To maximize reveneue, the pricing on monopoly goods is done as a function of disposable income (which is why you see 'regions' and constant attempts to curtail parallel imports in monopoly intensive industries). Cost of production only needs to be factored in to the price if you have competition (and the only competition in this case is 'piracy', so without 'piracy' the price would quite likely be even higher).
There is non-piracy competition, in the form of imperfect substitute goods. If one label's CDs are $18 and another's are $13, some consumers will choose the cheaper ones even though they're different artists. "I'd like Britney Spears, but Christina Aguilera is 5 bucks cheaper so I guess I'll get her instead." Many people seem to think that if a substitute is not exactly the same then it can have no effect on the price of another good, but that is not true. For another example in a similar industry, look at movies. Renting movies is not the exact same good as going to the theater, but it's very clearly a legitimate substitute.
The price of CD's has NEVER come down since they were first introduced, and it is only because of inflation that their relative price is now on a par with that of record albums from yon times of yore.
Only because of inflation? So you're saying the price has come down "only" in real dollars? Do you look at a new Honda and wonder why it costs six times as much as one from 1983? Inflation is critical when comparing prices over time, not just an aside that can be ignored. CDs have gotten much cheaper.
If you think the G-V shouldn't be flying for fun, for advertising, or maybe not for any reason then there are a lot of things you might to put a stop to.
You're making a big leap there. Even if I think you shouldn't be flying your GV, that doesn't mean I think you should be prevented from doing so. I don't approve of people getting a Suburban to drive their only child to school, but that doesn't mean I think it should be banned. Of course there are plenty of people who DO think the things they disapprove of should be banned, but that's not everyone.
Will someone from netflicks be bringing it by bike, or will they likely put it on a plane fly it to your city, place it in a mail truck, and drive it to your house?
Yes, all of which they would have done anyway. If you would care to calculate the incremental fuel cost of transporting a DVD (I don't) I'm sure you would find it's less than driving to the movies. Far less. Your argument is like saying don't take the bus because buses burn more fuel than cars. The bus is running anyway, so if you're on it rather than in your car, you're reducing emissions.
Don't take this to mean I agree with the other poster that we're not allowed to criticize this move unless we never go to the movies (or anywhere else we don't absolutely have to).
Finally - that plane flew over my house! Or at least very close to it.
But submitting the source for independant thirdparty analysis and certification should be mandatory, like it is in child car seats and light fixtures.
Why? Those certifications are to make sure the product is safe - it won't burn your house down, or it will keep your child safe in an accident. They don't test anything else, such as whether the light fixture is attractive or shows dirt, or if the car seat is easy to use or comfortable. If my software needs to be safe (I could get hurt if it malfunctions) then I agree, it should be certified. Personally, I don't run any software like that, and I don't want to pay an extra $50 for it because the developer passes on the mandatory certification cost to me. Power plant software? Flight control? Sure. Tetris? Word processor? No thank you.
This reminds me of a Dilbert cartoon. Dilbert's in the basement, where the department with the trolls (accounting?) is looking at the output of their random number generator. 9...9...9...9...9...9...
Dilbert: Are you sure that's random?
Troll: You can never be sure.
I agree it's made up by humans, but you can never be sure.:-)
If you look at the numbers I tossed up driving could be the better solution.
No argument there, I'm just questioning the assertion that public transportation is unacceptable to companies with on-call employees. It seems to me that arriving late is what's unacceptable, regardless of how you choose to get there. Your argument ends up at the same place: some people have cars in part because they're on call and public transportation doesn't get them there fast enough. But the cause is that public transportation is inadequate, not that the employer forbids the employee to use it.
Reason number 1: On call people. Waiting for a train/subway or worse a bus to take you into work is unacceptable to most companies.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but that sure rubs me the wrong way. Have you really seen policies that say "you must not take public transportation to work if you're on call and get called in"? Don't they just say that you must be able to get to work within a certain amount of time? What if you live somewhere that could take 10 minutes by train or 15 by car? Would they really require you to drive? I know when my wife has been on call as a nurse, the rule was she had to be ready to go 20 minutes from getting the call. She could stay in the on-call room at the hospital, or if she had somewhere else to sleep that would still let her get there in time, fine.
If the state of Maryland can get a better insurance plan than Walmart, why shouldn't Walmart encourage its employees to take advantage of that state resource. In Arkansas, Walmart is very good at letting its employees know what state aid programs that they quailify for and helping them obtain them.
