You just described iDine perfectly, by the way. Add your credit cards, give them marketing data, and you get 20% off your purchase price as a discount. I figure I'm being tracked anyway so why not - and I don't particularly care. United has a similar program where they give you miles at 5-per-dollar instead of cash back, through the same network.
But you act as if no one else can open a store again once they are all gone.
A true monopoly is one where no one else is even allowed into the market, such as our crapy phone, cable, and power systems, which are backed by the force of law, or in situations where the last one standing can prevent anyone else from competing.
That is not the case in retail.
If Walmart manages to wipe out everyone else and then starts jacking up the prices, competitors will start springing up all over the place with time forcing them to either become the price leader once again or be wiped out themselves.
Heh. If we all opened stores at the same time, maybe. But if you're going up against Walmart, a multi-national, in the environment that the GP post described, you'd better have deep pockets. If not, they can drop their prices down below cost (actually probably to above their cost but below yours) until you go out of business. Hell, they could just give stuff away until you ran out of money, and make it all up as soon as you closed the doors. The long periods without competition would make up for the short periods of unprofitability.
Frequently, selling lots of stuff below cost is illegal for just those reasons. That discounts the fact that Walmarts wholesale pricing is so much better than yours would be that they wouldn't have to. Its like poker - someone with deep pockets can just outlast the competition, especially if you're not allowed to go all in but they're allowed to keep raising the stakes.
Have you ever had an Amazon shipment not show up? It's horrendous trying to get your money back (or a new set of items). Amazon blames UPS, UPS blames Amazon. It sucks hard. It takes weeks beyond what you wanted to wait.
Hmm. Not sure about this one. Did you get a tracking number? If not, then its Amazon's fault (they should be able to provide you with one). If so, and if UPS's systems show that they never received or processed it, its Amazon's fault (again). If it shows that UPS received it but did not deliver it, its UPSs fault. If it shows that UPS delivered it but it wasn't at your house when you got home... maybe you should have had it shipped somewhere else?
Making sure you're placing blame where it belongs is important. Luckily, both parties in this have lots and lots of visibility into the process.
You missed the key part of the theory - that the rich person spends $50 for boots that last for 12 years, during which time the poor person has spent $120 ($10 per year) and has still had wet feet the whole time.
As long as you don't look at the interior - or compare it only to that of the C5, which was itself far better than the C4, but far worse than a Hyundai Elantra of comparable vintage (and yes, I owned both an Elantra and a C5 from 2001).
We may yet be witnessing the end of retailing for lots of stuff. Eventually we might be buying a car from the maker and having it delivered. Your next phone? Pfft, like I need a salesperson to show me the shiny bits.
Then why did you wander 'round the store taking pictures of barcodes and checking out the merchandise in person?
my little violin here. I'll be performing at the "former retail worker's schadenfraude party" this saturday.
Hopefully you don't create a product or service that was depending on someone else to purchase it, where that person either was a former retail worker, or made their money directly or indirectly from sales to said former retail worker.
Well look at it this way, if Walmart can sell item X for 200 dollars and still make money, why does some other big box like Best Buy feel the need to charge 300 dollars for that same item? Service and knowledge are equally shit, the items are the same, only the profit has been increased to feed the greedy. All this will serve to do is hurt those businesses that bemoan their poor revenue while jacking prices up beyond anything reasonable. OF course, if the stores would negotiate on the prices it could save them too. My local computer store has the highest price on parts for a new build, if they would give a discount for buying everything there (~1,000 bucks) I would go with them, but because they don't negotiate they lose out to the internet stores.
Because frequently Walmart isn't allowing the wholesaler any profit on the item, but its worth just not losing money on it to get their volume sky-high and make their manufacturing costs lower on the items they're selling for more money to other retailers. Sad, but true.
