AT&T is incredibly profitable, they have been making record profits every year since the iPhone was first released. I expect a business like that to scale up as they add more customers, NOT find new ways to charge more for less. Demand for bandwidth will ONLY increase, and fundamentally that's what AT&T is a provider of. If there business plan does not include a substantial investment in the ability to provide for the future needs of their growing customer base then they are failing in their primary function as an enterprise that sells bandwidth. You can make a ton of money in the short term with hacks and social manipulation (caps and higher rates), trying to get people to adjust their behaviors and use less bandwidth, but that can't work forever. So they save money today by not building an extra tower or upgrading their infrastructure but that extra profit is at the cost of not being able to meet the growing needs of tomorrow.
The actual price is $599 for the 16GB and $699 for the 32GB. That's the cost of the hardware without a contract, that's the price people should be quoting because I think it's the most relevant. That's the reality of upgrading for the vast majority of current iPhone users, even with AT&T allowing customers to renew 6 months early.
I don't want it priced like electricity because I use a ton of bandwidth per month and I do not want to pay more. I easily use 500GB in a 30 day period. I would only support a pay as you go model if it was sufficiently low per MB/GB that I would be paying less than I do now. Since I highly doubt that any restructuring of pricing would result in my ISP making LESS money, I am going to fight to maintain the current model. They should be using nearly all their profits to upgrade infrastructure, they're not. Allowing them to charge more for less would just allow them to put off making needed upgrades. Demand for bandwidth is only going to grow and if they think they are hurting now just wait another 5-10 years.
It is the inevitable result of a capitalistic system that allows the free movement of capital, but not the free movement of labor. Exploitation is going to remain the reality for someone, somewhere in the world until part of that equation changes.
I'd be happier with more DRM and no litigation against downloaders. DRM is a joke, doesn't work, and always gets cracked. Always. Litigation on the other hand ruins lives, and some of these people are going to be completely innocent. Open WAPs, changing IP addresses, kids downloading movies with their parents connection; all cases that shouldn't go to court at all. Really none of these people should ever have been charged because the law itself is flawed. When millions of people break a law every single day and most everyone sees nothing wrong with it, it's time for the law to go away - for better or worse. You can't have a functional society with the enforcement of laws when a majority of the population are criminals according to said laws.
This is one of the best comments I've read about this issue.
Too many people see things exactly as you describe. The "market" is just an abstraction, they don't make the connection to the real world companies that they are investing in because they don't see that as the point anymore. It used to be that you could take a small amount of money, invest it in a company with a good idea - along with many other people - and you could profit from it too. Getting money to people with good ideas, and letting people who could never start their own company have a chance to be involved in the process of business, that was the goal. Now, Wall Street is about finding new ways to creatively move, funnel, transfer, shuffle, and convert money so that when it comes out of the other side of the black box it's more than you started with. It might as well be a casino, instead of a random number generator or dice you have the ups and downs of real companies creating the random seed.
It would be funny if not for the fact that the rest of the US, the world really, are subsidizing this farce and allowing these people to get rich doing nothing productive.
There will always be people who will not be satisfied with our current level of understanding, the current state of technology, and the current prospects for humanity's future. As has been true for all time, these people will push civilization forward.
And bullshit like high frequency trading (really the entire concept of trading in derivatives, I hesitate to say the entire stock market in general because at its core there is something useful) only makes things worse - and at a faster rate. Every year a bit of wealth from every person in the lower 90% is siphoned off by traders and bankers and given to the top 10% or less. Over the decades a self reinforcing, self perpetuating system has been created, linked with government apparatuses that give it the appearance of legitimacy; this system rewards people who produce nothing of value, make nothing, enrich no one's lives, do not create art, do not expand the sphere of human knowledge, and provide no meaningful service to humanity or the country.
When it's possible to get rich just managing other people's capital and skimming off the top then the way we organize our economy is broken. This house of cards cannot stand forever when you stack more and more of those people on top of the working class, the foundation, that actually produces wealth and knowledge.
