Insurance companies figured out hundreds of years ago that they needed to make sure the insurer had a definite self-interest in the preservation of the asset being insured. If not, I could take out insurance on someone else's ship and sink it, pocketing the full payout.
Until AIG figured out it could make money coming and going by insuring other peoples assets - if they actually had to pay out the government would save them.
think gadget insurance is pretty crazy to begin with.
Gadget insurance is idiotic. The only people who carry it either (a) can't take care of their shit, or (b) intend to defraud the insurer. Because of this the premium/deductable schedule is such that you only win if you file a claim every three months - at which point the insurance company decides you're trying to defraud them and your denied coverage - and you lose any way.
especially gap insurance
Gap insurance only makes sense because a lot of people are idiots and will carry it even after they car is worth more than the loan. If you cancel it as soon as the blue book value matches yoru loan balance (usually ~12-18 months) you bought a useful service.
As for extended warranties - don't buy them. Not on cars, not on electronics, not on anything. Your laptop or your car is either going to break in the first six months and be covered, or isn't going to break until after the extended warranty is up. Even if it does break in the sweet spot, odds are what you paid for warranty coverage is about what it costs to fix your problem.
I'm wondering if maybe a better model might not be leasing the equipment instead.
What's the difference between a subsidized product with a contract and a lease? Not much. The cell phone market is functionally a leasers market today, the only difference is that the asset has nearly completely depreciated (at least as far as resale is concerned) in the lease term.
Take a look. Otswego State University of New York.
Granted, it's only become an OSU recently, but then again Oregon State has only been an OSU since 1961, before which it was Agricultural College of the State of Oregon. Ohio State started life as Ohio A&M, but was an OSU by 1878. Likewise Oklahoma State started as Oklahoma A&M and only became an OSU in 1957.
So either Ohio State is the oldest OSU, or Otswego State is an older OSU than Oregon State.
Your area may be profitable for WiMax, but I doubt it's profitable for wired internet.
If you want wired internet the only solution is government regulation. If you think we can serve the country with WiMax, then you need government regulation so the next WiMax provider doesn't step on your signal.
Originally from the buckeye state, not the sooner one.
You wouldn't be providing anything because there wouldn't be anything for your wireless router to plug into - unless you're prepared to lay 10 miles of cable from the nearest cable that meets the ISPs ROI calculations.
Without regulation the internet wouldn't be anywhere near you, it doesn't make economic sense to run cable 15mi out of the town center to serve a handful of people who live there.
What you're saying is now that regulation got your neighbor internet, we don't need it any more. You're trying to have your cake and eat it too.
The don't just give away the franchise rights. The trade them for, among other things, covering the whole, or at least a large part of, the municipality.
Municipalities would lose residents, and hence tax revenue if they allowed only one ISP to serve only the most profitable houses, because that would leave signicant portions of the area without coverage. "Can I get internet here" is a question people ask when they're moving. The municipality wants the answer to be "yes."
There's no way your neighbor would have internet without some kind of government mandate, i.e. regulation. So the question of whether you'd be able to bury your own cable in the absence of regulation is moot - there wouldn't be internet anywhere near you to tap into.
You're a case study why we need more - or at least more centralized government regulation of broadband.
Because, we don't want to live under an iceflow that is 10 times taller than the Empire State Building.
Climate Change, any climate change, is undesirable now that there's a society on the planet that adapted to the way things have been since the last ice age. Put it another way - meteor strikes happen, it's a natural process - but I'd really like to be able to do something about it.
There are two different questions, the first is whether there is anthropogenic climate change. The second is whether we should do something about climate change regardless of the cause.
The answer to both questions is Yes, but even if you deny the first, it really doesn't matter, because rising sea levels and droughts are bad, so if we can do something to prevent it we should. The question then becomes whether reducing our emissions will reduce climate change - and this is much more contentious. On the one side there are people who claim that humans are incapable of affecting the climate in any meaningful way, so no reducing emissions won't help, and on the other you have people who think the damage has already been done. Either way, it points to the fact that we should really be exploring climate engineering.
I understand why you find the matter distasteful, but really it depends on the situation.
Calling on a national vote to determine whether global climate change is real is idiotic.