Back when I was in the logistics field, Walmart would often end up getting the manufacturers to offer Net 90 terms (WM pays 3 months after they order or receive an item) even though their internal turnaround was about a week, thus giving them an interest-free loan of the money for 3 months - another advantage the smaller retailers just didn't get. Of course, you could refuse their terms, but they'd just pull your product and sub in someone elses, and there goes a lot of your scale efficiency right down the toilet (plus loss of market share and brand recognition)...
Once you're large enough, different operating principles apply.
I used my iPhone and the Red Laser app to scan all the toys my kids wanted. It shows all the prices for the stores around me, as well as online. I got approached by at least one sales person asking me what I was doing, and Toys R Us specifically was not happy. I got approached by a floor manager after the sales person approached me, and he asked to see the app. He looked none too happy. Why in the world would I not check if I had the ability??
Can you at least understand why he wasn't happy? If you want to use his floor space, play with his display models, and take advantage of all the other "free" services a bricks and mortar store provides, you should make your purchases there as well. Otherwise, do your research online and buy wherever is cheapest - that's fine too. Its just common decency.
And that's where A Standout Store Experience comes in, if you're only willing to stick it out and read the last quarter of the sentence. Small stores need to have helpful, knowledgeable staff and excellent customer service; enough so to engender extreme customer loyalty.
Which is great in theory, and works in larger markets, but if a large percentage of the potential userbase is willing to accept total crap for a $0.03 drop in price, and the total userbase is small enough, then the wonderful store can no longer exist.
I'll be happy with better food and nicer atmosphere. I don't expect the sit-down Italian place down the road to be price competitive with McDonalds. I expect to get great food, really good service, and a more enjoyable experience.
One thing that has happened that a lot of people don't like to talk about is that a lot of sub-par small businesses have also shut down. If the sit-down Mexican joint was the only place in town and everyone was used to it, then a Chipotle moved in next door and offered food that was 95% as good for 40% the price, you'd expect the more expensive one to suffer. In many small towns businesses have stepped up their game to actually offer those things that makes them stand out - better service, better focussed selection, etc. In others, people realized that what they thought had been good pricing/selection/service actually wasn't.
Of course, many fine businesses have been hurt as well because people will accept 50% of the quality for 90% of the cost. But that's not the whole story.
Yup. Amazon is very rarely the lowest price vendor, but they're close enough and provide a quality service with a very high-quality user experience. If I can wait 2 days for something, I almost certainly get it from Amazon because I know the process, they have all of my information, and I have faith that returns will never be an issue (and are rarely required).
If I want to shop for something, though, I prefer locally owned businesses and will always make my purchase there. Using the service of a bricks-and-mortar store to try something then buying it online is, quite frankly, a crap thing to do.
They can have a licensed open source H.264 encoder.
The real problem, as you seem to be wandering towards, is that they shouldn't have one - they shouldn't even try to be providing their own video decoders, any more than they should be providing their own printer drivers. That's the job of the OS, allowing the user (or the distribution) a central place to install and maintain all video codecs (and printer drivers) and giving all applications full access to them. Unless they refuse to look there and just say, "HP LaserJet - er - H.264? Never heard of it, so no printing - er, video playback - for you!"
Hell, OSX was one of the initial champions of H.264 in the consumer video space - I still remember a Keynote from way back when showing... I think it was the Incredibles... playing in full 1920x1080 in H.264 format. At the time it was revolutionary
Happily, browser users on all platforms will be able to view WebM video content without any plugin.
The very first hardware video decode accelerators for WebM/VP8 are just beginning to appear on the market.
The good news for those of us who don't replace our computers every few weeks is that almost every computer made in the last few years can effectively play H.264 video with hardware acceleration, using the codecs installed into almost every single consumer operating system already. The fact that Firefox doesn't want to trust the OS (at this point I'm a little surprised they're not working on their own printer drivers, it'd be just as moronic) shouldn't become their users' problem.
The only reason I can figure Microsoft did this was to keep people from dropping Firefox and going to Chrome.
