When setting up a company in the UK your name is also restricted, though notably they do not include "bank" as sensitive, I assume in recognition of the variety of uses. The principle is a good one - people often assume an element of legitimacy to a limited company and assume they are somehow "approved". A limited company effectively makes a bargain with society: its investors enjoy limited liability but in return must conform to certain rules and make certain information public. Does any such bargain exist for domains?
Personally I think some people pirating it do so because they have a fixed upgrade budget and paying for Windows means spending less on the hardware. However on my last upgrade my budget was very much self-imposed - I was looking at getting a certain level of performance and value from the hardware rather than seeing what I could get for a set amount of money. I bought Vista* and actually it felt pretty good.
I saw the W7 intro offer and while I'm somewhat annoyed that the Vista purchase hasn't lasted, the £50 was well worth it since I've had the RC running on a box of old bits put together and it really flies.
* Obligatory justification for going Vista: bought post-SP1, no problems, not even with performance since RAM was so cheap, no not even with x64, though beyond the 64bit for RAM I see little point "upgrading" if you already have XP.
It's true console makers don't charge what it costs to make a console. I guess it costs several hundred million dollars to make a console. OK, we all know that's a bit of a trope since they know in advance that they will make lots of consoles which share the overhead, so the cost of each and every unit shares a tiny portion of it.
We also know that as more consoles are made and time goes on, they get better at it, and the cost of the next unit falls.
So selling a console that costs you $1,000 to make for $300 is a loss, but it's worth it because eventually you'll be selling loads of $200 consoles for $250?
Wrong. From the start they know with quite a good deal of accuracy when and how much the costs are going to fall. For the same reason that the second unit costs the same as the first, the millionth unit also costs the same. Less cash may be flowing from the bank account than it did to make the first, but the first unit contributed towards discovering those cost savings and therefore both units costs the same (to put it another way, you can't have the millionth unit without having done the first).
They charge more for the first batch of consoles and incrementally decrease the price for several reasons, some of which may be:
- Firstly (foremost?) this is market skimming, a marketing technique to make the guys willing to pay up to $500 and those willing to pay up to $250 each pay their highest price.
- This tallys up with production since initially you want to be relatively low volume and you ramp up as you figure things out.
- It allows market positioning, so you sell $500 consoles to all the early adopters and you keep adjusting your position to appeal to each segment in turn (launch: $500 with Halo, then move on to $400 with Fable II, through to $250 with Netflix or whatever and so on). Shit, some people would rather spend $500 at the start and have a years' exclusivity over their neighbour.
- It also signals that the product is worth $500, and some of those $250 guys might pay $300 perceiving it to be a bargain.
- It gives room for error and tactics. You can adjust the price as a competitive reaction, or possibly a few cost-reduction milestones will be missed.
- the accounts don't take quite so bad a pounding since the R&D on learning-by-doing isn't ever going to be capitalised very well.
Market penetration - exclusive games to attract gamers from other consoles.
Product development - selling new kinds of peripherals to make more from existing customers.
Market development - Guitar Hero has also sold a lot of consoles to previously non-gamers, Wii took Nintento away to new casual market (doing this via product development, but the major change was their market).
Diversification - media centre, though really it's the consoles themselves which are a diversification for MS and Sony whom previously focused on different products to different markets.
At the moment Natal seems to be intent on spanning most categories but I think it's primary objective is market development.
I don't see anything to suggest that OnLive is the trigger for any of this, the competition between MS, Sony and Nintendo is. My guess is OnLive will either blow them out of the water or be insignificant. In the (however unlikely) event that OnLive works as hyped at a reasonable price, it should have the potential to do anything the console guys are doing so the "big three" will only have title exclusives to defend with.
Every person I know who does job interviews says that the main thing they are looking for is whether you will fit in to the workplace. That's being a little simplistic maybe, but consider that the interviewer(s) are people too (and they're probably quite nervous as well). It's actually quite common to have an interview panel comprised of a higher level boss, the immediate manager of the position and a colleague (though maybe a senior or supervisor), and in these cases you need unanimous approval.
