So your litmus test on whether something is 'good' or 'bad' is the level of outrage?
No, my litmus test on whether or something will continue to sell like hotcakes is the level of outrage.
If the level of outrage increases, the supply goes down. Perhaps even some of the demand. And the prices go up, and the sales go to the black market.
Some people like to say this is the fault of a free market, but the reality is if bad things are being bought, then either your definition of bad is not in line with everyone else's, or there are bad people out there, or both.
What I was countering was the view that the market "can fix anything"?
What those people mean is markets are like water, and will seek their own level, if left unrestrained. The problem is most people are myopic, and don't have the stomach for what this can mean in the short term.
Poor Guatamalan farm worker can't affort food after working 3000* hrs a week, while we get good, cheap bananas.
Most of the 'poor farmers' are lucky to have any jobs at all, and that's not the fault of free markets, it's the fault of their shitty governments, their lack of education, corruption at multiple levels, artificial trade barriers, etc. So then it sounds like a good idea to pay a 'fair price' for the food they're growing (i.e. more than it's going rate in the market). But the reality is that prevents the market from acting efficiently, and the bad side effects of it are often hard to spot. Rather than supporting fair trade, we should get world governments to abolish all trade barriers. But no one has the balls to do it, they wouldn't get re-elected.
Free markets require letting some inefficient parts of the market fail -- and this is something representative government officials have a real hard time with, for emotional reasons. So they mess with the market to fix a short term problem that's close to home, which ALWAYS results in other problems later on.
God forbid anyone try to control those desires, then the free marketeers scream about regulation.
Who gets to decide the morality of the item being bought and sold? There is the problem with interfering in a free market. Perfect example is prohibition in the United States. People WANT alcohol. The government tried to legislate morality, they interfered with the free market, and screwed it up. Same thing is happening now with the War on Drugs. It goes on forever.
Free markets can work things out for themselves. If something is truly bad, society naturally curbs it's distribution through outrage over the transaction.
I don't get the big deal about spam. Honestly, you get more junkmail than regular mail on a daily basis, but yet there's no big call to outlaw regular postage
My ratio of junkmail to regular mail is not on the order of 100:1, like it is with spam. Otherwise, believe me, I would be picketing the post office.
No, the phone has already been invented. The iPhone needs a killer app
You guys are hilarious... really, you're killing me.
What is the iPod's "killer app"? It's the fucking iPod! The design, the hardware, the software, the integration, the marketing, the simplicity, everything rolled into one.
Hello iPhone.
(Disclosure: I have no plans to buy an iPhone, I'm currently tied to blackberry due to work requirements.)
I don't know where all the anti-union rhetoric comes from
Well in my case it comes from intimate knowledge of the B.S. that unions pull in many Verizon centers. My cousin works in one as a LAN Manager (non-unionized employee).
Unions promote the lowest common denominator, the tyranny of the majority, and make market economies inefficient by means of using violence, pressure, or the threat of both to prevent the market from working at the local level. (E.g. pressuring people not to cross the union line of picketers.)
No, but it makes much more sense to have them pay restitution. Paying large sums of money and depleting your cash reserves or going into debt is quite a deterrent, and it benefits society by raising money and paying awards to the victims.
Putting him in jail may suck for him, but it also sucks for taxpayers.
Well since is the 9th time I've read this comment in this discussion, let me point out that the POTUS always travels with heavy GROUND security whose primary objective is to watch the crowd for people trying to get near the president to do harm directly, be it with a gun, a bomb, or a gun that turns into a bomb.
Why bother competing with the iPhone? 99% of it's features are useless to the average user. It's doomed to fail like the Mac Cube did. It targets an extremely small group of people, made smaller by vendor lock-in (via AT&T), you can't replace the battery which is a massive problem with something that needs to be charged as often as a color screened handheld device running a near full blown version of OSX. Don't get me wrong here, the idea is neat but with a 500-600$ price tag it's utterly pointless.
Keep talking... The road to consumer envy is paved with geeks like you who think Apple's latest idea (whatever it may be) is "lame." Let's come back to this thread in one year and see how you fare. The product isn't even to market yet, and in your eyes it's already a failure.
You're shorting the stock right? I'm long. Let's see how we do in a year. (I'm up 16% since April 20, btw.)
I find it interesting that it's features are "useless." Really? Then why are people fawning after these features? They've seen what it can do, it's not like it's a mystery. Look if a product is hyped and all you've got is whitepapers and rumors, then yeah that's bullshit. But this product has been seen, reviewed hands-on by some journalists even, and a lengthy demo given.
And don't get me wrong -- I have no plans to buy an iPhone, I like the BlackBerry for now. But I can also see why people are excited about the iPhone. They love iPods. They love phones. They love Apple's designs and user interfaces. Combine those together and you've got a potential consumer juggernaut.