That's the only reason you can think of really? My first impression was different. If I recall correctly, the main problem with Mozilla and H.264 is that, while there are open source decoders, they are illegal to distribute in Usptostan.
Of course its also unnecessary, since (just like printer drivers), video codecs are provided by the underlying operating system and don't need to be - and shouldn't be - distributed as part of the web browser. Except that Firefox, almost uniquely among applications that can perform video playback, refuses to use any OS-provided codecs, no matter how stupid that is.
There is a codec distribution problem. Its also a solved problem. The fact that Firefox is having a hard time solving it again shouldn't be their user's problem (but in the real world, it is).
the trial judge's handling of jury questions/special verdicts are critical in the attempt to ensure that jurors make decisions based on reliable and complete information in accordance with the law of that jurisdiction.
Reliable information like that which led to a Supreme Court decision that a tomato is a vegetable? That kind of reliable information? Let's see, according to Wikipedia (cut me some slack, I'm not sitting in a jury box), the justices decided to classify the tomato based "on the popular definition that classifies vegetables by use". Well. Apparently, SCOTUS polls the peanut gallery for their reliable information. I rest my fucking case.
Not unreasonable, IMO. Or do you normally count glass as a liquid instead of a solid? Technically, it is. Usefully, it is not.
I'm just interested in how this is intended to play out, because as you point out, if I were a defendant, I wouldn't want my jurors looking up biased or incorrect information online. But not too long ago I heard about a trial where the jury requested a copy of the law that was allegedly violated in text, and it was refused. How can the jury make an informed decision if they aren't even allowed to understand the laws and concepts being debated.
And that refusal will have been logged in the records, and if the either side felt that it made a difference in the fact that they lost, it would be grounds (albeit not very strong grounds) for appeal. Possibly the statutes were voluminous and heavily amended, and thus hard to provide in a jury-accessible format? Who knows. Either way, the important thing is that the record was kept and may be used if, after the fact, it was found to be significant.
That doesn't always happen. My last jury stint involved a trial with more than one defendant and an invocation of the so-called "felony murder rule". The judge wanted each jury member to affirm that they would treat the felony murder rule as Gospel, AND made this demand WITHOUT any detailed discussion of its value or history.
That's because your oath as a juror is to decide whether or not somebody followed the rules, not whether or not they're a "good person" or a "bad person" based on your personal opinion of what the rules should be. The latter path leads to lynchings. If you couldn't in good conscience make the affirmation the judge was requesting, why didn't you just say so and be excused from the process?
Do fill us in on where the judges would get this reliable information from. They have experts in every area on standby at the end of a phone? Or do they just an encylopedia , maybe , gasp , even wikipedia?
Wherever the get the information from, it becomes part of the record of the case and, if necessary, can be discussed by counsel before delivery to the jury or, at worst case, used as grounds for appeal by either side after the fact.
Keeping accurate records of everything the jury was told in order to form a verdict is very important, especially if some of it is later found to be inaccurate.
Are you arguing that printed encyclopedias are more accurate and less biased than Wikipedia?
No, but if the information came from an encyclopedia provided by the court then there'd be a record of that fact and both the prosecution and the defense would be able to review it before it was provided to the jury (in theory - in reality they'd at least know that it had been provided, could review it themselves, and could potentially bring it up as a reason to appeal if they thought it was biased in some way). None of those protections are available if people just go off and read a random website without telling anyone.
Sorry , but since when are lawyers experts on every possible area? Would you trust a lawyer to give someone the inside on computer hacking? No. So the lawyers just repeat parrot fashion what they've found out from somewhere else - possibly wikipedia.
Of course not. That's why you'd hear from an expert witness, you know, someone who testifies under oath and who both the defense and the prosecution agree can speak authoritatively about the subject at hand.
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You just described iDine perfectly, by the way. Add your credit cards, give them marketing data, and you get 20% off your purchase price as a discount. I figure I'm being tracked anyway so why not - and I don't particularly care. United has a similar program where they give you miles at 5-per-dollar instead of cash back, through the same network.
