Otherwise nothing will ever get done because EVERYTHING builds on something else. If you think otherwise then you are just a pathological narcisist.
Although I don't accept your premise.
BOTH devices are blatant copies of any number of other devices that came before them. This is how progress occurs.
Ownership is not supposed to be assigned to "what" but to HOW. That HOW needs to be non-trivial. It needs to be something that can't be replicated by some student.
Patents need to be real inventions, not college homework assignments.
Yes, the local ceramics company is suing a mug manufacturer because the round tall mug violates the patent they have on the shape of the handle. Reminds you of another company
Wait, so you bought an consumer electronics device from them well over a decade ago, it had a feature on it that didn't work very well for your purposes, and you want to throw them in the same category as crApple? I thought that I had a grudge about Apple through their recent behaviour, ever increasingly closed O/S, and hardware that is becoming more and more difficult (read impossible) to upgrade - but your grudge is slightly alarming... and you got your money back from Best Buy! As a former Apple employee and dedicated user of their products (I may have bordered on fanboy at one point), I've become so sick of Apple's despicable practices and direction that I've given my iPad to my wife and replaced it with a Google Nexus, replaced my iPhone (goodbye unlimited data!) with a Samsung S3, and my shiny late-2011 MBP has been relegated to a secondary laptop with a nice new Dell running Linux Mint 10... However, were Apple to change their business practices/policies I would again consider using their products as they are of exceptional quality.
I have Samsung laptops, washing machine and dryers, vacuums, etc. All top top quality products. I had other samsung products (cell phones and TVs). All top quality. The one time some small electronics failed, I got an RMA after I quoted the date of purchase and the serial number on the device. They sent me a new one.
If it was for a TV or washer, they have certified repair organizations. Can't beat that.
Now for the major factor. Their products performs better than the average. Like all manufacturers, from car to home appliances, etc. they buy a few of the competing products, figure out how they can do it better and sell a better product. It also happens to them, as you can bet a thousand dollars that Apple did that same thing with Samsung and their other competitors.
Samsung Galaxy performs better than does Apples overly priced product. Price gouging, is price gouging, and using the courts in every possible way to harm competition (they learned from MS), is not what I consider acceptable.
Apple is temporarily on top. I think it will be a me too company within 5 years. And all the competitors with their patents will combine to make sure Apple dies a torturous death.
Most idiots just parrot the 'security through obscurity' thinking it's some compelling argument when it's really not. If the basis of your security is entirely reliant on the obscurity of your algorithms, etc. being private then it is bad. But using some level of secrecy as a first line of defense can be quite useful in preventing attacks.
Even Bruce Schneier does not take the black-and-white stance that the Internet 'experts' do. He is actually quite pragmatic about acknowledging that there is a continuum of secrecy requirements based on the system at hand, but mentions that relying too much on secrecy makes the security of the system more fragile. These Internet 'experts' need to actual read what people like Bruce say rather than just repeating stupid sound bite pieces.
I hero worship Bruce Schneier. I read both editions of his cryptography books. What I most admire is his succinctness. A man of few words.
For a while I have been using KDE. With KDE, I can remove and remove until a base set is left, and on that frame is an icon that says, "Restore defaults". To my test, it restores the set of defaults that were present when I created the KDE logon.
So, not all GUI interfaces are as good as KDE provides.
Negative aspect of KDE (slow startup to establish itself. Perhaps some optimisation would be possible to halve the startup time)
Definitely Yes. Here is a Montreal Quebec Canada Story. The city had an old broken down waterfront area that used to house manufacturing. Together with some developers, with the government (provincial and federal), the took three city blocks square, and deemed it the IT square. They installed high speed fibre lines in the older buildings, temporarily, provided cheap rents, and so forth. Over time, they demolished and rebuilt new high tech buildings in that kilometer squared area. Some companies took entire floors, some an office, and some a bit more than a cubicle (shared office). Over time, all the buildings were replaced as new. Interestingly enough, neighboring buildings were demolished, and condominium apartments were built in their place. Many heritage buildings were kept, but converted to condos. The IT center outgrew that area, but spread to adjoining areas or took buildings not too far away. (Erricson, Ubisoft, etc. etc.) Good development premises resulted in attracting talent to Montreal. BTW, headhunters also got a small office in the Square Kilometer.
