There is the video and audio chat in Yahoo Internet Messenger (which I have used for chats between the US and Baghdad), and also there is video in AIM (but only for Windows XP). I'm currently watching my puppies who are at home from work right now using Yahoo Internet Messenger.
It also remains to be seen whether the costs of climate change outweigh the costs of reducing CO2 emmissions globally. There are a lot of poor people on the planet who die of diseases that could be easilly treated or even cured if they were economically developed (which will probably include enhanced CO2 emmissions).
Humanity made it through the last hypotherm, if we are all rich (Western standard of living), we might make it through the next one as well.
"Internet use" is not a product. Delivery of Internet service over cable, FTTH, satellite, WiFi, MMDS, EVDO, or dial-up, those are products.
Keep in mind that cable companies are granted exclusive monopoly rights by local governments - they are already significantly outside the competitive market world. Most people have a choice of two or more satellite providers, but only one cable provider.
Here are the economics. Imagine a cable system with two subscribers, A and B.
Today: A watches 3 channels. B watches 2 other channels. The cable company needs to recover the infrastructure costs of delivering 5 channels.
Under "a la carte": A wants 3 channels. B wants 2 channels. The cable company still needs to recover the infrastructure costs of delivering 5 channels.
If the cable company costs do not change, will the end user price change? Not much. Price tiers for different numbers of channels will not be very different from todays group-of-channels pricing because cable (and DBS) are broadcast mediums.
IPTV technologies may provide some solutions here, but that deployment is mainly being done by telcos right now who are building new FTTH infrastructure.
Where? California changed power regulations to call them "market-oriented," but continued to maintain plenty of stringent price regulations. As described here... If "deregulation" means less - not more - political control over an industry, then the California electricity industry has not been "deregulated."
First, the state forced the electricity companies to sell their power plants to independent investors and become power distributors.
Second, the state assumed total day-to-day control of the utilities' power grid to make sure they couldn't abuse their market power.
Third, the state required new owners of the divested power plants to sell their juice to a state-managed "power pool." The price of that power is set by a daily spot market run by - you guessed it - the state. Electricity companies that wanted to compete for your business had to buy their electricity from this pool, and the price charged them was equal to the highest price received by any electricity generator in the daily state-managed spot market.
Fourth, regardless of what they pay for power in the wholesale market, no company can charge a consumer more than 6.5 cents per kilowatt hour. That price can't change until the company has paid off its share of the bailout the state gave the electricity companies in order to accept this new regulatory scheme.
Now, what kind of "deregulation" imposes rigid government dictates on how industries should organize themselves? What sort of deregulation keeps fixed prices on retail providers? What kind of "deregulation" requires retailers to buy power through a state-run central exchange? And what brand of "deregulation" forbids retailers from buying electricity more than one day ahead?
Would you like to prove the existance of something with a non-zero elasticity of demand in relation to price?
The only economically valid argument for public utilities is the potential elimination of transaction costs in purchasing land for right-of-ways, and the fact that land is truly a limited commodity (with the exception of landfill islands...)
RF spectrum is much less limited than land, especially given new work on MIMO and UWB.
I don't see any "digital divide." I know people living under the poverty line who were able to buy their kids cheap used computers and cut back on cable TV to pay for cheap DSL.
The Chinese government killed 3,446,000 (Civil War-Sino-Japanese War 1923-1949 ) + 35,226,000 (political killings 1949-1987) + 38,000,000 (mass starvation from Great Leap Forward 1958-1961) = 76,692,000 killed.
Yet Americans are still more obese than Chinese.
A recent paper found a relationship between obesity and marginal rate of time preference.
Of note, Spain has a higher rate of female obesity than the US, and Germany and Finland have higher rates of male obesity than the US.
Carter began the process of deregulation, starting with airlines, rail transport, natural gas, oil, and banking. Of course, Reagan kept this going, along with a coherent freee-market philosophy to back it up.
A useful technology sits on the shelf, because business didn't think it was a good idea...imagine where we would be if this technology was around in the 80's
Remember that laser video disk systems were introduced in the 70's-80's and failed to sell. The problem was that the red helium-neon gas lasers required were expensive, and that people wanted recordability. So they bought videotape machines instead.
It is only very recently (last ten years) that we have affordable semiconductor red (and now blue) lasers, and have developed optical systems that are easilly recordable (from the home CD-burner).
BTW, I mentioned I was a corporate CEO. Here is how I became one. I filled out articles of incorporation, sent them into my state government with a small fee, and a week later I was a corporate CEO.
