No single person or group caused the problems in the Middle East
Couldn't agree more. It is because of that very complexity that I think initiating a pre-emptive, incompetently planned war was a bad decision. Not planning for the aftermath was the worst form of negligence. Actively deceiving your fellow citizens into sacrificing your best and bravest is - well, much of America seems fine with the idea, I guess it's not my place to say.
In my experience, when people start feeling like "The increased threat of terrorism today is the fault of Bush" they start coming up with totally insane "solutions" like "If we just vote Democrat then the terrorists won't hate us!" but that ignores the 200 other reasons that terrorism exists today.
"people start feeling like"?! The Iraq war was by the Bush administration's choice, and the US and UK have both produced reports stating that it has increased the threat of terrorism. Our experience in the UK confirms it, having had a number of Islamic attacks since. Before we had social tensions, now we have terrorists. This is not "feeling", this is fact. Listening to Democrats who say a vote for them will mean the "terrorists won't hate us" makes about as much sense as listening to the Republicans who thought an invasion of Iraq would be measured in weeks.
But people who think that calling Islam violent is prejudiced are just ignoring how Islam
The comment I responded to stated not just that Islam is the only religious or social group that would react violently, they were the only group that would react at all. That is prejudiced.
a huge number of them want to see Islam as a international force rather than a religion
This is exactly what people fear about fundamentalist Christians, and therefore suspect that the US could be the biggest current threat to world peace.
It's impossible for any support team to outpace the community on a consistent basis for a successful business - it will always be a significant factor smaller than the user community. Further, the community could include engineers of a higher standard than would work in a support role.
You're basically asking for a system that is guaranteed to be slower that what could be delivered, and preventing access to a large amount of intellectual firepower. RTFA - it even mentions that fact that is approach is *not* support, but a way of getting faster answers. Also, why assume they are not already providing timely assistance, but simply trying to improve their customer's experience?
Another "+5 Insightful" comment that is really "+5 Panders to/. knee-jerk prejudice".
The Christmas buying season is right around the corner. The iPhone is toward the top of the 'must have' tech products list right now. That buzz won't be there in another year, so Apple's capitalizing on it while they can.
Very possibly. I just feel that a mere two months premium isn't worth the PR impact of a fast drop in price. An open apology at the launch of a new product doesn't suggest everything went to plan. I give Apple a lot of credit for knowing about product sales. Not thinking about Christmas sales would be hard to forgive a product manager for. Failing to take into account the effects of as yet unreleased product lines, and not considering that Apple might in fact be its own biggest competitor for Christmas gadgets - still bad but comparatively understandable. Therefore my first guess would be the introduction of the new iPods has caused a revision of iPhone pricing.
Plus, Apple wants a share in the cellphone market.
Yes, I did mention they have market share targets.
The question then was, "will they be able to do it again?" If the iPhone turns out to be another runaway hit, imagine the buzz Apple's next hardware product will get.
Absolutely. But then why risk the buzz being, "just wait a few weeks, it'll be better to buy when you can get a refund if there's a price drop"? Wouldn't you want your reputation for being flawless, controversy free launches?
"I wonder where to draw the line between truly normal price decreases, and jacking the price on something you know will sell like hotcakes...I'm not all that business-savvy, so feel free to educate me if there is indeed such a line."
The idea of goods being sold at cost + a fixed margin is commonly accepted to be non-business savvy. Charge what the market will bear. However, large scale retail of high profile electronics goods tends to avoid re-pricing at the speed of e.g. airplane tickets, which rapidly fluctuate according to demand, not cost. Look at games consoles - they attempt to pick a price that will last some considerable time, rather than jacking them up for a Christmas launch.
So two months is quick. The whiners have no reason to complain, but then people get irked by small things and typically you would expect a company not to inflict PR pain upon a high profile product line. Accusations of gouging can hurt - it's been in the pricing for sports events, even when black market ticket values are way higher than face value.
Presumably there was some trigger at Apple. I would guess that the price change was forced by the introduction of the new iPod touch, their rate of sales is not considered fast enough to meet their market share targets, or the imminent European launch has been analysed as requiring a lower entry price for some reason and they need to bring US pricing in line.
It would make me chuckle if it was simply intended as a lesson to early adopter fanatics though...
I absolutely agree about the whiners. Anyone for whom that $200 was significant should not be spending it on a newly hyped status symbol.
But, there is a potential business reason. Apple is big on marketing and image, its part of their business approach. They might feel that the next big launch will be less successful if people figure "I can wait just a couple of months for a 33% price cut". Store credit means that $100 rebate is doesn't cost them the full hundred, they keep a good image, they mitigate the risk of losing the halo granted to them even by Wall St, they still get a $130 (or whatever) premium per unit on the first two months of revenue.
Which is a direct consequence (by definition) of the Iraq War. Which is a direct consequence of the decision to go to war.
I find that logic not only pedantic, but callous to the point of nauseating. I could never claim that the utterly guaranteed deaths of my countrymen in Iraq are merely an "indirect" consequence of the decision to go to war. I would have nothing but contempt for any commander that attempted to use such language, whether in public or just to himself.
I honestly don't see how it makes more sense to blame Bush for your problems than to blame the individuals *directly causing your problems*.
