Did you know that Clinton, Reagan and Carter all excercised the exact same authority? Did you know that a federal court declared it legal in 2002? If not, why are you posting. If so, why are you posting?
Idiot.
The concern is NOT about whether or not the standard for suspicion is too low for this administration, the concern is that THEY BROKE THE LAW AND CONSTITUTION by authorizing ILLEGAL SEARCHES!!!
Go and READ the Constitution, its the FOURTH AMENDMENT. No unreasonable search and seizure. Which is EXACTLY why we have warrants. The course ruled long time agon (and again and again) that govt should NOT be doing searches without warrants.
Are you implying that Clinton and Carter authorized warrantless searches? PROVE IT!!! It has NOT occurred since Nixon. And this administration has clearly proven that its integrity lies in the same murky depths that Nixon did.
This is a DIRECT assault on the Constitution. And you are willing to just let it piss away. You should leave your citizenship at the door.
Lack of endorsement is not an endorsement of nothing. Endorsing something is not the same as someone who does not endorse anything. A person who endorses something means, that the person has a made a choice. A person who does not endorse anything means that the person has NOT made any choice.
Strange, I guess my experience of my good-looking roommate who made less and dumber than me who was dating 3 or 4 girls at a time, while I spend most weekends by myself is just an anomaly.
Funny, he probably dated 60 or 70 girls over a couple of years (compare to 2 or 3 for me). But I guess just that was statistical blip.
I mean, c'mon, the fact that all of my tech geek friends who made 6 figure salaries pretty much struck out at every bar and parties (while jocky non-tech (albeit good looking guys) guys made out like a bandit has to be false, right?
I don't think Microsoft should be forced to sell their products. The OEM should be allowed to decide which media player to include on the final O/S. What is your problem with that?
Well, this has happened alrady in Europe with their anti-trust settlement. Guess what, no OEM's wanted the "crippled" version. They are just selling the bundled version just like before.
So what good THAT anti-trust suit do other than lightening up MS' pockets are little bit? What good will this do?
What you all seems to ignore is that for something like this to be valid and successful, there has to be a CONSUMER DEMAND for this! There is no outcry (other than Slashdot) for an unbundled version. In fact, 95% of the consumers are HAPPY that these apps are bundled.
This is much ado about nothing. MS will just count this as a cost of doing business and move on. No Korean OEM is going to sell the unbundled version and everything will blow away in few months after that. Just like it has with Europe.
The first amendment doesn't give you the right to say whatever you what wherever or whenever.
Actually, the 1st Amendment does give you the right to say whatever you want. It just doesn't protect you from private entities to use that against you.
The underlying idea of A la carte programming seems like a good idea, and will even cost those of us who couldn't care less about sports a LOT less (disgustingly enough, the bulk of your "extended basic" cable bill goes toward subsidizing the sports channels
Oh man, I know all of us are geeks, but do you have to make it THIS obvious?
(gym class wedge flashback)...shudder.
The wholesale market is quite elastic. IF distribution companies had the right to make their wholesale purchases from anyone instead of the state run "pool" when Enron pulled their "we have maintenance issues" BS and cut supply the distributors could have just given Enron the finger and purchased their power from elsewhere (lets not forget, if they weren't forced to sell their power generation in the first place they wouldn't have been so beholden to the "pool"). That is the free market at work.
This is BS. It is completely opposite of what happened. California bought most of the energy it needed through its distributors. But the system relies on spot market (i.e. FREE MARKET) to support addtional demand spikes. Enron decided to take advantage of this situation by cornering the spot market and driving it up. Just like how some stock speculators drive up the prices by buying up shares of a company with limited float (ALL FREE MARKET STUFF).
Again, since you have now dodged the question three times: how do you explain the UK's 10+ years of power deregulation, PA's open power markets, et al not exploding in a California like mess? According to your theory Pittsburgh should have a power system on par with Bagdad's by now.
Correlation does not equal causation. Just because I eat McDonalds, but haven't had a heart attck, does not mean that Big Macs are good for you.
However, for your information...
