To that extent, Linux (and any other software) must either not violate the patent or obtain a license to use it. Simply not charging is not enough. Eventually, after the patent expires, everyone benefits from teh right to use the inovation, so society and the individual creator 's needs are counterbalanced to benefit both.
Now, is the patent system messed up and should patent laws be revised to deal with new tech? Certainly, but the need to protect innovation is still there; just as copyrights are needed to protect other types of work. I think we can agree that their is a need for IP, otherwise there would be very little motivation for innovation if you couldn't profit from it.
As a side note, I had a friend whose company developed a software control for a manufacturing process, only to wind up in a patent dispute with someone who had a patent on a mechanical process to do the same thing; so it's not just software patents that can be a problem.
Yes, but what we should care about is wether the consumer benefits, not its impact on Linux or any other OS.
If consumers get a better product for less, they they win. If Linux suffers, then it is beacuse it hasn't convinced consumers that it is better, and deserves its fate.
OSS is a good, but not only, model for software development. In a free market, a company has a right to decide how to go to market and whether to share its work.
If all you want is the occasional discount at the register, use made up info. No chain has yet refused to enroll Mr A T Hun,Brad Majors,Bat Guano, or Jesus H Christ.
Now you need to recoup that money, but supply and demand dictates you can only raise prices so high.
You keep asserting this, but the classic monopolies, the trusts from which the antitrust laws take their name, managed to effectively control supply through tactics that are now illegal. This is basic economics, and your assertions otherwise are unconvincing.
Controlling supply does not mean you control demand, the other half of the supply / demand curves.
Take Standard Oil, one of the classic trusts - analysis of their actions reveal not only did they maintain lower prices but they bought competitors at fair market value. In short, the rational for breaking up trusts was wrong. there is a classic article on the topic, BTW.
The problem is peopl assume because a company is large and powerful that it is automatically bad fo rthem - whithout asking the basic question - how am I hurt. Lower prices hardly hurt a consumer, and to maintain a monolpoly you need to keep prices low enough to keep out competition.
So whether Microsoft is "really" a monopoly in the classic sense of the term is an interesting theoretical question. Also interesting is whether it might be net beneficial for their to be a privately owned OS monopoly: there are certain benefits to everybody using the same things.
There are a number of advantages to a standard OS - which is why the market chose one, and MS just happened to be the winner. The network externalities are hugh, and costs are reduced because companies don't need to make multiple versions to run on different OS and users can share data and learn one way of using systems so taht knowledge is portable.
It's alot like electricity - if we had AC / DC and various voltages, the cost of appliances would be much larger, not to mention that every company would string wires to serve customers (as was the situation earlier in the 20th century).
but until you show some undertstanding of economics
you're knee jerk reaction and repetition of discredited theories makes me wonder if you really understand even Econ 101.
In order to build up cash reserves, monoploists must rais eprices, but if they raise prices, then competitors move in.
If they keep prices low enough so ocmpetitors don't move in, consumers benefit from lower prices.
There's substantial lag here. If I drive all the bakeries in a city out of business, I can make quite a bit of money before somebody has time to open even one bakery. And really, to keep my prices down, they need to compete with all of my bakeries, not just one of them. Otherwise I just subsidize the bakeries near them.
First of all, you need to spend money to build out to the point where you can have an impact on prices, then lose money keeping pices low. Now you need to recoup that money, but supply and demand dictates you can only raise prices so high.
So to successfully get back to non-monopoly conditions, somebody needs to start with all the money I have plus enough money to open all the stores I have plus enough money to get an equal share of the customers coming to the new stores. And even that may not be enough, as the establishd monopoly will have a easier time raising more money than the upstart. It's not impossible, but it's a huge barrier to entry. One small businessman cannot successfully challenge a monopoly. If startup costs are high, companies will stay in business betting the cost cutter will run out of money before they do; especially since the have to make up for their startup costs. If they are low, it's better to exit the business and reenter when prices rise.
In either case, your notion that a competitor must have as much money as the monopolist is incorrect.
Look at the software business - I can get software with more features, for less money (in real dollars) than I could in 1979 when there were a number of competitors in thw home PC market, none of which were anywhere close to a monopoly. And that's not even counting the number of free equivalents to commercial products.
if a monopoly can keep out competitors and maintain high prices, they software market isn't exhibiting such behavior.
But then new competitors move in, because they can make a profit at the higher price, which forces the monolpolist to lower prices again, and keep them there, to keep out competition. If they echibit a pattern of lowering and raising prices, competitors will stay in beacuse they believe the low prices ar enot sustainable and eventually prices will rise to livable levels.
