I've NEVER seen an unreasonable speed limit anywhere in my travels.
I'd like to offer some food for thought:
First of all, in the US (you imply you are in the US) the speed limit is the same day and night. How can it be safe to drive 55 (for example) at night when the visibility is only as far as your headlights and still only be safe to drive 55 during the day when you can see for miles?
Secondly, in the US the speed limit is the same no matter what kind of a car you are driving. At the most some states have two speed limits, one for tractor trailers and one for everybody else. Why would you expect a mini van and a sports car to perform in the same way?
If it's in his contract he's entitled to it, period.
I RTFA and it is a little weak on detail, but it appears that PJ got what he was entitled to.
The article seems to be saying that New Line sold off merchandising rights to companies within the Time Warner family rather than sell to the highest bidder.
The suit contends that NL would have made more money, and therefore PJ would have recieved a higher cut, if the merchandising rights were sold on the open market.
For everyone who posted that a contract is a contract, it would seem that if NL never promised to sell to the highest bidder, then NL met all the terms of the contract and PJ got what he deserved.
How many folks out there would appreciate their employers under-paying them because "they had already been paid enough", or some such non-sense?
I wonder if I could sue our sales department for not generating enough revenue?
Am I the only one who doesn't buy this whole "blogsphere" crap?
I agree with you.
This press release (oops, I mean WSJ article) reads like somebody trying to justify spending money on some new marketing tool.
I think cell phone users have always complained about double billing (that the receiver has to pay for calls too).
But it took somebody running this software and discovering that teens don't like it either to make the cell phone companies (at least one of them) change? I don't buy it.
Maybe somebody who understands these things better than I do can chime in, but I don't think you would want to watch a UMD on a full size TV.
The PSP screen is about one third the resolution of a DVD. I think that means that a UMD only needs to hold one third of the data that a DVD does, which is how they are able to get a whole movie on such a small disk.
I think that a UMD movie on a full size TV would have worse resolution than VHS.
I would be the last person to apologize or make excuses for MS, but it is logical for the Xbox to include music. I would make three points:
1. The Xbox is not portable, so it is not really a competitor to the iPod.
2. The Xbox comes with a hard drive, so it could easily be used to store music (MP3s only?).
3. Many Xbox users hook their Xbox into their stereos to take advantage of games that have robust audio.
It seems like using the Xbox to store music, whether it is purchased or rented, would take advantage of existing Xbox functionality and would be a nice feature for people who want to listen to music at home.
That makes no sense. Government is already taking 12.5% of your paycheck for Socialist Security, and isn't even investing it for you at a decent rate of return, yet you claim it would cost you 30% of your paycheck to invest it in something which would give you a considerably higher rate of return, even a no-risk investment like certificates of deposit.
Actually, this could make sense, in a very twisted way.
Social Security and National Insurance are both "progressive" taxes. That means that people who make more money pay more relative to the benefit received than people who make less money.
Imagine two people, we'll call them M and Y, and let's imagine that they are both the same age and start work at the same time and retire together. Let's say every year, Y earns twice as much as M and that both of them are under the wage base cap (for SS, there is a wage at which no more SS taxes are taken out; in 2005 that amount is $90,000).
Y will receive a larger monthly payment than M, but Y will not receive twice as much as M does, even though Y put in twice as much as M did. This is because the tax is progressive and penalizes Y for earning more money.
While Y's rate of return on the withheld tax may be 0 or even negative, this loss on Y's part is a benefit to M. M will certainly earn more on the withheld tax than Y will, and may even earn more than in a traditional investment.
First of all, the TPS report analogy is exactly backwards. Why would you pay 1.5 times as much for the 9th hour of report-writing as for the 8th
Because there are certain aspects of the employer's expenses - office space, health care benefits, unemployment insurance, paid holidys, etc - that are factored into the overall salary before the employee receives it. Working more hours will not earn more health care or a better office, so the overtime wage can reflect only the increase in value to the company.
Here is a trivially simple example:
Let's say that it costs the company $30,000 / year in benefits to to employ someone.
