Right now I pay about $38 for extended basic cable, $40 for a cable modem, and $25 for a telephone. Now $38+40+25=$103, which is significantly less than $230. Even if I upgraded to digital cable, threw in a couple of premium channels, and included my long-distance phone calls, I'd still be well south of $200.
But here's the big question. If AOL/TW were to provide multiple services over the cable infrastructure, the price they charge to consumers should be LESS (certainly no greater than) the cost of the services obtained from multiple providers.
Infrastructure would be less costly to maintain for a variety of reasons. Even if the development costs were high, they could not pass those sunk costs on to consumers: if they charge a premium price, no one would switch to their services. This inability to recoup investment costs because of existing alternatives already available has as much to do with the delayed launch of "interactive digital convergence monopoly provider" services as anything.
Recording artists and movie stars command very high fees for their services. If we were to offer them significantly less, many of the most talented and popular artists would simply go into retirement. In short, no pay, no play.
Sure, the studios make large profits on hit movies and albums. However, there are also our fair share of bombs. At the end of the day, our return on investment is not significantly different from that in other industries.
We realize the consumers' desires to make personal copies, pass programming onto friends, etc. We simply cannot make a profit without sufficient copy protections to ensure that people actually buy our products.
Although there are good consumers who would abide by our copyrights if we removed all watermarking and other copy-prohibiting technologies. Both you and we know that there are always a few bad apples in the cart, and we must take preventative measures to protect our copyrighted material. Instead of directing your anger at us, why don't you join us in our efforts to track down people engaged in illegal activites?
The idea that information is free is simply not true. Without a way of paying the producers for their time and effort, the amount of material would evaporate until nearly nothing remains.
A person in the article states, "The rising popularity of Linux in these communities is now doing this job for Sun and reduced the burden of promoting Solaris."
When it comes to the x86 platform, Linux is ubiquitous, and there are thousands of precompiled binaries available for it. AFAIK, unless one is willing to compile everything from source, the number of apps available for x86 Solaris is much smaller.
This is nothing more than the free market at work. Consumers choose the best product for a job based on ease of use, availability, and other factors. For most x86 users, there is not enough of a difference between running Linux and Solaris to justify the support of the latter.
Although this product is "only" two-channel stereo, it sounds absolutely incredible compared to all other sound cards/add-ons that I've ever heard of!
Re:Personalization? Creepy...
on
Making It Personal
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I think you are confusing personalization and hard salesmanship.
When I talk to a CSR with a company I do business with, whether it's my local bank or a supplier for my company, I actually prefer if the person at the other end of the line knows who I am and knows what I have done in the past. It helps to streamline the communications between us, and by knowing why I have called in the past, they can better serve me.
Of course, no one wants to call a company, only for them to use the opportunity to sell you more stuff, but personalization isn't just about trying to sell you something new everytime you call. It's about building a relationship with you so that they can serve you better and keep your business in the long run.
Some businesses really want to treat their customers as best they can and look out for the customers' best interests, and personalization helps make that possible. It's good business strategy. I think that's what the MBA-types would call a win-win situation.
If ever there were a time when the middle ground was most appropriate, this is it.
According to the 1992 Act people are entitled to produce a copy of purchased music for their own, private use. Ergo, CD copy-prevention software takes away that right; and therefore record companies should be banned from using it.
However, I also noticed that a representative from Napster is to speak at this conference. Although there are legitimate uses for these P2P file sharing networks, Napster and its peers have the legal and ethical responsibility to make sure that their networks are used only for legal purposes. If rampant trading of copyrighted music is the norm for these networks (as I believe it is), then indeed they should be forced to shut down.
Purchasing a CD does not give one the right to distribute copies of the music to anyone he wishes. However, by law if someone wants to make a cassette tape (or MP3 file) for his own personal consumption, he does have that right; and the RIAA should not be allowed to nullify that right without very strong evidence that it is being abused by a large portion of the consuming public.
One major pitfall of the these new chips is that they use RDRAM, which is dramatically more expensive than plain-vanilla SDRAM. In fact, for the consumer market (including gamers without a ton of $$$), I think they've really got to start paying attention to memory prices--lots of RDRAM can blow the budget as fast as anything.
