one: how do you know if an artists is in it for the money? how they act, perhaps?
two: every wonder about the artists that can't tour except locally? Even worse, lots of artists don't have a concentrated fan group to tour around near. What about those artists that don't have enough fans in one area but have a lot across a wide range of areas.
three: Those artists who aren't very entertaining on a stage and are really only about the music and making a living off of it, where do you expect them to make there money?
four: law says you can't give it to your girlfriend so quit complaining about the copy protection when you are trying to break the law. That is why they created the copy protection so it is obviously working
five: you aren't 13 anymore and now have the money to get all the music and music videos you want legally. so why not? or is it you feel you deserve it for free now because you couldn't save up the money to buy the music when you were a child? I could. it took a few weeks but it was definitely possible. and if 10 dollar was possible at one time, you had the option of waiting till that next 10 dollars became available
I"m not sure about if it's true or not, but at least in the college age population, that doesn't hold. I know a single user of Itunes who has more legally downloaded music than illegally downloaded music. It's usually more like a 1-300 ratio if anything(adn I would credit the pepsi 1000000 free downloads for that). That one person I do know is extremely moral and does not believe in breaking any laws in a country. I would bet that most of hte people who get ipods get most of htere music from a very vast collection they already gathered.
what you really mean to say is that because the US has always had laws creating intellectual property that the entire country is based on flawed principles and founded by "bad guys" who crusaded against it.
the laws establishing intellectual property have been around for hundreds of years. outside of those laws against committing personal harm and the such, these stand as some of the first laws ever written.
I mean, personally, I don't see any reason why I can't go to a wal mart and take 6 or 7 bars of candy. It doesn't cause any legitimate harm to anyone and doesn't violate anyone's legitimate rights(at least, none of the rights I have decided to arbitrarily respect). but the laws don't agree with me.
you realize it is always a net economic gain in the short run to destroy all barriers to entry(you're effective end to copyright on music). It would be like saying all software should be free. It's a stupid idea to force your will on anyone. There are artists that only make money performing and there are artists that want to charge people 16 or 20 bucks a CD. If you like the artist who wants to distribute his music for 20 bucks a cd, then make your choice.
of course, the face of music would change completely. Would music still be around, yes. would it be anything like it has been for the last 200 or so years, no.
Combined with suing children, their single moms and their grandparents, these are the "wrongest" pieces of shit walking the planet.
because breaking the law is alright if you are a child?
I think what you really mean to say is that from the day you realized that you could get the music for free, you decided it was cheaper to go that way than buy the music you like.
can you believe that some people thought CD's were worth 18 dollars a pop because of the incredible leap in sound quality and ease of transport they offered. I mean, that is why I thought they cost more, because you were getting so much more.
I Just find it humorous you defend your actions by something the companies did after you started breaking the law(long after, in fact).
but it would be overcompensating if there is a simple, less power hungry way of achieving the same goals, wouldn't it?
(before you call me a fanboy, my laptop is intel based)
I think the main point is Intel has come up with a lot of good technology and left behind some of the simpler ways to greatly improve chip performance. Now if AMD could hurry up and expand the L2 cache and come out with something that can adequately challenge the centrino, that would be nice. Both sides have limited resources. It seems they have taken two separate routes and both are lacking in some respects.
well, I know in the US it is illegal, but I think in Europe you are allowed to build breeder reactors which will recycle the used nuclear material into new fuel.
They don't allow it in the US because during part of that process, you have weapons grade nuclear material on hand. and rather than dealing with the safety implications, they just make it illegal.
ok, so lets have an example of the FBI kicking down someone's door on bad evidence. even better, lets see some sort of proof that the evidence is flimsy by showing how that person was completely exonerating.
oh wait, most of hte legal action dealing with IP rights seems to be done in civil, instead of criminal court. that's because the FBI won't get involved in pure copyright infringement. they will get involved in outright pirating.
of course, the real question is, why do you have IP rights in parenthesis? you could come out and say you don't believe there is such a thing as IP if that is how you feel. but if there is such a thing as intellectual property and those groups own that property, they have all the right to try and protect it as they see fit within the limits of the law. its just like having to deal with any law instituted by some smaller(non-majority) group(like the drinking age being raised from 18 to 21).
its nice to make broad accusation, but how about getting down to the nitty-gritty.