Since FERC rules inaugurated electricity deregulation in 1996, similar price spikes have occurred in Illinois, Ohio, and New York. Even in Pennsylvania, considered the poster child for electricity deregulation, prices hit $930 a megawatt hour for brief periods in 1999. In June 2000, on a particularly hot day in New York City when a regional nuclear power plant was experiencing an "unplanned" power outage, the wholesale price of electricity soared twentyfold to $1,000 a megawatt hour, the state-imposed cap. More than $70 million flowed from city consumers to a half dozen energy companies on a single day.
When you have an inelastic market, spot control of prices is inevitiable, even in a completely free market. My argument is NOT that deregulation GUARANTEES fraud, but deregulation does not mean that it is free from fraud. Fraud can happen any time when you have a very inelastic market.
Depending on the plant you can do it in as little as two years...
I'll tell you what. If you can find an example, I will buy you an Xbox 360. And I don't mean from ground breaking to operation, I mean decision of building a power plant to operation. Please, it takes 5+ years just to go through planning and permits for a project this size.
and most communities in US does not want power plant near their homes.
[which is caused by regulation, cough cough]
Why don't you stick to one argument? Regulating price and zoning laws are completely different topics.
Oh, and now you are saying all regulations are bad? Are you one of those ultra-libertarian freaks? I don't know about you but I don't want an old-style power plant that generates huge plumes of black smoke near my neighborhood. But I guess we would have no problem getting permission for where you live.
While we are at it, why stop there? Why don't we just chuck all environmental laws? Who spend money on expensive filters and clean chambers when you can build coal firing plants on the cheapside? So what if it causes a little acid rain and smog. Who cares if the nearby river is so polluted you can even step in it (see: China). it's free society, right? All regulations are bad, right?
Uhhh Puhleeze...
We are talking about New Orleans here. Their gross economic ouput was lower than what went in to support it. They had exactly ONE fortune 100 HQ with no viable industry other than tourism.
We can re route all of the fuel refining/delivery to Texas (which has most of it already) where they are WELL above the sea level.
There is no reason why New Orleans cannot be moved further inland (higher elevation) and be the exactly the same port city (and the their relative size of trade through their port has been going down for last several decades).
It is ABSOLUTELY NUTS to rebuild a port city under the sea level. Netherlands HAS NO CHOICE. Their country is about as big as a small NE state. They have no other place to expand to. Only way they can sustain themselves is to reclaim land from sea.
US has no such problem. The land is plentiful. There are plenty of nearby port cities that can EASILY take the flow when properly planned (without any seawalls). Why go with the most expensive route when there are cheaper ways to go?
Finally, if California was a nation, it would have the 5th largest economy in the world. If LA was a nation, its economy would be barely above third world. And no, I do not live in California...
Really? Let's take a look at what you said earlier...
You CANNOT deregulate, you CANNOT expect the "Free market" to ensure quality and low price.
So again, let me ask this very relevant question: why, if deregulation can't stop such Enron fraud, haven't we seen it reproduced in every other jurisdiction where power markets have been opened up?
Ummm.... I don't know where you got that quote, but that wasn't me. And you still haven't answered MY QUESTION, how could have the deregulated market stopped the Enron fraud from occuring?
Yes, and it would have worked well if the wholesale market was actually deregulated, instead of pseudo-de-regulated (i.e. badly regulated) like in was in California.
That is PURE BS. Elasticity of Power TRADING Market is not the same thing as the Power Market elasticity. Regulation has NOTHING to do with limiting the elasticity of the power generation. Oil/coal prices, zoning laws, and environmental lawas etc. is what causes the inelasticity, not regulation.
It takes many years to build a power plant and most communities in US does not want power plant near their homes. HOW THE HECK IS DEREGULATION GOING TO FIX THAT???
Meanwhile, our society is ever more dependent on easily accessible power. And that demand is not very elastic either.
This is EXACTLY what the grandparent poster was trying to argue why government needs to step in when it comes to building and managing public infrastructure.
I've answered your questions, why don't you answer mine? Again, how could have deregulation of the power trading market could have prevented the Enron fraud?
