A broker looking to make an arbitrage profit is not the antithesis of the free market. They've found a pricing discrepancy in the supply/demand chain, and it's so far out of whack that they can still profit without moving 100% of their goods. That is precisely the free market.
Well, the problem is that you can't have a free market. A free market requires that there are no barrier to entry for suppliers. However, a supplier can't set up shop and start creating tickets to the show. Only the venue can do that, and they have a complete monopoly.
The only system being broken is the one where the venue sets a "fair price". That fair price is turning out to be much lower than the price the consumer is considering worthwhile. The venues are doing a terrible job pricing supply/demand for the more popular concerts. That's great for the consumer, so great that a marketplace has grown up around exploiting the arbitrage.
The venue is only doing a terrible job of abusing their monopoly position to the fullest. They could limit supply, practice price discrimination, product bundling, exclusive dealing, and other practices that people generally look down upon. However, for the most part they seem to be as fair as possible despite their monopoly position. Only to have the scalpers come in act an abusive manner in their place.
How are the limiting supply? Find me a story where the scalpers were buying and destroying tickets because that is the ONLY way they can limit the supply.
It can and does happen if the optimum price point is not when the venue is full. Say you have 1,000 seats, and you could fill it at $50 a seat, or you could sell 600 seats at $200 each. If a scalper effectively controls the supply because they have 90% of the tickets, they can pick the latter thus effectively reducing the size of the venue.
Well, if you extend the 100 year timespan a bit, you can include the 1906 San Francisco quake, which is the worst quake in US history in terms of loss of life and property damage. The fact that the loss of life since then has been so low has a lot to do with the lessons learned from that quake.
On the other hand, can you even buy a new TV nowadays that's not made in China? Sure, in the past there were plenty of TVs made that are now landfill fodder, but you could also spend some more and get a quality product that still survives today. Judging by what's built now, I would say having a new TV last 25 years would be a fluke, no matter how much you spent on it.
Can't you just move your foot from the brake to the gas pedal quickly, before the car has a chance to roll back? Kind of like what someone with a manual transmission would have to do in the same situation? Ditto if the car has a handbrake you can use.
It would make more sense to me to put the switch on the fuel pump. No gas will stop the engine quickly, and your lights and drive-by-wire systems will still have power.
I kind of doubt Microsoft will release IE9 for Windows XP, kind of like how Windows 2000 got cut off after IE6 SP1. So I'm going to guess we'll be stuck with IE8 for a good long time.
80% of consumer retail laptops, perhaps, with the notable exception of Apple (their 15" laptops use 1440x900 screens).. If you want something better, it's not difficult to order it.
Really? As far as I can tell, it's impossible now to order a laptop that is not a TN panel, and they are all shortscreen now, with most of them using the even sillier 16:9 ratio that TVs use. It's also very difficult to order a laptop that has a high DPI screen (say, equivalent to the 1600x1200 15" screens from a few years back), and it's getting harder and harder to not get stuck with a glossy display too.
That may be true for something like video games, but I would say no for something like audio/video hardware and streams where the DRM'd format is supposed to last several years to a decade or more.
I can assure you that car manufactorer's have absolutely no interest in crippliing used cars sales.
I'm sure they would love to control the used car market. It's not hard to imagine them wanting a system where the only way to offload your used car is to trade it in at a dealership. And the only place to buy a used car would be at the same dealerships.
Well, the answer is that it depends on the good. If it's an inelastic good, like gasoline, then the tax can be passed onto the consumer and the consumer really has no choice but to pay it (well, in the short term - in the long term the consumer may adapt by buying a more fuel efficient car or similar if the tax is offensive enough).
For an elastic good, this is not true. Take for example video games. Entertainment goods tend to be fairly elastic. Say a video game will sell 1 million units at $50, and 750,000 units at $60. Assuming that the cost to produce each additional copy of the the video game is fairly low, then the company will make more money if the game is priced at $50. So it's priced at $50, and suddenly a $10 tax is added. This does not change the demand curve, therefore the new optimum price is not going to be $60, but somewhere between $50 and $60. Or in other words, the tax will eat into the company's profits.
That being said, the first company that can come out with a netbook that can run off of USB power will have a winner.
Given that the USB spec only allows for a maximum draw of 2.5W, I doubt we'll see one soon. At best you could charge it slowly if the netbook was not actually running. Though the OLPC could pull it off.
Perhaps in the future when they have USB3.0 ports (maximum draw of 9W) it may be possible.
So, do you really think that scavenging a used card out of a trash pile is an enterprise-ready solution? Capacitors age, people aren't so kind about static protocols with systems heading to the recyclers, et FUCKING cetera...
YOU put your foot in mouth on that one, buddy-o!
So what's your point? There is still the option of buying brand news ones cheaply. Something that is not possible with a disposable computer like an iMac. Besides, these came out of retired, working PCs that we removed ourselves, not some random dumpster.
