I'm not just railing senselessly again the free market. I accept that like Democracy, a Regulated Free Market is the worst solution ever.
Except for all the others (we've tried).
Time was when most people worried about paying "a fair wage for a fair days work". And others worried about and charging a fair amount for the work done / product provided.
The transaction was one of meeting one's obligations to the other.
Not everyone, but the average person.
The fact is that Communism is a wonderful idea and a commendable ideal. The problem with Communism is that enough people are greedy, are often more than happy to live off the work of others, and are willing to lie, cheat, steal and even kill to do it, to ruin it for everyone else. Making a "share-and-share-alike" economy impossible among large groups of humans.
The free market is a horrible and deeply cynical idea that depends on the worst human impulses to function. The good part of the free market idea is that even though it depends on morally reprehensible impulses, it works better than anything else devised by humans thus far.
That is why the free market is a myth
It's not a myth; it's an ideal. Some markets are closer to it than others. None will probably ever meet it perfectly.
I speak of the mythical "free market", where all decisions are rational, all transactions are fair, and everyone is informed of the truth. Where no-one deliberately spreads disinformation to cloud the issue with bogus facts like "Smoking is Good for you", and "We do not use Slave Labor". Then hide behind the ideal of "Free Speech" when caught in their lies.
The free-market will be a myth as long as people act and speak as if the ideal does or even can exist in real life. Especially those that speak of a "free and unfettered" market.
The free market is a description of natural forces, and how those forces can be tapped
"Natural Forces". You make it sound like you are describing weather patterns.
Please speak plainly, it's a description of how human greed can be harnessed, rather than relying on our "better natures".
It's a sad statement about humanity that there are always those willing to take undeserved advantage, or steal from others.
The concept of the free market been corrupted by those like Ayn Rand (the philosopher and Science Fiction writer) and has been twisted into the belief that good is evil and evil is good. That the quest for ever more wealth is an absolute good, always, no matter who pays the price. And that charity is an evil because the poor are lazy and evil and deserving of no better than their lot in life. And probably should be punished.
This is how Republicans can justify to themselves their positions on suppressing the vote of those poorer than themselves.
That's why Romney's characterization of the 47% got applause, and still get's re-affirmed by Republicans brave enough to say what they mean.
to provide the best possible outcomes for vendors and consumers.
I'm not sure that vendors would consider a well informed consumer and a competitive market as even a desirable outcome, let alone "the best possible outcome".
For several years, pricewatch allowed consumers to compare comparable products, including computer parts. This was a great boon to the home-brewer and small computer resellers. The problem was that it forced the participating vendors to competitively offer their products at a lower and lower profit.
Eventually, Pricewatch was made aware of the fact that their customers were the vendors, and not their users, and began to remove the users ability to search for and compare the prices and features of specific products. The last time I checked, the products advertised on PriceWatch were priced the same as (or higher than) pro
That sounds like a great idea, but the lack of DVD players that don't support the various copy protection, regional restrictions, and fast-forward-blocking flags on DVDs isn't exactly encouraging. It's almost as if there is a law requiring that all DVD players support those features. And that's just to support the entertainment industry alone, much less the entire collective manufacturing industry.
Yes, it's called the DCMA, and specifically outlaws any device that can circumvent copy protection.
That's true. On the other hand, it's virtually impossible to enforce on any practical technical level.
I dunno. Remember DivX? It was a supposed superior replacement for DVDs that required the player to call (on the phone) in to a central repository to verify the owner had the right to watch the movie.
Circuit City was selling DivX players considerably below the cost of DVD players, and rented movies that didn't need to be returned (because after the rental period, you lost the right to play it).
I was amazed that it failed, even though most of the 'features' of the player were actually anti-user. Luckily the geek community rose up and educated most everybody else as to what was really going on (a power grab by the movie, music, and video industries to remove user-rights).
Many printers and copiers have, for years, had built-in hardware that will refuse to copy / print money. All they need to do is to require the printer access the Internet before it will print. Then it just sends the specs to a website for verification and waits for the yes or no order. (Also a good way to fish for cutting-edge technology before it's on the market. Which may be our saving grace. Or maybe they just won't install it on high-end industrial printers.)
Looked to me like they were mostly one breed. But that may just be the result of shaving and roasting them. One (without a head) looked kinda like a large chicken or turkey.
The free market requires that consumers must here about this, because the free market relies on an informed consumer.
That is why the free market is a myth, because those who sell stuff find it easier, cheaper, and more profitable to provide misinformation and sex appeal, rather than to educate the market. Otherwise all advertisements would be statistics, facts, and figures. Not sexy men and women, etc.
