Fees for one form of delivery are not used to "subsidize" another unless you pervert the word to mean the buildings, trucks, employees, etc. are shared between classes of delivery.
You are correct, subsidize was a in incorrect term. It would be more correct to say that first class mail generates the revenue needed to allow the post office to offer lower rates to companies doing mass mailings. There is little advantage to a bulk mailing, all mail has to be processed, and is delivered to different locations, so the cost per piece is not significantly cheaper if you send more.
The USPS is not funded through taxation.
Correct, well at least mostly. I believe there have been times when the government did have to cashflow the USPS, but it's because the same government took the money away from them to start with.
It is entirely within the chartering documents and intent of the Post Office that they make a profit.
Interesting. I will have to look up the chartering documents and verify this.
Without profit, there is no way to grow and expand.
My problem is that I don't believe, as a government entity (agency, independant corporation, whatever) it should need to grow and expand. It's a self propagating system, it uses the infrastructure setup to offer lower prices for bulk mailings which results in higher mail volume requring more equipment and infrastructure. If only first class letters were delivered they could cut their carrier staff significantly, lowering costs and still maintaining solvency.
Print ads cost the sender a significant amount of money per item mailed, so they're much more likely to listen to people who don't want their garbage. Not only that but they're the ones who foot the bill for the delivery of the junk mail.
Not exactly. Print ad delivery is subsidized by the first class mail and used by the postal service to feed their bloated government entity. I wouldn't care about that if the post office was a private company designed to make money, but as a government agency, it's not right that they create a market for themselves.
Spam costs the spammer pretty much the same amount of money whether they send out one thousand or one billion e-mails.
And it costs me nothing to delete the spam. I spend much more time shredding my snail mail spam so someone doesn't create a fraudulent credit card than I do dealing with spam.
AOL has publicly stated that something on the order of 25% of their monthly subscription fees go directly to cover the cost of their spam fighting.
Hmmm... and you believe this? I bet if there was no spam AOL would just reduce their subscription fee by 25%. Amazing that their dial-up plan is $23/month while competitors like earthlink and netzero offer plans under $15. Is Earthlink immune to spam? Does NetZero not deliver email? AOL's statement is a marketing ploy designed to justify their monthly fees, I doubt it's based in reality.
"Ha ha ha! If the power in everything is out, why is the guy's camcorder still working? Hey, ever notice everytime they need a clear path to drive through there is one? Why would aliens bury war machines centuries ago when they simply could have taken over then without a fight?" etc.
Thanks for the spoilers, I was waiting for the DVD.
I just can't understand how a multi-billion dollar industry can't figure that it's doing something wrong. What seems so intuitively obvious to the average American just seems to stump all of these corporate big wigs. They will have to spend millions on market analysis to figure out that their movies suck and they will have to start either making a better product or charging less.
Your analogy of the auto industry is right on. I couldn't believe when I read an article a few months ago that GM didn't know how much money it makes on any individual model of car. American auto makers can't figure out that their biggest problem is most of their cars suck. People won't pay higher prices for a sucky product. Like the movie industry, automakers either need to make a better product, or charge less. These are all basic economic concepts that most of us should have learned in high school, but a movie studio CEO or board member for an auto manufacturer can't seem to grasp the concept.
Attendance is down because people are cutting back on the luxuries. And DVD rentals are what, a dollar a day?
Yeah, that's why Starbucks profits were up 30% last quarter. I know many people that will pay $4 for a latte every freaking day. People will always pay money for entertainment and gratuitous things, if the value is high enough. Problem is the difference in value between a DVD rental and a theatre ticket is minimal, while the price difference is huge.
Having gone to the movies at least twice a year for the past 10 years, I have had several movies ruined by annoying people. Perhaps not cell phones or people throwing food specifically, but definitely noisy children and noisy people talking during the majority of the movie.
The studios don't have 'direct' control, but from what I understand they cause the problem. The studios control which theatres they distribute to. Have you noticed that most theatres these days are big corporate owned monstrosities. Where I live, most of the smaller theatres have closed up and everything remaining is AMC, UA or the like. These big corporations set prices and charge what they want for a hot dog. If the studios would encourage more private ownership and make it easier for a theatre to make money we might see less gouging at the concession stand.
Too bad the studios don't harness all of this cool home theatre equipment to encourage smaller theatres. How cool would it be if you could start your own 2 screen 200 seat theatre for a relatively small investment using the latest home equipment and get movies distributed on DVDs.
If there weren't any cell phones or commercials and I didn't have anything to do, I still wouldn't go.
I can respect that, but OTOH, I probably would. There have actually been several movies out this summer that I would have liked to have seen (war of the worlds, batman begins, sahara, etc...), but couldn't justify the expense to myself.