From the article I gathered that these electron guns are really a type of semiconductor, meaning that they can be controlled rather precisely.
That got me thinking. Currently, all CRT's have one set of electron guns at the center of the screen. Would it be possible to partition the screen into, say, four areas, each of which is painted by it's own set of guns.
This would have many advantages. Displays could be thinner, larger screens with higher resolution could be made, and (possibly) less energy would be required since the electrons from the guns would not have to fly nearly as far.
It seems the only tricky part would be getting the borders of adjacent areas to line up properly.
Not much of a threat (?)
on
Linux Virus Alert
·
· Score: 2, Informative
According to the article, the virus uses the exterior gateway protocol (EGP). I've never heard of this, though I could just be naive.
What services use this EGP protocol?
I'm assuming that if my box doesn't run anything that uses this, then it's not vulnerable to exploitation.
I noticed in the article that there was a passage saying that the open source nature of open source software appeals to Communist China.
First, let me state that I am a capitalist and firmly believe in the rights of companies and organizations to develop closed-source software and charge money for it. Many of my most frequently used programs (all for Linux) are closed-source and cost me a pretty penny to acquire. I believe in paying for software when I provides me with the services I need.
However, I also use open source software from time to time. Although many teenage Slashdotters seem to think that open source is necessarily good and commericial software is automatically evil, I believe the two paradigms can continue to exist side by side ad infinitum.
My contributing code for free to an open source project does not diminish my standing as a capitalist. Open source software is great. However, just because software is available for free (as in beer) does not make it a communist product.
At $19 it's reasonably priced, but is it really necessary? Redhat's printtool has always worked fine for me, and it's easy to use.
I guess the real question is how well it can handle some of the cheap Windows-only printers that are given away for $99 that don't have Linux drivers available anywhere. If it really can support a lot of these, then $99+$19 is still cheap for a printer.
Do any other Slashdot readers match my profile? I enjoy using computers running Linux as much as the next geek, but I hate all these stupid little gadgets.
I don't own a cell phone or a pager, my trusty PDA is a pad of 3x3 post-it notes, and I've never listened to an MP3 file. Yes, I do own a very nice CD player, but I still prefer my turntable; and my stereo amplifier and preamplifier use vacuum tubes.
Seriously, how many people really *want* to have and carry around all these gadgets? I sure don't.
I figured that I get somewhere around 30-40,000 pieces of spam annually. Lucky me... I get *this* statistic to be on the other side of the bell curve:)
The normal distribution, aka the "bell curve", has absolutely nothing to do with the distribution of the number of pieces of spam received annually. If anything, I would guess that the distribution has a long right tail: most people receive somewhere around the median amount of spam, but a relatively few users (such as slashdot readers) receive a much larger amount.
In general, numbers of anything do not just happen to be normally distributed. Central limit theory discusses the asymptotic normal distribution of sample means under suitable conditions, but generally very little can be said about the underlying population's distribution. Please refrain from talking about something having a particular distribution unless you know (or can test statistically) that it does. It's usually a sign of ignorance.
From what I gather, DRAM prices actually bottomed late in the summer and then have had a rather sharp run-up in the wholesale market over the past few months. In fact, MU has doubled from its post-9/11 low of around $16 to $32 now.
In terms of market structure, prior to Toshiba's divesture I think 4 companies produced about 80% of the world DRAM supply. Is this level of concentration sufficient to maintain collusive behavior? It all depends.
In one commonly used model of price wars, the memory chip market is in fact collusive. A key assumption is that firms cannot perfectly predict demand conditions ahead of time. Suppose that you and I are the only two producers, and we agree to the following arrangement. In period 1 we both will charge $1. If at the end of period 1 the realized price is $0.90 or greater, we charge $1 in period 2. If it is less than $0.90 cents, we begin a punishment phase in period 2 and charge our marginal cost (and earn zero profits). The realized price may differ from the ex ante declared price because of weak demand for the product or because of cheating. Finally, if the punishment phase has been in effect for 3 periods, we then revert to charging $1; in other words, the punishment lasts 3 periods.
