People still have to pay for the Internet connections upon which VoIP depends. It would just mean the TelCos would have to transition to a new business model wherein their focus is on providing the network and access to it, rather than seeing the Internet as a bastard stepchild of their voice profits.
Hypothetically, it would *inspire* them to finally lay down that optical cable they've been promising us for years. They'll no longer be riding on the profits of their copper-based services and ignoring everything else.
I also, like the other respondant, would have no problem with my tax dollars going to help fund the network - as long as We, The People own the network and not the corporations sitting upon it. I think a strong argument could be made that the communications grid is just as important a public resource as the street system and needs to be moved towards a format where no single entity is allowed to even potentially gain control of it.
The question that the VoIP suppliers having trouble answering is how they intend to duplicate the 911 system in a world where they rule the marketplace and the POTS system is shut down as obsolite.
That's a rather fatuous argument, don't you think? Of course they're having trouble answering questions regarding what they'll be doing in a hypothetical situation which, if it comes about at all, lies decades down the line. It's not like the TelCom industry is going to commit seppuku rather than attempt to remain competitive.
911 compatability wouldn't be hard. If things ever DID reach that point, the government (which centralizes 911 anyway, remember) and the industry work out some new protocol for handling VoIP 911 calls. And that's the other half of the equation - the VoIP industry has to be strong enough that the government sees a need to make it easy for them to get into 911. Once they hit that point, it'll happen quickly. (just as, originally, cell phones didn't have 911 on them, no?)
Exactly. Another thing that worries me is if they DO start regulating VoIP, who's to say they won't suddenly start looking at chat, or e-mail? God help us if the Feds suddenly decide that chat networks have to be reconfigured so that they can 'tap' ICQ. Or e-mail? Follow the same line of thought and PGP becomes illegal.
Incidentally, switching into film geek mode, Don Corleone was against getting into drug trade and got killed for it.;-)
I disagree. I think it's absolutely ludicrous that I can send an e-mail to Siberia, chat in ICQ simultaneously with folks from the whole of the Middle East, hook up my webcam to send video through MSN to a friend in Japan and do it all for "free"...
...yet if I want to actually TALK to a human being outside of my own country, suddenly I'm paying huge amounts of money per minute.
The TelCom industry is quickly becoming a dinosaur. The only reason people pay for their voice services is that there is no real alternative. And they're doing everything they can to make sure it stays that way.
Saying the land lines will suffer is almost more like a threat than an argument. "Don't want to pay us? Fine. We'll make sure you don't have any connection!" I know that's not quite what you said, but I suspect it's in the back of a lot of their minds. But the fact is, we are moving more and more towards an Internet world, and I find it hard to believe that huge companies like AT&T or SW Bell couldn't find ways of switching their business model over to strictly providing Internet-related services.
They've lost all credibility in terms of public interest anyway. How about all those millions (billions?) in government handouts they've taken under the promise of laying optical cable, only to pocket it and walk away? Or all those places in the city where you can't get DSL simply because your local TelCo can't be bothered to upgrade the lines?
Take AWAY their industry-monopoly on voice communications, and they'll basically be forced to upgrade or die. Who knows, they might even spend some money upgrading our pathetic cell network while they're at it.
And the nice part is, you don't have to ACTUALLY take anything away. You just DON'T force the competition \ alternatives to suffer under regulations which shouldn't apply to them. And that's best aspect of all of this. If VoIP takes off, suddenly communications get far more open and free than they've ever been. No more worries again over TelCos gaining too much power or abusing a "monopoly" position. The very idea of a monopoly of any sort on voice transmissions gets rendered moot. It might be rocky at the first, of course, but the trend is towards more Wired people in more countries, and that's deeply unlikely to change.
Of course, it would depend on exactly what sort of ruling the EU hands down. But if they, as is rumored, assess fines of hundreds of millions of dollars (Euros), then that will put Microsoft in a bad position either way. Either they pay up a fine which would hurt even them, and play by the rules, or they pull out of Europe.
I don't *think* they would start putting out, essentially, two different versions of Windows, with Europe getting the stripped-down version. For one thing, what sort of sense does it make to sell the inferior product to the larger customer base? Especially when Europe is increasingly looking towards Linux. Not to mention the costs involved in maintaining even more versions of the platform.
No, while it would, of course, be possible for Microsoft to continue their evil ways with new methods, on the whole this may be the catalyst that forces them to start playing nicely. There's just too much to lose from pissing the EU off.