But, if you are correct and deregulation in inself will cause massive, Enron like fraud then please explain how the likes of PA
You have twisted my argument. I did NOT argue that deregulation will cause massive fraud. What I argued was that deregulation would not have STOPPED the massive fraud the Enron engineered.
Free market works best when there is elastic demand and supply. However, when it comes to power, both demand and supply is not elastic at all (at least not in short time tables, i.e.
The elaborate setup that California has setup was create to offset this inelastic market. What they forgot to take into account when they created their control system was that some suppliers would NOT play by the rules and willing break laws increase their profit.
And don't bother the in deregulated system this kind of fraud would not be possible. Again, that would be true in perfectly elastic system, but power supply, as I said before, is not elastic at all.
Well, I don't know if I can really fault them for expecting people to play by the rules. Oh well. Just goes to show, when it come to essentials (like power) it would be just easier to have the government take over entirely.
No, you don't understand. I agree that Nagins and Blanco are the best pair of mayor/gov LA has ever had. I wish them all the best.
However, it is still nuts trying to rebuild New Orleans EXACTLY the way it was. Why? The old NO was still the murder capital of US. Why recreate a city where the majority of its citizens were living below poverty?
The better way to go would be to recreate a smaller, more effecient, more livable New Orleans. Do not rebuild the lower parts of NO which was mostly the most poor neighborhoods. Rebuild the tourist centers, live with category 3 dikes, knowing fully what risks you are taking, because that is the most economically viable decision.
Apparently you haven't been paying that much attention. Most of Cali's problems came from partial deregulation. Wholesale prices were deregulated, but not consumer prices. That's a disaster waiting to happen.
What point are you trying to make? That the California citizens should have taken the bath instead of the state government?
You do know what happened right? Enron and other energy producers artificially lowered supply by claiming that various power generators were "down for maintenance/fixes" forcing brownouts during the heaviest usage season.
So, based on your reasoning, by passing the artificially high prices directly to the consumers would have prevented this fraud from occuring? Really? You are kidding right? You do realize that A/C in LA and business power consumption in California is not something that can be easily increased or decreased based on prices, right? Sure, over decades you would see some equilibrium, but not for a short term artificial shortage like Enron did, right?
Get a new Mayor and Gov
The really sad part of all this is that mayor Nagins and Gov Blanco is probably the best that LA has had in a very very long time (by a wide margin).
This is a state that has been ravaged by institutional corruptions for decades. I think LA easily takes the corruption cake in US. Nagins and Blanco are the first mayor and Gov combo to seriously tackle the corruption problems.
If there are more able people who can lead this state, they would have been found already.
This is also a reason why I don't believe billions of federal dollars should be spend rebuilding all of New Orleans. Why rebuild something that was so corrupt to begin with?
That is pretty interesting rant as Louisiana, along with several other SE states, have taken back FAR MORE from the government than average.
In fact, LA got back $1.47 for every $1.00 of federal tax they paid.
You are now arguing that we are not giving LA enough?
WTF? Perhaps you need to start blaming the decades of corrupt administrations (that YOU the Louisianians VOTED FOR) that wasted all the federal dollars that you got.
I mean, I feel bad as anyone about NO, but what the heck did they expect when you build below sea level? And now you want rest of us to pay billions and billions in dike system with no possibility of getting that money back?
At least with California, even though the earthquake risks exists, the economic output of that state justifies the risks. LA needs to go a LONG LONG ways before their economics justify spending BILLIONS on public project like this.
1. The iTMS has been operating at a profit for two years now. Small profits, certainly, but profits.
Again, how do you know? It is not available in public records.
iTunes may be THE major player in town (a very small town), but that is certainly not guaranteed. The labels can easily rally against iTunes whenever they want. There are plenty of other guys to turn to if iTunes make too much of a stink. Already the labels are pretty weary of dealing with iTunes and are doing everything they can to encourage other digital distributors. That will expedite GREATLY if Steve tries to play hardball.
The CD sale may be dropping but it still provides 90%+ of the revenue. If they are going to put Steve Jobs in place, this is the perfect time to do it before it grows to big and actually start affecting their bottom line.
Already iTunes guys are working on a subscription store as the labels have put a great deal pressure (pricing) favoring that model. This is so even though Steve Jobs has ALWAYS been vehemently against the leasing model for content.