This is only the case if the competitor believes they have enough money to outlast the monopolist. But the monopolist can build up large cash reserves, and they need only drop prices where the competitors are actually present, using areas without competition to subsidize the areas where there is an active challenge.
In order to build up cash reserves, monoploists must rais eprices, but if they raise prices, then competitors move in.
If they keep prices low enough so ocmpetitors don't move in, consumers benefit from lower prices.
So by and large, you don't get competitors to monopolies because people know it's a losing game to go head to head with a monopoly.
Which is why Red Hat, Apple, IBM, Sun, Novel all avoid competing with MS.
Switching from Microsoft is more than a cost issue. Just look at the available alternatives to MS Office. Most are cheaper (or even free) and offer the same, similar, or better features and quality. Yet people aren't dropping MS Office like a hot potatoe because of the hassle involved in switching. (In the case of businesses, "hassle" equates to "cost" and "lost production".) The same could be said for operating systems.
As long as teh cost of using MS products is less than switching, they is no reason to switch.
And if the swicthing costs are high becasue the competing products require too much effort to get people up and running, then it is they, not MS, that is to blame.
MS has a big advantage - network externalities such as the ability to send an MS generated file to almost anyone and have it work, which is not always true for competing products, make switching an iffy proposition.
Finally, better doesn't always win, especially when something else is the standard.
You assume the monopolist follows the law. (E.g. see the bloody monitor found in Netscape's bed...)
Also, the problem with high entrance cost.
(E.g. if a monopolist has a large area of monopoly, they can afford to undercut the prices longer than any competition is willing to wait -- so any possible competition goes into other areas of business.)
But once prices rise to a profitable level, competitors will enter, forcing another price drop.
BTW - your example has nothing to do with entrance costs.
In short, there are reasons that the laws regulating monopolies exists.
I'm not an economist, but I think this is a classic monopolist example.
Perhaps, but your conclusion is wrong.
Consider an area with many small bakeries. A big company goes in and opens bread shops with lower prices so the small shops have to close.
If they cannot compete long term becayue they believe the larger company can sustain the low prices.
Good for the consumers? No.
Sure - they're paying less for bread.
After the small companies close down, because of the lower prices from the big company, the prices are increased to higher than the small companies had before the big company went into the area!!
But then new competitors move in, because they can make a profit at the higher price, which forces the monolpolist to lower prices again, and keep them there, to keep out competition. If they echibit a pattern of lowering and raising prices, competitors will stay in beacuse they believe the low prices ar enot sustainable and eventually prices will rise to livable levels.
The profit from the high prices is used to undercut small businesses in the next area the big company takes over...
Except there is no excess profit to use this way - beacuse that will bring in competition, forcing prices down.
In the end, the consumer wins, because prices are lower than before.
And that doesn't even take into account the ability of stores to specialize to avoid competing in a commodity business where the bigger company has more power. (ever get a decent loaf of bread from a factory bakery?)
I take it you mean the low-voltage plug which goes into the printer.
Yes
But what's to stop me cutting off the two plugs which fit the printer, and joining the wires from the 230V power pack to the plug which came off the 110V power pack? Now I have a PSU which runs from 230V but fits a printer which originally came with a 110V PSU.
There'd only be 1 plug, with three pins - GND, DC out from 120, DC out from 240. You could cut the wires and make connectors to switch pins, but most people won't go through that hassle. HP could also make the connector some wierd shape so it'd be hard to get a good connection, making the printer unreliable.
An easier solution is just to put a step down bwteen the main and transformer; but then they could even do a frequency check so that the 120 pin would not be live unless it had a 60 cycle input.
My guess it's probably not worth the hassle (and increase in cost for the PS), since only a small fraction of users would want to modify a PS; and no matter what you do some will find a way.
If I was smart, I'd actually make the join using some sort of commonly available, standard connector in case I ever wated to swap back.
That's why I do it with one molded connector with several internal pins; rather than two seperate plugs.
We could go back and forth with the I do this, they do that; but since the margin is so low on the printer it isn't smart to try to stop the gray market at that level, so HP attacks it at the real source of profit - the cartridge.
Heh. I own a Brother 1440 (decent cheap laser) that cost $100. When I bought it, Office Depot wanted to sell me an extended warranty - cause the drum costs $150 and has to be replaced after some 10,000 or so pages. Not counting how long it takes to go through that much paper at home, I can buy a new printer for less than the drum (they're now $79 at OD) and only pay $40 more than the warranty (assuming it covers the drum since it is designed to wear out) and get a cartridge as well (although it is not a full one). Plus, by the time it wears out, they'll be newer models at the same price point.