Even if America is no longer willing to keep Microsoft in line, it would appear that Europe has no such compunctions. Rumors are flying that the EU's economics enforces are about to really lay down the hammer on Microsoft. And considering that the EU now represents a larger consumer base than the US (although, granted, some of them in countries without so much technology), the EU could effectively force them to revamp the way they do business.
Even Microsoft would be in trouble if it was suddenly cut off from 300+ million potential customers.
Because Wal-Mart usually has bad selection and there's a very good chance the CD you're buying has been censored without any labelling on the package to tell you that?
Well, it's AN argument, but not the best argument. They seem to have chosen this case based on ironic value rather than legal value. ie, "Oh look! Kazaa is suing the RIAA for the exact same thing the RIAA sued them for! That's t3h funny!"
One problem I see is that they're attempting to sue them for using KazaaLite, in violation of Kazaa's license agreement. Which means they are attempting to enforce an agreement that the RIAA may have never signed. And it would be a whole lot easier to hit KazaaLite with an IP infringement case than users thereof. The argument CAN be made, but it's not a very strong one. (it would be, as I see it, basically equivilent to suing a kid for wearing an unlicensed Simpsons T-shirt - in strict legal terms it might be illegal, but it's very problematic to argue. To begin with, you'd have to establish malicious intent and some sort of knowledge that the product in question was illegitimate)
Also, TOS\EULA violation cases don't have too much legal precedent behind them, and certainly aren't upheld universally. What might be grounds to terminate a user for TOS violations aren't necessarily grounds to sue. Again, it's another hurdle that could be overcome, but not assured. Now, if Kazaa had sent the RIAA a C&D citing TOS violations ordering them to stop using the service, which the RIAA then ignored - then there would be a case. But I don't think this happened.
In the meantime, there are any number of anti-trust \ RICO-style laws under which a far stronger argument could be made. It is almost inarguable that the RIAA is throwing huge amounts of money and resources trying to litigate Kazaa to death. If Kazaa presented itself as legitimate competition, which the RIAA is illegally attempting to destroy rather than facing them on the open market, they'd have a pretty good case. It would come down to a pure verdict on whether the RIAA's actions were anti-competitive.
It's certainly amusing, but they have no serious legal leg to stand on which I can see. And why sue for copyright infringement of all things, besides the irony factor? You might be able to get something on them for breaking the TOS, or by claiming the harassment of their users is an intentional ploy to try to destroy their business. (which would be a nice argument, since that's exactly what the RIAA is doing - isn't there something in RICO which covers that?)
On the whole, though, I'm not sure this is a good idea. If the courts find that Kazaa can assume legal responsibility in matters done TO their users, that puts them a step closer to being responsible for things done BY their users.
For that matter, any sufficiently-advanced Buddhist could be diagnosable with a good handful of western psychological disorders, just from his philosophy. Schitzotypal, at the least.
No, actually a large company selling at a loss specifically to drive smaller competition out of business is VERY illegal under US antitrust laws. The problem is that anyone Wal-Mart does this to isn't solvant enough afterwards to sue. And the government has no interest in going after them on their own.
Incidentally, your seeming enthusiasm about the subject disturbs me. Someone who obviously values capitalism should understand the dangers of allowing huge companies to crush all their competition. Unless you're seriously proposing that the best economic solution is to sit back, let oppressive monopolies form unchecked, and then wait for them to crumble under their own weight after a generation or two.
The problem with this argument, which no one seems to ever stop and consider, is the MASSIVE difference in standard-of-living between the US and India. It is far more expensive, in terms of hard currency, to live in the US than in India, so naturally wages here have to be far higher. So people say US workers should take a pay cut, or they expect "too much," when a large number are only barely making enough to scrape by, thanks to the overall state of the economy.
If the people stop believing in that, and an education isn't seen as a step up, or providing an advantage less people will pursue it.
Hell, I already see that. I was going to college, but had to drop out because of financial pressures. I'm now making a decent wage as a call center operator, but it's certainly no dream job.
A friend of mine from school, however, stuck with it. She struggled, borrowed, and generally worked her butt off, but after about 6 years, managed to get a dual business \ marketing degree.
And she's currently making a decent wage as a call center operator.
Actually they do, but only at the beginning. Whenever they move into a new area, they'll set their prices well below cost so that they can drive off the competition. (and get propped up by all the other stores in the meantime) Once the competition is gone, then they slowly wiggle their prices upwards until they're profittable again. But even if people notice that everything is significantly more expensive, they suddenly have no other options nearby.
Wal-Mart has actually destroyed entire towns by doing this. It's been documented on 60 Minutes and other news services. What happened is they move into a smallish town, then pull the above. All other business in the town, besides niche shops, shuts down. Then after a couple years, they discover the local economy can't support a full-sized Wal-Mart at profittable prices, so they shut the store down. Which leaves 90% of the town unemployed, and generally forces everyone living there to move somewhere else, leaving a ghost town in their wake.