Some of the points I take from this are -
- whether they think you will get on with colleagues (so ask open-ended questions about potential co-workers that might leave you an opening to divulge some shared interests);
- whether they think they will be able to work with you (honesty, integrity, respect, professionalism, personable),
- what your personality can offer,
- long-term promise (ask about Continued Professional Development or whatever),
- the approach you take to your work - are you naturally someone who tries to provide value to the client? Do you "hug"? Or do you focus on being efficient? Consider say a bank - some banks the customer wants to get in and out as quickly, easily and cheaply as possible while other banks have customers that want to come in and be offered a cup of coffee before they have a lengthy discussion with their account manager that might include both their new loan, the way forward for their business and golf. The interviewer is not looking for someone who would be great at the other bank.
The trick is doing this in a way that is appropriate to the company and the profession. Be sure to read the website, their literature and figure out their market and their position in it. That not only provides you with ammo for discussion but indicates your interest in the company, that you think you're right for the company (and the company right for you!) and that you were smart enough to have thought of it.
I walked into my first interview for a "proper job" and within 30 seconds was asked what I thought about their new website, I confessed I hadn't had chance to read it and it was blatantly game over from there. The next interview I was asked something which was a clear opener for me to remark about the website, which she then asked me what I thought of and I responded that it was a little short on content, could perhaps do more to sell the company, but generally seemed appropriate and anyway in this field there is a danger of content going out of date. The interviewer actually then ticked something on her pad and scribbled a little comment, looked up and realised I'd caught her testing me and we shared a little smile which I'm pretty sure secured me the job.
Businesses treat taxation as cost and minimise it.
That's how I'd rephrase your point (while still saying roughly the same thing).
In Microsoft's case this is quite literal, as the tax adds 7.9% to the cost of their equipment.
Companies exist to maximise shareholder wealth. This is done by increased share price and through dividends. Tax reduces shareholder wealth, it is the company's duty to it's shareholders to minimise it - but legally. Three usual terms divide up the spectrum of minimising tax:
- tax planning, which is simply as described to be tax-efficient by design and is perfectly bona-fide.
- tax avoidance, which is using the system to your advantage (i.e. going out of your way to reduce tax). Legal but has a wide scale of moral grey.
- tax evasion which is cheating.
To a company tax is just another cost. A society offers it certain things and extracts a price in return. Taxation can be high (relative to other areas) provided there are compensating advantages. Once the cost of taxation exceeds those advantages, that place is no longer best and the company is failing in its duty towards it's shareholders if it does not move. Complaining that a company moved to minimise tax is hypocritical - you also put a large emphasis on price every time you buy something.
The problems are generally that some companies evade tax, legislators are fallable (leading to undesirable avoidance), and governments are always mucking around with tax. That last point is often understated. Differences in taxation distorts the market: a company may choose to avoid a tax area that has a natural competitive advantage because that country has higher taxes - TFA is a good example, Quincy has hydro power. Texas is therefore suboptimal and on balance society has a net loss.
Tax is also changed over time, so a company may do good planning which then backfires because the tax is changed. This is obviously means those plans are now inefficient, and again we have a net loss.
So we see that taxation is both a direct cost to a company and also poor implementation of taxation has a cost from inefficiency. Both of these pass on to society.
None of the above is any comment for/against high taxation, but rather to show the importance of how it is implemented.
I've never seen a PDF used other than with the intent of creating the equivalent of a printed document that is stored electronically. That is, it can be passed onto others confident in the knowledge that it can be viewed exactly (in all ways that matter) as it was sent, and that it is unlikely to be modified along the way (not that it can't be, but it takes a little effort).
Word documents are printed and mailed to clients or received in the mail from clients. PDF's go by email.
Mind you, all the PDF's were made as a Word document and converted...
Freedom is the ability to make your own choices. Free market is the ability to make your own choices (free) as regards buying and selling (market).
Free market is a well-defined economics term and it underpins most economic theory.
In the US, the consumer has a choice of a thousand hats of varied designs, quality and prices. This is because everybody is free to try and make what they please, consumers are free to choose what they buy, and the profit motive brings the two together.
In the USSR the store had the 5 hats the state decided to make at the price the state decided to charge.