Do you really think this phone will be $500/$600 in a year's time? Hell, I doubt it will cost anyone that much in June.
I know people will buy these devices but not nearly enough to make the market profitable.
Well since Apple makes a profit on every device, I think you are probably WRONG.
Maybe it's just me. I personally hate cell phones and use mine only to talk to my girlfriend and parents or for roadside emergencies. Everyone else can wait till I get home. My 10 years of being on-call in the IT business probably biased me also. Regardless, I don't see the point to these devices.
OK, I get it now... you're just one of those guys. Let me guess, you don't own a TV and you fart granola? I am glad you included the last paragraph though, it really puts your initial views into context.
Jobs made one valid point -- people are accustomed to renting movies, so they are familiar with the idea that they have limited use of these movies. People have never been used to renting music, they've always "owned" it without many restrictions, so that is how he justifies this position in his mind.
My feeling is that Jobs is focusing on music first. Once he has that accomplished and the sales numbers (presumably) back the claims that removing DRM will actually improve sales, then he has some ammo to approach the movie industry with a similar proposition.
Thing is, if the price is raised above 99 cents, then you get into the $1+ range, at which point you might as well go out and buy the CD, defeating the point of iTunes if you want to buy entire albums/singles instead of just individual songs
Thing is, you're wrong because the albums are still going to be $9.99.
Personally I'd rather pay 99 cents for a DRMed song and do the old burn/re-rip switcheroo and waste a 10 cent CD than pay extra for no DRM.
Setting aside the quality degradation of this method, it also seems to illustrate that your time is nearly worthless.
Seriously, there's a lot of people who believe technology only originates or is engineered in someones garage
That's because it is. Apple. HP. Yahoo. Google. I could go on all day here, but the idea that the government is the source of most new products is an insultingly stupid idea.
Even if it were anywhere close to the end-all be-all that you describe, it's an absolutely abysmal return on [forced] investment. Imagine what kind of cool stuff we'd have today if I could [voluntarily] help fund more research by the Apples and Googles of the world by giving them more of my money not spent on taxes.
Why can't a privately funded entity teach science? What makes a government school the best choice to teach science? I agree that this particular show is not a good choice, but let's not just wipe TV or the internet out and put government schools up on a pedestal.
At the very least, scientific TV shows encourage people to learn more about science and the scientific method.
Carl Sagan taught me more about science with his Cosmos series (that has stuck with me) than any government school ever did. When I heard about this search engine named "Google" back on Slashdot so many years ago, I can still remember thinking back to the Cosmos episode where Sagan was talking about large numbers, like googol and googolplex. To see him try to roll out a piece of paper not with a googolplex of numbers on it, but merely the standard notation of googolplex (1 followed by a googol zeroes), it sticks with you. And on the smaller scale, to watch him place a drop of oil on a lake, and come back an hour later to explain that the entire surface of the lake now had a microscopic layer of oil across the entire surface. Or to demonstrate Einstein's theories of gravity with a stretchy sheet of material and some heavy balls of different sizes. Or demonstrating the 4th dimension by showing a "shadow" of a 4th dimensional item as a 3 dimensional item, much as we can see the shadow of a 3 dimensional item drawn on paper. I haven't seen Cosmos in a decade, and can still remember things he talked about.
This is something government schools rarely ever do, unless you happen to be assigned to the one-in-a-million inspirational teacher.
Another example -- planet earth, now running on Discovery HD Theatre. An absolutely stunning piece of scientifically interesting video.
Uhhh you're already ahead by putting money into savings from each paycheck. Why not calculate what you really owe the government more closely, and put THAT extra money into savings each month as well?
The real reason we're still having the government take money out of each paycheck (even though this idea was only enacted due to WW2) is because they know there would be much more pressure to reduce taxes if people actually had to cut a check each year for the full amount. Most people don't even know how much money they're paying in taxes! They only know "how much I GET from the government!"
Slashdot Mirror
So your litmus test on whether something is 'good' or 'bad' is the level of outrage?
No, my litmus test on whether or something will continue to sell like hotcakes is the level of outrage.
If the level of outrage increases, the supply goes down. Perhaps even some of the demand. And the prices go up, and the sales go to the black market.
Some people like to say this is the fault of a free market, but the reality is if bad things are being bought, then either your definition of bad is not in line with everyone else's, or there are bad people out there, or both.
What I was countering was the view that the market "can fix anything"?
What those people mean is markets are like water, and will seek their own level, if left unrestrained. The problem is most people are myopic, and don't have the stomach for what this can mean in the short term.
Poor Guatamalan farm worker can't affort food after working 3000* hrs a week, while we get good, cheap bananas.
