The original $33 billion estimate was in 2008$. The current estimate of $98.5 billion is in year of expenditure dollars, which is the same as $65.4 billion in 2010$. So the price has only doubled, not tripled. The original submitter made the same mistake.
Meanwhile, the alternative to spending this $98.5 billion (YOE$) is spending $171 billion (YOE$) to build an additional 2,300 lane-miles of highways, 4 runways, and 115 airline gates just to move the same number of people! So the only thing more expensive than building high speed rail is not building it.
so in other words....he was asked to do the polices job for them, with no compensation from the police asking for the information, and in fact are charging him money to do so!
Consider it part of the cost of doing business. His competitors, if they used the same chemical, would be faced with the exact same costs, so this doesn't put him at a competitive disadvantage.
Recycling a name for a new incompatible format is a terrible idea. If I have a png image and software that supports pngs, I should be able to read that image, period.
IIRC, Bell's per GB overage charges were over a thousand times their actual costs... I think the excess charges should be in line with costs plus reasonable profit.
In the real world, product prices aren't set directly by "costs plus reasonable profit," but by whatever the market will bear. If you charge above the market, nobody will buy your widget, and if you charge below the market, you'll run out of widgets and lose money not just on the widgets you sold but also the widgets you couldn't sell because you ran out.
How "costs plus reasonable profit" is related to selling price is that if you can't make a reasonable profit, you won't produce any to sell. This reduces supply, causing the market equilibrium price to rise. Or if you can make an incredible profit, more sellers will find it worthwhile to enter the market, increasing supply and causing the price to fall.
Do you really think they're going to concede anything on the low end of the bandwidth usage spectrum, for example by offering old-granny-1GB-per-month a $10 plan?
Yes, because that's $10 more per month they would be getting from her than if they charged a flat rate of $50 per month.
If your bill for 20 Gigabytes of data transfer was $200 instead of $20 Would you care?
If that charge applies only to the peak usage periods from 6-9am and 6-9pm, and it's free at all other times, plus a flat $10 per month line charge, I could get pretty close to paying only $10 per month for broadband internet. That wouldn't be so bad.
If bandwidth were a free good, then it would be in such abundance that everybody would have all they could ever want and nobody would ever have to pay anybody for it. Clearly, that isn't the case.
Usage-based billing with variable pricing is actually the most efficient way to charge for a limited resource. Under the "all you can eat" flat rate model, the most economical amount of capacity is not where there is no network saturation ever, but where the cost to your users of the inconvenience of network saturation equals the cost of adding capacity. That means a little network congestion is actually a good thing in this pricing model.
Under the "usage-based billing with variable pricing" model, there are neither heavy periods nor light periods, but expensive periods and inexpensive periods. It gives people the freedom and ability to economize by scheduling their heavy downloads for the cheap periods to save money.
If something is in less demand during certain times of the day, why shouldn't the seller charge less during those times? This is why restaurants offer lunch and happy hour specials.
Aren't freedom and the ability to economize good things?
I read about two or three times as fast as my wife... She does sound out words in her head- I don't- I just tend to zip over them.
Does she convert a written word into sounds, letter by letter and syllable by syllable, or does her brain have a direct word-shape-to-sound lookup table?
If the government didn't depend so much on fuel taxes, they wouldn't care so much about bootlegging.
A mileage-based tax based on the weight of the vehicle would also solve the problem that a 2-ton car causes 16 times as much road wear per mile as a 1-ton car, but only pays about twice as much in fuel taxes.
It could work, as long as sunset clauses are built into all resulting legislation in case something doesn't work out as well as planned. There's nothing worse than a bad law that can't easily be repealed, and this difficulty also prevents good laws from having a chance at being passed.
That 60mph is the average speed of the traffic. I'm sure you will find people going under 60 in the slow lane and people going over 60 in the fast lane.
Since 60 mph is the peak of throughput, it would be better if everyone went 60.
The graph shows that the maximum flow (=throughput) is about the same at 20-35, and at 50-65. The top 'bunch' is no further to the right than the bottom 'bunch'.