And why are they so interested in "helping" them in this way? To improve Wal-Mart's bottom line. The company wants employees on state-funded health care so that the corporation can get richer, not because they care about their employees. You can argue that every company is that way, and to one extent or another it's true. But I think there's a good reason WM has gotten the most attention for these kinds of practices, and it's not because they have a lot of stores.
I hadn't seen this site before, and certainly won't read it again. Here are some revealing tidbits, any emphasis and parenthetical comments mine, starting with the title.
The Spectacular Failure of WinCE and Windows Mobile
Microsoft avoided the term PDA, which was by then associated with the functional and sophisticated Newton from 1993. (Maybe I'm wrong, but I remember the term being associated with Palm Pilots)
Meanwhile, the Handheld PC form factor had discovered there was little demand for bulky micro-laptops with scant battery life and minimal functionality.
Fortunately for Palm, Pocket PCs were ultra thick battery hogs that made Palm's basic offerings look amazing in comparison.
Further, even the most Microsoft-bound IT shops had turned up their noses at Handheld PCs
After the death of Handheld PC, and finding stagnant sales for Pocket PCs, Microsoft aimed WinCE in a series of new, increasingly desperate directions:
[Windows Mobile 5 Smartphones] can, however, pretend to edit Excel documents on their tiny screens with a quarter the resolution of a typical DOS PC from the 80s.
Even after Apple improved its ink recognition software, the Newton was derided by Microsoft fans for its "legendarily unreliable handwriting input system." (Wasn't it derided by the market?)
when WinCE appeared it delivered the typical embarrassment of a clumsy Microsoft product launch
It's no wonder Microsoft is losing so much money down the rat hole of WinCE
Huh? Don't most smartphones/pocket pc phones have mini USB ports? I've never seen a Windows phone that doesn't, anyway, and a quick check on Cingular's website shows at least some Blackberry models and looks like the Nokia E62 have it. Couldn't find one on the Treos, but I wouldn't call that collection "virtually no consumer phones".
No, you could CHOOSE not to eat at that restaurant that allowed smoking
That's a meaningless choice when ALL the restaurants allow smoking. Which was the case before the ban where I live.
And yes you can be refused service....I've seen it at restaurants when someone was disturbing others around him.
I said restaurants cannot refuse service to anyone they want, not that they can never refuse service no matter what. A sign saying we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone is not allowed, because that would mean they could refuse service to blacks, or women, or gays, or disabled people, or people who look funny. They must have a legitimate cause to refuse service.
remember seeing the signs (not as often displayed these days) saying they reserved the right to refuse to serve anyone..?
I'm guessing because it's illegal. Restaurants do not in fact have the right to refuse to serve anyone.
No shoes, no shirt, no service?
I believe those are health code regulations.
Restaurants are privately-owned public places. A park is a publicly-owned public place. If the government owned and operated low-income housing, the apartments would be publicly-owned private places. Your house is a privately-owned private place. There can be any combination of them, because there are two different senses of the word and they operate independently.
When there is no ban...EVERYONE has a choice of whether to go there as a patron, or an employee. No one holds a gun to anyone's head forcing them in the door to stay.
With smoking bans....there is no choice.
Of course there is a choice. If you want to smoke while you eat, then get take-out. As you said, no guns are held to heads. What the ban says is that my interest in eating at a restaurant without being exposed to toxic chemicals is more important than your interest in smoking while you eat there. Now I can choose to be sure I won't breathe smoke while I eat at a restaurant, while I didn't have that choice before. See? Not fewer choices, just different ones.
I don't know how it is elsewhere, but in Boulder CO before the public smoking ban there were almost no restaurants without a smoking section. I say almost because while I didn't know of a single one, there could have been some I didn't know about. Someone wanting to eat without breathing cigarette smoke had to ask for a table far from the smoking section and keep their fingers crossed. Now restaurants can put in a separately-ventilated smoking section, so if they want to cater to that market they can. I know of one restaurant that has done so, so it can't be that important. I can now go at least a year without smelling cigarette smoke.
So, the "just go somewhere else" argument does not always hold water.
Would you hire a roofing contractor who uses a rock to drive nails? Would you hire a roofing contractor and then insist that he use a rock instead of a nail gun? After all rocks are "ugly and ineffective" and only "brilliant and experienced" roofers use them.
His point was not that we ought to be using ugly and ineffective tools, but that it takes more skill to get the same thing done with ineffective tools than it does with effective ones. If one roofer is using a claw hammer and the other a nail gun, and they get the same amount of work done in the same amount of time, I would assume the claw hammer guy is better, because he can do the same job with an inferior tool. This does not mean I think it is a good idea for him to use a claw hammer - he's probably even faster with a nail gun.