As long as manufacturers try to make money on cartridges and not printers, they will essentially be throw aways.
How are they going to prevent me from importing a printer together with the cartridges?
If I had to do that, I'd put a different proprietary plug between the power brick and the printer, so I could still use a 120/240 brick with two DC output pins where only one pin is powered, depending on the input voltage. The cord then localizes the power supply.
The real point is why bother stopping gray market printer sales - printers don't cost that much more in Europe, and if you regional code the ink, you limit the size of the market for gray market inks. After all, what percentage of printer buyers will import US printers to save a few Euro's on ink? That shrinks the size of the gray market for ink to the point it would not be very profitable to import them, except for individuals who have friends / family in the US that can toss in a few carts when they travel overseas. That market isn't worth going after.
What this really does is add another level of hassle for non-OEM ink manufacturers - now they have to gage the size of the market and make ink market specific - they can't just make x amount of cartridges and then ship them wherever there is demand. So, under the guise of protecting themselves from currency fluctuations (which the could do with some financial engineering for a lot less hassle), they can limit competition and keep prices up; while also avoiding EU anti-competitive sanctions, since any third party could make a region specific cartridge that would work.
The same is true for foreign language learning. Some of the best results come from students who are allowed and encouraged to vocally produce their own sentences (NOT simply read, write, or translate) in dialogues with other students or people fluent in the target language.
I believe Dr. Feynman had the right idea - get a sleeping dictionary from the country where teh language is spoken.
It looks like most/.'s will remain monolingual, ay best...
Bose makes an amazing set of headphones that totally cancel almost all noise. You can listen to music, or a movie or whatever and not even hear the plane engine or anyone around you.
Actually, they don't cancel all noise - they cancel the consistent rumble from engines, but voice comes through pretty well, considering you're wearing headphones.
If you want noise isolation, go with in ear headphones such as Shure's E2/3/5 series or plain old ear plugs.
But how many times have you gotten a good book picked out and sit down to start reading on the flight, and get that "so whatcha reading?" And next thing you have heard their entire life story. You kept your face down in the book trying to discourage them. So I am not sure what is worse, having them drone on endlessly trying to talk to you or drone on endlessly talking to someone else. Either way it is extremely annoying.
That's why God made headphones. They're pretty clear way to say "Do not Disturb."
Slashdot Mirror
I know Macs are unpopular for desktops (never mind how many companies buy Windows desktops straight from Dell, that must REALLY count against Apple there)... but I have a hunch they're doing very well in the laptop arena.
University, perhaps - but not in the business world. I see a lot of people pull out laptops in airports and on planes, and I rarely see a Mac portable.
Two good exmaples of government facilitating infrastructure are electricity and telephone service. A similar situation existed, where companies had no incentive to provide those services to the rural areas of teh US (which were much more extensive than today), so the government stepped in to provide a way to get those services to those areas. The Rural Electrification Act created electrical cooperatives (amonsgts other things) that bought power from utilities and ran the infrastructure to their members. Toda, a lot of people in very urban areas still get their power from their EMC (or some variation on that name). Sure, it took tax money, but I think most people wouyld agree that it provided hugh benefits to everyone.
While looney libretarians (but I'm redundant there) may believe that free enterprise can solve every problem, the reality is that it will only provide what is profitable.
In a 2000 square foot video store, the manager told me that the little 150 square foot adult video area is responsible for 25% of their revenue.
Either this doesn't work on a nationwide level, or Blockbuster is just full of shit.
It doesn't work because of the ability for each community to block the sale and rental of adult videos, so Blockbuster would have to deal with thousands of different communities as it tries to decide who can carry what. Frankly, the legal fees, hassle and publicity aren't worth it. If it were easy and profitable, someone would have done it. But since it is more a less a local phenomena, that tells me it's yoo much trouble to replicate across the US.
Paramount cna now sell it as a package in syndication w/o more production costs. Plus, there's teh DVD release and maybe a movie or two.
The money's not in another season
Do a hotels near DCA serach - it shows the Sheraton north of teh Marriott Crystal Gateway, it is actually a block or so south - I think they reversed the pushpins
John Boy is the real file swapper.
the need to protect innovation is still there
Actually, it's the need to encourage innovation.