In queuing theory, we learn that a server working at speed X is better than 2 servers working at X/2 speed. So tightly coupled 4 cores executing at speeds less than X but more than 2/3 of X are probably not giving any good results. The reasoning is simple. The memory is not a quad memory, it is a resource where the cores have contention for access. Also for disk, etc.
Loosely coupled new architectures would be better, if the partner is improving access to physical devices.
The PC really is responsive enough for our email, browsing, responding to keyboarding, playing music, watching videos, and compiling programs. The power is there, will everybody be needing more power to do hacking of encryption algorithms?
My thoughts are that in the time of Noah, we counted months as years. To live 900+ years was quite exceptional (about 74 of our years). Later the calendar changed to count rainy seasons. If we lived to 120, as the bible says, in todays reconning, it was 60 of our years). Leaving the calendar discussion.....
My one regret is that I cannot watch how people feel about me or talk about me after I die and before the eulogy.
I have grandchildren, I would like to be at their marriages, and the birth of their children. If my wife precedes me in death, I would prefer to not continue. She is my love, my life, and my raison d'être. I expect my wife will live to 90+, so I will expect to be living to 95+.
As we age, body parts wear out. We get aches and pains. The scratchpad, our brain's short term memory needs the cache cleared, so we can remember a 10 digit phone number. And after so many years, our memory search for historical data (retrieval) takes longer. This does not mean we are getting stupid, but we appear forgetful to the public. Our IQ has not diminished, and with our experience in life, I believe we make smarter decisions.
Using pieces of string as my hardware, I have applied for a patent to solve the right angle problem using the formula hyptoteneuse squared = sum of the squares of the individual remaining two sides). My strings are engineered to be of length 3 yards, 4 yards, and 5 yards.
I even believe that it is genetically sound and we will find this rule to be a patent that is pending in all mathematics calculations for building construction, or any construction where a 90 degree angle is required.
Kids are getting Samsung Galaxy 3 phones and with it comes wifi, and data. Via data, they can do everything that is possible, as if the school has no firewall.
I would block facebook, except for lunch hours. Ditto for the other sites.
Er, there's a rather large country with lots of open spaces right next door, that someone might consider as a viable option to the US or Europe. You know, Canada, that place where we've weathered the downturn better, are on track (in 2-3 years or so, unless Europe implodes) to eliminate the temporary deficits we ran up to keep our heads above water during the financial crisis and go back to running surpluses, have universal, single payor health care (at half the price per capita of US health care), similar standard of living, stable democracy, and politicians who are saner than the US ones, even if I don't like anything our current government is doing.
Just sayin'.
(We've got our own problems here, no question, but we're in better shape than the US, for the foreseeable future)
You forgot to include -- no automatic weapons, no small arms, just game hunters with rifles. Multi-culturism -- Bilingual English / French, with respect for Spanish-- all European Languages, Great universities comparable to the best in the world for science, medicine, music, arts,
I think that we forgot how things in software engineering should be done. Are there not steps that we have learned?
a) Business Spec b) Functional Spec c) Technical Spec d) Risk Analysis e) Coding and testing f) Quality Control (of pre-production code) g) Legal (CYA) h) Marketing (somewhere around a.1)
Code walkthoughs and testing must be done-- right?
The exchange rate is part of it but locked down distribution channels are the larger part.
A while ago, one US dollar was worth 1.7 Australian dollars. So something worth US$50 in a US store would be put on shelves here for AU$85. And then the exchange rate changed. One US dollar was worth one AU dollar. But things don't sell for their cost, they sell for as much as the seller can get and that's the pricing Australian consumers were used to. So that US$50 item would still be sold for AU$85 and someone would pocket the AU$35 difference.
