How exactly do they encourage the science and useful arts? By guaranteeing their inventory the ability to benefit from his/her invention.
It grants a temporary monopoly to the inventor for the express purpose to encourage inventors to invent stuff to make money. Protecting the inventor's rights to the invention is equivalent to advancing science and the useful arts in this case, because that is how it is approached.
If a company could not create something and be assured that they would not be copied by the first person that came along, they would not invest in the R&D required to produce it, so then useful arts and advanced sciences have just lost out.
Patents exist to encourage people to try to invent things for their own benefit, which will indirectly benefit the rest of society.
If you spent 5 years developing something, then the patent is protecting your right to benefit from that investment and effort. The by-product of the patent, it's purpose, is to encourage people to invent and innovate.
The probability of this being altruistic is practically 0. Even individual charity offerings is typically connected to a personal feeling of benefit (donating makes me feel good).
A business has even more pressing profit necessity, and Google gets it's ad revenue from the internet surfers. If more people have the internet, then they get more ad revenue, their profits go up.
Really, it's econ 101... but I do have a MA in Econ.
The Wii was their response to dropping market share and being third in a market they dominated prior to Sony.
So, they're not feeling as much pressure anymore, but the pressure from Sony and Microsoft pushed them to take a risk and produce the Wii, much to everyone's satisfaction.
The sales of anything pushes revenue higher. I could sell you a $1000 laptop and my revenue goes up exactly $1000 dollars.
The important metric is profits = revenues - costs. Selling a Xbox360 pushes revenues up, their costs are just higher than their revenue on them is, currently.
I'm glad Microsoft is sticking it even with those losses. It puts pressure on Sony and Nintendo to fight harder for their market shares, and gives them incentive to encourage good game production values. Who cares if they fail? It just helps the consumer in this case.
You should be able to get a new copy so long as you can prove you paid for it in the first place. So I send in the scratched CD + case, and receive a new one. Or, at the very least, I should be able to have a backup copy *without paying extra* for it.
If they're going to make it wrong to backup the data you've paid to access, then they should be responsible for replacing access to it. Seeing as how digital downloads are typically a "lifetime" purchase, and you can access it anywhere a set number of times (and able to deactivate previous sources, such as through iTunes), and how a broken CD could be sent/returned in Netflix-style, I really see how this isn't feasible.
Proving that you have a malfunctioning CD, or digital access, isn't all that difficult -- a receipt, the broken CD, your purchasing history at whatever music site etc.
Ultimately, if they want to manage our digital rights, then they need to provide ALL the functions we would otherwise do ourselves, not just the ones that benefit their bottom line.
I like Steam because it does just that. You have access to your games, you can't copy them, but you can't lose them either.
The point of the levy is not to recover losses on piracy, piracy is still illegal and punishable.
The levy simply makes backing up your music legal, but you're still paying for it.
The point of the levy is to recover losses on 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. purchases.
You know, you bought the CD but you want to play it on your iPod -- that's another $1.29 per song.
Or you feel like making a backup copy -- that's a whole CD at 15$/CD.
Or how about a mix tape? That's $1.29 per song.
Piracy is still illegal in Canada, so the levies are not "covering" that, but rather covering the loss of multiple sales of a single item. Any other type of tax would just be extra money in the pockets of the big labels, and they would still ram DRM down our throats and wave litigation around because copying music would still be illegal.
In otherwords, it's complete fucking bullshit and you people up north are just getting ass-fucked by greedy shitheads. I would also read this as being that buying a CD is not a license to access the intellectual property, but just a piece of plastic for your use. When a good breaks, it's gone -- but a license to access that information doesn't just break. What are the record companies selling you? A piece of plastic along with the rights to access the information encoded on that plastic? Just a piece of plastic? Or just the rights?
If they're selling you the rights to access that music, then you have the rights to access that music. You've paid to enjoy that stuff in any way you wish. If they sold you plastic, then the data online is free, since you just bought the plastic for 15$ rather than downloading it for the cost of the bandwidth.
Or, if it is a combination of the two, you have still bought the rights/license to access the music.
I thought that was how copyright worked. You compensate someone for use of their copyright, and you can use it. If that's not the case, what the fuck did I pay for, can I sue, and why the hell did Canada let that levy pass?
And to think they encouraged our descent by increasing the reach of democracy!
Hey, lets give the vote on the Senate to the masses so they think the senate cares about them!
Senator A: Alright, since we have to woo so many voters (half a state), we need money.
Senator B: And lets make each other look good while we're at it. Hey Jack, you claim the cash for your spending came out of my state and I'll claim that mine came out of yours and we both get re-elected.
Representative B: Hey, that's not right, that's from my district!
Senator A: Don't worry, Senator B has you covered with this line item.
Representative B: Ah, no problems then!
There was a reason for why the House of Representatives represented the people, and the Senate represented the states governments. It helped balance power among the two, and provide a check on each other since their goals were not necessarily the same. The Senate would have more reason to genuinely look out for the good of a whole state as opposed to areas where they need votes, since the state legislature is chosen on a very small basis comparatively and want the best outcome for their state.
Now that the federal government controls all of the power (through the people of course...) and the states have little to no real impact (they don't chose Senators, they rely on the feds for tax kickbacks, etc) the President's power is extreme. The current administration is just another expansion of federal power that has been on-going since FDR. The federal government should have to rely on states to provide funding, not the opposite.