Well, I'd argue that patents protect innovation and a free market economy encourages innovation through the possibility of rewards, but that's really just a semantic difference more than a philosophical one. Either way, we need to protect, encourage and reward innovation in order to foster it.
Protection is the means, to encourage innovation is the end. And there are deep and serious questions regarding whether software patenting promotes or retards innovation in general.
I think were are in violent agreement overall. Our current patent system was designed for an economy where new ideas where innovation resulted in tangible items that expressed the idea, and patents protected that expression, not the fundamental concept. For example, I could patent a mechanical cash register, but not th idea of exchanging money and calculating how much change to give.
The problem with software patents is that software carries out an action, or enables carrying out existing actions (buying goods) in a new medium; and the manner in which underlying code can carry that out can be very different. As a result, people can't protect the way the task is accomplished by copyrighting the code, since non-infringing code code be created, so people have patented the what, not the how. Even though much of the what is merely restating things that have been accomplished in other mediums for some time (imagine someone trying to patent the "travel by steamship" in the age of sail) our system has allowed it because, and therefore needs to be changed.
Your sentiment would be correct if this were an open market and a level playing field for all competitors. When software patents are brought into the picture, they are first used to intimidate the customer away from what otherwise might be a technically superior product, and then later on actual lawsuits can be brought to remove that competitor from the market. When a product and competitor are removed for non-technical reasons, quality in general declines due to the decreased need for the remaining products to compete. Prices increase for the same reason. And the consumer loses.
If by level playing field you mean that ideas should not be patentable, there isn't a level playing field, in the US at least, due to our Constitution. Patents are designed to protect the owner's rights to use the idea for a limited period of time. To that extent, Linux (and any other software) must either not violate the patent or obtain a license to use it. Simply not charging is not enough. Eventually, after the patent expires, everyone benefits from teh right to use the inovation, so society and the individual creator 's needs are counterbalanced to benefit both.
Now, is the patent system messed up and should patent laws be revised to deal with new tech? Certainly, but the need to protect innovation is still there; just as copyrights are needed to protect other types of work. I think we can agree that their is a need for IP, otherwise there would be very little motivation for innovation if you couldn't profit from it.
As a side note, I had a friend whose company developed a software control for a manufacturing process, only to wind up in a patent dispute with someone who had a patent on a mechanical process to do the same thing; so it's not just software patents that can be a problem.
I care a whole lot.
Yes, but what we should care about is wether the consumer benefits, not its impact on Linux or any other OS.
If consumers get a better product for less, they they win. If Linux suffers, then it is beacuse it hasn't convinced consumers that it is better, and deserves its fate.
OSS is a good, but not only, model for software development. In a free market, a company has a right to decide how to go to market and whether to share its work.
If all you want is the occasional discount at the register, use made up info. No chain has yet refused to enroll Mr A T Hun,Brad Majors,Bat Guano, or Jesus H Christ.
Wasn't that stardate 1173?
HAND
Now you need to recoup that money, but supply and demand dictates you can only raise prices so high.
You keep asserting this, but the classic monopolies, the trusts from which the antitrust laws take their name, managed to effectively control supply through tactics that are now illegal. This is basic economics, and your assertions otherwise are unconvincing.
Controlling supply does not mean you control demand, the other half of the supply / demand curves.
Take Standard Oil, one of the classic trusts - analysis of their actions reveal not only did they maintain lower prices but they bought competitors at fair market value. In short, the rational for breaking up trusts was wrong. there is a classic article on the topic, BTW.
The problem is peopl assume because a company is large and powerful that it is automatically bad fo rthem - whithout asking the basic question - how am I hurt. Lower prices hardly hurt a consumer, and to maintain a monolpoly you need to keep prices low enough to keep out competition.
So whether Microsoft is "really" a monopoly in the classic sense of the term is an interesting theoretical question. Also interesting is whether it might be net beneficial for their to be a privately owned OS monopoly: there are certain benefits to everybody using the same things.
There are a number of advantages to a standard OS - which is why the market chose one, and MS just happened to be the winner. The network externalities are hugh, and costs are reduced because companies don't need to make multiple versions to run on different OS and users can share data and learn one way of using systems so taht knowledge is portable.
It's alot like electricity - if we had AC / DC and various voltages, the cost of appliances would be much larger, not to mention that every company would string wires to serve customers (as was the situation earlier in the 20th century).
but until you show some undertstanding of economics
you're knee jerk reaction and repetition of discredited theories makes me wonder if you really understand even Econ 101.
In order to build up cash reserves, monoploists must rais eprices, but if they raise prices, then competitors move in.
