I predict that movie directors who pay more attention to the story will create much better movies than those, who only care about money/visuals.
And I predict, that commas, will be ever increasingly, used in improper, places, making reading, sentences, seem like they, are done by, Shatner, or that handicapped, kid, from, "Malcom in the Middle."
Anyway, RTFA. It's not about using the market predictions to determine whether effects or story will dominate in a film production.
That I'll agree with, except the voluntarily 'helping out' by giving more info. My (domestic) travel records are no concern of theirs... though international is a different story, I suppose.
The simplest number for evaluation purposes is the value for which half the area under the curve is before that point, and half is after.
Sure, the simplest number for stupid marketing and BS babble is something arbitrary like the 50th sales percentile. The simplest number for evaluation purposes is not the 50th percentile of sales, but rather the point on the curve at which holding the inventory becomes unprofitable.
E.g., one can compare meaningless figures, or one can evaluate meaningful figures.
Usually the people who manage it do it in an unpredictable way, and you only realize after the fact that they harnessed a trend, and all the people who tried deliberately simply fail.
Throw enough darts, and some will hit the bullseye. Even if you're blindfolded.
There's nothing wrong with people who are willing to voluntarily give up some measure of their own privacy in exchange for a service provided on that data
I'm only going to partially agree with you on that one.
When deciding to give up their privacy, people are going to weigh the benefit gained against the harm done (in theory). The question is, when your choices are limited and all of them require you to give up your privacy, what are you going to do?
Privacy (IMO) needs to be actively protected. We've gotten complacent about it, and the lack of privacy from business and government that we experience today is mind-boggling. 100 years ago, it would have caused armed rebellions.
So, while in theory people will make an educated choice about trading privacy for services, in practice we're ending up with less of a choice and with greater intrusions of privacy.
People in general really have a problem with subtle points. If there isn't an "A IS GOOD, B IS BAD" in there somewhere, they'll simply convert the point into an "A IS GOOD, B IS BAD" point, and to hell with understanding what's actually being said.
By "people in general," of course, you mean people not in the long tail, right? The long tail people get the subtlety, it's just that it seems as time goes on that the long-tail-of-those-who-get-subtle-points (LTOTWGSP) is becoming a short stubby tail.
Either that, or the market is failing to reach the LTOTWGSP, and it would be a wise move for pundits and pontificators to start serving this long tail by introducing more subtlety into their dialogue.
OK, seriously:
There will still be people who deal only in hits, it's just that there will also be people who deal only in the tail, and the latter may become very large, too, perhaps even Amazon-sized, whereas before this was essentially impossible.
There have been specialty shops for practically forever. Your neighborhood alt/punk record shop previously served that market -- now they're out of business (or struggling) because of online availability of their inventory. But that shop couldn't survive in a regional market without both the culture and the population to support it. Online merchanting has eliminated those restraints, so arguably, that long tail IS being better served, since Joey "I Wanna Be Sedated" Public from East Bumbleshnizzle now has easy access to those records.
The point? As you say, those who serve the tail do have the opportunity to grow. But more likely, those that serve everyone will continue to dominate. Amazon, for example, can easily brand a sub-store for alt/punk, or they could easily be the fulfillment house for other merchants -- though I suspect which one they'd prefer. For the largest retailer, the amount of inventory space and other costs dedicated to long-tail items is proportionately lower to total costs than in a business that only serves the long tail. This efficiency helps with the one-stop-shopping concept that results in more sales -- they can afford to carry less profitable items, since they will lead to sales of highly profitable items.
I have to take a bit of issue with the complacency:
If Cameroon pisses off or annoys enough people with a stunt like this, I suspect someone, somewhere will do something about it.
What's that saying I've seen on crappy motivatioal posters with a bunch of ducks... ah yes, "Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way." The net routes around breaks due to the protocol and how routers work. The net routes around non-broken ugliness because people take action, and that action requires information. Not to be too pedantic, but if everyone assumes someone else will fix it, it doesn't get fixed.
The War On Drugs is sooo last century - didn't they get the memo that we're fighting the War On Terror now?
No, the War on Drugs is over politically (though no one will admit they lost the war. But the War on Drugs is still very much alive in sport -- at every level from high school to professional.
This will ideally just make it cheaper to test the other teams' 8-year-olds for EPO and synthetic testosterone to make sure they're not getting an unfair advantage over our non-cheating good-sportsman hard-working and deserving 8-year-olds.