According to the Doing Business site, in the U.S., entrepreneurs can expect to go through 5 steps to launch a business over 5 days on average, at a cost equal to 0.5% of gross national income (GNI) per capita. There is no minimum deposit requirement to obtain a business registration number.
In Portugal, entrepreneurs can expect to go through 11 steps to launch a business over 54 days on average, at a cost equal to 13.4% of gross national income (GNI) per capita. They must deposit at least 39.4% of GNI per capita in a bank to obtain a business registration number.
In the U.S., the Rigidity of Employment Index is 3. I can hire or fire pretty much anyone whenever I want to with or without cause (only discrimination on race, sex, old age, and veteran status is prohibitied).
In Portugal, the Rigidity of Employment Index is 58. There are significant restrictions on hiring and firing.
In the U.S., it takes 4 steps and 12 days for a business to register property. The cost to register property there is 0.5% of overall property value.
In Portugal, it takes 5 steps and 83 days for a business to register property. The cost to register property there is 7.4% of overall property value.
Portugal is ranked "mostly free" in the Economic Freedom Index. It has made some progress in real economic reform, but reform has stalled since 1997.
That said, the 1990's reforms have had their positive effect. Average income per person in Portugal has grown from 56% EU average in 1986 to 76% to the EU average in 2001. Portugese unemployment dipped to near 4% in 2001.
But since reforms have stalled, Portugese unemployment has risen and economic growth has stalled. Unemployment in Portugal is still lower than that of ultra-regulated France or Germany though.
Portugal has to decide whether to continue to reform and go the way of Ireland, the Netherlands, and the UK, or to stick with the failed model of France.
If you think the "free markets" approach has failed, where is the evidence that the "non-free-markets" approach works? At least the "free market" approach can point to many economically free countries (the U.S., New Zealand, UK, Denmark, Australia, Canada, Ireland) that are doing very well.
Europeans have been giving away their labour rights and lowering their quality of living, and the unemployement just gets worse.
The French have not been giving away any labor rights (except the recent end of the silly 35 hour workweek limit), and the Germans are just getting to it.
Meanwhile, Ireland has had real labor market reforms, and has an unemployment rate of 4.3%, less than half that of France or Germany. The Netherlands had the "poldermodel" of labor market reforms, and now has an unemployment rate of 4.6%.
Tell me, are you a boss?
I have previously been a corporate CEO, but of course the investors are really the boss then.
It is pretty basic economics that if you tax or regulate something, you will sell less of it. This applies to labor as well. Drop labor taxes and/or labor regulations, and you will be able to sell more labor, fewer people will be unemployed.
There is plenty of HD video compressed in MPEG-2 sent at 10 to 14 Mbps in cable and broadcast applications. Below 10 it really starts to look horrible all the time.
No one "needs" uncomrpessed full bandwidth HD-SDI data rates for video storage, 400 Mbps with MPEG-2 compression (or 220 Mbps the Avid DNxHD) does a great job with HD.
I don't think Libertarians believe their low vote percentage is part of a massive bi-partisan conspiracy, but on the other hand there have been real examples of the Libertarian vote, small though it is, being "misplaced."
Also there are elected Libertarians, although generally they win non-partisan elections to city councils, water and land boards, etc.
So you think it is better to keep 10% of the French population jobless (and 30% of young French of North African descent) than to let them work outside of French labor restrictions?
Yeah, it all ads up - $10-$20 for RF front-end, $10 for COFDM/8VSB demos, $10 for MPEG-2 decoder, $10 for misc. glue logic and you're at $50 for base tuner.
By FCC regulation, all new television sets sold in the United States from 1 March 2007 forward must contain a digital TV (DTV) tuner. Currently, all sets including models with greater than 36" diagonal screens must have a DTV tuner, and by next March, all sets from 25" to 36" diagonal screens must have a DTV tuner.
There is one way out of it - a television set is not a television set if it has no analog tuner, in which case it is a monitor, and needs no DTV tuner.
There are already over-the-air digital TV broadcasts in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. Canada has chosen the same digital standard as the US, the ATSC system. CBC and CTV have already begun HD programming. More info here.
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My relatives in El Salvador are just getting into AIM, it is very cool!
There is the video and audio chat in Yahoo Internet Messenger (which I have used for chats between the US and Baghdad), and also there is video in AIM (but only for Windows XP). I'm currently watching my puppies who are at home from work right now using Yahoo Internet Messenger.
Much of Africa could use more rain. Central America, on the other hand, has plenty already.