It will take years before things change, and I can only imagine it will be due to a serious economic downturn in the near future. But until then, the federal government has all of the powers necessary to keep itself in power, even while providing the illusion of choice.
You can choose between jackass A (Democrat) or jackass B (Republican), and occasionally we'll let a real choice make a showing in certain states to make them feel better about voting for a possible winner. All the while, Super Jackass #x (currently 43, unlikely to improve with 44) puts partisan lackeys into positions of power to make broad statements and further make us rely upon the corrupt powers. If Jefferson wasn't already (unlikely), he's rolling in his grave - if not flipping.
At the very least, they managed to put a competent Federal Reserve chairman in...but I imagine that's due to the need to have someone to fight back against government-mandated inflation (aka, deficit spending).
An auction price will typically be higher than the average demanded (strictly competitive) price because the winner values it higher than society does -- therefore, the winner is always a loser in an auction as he would've gotten the same good at a lower price in a market. The only case in which an auction is a true price is for a unique or extremely limited item, because that items social benefit is the highest value placed upon it - an item that can be perfectly distributed for maximum social benefit. Of course, all of the social benefit goes to the seller because the buyer has paid all (or most of) his benefit to the seller for the item.
These items seem to be directly sold on E-Bay (Buy It Now!) as opposed to auctions. Which would mean that these prices are the price of the good + profit for seller. The retail stores charge price of good + price of service + profit, so naturally, the online prices will be lower.
Yeah, just a word processor with interoperability with SQL, Excel, Access,.NET programs...
You realize you can generate dynamic documents with Word that interact with databases and interfaces pretty easily, correct?
You know, like writing a base invoice in Word, linking it to Access or SQL server to pull down charges, and using the Excel engine to generate a graph of productivity provided?
Even if OO does the same stuff, it takes significant time to learn a new library, or even more likely, a whole different language.
But since you just want a word processor... WordPad is a free word processor. And it's just that, a word processor.
They have patented targeted pop-ups. So, being the evil corporation they are, won't they sue all advertisers that use pop-up advertisements out of business?
If we're lucky, Microsoft will go all Microsoft on the online ad-agencies and knock them out of the competition, or buy them up. In which case, Microsoft will produce buggy ad-software that doesn't correctly display ads, they'll lose their clientelle, and problem solved = no more ads for the pop-up blocker to block!
On the flip side...this is one of those cases where you would almost expect them to get it right. But again, it is Microsoft.
The good bands play cheap shows at cheap venues that you can get tickets through places other than Ticketmaster.
I listen to Pandora and routinely buy the CDs I hear for 4-6$ a pop brand new. Then when these bands come around to my area, they're playing small bar venues for 5-15$, and they get a cut of the bar tab they brought in, and they sell CDs there for 5$, a good 75% of which goes back to them (since they've paid for most of their recording costs).
Take the Meat Puppets for example -- one of the pricier bands at 8$ for their new CD and 15$ for show tickets -- They release good stuff, play awesome shows, and have very reasonable prices.
Or the Burden Brothers -- a fairly popular band in DFW -- who play badass shows at a price of 15-20$, and sell their CDs at their shows for 10$ and hang out and chat/sign stuff afterwards.
Just avoid the big bands, which there are very few decent ones anyhow, and the costs aren't so high.
While Tower Records and the large labels are losing CD sales, smaller labels are making a killing selling CDs on the cheap end of the spectrum between 5-10$. Support free competition, buy small label CDs and try out some new music. Avoid the RIAA, you don't need their crappy artists anyhow.
Google's goal is to get EVERYONE online, because they make revenue on search ads. If there are more people online, they get to charge more for ads. It must appear to them that providing internet access will cost less than the improved ad-income they will earn.
AT&T, on the other hand, sells internet access -- not advertising space. All their income comes from the cost to join an infrastructure. They want to maintain barriers to entry that keep the industry a monopoly/oligopoly rather than a more open market.
Ultimately -- both firms are looking out for their VIPs, the shareholders.
Sorry, but that's included in the administrative fee on your water bill (Expected losses due to singing in the shower).
And don't forget that "Singing in the Rain" is copyrighted. So if you like singing in the rain, prepare to hire a lawyer.
Also, check your electric bill next time. There is a sub-tax included to cover the mental humming of music caused by actually listening to music through any electrical device.
The final kicker -- part of that gasoline bill goes to pay for listeners who listen to CDs/tapes/iPod in their car rather than to the terrestrial or satellite radio that pays for the music.
Hopefully no one from the RIAA reads/. cause otherwise those might someday be true.
I don't know about you, but it takes me about 45 minutes to do a copy from one DVD, compression, and burn onto a new 4.7gb DVD.
I have about a 1% fail rate -- I've made two DVD coasters.
I have backups of all of my DVDs now on DVD without the commercials, and playable on any of my DVD players (my new 5 disc changer, and my PS2 included.)
I have the original DVDs for when I want 100% of the quality when I'll be sitting infront of the TV with no interruptions -- but I can't remember the last time that happened.
I dunno, I know people who use my burning method (DVDFab Platinum - 50$) to burn their Netflix movies the day they come in and send them out the next morning. They get 20 movies a month or so through Netflix this way and get copies of them all and watch them at their leisure.