This may in fact characterize the DRAM market. Because of a fall-off in demand for memory late last year and into this year, prices plummeted. Hence, the four DRAM producers began a punishment-phase price war. In the past several months demand for PC's and DRAM has stabilized somewhat, and the firms (ex post) realize this. The price war is now over, and the firms are returning to a high-demand stage where the higher collusive price is charged.
Perhaps this sounds implausible to you, but in fact it is one of the most common models of collusive behavior in the economics profession. Of course, I've left out a ton of details, but the main point is clear: firms in an industry cannot perfectly observe demand, and so falling prices (whether due to low demand or actual cheating) must result in punishment. Once the punishment phase is over and demand returns to its normal level, the higher cartel price can again be charged.
(1) I've been under the impression that Linksys usually follows other home networking companies like 3Com. It's good to see them taking the lead in introducing a new product.
(2) I've always had good success with Linksys hubs, switches, and NIC's in the past; and I appreciate their low cost. I'm sure this will be a good product, too.
Now for a question: I don't fully understand how the electrical grid outside my house works, but what is to prevent my next-door neighbor from buying one of these powergrid devices and "borrowing" my bandwidth?
Based on the few excerpts of the Senate hearings I heard on TV yesterday, I would be surprised if in fact the proposed DoJ/MSFT settlement is allowed to go forth. It was rather clear to me that most Democrats as well as Republican Orrin Hatch (from Novell country) are outraged.
IANAL, but I wonder to what extent the presiding judge pays attention to the media and how this will affect her decision. On the one hand, judges are not supposed to be swayed by media reporting, yet the judge is supposed to consider public comments about the proposed settlement. To the extent that Senators represent their constituents' beliefs and needs, the judge may give some weight to these types of Congressional hearings.
god, i forget what the term is, but there's an economics word for this. old people and students get discounts in the real world, non-workers get discounts in the virtual one. annoying, but fair.
It's called third-degree price discrimination. Basically, a firm has a way to segment its consumers into different groups, and it can therefore charge each group a different price based on that particular group's elasticity of demand. At a movie theater, consumers can be differentiated by requiring a student ID card, for example; the cable companies' problem is that they have difficulty being able to determine which group to which a consumer should belong.
[bpoi@beast]$./shit.pl
Reversed/= operator at./shit.pl line 5.
syntax error at./shit.pl line 6, near "&&}"
Execution of./shit.pl aborted due to compilation errors.
Nice try, but it doesn't work.
Re:Firmware was posted...
on
Review: SliMP3
·
· Score: 1
I know I am going to get flamed royally for saying this, but let me also state that I think M$ is evil.
CmdrTaco and many others have stated a desire to have the underlying code of this product to be open-sourced or otherwise made publicly available. This is a classic example of where, IMHO, the company has absolutely no reason, pecuniary or ethical, to make hacking this product any easier.
The company produces a product to allow people to do one particular activity: play MP3 files using the software and other mechanisms provided with the hardware. Nothing more, nothing less. Many alternative devices are also available, so if someone does not like this model's features, he is able to purchase alternatives. There are no significant network externalities, tie ins, or other economic forces at work which warrant any type of oversight. The firm provides a product. Don't like it, don't buy it. Having a non-open-source system will not stop the vast majority of people from purchasing it.
If a person wishes to hack this product, all the more power to him. However, by doing so he is in fact using the product for a purpose for which it was not originally intended; and so the company has no responsibility whatsoever to that customer in supporting his endeavors.
Having open, commonly accepted protocols for services which are important to a large number of people is certainly important. In this respect, forcing to have M$ openly declare, for example, its SMB protocal and.doc file formats would have important benefits to society. However, demanding to know the (possibly proprietary) protocol used by a single MP3 player, for which there are many competitive products, is ludicrous.
With its small display, slow processor, and limited amount of RAM, it may not make a very good second PC. However, it seems more than adequate to run a basic X terminal. The 800x600 display would be adequate for having a couple of xterm sessions open or a web browser for casual surfing.
