At some point, it's almost not worth wasting time on such people, as they won't even bother to do basic research before panicking.
But the anti-progress lobby (including people who are supposedly against climate change and think that wind power will solve our problems) need to be rebutted. The public who don't know the facts need informing, and there will be plenty of people telling them how dangerous it is. We need more people who can tell people some facts.
We're seeing this in nuclear energy here in the UK.
Next thing you'll be demanding fillet steak for the same price as rump.
Really, don't like 'em, don't shop there. Personally, Ticketmaster events don't appeal to me very often, and when I've gone through and got the fees up, I've once been so disgusted, and it tipped what I was willing to pay, so that I abandoned the sale. Whilst the fees aren't up front, you see them during the ordering process. You have that choice.
To be honest, I wouldn't bother worrying about morally justifying it. The bottom line is that someone is selling something below what the market will bear.
I always hear this when Wimbledon final tickets get sold, and people who pick up £50 tickets sell them for £1000. Sorry, you priced it too low, deal with it.
We don't call people who speculate in property or the stock market "scalpers", but "investors".
Why would Ticketmaster want to have empty, unsold seats?
By the time you are a week from a gig happening, it's all in play. If Ticketmaster still have 100 tickets, would they rather they be unsold, in which case they make money, or sell them for a reduced price, and get something?
If you had a spare ticket, would you sell it for $10, or say "no, I really want the $50 I paid", and find that the day after the concert, it went unsold?
Flights in the EU are dirt cheap compared to what they were 20 years ago. Years ago, there was basically a cartel on routes. The national carriers of the departure and arrival countries had the route, and the price was astronomical.
The EU decided to open up the market, and in came airlines like Ryanair and Easyjet, and took them on.
To give you an example. 25 years ago, I flew one way from Bordeaux to London. Cost something like £130. I can get a one-way for about £50 now. In real terms, that's about 1/10th of the cost then.
I hate this brand of capitalism that always favors the corporations.
It doesn't "favour the corporation". They're offering something for a price. Don't like it, don't pay it. I wouldn't mind going to see the UK F1 GP, but I'm not paying £100 for it. So, they don't get my money. Of course, if they drop the price to what I will pay, then I'll go for it.
Trust me, no-one wants an unsold ticket. It's really bad business.
Why should "normal families" have a ticket to a premium event? It's a very restricted supply with huge demand, and selling a Wimbledon final ticket for less than £100 is just ridiculous.
Look at it this way, where's my right to a Ferrari, or my right to drink an '82 Chateau Latour? After all, I'm a big wine fan, and probably know more about it than many of the people who get to afford it.
We're not talking healthcare, food, education, books or transportation here. Things that might reasonably be considered as worthy of a debate about market failure. Concert tickets to major events are something that people can live without, and there are plenty of alternatives.
It's an interesting point - you could see a lot of really soulless gigs where teenagers who were prepared to take the time to sleep rough to get a ticket won't anymore.
However, a lot of Ticketmaster's stuff is already pretty soulless. The UK site is showing Madonna, The Stones and Bon Jovi. All acts who are basically past it and marketing to an ageing audience. There's rarely a problem getting a ticket for one of the bands that are sold through a site like wegottickets.com, because they are the up-and-coming bands.
The key thing being taught is the language. The problem with an IDE is that it takes away a lot of language learning. It often teaches you how to do things the IDE way, not how it should be done.
For instance, I've seen developers put a header or menu on each form in asp.net, because they don't think to create a mypage class based on page, which does it as common practise. In part, because when you start doing such things, you break the IDE being able to show it in "development mode".
Hand coding makes people look at the code they are writing for things like form building. Makes them perhaps look more closely at it.
The big problem is that people need a TV upgrade too.
I know there are people out there who can go out and spend hundreds on a new TV, so that they can watch movies at higher resolution, but it's nowhere near the top of my priorities.
The problem is that it's all about jobs. People view job creation as a means to itself, where it should be a by-product of wealth generation. It's the wrong way around.
Encourage wealth generation as the primary objective. The jobs will follow. And they'll be real, sustainable jobs.