And, yes, I would suspect that emergency personnel making a quick stop would not bear to be out of contact for fifteen minutes.
Its a good thing we've always had celphones, then.
But you act as if no one else can open a store again once they are all gone.
A true monopoly is one where no one else is even allowed into the market, such as our crapy phone, cable, and power systems, which are backed by the force of law, or in situations where the last one standing can prevent anyone else from competing.
That is not the case in retail.
If Walmart manages to wipe out everyone else and then starts jacking up the prices, competitors will start springing up all over the place with time forcing them to either become the price leader once again or be wiped out themselves.
Heh. If we all opened stores at the same time, maybe. But if you're going up against Walmart, a multi-national, in the environment that the GP post described, you'd better have deep pockets. If not, they can drop their prices down below cost (actually probably to above their cost but below yours) until you go out of business. Hell, they could just give stuff away until you ran out of money, and make it all up as soon as you closed the doors. The long periods without competition would make up for the short periods of unprofitability.
Frequently, selling lots of stuff below cost is illegal for just those reasons. That discounts the fact that Walmarts wholesale pricing is so much better than yours would be that they wouldn't have to. Its like poker - someone with deep pockets can just outlast the competition, especially if you're not allowed to go all in but they're allowed to keep raising the stakes.
Have you ever had an Amazon shipment not show up? It's horrendous trying to get your money back (or a new set of items). Amazon blames UPS, UPS blames Amazon. It sucks hard. It takes weeks beyond what you wanted to wait.
Hmm. Not sure about this one. Did you get a tracking number? If not, then its Amazon's fault (they should be able to provide you with one). If so, and if UPS's systems show that they never received or processed it, its Amazon's fault (again). If it shows that UPS received it but did not deliver it, its UPSs fault. If it shows that UPS delivered it but it wasn't at your house when you got home... maybe you should have had it shipped somewhere else?
Making sure you're placing blame where it belongs is important. Luckily, both parties in this have lots and lots of visibility into the process.
You missed the key part of the theory - that the rich person spends $50 for boots that last for 12 years, during which time the poor person has spent $120 ($10 per year) and has still had wet feet the whole time.
Italics approximate the original.
Hmm. Perhaps you could call it Target?
As long as you don't look at the interior - or compare it only to that of the C5, which was itself far better than the C4, but far worse than a Hyundai Elantra of comparable vintage (and yes, I owned both an Elantra and a C5 from 2001).
We may yet be witnessing the end of retailing for lots of stuff. Eventually we might be buying a car from the maker and having it delivered. Your next phone? Pfft, like I need a salesperson to show me the shiny bits.
Then why did you wander 'round the store taking pictures of barcodes and checking out the merchandise in person?
my little violin here. I'll be performing at the "former retail worker's schadenfraude party" this saturday.
Hopefully you don't create a product or service that was depending on someone else to purchase it, where that person either was a former retail worker, or made their money directly or indirectly from sales to said former retail worker.
Just sayin'.
I'm a prime customer too - got to say, I'm a big fan. Just got a mattress (a mattress!) delivered. Two days, no charge. Sheesh...
Well look at it this way, if Walmart can sell item X for 200 dollars and still make money, why does some other big box like Best Buy feel the need to charge 300 dollars for that same item? Service and knowledge are equally shit, the items are the same, only the profit has been increased to feed the greedy. All this will serve to do is hurt those businesses that bemoan their poor revenue while jacking prices up beyond anything reasonable. OF course, if the stores would negotiate on the prices it could save them too. My local computer store has the highest price on parts for a new build, if they would give a discount for buying everything there (~1,000 bucks) I would go with them, but because they don't negotiate they lose out to the internet stores.
Because frequently Walmart isn't allowing the wholesaler any profit on the item, but its worth just not losing money on it to get their volume sky-high and make their manufacturing costs lower on the items they're selling for more money to other retailers. Sad, but true.