The free market is designed to...
Sorry again, but the free market is NOT designed. It just happens. That's why they constantly refer the the "Invisible Hand of the Market". I think they see it as God's hand. When instead it's just people trying to get as much money as possible, from investments of as little money as possible. It used to be called "Greed", now it's called "What the Market will Bear".
drive the prices and profits down; that is the entire point of a free market
No, that is the THEORY behind "Letting the Market Decide". But as you pointed out, for the market to work, all the potential customers must be educated, and there is no incentive (money) to do that. It's more profitable for the consumers to think with their crotches or other emotions, than to fill their heads with facts and let them decide for themselves.
multiple vendors compete for the patronage of consumers in a fair manner, by offering the best products for the most attractive price.
Competition is expensive for the vendors. Competitors in a truly free market (well, not just a free market) would rather eliminate the competition than compete. That allows them to set prices at nearly any profit margin.
If you're not getting that, then you're not in a free market.
We agree again.
If what I say was not true, the article would be a press-release by a vendor, or an advertisement. If what I say was not true, cat-food companies would have announced that there were life-threatening contaminants in their food a few years ago, rather than it having to be a leak. If what I say was not true, there would be no need for the FDA to inspect food for salmonella, feces, and other contaminants.
At one time Einsteins theories weren't testable either and were just neat thought experiments.
There's a difference between "aren't testable using current technology" and "can never be testable with any possible future technology".
Me thinks that's why he used the phrase "At one time", which implies the following statement is no longer true. Which, by definition means that something, like technology, has changed. And there is an assumption, even in the general public, that physics (not Physics) can't change.
No, of course I can't read. What an intelligent and perceptive question on your part.
Your personal insult has definitely raised my opinion of you, and, I'm sure, suitably raised your credibility in the eyes of all slashdotters.
I was criticizing their inept parts procurement
You mean their adaption to a temporary environment of scarcity? How is that inept? Or do you mean their purchasing from places that provided the lowest prices? Again, that is not inept.
...not the mere fact that they build stuff.
Well your focus on their manufacturing their own pods belied that. You said:
as long as you don't care whether your data is still there when you need to restore it.
and
Instead they're building their own "pods".
and
How much redundancy do they offer?
and
How glitchy are these home-brew NAS devices?
Certainly sounds like you're criticizing the fact that they manufacture their own stuff.
As I said, neither adapting, nor finding the lowest cost parts is a "screw-up".
But, your reaction has caused me to want to go back and pick-apart your original post, because there were more flaws than that in it. So, ignoring your spelling errors....
>
Unlimited storage for $5/mo? I have to get on this shit.
That's fine, as long as you don't care whether your data is still there when you need to restore it.
You have nothing but your speculation to support the idea that Backblaze is any less reliable than any other cloud service, otherwise you would have provided it.
These guys are cheap because they're bucking the trend toward cloud storage for big data. Instead they're building their own "pods".
*rolls eyes* Hello! "These guys" are cloud storage providers *sarcastic personal insult not added*. Or do you believe that cloud storage just magically appears without anyone providing resources for it? Maybe you think that the "cloud" in "cloud storage" is literal, and believe the data is stored in the sky? If that is the case, let me educate you: ALL STORAGE IS LOCAL somewhere.
Anybody who's doing manufacturing on that kind of scale needs to be a lot better at supply chain manageent.
And when your suppliers suddenly will only supply you with product overpriced by between 363% to 465%, you turn to new ones.
The reason I know they were overpriced? Because I know that equivalent external drives were available for $165 (verses $600 for internal drives), because I read the original story.
Many retailers are notorious for providing loss-leader hardware for less than wholesale. Best Buy, for instance, forced me out of business by providing computers for retail sale at prices lower than my hardware costs, let alone any time I spent researching and building them. And to this day people make money buying hardware on sale at Best Buy and reselling it on eBay, much to Best Buy's displeasure.
If they screw up something so central to their business model, what else might they screw up?
A question no more relevant to Backblaze than any other storage provider.
How glitchy are these home-brew NAS devices?
A: Since they are a business, these "pods" are by definition, NOT "home-brew". B: Why would they be any less stable than any other assembled systems? Hence my reference to Google, who does basically the same thing.
I used to work at a Radio Shack, and we experienced a problem with our display products (TVs, VCRs and answering machines mostly) up near the door walking out of the store nearly every day.
