> (help me out here any of you people who actually > have an economics degree, what do you think the > actual cost to Hollywood is? Is the demand > elastic?)
Since DVDs are not a necessity the demand for DVDs is at least somewhat elastic (except amongst geeks) - and probably very elastic.
The problem with the modelling is that although you can draw the DivX curve (any supply at zero cost) drawing the DVD curve is very difficult as the companies use a huge number of techniques to segment the market and get the maximum price from every purchase. (Region locking, VHS/DVD releases, discounting etc.)
I suspect that even the MPAA couldn't calculate an accurate figure (to within 2 orders of magnitude even with all the numbers) which makes their clames almost entirley farsical....and I bet they used the HMV price instead of the play.com price as well. (£25+ instead of £7.99.)
"The best thing about MP3s is that it makes the 'distribution costs' argument for high priced CDs sound very weak indeed - since the fans can transport it around the globe for nothing."
To be fair prices don't seem that far out.
14 and 15" TFTs are now pretty cheap - £180 or so - cheap enough that you can immagine that the same part in a £700 laptop isn't costing you that much less.
17" TFTs have nowhere near the same volume - being as there aren't many 17" laptops - yet the prices are pretty low (£300/$500) a part for top notch Samsung panels (in a GNR case, like my new ones).
19" and above are still well overpriced (£700+), partly because it's a low volume market (for the moment) - but a lot of that is also to do with the difficulty of finding a 19" sized chunk of TFT with no dead pixels!
Hardly new - there is a Q3 map of ITESM (Tampico ) in Mexico, a UT 2003 map of Cambridge University and a work in progress of Loughborough University for UT 2003.
Where there are sufficient geeks, there will be maps for 3D games:o)
I love Apple laptops, and would buy one tomorrow except for two small niggles -
The first is the OS X tax - worse than the MS tax as you cannot even return the license (or buy it with a Linux boot CD for £0.01 as per Fujitsu Siemens).
The second is the bloody stupid mouse - not something you can change on a laptop. I know KDE works ok with one button, but I like fluxbox and that needs at least two.
Come on Apple, buck up and let me give you my money!
However, there would be nothing to stop you putting the controllers for all 10 100mbit ethernet cards on a single chip. This would cut costs significantly, although fitting all those ports onto the backplane might be difficult!
They _do_ get back the $bn they spend on cruise missles - they pay American defense companies (whos profit is taxed) who pay American workers (whos wages are taxed) who buy American goods (whos sales are taxed).
Even if the money is exported, this is taxed. Exported money is often then used to buy American goods and services, which is taxed.
--Money doesn't vanish*, it just goes around in circles.
*Excepting periods of negative worldwide economic growth, but there hasn't been one in my lifetime AFAIK.
Since Germans with computers will already have paid the fees to the artists to use their music, file sharing will be legal and RIAA endorsed for a flat rate, something everyone seems to want.
Then, of course, I woke up and realised that the RIAA is secretly run by Catbert, and it's all an evil scheme to get you to pay for nothing, since you have to pay the tax _and_ pay for the music.
ISTR that Sharp sell mobile Athlons (at least in the UK) - not too great battery life, but pretty fast beasts. In fact the chips are getting pretty common here in the more desktop-replacement-korean-type laptops you can get from PC world as well.
If the university system is based on OSS then the students will be free to use whatever they like to connect to it. IE has no problems connecting to Apache, OE has no problems connecting to a *nix mail server.
If the college systems are based on MS software on the other hand... connecting to an Exchange or Notes server pretty much requires Windows if the university want to use all of the 'advanced' functions that are available to anyone in something like Horde.
As far as programming goes, again, work done in Ansi C or Java (or even C++) will be easily portable to Windows to run at home. Stuff done in Visual Basic or even C# is _not_ easily portable.
Students can log into the university boxes with PuTTy/Exeed if they like, can you log into a Windows terminal server box (easily/free/at all) from Linux? Yeah, right.
Universites should pick the most stards compliant, open systems they can (so, Linux, BSD, something else) when setting p their network so they can retain access for all, no matter what their client wants to learn. The £2.4 million will just help them get there faster in this case.
My NEC Versa Aptitude does this automatically - unhook the power and it drops from a PIII 750 to a ~PIII 500. Battery life is a tad under 3 hours in X, or a tad over in the CLI:o)
Two batteries get me accross the atlantic - which is why I plan not to upgrade until the thing dies. It has done 2 years and 90,000 miles so far with no sign of that happening yet though!
You can pay your £3.50 for a meal deal and not have to accept the food? There is nothing wrong with the orange juice*, but it's a bit of a waste to just chuck the food** in the bin:o)
*Probably.
**Or so they claim.
Less paranoid? The company I work for has a restricted network (with internet access in one direction only) plus 4 or more (its possible there are some I don't know about) secret or better networks for various projects.
File tarnsfer in is vetted, and file transfer out is by physical media only, after the completion of several forms.
But, with two or more PCs on most desks, at least everyone gets net access anyway:o)
I have shielded rounded IDE cables on the desktop I usually keep in bits (ribbon cables were a nightmare in this thing).
The sheilded ones are supposed to be pretty good, but they cost a fortune (easily 10+ times ribbon cable costs), and the unshielded ones are best avoided.
I suggest you buy ut2k3 from a Linux distributor and then e-mail mrein @ epic.com to tell him you did _because_ of the native Linux support:o)
It works great, and they are keeping the patches current with the Windows version. It has a 3Gb install though!
IME it is also faster, smooth as a rail @ 800x600 with all the options turned on, the same box running Windows needs all the options turned off, even when using DirectX not OpenGL.
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> (help me out here any of you people who actually
...and I bet they used the HMV price instead of the play.com price as well. (£25+ instead of £7.99.)