Asking a bunch of experts on a committee who can be reasonably be expected to know the science/math - or at least not vote if they don't know - is a good way to find out if one guy is making an absurd claim that no one who knows what they're talking about would agree with. Going to a textbook is simply relying on a different expert than the one that made the claim, and, depending on the situation, is prone to cherry-picking. If the vote comes up 99 to 1, you can safely move on. On the other hand, if the vote comes up 60-40, you either want to check your assumptions or evaluate the credentials of your experts.
Real competition wouldn't work either, because no one gives two shits about running expensive fiber to decreasingly dense, and therefore less profitable exurbs. Everyone wants to serve commercial hubs, no one wants to serve small towns.
What we need is mandated, subsidized coverage at least at the state level with minimum speeds and common carrier provisions (meaning companies other the one that laid the cable can use the line.)
This is how we handled rural electrification and nationwide telephony, it should be how we handle the internet.
There are an awful lot of properties that only have internet because the deals the ISPs negotiated with the municipalities require a certain (high) level of coverage. I obviously don't know your exact situation, but it's very possible that the only reason that 8Mbps extends within 500ft of you is that the next town over made them run it that far. They might have been happier keeping cable 10 miles from you and only serving the city center - but in order to access the profitable part of the market they're made to serve the less profitable parts.
for about the 500th time, ISPs are not, and do not want to be common carriers.
The DMCA safe harbor provision is completely different from common carrier protection and applies regardless of whether the content host monitors their content or not.
Let me start by reiterating that I am under no impression that big pharma are saints.
However, academia isn't in the business of business. Even if I were to grant that educational institutions could do all the medical R&D we need, they are not capable of formulating, meeting regulatory requirements, manufacturing, marketing, distributing, and assuming liability for drugs.
Generic's business model is to take the active ingredient AND formulation AND regulatory approval that the patent holder developed and manufacture the drug more cheaply. This is a very important part of the prescription drug economy, but in a world where pharmaceutical companies don't hold patents academia might be capable of turning out interesting and novel active ingredients, but there wouldn't be anyone there to turn it into a marketable drug.
I'm not happy with the size of big pharma's marketing budget or tactics, but consider that a significant portion of the NIH's budget goes towards the paper writing portion of science, as opposed to the research itself. This is absolutely a necessary part of science, but communication of discoveries is, in essence, another form of marketing.
An interesting illustration of this case is Buzz Aldrin suing Bacardi over using a photo of him on the moon taken by Neil Armstrong on a rum bottle label. You're not likely to find a clearer case of a work by a government employee as part of their official duties. Anyway, Aldrin is a recovering alcoholic and was none too pleased that a liquor company was using his likeness to promote alcohol.
Bacardi settled, and while this may not have included an admission of guilt, suffice it to say if they could have gotten away with using this (modified) public domain image for commercial use, they would have continued to.
The NIH has a not-insubstantial annual budget of ~$30 billion.
Pfizer, by itself, had revenues of $48 billion last year.
Academic medical research is good at lots of things - developing new marketable drugs isn't one of them - nor is the government prepared to spend that kind of money.
We can't get the government to provide universal healthcare, what in the world makes you think that we can get the government to step up and cover pharma's R&D budget in the absence of patents?
Almost everyone that google can find doesn't have any problem with this project (assuming the price is right). The question is whether google should be legally allowed to assume that the people they can't find don't have a problem with it.
For starters, there would be no drug research without intellectual property. No, drug companies aren't saints, but developing and testing a drug is phenomenally expensive, if they had to compete with the generics from the word go they'd just shut down. Medical breakthroughs are pretty important.
Intellectual property encompass trademarks, if I'm at the grocery store and I want to buy some Glad (tm) trashbags, it's because I don't want the store brand ones. If the store could duplicate Glad's packaging I wouldn't know what I'm getting.
more to the point, google is saying you don't have an option of only making $X if that's what you want. They want to force you into a situation where your material is online - regardless of whether you'll make more money that way or not.
Slashdot Mirror
Nah, it'll be your effete voice, meticulous faggy pronunciation, and vocabulary that contains words like effete.
I new it was trouble using both lose and to yours in a sentence. Those should both be you're.
Next time I'll try to effect more affective grammar.
Until AIG figured out it could make money coming and going by insuring other peoples assets - if they actually had to pay out the government would save them.