I'm pretty sure that it's easier to have a DVD mailed to you than downloading it. And TV Outputs to older TVs can be difficult to set up, while outputs to new TVs require calibration and such to set up. Why not just pop it into the DVD player already hooked up correctly?
I dunno, some people really like certain movies. Every so often you remember a movie you liked, feel like vegging out and nothing is on TV, so you watch it again. That's how you get those people who can quote movies at will.
This is Slashdot, here I'm small fry in terms of technical computing knowledge. I don't even use Linux, what's so hard about burning a DVD? It's faster than BitTorrent (1 hour vs 8+), you don't have to sit there. You pop a DVD in one drive, a DVD-R in another, and let it go.
In economics, this is product differentiation where the ultimate goal is to be "different" enough to be considered a separate market, and therefore have market power.
Apple does the same exact thing with the Mac. It's not a PC, it's a Mac -- product differentiation into a different market. Once you're with Mac, you don't have choices as to hardware, you just have Apple. It's ultimately the same goal. The iPod is similar in that it ties into iTunes. And OSX is similar in that it's tied directly to their hardware and software offerings. You could say Apple has a monopoly in the "Mac" market just like Microsoft has a monopoly on the "360" market or Sony has a monopoly on the "PS3" market, and like the Mac/PC competition there is some overlap -- but not everything for the PC is available for Mac, and not everything for the Mac is available on PC. To ultimately have "everything", you have to get both.
The goal is to make consumers think that rather than competing products, that they are different products and that you may need both of them to get everything you want. Do you have two different branded razors? Two different branded gallons of milk in the fridge? Those are products competing directly with each other. The consoles would be closer to juice vs milk -- you might want one or the other in your fridge, so they compete in that regard, but to get the calcium you go with milk, for the antioxidants you go with the juice so you may still want to get both.
The PS3 and the XBox360 are the two ice cream stands that are 10 feet apart on a beach a mile long and competing for a large portion of the customers, but each one has slightly different offerings (in the ice cream stand example -- Hotelling model for spacial competition -- the difference is distance to walk).
Excel doesn't simply contain data. There are whole applications built around and through Excel.
Excel can call.NET code, access SQL databases, and transfer/collect information over the web with the proper coding and tools.
We have a fairly strong infrastructure of MATLAB, Excel, SQL, and Access (all working together) for handling incoming data, processing it, creating easy to read and edit reports with pretty charts for the CEO types, and finally storing it and analyzing it for future access.
We typically receive the data in Excel and do some basic transformations into Access (rarely do our clients understand Access) where we can do some of the simpler SQL stuff (not everyone here understands SQL) and push the main data into SQL. From here, Matlab can pull the data out in the formats it needs, run some calculations, and spit out pretty results to Excel that can be sent directly to our clients for review -- charts and all.
I can imagine dozens of ways to use Excel to compromise a system, but the important thing here is that idiots shouldn't open and run macros in Excel if they don't know what they do, or where they come from. Excel is the winning spreadsheet for us because we can do absolutely anything in it -- from simple optimization algorithms, to a piece in a larger application.
If some of you Microsoft haters actually understood some of the power within the Office group (interop is wonderful) then you might not hate it quite so much.
"While I generally support a freemarket, in cases like this where a right of way for cables or whatever are needed I prefer a local group own it. That group may be the city or county government, or it may be a coop, or even a nonprofit the locals own. Whoever owns it then allows anyone who wants to to provide any services it is capable of, broadband access, cable tv, phone service, or anything else that comes down the road."
I just said that an ideal situation would be where the government (county/municipal/whatever) owns and runs the infrastructure, and maintains it by taxing the service providers. In this way you could have extensive competition along the same infrastructure, without incurring the large number of fixed costs -- basically what that broadband utopia is, except owned/operated by the community itself rather than their government.
Lets look at an extreme example: Land freight.
There are no government-provided roads, so freight companies build their own turnpikes and charge for use of the road in addition to freight charges. Ultimately there will be one freight company per (short) route because two roads would cut too far into profits for either company to want to provide the service -- this is currently how our telcos work (AT&T builds lines, provides service, and runs maintenance -- no other company can afford to enter because there are not enough people willing to pay 100$ a month for basic service to cover the cost of, essentially, two infrastructures)
Government provides roads:
Many freight companies will provide the service at a cheaper cost, and part of their revenue goes to maintaining the roads through taxes. Competition keeps profits from approaching the monopoly level, and surpresses them to just above risk-free rate of return. This is how telcos should work, and how that broadband utopia you describe effectively works. In this case, the government would provide the copper lines for telephone and providers would provide their plans using the same copper lines, and pay maintenance fees to the government based on their market share.
I was pointing out a term that was used completely incorrectly and explaining the correct usage. I'm using strict economic terms, radio is not currently monopolized, it has high barriers to entry (arguably a cartel/oligopoly) and limited space within the industry. Telcos/cable/power are typically examples of natural monopoly -- but this is only the case when they actually own/build/manage the infrastructure, if the government manages it and allows anyone to provide over it, then these should be allowed to compete since no extreme fixed costs are incurred.
"That was my point as well when I replied to you."
I don't quite understand why you think I mis-stated the description of natural monopoly, as you simply provided examples of it with the telcos/cable companies. If you have problems with my underlying economic points, please explain as I'd certainly like to know where I'm being foggy at.
"Without megabucks you won't be able to buy a license, if you can get an open frequency."