The second part of this is distribution channel lockdown. Companies producing goods make deals with their US distributors to force those distributors to refuse to sell to Australian buyers. That leaves Australians and Australian retailers forced to buy from the designated Australian distributor at inflated prices.
What the grey market does is break that distribution lock. That's all. Some US citizen buys goods in the US from the US distribution channel, pays the US price, ships them over and sells them in Australia for far less than the authorised Australian distributor charges Australian retailers. If it wasn't for the locked down distribution, Australian retailers would skip the authorised Australian distributor and buy from a US distributor at US prices.
Another reason Australians are complaining is, with Internet sales, people nowdays can *see* the prices being charged elsewhere. 15 years ago, you'd have no idea what something sold for in another country. Now, we see Skyrim appear on Steam for US$50 for US gamers and US$90 for Australian gamers.
Yes, we get charged US dollars on Steam. 90 of them instead of 50, because the US Steam site sees I have an Australian IP address. And you have to send the packets much harder to make sure they get all the way across the ocean, you know? There's sites where you can order a game and they'll go to their local retailer, buy the game, open the box and then email you the Steam key. You can type it in your Steam client and download the game. Absolutely ridiculous.
I may be naive, but does Austrailia have currency controls. I deal with Latin America, and one of the countries limits an individual transfer of money out of the country to $3500.00 after which there is a tax. Tourists and individuals are not impacted if they take less than that amount out of the country. Your grey market purchase would fall into the less-than "currency controlled" amount, if that is imposed.
Yeah; I'm waiting for the day they abolish prices altogether and just list the cost of everything as a percentage of your income. That's the pricing model everything is moving towards anyway -- not what something is worth, but what they can get away with charging you. And if any of you asshats stand up and make an "invisible hand" argument, you're waking up tomorrow with a horse head next to you. This is not the result of free trade, but the restriction of free trade. Those corporations are shoving region coding down your throats, signing exclusive contracts and manipulating distribution channels to artificially alter the prices, and buying off government officials to make it all legal. That is not capitalism. It is not free trade. It is exploitative, and should be stopped.
You think that's bad... try being in Canada, our drug prices may be less, but our prices on almost everything else are significantly higher than in the USA. There was actually a news article here a while back about cars that were built at a plant in Canada, being $10,000-$20,000 cheaper in hawaii than they were at the dealership accross the street from the plant. I frequently buy other things online to avoid the ridiculous markup in Canadian stores too.
I was at a popular Electronic Retail Store. where 6 foot HDMI cables was listed at $40.00 I went to the local Dollarama (dollar store) and they had the 6 foot cables for $2.00. Batteries, lightbulbs etc. at big box stores are triple the price of the internet or local dollar stores (for the same product).
Technically, on a 6 foot length, with no real megahertz frequencies traversing the cable, there is perceptable difference in TV output or even my HDMI monitor output. The $40.00 cables had gold colored connector shells.
In UK, NZ, and I presume Australia too, the reason people pay for private health insurance is to get a bed in a private room when/if they require hospitilization, and to get on a shorter waiting list for tests and treatments for non-life-threatening conditions. If you're prepared to slum it in a shared ward with other patients and wait a few months to get surgery on that low level knee pain that's been annoying you for years, then the NHS is perfectly adequate, and will kick into action quickly and efficiently when you really need it.
Same story for Quebec and most of Canada. By the way, our health insurance, via taxes, also includes some of not most ambulance services. That includes heliocopter rides from remote locations to local hospitals. (We have a few hospitals with landing pads). In other cases, if it is scheduled surgery, it may include return plane fare if the resident is living in a remote region.
Where we fail badly is in the far north with Aboriginal Indians who live on reserves. They often have no resident doctor.