As regards AT&T, the first line of the monopoly section of their Wiki page is "As a result of a combination of regulatory actions by government and actions by AT&T, the firm eventually gained what most regard as monopoly status." Not forgetting the primary cause - their patent.
Standard Oil I'd put in the Microsoft category of monopoly. However, it's fallacy to select a few outliers as evidence to conclude the norm.
Take games consoles. Once upon a time there were several players, which were whittled down to Nintendo and Sega. Nintendo dominates, but Sega is still effective to prevent monopoly. Sony enters. Sony becomes dominant. Nintendo all but falls out. Sega falls out. Microsoft enters. Microsoft removes Sony's dominance. Nintendo re-enters. Sony is now in last place.
The dominant firm has changed hands with every product cycle, and even still the dominant firm has had highly effective competition from the others.
There are monopolies, but usually these fall into one of two categories. Firstly there are monopolies which have been artificially supported by an industry structure imposed by government (e.g. BT in the UK), in other words they are not a failure of the free market, they are a failure caused by government subverting the free market. Secondly, there are natural monopolies which should really be ran by the state because the infrastructure requirements simply do not allow for real competition e.g. water supply.
Occasionally you get other kinds of monopolies, but it's actually quite rare to have monopolistic companies (other than those mentioned above) where consumers are significantly worse off than they would be under competition. For example if there was a thousand little Intel's I'd wager we would have much cheaper, much slower chips - to the point that per unit of computing power we'd actually be paying more. The scale economy which has allowed Intel's monopoly is so great that it benefits the consumer too. Actually that argument defines Intel as a natural monopoly but there is an important distinction between where competition is simply not possible vs. where it is simply not any better.
I will say though that I went into the film having simply been told "a guy is alone on a moon base and things start to go wrong". This is the best way to go. If you really must watch the trailer, stop at 1 min.
My most recent reading of Big Brother was some time ago, so I may be a little hazy, but my impression is that the thing that should get you really worried is when you don't have these stories.
Safe recycling and disposal is necessary, and everyone has a role to play. Manufacturers should not be wholly responsible for the disposal of their products, for they are not the only player. Everybody involved needs to be responsible for areas where they can improve the situation. There is no point making anybody responsible for things that they cannot influence. But, the flip side is that it is completely right to make people responsible for what they do have influence over, if they are deriving benefit. It's absurd to argue that a company should have no responsibility for products they no longer own - companies whom advertise no warranty nonetheless have one imposed by law. Companies are still liable for the safe design of their products.
Thus, manufacturers should be responsible and held accountable for how easily their products can be recycled and safely disposed. Councils/counties/whoever need to be responsible for accessible, convenient collection. Consumers need to be responsible for sorting through their refuse and depositing it properly. The thing is, councils are already incentivised to do their job (it costs them to dispose of waste) and given the facilities, it's turning out that consumers are happy to do their bit. I doubt manufacturers should be given the job of actually recycling and disposing of their products, because it is not their area of expertise. Specialist companies are likely to be simply better at it. But there needs to be a direct link between the ease of recycling and the manufacturer, because they are whom is best able to influence it.
The hardware isn't expensive if you already have a HD TV, and here in the UK the TV's seem to be doing well enough even though the only widespread HD content is from a games console. Compared to the TV the BR drives are cheap - decent units can be bought for cheaper than when DVD got popular. But people still aren't buying them because the movies are still very expensive. I can go to my local store and walk out with 6 good DVD's for the price of a single Bluray (plus the choice of titles on the shelves is about 40x wider, and the difference gets much bigger using online stores).
The only thing IMHO holding Bluray back is that the disks themselves are far too expensive relative to what people are used to paying, given the real-world benefits are not perceived as being that great. Sure, BR is technologically vastly better, but people are still quite happy with DVD and for most movies the higher resolution is just not important - and as for audio, most people use the TV speakers anyway. I have a BR player and use a a subscription rental where a BR is the same as a DVD - for blockbusters I go for BR, but for the vast majority I really don't care.
