Since this seems like such a new concept (please correct me if I'm wrong; I don't follow plane technology too much), it would just seem prudent to try bending the wings until they break... how can they make accurate judgments and calculations without knowing exactly how much stress the wings can take before snapping?
Not only that, you don't want to just take one data point. You need to break a number of them to get a good sample.
It's a fallacy? Shit. I guess that all these years that I have been working on open source software, fixing bugs, adding features, has actually been a big long dream.
I think he's talking about the big, monolithic beasts like the linux kernel and OpenOffice. Neither of those are things that the casual user can poke around and fix. For smaller programs, I have on occasion made minor modifications to things I've used.
Naturally, if you have had code integrated into the kernel source tree or OO, I'm sure we'd love to hear about how you got started.
Ya think? Also bear in mind the agreement that the carriers will not subsidize the phone. So you're looking at a phone for $500-$600 and plans at $70-$100/month. Amortize the cost of the phone over 2-3 years and you're looking at something like $100-$150/month (plus taxes) for cell service. Ouch. Not for me!
ID (at least the couple of arguments for it I have found interesting) starts with empirical data and evidence and concludes on that it is unlikely the complexity can be adequately explained by anything except design.
That's still not science. It's using "design" as some sort of default hypothesis, but how did a "creator" get nominated? I could equally say that since something can't be proven, it must be aliens. Heck, they couldn't prove OJ killed his ex-wife, so it must have been aliens, right?
Also, it uses negative evidence as "proof," which is exceptionally poor. Just because I can't prove something at any given time, doesn't mean we resort to an arbitrary conclusion. The creator hypothesis needs to be subjected to the same rigor as others, and positively proven.
Many of the advancements to science can be considered outside of what is considered "science" at the time.
You're confusing prevailing beliefs held by scientists with the scientific method itself. You're right, at any given time some portion of the best-believed scientific knowledge will be wrong, and other scientists will eventually find evidence for other theories. This will, however, be done using scientific principles. It will not be done by examining scripture.
ID is unique (I'm not talking about young earth crap) because it really is not straight philosophy as it has too many ties to empirical data, it shouldn't be religion because (at least the reasonable arguments) don't actually argue for a "God," and yet it doesn't fit very nicely into the current definitions of "science."
ID simply does not use the scientific method. To do so, it would have to generate a testable hypothesis which is disproveable. It is inherently not proveable to show that the earth was made, in some way, by a deity. As Wolfgang Pauli once put it, "That's not right. That's not even wrong!" His point was that, for a theory to come under the purview of science, it has to be disprovable. ID is not. ID takes a specific belief and carefully skirts around existing evidence in a way that it avoids making a testable hypothesis. As such, ID does not belong in science curriculum. There's also the notion of "why the Christian religion?" If they get equal billing with science, surely Mayan, Greek, Norse, Phoenician, Aztec, Zulu, Persian, Flying Spaghetti Monster, and other creation myths should be taught in science class, right?
An attempt to limit scholarly inquiry by excluding it from scientific discussion will only discourage diversity in the scientific community.
We're talking about what should be taught in high school science. Textbooks contain the best available knowledge at any given time, and that's what should be taught in PUBLIC schools. The vast majority of scientists have examined the available evidence and mechanisms and concluded that evolution is almost certainly responsible for the existing biodiversity on earth. No one, however, is preventing a group of people from conducting research into ID or anything else, or of teaching it in parochial schools not funded by taxpayers. So no one is attempting to limit scholarly inquiry.
congress is set to re-visit taxing virtual goods, a concept they shelved a while back in order to consider the matter more fully.
Congress, as a whole, doesn't fucking care.
'Given growth rates of 10 to 15 percent a month, the question is when, not if, Congress and IRS start paying attention to these issues,'
I extrapolate exponential trends, showing my poor grasp of statistics. I also make baseless speculations sound important by name-dropping governmental agencies.
Miller, who is a fan of virtual worlds and economies, told CNET News.com in December. 'So it is incumbent on us to set the terms and the debate so we have a shaped tax policy toward virtual worlds and virtual economies in a favorable way.'"
Somebody with way too much time on his hands takes this shit way too seriously.
'Lodrick, who made a statement at sentencing, was dissatisfied. "I can't believe it," she said. "I went through six months of hell, and she's going to get probation? She was on probation when she victimized me. Obviously, probation's not helping."'