Now, I love good special effects as much as the next geek, but, call me old fashioned here, I actually like my movies to have this thing called a plot.
Funny thing is, there is a whole genre of independent and foreign films out there that often have good plots and good acting - but a low budget. Thing is these movies rarely make it to a theatre. I would have loved to have seen Jean-Pierre Jeunet's latest film A Very Long Engagement, but there wasn't a theatre within 50 miles that showed it.
So in another ten years, you'll be able to recycle the same old schtick: "4 out of 5 swinging dicks say more lasers for the jets, and less armor for the groundpounders".
And in ten years the military will do the same thing. Spend money on both.
And, back to the 'AOL Fine' subject, even back then AOL was making it extremely difficult to stop the billing. Many people were getting screwed because direct withdrawals & CC charges would not stop.
Funny thing is most businesses make it difficult to stop service. I disconnected my land line earlier this year. The phone company offers every other service online, but it took a half hour phone call to cancel. Same with my satellite TV. It's become standard procedure for a company to offer a 'free trial', collect a credit card, charge the card at the end of the trial period and be REALLY slow about answering the phone when you call to cancel.
Not sure if it's good that AOL got in trouble for this - just set a precedent that's going to create more work for the legal system.
The only reason I asked Slashdot was for a jump start. My manager says we need to have something, at least a plan, by next week.
I have worked on some milspec projects, not computer related, but electronic. My advice would be to find a vendor (HP, Dell, whoever) that can supply what you need. DoD specs can be very thorough and very complex. Your life will be simpler if you leave the heavy lifting up to someone that does it all the time.
Sonar was developed because you can't see underwater. The military has invested huge sums refining it. Above ground we can see, so nobody's bothered researching air-based sonar to the same degree.
Not exactly true. You can definitely see underwater, your range is just limited. Sonar extends that range. Above ground we have radar. Sonar wouldn't have significantly more range than visual does, so the military has no need to invest in sonar.
The point is not that mental arithmetic is used to replace calculators as some sort of penis waving 'yay, look what I can do', it's to know what you just did with the calculator is sensible, so the calculator doesn't turn into a crutch that collapses at the most inopportune moment (say when your spacecraft is approaching planetary orbit or your phone/gas/electricity/grocery/restaurant bill doesn't add up).
Absolutely. Recently I purchased some clearance items at a store. The items were supposed to be "70% off the lowest marked price". When the items were scanned, the computer marked them down 50%. I asked the store employee why they weren't 70% off since that was what the sign said. He said he would give me the additional 20%, and proceeded to reduce the amount by 20%. Problem was, he gave me 20% off of the 50% marked down price, not the original price. The end result was only 60% off the original price, not 70%.
Took me 5 minutes to explain the problem to him and in the end he just took my word for it and sold the items to me for the price I said they should be. My basic math skills came in handy - would have been nice if the store employee had some.
You do not need windows to play games. You may need windows to play games designed to run on Windows though.
The vast majority of commercial games run on the Windows operating system. The easiest way to play these games is on a computer with Windows installed. Until the commercial game manufacturers support another platform this is the way it is. Anyone that wants to play these games will probably keep a Windows machine around to do it.
Linux, as it exists today, is a philosophical choice.
For some perhaps. For me it's a combination of a financial choice and choosing the OS with the best functionality. Linux does things Windows can't even come close to doing. There are more applications and features included with most distributions than there are on the Windows platform. Finally, I can download most Linux distributions absolutely free. Not one of those reasons is philisophical.
when you go by graveyards how often do you actually see living people in there, besides actual funeral parties?
One thing about this idea, it might actually change the number of people that visit graveyard. Unless there is a grave you want to visit or you are a genealogy researcher why would you want to visit a graveyard? If we could see video of people's lives it might be more interesting - especially if the displays keep working for years. How cool would it be now if you could go see video of somebodies life who died in the 30s or 40s?
It's the exact same thing as running a rigged 3-Card Monty game on a street-corner. It's a con, and you can be arrested for stealing their money.
But wouldn't running a legitimate game of 3-Card Monty (if there was such a thing) be illegal in most places in the US as well. Even places where gambling is legal you would probably have to have a license to run the game. If someone is arrested for running a game like that, what is the charge? Is it fraud, or is it just illegal gambling?
Or are they cashing their extremely inflated stock?
That's what I'd do. Cash in and after the bubble bursts buy it all back at a reduced price. Sounds smart to me - unless of course the SEC frowns on that.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I've read the book.
True enough.
Fees for one form of delivery are not used to "subsidize" another unless you pervert the word to mean the buildings, trucks, employees, etc. are shared between classes of delivery.