Let's say that an employee can produce 60,000 TPS reports / year.
Let's say that each TPS Report is worth $1 to the company.
In this example, the employer would be willing to pay someone $30,000 a year, or about $14.50 / hour.
Let's use 10 paid holidays and 2 weeks vacation. This works out to about 31 TPS reports per hour.
Imagine that the employer asks the employee to come into the office on Saturday and fill out 248 (31 * 8) TPS Reports. This would result in a gain for the company of $248. The employee would receive $174 (14.50 * 8 * 1.5).
This example shows why employers will often prefer to have their employees work overtime rather than hire extra work. The employer is able to pay 150% of the employee's usualy wage and come out ahead.
Now, about your painter - if she's been in the business for any length of time, she's pricing the painting based on how long it'll take her to do
That is not correct. In the absence of price controls on the work of painters, the artist will be able to charge what the market will bear. The artist will then decide whether or not to compete in that market. If the artist places a low premium on the time they spend working relative to their competitors, then they will be willing to put in more hours for the same pay.
I think the central focus is on the level of work done.
If the employee's job is to fill out TPS reports all day, I can probably come up with a pretty good estimate about how many the employee will complete each week. I can use this information, along with the value of a filled out TPS report to the company to come up with a wage. If I increase required number of TPS reports, the employee has to work more hours. But the increased number of reports results in more value for the company, so the employee is justified in receiving additional pay in the form of overtime.
Contrast this with commissioning a painting. If I find an artist who will do the painting for a price I am willing to pay, do I care if the painter completed it by working for 10 hours or 100 hours? The work was priced as a completed piece, not by the number of hours the painter took to complete it.
Which of these categories are game developers in? I've always felt that the industry treats them as if they were in the second category, which is why I've always lauged at people who take jobs with game developers.
So what is happening now? Has the game development industry gotten to the point where designing games has become so formalized that these people believe that the work they do is no different from filling out TPS reports? If so, then they feel that they should get more money for doing more work. Does management still see them as artists being paid by the completed piece? If so then there is going to be conflict.
That's the part I never quite understood about companies that want to be built in downtown areas.
By consolidating a million jobs into a small physical area - downtown Chicago for example - workers are drawn in from all over the world because of the perception that there are tremendous opportunities.
Compare this with the number of workers running out of a beautiful place like Tucson, Arizona because they perceive that there are few opportunities.
They'll be the most expensive place to buy Sony products, only carry home electronics (no computers or parts), and be staffed by people who know all the buzzwords but have little idea what they mean.
Until Sony closed it, I used to go to the one in Chicago once a month so I'll address these points one at a time:
1. Their prices were the same as those on Sony's website. Things could be found cheaper from other resellers. Note that the sales tax is 10% on Michigan Avenue, so that might make it more expensive than most places.
2. They carried the full Sony line including computers (even Aibos). They sold accessories for the products, but it didn't appear that they had every part - for example, I doubt I could have purchased a replacement power supply for my Vaio.
3. I think you are right about the staff, although I never expect the staff at a retail outlet to know much. They aren't getting paid enough to be domain experts.
I don't think Sony expects people to go to these stores to ask questions about the products. I think Sony has the stores so people can see the products that they have been reading about up close and decide if it is for them.
If the Libertarian Party's main platform is real freedom, then does that mean that spamming would be legal?
I'm not aware of Candidate Badnarik making any statements about spam, but I think the general feeling among Libertarians is that spam should be treated like junk mail.
For example, it isn't illegal to send someone junk mail, although it is illegal to perpetrate fraud using the mail. It isn't illegal to send someone an unsolicited letter, but it is illegal to send someone anthrax through the mail.
Just the act of sending junk mail / spam should't be illegal, but that doesn't mean that using junk mail / spam gives some kind of immunity to criminal charges.
The Libertarian position on most (all?) issues is based on taking personal responsibility. If you don't want junk mail / spam, don't get on any junk mail / spam lists.
yes, there are freedom of speech issues but most countries already deign to regulate political campaigning, especially around election time.