What would be nice is if someone were able to make a boot floppy or boot ROM for a NIC so that this machine could be used with the Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) or some similar software. At $100, it would be great for use in schools, libraries, internet cafes, and other places where little more than a browser is needed and the additional components of a PC such as a hard drive and multiple removable media drives are more of a hassle than anything else.
Admittedly, some areas do not yet have access to cable or DSL internet access. Installing transmitters atop telephone poles may reduce the cost of providing the "last mile" of service in small towns, but I'm not sure it will greatly increase overall coverage; people living in remote areas may continue to be SOL in getting high-speed access.
That said, the monthly $39-$49 cost is comparable to current options, yet the speed is only stated to be 128 kbps (though actual throughput may be higher). If potential customers have a choice between Ricochet and cable or DSL, most would choose one of the latter alternatives because of the speed.
While 128 kbps is certainly better than a modem, the real test of this company's future is whether it can provide service in markets which are not served by cable or DSL. Otherwise, I am not sure how large a market share it could garner.
Slashdot Mirror
But here's the big question. If AOL/TW were to provide multiple services over the cable infrastructure, the price they charge to consumers should be LESS (certainly no greater than) the cost of the services obtained from multiple providers.
Infrastructure would be less costly to maintain for a variety of reasons. Even if the development costs were high, they could not pass those sunk costs on to consumers: if they charge a premium price, no one would switch to their services. This inability to recoup investment costs because of existing alternatives already available has as much to do with the delayed launch of "interactive digital convergence monopoly provider" services as anything.
Entertainment companies sell movies on DVD so that people may watch them at home on DVD players produced by consumer electronics companies.
If the DVD format is not suitable for you, don't buy it.
Sure, the studios make large profits on hit movies and albums. However, there are also our fair share of bombs. At the end of the day, our return on investment is not significantly different from that in other industries.
We realize the consumers' desires to make personal copies, pass programming onto friends, etc. We simply cannot make a profit without sufficient copy protections to ensure that people actually buy our products.
Although there are good consumers who would abide by our copyrights if we removed all watermarking and other copy-prohibiting technologies. Both you and we know that there are always a few bad apples in the cart, and we must take preventative measures to protect our copyrighted material. Instead of directing your anger at us, why don't you join us in our efforts to track down people engaged in illegal activites?
The idea that information is free is simply not true. Without a way of paying the producers for their time and effort, the amount of material would evaporate until nearly nothing remains.
Okay, flame away :-)
When it comes to the x86 platform, Linux is ubiquitous, and there are thousands of precompiled binaries available for it. AFAIK, unless one is willing to compile everything from source, the number of apps available for x86 Solaris is much smaller.
This is nothing more than the free market at work. Consumers choose the best product for a job based on ease of use, availability, and other factors. For most x86 users, there is not enough of a difference between running Linux and Solaris to justify the support of the latter.
Although this product is "only" two-channel stereo, it sounds absolutely incredible compared to all other sound cards/add-ons that I've ever heard of!
When I talk to a CSR with a company I do business with, whether it's my local bank or a supplier for my company, I actually prefer if the person at the other end of the line knows who I am and knows what I have done in the past. It helps to streamline the communications between us, and by knowing why I have called in the past, they can better serve me.
Of course, no one wants to call a company, only for them to use the opportunity to sell you more stuff, but personalization isn't just about trying to sell you something new everytime you call. It's about building a relationship with you so that they can serve you better and keep your business in the long run.
Some businesses really want to treat their customers as best they can and look out for the customers' best interests, and personalization helps make that possible. It's good business strategy. I think that's what the MBA-types would call a win-win situation.
According to the 1992 Act people are entitled to produce a copy of purchased music for their own, private use. Ergo, CD copy-prevention software takes away that right; and therefore record companies should be banned from using it.
However, I also noticed that a representative from Napster is to speak at this conference. Although there are legitimate uses for these P2P file sharing networks, Napster and its peers have the legal and ethical responsibility to make sure that their networks are used only for legal purposes. If rampant trading of copyrighted music is the norm for these networks (as I believe it is), then indeed they should be forced to shut down.