Yes, it's massively illegal. No, the government doesn't do anything.
Erm, right. That was my point. The implication of the article - intentional or not - is that the iPod is the all-in-one player, and he's reduced to recommending niche alternatives.
Yep. Exactly. Although I'm constantly amazed at how much Macs do NOT devalue. Ever tried looking for a halfway new one on eBay? There's virtually no price drop at all. Even the ancient clamshell iBooks are still pretty expensive...
While the author got some facts wrong, I do agree with his lament about us becoming so fixated on replacable goods. It strikes me as a situation that will get more and more unstable as time goes on, although what exact economic impact it would have, I'm not sure.
Ok, fine, it has a spinning hard drive. Which has an expected lifespan of many years. That doesn't negate the basic point - that you can't compare a piece of electronics to a car - and thank you for nitpicking. Feel better?
Mildly interesting article, but it lost me at the point that it first says it's bad to go jogging with a hard-drive based player because it might theoretically skip, and then turns around and recommends CD players.
Unless the reviewer can come up with recommendations for an all-in-one alternative to the iPod, it's a meaningless list. He appears to have simply taken several aspects of the iPod, and then individually come up with alternatives for each aspect. (without applying the same cited standards to those alternatives) Which would suggest in turn (if you follow that logic trail) that it takes 5 different other players to become superior to one iPod.
Not that I think that's the case, just that I think it was a poorly-written article.
Blaming Apple's engineers or design staff is at most a reach, because they didn't manufacture every piece of the iPod, they spec'd out the available technologies and then put them together
So they shouldn't be blamed because they weren't the ones doing their job in the first place...?
If Apple is to be blamed for this it is because they are A)utilizing the same shoddy, lowest-bidder "engineering" tricks as every other company in the business, but B)pricing their products twice as high and attempting to make it APPEAR that they are somehow of better quality.
And if they are being blamed, it's because they've set themselves up as (and traded upon the perception) that they are the Good Guys - and therefore the first to be jumped upon if they prove themselves to be no more Good than anyone else.
Ugh. What ever happened to making things that last? When I buy something, even technology stuff, I want it to last.
Welcome to the Economics of Mediocrity. As long as EVERYONE is making cheap, badly produced crap that dies after a year, then everyone rakes in huge profits as everyone is forced to keep replacing things. Once they get it streamlined to a certain point, it becomes almost impossible for an well-intentioned company to compete with a well-made product, because by its nature, it's going to cost twice as much as the crap - and it'll be a year or two before anyone realizes that it holds together longer. By that point, the company in question has probably already failed.
Perhaps Apple will decide to use their awesome powers of Coolness for good rather than evil, and engineer the next generation of iPods to have easily-replacible batteries. At that point, the higher cost of the Pods will be fully justified - and they already have the edge on the rest of the marketplace going in.
Your analogy is hideous. A car is full of physical parts moving and wearing down, and is constantly running at temperatures which would melt lesser materials. Entropy alone dicates it will wear out, and there are few in this world so dumb as to not know there are limits on what a mechanical system that complex can handle.
But a piece of electronics? The iPod doesn't even have moving parts to speak of, besides the buttons on the front panel. There's no reasonable expectation on the part of a user that it would "wear out." And one would have to be pretty familiar with battery chemistry to be able to know the type used in the iPod, and roughly how many charges it would last.
Whether this came from oversight or malice, we won't know, but to claim that the users are somehow at fault for *gasp* actually USING their $400 piece of electronics is simply rediculous.
Yes, since obviously asking questions that might cause people to doubt the status quo is automatically trolling.
The point was to make people THINK. To challenge those who were obviously blindly hating simply because they had been conditioned to do so. Those who posted reasonable responses obviously, at least, put some thought into the subject.
But if you think trying to get people to simply think twice about furious, kneejerk hatred is "trolling" I do truly feel sorry for you.
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Hypothetically, it would *inspire* them to finally lay down that optical cable they've been promising us for years. They'll no longer be riding on the profits of their copper-based services and ignoring everything else.
I also, like the other respondant, would have no problem with my tax dollars going to help fund the network - as long as We, The People own the network and not the corporations sitting upon it. I think a strong argument could be made that the communications grid is just as important a public resource as the street system and needs to be moved towards a format where no single entity is allowed to even potentially gain control of it.