There's no need to be so black-and-white, there's been more than enough blood split to stain many pairs of hands. There are many concepts out there explaining that blame does not require direct involvement: the legal concept of "aiding and abetting", perhaps, or the political concept of "plausible deniability". It's been a while since I've studied philosophy or read the Bible but you shouldn't find it too difficult to come up with examples where morality is considered rather more sophisticated than "I wasn't directly, physically involved".
A President's actions are his speeches and decisions; he does not engage directly. Short of picking up a rifle and shooting some of the troops himself, by your argument the commander-in-chief can never under any circumstances be responsible for the way he conducts himself in office. I do not accept a framework in which military leaders cannot be guilty of causing unwarranted deaths.
A few quick points. You're right, pro-lifers wouldn't attack a town hall, the clinics are indeed symbolic. However, they sometimes do more than just clinics, such as the bombing and deaths at the Atlanta Olympics. No, actively seeking out a clinic is *not* face-to-face provocation. Similarly, Al-Qaeda had no right to fly a planes into the WTC and the Pentagon because they find the activities conducted within offensive. If they neither live and let live, nor protest peacefully, they're criminals.
I still don't get why you think that's going to make Islam look better or safer, inside the US or otherwise.
You know the saying, "the facts speak for themselves"? In this case they're fairly clear. There is no reason for someone in the states to believe that an online insult to Islam will result in a beheading or bombing. There is reason to believe views offensive to some Christians can have violent repercussions, or anti-Semitic comments will get a response, possibly of the scale of the original story about an online petition. If you continue to hold that Islam in the US is just as dangerous as "they'll cut your head off", that is based on prejudice rather than facts.
The focus on the whole "inside the US or otherwise" issue is tiresome. It's an important distinction. In Belfast, I'd be worried about Protestants on behalf of Catholics. In India, it would be the Sikhs or Hindus. In China, the government.
In the US, first of all I'd be confident that direct repercussions have never happened - the real concern is that some local lunatic would blow me up or shoot me, just for being in wrong place at the wrong time. But then I'd be worried about Christian extremists, about the fact their hatred is not challenged. I would poke fun at creationists, the hypocrisy and violence of many pro-lifers, or bitch about the fact that Christians have sent more Americans to their deaths in Iraq than Osama Bin Laden ever dreamed of.
Actively defending prejudice against Islam? To my tastes, that heads towards to willful ignorance. It has too much hatred of the foreigner and forgiveness of one's own extremists. And it's hurting your country, as the 3,728 US citizens dead in Iraq testify.
Your main point seems to be that Christian violence is alright, because Islam is more violent. Can't say that's a convincing argument.
Do you realize that your examples are all real-life, in-your-face provocations?
This is not true. Tim McVeigh, pro-lifers, and anti-Semitism did not refer to face-to-face problems. Incidentally, I'm sure the good folks of the south will appreciate your characterisation of them as drunks. But I actually had in mind the Bill Hicks story about being threatened by Christians after a show, numerous online stories of atheists being persecuted, fights that kicked off *without* the presence of alcohol e.g. when the Orange Walk goes marching. Feel free to characterise the whole point as "anyone can pick a fight with a drunk", however that misses the point.
Also, I was responding to a poster who said that insult a Muslim, and they'll cut off your head or car bomb your friends. The odds are that this has *never* happened in whatever country the poster resides. At least my examples are indeed real life ones.
Why can't one say, "Abortion clinic bombings were aimed at being a spectacle" and thus get out of that tricky situation?
First, if the pro-lifer attacks were primarily planned according to the scale and visibility of the damage caused, they would blow up the town hall or somesuch. But they are not, they are directly targeted at facilities or people that offend specific religious sensibilities.
Second, if you post something online, or denounce Islam on national TV, then the odds of someone hijacking a 747, flying into a high profile skyscraper (not necessarily one you have a connection to, just one that is a viable target), and actually managing to injure you in the process, is altogether rather slim. You really don't have to worry that's going to happen to you.
I guess you've conveniently forgotten about recent real-world Muslim responses
No. I deliberately make the point that the dangerous group depends on where you are. Europe has far more Muslims (including the extremist variety) than the US; clearly it is a different case as you point out. I live in London, and I travel on the underground - I have reason to be afraid of Islamic terrorism. We had some nasty street scenes and arrests at the time of the cartoons being published. However, I've been a regular visitor to New York as a student at Columbia, and my impression that it is nowhere near as bad over in the US. Do you have any US examples to make a counterpoint?
when someone "insults Islam" or whatever, why is your response to point out flaws in Christianity?
Primarily because my guess is that the GP is American, likely to be from a Judeo-Christian background, and I was hoping to respond directly to that. Their knee jerk comment was marked "+5 Insightful", and it deserves to be challenged.
But I'm aware the GP may not be Christian. Another reason the examples are Christian is that it is more simply polite to criticise your own religious background for the sake of an argument, and besides I have direct experience of violent Christians. Further, in the US I am not aware of any examples of Geeks, Buddists, Jews, Scientologists, Atheists, or LoS (Libertarians on Slashdot) engaging in terrorism or other violent acts because of their religious background. Perhaps rather than criticising my choice of Christianity, you could give comparable examples of e.g. Buddhist violence in the US?