Purchasing a CD does not give one the right to distribute copies of the music to anyone he wishes. However, by law if someone wants to make a cassette tape (or MP3 file) for his own personal consumption, he does have that right; and the RIAA should not be allowed to nullify that right without very strong evidence that it is being abused by a large portion of the consuming public.
One major pitfall of the these new chips is that they use RDRAM, which is dramatically more expensive than plain-vanilla SDRAM. In fact, for the consumer market (including gamers without a ton of $$$), I think they've really got to start paying attention to memory prices--lots of RDRAM can blow the budget as fast as anything.
That got me thinking. Currently, all CRT's have one set of electron guns at the center of the screen. Would it be possible to partition the screen into, say, four areas, each of which is painted by it's own set of guns.
This would have many advantages. Displays could be thinner, larger screens with higher resolution could be made, and (possibly) less energy would be required since the electrons from the guns would not have to fly nearly as far.
It seems the only tricky part would be getting the borders of adjacent areas to line up properly.
What services use this EGP protocol?
I'm assuming that if my box doesn't run anything that uses this, then it's not vulnerable to exploitation.
Berkeley has Republican professors? Get out of here. No way in hell.
First, let me state that I am a capitalist and firmly believe in the rights of companies and organizations to develop closed-source software and charge money for it. Many of my most frequently used programs (all for Linux) are closed-source and cost me a pretty penny to acquire. I believe in paying for software when I provides me with the services I need.
However, I also use open source software from time to time. Although many teenage Slashdotters seem to think that open source is necessarily good and commericial software is automatically evil, I believe the two paradigms can continue to exist side by side ad infinitum.
My contributing code for free to an open source project does not diminish my standing as a capitalist. Open source software is great. However, just because software is available for free (as in beer) does not make it a communist product.
Well stated. It seems like many of these electronic gizmos are designed for people too lazy to think ahead. I like being disconnected sometimes.
Unfortunately, it's Windows only, and I've been Windows-free for six months!!!
I guess the real question is how well it can handle some of the cheap Windows-only printers that are given away for $99 that don't have Linux drivers available anywhere. If it really can support a lot of these, then $99+$19 is still cheap for a printer.
I don't own a cell phone or a pager, my trusty PDA is a pad of 3x3 post-it notes, and I've never listened to an MP3 file. Yes, I do own a very nice CD player, but I still prefer my turntable; and my stereo amplifier and preamplifier use vacuum tubes.
Seriously, how many people really *want* to have and carry around all these gadgets? I sure don't.
Merry Christmas to all my Slashdot friends!
I figured that I get somewhere around 30-40,000 pieces of spam annually. Lucky me... I get *this* statistic to be on the other side of the bell curve :)
The normal distribution, aka the "bell curve", has absolutely nothing to do with the distribution of the number of pieces of spam received annually. If anything, I would guess that the distribution has a long right tail: most people receive somewhere around the median amount of spam, but a relatively few users (such as slashdot readers) receive a much larger amount.
In general, numbers of anything do not just happen to be normally distributed. Central limit theory discusses the asymptotic normal distribution of sample means under suitable conditions, but generally very little can be said about the underlying population's distribution. Please refrain from talking about something having a particular distribution unless you know (or can test statistically) that it does. It's usually a sign of ignorance.
In terms of market structure, prior to Toshiba's divesture I think 4 companies produced about 80% of the world DRAM supply. Is this level of concentration sufficient to maintain collusive behavior? It all depends.
In one commonly used model of price wars, the memory chip market is in fact collusive. A key assumption is that firms cannot perfectly predict demand conditions ahead of time. Suppose that you and I are the only two producers, and we agree to the following arrangement. In period 1 we both will charge $1. If at the end of period 1 the realized price is $0.90 or greater, we charge $1 in period 2. If it is less than $0.90 cents, we begin a punishment phase in period 2 and charge our marginal cost (and earn zero profits). The realized price may differ from the ex ante declared price because of weak demand for the product or because of cheating. Finally, if the punishment phase has been in effect for 3 periods, we then revert to charging $1; in other words, the punishment lasts 3 periods.
