Or instead of taxing by distance which would ultimately set off the libertarians that don't want the G-men knowing how many miles they put on a vehicle, etc.; tax the tires.
Everything uses tires, and will until we have antigravity systems. And if you are buying tires with a tread compound that puts extra wear on roads (studded tires if those still exist?) or tires for heavier vehicles that put more wear on roads, tax them at a higher rate.
Actually, the proposed solution is to raise usage fees, which not a "liberal" idea at all, but a libertarian one. And, it's a pretty good solution - the people that use the service should ultimately bear an appropriate chunk of it's operating costs.
As an aside, you should probably work on your reading comprehension skills before telling others to.
From what I've seen, the "well-integrated SD card" has effectively been killed by Google's latest versions of Android, and their wanton disregard to fix things. Class-10 cards that were perfectly fine in previous versions of Android all of a sudden are "too slow" in the same hardware, with constant messages about "external storage" crashing should you dare to use it.
If the base OS has shitty support, good luck ever finding a phone that does it properly.
An even higher percentage of photos taken on film were never viewed at all. At least photos taken on a phone have a far better chance of being viewed by someone other than yourself or someone having to sit through the dreaded post-vacation 1970s slide show because of social networking and almost-ubiquitous internet access.
The "long term evolution" wasn't an evolution in technology - it was an evolution in what the telcos can get away with charging people for, and scheme to limit the "unlimited."
Who do you think is building SLS? Do you think there are a bunch of Federal employees working welders and shit making fuel tanks and turbopumps for rocket motors? Or, just maybe is all of that contracted out to aerospace companies like Aerojet Rocketdyne, Northrup Grumman, Lockheed Martin and Boeing just like it always has been? Here's a hint for you: the Apollo Command Module was made by North American Aviation, and the Lunar Module was made by Grumman in the 1960s. The list of contractors involved goes on from there.
And they all made a nice profit doing it, and still do.
Well, the city has to do a bunch of stuff not to make the whole situation a giant clusterfuck - road expansions, mass transit lines, new traffic signals, changing of traffic patterns to match the estimated traffic increases, all the water works / sewer work to be able to service all this new stuff, build fire stations, police stations, schools for the new housing, parks, waste disposal services, etc.
You know that Amazon won't be footing the bill for any of that. The current citizens will be, and there won't be any tax revenue coming from Amazon for several years after it's all done, because of the tax breaks being handed over, so the current citizenry will have to foot the bill disproportionately for some time.
Somewhere down the road, the city will start collecting on all this new shit when the deal expires; by then Amazon will threaten to leave and some idiot politician will ram through an extension just on the threat. This is the same game that urban renewal advocates play with "tax increment financing."
Apparently Long Island City's mayor is extra dumb, because Amazon is getting about double the incentives to build there, that they are in Alexandria, VA.
Is anyone really surprised that they chose New York and DC? Talk about the most obvious choice they could have made...
Having sat in the very back row on a flight to East Asia recently, I can say with some certainty that sitting in the front is more desired. You don't have to wait for every single person to get their shit and go before you can get off the plane after 13+ hours of being on it. And, every single bump and sway in the airframe is something you are very aware of that far behind the wings.
In which case it's Best Buy that has the relationship with the disk manufacturer, and is using eBay as the storefront. That changes nothing. eBay is still just providing the connection with the buyer as well as payment services, for a percentage of the sale. And probably an additional fee for the "special" account.
I guess I'm wondering what you think that looks like. What is your proposed remedy for this "monopoly"? (it's not a monopoly, but you keep calling it one. A monopoly is defined as the exclusive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service.)
Is there all of a sudden going to be some government office that you can file a form with, and now Amazon has to use their logistics chain to sell your stuff, under penalty of fines or sanction? What happens when people start to flood Amazon with low quality bullshit that they aren't allowed to de-list without governmental sanctions? Who do you think in the US or EU government would have the authority to do this, under current laws? And how do you think it wouldn't be a total clusterfuck that makes the issue worse - your compulsory product listings literally hands more market share to Amazon by making it even easier to sell through them. And how is a government entity forcing a company to list and sell products they would rather not sell "the free market"?