Lack of regulation allowed them to move to India and China. Why should capital be allowed to freely move across borders but labor cannot? When you have one without the other you have oppression and exploitation. So we either stop both, or allow both (or allow labor to move but not capital).
You said it all right there, "money to be made" Money that wasn't "earned" it was made from nothing; producing nothing, creating nothing, improving nothing. You just manage the capital, and yet you can (or at least some do) live better than the people who actually do the work. That is obscene.
I consider myself an environmentalist, and I support nuclear power. I don't know what else to say, I do agree with your sentiments and conclusions. I hope reality isn't as bleak as all that though
I am using my brain, I use it to learn when I am ignorant. I am aware of just how little I know, and I am aware of how long it takes and how much effort to fill a head with knowledge on an issue like this. I admire and respect that expertise, and I listen when they speak.
If, collectively, humans are engaged in some activity that is harmful or will be harmful to everyone then it is acceptable to me to limit your or anyone else's freedom to correct that behavior. It is not limiting freedom for no reason. Of course there are scientists who disagree, there are dissenters in every issue but finding one out of a hundred scientists who disagree doesn't outweigh the 99 who think it is happening, and is human caused.
I value having a suitable planet to live on more than your economic freedom, if intervening in the economy is the tool needed to solve the problem then that's what I support. Sorry.
Yes, raise taxes for one. Make the top marginal rate 90% (it has been that high in the past during the 50s and 60s), get rid of regressive taxes like the sales tax. Reintroduce the estate tax. There is also a slew of regulations that could be put on Wall Street to stop the most egregious of abuses. There are also other creative solutions like making the board of directors of publicly traded companies elected by the workers.
10 years is too short of a time span to be statistically significant. You're not thinking long term enough. It's just as bad of an argument as saying, I walked outside today and it was cooler than it was yesterday by 1 degree, in a month it'll be cooler by 30 degrees.
It's climate change, not global warming. You're obviously not a relevant scientist because a global average increase in temperature allows for a local increase in some areas at some times. I've seen that argument come up enough times to know why it's wrong even without being an expert.
That's an example of the "culture shift" that will need to happen for public transit to become viable. You buy ten bags of groceries and shop once every two weeks. That's the norm in the US. If you shopped every day or every other day and bought less at a time then public transportation becomes more acceptable. You'll say you don't have time, but again that's just another cultural value.
That still doesn't explain why we need an entire class of people who are wealthier than the engineers, scientists, and workers they are supposed to be empowering to produce. I can almost accept that argument if not for the fact that it still doesn't justify those people, the bankers and Wall Street traders, being able to live better than the people who actually have the ideas they support in the first place. Perhaps there is a legitimate place for them, but I think the role they currently play has grown to the point of absurdity.
That is a strength of the scientific method, not a failure. Our understanding of the natural world is always improving and ideas change over time. Climate change isn't a new idea, it's time tested. There is more debate about what gravity is and how it works than there is about if climate change is happening and humans are to blame.
Part of being "robust" would be 1) increasing options, so you could take bus or train or light rail 2) increasing availability, which means more stations, more bus stops, etc and 3) increasing reliability which means longer running ours and more frequent arrival times
100 hours? Please. It takes a lifetime to get the kind of knowledge required to be an expert in any field. I am not an expert, you are not an expert. If you're trying to prove otherwise you'll have to do better than a few dozen hours of "research". Your opinion on this matter is, pardon my saying so, worthless. Mine is too for that matter.
Which is why I have to look to the people who's opinion is not worthless: scientists with relevant knowledge and experience. Collectively they do not constitute a single source. Individually maybe, but that's why I look for consensus. It's there.
