One trend out there is if an IT project doesn't really to appear to have lowered costs, didn't really improve profits, and didn't really improve productivity, what was the over-all point? Was it a failure or is tehre some other measurement of success?
But another measure of success is to measure the increase in Consumer Surplus the IT project/dept adds to the firm. Consumer surplus is one possible way to measure a competitive advantage (because it measures the increased value to your customers).
Estimating consumer surplus is another story though...
By centralizing the negotiation and licensing, Microsoft greatly reduces the total transaction costs. This argument literally looks like an argument that proposes a monopolized situation wins out over a competitive situation. Which just isn't true. All that is needed is an intermediary acting on behalf of the consumers for small fee (i.e. - where the fee + amount is less than the $21.50)
Mostly big medicine? How long are any of Intel or AMD's chips in development before they reach affordable levels? Sure, dual core CPUs may come come out right before your 5 year mark, but how expensive were these? Its true that if its 5 years, you'd see generic dual cores and costs would come down. Intel and MAD would just quit making new ones because they could take their money someplace else.
Same thing with the game consoles market. How long was that Cell processor Sony was making in development? We've been hearing about it for 5 years, should Nintendo be able to make a cheap version of the Wii with the Cell processors in it? "Hey, we play Wii games and PS3 games!"
The worst part is, the above examples are just the tech industry. You mention 'big medicine'... but big medicine typically takes a little longer to develop (and thus can be more costly) than 5 years. The patent system does need to apply to all industries.
Sorry man, that just doesn't make sense. The dividends are payments made to the shareholders. You get taxed on that as a form of income. Companies are not required to pay dividends. They can instead choose to reinvest the money into new projects, to generate new cash flows will should drive the stock price up, having the same end effect (i.e. - more money in the shareholder's back pocket)
If they wish 'invest' their money in WoW gold, it'd be no different than investing in English Pounds or some other foreign currency. The difference is, what happens to the your investment when Blizzard puts in a ladder and ladder seasons like they did when released a patch for Diablo 2.
The real stupidity of the law's idea is an economic one. Asking the question of whether or not to tax isn't the issue. If it is, then the government is just looking for a revenue stream. The only reason to tax any of this is to discourage playing of WoW. And I don't see why the government should take a stance on this.
The article mentions what the grandparent mentions. Selling items for real USD for your real-life bank account should be taxed, assuming you fall under income taxes.
Why is it I see just as many Comp Sci students copying code from a site online as I do in the business classes? Cheating is across the board and is not dependent upon a given 'major,'... we're talking about a persons morals and values, not where their interests lie.
While the above information in the article and above links is interesting, and you can sure feel for the victims, I'd be more interested in knowing what the individuals were or were not doing that allowed the viruses/hackers/keyloggers on the systems. Do these individuals/corporations not run behind a firewall? port blocker? run anti-virus software? run anti-spyware?
I'm not the end-all-be-all security expert, but when I help individuals set up a 'net connection, I make sure all firewalls are on (or the router they are using only allows the necessary ports needed for operations to be forwarded into the network). I setup free anti-virus and free anti-spyware as well. Are these places doing the same? Or do most of you guys [read: slashdot-readers] find that in general they don't?
Subscriptions are supposed to save you money, that is the ENTIRE POINT of subscriptions and the natural assumption of any reasonable person would be that paying for a subscription renewal would be the cheaper option even after taking into account any promotional discounts for new users.
The entire point of a subscription is to save you money? Where on earth did you get this idea from? The subscription is to guarantee service. Last time I checked there is no legal standing that requires that you save money on it. Tough break for the people that pay it, but its not my fault, and its not the software company's fault. Seriously, if you don't think the service is worth the dollar amount you paid, you stop the service. Its like saying you think a BigMac is too expensive, but you keep buying them anyways. This isn't the company's fault if you fail to investigate the price afterwards. Again, the concept is to look at what you'll be paying on a "normal basis" and make the determination based on that. The lower initial cost to the consumer is just an incentive to get you to switch services/products.
You and guy posting above you seem to be bitching how companies are trying to screw you over, then assume they should be giving you the best prices. Get real... you know they won't, so you can't compare it on that basis. If you get a good deal with the upfront cost, then find another better deal, you switch again. Here the article is just pointing out going back to the same company is more beneficial.
This is literally no different than renting out an apartment and getting the first month's free rent. But I've never heard anyone bitch about that... until now.