While this is unfair and not supportive of truly free markets, it would not be protecting a monopoly if it were not for Clear Channel's complete domination of terrestrial radio.
And infact, I have been on the receiving end of the FCC. For a government agency, they respond very quickly to complaints. If only FEMA responded as quickly.
I work in insurance (actuary) and every state has rules specific to operating within that state, so rates have to be filed with each and every state each and every year. Losses have to be reported by state, and some states have different ways to categorize your losses.
As frustrating as it is for the companies, it ultimately provides the consumer more protection because people and conditions in Texas are not the same as people and conditions in New York, or in Washington.
They most likely do not want to have to follow rules on a state-by-state basis, but if they don't, then the rules will target the lowest common denominator.
The states are large enough to not be an extreme hassle (imagine doing counties), but are small enough to provide atleast some targetting of needs. Since credit rules are typically different by states anyhow (my basic understanding), then these rules should just be added to those.
Right, those are argued to be natural monopolies due to the infrastructure requirement for entry -- a competing phone company would have to run it's own wires which costs an extraordinate amount.
If there were 3 telco companies, and each had to run their own telephone wires, phone costs would be much higher than they are because you would be supporting 3 separate infrastructures, each one with 1/3rd of the customers -- assuming an equivalent distribution of customers.
In this case, it is more beneficial to have a regulated natural monopoly that operates with a base profit margin of ~10% as opposed to 3 working for a profit margin of >5%.
That is a natural monopoly/oligopoly in essense, because there would be loss of customers with the price hike (I know I wouldn't use a phone at 2x my current rate), and profits would likely go negative for one firm, causing them to exit the industry -- so it would have a severely limited number of entrants, with industry-crippling competition. But this is assuming other firms entered in the first place.
One thing to remember is that a natural monopoly is not a monopoly in which a firm can wield market power, it's a natural monopoly because there is no market power to wield. In a monopoly on market power, you are actively preventing entrants by driving down costs for short periods of time, or buying them outright. A natural monopoly charges the profit maximizing price, but it also happens to be the optimum position for social benefit (within that industry) as well (as opposed to the artificial monopoly situation).
The "right of way" for infrastructure use is enforcing the monopoly. In this case, the providers are not building the infrastructure, only using it -- therefore, it is no longer a natural monopoly situation and should be open to competition. They are not directly maintaining the infrastructure, but rather paying taxes on their income that does maintain that infrastructure. Since that's the case, no matter how many companies enter, the single shared infrastructure would be maintained and costs would be minimized with profit rates approaching the risk-free new money rate. The government is effectively providing an unfair monopoly in this situation, and is not looking out for consumer interests.
As for radio, TV, and such -- that is hardly a monopoly (outside of the Clear Channel case anyways) because you can have 20ish stations which provides plenty of competition. The problem with radio is that it has been internally conglomerated into Clear Channel and then the 1 station in each city that isn't owned by Clear Channel. Additionally, they have to compete with satellite and internet radio. The FCC in this case isn't enforcing a monopoly so much as protecting the rights of a broadcaster to the frequency they have paid for. This limits the market to imperfect competition, but this is still an improvement over a monopolistic situation.
My original point is simply that the iPod does not constitute a natural monopoly, and the original poster should look up economic terms before throwing them about.
The digital music player industry is anything BUT a natural monopoly. A natural monopoly does not "arise because that's what consumers are buying." All monopolies arise that way quite obviously. A natural monopoly occurs in an industry where the change in social benefit from entry is negative -- that is, industry-wide profits would become negative with more than 1 entrant into the industry and the industry would self-select itself back to 1 firm.
Learn your economic terminology before spouting off like an idiot. Digital music players are a consumer good that would benefit all if there were more available. The iPod has strong market share because it is easiest to use, but that HARDLY makes it a natural monopoly. It's more like a vertical monopoly (think Rockefeller's vertical oil holdings) where Apple controls the hardware, the software, and the distribution. Now they just need the content and the gov't can go anti-trust on'em.
Seriously, if you're going to use economic terms, atleast look them up first. Hell, even Wikipedia has a decent entry on it.
This is an artificial barrier to entry.
Before the internet, you had to get on the radio, which meant you needed a label behind you to say, "Hey, these guys are worth putting on the radio, give them a shot." etc.
Now, with the internet, smaller bands (such as The Velmas) can broadcast their music online much cheaper and target people through services like Pandora, or even host their own personal internet radio channels.
I could host strictly Dallas bands that are unsigned yet have recorded indie CDs and still have to pay SoundExchange. And it would cost me more to broadcast to the 30 people that listen to the station than the bands could pay me even if they WERE receiving their dues from SoundExchange.
This is strictly a tool for controlling the market. SoundExchange should not be allowed to collect royalties UNTIL a band has registered with them. Until then, the radio should be able to play it freely as it is publicity for the band. I've bought 5 CDs from 4 bands I heard on Pandora that I'd never ever hear on the air. (Velmas, Martinis, Ringside, Redd Kross).
I agree. Working in the insurance industry (actuary) I work with Worker's Comp which is regulated by the states. Each state says what exactly is covered, and how it is covered, and then private insurers provide the actual insurance based on those rules.
A similar arrangement for medical insurance for certain tiers:
Catastrophe health insurance (car wrecks, muggings, crazy shit) would cover injuries sustained in stuff like that, as specified by the government.
Preventative health insurance would cover office visits, MRI/CT/other scans for detecting and preventing serious problems.