Sometimes I actually go for the DVD version. The "don't pirate me" messages at the start of DVDs are bad enough but with every BR they are infuriating, can't I just tick some "I acknowledge piracy is illegal" box once and have the other disks see that I've already sat through this crap? I just got Band of Brothers on BR and since I watched an episode a night I sat though 90 seconds of crap for 10 nights - 15 minutes in total. There's something wrong when I'm making a habit of loading the BR then switching back to the web browser while it gets to the menu. All I am going to say about the required firmware upgrades is that an unexpected 40 minute routine (OK, counting the PowerDVD patch) is not welcome when I have deliberately left myself just enough time to watch the movie to finish off the night.
It would be a lot better to stop the digital TV roll-out and use that money to fund braodband.
Now that you mention it, £600m of the BBC's funds for the digital switch over are also being diverted for this.
As an aside, presumably BT are most pleased that they are getting £600m from the BBC just a few days after whining about how the BBC should pay it lots of money to let BT's customers use the internet that they pay BT for.
The amount isn't the problem, it's the principle behind the method. The levy doesn't make any sense and it certainly does not necessarily go where it is supposed to.
The thing is, if they simply required BT to supply every home then the same thing happens but with an element of free market control. BT would raise it's prices to cover the expense, and would do so in the way that it thinks best suits the market. BT already does this with all their other domestic charges. Using a levy is just the government meddling more than necessary.
I don't see why he should expect a right to privacy. If you are going to make public accusations and attacks, then the other parties have a right to defend. If he was merely debating a matter of principle (purely philosophical) then his person would be irrelevant to the argument and yes it would be at a minimum very bad form to name him. But he was pointing figures about specific organisations.
The right of free speech does not confer any kind of right to anonymity. That is a specific right only granted where it is in the public interest. Indeed it is the reverse: with rights comes responsibility; if you want to say things then be prepared to defend it. There is no question over free speech here, the newspaper is not restricting what he is saying on his blog, they are merely calling it to account (whether you agree with their argument or not).
That does not at all mean newspapers etc should have an automatic right to discover his information. But if they are able to discover the name via legitimate means, that's his fault for not covering himself.
Note he is the one actively publishing, publicising and promoting his allegations. This is important. It is only those whom publish allegations that should be held responsible for them. One issue with UK Law* is that it considers any comment posted online without restricted access to be publishing, failing to distinguish between what is really publishing and what is merely chit chat.
* (by UK law I mean the various laws in the UK member states, there is no such thing as "UK Law").
Coming at this from a general control perspective, controls operate at both detection and prevention. The code reviews may not be detecting many problems, but their existence may have an impact anyway. If nobody is reviewing code at all, would people approach their task differently? What would anyone know about the software quality other than "it works"? The process may also be valuable to management for other reasons. What does anyone know about the programmer's level of skill? Is the code documented for maintenance?
Civilization IV took an approach which at least overlaps somewhat with crowd sourcing. They prioritised modding when designing the game, and have subsequently included fan-made mods in expansion packs and converted fan-made unofficial patches into official ones (though they did additional work).
The benefit of this approach is the community does a lot of the work for them. Not just in generating ideas and the actual production, but in filtering out the crap.
The Aztec Odyssey example in TFA does not sound much like crowd sourcing to me. They only went halfway, effectively just having a huge open tender. The other half would have involved the crowd playing a big part in selecting the winner.
Casinos are notorious for money laundering. Buy a few chips, get handed a bundle more from your customer and cash out your "winnings". Or there's the slots. It is superb for relatively low-level money laundering, especially since winnings are not taxable.
Online casinos, not so much. You can't just hand over a sack of chips in the toilets.
You're never going to deal with this until you accept this isn't limited to the IT department. They're all being difficult to each other. Is the accounts department ever not referred to as the bean counters on Slashdot? People in any one department generally have little idea what the other departments are doing or the problems they are dealing with. Learn how to deal with people. If someone is being difficult via email, go talk in person or at least on the phone.
If you're not dealing with the same individuals day-by-day then first impressions count: a suit goes a long way.
Slashdot Mirror
When setting up a company in the UK your name is also restricted, though notably they do not include "bank" as sensitive, I assume in recognition of the variety of uses. The principle is a good one - people often assume an element of legitimacy to a limited company and assume they are somehow "approved". A limited company effectively makes a bargain with society: its investors enjoy limited liability but in return must conform to certain rules and make certain information public. Does any such bargain exist for domains?