You are correct, subsidize was a in incorrect term. It would be more correct to say that first class mail generates the revenue needed to allow the post office to offer lower rates to companies doing mass mailings. There is little advantage to a bulk mailing, all mail has to be processed, and is delivered to different locations, so the cost per piece is not significantly cheaper if you send more.
The USPS is not funded through taxation.
Correct, well at least mostly. I believe there have been times when the government did have to cashflow the USPS, but it's because the same government took the money away from them to start with.
It is entirely within the chartering documents and intent of the Post Office that they make a profit.
Interesting. I will have to look up the chartering documents and verify this.
Without profit, there is no way to grow and expand.
My problem is that I don't believe, as a government entity (agency, independant corporation, whatever) it should need to grow and expand. It's a self propagating system, it uses the infrastructure setup to offer lower prices for bulk mailings which results in higher mail volume requring more equipment and infrastructure. If only first class letters were delivered they could cut their carrier staff significantly, lowering costs and still maintaining solvency.
the results will be the biggest discovery of the last 100 yrs (leaving out quantum physics and atomic energy)
And internet pr0n!
No doubt. Water flowed recently in my back yard (at least until the dog ate the hose) - didn't exactly make the news. BFD.
Print ads cost the sender a significant amount of money per item mailed, so they're much more likely to listen to people who don't want their garbage. Not only that but they're the ones who foot the bill for the delivery of the junk mail.
Not exactly. Print ad delivery is subsidized by the first class mail and used by the postal service to feed their bloated government entity. I wouldn't care about that if the post office was a private company designed to make money, but as a government agency, it's not right that they create a market for themselves.
Spam costs the spammer pretty much the same amount of money whether they send out one thousand or one billion e-mails.
And it costs me nothing to delete the spam. I spend much more time shredding my snail mail spam so someone doesn't create a fraudulent credit card than I do dealing with spam.
AOL has publicly stated that something on the order of 25% of their monthly subscription fees go directly to cover the cost of their spam fighting.
Hmmm... and you believe this? I bet if there was no spam AOL would just reduce their subscription fee by 25%. Amazing that their dial-up plan is $23/month while competitors like earthlink and netzero offer plans under $15. Is Earthlink immune to spam? Does NetZero not deliver email? AOL's statement is a marketing ploy designed to justify their monthly fees, I doubt it's based in reality.
"Ha ha ha! If the power in everything is out, why is the guy's camcorder still working? Hey, ever notice everytime they need a clear path to drive through there is one? Why would aliens bury war machines centuries ago when they simply could have taken over then without a fight?" etc.
Thanks for the spoilers, I was waiting for the DVD.
I just can't understand how a multi-billion dollar industry can't figure that it's doing something wrong. What seems so intuitively obvious to the average American just seems to stump all of these corporate big wigs. They will have to spend millions on market analysis to figure out that their movies suck and they will have to start either making a better product or charging less.
Your analogy of the auto industry is right on. I couldn't believe when I read an article a few months ago that GM didn't know how much money it makes on any individual model of car. American auto makers can't figure out that their biggest problem is most of their cars suck. People won't pay higher prices for a sucky product. Like the movie industry, automakers either need to make a better product, or charge less. These are all basic economic concepts that most of us should have learned in high school, but a movie studio CEO or board member for an auto manufacturer can't seem to grasp the concept.
Attendance is down because people are cutting back on the luxuries. And DVD rentals are what, a dollar a day?
Yeah, that's why Starbucks profits were up 30% last quarter. I know many people that will pay $4 for a latte every freaking day. People will always pay money for entertainment and gratuitous things, if the value is high enough. Problem is the difference in value between a DVD rental and a theatre ticket is minimal, while the price difference is huge.
When's the last time you saw a $40M marketing blitz on a "good movie"?
By most movie snob's definition it wouldn't be a "good movie" if they spen $40M marketing it.
Having gone to the movies at least twice a year for the past 10 years, I have had several movies ruined by annoying people. Perhaps not cell phones or people throwing food specifically, but definitely noisy children and noisy people talking during the majority of the movie.
The studios don't have 'direct' control, but from what I understand they cause the problem. The studios control which theatres they distribute to. Have you noticed that most theatres these days are big corporate owned monstrosities. Where I live, most of the smaller theatres have closed up and everything remaining is AMC, UA or the like. These big corporations set prices and charge what they want for a hot dog. If the studios would encourage more private ownership and make it easier for a theatre to make money we might see less gouging at the concession stand.
Too bad the studios don't harness all of this cool home theatre equipment to encourage smaller theatres. How cool would it be if you could start your own 2 screen 200 seat theatre for a relatively small investment using the latest home equipment and get movies distributed on DVDs.
It was a terrible mistake to put George Bush in charge of defending us from enemies like China.
Yeah, we were so much better off when Clinton was giving away security secrets.