> have an economics degree, what do you think the
> actual cost to Hollywood is? Is the demand
> elastic?)
Since DVDs are not a necessity the demand for DVDs is at least somewhat elastic (except amongst geeks) - and probably very elastic.
The problem with the modelling is that although you can draw the DivX curve (any supply at zero cost) drawing the DVD curve is very difficult as the companies use a huge number of techniques to segment the market and get the maximum price from every purchase. (Region locking, VHS/DVD releases, discounting etc.)
I suspect that even the MPAA couldn't calculate an accurate figure (to within 2 orders of magnitude even with all the numbers) which makes their clames almost entirley farsical.
"The best thing about MP3s is that it makes the 'distribution costs' argument for high priced CDs sound very weak indeed - since the fans can transport it around the globe for nothing."
Linux or BSD on x86 offers me great software on powerful hardware.
OS X on Mac boxes offers me a beautiful case and Apple support.
What does a beige Mac offer me? None of the above? I must rush out and buy one right away.
To be fair prices don't seem that far out. 14 and 15" TFTs are now pretty cheap - £180 or so - cheap enough that you can immagine that the same part in a £700 laptop isn't costing you that much less. 17" TFTs have nowhere near the same volume - being as there aren't many 17" laptops - yet the prices are pretty low (£300/$500) a part for top notch Samsung panels (in a GNR case, like my new ones). 19" and above are still well overpriced (£700+), partly because it's a low volume market (for the moment) - but a lot of that is also to do with the difficulty of finding a 19" sized chunk of TFT with no dead pixels!
Hardly new - there is a Q3 map of ITESM (Tampico ) in Mexico, a UT 2003 map of Cambridge University and a work in progress of Loughborough University for UT 2003.
:o)
Where there are sufficient geeks, there will be maps for 3D games
I love Apple laptops, and would buy one tomorrow except for two small niggles -
The first is the OS X tax - worse than the MS tax as you cannot even return the license (or buy it with a Linux boot CD for £0.01 as per Fujitsu Siemens).
The second is the bloody stupid mouse - not something you can change on a laptop. I know KDE works ok with one button, but I like fluxbox and that needs at least two.
Come on Apple, buck up and let me give you my money!
However, there would be nothing to stop you putting the controllers for all 10 100mbit ethernet cards on a single chip. This would cut costs significantly, although fitting all those ports onto the backplane might be difficult!
They _do_ get back the $bn they spend on cruise missles - they pay American defense companies (whos profit is taxed) who pay American workers (whos wages are taxed) who buy American goods (whos sales are taxed).
Even if the money is exported, this is taxed. Exported money is often then used to buy American goods and services, which is taxed.
--Money doesn't vanish*, it just goes around in circles.
*Excepting periods of negative worldwide economic growth, but there hasn't been one in my lifetime AFAIK.
Since Germans with computers will already have paid the fees to the artists to use their music, file sharing will be legal and RIAA endorsed for a flat rate, something everyone seems to want.
Then, of course, I woke up and realised that the RIAA is secretly run by Catbert, and it's all an evil scheme to get you to pay for nothing, since you have to pay the tax _and_ pay for the music.
ISTR that Sharp sell mobile Athlons (at least in the UK) - not too great battery life, but pretty fast beasts. In fact the chips are getting pretty common here in the more desktop-replacement-korean-type laptops you can get from PC world as well.
If the university system is based on OSS then the students will be free to use whatever they like to connect to it. IE has no problems connecting to Apache, OE has no problems connecting to a *nix mail server.
If the college systems are based on MS software on the other hand... connecting to an Exchange or Notes server pretty much requires Windows if the university want to use all of the 'advanced' functions that are available to anyone in something like Horde.
As far as programming goes, again, work done in Ansi C or Java (or even C++) will be easily portable to Windows to run at home. Stuff done in Visual Basic or even C# is _not_ easily portable.
Students can log into the university boxes with PuTTy/Exeed if they like, can you log into a Windows terminal server box (easily/free/at all) from Linux? Yeah, right.
Universites should pick the most stards compliant, open systems they can (so, Linux, BSD, something else) when setting p their network so they can retain access for all, no matter what their client wants to learn. The £2.4 million will just help them get there faster in this case.
My NEC Versa Aptitude does this automatically - unhook the power and it drops from a PIII 750 to a ~PIII 500. Battery life is a tad under 3 hours in X, or a tad over in the CLI :o)
Two batteries get me accross the atlantic - which is why I plan not to upgrade until the thing dies. It has done 2 years and 90,000 miles so far with no sign of that happening yet though!
You can pay your £3.50 for a meal deal and not have to accept the food? There is nothing wrong with the orange juice*, but it's a bit of a waste to just chuck the food** in the bin :o)
*Probably.
**Or so they claim.
Less paranoid? The company I work for has a restricted network (with internet access in one direction only) plus 4 or more (its possible there are some I don't know about) secret or better networks for various projects. File tarnsfer in is vetted, and file transfer out is by physical media only, after the completion of several forms. But, with two or more PCs on most desks, at least everyone gets net access anyway :o)
I have shielded rounded IDE cables on the desktop I usually keep in bits (ribbon cables were a nightmare in this thing). The sheilded ones are supposed to be pretty good, but they cost a fortune (easily 10+ times ribbon cable costs), and the unshielded ones are best avoided.
I suggest you buy ut2k3 from a Linux distributor and then e-mail mrein @ epic.com to tell him you did _because_ of the native Linux support :o)
It works great, and they are keeping the patches current with the Windows version. It has a 3Gb install though!
IME it is also faster, smooth as a rail @ 800x600 with all the options turned on, the same box running Windows needs all the options turned off, even when using DirectX not OpenGL.