While I agree with your first 3 points, I don't think the fourth is a valid problem.
The danger of the side kick is not that it can't be dodged easily, but that when it hits, it can do a lot of damage to a person. But that is the key, it is to a person. This is a man made machine. It can easily be built to withstand even the strongest kicks. People aren't all that strong in the grand scheme of things, it is only when you compare people to other people that the strength seems incredible.
of course, I have no idea what they mean by dodging. The processor speed and image decoding are just computational problems and easily overcome with very expensive hardware. I find the real problem in having a machine beable to move in teh number of directions necesarry. Anyone who has done any type of boxing/martial arts nkows that if you always respond the same way (or some small set of ways) to one attack, it is trivial to lure the person into a trap. The lack of dynamic and varied decision making would be the biggest downfall.
either way,it would be a cool toy. and for a lot of people, he will probably be challenging.
well, I"ve done a little of both. I've tutored single kids and then groups of people and I find, in general, the more personal attention you can give someone, the more they can learn. And then of course, the more you rely on what they already have knowledge of, the more they can learn. It is incredibly easy for me with one or two people to hit exactly the central points they are lacking, strengthen them, and then go back to the beginning to make sure we are clear. But that is incredibly hard with a group of people(even just 6 or 7) because you are almost overwelmed by the lack of knowledge you are faced with. Unfortunately, everyone usually lacks one thing and that thing is different for each person, which means 6/7 of the time, a person is getting nothing out of what I'm saying.
or you could just judge them by stadardized tests looking at math and scientific ability (you know, those tests taht have america below China and India). There are lots of measuring sticks that can swing the arugment both ways.
it also happens that the education system in India is very different. After 10th grade, you go to college for your profession, which means you get medical school students at 16 or latest, 17. In the same way, once you go to school for engineering, that is all that you do for those two years so it is about equal to doing four years here. The people who do a full four years of that training usually come to the states for grad school and easily finish the work(and by easy, I mean no where near the jump in difficultly we see in the US and some of the work is repetitive).
How do I know this, a lot of my family members have done this(both of the routes). NOw I don't know about their work ethic on the job but it is standard to do 60 hour weeks at work.
It is damn near impossible to compare the two systems of education and the only thing you can judge them by is the quality of the their work which seems to be on par with what I recieve(in the way of services) from all US operations.
of course not. I mean, why blame the group that ruthlessly gutted a country of all its natural resources for years and upon leaving, took everything they could of any value and left nothing in place. Of course India should have been able to industrialize as fast as Japan. I mean, there are only minor differences when compared to the US policy of pumping money and supplies into the Japanese economy and attempting to speed development.
I think you should to a bit more research. one of the biggest suppliers of all martial arts equiptment is Century and everything I have ever bought from them is made in the US. this includes multiple uniforms for Kempo, Judo, and Tae Kwon Do.
except it is 500,000 dollars for just them. a class action status suti just means you can have multiple plaintiffs and they all get settled at one time. imagine 10,000 of these suits aggregated together and suddenly you see hundreds of millions could be lost here. of course, this is just the beginning, and this stuff takes years before payment is ever made.
for experimental drugs, they already do exactly that. Drugs that have reached human testing phases are usually done on terminally ill patients because they will die anyway and this gives them a chance to try the drug. but besides that, they do this same thing will all kinds of drugs. There was an attempt at an HIV vaccine a while back, all the participants got HIV and had no recourse.
but of course, once you have FDA approval, you can't do that. you are completely liable for the effects of your drugs and cannot make people sign waivers(unless, of course, it is for treatment of a different disease than was originally created, but this is questionable and I'm not sure on how such a case would work out).
and of course, with those experimental drugs, the taxpayer ends up footing the bill once the person goes broke(if that does happen). but then again, with out human trials, we wouldn't have any proof as to the efficacy of hte drug so it is the burden we bear to get the drugs we use.
in y'all's process of arguing economic theory, you are really using a situation without any grounding in truth. Vioxx was on the market before there was any research showing long term harmful effects. There was one study in 2000, well after it hit the market, that could have showed possible long term problems(as recently challenged by some New England Journal).
