Wow, are big companies really that scared of mismanaging personal data?
I was (temporarily) prevented from buying a house when a credit reporting agency sold false information about me. This after having been preapproved by 2 different lenders.
You'd think there would be liability. You'd think they should regret what they did. Surprise! They didn't. I was the one with extra expenses and invconvenience, not them.
Yeah, if less revenue is available to TV companies, then prices must go up, right?
Not exactly. The economics of scale hardly apply to TV. If they did, Friends would only have one commercial because so many people watch it.
Instead, the price of producing the show rises exactly to whatever amount of money they bring in. Yet the added expense doesn't make the show any better; it's still the same old actors, just paid 100x as much now.
They already do. That's why I don't subscribe to digital cable.
Instead, I get analog tv signal, digitize it with a video capture card, apply highly lossy compression, decompress, reconvert to analog with a tv-out card, transmit the analog signal through a long cable from the study to the living room, and FINALLY it appears on the TV.
My own little Rube Goldberg Digital Convergence box.
But it's all open source, and it's better than planning my day around the TV Guide.
I wonder if people really roam around like they're "supposed to," or if people settle into a routine of sitting in the same place.
Like in a college class where this girl walks up and accuses me of being in "her" seat.
Re:The EM spectrum is a limited resource
on
Wireless Congestion
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· Score: 1
Microsoft's stock price reflects a profit margin that only an abusive monopoly could maintain. There is no way Open Source will bring in that kind of money for them. But now they have eaten every other fish in the pond. They have no place to go but downhill.
The only thing they can do is fight their customers and the government to maintain their stranglehold, grabbing as much cash as they can get away with before they are pushed aside.
I disagree.
If there were many companies fighting to bring bandwidth into your house, you wouldn't care if the least efficient / successful of them croaked. That's totally different than a monopoly raising prices because "whatcha gonna do about it?"
Long-haul networks simply don't suffer the monopoly problem that last-mile networks have. Coincidentally(?), long-haul bandwidth is cheap and there's a glut of it.
Re:REAL reason for dot.com bust
on
The Venture Cafe
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· Score: 1
Is this just really dry humor, or shall we all pile on making fun of you?
And what incentive did AT&T have to develop those new, price-decreasing technologies? If their profits got too big, the regulators would just force them to lower rates. When the market works, companies must improve just to maintain profits - or else they die.
Just look at your argument - monopolies are better than markets because competition causes waste and provides no benefits. This is just socialism, except worse because there's not even a ruse of public influence over The Company.
Duh, you're appealing to market principles to solve the bain of the market - monopolies. Senseless.
So what if they have thin margins? AT&T might have had thin margins all those years they were a monopoly, charging several times what long distance now costs. Monopolies can't be efficient because they don't have to be.
Cliff's commentary on Wrighter's question dwells on the fairness of tiered pricing.
However, this is a completely separate question from how to prevent monopolies in Internet access, or how to live with those monopolies.
For instance, under a tiered plan, a competitive ISP will probably offer "extra" bandwidth at an affordable rate, while a monopoly will call its customers "hogs" and slap them with "overusage penalties."
As soon as customers and providers get into arguing the "fair" price, the battle is lost already, because the market is no longer at work. A monopoly will lose money even at rates that would price it out of a competitive market, because the monopoly's response to losing money is to push for rate increases rather than increased efficiency.
Half-full cartriges sounds bad, doesn't it?
If HP were smarter they'd spend the extra $$
to make cartriges with smaller ink wells instead.
Nobody would balk at that.
Slashdot Mirror
I was (temporarily) prevented from buying a house when a credit reporting agency sold false information about me. This after having been preapproved by 2 different lenders.
You'd think there would be liability. You'd think they should regret what they did. Surprise! They didn't. I was the one with extra expenses and invconvenience, not them.
Not exactly. The economics of scale hardly apply to TV. If they did, Friends would only have one commercial because so many people watch it.
Instead, the price of producing the show rises exactly to whatever amount of money they bring in. Yet the added expense doesn't make the show any better; it's still the same old actors, just paid 100x as much now.
The Invisible Hand is in somebody's pocket.
They already do. That's why I don't subscribe to digital cable. Instead, I get analog tv signal, digitize it with a video capture card, apply highly lossy compression, decompress, reconvert to analog with a tv-out card, transmit the analog signal through a long cable from the study to the living room, and FINALLY it appears on the TV. My own little Rube Goldberg Digital Convergence box. But it's all open source, and it's better than planning my day around the TV Guide.
Oh, you city boys with your fancy "roads!"
I wonder if people really roam around like they're "supposed to," or if people settle into a routine of sitting in the same place. Like in a college class where this girl walks up and accuses me of being in "her" seat.
Tell us, who is "offering" the EM spectrum?
The only thing they can do is fight their customers and the government to maintain their stranglehold, grabbing as much cash as they can get away with before they are pushed aside.
Somebody who didn't even read the story's TITLE!
(Hint: it's "Keeping Secrets in **Hardware** DOH!)
I disagree. If there were many companies fighting to bring bandwidth into your house, you wouldn't care if the least efficient / successful of them croaked. That's totally different than a monopoly raising prices because "whatcha gonna do about it?" Long-haul networks simply don't suffer the monopoly problem that last-mile networks have. Coincidentally(?), long-haul bandwidth is cheap and there's a glut of it.
Is this just really dry humor, or shall we all pile on making fun of you?
Just test it before you trust it. Rechargeable batteries degrade horribly with time, especially when setting on a shelf (or in a clearance bin).
I would think a lot of things are not being ported, because it's bombing.
Just look at your argument - monopolies are better than markets because competition causes waste and provides no benefits. This is just socialism, except worse because there's not even a ruse of public influence over The Company.
So what if they have thin margins? AT&T might have had thin margins all those years they were a monopoly, charging several times what long distance now costs. Monopolies can't be efficient because they don't have to be.
Cliff's commentary on Wrighter's question dwells on the fairness of tiered pricing. However, this is a completely separate question from how to prevent monopolies in Internet access, or how to live with those monopolies. For instance, under a tiered plan, a competitive ISP will probably offer "extra" bandwidth at an affordable rate, while a monopoly will call its customers "hogs" and slap them with "overusage penalties." As soon as customers and providers get into arguing the "fair" price, the battle is lost already, because the market is no longer at work. A monopoly will lose money even at rates that would price it out of a competitive market, because the monopoly's response to losing money is to push for rate increases rather than increased efficiency.
Can any of the further development that goes into StarOffice be put into OpenOffice?
Half-full cartriges sounds bad, doesn't it? If HP were smarter they'd spend the extra $$ to make cartriges with smaller ink wells instead. Nobody would balk at that.