Personally I think some people pirating it do so because they have a fixed upgrade budget and paying for Windows means spending less on the hardware. However on my last upgrade my budget was very much self-imposed - I was looking at getting a certain level of performance and value from the hardware rather than seeing what I could get for a set amount of money. I bought Vista* and actually it felt pretty good.
I saw the W7 intro offer and while I'm somewhat annoyed that the Vista purchase hasn't lasted, the £50 was well worth it since I've had the RC running on a box of old bits put together and it really flies.
* Obligatory justification for going Vista: bought post-SP1, no problems, not even with performance since RAM was so cheap, no not even with x64, though beyond the 64bit for RAM I see little point "upgrading" if you already have XP.
It's true console makers don't charge what it costs to make a console. I guess it costs several hundred million dollars to make a console. OK, we all know that's a bit of a trope since they know in advance that they will make lots of consoles which share the overhead, so the cost of each and every unit shares a tiny portion of it.
We also know that as more consoles are made and time goes on, they get better at it, and the cost of the next unit falls.
So selling a console that costs you $1,000 to make for $300 is a loss, but it's worth it because eventually you'll be selling loads of $200 consoles for $250?
Wrong. From the start they know with quite a good deal of accuracy when and how much the costs are going to fall. For the same reason that the second unit costs the same as the first, the millionth unit also costs the same. Less cash may be flowing from the bank account than it did to make the first, but the first unit contributed towards discovering those cost savings and therefore both units costs the same (to put it another way, you can't have the millionth unit without having done the first).
They charge more for the first batch of consoles and incrementally decrease the price for several reasons, some of which may be:
- Firstly (foremost?) this is market skimming, a marketing technique to make the guys willing to pay up to $500 and those willing to pay up to $250 each pay their highest price.
- This tallys up with production since initially you want to be relatively low volume and you ramp up as you figure things out.
- It allows market positioning, so you sell $500 consoles to all the early adopters and you keep adjusting your position to appeal to each segment in turn (launch: $500 with Halo, then move on to $400 with Fable II, through to $250 with Netflix or whatever and so on). Shit, some people would rather spend $500 at the start and have a years' exclusivity over their neighbour.
- It also signals that the product is worth $500, and some of those $250 guys might pay $300 perceiving it to be a bargain.
- It gives room for error and tactics. You can adjust the price as a competitive reaction, or possibly a few cost-reduction milestones will be missed.
- the accounts don't take quite so bad a pounding since the R&D on learning-by-doing isn't ever going to be capitalised very well.
And the disparity in the growth rates of their economies.
TFA would have been better referring to the Ansoff's Product-Market Growth Matrix.
Market penetration - exclusive games to attract gamers from other consoles.
Product development - selling new kinds of peripherals to make more from existing customers.
Market development - Guitar Hero has also sold a lot of consoles to previously non-gamers, Wii took Nintento away to new casual market (doing this via product development, but the major change was their market).
Diversification - media centre, though really it's the consoles themselves which are a diversification for MS and Sony whom previously focused on different products to different markets.
At the moment Natal seems to be intent on spanning most categories but I think it's primary objective is market development.
I don't see anything to suggest that OnLive is the trigger for any of this, the competition between MS, Sony and Nintendo is. My guess is OnLive will either blow them out of the water or be insignificant. In the (however unlikely) event that OnLive works as hyped at a reasonable price, it should have the potential to do anything the console guys are doing so the "big three" will only have title exclusives to defend with.
Every person I know who does job interviews says that the main thing they are looking for is whether you will fit in to the workplace. That's being a little simplistic maybe, but consider that the interviewer(s) are people too (and they're probably quite nervous as well). It's actually quite common to have an interview panel comprised of a higher level boss, the immediate manager of the position and a colleague (though maybe a senior or supervisor), and in these cases you need unanimous approval.