Good god, doesn't anyone know how to do a little reading on subjects before giving their lectures? As much as everyone hates insurance companies, they actually contribute very little overall to the cost of health care (less than 10%), and malpractice lawsuits contribute far less than even that. The BIGGEST contributor to the outrageous health care costs in the US is, by far, a lack of pricing regulations over pharmaceutical companies and manufacturers (which every other developed country in the world has) and a willingness by politicians (and insurance companies) to sign contracts with pharmaceutical businesses to meet their ridiculous prices. Why do you think people can go to Mexico to buy the same medicine for less than 1/10th of what they pay for it in the US? It's not like Mexico can afford to subsidize a wide variety of medicine; most of that stuff is completely unsubsidized. It's because pharmaceutical companies know they can charge outrageous prices for cheap medicine knowing that we'll buy it if we have to.
And "Obamacare" does indeed address this issue, although nowhere near as much as it should, and that was even before it got neutered by the corporate henchmen we know as (mostly Republican) Congressmen. If you seriously think "real" health care reform is just making it impossible for people to sue for botched operations (which can already take years in many states, if it's even permitted), you need to stop watching Fox Noise.
We in Canada know well what gouging is taking place. The provinces are moving together to purchase generics en masse. They also learned to not have a single source of supply. Sandoz, a large generic manufacturer shut itself down when some issues with medications and sanitary manufacturing were detected. They were the lowest bidder. They are now back on line, and the governments are looking to having two suppliers of every medication. One thing about prescription drugs though, is that the government does not approve every new drug that comes onto the market. They are very very careful to ensure the drug has merit, and that lower cost alternative cocktail solutions will be a good alternative. If you also have private insurance, perhaps that insurance plan will cover the new drugs -- drugs without a good history of worthwhile results.
US healthcare is expensive, and supply is high, but demand is low (as fewer can afford it, though I thought Obamacare was supposed to fix that). Hence lots of money to spend on shiny new toys to fix people, and no waiting lists. (Of course, there are other costs as well - like people delaying trips to the doctor so they can get more ailments before seeking treatment...).
No ObamaCare won't do any such thing in actuality; though it may pretend to do so it will actually make all the costs go up as it lacks any actual cost control mechanism. Their ideas was "make everyone get it and the insurers will lower their prices" but it doesn't work that way - especially when the insurers are the number one or two problem (the other being malpractice lawsuits, which again ObamaCare does nothing to cure).
If you want real health reform in the US, then you have to address malpractice lawsuits in some meaningful manner, and also address the fact that insurance companies do everything they can to keep from paying anything - which results in 3, 4, or more appeals before a doctor gets paid - each appeal making costs higher as it requires money to file, and personnel to file and track - people that could otherwise be helping service patients. Solve those to things and health care costs will drop dramatically.
Bravo... You are right on!!.
In Quebec, doctors are by law, prevented from being sued for malpractice. But the College of physicians is scrutineering the doctors very closely. With no law suits, the quality of doctor has not suffered, and patients are not dying or being more injured than if there was lawsuites. Doctors are free to see more critically ill patients, and live with less stress because they are protected.
A Doctors net net pay after expenses is about the same as their USA counterpart, who have high insurance expenses to protect the doctor from (frivolous) law suites.
We are blessed that back in the 1970's, 1980's and in early 1990's there were many inventors decided to share their incredible inventions with the world, and they also decided against patenting their inventions
That is why we got what we got today - from hypertext to web2, web3
If the inventors of yesteryears were as greedy as Apple - We are sure going to miss out on the many things that we are enjoying today
Hooray to the generous inventors !!
Pox to those greedy patent trolls !!!
Yes, it's a true assumption. It is also the reason we are able to communicate on/.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes. Blatant copying is OK with me.
Otherwise nothing will ever get done because EVERYTHING builds on something else. If you think otherwise then you are just a pathological narcisist.
Although I don't accept your premise.
BOTH devices are blatant copies of any number of other devices that came before them. This is how progress occurs.
Ownership is not supposed to be assigned to "what" but to HOW. That HOW needs to be non-trivial. It needs to be something that can't be replicated by some student.