The Fed caused the Great Depression by deflating the currency.
The Fed's contraction of the money supply was one factor in exacerbating the Great Depression, but the root causes were not the Fed activity (it can be argued that the Fed merely failed to help prevent the Depression). What caused the Depression was a poor distribution of wealth and overspeculation. The massively inequitable distribution of wealth had a negative effect on consumer demand, and the overspeculation caused massive drops in wealth injection when the bubble burst (since wealth injection was concentrated in the hands of a relative few who pulled out when things looked iffy).
The role of government in the marketplace is to prevent violence. Whenever you go beyond that, politicians have something to sell, and sell it they will.
A lot of people will disagree on the role of government (and that debate is healthy), but few would agree with your definition of the scope of government.
As to the inherent corruptibility of an system where there is an inequal distribution of power, it would be far worse to have that power held in the hands of a few, rather than ultimately in the hands of the people (in theory -- not that the people really wield power anymore in the US). The proper solution, IMO, is to remove the incentives to sell legislation, and increase public scrutiny of process. Unfortunately, no one really gives two turds about process, which is where this stuff happens.
Will we have toxic fumes along the lines of the DEHP that makes vinyl siding your house a public safety risk?
Are you kidding? This is a BRIDGE over DiHydrogen Monoxide, one of the most toxic compounds known to man, and you're worried about the toxicity of combustion byproducts *just in case* the bridge catches on fire?
No, it isn't. Look at www.dslreports.com to see how many competitors there are -- the less regulation there is in a municipality, the more competition there is.
Look again in 10 years. Also, whose fiber are they using? How did that fiber get there (who paid for it, and why were they able to afford to pay for it)?
Again, untrue. Once local service regulations were reduced (and not removed), we saw incredible outreach for cell phone service and broadband access. It wasn't the regulations that gave us this growth, it was new technologies that were finally allowed to compete with the old and dead monopoly technologies that provided it.
What happened prior to the big tech change? I'll freely admit that faced with new technology, a lot of outdated regulation needs to be revamped or removed. However, an unregulated market is rarely the answer for non-commodity goods in the long run.
There are numerous satellite broadband providers offering 1.5Mbps down and up to 256Kbps up throughout all 50 states at around US$50 to US$100 per month. Nothing precludes one person from getting a corporate account that allows reselling of the bandwidth. These speeds are only held back by FCC regulations.
Wildblue charges $80/mo for 1.5Mbps down / 256Kbps up (max), and they limit heavy users (like most telcos) which would prevent effective resale. Plus, $300 for the receiving equipment. Plus, how scalable is that? Wildblue (and others) would have to invest MAJOR capital to get more satellite space if they handled even 1% of the traffic out there. As of now, they are limiting themselves to hopefully being able to offer consistent 3Mbps down to businesses. A far, far cry from 1.5Gbps down, as you claim is around the corner (or would be w/o govt restrictions).
I lost about US$300,000 on that business last year.
You sure about that? In a response to one of my posts earlier this year, that $300,000 figure was much lower... an order of magnitude lower, IIRC. If I was a subscriber, I'd check my post history (and/or yours) for the specific post.
Any subscribers care to dig through our post histories?
But there are reasons some are precluded from switching easily. Usually it is because a local municipality or state has laws creating a monopoly provider.
And often those people would have no access to broadband if it weren't for regulated monopoly. In exchange for building out to West Dingleberry, the telco is granted the sole right to serve that area. Otherwise the risk outwieghs the potential profit.
As long as government doesn't create monopoly powers through Internet regulations, the Net will change to what the consumers want.
Hardly. As long as there is competition in a hugely capital-intensive market, you'll have a minimum of providers undercutting potential new competition, along with collusion. At best you'll get very, very slow one-upmanship without major capital improvements.
Competition crushed the CD, the DVD and the newspaper. Let it crush more so we get more for less.
Let it crush more? So that we have fewer, not more, options as to how we get deliverables? Unregulated markets of non-commodity goods (like internet service) result in monopolies and oligopolies. That's the natural state... even your totally unregulated Austrian model has to adjust for monopolistic force in order to work properly. If you really want better performance in terms of net result for the consumer, you either need to take actions to prevent monopolies, or take actions to regulate them -- whether you're from the Austrian school of thought (such as yourself), the Keynesian (such as the FRB), or another (such as myself). In the case of the telcos, it was determined that regulation was a better bet because of the alternative would have either been state-owned infrastructure, or no service to less dense areas.