This means that with a completely honest presentation of the data available, they got certification. It is required that after certification you conduct a long term test to see if htere are long term problems. It was in this set of tests they found what happened. Under your system, Vioxx would still be on the market and the warning would have been added after proof came out(of course, that is just an assumption, no one will ever know). Merck lying is one hell of a thing to say as there is no solid evidence yet of that. They deffinitely didn't lie to get past the FDA's hoops though. that is obvious because they voluntarily pulled the drug and opened themselves up to basically a possible bankruptcy. If they were already lying, it would have been better to just keep lying and not increase the possibility of losing money.
proof of purposeful lying ot the FDA for approval basically is a sign that you will be shut down(especially when there are several possible deaths that can be attributed to your product). One can argue it is in the benefit of management, but then lying under any system would equally be to the benefit of management(limited liability, cashing of options with higher prices, etc).
again, learn to read. I never once said I had or referenced a study. I said that asking people nicely why they bought something is called a survey by businesses. you really need to work on that whole taking things out of reference.
you also have no idea about the Jordan shoes, do you? by the mid 90's(ie. 94 to 96 I assume would qualify), only other superstars had shoes as expensive as the Jordans. They were 160$ at that point. Don't even try to bullshit that all the other sneakers were that expensive, they were half that price or less(I'm talking about new, a year after they came out, the price would drop on those sneakers). but as the price goes, the iPod means you have upwards of 500 dollars to spend on something to play your music(and generally 100 to 200 dollars more than similarly spec'ed competition).
of course, I will admit because those sneakers had a big name behind them, so they are different to a degree. But you didn't even try to address the mention of polo or hilfiger clothing, specifically the popularity of the collared shirts which only have one small symbol to tell you who made them. At is at most as obvious as the iPod ear pieces (and actually has more competition in the way of other companies).
but again, my original point was simply a response to your comment about not knowing someone who doesn't own an MP3 player. there are a whole bunch of us. I neither feel the need to buy one simply because everyone else has one nor see much purpose in my owning one. And of course, I tread litely as I know several people that bought them and ended up dissatisfied because they realized that don't care to listen to music 24/7(hyperbole).
you know, you can find out exactly why someone bought something if you ask them nicely. its pretty damn easy to find out. its especially obvious when you ask why they chose the iPod as compared to brand x. If you haven't ever talked to people and lose yourself in your music, you obviously wouldn't have seen the rest of the world. of course, formally, businesses call them surveys and its why they try so damn hard to protect the individuality of their product.
and why would anyone think the iPod is a status symbol? that might be the dumbest question(even rhetorical) I've ever heard. I mean, why would anyone consider the latest Jordan's a status symbol in middle school? when you aren't using them for the proscribed purpose of protecting your feet while walking around outside, they are tucked away in some closet. oh wait, people do buy every day things and use them as status symbols. And those shoes are probably less noticable than those white earbuds. The same goes for that little tommy hilfiger symbol or polo symbol on their collared shirts. they are status symbols even though they are small. Its common.
be careful, you can call me an ass all you want but your ignorance of the retail sector is showing.
of course, trying to draw some completely unrealistic analogy to what the other 6.2 billion people live in with the New york subway system of the 70's and 80's is pretty damn foolish. try something a little more canonical of everyday life for at least the other 250 million americans.
except the ipod wasn't anywhere near the first mp3 player or the first one with a navigation menu like it uses. it basically took the things that worked and put them together. and added a nice touch scroll wheel.
the reason these lawsuits are starting now is probably because the patent was filed for years ago and is just now being approved(as it usually happens).
I was also commenting on your amazing ignorance about the vast numbers of people who don't give a damn about MP3 players and probably won't for a long time, or ever. If you didn't know, here is a clue: some people don't care to be lost in some fanciful world and would rather be engaged with other people in some form of itneraction. but then again, that usually keeps me from being bored no matter what I'm doing. I do have several friends with MP3 players and it fits them just fine. They prefer to listen to music rather than talk to people. maybe you should open your mind to the possibility that there are a lot of people that buy things because it is a status symbol and lots of people that don't buy things you find useful, because both those groups exist.
my main comment was about when people buy the iPod (a great symbol of moving with the crowd) and don't use it to anywhere near its capacity, sometimes never. its funny simply because it was bought expecting it to magically have some value and suddenly, those people reaized it didn't have any and they are stuck with a 250 dollar 20 gig hard drive.
yes and that leads to a monopoly which is economically inefficient(by an incredibly long ways). but hey, if you like the more inefficient system, then go right ahead. it seems if we can't agree on that point, then none of the conclusions will agree.