Trust me, the labels play pretty damn good hardball. Steve is not going to be able to buck that trend.
Running data archive (low I/O) is not anywhere near as costly has EXTREAMELY high I/O data storage that needs to be redundant, highly available, fast, and has to be available world-wide (mirrored in all major continents).
Shit, if I all I needed was a data archive, I can string 100 Seagate 400GB drives together. I can buy that for 20 grand.
You have to remember that no distributor EVER brought a price fixing lawsuit against the labels. They may not like what the labels do, but they also don't want to jeopardize their distribution chain. I doubt that Steve Jobs would risk his iPod profits in pursuing a lawsuit against the labels.
The price fixing lawsuit was started by NY Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer (I LOVE THAT GUY). There are not many people with integrity and balls to bring suits like this. Once he becomes the governor of NY. You will not see any lawsuits like this against the labels....
Well, they could not renew the contract. If Steve has the balls he might just remove all of that labels' songs from the store
That is pretty funny. That would be just fine if the labels were true competitors. But they act more like a federation than competitors. Just look at all the lobbying (and other actions) they do through RIAA.
The price increase is not just coming from a single label, they are coming from ALL major labels. Sure, Steve can say "go fuck yourself", but that would mean that he would lose about 100,000 songs that comprise 80% to 90% of his sales. And trust me, Steve Jobs is not that stupid.
Also, in reply to like the great-grandparent, I do believe iTMS is profitable these days. I think they are making a nice little profit, actually
And you are basing this on??? What? Your feel?
I know how many drives, floor space, power, and maintenance you need to run a datacenter with 30 TB of data (required to run a site with 1 million + songs). I know how much bandwidth and servers you need to deliver these songs to the desktop. This is not cheap.
I know what the average wholesale price is per digital song and I know what Apple is charging. It is simply impossible to break even on the current price structure. EVERY distributor is losing money. Which is why everyone other than iTunes is pushing the subscription model (which has a much higher margin). iTunes can afford to lose the money because they make it back and more on their device sales.
First of all, I don't think wholesale prices have anything to do with it here, because IIRC Apple has a contract with the music companies
Guess what? The distribution contracts are pretty short (>3 years) and the contracts are fairly flexible for the labels to dictate whatever price increase they want.
Jobs (and other digital music distributors) got a pretty decent deal because the labels were really nervous about Napster and other free distribution sites. But since then the labels have had very good result in scaring general public away from download sites (via lawsuits), and courts have complied by ruling against music sharing apps.
Now, the labels are feeling much more confident and want to make sure that the revenue they are losing on CD's are going to be made up by digital sales.
How do I know? I used to work for a digital music distributor (very recently). We got a notice from all major labels (ones that matter like Warner, BMG, Universal) that they are planning to increase their prices for 2006 and that they expect all distributors to support flexible pricing.
I am guessing iTunes got the same notice as well. There is not much you, I, or Steve Jobs can do to prevent the RIAA bastards to start charging $2/song on all top 100 titles.
Umm... sorry to break it to you. Apple may control RETAIL pricing for digital music, but the labels set the WHOLESALE pricing for digital music.
The labels can pretty much dictate WHATEVER pricing they want, and Apple will not have any say over it (unless they want to lose revenue). It would be one thing if they had a marketshare of say, Walmart. But digital sale is still pretty small percentage of the overall revenue for the labels.
The labels have been offering their goods at "introductory" pricing to see how quickly they can get legit digital distribution to grow.
Well, thanks to iTunes, they are growing fine, and now the labels want to make (more) money off of it. Which is a lot easier if they can apply flexible pricing model.
When the exec says he believe iTunes will offer multiple price points is because the labels have already announced to the digital music wholesalers that in 2006, they will be introducing mulitple wholesale price points.
Unless Jobs wants to lose even more money than he is losing now on iTunes (yes, they make money on iPod but iTunes is still not operating even yet), he WILL offer multiple pricing points on retail as well.
Wow, just because you see some Indians working with you, racism doesn't exist? Maybe you should talk to those people every now and then. I think they will tell you a different story.