Necessary-Life Reactive insurance could cover things that were not caught/prevented such as cancer, aids, drug costs etc.
Quality-Of-Life Reactive insurance would cover things that aren't directly life-threatening like arthritis....
The point is, rather than having a purely private healthcare, or a purely public, the government could specify required levels of care for healthcare like they do for worker's comp, and then companies could evaluate and provide those costs. You'd have your card that says I have these levels of care, and you would know exactly what is covered.
We already have this system for worker's comp! Why not just expand it for health insurance to make it CLEAR what is covered, and what is not - since the heaviest costs go toward figuring that out anyhow, this would create a level playing field and allow people to get the coverage they want and need. This would also allow employers to provide clearly marked levels of healthcare to make comparing benefits easier.
Slashdot Mirror
Or rather, in this case, Open Office.
Works is the most pointless software package imaginable...atleast, I hope Microsoft can't improve on the pointlessness of that package anyways.
It grants a temporary monopoly to the inventor for the express purpose to encourage inventors to invent stuff to make money. Protecting the inventor's rights to the invention is equivalent to advancing science and the useful arts in this case, because that is how it is approached.
If a company could not create something and be assured that they would not be copied by the first person that came along, they would not invest in the R&D required to produce it, so then useful arts and advanced sciences have just lost out.
Patents exist to encourage people to try to invent things for their own benefit, which will indirectly benefit the rest of society.
If you spent 5 years developing something, then the patent is protecting your right to benefit from that investment and effort. The by-product of the patent, it's purpose, is to encourage people to invent and innovate.
It's an incentive scheme, that's all.
The probability of this being altruistic is practically 0. Even individual charity offerings is typically connected to a personal feeling of benefit (donating makes me feel good).
A business has even more pressing profit necessity, and Google gets it's ad revenue from the internet surfers. If more people have the internet, then they get more ad revenue, their profits go up.
Really, it's econ 101... but I do have a MA in Econ.
So, they're not feeling as much pressure anymore, but the pressure from Sony and Microsoft pushed them to take a risk and produce the Wii, much to everyone's satisfaction.
The important metric is profits = revenues - costs. Selling a Xbox360 pushes revenues up, their costs are just higher than their revenue on them is, currently.
I'm glad Microsoft is sticking it even with those losses. It puts pressure on Sony and Nintendo to fight harder for their market shares, and gives them incentive to encourage good game production values. Who cares if they fail? It just helps the consumer in this case.
If they're going to make it wrong to backup the data you've paid to access, then they should be responsible for replacing access to it. Seeing as how digital downloads are typically a "lifetime" purchase, and you can access it anywhere a set number of times (and able to deactivate previous sources, such as through iTunes), and how a broken CD could be sent/returned in Netflix-style, I really see how this isn't feasible.
Proving that you have a malfunctioning CD, or digital access, isn't all that difficult -- a receipt, the broken CD, your purchasing history at whatever music site etc.
Ultimately, if they want to manage our digital rights, then they need to provide ALL the functions we would otherwise do ourselves, not just the ones that benefit their bottom line.
I like Steam because it does just that. You have access to your games, you can't copy them, but you can't lose them either.
The levy simply makes backing up your music legal, but you're still paying for it.
The point of the levy is to recover losses on 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. purchases.
You know, you bought the CD but you want to play it on your iPod -- that's another $1.29 per song.
Or you feel like making a backup copy -- that's a whole CD at 15$/CD.
Or how about a mix tape? That's $1.29 per song.
Piracy is still illegal in Canada, so the levies are not "covering" that, but rather covering the loss of multiple sales of a single item. Any other type of tax would just be extra money in the pockets of the big labels, and they would still ram DRM down our throats and wave litigation around because copying music would still be illegal.
In otherwords, it's complete fucking bullshit and you people up north are just getting ass-fucked by greedy shitheads. I would also read this as being that buying a CD is not a license to access the intellectual property, but just a piece of plastic for your use. When a good breaks, it's gone -- but a license to access that information doesn't just break. What are the record companies selling you? A piece of plastic along with the rights to access the information encoded on that plastic? Just a piece of plastic? Or just the rights?
If they're selling you the rights to access that music, then you have the rights to access that music. You've paid to enjoy that stuff in any way you wish. If they sold you plastic, then the data online is free, since you just bought the plastic for 15$ rather than downloading it for the cost of the bandwidth. Or, if it is a combination of the two, you have still bought the rights/license to access the music.
I thought that was how copyright worked. You compensate someone for use of their copyright, and you can use it. If that's not the case, what the fuck did I pay for, can I sue, and why the hell did Canada let that levy pass?
Hey, lets give the vote on the Senate to the masses so they think the senate cares about them!
Senator A: Alright, since we have to woo so many voters (half a state), we need money.
Senator B: And lets make each other look good while we're at it. Hey Jack, you claim the cash for your spending came out of my state and I'll claim that mine came out of yours and we both get re-elected.
Representative B: Hey, that's not right, that's from my district!
Senator A: Don't worry, Senator B has you covered with this line item.
Representative B: Ah, no problems then!
There was a reason for why the House of Representatives represented the people, and the Senate represented the states governments. It helped balance power among the two, and provide a check on each other since their goals were not necessarily the same. The Senate would have more reason to genuinely look out for the good of a whole state as opposed to areas where they need votes, since the state legislature is chosen on a very small basis comparatively and want the best outcome for their state.