I knew you would say that. But, since you are doing things like SALVAGING PCI CARDS, I take it you aren't working for the gummint, or even a government contractor, who might have an overriding security concern.
I don't see how an old network card would be a security concern. Yeah, I can think of something in theory, but it's not like these network cards came off of eBay either.
But if you can show me a valid reason why a PROPERLY secured WiFi network is somehow a security concern, then I'd agree.
Yeah, lets go to the trouble of setting up a WiFi network just because we have a broken iMac. Genius!
Also, didja ever think of trying ONE OF THESE [sustworks.com] Ethernet -> USB adapters? Seems a LOT cheaper than chucking a whole system, don'tcha think?
We have some of those. They are slow, about 5-8 times slower than a 100mbit PCI card. Useful in a pinch, maybe a permanent solution depending on what you're doing with the computer or if you're stuck with a Mac.
On the other iMac: did you just want a nice G5 iMac to sneak out the back door for yourself??? You DID mention that the one with "too many dead pixels" was "ON YOUR DESK" right now.
Obviously you're even stupider than I thought or you would have noticed I'm not the original poster.
Fair enough. On the other hand, badly written code is self-limiting in size. It almost never gets particularly large because if it is that hard to maintain, it will also be extremely hard to expand in any useful way. Usually by the time it gets past about 10-15,000 LOC, it has to be at least somewhat sensible.
Using copy and paste you can get very large, messy projects pretty easily. Nothing like having multiple versions of the same 2000-line function, all of them used and each subtly different from each other. Or simply copying lines code all over the place instead of placing it into a function and calling the function when you need it.
Depends on the capacitor technology you use, some kinds can last forever. But for this application you probably would need an electrolytic to get a high enough charge per given volume.
1. The most that would have had to be replaced on the iMac G5 would have been a motherboard. Ebay has tons of them. $40 will get ya one. There is even a flat $249 repair service [ebay.com] listed.
Do you really think that buying parts from eBay that are scavenged from other, presumably dead iMacs is an enterprise ready solution?
Considering that nearly ALL PEE-SEE mobos have INTEGRATED ETHERNET on them, do you REALLY think it would be significantly cheaper to fix that problem if it was a PEE-SEE?
Yes actually, since the solution for a dead ethernet port on a standard PC is a $15 PCI ethernet card. That's what we do at work, except the ethernet card is free since we harvested them out of the P2/P3 systems that went off to the recyclers a while back.
And UNlike that PEE-SEE, the iMac could have connected up via WiFi THAT WAS ALREADY IN THE IMAC, and you could have had the guy back up and running in about 1 minute flat. Methinks you are an EE-DEE-OTT.
And not all workplaces have wi-fi for security and other reasons. You Mac people sure can be dense.
In theory, you could install Windows 7 on a P3 system that originally shipped with Windows 98. In reality, there is no way you can install an Intel-only version of OSX on a PPC PowerMac.
Well, it's not like you have much of a choice when Apple kills support for your hardware. You would think that for a much as you pay for a Mac, you'd think they'd support them a bit longer.
But hey, at least with the Intel Macs you can always install Windows if you don't like Linux so much. Kind of funny how Microsoft is going to support your Apple hardware long after Apple has forgotten about you.
Most operating systems have switched to 1GB == 1000MB, 1MB == 1000KB, including Mac OS X and Ubuntu.
You'll note that's only for disk space. Both of those OSes consider 1GB = 1024MB and 1MB = 1024kB when reporting ram sizes. In that sense, at least Windows is consistent.
Why not? Typically when someone complains about the DRM on the iPod, all the Apple fanboys fall all over themselves pointing out how you can sync your iPod in Linux and pull the music off of it, etc. And they always completely fail to mention that this does not work on the Touch.
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If that's the case, how are you supposed to move the car if the battery is dead so you can't it out of park?
Well, the problem is that you can't have a free market. A free market requires that there are no barrier to entry for suppliers. However, a supplier can't set up shop and start creating tickets to the show. Only the venue can do that, and they have a complete monopoly.
The venue is only doing a terrible job of abusing their monopoly position to the fullest. They could limit supply, practice price discrimination, product bundling, exclusive dealing, and other practices that people generally look down upon. However, for the most part they seem to be as fair as possible despite their monopoly position. Only to have the scalpers come in act an abusive manner in their place.
It can and does happen if the optimum price point is not when the venue is full. Say you have 1,000 seats, and you could fill it at $50 a seat, or you could sell 600 seats at $200 each. If a scalper effectively controls the supply because they have 90% of the tickets, they can pick the latter thus effectively reducing the size of the venue.
Well, if you extend the 100 year timespan a bit, you can include the 1906 San Francisco quake, which is the worst quake in US history in terms of loss of life and property damage. The fact that the loss of life since then has been so low has a lot to do with the lessons learned from that quake.
On the other hand, can you even buy a new TV nowadays that's not made in China? Sure, in the past there were plenty of TVs made that are now landfill fodder, but you could also spend some more and get a quality product that still survives today. Judging by what's built now, I would say having a new TV last 25 years would be a fluke, no matter how much you spent on it.