Most of the 'poor farmers' are lucky to have any jobs at all, and that's not the fault of free markets, it's the fault of their shitty governments, their lack of education, corruption at multiple levels, artificial trade barriers, etc. So then it sounds like a good idea to pay a 'fair price' for the food they're growing (i.e. more than it's going rate in the market). But the reality is that prevents the market from acting efficiently, and the bad side effects of it are often hard to spot. Rather than supporting fair trade, we should get world governments to abolish all trade barriers. But no one has the balls to do it, they wouldn't get re-elected.
Free markets require letting some inefficient parts of the market fail -- and this is something representative government officials have a real hard time with, for emotional reasons. So they mess with the market to fix a short term problem that's close to home, which ALWAYS results in other problems later on.
God forbid anyone try to control those desires, then the free marketeers scream about regulation.
Who gets to decide the morality of the item being bought and sold? There is the problem with interfering in a free market. Perfect example is prohibition in the United States. People WANT alcohol. The government tried to legislate morality, they interfered with the free market, and screwed it up. Same thing is happening now with the War on Drugs. It goes on forever.
Free markets can work things out for themselves. If something is truly bad, society naturally curbs it's distribution through outrage over the transaction.
Free markets are just places to buy and sell things competitively.
If humans desire something, and other humans have it, it will be sold in a free market.
This does not impugn free markets or capitalism, only those humans and their desires.
I don't get the big deal about spam. Honestly, you get more junkmail than regular mail on a daily basis, but yet there's no big call to outlaw regular postage
My ratio of junkmail to regular mail is not on the order of 100:1, like it is with spam. Otherwise, believe me, I would be picketing the post office.
No, the phone has already been invented. The iPhone needs a killer app
You guys are hilarious... really, you're killing me.
What is the iPod's "killer app"? It's the fucking iPod! The design, the hardware, the software, the integration, the marketing, the simplicity, everything rolled into one.
Hello iPhone.
(Disclosure: I have no plans to buy an iPhone, I'm currently tied to blackberry due to work requirements.)
I don't know where all the anti-union rhetoric comes from
Well in my case it comes from intimate knowledge of the B.S. that unions pull in many Verizon centers. My cousin works in one as a LAN Manager (non-unionized employee).
Unions promote the lowest common denominator, the tyranny of the majority, and make market economies inefficient by means of using violence, pressure, or the threat of both to prevent the market from working at the local level. (E.g. pressuring people not to cross the union line of picketers.)
What if the time machine can only go forward in time?
No, but it makes much more sense to have them pay restitution. Paying large sums of money and depleting your cash reserves or going into debt is quite a deterrent, and it benefits society by raising money and paying awards to the victims.
Putting him in jail may suck for him, but it also sucks for taxpayers.
Yeah but... where did you take it?
Ahh yes... one of those guys...
The only reason Zelda lacks voice acting is because it'd be too expensive to do the entire game in Japanese and English.
Much easier to only voice the odd grunts and laughs, language-neutral, and then put the text in whatever language is needed.
Well since is the 9th time I've read this comment in this discussion, let me point out that the POTUS always travels with heavy GROUND security whose primary objective is to watch the crowd for people trying to get near the president to do harm directly, be it with a gun, a bomb, or a gun that turns into a bomb.
patio11, we've finally caught you! Ha-ha!!
You see, your copy of that Tom Clancy book was the ONLY COPY that contained the phrase "Canary Trap."
In all other prints, it was referred to as a Mockingbird Receptacle.
Your reign of leaks and terror are at an end!
How does it reduce consumption to cut a large hole into something which was already produced?
Let's see, what's more likely... produce large, solid block of styrofoam on assembly line, run it through another line to cut all the holes in it.
OR
Create the styrofoam in special molds so "the holes" are there from the beginning.
Jesus I can't believe this has to be explained
Why bother competing with the iPhone? 99% of it's features are useless to the average user. It's doomed to fail like the Mac Cube did. It targets an extremely small group of people, made smaller by vendor lock-in (via AT&T), you can't replace the battery which is a massive problem with something that needs to be charged as often as a color screened handheld device running a near full blown version of OSX. Don't get me wrong here, the idea is neat but with a 500-600$ price tag it's utterly pointless.
... you're just one of those guys. Let me guess, you don't own a TV and you fart granola? I am glad you included the last paragraph though, it really puts your initial views into context.
Keep talking... The road to consumer envy is paved with geeks like you who think Apple's latest idea (whatever it may be) is "lame." Let's come back to this thread in one year and see how you fare. The product isn't even to market yet, and in your eyes it's already a failure.
You're shorting the stock right? I'm long. Let's see how we do in a year. (I'm up 16% since April 20, btw.)