Slashdot Mirror
Once they lose their connection I have a feeling the customer will take care of initiating the necessary dialog :p
AT&T is incredibly profitable, they have been making record profits every year since the iPhone was first released. I expect a business like that to scale up as they add more customers, NOT find new ways to charge more for less. Demand for bandwidth will ONLY increase, and fundamentally that's what AT&T is a provider of. If there business plan does not include a substantial investment in the ability to provide for the future needs of their growing customer base then they are failing in their primary function as an enterprise that sells bandwidth. You can make a ton of money in the short term with hacks and social manipulation (caps and higher rates), trying to get people to adjust their behaviors and use less bandwidth, but that can't work forever. So they save money today by not building an extra tower or upgrading their infrastructure but that extra profit is at the cost of not being able to meet the growing needs of tomorrow.
The actual price is $599 for the 16GB and $699 for the 32GB. That's the cost of the hardware without a contract, that's the price people should be quoting because I think it's the most relevant. That's the reality of upgrading for the vast majority of current iPhone users, even with AT&T allowing customers to renew 6 months early.
I don't want it priced like electricity because I use a ton of bandwidth per month and I do not want to pay more. I easily use 500GB in a 30 day period. I would only support a pay as you go model if it was sufficiently low per MB/GB that I would be paying less than I do now. Since I highly doubt that any restructuring of pricing would result in my ISP making LESS money, I am going to fight to maintain the current model. They should be using nearly all their profits to upgrade infrastructure, they're not. Allowing them to charge more for less would just allow them to put off making needed upgrades. Demand for bandwidth is only going to grow and if they think they are hurting now just wait another 5-10 years.
Mandate paying them a (real) living wage, give them health care, and opportunities to advance their education for free or at very little cost.
It is the inevitable result of a capitalistic system that allows the free movement of capital, but not the free movement of labor. Exploitation is going to remain the reality for someone, somewhere in the world until part of that equation changes.
I would imagine that the prices drop dramatically once you don't have to worry about sending humans up, keeping them alive, and returning them safely.
I'd be happier with more DRM and no litigation against downloaders. DRM is a joke, doesn't work, and always gets cracked. Always. Litigation on the other hand ruins lives, and some of these people are going to be completely innocent. Open WAPs, changing IP addresses, kids downloading movies with their parents connection; all cases that shouldn't go to court at all. Really none of these people should ever have been charged because the law itself is flawed. When millions of people break a law every single day and most everyone sees nothing wrong with it, it's time for the law to go away - for better or worse. You can't have a functional society with the enforcement of laws when a majority of the population are criminals according to said laws.
How about not suing anyone for downloading anything, ever? I won't be satisfied until it's not a crime anymore.
This is one of the best comments I've read about this issue.
Too many people see things exactly as you describe. The "market" is just an abstraction, they don't make the connection to the real world companies that they are investing in because they don't see that as the point anymore. It used to be that you could take a small amount of money, invest it in a company with a good idea - along with many other people - and you could profit from it too. Getting money to people with good ideas, and letting people who could never start their own company have a chance to be involved in the process of business, that was the goal. Now, Wall Street is about finding new ways to creatively move, funnel, transfer, shuffle, and convert money so that when it comes out of the other side of the black box it's more than you started with. It might as well be a casino, instead of a random number generator or dice you have the ups and downs of real companies creating the random seed.
It would be funny if not for the fact that the rest of the US, the world really, are subsidizing this farce and allowing these people to get rich doing nothing productive.
There will always be people who will not be satisfied with our current level of understanding, the current state of technology, and the current prospects for humanity's future. As has been true for all time, these people will push civilization forward.
And bullshit like high frequency trading (really the entire concept of trading in derivatives, I hesitate to say the entire stock market in general because at its core there is something useful) only makes things worse - and at a faster rate. Every year a bit of wealth from every person in the lower 90% is siphoned off by traders and bankers and given to the top 10% or less. Over the decades a self reinforcing, self perpetuating system has been created, linked with government apparatuses that give it the appearance of legitimacy; this system rewards people who produce nothing of value, make nothing, enrich no one's lives, do not create art, do not expand the sphere of human knowledge, and provide no meaningful service to humanity or the country.