If you have to subsidise a business to come, then what does that say? It says that without the subsidy, they won't be there. So, what happens when the subsidy ends.
The idea of encouraging a large business in is also tempered by "but it will create lots of spin-off companies too". True, but they are often then beholden to that giant, as they are only there because of the company, which is only there because of the subsidy. So, what happens when the giant moves on? Much of that economic activity collapses too.
Stick with real, organic growth. Do everything possible to scale back government's interference in that business. Make it easy for business to operate, and businesses will be created.
The key thing is that the market for healthcare (doctors in particular) is highly inflexible. It takes 8 years of study to become a general practitioner here.
That means that lots of people aren't going to do it, however much they want to. It means that people with families are unlikely to drop their well-paid job to switch to it because they can't afford to.
People in the UK love to point to the USA and say "look, it costs more there in the free market" without recognising that free markets only really work when there are reasonably low barriers to entry.
I don't believe that most of what a general practitioner does is that difficult. Is it more complex than fixing a car? Not really. But the reason doctors earn more than mechanics is because of the artificial restraints on the market.
I'm not saying people shouldn't study for 7-8 years, any more than people shouldn't have MCSD exams. But with programming, it's optional. You don't have to have an MCSD to operate. Some companies only like to hire people with MCSDs, and I'm sure that some people would gladly hand over a wad of cash for a full on MD. But it could be that we could have a General Certificate of Practise, where someone can train for something like 2 years and practise general medicine.
Things like diabetes are more related to diet than healthcare.
As for costs, how long does it take to get treated in the US? Millions of people in the UK pay twice. Once for the socialist NHS, once for private provision. Why? Because if you don't, then you'll wait months to get seen or treated. If I wanted to see an ear specialist, I had to wait over 3 months on the NHS, or 2 weeks privately.
Eventually, you end up with the market resolving things. There is no absolute price for things, they are relative. Ask the old lady who bought a house around the corner from me for £700 in 1938 that's now worth more like £200,000.
Right now, it's cheaper to outsource to China. The more that happens, the harder it is to make a living, so people tighten their belts. Things like house prices and car prices fall as people can't afford as much, and eventually, people can compete with China.
Search is a market that's almost impossible to monopolise, because switching is so easy.
If you start running on Windows for your business, you install some software: Office, Project, Maybe a web server running IIS/ASP.NET, Exchange etc.
How easy is it for you to switch to an alternative setup? You've got to rebuild all the machines, maybe do some user testing, worry about interoperability with your clients etc etc.
How hard is it to switch from Google to Yahoo? Select the toolbar and go to www.yahoo.com. That's it.
So, where are you going with that? That big businesses should get more perks?
Who cares if they don't employ anyone? That's not the purpose of a business. Providing things that people want is.
Let people create businesses and see where they go. Offer nothing to big businesses that isn't also offered to small, and let the market decide.
Small businesses are good for two reasons: 1) they create the new big businesses. 2) They distribute employment. The more small businesses, the less chance that a single event can destroy the economy of your town.
There's a number of TV series that I would gladly buy on DVD at the right price.
But I'm just not going to spend £45 ($65) for a DVD box set of Dr Who Series 1. Get real. You put it on TV for free. Make it something like £10-15 and I'll pay it. I'm not pirating it, I'm just not watching it. I'm doing something else with my money instead.
If the TV series were less than £10, I'd be filling my shelves with them. I'd have S1 of Lost, S1+S2 of Nip/Tuck, 4 series of The Sopranos, Jeeves and Wooster, all of South Park, some Futurama, and some Simpsons. I'd put down something like £200 down for that lot. stuff that's costing the production companies something like £10-20 to produce in total. Instead, I consider it a bad bargain and go and spend my money elsewhere.
The problem with this is that the signal/noise ratio is really low.
Drugs are illegal, which means that a dog can sniff it. Simply, it's illegal.
Importing DVDs of many sorts into the UK is legal. We also have a huge amount of importing going on because of certain restrictions on sales of DVDs.