Patents need to be real inventions, not college homework assignments.
Yes, the local ceramics company is suing a mug manufacturer because the round tall mug violates the patent they have on the shape of the handle.
Reminds you of another company
Wait, so you bought an consumer electronics device from them well over a decade ago, it had a feature on it that didn't work very well for your purposes, and you want to throw them in the same category as crApple? I thought that I had a grudge about Apple through their recent behaviour, ever increasingly closed O/S, and hardware that is becoming more and more difficult (read impossible) to upgrade - but your grudge is slightly alarming... and you got your money back from Best Buy!
As a former Apple employee and dedicated user of their products (I may have bordered on fanboy at one point), I've become so sick of Apple's despicable practices and direction that I've given my iPad to my wife and replaced it with a Google Nexus, replaced my iPhone (goodbye unlimited data!) with a Samsung S3, and my shiny late-2011 MBP has been relegated to a secondary laptop with a nice new Dell running Linux Mint 10... However, were Apple to change their business practices/policies I would again consider using their products as they are of exceptional quality.
I have Samsung laptops, washing machine and dryers, vacuums, etc. All top top quality products. I had other samsung products (cell phones and TVs). All top quality. The one time some small electronics failed, I got an RMA after I quoted the date of purchase and the serial number on the device. They sent me a new one.
If it was for a TV or washer, they have certified repair organizations. Can't beat that.
Now for the major factor. Their products performs better than the average. Like all manufacturers, from car to home appliances, etc. they buy a few of the competing products, figure out how they can do it better and sell a better product. It also happens to them, as you can bet a thousand dollars that Apple did that same thing with Samsung and their other competitors.
Samsung Galaxy performs better than does Apples overly priced product. Price gouging, is price gouging, and using the courts in every possible way to harm competition (they learned from MS), is not what I consider acceptable.
Apple is temporarily on top. I think it will be a me too company within 5 years. And all the competitors with their patents will combine to make sure Apple dies a torturous death.
Most idiots just parrot the 'security through obscurity' thinking it's some compelling argument when it's really not. If the basis of your security is entirely reliant on the obscurity of your algorithms, etc. being private then it is bad. But using some level of secrecy as a first line of defense can be quite useful in preventing attacks.
Even Bruce Schneier does not take the black-and-white stance that the Internet 'experts' do. He is actually quite pragmatic about acknowledging that there is a continuum of secrecy requirements based on the system at hand, but mentions that relying too much on secrecy makes the security of the system more fragile. These Internet 'experts' need to actual read what people like Bruce say rather than just repeating stupid sound bite pieces.
I hero worship Bruce Schneier. I read both editions of his cryptography books. What I most admire is his succinctness. A man of few words.
Samsung should get the Apple products banned because they DO infringe on Samsung patents.
For a while I have been using KDE. With KDE, I can remove and remove until a base set is left, and on that frame is an icon that says, "Restore defaults". To my test, it restores the set of defaults that were present when I created the KDE logon.
So, not all GUI interfaces are as good as KDE provides.
Negative aspect of KDE (slow startup to establish itself. Perhaps some optimisation would be possible to halve the startup time)
Definitely Yes.
Here is a Montreal Quebec Canada Story. The city had an old broken down waterfront area that used to house manufacturing. Together with some developers, with the government (provincial and federal), the took three city blocks square, and deemed it the IT square. They installed high speed fibre lines in the older buildings, temporarily, provided cheap rents, and so forth.
Over time, they demolished and rebuilt new high tech buildings in that kilometer squared area. Some companies took entire floors, some an office, and some a bit more than a cubicle (shared office).
Over time, all the buildings were replaced as new. Interestingly enough, neighboring buildings were demolished, and condominium apartments were built in their place. Many heritage buildings were kept, but converted to condos.
The IT center outgrew that area, but spread to adjoining areas or took buildings not too far away. (Erricson, Ubisoft, etc. etc.) Good development premises resulted in attracting talent to Montreal. BTW, headhunters also got a small office in the Square Kilometer.