You're not going to convince any rational people that violence in (modern) Christianity is as widespread as violence in (modern) Islam.
I'm not sure you've managed to comprehend my post. At no point do I make that argument. If you narrow it down to the US, however, I'd need to see statistics before I would agree that a rational person could not be convinced that as US citizen is more likely to suffer at the hands of a Chris
"never make fun of Islam, the religion of peace, because they might cut off your head and car bomb your friends." Any examples of that happening in the US? Closest to a car bomb would be Oklahoma City and the *Christian* Tim McVeigh, would it not?
If you're based in the US, try going to the Bible belt and go around insulting Christianity. There's a good chance you will find yourself on the receiving end of more than an online petition. And plenty of people have found themselves accused of being anti-Semite, and consequently suffered.
Or, try asking someone like myself from Glasgow in Scotland and ask what's likely to happen if you go into a pub around Parkhead and shouting "Fuck the Pope", or across town to Ibrox and dissing "Orange Huns". For those of you who didn't know, Christian violence also exists - against Christians, no less. Protestant and Catholic Christians have a fine old tradition of killing each other, and sectarian violence continues to this day. Northern Ireland is only just (hopefully) settling down - killing and car bombing is also a Christian act, it would seem.
The dangerous religious group varies significantly depending on where you are. If I was in the US, for instance, I would be more worried about Christians. 9/11 was aimed at being a spectacle, not specifically aimed at individuals in retaliation for something they posted online. Insulting Islam gets you an online petition. Not even insulting, but simply acting contrary to someone's view Christianity, can get you bombed (c.f. pro-lifers etc).
Sorry for the ambiguity, but it can be deduced. Which is extreme, checking receipts or "doing anything you're told"? Checking receipts is fairly common, "doing anything you're told" is pretty extreme - straight forward logic.
Hey - you didn't apply logic, used extreme examples, and even top it off with unwarranted sarcarsm! Maybe that's indicative of something!
As you can't be bothered doing even a basic check before posting, I've quoted below from the first result on the search string I mentioned in my post.
Did you really mean to suggest that the GP had good reason for the $1000 figure? That Apple genuinely might need a 75% gross margin (a 300% markup!) to cover the costs of a consumer electronics device? Seriously, forget the cut-and-paste business 101 comments, do you really think that's a sensible suggestion to make, without any factual data to support it?
The large margins make price cuts inevitable.
"They will cut prices later on," said Jagdish Rebello, director and principal analyst with iSuppli. "It is hard to imagine anyone else getting 50 percent margins for long."
Other manufacturers of high-end multimedia phones get about a 20 percent margin. That would put the retail price of an 8GB iPhone at around $350 without subsidies from the cellular carrier.
I never said that the cost of manufacturing dictates the market price.
I can't see anyone making that statement in the above posts, either. Who's the one hallucinating here? However, cost of manufacturing does determine whether something is being subsidised. If the sale price ($500) is a lot higher than the estimated cost to manufacture ($250 - 300), on what basis can you claim that it is being heavily subsidised?
It would be one thing to pull the figure of $1000 out of your arse if there had been no estimates out there of manufacturing cost. But there are (search for "component price of iPhone"), so it's a completely invalid number to use.
"Would it still sell for $1000?" is actually a damn valid question.
Not really. It far higher than comparable products in the marketplace, and bears no relation to manufacturing cost. Apple are going up against entrenched competition in a market they have no experience of, with a goal to establish market share. Asking whether they should price so high, with no need to do so and in direct contradiction of their business goal, is not a particularly useful question to ask.
It is not much of an achievement for a democracy not to fall into the abyss of horror that most other countries who found huge resources by accident are in.
True. Therefore, perhaps a better comparison would be another democracy that received the same jackpot at the same time, namely the UK? It has failed to achieve a generally high standard of living. Given a valid comparison rather than hysterical references to an "abyss of horror", we can still see that Norway handled their windfall extremely well.
A society where healthy competition brings out the best in people. That's all.
"That's all"?! Seeing as no-one has managed yet to achieve such a utopia, on what basis do you mean to imply it's not much to ask?
It pisses me off to see mediocre idiots who have never accomplished shit criticize highly accomplished people though
And no doubt some highly accomplished people get pissed off with people who have never managed to be anything other than moderately accomplished. People should put such wasteful reactions aside, and either deal with or ignore the criticism as appropriate. People very rarely get pissed off about something unless they relate to it directly. You're clearly not big on altruism, so "moderately accomplished" sounds like a euphemism for "I think I'm better than those people".
"you can't move music from one computer to another with an iPod"
You're focusing on the wrong thing i.e. the technical interface, rather than the business man's perpsective. I doubt Geffen is talking about, and maybe not even aware of, the actual method for file transfer. Probably he either doesn't care (or even doesn't know) that there were mp3 players before the iPod, because it was Apple that popularised the concept.
But with the iTunes integration, from being a good piece of equipment, from driving sales (and hence users) up dramatically, the iPod did make sharing music easy for a lot of people. Even if it doesn't matter whether it's an iPod or not, and (in my experience anyway) the most common interface for actually transferring the data is an external hard drive, or a USB key for just an album or two.