It also remains to be seen whether the costs of climate change outweigh the costs of reducing CO2 emmissions globally. There are a lot of poor people on the planet who die of diseases that could be easilly treated or even cured if they were economically developed (which will probably include enhanced CO2 emmissions).
Humanity made it through the last hypotherm, if we are all rich (Western standard of living), we might make it through the next one as well.
"Internet use" is not a product. Delivery of Internet service over cable, FTTH, satellite, WiFi, MMDS, EVDO, or dial-up, those are products.
Keep in mind that cable companies are granted exclusive monopoly rights by local governments - they are already significantly outside the competitive market world. Most people have a choice of two or more satellite providers, but only one cable provider.
Your insight implies a better way to keep teenagers away from store fronts - block cellphone reception there!
Here are the economics. Imagine a cable system with two subscribers, A and B.
Today: A watches 3 channels. B watches 2 other channels. The cable company needs to recover the infrastructure costs of delivering 5 channels.
Under "a la carte": A wants 3 channels. B wants 2 channels. The cable company still needs to recover the infrastructure costs of delivering 5 channels.
If the cable company costs do not change, will the end user price change? Not much. Price tiers for different numbers of channels will not be very different from todays group-of-channels pricing because cable (and DBS) are broadcast mediums.
IPTV technologies may provide some solutions here, but that deployment is mainly being done by telcos right now who are building new FTTH infrastructure.
power was deregulated in some areas
Where? California changed power regulations to call them "market-oriented," but continued to maintain plenty of stringent price regulations. As described here...
If "deregulation" means less - not more - political control over an industry, then the California electricity industry has not been "deregulated."
First, the state forced the electricity companies to sell their power plants to independent investors and become power distributors.
Second, the state assumed total day-to-day control of the utilities' power grid to make sure they couldn't abuse their market power.
Third, the state required new owners of the divested power plants to sell their juice to a state-managed "power pool." The price of that power is set by a daily spot market run by - you guessed it - the state. Electricity companies that wanted to compete for your business had to buy their electricity from this pool, and the price charged them was equal to the highest price received by any electricity generator in the daily state-managed spot market.
Fourth, regardless of what they pay for power in the wholesale market, no company can charge a consumer more than 6.5 cents per kilowatt hour. That price can't change until the company has paid off its share of the bailout the state gave the electricity companies in order to accept this new regulatory scheme.
Now, what kind of "deregulation" imposes rigid government dictates on how industries should organize themselves? What sort of deregulation keeps fixed prices on retail providers? What kind of "deregulation" requires retailers to buy power through a state-run central exchange? And what brand of "deregulation" forbids retailers from buying electricity more than one day ahead?
Would you like to prove the existance of something with a non-zero elasticity of demand in relation to price?
The only economically valid argument for public utilities is the potential elimination of transaction costs in purchasing land for right-of-ways, and the fact that land is truly a limited commodity (with the exception of landfill islands...)
RF spectrum is much less limited than land, especially given new work on MIMO and UWB.
I don't see any "digital divide." I know people living under the poverty line who were able to buy their kids cheap used computers and cut back on cable TV to pay for cheap DSL.
The Chinese government killed 3,446,000 (Civil War-Sino-Japanese War 1923-1949 ) + 35,226,000 (political killings 1949-1987) + 38,000,000 (mass starvation from Great Leap Forward 1958-1961) = 76,692,000 killed.
Yet Americans are still more obese than Chinese.
A recent paper found a relationship between obesity and marginal rate of time preference.
Of note, Spain has a higher rate of female obesity than the US, and Germany and Finland have higher rates of male obesity than the US.
Carter began the process of deregulation, starting with airlines, rail transport, natural gas, oil, and banking. Of course, Reagan kept this going, along with a coherent freee-market philosophy to back it up.
A useful technology sits on the shelf, because business didn't think it was a good idea...imagine where we would be if this technology was around in the 80's
Remember that laser video disk systems were introduced in the 70's-80's and failed to sell. The problem was that the red helium-neon gas lasers required were expensive, and that people wanted recordability. So they bought videotape machines instead.
It is only very recently (last ten years) that we have affordable semiconductor red (and now blue) lasers, and have developed optical systems that are easilly recordable (from the home CD-burner).
BTW, I mentioned I was a corporate CEO. Here is how I became one. I filled out articles of incorporation, sent them into my state government with a small fee, and a week later I was a corporate CEO.
According to the Doing Business site, in the U.S., entrepreneurs can expect to go through 5 steps to launch a business over 5 days on average, at a cost equal to 0.5% of gross national income (GNI) per capita. There is no minimum deposit requirement to obtain a business registration number.