Not to be cliche, but suckers use AOL, which ties in perfectly with advertising, as follows:
1) Create ISP/crappy web portal/email service. 2) Make sure you're substandard. 3) Advertise the heck out of your substandard service. 4) Compile a list of those suckers that signed up for your service despite better, cheaper alternatives, and make sure you have a way to get content in front of them (see 1, above). 5) Sell advertising space targeting your pre-filtered-for-susceptibility-to-advertising-lis t-of-sucker-consumers. 6) Profit.
I work for a print publishing firm, so the ability to write well is valued more than in most companies, I'd imagine.
Also, I work on the business end, so email is preferred over IM due to better archiving (particularly with vendors or clients, but also interdepartmental correspondence).
Sure. That's because we have allowed our government to meddle in the market. Now the market is meddling in our government and the results are pretty ugly.
This has always been true. It's nothing new, except in degree -- and the ultimate reason is media bastardizing the election process (so that the electorate isn't voting on the real issues).
Free trade is not the ultimate answer, IMO. Campaign finance reform is a better option, since it still allows us the power to take necessary actions in the market to forestall economic disaster. I suspect we differ in opinion on the role of government in the market -- I'll just say that less is more, but some is necessary, IMO.
It seems to me that AOL is looking at the search engine model and trying to copy it.
Looks more like the magazine model to me. And like the magazine industry, likely to not do so well in the long run -- there is just way too much free content out there easily available. AOL makes its living off: (1) People who don't know better (who, BTW, are excellent targets for ads for the same reason they know no better) (2) People who don't want to let go of their email address.
Finally, as we see minority browsers get market share, especially Firefox (with its ease of customization and extendability), subscription web portals are becoming less and less useful -- moreso as the population becomes more facile with the internet and computers in general.
"targeted, personalized meetings and activities" Strippers and lap-dances to get the buyers in the right "mood"?
Clearly you misunderstand the meaning of the word 'targeted.' What they mean to say is that they'll be playing a FPS on closed 8-person LANs, hence the 'targeted'. Oh, and they'll be using first names, hence the 'personalized'. And, of course, they'll be saying 'hi' to eachother and there will be massive quantities of hand-shaking (the 'meetings').
As for strippers and lap-dances, I think you're thinking of the varnish-removal industry convention and hoe-down hosted each year by the reindeer-raising Scandinavians. But I could be mistaken.
Hogwash. If you think that the power truly rests with the people, you are either very much the optimist, or you're deluding yourself (or both). I'm a cynic, but it appears that you've drunk the kool-aid we've all been fed since our first days of civics lessons in school.
Two simple reasons why our government is no longer (if it ever was) for and by the people:
(1) Secrecy. When you can;t find out what your government is doing, how are you supposed to act against it in a legal manner? (2) Money. Big money interests (both corporations and individuals) have an undue amount of influence in our political system.
I personally participate in the democratic in many ways, from voting to writing letters to calling my state legislators, to attending functions they'll be at in order to press my point(s). Nevertheless, the actions of the individual (even the actions of hundreds) are far from a panacea to our civic problems.
Government may have used to be the people. Not so any longer, and it's important to recognize that the bureaucratic government holds power that the electorate (us) can't counter. Career politicians, career bureacrats, government agencies whose very existence is secret, monies spent on secret budgets that no one is accountable for...
My tinfoil hat is on... because it's not paranoia if they ARE really monitoring your actions (I've been pulled out of line to be searched waiting to board a plane because my FBI file lists me as an agitator. Had to fly into SEA-TAC during the WTO meeting pre-9/11 for business.)
But my brain is 'asploding' from the posts so far in this thread with their 'lolz' and their 'plz' and their 'orly'. Get off my lawn, yada yada.
From a business perspective, I've seen college graduates emailing using the typical IM abbreviations -- but typically, when reminded that it's not appropriate, I'd say that the grammar of these new hires tends to be as good or better than some of what I see elsewhere. At least they've been communicating in a non-verbal format.
If anything, I find that those who have IM'd a lot tend to have an easier time of getting their message across clearly in emails -- maybe it's due to their understanding of the shortfalls of text communication.
There are ways to oversee the process with paper ballots. Not so with this generation of machines. A machine that is wholesale falsifiable without recourse of back-checking is ridiculous. Why 'upgrade' to a machine when the machine is less trustworthy than paper ballots?