Back when I was in the logistics field, Walmart would often end up getting the manufacturers to offer Net 90 terms (WM pays 3 months after they order or receive an item) even though their internal turnaround was about a week, thus giving them an interest-free loan of the money for 3 months - another advantage the smaller retailers just didn't get. Of course, you could refuse their terms, but they'd just pull your product and sub in someone elses, and there goes a lot of your scale efficiency right down the toilet (plus loss of market share and brand recognition)...
Once you're large enough, different operating principles apply.
I used my iPhone and the Red Laser app to scan all the toys my kids wanted. It shows all the prices for the stores around me, as well as online. I got approached by at least one sales person asking me what I was doing, and Toys R Us specifically was not happy. I got approached by a floor manager after the sales person approached me, and he asked to see the app. He looked none too happy. Why in the world would I not check if I had the ability??
Can you at least understand why he wasn't happy? If you want to use his floor space, play with his display models, and take advantage of all the other "free" services a bricks and mortar store provides, you should make your purchases there as well. Otherwise, do your research online and buy wherever is cheapest - that's fine too. Its just common decency.
And that's where A Standout Store Experience comes in, if you're only willing to stick it out and read the last quarter of the sentence. Small stores need to have helpful, knowledgeable staff and excellent customer service; enough so to engender extreme customer loyalty.
Which is great in theory, and works in larger markets, but if a large percentage of the potential userbase is willing to accept total crap for a $0.03 drop in price, and the total userbase is small enough, then the wonderful store can no longer exist.
I'll be happy with better food and nicer atmosphere. I don't expect the sit-down Italian place down the road to be price competitive with McDonalds. I expect to get great food, really good service, and a more enjoyable experience.
One thing that has happened that a lot of people don't like to talk about is that a lot of sub-par small businesses have also shut down. If the sit-down Mexican joint was the only place in town and everyone was used to it, then a Chipotle moved in next door and offered food that was 95% as good for 40% the price, you'd expect the more expensive one to suffer. In many small towns businesses have stepped up their game to actually offer those things that makes them stand out - better service, better focussed selection, etc. In others, people realized that what they thought had been good pricing/selection/service actually wasn't.
Of course, many fine businesses have been hurt as well because people will accept 50% of the quality for 90% of the cost. But that's not the whole story.
Yup. Amazon is very rarely the lowest price vendor, but they're close enough and provide a quality service with a very high-quality user experience. If I can wait 2 days for something, I almost certainly get it from Amazon because I know the process, they have all of my information, and I have faith that returns will never be an issue (and are rarely required).
If I want to shop for something, though, I prefer locally owned businesses and will always make my purchase there. Using the service of a bricks-and-mortar store to try something then buying it online is, quite frankly, a crap thing to do.
They can have a licensed open source H.264 encoder.
The real problem, as you seem to be wandering towards, is that they shouldn't have one - they shouldn't even try to be providing their own video decoders, any more than they should be providing their own printer drivers. That's the job of the OS, allowing the user (or the distribution) a central place to install and maintain all video codecs (and printer drivers) and giving all applications full access to them. Unless they refuse to look there and just say, "HP LaserJet - er - H.264? Never heard of it, so no printing - er, video playback - for you!"
Hell, OSX was one of the initial champions of H.264 in the consumer video space - I still remember a Keynote from way back when showing... I think it was the Incredibles... playing in full 1920x1080 in H.264 format. At the time it was revolutionary
Happily, browser users on all platforms will be able to view WebM video content without any plugin.
The very first hardware video decode accelerators for WebM/VP8 are just beginning to appear on the market.
The good news for those of us who don't replace our computers every few weeks is that almost every computer made in the last few years can effectively play H.264 video with hardware acceleration, using the codecs installed into almost every single consumer operating system already. The fact that Firefox doesn't want to trust the OS (at this point I'm a little surprised they're not working on their own printer drivers, it'd be just as moronic) shouldn't become their users' problem.