Now that the federal government controls all of the power (through the people of course...) and the states have little to no real impact (they don't chose Senators, they rely on the feds for tax kickbacks, etc) the President's power is extreme. The current administration is just another expansion of federal power that has been on-going since FDR. The federal government should have to rely on states to provide funding, not the opposite.
It will take years before things change, and I can only imagine it will be due to a serious economic downturn in the near future. But until then, the federal government has all of the powers necessary to keep itself in power, even while providing the illusion of choice.
You can choose between jackass A (Democrat) or jackass B (Republican), and occasionally we'll let a real choice make a showing in certain states to make them feel better about voting for a possible winner. All the while, Super Jackass #x (currently 43, unlikely to improve with 44) puts partisan lackeys into positions of power to make broad statements and further make us rely upon the corrupt powers. If Jefferson wasn't already (unlikely), he's rolling in his grave - if not flipping.
At the very least, they managed to put a competent Federal Reserve chairman in...but I imagine that's due to the need to have someone to fight back against government-mandated inflation (aka, deficit spending).
An auction price will typically be higher than the average demanded (strictly competitive) price because the winner values it higher than society does -- therefore, the winner is always a loser in an auction as he would've gotten the same good at a lower price in a market. The only case in which an auction is a true price is for a unique or extremely limited item, because that items social benefit is the highest value placed upon it - an item that can be perfectly distributed for maximum social benefit. Of course, all of the social benefit goes to the seller because the buyer has paid all (or most of) his benefit to the seller for the item.
Auctions benefit the sellers. It's the winner's curse.
These items seem to be directly sold on E-Bay (Buy It Now!) as opposed to auctions. Which would mean that these prices are the price of the good + profit for seller. The retail stores charge price of good + price of service + profit, so naturally, the online prices will be lower.
You realize you can generate dynamic documents with Word that interact with databases and interfaces pretty easily, correct?
You know, like writing a base invoice in Word, linking it to Access or SQL server to pull down charges, and using the Excel engine to generate a graph of productivity provided?
Even if OO does the same stuff, it takes significant time to learn a new library, or even more likely, a whole different language.
But since you just want a word processor... WordPad is a free word processor. And it's just that, a word processor.
They have patented targeted pop-ups. So, being the evil corporation they are, won't they sue all advertisers that use pop-up advertisements out of business?
If we're lucky, Microsoft will go all Microsoft on the online ad-agencies and knock them out of the competition, or buy them up. In which case, Microsoft will produce buggy ad-software that doesn't correctly display ads, they'll lose their clientelle, and problem solved = no more ads for the pop-up blocker to block!
On the flip side...this is one of those cases where you would almost expect them to get it right. But again, it is Microsoft.
I listen to Pandora and routinely buy the CDs I hear for 4-6$ a pop brand new. Then when these bands come around to my area, they're playing small bar venues for 5-15$, and they get a cut of the bar tab they brought in, and they sell CDs there for 5$, a good 75% of which goes back to them (since they've paid for most of their recording costs).
Take the Meat Puppets for example -- one of the pricier bands at 8$ for their new CD and 15$ for show tickets -- They release good stuff, play awesome shows, and have very reasonable prices.
Or the Burden Brothers -- a fairly popular band in DFW -- who play badass shows at a price of 15-20$, and sell their CDs at their shows for 10$ and hang out and chat/sign stuff afterwards.
Just avoid the big bands, which there are very few decent ones anyhow, and the costs aren't so high.
While Tower Records and the large labels are losing CD sales, smaller labels are making a killing selling CDs on the cheap end of the spectrum between 5-10$. Support free competition, buy small label CDs and try out some new music. Avoid the RIAA, you don't need their crappy artists anyhow.
Google's goal is to get EVERYONE online, because they make revenue on search ads. If there are more people online, they get to charge more for ads. It must appear to them that providing internet access will cost less than the improved ad-income they will earn.
AT&T, on the other hand, sells internet access -- not advertising space. All their income comes from the cost to join an infrastructure. They want to maintain barriers to entry that keep the industry a monopoly/oligopoly rather than a more open market.
Ultimately -- both firms are looking out for their VIPs, the shareholders.
And don't forget that "Singing in the Rain" is copyrighted. So if you like singing in the rain, prepare to hire a lawyer.
Also, check your electric bill next time. There is a sub-tax included to cover the mental humming of music caused by actually listening to music through any electrical device.
The final kicker -- part of that gasoline bill goes to pay for listeners who listen to CDs/tapes/iPod in their car rather than to the terrestrial or satellite radio that pays for the music.
Hopefully no one from the RIAA reads /. cause otherwise those might someday be true.
I have about a 1% fail rate -- I've made two DVD coasters.
I have backups of all of my DVDs now on DVD without the commercials, and playable on any of my DVD players (my new 5 disc changer, and my PS2 included.)
I have the original DVDs for when I want 100% of the quality when I'll be sitting infront of the TV with no interruptions -- but I can't remember the last time that happened.
I dunno, I know people who use my burning method (DVDFab Platinum - 50$) to burn their Netflix movies the day they come in and send them out the next morning. They get 20 movies a month or so through Netflix this way and get copies of them all and watch them at their leisure.