Slashdot Mirror
Anyway, RTFA. It's not about using the market predictions to determine whether effects or story will dominate in a film production.
I'd rather know what they would do for a Klondike Bar.
Hopefully nothing like what is said here. Warning: there there be crappiness.
Nice. Very nice. But what about the Asks, the MSNSearches, or the Dogpiles (my favorite)?
That I'll agree with, except the voluntarily 'helping out' by giving more info. My (domestic) travel records are no concern of theirs... though international is a different story, I suppose.
Or are "Googles" something like "Fraggles"? Because I've forgotten what Fraggle Rock was all about.
What's that you say? Someone just forgot an apostrophe? Oh. Never mind then. Back to business.-
E.g., one can compare meaningless figures, or one can evaluate meaningful figures.
When deciding to give up their privacy, people are going to weigh the benefit gained against the harm done (in theory). The question is, when your choices are limited and all of them require you to give up your privacy, what are you going to do?
Privacy (IMO) needs to be actively protected. We've gotten complacent about it, and the lack of privacy from business and government that we experience today is mind-boggling. 100 years ago, it would have caused armed rebellions.
So, while in theory people will make an educated choice about trading privacy for services, in practice we're ending up with less of a choice and with greater intrusions of privacy.
Either that, or the market is failing to reach the LTOTWGSP, and it would be a wise move for pundits and pontificators to start serving this long tail by introducing more subtlety into their dialogue.
OK, seriously:
There have been specialty shops for practically forever. Your neighborhood alt/punk record shop previously served that market -- now they're out of business (or struggling) because of online availability of their inventory. But that shop couldn't survive in a regional market without both the culture and the population to support it. Online merchanting has eliminated those restraints, so arguably, that long tail IS being better served, since Joey "I Wanna Be Sedated" Public from East Bumbleshnizzle now has easy access to those records.
The point? As you say, those who serve the tail do have the opportunity to grow. But more likely, those that serve everyone will continue to dominate. Amazon, for example, can easily brand a sub-store for alt/punk, or they could easily be the fulfillment house for other merchants -- though I suspect which one they'd prefer. For the largest retailer, the amount of inventory space and other costs dedicated to long-tail items is proportionately lower to total costs than in a business that only serves the long tail. This efficiency helps with the one-stop-shopping concept that results in more sales -- they can afford to carry less profitable items, since they will lead to sales of highly profitable items.
What's that saying I've seen on crappy motivatioal posters with a bunch of ducks... ah yes, "Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way." The net routes around breaks due to the protocol and how routers work. The net routes around non-broken ugliness because people take action, and that action requires information. Not to be too pedantic, but if everyone assumes someone else will fix it, it doesn't get fixed.
This will ideally just make it cheaper to test the other teams' 8-year-olds for EPO and synthetic testosterone to make sure they're not getting an unfair advantage over our non-cheating good-sportsman hard-working and deserving 8-year-olds.
A lot of people will disagree on the role of government (and that debate is healthy), but few would agree with your definition of the scope of government.
As to the inherent corruptibility of an system where there is an inequal distribution of power, it would be far worse to have that power held in the hands of a few, rather than ultimately in the hands of the people (in theory -- not that the people really wield power anymore in the US). The proper solution, IMO, is to remove the incentives to sell legislation, and increase public scrutiny of process. Unfortunately, no one really gives two turds about process, which is where this stuff happens.
I found the "insightful" mods pretty funny, meta-humor even (were the mods in on the joke and just adding to it?)
At any rate, I wasn't aiming for "+5 funny" -- I was aiming to make people chuckle.
I'm not concerned at all about bonuses to karma, I've plenty to burn and that's not why I post on slashdot anyway.
Sheesh.
What happened prior to the big tech change? I'll freely admit that faced with new technology, a lot of outdated regulation needs to be revamped or removed. However, an unregulated market is rarely the answer for non-commodity goods in the long run.Wildblue charges $80/mo for 1.5Mbps down / 256Kbps up (max), and they limit heavy users (like most telcos) which would prevent effective resale. Plus, $300 for the receiving equipment. Plus, how scalable is that? Wildblue (and others) would have to invest MAJOR capital to get more satellite space if they handled even 1% of the traffic out there. As of now, they are limiting themselves to hopefully being able to offer consistent 3Mbps down to businesses. A far, far cry from 1.5Gbps down, as you claim is around the corner (or would be w/o govt restrictions).