To sell a DVD of a movie in the UK, you need a license from the BBFC that costs a load of cash (like thousands of pounds per movie). R1 discs are not submitted for license, and so cannot be sold here (by retail or mail order). But the law allows for a workaround, that customers can import any movie from abroad, as long as it isn't in certain banned categories.
So, companies exist who provide cheaper, or earlier release discs, and mail out from other countries. All completely legitimate.
Finding a pirate DVD amongst this lot is like looking for a needle in a haystack. If it's too successful, the pirates will just start manufacturing here instead.
Slashdot Mirror
But the anti-progress lobby (including people who are supposedly against climate change and think that wind power will solve our problems) need to be rebutted. The public who don't know the facts need informing, and there will be plenty of people telling them how dangerous it is. We need more people who can tell people some facts.
We're seeing this in nuclear energy here in the UK.
Really, don't like 'em, don't shop there. Personally, Ticketmaster events don't appeal to me very often, and when I've gone through and got the fees up, I've once been so disgusted, and it tipped what I was willing to pay, so that I abandoned the sale. Whilst the fees aren't up front, you see them during the ordering process. You have that choice.
I always hear this when Wimbledon final tickets get sold, and people who pick up £50 tickets sell them for £1000. Sorry, you priced it too low, deal with it.
We don't call people who speculate in property or the stock market "scalpers", but "investors".
By the time you are a week from a gig happening, it's all in play. If Ticketmaster still have 100 tickets, would they rather they be unsold, in which case they make money, or sell them for a reduced price, and get something?
If you had a spare ticket, would you sell it for $10, or say "no, I really want the $50 I paid", and find that the day after the concert, it went unsold?
The EU decided to open up the market, and in came airlines like Ryanair and Easyjet, and took them on.
To give you an example. 25 years ago, I flew one way from Bordeaux to London. Cost something like £130. I can get a one-way for about £50 now. In real terms, that's about 1/10th of the cost then.
It doesn't "favour the corporation". They're offering something for a price. Don't like it, don't pay it. I wouldn't mind going to see the UK F1 GP, but I'm not paying £100 for it. So, they don't get my money. Of course, if they drop the price to what I will pay, then I'll go for it.
Trust me, no-one wants an unsold ticket. It's really bad business.
Look at it this way, where's my right to a Ferrari, or my right to drink an '82 Chateau Latour? After all, I'm a big wine fan, and probably know more about it than many of the people who get to afford it.
We're not talking healthcare, food, education, books or transportation here. Things that might reasonably be considered as worthy of a debate about market failure. Concert tickets to major events are something that people can live without, and there are plenty of alternatives.
The Duran Duran comeback tour tickets were sold out quite early, but in the last week, people were selling them very cheaply on Ebay.
People want to maximise revenue. An empty seats is lost revenue. Even charging $5 for it is better than no-one buying it.
However, a lot of Ticketmaster's stuff is already pretty soulless. The UK site is showing Madonna, The Stones and Bon Jovi. All acts who are basically past it and marketing to an ageing audience. There's rarely a problem getting a ticket for one of the bands that are sold through a site like wegottickets.com, because they are the up-and-coming bands.
To defend this, people need to be informed to counter the environmental sceptics who will no doubt be against this.
The key thing being taught is the language. The problem with an IDE is that it takes away a lot of language learning. It often teaches you how to do things the IDE way, not how it should be done.
For instance, I've seen developers put a header or menu on each form in asp.net, because they don't think to create a mypage class based on page, which does it as common practise. In part, because when you start doing such things, you break the IDE being able to show it in "development mode".
Hand coding makes people look at the code they are writing for things like form building. Makes them perhaps look more closely at it.
The VAT is enough that it might be worth considering buying a cheapo Ryanair/Easyjuet flight so you can buy one at an airport tax-free shopping.
Alternatively, get yourself outside of Zone 1 on the tube, and the prices drop quite a lot.
I have a Creative Zen Nomad, which a friend sold me for a bargain.
The menu interface is obvious. It's what I'd have built myself.
And even though I own a Zen, I've got to say that the iPod does it much better.
I hope that every slashdotter boycotts your products for this.
I know there are people out there who can go out and spend hundreds on a new TV, so that they can watch movies at higher resolution, but it's nowhere near the top of my priorities.