Do any of these countries have the following in their constitutions? Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
I don't think there is such a thing as a "freedom of speech issue". Either you have freedom of speech or you don't.
In fact, I think the Bush administration is positively pro-stem cell research, just more realistic about the possibilities and more oriented towards adult stem cell research instead of fetus stem cell research.
Then why didn't Bush say this when he was asked about funding stem cell research, rather than make it sound like his administration was completely behind the research, spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars?
What made the responses of the candidates stupefying was (1) that they gave uninformative answers to very clear questions that contradicted positions that they have taken in the past and (2) they were not asked to clairfy these contradictions.
Part of me is loathe to RTA. From here outside of the USA, I imagine the dialog to be stupefying.
I'm inside the USA, just read the article, and it is stupefying.
I wouldn't glorify the article by calling it a dialogue. It appears to be a set of questions sent to both candidates who sent back their answers. The answers were not challenged, and there were no follow up questions to clarify seemingly contradictory positions.
For example, you would never know from reading the article that the Bush administration is anything but pro stem cell research. He even brags that his administration has spent $216 million on stem cell research.
The gene pool is worsening since intelligent people tend not to breed, and the stupid breed in droves.
I'm not sure if you care, but according to the prevelant intelligence (IQ) theories out there this situation would result in an improving gene pool.
Statistically speaking, offspring would tend towards the mean under the current theories. So two smart people will be statistically more likely to have a child that is dumber than either of them, while two stupid people are statistically more likely to have a child that is smarter than either of them.
Of course the concept of IQ could be a big pile of crap.
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I've NEVER seen an unreasonable speed limit anywhere in my travels.
I'd like to offer some food for thought:
First of all, in the US (you imply you are in the US) the speed limit is the same day and night. How can it be safe to drive 55 (for example) at night when the visibility is only as far as your headlights and still only be safe to drive 55 during the day when you can see for miles?
Secondly, in the US the speed limit is the same no matter what kind of a car you are driving. At the most some states have two speed limits, one for tractor trailers and one for everybody else. Why would you expect a mini van and a sports car to perform in the same way?
If it's in his contract he's entitled to it, period.
I RTFA and it is a little weak on detail, but it appears that PJ got what he was entitled to.
The article seems to be saying that New Line sold off merchandising rights to companies within the Time Warner family rather than sell to the highest bidder.
The suit contends that NL would have made more money, and therefore PJ would have recieved a higher cut, if the merchandising rights were sold on the open market.
For everyone who posted that a contract is a contract, it would seem that if NL never promised to sell to the highest bidder, then NL met all the terms of the contract and PJ got what he deserved.
How many folks out there would appreciate their employers under-paying them because "they had already been paid enough", or some such non-sense?
I wonder if I could sue our sales department for not generating enough revenue?
Because the last thing that Microsoft would want to do is piss off the Norwegian's.
Piss off their what? What? WHAT???
Am I the only one who doesn't buy this whole "blogsphere" crap?
I agree with you.
This press release (oops, I mean WSJ article) reads like somebody trying to justify spending money on some new marketing tool.
I think cell phone users have always complained about double billing (that the receiver has to pay for calls too).
But it took somebody running this software and discovering that teens don't like it either to make the cell phone companies (at least one of them) change? I don't buy it.
Maybe somebody who understands these things better than I do can chime in, but I don't think you would want to watch a UMD on a full size TV.
The PSP screen is about one third the resolution of a DVD. I think that means that a UMD only needs to hold one third of the data that a DVD does, which is how they are able to get a whole movie on such a small disk.
I think that a UMD movie on a full size TV would have worse resolution than VHS.
I would be the last person to apologize or make excuses for MS, but it is logical for the Xbox to include music. I would make three points:
1. The Xbox is not portable, so it is not really a competitor to the iPod.
2. The Xbox comes with a hard drive, so it could easily be used to store music (MP3s only?).
3. Many Xbox users hook their Xbox into their stereos to take advantage of games that have robust audio.
It seems like using the Xbox to store music, whether it is purchased or rented, would take advantage of existing Xbox functionality and would be a nice feature for people who want to listen to music at home.