I'm pretty sure that it's easier to have a DVD mailed to you than downloading it. And TV Outputs to older TVs can be difficult to set up, while outputs to new TVs require calibration and such to set up. Why not just pop it into the DVD player already hooked up correctly?
I dunno, some people really like certain movies. Every so often you remember a movie you liked, feel like vegging out and nothing is on TV, so you watch it again. That's how you get those people who can quote movies at will.
This is Slashdot, here I'm small fry in terms of technical computing knowledge. I don't even use Linux, what's so hard about burning a DVD? It's faster than BitTorrent (1 hour vs 8+), you don't have to sit there. You pop a DVD in one drive, a DVD-R in another, and let it go.
I hope I'm not the only one who read it this way.
His approval poll is abysmal at like 25%, but Congress' approval rating is even lower at 15%.
Congress is simply emulating Bush to improve their approval ratings.
Apple does the same exact thing with the Mac. It's not a PC, it's a Mac -- product differentiation into a different market. Once you're with Mac, you don't have choices as to hardware, you just have Apple. It's ultimately the same goal. The iPod is similar in that it ties into iTunes. And OSX is similar in that it's tied directly to their hardware and software offerings. You could say Apple has a monopoly in the "Mac" market just like Microsoft has a monopoly on the "360" market or Sony has a monopoly on the "PS3" market, and like the Mac/PC competition there is some overlap -- but not everything for the PC is available for Mac, and not everything for the Mac is available on PC. To ultimately have "everything", you have to get both.
The goal is to make consumers think that rather than competing products, that they are different products and that you may need both of them to get everything you want. Do you have two different branded razors? Two different branded gallons of milk in the fridge? Those are products competing directly with each other. The consoles would be closer to juice vs milk -- you might want one or the other in your fridge, so they compete in that regard, but to get the calcium you go with milk, for the antioxidants you go with the juice so you may still want to get both.
The PS3 and the XBox360 are the two ice cream stands that are 10 feet apart on a beach a mile long and competing for a large portion of the customers, but each one has slightly different offerings (in the ice cream stand example -- Hotelling model for spacial competition -- the difference is distance to walk).
We have a fairly strong infrastructure of MATLAB, Excel, SQL, and Access (all working together) for handling incoming data, processing it, creating easy to read and edit reports with pretty charts for the CEO types, and finally storing it and analyzing it for future access.
We typically receive the data in Excel and do some basic transformations into Access (rarely do our clients understand Access) where we can do some of the simpler SQL stuff (not everyone here understands SQL) and push the main data into SQL. From here, Matlab can pull the data out in the formats it needs, run some calculations, and spit out pretty results to Excel that can be sent directly to our clients for review -- charts and all.
I can imagine dozens of ways to use Excel to compromise a system, but the important thing here is that idiots shouldn't open and run macros in Excel if they don't know what they do, or where they come from. Excel is the winning spreadsheet for us because we can do absolutely anything in it -- from simple optimization algorithms, to a piece in a larger application.
If some of you Microsoft haters actually understood some of the power within the Office group (interop is wonderful) then you might not hate it quite so much.
I just said that an ideal situation would be where the government (county/municipal/whatever) owns and runs the infrastructure, and maintains it by taxing the service providers. In this way you could have extensive competition along the same infrastructure, without incurring the large number of fixed costs -- basically what that broadband utopia is, except owned/operated by the community itself rather than their government.
Lets look at an extreme example: Land freight. There are no government-provided roads, so freight companies build their own turnpikes and charge for use of the road in addition to freight charges. Ultimately there will be one freight company per (short) route because two roads would cut too far into profits for either company to want to provide the service -- this is currently how our telcos work (AT&T builds lines, provides service, and runs maintenance -- no other company can afford to enter because there are not enough people willing to pay 100$ a month for basic service to cover the cost of, essentially, two infrastructures)
Government provides roads: Many freight companies will provide the service at a cheaper cost, and part of their revenue goes to maintaining the roads through taxes. Competition keeps profits from approaching the monopoly level, and surpresses them to just above risk-free rate of return. This is how telcos should work, and how that broadband utopia you describe effectively works. In this case, the government would provide the copper lines for telephone and providers would provide their plans using the same copper lines, and pay maintenance fees to the government based on their market share.
I was pointing out a term that was used completely incorrectly and explaining the correct usage. I'm using strict economic terms, radio is not currently monopolized, it has high barriers to entry (arguably a cartel/oligopoly) and limited space within the industry. Telcos/cable/power are typically examples of natural monopoly -- but this is only the case when they actually own/build/manage the infrastructure, if the government manages it and allows anyone to provide over it, then these should be allowed to compete since no extreme fixed costs are incurred.
"That was my point as well when I replied to you."
I don't quite understand why you think I mis-stated the description of natural monopoly, as you simply provided examples of it with the telcos/cable companies. If you have problems with my underlying economic points, please explain as I'd certainly like to know where I'm being foggy at.
"Without megabucks you won't be able to buy a license, if you can get an open frequency."
While this is unfair and not supportive of truly free markets, it would not be protecting a monopoly if it were not for Clear Channel's complete domination of terrestrial radio.
And infact, I have been on the receiving end of the FCC. For a government agency, they respond very quickly to complaints. If only FEMA responded as quickly.
As frustrating as it is for the companies, it ultimately provides the consumer more protection because people and conditions in Texas are not the same as people and conditions in New York, or in Washington.
They most likely do not want to have to follow rules on a state-by-state basis, but if they don't, then the rules will target the lowest common denominator.