"Standards of living are generally high-ish in all of the country. People do not suffer.. It is a beautiful place to visit".
Is there something wrong with you that you don't realise what an achievement this is? Most countries that have won a natural resources jackpot have failed to achieve a generally high standard of living. They say the real test of character is what you do when power or money is given to you. The fact that they just won a lottery makes it all the more impressive - that opportunity could have been squandered or stolen. Instead, they've achieved more than most nations on the planet.
But presumably you want more for yourself? More attention? More than a long, healthy life, more or less lived in freedom? Maybe you just want people to publicly admit that *you* are *better* than them?
china remains totalitaianstic but with a capitalism mixed in
Wow, that's a lot of bad, painful-to-read writing.
The vast majority of geeks that I know profess to be registered libertarians (including myself).
You quote a poll yourself that says 78% of the geek population is not libertarian, and probably 90%+ is not registered libertarian. Yet the vast majority of geeks you know are registered. Therefore you only interact with a very small group of people.
Being poorly spoken, with risks of in-breeding, is not a good way to support a statement of higher than average IQ.
Nerds are particularly sensitive to individual liberty, because they tend to want to think and act in ways that deviate from the norm
We've got our own norms we conform to, or haven't you noticed? So we are also conformist, albeit with norms different to that of the mainstream. As are other different groups in the world e.g. environmentalists, or the anti-globalisation movement. They are not libertarian, sometimes with violent opposition to property rights. There must be a different reason that nerds are "particularly sensitive" to individual liberty, because clearly deviating from the norm is not a sufficient reason.
Therefore a libertarian society is the only type in which they are free to innovate.
I'm not aware of any country that has been described as a libertarian society. I'm fairly sure, for instance, that the ancient Chinese, Greeks, and Moors were not. They came up with rather important innovations thousands of years ago. More recently, it is widely acknowledged that military funding delivers a lot of innovations, with the Second World War being a fairly good example of innovators working under strict rules.
if you can provide them with a fact that shows people really do not act liek they think they would
That's a bad argument, based on an impossible condition. Let's assume an intelligent adult has formed a view of the world based on many years of experience, access to information from education, the media, their social background, etc. It will be based upon thousands or millions of facts. What are the odds in any given discussion that a new fact will come along that substantially changes their understanding of people? At best, you may demonstrate that in a specific scenario, probably involving a small number of interactions, their detailed understanding of psychology is lacking.
It is probably not a challenging process for any new fact to be integrated into their understanding of people. You see it happen all the time - people are not so much shaken in their beliefs, as caught out that they don't have a quick answer to someone's challenge. They then follow a process of seeing how they can fit that fact into their world view, without having to actually change it.
Therefore as any new fact can be integrated into an adult's understanding of human nature without that perspective changing, you're not really challenging the GP's statement. They can just acknowledge the new fact changes what they think people would do in a given situation, and yet remain fundamentally of the same opinion as they held previously. Most people - myself included - don't change their views on human nature much after reaching adulthood.
The combination of nerd (i.e. smart enough to fit disparate facts into a logical argument to support their case) and libertarian (i.e. a minority ideology) definitely has some traits that support the idea of being "unrealistic when it comes to how human beings actually work".
In terms of choosing tracks you like, you have a strong argument.
However, if your approach to life is that predictable gets boring, or you like the idea of hearing things you've never heard before, then you can see how the "best mix" for some of us cannot be comprised only of artists we already know.
But there's also the question of what you're in the mood for. I like having the choice of radio vs. my own collection. If I'm in the mood for my own selection, I've got it. If I want to hear new stuff, there's the radio. And with both a wide selection of stations and services using predictive algorithms to select tracks I might like, I have a lot of control over the degree of randomness in the mix of music I get from the radio.
It's that mix of my music vs. radio that's the important thing for me - I confess it's a small part of my listening time is to internet radio. But a small percentage across millions of potential audience members is enough to justify the internet radio stations. Unless royalties are raised so high it puts them out of business.
The point of most markets (and commercial arrangements) is to find a price suitable to both parties. Pricing internet stations out of the game, when they could otherwise provide a useful service to a niche market, is an abuse of power. It's a bad thing.
Sorry, basing a bad joke on the wrong part of the regs.
OK, going by the regs, the act of filming includes "taking still photographs", which is quite different to looking at them.
Still, it's a fair point. Having gone through the document it is strange that they can't find a way to exempt recreational photographers. It's pretty clear that it's written to cover professionals (or students on their way to becoming so). Would have thought that's easier to do than coming up with a definition that covers e.g. low budget indie productions, but avoids having an impact on the average passer-through.
"The proposed rules would require a permit for "activity involving a tripod and a crew of 5 or more people at one site for 10 minutes or more"
Your post is well written, polite, and makes a point that is often very valid. However, given that the linked article, the original source (http://www.nyc.gov/html/film/html/news/080107_pro posed_permit_rules.shtml), and even the first post (conveniently rated at +5 for high visibility) all use the word "crew", it is also factually inaccurate. To speak frankly, it reads as if your conclusion was already formed, and then facts were changed to fit it. Consider that your response to my criticism of ignorant-of-the-facts Slashdot posts takes its "actual language" from one of said posts.