At least in France, even those succeeding to finish universities face inescapable discrimination because of their Arabic names, and their address. Research shows that, with equal qualifications, the chance of getting an interview for an applicant with dark skin is five times less than the average. Leaving the ghetto seems an insurmountable task even for many educated children of the migrants.
There was a similar test in US and even US did SIGNFICANTLY better than French.
Five times less likely is pretty pathetic and blatantly racist.
However, Computer Associates, which has a security division, said on Monday it had found further security risks in the Sony software and was releasing a tool to uninstall it directly.
According to Computer Associates, the Sony software makes itself a default media player on a computer after it is installed. The software then reports back the user's Internet address and identifies which CDs are played on that computer. Intentionally or not, the software also seems to damage a computer's ability to "rip" clean copies of MP3s from non-copy protected CDs, the security company said.
"It will effectively insert pseudo-random noise into a file so that it becomes less listenable," said Sam Curry, a Computer Associates vice president. "What's disturbing about this is the lack of notice, the lack of consent, and the lack of an easy removal tool."
So, not only is it spying on you, it even prevents you from making good copies of the CD's WITHOUT any DRM!!! The BALLS!
Slashdot Mirror
Idiot.
The concern is NOT about whether or not the standard for suspicion is too low for this administration, the concern is that THEY BROKE THE LAW AND CONSTITUTION by authorizing ILLEGAL SEARCHES!!!
Go and READ the Constitution, its the FOURTH AMENDMENT. No unreasonable search and seizure. Which is EXACTLY why we have warrants. The course ruled long time agon (and again and again) that govt should NOT be doing searches without warrants.
Are you implying that Clinton and Carter authorized warrantless searches? PROVE IT!!! It has NOT occurred since Nixon. And this administration has clearly proven that its integrity lies in the same murky depths that Nixon did.
This is a DIRECT assault on the Constitution. And you are willing to just let it piss away. You should leave your citizenship at the door.
Again, believing in something is not believing in nothing.
Just as you cannot prove a negative, you cannot believe in nothing. It just means that you do not believe in something (basically all religion).
Lack of endorsement is not an endorsement of nothing. Endorsing something is not the same as someone who does not endorse anything. A person who endorses something means, that the person has a made a choice. A person who does not endorse anything means that the person has NOT made any choice.
It is not the same thing.
Spouting useless and inaccurate statements is child abuse!!!
Strange, I guess my experience of my good-looking roommate who made less and dumber than me who was dating 3 or 4 girls at a time, while I spend most weekends by myself is just an anomaly. Funny, he probably dated 60 or 70 girls over a couple of years (compare to 2 or 3 for me). But I guess just that was statistical blip. I mean, c'mon, the fact that all of my tech geek friends who made 6 figure salaries pretty much struck out at every bar and parties (while jocky non-tech (albeit good looking guys) guys made out like a bandit has to be false, right?
My algorithms say this article is 98% BS and 2% Who Cares...
Well, this has happened alrady in Europe with their anti-trust settlement. Guess what, no OEM's wanted the "crippled" version. They are just selling the bundled version just like before.
So what good THAT anti-trust suit do other than lightening up MS' pockets are little bit? What good will this do?
What you all seems to ignore is that for something like this to be valid and successful, there has to be a CONSUMER DEMAND for this! There is no outcry (other than Slashdot) for an unbundled version. In fact, 95% of the consumers are HAPPY that these apps are bundled.
This is much ado about nothing. MS will just count this as a cost of doing business and move on. No Korean OEM is going to sell the unbundled version and everything will blow away in few months after that. Just like it has with Europe.
Actually, the 1st Amendment does give you the right to say whatever you want. It just doesn't protect you from private entities to use that against you.
The underlying idea of A la carte programming seems like a good idea, and will even cost those of us who couldn't care less about sports a LOT less (disgustingly enough, the bulk of your "extended basic" cable bill goes toward subsidizing the sports channels Oh man, I know all of us are geeks, but do you have to make it THIS obvious? (gym class wedge flashback) ...shudder.