Just because they will be providing VPN support, doe not mean that they are doing something illegal.
I want one, PLEASE send it, I will pay for it. But I need some ability to run A/C and heating because of our weather.
In queuing theory, we learn that a server working at speed X is better than 2 servers working at X/2 speed. So tightly coupled 4 cores executing at speeds less than X but more than 2/3 of X are probably not giving any good results.
The reasoning is simple. The memory is not a quad memory, it is a resource where the cores have contention for access. Also for disk, etc.
Loosely coupled new architectures would be better, if the partner is improving access to physical devices.
The PC really is responsive enough for our email, browsing, responding to keyboarding, playing music, watching videos, and compiling programs. The power is there, will everybody be needing more power to do hacking of encryption algorithms?
My thoughts are that in the time of Noah, we counted months as years. To live 900+ years was quite exceptional (about 74 of our years). Later the calendar changed to count rainy seasons. If we lived to 120, as the bible says, in todays reconning, it was 60 of our years).
Leaving the calendar discussion.....
My one regret is that I cannot watch how people feel about me or talk about me after I die and before the eulogy.
I have grandchildren, I would like to be at their marriages, and the birth of their children. If my wife precedes me in death, I would prefer to not continue. She is my love, my life, and my raison d'être.
I expect my wife will live to 90+, so I will expect to be living to 95+.
As we age, body parts wear out. We get aches and pains. The scratchpad, our brain's short term memory needs the cache cleared, so we can remember a 10 digit phone number. And after so many years, our memory search for historical data (retrieval) takes longer. This does not mean we are getting stupid, but we appear forgetful to the public. Our IQ has not diminished, and with our experience in life, I believe we make smarter decisions.
My 2 cents
Using pieces of string as my hardware, I have applied for a patent to solve the right angle problem using the
formula hyptoteneuse squared = sum of the squares of the individual remaining two sides). My strings are engineered to be of length 3 yards, 4 yards, and 5 yards.
I even believe that it is genetically sound and we will find this rule to be a patent that is pending in all mathematics calculations for building construction, or any construction where a 90 degree angle is required.
Kids are getting Samsung Galaxy 3 phones and with it comes wifi, and data. Via data, they can do everything that is possible, as if the school has no firewall.
I would block facebook, except for lunch hours. Ditto for the other sites.
Er, there's a rather large country with lots of open spaces right next door, that someone might consider as a viable option to the US or Europe. You know, Canada, that place where we've weathered the downturn better, are on track (in 2-3 years or so, unless Europe implodes) to eliminate the temporary deficits we ran up to keep our heads above water during the financial crisis and go back to running surpluses, have universal, single payor health care (at half the price per capita of US health care), similar standard of living, stable democracy, and politicians who are saner than the US ones, even if I don't like anything our current government is doing.
Just sayin'.
(We've got our own problems here, no question, but we're in better shape than the US, for the foreseeable future)
You forgot to include -- no automatic weapons, no small arms, just game hunters with rifles.
Multi-culturism -- Bilingual English / French, with respect for Spanish-- all European Languages,
Great universities comparable to the best in the world for science, medicine, music, arts,
So the swing will be more and more to talk radio and call-in shows.
Have UK Citizenship
Have Canadian, Australian, Mexican, Latin American, Cuban, Russian, French, German, ..... citizenship. Almost every country but the USA.
I think that we forgot how things in software engineering should be done. Are there not steps that we have learned?
a) Business Spec
b) Functional Spec
c) Technical Spec
d) Risk Analysis
e) Coding and testing
f) Quality Control (of pre-production code)
g) Legal (CYA)
h) Marketing (somewhere around a.1)
Code walkthoughs and testing must be done-- right?
I would think the limiting factor would be the strength of the plastic and not the design itself.
Would not the limiting factor be the gun lobby, which will see their sales drop very very substantially.
Now they will say, guns don't kill, 3D printed guns kill
The exchange rate is part of it but locked down distribution channels are the larger part.