I was originally going to hook up an alarm panel we sold, and alarm the products, but quickly saw that would be a major project, would be REALLY ugly, and would still leave a considerable amount of display items unalarmed. So I got a bright Idea to run a single alarm wire from the ceiling down to the expensive display items on display tables. I just took a length of wire, stuck one end under a ceiling tile, then just poked the other end into the display item. The tactic worked so well that I also used it on the smaller items displayed on the walls too. I cut smaller pieces of alarm wire, and stuck one end into one item, and the other end into the item beside it, so it looked like a single wire was running through all the display items.
The thefts came to a dead halt.
What was hilarious to me was that these lengths of wire were just sitting in vent holes, and attached to nothing. They didn't even have knots in their ends to prevent them from being pulled out! You could just pick up the wire, and it would just come right out! So there was no REAL security AT ALL, not even the items being tied together by the wire! It just LOOKED like they were alarmed.
A couple of months later, the District Manager came into the store, saw all the ugly wires, and immediately ordered that they all be removed. I said, "Sure. No problem. But before I do that, I'd like to show you the figures on thefts before and after the wires were put in. He decided that the wires should stay put.
I live in a medium sized town in Indiana, and the problem has become bad enough that the police are telling people NOT to pick-up dumped trash for fear it's a portable Meth lab.
[D]ad and I used to see the same damn people dumping bags of trash on our road every week... later, the people who dumped the trash awakened to find every last fucking piece of it we had collected over the months spread across their own front lawn.
LOL! Classic!
And most definitely true. The best way to get some practice stopped is to spread the pain around.
People who were originally content to let problems remain unsolved, become amazingly anxious to see solutions put in place when THEY find the problem (literally in this case) on their front door step!
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not just railing senselessly again the free market. I accept that like Democracy, a Regulated Free Market is the worst solution ever.
Except for all the others (we've tried).
Time was when most people worried about paying "a fair wage for a fair days work".
And others worried about and charging a fair amount for the work done / product provided.
The transaction was one of meeting one's obligations to the other.
Not everyone, but the average person.
The fact is that Communism is a wonderful idea and a commendable ideal.
The problem with Communism is that enough people are greedy, are often more than happy to live off the work of others, and are willing to lie, cheat, steal and even kill to do it, to ruin it for everyone else. Making a "share-and-share-alike" economy impossible among large groups of humans.
The free market is a horrible and deeply cynical idea that depends on the worst human impulses to function.
The good part of the free market idea is that even though it depends on morally reprehensible impulses, it works better than anything else devised by humans thus far.
That is why the free market is a myth
It's not a myth; it's an ideal. Some markets are closer to it than others. None will probably ever meet it perfectly.
I speak of the mythical "free market", where all decisions are rational, all transactions are fair, and everyone is informed of the truth. Where no-one deliberately spreads disinformation to cloud the issue with bogus facts like "Smoking is Good for you", and "We do not use Slave Labor". Then hide behind the ideal of "Free Speech" when caught in their lies.
The free-market will be a myth as long as people act and speak as if the ideal does or even can exist in real life. Especially those that speak of a "free and unfettered" market.
The free market is a description of natural forces, and how those forces can be tapped
"Natural Forces". You make it sound like you are describing weather patterns.
Please speak plainly, it's a description of how human greed can be harnessed, rather than relying on our "better natures".
It's a sad statement about humanity that there are always those willing to take undeserved advantage, or steal from others.
The concept of the free market been corrupted by those like Ayn Rand (the philosopher and Science Fiction writer) and has been twisted into the belief that good is evil and evil is good. That the quest for ever more wealth is an absolute good, always, no matter who pays the price. And that charity is an evil because the poor are lazy and evil and deserving of no better than their lot in life. And probably should be punished.
This is how Republicans can justify to themselves their positions on suppressing the vote of those poorer than themselves.
That's why Romney's characterization of the 47% got applause, and still get's re-affirmed by Republicans brave enough to say what they mean.
to provide the best possible outcomes for vendors and consumers.
I'm not sure that vendors would consider a well informed consumer and a competitive market as even a desirable outcome, let alone "the best possible outcome".
For instance, do you remember http://pricewatch.com/ ?
For several years, pricewatch allowed consumers to compare comparable products, including computer parts. This was a great boon to the home-brewer and small computer resellers. The problem was that it forced the participating vendors to competitively offer their products at a lower and lower profit.
Eventually, Pricewatch was made aware of the fact that their customers were the vendors, and not their users, and began to remove the users ability to search for and compare the prices and features of specific products. The last time I checked, the products advertised on PriceWatch were priced the same as (or higher than) pro
That sounds like a great idea, but the lack of DVD players that don't support the various copy protection, regional restrictions, and fast-forward-blocking flags on DVDs isn't exactly encouraging. It's almost as if there is a law requiring that all DVD players support those features. And that's just to support the entertainment industry alone, much less the entire collective manufacturing industry.