In conclusion: A. you haven't thought through this very much B. you don't understand what a monopoly is C. you don't understand what a free market is D. you don't really have any suggestions of how to fix the issue E. you don't have any legal framework or statute to stand on anyway.
Yeah, but with that logic, planted stories in the industry-friendly press won't lead to increased sales for Q4. Buy now before the tariffs increase your needlessly expensive case by $5! And other FUD statements!
It's significant because it's a massive middle finger to MPEG. They made a complete hash of the licensing around H.265 so that nobody can figure it out, and those that can either have to have contributed IP to the licensing pools or get financially raped to use it. So the vast majority of the tech industry threw all their patents together into this effort to cut MPEG out, and by the way made it free of cost to use.
It's supported by ARM, Nvidia, Intel, AMD, Microsoft, Google, Apple, and many others. Surprisingly, Samsung, Sony, and Qualcomm aren't on the list, so expect some Android hardware to not have hardware support unless they inherit it from an included GPU design.
It's legal under Right of First Sale because you have no guaranteed right to sell shit on Amazon.
You're still welcome to sell it on eBay, Facebook, Craigslist, the local classified ads, to your neighbor, etc.
Amazon has the right to list, or not list, anything they god damn want to on their store. What makes you think they should be compelled to list these refurb units? That's what you are advocating for here.
Well, except that eBay isn't trying to list new product direct from Apple, which is the crowbar that Apple used here. Want to sell shit direct from Apple, you have to abide by their draconian terms.
eBay isn't interested, they'll let other people with Apple product list and be perfectly happy to take their taste of the final sale price.
Lots of people get by with this kind of thing on eBay and are quite happy to do so. I don't see eBay kicking off so-called "unauthorized" resellers, and they aren't exactly the small guy.
Don't start quoting statistics that are wildly made up unless you want to look like an idiot. Amazon doesn't have the power to cut anyone off from 99% of anything, except maybe Amazon-exclusive customers (of which I'm sure there are incredibly few).
Except that there is no monopoly here. These refurbishers are still free to market their product on any other platform up to and including eBay.
Are you really saying that eBay is about to go under because Amazon?
I'm pretty sure that Amazon gets to choose what products are listed in their store, just the same as any brick and mortar gets to choose what goes on their shelves. What are you advocating for here, compulsory product listings from randoms who switch out fans and disks?
Nope. Sorry. You can call this mess "a la carte" if you would like, but you would be wrong.
The concept of a la carte television was to pay vastly reduced rates for only the channels we want - no bundling in 30 channels of crap nobody every watches in order to subsidize the 4 channels people care about, and the option to not pay for expensive channels that you don't want.
What this is, is being forced to subscribe to multiple bundles of bullshit you don't want just to see the few shows that you do. It's no different, except for being a useability nightmare - oh, I want to watch $SHOW, is it on Netflix, Hulu, YouTube TV, Disney+, HBO Now, CBS whatever, etc. etc. At least with cable, it was all one shitty cable box that had a single guide, rather than having to search, launch something else, search, launch something else, search, ad nauseum.
The market won't put up with this bullshit, and piracy will rise. Netflix and Hulu were successful because they had content from across the industry available, and it worked. This shit will barely move the needle from what they get from additional cable bundle subscriptions.
The lesson of Napster / Limewire was not learned by the movie studios, so they are doomed to repeat it. The more fragmented and locked down they make it, the users will reject it and go another way, legal or not.
Slashdot Mirror
Or instead of taxing by distance which would ultimately set off the libertarians that don't want the G-men knowing how many miles they put on a vehicle, etc.; tax the tires.
Everything uses tires, and will until we have antigravity systems. And if you are buying tires with a tread compound that puts extra wear on roads (studded tires if those still exist?) or tires for heavier vehicles that put more wear on roads, tax them at a higher rate.