Encourage wealth generation as the primary objective. The jobs will follow. And they'll be real, sustainable jobs.
If you have to subsidise a business to come, then what does that say? It says that without the subsidy, they won't be there. So, what happens when the subsidy ends.
The idea of encouraging a large business in is also tempered by "but it will create lots of spin-off companies too". True, but they are often then beholden to that giant, as they are only there because of the company, which is only there because of the subsidy. So, what happens when the giant moves on? Much of that economic activity collapses too.
Stick with real, organic growth. Do everything possible to scale back government's interference in that business. Make it easy for business to operate, and businesses will be created.
That means that lots of people aren't going to do it, however much they want to. It means that people with families are unlikely to drop their well-paid job to switch to it because they can't afford to.
People in the UK love to point to the USA and say "look, it costs more there in the free market" without recognising that free markets only really work when there are reasonably low barriers to entry.
I don't believe that most of what a general practitioner does is that difficult. Is it more complex than fixing a car? Not really. But the reason doctors earn more than mechanics is because of the artificial restraints on the market.
I'm not saying people shouldn't study for 7-8 years, any more than people shouldn't have MCSD exams. But with programming, it's optional. You don't have to have an MCSD to operate. Some companies only like to hire people with MCSDs, and I'm sure that some people would gladly hand over a wad of cash for a full on MD. But it could be that we could have a General Certificate of Practise, where someone can train for something like 2 years and practise general medicine.
As for costs, how long does it take to get treated in the US? Millions of people in the UK pay twice. Once for the socialist NHS, once for private provision. Why? Because if you don't, then you'll wait months to get seen or treated. If I wanted to see an ear specialist, I had to wait over 3 months on the NHS, or 2 weeks privately.
Right now, it's cheaper to outsource to China. The more that happens, the harder it is to make a living, so people tighten their belts. Things like house prices and car prices fall as people can't afford as much, and eventually, people can compete with China.
If you start running on Windows for your business, you install some software: Office, Project, Maybe a web server running IIS/ASP.NET, Exchange etc.
How easy is it for you to switch to an alternative setup? You've got to rebuild all the machines, maybe do some user testing, worry about interoperability with your clients etc etc.
How hard is it to switch from Google to Yahoo? Select the toolbar and go to www.yahoo.com. That's it.
Who cares if they don't employ anyone? That's not the purpose of a business. Providing things that people want is.
Let people create businesses and see where they go. Offer nothing to big businesses that isn't also offered to small, and let the market decide.
Small businesses are good for two reasons: 1) they create the new big businesses. 2) They distribute employment. The more small businesses, the less chance that a single event can destroy the economy of your town.
If you get a chance, there's some other great ealing comedies too.
But I'm just not going to spend £45 ($65) for a DVD box set of Dr Who Series 1. Get real. You put it on TV for free. Make it something like £10-15 and I'll pay it. I'm not pirating it, I'm just not watching it. I'm doing something else with my money instead.
If the TV series were less than £10, I'd be filling my shelves with them. I'd have S1 of Lost, S1+S2 of Nip/Tuck, 4 series of The Sopranos, Jeeves and Wooster, all of South Park, some Futurama, and some Simpsons. I'd put down something like £200 down for that lot. stuff that's costing the production companies something like £10-20 to produce in total. Instead, I consider it a bad bargain and go and spend my money elsewhere.
Drugs are illegal, which means that a dog can sniff it. Simply, it's illegal.
Importing DVDs of many sorts into the UK is legal. We also have a huge amount of importing going on because of certain restrictions on sales of DVDs.
To sell a DVD of a movie in the UK, you need a license from the BBFC that costs a load of cash (like thousands of pounds per movie). R1 discs are not submitted for license, and so cannot be sold here (by retail or mail order). But the law allows for a workaround, that customers can import any movie from abroad, as long as it isn't in certain banned categories.
So, companies exist who provide cheaper, or earlier release discs, and mail out from other countries. All completely legitimate.
Finding a pirate DVD amongst this lot is like looking for a needle in a haystack. If it's too successful, the pirates will just start manufacturing here instead.