This is BS. It is completely opposite of what happened. California bought most of the energy it needed through its distributors. But the system relies on spot market (i.e. FREE MARKET) to support addtional demand spikes. Enron decided to take advantage of this situation by cornering the spot market and driving it up. Just like how some stock speculators drive up the prices by buying up shares of a company with limited float (ALL FREE MARKET STUFF).
Again, since you have now dodged the question three times: how do you explain the UK's 10+ years of power deregulation, PA's open power markets, et al not exploding in a California like mess? According to your theory Pittsburgh should have a power system on par with Bagdad's by now.
Correlation does not equal causation. Just because I eat McDonalds, but haven't had a heart attck, does not mean that Big Macs are good for you.
However, for your information...
Since FERC rules inaugurated electricity deregulation in 1996, similar price spikes have occurred in Illinois, Ohio, and New York. Even in Pennsylvania, considered the poster child for electricity deregulation, prices hit $930 a megawatt hour for brief periods in 1999. In June 2000, on a particularly hot day in New York City when a regional nuclear power plant was experiencing an "unplanned" power outage, the wholesale price of electricity soared twentyfold to $1,000 a megawatt hour, the state-imposed cap. More than $70 million flowed from city consumers to a half dozen energy companies on a single day.
When you have an inelastic market, spot control of prices is inevitiable, even in a completely free market. My argument is NOT that deregulation GUARANTEES fraud, but deregulation does not mean that it is free from fraud. Fraud can happen any time when you have a very inelastic market.
Depending on the plant you can do it in as little as two years...
I'll tell you what. If you can find an example, I will buy you an Xbox 360. And I don't mean from ground breaking to operation, I mean decision of building a power plant to operation. Please, it takes 5+ years just to go through planning and permits for a project this size.
and most communities in US does not want power plant near their homes. [which is caused by regulation, cough cough]
Why don't you stick to one argument? Regulating price and zoning laws are completely different topics.
Oh, and now you are saying all regulations are bad? Are you one of those ultra-libertarian freaks? I don't know about you but I don't want an old-style power plant that generates huge plumes of black smoke near my neighborhood. But I guess we would have no problem getting permission for where you live.
While we are at it, why stop there? Why don't we just chuck all environmental laws? Who spend money on expensive filters and clean chambers when you can build coal firing plants on the cheapside? So what if it causes a little acid rain and smog. Who cares if the nearby river is so polluted you can even step in it (see: China). it's free society, right? All regulations are bad, right?
Pathetic...
We can re route all of the fuel refining/delivery to Texas (which has most of it already) where they are WELL above the sea level.
There is no reason why New Orleans cannot be moved further inland (higher elevation) and be the exactly the same port city (and the their relative size of trade through their port has been going down for last several decades).
It is ABSOLUTELY NUTS to rebuild a port city under the sea level. Netherlands HAS NO CHOICE. Their country is about as big as a small NE state. They have no other place to expand to. Only way they can sustain themselves is to reclaim land from sea.
US has no such problem. The land is plentiful. There are plenty of nearby port cities that can EASILY take the flow when properly planned (without any seawalls). Why go with the most expensive route when there are cheaper ways to go?
Finally, if California was a nation, it would have the 5th largest economy in the world. If LA was a nation, its economy would be barely above third world. And no, I do not live in California...
You CANNOT deregulate, you CANNOT expect the "Free market" to ensure quality and low price.
So again, let me ask this very relevant question: why, if deregulation can't stop such Enron fraud, haven't we seen it reproduced in every other jurisdiction where power markets have been opened up?
Ummm.... I don't know where you got that quote, but that wasn't me. And you still haven't answered MY QUESTION, how could have the deregulated market stopped the Enron fraud from occuring?
Yes, and it would have worked well if the wholesale market was actually deregulated, instead of pseudo-de-regulated (i.e. badly regulated) like in was in California. That is PURE BS. Elasticity of Power TRADING Market is not the same thing as the Power Market elasticity. Regulation has NOTHING to do with limiting the elasticity of the power generation. Oil/coal prices, zoning laws, and environmental lawas etc. is what causes the inelasticity, not regulation.
It takes many years to build a power plant and most communities in US does not want power plant near their homes. HOW THE HECK IS DEREGULATION GOING TO FIX THAT???