What the hell? Is she on double secret probation now? Isn't that the point of probation, that you serve your sentence if you break it? I realize it's more important to have violent offenders incarcerated, but recidivist, unapologetic thieves who rack up that kind of bill need to be dealt with.
Problem is jails are expensive, but anything less is no deterrent to people like this. I'm sick of our PC justice system - this person needs something to fear, and I think lashings should play a central role.
Right, which also costs them next to nothing, unless they are having capacity issues in a given area, which is fairly rare with modern technology barring unusual events (9/11, the campus shootings, etc) that drive up the volume of traffic. Why do you think they can give away nights and weekends and mobile to mobile?
Nights and weekends are free as an enticement because maintaining the network - towers, equimpent, etc - is a relatively fixed cost (on a day/night basis). Same reason electricity is often cheaper off-peak. In this case, peak business-time demand drives network capacity, which would be lying effectively dormant at night. As such, some genius marketeer came up with the idea of making nights and weekends free, and the rest followed. What else do you think the costs are of running a wireless company? It's not cheap by any means, and is why you don't see little mom-and-pops throwing up towers all over the place. There's a serious capital expense involved, for startup and maintenance.
Eh, in areas that they choose to cover the coverage is typically very good. They haven't really bothered at all with rural areas -- but the dirty little secret of the big boys is that if you took away their roaming agreements with the regional providers, they'd have huge coverage gaps as well.
Yes - covering the first 50% of the population is much cheaper than covering the last 50%. They've chosen to reduce costs by reducing geographical coverage. Even accounting for the reciprocity agreements, Tmobile seems to have piss coverage breadth compared to the 'big boys.'
But it sounds like you are assuming that you are costing them money and the other customers are supporting you. That's not the case. The profit margin on your account is a lot less then the profit margin on the person carrying a $10,000 balance at 19% APR, but you are still making them money.
I'm *probably* still making the CC company money, though not nearly as much as they'd like considering my average balance that nets them 0 interest. If I spend $2000 a month on the CC, then I have an average balance of $1000, which means they're basically making me a permanant 0%-interest loan. They are probably giving up $50ish in interest. On the other hand, taking the merchant fees and subtracting cash back, they probably make abouut $300 or so on fees. That's a $250 gross. Out of that comes all the fees that my card company pays Visa for my transactions, overhead, etc. If the net margin is positive, it's not by much. In any event, my point is that the money the CC company makes doesn't come from me, thanks to the CC company forcing that rule on their merchants.
Regardless, even if I accept your argument that the cell industry depends on ringtones and SMS as revenue and wouldn't survive/would raise voice prices without them, how exactly does that justify locking down my phone again? You realize that most people would continue to use "Get It Now" for these things right?
I don't grant that assumption at all - I think many people would figure out how to get their own mp3s on the phone for free, use wireless not sold by the vendor, etc. They lock the phone down so you have to use "Get it now." Otherwise, why the hell would you - "Get it now" sucks! So I do think they use lock-in as a revenue generation tool. What other reason would there be to remove features from phones? Fun? The joy of underwhelming customers?
How does the handful of people smart enough to bluetooth/usb an mp3 to their phone harm Verizon's bottom line?
The cell companies make their money from kids and businesspeople. The latter pays a lot for high-end service. The former is the driving force for ringtones, text messaging, etc (something else they absolutely gouge for). I most certainly think kids could do it, particularly with help from their friends. I'm assuming the phone manufacturers would make it quite easy to do your own ringtones as a value-add if the ser
It's hard to know what the margins actually are because most of them are owned by parent companies (T-Mo by Deutsche Telekom, VZW by Verizon and Vodafone, etc, etc) and don't report separate results, but even assuming that's the case I don't buy it as justification for this behavior.
It's not about justification of behavior. Sprint, for example, is predominantly a wireless company and has margins in the low single digits. I've read analysis that claims similar for the other carriers. From the cutthroat way they attack each other in ads and go after each other's customers, I'd say the market is competitive. So they don't make a ton of money. That's point 1.
I'd dispute that. Voice minutes cost them next to nothing to provide. A friend of mine works at the local university. They have their own telephone switch and telecom department and lease dedicated flat-rate trunks to carry their off-campus traffic. How much do you think they pay for voice minutes to the US and Canada? With the flat-rate trunks it works out to less then a hundredth of a penny per minute.
That's land line, which is irrelevant for an analysis of wireless. You're paying mainly for the wireless capacity, not for the land-based transmission part of the call.