Any subscribers care to dig through our post histories?
Hardly. As long as there is competition in a hugely capital-intensive market, you'll have a minimum of providers undercutting potential new competition, along with collusion. At best you'll get very, very slow one-upmanship without major capital improvements.
Let it crush more? So that we have fewer, not more, options as to how we get deliverables? Unregulated markets of non-commodity goods (like internet service) result in monopolies and oligopolies. That's the natural state... even your totally unregulated Austrian model has to adjust for monopolistic force in order to work properly. If you really want better performance in terms of net result for the consumer, you either need to take actions to prevent monopolies, or take actions to regulate them -- whether you're from the Austrian school of thought (such as yourself), the Keynesian (such as the FRB), or another (such as myself). In the case of the telcos, it was determined that regulation was a better bet because of the alternative would have either been state-owned infrastructure, or no service to less dense areas.
I mean seriously, who uses AOL?
s t-of-sucker-consumers.
Not to be cliche, but suckers use AOL, which ties in perfectly with advertising, as follows:
1) Create ISP/crappy web portal/email service.
2) Make sure you're substandard.
3) Advertise the heck out of your substandard service.
4) Compile a list of those suckers that signed up for your service despite better, cheaper alternatives, and make sure you have a way to get content in front of them (see 1, above).
5) Sell advertising space targeting your pre-filtered-for-susceptibility-to-advertising-li
6) Profit.
Email, not IM. Quite a difference, as you note.
I work for a print publishing firm, so the ability to write well is valued more than in most companies, I'd imagine.
Also, I work on the business end, so email is preferred over IM due to better archiving (particularly with vendors or clients, but also interdepartmental correspondence).
Free trade is not the ultimate answer, IMO. Campaign finance reform is a better option, since it still allows us the power to take necessary actions in the market to forestall economic disaster. I suspect we differ in opinion on the role of government in the market -- I'll just say that less is more, but some is necessary, IMO.
(1) People who don't know better (who, BTW, are excellent targets for ads for the same reason they know no better)
(2) People who don't want to let go of their email address.
Finally, as we see minority browsers get market share, especially Firefox (with its ease of customization and extendability), subscription web portals are becoming less and less useful -- moreso as the population becomes more facile with the internet and computers in general.
As for strippers and lap-dances, I think you're thinking of the varnish-removal industry convention and hoe-down hosted each year by the reindeer-raising Scandinavians. But I could be mistaken.
Hogwash. If you think that the power truly rests with the people, you are either very much the optimist, or you're deluding yourself (or both). I'm a cynic, but it appears that you've drunk the kool-aid we've all been fed since our first days of civics lessons in school.
Two simple reasons why our government is no longer (if it ever was) for and by the people:
(1) Secrecy. When you can;t find out what your government is doing, how are you supposed to act against it in a legal manner?
(2) Money. Big money interests (both corporations and individuals) have an undue amount of influence in our political system.
I personally participate in the democratic in many ways, from voting to writing letters to calling my state legislators, to attending functions they'll be at in order to press my point(s). Nevertheless, the actions of the individual (even the actions of hundreds) are far from a panacea to our civic problems.
Government may have used to be the people. Not so any longer, and it's important to recognize that the bureaucratic government holds power that the electorate (us) can't counter. Career politicians, career bureacrats, government agencies whose very existence is secret, monies spent on secret budgets that no one is accountable for...
My tinfoil hat is on... because it's not paranoia if they ARE really monitoring your actions (I've been pulled out of line to be searched waiting to board a plane because my FBI file lists me as an agitator. Had to fly into SEA-TAC during the WTO meeting pre-9/11 for business.)
But my brain is 'asploding' from the posts so far in this thread with their 'lolz' and their 'plz' and their 'orly'. Get off my lawn, yada yada.
From a business perspective, I've seen college graduates emailing using the typical IM abbreviations -- but typically, when reminded that it's not appropriate, I'd say that the grammar of these new hires tends to be as good or better than some of what I see elsewhere. At least they've been communicating in a non-verbal format.
If anything, I find that those who have IM'd a lot tend to have an easier time of getting their message across clearly in emails -- maybe it's due to their understanding of the shortfalls of text communication.
There are ways to oversee the process with paper ballots. Not so with this generation of machines. A machine that is wholesale falsifiable without recourse of back-checking is ridiculous. Why 'upgrade' to a machine when the machine is less trustworthy than paper ballots?