Given you place importance on careful reading, I doubt you deliberately changed the facts, but instead fell prey to groupthink. Try having a sense of perspective, because careful reading of clearly biased sources has terrible, unintended side effects.
Listen, there may be some valid criticisms of that proposal, but most of the posts so far are the kind of knee-jerk, ignore-the-facts attitude that doesn't get anywhere.
I've been a fairly regular visitor to New York, and travel extensively, and I can't think of any occasions where a tourist or professional photographer goes around with a crew of 5 and a tripod. That's more than your regular TV news crew shows up with.
You know the classic style of footage where you see a cop or security guard put their hand over the camera, with the old "you can't take photos here"? How many times was the camera stationary i.e. on a tripod? Did you ever really get the impression that guy was trying to intimidate a group of five or more people who spent time setting up their gear? Would any kind of investigative journalist both have the budget to waste and the complete lack common sense to drag around that kind of expensive, highly visible support? And if your answer is "oh yes, frequently" - you're bullshitting.
New York's Office of Film and Broadcasting also deserves a bit of credit here. NYC is well known in the movie business to being friendly to filming. The biggest challenge is deciding whether to film in Toronto for the cost savings. That's the context this should be viewed in, not the attitude of the NYPD.
Everytime I see a set of reactions like this, it makes me think that Slashdot actually wants to be the Fox news of online communities.
Slashdot Mirror
Couldn't agree more. It is because of that very complexity that I think initiating a pre-emptive, incompetently planned war was a bad decision. Not planning for the aftermath was the worst form of negligence. Actively deceiving your fellow citizens into sacrificing your best and bravest is - well, much of America seems fine with the idea, I guess it's not my place to say.
"people start feeling like"?! The Iraq war was by the Bush administration's choice, and the US and UK have both produced reports stating that it has increased the threat of terrorism. Our experience in the UK confirms it, having had a number of Islamic attacks since. Before we had social tensions, now we have terrorists. This is not "feeling", this is fact. Listening to Democrats who say a vote for them will mean the "terrorists won't hate us" makes about as much sense as listening to the Republicans who thought an invasion of Iraq would be measured in weeks.
The comment I responded to stated not just that Islam is the only religious or social group that would react violently, they were the only group that would react at all. That is prejudiced.
This is exactly what people fear about fundamentalist Christians, and therefore suspect that the US could be the biggest current threat to world peace.
It's impossible for any support team to outpace the community on a consistent basis for a successful business - it will always be a significant factor smaller than the user community. Further, the community could include engineers of a higher standard than would work in a support role.
/. knee-jerk prejudice".
You're basically asking for a system that is guaranteed to be slower that what could be delivered, and preventing access to a large amount of intellectual firepower. RTFA - it even mentions that fact that is approach is *not* support, but a way of getting faster answers. Also, why assume they are not already providing timely assistance, but simply trying to improve their customer's experience?
Another "+5 Insightful" comment that is really "+5 Panders to
The Christmas buying season is right around the corner. The iPhone is toward the top of the 'must have' tech products list right now. That buzz won't be there in another year, so Apple's capitalizing on it while they can.
Very possibly. I just feel that a mere two months premium isn't worth the PR impact of a fast drop in price. An open apology at the launch of a new product doesn't suggest everything went to plan. I give Apple a lot of credit for knowing about product sales. Not thinking about Christmas sales would be hard to forgive a product manager for. Failing to take into account the effects of as yet unreleased product lines, and not considering that Apple might in fact be its own biggest competitor for Christmas gadgets - still bad but comparatively understandable. Therefore my first guess would be the introduction of the new iPods has caused a revision of iPhone pricing.
Plus, Apple wants a share in the cellphone market.
Yes, I did mention they have market share targets.
The question then was, "will they be able to do it again?" If the iPhone turns out to be another runaway hit, imagine the buzz Apple's next hardware product will get.
Absolutely. But then why risk the buzz being, "just wait a few weeks, it'll be better to buy when you can get a refund if there's a price drop"? Wouldn't you want your reputation for being flawless, controversy free launches?
"I wonder where to draw the line between truly normal price decreases, and jacking the price on something you know will sell like hotcakes...I'm not all that business-savvy, so feel free to educate me if there is indeed such a line."
The idea of goods being sold at cost + a fixed margin is commonly accepted to be non-business savvy. Charge what the market will bear. However, large scale retail of high profile electronics goods tends to avoid re-pricing at the speed of e.g. airplane tickets, which rapidly fluctuate according to demand, not cost. Look at games consoles - they attempt to pick a price that will last some considerable time, rather than jacking them up for a Christmas launch.
So two months is quick. The whiners have no reason to complain, but then people get irked by small things and typically you would expect a company not to inflict PR pain upon a high profile product line. Accusations of gouging can hurt - it's been in the pricing for sports events, even when black market ticket values are way higher than face value.
Presumably there was some trigger at Apple. I would guess that the price change was forced by the introduction of the new iPod touch, their rate of sales is not considered fast enough to meet their market share targets, or the imminent European launch has been analysed as requiring a lower entry price for some reason and they need to bring US pricing in line.
It would make me chuckle if it was simply intended as a lesson to early adopter fanatics though...
I absolutely agree about the whiners. Anyone for whom that $200 was significant should not be spending it on a newly hyped status symbol.