If there weren't any cell phones or commercials and I didn't have anything to do, I still wouldn't go.
I can respect that, but OTOH, I probably would. There have actually been several movies out this summer that I would have liked to have seen (war of the worlds, batman begins, sahara, etc...), but couldn't justify the expense to myself.
Now, I love good special effects as much as the next geek, but, call me old fashioned here, I actually like my movies to have this thing called a plot.
Funny thing is, there is a whole genre of independent and foreign films out there that often have good plots and good acting - but a low budget. Thing is these movies rarely make it to a theatre. I would have loved to have seen Jean-Pierre Jeunet's latest film A Very Long Engagement, but there wasn't a theatre within 50 miles that showed it.
So in another ten years, you'll be able to recycle the same old schtick: "4 out of 5 swinging dicks say more lasers for the jets, and less armor for the groundpounders".
And in ten years the military will do the same thing. Spend money on both.
And, back to the 'AOL Fine' subject, even back then AOL was making it extremely difficult to stop the billing. Many people were getting screwed because direct withdrawals & CC charges would not stop.
Funny thing is most businesses make it difficult to stop service. I disconnected my land line earlier this year. The phone company offers every other service online, but it took a half hour phone call to cancel. Same with my satellite TV. It's become standard procedure for a company to offer a 'free trial', collect a credit card, charge the card at the end of the trial period and be REALLY slow about answering the phone when you call to cancel.
Not sure if it's good that AOL got in trouble for this - just set a precedent that's going to create more work for the legal system.
The only reason I asked Slashdot was for a jump start. My manager says we need to have something, at least a plan, by next week.
I have worked on some milspec projects, not computer related, but electronic. My advice would be to find a vendor (HP, Dell, whoever) that can supply what you need. DoD specs can be very thorough and very complex. Your life will be simpler if you leave the heavy lifting up to someone that does it all the time.
Sonar was developed because you can't see underwater. The military has invested huge sums refining it. Above ground we can see, so nobody's bothered researching air-based sonar to the same degree.
Not exactly true. You can definitely see underwater, your range is just limited. Sonar extends that range. Above ground we have radar. Sonar wouldn't have significantly more range than visual does, so the military has no need to invest in sonar.
The point is not that mental arithmetic is used to replace calculators as some sort of penis waving 'yay, look what I can do', it's to know what you just did with the calculator is sensible, so the calculator doesn't turn into a crutch that collapses at the most inopportune moment (say when your spacecraft is approaching planetary orbit or your phone/gas/electricity/grocery/restaurant bill doesn't add up).
Absolutely. Recently I purchased some clearance items at a store. The items were supposed to be "70% off the lowest marked price". When the items were scanned, the computer marked them down 50%. I asked the store employee why they weren't 70% off since that was what the sign said. He said he would give me the additional 20%, and proceeded to reduce the amount by 20%. Problem was, he gave me 20% off of the 50% marked down price, not the original price. The end result was only 60% off the original price, not 70%.
Took me 5 minutes to explain the problem to him and in the end he just took my word for it and sold the items to me for the price I said they should be. My basic math skills came in handy - would have been nice if the store employee had some.
You do not need windows to play games. You may need windows to play games designed to run on Windows though.
The vast majority of commercial games run on the Windows operating system. The easiest way to play these games is on a computer with Windows installed. Until the commercial game manufacturers support another platform this is the way it is. Anyone that wants to play these games will probably keep a Windows machine around to do it.
Linux, as it exists today, is a philosophical choice.
For some perhaps. For me it's a combination of a financial choice and choosing the OS with the best functionality. Linux does things Windows can't even come close to doing. There are more applications and features included with most distributions than there are on the Windows platform. Finally, I can download most Linux distributions absolutely free. Not one of those reasons is philisophical.
when you go by graveyards how often do you actually see living people in there, besides actual funeral parties?
One thing about this idea, it might actually change the number of people that visit graveyard. Unless there is a grave you want to visit or you are a genealogy researcher why would you want to visit a graveyard? If we could see video of people's lives it might be more interesting - especially if the displays keep working for years. How cool would it be now if you could go see video of somebodies life who died in the 30s or 40s?
And all my friends can bore me with video of their vacations FOREVER.
and
It's the exact same thing as running a rigged 3-Card Monty game on a street-corner. It's a con, and you can be arrested for stealing their money.
But wouldn't running a legitimate game of 3-Card Monty (if there was such a thing) be illegal in most places in the US as well. Even places where gambling is legal you would probably have to have a license to run the game. If someone is arrested for running a game like that, what is the charge? Is it fraud, or is it just illegal gambling?
Or are they cashing their extremely inflated stock?
That's what I'd do. Cash in and after the bubble bursts buy it all back at a reduced price. Sounds smart to me - unless of course the SEC frowns on that.