Yes, it's called the DCMA, and specifically outlaws any device that can circumvent copy protection.
Wait, they didn't describe the actual algorithm in the patent?
That would tie them down to one algorithm, and remove their ability to change it without losing the patent protection.
That's true. On the other hand, it's virtually impossible to enforce on any practical technical level.
I dunno. Remember DivX? It was a supposed superior replacement for DVDs that required the player to call (on the phone) in to a central repository to verify the owner had the right to watch the movie.
Circuit City was selling DivX players considerably below the cost of DVD players, and rented movies that didn't need to be returned (because after the rental period, you lost the right to play it).
I was amazed that it failed, even though most of the 'features' of the player were actually anti-user. Luckily the geek community rose up and educated most everybody else as to what was really going on (a power grab by the movie, music, and video industries to remove user-rights).
Many printers and copiers have, for years, had built-in hardware that will refuse to copy / print money. All they need to do is to require the printer access the Internet before it will print. Then it just sends the specs to a website for verification and waits for the yes or no order. (Also a good way to fish for cutting-edge technology before it's on the market. Which may be our saving grace. Or maybe they just won't install it on high-end industrial printers.)
Looked to me like they were mostly one breed. But that may just be the result of shaving and roasting them. One (without a head) looked kinda like a large chicken or turkey.
You've obviously never DRIVEN past a farm. There are whole seasons that most of them reek of cowshit.
Luck?
Your FoxNews link in your sig is broken.
The free market requires that consumers must here about this, because the free market relies on an informed consumer.
That is why the free market is a myth, because those who sell stuff find it easier, cheaper, and more profitable to provide misinformation and sex appeal, rather than to educate the market. Otherwise all advertisements would be statistics, facts, and figures. Not sexy men and women, etc.
The free market is designed to...
Sorry again, but the free market is NOT designed. It just happens. That's why they constantly refer the the "Invisible Hand of the Market". I think they see it as God's hand. When instead it's just people trying to get as much money as possible, from investments of as little money as possible.
It used to be called "Greed", now it's called "What the Market will Bear".
drive the prices and profits down; that is the entire point of a free market
No, that is the THEORY behind "Letting the Market Decide".
But as you pointed out, for the market to work, all the potential customers must be educated, and there is no incentive (money) to do that.
It's more profitable for the consumers to think with their crotches or other emotions, than to fill their heads with facts and let them decide for themselves.
multiple vendors compete for the patronage of consumers in a fair manner, by offering the best products for the most attractive price.
Competition is expensive for the vendors. Competitors in a truly free market (well, not just a free market) would rather eliminate the competition than compete. That allows them to set prices at nearly any profit margin.
If you're not getting that, then you're not in a free market.
We agree again.
If what I say was not true, the article would be a press-release by a vendor, or an advertisement.
If what I say was not true, cat-food companies would have announced that there were life-threatening contaminants in their food a few years ago, rather than it having to be a leak.
If what I say was not true, there would be no need for the FDA to inspect food for salmonella, feces, and other contaminants.
What do you think is a large proportion of their diet in the wild?
... elimination of stupid people in the Middle East.
Why stop there? Idiots infest every country.
If you are afraid that your ideas can't stand on their own without being crushed by different ideas, there is always a "crying need" for censorship.
Those who believe, "The Truth will Out", and are interested in the truth, don't need censorship.
lol
That's good advice, you should take it.
You mean "scrutinize the inscrutable".
Inscrutable has nothing to do with screwing, it means "unable to examine" / "unknowable", or "difficult to understand", or "unable to be seen".
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/inscrutable
Scrutinize, on the other hand means to investigate carefully, or to examine in detail.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/scrutinize
At one time Einsteins theories weren't testable either and were just neat thought experiments.
There's a difference between "aren't testable using current technology" and "can never be testable with any possible future technology".
Me thinks that's why he used the phrase "At one time", which implies the following statement is no longer true. Which, by definition means that something, like technology, has changed. And there is an assumption, even in the general public, that physics (not Physics) can't change.
something something terrorists
Ahhh! Declare Martial Law! Shut down the Internet! Confiscate all cameras!
"This bill is not in the public interest, so we're not allowing the public to see it."
You nailed it.
They also said
[Releasing] it would prejudice [the] decision making processes already in train
Meaning that there would be such a public outcry that policy makers would withdraw it.
Woops! I accidentally put a bunch of [quote]'s where I ment to put [b]'s.
Oh well.
Can you read?
No, of course I can't read. What an intelligent and perceptive question on your part.
Your personal insult has definitely raised my opinion of you, and, I'm sure, suitably raised your credibility in the eyes of all slashdotters.