I'm not so certain this a 'screwing over' loyal customers as much as it is an incentive to give new customers a cheaper opportunity to try service. This trend doesn't apply to software alone but exists in many services (phone, cable TV, etc.)
As companies compete and offer new services, you want them to offer you deals in order to entice you to try their products.
Another argument (in addition to yours) is to consider at what cost. If it pays less than half to hire someone overseas as opposed to inside the US, its going to happen over there and never over here. Most people seem to forget that. Those jobs would NEVER be created here is they have to pay someone twice as much. Simply put, quantity supplied of people wanting that job far exceed the demand of those workers.
Your customers pay, as they do now. As it's an energy tax, everyone who consumes energy would pay the tax in proportion to their consumption, it wouldn't fall any more heavily on businesses than it would on anyone else, and the tax change would have to be split, employees would have proportionally higher domestic costs. Companies which are more energy efficient will obviously have substantially lower costs.
This isn't really true. The ability of a company to pass along a price increase (from the tax) to their consumers depends on many items. Take a good Intro to Macroeconomics class or just read the following section on Wiki:
In short, it depends on the elasticities of supply and demand for the item being taxed. In the case of energy though, and the current global situation, I'd say it falls more heavily on the consumers side. But, for the increased cost of overall business, some businesses will not see much of an effect, others will.
that is why the US government of today dwarfs the US government of only 100 years ago, both in revenue and power over the people.
Actually, current government spending is currently about 17% of Real GDP, but in the late 60's and 70's, government spending was about 20% of Real GDP (and 29% in '67). My source is http://www.bea.gov/ the Bureau of Economic Analysis
That's actually an excellent point. But, growth and technology is more often brought about by competition in a given market place. What immediate competition do the energy companys have compared to most other industries? None really...
Interesting thing about free markets (freely and highly competitive, that is) and this situation. They actually wind up in the same spot as far as who gets tickets and who doesn't.
The difference in the situtions is who has more money in their back pocket. This could be solved, and Pearl Jam fans could see them if the government stepped in to let more competition into the market forcably.
In economics, the most efficient markets are those that can be directly competed against one another.
I'm just nitpicking here, but that's not what defines efficient markets in economics. A discriminating monopolist market is also efficient. Efficiency is defined by Pareto efficiency... Here is a link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficient
Although, its true a perfectly competitive situation results in an efficient market. Most of the time, people like perfect competition mainly because its the market with the lowest prices, not because of its efficiency to allocate resources.
By the way, neither Apple nor Microsoft exist in a highly competitve market (as defined by those terms in economics).
While most governments may not make 100% efficient use of tax dollars, how else do you think roads get made? Police get paid? Firefighters get paid? Public Transportation get made? Laws get made for the purpose of proecting your own private property?
If I trade you two chickens for a goat, are they entitled to take for themselves the drumsticks off one chicken and one udder from the goat? That's stupid.
While you might not like it, I think you'd like it even less if the other fellow beats the shit out of you and takes his goat and your chickens. Thus the need for the basic government. The people that provide these services that you benefit cannot work for free. And if you argue that police protection can be handled by the markets, then you are basically denying those people that cannot afford it any protection at all. All that particular argument does is show what type of member you are in your own society.
I thought this comment posted on Doom9 was interesting about HD-DVD:
HD DVD was launched early. Yesterday, the first HD DVD players were being sold in Japan and a reader managed to grab one and two discs, and he was not pleased. I haven't managed to get any details yet as to which codec was used and if the disc was single layer or double layer, but 1080i content encoded with MPEG-2 to a single layer HD DVD would indeed be a disaster.. two times the space for 4 times the amount of pixels - you do the math.
But the issue here is there is no real way to police a tax on email, where as phones, there are. If I send an email via some server in Poland over some random encrypted port, how are they to know? Then there is the issue that other forms of comuncation exist. If the tax is high, they'd kill off email, and lose that tax revenue. Its just not likely to happen for numerous reasons.
....the real victim of the PS3 delay may actually be current gen console publishers and gamers... "The third scenario theorizes on a 25 percent price cut on current generation software.
The way I see this, is that the publishers lose, and the customer wins. So, does that mean if the PS3 were here now, prices would be higher and the publisher wins and customer loses?
There is the concept of 'risk' that every company must analyze and accept. Sometimes you win some, sometimes... well, you know...