If they keep prices low enough so ocmpetitors don't move in, consumers benefit from lower prices.
There's substantial lag here. If I drive all the bakeries in a city out of business, I can make quite a bit of money before somebody has time to open even one bakery. And really, to keep my prices down, they need to compete with all of my bakeries, not just one of them. Otherwise I just subsidize the bakeries near them.
First of all, you need to spend money to build out to the point where you can have an impact on prices, then lose money keeping pices low. Now you need to recoup that money, but supply and demand dictates you can only raise prices so high.
So to successfully get back to non-monopoly conditions, somebody needs to start with all the money I have plus enough money to open all the stores I have plus enough money to get an equal share of the customers coming to the new stores. And even that may not be enough, as the establishd monopoly will have a easier time raising more money than the upstart. It's not impossible, but it's a huge barrier to entry. One small businessman cannot successfully challenge a monopoly.
If startup costs are high, companies will stay in business betting the cost cutter will run out of money before they do; especially since the have to make up for their startup costs. If they are low, it's better to exit the business and reenter when prices rise.
In either case, your notion that a competitor must have as much money as the monopolist is incorrect.
Look at the software business - I can get software with more features, for less money (in real dollars) than I could in 1979 when there were a number of competitors in thw home PC market, none of which were anywhere close to a monopoly. And that's not even counting the number of free equivalents to commercial products.
if a monopoly can keep out competitors and maintain high prices, they software market isn't exhibiting such behavior.
But then new competitors move in, because they can make a profit at the higher price, which forces the monolpolist to lower prices again, and keep them there, to keep out competition. If they echibit a pattern of lowering and raising prices, competitors will stay in beacuse they believe the low prices ar enot sustainable and eventually prices will rise to livable levels.
This is only the case if the competitor believes they have enough money to outlast the monopolist. But the monopolist can build up large cash reserves, and they need only drop prices where the competitors are actually present, using areas without competition to subsidize the areas where there is an active challenge.
In order to build up cash reserves, monoploists must rais eprices, but if they raise prices, then competitors move in.
If they keep prices low enough so ocmpetitors don't move in, consumers benefit from lower prices.
So by and large, you don't get competitors to monopolies because people know it's a losing game to go head to head with a monopoly.
Which is why Red Hat, Apple, IBM, Sun, Novel all avoid competing with MS.
Switching from Microsoft is more than a cost issue. Just look at the available alternatives to MS Office. Most are cheaper (or even free) and offer the same, similar, or better features and quality. Yet people aren't dropping MS Office like a hot potatoe because of the hassle involved in switching. (In the case of businesses, "hassle" equates to "cost" and "lost production".) The same could be said for operating systems.
As long as teh cost of using MS products is less than switching, they is no reason to switch.
And if the swicthing costs are high becasue the competing products require too much effort to get people up and running, then it is they, not MS, that is to blame.
MS has a big advantage - network externalities such as the ability to send an MS generated file to almost anyone and have it work, which is not always true for competing products, make switching an iffy proposition.
Finally, better doesn't always win, especially when something else is the standard.
But then new competitors move in
It's not so easy in practice.
You assume the monopolist follows the law. (E.g. see the bloody monitor found in Netscape's bed...)
Also, the problem with high entrance cost.
(E.g. if a monopolist has a large area of monopoly, they can afford to undercut the prices longer than any competition is willing to wait -- so any possible competition goes into other areas of business.)
But once prices rise to a profitable level, competitors will enter, forcing another price drop.
BTW - your example has nothing to do with entrance costs.
In short, there are reasons that the laws regulating monopolies exists.
True, but helping consumers is not one of them.
I'm not an economist, but I think this is a classic monopolist example.
Perhaps, but your conclusion is wrong.
Consider an area with many small bakeries. A big company goes in and opens bread shops with lower prices so the small shops have to close.
If they cannot compete long term becayue they believe the larger company can sustain the low prices.
Good for the consumers? No.
Sure - they're paying less for bread.
After the small companies close down, because of the lower prices from the big company, the prices are increased to higher than the small companies had before the big company went into the area!!
But then new competitors move in, because they can make a profit at the higher price, which forces the monolpolist to lower prices again, and keep them there, to keep out competition. If they echibit a pattern of lowering and raising prices, competitors will stay in beacuse they believe the low prices ar enot sustainable and eventually prices will rise to livable levels.
The profit from the high prices is used to undercut small businesses in the next area the big company takes over...