The states are large enough to not be an extreme hassle (imagine doing counties), but are small enough to provide atleast some targetting of needs. Since credit rules are typically different by states anyhow (my basic understanding), then these rules should just be added to those.
If there were 3 telco companies, and each had to run their own telephone wires, phone costs would be much higher than they are because you would be supporting 3 separate infrastructures, each one with 1/3rd of the customers -- assuming an equivalent distribution of customers. In this case, it is more beneficial to have a regulated natural monopoly that operates with a base profit margin of ~10% as opposed to 3 working for a profit margin of >5%.
That is a natural monopoly/oligopoly in essense, because there would be loss of customers with the price hike (I know I wouldn't use a phone at 2x my current rate), and profits would likely go negative for one firm, causing them to exit the industry -- so it would have a severely limited number of entrants, with industry-crippling competition. But this is assuming other firms entered in the first place.
One thing to remember is that a natural monopoly is not a monopoly in which a firm can wield market power, it's a natural monopoly because there is no market power to wield. In a monopoly on market power, you are actively preventing entrants by driving down costs for short periods of time, or buying them outright. A natural monopoly charges the profit maximizing price, but it also happens to be the optimum position for social benefit (within that industry) as well (as opposed to the artificial monopoly situation).
The "right of way" for infrastructure use is enforcing the monopoly. In this case, the providers are not building the infrastructure, only using it -- therefore, it is no longer a natural monopoly situation and should be open to competition. They are not directly maintaining the infrastructure, but rather paying taxes on their income that does maintain that infrastructure. Since that's the case, no matter how many companies enter, the single shared infrastructure would be maintained and costs would be minimized with profit rates approaching the risk-free new money rate. The government is effectively providing an unfair monopoly in this situation, and is not looking out for consumer interests.
As for radio, TV, and such -- that is hardly a monopoly (outside of the Clear Channel case anyways) because you can have 20ish stations which provides plenty of competition. The problem with radio is that it has been internally conglomerated into Clear Channel and then the 1 station in each city that isn't owned by Clear Channel. Additionally, they have to compete with satellite and internet radio. The FCC in this case isn't enforcing a monopoly so much as protecting the rights of a broadcaster to the frequency they have paid for. This limits the market to imperfect competition, but this is still an improvement over a monopolistic situation.
My original point is simply that the iPod does not constitute a natural monopoly, and the original poster should look up economic terms before throwing them about.
The digital music player industry is anything BUT a natural monopoly. A natural monopoly does not "arise because that's what consumers are buying." All monopolies arise that way quite obviously. A natural monopoly occurs in an industry where the change in social benefit from entry is negative -- that is, industry-wide profits would become negative with more than 1 entrant into the industry and the industry would self-select itself back to 1 firm.
Learn your economic terminology before spouting off like an idiot. Digital music players are a consumer good that would benefit all if there were more available. The iPod has strong market share because it is easiest to use, but that HARDLY makes it a natural monopoly. It's more like a vertical monopoly (think Rockefeller's vertical oil holdings) where Apple controls the hardware, the software, and the distribution. Now they just need the content and the gov't can go anti-trust on'em.
Seriously, if you're going to use economic terms, atleast look them up first. Hell, even Wikipedia has a decent entry on it.
This is an artificial barrier to entry. Before the internet, you had to get on the radio, which meant you needed a label behind you to say, "Hey, these guys are worth putting on the radio, give them a shot." etc. Now, with the internet, smaller bands (such as The Velmas) can broadcast their music online much cheaper and target people through services like Pandora, or even host their own personal internet radio channels. I could host strictly Dallas bands that are unsigned yet have recorded indie CDs and still have to pay SoundExchange. And it would cost me more to broadcast to the 30 people that listen to the station than the bands could pay me even if they WERE receiving their dues from SoundExchange. This is strictly a tool for controlling the market. SoundExchange should not be allowed to collect royalties UNTIL a band has registered with them. Until then, the radio should be able to play it freely as it is publicity for the band. I've bought 5 CDs from 4 bands I heard on Pandora that I'd never ever hear on the air. (Velmas, Martinis, Ringside, Redd Kross).
I agree. Working in the insurance industry (actuary) I work with Worker's Comp which is regulated by the states. Each state says what exactly is covered, and how it is covered, and then private insurers provide the actual insurance based on those rules. A similar arrangement for medical insurance for certain tiers: Catastrophe health insurance (car wrecks, muggings, crazy shit) would cover injuries sustained in stuff like that, as specified by the government. Preventative health insurance would cover office visits, MRI/CT/other scans for detecting and preventing serious problems. Necessary-Life Reactive insurance could cover things that were not caught/prevented such as cancer, aids, drug costs etc. Quality-Of-Life Reactive insurance would cover things that aren't directly life-threatening like arthritis. ...
The point is, rather than having a purely private healthcare, or a purely public, the government could specify required levels of care for healthcare like they do for worker's comp, and then companies could evaluate and provide those costs. You'd have your card that says I have these levels of care, and you would know exactly what is covered.
We already have this system for worker's comp! Why not just expand it for health insurance to make it CLEAR what is covered, and what is not - since the heaviest costs go toward figuring that out anyhow, this would create a level playing field and allow people to get the coverage they want and need. This would also allow employers to provide clearly marked levels of healthcare to make comparing benefits easier.