This may in fact characterize the DRAM market. Because of a fall-off in demand for memory late last year and into this year, prices plummeted. Hence, the four DRAM producers began a punishment-phase price war. In the past several months demand for PC's and DRAM has stabilized somewhat, and the firms (ex post) realize this. The price war is now over, and the firms are returning to a high-demand stage where the higher collusive price is charged.
Perhaps this sounds implausible to you, but in fact it is one of the most common models of collusive behavior in the economics profession. Of course, I've left out a ton of details, but the main point is clear: firms in an industry cannot perfectly observe demand, and so falling prices (whether due to low demand or actual cheating) must result in punishment. Once the punishment phase is over and demand returns to its normal level, the higher cartel price can again be charged.
(2) I've always had good success with Linksys hubs, switches, and NIC's in the past; and I appreciate their low cost. I'm sure this will be a good product, too.
Now for a question: I don't fully understand how the electrical grid outside my house works, but what is to prevent my next-door neighbor from buying one of these powergrid devices and "borrowing" my bandwidth?
IANAL, but I wonder to what extent the presiding judge pays attention to the media and how this will affect her decision. On the one hand, judges are not supposed to be swayed by media reporting, yet the judge is supposed to consider public comments about the proposed settlement. To the extent that Senators represent their constituents' beliefs and needs, the judge may give some weight to these types of Congressional hearings.
It's called third-degree price discrimination. Basically, a firm has a way to segment its consumers into different groups, and it can therefore charge each group a different price based on that particular group's elasticity of demand. At a movie theater, consumers can be differentiated by requiring a student ID card, for example; the cable companies' problem is that they have difficulty being able to determine which group to which a consumer should belong.
@P=split//,".URRUU\c8R";@d=split//,"\nrekcah xinU / lreP rehtona tsuJ";sub p{
@p{"r$p","u$p"}=(P,P);pipe"r$p","u$p";++$p;($q*
($p{$_})&6];$p{$_}=/ ^$P/ix?$P:close$_}keys%p}p;p;p;p;p;map{$p{$_}=~/^
close$_}%p;wait until$?;map{/^r/&&}%p;$_=$d[$q];sleep rand(2)if/\S/;print
[bpoi@beast]$
Reversed
syntax error at
Execution of
Nice try, but it doesn't work.
CmdrTaco and many others have stated a desire to have the underlying code of this product to be open-sourced or otherwise made publicly available. This is a classic example of where, IMHO, the company has absolutely no reason, pecuniary or ethical, to make hacking this product any easier.
The company produces a product to allow people to do one particular activity: play MP3 files using the software and other mechanisms provided with the hardware. Nothing more, nothing less. Many alternative devices are also available, so if someone does not like this model's features, he is able to purchase alternatives. There are no significant network externalities, tie ins, or other economic forces at work which warrant any type of oversight. The firm provides a product. Don't like it, don't buy it. Having a non-open-source system will not stop the vast majority of people from purchasing it.
If a person wishes to hack this product, all the more power to him. However, by doing so he is in fact using the product for a purpose for which it was not originally intended; and so the company has no responsibility whatsoever to that customer in supporting his endeavors.
Having open, commonly accepted protocols for services which are important to a large number of people is certainly important. In this respect, forcing to have M$ openly declare, for example, its SMB protocal and .doc file formats would have important benefits to society. However, demanding to know the (possibly proprietary) protocol used by a single MP3 player, for which there are many competitive products, is ludicrous.
What would be nice is if someone were able to make a boot floppy or boot ROM for a NIC so that this machine could be used with the Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) or some similar software. At $100, it would be great for use in schools, libraries, internet cafes, and other places where little more than a browser is needed and the additional components of a PC such as a hard drive and multiple removable media drives are more of a hassle than anything else.
That said, the monthly $39-$49 cost is comparable to current options, yet the speed is only stated to be 128 kbps (though actual throughput may be higher). If potential customers have a choice between Ricochet and cable or DSL, most would choose one of the latter alternatives because of the speed.
While 128 kbps is certainly better than a modem, the real test of this company's future is whether it can provide service in markets which are not served by cable or DSL. Otherwise, I am not sure how large a market share it could garner.