I'd also dispute that. T-Mobile doesn't use vendor lock-in and they are about the best value in mobility, if you live an area with coverage.
That answers itself - Tmobile is known (particularly where I live) for having an abysmal network, particularly where coverage is concerned. Most certainly, with wireless companies in the US, you're paying your dollar for coverage pretty much anywhere you'll be traveling. One way to get a discount is to get a carrier that has coverage in a few areas you plan to be, rolling the dice that you won't get screwed elsewhere when traveling.
Your paying for that as well. Ever hear of the merchant fee? Even if you don't eat finance charges the merchant is eating 1.5-3.0% of every sale when you use your credit card. In fact, I'm helping you to pay for that as well because the merchant isn't allowed to pass that charge along to you -- so the cash users wind up subsidizing the credit card ones.
That one answers itself too. Since the merchants aren't allowed to charge more for CC transactions, on a comparative basis my credit card is better than free. The merchant fees are the only money they get from me. Ever. And since the CC vs. cash cost is the same for the customer, that's the merchant's money they're getting, not mine. So you're quite right - cash users and people who pay finance and late charges pay for the convenience of me using my credit card - which was my basic point all along.
And I still maintain that, similarly, giving a ringtone to a customer DOES NOT cost the wireless company $3 for a 30 second clip. No way in hell. So that money is definitely used to help pay for my service - presumably in the false hope that I'll use their add-on services. Just how my CC keeps increasing my credit line in the hopes I'll use it. And I won't.
That would indeed be Verizon. You can't do jack shit with a Verizon phone unless it comes through Verizon's "Get it Now" service. And Motorola/Nokia can't even offer full price phones to Verizon customers, because Verizon won't let unbranded phones on their network. Again, it's obvious how this helps Verizon (revenue from Get it Now), but how does it help the consumer?
I hate vendor lock-in, but I'll play Verizon's Advocate (they are in fact the devil):
You can't say they're just profiteering. Though the amount of features available to the US market sucks, it's not a matter of the money lining the carriers' pockets - the margins in the wireless industry (last I checked) were rather thin overall. However, the "Get it now!" add-ons are big moneymakers, with exceptionally high margins.
What does that mean? Basic service must not be a huge moneymaker for them. So the person who benefits is someone who doesn't care about their ringtone, doesn't text message much, doesn't use all the damned add-ons. So if all you want is a phone, go with a carrier that uses vendor lock-in to screw their other customers! You'll probably get a better deal.
It's kind of like how credit card users who pay off their balance every month get a fantastic deal. I, for instance, never pay finance charges. I get the free convenience of not having to carry cash, free accounting statements, the knowledge that I get some degree of fraud protection, and some degree of cash-back reward. Who pays for that? The people who run up huge finance charges, that's who. Just like people who pay for ringtones keep my cell bill down.
In order for OSS community to prosper, Linus needs to stop speaking at all. His arrogance alienates many people (including me) and (probably) companies.
Good idea. That would allow someone like Stallman or Raymond to become the OSS poster child. Talk about arrogance and alienation.
How anyone can say Microsoft still has a monopoly AND claim that 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and probably 2008 was and/or will be the year of Linux on the desktop strikes me as funny.
I think that question answers itself - the fact that Linux is the desktop of the future (and always will be, in a GaAs kind of way) suggests how tough it is to break the monopolistic hegemony.
If MS has such a crappy OS, and everyone, and I mean EVERYONE on Slashdot can see it? Why don't they come up with a viable, commercial solution to take down the giant? It can be done. You just have to come up with something the consumers, your target market, wants... WANTS to buy.
All of which assumes a free market, which doesn't exist when monopolistic, predatory practices kills competition. However, if my product needs to work with another product that is sold by a monopolist, that company can crush me by making by product non-functional. That's the illegal bit. Note that there are many, many examples of companies that have been crushed by illegal monopolistic practices, both within the software world and without.
Another point is, you shouldn't have to completely take down the giant to compete with it.
A capatilistic market without anti-trust regulation is like a basketball game without referees. It's fine until you get some jackass who wants to throw elbows to the crotch. If it also happens that he's 300 pounds and trained in martial arts, there's not much you can do to compete.
Given your previous post, I'd imagine these subtler points of logic will miss the mark.
If Chrysler decided to design a car that worked better with specific parts, who would complain. If MS designs their OS so their desktop search works better, great. If Google really wants to be a competitor let them spend all that evil filthy lucre they've amassed and build thier own stinking OS that they can lock MS out of.