I was criticizing their inept parts procurement
You mean their adaption to a temporary environment of scarcity? How is that inept?
Or do you mean their purchasing from places that provided the lowest prices? Again, that is not inept.
...not the mere fact that they build stuff.
Well your focus on their manufacturing their own pods belied that.
You said:
as long as you don't care whether your data is still there when you need to restore it.
and
Instead they're building their own "pods".
and
How much redundancy do they offer?
and
How glitchy are these home-brew NAS devices?
Certainly sounds like you're criticizing the fact that they manufacture their own stuff.
As I said, neither adapting, nor finding the lowest cost parts is a "screw-up".
But, your reaction has caused me to want to go back and pick-apart your original post, because there were more flaws than that in it. So, ignoring your spelling errors....
>
Unlimited storage for $5/mo? I have to get on this shit.
That's fine, as long as you don't care whether your data is still there when you need to restore it.
You have nothing but your speculation to support the idea that Backblaze is any less reliable than any other cloud service, otherwise you would have provided it.
These guys are cheap because they're bucking the trend toward cloud storage for big data. Instead they're building their own "pods".
*rolls eyes* Hello! "These guys" are cloud storage providers *sarcastic personal insult not added*. Or do you believe that cloud storage just magically appears without anyone providing resources for it? Maybe you think that the "cloud" in "cloud storage" is literal, and believe the data is stored in the sky? If that is the case, let me educate you: ALL STORAGE IS LOCAL somewhere.
Anybody who's doing manufacturing on that kind of scale needs to be a lot better at supply chain manageent.
And when your suppliers suddenly will only supply you with product overpriced by between 363% to 465%, you turn to new ones.
The reason I know they were overpriced? Because I know that equivalent external drives were available for $165 (verses $600 for internal drives), because I read the original story.
Many retailers are notorious for providing loss-leader hardware for less than wholesale. Best Buy, for instance, forced me out of business by providing computers for retail sale at prices lower than my hardware costs, let alone any time I spent researching and building them. And to this day people make money buying hardware on sale at Best Buy and reselling it on eBay, much to Best Buy's displeasure.
If they screw up something so central to their business model, what else might they screw up?
Changing wholesale market conditions != Screwing up.
How much redundancy do they offer?
A question no more relevant to Backblaze than any other storage provider.
How glitchy are these home-brew NAS devices?
A: Since they are a business, these "pods" are by definition, NOT "home-brew".
B: Why would they be any less stable than any other assembled systems? Hence my reference to Google, who does basically the same thing.
You are just
_assuming_
that they will have problems, becau
A puddle of water there would be way more valuable.
That puddle would freeze, then evaporate. (Yes, I know it's not really evaporation, it's just out-gassing, but it's close.)
I used to work at a Radio Shack, and we experienced a problem with our display products (TVs, VCRs and answering machines mostly) up near the door walking out of the store nearly every day.
I was originally going to hook up an alarm panel we sold, and alarm the products, but quickly saw that would be a major project, would be REALLY ugly, and would still leave a considerable amount of display items unalarmed. So I got a bright Idea to run a single alarm wire from the ceiling down to the expensive display items on display tables. I just took a length of wire, stuck one end under a ceiling tile, then just poked the other end into the display item. The tactic worked so well that I also used it on the smaller items displayed on the walls too. I cut smaller pieces of alarm wire, and stuck one end into one item, and the other end into the item beside it, so it looked like a single wire was running through all the display items.
The thefts came to a dead halt.
What was hilarious to me was that these lengths of wire were just sitting in vent holes, and attached to nothing. They didn't even have knots in their ends to prevent them from being pulled out! You could just pick up the wire, and it would just come right out! So there was no REAL security AT ALL, not even the items being tied together by the wire! It just LOOKED like they were alarmed.
A couple of months later, the District Manager came into the store, saw all the ugly wires, and immediately ordered that they all be removed. I said, "Sure. No problem. But before I do that, I'd like to show you the figures on thefts before and after the wires were put in. He decided that the wires should stay put.
Sweet.
I live in a medium sized town in Indiana, and the problem has become bad enough that the police are telling people NOT to pick-up dumped trash for fear it's a portable Meth lab.
[D]ad and I used to see the same damn people dumping bags of trash on our road every week... later, the people who dumped the trash awakened to find every last fucking piece of it we had collected over the months spread across their own front lawn.
LOL! Classic!
And most definitely true. The best way to get some practice stopped is to spread the pain around.
People who were originally content to let problems remain unsolved, become amazingly anxious to see solutions put in place when THEY find the problem (literally in this case) on their front door step!