Except there is no excess profit to use this way - beacuse that will bring in competition, forcing prices down.
In the end, the consumer wins, because prices are lower than before.
And that doesn't even take into account the ability of stores to specialize to avoid competing in a commodity business where the bigger company has more power. (ever get a decent loaf of bread from a factory bakery?)
I take it you mean the low-voltage plug which goes into the printer.
Yes
But what's to stop me cutting off the two plugs which fit the printer, and joining the wires from the 230V power pack to the plug which came off the 110V power pack? Now I have a PSU which runs from 230V but fits a printer which originally came with a 110V PSU.
There'd only be 1 plug, with three pins - GND, DC out from 120, DC out from 240. You could cut the wires and make connectors to switch pins, but most people won't go through that hassle. HP could also make the connector some wierd shape so it'd be hard to get a good connection, making the printer unreliable.
An easier solution is just to put a step down bwteen the main and transformer; but then they could even do a frequency check so that the 120 pin would not be live unless it had a 60 cycle input.
My guess it's probably not worth the hassle (and increase in cost for the PS), since only a small fraction of users would want to modify a PS; and no matter what you do some will find a way.
If I was smart, I'd actually make the join using some sort of commonly available, standard connector in case I ever wated to swap back.
That's why I do it with one molded connector with several internal pins; rather than two seperate plugs.
We could go back and forth with the I do this, they do that; but since the margin is so low on the printer it isn't smart to try to stop the gray market at that level, so HP attacks it at the real source of profit - the cartridge.
No
Heh. I own a Brother 1440 (decent cheap laser) that cost $100. When I bought it, Office Depot wanted to sell me an extended warranty - cause the drum costs $150 and has to be replaced after some 10,000 or so pages. Not counting how long it takes to go through that much paper at home, I can buy a new printer for less than the drum (they're now $79 at OD) and only pay $40 more than the warranty (assuming it covers the drum since it is designed to wear out) and get a cartridge as well (although it is not a full one). Plus, by the time it wears out, they'll be newer models at the same price point.
As long as manufacturers try to make money on cartridges and not printers, they will essentially be throw aways.
How are they going to prevent me from importing a printer together with the cartridges?
If I had to do that, I'd put a different proprietary plug between the power brick and the printer, so I could still use a 120/240 brick with two DC output pins where only one pin is powered, depending on the input voltage. The cord then localizes the power supply.
The real point is why bother stopping gray market printer sales - printers don't cost that much more in Europe, and if you regional code the ink, you limit the size of the market for gray market inks. After all, what percentage of printer buyers will import US printers to save a few Euro's on ink? That shrinks the size of the gray market for ink to the point it would not be very profitable to import them, except for individuals who have friends / family in the US that can toss in a few carts when they travel overseas. That market isn't worth going after.
What this really does is add another level of hassle for non-OEM ink manufacturers - now they have to gage the size of the market and make ink market specific - they can't just make x amount of cartridges and then ship them wherever there is demand. So, under the guise of protecting themselves from currency fluctuations (which the could do with some financial engineering for a lot less hassle), they can limit competition and keep prices up; while also avoiding EU anti-competitive sanctions, since any third party could make a region specific cartridge that would work.
So , if understand this correctly,in the US you have to pay for sms you send and recieve,even without knowing that you wanted to recieve that message?
It probably varies by provider, but Verizon charges for incoming and outgoing messages.
Solution - block text messaging - that way none get through.
The same is true for foreign language learning. Some of the best results come from students who are allowed and encouraged to vocally produce their own sentences (NOT simply read, write, or translate) in dialogues with other students or people fluent in the target language.
/.'s will remain monolingual, ay best...
I believe Dr. Feynman had the right idea - get a sleeping dictionary from the country where teh language is spoken.
It looks like most
Bose makes an amazing set of headphones that totally cancel almost all noise. You can listen to music, or a movie or whatever and not even hear the plane engine or anyone around you.
Actually, they don't cancel all noise - they cancel the consistent rumble from engines, but voice comes through pretty well, considering you're wearing headphones.
If you want noise isolation, go with in ear headphones such as Shure's E2/3/5 series or plain old ear plugs.
But how many times have you gotten a good book picked out and sit down to start reading on the flight, and get that "so whatcha reading?" And next thing you have heard their entire life story. You kept your face down in the book trying to discourage them. So I am not sure what is worse, having them drone on endlessly trying to talk to you or drone on endlessly talking to someone else. Either way it is extremely annoying.
That's why God made headphones. They're pretty clear way to say "Do not Disturb."