I find it interesting that it's features are "useless." Really? Then why are people fawning after these features? They've seen what it can do, it's not like it's a mystery. Look if a product is hyped and all you've got is whitepapers and rumors, then yeah that's bullshit. But this product has been seen, reviewed hands-on by some journalists even, and a lengthy demo given.
And don't get me wrong -- I have no plans to buy an iPhone, I like the BlackBerry for now. But I can also see why people are excited about the iPhone. They love iPods. They love phones. They love Apple's designs and user interfaces. Combine those together and you've got a potential consumer juggernaut.
Do you really think this phone will be $500/$600 in a year's time? Hell, I doubt it will cost anyone that much in June.
I know people will buy these devices but not nearly enough to make the market profitable.
Well since Apple makes a profit on every device, I think you are probably WRONG.
Maybe it's just me. I personally hate cell phones and use mine only to talk to my girlfriend and parents or for roadside emergencies. Everyone else can wait till I get home. My 10 years of being on-call in the IT business probably biased me also. Regardless, I don't see the point to these devices.
OK, I get it now
Great, this could help phishing attacks ... against banks.
Phishers will just move on to easier prey, such as all other institutions that handle lots of money or transactions (eBay, PayPal, etc).
Jobs made one valid point -- people are accustomed to renting movies, so they are familiar with the idea that they have limited use of these movies. People have never been used to renting music, they've always "owned" it without many restrictions, so that is how he justifies this position in his mind.
My feeling is that Jobs is focusing on music first. Once he has that accomplished and the sales numbers (presumably) back the claims that removing DRM will actually improve sales, then he has some ammo to approach the movie industry with a similar proposition.
Thing is, if the price is raised above 99 cents, then you get into the $1+ range, at which point you might as well go out and buy the CD, defeating the point of iTunes if you want to buy entire albums/singles instead of just individual songs
Thing is, you're wrong because the albums are still going to be $9.99.
Personally I'd rather pay 99 cents for a DRMed song and do the old burn/re-rip switcheroo and waste a 10 cent CD than pay extra for no DRM.
Setting aside the quality degradation of this method, it also seems to illustrate that your time is nearly worthless.
Seriously, there's a lot of people who believe technology only originates or is engineered in someones garage
That's because it is. Apple. HP. Yahoo. Google. I could go on all day here, but the idea that the government is the source of most new products is an insultingly stupid idea.
Even if it were anywhere close to the end-all be-all that you describe, it's an absolutely abysmal return on [forced] investment. Imagine what kind of cool stuff we'd have today if I could [voluntarily] help fund more research by the Apples and Googles of the world by giving them more of my money not spent on taxes.
Mod parent up !
oh fuck
Why can't a privately funded entity teach science? What makes a government school the best choice to teach science? I agree that this particular show is not a good choice, but let's not just wipe TV or the internet out and put government schools up on a pedestal.
At the very least, scientific TV shows encourage people to learn more about science and the scientific method.
Carl Sagan taught me more about science with his Cosmos series (that has stuck with me) than any government school ever did. When I heard about this search engine named "Google" back on Slashdot so many years ago, I can still remember thinking back to the Cosmos episode where Sagan was talking about large numbers, like googol and googolplex. To see him try to roll out a piece of paper not with a googolplex of numbers on it, but merely the standard notation of googolplex (1 followed by a googol zeroes), it sticks with you. And on the smaller scale, to watch him place a drop of oil on a lake, and come back an hour later to explain that the entire surface of the lake now had a microscopic layer of oil across the entire surface. Or to demonstrate Einstein's theories of gravity with a stretchy sheet of material and some heavy balls of different sizes. Or demonstrating the 4th dimension by showing a "shadow" of a 4th dimensional item as a 3 dimensional item, much as we can see the shadow of a 3 dimensional item drawn on paper. I haven't seen Cosmos in a decade, and can still remember things he talked about.
This is something government schools rarely ever do, unless you happen to be assigned to the one-in-a-million inspirational teacher.
Another example -- planet earth, now running on Discovery HD Theatre. An absolutely stunning piece of scientifically interesting video.
Is there any reason to believe this will actually be so?
... I have a tunnel to sell you.
If you believe that
Uhhh you're already ahead by putting money into savings from each paycheck. Why not calculate what you really owe the government more closely, and put THAT extra money into savings each month as well?
The real reason we're still having the government take money out of each paycheck (even though this idea was only enacted due to WW2) is because they know there would be much more pressure to reduce taxes if people actually had to cut a check each year for the full amount. Most people don't even know how much money they're paying in taxes! They only know "how much I GET from the government!"
Why not eliminate THEM from the process entirely, and go with a federal sales tax like Fair Tax?