But, there is a potential business reason. Apple is big on marketing and image, its part of their business approach. They might feel that the next big launch will be less successful if people figure "I can wait just a couple of months for a 33% price cut". Store credit means that $100 rebate is doesn't cost them the full hundred, they keep a good image, they mitigate the risk of losing the halo granted to them even by Wall St, they still get a $130 (or whatever) premium per unit on the first two months of revenue.
I find that logic not only pedantic, but callous to the point of nauseating. I could never claim that the utterly guaranteed deaths of my countrymen in Iraq are merely an "indirect" consequence of the decision to go to war. I would have nothing but contempt for any commander that attempted to use such language, whether in public or just to himself.
There's no need to be so black-and-white, there's been more than enough blood split to stain many pairs of hands. There are many concepts out there explaining that blame does not require direct involvement: the legal concept of "aiding and abetting", perhaps, or the political concept of "plausible deniability". It's been a while since I've studied philosophy or read the Bible but you shouldn't find it too difficult to come up with examples where morality is considered rather more sophisticated than "I wasn't directly, physically involved".
A President's actions are his speeches and decisions; he does not engage directly. Short of picking up a rifle and shooting some of the troops himself, by your argument the commander-in-chief can never under any circumstances be responsible for the way he conducts himself in office. I do not accept a framework in which military leaders cannot be guilty of causing unwarranted deaths.
A few quick points. You're right, pro-lifers wouldn't attack a town hall, the clinics are indeed symbolic. However, they sometimes do more than just clinics, such as the bombing and deaths at the Atlanta Olympics. No, actively seeking out a clinic is *not* face-to-face provocation. Similarly, Al-Qaeda had no right to fly a planes into the WTC and the Pentagon because they find the activities conducted within offensive. If they neither live and let live, nor protest peacefully, they're criminals.
You know the saying, "the facts speak for themselves"? In this case they're fairly clear. There is no reason for someone in the states to believe that an online insult to Islam will result in a beheading or bombing. There is reason to believe views offensive to some Christians can have violent repercussions, or anti-Semitic comments will get a response, possibly of the scale of the original story about an online petition. If you continue to hold that Islam in the US is just as dangerous as "they'll cut your head off", that is based on prejudice rather than facts.
The focus on the whole "inside the US or otherwise" issue is tiresome. It's an important distinction. In Belfast, I'd be worried about Protestants on behalf of Catholics. In India, it would be the Sikhs or Hindus. In China, the government.
In the US, first of all I'd be confident that direct repercussions have never happened - the real concern is that some local lunatic would blow me up or shoot me, just for being in wrong place at the wrong time. But then I'd be worried about Christian extremists, about the fact their hatred is not challenged. I would poke fun at creationists, the hypocrisy and violence of many pro-lifers, or bitch about the fact that Christians have sent more Americans to their deaths in Iraq than Osama Bin Laden ever dreamed of.
Actively defending prejudice against Islam? To my tastes, that heads towards to willful ignorance. It has too much hatred of the foreigner and forgiveness of one's own extremists. And it's hurting your country, as the 3,728 US citizens dead in Iraq testify.
This is not true. Tim McVeigh, pro-lifers, and anti-Semitism did not refer to face-to-face problems. Incidentally, I'm sure the good folks of the south will appreciate your characterisation of them as drunks. But I actually had in mind the Bill Hicks story about being threatened by Christians after a show, numerous online stories of atheists being persecuted, fights that kicked off *without* the presence of alcohol e.g. when the Orange Walk goes marching. Feel free to characterise the whole point as "anyone can pick a fight with a drunk", however that misses the point.
Also, I was responding to a poster who said that insult a Muslim, and they'll cut off your head or car bomb your friends. The odds are that this has *never* happened in whatever country the poster resides. At least my examples are indeed real life ones.
First, if the pro-lifer attacks were primarily planned according to the scale and visibility of the damage caused, they would blow up the town hall or somesuch. But they are not, they are directly targeted at facilities or people that offend specific religious sensibilities.
Second, if you post something online, or denounce Islam on national TV, then the odds of someone hijacking a 747, flying into a high profile skyscraper (not necessarily one you have a connection to, just one that is a viable target), and actually managing to injure you in the process, is altogether rather slim. You really don't have to worry that's going to happen to you.
No. I deliberately make the point that the dangerous group depends on where you are. Europe has far more Muslims (including the extremist variety) than the US; clearly it is a different case as you point out. I live in London, and I travel on the underground - I have reason to be afraid of Islamic terrorism. We had some nasty street scenes and arrests at the time of the cartoons being published. However, I've been a regular visitor to New York as a student at Columbia, and my impression that it is nowhere near as bad over in the US. Do you have any US examples to make a counterpoint?
Primarily because my guess is that the GP is American, likely to be from a Judeo-Christian background, and I was hoping to respond directly to that. Their knee jerk comment was marked "+5 Insightful", and it deserves to be challenged.
But I'm aware the GP may not be Christian. Another reason the examples are Christian is that it is more simply polite to criticise your own religious background for the sake of an argument, and besides I have direct experience of violent Christians. Further, in the US I am not aware of any examples of Geeks, Buddists, Jews, Scientologists, Atheists, or LoS (Libertarians on Slashdot) engaging in terrorism or other violent acts because of their religious background. Perhaps rather than criticising my choice of Christianity, you could give comparable examples of e.g. Buddhist violence in the US?