Your argument implies people want windows and want microsoft software. That means they are willing to put up with the bullshit that microsoft pulls.
Yes, but I'm not sure what your point is. It's OK for MS to be a monopolistic bully as long as their customers put up with it? The competition that they put out of business doesn't really have anything to complain about, because people are still willing to write checks to MS? Or something else?
And why don't those companies just give a big fuck you to microsoft's format? The lock in with ANYTHING from Microsoft is SUPPORTED by the very consumers that BUY from microsoft.
You just answered your question. Saying FU to MS compatibility means saying FU to their customers. Companies that do that tend to go out of business.
You're confusing "free" memory with "available" memory.
Then substitute "available" for "free".
As long as directed use of any computing resource trumps background use with very little lagtime, and there isn't a power/burnout factor involved, then why do you care what the computer's doing behind your back, as long as the net result is a better/faster/gniftier experience for you, the user? Serious question.
As long as it's something I authorized I don't care, and I'm not making any claims about any of those things. I could be mistaken, but it seems you're saying all those resources ought to be fully utilized all the time. If so, I disagree. something@home is great. I use one and I think others should too. As far as disk and internet access, I'm not going to go out and download and upload stuff just to make sure I'm making full use of my investment in the computer. And I don't run Folding@Home while I'm actually using the computer because it makes the CPU fan spin up and the computer is at least twice as loud as normal. I value quiet more than making full use of the processor. Actually I value just about anything more than making full use of the processor. If you're saying it's okay to have all those things maxed out all the time, then I agree, except that you can't help but shorten your disk drive's life if you're using it all the time.
Sorry if I posted part of this twice, I may have hit enter accidentally.
Forgot another thing - free memory means you can do more with the machine later without starting to page more. If my memory is maxed out, that means in the future if the next version of Anyware uses more memory, then it will degrade my performance to upgrade. If I want to start having X + 1 programs running instead of X, again I take a hit. So having free memory has upsides. For that matter, what's different about memory compared to any other resource? Should your processor, disk access, disk space, and internet connection all be maxed out all the time too?
Without more detailed information, the ideal situation is to have just a little bit of memory free. If you have no free memory, you cannot tell if it's because you're just barely using it up or if you need twice as much memory as you have, and you're paging like hell. Again, I'm assuming that your only metric is the amount of free physical memory. If you have just a little free, assuming your OS doesn't suck at memory management (another big assumption) then you know you're making (basically) max use of your asset without having extra that you paid for but aren't using. This doesn't address the question of whether a given OS performs better with a certain amount of free memory. Beats me.
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Don't take this to mean I agree with the other poster that we're not allowed to criticize this move unless we never go to the movies (or anywhere else we don't absolutely have to).
Finally - that plane flew over my house! Or at least very close to it.
Dilbert: Are you sure that's random?
Troll: You can never be sure.
I agree it's made up by humans, but you can never be sure. :-)
In short... could you be more biased?
I said restaurants cannot refuse service to anyone they want, not that they can never refuse service no matter what. A sign saying we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone is not allowed, because that would mean they could refuse service to blacks, or women, or gays, or disabled people, or people who look funny. They must have a legitimate cause to refuse service.
Restaurants are privately-owned public places. A park is a publicly-owned public place. If the government owned and operated low-income housing, the apartments would be publicly-owned private places. Your house is a privately-owned private place. There can be any combination of them, because there are two different senses of the word and they operate independently.
Of course there is a choice. If you want to smoke while you eat, then get take-out. As you said, no guns are held to heads. What the ban says is that my interest in eating at a restaurant without being exposed to toxic chemicals is more important than your interest in smoking while you eat there. Now I can choose to be sure I won't breathe smoke while I eat at a restaurant, while I didn't have that choice before. See? Not fewer choices, just different ones.I don't know how it is elsewhere, but in Boulder CO before the public smoking ban there were almost no restaurants without a smoking section. I say almost because while I didn't know of a single one, there could have been some I didn't know about. Someone wanting to eat without breathing cigarette smoke had to ask for a table far from the smoking section and keep their fingers crossed. Now restaurants can put in a separately-ventilated smoking section, so if they want to cater to that market they can. I know of one restaurant that has done so, so it can't be that important. I can now go at least a year without smelling cigarette smoke.
So, the "just go somewhere else" argument does not always hold water.
Sorry if I posted part of this twice, I may have hit enter accidentally.