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe because batteries can be recycled? http://www.batteryrecycling.com/
One trend out there is if an IT project doesn't really to appear to have lowered costs, didn't really improve profits, and didn't really improve productivity, what was the over-all point? Was it a failure or is tehre some other measurement of success?
But another measure of success is to measure the increase in Consumer Surplus the IT project/dept adds to the firm. Consumer surplus is one possible way to measure a competitive advantage (because it measures the increased value to your customers).
Estimating consumer surplus is another story though...
Just an idea
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_surplus
Across a 20,000-mile path, I'm starting to bet on the network.
Lies, Damn Lies and !!!!
This argument literally looks like an argument that proposes a monopolized situation wins out over a competitive situation. Which just isn't true. All that is needed is an intermediary acting on behalf of the consumers for small fee (i.e. - where the fee + amount is less than the $21.50)
They aren't passing anything along. You can only pass your portion of the tax if the price would adjust in the market.
In other words, they are only passing the tax along to customers if MSoft would have charged a different price with them being paying customers.
Mostly big medicine? How long are any of Intel or AMD's chips in development before they reach affordable levels? Sure, dual core CPUs may come come out right before your 5 year mark, but how expensive were these? Its true that if its 5 years, you'd see generic dual cores and costs would come down. Intel and MAD would just quit making new ones because they could take their money someplace else.
... but big medicine typically takes a little longer to develop (and thus can be more costly) than 5 years. The patent system does need to apply to all industries.
Same thing with the game consoles market. How long was that Cell processor Sony was making in development? We've been hearing about it for 5 years, should Nintendo be able to make a cheap version of the Wii with the Cell processors in it? "Hey, we play Wii games and PS3 games!"
The worst part is, the above examples are just the tech industry. You mention 'big medicine'
Sorry man, that just doesn't make sense. The dividends are payments made to the shareholders. You get taxed on that as a form of income. Companies are not required to pay dividends. They can instead choose to reinvest the money into new projects, to generate new cash flows will should drive the stock price up, having the same end effect (i.e. - more money in the shareholder's back pocket) If they wish 'invest' their money in WoW gold, it'd be no different than investing in English Pounds or some other foreign currency. The difference is, what happens to the your investment when Blizzard puts in a ladder and ladder seasons like they did when released a patch for Diablo 2. The real stupidity of the law's idea is an economic one. Asking the question of whether or not to tax isn't the issue. If it is, then the government is just looking for a revenue stream. The only reason to tax any of this is to discourage playing of WoW. And I don't see why the government should take a stance on this. The article mentions what the grandparent mentions. Selling items for real USD for your real-life bank account should be taxed, assuming you fall under income taxes.
Why is it I see just as many Comp Sci students copying code from a site online as I do in the business classes? Cheating is across the board and is not dependent upon a given 'major,' ... we're talking about a persons morals and values, not where their interests lie.
While the above information in the article and above links is interesting, and you can sure feel for the victims, I'd be more interested in knowing what the individuals were or were not doing that allowed the viruses/hackers/keyloggers on the systems. Do these individuals/corporations not run behind a firewall? port blocker? run anti-virus software? run anti-spyware?
I'm not the end-all-be-all security expert, but when I help individuals set up a 'net connection, I make sure all firewalls are on (or the router they are using only allows the necessary ports needed for operations to be forwarded into the network). I setup free anti-virus and free anti-spyware as well. Are these places doing the same? Or do most of you guys [read: slashdot-readers] find that in general they don't?
The entire point of a subscription is to save you money? Where on earth did you get this idea from? The subscription is to guarantee service. Last time I checked there is no legal standing that requires that you save money on it. Tough break for the people that pay it, but its not my fault, and its not the software company's fault. Seriously, if you don't think the service is worth the dollar amount you paid, you stop the service. Its like saying you think a BigMac is too expensive, but you keep buying them anyways. This isn't the company's fault if you fail to investigate the price afterwards. Again, the concept is to look at what you'll be paying on a "normal basis" and make the determination based on that. The lower initial cost to the consumer is just an incentive to get you to switch services/products.
You and guy posting above you seem to be bitching how companies are trying to screw you over, then assume they should be giving you the best prices. Get real... you know they won't, so you can't compare it on that basis. If you get a good deal with the upfront cost, then find another better deal, you switch again. Here the article is just pointing out going back to the same company is more beneficial.