I'm not sure you've managed to comprehend my post. At no point do I make that argument. If you narrow it down to the US, however, I'd need to see statistics before I would agree that a rational person could not be convinced that as US citizen is more likely to suffer at the hands of a Chris
"never make fun of Islam, the religion of peace, because they might cut off your head and car bomb your friends."
Any examples of that happening in the US? Closest to a car bomb would be Oklahoma City and the *Christian* Tim McVeigh, would it not?
If you're based in the US, try going to the Bible belt and go around insulting Christianity. There's a good chance you will find yourself on the receiving end of more than an online petition. And plenty of people have found themselves accused of being anti-Semite, and consequently suffered.
Or, try asking someone like myself from Glasgow in Scotland and ask what's likely to happen if you go into a pub around Parkhead and shouting "Fuck the Pope", or across town to Ibrox and dissing "Orange Huns". For those of you who didn't know, Christian violence also exists - against Christians, no less. Protestant and Catholic Christians have a fine old tradition of killing each other, and sectarian violence continues to this day. Northern Ireland is only just (hopefully) settling down - killing and car bombing is also a Christian act, it would seem.
The dangerous religious group varies significantly depending on where you are. If I was in the US, for instance, I would be more worried about Christians. 9/11 was aimed at being a spectacle, not specifically aimed at individuals in retaliation for something they posted online. Insulting Islam gets you an online petition. Not even insulting, but simply acting contrary to someone's view Christianity, can get you bombed (c.f. pro-lifers etc).
No. That's like the suggesting an ISP and a copper phone line are the same thing.
Besides, do you mean to imply that on principle, people should be allowed to drive drunk even if it were technically possible to prevent it?
I was referring to the post I replied to.
Sorry for the ambiguity, but it can be deduced. Which is extreme, checking receipts or "doing anything you're told"? Checking receipts is fairly common, "doing anything you're told" is pretty extreme - straight forward logic.
Hey - you didn't apply logic, used extreme examples, and even top it off with unwarranted sarcarsm! Maybe that's indicative of something!
No, but using extreme cases and fallacious logic can be indicative of a lack of intelligence.
As you can't be bothered doing even a basic check before posting, I've quoted below from the first result on the search string I mentioned in my post.
Did you really mean to suggest that the GP had good reason for the $1000 figure? That Apple genuinely might need a 75% gross margin (a 300% markup!) to cover the costs of a consumer electronics device? Seriously, forget the cut-and-paste business 101 comments, do you really think that's a sensible suggestion to make, without any factual data to support it?
I can't see anyone making that statement in the above posts, either. Who's the one hallucinating here? However, cost of manufacturing does determine whether something is being subsidised. If the sale price ($500) is a lot higher than the estimated cost to manufacture ($250 - 300), on what basis can you claim that it is being heavily subsidised?
It would be one thing to pull the figure of $1000 out of your arse if there had been no estimates out there of manufacturing cost. But there are (search for "component price of iPhone"), so it's a completely invalid number to use.
Not really. It far higher than comparable products in the marketplace, and bears no relation to manufacturing cost. Apple are going up against entrenched competition in a market they have no experience of, with a goal to establish market share. Asking whether they should price so high, with no need to do so and in direct contradiction of their business goal, is not a particularly useful question to ask.
I never said they were. I never said it is. Do you have trouble reading as well as writing?
"you can't move music from one computer to another with an iPod"
You're focusing on the wrong thing i.e. the technical interface, rather than the business man's perpsective. I doubt Geffen is talking about, and maybe not even aware of, the actual method for file transfer. Probably he either doesn't care (or even doesn't know) that there were mp3 players before the iPod, because it was Apple that popularised the concept.
But with the iTunes integration, from being a good piece of equipment, from driving sales (and hence users) up dramatically, the iPod did make sharing music easy for a lot of people. Even if it doesn't matter whether it's an iPod or not, and (in my experience anyway) the most common interface for actually transferring the data is an external hard drive, or a USB key for just an album or two.
"Standards of living are generally high-ish in all of the country. People do not suffer .. It is a beautiful place to visit".
Is there something wrong with you that you don't realise what an achievement this is? Most countries that have won a natural resources jackpot have failed to achieve a generally high standard of living. They say the real test of character is what you do when power or money is given to you. The fact that they just won a lottery makes it all the more impressive - that opportunity could have been squandered or stolen. Instead, they've achieved more than most nations on the planet.
But presumably you want more for yourself? More attention? More than a long, healthy life, more or less lived in freedom? Maybe you just want people to publicly admit that *you* are *better* than them?
Wow, that's a lot of bad, painful-to-read writing.
You quote a poll yourself that says 78% of the geek population is not libertarian, and probably 90%+ is not registered libertarian. Yet the vast majority of geeks you know are registered. Therefore you only interact with a very small group of people.
Being poorly spoken, with risks of in-breeding, is not a good way to support a statement of higher than average IQ.
Bullshit!