In the case that you regularly take your Camry to the race track, I would then suggest you don't take the update.
Can't you just move your foot from the brake to the gas pedal quickly, before the car has a chance to roll back? Kind of like what someone with a manual transmission would have to do in the same situation? Ditto if the car has a handbrake you can use.
It would make more sense to me to put the switch on the fuel pump. No gas will stop the engine quickly, and your lights and drive-by-wire systems will still have power.
I kind of doubt Microsoft will release IE9 for Windows XP, kind of like how Windows 2000 got cut off after IE6 SP1. So I'm going to guess we'll be stuck with IE8 for a good long time.
Really? As far as I can tell, it's impossible now to order a laptop that is not a TN panel, and they are all shortscreen now, with most of them using the even sillier 16:9 ratio that TVs use. It's also very difficult to order a laptop that has a high DPI screen (say, equivalent to the 1600x1200 15" screens from a few years back), and it's getting harder and harder to not get stuck with a glossy display too.
That may be true for something like video games, but I would say no for something like audio/video hardware and streams where the DRM'd format is supposed to last several years to a decade or more.
I'm sure they would love to control the used car market. It's not hard to imagine them wanting a system where the only way to offload your used car is to trade it in at a dealership. And the only place to buy a used car would be at the same dealerships.
You'll also find 7 Starter on some of the netbooks sold in the US.
Things you haven't even imagined yet.
Well, the answer is that it depends on the good. If it's an inelastic good, like gasoline, then the tax can be passed onto the consumer and the consumer really has no choice but to pay it (well, in the short term - in the long term the consumer may adapt by buying a more fuel efficient car or similar if the tax is offensive enough).
For an elastic good, this is not true. Take for example video games. Entertainment goods tend to be fairly elastic. Say a video game will sell 1 million units at $50, and 750,000 units at $60. Assuming that the cost to produce each additional copy of the the video game is fairly low, then the company will make more money if the game is priced at $50. So it's priced at $50, and suddenly a $10 tax is added. This does not change the demand curve, therefore the new optimum price is not going to be $60, but somewhere between $50 and $60. Or in other words, the tax will eat into the company's profits.
Given that the USB spec only allows for a maximum draw of 2.5W, I doubt we'll see one soon. At best you could charge it slowly if the netbook was not actually running. Though the OLPC could pull it off.
Perhaps in the future when they have USB3.0 ports (maximum draw of 9W) it may be possible.
So what's your point? There is still the option of buying brand news ones cheaply. Something that is not possible with a disposable computer like an iMac. Besides, these came out of retired, working PCs that we removed ourselves, not some random dumpster.
I don't see how an old network card would be a security concern. Yeah, I can think of something in theory, but it's not like these network cards came off of eBay either.
Yeah, lets go to the trouble of setting up a WiFi network just because we have a broken iMac. Genius!
We have some of those. They are slow, about 5-8 times slower than a 100mbit PCI card. Useful in a pinch, maybe a permanent solution depending on what you're doing with the computer or if you're stuck with a Mac.
Obviously you're even stupider than I thought or you would have noticed I'm not the original poster.
Using copy and paste you can get very large, messy projects pretty easily. Nothing like having multiple versions of the same 2000-line function, all of them used and each subtly different from each other. Or simply copying lines code all over the place instead of placing it into a function and calling the function when you need it.
Depends on the capacitor technology you use, some kinds can last forever. But for this application you probably would need an electrolytic to get a high enough charge per given volume.
Do you really think that buying parts from eBay that are scavenged from other, presumably dead iMacs is an enterprise ready solution?
Yes actually, since the solution for a dead ethernet port on a standard PC is a $15 PCI ethernet card. That's what we do at work, except the ethernet card is free since we harvested them out of the P2/P3 systems that went off to the recyclers a while back.
And not all workplaces have wi-fi for security and other reasons. You Mac people sure can be dense.
In theory, you could install Windows 7 on a P3 system that originally shipped with Windows 98. In reality, there is no way you can install an Intel-only version of OSX on a PPC PowerMac.
Well, it's not like you have much of a choice when Apple kills support for your hardware. You would think that for a much as you pay for a Mac, you'd think they'd support them a bit longer.
But hey, at least with the Intel Macs you can always install Windows if you don't like Linux so much. Kind of funny how Microsoft is going to support your Apple hardware long after Apple has forgotten about you.
You'll note that's only for disk space. Both of those OSes consider 1GB = 1024MB and 1MB = 1024kB when reporting ram sizes. In that sense, at least Windows is consistent.
Why not? Typically when someone complains about the DRM on the iPod, all the Apple fanboys fall all over themselves pointing out how you can sync your iPod in Linux and pull the music off of it, etc. And they always completely fail to mention that this does not work on the Touch.
It's not like we don't do it here on Slashdot. Can you name the companies that are headquartered in Redmond and Cupertino?