This is literally no different than renting out an apartment and getting the first month's free rent. But I've never heard anyone bitch about that... until now.
I'm not so certain this a 'screwing over' loyal customers as much as it is an incentive to give new customers a cheaper opportunity to try service. This trend doesn't apply to software alone but exists in many services (phone, cable TV, etc.)
As companies compete and offer new services, you want them to offer you deals in order to entice you to try their products.
Another argument (in addition to yours) is to consider at what cost. If it pays less than half to hire someone overseas as opposed to inside the US, its going to happen over there and never over here. Most people seem to forget that. Those jobs would NEVER be created here is they have to pay someone twice as much. Simply put, quantity supplied of people wanting that job far exceed the demand of those workers.
This isn't really true. The ability of a company to pass along a price increase (from the tax) to their consumers depends on many items. Take a good Intro to Macroeconomics class or just read the following section on Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxpayer#Economics_o
In short, it depends on the elasticities of supply and demand for the item being taxed. In the case of energy though, and the current global situation, I'd say it falls more heavily on the consumers side. But, for the increased cost of overall business, some businesses will not see much of an effect, others will.
Do those numbers include the 19 different version of Star Wars, or no?
that is why the US government of today dwarfs the US government of only 100 years ago, both in revenue and power over the people.
Actually, current government spending is currently about 17% of Real GDP, but in the late 60's and 70's, government spending was about 20% of Real GDP (and 29% in '67). My source is http://www.bea.gov/ the Bureau of Economic Analysis
That's actually an excellent point. But, growth and technology is more often brought about by competition in a given market place. What immediate competition do the energy companys have compared to most other industries? None really...
Not so...http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/09/05/o
Oil discoveries are still being made, although they are typically further down.
Interesting thing about free markets (freely and highly competitive, that is) and this situation. They actually wind up in the same spot as far as who gets tickets and who doesn't.
The difference in the situtions is who has more money in their back pocket. This could be solved, and Pearl Jam fans could see them if the government stepped in to let more competition into the market forcably.
In economics, the most efficient markets are those that can be directly competed against one another.
...
I'm just nitpicking here, but that's not what defines efficient markets in economics. A discriminating monopolist market is also efficient. Efficiency is defined by Pareto efficiency
Here is a link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficient
Although, its true a perfectly competitive situation results in an efficient market. Most of the time, people like perfect competition mainly because its the market with the lowest prices, not because of its efficiency to allocate resources.
By the way, neither Apple nor Microsoft exist in a highly competitve market (as defined by those terms in economics).
While most governments may not make 100% efficient use of tax dollars, how else do you think roads get made? Police get paid? Firefighters get paid? Public Transportation get made? Laws get made for the purpose of proecting your own private property?
If I trade you two chickens for a goat, are they entitled to take for themselves the drumsticks off one chicken and one udder from the goat? That's stupid.
While you might not like it, I think you'd like it even less if the other fellow beats the shit out of you and takes his goat and your chickens. Thus the need for the basic government. The people that provide these services that you benefit cannot work for free. And if you argue that police protection can be handled by the markets, then you are basically denying those people that cannot afford it any protection at all. All that particular argument does is show what type of member you are in your own society.
Does any other company really search for prior art anymore? Granted, it might help... but you don't run across something obvious... go for it anyways.
I thought this comment posted on Doom9 was interesting about HD-DVD:
HD DVD was launched early. Yesterday, the first HD DVD players were being sold in Japan and a reader managed to grab one and two discs, and he was not pleased. I haven't managed to get any details yet as to which codec was used and if the disc was single layer or double layer, but 1080i content encoded with MPEG-2 to a single layer HD DVD would indeed be a disaster.. two times the space for 4 times the amount of pixels - you do the math.
But the issue here is there is no real way to police a tax on email, where as phones, there are. If I send an email via some server in Poland over some random encrypted port, how are they to know? Then there is the issue that other forms of comuncation exist. If the tax is high, they'd kill off email, and lose that tax revenue. Its just not likely to happen for numerous reasons.
....the real victim of the PS3 delay may actually be current gen console publishers and gamers... "The third scenario theorizes on a 25 percent price cut on current generation software.
The way I see this, is that the publishers lose, and the customer wins. So, does that mean if the PS3 were here now, prices would be higher and the publisher wins and customer loses?
There is the concept of 'risk' that every company must analyze and accept. Sometimes you win some, sometimes... well, you know...