I damn well don't feel like paying more because other users are complete idiots when it comes to computers(another economic failure, not even close to good information) so I am all for hte government stepping in now and then and forcing a bit more knowledge on the people this way.
I was just commenting on how everyone seems to now need an MP3 player to be part of the in crowd and the biggest symbol of conformity is the iPod in my mind. it reminds me of old 1984 commercial.
your last point is BS and it shouldn't be spread. doctors are not getting even a minority of the health care cost increases. almost all of those are accurately traced to drug price increases that can be evenly attributed to the great increase in efficacy of the drugs people use.
Point 2: none of hte hours I said were made up(by the way, 168-42 isn't 130,but its close) . Those were the exact hours my dad was required to work. What is the point: to learn how to function and how to actually give medical treatment when you are past the limit of what most people can do. Until you are the patient that gets left on the operating table in need of a surgery and your doctor doesn't feel like coming in because he wants a 'life', you might not realize what the demands are of being a doctor. It means you are usually serving people who are the dumb ones and get hurt seriously at all the bad times.
Most physicians would love to have more doctors in the field. It just happens to be that getting well trained doctors is difficult. It takes a really bright person to be a doctor. If you think these people are out there you're sorely mistaken. Very few of these people want to do the amount of work that it takes to become certain types of physician(note the extreme increases in non-emergency fields, especially dermatology, plastics, and dentistry, all of which are also happen to be more immune to lawsuits and earn more money). The surgical fields have a real problem getting qualified people to do the work because it is that hard. You don't have to accept that it is that hard, it just shows you don't know what quite goes into those fields. It turns out there are more than enough physicians in several fields and not nearly enough in the toughest fields.
I'm not even going to get into the idea of 60 or 70 hours a week being unnatural. I don't see anything wrong with a 60 hour work week, but then that might stem from what I have been surrounded with since I was born.
Slashdot Mirror
Artists in it for money (sellouts) don't last
one: how do you know if an artists is in it for the money? how they act, perhaps?
two: every wonder about the artists that can't tour except locally? Even worse, lots of artists don't have a concentrated fan group to tour around near. What about those artists that don't have enough fans in one area but have a lot across a wide range of areas.
three: Those artists who aren't very entertaining on a stage and are really only about the music and making a living off of it, where do you expect them to make there money?
four: law says you can't give it to your girlfriend so quit complaining about the copy protection when you are trying to break the law. That is why they created the copy protection so it is obviously working
five: you aren't 13 anymore and now have the money to get all the music and music videos you want legally. so why not? or is it you feel you deserve it for free now because you couldn't save up the money to buy the music when you were a child? I could. it took a few weeks but it was definitely possible. and if 10 dollar was possible at one time, you had the option of waiting till that next 10 dollars became available
I"m not sure about if it's true or not, but at least in the college age population, that doesn't hold. I know a single user of Itunes who has more legally downloaded music than illegally downloaded music. It's usually more like a 1-300 ratio if anything(adn I would credit the pepsi 1000000 free downloads for that). That one person I do know is extremely moral and does not believe in breaking any laws in a country. I would bet that most of hte people who get ipods get most of htere music from a very vast collection they already gathered.
what you really mean to say is that because the US has always had laws creating intellectual property that the entire country is based on flawed principles and founded by "bad guys" who crusaded against it.
the laws establishing intellectual property have been around for hundreds of years. outside of those laws against committing personal harm and the such, these stand as some of the first laws ever written.
I mean, personally, I don't see any reason why I can't go to a wal mart and take 6 or 7 bars of candy. It doesn't cause any legitimate harm to anyone and doesn't violate anyone's legitimate rights(at least, none of the rights I have decided to arbitrarily respect). but the laws don't agree with me.
you realize it is always a net economic gain in the short run to destroy all barriers to entry(you're effective end to copyright on music). It would be like saying all software should be free. It's a stupid idea to force your will on anyone. There are artists that only make money performing and there are artists that want to charge people 16 or 20 bucks a CD. If you like the artist who wants to distribute his music for 20 bucks a cd, then make your choice.
of course, the face of music would change completely. Would music still be around, yes. would it be anything like it has been for the last 200 or so years, no.