Did Chrysler increase their market share by 90% last night? If not, the difference between Chrysler and MS is that Microsoft is a convicted monopolist with a very high marketshare of desktop computers while Chrysler is a small player in the US auto market. This means that MS is subject to laws and rules that, in general, Chrysler is not. One of them is leveraging their market share in one market (operating systems) into others (search tools, browsers, etc). If MS is using anticompetitive tactics to render Google's products less capable of working with MS's operating system, to MS's advantage, that could be illegal.
Note that if Chrysler made 95% of the cars on the road, and Chrysler intentionally restricted their cars so that they would only work with Chrysler-blessed stereos, that would be illegal as well.
I despise the RIAA as much as the next... But this is one of the few things I have *no* problem with. File sharing is one thing. Selling counterfeit copies? That's a far cry from not being able to afford the media, or wanting to casually fuck over the assholes at the RIAA.
And blindly attacking the RIAA forces one into a position of implicitly defending the people arrested...who in this case are simple counterfeiters. I don't think that makes for a good case. When beating the anti-RIAA drum, let's make sure we select sympathetic characters like grandmothers, single moms, and dead people. Not flea-market scumbags.
Interesting mixture. I'll abbreviate your post to:
"I don't like the Supreme Court because they do too much bench legislation for causes I don't advocate. I also don't like the Supreme Court because they don't do enough bench legislation for caues I do advocate.
Perhaps you should be asking Congress to solve these problems.
If this were the other way around, HD DVD proponents would be shouting the superiority of "The Matrix" trilogy and talking about "Pirates" as child's play. You may have a point, but MY point is that either way, BluRay wins in this situation. They sold more.
Sure, if you blindly trust meaningless statistics with absolutely no analysis of their context, then you're absolutely right.
No, the best thing you can do is to do your fucking job and at least slow the march of evil for a little while, rather than joining it (or laying down and taking it) for your own greed. Another term is useless if you're not helping anyway.
When you grow up you'll learn that you need to pick your battles. If this is the one end-all issue that you'll go to the wall for, then yes, you do. Otherwise, you're out on your ass before you can do anything actually useful. And for what? A bill that has a modest chance of becoming law and no chance of getting past the Supreme Court? Don't think so. This is election bait, and if you were in office, you'd have just fallen for it.
This is why the cute, ideological, naive first-term representatives are often one-termers.
The problem is crap like this is an election year time bomb. It's like this. Let's say somebody sponsors a bill earmarking $2 billion for animal shelters. You vote against it because it's too much money. If I run against you in an election, I'll run a commercial saying that you like to kill puppies for fun.
Idiotic bills like this, best thing you can do as a representative, sadly, is abstain.
100% certainty that 10 people sample-set is too little for a Yes-No experiement.
Probability that a bunch of editors will fuck up the statistical design of an experiment: 96.2% Seriously, you're writing for a magazine with decent readership, and you can't spend a week finding 90 more people at a coffeeshop who are willing to listen to music for 15 minutes apiece? Possibly get some statistical validity?
I'd give this shit the "honorable mention" you-suck ribbon at a 5th grade science fair.
The rulebook of my high school explicitly forbid bringing to school "anything that can be used as a weapon." I brought up the point that this would effectively expel all small freshmen who could be picked up and thrown at other people.
Other things that would be illegal:
Tacks, compasses, pens, pencils, rubber bands, combination locks, D-ring binders, glue, erasers, shoes, belts, bookbags, books, calculators. Good luck doing much without any of that.
Sure, but that's the point. Hating is a distraction from the goal. For fanboys, ostentatiously deranged hatred *is* the goal.
Ah, but that's *my* point. It's not that they don't hate; it's that the smart ones don't show it. Although I agree with you on the latter point; for the maladjusted it seems all they need is an outlet for their general rage.
Lesson: sputtering halfwitted rage is for idiot fanboys. The people who actually make things base their self-esteem on what they accomplish, not on how insanely they hate someone else.
On the contrary, there are many feuds between high-level execs I could name, some of whom worked together, some of whom were rivals. Some of those feuds get to the rage level. The difference is the savvy ones realize that they can't show it in public, and maintain a calm, even witty demeanor.
That observation has no bearing on this particular pair of executives, however.
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Since this seems like such a new concept (please correct me if I'm wrong; I don't follow plane technology too much), it would just seem prudent to try bending the wings until they break... how can they make accurate judgments and calculations without knowing exactly how much stress the wings can take before snapping?