Some of the points I take from this are -
- whether they think you will get on with colleagues (so ask open-ended questions about potential co-workers that might leave you an opening to divulge some shared interests);
- whether they think they will be able to work with you (honesty, integrity, respect, professionalism, personable),
- what your personality can offer,
- long-term promise (ask about Continued Professional Development or whatever),
- the approach you take to your work - are you naturally someone who tries to provide value to the client? Do you "hug"? Or do you focus on being efficient? Consider say a bank - some banks the customer wants to get in and out as quickly, easily and cheaply as possible while other banks have customers that want to come in and be offered a cup of coffee before they have a lengthy discussion with their account manager that might include both their new loan, the way forward for their business and golf. The interviewer is not looking for someone who would be great at the other bank.
The trick is doing this in a way that is appropriate to the company and the profession. Be sure to read the website, their literature and figure out their market and their position in it. That not only provides you with ammo for discussion but indicates your interest in the company, that you think you're right for the company (and the company right for you!) and that you were smart enough to have thought of it.
I walked into my first interview for a "proper job" and within 30 seconds was asked what I thought about their new website, I confessed I hadn't had chance to read it and it was blatantly game over from there. The next interview I was asked something which was a clear opener for me to remark about the website, which she then asked me what I thought of and I responded that it was a little short on content, could perhaps do more to sell the company, but generally seemed appropriate and anyway in this field there is a danger of content going out of date. The interviewer actually then ticked something on her pad and scribbled a little comment, looked up and realised I'd caught her testing me and we shared a little smile which I'm pretty sure secured me the job.
Businesses treat taxation as cost and minimise it.
That's how I'd rephrase your point (while still saying roughly the same thing).
In Microsoft's case this is quite literal, as the tax adds 7.9% to the cost of their equipment.
Companies exist to maximise shareholder wealth. This is done by increased share price and through dividends. Tax reduces shareholder wealth, it is the company's duty to it's shareholders to minimise it - but legally. Three usual terms divide up the spectrum of minimising tax:
- tax planning, which is simply as described to be tax-efficient by design and is perfectly bona-fide.
- tax avoidance, which is using the system to your advantage (i.e. going out of your way to reduce tax). Legal but has a wide scale of moral grey.
- tax evasion which is cheating.
To a company tax is just another cost. A society offers it certain things and extracts a price in return. Taxation can be high (relative to other areas) provided there are compensating advantages. Once the cost of taxation exceeds those advantages, that place is no longer best and the company is failing in its duty towards it's shareholders if it does not move. Complaining that a company moved to minimise tax is hypocritical - you also put a large emphasis on price every time you buy something.
The problems are generally that some companies evade tax, legislators are fallable (leading to undesirable avoidance), and governments are always mucking around with tax. That last point is often understated. Differences in taxation distorts the market: a company may choose to avoid a tax area that has a natural competitive advantage because that country has higher taxes - TFA is a good example, Quincy has hydro power. Texas is therefore suboptimal and on balance society has a net loss.
Tax is also changed over time, so a company may do good planning which then backfires because the tax is changed. This is obviously means those plans are now inefficient, and again we have a net loss.
So we see that taxation is both a direct cost to a company and also poor implementation of taxation has a cost from inefficiency. Both of these pass on to society.
None of the above is any comment for/against high taxation, but rather to show the importance of how it is implemented.
I've never seen a PDF used other than with the intent of creating the equivalent of a printed document that is stored electronically. That is, it can be passed onto others confident in the knowledge that it can be viewed exactly (in all ways that matter) as it was sent, and that it is unlikely to be modified along the way (not that it can't be, but it takes a little effort).
Word documents are printed and mailed to clients or received in the mail from clients. PDF's go by email.
Mind you, all the PDF's were made as a Word document and converted...
Freedom is the ability to make your own choices. Free market is the ability to make your own choices (free) as regards buying and selling (market).
Free market is a well-defined economics term and it underpins most economic theory.
In the US, the consumer has a choice of a thousand hats of varied designs, quality and prices. This is because everybody is free to try and make what they please, consumers are free to choose what they buy, and the profit motive brings the two together.
In the USSR the store had the 5 hats the state decided to make at the price the state decided to charge.
As regards AT&T, the first line of the monopoly section of their Wiki page is "As a result of a combination of regulatory actions by government and actions by AT&T, the firm eventually gained what most regard as monopoly status." Not forgetting the primary cause - their patent.