That makes no sense. Government is already taking 12.5% of your paycheck for Socialist Security, and isn't even investing it for you at a decent rate of return, yet you claim it would cost you 30% of your paycheck to invest it in something which would give you a considerably higher rate of return, even a no-risk investment like certificates of deposit.
Actually, this could make sense, in a very twisted way.
Social Security and National Insurance are both "progressive" taxes. That means that people who make more money pay more relative to the benefit received than people who make less money.
Imagine two people, we'll call them M and Y, and let's imagine that they are both the same age and start work at the same time and retire together. Let's say every year, Y earns twice as much as M and that both of them are under the wage base cap (for SS, there is a wage at which no more SS taxes are taken out; in 2005 that amount is $90,000).
Y will receive a larger monthly payment than M, but Y will not receive twice as much as M does, even though Y put in twice as much as M did. This is because the tax is progressive and penalizes Y for earning more money.
While Y's rate of return on the withheld tax may be 0 or even negative, this loss on Y's part is a benefit to M. M will certainly earn more on the withheld tax than Y will, and may even earn more than in a traditional investment.
First of all, the TPS report analogy is exactly backwards. Why would you pay 1.5 times as much for the 9th hour of report-writing as for the 8th
Because there are certain aspects of the employer's expenses - office space, health care benefits, unemployment insurance, paid holidys, etc - that are factored into the overall salary before the employee receives it. Working more hours will not earn more health care or a better office, so the overtime wage can reflect only the increase in value to the company.
Here is a trivially simple example:
Let's say that it costs the company $30,000 / year in benefits to to employ someone.
Let's say that an employee can produce 60,000 TPS reports / year.
Let's say that each TPS Report is worth $1 to the company.
In this example, the employer would be willing to pay someone $30,000 a year, or about $14.50 / hour.
Let's use 10 paid holidays and 2 weeks vacation. This works out to about 31 TPS reports per hour.
Imagine that the employer asks the employee to come into the office on Saturday and fill out 248 (31 * 8) TPS Reports. This would result in a gain for the company of $248. The employee would receive $174 (14.50 * 8 * 1.5).
This example shows why employers will often prefer to have their employees work overtime rather than hire extra work. The employer is able to pay 150% of the employee's usualy wage and come out ahead.
Now, about your painter - if she's been in the business for any length of time, she's pricing the painting based on how long it'll take her to do
That is not correct. In the absence of price controls on the work of painters, the artist will be able to charge what the market will bear. The artist will then decide whether or not to compete in that market. If the artist places a low premium on the time they spend working relative to their competitors, then they will be willing to put in more hours for the same pay.
Surely I'm missing something here. What is it?
I think the central focus is on the level of work done.
If the employee's job is to fill out TPS reports all day, I can probably come up with a pretty good estimate about how many the employee will complete each week. I can use this information, along with the value of a filled out TPS report to the company to come up with a wage. If I increase required number of TPS reports, the employee has to work more hours. But the increased number of reports results in more value for the company, so the employee is justified in receiving additional pay in the form of overtime.
Contrast this with commissioning a painting. If I find an artist who will do the painting for a price I am willing to pay, do I care if the painter completed it by working for 10 hours or 100 hours? The work was priced as a completed piece, not by the number of hours the painter took to complete it.
Which of these categories are game developers in? I've always felt that the industry treats them as if they were in the second category, which is why I've always lauged at people who take jobs with game developers.
So what is happening now? Has the game development industry gotten to the point where designing games has become so formalized that these people believe that the work they do is no different from filling out TPS reports? If so, then they feel that they should get more money for doing more work. Does management still see them as artists being paid by the completed piece? If so then there is going to be conflict.
That's the part I never quite understood about companies that want to be built in downtown areas.
By consolidating a million jobs into a small physical area - downtown Chicago for example - workers are drawn in from all over the world because of the perception that there are tremendous opportunities.
Compare this with the number of workers running out of a beautiful place like Tucson, Arizona because they perceive that there are few opportunities.