Gadget insurance is idiotic. The only people who carry it either (a) can't take care of their shit, or (b) intend to defraud the insurer. Because of this the premium/deductable schedule is such that you only win if you file a claim every three months - at which point the insurance company decides you're trying to defraud them and your denied coverage - and you lose any way.
Gap insurance only makes sense because a lot of people are idiots and will carry it even after they car is worth more than the loan. If you cancel it as soon as the blue book value matches yoru loan balance (usually ~12-18 months) you bought a useful service.
As for extended warranties - don't buy them. Not on cars, not on electronics, not on anything. Your laptop or your car is either going to break in the first six months and be covered, or isn't going to break until after the extended warranty is up. Even if it does break in the sweet spot, odds are what you paid for warranty coverage is about what it costs to fix your problem.
What's the difference between a subsidized product with a contract and a lease? Not much. The cell phone market is functionally a leasers market today, the only difference is that the asset has nearly completely depreciated (at least as far as resale is concerned) in the lease term.
Take a look. Otswego State University of New York.
Granted, it's only become an OSU recently, but then again Oregon State has only been an OSU since 1961, before which it was Agricultural College of the State of Oregon. Ohio State started life as Ohio A&M, but was an OSU by 1878. Likewise Oklahoma State started as Oklahoma A&M and only became an OSU in 1957.
So either Ohio State is the oldest OSU, or Otswego State is an older OSU than Oregon State.
Oswego State is older still, but nobody pays any attention to it either ;)
Didn't we start off talking about wired internet?
Your area may be profitable for WiMax, but I doubt it's profitable for wired internet.
If you want wired internet the only solution is government regulation. If you think we can serve the country with WiMax, then you need government regulation so the next WiMax provider doesn't step on your signal.
Originally from the buckeye state, not the sooner one.
You wouldn't be providing anything because there wouldn't be anything for your wireless router to plug into - unless you're prepared to lay 10 miles of cable from the nearest cable that meets the ISPs ROI calculations.
Without regulation the internet wouldn't be anywhere near you, it doesn't make economic sense to run cable 15mi out of the town center to serve a handful of people who live there.
What you're saying is now that regulation got your neighbor internet, we don't need it any more. You're trying to have your cake and eat it too.
The don't just give away the franchise rights. The trade them for, among other things, covering the whole, or at least a large part of, the municipality.
Municipalities would lose residents, and hence tax revenue if they allowed only one ISP to serve only the most profitable houses, because that would leave signicant portions of the area without coverage. "Can I get internet here" is a question people ask when they're moving. The municipality wants the answer to be "yes."
That's what I'm driving at.
There's no way your neighbor would have internet without some kind of government mandate, i.e. regulation. So the question of whether you'd be able to bury your own cable in the absence of regulation is moot - there wouldn't be internet anywhere near you to tap into.
You're a case study why we need more - or at least more centralized government regulation of broadband.
Fortunately Rand Land and the suburbs overlap nicely, so they'll find some logical contortion for government to step in and get them their internet.
People don't realize that going Galt means digging a hole the backyard to shit in.
If a flood or an ice floe makes NY uninhabitable, the people who used to live in New York will move next door to you.
Because, we don't want to live under an iceflow that is 10 times taller than the Empire State Building.
Climate Change, any climate change, is undesirable now that there's a society on the planet that adapted to the way things have been since the last ice age. Put it another way - meteor strikes happen, it's a natural process - but I'd really like to be able to do something about it.
There are two different questions, the first is whether there is anthropogenic climate change. The second is whether we should do something about climate change regardless of the cause.
The answer to both questions is Yes, but even if you deny the first, it really doesn't matter, because rising sea levels and droughts are bad, so if we can do something to prevent it we should. The question then becomes whether reducing our emissions will reduce climate change - and this is much more contentious. On the one side there are people who claim that humans are incapable of affecting the climate in any meaningful way, so no reducing emissions won't help, and on the other you have people who think the damage has already been done. Either way, it points to the fact that we should really be exploring climate engineering.
I understand why you find the matter distasteful, but really it depends on the situation.
Calling on a national vote to determine whether global climate change is real is idiotic.