Standard Oil I'd put in the Microsoft category of monopoly. However, it's fallacy to select a few outliers as evidence to conclude the norm.
...and then to revert to competition.
Take games consoles. Once upon a time there were several players, which were whittled down to Nintendo and Sega. Nintendo dominates, but Sega is still effective to prevent monopoly. Sony enters. Sony becomes dominant. Nintendo all but falls out. Sega falls out. Microsoft enters. Microsoft removes Sony's dominance. Nintendo re-enters. Sony is now in last place.
The dominant firm has changed hands with every product cycle, and even still the dominant firm has had highly effective competition from the others.
There are monopolies, but usually these fall into one of two categories. Firstly there are monopolies which have been artificially supported by an industry structure imposed by government (e.g. BT in the UK), in other words they are not a failure of the free market, they are a failure caused by government subverting the free market. Secondly, there are natural monopolies which should really be ran by the state because the infrastructure requirements simply do not allow for real competition e.g. water supply.
Occasionally you get other kinds of monopolies, but it's actually quite rare to have monopolistic companies (other than those mentioned above) where consumers are significantly worse off than they would be under competition. For example if there was a thousand little Intel's I'd wager we would have much cheaper, much slower chips - to the point that per unit of computing power we'd actually be paying more. The scale economy which has allowed Intel's monopoly is so great that it benefits the consumer too. Actually that argument defines Intel as a natural monopoly but there is an important distinction between where competition is simply not possible vs. where it is simply not any better.
And then there's Microsoft.
I can also recommend Moon.
I will say though that I went into the film having simply been told "a guy is alone on a moon base and things start to go wrong". This is the best way to go. If you really must watch the trailer, stop at 1 min.
My most recent reading of Big Brother was some time ago, so I may be a little hazy, but my impression is that the thing that should get you really worried is when you don't have these stories.
Safe recycling and disposal is necessary, and everyone has a role to play. Manufacturers should not be wholly responsible for the disposal of their products, for they are not the only player. Everybody involved needs to be responsible for areas where they can improve the situation. There is no point making anybody responsible for things that they cannot influence. But, the flip side is that it is completely right to make people responsible for what they do have influence over, if they are deriving benefit. It's absurd to argue that a company should have no responsibility for products they no longer own - companies whom advertise no warranty nonetheless have one imposed by law. Companies are still liable for the safe design of their products.
Thus, manufacturers should be responsible and held accountable for how easily their products can be recycled and safely disposed. Councils/counties/whoever need to be responsible for accessible, convenient collection. Consumers need to be responsible for sorting through their refuse and depositing it properly. The thing is, councils are already incentivised to do their job (it costs them to dispose of waste) and given the facilities, it's turning out that consumers are happy to do their bit. I doubt manufacturers should be given the job of actually recycling and disposing of their products, because it is not their area of expertise. Specialist companies are likely to be simply better at it. But there needs to be a direct link between the ease of recycling and the manufacturer, because they are whom is best able to influence it.
The hardware isn't expensive if you already have a HD TV, and here in the UK the TV's seem to be doing well enough even though the only widespread HD content is from a games console. Compared to the TV the BR drives are cheap - decent units can be bought for cheaper than when DVD got popular. But people still aren't buying them because the movies are still very expensive. I can go to my local store and walk out with 6 good DVD's for the price of a single Bluray (plus the choice of titles on the shelves is about 40x wider, and the difference gets much bigger using online stores).
The only thing IMHO holding Bluray back is that the disks themselves are far too expensive relative to what people are used to paying, given the real-world benefits are not perceived as being that great. Sure, BR is technologically vastly better, but people are still quite happy with DVD and for most movies the higher resolution is just not important - and as for audio, most people use the TV speakers anyway. I have a BR player and use a a subscription rental where a BR is the same as a DVD - for blockbusters I go for BR, but for the vast majority I really don't care.