A while ago, one US dollar was worth 1.7 Australian dollars. So something worth US$50 in a US store would be put on shelves here for AU$85. And then the exchange rate changed. One US dollar was worth one AU dollar. But things don't sell for their cost, they sell for as much as the seller can get and that's the pricing Australian consumers were used to. So that US$50 item would still be sold for AU$85 and someone would pocket the AU$35 difference.
The second part of this is distribution channel lockdown. Companies producing goods make deals with their US distributors to force those distributors to refuse to sell to Australian buyers. That leaves Australians and Australian retailers forced to buy from the designated Australian distributor at inflated prices.
What the grey market does is break that distribution lock. That's all. Some US citizen buys goods in the US from the US distribution channel, pays the US price, ships them over and sells them in Australia for far less than the authorised Australian distributor charges Australian retailers. If it wasn't for the locked down distribution, Australian retailers would skip the authorised Australian distributor and buy from a US distributor at US prices.
Another reason Australians are complaining is, with Internet sales, people nowdays can *see* the prices being charged elsewhere. 15 years ago, you'd have no idea what something sold for in another country. Now, we see Skyrim appear on Steam for US$50 for US gamers and US$90 for Australian gamers.
Yes, we get charged US dollars on Steam. 90 of them instead of 50, because the US Steam site sees I have an Australian IP address. And you have to send the packets much harder to make sure they get all the way across the ocean, you know? There's sites where you can order a game and they'll go to their local retailer, buy the game, open the box and then email you the Steam key. You can type it in your Steam client and download the game. Absolutely ridiculous.
I may be naive, but does Austrailia have currency controls. I deal with Latin America, and one of the countries limits an individual transfer of money out of the country to $3500.00 after which there is a tax. Tourists and individuals are not impacted if they take less than that amount out of the country. Your grey market purchase would fall into the less-than "currency controlled" amount, if that is imposed.
Yeah; I'm waiting for the day they abolish prices altogether and just list the cost of everything as a percentage of your income. That's the pricing model everything is moving towards anyway -- not what something is worth, but what they can get away with charging you. And if any of you asshats stand up and make an "invisible hand" argument, you're waking up tomorrow with a horse head next to you. This is not the result of free trade, but the restriction of free trade. Those corporations are shoving region coding down your throats, signing exclusive contracts and manipulating distribution channels to artificially alter the prices, and buying off government officials to make it all legal. That is not capitalism. It is not free trade. It is exploitative, and should be stopped.
Are you proposing communism?
You think that's bad... try being in Canada, our drug prices may be less, but our prices on almost everything else are significantly higher than in the USA. There was actually a news article here a while back about cars that were built at a plant in Canada, being $10,000-$20,000 cheaper in hawaii than they were at the dealership accross the street from the plant. I frequently buy other things online to avoid the ridiculous markup in Canadian stores too.
I was at a popular Electronic Retail Store. where 6 foot HDMI cables was listed at $40.00 I went to the local Dollarama (dollar store) and they had the 6 foot cables for $2.00. Batteries, lightbulbs etc. at big box stores are triple the price of the internet or local dollar stores (for the same product).
Technically, on a 6 foot length, with no real megahertz frequencies traversing the cable, there is perceptable difference in TV output or even my HDMI monitor output. The $40.00 cables had gold colored connector shells.
In UK, NZ, and I presume Australia too, the reason people pay for private health insurance is to get a bed in a private room when/if they require hospitilization, and to get on a shorter waiting list for tests and treatments for non-life-threatening conditions. If you're prepared to slum it in a shared ward with other patients and wait a few months to get surgery on that low level knee pain that's been annoying you for years, then the NHS is perfectly adequate, and will kick into action quickly and efficiently when you really need it.
Same story for Quebec and most of Canada. By the way, our health insurance, via taxes, also includes some of not most ambulance services. That includes heliocopter rides from remote locations to local hospitals. (We have a few hospitals with landing pads). In other cases, if it is scheduled surgery, it may include return plane fare if the resident is living in a remote region.