They'll be the most expensive place to buy Sony products, only carry home electronics (no computers or parts), and be staffed by people who know all the buzzwords but have little idea what they mean.
Until Sony closed it, I used to go to the one in Chicago once a month so I'll address these points one at a time:
1. Their prices were the same as those on Sony's website. Things could be found cheaper from other resellers. Note that the sales tax is 10% on Michigan Avenue, so that might make it more expensive than most places.
2. They carried the full Sony line including computers (even Aibos). They sold accessories for the products, but it didn't appear that they had every part - for example, I doubt I could have purchased a replacement power supply for my Vaio.
3. I think you are right about the staff, although I never expect the staff at a retail outlet to know much. They aren't getting paid enough to be domain experts.
I don't think Sony expects people to go to these stores to ask questions about the products. I think Sony has the stores so people can see the products that they have been reading about up close and decide if it is for them.
I would say that the tourism industry disproves that assumption quite nicely.
The tourism industry proves that people will pay money to send themselves someplace because "it's there".
But the existence of the tourism industry is insufficient to prove that people will pay money to send someone else someplace because "it's there".
I guess this article is so bad and so long that no one wants to read it or comment on it.
/. editors might think that they have to do a better job of filtering.
I read the article, but I thought it was so bad there was no point in commenting on it.
I had a crazy idea that maybe if nobody commented on the article then the
I wouldn't call it a total rip-off because he owns both of the previously released versions and this one is by far the prettiest.
The ripoff is that your friend was duped into buying the two inferior versions. Why wasn't the good version released first?
If the Libertarian Party's main platform is real freedom, then does that mean that spamming would be legal?
I'm not aware of Candidate Badnarik making any statements about spam, but I think the general feeling among Libertarians is that spam should be treated like junk mail.
For example, it isn't illegal to send someone junk mail, although it is illegal to perpetrate fraud using the mail. It isn't illegal to send someone an unsolicited letter, but it is illegal to send someone anthrax through the mail.
Just the act of sending junk mail / spam should't be illegal, but that doesn't mean that using junk mail / spam gives some kind of immunity to criminal charges.
The Libertarian position on most (all?) issues is based on taking personal responsibility. If you don't want junk mail / spam, don't get on any junk mail / spam lists.
yes, there are freedom of speech issues but most countries already deign to regulate political campaigning, especially around election time.
Do any of these countries have the following in their constitutions?
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
I don't think there is such a thing as a "freedom of speech issue". Either you have freedom of speech or you don't.
In fact, I think the Bush administration is positively pro-stem cell research, just more realistic about the possibilities and more oriented towards adult stem cell research instead of fetus stem cell research.
Then why didn't Bush say this when he was asked about funding stem cell research, rather than make it sound like his administration was completely behind the research, spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars?
What made the responses of the candidates stupefying was (1) that they gave uninformative answers to very clear questions that contradicted positions that they have taken in the past and (2) they were not asked to clairfy these contradictions.
Part of me is loathe to RTA. From here outside of the USA, I imagine the dialog to be stupefying.
I'm inside the USA, just read the article, and it is stupefying.
I wouldn't glorify the article by calling it a dialogue. It appears to be a set of questions sent to both candidates who sent back their answers. The answers were not challenged, and there were no follow up questions to clarify seemingly contradictory positions.
For example, you would never know from reading the article that the Bush administration is anything but pro stem cell research. He even brags that his administration has spent $216 million on stem cell research.
The gene pool is worsening since intelligent people tend not to breed, and the stupid breed in droves.
I'm not sure if you care, but according to the prevelant intelligence (IQ) theories out there this situation would result in an improving gene pool.
Statistically speaking, offspring would tend towards the mean under the current theories. So two smart people will be statistically more likely to have a child that is dumber than either of them, while two stupid people are statistically more likely to have a child that is smarter than either of them.
Of course the concept of IQ could be a big pile of crap.
Tobacco is sold not because of the evil of corporations, but because of the evil of government.
Tobacco is sold because people want to buy it despite being told how dangerous it is.
I agree with you about the government being evil though.