Actually, the proposed solution is to raise usage fees, which not a "liberal" idea at all, but a libertarian one. And, it's a pretty good solution - the people that use the service should ultimately bear an appropriate chunk of it's operating costs.
As an aside, you should probably work on your reading comprehension skills before telling others to.
From what I've seen, the "well-integrated SD card" has effectively been killed by Google's latest versions of Android, and their wanton disregard to fix things. Class-10 cards that were perfectly fine in previous versions of Android all of a sudden are "too slow" in the same hardware, with constant messages about "external storage" crashing should you dare to use it.
If the base OS has shitty support, good luck ever finding a phone that does it properly.
Narcissism.
Why take a picture of a beautiful place, if you can take a picture of said beautiful place and block at least 1/3 of it with yourself at arms reach?
An even higher percentage of photos taken on film were never viewed at all. At least photos taken on a phone have a far better chance of being viewed by someone other than yourself or someone having to sit through the dreaded post-vacation 1970s slide show because of social networking and almost-ubiquitous internet access.
The "long term evolution" wasn't an evolution in technology - it was an evolution in what the telcos can get away with charging people for, and scheme to limit the "unlimited."
Who do you think is building SLS? Do you think there are a bunch of Federal employees working welders and shit making fuel tanks and turbopumps for rocket motors? Or, just maybe is all of that contracted out to aerospace companies like Aerojet Rocketdyne, Northrup Grumman, Lockheed Martin and Boeing just like it always has been? Here's a hint for you: the Apollo Command Module was made by North American Aviation, and the Lunar Module was made by Grumman in the 1960s. The list of contractors involved goes on from there.
And they all made a nice profit doing it, and still do.
You know that every single rocket that NASA has ever launched was built by a corporation under contract, right?
Every.
Single.
One.
Well, the city has to do a bunch of stuff not to make the whole situation a giant clusterfuck - road expansions, mass transit lines, new traffic signals, changing of traffic patterns to match the estimated traffic increases, all the water works / sewer work to be able to service all this new stuff, build fire stations, police stations, schools for the new housing, parks, waste disposal services, etc.
You know that Amazon won't be footing the bill for any of that. The current citizens will be, and there won't be any tax revenue coming from Amazon for several years after it's all done, because of the tax breaks being handed over, so the current citizenry will have to foot the bill disproportionately for some time.
Somewhere down the road, the city will start collecting on all this new shit when the deal expires; by then Amazon will threaten to leave and some idiot politician will ram through an extension just on the threat. This is the same game that urban renewal advocates play with "tax increment financing."
Apparently Long Island City's mayor is extra dumb, because Amazon is getting about double the incentives to build there, that they are in Alexandria, VA.
Is anyone really surprised that they chose New York and DC? Talk about the most obvious choice they could have made...
Having sat in the very back row on a flight to East Asia recently, I can say with some certainty that sitting in the front is more desired. You don't have to wait for every single person to get their shit and go before you can get off the plane after 13+ hours of being on it. And, every single bump and sway in the airframe is something you are very aware of that far behind the wings.
You appear to not possess the concept of humor, specifically the "double meaning"
Since when is FedEx the "little guy"?
In which case it's Best Buy that has the relationship with the disk manufacturer, and is using eBay as the storefront. That changes nothing. eBay is still just providing the connection with the buyer as well as payment services, for a percentage of the sale. And probably an additional fee for the "special" account.
I guess I'm wondering what you think that looks like. What is your proposed remedy for this "monopoly"? (it's not a monopoly, but you keep calling it one. A monopoly is defined as the exclusive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service.)
Is there all of a sudden going to be some government office that you can file a form with, and now Amazon has to use their logistics chain to sell your stuff, under penalty of fines or sanction? What happens when people start to flood Amazon with low quality bullshit that they aren't allowed to de-list without governmental sanctions? Who do you think in the US or EU government would have the authority to do this, under current laws? And how do you think it wouldn't be a total clusterfuck that makes the issue worse - your compulsory product listings literally hands more market share to Amazon by making it even easier to sell through them. And how is a government entity forcing a company to list and sell products they would rather not sell "the free market"?