Where we fail badly is in the far north with Aboriginal Indians who live on reserves. They often have no resident doctor.
Good god, doesn't anyone know how to do a little reading on subjects before giving their lectures? As much as everyone hates insurance companies, they actually contribute very little overall to the cost of health care (less than 10%), and malpractice lawsuits contribute far less than even that. The BIGGEST contributor to the outrageous health care costs in the US is, by far, a lack of pricing regulations over pharmaceutical companies and manufacturers (which every other developed country in the world has) and a willingness by politicians (and insurance companies) to sign contracts with pharmaceutical businesses to meet their ridiculous prices. Why do you think people can go to Mexico to buy the same medicine for less than 1/10th of what they pay for it in the US? It's not like Mexico can afford to subsidize a wide variety of medicine; most of that stuff is completely unsubsidized. It's because pharmaceutical companies know they can charge outrageous prices for cheap medicine knowing that we'll buy it if we have to.
And "Obamacare" does indeed address this issue, although nowhere near as much as it should, and that was even before it got neutered by the corporate henchmen we know as (mostly Republican) Congressmen. If you seriously think "real" health care reform is just making it impossible for people to sue for botched operations (which can already take years in many states, if it's even permitted), you need to stop watching Fox Noise.
We in Canada know well what gouging is taking place. The provinces are moving together to purchase generics en masse. They also learned to not have a single source of supply. Sandoz, a large generic manufacturer shut itself down when some issues with medications and sanitary manufacturing were detected. They were the lowest bidder. They are now back on line, and the governments are looking to having two suppliers of every medication. One thing about prescription drugs though, is that the government does not approve every new drug that comes onto the market. They are very very careful to ensure the drug has merit, and that lower cost alternative cocktail solutions will be a good alternative. If you also have private insurance, perhaps that insurance plan will cover the new drugs -- drugs without a good history of worthwhile results.
No ObamaCare won't do any such thing in actuality; though it may pretend to do so it will actually make all the costs go up as it lacks any actual cost control mechanism. Their ideas was "make everyone get it and the insurers will lower their prices" but it doesn't work that way - especially when the insurers are the number one or two problem (the other being malpractice lawsuits, which again ObamaCare does nothing to cure).
If you want real health reform in the US, then you have to address malpractice lawsuits in some meaningful manner, and also address the fact that insurance companies do everything they can to keep from paying anything - which results in 3, 4, or more appeals before a doctor gets paid - each appeal making costs higher as it requires money to file, and personnel to file and track - people that could otherwise be helping service patients. Solve those to things and health care costs will drop dramatically.
Bravo... You are right on!!.
In Quebec, doctors are by law, prevented from being sued for malpractice. But the College of physicians is scrutineering the doctors very closely. With no law suits, the quality of doctor has not suffered, and patients are not dying or being more injured than if there was lawsuites. Doctors are free to see more critically ill patients, and live with less stress because they are protected.
A Doctors net net pay after expenses is about the same as their USA counterpart, who have high insurance expenses to protect the doctor from (frivolous) law suites.
So will I have to go to Mexico for my low price drugs now? Sorry Canada
Actually, it costs me $8.00 roughly as a monthly dispensing fee, and 80% of the drug cost until I reach my yearly quota of $1000.00.
Thereafter the prescription drugs are free, except for the monthly dispensing fee.
And I don't have to go to Mexico. Of course, it is impossible to even think of going to the USA.
We are blessed that back in the 1970's, 1980's and in early 1990's there were many inventors decided to share their incredible inventions with the world, and they also decided against patenting their inventions
That is why we got what we got today - from hypertext to web2, web3
If the inventors of yesteryears were as greedy as Apple - We are sure going to miss out on the many things that we are enjoying today
Hooray to the generous inventors !!
Pox to those greedy patent trolls !!!
Yes, it's a true assumption. It is also the reason we are able to communicate on /.