That's a rather fatuous argument, don't you think? Of course they're having trouble answering questions regarding what they'll be doing in a hypothetical situation which, if it comes about at all, lies decades down the line. It's not like the TelCom industry is going to commit seppuku rather than attempt to remain competitive.
911 compatability wouldn't be hard. If things ever DID reach that point, the government (which centralizes 911 anyway, remember) and the industry work out some new protocol for handling VoIP 911 calls. And that's the other half of the equation - the VoIP industry has to be strong enough that the government sees a need to make it easy for them to get into 911. Once they hit that point, it'll happen quickly. (just as, originally, cell phones didn't have 911 on them, no?)
Incidentally, switching into film geek mode, Don Corleone was against getting into drug trade and got killed for it. ;-)
The TelCom industry is quickly becoming a dinosaur. The only reason people pay for their voice services is that there is no real alternative. And they're doing everything they can to make sure it stays that way.
Saying the land lines will suffer is almost more like a threat than an argument. "Don't want to pay us? Fine. We'll make sure you don't have any connection!" I know that's not quite what you said, but I suspect it's in the back of a lot of their minds. But the fact is, we are moving more and more towards an Internet world, and I find it hard to believe that huge companies like AT&T or SW Bell couldn't find ways of switching their business model over to strictly providing Internet-related services.
They've lost all credibility in terms of public interest anyway. How about all those millions (billions?) in government handouts they've taken under the promise of laying optical cable, only to pocket it and walk away? Or all those places in the city where you can't get DSL simply because your local TelCo can't be bothered to upgrade the lines?
Take AWAY their industry-monopoly on voice communications, and they'll basically be forced to upgrade or die. Who knows, they might even spend some money upgrading our pathetic cell network while they're at it.
And the nice part is, you don't have to ACTUALLY take anything away. You just DON'T force the competition \ alternatives to suffer under regulations which shouldn't apply to them. And that's best aspect of all of this. If VoIP takes off, suddenly communications get far more open and free than they've ever been. No more worries again over TelCos gaining too much power or abusing a "monopoly" position. The very idea of a monopoly of any sort on voice transmissions gets rendered moot. It might be rocky at the first, of course, but the trend is towards more Wired people in more countries, and that's deeply unlikely to change.
And then there's one more problem solved.
I don't *think* they would start putting out, essentially, two different versions of Windows, with Europe getting the stripped-down version. For one thing, what sort of sense does it make to sell the inferior product to the larger customer base? Especially when Europe is increasingly looking towards Linux. Not to mention the costs involved in maintaining even more versions of the platform.
No, while it would, of course, be possible for Microsoft to continue their evil ways with new methods, on the whole this may be the catalyst that forces them to start playing nicely. There's just too much to lose from pissing the EU off.
Even Microsoft would be in trouble if it was suddenly cut off from 300+ million potential customers.
Because Wal-Mart usually has bad selection and there's a very good chance the CD you're buying has been censored without any labelling on the package to tell you that?
One problem I see is that they're attempting to sue them for using KazaaLite, in violation of Kazaa's license agreement. Which means they are attempting to enforce an agreement that the RIAA may have never signed. And it would be a whole lot easier to hit KazaaLite with an IP infringement case than users thereof. The argument CAN be made, but it's not a very strong one. (it would be, as I see it, basically equivilent to suing a kid for wearing an unlicensed Simpsons T-shirt - in strict legal terms it might be illegal, but it's very problematic to argue. To begin with, you'd have to establish malicious intent and some sort of knowledge that the product in question was illegitimate)
Also, TOS\EULA violation cases don't have too much legal precedent behind them, and certainly aren't upheld universally. What might be grounds to terminate a user for TOS violations aren't necessarily grounds to sue. Again, it's another hurdle that could be overcome, but not assured. Now, if Kazaa had sent the RIAA a C&D citing TOS violations ordering them to stop using the service, which the RIAA then ignored - then there would be a case. But I don't think this happened.
In the meantime, there are any number of anti-trust \ RICO-style laws under which a far stronger argument could be made. It is almost inarguable that the RIAA is throwing huge amounts of money and resources trying to litigate Kazaa to death. If Kazaa presented itself as legitimate competition, which the RIAA is illegally attempting to destroy rather than facing them on the open market, they'd have a pretty good case. It would come down to a pure verdict on whether the RIAA's actions were anti-competitive.
On the whole, though, I'm not sure this is a good idea. If the courts find that Kazaa can assume legal responsibility in matters done TO their users, that puts them a step closer to being responsible for things done BY their users.
Oh wait, it's 2004 now. Why didn't someone tell me?
.BAT scripting? In 2003? Jeeeeeezus. I don't even wanna ask how long it's been since they gave IT money for upgrades. You have my sympathies.