Not only that, you don't want to just take one data point. You need to break a number of them to get a good sample.
Is it obvious how much I like breaking crap?
It's a fallacy? Shit. I guess that all these years that I have been working on open source software, fixing bugs, adding features, has actually been a big long dream.
I think he's talking about the big, monolithic beasts like the linux kernel and OpenOffice. Neither of those are things that the casual user can poke around and fix. For smaller programs, I have on occasion made minor modifications to things I've used.
Naturally, if you have had code integrated into the kernel source tree or OO, I'm sure we'd love to hear about how you got started.
The plans I will admit are a little pricey.
Ya think? Also bear in mind the agreement that the carriers will not subsidize the phone. So you're looking at a phone for $500-$600 and plans at $70-$100/month. Amortize the cost of the phone over 2-3 years and you're looking at something like $100-$150/month (plus taxes) for cell service. Ouch. Not for me!
ID (at least the couple of arguments for it I have found interesting) starts with empirical data and evidence and concludes on that it is unlikely the complexity can be adequately explained by anything except design.
That's still not science. It's using "design" as some sort of default hypothesis, but how did a "creator" get nominated? I could equally say that since something can't be proven, it must be aliens. Heck, they couldn't prove OJ killed his ex-wife, so it must have been aliens, right?
Also, it uses negative evidence as "proof," which is exceptionally poor. Just because I can't prove something at any given time, doesn't mean we resort to an arbitrary conclusion. The creator hypothesis needs to be subjected to the same rigor as others, and positively proven.
Many of the advancements to science can be considered outside of what is considered "science" at the time.
You're confusing prevailing beliefs held by scientists with the scientific method itself. You're right, at any given time some portion of the best-believed scientific knowledge will be wrong, and other scientists will eventually find evidence for other theories. This will, however, be done using scientific principles. It will not be done by examining scripture.
ID is unique (I'm not talking about young earth crap) because it really is not straight philosophy as it has too many ties to empirical data, it shouldn't be religion because (at least the reasonable arguments) don't actually argue for a "God," and yet it doesn't fit very nicely into the current definitions of "science."
ID simply does not use the scientific method. To do so, it would have to generate a testable hypothesis which is disproveable. It is inherently not proveable to show that the earth was made, in some way, by a deity. As Wolfgang Pauli once put it, "That's not right. That's not even wrong!" His point was that, for a theory to come under the purview of science, it has to be disprovable. ID is not. ID takes a specific belief and carefully skirts around existing evidence in a way that it avoids making a testable hypothesis. As such, ID does not belong in science curriculum. There's also the notion of "why the Christian religion?" If they get equal billing with science, surely Mayan, Greek, Norse, Phoenician, Aztec, Zulu, Persian, Flying Spaghetti Monster, and other creation myths should be taught in science class, right?
An attempt to limit scholarly inquiry by excluding it from scientific discussion will only discourage diversity in the scientific community.
We're talking about what should be taught in high school science. Textbooks contain the best available knowledge at any given time, and that's what should be taught in PUBLIC schools. The vast majority of scientists have examined the available evidence and mechanisms and concluded that evolution is almost certainly responsible for the existing biodiversity on earth. No one, however, is preventing a group of people from conducting research into ID or anything else, or of teaching it in parochial schools not funded by taxpayers. So no one is attempting to limit scholarly inquiry.
Let's translate this damned thing into reality:
congress is set to re-visit taxing virtual goods, a concept they shelved a while back in order to consider the matter more fully.
Congress, as a whole, doesn't fucking care.
'Given growth rates of 10 to 15 percent a month, the question is when, not if, Congress and IRS start paying attention to these issues,'
I extrapolate exponential trends, showing my poor grasp of statistics. I also make baseless speculations sound important by name-dropping governmental agencies.
Miller, who is a fan of virtual worlds and economies, told CNET News.com in December. 'So it is incumbent on us to set the terms and the debate so we have a shaped tax policy toward virtual worlds and virtual economies in a favorable way.'"
Somebody with way too much time on his hands takes this shit way too seriously.
'Lodrick, who made a statement at sentencing, was dissatisfied. "I can't believe it," she said. "I went through six months of hell, and she's going to get probation? She was on probation when she victimized me. Obviously, probation's not helping."'
What the hell? Is she on double secret probation now? Isn't that the point of probation, that you serve your sentence if you break it? I realize it's more important to have violent offenders incarcerated, but recidivist, unapologetic thieves who rack up that kind of bill need to be dealt with.