The points on the graph at 20-35 indicate a congestion state. Let's not go there.
They also need to take current conditions into account (wet roads, fog, etc.) to determine if someone is breaking the basic speed law, even when they are driving below the posted speed limit.
As I wrote above, the spaces close to the entrance can remain handicap accessible as they are now. This still recovers a lot of space in almost all cases.
"The Zero One or Infinity (ZOI) rule is a rule of thumb in software design." Trying to apply it to handicap parking is stupid.
When your best argument is an insult, you should reconsider your position.
Also, you're suggesting Apple charge their employees for parking on a daily basis? wtf?
Guess who pays for all that parking now?
The fact that the spaces closest to the entrance fill up first proves that those are worth more to employees than the spaces farther away. So why shouldn't the employees who park farther away, and the ones who don't occupy a parking space at all, get a discount? Why do they need to subsidize the other drivers?
So, you're suggesting charging more for spots near the entrance to buildings?
The "one price fits all" model just doesn't work very well in the real world. That's why restaurants have lunch specials and happy hour specials.
And requiring people who need handicapped spots, because they're handicapped, to pay for it?
Given that they don't have the physical ability to park far from the entrance in order to save money, I think it would be fair to give them a discount.
They're not asking for free broadband. They're asking for the opportunity to PAY for broadband.
There's a price for everything. These rural residents simply don't feel that the benefits are worth the costs, and want urban dwellers to help subsidize their lifestyles.
Or you could starve while living in your densely-populated urban environment. Your call.
So if we don't subsidize broadband for farmers, we'll starve?
No, I don't think that's true. It's quite possible that a farm with broadband can produce food more cheaply than a farm without broadband, but are the benefits really worth the costs?
Remember that subsidies distort the market, and that prevents those farmers from making rational decisions that lower the cost of food production. That means we will all pay more in the end.
There are many benefits of living away from civilization that your parents enjoy but urban residents don't. Consider the lack of broadband options one of the costs. It's up to them to decide whether the benefits outweigh the costs.
Until you can prove that the benefit to the government of subsidizing broadband access for rural residents outweighs the costs, don't ask the government to intervene. It isn't the government's role to pick the winners and the losers.
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The original $33 billion estimate was in 2008$. The current estimate of $98.5 billion is in year of expenditure dollars, which is the same as $65.4 billion in 2010$. So the price has only doubled, not tripled. The original submitter made the same mistake.
Meanwhile, the alternative to spending this $98.5 billion (YOE$) is spending $171 billion (YOE$) to build an additional 2,300 lane-miles of highways, 4 runways, and 115 airline gates just to move the same number of people! So the only thing more expensive than building high speed rail is not building it.
Consider it part of the cost of doing business. His competitors, if they used the same chemical, would be faced with the exact same costs, so this doesn't put him at a competitive disadvantage.
It's a chicken-and-egg problem. What's the cheapest way to break out of the loop: make HDR displays, or give WebP support for HDR?
An that goes double for .avi files!
In the real world, product prices aren't set directly by "costs plus reasonable profit," but by whatever the market will bear. If you charge above the market, nobody will buy your widget, and if you charge below the market, you'll run out of widgets and lose money not just on the widgets you sold but also the widgets you couldn't sell because you ran out.
How "costs plus reasonable profit" is related to selling price is that if you can't make a reasonable profit, you won't produce any to sell. This reduces supply, causing the market equilibrium price to rise. Or if you can make an incredible profit, more sellers will find it worthwhile to enter the market, increasing supply and causing the price to fall.
Yes, because that's $10 more per month they would be getting from her than if they charged a flat rate of $50 per month.
If that charge applies only to the peak usage periods from 6-9am and 6-9pm, and it's free at all other times, plus a flat $10 per month line charge, I could get pretty close to paying only $10 per month for broadband internet. That wouldn't be so bad.
If bandwidth were a free good, then it would be in such abundance that everybody would have all they could ever want and nobody would ever have to pay anybody for it. Clearly, that isn't the case.