We've got our own norms we conform to, or haven't you noticed? So we are also conformist, albeit with norms different to that of the mainstream. As are other different groups in the world e.g. environmentalists, or the anti-globalisation movement. They are not libertarian, sometimes with violent opposition to property rights. There must be a different reason that nerds are "particularly sensitive" to individual liberty, because clearly deviating from the norm is not a sufficient reason.
I'm not aware of any country that has been described as a libertarian society. I'm fairly sure, for instance, that the ancient Chinese, Greeks, and Moors were not. They came up with rather important innovations thousands of years ago. More recently, it is widely acknowledged that military funding delivers a lot of innovations, with the Second World War being a fairly good example of innovators working under strict rules.
That's a bad argument, based on an impossible condition. Let's assume an intelligent adult has formed a view of the world based on many years of experience, access to information from education, the media, their social background, etc. It will be based upon thousands or millions of facts. What are the odds in any given discussion that a new fact will come along that substantially changes their understanding of people? At best, you may demonstrate that in a specific scenario, probably involving a small number of interactions, their detailed understanding of psychology is lacking.
It is probably not a challenging process for any new fact to be integrated into their understanding of people. You see it happen all the time - people are not so much shaken in their beliefs, as caught out that they don't have a quick answer to someone's challenge. They then follow a process of seeing how they can fit that fact into their world view, without having to actually change it.
Therefore as any new fact can be integrated into an adult's understanding of human nature without that perspective changing, you're not really challenging the GP's statement. They can just acknowledge the new fact changes what they think people would do in a given situation, and yet remain fundamentally of the same opinion as they held previously. Most people - myself included - don't change their views on human nature much after reaching adulthood.
The combination of nerd (i.e. smart enough to fit disparate facts into a logical argument to support their case) and libertarian (i.e. a minority ideology) definitely has some traits that support the idea of being "unrealistic when it comes to how human beings actually work".
In terms of choosing tracks you like, you have a strong argument.
However, if your approach to life is that predictable gets boring, or you like the idea of hearing things you've never heard before, then you can see how the "best mix" for some of us cannot be comprised only of artists we already know.
But there's also the question of what you're in the mood for. I like having the choice of radio vs. my own collection. If I'm in the mood for my own selection, I've got it. If I want to hear new stuff, there's the radio. And with both a wide selection of stations and services using predictive algorithms to select tracks I might like, I have a lot of control over the degree of randomness in the mix of music I get from the radio.
It's that mix of my music vs. radio that's the important thing for me - I confess it's a small part of my listening time is to internet radio. But a small percentage across millions of potential audience members is enough to justify the internet radio stations. Unless royalties are raised so high it puts them out of business.
The point of most markets (and commercial arrangements) is to find a price suitable to both parties. Pricing internet stations out of the game, when they could otherwise provide a useful service to a niche market, is an abuse of power. It's a bad thing.
OK, I take back that other post. The wording of the summary is different to the actual regulation. Damnit!
The intent is clear, but the effect not necessarily so, indeed. Well, like I said it happens a lot!
Apologies.
Sorry, basing a bad joke on the wrong part of the regs.
OK, going by the regs, the act of filming includes "taking still photographs", which is quite different to looking at them.
Still, it's a fair point. Having gone through the document it is strange that they can't find a way to exempt recreational photographers. It's pretty clear that it's written to cover professionals (or students on their way to becoming so). Would have thought that's easier to do than coming up with a definition that covers e.g. low budget indie productions, but avoids having an impact on the average passer-through.
Like reading the article, perhaps?
Your post is well written, polite, and makes a point that is often very valid. However, given that the linked article, the original source (http://www.nyc.gov/html/film/html/news/080107_pro posed_permit_rules.shtml), and even the first post (conveniently rated at +5 for high visibility) all use the word "crew", it is also factually inaccurate. To speak frankly, it reads as if your conclusion was already formed, and then facts were changed to fit it. Consider that your response to my criticism of ignorant-of-the-facts Slashdot posts takes its "actual language" from one of said posts.
Given you place importance on careful reading, I doubt you deliberately changed the facts, but instead fell prey to groupthink. Try having a sense of perspective, because careful reading of clearly biased sources has terrible, unintended side effects.
Listen, there may be some valid criticisms of that proposal, but most of the posts so far are the kind of knee-jerk, ignore-the-facts attitude that doesn't get anywhere.
I've been a fairly regular visitor to New York, and travel extensively, and I can't think of any occasions where a tourist or professional photographer goes around with a crew of 5 and a tripod. That's more than your regular TV news crew shows up with.
You know the classic style of footage where you see a cop or security guard put their hand over the camera, with the old "you can't take photos here"? How many times was the camera stationary i.e. on a tripod? Did you ever really get the impression that guy was trying to intimidate a group of five or more people who spent time setting up their gear? Would any kind of investigative journalist both have the budget to waste and the complete lack common sense to drag around that kind of expensive, highly visible support? And if your answer is "oh yes, frequently" - you're bullshitting.
New York's Office of Film and Broadcasting also deserves a bit of credit here. NYC is well known in the movie business to being friendly to filming. The biggest challenge is deciding whether to film in Toronto for the cost savings. That's the context this should be viewed in, not the attitude of the NYPD.
Everytime I see a set of reactions like this, it makes me think that Slashdot actually wants to be the Fox news of online communities.