Combined with suing children, their single moms and their grandparents, these are the "wrongest" pieces of shit walking the planet.
because breaking the law is alright if you are a child?
I think what you really mean to say is that from the day you realized that you could get the music for free, you decided it was cheaper to go that way than buy the music you like.
can you believe that some people thought CD's were worth 18 dollars a pop because of the incredible leap in sound quality and ease of transport they offered. I mean, that is why I thought they cost more, because you were getting so much more.
I Just find it humorous you defend your actions by something the companies did after you started breaking the law(long after, in fact).
but it would be overcompensating if there is a simple, less power hungry way of achieving the same goals, wouldn't it?
(before you call me a fanboy, my laptop is intel based)
I think the main point is Intel has come up with a lot of good technology and left behind some of the simpler ways to greatly improve chip performance. Now if AMD could hurry up and expand the L2 cache and come out with something that can adequately challenge the centrino, that would be nice. Both sides have limited resources. It seems they have taken two separate routes and both are lacking in some respects.
well, I know in the US it is illegal, but I think in Europe you are allowed to build breeder reactors which will recycle the used nuclear material into new fuel.
They don't allow it in the US because during part of that process, you have weapons grade nuclear material on hand. and rather than dealing with the safety implications, they just make it illegal.
ok, so lets have an example of the FBI kicking down someone's door on bad evidence. even better, lets see some sort of proof that the evidence is flimsy by showing how that person was completely exonerating.
oh wait, most of hte legal action dealing with IP rights seems to be done in civil, instead of criminal court. that's because the FBI won't get involved in pure copyright infringement. they will get involved in outright pirating.
of course, the real question is, why do you have IP rights in parenthesis? you could come out and say you don't believe there is such a thing as IP if that is how you feel. but if there is such a thing as intellectual property and those groups own that property, they have all the right to try and protect it as they see fit within the limits of the law. its just like having to deal with any law instituted by some smaller(non-majority) group(like the drinking age being raised from 18 to 21).
its nice to make broad accusation, but how about getting down to the nitty-gritty.
While I agree with your first 3 points, I don't think the fourth is a valid problem.
The danger of the side kick is not that it can't be dodged easily, but that when it hits, it can do a lot of damage to a person. But that is the key, it is to a person. This is a man made machine. It can easily be built to withstand even the strongest kicks. People aren't all that strong in the grand scheme of things, it is only when you compare people to other people that the strength seems incredible.
of course, I have no idea what they mean by dodging. The processor speed and image decoding are just computational problems and easily overcome with very expensive hardware. I find the real problem in having a machine beable to move in teh number of directions necesarry. Anyone who has done any type of boxing/martial arts nkows that if you always respond the same way (or some small set of ways) to one attack, it is trivial to lure the person into a trap. The lack of dynamic and varied decision making would be the biggest downfall.
either way,it would be a cool toy. and for a lot of people, he will probably be challenging.
well, I"ve done a little of both. I've tutored single kids and then groups of people and I find, in general, the more personal attention you can give someone, the more they can learn. And then of course, the more you rely on what they already have knowledge of, the more they can learn. It is incredibly easy for me with one or two people to hit exactly the central points they are lacking, strengthen them, and then go back to the beginning to make sure we are clear. But that is incredibly hard with a group of people(even just 6 or 7) because you are almost overwelmed by the lack of knowledge you are faced with. Unfortunately, everyone usually lacks one thing and that thing is different for each person, which means 6/7 of the time, a person is getting nothing out of what I'm saying.
or you could just judge them by stadardized tests looking at math and scientific ability (you know, those tests taht have america below China and India). There are lots of measuring sticks that can swing the arugment both ways.
it also happens that the education system in India is very different. After 10th grade, you go to college for your profession, which means you get medical school students at 16 or latest, 17. In the same way, once you go to school for engineering, that is all that you do for those two years so it is about equal to doing four years here. The people who do a full four years of that training usually come to the states for grad school and easily finish the work(and by easy, I mean no where near the jump in difficultly we see in the US and some of the work is repetitive).
How do I know this, a lot of my family members have done this(both of the routes). NOw I don't know about their work ethic on the job but it is standard to do 60 hour weeks at work.