Meanwhile, our society is ever more dependent on easily accessible power. And that demand is not very elastic either.
This is EXACTLY what the grandparent poster was trying to argue why government needs to step in when it comes to building and managing public infrastructure.
I've answered your questions, why don't you answer mine? Again, how could have deregulation of the power trading market could have prevented the Enron fraud?
You have twisted my argument. I did NOT argue that deregulation will cause massive fraud. What I argued was that deregulation would not have STOPPED the massive fraud the Enron engineered.
Free market works best when there is elastic demand and supply. However, when it comes to power, both demand and supply is not elastic at all (at least not in short time tables, i.e. The elaborate setup that California has setup was create to offset this inelastic market. What they forgot to take into account when they created their control system was that some suppliers would NOT play by the rules and willing break laws increase their profit.
And don't bother the in deregulated system this kind of fraud would not be possible. Again, that would be true in perfectly elastic system, but power supply, as I said before, is not elastic at all.
Well, I don't know if I can really fault them for expecting people to play by the rules. Oh well. Just goes to show, when it come to essentials (like power) it would be just easier to have the government take over entirely.
However, it is still nuts trying to rebuild New Orleans EXACTLY the way it was. Why? The old NO was still the murder capital of US. Why recreate a city where the majority of its citizens were living below poverty?
The better way to go would be to recreate a smaller, more effecient, more livable New Orleans. Do not rebuild the lower parts of NO which was mostly the most poor neighborhoods. Rebuild the tourist centers, live with category 3 dikes, knowing fully what risks you are taking, because that is the most economically viable decision.
You do know what happened right? Enron and other energy producers artificially lowered supply by claiming that various power generators were "down for maintenance/fixes" forcing brownouts during the heaviest usage season.
So, based on your reasoning, by passing the artificially high prices directly to the consumers would have prevented this fraud from occuring? Really? You are kidding right? You do realize that A/C in LA and business power consumption in California is not something that can be easily increased or decreased based on prices, right? Sure, over decades you would see some equilibrium, but not for a short term artificial shortage like Enron did, right?
Give me a freakin break!
This is a state that has been ravaged by institutional corruptions for decades. I think LA easily takes the corruption cake in US. Nagins and Blanco are the first mayor and Gov combo to seriously tackle the corruption problems.
If there are more able people who can lead this state, they would have been found already.
This is also a reason why I don't believe billions of federal dollars should be spend rebuilding all of New Orleans. Why rebuild something that was so corrupt to begin with?
In fact, LA got back $1.47 for every $1.00 of federal tax they paid.
You are now arguing that we are not giving LA enough?
WTF? Perhaps you need to start blaming the decades of corrupt administrations (that YOU the Louisianians VOTED FOR) that wasted all the federal dollars that you got.
I mean, I feel bad as anyone about NO, but what the heck did they expect when you build below sea level? And now you want rest of us to pay billions and billions in dike system with no possibility of getting that money back?
At least with California, even though the earthquake risks exists, the economic output of that state justifies the risks. LA needs to go a LONG LONG ways before their economics justify spending BILLIONS on public project like this.
iTunes may be THE major player in town (a very small town), but that is certainly not guaranteed. The labels can easily rally against iTunes whenever they want. There are plenty of other guys to turn to if iTunes make too much of a stink. Already the labels are pretty weary of dealing with iTunes and are doing everything they can to encourage other digital distributors. That will expedite GREATLY if Steve tries to play hardball.
The CD sale may be dropping but it still provides 90%+ of the revenue. If they are going to put Steve Jobs in place, this is the perfect time to do it before it grows to big and actually start affecting their bottom line.
Already iTunes guys are working on a subscription store as the labels have put a great deal pressure (pricing) favoring that model. This is so even though Steve Jobs has ALWAYS been vehemently against the leasing model for content.
Trust me, the labels play pretty damn good hardball. Steve is not going to be able to buck that trend.
Shit, if I all I needed was a data archive, I can string 100 Seagate 400GB drives together. I can buy that for 20 grand.
Stuff I am talking about costs 1000 times more.