Problem is jails are expensive, but anything less is no deterrent to people like this. I'm sick of our PC justice system - this person needs something to fear, and I think lashings should play a central role.
Right, which also costs them next to nothing, unless they are having capacity issues in a given area, which is fairly rare with modern technology barring unusual events (9/11, the campus shootings, etc) that drive up the volume of traffic. Why do you think they can give away nights and weekends and mobile to mobile?
Nights and weekends are free as an enticement because maintaining the network - towers, equimpent, etc - is a relatively fixed cost (on a day/night basis). Same reason electricity is often cheaper off-peak. In this case, peak business-time demand drives network capacity, which would be lying effectively dormant at night. As such, some genius marketeer came up with the idea of making nights and weekends free, and the rest followed. What else do you think the costs are of running a wireless company? It's not cheap by any means, and is why you don't see little mom-and-pops throwing up towers all over the place. There's a serious capital expense involved, for startup and maintenance.
Eh, in areas that they choose to cover the coverage is typically very good. They haven't really bothered at all with rural areas -- but the dirty little secret of the big boys is that if you took away their roaming agreements with the regional providers, they'd have huge coverage gaps as well.
Yes - covering the first 50% of the population is much cheaper than covering the last 50%. They've chosen to reduce costs by reducing geographical coverage. Even accounting for the reciprocity agreements, Tmobile seems to have piss coverage breadth compared to the 'big boys.'
But it sounds like you are assuming that you are costing them money and the other customers are supporting you. That's not the case. The profit margin on your account is a lot less then the profit margin on the person carrying a $10,000 balance at 19% APR, but you are still making them money.
I'm *probably* still making the CC company money, though not nearly as much as they'd like considering my average balance that nets them 0 interest. If I spend $2000 a month on the CC, then I have an average balance of $1000, which means they're basically making me a permanant 0%-interest loan. They are probably giving up $50ish in interest. On the other hand, taking the merchant fees and subtracting cash back, they probably make abouut $300 or so on fees. That's a $250 gross. Out of that comes all the fees that my card company pays Visa for my transactions, overhead, etc. If the net margin is positive, it's not by much. In any event, my point is that the money the CC company makes doesn't come from me, thanks to the CC company forcing that rule on their merchants.
Regardless, even if I accept your argument that the cell industry depends on ringtones and SMS as revenue and wouldn't survive/would raise voice prices without them, how exactly does that justify locking down my phone again? You realize that most people would continue to use "Get It Now" for these things right?
I don't grant that assumption at all - I think many people would figure out how to get their own mp3s on the phone for free, use wireless not sold by the vendor, etc. They lock the phone down so you have to use "Get it now." Otherwise, why the hell would you - "Get it now" sucks! So I do think they use lock-in as a revenue generation tool. What other reason would there be to remove features from phones? Fun? The joy of underwhelming customers?
How does the handful of people smart enough to bluetooth/usb an mp3 to their phone harm Verizon's bottom line?
The cell companies make their money from kids and businesspeople. The latter pays a lot for high-end service. The former is the driving force for ringtones, text messaging, etc (something else they absolutely gouge for). I most certainly think kids could do it, particularly with help from their friends. I'm assuming the phone manufacturers would make it quite easy to do your own ringtones as a value-add if the ser
It's hard to know what the margins actually are because most of them are owned by parent companies (T-Mo by Deutsche Telekom, VZW by Verizon and Vodafone, etc, etc) and don't report separate results, but even assuming that's the case I don't buy it as justification for this behavior.
It's not about justification of behavior. Sprint, for example, is predominantly a wireless company and has margins in the low single digits. I've read analysis that claims similar for the other carriers. From the cutthroat way they attack each other in ads and go after each other's customers, I'd say the market is competitive. So they don't make a ton of money. That's point 1.
I'd dispute that. Voice minutes cost them next to nothing to provide. A friend of mine works at the local university. They have their own telephone switch and telecom department and lease dedicated flat-rate trunks to carry their off-campus traffic. How much do you think they pay for voice minutes to the US and Canada? With the flat-rate trunks it works out to less then a hundredth of a penny per minute.
That's land line, which is irrelevant for an analysis of wireless. You're paying mainly for the wireless capacity, not for the land-based transmission part of the call.
I'd also dispute that. T-Mobile doesn't use vendor lock-in and they are about the best value in mobility, if you live an area with coverage.