In conclusion:
A. you haven't thought through this very much
B. you don't understand what a monopoly is
C. you don't understand what a free market is
D. you don't really have any suggestions of how to fix the issue
E. you don't have any legal framework or statute to stand on anyway.
Yeah, but with that logic, planted stories in the industry-friendly press won't lead to increased sales for Q4. Buy now before the tariffs increase your needlessly expensive case by $5! And other FUD statements!
Won't you think of the shareholders?
It's significant because it's a massive middle finger to MPEG. They made a complete hash of the licensing around H.265 so that nobody can figure it out, and those that can either have to have contributed IP to the licensing pools or get financially raped to use it. So the vast majority of the tech industry threw all their patents together into this effort to cut MPEG out, and by the way made it free of cost to use.
It's supported by ARM, Nvidia, Intel, AMD, Microsoft, Google, Apple, and many others. Surprisingly, Samsung, Sony, and Qualcomm aren't on the list, so expect some Android hardware to not have hardware support unless they inherit it from an included GPU design.
List of members in the Alliance for Open Media
It's legal under Right of First Sale because you have no guaranteed right to sell shit on Amazon.
You're still welcome to sell it on eBay, Facebook, Craigslist, the local classified ads, to your neighbor, etc.
Amazon has the right to list, or not list, anything they god damn want to on their store. What makes you think they should be compelled to list these refurb units? That's what you are advocating for here.
Well, except that eBay isn't trying to list new product direct from Apple, which is the crowbar that Apple used here. Want to sell shit direct from Apple, you have to abide by their draconian terms.
eBay isn't interested, they'll let other people with Apple product list and be perfectly happy to take their taste of the final sale price.
Except for all other online sales venues, such as Craigslist, eBay, Facebook, etc.
So you're part of the "Amazon doesn't get to choose what gets sold on their web site" crowd then? Explain that one to me, please.
Lots of people get by with this kind of thing on eBay and are quite happy to do so. I don't see eBay kicking off so-called "unauthorized" resellers, and they aren't exactly the small guy.
Don't start quoting statistics that are wildly made up unless you want to look like an idiot. Amazon doesn't have the power to cut anyone off from 99% of anything, except maybe Amazon-exclusive customers (of which I'm sure there are incredibly few).
Yeah, because brick and mortar stores never switch suppliers or change the product they carry. Are you serious?
Except that there is no monopoly here. These refurbishers are still free to market their product on any other platform up to and including eBay.
Are you really saying that eBay is about to go under because Amazon?
I'm pretty sure that Amazon gets to choose what products are listed in their store, just the same as any brick and mortar gets to choose what goes on their shelves. What are you advocating for here, compulsory product listings from randoms who switch out fans and disks?
Nope. Sorry. You can call this mess "a la carte" if you would like, but you would be wrong.
The concept of a la carte television was to pay vastly reduced rates for only the channels we want - no bundling in 30 channels of crap nobody every watches in order to subsidize the 4 channels people care about, and the option to not pay for expensive channels that you don't want.
What this is, is being forced to subscribe to multiple bundles of bullshit you don't want just to see the few shows that you do. It's no different, except for being a useability nightmare - oh, I want to watch $SHOW, is it on Netflix, Hulu, YouTube TV, Disney+, HBO Now, CBS whatever, etc. etc. At least with cable, it was all one shitty cable box that had a single guide, rather than having to search, launch something else, search, launch something else, search, ad nauseum.
The market won't put up with this bullshit, and piracy will rise. Netflix and Hulu were successful because they had content from across the industry available, and it worked. This shit will barely move the needle from what they get from additional cable bundle subscriptions.
The lesson of Napster / Limewire was not learned by the movie studios, so they are doomed to repeat it. The more fragmented and locked down they make it, the users will reject it and go another way, legal or not.