Asking a bunch of experts on a committee who can be reasonably be expected to know the science/math - or at least not vote if they don't know - is a good way to find out if one guy is making an absurd claim that no one who knows what they're talking about would agree with. Going to a textbook is simply relying on a different expert than the one that made the claim, and, depending on the situation, is prone to cherry-picking. If the vote comes up 99 to 1, you can safely move on. On the other hand, if the vote comes up 60-40, you either want to check your assumptions or evaluate the credentials of your experts.
Everyone has ulterior motives.
The people doing the Global Warming science are based in universities and want to continue to receive funding.
The people doing anti-Global Warming work are based in Energy companies and want to continue to make record profits.
Which one do you think is more likely to color your results?
Real competition wouldn't work either, because no one gives two shits about running expensive fiber to decreasingly dense, and therefore less profitable exurbs. Everyone wants to serve commercial hubs, no one wants to serve small towns.
What we need is mandated, subsidized coverage at least at the state level with minimum speeds and common carrier provisions (meaning companies other the one that laid the cable can use the line.)
This is how we handled rural electrification and nationwide telephony, it should be how we handle the internet.
Maybe, maybe not.
There are an awful lot of properties that only have internet because the deals the ISPs negotiated with the municipalities require a certain (high) level of coverage. I obviously don't know your exact situation, but it's very possible that the only reason that 8Mbps extends within 500ft of you is that the next town over made them run it that far. They might have been happier keeping cable 10 miles from you and only serving the city center - but in order to access the profitable part of the market they're made to serve the less profitable parts.
I think I just found the methodological flaw in the study. Too small sample size in the non-bored civil servant cohort.
Pfew that was exciting.
for about the 500th time, ISPs are not, and do not want to be common carriers.
The DMCA safe harbor provision is completely different from common carrier protection and applies regardless of whether the content host monitors their content or not.
Let me start by reiterating that I am under no impression that big pharma are saints.
However, academia isn't in the business of business. Even if I were to grant that educational institutions could do all the medical R&D we need, they are not capable of formulating, meeting regulatory requirements, manufacturing, marketing, distributing, and assuming liability for drugs.
Generic's business model is to take the active ingredient AND formulation AND regulatory approval that the patent holder developed and manufacture the drug more cheaply. This is a very important part of the prescription drug economy, but in a world where pharmaceutical companies don't hold patents academia might be capable of turning out interesting and novel active ingredients, but there wouldn't be anyone there to turn it into a marketable drug.
I'm not happy with the size of big pharma's marketing budget or tactics, but consider that a significant portion of the NIH's budget goes towards the paper writing portion of science, as opposed to the research itself. This is absolutely a necessary part of science, but communication of discoveries is, in essence, another form of marketing.
An interesting illustration of this case is Buzz Aldrin suing Bacardi over using a photo of him on the moon taken by Neil Armstrong on a rum bottle label. You're not likely to find a clearer case of a work by a government employee as part of their official duties. Anyway, Aldrin is a recovering alcoholic and was none too pleased that a liquor company was using his likeness to promote alcohol.
Bacardi settled, and while this may not have included an admission of guilt, suffice it to say if they could have gotten away with using this (modified) public domain image for commercial use, they would have continued to.
forgive me if I'm not willing to place my health in the invisible hand of the free market.
The NIH has a not-insubstantial annual budget of ~$30 billion.
Pfizer, by itself, had revenues of $48 billion last year.
Academic medical research is good at lots of things - developing new marketable drugs isn't one of them - nor is the government prepared to spend that kind of money.
We can't get the government to provide universal healthcare, what in the world makes you think that we can get the government to step up and cover pharma's R&D budget in the absence of patents?
Almost everyone that google can find doesn't have any problem with this project (assuming the price is right). The question is whether google should be legally allowed to assume that the people they can't find don't have a problem with it.
For starters, there would be no drug research without intellectual property. No, drug companies aren't saints, but developing and testing a drug is phenomenally expensive, if they had to compete with the generics from the word go they'd just shut down. Medical breakthroughs are pretty important.
Intellectual property encompass trademarks, if I'm at the grocery store and I want to buy some Glad (tm) trashbags, it's because I don't want the store brand ones. If the store could duplicate Glad's packaging I wouldn't know what I'm getting.
more to the point, google is saying you don't have an option of only making $X if that's what you want. They want to force you into a situation where your material is online - regardless of whether you'll make more money that way or not.