In my physics class last year, my professor had the textbook a year older than the one all the students were forced to buy. It was exactly the same, except the numbers were different in the problems. He was able to teach perfectly fine with an older textbook.
A psychology professor at my school said this:
It's a classic example of price discrimination, as with prescription drugs in other countries and airline seats. Different markets have different demand curves and so a monopolist will charge different prices in each market (where market may mean another country with which there isn't much direct trade or a different ordering horizon for airline tickets).
Consider this example. Suppose that it costs $8 to produce one more copy of a textbook (the pure cost of printing it up and shipping it out).
Suppose further that in the US, the demand for textbooks is given by this relation Price = 208-Q, and in England it is given by Price = 108-Q. A
monopolist will want to charge $100 in the US and $50 in England to get a maximum possible profit. (Profit for a single market = Price*Q - $8*Q -
fixed costs)
(From what I've heard, the cost of launching a new edition of a text is about $1,000,000, the marginal cost is about $8 per book, and the rights to sell the book in other countries are sold to local publishers
for what would likely be an amount similar to the profit that could be extracted at the profit maximizing price. Also, that in recent years the length of time that a text stays viable in the market has shrunk from
about three years to about 18 months before the liquid used market just kills it.)
This "leakage" or arbitrage from discounted goods from one market moving into another can ruin these pricing schemes. What effect will this have? Certainly lower profits for the producer. For the consumer,
it might mean a slightly lower price in the big-market US but much higher prices for other countries, with the end result that few consumers around
the world will be able to enjoy the product, consumers that would have been willing to pay much more than the marginal cost of production. In
general, economists think that these sorts of price discrimination schemes are good things, that is, they spread the high fixed cost of producing the good over many consumers, and generally do so on a basis
that relates to ability to pay. Of course...it's no fun to be on the high priced end of such a system! (A more likely result with perscription drugs and textbooks is that the foreign versions of the product will be changed so that they will be sufficiently incompatible
with the domestic version that such cross-shipping will be unsuccessful.)
I think this is flat out bad. I have a cell phone occasionally, I'll admit. I pay a monthly fee, and I think that entitles me to ad-free service. This is a blatent invasion of privacy. "National Security" they will say...that's where it starts. I thought we had a little time before entering a Minority Report style world, which no privacy.
It's still shocking to me that enough kids have cell phones for this feature to be of any use. They are getting more and more popular, but everytime I hear about some thirteen year old with a cell phone I'm a little disappointed.
You've got to remember, these ads will only be on specific sites. The user gets to choose which sites they go to. Some will have the ads, others won't. I don't really care about the bandwidth, but a full-screen ad? I'm not gonna stand for that. I will stop going to a site that gets in the way like that. Users have power. If a site loses a vast amount of traffic because of these ads, the ads will go away.
This is a good idea, but it's not going to appeal to many people until the price drops drastically.
Dell and Apple make some pretty quiet computers that you can get for about the cost of this case.
I respect Niue a lot in the respect that they seem to be pretty tech-savvy in addition to respecting and following their past. It's a hard combo to have, but worth the effort in my opinion. This is probably due to the fact that they are such a small nation. They can do things that bigger countries couldn't dream of.
It's a good concept, but LED's don't output enough light to live comfortably. Maybe it'd be cool to flip a switch and have your apartment be purple...but that as the only option? Doesn't work for me.
The main benefit I see is that LEDs use a ton less power than conventional lighting. Unfortunately, they don't offer the brightness or color of good ole' conventional light bulbs.
I would strongly recommend a Timbuk2 Commute. I have one for my 15" powerbook and I can confidently say it is the best bag I have ever owned. It fits the powerbook perfectly; offering a snug fit and a lot of protection. It also gives you plenty of room for other stuff. I use it to carry everything at college. It's a tad expensive (for me at least) at $100, but worth every penny. I expect it to last quite awhile. PC Magazine gives it 4 of 5 stars.
This is where tablet pc's should be heading. You get all the power of your desktop, in a thin and light form factor you can carry around anywhere within a decent range. I hope R&D continues on these things. Maybe even build a very basic laptop into it so you can use it to take notes when outside of the range, and get full power and sync all your data automatically when you get back within range.
Still, this has great potential for delivering software and content. If it gets cheap, think about the potential for distributing movies on these as opposed to dvds.
I asked about educational discounts at the Michigan Avenue store, and they said they would give you the educational discount. The only catch was that if you took the educational discount, you couldn't get the 10% off on anything in the store deal they were having.
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You know you rely on the ctrl alt del keys if you use windows. About time someone made a keyboard fit to your needs.
I think this is flat out bad. I have a cell phone occasionally, I'll admit. I pay a monthly fee, and I think that entitles me to ad-free service. This is a blatent invasion of privacy. "National Security" they will say...that's where it starts. I thought we had a little time before entering a Minority Report style world, which no privacy.
It's still shocking to me that enough kids have cell phones for this feature to be of any use. They are getting more and more popular, but everytime I hear about some thirteen year old with a cell phone I'm a little disappointed.
You've got to remember, these ads will only be on specific sites. The user gets to choose which sites they go to. Some will have the ads, others won't. I don't really care about the bandwidth, but a full-screen ad? I'm not gonna stand for that. I will stop going to a site that gets in the way like that. Users have power. If a site loses a vast amount of traffic because of these ads, the ads will go away.
This is a good idea, but it's not going to appeal to many people until the price drops drastically. Dell and Apple make some pretty quiet computers that you can get for about the cost of this case.
I respect Niue a lot in the respect that they seem to be pretty tech-savvy in addition to respecting and following their past. It's a hard combo to have, but worth the effort in my opinion. This is probably due to the fact that they are such a small nation. They can do things that bigger countries couldn't dream of.
It's a good concept, but LED's don't output enough light to live comfortably. Maybe it'd be cool to flip a switch and have your apartment be purple...but that as the only option? Doesn't work for me. The main benefit I see is that LEDs use a ton less power than conventional lighting. Unfortunately, they don't offer the brightness or color of good ole' conventional light bulbs.
I would strongly recommend a Timbuk2 Commute. I have one for my 15" powerbook and I can confidently say it is the best bag I have ever owned. It fits the powerbook perfectly; offering a snug fit and a lot of protection. It also gives you plenty of room for other stuff. I use it to carry everything at college. It's a tad expensive (for me at least) at $100, but worth every penny. I expect it to last quite awhile. PC Magazine gives it 4 of 5 stars.
This is where tablet pc's should be heading. You get all the power of your desktop, in a thin and light form factor you can carry around anywhere within a decent range. I hope R&D continues on these things. Maybe even build a very basic laptop into it so you can use it to take notes when outside of the range, and get full power and sync all your data automatically when you get back within range.
Still, this has great potential for delivering software and content. If it gets cheap, think about the potential for distributing movies on these as opposed to dvds.
Maybe your friend qualified for Apple's up-to-date program? I did, with my new powerbook. It's all the same.
I asked about educational discounts at the Michigan Avenue store, and they said they would give you the educational discount. The only catch was that if you took the educational discount, you couldn't get the 10% off on anything in the store deal they were having.
Gotta love microsoft...take any cheap shot at Apple possible.
I think iTunes Music Store has a pretty relaxed DRM compared to others.... and you can't beat an iTunes/iPod combo.