The price fixing lawsuit was started by NY Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer (I LOVE THAT GUY). There are not many people with integrity and balls to bring suits like this. Once he becomes the governor of NY. You will not see any lawsuits like this against the labels....
The price increase is not just coming from a single label, they are coming from ALL major labels. Sure, Steve can say "go fuck yourself", but that would mean that he would lose about 100,000 songs that comprise 80% to 90% of his sales. And trust me, Steve Jobs is not that stupid.
Also, in reply to like the great-grandparent, I do believe iTMS is profitable these days. I think they are making a nice little profit, actually
And you are basing this on??? What? Your feel?
I know how many drives, floor space, power, and maintenance you need to run a datacenter with 30 TB of data (required to run a site with 1 million + songs). I know how much bandwidth and servers you need to deliver these songs to the desktop. This is not cheap.
I know what the average wholesale price is per digital song and I know what Apple is charging. It is simply impossible to break even on the current price structure. EVERY distributor is losing money. Which is why everyone other than iTunes is pushing the subscription model (which has a much higher margin). iTunes can afford to lose the money because they make it back and more on their device sales.
Guess what? The distribution contracts are pretty short (>3 years) and the contracts are fairly flexible for the labels to dictate whatever price increase they want.
Jobs (and other digital music distributors) got a pretty decent deal because the labels were really nervous about Napster and other free distribution sites. But since then the labels have had very good result in scaring general public away from download sites (via lawsuits), and courts have complied by ruling against music sharing apps.
Now, the labels are feeling much more confident and want to make sure that the revenue they are losing on CD's are going to be made up by digital sales.
How do I know? I used to work for a digital music distributor (very recently). We got a notice from all major labels (ones that matter like Warner, BMG, Universal) that they are planning to increase their prices for 2006 and that they expect all distributors to support flexible pricing.
I am guessing iTunes got the same notice as well. There is not much you, I, or Steve Jobs can do to prevent the RIAA bastards to start charging $2/song on all top 100 titles.
The labels can pretty much dictate WHATEVER pricing they want, and Apple will not have any say over it (unless they want to lose revenue). It would be one thing if they had a marketshare of say, Walmart. But digital sale is still pretty small percentage of the overall revenue for the labels.
The labels have been offering their goods at "introductory" pricing to see how quickly they can get legit digital distribution to grow.
Well, thanks to iTunes, they are growing fine, and now the labels want to make (more) money off of it. Which is a lot easier if they can apply flexible pricing model.
When the exec says he believe iTunes will offer multiple price points is because the labels have already announced to the digital music wholesalers that in 2006, they will be introducing mulitple wholesale price points.
Unless Jobs wants to lose even more money than he is losing now on iTunes (yes, they make money on iPod but iTunes is still not operating even yet), he WILL offer multiple pricing points on retail as well.
At least in France, even those succeeding to finish universities face inescapable discrimination because of their Arabic names, and their address. Research shows that, with equal qualifications, the chance of getting an interview for an applicant with dark skin is five times less than the average. Leaving the ghetto seems an insurmountable task even for many educated children of the migrants.
There was a similar test in US and even US did SIGNFICANTLY better than French.
Five times less likely is pretty pathetic and blatantly racist.
http://news.com.com/Antivirus+firms+target+Sony+ro otkit/2100-1029_3-5942265.html?part=rss&tag=594226 5&subj=news
Excerpts:
However, Computer Associates, which has a security division, said on Monday it had found further security risks in the Sony software and was releasing a tool to uninstall it directly.
According to Computer Associates, the Sony software makes itself a default media player on a computer after it is installed. The software then reports back the user's Internet address and identifies which CDs are played on that computer. Intentionally or not, the software also seems to damage a computer's ability to "rip" clean copies of MP3s from non-copy protected CDs, the security company said.
"It will effectively insert pseudo-random noise into a file so that it becomes less listenable," said Sam Curry, a Computer Associates vice president. "What's disturbing about this is the lack of notice, the lack of consent, and the lack of an easy removal tool."
So, not only is it spying on you, it even prevents you from making good copies of the CD's WITHOUT any DRM!!! The BALLS!