For that matter, any sufficiently-advanced Buddhist could be diagnosable with a good handful of western psychological disorders, just from his philosophy. Schitzotypal, at the least.
I'm guessing, This.
Incidentally, your seeming enthusiasm about the subject disturbs me. Someone who obviously values capitalism should understand the dangers of allowing huge companies to crush all their competition. Unless you're seriously proposing that the best economic solution is to sit back, let oppressive monopolies form unchecked, and then wait for them to crumble under their own weight after a generation or two.
The problem with this argument, which no one seems to ever stop and consider, is the MASSIVE difference in standard-of-living between the US and India. It is far more expensive, in terms of hard currency, to live in the US than in India, so naturally wages here have to be far higher. So people say US workers should take a pay cut, or they expect "too much," when a large number are only barely making enough to scrape by, thanks to the overall state of the economy.
Hell, I already see that. I was going to college, but had to drop out because of financial pressures. I'm now making a decent wage as a call center operator, but it's certainly no dream job.
A friend of mine from school, however, stuck with it. She struggled, borrowed, and generally worked her butt off, but after about 6 years, managed to get a dual business \ marketing degree.
And she's currently making a decent wage as a call center operator.
Wal-Mart has actually destroyed entire towns by doing this. It's been documented on 60 Minutes and other news services. What happened is they move into a smallish town, then pull the above. All other business in the town, besides niche shops, shuts down. Then after a couple years, they discover the local economy can't support a full-sized Wal-Mart at profittable prices, so they shut the store down. Which leaves 90% of the town unemployed, and generally forces everyone living there to move somewhere else, leaving a ghost town in their wake.
Yes, it's massively illegal. No, the government doesn't do anything.
Erm, right. That was my point. The implication of the article - intentional or not - is that the iPod is the all-in-one player, and he's reduced to recommending niche alternatives.
While the author got some facts wrong, I do agree with his lament about us becoming so fixated on replacable goods. It strikes me as a situation that will get more and more unstable as time goes on, although what exact economic impact it would have, I'm not sure.
Ok, fine, it has a spinning hard drive. Which has an expected lifespan of many years. That doesn't negate the basic point - that you can't compare a piece of electronics to a car - and thank you for nitpicking. Feel better?
Unless the reviewer can come up with recommendations for an all-in-one alternative to the iPod, it's a meaningless list. He appears to have simply taken several aspects of the iPod, and then individually come up with alternatives for each aspect. (without applying the same cited standards to those alternatives) Which would suggest in turn (if you follow that logic trail) that it takes 5 different other players to become superior to one iPod.
Not that I think that's the case, just that I think it was a poorly-written article.
So they shouldn't be blamed because they weren't the ones doing their job in the first place...?
If Apple is to be blamed for this it is because they are A)utilizing the same shoddy, lowest-bidder "engineering" tricks as every other company in the business, but B)pricing their products twice as high and attempting to make it APPEAR that they are somehow of better quality.
And if they are being blamed, it's because they've set themselves up as (and traded upon the perception) that they are the Good Guys - and therefore the first to be jumped upon if they prove themselves to be no more Good than anyone else.
Welcome to the Economics of Mediocrity. As long as EVERYONE is making cheap, badly produced crap that dies after a year, then everyone rakes in huge profits as everyone is forced to keep replacing things. Once they get it streamlined to a certain point, it becomes almost impossible for an well-intentioned company to compete with a well-made product, because by its nature, it's going to cost twice as much as the crap - and it'll be a year or two before anyone realizes that it holds together longer. By that point, the company in question has probably already failed.
Perhaps Apple will decide to use their awesome powers of Coolness for good rather than evil, and engineer the next generation of iPods to have easily-replacible batteries. At that point, the higher cost of the Pods will be fully justified - and they already have the edge on the rest of the marketplace going in.
But I somehow doubt it.
But a piece of electronics? The iPod doesn't even have moving parts to speak of, besides the buttons on the front panel. There's no reasonable expectation on the part of a user that it would "wear out." And one would have to be pretty familiar with battery chemistry to be able to know the type used in the iPod, and roughly how many charges it would last.
Whether this came from oversight or malice, we won't know, but to claim that the users are somehow at fault for *gasp* actually USING their $400 piece of electronics is simply rediculous.
The point was to make people THINK. To challenge those who were obviously blindly hating simply because they had been conditioned to do so. Those who posted reasonable responses obviously, at least, put some thought into the subject.
But if you think trying to get people to simply think twice about furious, kneejerk hatred is "trolling" I do truly feel sorry for you.