It is damn near impossible to compare the two systems of education and the only thing you can judge them by is the quality of the their work which seems to be on par with what I recieve(in the way of services) from all US operations.
of course not. I mean, why blame the group that ruthlessly gutted a country of all its natural resources for years and upon leaving, took everything they could of any value and left nothing in place. Of course India should have been able to industrialize as fast as Japan. I mean, there are only minor differences when compared to the US policy of pumping money and supplies into the Japanese economy and attempting to speed development.
I think you should to a bit more research. one of the biggest suppliers of all martial arts equiptment is Century and everything I have ever bought from them is made in the US. this includes multiple uniforms for Kempo, Judo, and Tae Kwon Do.
except it is 500,000 dollars for just them. a class action status suti just means you can have multiple plaintiffs and they all get settled at one time. imagine 10,000 of these suits aggregated together and suddenly you see hundreds of millions could be lost here. of course, this is just the beginning, and this stuff takes years before payment is ever made.
for experimental drugs, they already do exactly that. Drugs that have reached human testing phases are usually done on terminally ill patients because they will die anyway and this gives them a chance to try the drug. but besides that, they do this same thing will all kinds of drugs. There was an attempt at an HIV vaccine a while back, all the participants got HIV and had no recourse.
but of course, once you have FDA approval, you can't do that. you are completely liable for the effects of your drugs and cannot make people sign waivers(unless, of course, it is for treatment of a different disease than was originally created, but this is questionable and I'm not sure on how such a case would work out).
and of course, with those experimental drugs, the taxpayer ends up footing the bill once the person goes broke(if that does happen). but then again, with out human trials, we wouldn't have any proof as to the efficacy of hte drug so it is the burden we bear to get the drugs we use.
in y'all's process of arguing economic theory, you are really using a situation without any grounding in truth. Vioxx was on the market before there was any research showing long term harmful effects. There was one study in 2000, well after it hit the market, that could have showed possible long term problems(as recently challenged by some New England Journal).
This means that with a completely honest presentation of the data available, they got certification. It is required that after certification you conduct a long term test to see if htere are long term problems. It was in this set of tests they found what happened. Under your system, Vioxx would still be on the market and the warning would have been added after proof came out(of course, that is just an assumption, no one will ever know). Merck lying is one hell of a thing to say as there is no solid evidence yet of that. They deffinitely didn't lie to get past the FDA's hoops though. that is obvious because they voluntarily pulled the drug and opened themselves up to basically a possible bankruptcy. If they were already lying, it would have been better to just keep lying and not increase the possibility of losing money.
proof of purposeful lying ot the FDA for approval basically is a sign that you will be shut down(especially when there are several possible deaths that can be attributed to your product). One can argue it is in the benefit of management, but then lying under any system would equally be to the benefit of management(limited liability, cashing of options with higher prices, etc).
again, learn to read. I never once said I had or referenced a study. I said that asking people nicely why they bought something is called a survey by businesses. you really need to work on that whole taking things out of reference.
you also have no idea about the Jordan shoes, do you? by the mid 90's(ie. 94 to 96 I assume would qualify), only other superstars had shoes as expensive as the Jordans. They were 160$ at that point. Don't even try to bullshit that all the other sneakers were that expensive, they were half that price or less(I'm talking about new, a year after they came out, the price would drop on those sneakers). but as the price goes, the iPod means you have upwards of 500 dollars to spend on something to play your music(and generally 100 to 200 dollars more than similarly spec'ed competition).
of course, I will admit because those sneakers had a big name behind them, so they are different to a degree. But you didn't even try to address the mention of polo or hilfiger clothing, specifically the popularity of the collared shirts which only have one small symbol to tell you who made them. At is at most as obvious as the iPod ear pieces (and actually has more competition in the way of other companies).
but again, my original point was simply a response to your comment about not knowing someone who doesn't own an MP3 player. there are a whole bunch of us. I neither feel the need to buy one simply because everyone else has one nor see much purpose in my owning one. And of course, I tread litely as I know several people that bought them and ended up dissatisfied because they realized that don't care to listen to music 24/7(hyperbole).