In Portugal, entrepreneurs can expect to go through 11 steps to launch a business over 54 days on average, at a cost equal to 13.4% of gross national income (GNI) per capita. They must deposit at least 39.4% of GNI per capita in a bank to obtain a business registration number.
In the U.S., the Rigidity of Employment Index is 3. I can hire or fire pretty much anyone whenever I want to with or without cause (only discrimination on race, sex, old age, and veteran status is prohibitied).
In Portugal, the Rigidity of Employment Index is 58. There are significant restrictions on hiring and firing.
In the U.S., it takes 4 steps and 12 days for a business to register property. The cost to register property there is 0.5% of overall property value.
In Portugal, it takes 5 steps and 83 days for a business to register property. The cost to register property there is 7.4% of overall property value.
All this adds up...regulation by regulation.
Portugal is ranked "mostly free" in the Economic Freedom Index. It has made some progress in real economic reform, but reform has stalled since 1997.
That said, the 1990's reforms have had their positive effect. Average income per person in Portugal has grown from 56% EU average in 1986 to 76% to the EU average in 2001. Portugese unemployment dipped to near 4% in 2001.
But since reforms have stalled, Portugese unemployment has risen and economic growth has stalled. Unemployment in Portugal is still lower than that of ultra-regulated France or Germany though.
Portugal has to decide whether to continue to reform and go the way of Ireland, the Netherlands, and the UK, or to stick with the failed model of France.
If you think the "free markets" approach has failed, where is the evidence that the "non-free-markets" approach works? At least the "free market" approach can point to many economically free countries (the U.S., New Zealand, UK, Denmark, Australia, Canada, Ireland) that are doing very well.
Europeans have been giving away their labour rights and lowering their quality of living, and the unemployement just gets worse.
The French have not been giving away any labor rights (except the recent end of the silly 35 hour workweek limit), and the Germans are just getting to it.
Meanwhile, Ireland has had real labor market reforms, and has an unemployment rate of 4.3%, less than half that of France or Germany. The Netherlands had the "poldermodel" of labor market reforms, and now has an unemployment rate of 4.6%.
Tell me, are you a boss?
I have previously been a corporate CEO, but of course the investors are really the boss then.
It is pretty basic economics that if you tax or regulate something, you will sell less of it. This applies to labor as well. Drop labor taxes and/or labor regulations, and you will be able to sell more labor, fewer people will be unemployed.
There is plenty of HD video compressed in MPEG-2 sent at 10 to 14 Mbps in cable and broadcast applications. Below 10 it really starts to look horrible all the time.
No one "needs" uncomrpessed full bandwidth HD-SDI data rates for video storage, 400 Mbps with MPEG-2 compression (or 220 Mbps the Avid DNxHD) does a great job with HD.
I don't think Libertarians believe their low vote percentage is part of a massive bi-partisan conspiracy, but on the other hand there have been real examples of the Libertarian vote, small though it is, being "misplaced."
Also there are elected Libertarians, although generally they win non-partisan elections to city councils, water and land boards, etc.
So you think it is better to keep 10% of the French population jobless (and 30% of young French of North African descent) than to let them work outside of French labor restrictions?
If so, get ready for more riots...
Yeah, it all ads up - $10-$20 for RF front-end, $10 for COFDM/8VSB demos, $10 for MPEG-2 decoder, $10 for misc. glue logic and you're at $50 for base tuner.
Oh yeah, I'm a Virginian! From the Commonwealth of Virginia, ya know...Virginia used to be a corporation too...
MPEG-2 decoder chips are pretty mass-market and cheap these days...
The big money for DTV decoders are the novel demodulators, 8-VSB (with additional anti-multipath DSP $$$) in the US, or COFDM in the EU.
Is your desktop 640x480? ;)
No wait, I suppose here on Slashdot a lot of you have RS-232 console terminals...
By FCC regulation, all new television sets sold in the United States from 1 March 2007 forward must contain a digital TV (DTV) tuner. Currently, all sets including models with greater than 36" diagonal screens must have a DTV tuner, and by next March, all sets from 25" to 36" diagonal screens must have a DTV tuner.
There is one way out of it - a television set is not a television set if it has no analog tuner, in which case it is a monitor, and needs no DTV tuner.
There are already over-the-air digital TV broadcasts in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. Canada has chosen the same digital standard as the US, the ATSC system. CBC and CTV have already begun HD programming. More info here.
Incontournable la Haute Definition!