When it's possible to get rich just managing other people's capital and skimming off the top then the way we organize our economy is broken. This house of cards cannot stand forever when you stack more and more of those people on top of the working class, the foundation, that actually produces wealth and knowledge.
Lack of regulation allowed them to move to India and China. Why should capital be allowed to freely move across borders but labor cannot? When you have one without the other you have oppression and exploitation. So we either stop both, or allow both (or allow labor to move but not capital).
You said it all right there, "money to be made" Money that wasn't "earned" it was made from nothing; producing nothing, creating nothing, improving nothing. You just manage the capital, and yet you can (or at least some do) live better than the people who actually do the work. That is obscene.
I consider myself an environmentalist, and I support nuclear power. I don't know what else to say, I do agree with your sentiments and conclusions. I hope reality isn't as bleak as all that though
I am using my brain, I use it to learn when I am ignorant. I am aware of just how little I know, and I am aware of how long it takes and how much effort to fill a head with knowledge on an issue like this. I admire and respect that expertise, and I listen when they speak.
If, collectively, humans are engaged in some activity that is harmful or will be harmful to everyone then it is acceptable to me to limit your or anyone else's freedom to correct that behavior. It is not limiting freedom for no reason. Of course there are scientists who disagree, there are dissenters in every issue but finding one out of a hundred scientists who disagree doesn't outweigh the 99 who think it is happening, and is human caused.
I value having a suitable planet to live on more than your economic freedom, if intervening in the economy is the tool needed to solve the problem then that's what I support. Sorry.
Yes, raise taxes for one. Make the top marginal rate 90% (it has been that high in the past during the 50s and 60s), get rid of regressive taxes like the sales tax. Reintroduce the estate tax. There is also a slew of regulations that could be put on Wall Street to stop the most egregious of abuses. There are also other creative solutions like making the board of directors of publicly traded companies elected by the workers.
10 years is too short of a time span to be statistically significant. You're not thinking long term enough. It's just as bad of an argument as saying, I walked outside today and it was cooler than it was yesterday by 1 degree, in a month it'll be cooler by 30 degrees.
It's climate change, not global warming. You're obviously not a relevant scientist because a global average increase in temperature allows for a local increase in some areas at some times. I've seen that argument come up enough times to know why it's wrong even without being an expert.
There are plenty of experts that would agree with me :p
Also, it's more of a value/morality judgment, which is more acceptable to make on your own.
That's an example of the "culture shift" that will need to happen for public transit to become viable. You buy ten bags of groceries and shop once every two weeks. That's the norm in the US. If you shopped every day or every other day and bought less at a time then public transportation becomes more acceptable. You'll say you don't have time, but again that's just another cultural value.
That still doesn't explain why we need an entire class of people who are wealthier than the engineers, scientists, and workers they are supposed to be empowering to produce. I can almost accept that argument if not for the fact that it still doesn't justify those people, the bankers and Wall Street traders, being able to live better than the people who actually have the ideas they support in the first place. Perhaps there is a legitimate place for them, but I think the role they currently play has grown to the point of absurdity.
That is a strength of the scientific method, not a failure. Our understanding of the natural world is always improving and ideas change over time. Climate change isn't a new idea, it's time tested. There is more debate about what gravity is and how it works than there is about if climate change is happening and humans are to blame.
My dyslexia is strong tonight, should say "hours"
Part of being "robust" would be 1) increasing options, so you could take bus or train or light rail 2) increasing availability, which means more stations, more bus stops, etc and 3) increasing reliability which means longer running ours and more frequent arrival times
100 hours? Please. It takes a lifetime to get the kind of knowledge required to be an expert in any field. I am not an expert, you are not an expert. If you're trying to prove otherwise you'll have to do better than a few dozen hours of "research". Your opinion on this matter is, pardon my saying so, worthless. Mine is too for that matter.
Which is why I have to look to the people who's opinion is not worthless: scientists with relevant knowledge and experience. Collectively they do not constitute a single source. Individually maybe, but that's why I look for consensus. It's there.