Sometimes I actually go for the DVD version. The "don't pirate me" messages at the start of DVDs are bad enough but with every BR they are infuriating, can't I just tick some "I acknowledge piracy is illegal" box once and have the other disks see that I've already sat through this crap? I just got Band of Brothers on BR and since I watched an episode a night I sat though 90 seconds of crap for 10 nights - 15 minutes in total. There's something wrong when I'm making a habit of loading the BR then switching back to the web browser while it gets to the menu. All I am going to say about the required firmware upgrades is that an unexpected 40 minute routine (OK, counting the PowerDVD patch) is not welcome when I have deliberately left myself just enough time to watch the movie to finish off the night.
So what happens when the guys with money and influence are the ones using anonymity to spread lies about you?
I agree, the supply should be provided by all of the companies who wholesale ADSL lines.
Oh...
It would be a lot better to stop the digital TV roll-out and use that money to fund braodband.
Now that you mention it, £600m of the BBC's funds for the digital switch over are also being diverted for this.
As an aside, presumably BT are most pleased that they are getting £600m from the BBC just a few days after whining about how the BBC should pay it lots of money to let BT's customers use the internet that they pay BT for.
The amount isn't the problem, it's the principle behind the method. The levy doesn't make any sense and it certainly does not necessarily go where it is supposed to.
The thing is, if they simply required BT to supply every home then the same thing happens but with an element of free market control. BT would raise it's prices to cover the expense, and would do so in the way that it thinks best suits the market. BT already does this with all their other domestic charges. Using a levy is just the government meddling more than necessary.
I don't see why he should expect a right to privacy. If you are going to make public accusations and attacks, then the other parties have a right to defend. If he was merely debating a matter of principle (purely philosophical) then his person would be irrelevant to the argument and yes it would be at a minimum very bad form to name him. But he was pointing figures about specific organisations.
The right of free speech does not confer any kind of right to anonymity. That is a specific right only granted where it is in the public interest. Indeed it is the reverse: with rights comes responsibility; if you want to say things then be prepared to defend it. There is no question over free speech here, the newspaper is not restricting what he is saying on his blog, they are merely calling it to account (whether you agree with their argument or not).
That does not at all mean newspapers etc should have an automatic right to discover his information. But if they are able to discover the name via legitimate means, that's his fault for not covering himself.
Note he is the one actively publishing, publicising and promoting his allegations. This is important. It is only those whom publish allegations that should be held responsible for them. One issue with UK Law* is that it considers any comment posted online without restricted access to be publishing, failing to distinguish between what is really publishing and what is merely chit chat.
* (by UK law I mean the various laws in the UK member states, there is no such thing as "UK Law").
Coming at this from a general control perspective, controls operate at both detection and prevention. The code reviews may not be detecting many problems, but their existence may have an impact anyway. If nobody is reviewing code at all, would people approach their task differently? What would anyone know about the software quality other than "it works"? The process may also be valuable to management for other reasons. What does anyone know about the programmer's level of skill? Is the code documented for maintenance?
Civilization IV took an approach which at least overlaps somewhat with crowd sourcing. They prioritised modding when designing the game, and have subsequently included fan-made mods in expansion packs and converted fan-made unofficial patches into official ones (though they did additional work).
The benefit of this approach is the community does a lot of the work for them. Not just in generating ideas and the actual production, but in filtering out the crap.
The Aztec Odyssey example in TFA does not sound much like crowd sourcing to me. They only went halfway, effectively just having a huge open tender. The other half would have involved the crowd playing a big part in selecting the winner.
08:54AM: British Telecom is asking for more money for the bandwidth that iPlayer and video streaming sites eat up
07:29PM: Disney's ESPN360.com is charging ISPs for 'bulk' access to their content
Heh.
Strange there is no mention of the Dopefish.
Casinos are notorious for money laundering. Buy a few chips, get handed a bundle more from your customer and cash out your "winnings". Or there's the slots. It is superb for relatively low-level money laundering, especially since winnings are not taxable.
Online casinos, not so much. You can't just hand over a sack of chips in the toilets.
You're never going to deal with this until you accept this isn't limited to the IT department. They're all being difficult to each other. Is the accounts department ever not referred to as the bean counters on Slashdot? People in any one department generally have little idea what the other departments are doing or the problems they are dealing with. Learn how to deal with people. If someone is being difficult via email, go talk in person or at least on the phone.
If you're not dealing with the same individuals day-by-day then first impressions count: a suit goes a long way.