That answers itself - Tmobile is known (particularly where I live) for having an abysmal network, particularly where coverage is concerned. Most certainly, with wireless companies in the US, you're paying your dollar for coverage pretty much anywhere you'll be traveling. One way to get a discount is to get a carrier that has coverage in a few areas you plan to be, rolling the dice that you won't get screwed elsewhere when traveling.
Your paying for that as well. Ever hear of the merchant fee? Even if you don't eat finance charges the merchant is eating 1.5-3.0% of every sale when you use your credit card. In fact, I'm helping you to pay for that as well because the merchant isn't allowed to pass that charge along to you -- so the cash users wind up subsidizing the credit card ones.
That one answers itself too. Since the merchants aren't allowed to charge more for CC transactions, on a comparative basis my credit card is better than free. The merchant fees are the only money they get from me. Ever. And since the CC vs. cash cost is the same for the customer, that's the merchant's money they're getting, not mine. So you're quite right - cash users and people who pay finance and late charges pay for the convenience of me using my credit card - which was my basic point all along.
And I still maintain that, similarly, giving a ringtone to a customer DOES NOT cost the wireless company $3 for a 30 second clip. No way in hell. So that money is definitely used to help pay for my service - presumably in the false hope that I'll use their add-on services. Just how my CC keeps increasing my credit line in the hopes I'll use it. And I won't.
That would indeed be Verizon. You can't do jack shit with a Verizon phone unless it comes through Verizon's "Get it Now" service. And Motorola/Nokia can't even offer full price phones to Verizon customers, because Verizon won't let unbranded phones on their network. Again, it's obvious how this helps Verizon (revenue from Get it Now), but how does it help the consumer?
I hate vendor lock-in, but I'll play Verizon's Advocate (they are in fact the devil):
You can't say they're just profiteering. Though the amount of features available to the US market sucks, it's not a matter of the money lining the carriers' pockets - the margins in the wireless industry (last I checked) were rather thin overall. However, the "Get it now!" add-ons are big moneymakers, with exceptionally high margins.
What does that mean? Basic service must not be a huge moneymaker for them. So the person who benefits is someone who doesn't care about their ringtone, doesn't text message much, doesn't use all the damned add-ons. So if all you want is a phone, go with a carrier that uses vendor lock-in to screw their other customers! You'll probably get a better deal.
It's kind of like how credit card users who pay off their balance every month get a fantastic deal. I, for instance, never pay finance charges. I get the free convenience of not having to carry cash, free accounting statements, the knowledge that I get some degree of fraud protection, and some degree of cash-back reward. Who pays for that? The people who run up huge finance charges, that's who. Just like people who pay for ringtones keep my cell bill down.
In order for OSS community to prosper, Linus needs to stop speaking at all. His arrogance alienates many people (including me) and (probably) companies.
Good idea. That would allow someone like Stallman or Raymond to become the OSS poster child. Talk about arrogance and alienation.
How anyone can say Microsoft still has a monopoly AND claim that 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and probably 2008 was and/or will be the year of Linux on the desktop strikes me as funny.
I think that question answers itself - the fact that Linux is the desktop of the future (and always will be, in a GaAs kind of way) suggests how tough it is to break the monopolistic hegemony.
If MS has such a crappy OS, and everyone, and I mean EVERYONE on Slashdot can see it? Why don't they come up with a viable, commercial solution to take down the giant? It can be done. You just have to come up with something the consumers, your target market, wants... WANTS to buy.
All of which assumes a free market, which doesn't exist when monopolistic, predatory practices kills competition. However, if my product needs to work with another product that is sold by a monopolist, that company can crush me by making by product non-functional. That's the illegal bit. Note that there are many, many examples of companies that have been crushed by illegal monopolistic practices, both within the software world and without.
Another point is, you shouldn't have to completely take down the giant to compete with it.
A capatilistic market without anti-trust regulation is like a basketball game without referees. It's fine until you get some jackass who wants to throw elbows to the crotch. If it also happens that he's 300 pounds and trained in martial arts, there's not much you can do to compete.
Given your previous post, I'd imagine these subtler points of logic will miss the mark.
If Chrysler decided to design a car that worked better with specific parts, who would complain. If MS designs their OS so their desktop search works better, great. If Google really wants to be a competitor let them spend all that evil filthy lucre they've amassed and build thier own stinking OS that they can lock MS out of.