The only reason I can figure Microsoft did this was to keep people from dropping Firefox and going to Chrome.
That's the only reason you can think of really? My first impression was different. If I recall correctly, the main problem with Mozilla and H.264 is that, while there are open source decoders, they are illegal to distribute in Usptostan.
Of course its also unnecessary, since (just like printer drivers), video codecs are provided by the underlying operating system and don't need to be - and shouldn't be - distributed as part of the web browser. Except that Firefox, almost uniquely among applications that can perform video playback, refuses to use any OS-provided codecs, no matter how stupid that is.
There is a codec distribution problem. Its also a solved problem. The fact that Firefox is having a hard time solving it again shouldn't be their user's problem (but in the real world, it is).
the trial judge's handling of jury questions/special verdicts are critical in the attempt to ensure that jurors make decisions based on reliable and complete information in accordance with the law of that jurisdiction.
Reliable information like that which led to a Supreme Court decision that a tomato is a vegetable? That kind of reliable information? Let's see, according to Wikipedia (cut me some slack, I'm not sitting in a jury box), the justices decided to classify the tomato based "on the popular definition that classifies vegetables by use". Well. Apparently, SCOTUS polls the peanut gallery for their reliable information. I rest my fucking case.
Not unreasonable, IMO. Or do you normally count glass as a liquid instead of a solid? Technically, it is. Usefully, it is not.
I'm just interested in how this is intended to play out, because as you point out, if I were a defendant, I wouldn't want my jurors looking up biased or incorrect information online. But not too long ago I heard about a trial where the jury requested a copy of the law that was allegedly violated in text, and it was refused. How can the jury make an informed decision if they aren't even allowed to understand the laws and concepts being debated.
And that refusal will have been logged in the records, and if the either side felt that it made a difference in the fact that they lost, it would be grounds (albeit not very strong grounds) for appeal. Possibly the statutes were voluminous and heavily amended, and thus hard to provide in a jury-accessible format? Who knows. Either way, the important thing is that the record was kept and may be used if, after the fact, it was found to be significant.
That doesn't always happen. My last jury stint involved a trial with more than one defendant and an invocation of the so-called "felony murder rule". The judge wanted each jury member to affirm that they would treat the felony murder rule as Gospel, AND made this demand WITHOUT any detailed discussion of its value or history.
That's because your oath as a juror is to decide whether or not somebody followed the rules, not whether or not they're a "good person" or a "bad person" based on your personal opinion of what the rules should be. The latter path leads to lynchings. If you couldn't in good conscience make the affirmation the judge was requesting, why didn't you just say so and be excused from the process?
Do fill us in on where the judges would get this reliable information from. They have experts in every area on standby at the end of a phone? Or do they just an encylopedia , maybe , gasp , even wikipedia?
Wherever the get the information from, it becomes part of the record of the case and, if necessary, can be discussed by counsel before delivery to the jury or, at worst case, used as grounds for appeal by either side after the fact.
Keeping accurate records of everything the jury was told in order to form a verdict is very important, especially if some of it is later found to be inaccurate.
Use an old-fashioned encyclopedia.
Are you arguing that printed encyclopedias are more accurate and less biased than Wikipedia?
No, but if the information came from an encyclopedia provided by the court then there'd be a record of that fact and both the prosecution and the defense would be able to review it before it was provided to the jury (in theory - in reality they'd at least know that it had been provided, could review it themselves, and could potentially bring it up as a reason to appeal if they thought it was biased in some way). None of those protections are available if people just go off and read a random website without telling anyone.
Sorry , but since when are lawyers experts on every possible area? Would you trust a lawyer to give someone the inside on computer hacking? No. So the lawyers just repeat parrot fashion what they've found out from somewhere else - possibly wikipedia.
Of course not. That's why you'd hear from an expert witness, you know, someone who testifies under oath and who both the defense and the prosecution agree can speak authoritatively about the subject at hand.