you know, you can find out exactly why someone bought something if you ask them nicely. its pretty damn easy to find out. its especially obvious when you ask why they chose the iPod as compared to brand x. If you haven't ever talked to people and lose yourself in your music, you obviously wouldn't have seen the rest of the world. of course, formally, businesses call them surveys and its why they try so damn hard to protect the individuality of their product.
and why would anyone think the iPod is a status symbol? that might be the dumbest question(even rhetorical) I've ever heard. I mean, why would anyone consider the latest Jordan's a status symbol in middle school? when you aren't using them for the proscribed purpose of protecting your feet while walking around outside, they are tucked away in some closet. oh wait, people do buy every day things and use them as status symbols. And those shoes are probably less noticable than those white earbuds. The same goes for that little tommy hilfiger symbol or polo symbol on their collared shirts. they are status symbols even though they are small. Its common.
be careful, you can call me an ass all you want but your ignorance of the retail sector is showing.
of course, trying to draw some completely unrealistic analogy to what the other 6.2 billion people live in with the New york subway system of the 70's and 80's is pretty damn foolish. try something a little more canonical of everyday life for at least the other 250 million americans.
except the ipod wasn't anywhere near the first mp3 player or the first one with a navigation menu like it uses. it basically took the things that worked and put them together. and added a nice touch scroll wheel.
the reason these lawsuits are starting now is probably because the patent was filed for years ago and is just now being approved(as it usually happens).
I was also commenting on your amazing ignorance about the vast numbers of people who don't give a damn about MP3 players and probably won't for a long time, or ever. If you didn't know, here is a clue: some people don't care to be lost in some fanciful world and would rather be engaged with other people in some form of itneraction. but then again, that usually keeps me from being bored no matter what I'm doing. I do have several friends with MP3 players and it fits them just fine. They prefer to listen to music rather than talk to people. maybe you should open your mind to the possibility that there are a lot of people that buy things because it is a status symbol and lots of people that don't buy things you find useful, because both those groups exist.
my main comment was about when people buy the iPod (a great symbol of moving with the crowd) and don't use it to anywhere near its capacity, sometimes never. its funny simply because it was bought expecting it to magically have some value and suddenly, those people reaized it didn't have any and they are stuck with a 250 dollar 20 gig hard drive.
yes and that leads to a monopoly which is economically inefficient(by an incredibly long ways). but hey, if you like the more inefficient system, then go right ahead. it seems if we can't agree on that point, then none of the conclusions will agree.
I damn well don't feel like paying more because other users are complete idiots when it comes to computers(another economic failure, not even close to good information) so I am all for hte government stepping in now and then and forcing a bit more knowledge on the people this way.
I was just commenting on how everyone seems to now need an MP3 player to be part of the in crowd and the biggest symbol of conformity is the iPod in my mind. it reminds me of old 1984 commercial.
I don't........
I guess to be part of hte in crowd I better go burn a good 250$ right now, eh?
your last point is BS and it shouldn't be spread. doctors are not getting even a minority of the health care cost increases. almost all of those are accurately traced to drug price increases that can be evenly attributed to the great increase in efficacy of the drugs people use.
Point 2: none of hte hours I said were made up(by the way, 168-42 isn't 130,but its close) . Those were the exact hours my dad was required to work. What is the point: to learn how to function and how to actually give medical treatment when you are past the limit of what most people can do. Until you are the patient that gets left on the operating table in need of a surgery and your doctor doesn't feel like coming in because he wants a 'life', you might not realize what the demands are of being a doctor. It means you are usually serving people who are the dumb ones and get hurt seriously at all the bad times.
Most physicians would love to have more doctors in the field. It just happens to be that getting well trained doctors is difficult. It takes a really bright person to be a doctor. If you think these people are out there you're sorely mistaken. Very few of these people want to do the amount of work that it takes to become certain types of physician(note the extreme increases in non-emergency fields, especially dermatology, plastics, and dentistry, all of which are also happen to be more immune to lawsuits and earn more money). The surgical fields have a real problem getting qualified people to do the work because it is that hard. You don't have to accept that it is that hard, it just shows you don't know what quite goes into those fields. It turns out there are more than enough physicians in several fields and not nearly enough in the toughest fields.
I'm not even going to get into the idea of 60 or 70 hours a week being unnatural. I don't see anything wrong with a 60 hour work week, but then that might stem from what I have been surrounded with since I was born.