Did Chrysler increase their market share by 90% last night? If not, the difference between Chrysler and MS is that Microsoft is a convicted monopolist with a very high marketshare of desktop computers while Chrysler is a small player in the US auto market. This means that MS is subject to laws and rules that, in general, Chrysler is not. One of them is leveraging their market share in one market (operating systems) into others (search tools, browsers, etc). If MS is using anticompetitive tactics to render Google's products less capable of working with MS's operating system, to MS's advantage, that could be illegal.
Note that if Chrysler made 95% of the cars on the road, and Chrysler intentionally restricted their cars so that they would only work with Chrysler-blessed stereos, that would be illegal as well.
I despise the RIAA as much as the next... But this is one of the few things I have *no* problem with. File sharing is one thing. Selling counterfeit copies? That's a far cry from not being able to afford the media, or wanting to casually fuck over the assholes at the RIAA.
And blindly attacking the RIAA forces one into a position of implicitly defending the people arrested...who in this case are simple counterfeiters. I don't think that makes for a good case. When beating the anti-RIAA drum, let's make sure we select sympathetic characters like grandmothers, single moms, and dead people. Not flea-market scumbags.
Interesting mixture. I'll abbreviate your post to:
"I don't like the Supreme Court because they do too much bench legislation for causes I don't advocate. I also don't like the Supreme Court because they don't do enough bench legislation for caues I do advocate.
Perhaps you should be asking Congress to solve these problems.
Emacs 22 took six years, just to find anything Emacs 21 didn't already offer...
Sure. Now maybe that they're done with that, they'll finish Hurd.
Yeah, I've been trying to get my wife to go for that for a while, but she's afraid of getting Santorum all over the place.
If this were the other way around, HD DVD proponents would be shouting the superiority of "The Matrix" trilogy and talking about "Pirates" as child's play. You may have a point, but MY point is that either way, BluRay wins in this situation. They sold more.
Sure, if you blindly trust meaningless statistics with absolutely no analysis of their context, then you're absolutely right.
No, the best thing you can do is to do your fucking job and at least slow the march of evil for a little while, rather than joining it (or laying down and taking it) for your own greed. Another term is useless if you're not helping anyway.
When you grow up you'll learn that you need to pick your battles. If this is the one end-all issue that you'll go to the wall for, then yes, you do. Otherwise, you're out on your ass before you can do anything actually useful. And for what? A bill that has a modest chance of becoming law and no chance of getting past the Supreme Court? Don't think so. This is election bait, and if you were in office, you'd have just fallen for it.
This is why the cute, ideological, naive first-term representatives are often one-termers.
The problem is crap like this is an election year time bomb. It's like this. Let's say somebody sponsors a bill earmarking $2 billion for animal shelters. You vote against it because it's too much money. If I run against you in an election, I'll run a commercial saying that you like to kill puppies for fun.
Idiotic bills like this, best thing you can do as a representative, sadly, is abstain.
100% certainty that 10 people sample-set is too little for a Yes-No experiement.
Probability that a bunch of editors will fuck up the statistical design of an experiment: 96.2% Seriously, you're writing for a magazine with decent readership, and you can't spend a week finding 90 more people at a coffeeshop who are willing to listen to music for 15 minutes apiece? Possibly get some statistical validity?
I'd give this shit the "honorable mention" you-suck ribbon at a 5th grade science fair.
The rulebook of my high school explicitly forbid bringing to school "anything that can be used as a weapon." I brought up the point that this would effectively expel all small freshmen who could be picked up and thrown at other people.
Other things that would be illegal:
Tacks, compasses, pens, pencils, rubber bands, combination locks, D-ring binders, glue, erasers, shoes, belts, bookbags, books, calculators. Good luck doing much without any of that.
Sure, but that's the point. Hating is a distraction from the goal. For fanboys, ostentatiously deranged hatred *is* the goal.
Ah, but that's *my* point. It's not that they don't hate; it's that the smart ones don't show it. Although I agree with you on the latter point; for the maladjusted it seems all they need is an outlet for their general rage.
Lesson: sputtering halfwitted rage is for idiot fanboys. The people who actually make things base their self-esteem on what they accomplish, not on how insanely they hate someone else.
On the contrary, there are many feuds between high-level execs I could name, some of whom worked together, some of whom were rivals. Some of those feuds get to the rage level. The difference is the savvy ones realize that they can't show it in public, and maintain a calm, even witty demeanor.
That observation has no bearing on this particular pair of executives, however.