Usage-based billing with variable pricing is actually the most efficient way to charge for a limited resource. Under the "all you can eat" flat rate model, the most economical amount of capacity is not where there is no network saturation ever, but where the cost to your users of the inconvenience of network saturation equals the cost of adding capacity. That means a little network congestion is actually a good thing in this pricing model.
Under the "usage-based billing with variable pricing" model, there are neither heavy periods nor light periods, but expensive periods and inexpensive periods. It gives people the freedom and ability to economize by scheduling their heavy downloads for the cheap periods to save money.
If something is in less demand during certain times of the day, why shouldn't the seller charge less during those times? This is why restaurants offer lunch and happy hour specials.
Aren't freedom and the ability to economize good things?
Does she convert a written word into sounds, letter by letter and syllable by syllable, or does her brain have a direct word-shape-to-sound lookup table?
The income tax (your state) and property taxes (seller's state) already get their share of the transaction.
So let's do away with sales taxes entirely. They're regressive and discourage commerce more directly than other taxes.
If the government didn't depend so much on fuel taxes, they wouldn't care so much about bootlegging.
A mileage-based tax based on the weight of the vehicle would also solve the problem that a 2-ton car causes 16 times as much road wear per mile as a 1-ton car, but only pays about twice as much in fuel taxes.
One advantage of tolling over gas taxes is congestion tolling can permanently eliminate traffic congestion while keeping the roads filled and productive, but the gas tax cannot do both at the same time. And with traffic congestion eliminated, you save a lot of money on road expansion. As a result, the SR-91 express toll lanes in Orange County, California generate net social benefits of at least $12 million per year, compared with a scenario in which the lanes had been built but drivers did not pay to use them.
It could work, as long as sunset clauses are built into all resulting legislation in case something doesn't work out as well as planned. There's nothing worse than a bad law that can't easily be repealed, and this difficulty also prevents good laws from having a chance at being passed.
Since 60 mph is the peak of throughput, it would be better if everyone went 60.
The points on the graph at 20-35 indicate a congestion state. Let's not go there.
False. Peak throughput occurs at around 60 mph. So when some vehicles are moving faster or slower than 60 mph, they are reducing throughput, not raising it.
They also need to take current conditions into account (wet roads, fog, etc.) to determine if someone is breaking the basic speed law, even when they are driving below the posted speed limit.
And if they can do all that, they can objectively determine if you're tailgating (driving on a road too close to the vehicle in front, at a distance which does not guarantee that stopping to avoid collision is possible).
Because so many people tailgate according this definition, this technology has the potential to make roads a lot safer!
As I wrote above, the spaces close to the entrance can remain handicap accessible as they are now. This still recovers a lot of space in almost all cases.
When your best argument is an insult, you should reconsider your position.
Guess who pays for all that parking now?
The fact that the spaces closest to the entrance fill up first proves that those are worth more to employees than the spaces farther away. So why shouldn't the employees who park farther away, and the ones who don't occupy a parking space at all, get a discount? Why do they need to subsidize the other drivers?
The "one price fits all" model just doesn't work very well in the real world. That's why restaurants have lunch specials and happy hour specials.
Given that they don't have the physical ability to park far from the entrance in order to save money, I think it would be fair to give them a discount.
There's a price for everything. These rural residents simply don't feel that the benefits are worth the costs, and want urban dwellers to help subsidize their lifestyles.
So if we don't subsidize broadband for farmers, we'll starve?
No, I don't think that's true. It's quite possible that a farm with broadband can produce food more cheaply than a farm without broadband, but are the benefits really worth the costs?
Remember that subsidies distort the market, and that prevents those farmers from making rational decisions that lower the cost of food production. That means we will all pay more in the end.
No spaces need to be made wider. The ones that are wide now can remain as they are.
There are many benefits of living away from civilization that your parents enjoy but urban residents don't. Consider the lack of broadband options one of the costs. It's up to them to decide whether the benefits outweigh the costs.
Until you can prove that the benefit to the government of subsidizing broadband access for rural residents outweighs the costs, don't ask the government to intervene. It isn't the government's role to pick the winners and the losers.
The spaces close to the entrance can remain handicap accessible as they are now. This still recovers a lot of space in almost all cases.